Jump to...
Hello, fellow Dork Knights!
I’m writing this because Mox has held me against my will and no one else will write an updated guide. Send help and pineapples.
With this guide I hope to provide everyone with an in-depth view on one of the FINAL FANTASY XIV tanks, Dark Knight. As such, this guide is dedicated to people already familiar with the basics of the Tank role. This guide is written with the expectation that you have read your tooltips or are going to go read them right now.
For those completely new to the Tank role, this guide will provide a foundation:
If you know the basics and want to push the limits of Dark Knight gameplay, carry on reading.
Distribution:
This guide is only to be hosted on places allowed by the author, which at this time only include SaltedXIV and the Balance discord.
You are allowed to contact me for permission to host, etc.
Job Overview
At its core, Dark Knight is about juggling and managing your mana and blood gauge to maximize damage in raid buffs. It also heavily leverages TBN
Stat Priority
Crit > Comfy SkS > DH > Det
(Det > DH if you also play WAR)
Comfy Skill Speed
You want to go as slow as possible in order to be able to put more substats in the larger damage increasing substats. However, the most important part to gearing is ensuring you can hit 5 GCD’s in
BiS Lists
Refer to The Balance discord server #drk_resources
2.38 – 13061.5 – Chicken Fettuccine https://etro.gg/gearset/6a9cdaa0-d1d2-4431-a5f2-62d3c903876f 2.41 – 13067.6 – Chicken Fettuccine https://etro.gg/gearset/0d179920-5123-45d5-9cc9-6e674c14a50a 2.43 — 13066.7 – Smoked Chicken https://etro.gg/gearset/59d18629-5fa3-43c0-8614-f9e0ca03a15a
Actions Preview
Single Target
Physical Damage
Standard basic attack to initiate your single target combo. The first hit in your 123.
Physical Damage, +600 mana
The second part of your 123 combo.
Physical Damage, +20 Blood gauge
The third part of your 123.
300p heal that is separate from the damage dealt.
Physical Damage, -50 Gauge
Consumes 50 Blood Gauge. Use this in raid buffs or to avoid overcapping blood gauge. Does not break your combo.
Magical Damage
Ranged attack with increased enmity. This is a spell so it will always have a 2.50s recast. Breaks your combo.
Area of Effect (AOE)
Magical Damage
The first part of your AOE combo. This is a spell, so it will always have a 2.50s recast.
Magical Damage, +20 Gauge +600 Mana
The second part of your AOE combo. Damage gain on 2 or more targets. This is a spell, so you will always have a 2.50s recast.
Physical Damage, -50 Gauge
AOE Blood gauge spender. Damage gain over Bloodspiller on 3 or more targets. Does not break your combo.
Offensive oGCDs
Magical Damage, -3000 Mana
Single target oGCD mana spender, you will use 4 a minute with full uptime. Upgrades from
Magical Damage, -3000 Mana
Line AOE mana spender. Damage gain on 2 or more targets. Upgrades from
Magical Damage
oGCD whose radius is centered on your target; heals you for each target hit. Useful to use as a weave while having to move the boss due to its ranged nature.
Physical Damage
Gap closer. 2 charges. Use in raid buffs unless you need to save a use to keep uptime because of mechanics. Do not let stacks cap out.
Physical Damage, +600 mana
Single target oGCD that also restores mana.
Magical Damage
Ground targeted AOE. As a ground target it will snapshot your buffs when cast, but will dynamically check enemy debuffs each hit. Gives a free instant tick on all targets in range when cast, independent of the actor timer so it’s actually 360 total potency.
Uncontrolled Pet, -50 Gauge
Summons Esteem to perform 7 attacks each dealing 300 potency after a delay of 6 seconds.
- Living Shadow will actively replicate your buffs on a per hit basis.
- It will always do the following attacks every time:
Abyssal Drain →Plunge →Quietus →Flood of Shadow →Edge of Shadow →Bloodspiller →Carve and Spit
UNLESS it is completely out of range before the next attack, in which case it will use Abyssal Drain -> Plunge.
