The completely REASONABLE changes to the Dark Knight job thread

The real problem is that grit only negates damage now that's fine since its just like paladins shield oath. But that's it it only negates DRK doesn't have a shield to block stuff they need to make it so parry is more frequent and negates more damage. And put an enhance to parry on grit.

And they need to tweak the ability that negated magic damage to have a decreased cool down. And tweak the other stuff too but another thing is dark arts it should give a few stacks to be used not just a 1 use 10sec buff to stuff.

I think Blood Weapon needs to 1) increase attack speed more AND 2) reduce TP cost for weaponskills. Because all it does it really does is burn out TP even faster. If SE is trying to shove skill speed down our throats then at least make it viable. Make DRK the zerg DPS in order to compete DPS wise with WAR and PLD when OTing

Swap Delirium and Reprisal side effects, make them cross-class from Dragoon instead of Warrior and i will be happy.

I feel that making Dark Knight able to "parry" or even "block?" magic will definitely put it on par with the other tanks. You won't even need to change any of the skills though there are some glaring mp issues with Blood Price and how it works on bosses who have slow auto attacks or attacks in general. Here's how I would like the tanks to be to keep things even and making sure everyone brings something to the table.

Paladin = Mitigation king with lots of strong utility and support specializing in physical reduction via blocking/parry
Warrior = AoE king specializing in off-tanking with high hp but manual mitigation via reactive cool down usage and maintaining debuffs's
Dark Knight = Jack-of-all-Trades with good AoE and cool down specializing in magic reduction via parry and magic debuffs.

Dark Mind is already an insane skill. Having a 30% magic reduction every 60 seconds for 10 seconds is massive and could be useful for moves like Flare Breaths in t13. So why not make Dark Knights parry magic to further enhance their lore on how they are able to control dark magic.

I think i only have one thing that i would really like to fix.

lose the MP cost on dark passenger. it's off GCD and is the only skill in the game like that.

Changes I would like to see:

1 - Dark Side
Remove the MP drain on the skill. Leave the restriction on MP regeneration effects.
-- Every single DRK ability is artificially being made more expensive due to this. This also makes it very difficult to figure out a stable rotation since the effect is based on 3s and unrelated to our action. Higher Skill Speed means less Dark Side cost per GCD.
-- From a gameplay balance perspective there is no reason for the MP drain. A Warrior's 20% Damage buff (Maim) comes free of charge as part of one of it's combos.

2 - Blood Price
Change it to % Damage taken (pre mitigation) to MP recovered (in Grit) / % Damage Dealt to MP (Not in Grit).
-- I suggest pre-mitigation so as to avoid the skill having a diminished effect on a less squishy tank.
-- I added the other non-grit effect to free up Blood Weapon for other things.

3 - Blood Weapon
Change to a Toggleable Buff. Grants +5% Damage and +10% Skill Speed. (Cannot be used with Grit)
-- Every other tank has a DPS stance, why shouldnt we?
-- This would bring DRK on par with that of a Warrior. Maim adds 20% and Deliverance adds 5% + Crit, total of +25% Damage and + Crit. DRKs getting 20% Damage (15%+5%) & +10% Skill Speed seems reasonable.

4 - Delirium
Add a Dark Arts Effectd to it: Reduces damage taken by 20% for 5s.
Stacks with Monk or Same as Monks Dragon Kick.
-- We need something to pop on Tank Busters, and Delirium currently has no DA effect.

shadow walls recast timer is pretty much injustified. i guess it was meant to balance dark mind. but it either needs it's recast reduced, or buff the effect. I'd prefer the first one.

dark dance is atm only really good for packs or multi hit attacks. DA effect should boost parry further. seeing as drk is the parry class yet war get's a 100% parry skill is weird. there needs to be a more reliable way to trigger reprisal. reprisal is imo fine btw. you can hold the trigger for a moment and use it, if you know a big hit will come in the next 20s. problem is just how random parries can be sometimes, especially on big stuff, which tends to cast a lot and stops auto attack for some time. I do like the suggestions being able to parry magic as drk, but not sure how easy it is to implement this into the game.

Souleater's return should be a bit higher. at least with DA. the cost is a bit too high for the gain.

