Dark Knight Megathread

This feels like continually shouting into the void but I still don't know why people are asking for stacks on Blood Weapon instead of asking for Blood Weapon to actually have a buff effect again. It doesn't do anything to warrant being a timer-based buff or a stack-based buff.

It doesn't enable the use of otherwise-unavailable skills.
It doesn't eliminate the cost of certain skills while under its effect.
It doesn't change the effect of any skills by forcing a critical hit or guaranteeing a proc, or any other mechanical change.
It doesn't interact with any non-GCD skills used under its duration.
It doesn't buff damage, or attack speed, or crit/DH rate.

Putting stacks on it just changes it from an incoherent, stupidly-designed skill that shouldn't exist and is slightly inconvenient, to an incoherent, stupidly-designed skill that shouldn't exist. If that's the bar people are setting for themselves then there's no wonder this job keeps going downhill with every update.

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Originally Posted by Crater

If that's the bar people are setting for themselves then there's no wonder this job keeps going downhill with every update.

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Not like people have been asking for simple fixes to Living Dead for example. They're just retardedly stubborn on this job to the detriment of anyone who enjoys it.

I personally would enjoy it if Blood Weapon gave us Haste back, enhancing the gameplay by attaching speed to our GCD's.

I could also make the same case for Dark Arts. Samurai uses Hissatsu: Kaiten to increase the potency on Weaponskills by 50%. I don't see what's difficult by giving back Dark Arts albeit easier or simpler with additional properties. It leads me to believe the developers have decided tanks are supposed to be casual while DPS takes on the mantle of difficulty. Thus Reaper. It's easy to see why they disregard feedback on DRK.

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Originally Posted by Wayback

Just a note, we're not losing any Mana restoration with the new Delirium. The 200 MP per hit is there to compensate for the loss in MP we'd recieve from our usual 1-2-3 combo, which averages out at 200 MP per GCD.

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Objectively wrong. Delirium being only 3 GCDs will make you lose 400 to 1000 MP since currently you can fit in 5 GCDS currently which would net you 1000 to 2500 MP. Now it will be 600 to 1500. May as well be a 20% loss.

There will likely be no MP scaling as it is now fixed at 10k forever.

The only burst MP restore you will have is pairing Delirium (5ShB/3EW GCDs) and Blood Weapon (4 GCDs) together.

Bloodspiller SHB = 3400 MP

Bloodspiller EW = 3000 MP

Quietus SHB = 4900 MP

Quietus EW = 3900 MP

For single target it wouldn't really matter but with Quietus it's huge overall loss when it comes to MP restore.

In a perfect world BW would fit 5 GCDS but even then the total in SHB would be 4000/5500 and the total in EW would be 3600/4500.

It's a big loss when it comes to Quietus. And a slight loss with Bloodspiller.

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Originally Posted by Shin96

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It's a fair point that SE seems to be stubborn and inattentive to DRK issues in general, but I still can't really follow the logic of asking for Blood Weapon to be a slightly more convenient version of a bad skill that shouldn't exist in its current form in the first place.

It's like if Living Dead were a skill you cast on a healer that gave them 2500 MP and an instant-cast Raise if you died... And instead of people asking for it to be turned into an invuln, they started asking for it to give the healer 3500 MP so they could raise you and heal you. It just doesn't make sense to me to make that kind of compromise with something that is clearly a design error. If SE isn't going to fix it despite the feedback, then they were never going to fix it anyway, but if they do actually listen to feedback for once, you might as well be asking for a good skill instead of a bad skill.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Objectively wrong. Delirium being only 3 GCDs will make you lose 400 to 1000 MP since currently you can fit in 5 GCDS currently which would net you 1000 to 2500 MP. Now it will be 600 to 1500. May as well be a 20% loss.

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...You do realize that removing those 2 extra BS's in Delirium means you return to your main combo 2 GCDs early right?

SHB Delirium: BS x 5 = 1000MP, at 200MP per hit.
EW delirium: BS * 3 = 600MP, and then you fill in the remaining 2 GCDs with Hard Slash + Syphon, Syphon + SE, or SE + HS. Which in two of those combinations, gives you 600MP, or 1200MP total across the same 5 GCDs.

Delirium's 200mp per hit is purely to refund you the opportunity cost of using BS vs the mp loss of not using your main combo for the duration of Delirium, since the average mp per GCD is identical; you can't compare SHB's 5 GCDs & EW's 3 GCDs in a vacuum, you have to factor in what EW Delirium can fill the extra 2 GCDs with. The only *actual* fringe situation where EW delirium's MP gain would be worse is if you had the SE + HS combo, and the loss of the 400 MP from the 2x BS in SHB Delirium made you lose an edge during raid buffs. But if we're also highlighting fringe cases, if you have either of the Syphon setups, there is a fringe scenario where you'd gain an extra 200MP over SHB delirium in the same 5GCDs, which could theoretically land another edge during burst windows if you were just 200 MP short in the SHB scenario.

Quietus also isn't as big a loss as you think, since you can fit an unleash + stalwart in lieu of the 2 missing Quietus's:

SHB: Quietus * 5 = 2500 MP
EW: Quietus * 3 = 1500 MP + (0 + 500 (Unleash/Stalwart respectively)) = 2000 MP.

There's also the fact that there's unseen benefits to EW delirium in that you theoretically gain 20 Blood from SE & Stalwart more often since you return to your main combos earlier, which adds up to extra Blood generation over time compared to SHB.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

...You do realize that removing those 2 extra BS's in Delirium means you return to your main combo 2 GCDs early right?

