Dark Knight Megathread

Success is a rocky road. World of Warcraft used to be the best MMO of all time, it all went downhill from there.

This corporate arrogance always leads to a disconnect between the player and creator. They need to understand that without their customers this game would've never found the success and appeal it did. When people ask for changes to their favourite jobs and they find no response, they'll look elsewhere. If you don't want to surprise us or make us happy then don't expect for people to stay. It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it.

I respect the developers for delievering alot of amazing moments and enjoyable content but that doesn't mean a thorn in my sight goes unseen when they deliberately ignore feedback for petty reasons. I mean alot of Viera players were rude and you caved, right?

In light of the new information from the recent 14 livestream, I'd like to renew my 2 cents after going through a decent bit of the new savage fights. The 3 changes I believe are necessary to at least put DRK on the right path to enjoyability(potencies adjustable):

1. Put Blood Weapon on a stack system similar to Ninja's Bushin, or Dark Knights own Delirium (5 stacks, usable over 15 seconds). The ability in its current state is too restrictive to those with higher ping that about 100, and without very high skill speed melds. Doing this allows for at least 1 edge of shadow's worth of mana generation every time the ability is used, instead of the current (assuming ping over 100/without skill speed melds) 2400 mana.

2. Living Dead needs the Penalty removed period. It should be as such: "While under the effect of "Walking Dead", most attacks will not lower your HP below 1." Duration still 10s to keep in line with other tanks. Not only will this put it on the same level as the other tanks, but it will keep the Guts berserker armor effect that the original design was going for. It has a higher cooldown time than Holmgang already, so that can be kept the same to keep it in line balance wise.

3. Remove the Mana cost on The Blackest Night, increase the cooldown time to 25s, remove the old break effect(Dark Arts) and add a new effect. In my opinion the new effect should be a Heal over Time effect that is as such:

Grants Darkened Embrace when barrier is completely absorbed.
Darkened Embrace Effect: Gradually restores HP
Cure Potency: 200
Duration: 12s

This would put it in line with the other tanks, allowing for skilled usage of the skill to gain an additional benefit, while not having to lose anything crucial like Damage for a misuse. In its current state, its beginner unfriendly and not in line with the other tanks "short duration" mitigation skills. With this, it would be brought in line with Endwalker design, and give Dark Knight players the sustain they've been asking for with skilled play & still fit the Dark Knight identity.

To add: This can be an added trait at 84, as Dark Knights "Enhanced Unmend" Is not very helpful in any situation and hurts their damage rotations more than it helps, as such it should be removed in favor of this new proposed trait. This would also justifying bringing The Blackest Nights duration up to 8s, to keep in line with every other tanks 25s defensive cooldown at that level.

That is all, thank you for reading.

Blood Weapon aside, that's a massive, uncalled-for nerf to TBN, doesn't solve the fundamental problem of Living Dead being a categorically worse version of Holmgang, and contributes to the massive homogenization among tank classes that already keeps the role from being as fun as it could be, should be, and has been in the past.

There are 1900 posts in this thread. There is no earthly way I was able to commit to reading all of that. So, if this has been suggested before, apologies. I've levelled DRK 8 times across various characters and versions (hey, what can I say? NG+ is a relatively recent addition, and there was only one way to replay plot before then!)

My thoughts on improving TBN is to add a trait at 82, same as all the other tanks, called Dread Spikes. I would also move Oblation to earlier in the levelling process, since I do feel DRK could use some extra mitigation prior to TBN. If it comes at the cost of a lower effect which is later upgraded, fine.


Anyway! Dread Spikes! As an FF11 player, this was one of my favourite DRK spells back then. Simply put, I'd get the broken shield of TBN to apply Dread Spikes to the target for some duration, and any enemy that hits the target in that timeframe would damage themselves and the target would absorb a portion of that damage as HP. I know it's conceptually a little similiar to current Warrior territory, but it is flipped to the degree that the enemy continues to kill themselves on your Dread Spikes, and you get better as a result. I'd probably also get the effect to wear off after a little less % than the shield was worth has been absorbed. Improved sustain, keep the DA proc for Flood / Edge so that you are still getting usage out of applying TBN to other party members in OT situations, and you're still spending something for the mitigation, but slip over into being DPS positive due to the Dread Spikes damage on all targets hitting you.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Blood Weapon aside, that's a massive, uncalled-for nerf to TBN, doesn't solve the fundamental problem of Living Dead being a categorically worse version of Holmgang

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We'll agree to disagree with TBN, I don't know how getting rid of the mana cost on an ability you ideally only use once a minute (to avoid dps loss outside of raid buffs) and upping the cd to be in line with the other tanks CD's is a "Nerf" but thats besides the point.

Every tank invuln is a worse version of holmgang at this point. 4 minute cd, invuln for 10s, and can heal themselves so the fact that you continue to take damage during its duration is a nonfactor. GNB literally drops themselves to 1hp, Paladin has nearly double the cooldown time for "I dont take damage for 10s". Dark knights is practically in a different universe of bad right now.

