Mystic Knights are a hybrid vocation in Dragon’s Dogma that can use swords, maces, staves, shields, and magic. They bridge the Fighter and Mage classes, providing flashy weapon attacks and enchantments. The class can bear large shields with high stability, imbue weapons with magic, and create Sword/Mace-based spells. The best skills on mystic knight scale off magic, but like magic archers, they are a hybrid vocation that benefits from strength and magic.
Mystic Knights heavily benefit from both strength and magick, but using a sword or mace will raise their strength much more than magick. At MK 8, Dark Anguish is the second best weapon class, while the sword relies on strength but can be enhanced with magic if weapon enchantment skills are on the shield. Mystic Knights have a balanced stat growth in both, but having more Magick is more important than equal Magick and Strength.
With the exception of Sky Rapture, all Mystic Knight exclusive skills are primarily Magick-based and rely on a strongly magickal character to do good damage. To make a strongly offensive Knight, it is desirable to gain more Magick. If you use your weapon attacks more, then lean towards strength and either spend time leveling as an assassin (highest strength growth but crap defenses) or warrior (second best).
Mystic Knights use both melee and magic in battle, and their primary weapon can be either a Sword, Mace, or Staff. Their other key piece of equipment is a Magick Shield. Most of Mystic Knight’s unique abilities do not scale with player strength at all. The total damage of most Mystic Knight skills is calculated by their strength and magic, making them a true hybrid.
📹 Mystic Knight is stronger and easier than you think!
Welcome Arisen, some people say the Mystic Knight is weak, or he is to complex to play. Today we proof them wrong! Check …
📹 Strength MK vs Magic MK
High Strength (956 strength 258 Magic) vs High Magic (866 Magic 258 Strength) Same Augments. Same Weapons.
After some calculations best way to maximize damage for Mystic Knight is just to level a balanced build. I’m very skeptical to shit I read online so I like to do my own thing, and can now rest at ease that I didn’t waste countless hours of my time creating my Mystic Knight lol. This wouldn’t be the case if the augment damage cap wasn’t there so utilizing the 2:3 40 60% split on Great Cannon of Strength and Magic respectively is the smartest thing to do.
So… Magick is just better. Shocker there. I split mine 50/50 and the results were noticeable. I could no longer kill an undead dragon with 1 great cannon+holy riposte, now it takes 2. Not a big difference, but one is doing a little less than half the damage of the other. That perspective does make it a big difference. Great article as usual. Keep up the good work.
Pretty easy answer. What skills are you gonna use? If you’re gonna be using the shield counters, sigil, and cannon then go full magic, they all scale off magic. Otherwise be a strong boi but IMO magic is better. MK’s coolest abilities are all magic based. The STR skills are just copy pasted from fighter so just play fighter
great timing, I have a question that you might know that is tied to mk and fighter. is perfect blocking tied to fps and if so does that means a game at 144fps is harder to block then say 60? want mess around with mk and fighter and would like to know if locking my fps at 60 would be better then 100+ is this case
Even before perusal the article, I’ll give it a like, just because I was wondering what to do! I’m on my first playthrough right now, I want to get most of the trophies, do BBI stuff, and then start a New Game, not NG+m but New Game. And I was torn between Strider10/Assassin200 and Mage10/Assa97/Sorc200 for my stats. I will probably mostly play MK when I’m done levelling, but I feel like I hear quite often strength is generally the way to go, although the balanced build would allow more flexibility should I feel like Holy Focussed Bolt. So yeah, anyway, love that you read my mind. 😉
I imagine both sides have their inherent weaknesses, like having to use strength for enemies with high magic resistance and vise versa Is there some way to get a relatively even balance of both, with a bit of an edge on magic? Perhaps the leveling could be something like this? 1-10 Strider 10-60 Assassin 60-200 Sorcerer
Hey man I just gotta say that you are by far the best player I have seen for this game. But I have a question. I’ve been playing as a ranger/strider/assassin for most of my playtime on my character. Beat the game on hard-mode. I’m like level 98. But I’ve dabbled into the magic vocations as well, and I’m looking to play MK for a while. Obviously I’m not set stat wise for magic at the current moment but is it worth leveling to 200 as MK? Or should I stick to my bow?
Now I’m curious how a hybrid would compare. If it would be in the middle of pure str and pure mag, or if it would be even lower than both since it isn’t committed one way or the other? Also with the great cannon test I wonder how much it would have changed if you placed the cannons close enough that the full moon slash would have hit too, since that way the str build could have benefitted from the full moon damage. Still probably wouldn’t have even been close, but it’s interesting. But yeah I guess with this combined with your Almost Immortal build from a couple days ago, pure magic seems to be a very strong winner.
a few things to keep in mind here. for great cannon a hybird build achieves the best overall results for an MK. as a pure magic mk is a glass cannon and will get hit for tons of dmg by any kind of phys move. since gc is 40/60 str/magic split dmg by default. full str mk was never a good idea to begin with. but a hybrid mk SHREDS trough enemy hp bars. just make sure magic is always about 20% higher than str. this way you not only become tanky you also deal tons of dmg with the great cannons which is the mks bread and butter move for bigger targets. plus keep in mind this enemy has way more phys defense than magic defense (980 phys defense vs 530 magic defense). hence why you should repeat the test with an enemy with equal resistences next to get really accurate results.
I’ve just started dragons dogma dark arisen again. I’m making a 100% strider run. I cannot TELL you how impatient i am for BBI. On to the topic of the vid: I actually just did mage 1-10 and then mystic knight. I figured as mystic knight, he’s going to gain average attack, so he’ll still be able to perform physical attacks well enough, but he’s more magick oriented, like MA. Still one of my favorite vocations
Love your stuff, you are hell of knowledgeable. Would you do me a help and break down/demonstrate the timing for controlled fall? I played competitive fighting games for years and am good at teching knockdowns, but I think I’ve managed to roll up maybe a dozen times in hundreds of hours of DD :I While I’m here I’d also love to see one of your heckin’ around articles with a sword/bow only assassin.
So, this article comes at the right time…i started today my 10th (i think…..maybe my 15th) run at Dragon’s Dogma and guess what….i started a MK run….the first time i played the game as a MK (some years ago) i did a hybrid build using a Warrior until Lvl 50, a Sorcerer until Lvl 100 and a MK from Lvl 101 to Lvl 200 but, perusal one of your articles about the MK, i realized that this Vocation is based entirely on magic So i was thinking to use a Sorcerer until Lvl 100, a Mage until i reach Level 9 Rank (just to get Attunement) and then switch to the Mystic Knight About weapons, i think it’s better to use magic based Swords/Maces instead of Strenght based such as the Virge of Madness….am I right ?
The only question I have concerns the defenses of the Elder Ogre. Its Defense is 450 higher than its Magick Defense, which would equate to the Magick setup hitting harder right? Because every single Blunt / Slash damage component loses 20% and then 980, while every Dark Magick component lost 20% + 530, and the neutral Magick just lost 530