Dark Knights are an absolute joke and I'm tired of pretending they're not

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Lots of people coming out of the wood to say "it's fine actually, it's just you"

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I don't know, sometimes it feels like in these Dark Knight threads people are just holding onto a fierce grudge.
Like I get it on a certain level, but eventually so many years will go past that surely they have to start letting go.

You let go when you don't care anymore.
It's not as much grudge as it is becoming louder in the hope of getting heard. A lot pointed out how ignored the DRK base feels.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

I don't know, sometimes it feels like in these Dark Knight threads people are just holding onto a fierce grudge.
Like I get it on a certain level, but eventually so many years will go past that surely they have to start letting go.

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How can I not hold a massive grudge after what I've been putting up with?

Not only do I have to continue to deal with long-term issues like Living Dead and obscene ability removals, I also get to deal with all of my recent grievances from Shadowbringers being actively ignored by the developers AND totally marginalized by an overwhelming amount of players who think DRK gets to be their personal punching bag because the skill floor is higher than the basement, based entirely on content that is objectively worthless from a balancing perspective. After an entire expansion with DRK plastered on the front of it, when everyone said it was "Fine, because TBN is OP and your complaints are unjustified, I bet you liked spamming Dark Arts, OMEGALUL." Now, I'm the one on copium for trying to point out facts in EW, despite many of us being the biggest DRK detractors since before Shadowbringers even released. Despite several other jobs getting the fixes that if 1:1 transplanted over to DRK, would make the experience playing it more enjoyable or at least tolerable. And we got silence from the developers, and pity or ridicule from everyone else.

"Just swap jobs lmao you can play anything in XIV"

I play everything in the game to some extent. I wish I didn't identify with DRK thematically, I wish DRK wasn't the gameplay style that I typically enjoy the most in RPGs (high burst, low sustain, spellsword), I wish DRK didn't use a greatsword, I wish the job quests and artifact/relic gear wasn't good, because then I wouldn't play the job. But those things are all true, so I keep returning to the job after several serious attempts to let go of it since SB. It sucks, okay? It sucks. I'm not happy about it either.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

I don't know, sometimes it feels like in these Dark Knight threads people are just holding onto a fierce grudge.
Like I get it on a certain level, but eventually so many years will go past that surely they have to start letting go.

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Honestly these people should just play a different job. Just say you don't enjoy DRK and go next. The job needs improvement for sure, I don't think anyone can disagree with that. But on a whole many people act as if they're unplayable when most of the problem is that the player can't play DRK

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Originally Posted by Padudu

Honestly these people should just play a different job. Just say you don't enjoy DRK and go next. The job needs improvement for sure, I don't think anyone can disagree with that. But on a whole many people act as if they're unplayable when most of the problem is that the player can't play DRK

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The player can’t play DRK? We’ve been playing DRK since it was released. We’ve watch it gutted since released. And now it has lost its style, devs don’t listen except for, maybe, removal of dark arts.

It’s not enjoyable to me (and a great deal of other players) and generally, where it matters since DRK is still a tank (mitigation/self sustain), it’s lacking.

You really shouldn’t generalize and speak about things you don’t know: like assuming folks who don’t enjoy a class must not know how to play it.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

The player can’t play DRK? We’ve been playing DRK since it was released. We’ve watch it gutted since released. And now it has lost its style, devs don’t listen except for, maybe, removal of dark arts.

It’s not enjoyable to me (and a great deal of other players) and generally, where it matters since DRK is still a tank (mitigation/self sustain), it’s lacking.

You really shouldn’t generalize and speak about things you don’t know: like assuming folks who don’t enjoy a class must not know how to play it.

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Dude if you're struggling to pull mobs and go through level 81+ dungeons the problem is you. Sorry to say fam

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Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

How can I not hold a massive grudge after what I've been putting up with?