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and contributes to the massive homogenization among tank classes that already keeps the role from being as fun as it could be, should be, and has been in the past.

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Much like Yoshida himself stated, we aren't going back to Heavensward times, we need to move on. Tank defensive homogenization allows for deeper fight design with those abilities in mind. Of which I personally enjoy more than difficult jobs with extremely high skill caps, yet raid fights with the depth of a puddle(See Creator savage at the end of Heavensward).

At the end of the day what I propose is a band-aid to promote general usability improvements, I personally don't see Dark Knight getting a complete rework this expansion if even in the next.

Aside from busters or raids though, there really isn't that much homogenization.

You got Warrior that can already solo savage raids and primals from SB and do 3 DPS speedruns of expert dungs. You got Paladin that can keep the whole party alive in dungeons if the healer DCs even through bosses.

Meanwhile you have DRK and GNB that can just whack things and nearly reach DNC level dps.

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Originally Posted by Mieck

There are 1900 posts in this thread. There is no earthly way I was able to commit to reading all of that.

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That sounds a lot like som--
[MESSAGE REDACTED]

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Originally Posted by Crater

... that's a massive, uncalled-for nerf to TBN ...

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I agree with this sooooo much and honestly I feel that many that are calling for TBN to just be turned into a 25 second recast defensive with no MP cost are just repeating what others, particularly a certain popular streamer, have said without really stopping to think about what the ripple effects of such changes would result in.

Asides from homogenizing the tank jobs even more, something that the forums love to at the same time rail against, such a change would actually greatly hurt DRK defensively in the very place that people feel DRK is currently the weakest, namely in large dungeon pulls. It is the ability to be able to use TBN every 15s that keeps DRK standing in that situation. If you force it to be every 25s, you will quickly find yourself not being able to cover the now longer time between TBNs and will likely end up dying way more than now. Even an extra regen or the like tacked onto the end of TBN will not be enough to compensate. The much shorter recast is a HUGE strength of TBN, greatly increasing its' defensive capabilities in mass dungeon pulls and providing more flexibility of use and timing in single-target fights.

Is anyone asking for this really stopping and thinking about what the problem they are trying to solve is?
The argument is that a defensive shouldn't be tied to a resource that is also used for dps.
Okay, why is that a problem?
The proposed problem is that it could be a potential dps loss if the shield doesn't break.
Okay, so then is the problem the reliance on MP to use or the shield not potentially breaking?

And that is where I see the disconnect is, that people have lost sight of what the actual problem they are trying to solve is and instead are proposing bandwagon solutions that aren't accurately aimed at the actual issue.
If the duration of the TBN shield is running out before the shield breaks, just have the duration increased. If 7s is too short, ask to have it it last 10s. If it is still not breaking after that, the damage input is probably low enough that you probably wouldn't want to even waste an Oblation on it.

If keeping enough MP in reserve for when you need a TBN is too much of a hassle, why are you playing a job more based around resource management?

I'm all for equitability between the tank jobs and constantly champion such here on the forums, but nuking what is probably DRKs' most interesting and unique aspect just to put in place an easy and overly comfortable solution that far oversteps what the actual problem was instead of just simply directly addressing it is, imo, not the way to go.

Let me say what removing the MP cost to TBN, its connection to Flood/Edge, and increasing the cooldown to 25s will do. It will remove the DPS being connected to TBN, it will remove the need to hold onto a resource for TBN when only PLD (who arguably has nothing else to use theirs on) is the only other job who uses a resource for this. It will remove the need to ignore every other problem on DRK because TBN, while still powerful with these changes, will not be usable all the time, thus highlighting the problems DRK has without it and making it easier to actually adjust the job. If one ability is the sole reason your job isn't getting meaningful changes, then I'm sorry, the ability has to be adjusted or removed for the good of the job.

TBN is only good for single hit busters. Previous xpacs you had higher HP and autos hit for way less so it felt like it was really good but with the changes it's only good for a one hit wonder. And it provides no mitigation whatsoever. It's a proactive skill.

It hit it's peak when it was introduced in Stormblood. When you could alternate between TBN and Blood Price + Abyssal Drain. And Blood price not only restored MP but also gave you blood per hit as well. And once geared a whole lot of attacks were very weak hits.

On top of that as a shield since it offers no actual healing it does nothing to synergize with Living Dead which requires your full HP amount in healing. Which the icon for Walking Dead is terrible and the simplest change is instead of Walking Dead they inflict a 10 second Doom debuff on yourself and you just have to be topped off to get rid of it.

Healers KNOW what Doom is and what it looks like and will get rid of it without any communication.

The other Tank TBN competitors all have mitigation, shields, selfheals in their 25s CD.

DRK has a big shield and maybe a free 160 or 460 potency attack?