Dark Knight Megathread

The only thing DRK is good for in Frontline is going in with a premade in voice call and using Salted Earth to set up for a fat Limit break play. The class does nothing else and has no other options especially compared to how it used to be.
You cant even chase people down or poke at any range like the class used to be able to.

Other than that you'll be basically afking in your party. maybe getting to plunge some straggler every now and then.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

The only thing DRK is good for in Frontline is going in with a premade in voice call and using Salted Earth to set up for a fat Limit break play. The class does nothing else and has no other options especially compared to how it used to be.
You cant even chase people down or poke at any range like the class used to be able to.

Other than that you'll be basically afking in your party. maybe getting to plunge some straggler every now and then.

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Salted Earth pulls people in and has mitigation, so the DRK should pull people in and stay for survivability, while players who can stun hit everyone inside SE so they take the whole DoT. Perfect synergy... except that a situation like that never happens in practice.

Eventide makes you unkillable for 10 seconds... except that you always get stunlocked during your immunity window, unable to move or even heal. All you did was wasting 10 seconds of the enemies' time. Wow, so great.

Everything works perfectly if you consider no context at all, am I right? It's almost like none of this was play tested...

Talking about Salted Earth, PvE wise...

In 6.0 Dark Knight lost the ground targeting, while it's sort of a QoL, we also lost the flexibility of placing it where we want.
In some cases, though rare, it can be annoying after we need to move a boss.

With WHM and SCH getting increased ranged for Sacred Soil and Asylum, wouldn't it be a good idea to also increase Salted Earth radius?

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Originally Posted by SylviaCrystal

Salted Earth pulls people in and has mitigation, so the DRK should pull people in and stay for survivability, while players who can stun hit everyone inside SE so they take the whole DoT. Perfect synergy... except that a situation like that never happens in practice.

Eventide makes you unkillable for 10 seconds... except that you always get stunlocked during your immunity window, unable to move or even heal. All you did was wasting 10 seconds of the enemies' time. Wow, so great.

Everything works perfectly if you consider no context at all, am I right? It's almost like none of this was play tested...

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Pretty sure it was... for their new pvp mode. The entire job rework is essentially balanced on being 5v5 on a relatively small map, but throw that same design into the old pvp modes with 24v24v24 on a big map and it completely falls apart.

Granted I'm not in the least surprised by this, even WoW, which in my opinion had one of the most solid pvp experiences I've ever played (during TBC, WotLK and Cataclysm), struggled when the same design was used in vastly different environments.

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Originally Posted by SylviaCrystal

After playing DRK on PvP for a while, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do in Frontline. It seems balanced around pulling people in with Salted Earth and hoping for the rare occasion that your team will follow through (most times they don't).

I don't have any ranged options outside of Shadowbringer, which is only 10y. I don't have any actions that stun, so people just walk away from my SE after the 3s bind from Salt and Darkness. Previously I could pull people individually with Weapon Throw...

Most of the time I see myself stalling behind my team and waiting for my LB bar to fill up so I can use Eventide. If I dare to jump in with Plunge to use SE I just get stunlocked to death by 7 White Mages, even with Purify. I have no counter play and fishing people with Salted Earth isn't being much fun to me so far. It's not so bad in Crystaline Conflict tho.

I get the feeling that they made a bunch of cool stuff that would be awesome in PvE (Salted Earth with mitigation, Sole Survivor on Plunge, managing HP instead of MP) and put in on PvP, but in PvP it doesn't work because of infinite stunlock and CC.

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Because you and oizen are playing frontlines wrong, you're talking about chasing people down etc, why? It's an objective game, stop being one of the annoying people fighting in the middle of nowhere and get to the objective. If a Drk is sitting on an objective with a couple of teammates to back them, Good look getting them off the point. Go near the point Dark will pull you in and their team destorys you while you're rooted next to the Drk who is also hammering you.

Dark is a Tank, in PVE and PVP they will play like a tank. If you want to be the chase down burst DPS I recommend playing dragoon or pretty much any melee DPS.

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Originally Posted by Malthir

Because you and oizen are playing frontlines wrong, you're talking about chasing people down etc, why? It's an objective game, stop being one of the annoying people fighting in the middle of nowhere and get to the objective. If a Drk is sitting on an objective with a couple of teammates to back them, Good look getting them off the point. Go near the point Dark will pull you in and their team destorys you while you're rooted next to the Drk who is also hammering you.

Dark is a Tank, in PVE and PVP they will play like a tank. If you want to be the chase down burst DPS I recommend playing dragoon or pretty much any melee DPS.