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Because in the long run holding a grudge just makes you miserable. Increased stress levels, fixation on negative outlooks, etc.
Like life is full of disappointments, be it just having a FFXIV job you like being changed to something you don't like, getting your bicycle stolen, get injured by an accident, yeah sometimes things suck.
But it is better to move on from it than getting stuck on this loop that "if I am angry about it long enough, eventually things will change." That is not it shakes up majority of the time.
The big DRK thread had all these posts that "Next patch! Next patch will surely finally have major DRK changes!", people whipping themselves into a frenzy with NOTHING really to back up that energy. And when nothing happens, that just fuels more negativity.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

Because in the long run holding a grudge just makes you miserable. Increased stress levels, fixation on negative outlooks, etc.
Like life is full of disappointments, be it just having a FFXIV job you like being changed to something you don't like, getting your bicycle stolen, get injured by an accident, yeah sometimes things suck.
But it is better to move on from it than getting stuck on this loop that "if I am angry about it long enough, eventually things will change." That is not it shakes up majority of the time.
The big DRK thread had all these posts that "Next patch! Next patch will surely finally have major DRK changes!", people whipping themselves into a frenzy with NOTHING really to back up that energy. And when nothing happens, that just fuels more negativity.

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Many ppl including me get so atached to original DRK it's really hard to let it go specially when we can fight to bring it back/for make it better and success like many others did with they respective jobs.
Im holding with Reaper better that i hold with GNB in SHB but i still want DRK to come back, i want the devs listen us and make changes in concordance of what we are asking for, we basically ask for the same level of care and love the rest of the other jobs gets. It's not as simple as move on, some have invested so much on the game and ppl wanna get what they lost as long is possible to get it back unless is an irreversible situation.

And yet, it's still the most popular tank?

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Originally Posted by Padudu

Dude if you're struggling to pull mobs and go through level 81+ dungeons the problem is you. Sorry to say fam

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This isn't counting other factors. We can manage our cooldowns properly and still run out if the dps is that slow and the healer can't keep up. I've come down to just hoping TBN comes off cooldown because I was waiting on my other cooldowns. Overall our current kit can get us by in dungeons. However not only have I come back the job and it's not remotely as bad as I remember it or made it out to be, but can safely say it still needs some more or better sustain to be on par with the other tanks in dungeons. At the very least I would like living dead to not be utter garbage because I feel like that's another big reason it falls short.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

Because in the long run holding a grudge just makes you miserable. Increased stress levels, fixation on negative outlooks, etc.
Like life is full of disappointments, be it just having a FFXIV job you like being changed to something you don't like, getting your bicycle stolen, get injured by an accident, yeah sometimes things suck.
But it is better to move on from it than getting stuck on this loop that "if I am angry about it long enough, eventually things will change." That is not it shakes up majority of the time.
The big DRK thread had all these posts that "Next patch! Next patch will surely finally have major DRK changes!", people whipping themselves into a frenzy with NOTHING really to back up that energy. And when nothing happens, that just fuels more negativity.

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Look man there are plenty like me who have tried to play other jobs and stray from Dark Knight. It's miserable to keep playing a job we love that keeps getting ignored, so yes we're upset with it. I stopped using my energy to get too mad about it a while ago but you can't do this to a job for several years and expect not to receive consistent backlash because of it. We can still hope for changes, but I agree in people making it a lot more stressful for themselves than it should be. At this point I'd accept just sustain improvements and some small changes then have a big rework on the job mechanically later but I just don't have my hopes up anymore.

I personally don't want old DRK, I just want current DRK to be better. The devs have proven with StB that they had no idea where to take HW DRK and they'd clearly just make it even worse from then on.

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Originally Posted by Halfgeeek

And yet, it's still the most popular tank?

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Considering everyone goes on and on about how busted the damage is? How can it not be popular? Damage is the only thing the player base wants and cares about anyway.

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Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

"Just swap jobs lmao you can play anything in XIV"

I play everything in the game to some extent. I wish I didn't identify with DRK thematically, I wish DRK wasn't the gameplay style that I typically enjoy the most in RPGs (high burst, low sustain, spellsword), I wish DRK didn't use a greatsword, I wish the job quests and artifact/relic gear wasn't good, because then I wouldn't play the job. But those things are all true, so I keep returning to the job after several serious attempts to let go of it since SB. It sucks, okay? It sucks. I'm not happy about it either.

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Same here.
Often took little breaks during expansions (as usual and like any MMo i played) but the first time with shadowbringers i took a break this long.
Play another MMo? bad period unfortunately (WoW going to s*** and GW2 with no expansions planned/icebrood saga for example) or the fact that every single one of your friends is going crazy at the simple mention of any other mmo being good.
Play solo/coop games, get other hobbys (irl or online) but even then at one point when you love one particular MMo or MMos in general you always come back to them, hoping it gets better.

