Dark Knight - I Used To Love You

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Originally Posted by RadicalPesto

Dark Knight has been in every world first group this expansion because of how strong its personal mitigation is. You're completely misunderstanding the importance of DPS vs. mitigation to claim mitigation is not relevant compared to DPS, when instead it's excess mitigation that isn't relevant compared to DPS. TBN helps provide an extremely solid baseline in terms of the mandatory mitigation every encounter or big pull requires, and making it a DPS gain will result in DPS optimization for DRK being based around bad play and deliberately being hit by AoEs.

TBN is the single best individual mitigation skill in the game. It doesn't need to be a DPS button.

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Originally Posted by Awful

Then you clearly dont know how to use TBN or you waste it, TBN lines up in almost every TB scenario so far this xpac, not to mention back in E4S you could Rampart + TBN to eat 1 Stonecrusher then use LD to eat the rest with the double tank stack mechanic trivializing it during MGR or Fault Line you easily had TBN if you were orange. Even during E5S every crippling blow there is TBN available and during thunderstorm if I so choose with Dark Mind, the mitigation on TBN is so strong and in the right hands is just amazing.

But mitigation isn't worth it though right?

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If tankbusters were way more frequent, I would actually use TBN as the devs clearly intended, but because of how infrequent tankbusters tend to be, TBN just feels more like bloat along with Dark Mind... Though they did add re-worked TBN at the start of the expansion for the "Dark Arts spam replacement" which is probably the dumbest re-work the devs have ever done...

TBN is a busted shield you can use for almost everything, TB, raid aoes and mass pulling, the shield is to powerful and in such frequent use you barely need management with you mitigation and make you healers lifes more boring, that's basically why every DRK play the job right now, it's like the fell cleave obsession in HW but on mitigation, the only memes that don't criticize the job are only to praise TBN.
His mitigation is insane for progression and cost literaly nothing except if you mess up but considering everything is scripted and casted in this game makes TBN the best, DRK it's only TBN now and it's easy to see why.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Ever since Stormblood, DRK has always felt like the tank that's busier than WAR but doesn't get rewarded for it. You press more buttons for the same or less result. Living Dead can kill you, Holm can't. DRK dps is almost never top. TBN is great, but the other tanks have plenty of great mitigation and heals too.

DRK has consistently been the "it's viable" or "it's fine" tank. Never the "it's amazing!" tank.

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^ Every time I post this same opinion, people gang up on me. DRK, to me, feels like it's got excessive button-presses and extra resource-management just to become equal to PLD...a job that has neither excessive button-presses nor extra resource management. I see literally no actual incentive to play DRK over PLD, other than to look like an edgy boy with all my purple farts (and I can glamour my gear Black as a PLD too). In fact, I only see disincentives. The less I have to look at a skill bar or resource gauge, the more I can actually pay attention to what a boss is doing.

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Originally Posted by Alaeacus

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To me, in the current implementation of the tank jobs, PLD feels the most "busy", followed by GNB, then DRK, then WAR.

I guess it all really depends on what a player defines as "busy" and their own personal play-style preferences. I for one find PLD's quick cycling rotation as being "busy" but because it is also quite repetitive, the "busy" part starts to feel like "busy work" because it starts getting allocated to muscle-memory instead of active mental engagement.
Whereas with DRK, I tend to feel more mentally engaged due to it's focus being more on resource management as opposed to a strict rotation. While I find the extra mental engagement of such to be more fun and in a way it's own reward, others of a different mindset may find this to be "extra work" and not fun or lacking in reward.

Also, some people like jobs with a higher APM, while others like slower APM jobs. To me a slow APM play-style feels awkward and too "chopped up", leaving me having difficulty getting in the flow of it; whereas a faster APM job flows more naturally.

However I will agree that there is a fine line that can be crossed where things definitely get into the "doing more for equal or less" territory and DRK has had the most troubled history among the tanks of crossing that line, with the example that was given for Living Dead being a pretty perfect representation of where that line was crossed. I won't deny that there are still other aspects to DRK that could be seen as being like this, but I do at least feel that most of the problems like this that have been brought up about DRK in the past have been mostly addressed.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

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That's fair. It's all in the eye of the beholder. To be honest if they made Living Dead not have such an excessive downside, I'd have a lot more difficulty picking between the two Tanks as I do like the big boy sword and DRK aesthetic.

