Dark Knight Megathread

The only feasible, possible skills to return from 3.0 in my honest opinion is Scourge and Sole Survivor. If the former did, it would likely function similar to GNB's Bowshock and become an AoE dot, or straight up replace Salted Earth and absorb S&D's potency. The latter could just be added as a nifty bonus alongside the current kit (using the revised 4.0 iteration).

I've already covered why Dark Arts will probably never return (along with any hopes of AD becoming a spammable self-heal), but other skills fare little better. Hate combos have become redundant, so no Power Slash, weaponskills afflicting resistance down/up are never coming back, so no Delirium, Dark Passenger is essentially Flood of Shadow (and without DA there is no blind attached anymore, but Square seems to want blind removed anyways), and RNG-based procs like Low Blow and Reprisal don't mesh at all with the current design philosophy and balancing. I could maybe see an RNG proc being attached to DRK somewhere, but attaching an RNG resource to a resource-based job hasn't been received well in present times (as evidenced by Shield Swipe being taken from PLD's kit).

The sad thing is because DRK can bring so much damage in a basically braindead manner (Have button? Press button, do damage, get clears.) I think they'll just look at the amount of DRK clears in savage and just say it's fine. DRK is in pretty high demand for tanks because it brings such good DPS to the table despite, as an actual tank, being inferior. And to be clear, by actual tank, I mean defensive cooldowns that are impactful and the ability to move bosses around. DRK isn't as bad as GNB for movement, but the fact that it also lacks the defensives GNB has just highlights the problem even more and Edge/Flood taking the place of Dark Arts just made that problem worse. Still pressing oGCD spam, but now with a range limit in movement phases.

Why not knock Dark Mind reduction down to 15% and give it a haima-like stacking shield? This keeps the silly gimmick of being a magical damage cooldown but makes it useful in sustained damage without stacking too high with TBN that tankbuster damage still matters.

The problem with DA in SB was that they removed a lot of its interaction with defensive cooldowns, so it just became an "ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK!" button instead of something you had to think about. Imagine if DA returned as an oGCD, and was used to change moves into other ones. Unmend to Abyssal Drain, Unleash to Salted Earth, Dark Mind to Dark Messenger, Oblation (if they change it so it's at a much earlier level) to TBN, etc, without adjusting the damage to our main damage skills, it'd be much better received since it'd be used for multiple defensive and offensive abilities.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The problem with DA in SB was that they removed a lot of its interaction with defensive cooldowns, so it just became an "ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK!" button instead of something you had to think about. Imagine if DA returned as an oGCD, and was used to change moves into other ones. Unmend to Abyssal Drain, Unleash to Salted Earth, Dark Mind to Dark Messenger, Oblation (if they change it so it's at a much earlier level) to TBN, etc, without adjusting the damage to our main damage skills, it'd be much better received since it'd be used for multiple defensive and offensive abilities.

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The problem of DA eating all of our oGCD slots would still remain, if not be become worse than 4.0. In 4.0, DA was mostly used to enhance GCD attacks, yes, but having to use an oGCD to enhance a critical, MP consuming oGCD (TBN for example) would be brutal when you are forced to cram it into frantic opener/dual-TB scenarios. Plus, using DA to make a GCD activate an oGCD (Salted) or using DA to consume a personal defensive to activate an aoe defensive is all forms of jank.

I don't want the entirety of 3.0 Drk to return but I do want some things 3.0 and 4.0 had

Dark knight is/was the speedy counter attack Tank
parry would proc Reprisal and reset low blow

TBN broke and gave you 50 blood

TBN breaks get a ""free"" flood/edge

blood weapon gave haste

but we can't fully grasp this identity because
tying defensive skill to an offensive skill and forcing Drk as MT is bad design.

I don't care if its easy or complex I just want this job to have some semblance of its older self AND have some form of gameplay mechanic which other 3 do just fine

PLD cycles through magic and melee
WAR revolves around cleaves
GNB is cartridge management

Dark knight has what? MP spender the has no real impact outside of damage buff and takes
no effort to keep up, A gauge thats incredibly basic and adds almost nothing to the rest of the kit then just a bunch of random ogcd that also have little to no synergy with the kit and the one ability the tries to tie things together doesn't even work most the time (blood weapon).
the dev team needs to rethink about this jobs gameplay and Kit it does not need an aesthetic overhaul.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