In the end i don't want big damage, life leach, the best possible and OP mitigation possible or any other stuff like that.
I just want the class to have a cohesive kit that doesn't feel like random spells put together having for only link that binds them together the fact that they have red and purple light effects.
(At this point it may be more realistic to ask for half life 3 for 7.0)

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

Considering everyone goes on and on about how busted the damage is? How can it not be popular? Damage is the only thing the player base wants and cares about anyway.

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Maybe. But DRK was popular in ShB even when they were lowest on damage..

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

I personally don't want old DRK, I just want current DRK to be better. The devs have proven with StB that they had no idea where to take HW DRK and they'd clearly just make it even worse from then on.

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I feel like a compromise on this would be fairly easy, the problem with old DRK was spamming Dark Arts between every single skill was annoying and Blood Price made MP a joke of a resource to maintain.
The current system of 3000 MP or a Dark Arts Stack from TBN could honestly still work and let them give us more interesting game play, I just think we need more way to get those Dark Arts stacks than just TBN.

Like if Oblation also just gave a Dark Arts stack like breaking TBN does, then you can buff some of the ogcd skills like AD into what they used to be and not have them be too spammable like they were before.

Entire issue I see is they don't really want to commit to DRK's resource pools anymore, for basically no reason.

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Originally Posted by Halfgeeek

Maybe. But DRK was popular in ShB even when they were lowest on damage..

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Many ppl considered TBN busted on ShB, some here even comfessed they played the job solely for TBN and how good it was the skill justifiyng the overall lack of gameplay and others just played the job bcs lore since DRK was the only thing that looked like the Warrior of Darkness wich is nothing alike at other expansions since being the Wol can be literally anything but being the Wod is just DRK ot eat grass.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

This isn't counting other factors. We can manage our cooldowns properly and still run out if the dps is that slow and the healer can't keep up. I've come down to just hoping TBN comes off cooldown because I was waiting on my other cooldowns. Overall our current kit can get us by in dungeons. However not only have I come back the job and it's not remotely as bad as I remember it or made it out to be, but can safely say it still needs some more or better sustain to be on par with the other tanks in dungeons. At the very least I would like living dead to not be utter garbage because I feel like that's another big reason it falls short.

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Oh don't get me wrong I realize the big issues with DRK. I think I was being a bit too memey/troll with my generalizations lol.

Square deserves all the criticism and shit for DRK being slashed on sustainability and living dead being such a meme (and clearly not thinking of healers lul) for so long. DRK definitely needs QoL changes to feel fine/fun too.

But I definitely think it's becoming a popular sentiment that DRK is unplayable and one mob will wipe you. Seriously one read at the forums and you think DRK is the most broken class ever that you'll die at Sastasha

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Of course not, I want all tanks to be on par.

I fully expect Raw Intuition's/Bloodwhetting's heals to be cut to 300p before the end of the expansion, but they could probably drop to 200p and still be in that state. 400p per hit in wall-to-walls is absolutely ridiculous, that's like 300% of their HP every 25 sec. And then they have the second-strongest burst heal in the game on top of it at the same CD as Abyssal Drain, and a buff to their healing received?
I don't even think WAR should be a self-healing tank in the first place, because life-draining and thriving on an enemy's suffering is more of a DRK thing anyway (case in point, Abyssal Drain, or the namesakes for skills like Blood Weapon). If anything they should be focused on heavy mitigation and stackable barriers, shrugging off attacks as nothing because mortal wounds tickle and they're just too blood-crazed to die.

But as a player, my priority is seeing DRK's survival go up over seeing WAR's go down. And yes, I would happily trade DRK having DPS-level burst for it.
Plus it's a DRK thread anyway.

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Okay I'm not a tank main at all but I 100% agree with your take on WAR. It doesn't make sense to me that an axe-wielding brute heals himself like crazy (how?) but a knight wielding dark power only focuses on damage. When I first started DRK I assumed it'd be like a vampire - relishing in the blood spilling and draining HP from enemies. I'm sad this is not what we get.