I agree 100% OP. Back when ShB launched, I was so angry with what they did to Dark Knight I nearly stopped playing the game, because one of the main reasons why I enjoyed the game as much as I did in the first place was because of the Dark Knight class. It was literally everything I love in a class:

- Tank
- Complex/Challenging
- Engaging gameplay
- Lots to learn
- Uniqueness
- Power (once mastered)
- Awesome aesthetic
- Utilized a greatsword

It's now been about 8 months since ShB dropped, and I'm definitely still a bit angry about Dark Knight, but I've just made peace with its fate. I still use the class (it's my secondary behind Paladin) because at the end of the day, it's still Dark Knight, but I cannot main it like I once did. It just lacks depth, and feels so...boring (in my opinion). Spamming Souleater combo drives me crazy man. Thankfully, Paladin is really dope now (but block seriously needs some kind of buff) so I'm able to at least enjoy the game, but I wish they would make Dark Knight like it used to be...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

If tankbusters were way more frequent, I would actually use TBN as the devs clearly intended, but because of how infrequent tankbusters tend to be, TBN just feels more like bloat along with Dark Mind... Though they did add re-worked TBN at the start of the expansion for the "Dark Arts spam replacement" which is probably the dumbest re-work the devs have ever done...

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You're joking right? Dark Mind and TBN aren't "bloat" they're literally one of the strongest mitigation CDs when stacked together, especially if the boss has magical TBs or Mid range AoE group damage, look at Ramuhs lightning AoEs they do 40-50k unmitigated on a non tank and you'll take about 25-30k on a tank Dark Mind is F R E E if you don't wanna use TBN.

We can also look back at old Eden Gate Savage fights (Been away for school so I'm just getting into Savage this tier), You have E2S TBs every 90 seconds that you can rotate Dark Mind, You have E1S lasers as well as using TBN on the Gravitational Waves to save your healers healing you after the fact, E3S Tsunami/single soak/TBs, E4S double fists/Earthen fury etc I could go on. It's not fluff these are core CDs for DRK that makes them stand out and isn't taken for granted you can use these in conjunction and it's one of the strongest combinations in the game. The fact you don't use TBN just makes me question if you just pull these things out of nowhere, I get you jumped ship to GNB which nothing wrong with that, but it's like if you never used Camouflage or HoS because it was "fluff" or Continuation because TBN is indeed a core mechanic just like your Gnashing combos are a necessity for GNB.

As for the Dark Arts spam that's subjective, if you liked that kind of play style that's totally fine same if you like Edge/Flood of Shadow, personally I like DRKs more contained burst combo but as pointed out in other threads I wish DRK evolved with their burst vs what Delirium is today. I don't mind it really and I love playing ShB DRK it's my 2nd fav with HW being my choice and SB being the option I'd avoid like the plague since that play style made me swap to unga-bunga WAR in SB.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

re-worked TBN at the start of the expansion for the "Dark Arts spam replacement" which is probably the dumbest re-work the devs have ever done...

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Are you seriously trying to say that TBN giving you 50 blood back then was better than the cost neutral ogcd it is giving us now? I just.... what?

I just want a 12 second duration for Blood Weapon, 2 charges for Abyssal drain and flat out reowork of Living Dead and I'm satisfied.

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Originally Posted by MiraAlora

But after taking a break and coming back, I hopped into the newest dungeon to find that I didn't enjoy myself. DRK felt super clunky and not very engaging. Abilities didn't feel like they had much purpose outside of "do damage". After I swapped to Gun Breaker to do a few dungeons with (in the process of leveling still) I found myself enjoying the game by miles more. Everything felt connected and each button press felt like it was working towards the next big swirl of animations. It felt good and rewarding to play with my resources in mind. I feel like DRK has become a shadow of its former self, even with it's flaws.

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I've gone the other way. I always disliked DRK. Before Shadowbrings I only ever wanted to use WAR outside of leveling them.

I was playing GNB this expac, but eventually just found it not as fun as it was once the 'new shiny' wore off... so I leveled DRK to 80 for completionist sake and found I absolutely love everything about the Shadowbringers take except maybe Living Dead because healers always go AFK when I hit that... It's like the skill comes with a forced 'AFK timer' on healers... that forces them to randomly 'answer the door', 'take a bio', 'feed the cat', 'disconnect', or 'pay the pizza guy'... It's just... a sure thing...

But other than that one ability, I am enjoying Dark Knight for the first time ever in this game, and finding my thrill with Warrior, Paladin, and Gunbreaker is a lot less. I enjoy them, but it's not the blast I have on Dark Knight... There was about a month long period when I was finishing up Dark Knight where every week when I had to do my level 80 roulettes... I was looking at my Scholar or my Dancer because I was just worn out on Gunbreaker... and so in the last week I just ignored the tomestome grind and forced myself to get Dark Knight up so I could enjoy level 80 roulette tanking again.