This counts towards the 7 attacks , and he will repeat this as many times as he has attacks left. - Living Shadow is a significant portion of your damage and is always worth to spend the gauge, even on multiple targets, unless enemies will go invulnerable before the full duration is used. Esteem’s attacks are not all magical based, they mirror your attacks in how they inflict the same type of physical or magical damage. (Abyssal is magical, Plunge is physical, etc)
- Note: As Esteem is classified in-game as a pet, it is unaffected by weakness, Damage down, Darkside, and
Dragon Sight . This also means the tooltip potency is not indicative of actual potency, and the actual potency is approximately 2530 over the duration.
Utility
Buff, +200 mana per Bloodspiller / +500 mana per Quietus
One of your 2 biggest damage cooldowns. Use either Bloodspiller or Quietus 5 times during the duration.
Buff, +600 mana and +10 blood per hit.
Any GCDs landed under this buff give mana and blood. This buff has an effective duration of 9.9 seconds making it very timing and ping dependant. You want to land 5 GCDs under this buff to maximize your mana and blood gains.
Stance
10x enmity while active. Keep it on while holding enmity (also known as aggro) or to maintain being the 2nd highest on the enmity list.
Role Action
This skill places you at the top of the enmity list and then adds an additional amount of enmity on top. The tank stance multiplier affects this additional amount when tank stance is on.
Role Action
Redirects 25% of your current enmity onto a targeted party member.
Role Action
Negates knockbacks and applies a slow to enemies who hit you (usually only effective on dungeon mobs). Very powerful dungeon cooldown.
Role Action
Stuns targets that can be stunned. 5s stun that decreases in length for each subsequent stun.
Role Action
Interrupts the use of some (highlighted) enemy actions.
Mitigation
Invulnerability
If your HP is reduced to 0 after using this, you are granted the Walking Dead status for 10s and won’t die from most attacks. If Walking Dead expires, you die. Walking Dead can be resolved by being healed an amount equal to your max hp. Note that resolving it means you are no longer invincible!
Personal Mitigation
30% damage reduction, 2 minute cooldown. 15s duration.
Personal Mitigation, Role Action
20% damage reduction, 90s cooldown. 20s duration.
Personal Mitigation
Reduces damage taken from MAGIC ATTACKS by 20%
Single Target Shield, -3000 mana
Grants Dark Arts if the shield is fully consumed in the 7s duration. (A consumed shield gives a free use of Edge of Shadow or Flood of Shadow)
Party Mitigation
AOE 10% magic resistance on yourself and nearby party members. This will stack with
Party Mitigation, Role Action
AOE 10% damage down debuff applied to enemies in a circle around you, very powerful. Use and abuse this in every encounter.
Mitigation Cheatsheet
For a grab and go overview of Dark Knight mitigation, click the image shown here!
You can download the image locally too.
Rotation Overview
Openers
Openers are built in order to maximize as much damage as you can during party raid buffs and debuffs. Edge of Shadow is used after the first GCD in order to gain the Darkside damage buff.
Standard DRK Opener
Aligns everything with raid buffs.
prepull (
Potion)
Single Weave
Use if you can’t double weave without clipping.
prepull ( Potion +
Unmend Opener
If you need to specifically position the boss at the beginning.
Potion)
- Use pre-pull
The Blackest Night to prevent the MP overcap from the natural MP tick and fromBlood Weapon Hard slash. This saves anEdge of Shadow for raid buffs. If TBN won’t be broken, use another Edge withLiving Shadow instead. - Swapping first
Plunge andAbyssal Drain is a very small potency gain with a Red Mage’sEmbolden . However, this can affect times you need a plunge later. Plan accordingly. Delirium is used late in order to catch as many raid buffs as possible. You can pop it as early as the second weave slot after Souleater along with Living Shadow if the fight requires earlier Delirium usage.