Here's the thing: I've played DRK (along with BRD, DNC and SCH) for about 4 years now, and although I agree with the sentiment about sustainability... I've never had a problem with dungeons pulls? And I care even less about Savage/Ultimate mitigation given a ton of it is magic.

The problem is that the other tanks got their "TBN"s for tools, they're just intensely overpowered, to the point that even TBN looks lackluster now, even though it isn't at all. I'm doing Amazing DPS in Savage, I will in DSW, my mitigation is pretty much never a problem.

There's two problems with DRK now: The fact that BW isn't stacks like Delirium, LD as a whole, and C&S and AD share a CD now. Other than that I really don't mind DRK as it is now. Sure maybe a little more class fantasy (Bring back Scourge!!!) would be nice, but maybe I'm an outlier here. Sure Shadowbringer is just a button you press, but my god that sound is so satisfying.

Honestly, i wouldnt care if the game made a new tank who is terrible at tanking more than 1 pack at a time...
IF...
the tank was actually fun enough to make up for it. or had really fun toys...
(it would also have to be able to handle a large pack occasionally, just to make it balanced for some of the savage fights)

DRK is just waaay too simple to enjoy, and having higher DPS than the other tanks still just isnt enough for me to care. TBN is just a shorter CD version of Thrill to me, and WAR comes with more fun toys. PLD has the lowest DPS but also has fun toys.
(Continuation is mostly GNBs "toy", and thats just not enough for me either. Superbolied could be considered a toy as well, but in best case scenario, its just hallowed, and in worst case scenario, its only a toy because u know ur healer had a heart attack for a second. LD from DRK is like the later, except the healer remains in heart attack mode if they arent a WHM)

Back on topic: In case youre out of every defensible option, there is another option that most overlook, which is actually not too bad. And thats just the soul eater combo. It heals more than you think. While youre DPS will drop, and the chance its what "saves u" will be small, it still could in theory.
(taking into consideration how MUCH dmg u intake, how long it takes to get the heal, how much longer the fight would take doing less dps, and that youre not doing this rotation the whole fight, but just for a tad, when u have no CDs.)
Secondly, while theres an issue to the next thing i suggest, it does have its merits, and thats to use TBN when lower in HP, rather than near higher amounts of HP. Because if youre at full HP and have TBN up, the healer might use the GCD for nukes instead of heals, which in your case, you need the heals. It wont amount to much, just 1-2 GCDs, but its like the idea of spreading out heals over time, rather than burst healing, as its easier on the healer.
Laslty, id say make a macro for LD, something along the lines of "Going to use living dead in the next pull" which tells the healer to just save some resources, in case they planned to use them up before LD is used. all 3 of my suggestions come at the cost of DPS, but ull do more alive than dead, IF you know ur gonna die.

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

I'm a sage and my partner is a DRK. We haven't had any issues whatsoever. He can pull as large as he likes and I keep him up better than most other random tanks I have to heal. Combo that with the much higher dps and it's wonderful.
The problem is either your management of cooldowns, your gear, or those of your healer.

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Originally Posted by Malthir

The issue around wiping is the player not the class.
There is no heart and soul to the class anymore, but they aren't broken, if you're constantly wiping on dungeon pulls I suggest you practice your rotations more.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I'm just kinda tired of all these DRK threads acting like its completely unplayable and you cannot even fight 1 trash mob on your own, when that really isn't the case.

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Originally Posted by Padudu

I definitely think it's becoming a popular sentiment that DRK is unplayable and one mob will wipe you. Seriously one read at the forums and you think DRK is the most broken class ever that you'll die at Sastasha

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... Anybody is saying you'd die to 1 trash mob?
This is a clear exaggeration of what the DRK critics are actually saying, but that that's tossed around more than once is making me wonder if I missed something.

Obviously all jobs depend on the player. Obviously DRK is capable of tanking current content or it wouldn't have even shipped.
By the "Is it playable?" metric alone, every job is perfect.
And yes, it's popular in Savage and Extreme content because of its high damage (though I'm fairly certain that's an argument about its single-target burst and not its AoE). That's not the issue.
Y'all talk about DRK's damage like it has a nuke in its back pocket, when it's just slightly better than GNB, but we're exaggerating about how fragile it feels?

