Dark Knight Megathread

You can forget PLD and their selfless kit



GNB is the right tank to compare with DRK


DRK have Dark Mind and Oblation, GNB have Aurora and Camou


But it hardly make up for the weak TBN. Aurora can target a party member, Dark Mind can't. Camou got 50% longer recast but the duration is twice as long as Oblation, plus parry chance against physical.

While Oblation can target party member and can have 2 stack the effect isn't significant and it is diminish when you stack it on the same target. Aurora on the hand isn't insignificant and I haven't heard of a complaint when stack it on the same target.



Now is there anyone willing to prove and give us a screen shot of the comparison between TBN vs other short recasts? cuzz I feared the claim that TBN is strong will keep coming back again and again.

I just really hope Abyssal drain gets a buff in 6.2

Yeah 200 cure potency just isn't worth putting Carve and Spit on cooldown. Personally I think they should unlink it with Carve and Spit, 30 sec cooldown, make it 400 heal potency and just nerf the damage by a lot ... maybe like 50. Perhaps just remove the damage and make it a heal only.

Or you can make Abyssal Drain an alternate second aoe combo that doesn't restore mp nor blood gauge but restore hp instead


and you can change Dark Mind to something to handle both physical and magical damage so you can always rely on it or make it 90s afterward and give DRK a proper 60s heal. This will improve DRK in raid


Or you could choose the fastest and easiest but laziest way= Make Quietus restore hp but this will not improve DRK in raid




DRK used to have Dark Dance to handle the physical damage but now it has been taken away and upgraded to create GNB's camouflage.


The problem is the people in charge just decided to taken away Dark Dance and leave a hole in DRK defensive kit against physical without even try to fix it.

personally i wish they just swapped Blood spiller and Quietis with AD and CnS
just make Blood spiller and quietis gauge fillers like reaper(w/e those GCDs are called) and let use spam CnS and AD under Delerium

Alright, just gonna weigh in a couple things, though I admit I'm beating a dead horse since they're not new opinions from me:

* Dark Mind is potent, but outside of high-end content it is niche. It needs something to be useful in more casual play.
I've recommended before having it increase the DRK's healing intake, and I still think that's not a bad idea -- both fitting in the theme of the ability, and slightly expanding the use-cases for the skill. There has been concern that DRK doesn't have the self-healing to make such a boost particularly useful to us, but I figure the mitigation is the main draw while the healing boost would just make healers hate us less, and still a helpful boon to our mitigation cycling in wall-to-walls.
I have in the past heard people suggest combining Dark Mind and Oblation (I suppose the idea is 2 charges, targetable, 20% magic mitigation and 10% physical mitigation), which is not a solution I'm personally a fan of and could imbalance it for the cases it's already used for.

* Abyssal Drain really should just replace Flood of Darkness/Shadow.
Flood is just a cheap knockoff of Edge for AoE, and even aesthetically it has little distinction from Shadowbringer now. Plus alternating a Line AoE is tricky to use when your spammable AoEs are PB circles -- something that WAR has already addressed with Overpower.
Simply, Abyssal Drain is a far more practical alternative, being the self-healing tool we desperately need in dungeons and a better fit with the directionality of our AoE. It's also a fair bit more iconic, given that Fray loves spamming it in cutscenes in place of Unmend. Such a replacement would also mean decoupling it from CnS; three birds, one stone.
The only tricky part is the question of what happens to Darkside in AoE (ie should it still be applied by a healing skill), and whether we need a healing alternative in single-target for parity, though I would argue in the latter case that we already have Souleater, and that a multifaceted nature for an AoE tool would mean it won't become completely useless outside of dungeons either or just relegated to "AoE knockoff of Edge". In the former case, they could always pull off something unique like having Stalwart Soul or Unmend apply/refresh Darkside... or just rework Darkside entirely which is probably a more popular solution.

* Oblation just needs to be fused into TBN.
I'm absolutely positive that Oblation is meant to be our version of Aurora given the shared CD and charges, but of all the tanks, we don't need more oGCDs to weave. TBN is already a mitigation effect that can be passed onto a target, so Oblation already shares its niche. Skipping the button and just applying some layer of mitigation that lasts after the barrier is burst would be a massive QoL boon, without even significantly affecting DRK's survivability beyond what it's capable of already.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Plus alternating a Line AoE is tricky to use when your spammable AoEs are PB circles -- something that WAR has already addressed with Overpower.

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This is the only point with which I'm forced to disagree. Dungeon pulling have gotten far less convenient since Warrior traded its cone for a circle with less than two-thirds its range. Flood is easily the handiest and smoothest of all AoEs for grabs and need not miss any mobs even in very large pulls (i.e., distance from the edge of leftmost mob's hit-ring edge to rightmost mob's hit-ring edge). A 5m targeted AoE would be far, far inferior for smooth pulling.