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Yes and because of it you'll be forced to pair D + BW together for max MP return and must always use Unleash or Hard Slash before popping DBW for a total of 3600/4500 MP return across 4 GCDs.

Which I think the Quietus and SS combo is more beneficial as you get 4500 MP along with 50 Blood. If BW allowed for 5 GCDS you could always guarantee 50 Blood each DBW window. Therefore by being at 50 blood you can then guarantee you reach 100 and still retain 5 BS/Q.

Currently you are going to see 3600 MP and 60 Blood for ST and 4500 MP and 50 Blood for AoE. I would prefer BW having 5 GCDs rather then just 4 so you can acquire 60 blood on both ST or AoE. At the end of the day it is still overall a loss on MP restoration.

Although I feel the limitation on Quietus MP restore should be removed and it should proc for every single target hit. That alone would make MP return phenomenal and allow for a fast paced Quietus + Flood spam playstyle.

BS/Q don't break combos so there is a tiny amount of preplanning you'll have to do which is great because that is engaging to me.

I think going forward BSx3 > SoSi(2400 + 1200) and Qx3 > StSo(3300 + 1200) is the future for burst MP restores every 60 seconds. 50 blood every 60s window would be the dream. Which requires a BW change or stacking SkS to the point 5 gcds is consistent.

This is difficult however because you then have the problem of weaponskills and spells using two different stats. That's a problem given AoE is spells and ST is weaponskills. Feels bad man.

But I really have always loved the Dark Knight across the franchise so I'm rather conflicted if dropping the class is the answer at 75 or if I should cap it at 90 for AF gear and story and then shelf it for either GNB or just stick with Reaper as the core job I'll play.

Core issues on DRK right now is just going to be Living Dead, Blood Weapon, and an array of systems that actively work against each other. Don't need to work for Cid Garlond to figure that out.

Blood Price needs to come back, a skill similar to Sole Survivor needs to come back and Abyssal Drain needs to be changed to what it was. Along with the other 58.25 issues DRK overall has with it's kit to the point I feel being a hot mess is part of the class fantasy.

Edit: You can actually get 60 blood (40 + 20) on ST after 5 GCDs (on regular SE). 60 blood across 4 GCDs(30 + 30) for AoE. So as far as blood goes it evens out. I just bad at math.

I'm mostly just here to support the thread as it's currently the biggest thread in the english forums (recently at least).

I mained this job in Stormblood and seeing it slowly burn out over the slow burn that's been Shadowbringers has left me feeling very dulled out of the job, but i will still support that it gets the changes it rightfully deserves and needs.

(truth be told, i could make a whole rant about the job's shortcomings in my eyes, but a lot is just repeating what others have said before, so i will just provide my support for the most part unless told to share my thoughts on where the job stands)

While I understand reworking Dark Knight, it is also a dangerous game to play reworks.

I always suggested Walking Dead should have at least a healing received increase 20-30% counteracting it's extreme drawback, Ast/Sch/Sge have to exert OGCDs keeping them alive. Each tank has their own invulnerable drawbacks while Warrior does not, specially EW Warrior.

TBN is the main focus issue when you suggest the reworks, this ability today is very powerful cheesing survival easy on demand short cooldown. I'm not the guy for a solution, but it feels very much like a Warrior clone with more buttons.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Yes and because of it you'll be forced to pair D + BW together for max MP return and must always use Unleash or Hard Slash before popping DBW for a total of 3600/4500 MP return across 4 GCDs.

Which I think the Quietus and SS combo is more beneficial as you get 4500 MP along with 50 Blood. If BW allowed for 5 GCDS you could always guarantee 50 Blood each DBW window. Therefore by being at 50 blood you can then guarantee you reach 100 and still retain 5 BS/Q.

Currently you are going to see 3600 MP and 60 Blood for ST and 4500 MP and 50 Blood for AoE. I would prefer BW having 5 GCDs rather then just 4 so you can acquire 60 blood on both ST or AoE. At the end of the day it is still overall a loss on MP restoration.

Although I feel the limitation on Quietus MP restore should be removed and it should proc for every single target hit. That alone would make MP return phenomenal and allow for a fast paced Quietus + Flood spam playstyle.

BS/Q don't break combos so there is a tiny amount of preplanning you'll have to do which is great because that is engaging to me.

I think going forward BSx3 > SoSi(2400 + 1200) and Qx3 > StSo(3300 + 1200) is the future for burst MP restores every 60 seconds. 50 blood every 60s window would be the dream. Which requires a BW change or stacking SkS to the point 5 gcds is consistent.

This is difficult however because you then have the problem of weaponskills and spells using two different stats. That's a problem given AoE is spells and ST is weaponskills. Feels bad man.

But I really have always loved the Dark Knight across the franchise so I'm rather conflicted if dropping the class is the answer at 75 or if I should cap it at 90 for AF gear and story and then shelf it for either GNB or just stick with Reaper as the core job I'll play.

Core issues on DRK right now is just going to be Living Dead, Blood Weapon, and an array of systems that actively work against each other. Don't need to work for Cid Garlond to figure that out.

Blood Price needs to come back, a skill similar to Sole Survivor needs to come back and Abyssal Drain needs to be changed to what it was. Along with the other 58.25 issues DRK overall has with it's kit to the point I feel being a hot mess is part of the class fantasy.