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Originally Posted by Makeda

But other than that one ability, I am enjoying Dark Knight for the first time ever in this game, and finding my thrill with Warrior, Paladin, and Gunbreaker is a lot less. I enjoy them, but it's not the blast I have on Dark Knight... There was about a month long period when I was finishing up Dark Knight where every week when I had to do my level 80 roulettes... I was looking at my Scholar or my Dancer because I was just worn out on Gunbreaker... and so in the last week I just ignored the tomestome grind and forced myself to get Dark Knight up so I could enjoy level 80 roulette tanking again.

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Thing is, if you didn't like Dark Knight before, you'll probably like Dark Knight now. And if you never touched Dark Knight before now, you might still like it.

Players that liked Dark Knight before...., we're divided in our opinion.

Me? I just can't play the thing. Hopped over to WAR and never looked back(Not to say WAR doesn't have it's own issues).

I miss too the DRK from HW, the one without a burst (I mean a very high spike of dps), the DRK who is able to tank like a PLD or dps like a WAR, with complex rotation and all. But I miss AOE rotation of SB.
However, the new DRK from ShB is imo better in overall than the SB's one, so... I'm hesitating to complain.

If I should change one thing, it's the Delirium = IR. I think there is no point at the beginning of spamming on spell 5 time for a burst, I don't like it from the WAR, I will not like this c/c for the DRK.
They really should give DRK another combo, even if it's similar to the WAR or the PLD, something else to do 123 then BS...

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Originally Posted by Azerhan

I miss too the DRK from HW, the one without a burst (I mean a very high spike of dps), the DRK who is able to tank like a PLD or dps like a WAR, with complex rotation and all. But I miss AOE rotation of SB.
However, the new DRK from ShB is imo better in overall than the SB's one, so... I'm hesitating to complain.

If I should change one thing, it's the Delirium = IR. I think there is no point at the beginning of spamming on spell 5 time for a burst, I don't like it from the WAR, I will not like this c/c for the DRK.
They really should give DRK another combo, even if it's similar to the WAR or the PLD, something else to do 123 then BS...

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I know the team gets flak but I swear they have more a lot more creativity and I would like to know the REAL reason why delirium got changed to an IR. It literally could've been anything else. Was it to just balance all the tanks so they have the same burst timings during party buffs? I can't think of any other reasons why they would give three tanks the same IR type skill.

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Originally Posted by Lammas

Are you seriously trying to say that TBN giving you 50 blood back then was better than the cost neutral ogcd it is giving us now? I just.... what?

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If TBN was 50+neutral oGCD, then I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

If TBN was 50+neutral oGCD, then I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it...

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As much as I also liked tbn giving 50 blood in stormblood (optimising blood to end phases on a soul eater was fun), having it be nuetral AND giving blood would simply be broken, you'd be encouraged to break as close to off cooldown as you could, which is exactly what they are designing away from and why we don't have HW drk anymore, because they don't want a classes dps to be heavily tied to its defensive skills/ making its dps higher when main tanking. The only current exception to this is warrior with vengence but the reflect is absolutely tiny.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

As much as I also liked tbn giving 50 blood in stormblood (optimising blood to end phases on a soul eater was fun), having it be nuetral AND giving blood would simply be broken, you'd be encouraged to break as close to off cooldown as you could, which is exactly what they are designing away from and why we don't have HW drk anymore, because they don't want a classes dps to be heavily tied to its defensive skills/ making its dps higher when main tanking. The only current exception to this is warrior with vengence but the reflect is absolutely tiny.

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Except TBN is designed with DRK being comfortable with either MT or OT, and DPS checks/enrage timers are just basically still a fad that refuses to die so having TBN be Neutral and giving 50 blood gauge isn't as broken as say BLM Sleep spell is good dungeon utility so long as everyone isn't constantly spamming AoE attacks that wake everything up or WHM AoE stun(A.K.A. Holy) is so good in dungeons when WHM in actuality no BLM wants to use Sleep spell because "mah deeps" and Holy has a delay(probably like 2 or 3 seconds) that lasts so long that by the time everything becomes fully resistant your tank is probably already dead all because "mah deeps".

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Except TBN is designed with DRK being comfortable with either MT or OT, and DPS checks/enrage timers are just basically still a fad that refuses to die so having TBN be Neutral and giving 50 blood gauge isn't as broken as say BLM Sleep spell is good dungeon utility so long as everyone isn't constantly spamming AoE attacks that wake everything up or WHM AoE stun(A.K.A. Holy) is so good in dungeons when WHM in actuality no BLM wants to use Sleep spell because "mah deeps" and Holy has a delay(probably like 2 or 3 seconds) that lasts so long that by the time everything becomes fully resistant your tank is probably already dead all because "mah deeps".