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I like how you just assumed my playstyle. I sit on the objective like anyone else, but the other teams hunt us down because they're not stupid. I have to fight back at some point, and when that point comes, I have no counter play outside of pointlessly trying to fish people with Salted Earth.

White Mage is a healer, but they don't sit down healing all day. They have a very broken LB that stuns everyone and supports the team AND they're ranged, so they can attack from behind the team and support them at the same time. Stop making excuses.

Do I have to say anything about WAR, who's also a tank, and has... how many stun actions again?

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Originally Posted by Malthir

If a Drk is sitting on an objective with a couple of teammates to back them

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PvP is called like that for a reason. You're not fighting an enemy with a predefined moveset. You can't just assume that everything is fine just because the best case scenario works. Here's what you do in the worst case scenario, after seeing your "couple of teammates" getting rekt after trying your best to support them: you pop Eventide, then Sprint... and hope that you won't get stunlocked as you try to run the f away lol

It was kind of fun reading through some old HW threads when I guess DRK's biggest issue was its lack of OT capabilities. Guess that was WAR's spot while PLD and DRK duked it out for MT. Also the fact that even used to be a conversation is pretty wild :p

Funnily enough there were also a few threads asking what DRK's identity was compared to PLD and WAR lol.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

Funnily enough there were also a few threads asking what DRK's identity was compared to PLD and WAR lol.

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When a job exchanges its identity to be accessible without assessing the risks of potentially losing its framework then you get DRK. Only the original designer knows what makes this job enjoyable not a different job designer.

Think they should take a good look of what was right about HW DRK and combine that with their current design philosophy. It's not going to be overly overwhelming I believe.

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Originally Posted by Shin96

Think they should take a good look of what was right about HW DRK and combine that with their current design philosophy. It's not going to be overly overwhelming I believe.

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Aaand personally I think they should be free to consider something not constrained by either precedented philosophy.
The current design philosophy is an oversimplified version of WAR, created as a result of the devs' own dissatisfaction with the complexity and direction of HW DRK -- in other words, both have flaws, and the best choice isn't necessarily a middle ground between the iterations, because after all DRK already existed in that middle ground for Stormblood and Shadowbringers. Limiting themselves only to a sliding scale between the past and present stifles potential creativity that the job desperately needs right now.

Now I'm not saying "scrap the job and start all over" -- they can reuse assets and familiar skills that already exist as they find the openings for them to their hearts' content. The 1-2-3 combo and staple tools like Grit and Shadow Wall aren't going anywhere.
But the priority shouldn't be on "HW did X better and Y worse" or "EW did Y better and X worse", it should be on "What makes DRK a choice for a tank in the first place?" and "What should DRK be able to do that no other tank could do the same or better?"

Yoshi-P said he wants DRK to feel like a magical tank. Alright. So where's the magic?
Because right now that's only reflected in "spell" tags that don't benefit from skill speed, and some unaspected damage here and there.
Oh, and Dark Mind. Talk about impractical identity tools.
Turn off the spell effects and you've got Cloud Strife sans melee LBs, not a particularly magical job.

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Originally Posted by SylviaCrystal

After playing DRK on PvP for a while, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do in Frontline. It seems balanced around pulling people in with Salted Earth and hoping for the rare occasion that your team will follow through (most times they don't).

I don't have any ranged options outside of Shadowbringer, which is only 10y. I don't have any actions that stun, so people just walk away from my SE after the 3s bind from Salt and Darkness. Previously I could pull people individually with Weapon Throw...

Most of the time I see myself stalling behind my team and waiting for my LB bar to fill up so I can use Eventide. If I dare to jump in with Plunge to use SE I just get stunlocked to death by 7 White Mages, even with Purify. I have no counter play and fishing people with Salted Earth isn't being much fun to me so far. It's not so bad in Crystaline Conflict tho.

I get the feeling that they made a bunch of cool stuff that would be awesome in PvE (Salted Earth with mitigation, Sole Survivor on Plunge, managing HP instead of MP) and put in on PvP, but in PvP it doesn't work because of infinite stunlock and CC.

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I tried DRK as well but I feel that the current dmg meta is not suited for some jobs like PLD and DRK who are clearly more focused on control. I've seen a decent DRK/SMN combo in FL where the DRK salts and the smn drops slip to lock players in. However co-ordination is uncommon in pvp and that was only a one off. Imo pvp atm is like yugioh in the TCG. A lot of single strong abilities that can win games and combo focused.