Dark Knight Megathread

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Originally Posted by Crater

I think you're trying to reinvent the wheel where there's no reason to.

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Mate, you're the one who implied that a level of burstiness, and whether that comes from GCDs or oGCDs, are what we ought to be targeting in filling out tank jobs' diversity. I'm merely saying there's no damn point in following, let alone trying to fill, those categories. DRK doesn't have to be anything except fun and competitive. We don't need to fill typal quotas.

If you want it to strip DRK's burst, that's fine by me so long as it has something in compensation for that gameplay lost -- since managing burst will always have, in itself, more gameplay than not having any burst to manage. But shuffling things around or slapping a label on DRK isn't going to give it any more or less fun of mechanics. That'll come from everything else.

I think the problem behind the EW version is that its all redundant and the worst type of button bloat you can have. They type where it offers nothing new outside of damage. The lvl 90 skill is just dark passenger but without the utility and MP cost and is just another button for the sake of pressing buttons to fill in the time between spamming your one combo rotation. There's no reason for DRK to have this many ogcds that will only ultimately be used within TA windows so they clearly didn't listen to players back in ShB when they said they didn't want the job to have too many ogcds and weaving between gcds. For reference here's how DRK compares to the other tanks in ogcds, excluding the universal gap closers:

DRK: 6* (7 if you count esteem as a glorified dot)
GNB: 2* (6 if you count the continuation combos)
PLD: 2* (3 if you count Requiescat)
WAR: 2

At least with GNB its tied to continuation and acts a universal ogcd to combos. DRK needs to have all those open slots dedicated to those ogcds that do nothing but damage and most of that damage is redundant. SB deals 600 potency to an enemy in a line with 2 charges on a 60 sec recast making it 1200 potency every 2 mins. Guess what else is 1200 potency? 3 edge of shadows, which can be spammed since its on a 2 sec recast and you have 9000 MP. Don't even get me started on Living shadow but suffice to say DRK embodies the current design philosophy of make everything feel and play the same but just look different. Its all style and no substance.

They also gave up on DA which was one of the more unique ideas a tank ever got. An ability that you pay resources for to buff or augment your tool kit, now reduced to a foot note in the job gauge help tool tips telling you that once TBN breaks you get a DA which is essentially a free shadow. They could remove the term DA and it would still function the same.

The only hope I see is in Living Shadow possibly being used in conjunction with your tool kits. Like instead of being a glorified dot you could tie Living Shadow to the Blood gauge exclusively and reduce the recast and duration. It can act as a surrogate to DA where if you spend 50 gauge it will come out for short duration and buff you before doing one attack and leaving. However, if you use 100 gauge it will stay longer and deal damage in addition to dropping an aoe. Also at any point if you use Living Dead and esteem is out, he will take the death penalty for you while you keep the invul. Doesn't that sound more interesting than a 600 potency ogcd?

God damn, I just watched a Heavensward DRK video and... What happened? The mana management sounded interesting as hell and those amazing Power Slash, the old Delirium and Scourge animations...

I mean, I would love to replace Bloodspiller, Quietus and Carve and Spit animations for something more interesting. Kinda makes me wish I played FFXIV back then, at least to try the job out.

Dark Knight was very rewarding in HW due to having to manage Enmity and Mana and knowing when to drop stance and reapply it since stances had a damage penalty tied to it. Over the years however it's kit was gutted and has been homogenized with the other tanks because Tanking was too "stressful" on players. To which we went for managing Enmity as an indicator of skill to one where no skill is required.

You will rarely if ever see Tanks competing for aggro in Fates/bosses or even utilizing strats where some tanks could tank multiple bosses at once and you will almost never see a healer or DPS rip hate ever again.

There were a couple fights where DRK was suboptimal but a lot of encounters had lots of magical damage that Dark Knight shined in. It was a great time back then.

DADP+DADD in dungeons was some really hype dodge tank status.

Those days are over I'm afraid.

Stormblood at least had Blood Price and Abyssal Drain god mode but that too has disappeared.

Heavensward DRK felt frantic and constantly on the edge. There you could see the Guts inspiration of just constantly flying by the seat of your pants, reacting to what was coming to you in what would look like a chaotic way.
It felt good to play.

I don't think that burst is incompatible with resource management. Take Reaper for example. Arcane Circle/Plentiful Harvest guarantee that you'll be entering Shroud during your burst every 60s. But you will also be entering your burst window at other points in time, depending on your resource gains from your combos or mob deaths.

Let's say that Delirium actually did something fun like new animations, a shadowy aura, and all that. Let's also say that it's usable on demand with no significant recast, once you hit 50 blood. All you really need to do is to have Living Shadow grant you 50 blood on use, and then let you do some sort of combined finisher with you and Frey when both LS and Delirium are up. Now you're free to do all the variable resource gains that you like. You'd have to move Bloodspiller off the blood gauge, but I'd honestly prefer that if it meant having a resource-gated burst window.

I also don't think that DRK has too many oGCDs. It was designed around being an oGCD heavy job from the outset. They just need to make them more interesting.

I don't think the amount of OGCD is the issue either, it's more that they all have the same CD so it frontloads your opener and then "nothing happens" for a minute.

i just wish DRK and WAR weren't so close in class lore. That to me is SE pigeonholing themselves in terms of designing a kit for the two.

Like what really separates a WAR's "Inner Beast" from DRK's "Inner Darkness?" I don't mean "well one's anger and the other's inner turmoil," I mean fundamentally. It's no wonder SE made DRK so hard to distinguish from WAR when their class fantasy can both be boiled down to "don't let your emotions take control over your actions."

What happened to "Doing what's just even if it's in defiance of what's right?" Where's the "Serving the dregs of society that the law turns a blind eye to?" Sure, something vague like that is difficult to translate into job skills, but I'd say TBN does those things pretty well.

I think the most accurate way to say it is DRK just have to much fluff oGCD that offer nothing gameplay wise more than pretty animations and no substance 1 time per min.

I'm not sure about pretty after they removed all our cool stuff and Reaper came out