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Oh, I see you just don't understand how balance and the game works. WHMs healing kit is so broken it can cast holy as almost every gcd and keep the tank alive, same with the other healers, I literally dont gcd heal at all when I play scholar in dungeons as that is the way the game is designed. Its why sleep is broadly useless as well, whats the point in sleeping everything and slowly killing them all when you can just aoe kill them vastly quicker at pretty much no loss to anyone even in the biggest of pulls. Things dying quicker mitigates more damage than sleep ever would. DPS checks also need to be a thing otherwise parties could just attrition through mechanics and the responsibility of dps players drops to the floor.

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Originally Posted by ReiMakoto

DPS checks also need to be a thing otherwise parties could just attrition through mechanics and the responsibility of dps players drops to the floor.

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Implying people aren't already doing this already because all they need to do is outgear the content they are running to achieve the results they actually want. And heaven forbid that fun comes before balancing .

In fact Yoshi-P could come out at any point and say that people are playing DRK(or any job/class for that matter) wrong because they are spamming only 1-2-3(or whatever single target spam you have) on bosses, yet DPS checks are designed to force you to optimize DPS as much as possible. PB AoE are good for cheesing "look away" mechanics, but those moments are too few and too far in between that's just better to hold your single target rotation until the mechanic is done and over with and that assuming the fight has "look away" mechanics.

Ranged attacks that all tanks and some most Melee DPS are good for when you need to move away from the boss, but it's either more optimal to finish your spam or hold your spam because using your ranged attack interrupts your combo.

I get that the devs don't want tanks to be as powerful as melee DPS or healers to be doing as much damage as a Caster DPS, but if they need to buff all of the DPS to compensate for tank and healer DPS being not as strong as a DPS in general if they really want to keep enrage timers.

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Originally Posted by jetfire117

I know the team gets flak but I swear they have more a lot more creativity and I would like to know the REAL reason why delirium got changed to an IR. It literally could've been anything else. Was it to just balance all the tanks so they have the same burst timings during party buffs? I can't think of any other reasons why they would give three tanks the same IR type skill.

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This ^, there should be an interview like the one was made with the boss battle team but with the job development team, that way they could express what they really wanted to do or in which path they want to develop them, be it dps, healers and tanks.

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Originally Posted by PeacefulEdge

This ^, there should be an interview like the one was made with the boss battle team but with the job development team, that way they could express what they really wanted to do or in which path they want to develop them, be it dps, healers and tanks.

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if they did a interview about job designs i will have several questions about DRK, like:
-why you make delirium a copy paste version of inner release and not a unique burst or a mechanic for the job on his now huge downtimes thanks to the blood weapon and MP economy changes?
-why you added a new UI gauge that have no gameplay repercussions and can be ignored complety since his utility is non-existed? "this one is pretty funny coming from the lily gauge they seems to learn nothing about useless implementations."
-why you choose to cut DRK MP economy to concentrate everything under the bloodweapon window when DRK was always about manage resources all the time killing that aspect of the job and make it a soul eater spam fest? wouln't be reduce the MP generation a bit instead of the masive slash you did there to preserve that part of his identity but being more friendly and make delirium a burst of whatever instead? "this one it's special since if they wanted to make delirium our burst skill then why the necesity of make the job doing nothing betwen bloodwepaons then?"
-why you don't give to DRK a way to dealt with walkind dead debuff by himself like the rest of the tanks that are able to use they invu and survive by they own means?
-why you didn't add more combos to the job when ppl asked for more and no less? HW DRK combo sistem could have been re-implemented in SHB easily too with edge of shadow and in some degree on aoes with flood.
-why darkside is still a useless mechanic that serve the same purpose of a trait without any gameplay impact?
-why you change the AOE rotation so much to no longer be the same? i know for this one you wanted to gutted all tanks aoes until lvl 72-74, wich is a horrible desing overall if you ask me due makes all tanks boring under those levels on dungeons but change the overall aoe rotation of DRK was terrible when was the best part of the job (in my personal opinion of course)

this questions will never been answer saddly.

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Originally Posted by jetfire117

I know the team gets flak but I swear they have more a lot more creativity and I would like to know the REAL reason why delirium got changed to an IR. It literally could've been anything else. Was it to just balance all the tanks so they have the same burst timings during party buffs? I can't think of any other reasons why they would give three tanks the same IR type skill.

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It might just be that simple... we’ll never know though. I’d be one of those to jump on the band wagon for how moronic and devoid of creativity the design is if done for that reason. There is little to no upside, as a business, for SE to do that.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

It might just be that simple... we’ll never know though. I’d be one of those to jump on the band wagon for how moronic and devoid of creativity the design is if done for that reason. There is little to no upside, as a business, for SE to do that.