Edit: You can actually get 60 blood (40 + 20) on ST after 5 GCDs (on regular SE). 60 blood across 4 GCDs(30 + 30) for AoE. So as far as blood goes it evens out. I just bad at math.

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I don't understand. Delirium and Blood Weapon are two entirely different systems, one does not actively influence the other, even if they actively influence the same resource. At the end of the day, you're going to generate ~12K a minute like you do now. If anything this version of Delirium is a noticeable buff from the current implementation, because it can be used -15 seconds pre-pull or in between dungeon pulls to potentially gain usages depending on killtimes. This is the logic behind pre-pull Delirium and delayed BWs after the opener, they aren't linked together, Blood Weapon is an acquisition tool, Delirium is a soft-burst with a small compensation cost for the GCDs it requires. Getting a lot of MP quickly doesn't really do anything if it's into overcap or it's damage used outside of raid buffs.

Nothing about the changes that we currently know about really change the MP economy at all. You're still looking at 4 edges per minute or a 5/3 split using Dark Arts. After doing a sample rotation with the changes, I'm doing the exact same rotations I'm doing now, just with the addition of the new stuff at 90s/2mins and Delirium Bloodspillers, which if anything, make it easier to play with at 9K+ MP with small 200 gains vs one big 600 gain as I wait for Trick Attack.

Also Blood Weapon is 5 GCDs, ideally. You CAN get 5 GCDs in Blood Weapon during AoE, but only if you use three weapon skills, two spells and full blood. (ie: Unleash > BW > Quietus > Quietus > Stalwart Soul > Quietus > Unleash) A concession only made because of the aforementioned SkS/SpS split on the skills. The annoyance of doing this is why the stack change is such a popular suggestion.

DRK systems do not work against each other, they just lack synergy and work mostly independently. Offensively, It's only Blood Weapon that is actively punishing DRKs for no reason and gimping the job. The only thing that the job feeds into itself with is Dark Arts procs into buff window Edge of Shadows and regrettably, Darkside. Everything else is entirely disjointed (Abyssal, Shadowbringer, Oblation) and/or "press button, receive damage" (Living Shadow, Shadowbringer, Bloodspiller/Delirium). I actually think this is to DRKs benefit, because it makes the bursts pretty flexible by having comparatively few prerequisites outside of MP for Edge. Everything else is there to mash.

You cannot re-introduce Blood Price. The only reason the TBN refund is allowed is because it's a DPS gain only in aDPS-leaning raid compositions and proper play. If you outright gave DRKs more MP through Blood Price, it incentivizes DRKs being the MT for more damage through more Edges. That's antithetical to tank design over the last four years. If you could give Blood Price to someone else as well, maybe as an Oblation secondary effect, that might change things, but then you are once again, tying defensive actions to offensives actions in a linear, 1-to-1 fashion, which leads to super degenerate playstyles, something SE, again, have tried to pull back on.

Sole Survivor can come back, but ONLY the HP portion of it. The MP portion would directly gain a few uses of Edge of Shadow, DPS gain, so either that part of it needs to be removed to preserve the fixed MP economy or Edge of Shadow potency needs to be nerfed. Nerfing Edge of Shadow would be bad, because it would mean you use it slightly more outside of the 60s bursts to compensate for the increased MP, making Darkside even more of a useless mechanic due to mandatory usages to prevent MP overcap, and make the discrepancy between Edges inside of raid buffs and outside of raid buffs less wide from a lower base potency. This is a pretty minor point, granted.

I do not think Abyssal Drain can return to a standalone GCD for similar reasons. You'd be using the GCDs on only HP recovery, messing with the MP regeneration again, which means less TBNs in bigger pulls for the sake of HP gain, or in single target, another unused button. This is, in general, full of unnecessary trade offs. It'd be better as either being put on a stack system much like Onslaught with three charges, or a third step AoE combo after Stalwart Soul. Or if I'm gonna mash it every minute, just jack up the heal potency part and let me have a dedicated full heal in huge pulls, and at least a SE level heal in single target once a minute. I mean, Equilibrium is still in the game after all.

And you absolutely cannot allow Quietus MP restore to proc on every hit. The only reason it was okay for Quietus to do that in SB is because nothing in the DRK AoE kit back then was super powerful in AoE, with the small exception of DADark Passenger due to it not having a GCD opportunity cost, balanced by a long cooldown. It gave you infinite sustain, which is why they removed it. If you re-introduced it now, it would scale far too fast in huge pulls, to the point of where you'd generate significantly more MP AND damage throwing out Floods with a potency gain over Edge at 2 targets, would catapult DRK burst DPS way higher than other tanks, when we're already on the top of the ladder in that area. Floods, Living Shadow, and in the future, ShB do way too much damage to allow something this unrestricted, and Flood needs to remain strong to keep being a gain during 2 target. Unleash > Stalwart and Floods as they currently are already pretty much put DRK as a lock in situations where multi-target is preferable over single because of objective Blood/MP gains and a higher overall potency per second.

The #1 intent of the ShB rework was to reduce MP gain, because in SB it was out of control. Anything being added to the kit that adds MP with no extra conditional spenders would be them backtracking on this design. (And some parts of it should be backtracked, to be fair)

I no longer think a total rework is the right play. I just think the things that make DRK unique like stock piling and defensive kit flexibility should be emphasized more, because the prevailing narrative of "WAR clone" is way too widespread right now.

