Dark Knight Megathread

Alright, so let's say that square enix has read all of our complaints and have decided to rework Dark Knight to make it more viable as a tank. What is this soonest we could expect to see changes implemented? Do they wait until large patch releases to make changes like this? Or is there a chance we could see improvements with 6.1?

6.4 for the biggest changes.
A complete rework would be 7.0

Anything before 6.3 is extremely generous unless they've been planning to rework even before 6.0 launch but needed more time. There's always the small possibility that most of DRK's 80-90 skills and traits were basically placeholders until the official rework comes out sometime later.

Maybe that's the copium talking, though.

This sounds way too hopeful. That also feels very dishonest from the devs, so I doubt that's the case.
In my opinion, if that was the case, they should have said it earlier. That due to constraint Dark Knight didn't get the amount of work they originally planned.
But that's honestly... kind of entitled to expect them to address dark knight specifically, it would need to be in an insanely broken state for it to be addressed by name and with some form of apologies. As bad as it is, it isn't *that* bad.

Blood Weapon is punishing for highping players. Put it on stacks, similar to Delirium/Perfect Balance. (And DRK shouldn't have spells, or those spells should scale on Skill Speed).

Living Dead's healing requirement is too demanding and it has no advantage over other invulns. Compare it to Holmgang. Rework.

Dark Mind shouldn't be magic-only.

Oblation is a weaker Intervention.

These are the most obvious complaints.

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Originally Posted by Luin

Oblation is a much weaker Intervention. Shorten its CD or increase its %mitigation.

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We really do pick odd examples by which to preface our suggestions sometimes...

Oblation is not meant to be equivalent to Intervention. If anything, it's equivalent only to Intervention's level 82 trait.

A true (given the flexibility afforded by its two charges) one-sixth uptime of a 10% ally-targetable defensive, with up to 20-second stretches or 2 targets affected at a time, is not bad for DRK's lv82 trait.

Personally, I'd prefer a shorter duration of a stronger defensive, as I think DRK's overall mitigation is low enough to warrant that positive change, but it's not like Oblation needs to equate to Nascent or Intervention. It doesn't share a recast with TBN.

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Originally Posted by RatCopter

If we're spitballing ideas for Living Dead again, I'd like to see it work along the lines of "set your HP to 1 and can't go below for 10s, heal for a portion of damage taken at the end of duration."
Itd be like putting health aside for later.

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I think they should just turn living dead into a reward to push. Push it, it triggers at 1 hp and you start healing from DMG taken up to max HP and then the Invuln ends.

1. What issue with Dark Knight do you have since 5.0?
My dislike of dark knight currently boils down to three things:
1. The job's offensive tool kit lacks any sort of synergy, containing three different gauges to maintain with little to no interaction between them.
2. The majority of OGCD skills the job possesses do not interact at all with the job's core mechanics, and instead are simply fire and forget skills that you use during buff windows.
3. Their defensive kit is weak in comparison to the other tank jobs, and often require heavy drawbacks in comparison for similar skills. not to mention the lack of self healing.

2. Is there a viable solution to your problem? If so, write it down.
1. Not without a complete rework i feel.
2. as above, though it would be a good idea to cut down on the number of OGCDs. several of them at this point exist more as filler than anything.
3. Give dark knight some form of self heal beyond abyssal drain and soul eater, remove the drawback from tbn and tie oblation into it in some way, rework living dead to be a more fun skill to use.

3. What did you like about previous iterations of Dark Knight?
I liked that hw dark knight had a specific rotation, and the way dark arts was implemented felt interesting. You didn't spam it, and many defensive cds could take advantage of the mechanic. SB dark knight was very clunky, but i loved how delerium worked, and loved how rewarding TBN was to use.
4. How did DRK capture your interest while playing FFXIV?
Heavensward previews did a lot of work for me on that. Fell in love immediately while playing it due to the animations and story. wish they could have kept the design philosophy it initially had.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Personally, I'd prefer a shorter duration of a stronger defensive, as I think DRK's overall mitigation is low enough to warrant that positive change, but it's not like Oblation needs to equate to Nascent or Intervention. It doesn't share a recast with TBN.

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I think the most novel suggestion I've seen for Oblation, and I forget exactly where it was or who said it, was to give it an interaction when used together with TBN so that you get a single buffed TBN every 60 seconds (with 2 bankable stacks). Something like: If you use Oblation when TBN is already up, the duration on TBN is extended by 10 seconds (so that it's easier to break a shield in a situation with low incoming damage, like a dungeon boss). And if you use TBN while Oblation is already up, the shield is boosted up by an extra 10% of your HP (for when you know incoming damage is going to hit especially hard).

I think it would be fun to have three distinct uses for Oblation (those two, plus the option of just using it and TBN completely separately). And that change might, hopefully, help drive home that Oblation is meant to be a counterpart to Flow/Tide on Bloodwhetting, Resolve/Benediction on Sheltron/Intervention, and Catharsis/Clarity on HoC, rather than attempting to go toe-to-toe with completely unrelated skills.

i do agree with drk needing changes/overhaul etc and i do see the issue with identity. general consensus from forums is its a warrior clone or wanna be at that otherwise is jumbled up mess. in my opinion if SE would step back think then plan out how drk identifies then its lore once that's established they can create the abilities, spells, etc for it to carry that out. in many ways we see pld has its identity then lore and finally abilities to carry out its playstyle for the most part we hope drk can get same treatment.