The issue is that DRK is far and away the hardest tank to heal and keep up in dungeons. Not that you can't possibly keep them up on a wall-to-wall.
But how well you actually manage is extremely dependent both on your tank and healer's gearing and using all of their cooldowns liberally and no small amount of GCD healing, whereas PLD or GNB can manage largely on healer oGCDs and a steady rotation of their own mitigation.
People think we're just jumping on "wanting to be like WAR" like there's no middle ground, I swear...

There is a HUGE gap in the survivability between DRK and other tanks after level 82, and level 84 just cements that. Even ignoring the ridiculousness of WAR, PLD can self-heal almost constantly just by doing their rotation, and GNB gets an Excog every 25 sec and an extra Aurora in the bank.
All that and DRK gets... Oblation. That's it. The only self-heal it has shares a CD with another attack now.
(Well, okay, there's always Souleater which has marginally better healing than Storm's Path, but why would anyone argue that being the one tank who sticks to a single-target rotation for a crumb of self-healing during an AoE pull is well-designed? Especially after all the talk about its overhyped damage...?)

Now on the one hand, some can argue that TBN was borderline OP for the last couple expansions -- but enemy damage has gone up to compensate for the increases in survivability all tanks aside from DRK get.
And on the other hand, Living Dead, Dark Mind and Oblation are indefensibly awful CDs marginally better than nothing at all, so your DRK tank has to burn through his big ones way faster than any other tank.

I have no problems pulling wall to wall as DRK; I do it in every dungeon.

Is it much easier to do so as a Warrior? Yes.

Do I get healers occasionally with a bad attitude because they're used to healing warriors? Yes.

But to say you can't pull more than one pack is patently untrue.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

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Yes I understand and I agree with most of what you said there, but if you read the first post of this thread you get the impression that the OP is saying that DRK is pretty much unplayable, and then you see a bunch of people jumping to that very same bandwagon, and I truly believe that gross over exaggeration resulting in loud whinning will take us nowhere. I believe that's why so many people jump in to say it is not that bad, myself included.

The one thing I think that needs a sort of emergency fix right now is the living dead. Maybe if they make it reset the CD on Abyssal Drain when the walking dead effect is triggered and double its cure potency while such effect is active would be enough to offset the danger of using it in dungeons big pulls without shifting too much the current balance of the game and without needing a complete overhaul of the job which SE might be reluctant to do at this point. It would be very useful in dungeons but mostly the same in single target.

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Originally Posted by Erik501

Yes I understand and I agree with most of what you said there, but if you read the first post of this thread you get the impression that the OP is saying that DRK is pretty much unplayable, and then you see a bunch of people jumping to that very same bandwagon, and I truly believe that gross over exaggeration resulting in loud whinning will take us nowhere. I believe that's why so many people jump in to say it is not that bad, myself included.

The one thing I think that needs a sort of emergency fix right now is the living dead. Maybe if they make it reset the CD on Abyssal Drain when the walking dead effect is triggered and double its cure potency while such effect is active would be enough to offset the danger of using it in dungeons big pulls without shifting too much the current balance of the game and without needing a complete overhaul of the job which SE might be reluctant to do at this point. It would be very useful in dungeons but mostly the same in single target.

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Living dead doesn't need an emergency fix. It's been broken since it was in the game, it's always been crap, that's not an emergency it's just an annoyance.

Drk's are realistically asking for an entire rework of the class. The company will not waste dev hours on patching a class they are going to rework unless it is actually broken e.g cannot preform it's function. So actually having no patch info or changes for Drk might be a good sign as it could signify they are spending time on reworking the boring class as opposed to wasting time changing quick changing moves that we don't like anyway.

If you can't tank more than one group there are multiple reasons why:

#You're bad because you are using your cooldowns wrong.
#The healer is bad because he only spams Vita.
#The dps is bad and doesn't kill he packs fast enough before you run out of mitigation.
or a combination of the three things.

i always pull wall to wall, doesn't matter which tank job, but i have to agree that DRK is trash compared to other tank jobs, and warrior is a dungeon god.

Well, call it long needed fix if you don't like my words... since a complete rework mid expansion seems highly unlikely to me I thought that maybe a little tweak for living dead to make it less annoying might have a better chance to be implemented. I might be wrong, though...