Check the picture below for a good moment to activate your
Single Target
After the opener, you will do your 123 combo of
- Using
Bloodspiller to avoid overcapping blood Delirium windows- Using Bloodspiller in raid buffs
Other than the above, you will hit your oGCDs as they come off cooldown in order to fit them in raid buffs to maximize your damage. There are times when holding offensive cooldowns will enable you to better use them inside raid buffs without losing a use.
Beware of using Plunge on cooldown due to its charge system. Be mindful of its 30s cooldown to ensure you can use two inside of raid buffs.
Additionally, wait to use Blood Weapon/Delirium until the second weave slot when they come off cd, or you will not be able to hit 5 GCDs within them. See the diagram below for an example of double weaving. Each green dot represents an oGCD weaved inside your GCD action.
Area of Effect
- On 2 or more targets, you will use
Unleash ->Stalwart Soul
Math for why, using a 6 GCD spread:Hard Slash Syphon Strike Souleater x2
400 + 600 + 800 Potency = 1800 potency
40 Blood Gauge and 1200 ManaUnleash Stalwart Soul x3
900 + 960 Potency = 1860 potency
60 Blood gauge and 1800 Mana - While the base potency gain is small, you will generate resources 50% faster using your AOE combo on two or more targets.
Living Shadow is your strongest AOE tool, it will be your first blood spender in a multi-target situation.- On only 2 targets, you will still use
Bloodspiller , and at 3 or more targets you will useQuietus to spend your blood gauge. Quietus becomes 630 potency on 3 targets compared to Bloodspillers 600 potency on one. - Spend mana on
Flood of Shadow on 2 or more targets. 300 potency on 2 targets is more damage than 500 on one target.
Resource Management
Mana (MP)
With a cap of 10k mana, and mana spenders that cost 3k MP, the challenge becomes fitting 4 mana spenders inside raid buffs.
To begin, you will generate approximately 12k mana a minute in full uptime scenarios. Your “base” mana regen is 200 mp per actor “server” tick (every 3 seconds). In order to get 4 within something like
In fights where outgoing damage is substantial and healer GCDs are saved, use TBN liberally.
Mana spending follows a simple priority system:
- Spend to get the damage buff from Darkside.
- Spend on
The Blackest Night to save healer GCDs. - Spend on TBN once a minute to bank for raid buffs.
- Spend within raid buffs.
Blood
Blood is only used on your spenders;
- Spend Blood Gauge to avoid overcapping.
- Spend Blood Gauge on Living Shadow.
- Spend within buffs.
Blood Weapon
Utilizing and maximizing
You can also delay your second Blood Weapon until your next Souleater so that it comes up during buffs instead of before them. This will allow for better blood management in full uptime, as there are some rotational times with certain SKS amounts where you are forced to choose between overcapping 10 blood, dropping a combo, or delaying Living Shadow.
You can hit 5 GCDs under Blood Weapon in AOE scenarios fairly consistently if you start with 100 Blood Gauge and perform a specific rotation.
For 3 or more targets:
For 2 Targets
This works because 3 GCDs under Blood Weapon are regular weaponskills and thus boosted by skill speed. You generate a 3rd gauge spender from Blood Weapon and Stalwart Soul, and can finish with an
The Blackest Night
This skill is absurdly powerful, and is Dark Knight’s strongest defensive tool. A 25% HP shield on a tank is more HP than a standard GCD heal like
Raid Buffs and How They Affect You
Reopener
There are two commonly used situations where the term reopener is used: when you start attacking the boss after a phase shift or a period of downtime, or a naturally occurring window where all of your cooldowns line up, like in your opener. This occurs for all jobs at 6 minutes.
Buff Windows
This section assumes full uptime.
Buff windows and usages will likely change if a fight has multiple jumps or phase changes. In the case of multiple raid buffs, aim to use as many cooldowns and resources as you can when there are multiple buffs up to utilize multiplicative damage stacking.
Trick Attack
- 4 Edge or Flood of Shadows, Abyssal Drain, Carve and Spit, 1-2x Plunge.