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What in Etheiryis are you on about? WAR easily had the highest damage output in Heavensward, in addition to having Path, which was an on demand 100% uptime damage mitigation buff, in addition to having Eye as a 100% uptime slashing buff which, even if you had NIN in the party, it was still preferable for the WAR to apply. That's also not including the fact that WAR was just flat out better at establishing and retaining enmity without outside assistance, with an enmity combo that was a damage gain. If you thought WAR was broken in Stormblood, it was even moreso in Heavensward. There were two tank raid slots in Heavensward: a situational PLD/DRK slot, and a pretty much mandatory WAR slot. And there were fights from a progression standpoint where it was definitely preferential to go PLD over DRK. The WF for A1S, A2S, A7S, and A9S all used PLD. A2S required the use of Cover on your healer if you didn't use the Equilibrium trick. A4S was a close contender when people were figuring out how best to cheese Nisi. PLD was hands down a superior choice for A7S, given the amount of physical damage, the fact that PLD was better to spin and stunlock the heart in a pinch, the fact that Hallowed was hands down a superior choice to LD during second cat phase. Interestingly, many groups did prog on A8S with PLD/DRK due to the duration of the Final Punch/Apocalypse/Beam combo, but then again, some groups did it with double WAR as well. Creator was the point in time where everyone's favorite abacus started excluding non-standard group formats, because speedrun groups just as often dropped the second tank for solo WAR. Useless WAR in Heavensward of all things? No, this is bizarre revisionist history at best.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What in Etheiryis are you on about? WAR easily had the highest damage output in Heavensward, in addition to having Path, which was an on demand 100% uptime damage mitigation buff, in addition to having Eye as a 100% uptime slashing buff which, even if you had NIN in the party, it was still preferable for the WAR to apply. That's also not including the fact that WAR was just flat out better at establishing and retaining enmity without outside assistance, with an enmity combo that was a damage gain. If you thought WAR was broken in Stormblood, it was even moreso in Heavensward. There were two tank raid slots in Heavensward: a situational PLD/DRK slot, and a pretty much mandatory WAR slot. And there were fights from a progression standpoint where it was definitely preferential to go PLD over DRK. The WF for A1S, A2S, A7S, and A9S all used PLD. A2S required the use of Cover on your healer if you didn't use the Equilibrium trick. A4S was a close contender when people were figuring out how best to cheese Nisi. PLD was hands down a superior choice for A7S, given the amount of physical damage, the fact that PLD was better to spin and stunlock the heart in a pinch, the fact that Hallowed was hands down a superior choice to LD during second cat phase. Interestingly, many groups did prog on A8S with PLD/DRK due to the duration of the Final Punch/Apocalypse/Beam combo, but then again, some groups did it with double WAR as well. Creator was the point in time where everyone's favorite abacus started excluding non-standard group formats, because speedrun groups just as often dropped the second tank for solo WAR. Useless WAR in Heavensward of all things? No, this is bizarre revisionist history at best.

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If you think permanent -10% INT and near permanent Reprisal isn't OP, then you seriously need to drop the Copium, Virus was nerfed to the ground for being spammed, and classic Reprisal uptimes 20s with a 10s downtime, except reduces all forms of damage. Enmity doesn't mean crap no matter how strong it was, every team mate willing to optimise used all means of enmity reductions, and using Ninja for shift, one DA Power Slash, Tank stance is never used again.

World First doesn't mean anything, it's a content rush fast as possible using terrible strategies just to kill it asap, every raid tier. Every raid group killing the new raid tier again are extremely advised not to do first week strategies, they're very tended to suck balls, and very relied on RNG, and time waste... a lot...

DRK was good but its never been WAR good
MNK and PLD also had a permanent 10% debuff

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Originally Posted by Duskane

DRK was good but its never been WAR good
MNK and PLD also had a permanent 10% debuff

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Drk removed any means of needing Mnk since it also did -10% INT, except it was on Dark Knights rotation, and they did not stack, meaning useless. Paladin only had Veil, and Halone for -10% Str, Drk did both STR/INT -10% and clipped Plds DPS 200-300 more. No one took an Ast since it was useless till it received crazy buffs in 3.4 the Creator raid, Bene always kept for LD, 2 mins advantage.

Also going through the fastest top 5 runs on every Savage raid, Paladin hardly existed to any of them, DRKs DPS even level with Warrior, or Below/higher than Warrior, which is essentially Crit RNG game at this point, except Fell Cleave Crit RNG valued higher. Drk low blow spamming crushed Paladin. Raid DPS enhancing is a DPS enhancement, major damage reductions for every raid member over any other tank is broken, Reprisal had to be changed to all tanks, it was Virus 2.0 exclusive to Drk, original Virus all casters/healers could use on a rotated spam for -10% strength.

Edit: My Mistake -20% INT for the raid group, Delirium -10% INT, Reprisal -10% INT/STR.

Dark wasn't OP Paladin was just terrible in HW and MNK did not stand a chance between NIN and DRG ,DRK at the time was just the final nail in the coffin for MNK.