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The only care about the short term rather than the long term... It's probably why retail World of Warcraft is failing so hard right now because of the company just cares about the short term gain rather than the long term gain... hence why they dumbed the a good majority of the roles that isn't Caster just to mass sell level skip and story skip books...

idk about the relation betwen make everything brainless and sell the skip books, i don't find the logic about that, but i really can tell they has change to a less effort and maximun profit actitude, dumping down jobs to a point to don't cause mayor balance problems, doing less combat involvement content and proceed to ignore any request/feedback about the combat system and his sounds effects on both tanks and healers while they proceed to do extensive reworks to the crafting ¡¡twice!! to make it way more easy it's pretty disturbing for me, we are almost at the half of the lifespam of the expansion and i can't but rate it at the worst expansion of this game ever have, everything they add and change have more negatives than positives except the MSQ.

I mean it's really clear hardly anyone in the battle design team mains either Tank or Healer. The DPS jobs, while relatively similar, all feel different in how they achieve their dps.

While it's clear that the Tank and Healer jobs were just copy paste with changes slight enough as to be able to distinguish them with something other than seeing a different weapon.

Just wanted to thrown in my two cents here since I've been lurking in this thread for a while :p

I feel like the main issue with DRK (for me at least) is it has very stale game play and this is a bit of an issue with WAR as well in that all 80 levels for them is them spamming the same 123 combo with some oGCD to weave here and there, with a single skill that they mash over and over again.

The reason why PLD and GNB are likely more popular is because things change with their skills, Rage of Halone turns into Royal Authority that jumps 200 potency, develops a magic combo and on top of all that a DoT to manage well which makes it engaging.

GNB develops a cartridge combo that does move damage that your regular combo and later lets you weave another combo to put forward a satisfying flow of damage. Both classes have things change in their own ways as they get stronger.

Whereas with DRK, nothing really changes. They keep the same 123 combo throughout their lives and endure spamming Unleash for 66 levels. They only get some oGCDs to weave in, no DoTs to manage, very few skills change the way your combo looks or works and above all have abyssal MP regeneration at low level AOE situations.

A step that they could potentially take would be do throw the Bloodletter spam out the window and replace it with actual impactful skills. Maybe if you use Delirium your combo changes where the first inflicts a vulnerability up debuff, the second a damage over a time and a final hard hitting finisher, something like that to make things more interesting that just spamming a skill and doing the same 123 combo all the time.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

I mean it's really clear hardly anyone in the battle design team mains either Tank or Healer. The DPS jobs, while relatively similar, all feel different in how they achieve their dps.

While it's clear that the Tank and Healer jobs were just copy paste with changes slight enough as to be able to distinguish them with something other than seeing a different weapon.

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I think next expansion something really needs to change with tank and healers in relation to how they interact in a battle setting, as it stands you have a CD for any kind of situation and you barely need any real healing because the damage output, even in raids is quite low. I could see them going into an active style tanking style but they would need to change practically every encounter and how monsters interact with emnity, WoW during Legion times were pretty good with active mitigation where you had abilities that did dmg and gave you defensive buffs while spending resources and your talents and 1-2 spells were used for emergencies.

Obviously there's a lot of downsides with this but I don't know how they can keep going forward with healers and tanks being so mundane this expansion I know people don't wanna spam heal every GCD but there has to be a line with what makes this role more enticing. And btw I do agree with you with the tanks and healers being copy and pasted only DPS have interesting mechanics to their play style.

I didnt play back in HW or SB. I started in ARR quit and just now picked the game back up and unlocked drk finally. idk if its because im still low level or what but I find myself enjoying drk more than any other job atm. It just feels right to me

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Originally Posted by ZackxFair

I didnt play back in HW or SB. I started in ARR quit and just now picked the game back up and unlocked drk finally. idk if its because im still low level or what but I find myself enjoying drk more than any other job atm. It just feels right to me

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I've said it before, I'll say it again. If you didn't play DRK, you'll probably like New DRK. And that's completely fine, it's the nature of the game. Changes around Jobs/classes will cause people to like or dislike them.

Those of us that played Old Dark through Stormblood, we're a bit more divided on liking new DRK.

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Originally Posted by ZackxFair

I didnt play back in HW or SB. I started in ARR quit and just now picked the game back up and unlocked drk finally. idk if its because im still low level or what but I find myself enjoying drk more than any other job atm. It just feels right to me

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It's feels right for you bcs for you it's like the job has been released yesterday since you didn't played the original gameplay and his overall flow, for any veteran that have at least minimum knowledge about how DRK use to play knows that has become a poor designed WAR with a few more off-global colddowns and no sinergy whatsoever with extra useless stuff on your screen, that's doesn't feel right at all.

