Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[Khalithar]

JP has waaaay higher clear rates. Is that because their Japanese birth certificate comes with innate gaming knowledge and skill? Probably not, ...

It is. Everyone knows asian gamers have special powers.

[Phileas]

I wouldn’t say DRK is bad. I just don’t enjoy 4.0 DRK. I just feel like it’s a lot of work managing blood and mp with not too much reward for it. And lack of synergy between abilities makes me sad. Taking away 3.0 dark dance and reprise was such a mistake...

DRK can tank competently but I just feel there is no real edge against war or pld. What do you bring a DRK for? I’m not entirely sure....

[Bhearil]

Problem is while other jobs need low/ medium effort, DRK needs high effort to perform close yet not better than those. Add that its really lacking a personality and niche, and players say "Why pick Drk when X tank is easier and performs far better on low/average skill cap and even on high skill cap they are still behind even if not for much?"

Some people might enjoy DRK, buts thats like those who mained Pala on Heavensward when they were on a serious need of some love because Drk/War were outperforming Pala badly

[Kuukyo]

I came from competitive MOBA, FPS games like Counter Strike, League of Legends, etc, and there are certain champions/heroes I want to play more than others despite the skill gap difference between them. Say, in League of Legends, people love to play champions that are in favor of the meta, but I want to play champions like Yasuo, Zed, Riven, etc. Many people would say "why don't you go with the meta? It's more effective and some of them are even simpler than those you are playing right now." Indeed, but these champions are really fun when you start to understand the mechanic of those high skill cap champions and it felt more satisfying to use my brain to make creative gameplay instead of "right clicking to win" (Master Yi).

Same can be applied to FFXIV. I don't see many people running DRK while I run ID solo because I feel like they tend to favor effectiveness and low-effort gameplay to get pass the dungeons as fast as possible. I had played in a new preferred server in Japanese DB (Atomos), and out of 10 IDs I played in, 7-8 games I played with a DRK. The clear is significantly faster because everyone knows what to do: tanks don't do trash pull, or that's how I have seen so far - healer can DPS while still be able to heal tank at right times; everyone focuses at a single target. That's my experience so far, but what I want to say is, DRK isn't bad unless you want to speed run through IDs, and if you do, you should know what you are doing and you should bring a healer friend with you cause DRK doesn't have tanky stats but this class has a lot of sustain if you use your rotation right.

[Launched]

Problem is while other jobs need low/ medium effort, DRK needs high effort to perform close yet not better than those.

I don't agree with that at all. DRK's difficulty is the most exaggerated thing in the game and in my opinion it's one of the easiest jobs in the game. Pressing buttons more often doesn't add difficulty when it's just Dark Arts over and over again (and spamming Low Blow/Reprisal on cooldown in HW wasn't any different).

[shao32]

I don't agree with that at all. DRK's difficulty is the most exaggerated thing in the game and in my opinion it's one of the easiest jobs in the game. Pressing buttons more often doesn't add difficulty when it's just Dark Arts over and over again (and spamming Low Blow/Reprisal on cooldown in HW wasn't any different).

DRK is harder bcs at contrary that PLD and WAR you have to react and use you skills based on a inconsistent resource generation mechanics, mess with delirium can lead with a masive dps loss, mess with the mp can lead to let you defenseless without TBN, and messing with blood can lead you to or waste blood overcaping or missing the delirium window bcs you dont have enough, compared to just place a brainless burst window of 10 sec where you only worry is spam 1-2 buttons and having a pretty stable gauge/MP generation DRK its obviously the hardest of the 3, but i dont think no one is saying is the hardest job of the game or something like that but of the current tanks.

[Aana]

DRK is harder bcs at contrary that PLD and WAR you have to react and use you skills based on a inconsistent resource generation mechanics, mess with delirium can lead with a masive dps loss, mess with the mp can lead to let you defenseless without TBN, and messing with blood can lead you to or waste blood overcaping or missing the delirium window bcs you dont have enough, compared to just place a brainless burst window of 10 sec where you only worry is spam 1-2 buttons and having a pretty stable gauge/MP generation DRK its obviously the hardest of the 3, but i dont think no one is saying is the hardest job of the game or something like that but of the current tanks.

It is only that hard to hit 99% with on FFlogs. That is the only place that you have to be mega careful with your resources to make sure you can punch the gas when raid buffs come up and save up more in between. Kinda like the old 4.0 warrior. But you really are working hard to make Drk sound complicated. Dont let your MP hit rock bottom (so you can TBN if needed). Dont let your MP cap out or you waste it. Use your your blood when you get 50 on a BS. Congrats you can now hit purple on Drk.

To be fair, different folks have different strengths. Some are much better with explicit, rigid patterns/rotations (like 4.0 war) and do very well with those kinds of systems. Some people are much better go with the flow and a general statement like "always keep enough MP for TBN and dont let it cap" is all the direction they need and perform beautifully. If you find 4.X drk highly difficult it is likely you do better with fixed rigid systems than the more free flow of drk. You cant really plan drk out to the GCD on every fight because there is some flex in resource gen unlike say, war who has extremely binary/rigid resources and rotations. But that doesnt make drk a complex untamable beast. It just has a very different type of gameplay flow.

And of course, more buttons doesnt = hard. Spamming 1 combo and 1 OGCD action really fast doesnt make it somehow harder. It is quite straight forward in that regard, even moreso now that they have further homogenized DA to be the same potency for most actions.