Warrior's Overpower wasn't "addressed" in any positive sense of the word. It was done despite anyone who regularly did dungeon knowing better than to believe it would have a positive influence. One has never needed to regularly reposition to cycle conal and circular AoEs. Those repositioning requirements are likewise modest, more than made up for in their range, between Flood and Unleash/Stalwart.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This is the only point with which I'm forced to disagree. Dungeon pulling have gotten far less convenient since Warrior traded its cone for a circle with less than two-thirds its range. Flood is easily the handiest and smoothest of all AoEs for grabs and need not miss any mobs even in very large pulls (i.e., distance from the edge of leftmost mob's hit-ring edge to rightmost mob's hit-ring edge). A 5m targeted AoE would be far, far inferior for smooth pulling.

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And in such a case, I would then argue that we at least have Shadowbringer to make up that deficit if need be. All we need is a new way to get Darkside before an AoE, or for it to be decoupled from it (since that's just a weird limiter).

Not to mention that in my experience, mobs tend to usually group up in either clusters, small arcs or perpendicular lines to the path of movement, which isn't often convenient for using lines to pull. It's usually after you have a mob train going that lines become convenient to maintain threat.

A cone, perhaps, would be superior -- and I fully understand the frustation WARs felt about losing that -- but I also understand the devs' position of making your spammable AoE tools consistent in shape so that you don't have to constantly reposition mobs between casts, which was a simultaneous frustration of playing WAR when a mob would sometimes decluster off to the side, or your central target died and your new target would only let you hit half the pack unless you slid into a new angle. I used Overpower as an example not because I think it's the ideal direction, but because I know that's a position the devs have already taken and that DRK creates an inconsistency with said position with its even narrower line AoEs.

The ideal direction would be to allow for a niche tool of a unique shape for opening and pulling, but maintain a consistent shape for your spammable attacks. For instance, if Overpower had been used to apply the 10% buff at a lower potency but a longer range, while Mythril Tempest was de-comboed but allowed for a consistent AoE circle at a higher potency.
What might be a point of contention here is that I consider the MP-based oGCDs a part of the spammable AoE portion.

Dark Mind increase healing received wouldn't remind anyone of ToB of course. Might as well increase recast timer to 90s so they can have a similarity even more..


But congratulations if Dark Mind really changed.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

And in such a case, I would then argue that we at least have Shadowbringer to make up that deficit if need be.

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Except, the one is used a handful of times per minute, the other... just twice per two. And you certainly won't want to waste that CD on less than full pack, which means it's not about to be used for initial grabs.

Generally, it's better to have the tool that is better for add grabs to be available often enough to deal with add grabs. The other can be the CD too long for such purposes.

For that reason, if trimming one button would cost us that functionality, I'd rather not. I'd rather just see Abyssal be buffed and (alongside CnS) given a second charge.

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Not to mention that in my experience, mobs tend to usually group up in either clusters, small arcs or perpendicular lines to the path of movement, which isn't often convenient for using lines to pull.

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Take just the first Opo-opo pull in the new dungeon, for instance. On any other tank, I have to wait around a bit to catch all. On DRK, I just voke the first the moment it's in range, sweep slightly towards one end or the other while targeting the opposite side and, without pausing, I can hit all of them.

All the better for it being oGCD, as I can circular two, if necessary, while still reaching the rest in that same moment even if the furthest is some 10y away and, say, the other mob is more than 5y distant from the farthest.

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but I also understand the devs' position of making your spammable AoE tools consistent in shape so that you don't have to constantly reposition mobs between casts

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That's the point, though. Outside of the rarest of pulls, and only if you positioned the largest mobs in the center (thereby increasing the pack's diameter / maximum distance between any two mob's hit-ring edges), you did not have to do that. You could remain in place and still hit everything. You could dodge AoEs with little to no retargeting and still hit everything.

Dipping in and out has only been necessary for Samurai when the tank is moving, to reduce the risk of lost coverage over one's Tenka cast time.

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but because I know that's a position the devs have already taken and that DRK creates an inconsistency with said position with its even narrower line AoEs.

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Homogeneity of AoE shapes, both across jobs and each kit itself, is itself the recent deviation from trends. Every original job had multiple AoE shapes. Heavensward merely added on to their dominant/iconic shape without removing the other. Likewise, until Shadowbringer, each tank had a different variety of those shapes. DRK had self-circles and target-circles (later replaced primarily by line AoEs). WAR had circles and cones. PLD had only self-circles.

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The ideal direction would be to allow for a niche tool of a unique shape for opening and pulling, but maintain a consistent shape for your spammable attacks.

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You don't even need that so much as to keep the original affordances. The extra range is useless outside of the pull and isn't remotely powerful enough to be consider nerfing a given job's overall AoE damage for.

Just use hybrid shape on Abyssal (thick line until target, then a circular therefrom, hitting each enemy therein still only once) and we'd be golden. Or, just give Edge falloff damage and have its sword arc continue onward as a lengthy, 60-degree cone or thick line or so, such that one can still conveniently tag mobs. So long as we aren't giving up something unique to DRK, we're fine.

That said, I'd still prefer for Abyssal to have its potency buffed and be given (alongside CnS) a second charge, more so than to make it spammable. I'd honestly rather see WAR's AoE sustain curtailed, as I think that's likely to create a balancing hell if Variant Dungeons want to take themselves at all seriously, than to simply see DRK brought close / to second place. Moreover, it'd better mimic the cost and power of the original DA-AD, now that we don't have any Stormblood-era Blood Weapon-Quietus cheese available to us.