- Every other trick attack will have a Living Shadow
- Delirium will line up with every third Trick Attack use after the opener (180s, 360s, etc)
Brotherhood
120s Buffs
These buffs will all line up with Trick attack, and each will have a Living Shadow used under them. As with the trick attack window, you’ll use the following:
- 4 Edge or Flood of Shadows, Abyssal Drain, Carve and Spit, 1-2x Plunge.
- Delirium will line up with every third use after the opener (360s, etc)
180s buffs
{!Devotion}
These buffs will always have Delirium fall within them. As with the trick attack window, you’ll use the following:
- 4 Edge or Flood of Shadows, Abyssal Drain, Carve and Spit, 1-2x Plunge.
- Living Shadow will line up with every other usage (360, etc)
270s Potions
These increase your damage by ~8% for their duration. Due to the long cooldown, potions are often not used immediately upon coming off cooldown, in order to maximize the amount of damage done during your potion window. For instance, if a fight would be killed within 8 minutes, instead of using your second potion for your fourth Delirium window at 4m30s, you should hold it until your 6 minute burst, so that it is available for your full reopener (When all cooldowns line up naturally like your opener). Generally, these uses are also coordinated with major raid burst timings.
Pooling Resources for Raid Buffs
Dark Knight possesses the most flexibility among tanks to use their various burst cooldowns and resources within buff windows.
To give an example of why it is important to use resources and cooldowns within raid buffs:
Every 60s:
4 Edge of Shadow (2000 potency)
Abyssal + Carve and Spit (200 + 450)
2 Plunges (400)
(3,050 potency total)
You are gaining 5% from
If you had simply burned MP as it came up, and used plunge on cooldown, you lose 3 edges in trick, and one plunge, so you lose 85 potency from the 152 you would have generated.
Now let’s look at a 120s window:
Assume a party composition of Ninja, Dragoon, Dancer, Black Mage, Astrologian, Scholar
5% from trick attack, 10% crit from
2000 potency (EoS)
Abyssal + Carve and Spit (200 + 450)
2 Plunges (400)
(5,580 potency total)
Due to how buffs work, the damage is multiplicative, so it becomes 1.05*1.06*1.05 = 1.16865 multiplier + 10% crit rate
5,580 * 1.16865 = 6,521.067 Potency. You will gain almost 1k potency from pooling resources for 120s windows.
Stats, Itemization and BiS Theory
Utilizing the known damage calculations inside the game, we can use those formulas in community tools such as the current Tank DPS calculator to allow us to more accurately determine what gear and melds should be used for Dark Knight. For general use:
Melding priority
Crit > Comfy SkS > DH > Det
(Det > DH if you also play WAR)
Appropriate “comfy” Skill Speed (SKS) allows you to hit 5 GCDs in
Skill Speed Tiers
Generally, you want to go as slow as possible in order to be able to put more substats in the larger damage increasing substats. However, the most important part to gearing is ensuring you can hit 5 GCD’s in
Some common SkS GCD tiers in order from hardest to execute to most lenient:
- 1015 for 2.43 GCD – Tight af
- 1117 for 2.42 GCD
- 1218 for 2.41 GCD
- 1320 for 2.40 GCD
- 1421 for 2.39 GCD
- 1523 for 2.38 GCD – Lenient
Note: This is heavily dependent on your connection, and something only YOU can figure out for yourself from hitting a striking dummy. Most people need 2.40 or faster to consistently hit 5 GCD’s in Blood Weapon.
Tips and Tricks
- Because the majority of raidwides are magical, use
Dark Mind for free mitigation. Several bosses such as Ramuh in E5S have magical auto attacks. - Use
The Blackest Night on people who are low, or have missed heals before incoming damage. If TBN will not pop from autos or a buster between 60s buff windows, using it on a squishier party member for a raidwide will almost always break the shield. Casters, Healers, and Physical Ranged tend to be the squishiest. - If you know downtime is coming soon you want to end the Phase with a finished combo or a finished combo followed by 1 or 2 Bloodspillers. This is mostly something that takes a few pulls to get a feel for, but the important thing is ending on a combo ender or Bloodspiller and not wasting Blood Gauge.