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Originally Posted by Erik501

since a complete rework mid expansion seems highly unlikely to me

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Why not they've done it several times before. They completely changed Monk in I like 3.2 or was is 2.2? or something to that effect. They've completely reworked classes like 4 times mid expac, no reason to think they wouldn't do it again.

Another thing to think about is that we got really lack lustre abilities in this expac, like nothing new. Oblation is a watered down rampart with 2 stacks, salt and tears is nothing really just a pop for damage, and shadowbringer is dark passenger without the blind and 2 uses.
Again could be an indicator that they are working on changes to the functionality of the class but needed something for the expac as they wouldn't be ready yet. No guarantee but again they've completely revamped classes before no reason to believe they wouldn't again.

With Living dead, there's really no point fixing it by itself. The complaints of the Drk players all boil down to requiring a complete rework of the class. If they spent like 1-2 weeks and that's being generous as it could easily take a month or more from Design to Develop to QA then any reworks and retests. All to making a better living dead, would the myriad of complaints disappear overnight? Most Drk's just don't bother pressing Living Dead, we've done so for what like 5 years now, so it's not something that would drastically change any situation.

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

Its hard being the highest dps tank I'm sure.

If no healer can keep you up on pulls, maybe the problem isn't the class. Its your gear and or skill with the class.

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If that's your thought process then your perception of what a tank is meant to be is lacking.


The point of a Tank is to take the brunt of a boss/mobs damage so your party doesn't need to.



Regardless of whether DRK MARGINALLY does the most damage out of all tanks is not what people are complaining about.




DRK's biggest problems are



Lack of agency over their own health pool.

Considering that Dark Knight is the only tank who has a "You must be healed for x% of your health or die" mechanic in their kit, having ZERO agency over whether they live or die is unacceptable.

Gunbreaker presses Super? Oh no they dropped to 1 hp, Anyway! Heart of Corundum + Aurora and the GNB is at least 50-60% health before needing healer intervention.

Warrior low and presses Holmgang? XD Equilibrium + Bloodwhetting oh the Warrior's full HP again!

Hallowed Ground preserves current HP values so healers have 10 seconds of Freedom.





Living Dead is poorly designed compared to other Invulns.

Invulns are meant to protect the tank from lethal damage as well as protect healer resources.

Living Dead completely goes against that.


Without writing an essay about this, I'm going to link a youtube video EliasXIV made explaining why Living Dead sucks ass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINmkcvo3Gk





Unleash, Stalwart Soul and Dark Missionary.

In my opinion these spells are gained too late.

Dark Missionary should be level 70 similar to Heart of Light.

AoE combo should be level 70 and be weaponskills not spell.





Blood Weapon.

Blood Weapon needs to go on the stack system similar to Delirium.



The Blackest Night.

Now, before all the copium overdosers come and say "TBN is the strongest low cd mitigation in the game" let me ask you this -

Have you seen Heart of Corundum? Bloodwhetting? Holy Sheltron?


The Blackest Night is the ONLY low CD tank mitigation ability in the game that is directly tied to your damage resource.

The Blackest Night is the ONLY low CD tank mitigation ability that requires you get 100% value out of every single use.


TBN needs to go to a 25 second cooldown and not cost MP to use.

This feels a little like the community response to DRK in SB before buffs. I was told by another tank at the time… why take DRK, etc., and he was right to a certain degree when compared side by side to the other tanks. At the time DRK was fun although spammy. Now it doesn’t seem fun. It wasn’t necessarily fun in shb either but tbn was outstanding comparatively so negative player sentiment was swept under the rug.

It’s got great DPS. That’s great but that’s a secondary job of a tank. Buffing a secondary task and then to make up for it by nerfing self-sustain and mitigation into the ground is difficult to understand. I get it - DPS is king. DPS checks, skipping mechanics is great, pushing phase changes… all that is good stuff. But DRK is a tank and it’s primary function looks subpar. Is it playable, sure, but it doesn’t feel good.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

This feels a little like the community response to DRK in SB before buffs. I was told by another tank at the time… why take DRK, etc., and he was right to a certain degree when compared side by side to the other tanks. At the time DRK was fun although spammy. Now it doesn’t seem fun. It wasn’t necessarily fun in shb either but tbn was outstanding comparatively so negative player sentiment was swept under the rug.