DRK is a good job with a oversimplified trash gameplay.

I'm new player. My DRK is 74. Donno about previous versions so will just write about my experiences as new player. If i were to use 1 word i would say CRAP. DRK skill progression is insanely bad. Since i do lot of synced content i often don't have blood skills, Without it DRK is so boring i can almost die of boredom. Sure at 72 with completed AOE combo and TBN it gets better, but whenever synced the crappy feeling returns. I also play GNB, SAM and WAR. Won't talk about WAR i hate the job, got it at 69 will level it to 80 with MSQ Duty and that's it. Nothing wrong with it, i just don't like it. But GNB and SAM i really love. Those classes are very fun to play and GNB as long as i get synced to dung that is 30+ it still can be fun. Still have no mercy, blasting zone and cartrige so can do small burst comboses. Anyways it's funnier than DRK at 30. At 72 no point to even compare. GNB is simply insanely fun, it feels fast and is very flashy. I didn't write much about mechanics and viability cause all tanks can tank and will do the job, but it doesn't make them equally fun. They should really work on skill progression in this game, most of the classes feels like shit till 50 sometimes longer. It's not at all short time for new player. I'm betting lot of pplz will be put off by it and simply quit if they played any other MMORPG ever. Cause actually even F2p crappy mmorpg have better skill progressions most of the time. Game is good sure, prolly best MMORPG out there right now, but you spend lot of time fighting and fighting at low lv doesn't feel good at all. Problem is for this game low lv ends at 80.

They already have skills that evolves with levels. They should just have executed on it properly. I would do it like this: give all classes all their skills till 40 [half of max lv], but all of those skills would be weaker versions with lower potency to not ruin balance and avoid bloat skill numbers. And then from 40+ you don't get new skills at all but all skills you have evolve into their proper versions. That would make few things better. 1st thing fight would be fun earlier. New players would have way more time to learn proper rotations and get proper muscle memory for classes they play than nowdays when they hit 80, get completed class at last and they must learn now how to play it in less forgiving lv 80 content. Cause if you get synced you can't learn a shit.

They should also avoid skill bloat. Yes i know they reduced skill numbers that's why classes changed so much. That's for the future content. Modern MMO go into quality and meaningful skills than sheer number of skills. So solution would be to either limit number of skills and fuse some of the together or allow certain number of skills to be used like with Blue Mage. That would introduce builds, which could be interesting in it's own way and prevent skill bloat.

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Originally Posted by Thanad

I'm new player. My DRK is 74. Donno about previous versions so will just write about my experiences as new player. If i were to use 1 word i would say CRAP. DRK skill progression is insanely bad. Since i do lot of synced content i often don't have blood skills, Without it DRK is so boring i can almost die of boredom. Sure at 72 with completed AOE combo and TBN it gets better, but whenever synced the crappy feeling returns. I also play GNB, SAM and WAR. Won't talk about WAR i hate the job, got it at 69 will level it to 80 with MSQ Duty and that's it. Nothing wrong with it, i just don't like it. But GNB and SAM i really love. Those classes are very fun to play and GNB as long as i get synced to dung that is 30+ it still can be fun. Still have no mercy, blasting zone and cartrige so can do small burst comboses. Anyways it's funnier than DRK at 30. At 72 no point to even compare. GNB is simply insanely fun, it feels fast and is very flashy. I didn't write much about mechanics and viability cause all tanks can tank and will do the job, but it doesn't make them equally fun. They should really work on skill progression in this game, most of the classes feels like shit till 50 sometimes longer. It's not at all short time for new player. I'm betting lot of pplz will be put off by it and simply quit if they played any other MMORPG ever. Cause actually even F2p crappy mmorpg have better skill progressions most of the time. Game is good sure, prolly best MMORPG out there right now, but you spend lot of time fighting and fighting at low lv doesn't feel good at all. Problem is for this game low lv ends at 80.

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FINALLY!!! SOMEONE WHO IS A NEW PLAYER GETS HOW BAD SYNCED CONTENT IS FOR TANKS!!! Also, if you love GNB and SAM, you might also like DRG.

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Originally Posted by Thanad

They already have skills that evolves with levels. They should just have executed on it properly. I would do it like this: give all classes all their skills till 40 [half of max lv], but all of those skills would be weaker versions with lower potency not to ruin balance and not to bloat skill numbers. And then from 40+ you don't get new skills at all but all skills you have evolve into their proper versions. That would make few things better. 1st thing fight would be fun earlier. New players would have way more time to learn proper rotations and get proper muscle memory for classes they play than nowdays when they hit 80, get completed class at last and they must learn now how to play it in less forgiving lv 80 content. Cause if you get synced you can't earn a shit.