And if you're unsure about playing it, honestly, shelf it. There's too many problems to whole-heartedly support the EW version. Save yourself the trouble.

Posting to show support as something needs to be done and what they put up in the media tour was… well bit early for aprils fools isn’t it?

I just want this thread to keep going. A lot of people, including me, have posted what they want from DRK. I am, in general, against the direction the game takes with tanks and healers (making them more and more simple and homogenized), but DRK was hit hardest by this on the tank side, IMO.

I'll be hopping on RPR to test it out in a week, but I still hope DRK receives a cohesive dedicated rework that would distance it from the "just dump all of your resources in the buff window and 1-2-3 the rest of the time" design philosophy SE seems to have adopted for many classes. I know SE can balance DPS numbers very well even without making everything work the same way, they did it in HW and SB (and ShB for DPS), so I don't really see the reason to do it.

Assuming the best case scenario, where this thread is seen, yoshi took the suggestion that DRK had problems seriously, that JPN forums are making some noise, and that the devs are taking a closer look at DRK;
What do you guys think we can reasonably expect within a given time frame?

I'm guessing minor number changes by 6.1 (mana numbers, cooldown adjustments, etc. ), mechanical changes by 6.2 (BW on a charge system, etc.), and major reworks by 6.4 at the absolute earliest. I want to temper my own expectations, but I'd be interested to know what your thoughts are.

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Originally Posted by RatCopter

and major reworks by 6.4 at the absolute earliest.

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What kind of "major rework" do you think they'd do mid-expac?

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Originally Posted by ItMe

What kind of "major rework" do you think they'd do mid-expac?

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Changing Enhanced Unmend to something less insulting :V

Real talk, I dunno. Changing how the new skills interact with each other, expanding the dark arts system, those kind of things.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

What kind of "major rework" do you think they'd do mid-expac?

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Most likely nothing since, by the numbers, DRK is an functional tank within reason. Its not wildly unbalanced like in ARR/HW. SB was the closest they got to balance while keeping the tanks different and even then they weren't nowhere near the balance of ShB. It's not gonna get anything new outside of hopefully making Blood Weapon 5 stacks, or, give it 10% haste like in SB. Unless DRK becomes the social pariah that 2.0-2.1 WAR and HW PLD was, it's likely gonna stay as is, outside of potency tweaks.

It's a shame they missed out on Dark Arts as the concept of buffing and augmenting your abilities is a great idea. Guess we have to deal with a poormans WAR/MCH hybrid for the next two more years.

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Originally Posted by KaliAurion

I've honestly been pretty discouraged from even playing Endwalker because of what's been going on with DRK. I've been stubborn and stuck to it through StB and ShB but I really don't think I could go through this for another 2 years.

Another problem is that I'd much prefer to be a tank and the other 3 tanks don't interest me in the slightest.

Right now I'm heavily leaning towards just skipping Endwalker for the time being until the job design team can get it together..

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I feel you there. I leveled PLD, played a lot with it in fact, and it's sweet seeing how good it will be in Endwalker with all their heals, flashy abilities and QoL changes across the board, but at the end of the day, DRK aesthetics are so much more interesting to me, everything from animations, to lore, to artifacts and artifact armor designs.

I was raiding with a group of friends but the more I played PLD, the less interested I was in joining them on raid nights while at the same time, I find DRK as if not more boring than PLD when it comes to gameplay, and seeing how things remained LARGELY the same for DRKs in Endwalker, I do feel a crippling doubt settling in about what I wanna play as after I am done with the story and decide to push on some harder content.

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Originally Posted by RatCopter

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My main thought here is that I really hope DRK doesn't get a mid-expac rework. I expect that they'll tweak the numbers around in any case, whether that's making it into the game for 6.0, or if it's the panic buffs in 6.05, or some round of buffs in 6.1 or 6.2 or whatever. But I really hope they don't try to make major changes partway through an expansion, because every time they've attempted to do that with a class in the past, the form the "rework" has taken has been to throw the baby out with the bathwater and destroy a class mechanic rather than fix it. If we get a 6.3 or 6.4 rework, we're liable to see something stupid like Edge/Flood changed to 1.5s Spells that are on the GCD, rather than an improvement to DRK's actual gameplay.

The only real hope here is that DRK limps along through Endwalker without any major revision, and then gets a total overhaul in 7.0 that might produce something more fun than the current version. If they try to tackle this mid-expansion, it's all but guaranteed to just make things worse.

I'm very wary of having hopium. SB was a terrible time for DRK. We were bottom and the redesign was awful. I can't understand thinking the old Dark Arts was good because it 'empowered' or 'changed' abilities when it came down to using it when you had MP to spare or not using it when you were low or out. Also, it was just APM bloat. You had to squeeze an extra action for everything and still be a worst tank than PLD or WAR. Also, TBN not getting broken was a much bigger deal back then, too. A single Holy would royally screw you over in a trash pull. All of this coming off HW DRK which was sheer perfection.

What might happen is you either wait too long for nothing (literal years too) or wait too long for something that might not be worse but it isn't good. Make yourselves heard or let your wallet do the talking.

SHB might be boring but at least its functional. I'll take it over 4.X DRK.

On the one hand, HW era DRK was the most fun I've ever had with this game. I know that we can't go back to that for a variety of reasons (not going to lie, it was jank as hell then too, but for entirely different reasons), and as much as I deeply, deeply miss HW DRK, I do understand that the simplification of tanking kind of had to be done to make the entire game more playable. But I do think things went way too far in that regard, and I wouldn't mind dialing things back to a more refined version of the concept we had in HW.

