Dark Knight Megathread

Can Dark Knight get an option to sacrifice HP for damage or some kind of utility now that Living Dead heals you to full in a 1,2,3? It would match thematically with a lot of previous iterations of the class and it'd honestly make me a very happy boy. Yes, I'm looking to kill myself 100% for dmg/buffs, cancel out my death, and continue to beat that ass.

DRK doesn't need to do more damage at present. It's better when there's a relatively tight balance, because then everyone plays the job they want to play rather than seeking out the FotM. The sacrifice mechanic is there in PvP right now, so go check that out and see if you actually enjoy that sort of thing.

From experience, players almost always respond negatively to changes in job mechanics. If you're relatively happy with DRK's design, leave it be for now. I guarantee that there are plenty of ways of making things worse, and the job rework roulette is only for the truly desperate.

I think a better question to ask yourself is how you would like to see next expansion's actions build off of the existing ones. I'd personally like to see a new empowered combo gated off of the Dark Arts proc, and perhaps a finisher to Delirium that interacts with Living Shadow in an interesting way (Omnislash/Eventide). If we're talking upgrades, I'd think of doing something with either Dark Mind or Missionary - perhaps giving DM a movement speed buff/knockback resist on top of the magic resist (Wraithform), or perhaps letting Dark Missionary absorb some of that magical damage to generate HP or MP (Runic). But I probably wouldn't touch the job this expansion unless they significantly skew tank balance for some reason.

I know for a fact that there are people that are not 'happy' with where DRK is right now. Is it better than it used to be? Gods yes, but these are mere /necessary/ steps that frankly it's insulting it took so long to add to the class, and there are still very VERY basic changes it should receive in order to be set back to zero in serviceability.

This is before even addressing that DRK right now to many players is just that: serviceable. It does its job well enough, it has a place, it hits high rankings, but gods it's like eating oatmeal by itself. It'll keep you fed, but there's no spice and hardly any flavor.

There's nothing that particularly stands out about the job, it's a middle of the road tank that can't decide what it wants to be so it's just a worse everyone at once with little cohesion. I can't stress enough how important cohesion and job feel is, because if it wasn't SAM players wouldn't be so pissed about Kaiten.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

From experience, players almost always respond negatively to changes in job mechanics.

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Lucky for them that WAR exists as an alternative, then, especially since DRK has been filtered down to its off-brand version since... ShB?

Sure DRK has a more difficult time surviving so some people may call WAR braindead by comparison, but ultimately "the same as an existing job but slightly worse to play" isn't a great selling point.

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But I probably wouldn't touch the job this expansion unless they significantly skew tank balance for some reason.

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Is anybody expecting a full rework within 6.x? Realistically?
My writeup may say it's "Post-6.1" but that's just when I wrote it, not my expectation.

Living Dead finally changed, we might see reworks to one or two other specific abilities (fingers crossed for DM), but nothing all-encompassing until 7.0 rolls around... which is the perfect time to change a weak foundation (re: MNK, SMN) rather than try to stack more on top of it.
We've had two expansions to digest their experiment with a new DRK and we're saying it's... bland, and maybe they should try something new rather than keep rolling this through the tumbler in the hopes it might sparkle.

Blood Weapon and Living Dead were much needed QoL changes. Changes that should of happened in Shadowbringers. Living Dead is now usable in all content but is still by far the worst invuln on the basis your self healing only really lasts until you get topped off. Especially when PLD doesn't need the heals, GNB can stack Aurora, Corundum Excog and Warrior has the lowest CD and can pretty much heal itself back up every Bloodwhetting window.

DRK still has a self healing issue, a mitigation issue where TBN is weaker in relation to the TBN competitors and has defensives that only fit niche fights with magic damage which is an old relic from HW. Dark Missionary still at 76 while GNB gets Heart of Light at 64? BRUH.

The only thing DRK has going for it that makes it relevant is burst damage every 2 minutes?

Only time DRK feels amazing was either in HW or right now in PvP. Salted Earth as a defensive CD is sexy. In PvE it's ass garbage.