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I can get behind the idea you proposed. So long as tanks aren't "spam 1-2-3 with the occasional 4th and/or 5th button for slightly more DPS for single target or 1-2 for AoE with the occasional 3rd and/or 4th button more DPS" I'm definitely down for this idea.

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Originally Posted by Thanad

They should also avoid skill bloat. Yes i know they reduced skill numbers that's why classes changed so much. That's for the future content. Modern MMO go into quality and meaningful skills than sheer number of skills. So solution would be to either let's say limit number of skills and fuse some of the together or allow certain number of skills to be used like with Blue Mage. That would introduce builds, which could be interesting in it's own way and prevent skill bloat.

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Ah yes the limited job approach... though I refuse touch BLU because I just don't see the appeal of it... Freelancer however, which I hope is basically the next limited job and is more like the FF5 Freelancer, I can definitely see test the waters for job builds better than Blue Mage ever could...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

FINALLY!!! SOMEONE WHO IS A NEW PLAYER GETS HOW BAD SYNCED CONTENT IS FOR TANKS!!!

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Yeah but...

It's also bad for DPS. and Healers.

I think it's really only good for Blue Mages... :P

(who can't even run it... thus... enjoy it more than anyone else...)

I think FFXIV should have done what ESO did, and sync UP instead of sync DOWN.

They know this... it's what Deep Dungeons do. Which were added years after. It's just the 1.0 or 2.0 (I'm not sure as I wasn't around in 1,0) design that made the wrong choice...

They should go back and fix it all to sync UP, like Deep Dungeons, but not as badly balanced as Deep Dungeons...

I'm sure folks would say "they have more important things to focus on", except they don't - the roulette system ensures that the vast majority of us are in 1-6 sync'd pieces of content a day (level X/Y/Z, Leveling, Trial, Raid, Alliance, MSQ)...

Sync'd content is actually the majority of our gameplay...

Time to fix it... like ESO did... ESO also did that after launch... their sync UP system was a fix to the "WTF is this mess" situation they had before it. Granted the mess they had was basically ESO 1.0, and the current game is equivalent to 'ESO ARR'... Sync UP was just one of many things they changed...

Hindsight is like that... ESO's fix happened because they say the syncing in FFXIV and WoW and said "cool idea, let's take it and make it better"... so now it's time for FFXIV to say "cool treatment of OUR idea you have there, we're going to one-up it now."

(and yes I know sync UP & sync DOWN both actually started with City of Heroes... but that system was just a lesson in 'here is how to NOT do this idea, the idea is good, but this version of it is bad'.)

I probably wouldn't hate Satasha so much if I could foul their stupid faces off.

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Originally Posted by Makeda

Yeah but...

It's also bad for DPS. and Healers.

I think it's really only good for Blue Mages... :P

(who can't even run it... thus... enjoy it more than anyone else...)

I think FFXIV should have done what ESO did, and sync UP instead of sync DOWN.

They know this... it's what Deep Dungeons do. Which were added years after. It's just the 1.0 or 2.0 (I'm not sure as I wasn't around in 1,0) design that made the wrong choice...

They should go back and fix it all to sync UP, like Deep Dungeons, but not as badly balanced as Deep Dungeons...

I'm sure folks would say "they have more important things to focus on", except they don't - the roulette system ensures that the vast majority of us are in 1-6 sync'd pieces of content a day (level X/Y/Z, Leveling, Trial, Raid, Alliance, MSQ)...

Sync'd content is actually the majority of our gameplay...

Time to fix it... like ESO did... ESO also did that after launch... their sync UP system was a fix to the "WTF is this mess" situation they had before it. Granted the mess they had was basically ESO 1.0, and the current game is equivalent to 'ESO ARR'... Sync UP was just one of many things they changed...

Hindsight is like that... ESO's fix happened because they say the syncing in FFXIV and WoW and said "cool idea, let's take it and make it better"... so now it's time for FFXIV to say "cool treatment of OUR idea you have there, we're going to one-up it now."

(and yes I know sync UP & sync DOWN both actually started with City of Heroes... but that system was just a lesson in 'here is how to NOT do this idea, the idea is good, but this version of it is bad'.)

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It's bad for everyone but some jobs really don't feel right when synced down due to their changes. Compared DRK to say, DRG a class who hasn't really changed much since release. It feels weird to suddenly not have BotD for Dragoon and you do feel weaker yes but you still have a very effective damage loop and abilities to help yourself out.

DRK at lower levels feels kneecapped, to the point I would love to see the data of how many people picked up a jump potion.