Dark Arts in general costs a bit too much, first i thought different but the boosted effects are not that powerful to warrant the high cost. either lower it or at least boost carve and spit's mp return.

Speaking of mp costs: Dark Passenger. no point in it needing mp. atm boosted with DA it requires 2652 MP. sure it's a strong attack but really?

Now to Delirium: it needs a slashing resistance debuff. on top of Int down. Imo SE needs to make all those moves with similar effects work like Miasma does now. It applies 3 things at once: the DoT, the heavy effect (which is the same as all other heavy effects now and longer stacks) and Malady (the healing received down effect, which was part of the DoT in 2.xx)
So have a universal slashing down debuff, a universal int down debuff and so. Works like this:

Dancing Edge now applies the universal slashing down debuff.
Storm's Eye applies 2 debuffs: universal slashing down and Malady (cause atm, it is build into one debuff, which still can be overwritten by dancing edge)
Dragon Kick applies 2 debuffs: universal blunt down and universal int down
Now have Delirium do the following: Applying 2 debuffs: the universal Int down AND the universal slashing down. Which would boost drk's utility a bit (even though pld+war+mnk remains to be stronger).

If you have a drk use delirium now, you have the 2 debuffs on the mob. now a mnk uses DK, but only the int down get's refreshed, blunt and slashing don't interfere.
Or have a pt with war, nin, drk. only the slashing would get refreshed while the other debuffs would be a applied separately.


imo nothing of this will make drk broken in a good way, but if balance is an issue stuff like shadow wall or certain mp costs are not on a high prio for me. but delirium is underwhelming atm and the parry mechanics for drk feel not optimized and i hope SE will do something about it.

Maybe they want DRKs to stack parry and vit all the way to compensate for the lackluster design with mitigation? Probably don't want another tank stacking str over 'tank stats'.

Here's just an idea I had with Sole Survivor, if you get it to proc have it restore 200 TP (because honestly, we need SOME way to get TP back), and when it procs it also recovers 10% HP/MP and 50-100 TP for everyone within 5-10 yalms of the target. It's a fairly lackluster skill as it is, but at least this way it can help with our TP issues and help add a little utility to the job.

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Originally Posted by MuzakFan

What I don't want to see: Grit doesn't need to be an off-GCD ability like Defiance. We already have Darkside for that. Being able to swap freely between their DPS and tank stances is one of WAR's key strengths that the other two tanks don't need to encroach on. The only good reason DRK has to drop Grit while MT is for Blood Weapon, but buffing our other abilities to get MP back when Grit is on should make this unnecessary. Blood Weapon is obviously a tool for keeping up MP when OT, not MT.

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That being said, I would like the ability to turn off Grit mid-GCD, much like PLD's oaths. They can't swap in oGCD, but they can drop Shield just before finishing their combo and moving into Sword, whereas Grit cannot be dropped until the next GCD is readied, thereby encroaching faintly into the next GCD due to animation time. I apologize if my memory is mistaken and DRK can already do this.

I'd also love to see Delirium's magic-down debuff able to be up alongside Dragon Kick without stacking, allowing Monk's a bit a more lenience on intensive fights, or reworked.

-- I agree with everything here except for Reprisal's CD needing to be reduced to allow full uptime when parry-capable / MT. I feel like if DRK's MT value at all hangs on this fine a balance, that gap should be made up in some other way.

Also, given that TP seems to be a concern for DRK's as well, a TP refresh over time or cost reduction paired to Blood Weapon might be reasonable, especially if it's attack speed buff were to be increased.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That being said, I would like the ability to turn off Grit mid-GCD, much like PLD's oaths. They can't swap in oGCD, but they can drop Shield just before finishing their combo and moving into Sword, whereas Grit cannot be dropped until the next GCD is readied, thereby encroaching faintly into the next GCD due to animation time. I apologize if my memory is mistaken and DRK can already do this.

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It seems to work the same way as Shield Oath for me: You can use it during GCD and it will queue it up as the first action, dropping it as soon as the GCD is ready. Then you have to mash your next attack. Neither can drop it mid-GCD.