It’s got great DPS. That’s great but that’s a secondary job of a tank. Buffing a secondary task and then to make up for it by nerfing self-sustain and mitigation into the ground is difficult to understand. I get it - DPS is king. DPS checks, skipping mechanics is great, pushing phase changes… all that is good stuff. But DRK is a tank and it’s primary function looks subpar. Is it playable, sure, but it doesn’t feel good.

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Exactly, DPS is a secondary job of a Tank.

Survival is the main job.

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Originally Posted by NightHour

Exactly, DPS is a secondary job of a Tank.

Survival is the main job.

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Not entirely true, your job as a tank is to be the person that gets hit as opposed to the party getting hit, however they destroyed the notion of aggro and tank switching in order to focused the fights on playing dance dance revolution. The job of a tank no longer existed so they artifically created one via tank busters. Now your job is to DPS and use buffs and moves to mitigate or self heal.

The healers job is to ensure the survival of the tank but because they broke the job of the tank and the tanks responsibilities took over part of the healer role, they broke healers too. Now healers jobs is to DPS and throw the occasional heal onto the tanks or anyone stupid enough to stand in a GIANT GLOWING CIRCLE.

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Originally Posted by NightHour

Exactly, DPS is a secondary job of a Tank.

Survival is the main job.

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Doesn't this just boil down to "press big shield button during big boss attack"

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Doesn't this just boil down to "press big shield button during big boss attack"

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And you find that fun?


Because after playing with Heart of Corundum and Bloodwhetting, I don't think so personally.

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Originally Posted by Erik501

The one thing I think that needs a sort of emergency fix right now is the living dead.

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... no, that alone will not solve DRK's relative fragility.

Don't get me wrong, Living Dead is objectively the worst immune available to any tank for a multitude of reasons we've already covered, and absolutely needs a complete rework on its own merits.
As I've suggested before, just make it give immunity but sap health (or barriers) over 10 sec. Way easier to deal with and you can actually see if you need to panic.

But fixing an immune skill will not resolve the "emergency" of -- in my experience as a healer -- DRKs panic-popping theirs more often (and generally, earlier in dungeons) than other tanks in the first place.
Like, if PLD was having survival issues, the fix wouldn't be letting them HG more often. We'd be scrutinizing every other tool they had first. (It just happens that LD, also, but separately, is bad.)

And in this case, DRK has:

• Dark Mind, which is useless in most pulls (especially compared to Thrill of Battle and Camouflage) because no pack is majority magic damage
• The worst 82 upgrade, Oblation, which needs to be stacked with other tools to be worthwhile
• The only non-survival 84 upgrade, probably because Oblation already comes with two charges
• An on-demand mitigation that costs MP (putting it on the same effective CD as other tanks) and is designed to absorb a heavy burst but not periods of sustained damage; it's already basically the 4 second upfront defense boost other on-demands get at 82, but doesn't have that whole "actual mitigation and healing" that comes after that period
• A singular self-healing CD that is a damage loss below 4 targets because it shares a CD with another attack (which doesn't heal), and needs at least 6 targets to match Equilibrium and Aurora... before their respective 84 upgrades that double their effectiveness

... to say nothing of how late it gets an on-demand or its raidwide mitigation skill compared to other tanks.

Now, can it survive a wall-to-wall with several TBNs, role actions (incl. Shadow Wall) and a well-timed AD? Sure. But it's burning through 'em twice as fast due to lack of buffers.

TBN pushed off the issue of DRK's survival kit being completely lackluster. Oopsie, now that's caught up to DRK.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

This is a clear exaggeration of what the DRK critics are actually saying, but that that's tossed around more than once is making me wonder if I missed something.

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Have you read the title of this thread? C'mon man calling DRK an "absolute joke" is just as much as an exaggeration lol. Yes they have lower sustain than other tanks, yes they're harder to heal, but no it's not impossible to survive trash mobs. Hell here's the OP right here:

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

I have no idea if the defense values are just lower than other tanks, but I have barely any survivability

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"barely any survivability"? lol c'mon man we both know this also isn't true. It has the least, sure, but not "barely". It's definitely workable, just not ideal at its current state. The OP states that their healers consistently have had trouble keeping them up during wall-to-walls in dungeons, that is likely an OP problem with their gear/rotation if "most healers" cannot keep them alive.