DRK got it's uses. When i'm tired and sleepy i can just pick it up and mindlessly spam 1-2-3 with ocasional edge of darkness or unleash + flood of darkness. With how slow that class is even sleeping mind can handle it. I wish they gave you blood skills at 30 and darkness at 60. That 10% buff at low lv is crap anyways i'd rather have 2 more skills early. Unleash should also generate blood so you can spam Quaietus earlier than lv 72.

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Originally Posted by Thanad

DRK got it's uses. When i'm tired and sleepy i can just pick it up and mindlessly spam 1-2-3 with ocasional edge of darkness or unleash + flood of darkness. With how slow that class is even sleeping mind can handle it. I wish they gave you blood skills at 30 and darkness at 60. That 10% buff at low lv is crap anyways i'd rather have 2 more skills early. Unleash should also generate blood so you can spam Quaietus earlier than lv 72.

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Let's not forget how weak Stalwart Soul is by the time you get it... it's a level 72 spell that has a required combo action to get the full benefits... and 160 potency is the best they could come up with for DRK... and what are the benefits? 20 Blood gauge and 600 flat MP generation... Stormblood Dark Knight had a better AoE DPS loop(and in general) and generated more MP AND Blood gauge than Shadowbringers Dark Knight... and by Shadowbringers Dark Knight I mean Dark Warrior because that's what Dark Knight is this expansion, just a re-skin of WAR with no real thought to put into it other than "here's what NOT to do for the next expansion" but we all know Square-Enix prefers making a quick buck over staying for the long term...

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised when(not "IF") FF14 goes free to play and actually give players what they actually want because the money whales have nothing better to spend their money on... but by then it will be too late...

Well since they removed old Dark Arts they should have removed it all the way. Edge of Darkness and Flood or Darkness aren't worth it. When TBN is destroyed it should grant Delirium buff separate from Delirium skill ofc. That would at least make it funnier with Bloodsplitter and Quaietus spam. Plus you would still have Delirium Skill for even more spam.

I enjoy drk :p. Granted It’s my first max level tank so I never played any previous tanks in endgame content. I just wish using TBN correctly would be more rewarding!

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Originally Posted by Thanad

Well since they removed old Dark Arts they should have removed it all the way. Edge of Darkness and Flood or Darkness aren't worth it. When TBN is destroyed it should grant Delirium buff separate from Delirium skill ofc. That would at least make it funnier with Bloodsplitter and Quaietus spam. Plus you would still have Delirium Skill for even more spam.

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Still spamming 1-2-3 there for the rest of the fight...

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Originally Posted by Stuxy

I enjoy drk :p.

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No comment...

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Originally Posted by Stuxy

Granted It’s my first max level tank so I never played any previous tanks in endgame content.

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No comment...

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Originally Posted by Stuxy

I just wish using TBN correctly would be more rewarding!

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I agree, using TBN correctly should be more rewarding... though it won't fix the "spam 1-2-3 for the entire fight" issue that most tank have...

Haven't been around tank forums for a while, but glad to see there's still fresh DRK salt going - as there should be.

SHB DRK is an insult to players' intelligence, riddled with pretend-mechanics which solve themselves by design, leaving not much more than an illusion of game-play.
The MP rates are calculated to fit exactly into the 60 second raid bursts with zero management required, that including the one TBN you optimally use. Darkside is impossible to drop due to being tied to literally everything you can spend MP on. Living shadow having to be activated before burst means you'll always have the 50 ready, as there's no reason to accidentally dump Blood before that.
The job nearly plays itself.

From what I see here and have seen since SHB's launch, most praise for reworked DRK boils down to "TBN is kewl"(except it was an SB skill and way more interesting back then, so how's that a + for SHB?) and "I disliked old DRK because it was too demanding, I preferred the other tanks being simpler, but now I like DRK!".

Well here's a bigbrain idea for ya - you could've just played the other tanks.

The main appeal of DRK for a lot of people, was exactly that it was the ONE more complex, faster paced option and we found that way more engaging. Now it's gone and we've got ZERO options, because the shiny new GNB isn't actually any more complicated than the rest, once you actually play it a bit(or just read the skill tooltips really). More buttons doesn't instantly mean more complexity and neither does more ogcds - not if it's all just brainlessly unloaded at once every minute(kinda like all DRK does now, huh).
Previous iterations of DRK were more complex because of how its skills and resources interacted with each other and how you had to constantly keep track of them. If you disliked that, then you had twice as many jobs without it - now would be thrice. What you considered to be a mess - we found fun. What you see as "smooth" - we consider boring. We don't ask for all tanks to be catered to us - just the one.

The most ironic part is that right now PLD is indeed the most complex, well-designed mechanically tank - you know, the old go-to "relaxed tank" - while the rest are more or less just pieces of PLD with some iteration of Wrath stacks slapped on it, without much rhyme or reason.