So, the more I play DRk the less I want to play the other tanks. I'm getting used to any short comings it has and learning to love it's tool kit the best I can. Such as in pulls saving Reprisal for the mob that'll cause me the post problems, or not just popping reprisal because it's up (unlike Low blows). But there's one thing I cannot understand now that I've gotten to the level 58 DRK quest.

Why is Sole Survivor an execute? I mean, its great and all and it'd definitely useful in pulls, but this was the ability that could have given DRK a chance to actually offer something unique to the raid.


instead of benefitting from killing an opponent, why doesn't it benefit from being near an ally? A Damage increase, a defense increase, mp/tp regen; any of these would have actually added to the party and given DRK something unique for the raid environment.

Sole Survivor is how mercy strike should work, but buffing you and your selected charge would have worked so much more with the story and supposed theme of DRK.

And I recall someone said something similar to this, but I cannot remember who and I wasn't far enough in the story to see what you meant.

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Originally Posted by Rhaja

So, the more I play DRk the less I want to play the other tanks. I'm getting used to any short comings it has and learning to love it's tool kit the best I can. Such as in pulls saving Reprisal for the mob that'll cause me the post problems, or not just popping reprisal because it's up (unlike Low blows). But there's one thing I cannot understand now that I've gotten to the level 58 DRK quest.

Why is Sole Survivor an execute? I mean, its great and all and it'd definitely useful in pulls, but this was the ability that could have given DRK a chance to actually offer something unique to the raid.


instead of benefitting from killing an opponent, why doesn't it benefit from being near an ally? A Damage increase, a defense increase, mp/tp regen; any of these would have actually added to the party and given DRK something unique for the raid environment.

Sole Survivor is how mercy strike should work, but buffing you and your selected charge would have worked so much more with the story and supposed theme of DRK.

And I recall someone said something similar to this, but I cannot remember who and I wasn't far enough in the story to see what you meant.

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Could be something like a buff on the enemy where any party members doing damage to the marked target give you a small amount of HP and MP. Let's say 2% of each, and only work with direct damage spells and abilities and not dot ticks. This would give the class some kind of utility. While it's very minor it's still something

For utility, they said they wanted PLD to be the shield for the party, and it shows now between Divine Veil and Clemency helping keep people alive. Why not make DRK utility be the sword? Have us able to buff the DPS of those around us in some way. Say DA +Dark Dance adds a small haste buff to people around us, or DA + Dark Passenger adding a short term vulnerability/magic vulnerability debuff or something? That would help make DRK appealing and bring something to the table the other tanks can't do. PLD keep the raid alive and take the best hits, WAR lower the bosses damage and bring a good amount of damage themselves, and have DRK be the ones to dabble in good mitigation with fair DPS but be able to help boost the DPS of the group a bit.

An idea I always thought would be cool for DRK if they made tweaks was to make a change to Salted Earth (no, not cast under your feet).

I would make Salted Earth have a bigger circle (like Sacred Soil size or maybe even bigger) and make it have a shield effect like Sacred Soil for anyone inside that stacks with SS, in addition to the DoT damage on mobs. That would give DRK an on demand mitigation increase because the cooldown of SE is so low, give them party utility because they can reduce raid damage for all the people inside (melees and the other tank usually) while also hurting the boss, and not require massive reworking to pull off. Thinking about the possibilities of such an attack, an OT DRK fighting an add could drop it on the MT if needed to give them a shield buff, use it on themselves, or if the party's off killing adds while a DRK is MT they can throw it to the party to help them out and protect them.

Of course this would mean that it may not be wise to use it on cooldown immediately so I'd give minor damage buffs to the WS combos to make up for the lost potency. Nothing crazy, just little tweaks.

Other things I would change:

- Change Power Slash Dark Arts to the damage reduction from Reprisal
- Make Reprisal lower vulnerability like Trick Attack but by a lower percentage
- Make Carve and Spit do full damage without Dark Arts and increase MP percentage restored, change the Dark Arts buff to restore TP instead of MP
- Reduce the cooldown for Shadow Wall
- Reduce the MP cost for Dark Passenger

Add a immunity to knockback for Shadow Wall and that would make that skill perfect and you wont need to change anything else to that skill.

