Dark Knight Megathread

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

I mean, people been doing it for years taking Vuln stacks for more DPS, there's nothing remotely wrong with it as long it's not overboard.

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Right, but that doesn't mean I should get punished with outgoing DPS because I didn't take the vuln stack. I should not get punished for using my actions in a way that allows me to avoid a vuln stack just because "it's fine if I got it anyway." This argument lacks grounding so bad that even conjecture would have more standing than "Lol then don't use your abilities." And what if saving the vuln stack means I can take one later for even more uptime?

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Originally Posted by Ryaduera

TBN having an MP cost is not problematic, no. TBN not breaking punishing you with a DPS loss is. Again, knowing patterns of fights TBN can just not break anyway. I was doing Zodiark and on the first Exoterikos (Spelling?) if he does triangle + Square I will use TBN and Dark Mind to avoid taking damage and not get a vuln stack but keep uptime. I did this with Dark Mind because even though I know I will not need Shadow Wall again in the cooldown duration, if I do this the auto attack that happens after that damage is applied, TBN does not break... I know this because I learned the fights patterns and used my cooldowns to their fullest to keep uptime and maximize DPS... and instead took a DPS loss the first time i tried it. And there are multiple points with the triple Exoterikos where you can use the same trick to avoid moving. That feels so incredibly bad. Imagine someone saying you're too good at your job, so you get paid less money.

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While I get that "overmitigating" sounds like a weird thing to be punished for, the situation can be as easily framed instead as "wasteful usage" -- in which case we'd not long have shrugged off being punished for it since prior to EW its cooldown was disproportionately low relative to its power precisely because it has that alternate constraint (available timings, rather than just a cooldown) to keep it in check.

TBN had so low cool a cooldown precisely because it can't quite by used on CD regardless of circumstance; now, with the buffs to the others, it might be justified in not having that further means of curtailing its usage, but I'd really rather that constraint remain -- if not as sharply/punishingly.

I do think its degree of punishment is excess, but I don't think there is a problem with it having punishment.

And if that constraint --something I find interesting and unique about DRK's on-demand-- were removed, I would not be satisfied short of DRK getting a similarly unique and predictive mechanic (ideally, one that harkens back to HW era anti-synergies between overlapped defensives, as current TBN does).

tl;dr: TBN needs improvement, sure, but it doesn't need to lose its fundamentals, learning requirements, and all else that makes it unique.

I don't think that you can have it both ways, and the trade-off can actually be interesting. I remember that O11S had a damage down stack instead of vuln during the Level Checker sequence where you could use TBN to bypass the effect to keep your uptime. TBN didn't break (if it did you would get the vuln), but gave you a couple of GCDs so it was a dps gain.

I think that damage down is a much better mechanic overall and should apply independently of damage in all circumstances to take these issues out of consideration (or perhaps apply damage down and vuln together for failing a mechanics check). They should also give tanks tools like gap extenders and speedboosts to support more skilled gameplay around dodging mechanics.

Why does Abyssal Drain exist? Why cant Salted Earth and Salt&Darkness have the healing effect? It would keep the life-steal aesthetic. The healing would be single-target viable, and this would reduce button bloat. 200 cure potency per hit is 1400cure potency per 90s, still worse healing/minute than the other tanks.

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Originally Posted by Luin

Why does Abyssal Drain exist? Why cant Salted Earth and Salt&Darkness have the healing effect? It would keep the life-steal aesthetic. The healing would be single-target viable, and this would reduce button bloat. 200 cure potency per hit is 1400cure potency per 90s, still worse healing/minute than the other tanks.

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Tbf, that question can be asked for nearly every shared-cooldown AoE/ST alternative (especially if to a previously falloff AoE / AoE with focus-damage). In AD's case, probably HW/StB nostalgia above all else, as it's not as if C&S doesn't look as if it could cleave, or that Abyssal couldn't just DoT the main target for additional damage over 6 seconds or so and become a fall-off / focus-target AoE in turn.

I was thinking, one of the things holding it back is Square's obsession with designing everything around 1 and 2 minute bursts. It makes it easier to line up raid buffs sure, but it stifles how creative they get with the class if they don't want to deviate from this and just add more and more 1 min CD abilities every expansion. If we got a full DRK rework, I'd want them to spread DRK's damage out with abilities that have shorter CD and focus more on the interplay between resources (MP, Darkside and Blood) to help break up the monotony it currently has between bursts.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

I was thinking, one of the things holding it back is Square's obsession with designing everything around 1 and 2 minute bursts. It makes it easier to line up raid buffs sure, but it stifles how creative they get with the class if they don't want to deviate from this and just add more and more 1 min CD abilities every expansion. If we got a full DRK rework, I'd want them to spread DRK's damage out with abilities that have shorter CD and focus more on the interplay between resources (MP, Darkside and Blood) to help break up the monotony it currently has between bursts.