We have like, what, 5 threads on the front page about DRK being bad and unworkable lol and a huge circle fest of 'DRK unplayable and broken' when in reality they just need some good qol fixes.

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Originally Posted by Padudu

"barely any survivability"? lol c'mon man we both know this also isn't true.

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I agree it's an exaggeration, but I think you're reading it too much at face value.
For any tank, the role actions alone (and I include the 30% for 15s on a 2m CD all tanks get at 38) can do half the work for your survival in a wall-to-wall. Or almost all of it pre-50 for most tanks. Really, the combination could make a semi-passable tank out of almost any job with access to them, provided you use them well.

As I've been saying though, DRK burns through those fast because most of its personal tools are insufficient and/or lackluster, which is my takeaway from the intent of the quotation.

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Originally Posted by Padudu

Have you read the title of this thread? C'mon man calling DRK an "absolute joke" is just as much as an exaggeration lol. Yes they have lower sustain than other tanks, yes they're harder to heal, but no it's not impossible to survive trash mobs. Hell here's the OP right here:



"barely any survivability"? lol c'mon man we both know this also isn't true. It has the least, sure, but not "barely". It's definitely workable, just not ideal at its current state. The OP states that their healers consistently have had trouble keeping them up during wall-to-walls in dungeons, that is likely an OP problem with their gear/rotation if "most healers" cannot keep them alive.

We have like, what, 5 threads on the front page about DRK being bad and unworkable lol and a huge circle fest of 'DRK unplayable and broken' when in reality they just need some good qol fixes.

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You are taking their statement and immediately running with the worst case scenario of it as a criticism, when you know very well what the OP meant.

If they had stated instead, “ It FEELS like I have barely any survivability. “ You’d probably be running far less in the extreme sense of hyperbole as you have been.


Also, I have to laugh at all of these people coming into the thread with personal attacks. Shows a real lack of character in my opinion. Heaven forbid those of us who mained Dark Knight since release ( For me, even all the way back in FF 11 ) and love this job with all of their heart want to see their concerns heard and addressed.

But yeah, sure. Let’s just attack them on a personal level and call them into question. Frustrating to see that.

Dark Knight has issues. They aren’t catastrophic. But gods does the class need a rework and a course correction, asap


I’ve said my peace. I’m out. Not gonna bother replying to anyone either, as I’d rather the thread serve a constructive discussion then a tit for tat argument exchange.

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Originally Posted by Dracosavarian

You are taking their statement and immediately running with the worst case scenario of it as a criticism, when you know very well what the OP meant.

If they had stated instead, “ It FEELS like I have barely any survivability. “ You’d probably be running far less in the extreme sense of hyperbole as you have been.


Also, I have to laugh at all of these people coming into the thread with personal attacks. Shows a real lack of character in my opinion. Heaven forbid those of us who mained Dark Knight since release ( For me, even all the way back in FF 11 ) and love this job with all of their heart want to see their concerns heard and addressed.

But yeah, sure. Let’s just attack them on a personal level and call them into question. Frustrating to see that.

Dark Knight has issues. They aren’t catastrophic. But gods does the class need a rework and a course correction, asap


I’ve said my peace. I’m out. Not gonna bother replying to anyone either, as I’d rather the thread serve a constructive discussion then a tit for tat argument exchange.

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lol bro, get off of your high horse.

And read their other posts, I took that quote out specifically but their other posts are about the healer struggling to keep up multiple times in the thread. I'm literally taking what they said because they supported that statement multiple times.

Again, if you struggle to pull mobs that's on you fam. There's nothing personal about it lul. Stop making it out to be like I'm attacking the OP's honor here when the OP is written based on their experiences with the job so of course their gear/rotation/mitigation and what else will come into question when they say they're having a hard time on something that's doable even with DRK having issues.

The point of all these threads seems to be that DRK needs a rework and the only hopium silver lining of the the 6.x DRK is that maybe devs did such a shit job because they planned on reworking it and are doing so an will announce it ahead of the next patch.

That's a lot of hopium considering we are talking about this dev team and DRK the job that has get so much disservice from them but i wish you are right.