Tanking is plenty accessible now, with so many simple jobs, it wouldn't hurt to have one with more complexity now. We can roll back that huge overadjustment a little bit, even just for one class.

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Originally Posted by Kiteless

On the one hand, HW era DRK was the most fun I've ever had with this game. I know that we can't go back to that for a variety of reasons (not going to lie, it was jank as hell then too, but for entirely different reasons), and as much as I deeply, deeply miss HW DRK, I do understand that the simplification of tanking kind of had to be done to make the entire game more playable. But I do think things went way too far in that regard, and I wouldn't mind dialing things back to a more refined version of the concept we had in HW.

Tanking is plenty accessible now, with so many simple jobs, it wouldn't hurt to have one with more complexity now. We can roll back that huge overadjustment a little bit, even just for one class.

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thats the problem, all jobs are braindead simple. The universal simplification and homogenisation was not neccessary in the jobs that suffered most from it.
There is nothing wrong with having some jobs be more challenging than others. It works for the dps jobs, it worked back in SB, it worked in HW. That's one reason why everyone wants to go back to HW for a lot of jobs- because HW was the most fun era.

I've argued all through shb we need HW drk as the base, with a bit of SB and SHB drk added on top. the latter two had some good additions but they don't have the fun that was HW

Grit is a mere enmity switch now so thats fixed.
Darkside can be used for a haste mode, perhaps each attack drains mp while giving more potency and blackblood.
Dark arts being able to be stocked could be a place to explore.
Blackblood can be used for mp regen or sustain

so much they could do if they gave it the same effort as they do dps

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

thats the problem, all jobs are braindead simple. The universal simplification and homogenisation was not neccessary in the jobs that suffered most from it.

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It had to be done. Back in the HW era, SE had a clear target audience in mind and as such, the expansion was catered to them specifically. Dark Knight was born during that era and offered a more complex tank with rewarding gameplay for anyone that bothered.

Fast-forward, ShB and Endwalker are targeted at the "casual" demographic that doesn't give two flying shits about learning their job. Hence the huge emphasis on story-elements and less focus on gameplay mechanics. SE is smart enough to understand how complexity can get in the way of accessibility hence why they homogenize and simplify tanks as they bear responsibility for party wide failure.

Overall, if we had any sort of gatekeepers around tanking perhaps this wouldn't have happened, but we're not going to see 3.0 complexity ever again.

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Originally Posted by Kiteless

But I do think things went way too far in that regard, and I wouldn't mind dialing things back to a more refined version of the concept we had in HW.

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I don't actually think it would be that hard to create a version of DRK that felt like HW DRK while still being in keeping with the general post-Shadowbringers design philosophy, if SE were actually of a mind to do it. The actual complexity of 3.x DRK is not really possible to bring back, but that's not really the main thing that DRK lost: The actual loss that you feel every time you try to play 5.x DRK is that its gameplay identity has been completely reversed from what it was supposed to be, and it's instead been shoved into a niche that other tanks already occupy (and are better at).

3.x DRK was an oGCD-focused equivalent to modern-day PLD: It was not a burst-damage tank; it was instead based on continuously doing damage across an entire rotation. While modern-day PLD achieves this by having three distinct 'phases' to their rotation, 3.x DRK achieved it by having oGCDs with irregular cooldowns that lined up differently from minute to minute, and rate-limiting how fast you could spend MP to deal damage.

If you sort of break down how and why 3.x DRK felt the way it did, it isn't impossible to imagine a post-5.x version of the same gameplay identity:

• If you had an excess of MP and wanted to turn it into damage, you had to do it through Souleater, giving it an effect 3 GCD cooldown. You could achieve the same thing today by adding an 8-10s cooldown to Edge/Flood, solving the two major problems of 1) 5.x DRK's burst windows feeling more spammy than 4.x DRK's "Dark Arts spam" ever did and 2) 5.x DRK not having anything to do outside of burst windows.
• Most of 3.x DRK's oGCDs were designed to not line up cleanly with 60s Trick windows, which meant that much of DRK's gameplay happened outside of party burst. Salted Earth was 45s, Blood Weapon and Blood Price were 40s, Reprisal's parry requirement gave it a randomized cooldown that averaged somewhere between 40 and 50 seconds, and Low Blow was 25s (with a randomized chance on parry to reset at essentially any moment). Only Plunge and Dark Passenger, at 30s each, were made to line up with Trick. Modern-day DRK could easily achieve this by rolling Salted Earth and Blood Weapon back to 45s and 40s, introducing Shadowbringer at 40s instead of 60s, and changing Plunge to 25s, not to mention any possible changes to Abyssal Drain, Delirium, or Living Shadow. (Obviously potencies would have to be adjusted to make sure it didn't come out too strong or too weak).
• Kind of a tag onto the last point, but: At 60 seconds, Carve and Spit was 3.x DRK's longest offensive cooldown. Everything else was shorter, and Plunge didn't have Charges, which (obviously) meant that DRK had things to do and buttons to press in between party buff windows. On 5.x DRK, once you realize that charges effectively give Plunge a 60s cooldown, Carve and Spit is actually tied for DRK's shortest cooldown, a complete reversal of how the class was supposed to work. Fixing this would go a long way to restoring DRK's gameplay identity.