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Yeah I think SE has kinda designed themselves into a hole at this point. There was a thread discussing this on the /r/ffxivdiscussion subreddit and this comment stood out to me:

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I think it's absolutely awful (note: I don't consider Shadowbringers to be particularly meaningfully different from Endwalker as far as this goes). I don't like that it gives basically every class in the game the same gameplay rhythm, I don't like that it basically removes the ability to make classes that are designed around consistently high damage instead of huge spikes of burst damage, or classes with irregular sets of cooldowns that line up in different ways from minute to minute instead of all existing in multiples of 30 seconds, or classes that revolve around optimizing within their own internal kit rather than playing to the group buffs. It's so ubiquitous that it largely dictates fight design, which puts some hard limits on how interesting SE can make the game's encounters. It represents a severe reduction in the game's capacity to support any sort of player expression. And it makes gauging your own performance needlessly difficult because so much of your damage winds up concentrated into such a small number of attacks within such a small portion of the total fight time that Crit/DH probabilities don't reliably normalize into something that reflects your actual input to the game.

I don't know if I was the one who made the post saying it's the worst thing that's happened to the game in years, but I'm sure I've said it before - and if not, I'm saying it now.

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Every Job is on that cycle now, and I think the only damage cooldown that isn't sitting at a 1 or 2 minute cooldown is Riddle of Wind over on MNK. Sustained DPS is dead, variable timers are dead, and raids are designed such that major mechanics happen right when burst is coming off cooldown, such as Intemperance, Limit Cut, P3S add phase, etc. I dunno, feels like they designed themselves into a corner, particularly in regards to Jobs.

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Originally Posted by Luin

Why does Abyssal Drain exist? Why cant Salted Earth and Salt&Darkness have the healing effect? It would keep the life-steal aesthetic. The healing would be single-target viable, and this would reduce button bloat. 200 cure potency per hit is 1400cure potency per 90s, still worse healing/minute than the other tanks.

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Why does much exist as the DRK current kit - its so vague and forgotten feeling , like finger prints on an abandoned hand rail.

How I feel about DRK is:

It looks like it was designed , to me at least (during proto stages) , to be a Greatsword DPS class with dark magic buffing , and had been changed to the HW tank , and eventually reworked into what could best describe as a machinist with a sword with defensive stats instead of dps that has slow base 123 combos and many quick weaves whilst you charge up your darkside minion like a mCH does with its robo queen ( i didn't play HW version so i cant compare better than this).


All the classes are slowly falling because they have built the game around all classes being viable down to a small difference between the same job arcs which inevitably means they are the same ice cream brand , just different flavours.


They should design a dark knight to be an energy draining black magic sword user , probably ace at multi dotting adds to also HP leech from the dark art skills , that's once the DRK in maxed/very good gear can beast dungeons and content with heavy zergs of adds , but that would be useless in savage boss fights .

This game doesn't have advanced dungeon power creeping modes like say wow does with its serious dungeons in the mythic system, where different job designs can shine with their unique powerful skills, so all classes are going the be left by the wayside at some point whilst they focus on one or two of a job arc and improve/tweak those as they cant get to grips balancing and redesigning them all as their end game goals are not best suited to all the jobs they keep adding.

IMO

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Originally Posted by Izar_Chillen

It looks like it was designed , to me at least (during proto stages) , to be a Greatsword DPS class with dark magic buffing , and had been changed to the HW tank , and eventually reworked into what could best describe as a machinist with a sword with defensive stats instead of dps that has slow base 123 combos and many quick weaves whilst you charge up your darkside minion like a mCH does with its robo queen ( i didn't play HW version so i cant compare better than this).

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That's actually completely backwards to my understanding of events. The HW tank was initially pitched as Samurai, but seeing the direction of its toolkit led the team to turn it into DRK instead.

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They should design a dark knight to be an energy draining black magic sword user

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Seconded.

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probably ace at multi dotting adds

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Unlikely. The devs have previously voiced their disdain towards adding DoT effects, partly because players find them tedious or confusing, partly because enemies can only hold so many debuffs at one time, and implicitly because multiple ticking damage sources are more resource intensive. It's probably not a coincidence that DoTs were removed from SMN and NIN the same expansion we got Death's Design and Eukrasian Dosis, or that PLD's new DoT is exclusive with its old one.

Besides, even BRD can't multi-DoT. With the losses of Bane, Aero III and Miasma II, the only jobs that can right now are BLM and (bit ironically) PLD.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Unlikely. The devs have previously voiced their disdain towards adding DoT effects, partly because players find them tedious or confusing, partly because enemies can only hold so many debuffs at one time, and implicitly because multiple ticking damage sources are more resource intensive. It's probably not a coincidence that DoTs were removed from SMN and NIN the same expansion we got Death's Design and Eukrasian Dosis, or that PLD's new DoT is exclusive with its old one.

Besides, even BRD can't multi-DoT. With the losses of Bane, Aero III and Miasma II, the only jobs that can right now are BLM and (bit ironically) PLD.

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God do I remember the DoT Vomit that happened on a boss' debuff bar in Stormblood in Eureka. Literally made SMN unplayable at times unless you got your DoT in via server tick. However, I think some PLDs want Atonement to mean something again since we literally only just stab once and then go into 60s burst window after a full rotation. Also, as for the idea about a Black Magic Swordsman? I don't want to be frank, but I think that may be a bit of a stretch given how they can be on lore(believe me, DRK and BLM lore are actually pretty good) in their game unless you're a Healer that isn't SGE. I'd rather they work on the current aesthetic, but just fix the f***ing job flow. That's literally all that is grinding against DRK right now is that its Job Flow is HORRIBLE.