DRK is stuck in this dilemma on whether it wants to be a Paladin or Warrior and seemingly refuses to be it's own thing. Unless it's PvP where it's this HP spending Lifestealing death machine on wheels.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Living Dead is now usable in all content but is still by far the worst invuln

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I wouldn't go that far. On paper it's Holmgang but better in every respect, except with a slightly longer cooldown and the (now significantly less threatening) doom clock; the issue is less the comparison of the invulns against one another in a vacuum, and more the holistic kits surrounding them.
The fact that DRK's only sustainability effects are a CD limited to AoE scenarios and a limited window of the invuln itself are hugely disappointing when compared to the other three tanks' myriad responses to activating their invulns, including two that synergize directly with their on-demands.

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Salted Earth as a defensive CD is sexy.

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I would also point out that this has to be taken with a grain of salt, given the absence of alternative defensive CDs in PVP (aside from "literally stop attacking and try to crawl back to your party before someone breaks your Guard and kills you anyway").

Any time that you make a decision to rework a job, you're effectively pressing a big reset button. It's a fairly drastic step, and jobs which do this less often (or not at all) are generally better off for it because the job has time to grow and develop. Consider a job like BLM, which has stayed relatively stable across expansions. They build off of the foundation step by step, rather than bulldozing it down every other expansion and starting from zero.

I think that if you have views on how to improve DRK's gameplay, then it's better along these lines. How do we expand on the existing gameplay to make it more fun? I would say that DRK's biggest gameplay issue is that it only really has 4 single target GCD actions and 3 AoE GCD actions. All the interesting action happens during your weaving. I think what it really needs is an enhanced combo that is resource linked in some way. You could gate it to Blood or MP, but then it would just be in competition with the existing gauge spenders. The workaround, I think, is to link it to the Dark Arts mechanic, and actually do something interesting with that gauge element.

It's hard to talk about DRK being it's 'own thing' if we're always comparing it to the other tanks. As long as you focus on asking for what they have, you'll always be an expansion behind with their hand-me-downs.

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Originally Posted by Runeslayer

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I think the SAM example is a good one. The reason why people are upset over Kaiten because they were used to it. Any time you make a drastic change to job mechanics that forces players to change their habits, you will get backlash over it. That's why you don't opt for a rework unless the job is a complete mess. I do find it interesting that you acknowledge that the job is currently 'serviceable', but you want it reset back to zero in serviceability. Why? Are we just bulldozing things for fun?

I want the job to be reworked completely despite being ok in performance the current design is using to archive that numbers it's hella awful and I don't wanna touch it even with a stick compared to other jobs the Dev team prefer to work on like that nice example of BLM, a job that is being taken care by Yoship himself bcs is his fav and his main.

DRK got hit by a huge rework in SHB and it was bad, very bad but many argued it was a strong base to build on it, now for what? Enchance unmend? 2 enchanced living shadow? Just a couple of generic oGCD that literally didn't change or improve anything? And a generic change on Delirium that has been done bcs inner release and just make his downtime even more dull? At the end of the day it doesn't matter what you ask if the dev team aren't willing to put any effort on the job gameplay like they do with BLM, PLD, WAR, DRG, Ect ect, jobs they obviously like and put effort on offering a an engaging unique gameplay.

Asking for huge changes on the job is actually more like asking them for put the same development effort and care they put on they fav jobs and stop leaving DRK in the dust as a serviceable knock-off braindead WAR with a bunch of generic oGCD and buffs that keep themselfs.

I'd rather not see a full rework of DRK. I kinda like having jobs that focus more on weaving and OGCDs rather than GCD combos. Personally, I'd like to see DRK lean more into shield tank and have more MP management.

Ppl that ask for reworks or rework the job themselfs always keep the oGCD nature of the job, they just make it cohesive and add actual mechanics you care of to the gameplay like how the job use to be, extra combos or better say GCD diversity is for kill the dull soul eater combo spam that is visually boring.