I don't think that changing these aspects would run too contrary to the post-5.0 design philosophy, and they would go a long way to restoring the "feel" of 3.x DRK. Getting back the full range of gameplay nuance is probably not on the table, but there is an actual problem here that isn't just a case of lost complexity.

Ideally, with four tanks in the game, we would have:
1) A GCD-based, burst-damage tank [WAR✓]
2) A GCD-based, continuous-damage tank [PLD✓]
3) An oGCD-based, burst-damage tank [GNB✓]
4) An oGCD-based, continuous-damage tank [DRK✗]

Instead, DRK has been changed into something that's trying to wear the same pair of pants as GNB, and the results are, unsurprisingly, that DRK's gameplay feels unsatisfying and lacking in unique identity.

I'm not sure how well the burst/sustain dichotomy will hold up in Endwalker with every tank operating on 60s burst windows. What made HW DRK different was not so much a lack of burst but the fact that you had to situationally respond based on whatever procs or resources were available at the time. The current problem that tanks face is that all tanks, including ones which are supposed to be based around resource-management, operate on fixed rotations and timers, just some are more blatantly obvious (PLD/GNB) than others (WAR/DRK). Your resource gains happen every time at fixed points on your combo. The end result is that every pull ends up playing out the same when things go correctly. I personally find that to be extremely boring.

What I would like to see is more variable resource gains on DRK. Even something simple like 'every time one of your barriers absorbs damage, you gain a small amount of resources' leads to variable resource totals, which can make a difference over a ten minute fight. I know that this will make the job less accessible for players who can't make decisions on the fly, but there's three other tanks for them to choose from if they want to cling to their spreadsheets. Really, all I want this game to do is start mixing up pulls so that they don't always happen the same way.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Ideally, with four tanks in the game, we would have:
1) A GCD-based, burst-damage tank [WAR✓]
2) A GCD-based, continuous-damage tank [PLD✓]
3) An oGCD-based, burst-damage tank [GNB✓]
4) An oGCD-based, continuous-damage tank [DRK✗]

Instead, DRK has been changed into something that's trying to wear the same pair of pants as GNB, and the results are, unsurprisingly, that DRK's gameplay feels unsatisfying and lacking in unique identity.

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Brilliant post overall, really sums up how I feel about DRK's identity and what I enjoyed about HW/SB DRK, but the quoted part bears repeating. The "oGCD sustained damage tank with lots of small buttons instead of a few burst big buttons" was literally DRK's niche DPS kit-wise before the rework, and the rework removed every trace of it. I really, really want that back.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm not sure how well the burst/sustain dichotomy will hold up in Endwalker with every tank operating on 60s burst windows.

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PLD operates on a 60s cycle, but I wouldn't say it operates on a 60s burst cycle. Its damage peak is considerably lower than the other tanks, and its damage in between peaks is considerably higher than the other tanks. It isn't uniform - neither was 3.x DRK - but it is a lot more continuous and sustained than the others. And, looking at the changes it's receiving in Endwalker, Square-Enix is doubling down on that damage profile: PLD's main offensive upgrade is effectively a buff to the lowest-DPS point in its rotation, rather than giving it another big hit in the burst window as they've done for WAR, GNB, and DRK. I think that's absolutely a dichotomy that they're aware of and are actively trying to maintain; they're just (erroneously, in my opinion) doing a 1/3 split instead of the 2/2 that I think would be more healthy for the game.

I'm in full agreement that things would be much better if we had variability in resource generation back. I liked that your decisions could be very different from pull-to-pull based on relatively slight changes in how the pull goes, and even that you occasionally ran into slight differences even when you were essentially playing identically. I'd enjoy it if they not only brought that stuff back, but expanded on it and made it more central to DRK's kit - and I definitely feel you on "There are three other tanks for people who like the current level of complexity and predictability - those people don't need to have all four." (Same applies to healers.) But I'm not optimistic that SE would really lean into that kind of design any time in the foreseeable future, and if they did, I think it would have to be a gradual process that starts from something a little more baseline and fundamental.

There are some good reasons why that approach wouldn't work for the current tank designs: PLD is based around the predictability of some fairly long strings of GCD sequences and you wouldn't want to introduce chaos into that system (which I think fits the class fantasy of being a traditional, disclipined knight). WAR is intentionally designed to be incredibly straightforward, because that seems to overwhelmingly be what the Warrior playerbase wants (I think we all remember the reaction to having to manage gauge in early Stormblood). GNB doesn't have enough granularity in its resource system to really introduce any chaos in a way that isn't frustrating. And the current version of DRK is so married to the burst window that a little bit of resource variability wouldn't move the needle (or at least, wouldn't move the needle in an interesting way - it would just solidify the cursed "2/6 rotation" type stuff). DRK and GNB aren't fundamentally incompatible with a little bit of chaos/RNG, but neither of their current designs is well-suited to having it bolted on. A hypothetical rework of DRK that moved it more into a sustained-damage model, though, would open up some opportunity for SE to experiment with some of those mechanics in the future.

I don't think we can expect SE to completely leave their comfort zone on class design any time soon, especially considering how much the current success of the game must be encouraging an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude. But if EW rolls around and it does turn out that "DRK is broke, needs fixing", I think there's at least a small chance that they could be persuaded to change it into something with a more distinct gameplay identity that also still fits fairly neatly within the job design parameters that they've set for themselves.