- ALWAYS keep your GCD “rolling”. Do not go extended periods of time without hitting GCDs. Something is more than nothing. If you are forced to break away for mechanics, learn to manipulate your GCD to end on a combo ender or Bloodspiller and use Unmend. While this is low potency it is still better than nothing.
- Boss movement takes a bit of practice to get proficient at, as you will have to alternate between running from the boss, and coming back in to use a GCD. If you have to immediately move the boss for a mechanic, it is better for you to manipulate your GCD to allow for unmend to not break a combo, and have the boss move ASAP.
- Many people have an issue practicing the opener due to not being able to break the shield from TBN on a striking dummy, so the recommendation is to unsync old fights with a tankbuster or hard hitting autos, and with a death wall for quick resets. My personal recommendation is O12S while removing non sks boosting gear.
Eden’s Verse (Savage)
E7S | Idol of Darkness Opener
prepull Potion
This opener is used if the adds are getting killed quickly. It gains a use of Delirium during the fight. If they are not being killed quickly then use Delirium after the third GCD. Prepull pot, and blood weapon after your first bloodspiller due to weave space.
E8S | Shiva Re-opener
( Potion)
Helpful Macros
/merror off /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /ac "Salted Earth" <t> /micon "Salted Earth"This macro will drop
/merror off /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /ac "Shirk" <2> /micon "Shirk"This macro will automatically hit the 2nd spot in your party list with shirk, which should be your co-tank. Outside of multi-tank challenge runs, this is a staple macro most players have. Or git gud and learn to target your party list you scrub.
The Epic of Alexander
https://bit.ly/DRK_TEA_Notes 
Additional Resources
Guides
Beginner’s Tank Guide
Visit for basics of tanking
Warrior Guide
Visit for tips on the most infuriating tank
Paladin Primer
Visit for shield wielding tips
Gunbreaker Primer
Visit for gunpowder blasting tips
Aletin’s DRK Primer
Laid the foundation for this guide
Momo’s melee uptime guide
For learning how to be a better melee with defensive cooldowns
Websites
The Balance Discord
Visit for chat and questions
SaltedXIV
This website, visit for various guides and community resources
How to properly cook pineapple on pizza
Step 1. Skewer pineapple chunks and baste with a savory sauce, I prefer BBQ.
Step 2. Cook pizza separately from pineapple.
Step 3. Cook pineapple chunks until they develop a light glaze and have lost a lot of juice.
Step 4. Add pineapple to pizza after both are properly cooked.
Step 5. Lose your mind that TBN didn’t break.
Acknowledgment
Authors:
Ramza Beoulve’ (awesomeuno#7660)
Special thanks to:
Levi (Alevia#1270)
For Dark Knight blobs and powerful editor skills. Visit Levi’s Discord for more!
Mox Xinmagar (Mox#0007)
For the WAR guide that was cloned, slaughtered and modified to make this guide, and for helping me format and pretty it up.
Rin Karigani (Rin Karigani#0015)
Extremely powerful tank who I have stalked logs of for optimization and speedrunning, as well as being an Ultimate Tank friend.
Ari (AriNeedsAUsername#2514)
Math wizard who graciously let me use his mitigation cheatsheet.
Demon (Demon#2000)
Has helped me learn a lot of in’s and out’s of Dark Knight, and provided his Optimization guide to help improve this one.
Nethar (nethar#5308)
For letting me use her weaving infographic.
Aho Senpai (Aho Senpai#0818)
Utilized his site to build the images for the various openers.
Tank_gen friends (Various discord profiles)
Jaden, Tonto, Hopps, Runyst, Forgotten Freedom, Torael, Sizzy, Pazu, Zana for being excellent friendos.
The Haters (Various discord profiles)
You keep me going when no one else would, thanks for giving me something to laugh at all these years.
Changelog
2020-09-14
Initial finished draft version for 5.3