[shao32]

snip

at 80-99% yeah its harder bcs every drop of MP and blood count to keep the barely dps levels we share with PLD on lower % players strugle bcs they have to keep a eye on the MP, on the gauge, on you CD rotation and the tricky spikes of blood of TBN with is a lot more that you have to keep an eye with the other 2, the job itself is harder, the gap of PLD/WAR vs DRK is bigger and bigger the lower % you look so is not a mistery, DRK is the defaul hardest tank of the 3 but in not saying its harder to hell leves lets try to dont take it to that extreme either, and of course depend of the player to but the general consensus its that and the data support it with isnt bad either being a hard job is nice too, its the relation of work and reward.

[347SPECTRE]

at 80-99% yeah its harder bcs every drop of MP and blood count to keep the barely dps levels we share with PLD on lower % players strugle bcs they have to keep a eye on the MP, on the gauge, on you CD rotation and the tricky spikes of blood of TBN with is a lot more that you have to keep an eye with the other 2, the job itself is harder, the gap of PLD/WAR vs DRK is bigger and bigger the lower % you look so is not a mistery, DRK is the defaul hardest tank of the 3 but in not saying its harder to hell leves lets try to dont take it to that extreme either, and of course depend of the player to but the general consensus its that and the data support it with isnt bad either being a hard job is nice too, its the relation of work and reward.

I wouldnt say it's harder, just more tedious, and less rewarding for more effort in comparison to WAR and PLD.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

Personally it is the current implementation of the more shifting and inconsistent flow of resources, especially Blood, that makes 4.X DRK feel awkward and clunky to play to me.

It's not the actual more fluid resource gain itself that I find to be the problem and I can actually appreciate the different feel to that type of resource gain, it's that the ways to utilize the resources clash with the fluidity of gain by being far too rigid and strict. For the most part I don't have an issue with MP asides from thinking the MP pool could be a smidge bigger, but Blood just feels awkward to me.

Basically Blood has a pool of 100 just like WAR and PLD and has abilities that cost 50 a pop, again like PLD and WAR. Here are the problems though.

WAR has very predictable and measured gauge gain so you can more easily plan out using your gauge so that you never overcap and waste gauge gain and then on top of that they have two separate abilities that cost less than 50 and can be used as gauge dumps. So straight forward gauge gain with limited but straight forward gauge usage that has a few extra tools to help with management.

PLD doesn't have any gauge dumps and their gauge gain can sometimes be a bit less predictable than WAR but their only ways to use the gauge is defensively, so holding onto gauge resources and over-capping isn't really much of if any loss. Also, PLD has no burst Gauge gain like Equilibrium or TBN, so they don't have to adjust for that. I guess you could consider Bulwark in ShO as that, but that is up very infrequently. So potentially somewhat fluid gauge gain but with gauge use that is pretty forgiving.

DRK though sort of has the worst of both, or all worlds, in the way their gauge resource works.
It's gain is highly fluid with multiple sources flowing into it from combos, an AoE DoT, timed buffs and then on top of that a burst resource gain in TBN that is up frequently and gives half of your entire gauge in one go that you want to use as much as possible for a reason outside of the resource gain, the defensive aspect, which results in you having to constantly manage your Blood pool so that you can push out those TBNs and not overcap.
So DRK by far has the most complicated gauge resource gain of the three tanks, which as I've stated isn't a problem in of itself.
However DRK also has the unfortunate position of having incredibly strict and limited ways to use up the gauge with only two readily available abilities that are GCD attacks and both cost half the gauge pool, and one OGCD ability that is on an 80s timer and also costs half the gauge pool. There are no gauge dump skills that cost less than 50 to provide finer control of your gauge resources and only one that is OGCD and that is on a long timer, and obviously no skills that are both less than 50 gauge, OGCD and on a relatively short time like WAR has in Onslaught and Upheaval. That is then combined with DRK's gauge abilities being offensive and attacks which means that gauge directly correlates to dps and so is very punishing if you overcap.
So basically you end up with DRK having the most complicated gauge resource gain of the tanks while also having the most restrictive and punishing gauge resource usage of all the tanks.
Don't get me wrong, you can pretty much "manage" this by essentially churning out Bloodspillers, or Quietuses, as soon as you see them light up and become available, but IMO it just feels really bad, clunky and not nearly as impactful as the gauge usage on WAR or PLD. While I like being able to do as many big attacks as I can possibly put out, it just feels like I am sort of being forced into spamming Bloodspiller whenever possible or else I will be punished for it; no control or choice, just do it that way over and over or else, which funny enough seems to be in line with the general theme of complaints with DRK.

I feel that going forward SE really needs to do something about this and here are a few of my suggestions.

Increase the size of the resource pools, both MP and Blood if I had my way, or adjust the Blood costs of abilities down so that there is greater flex/wiggle room to compensate for and work in tandem with the more fluid and complex gauge gain. This could also open up the potential for the greater storing of resource points and potentially giving DRK more of an ability to have a better level of controlled burst in their dps. For example, if Bloodspiller, Quietus and Delerium had their cost dropped from 50 to 30 while also proportionately adjusting resource gain like popping TBN giving 30 so that it still only give the use of one ability, that would allow DRK to store up 3 moves as opposed to two with a little bit of wiggle-room left over which would give them a lot more breathing room to work with their fluid gain instead of feeling like they are fighting against it.

Provide DRK with gauge dump skills that can be used like Onslaught or Upheaval, so they have better tools to leverage more fine control over their gauge usage and management.

Fluid and dynamic gauge gain for DRK is fine and I want them to keep it, they just need to make the ways to use it more fluid and dynamic as well.