Having some slight random/variable ressource generation could honestly breathe a lot of life into DRK. That's why I loved the parry procs, Blood Price etc. I honestly wish MP wasn't as standard 10k as it is now, and have actual numbers instead of a %.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Ideally, with four tanks in the game, we would have:
1) A GCD-based, burst-damage tank [WAR✓]
2) A GCD-based, continuous-damage tank [PLD✓]
3) An oGCD-based, burst-damage tank [GNB✓]
4) An oGCD-based, continuous-damage tank [DRK✗]

Instead, DRK has been changed into something that's trying to wear the same pair of pants as GNB, and the results are, unsurprisingly, that DRK's gameplay feels unsatisfying and lacking in unique identity.

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In what XIV-related world, though, is a continuous-damage tank not simply a worse tank? The possibility of just barely getting in one extra CD cycle vs. not having the risk of barely losing out on one further CD cycle is rarely an acceptable balancing point in a game that's still largely ruled by raid (de)buff windows.

PLD doesn't hold up against WAR because it has "continuous damage". It holds up despite that, and only through some rather unique capacities that do far more to generate its identity that does the shape of its fflogs graphs.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

In what XIV-related world, though, is a continuous-damage tank not simply a worse tank?

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In the current world that we've been in for probably at least 3-4 years now, where encounter designers specifically go out of their way to give everyone nearly 100% uptime if they want it. We're a long, long way off from Heavensward fight design where bosses had so many jumps and forced disconnects that burst damage was worth twice your sustained damage.

Burst damage isn't better than sustained damage because it lines up with raid buffs; FFXIV class balancing (as of Shadowbringers) very, very obviously takes that into account - if it didn't, Paladin would be thousands of DPS behind every other tank on almost every encounter. But that's not what we see: The Tanks are all weighing in at approximately the same DPS, usually with less than a 500 DPS gap between the top and bottom, out of 14000+. Being a sustained versus burst class is very emphatically neither an advantage nor a disadvantage in modern-day FFXIV.

Rather, burst damage is "better" than sustained damage because of the (these days, largely hypothetical) utility that it brings: Burst can be used to kill adds faster, to push specific HP%-based phase thresholds, or to deal with any downtime or forced disconnections better. These are all things that were very common in previous expansions, and have been largely excised from modern FFXIV.

The situation that we exist in now is pretty simple: There are no particular objective advantages or disadvantages to being a burst versus a sustained damage class - not from a class design/balance perspective, and not from an encounter design perspective - but they provide very different playstyles, which different players may subjectively find to be significantly more or less fun than others. And with two clearly defined separations between tank playstyles, we should have a tank that exists in every combination, so that everyone has at least one tank with the playstyle that they find fun - but we don't. And that should be fixed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crater

Rather, burst damage is "better" than sustained damage because of the (these days, largely hypothetical) utility that it brings: Burst can be used to kill adds faster, to push specific HP%-based phase thresholds, or to deal with any downtime or forced disconnections better.

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Which is still a capacity -- even if one we are never asked to sacrifice total/sustained damage (e.g., uses per fight) to exploit (for dps checks) -- that "continuous damage" (a euphemism simply for "less burst than most") jobs simply won't have.

"Continuous damage" does not, in itself, have a compensatory factor. Just as being able to do deal one's damage from range is, in itself, just objectively better than being only able to attack from up close, having burst is simply an allowance that not having burst does not have.

We can give "continuous damage" jobs other goodies to compensate, but the original lack of whatever (burst, range, mobility, etc.) will not be the basis for an job identity. It's what the job does to make up for that lack that makes a PLD what it is, what makes a GNB what it does, etc.

So what is it that you want DRK to have in exchange? To simply "not have X" is not going to be sufficient basis for DRK any more than it's been for WHM. It's how we fill that space differently that will give a well-designed job.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

So what is it that you want DRK to have in exchange? To simply "not have X" is not going to be sufficient basis for DRK any more than it's been for WHM. It's how we fill that space differently that will give a well-designed job.

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I think you're trying to reinvent the wheel where there's no reason to. The only thing that DRK needs "in exchange" for this sort of playstyle is "a lot of people find that sort of gameplay to be much more fun than the alternatives". That's it. No further justification is needed. PLD isn't some loser class that people only bring along when they absolutely need a second party mitigation skill or a tank that can briefly attack from range; a lot of people like its playstyle, and so it gets a ton of use. Neither would this version of DRK be.

We don't need to hold out for some galaxy-brain innovation or sit around wringing our hands about how it's hypothetically possible that a fight could come around that would be somewhat less advantageous to our class now that we find it fun to play at a base level. The aspects of the game that could conceivably turn this design into a disadvantage are things that the developers have intentionally minimized or outright removed from the game's design - if they ever decided to change their design philosophy and reintroduce those mechanics, then presumably that shift in design philosophy would also extend to class design, and the affected classes would be given something compensatory then. As of now, and as of the foreseeable future, there are no tangible disadvantages to an oGCD-focused, sustained-damage tank, and so we have no reason to oppose being given a class that fits that style.

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Originally Posted by Crater

I think you're trying to reinvent the wheel where there's no reason to.

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Mate, you're the one who implied that a level of burstiness, and whether that comes from GCDs or oGCDs, are what we ought to be targeting in filling out tank jobs' diversity. I'm merely saying there's no damn point in following, let alone trying to fill, those categories. DRK doesn't have to be anything except fun and competitive. We don't need to fill typal quotas.

If you want it to strip DRK's burst, that's fine by me so long as it has something in compensation for that gameplay lost -- since managing burst will always have, in itself, more gameplay than not having any burst to manage. But shuffling things around or slapping a label on DRK isn't going to give it any more or less fun of mechanics. That'll come from everything else.

I think the problem behind the EW version is that its all redundant and the worst type of button bloat you can have. They type where it offers nothing new outside of damage. The lvl 90 skill is just dark passenger but without the utility and MP cost and is just another button for the sake of pressing buttons to fill in the time between spamming your one combo rotation. There's no reason for DRK to have this many ogcds that will only ultimately be used within TA windows so they clearly didn't listen to players back in ShB when they said they didn't want the job to have too many ogcds and weaving between gcds. For reference here's how DRK compares to the other tanks in ogcds, excluding the universal gap closers:

DRK: 6* (7 if you count esteem as a glorified dot)
GNB: 2* (6 if you count the continuation combos)
PLD: 2* (3 if you count Requiescat)
WAR: 2

At least with GNB its tied to continuation and acts a universal ogcd to combos. DRK needs to have all those open slots dedicated to those ogcds that do nothing but damage and most of that damage is redundant. SB deals 600 potency to an enemy in a line with 2 charges on a 60 sec recast making it 1200 potency every 2 mins. Guess what else is 1200 potency? 3 edge of shadows, which can be spammed since its on a 2 sec recast and you have 9000 MP. Don't even get me started on Living shadow but suffice to say DRK embodies the current design philosophy of make everything feel and play the same but just look different. Its all style and no substance.

They also gave up on DA which was one of the more unique ideas a tank ever got. An ability that you pay resources for to buff or augment your tool kit, now reduced to a foot note in the job gauge help tool tips telling you that once TBN breaks you get a DA which is essentially a free shadow. They could remove the term DA and it would still function the same.

The only hope I see is in Living Shadow possibly being used in conjunction with your tool kits. Like instead of being a glorified dot you could tie Living Shadow to the Blood gauge exclusively and reduce the recast and duration. It can act as a surrogate to DA where if you spend 50 gauge it will come out for short duration and buff you before doing one attack and leaving. However, if you use 100 gauge it will stay longer and deal damage in addition to dropping an aoe. Also at any point if you use Living Dead and esteem is out, he will take the death penalty for you while you keep the invul. Doesn't that sound more interesting than a 600 potency ogcd?

God damn, I just watched a Heavensward DRK video and... What happened? The mana management sounded interesting as hell and those amazing Power Slash, the old Delirium and Scourge animations...

I mean, I would love to replace Bloodspiller, Quietus and Carve and Spit animations for something more interesting. Kinda makes me wish I played FFXIV back then, at least to try the job out.

Dark Knight was very rewarding in HW due to having to manage Enmity and Mana and knowing when to drop stance and reapply it since stances had a damage penalty tied to it. Over the years however it's kit was gutted and has been homogenized with the other tanks because Tanking was too "stressful" on players. To which we went for managing Enmity as an indicator of skill to one where no skill is required.

You will rarely if ever see Tanks competing for aggro in Fates/bosses or even utilizing strats where some tanks could tank multiple bosses at once and you will almost never see a healer or DPS rip hate ever again.

There were a couple fights where DRK was suboptimal but a lot of encounters had lots of magical damage that Dark Knight shined in. It was a great time back then.

DADP+DADD in dungeons was some really hype dodge tank status.

Those days are over I'm afraid.

Stormblood at least had Blood Price and Abyssal Drain god mode but that too has disappeared.

Heavensward DRK felt frantic and constantly on the edge. There you could see the Guts inspiration of just constantly flying by the seat of your pants, reacting to what was coming to you in what would look like a chaotic way.
It felt good to play.

I don't think that burst is incompatible with resource management. Take Reaper for example. Arcane Circle/Plentiful Harvest guarantee that you'll be entering Shroud during your burst every 60s. But you will also be entering your burst window at other points in time, depending on your resource gains from your combos or mob deaths.

Let's say that Delirium actually did something fun like new animations, a shadowy aura, and all that. Let's also say that it's usable on demand with no significant recast, once you hit 50 blood. All you really need to do is to have Living Shadow grant you 50 blood on use, and then let you do some sort of combined finisher with you and Frey when both LS and Delirium are up. Now you're free to do all the variable resource gains that you like. You'd have to move Bloodspiller off the blood gauge, but I'd honestly prefer that if it meant having a resource-gated burst window.

I also don't think that DRK has too many oGCDs. It was designed around being an oGCD heavy job from the outset. They just need to make them more interesting.

I don't think the amount of OGCD is the issue either, it's more that they all have the same CD so it frontloads your opener and then "nothing happens" for a minute.

i just wish DRK and WAR weren't so close in class lore. That to me is SE pigeonholing themselves in terms of designing a kit for the two.

Like what really separates a WAR's "Inner Beast" from DRK's "Inner Darkness?" I don't mean "well one's anger and the other's inner turmoil," I mean fundamentally. It's no wonder SE made DRK so hard to distinguish from WAR when their class fantasy can both be boiled down to "don't let your emotions take control over your actions."

What happened to "Doing what's just even if it's in defiance of what's right?" Where's the "Serving the dregs of society that the law turns a blind eye to?" Sure, something vague like that is difficult to translate into job skills, but I'd say TBN does those things pretty well.

I think the most accurate way to say it is DRK just have to much fluff oGCD that offer nothing gameplay wise more than pretty animations and no substance 1 time per min.

I'm not sure about pretty after they removed all our cool stuff and Reaper came out