So, somewhat off topic, but who's not going to be surprised when 3.1 changes come and we're looking at something even closer to Death Knight?

Grit -> Blood Presence: same as it is now, but every time you use Soul Eater it'll grant you a shield against Physical Damage
Soul Eater -> Death Strike: See above. Healz plus Shield
Dark Dance + DA -> Bone Shield: In addition to parry you take 20% less damage for the first six hits.

Just for lulz
Dark Mind + DA -> Anti-magic zone: Dark Mind will just give a flat 20-30 percent resistance to magic, when upgrade all nearby allies gain resistance as well.

After taking a 10 day break from FFXIV and coming back to Dark Knight, I feel that the Drk's defensive cooldowns are, for the most part, entirely reasonable and shouldn't be changed. Dark Arts DD is a different story, but let's ignore that for now.

Drk has some TP issues in long fights, but that can be alleviated by using unmade. Now, this leads to a mana issue, which causes you to use more tp skills, which then means you gotta spend mana, etc etc etc. I believe this would be best fixed by:

- Lowering the mana cost of Dark Arts by 10-20%
- Lowering Unmade's cost by 5-10%
- Lowering Dark Passengers cost by 40-50%


As for Dark Dance, I think I have come up with a good way to fix it:
- Dark Arts now causes Dark Dance to double the damage reduced when an attack is parried,

Two simple changes that could fix the main problems they have (aside from bugs):

- Reprisal: Available only immediately following a Parry OR when Dark Arts is active. Dark Arts fades upon use. Up CD to 40s or leave it.
- Dark Dance: When in Grit, same effect as current. When Grit is not active, regain 200 TP, 400 with Dark Arts. It also has a good CD for this type of skill already and a proper name.

- Solves the "Reprisal isn't reliable" issue, giving it an "on-demand" option at the cost of MP
- Dark Dance providing TP helps deal with the TP issues DRK has while OT
- Both skills now are useful OT instead of being completely dead.

This is coming from someone who just unlocked the Job, but seems to be in line with all the posts about the issues they have.

I think it's pretty clear that DRK has some genuine flaws. The inverse synergy with a skill that gives you evasion when certain facets of the job give you bonuses to being hit. Extreme TP issues. High MP costs affecting stance swaps. Lack of utility as an off tank. There is quite a list. But I do think this is all fixable.

I haven't read through this thread. I'm sure there are a lot of great suggestions here, probably a lot that echo or are even the same as the ones I have.


TP issues and potential solutions:

1. Blood weapon (and haste) is really brutal on TP, so rework it: In a dummy fight even goad is not going to help a DRK stay afloat the entire fight. Blood Weapon makes sure of that by forcing players to attack faster and thus drain TP faster. This was (still is?) the main issue with skill speed. My suggestion is to make Blood weapon an auto-crit ability like life surge, once every 30 or 45 seconds. If the goal of the devs is to force players to seek TP from other party members, that only makes sense if getting 1-2 boosts a fight is enough. But with Blood Weapon it's still not enough to avoid bottoming out on TP. So either giving DRK a self-sustaining TP ability works or reworking Blood Weapon will work.

2. If giving a self-sustaining ability is an option you can have sole survivor provide a TP boost in addition to HP/MP. 300 or 400 TP would go a long way. While it's an imperfect solution on a fight with no adds, most engagements don't have a lack of them and this is something that can help dramatically.

3. Additionally you can change the crossclass DRK uses from marauder to lancer. I think not only does this solve a lot of issues, the synergy makes sense far more than it does for marauder. Invigorate is an obvious help to TP. Keen Flurry synergizes well for things like Low Blow and Reprisal. In fact I think if you ask most PLD's they'd much rather have LNC as a cross class as well for reasons having to do with TP as well. MRD really just doesn't do all that much to support DRK (or PLD) as a cross class. Bloodbath and Foresight are not very useful skills for DRK.

4. You can change how Carve and Spit works by giving a TP restore. Honestly I have very ambiguous feelings about this ability. As a MT it's quite difficult to generate the MP you want and more often than I'd like, I end up using C/S to generate MP rather than boosting it for damage. One thing that I think would make for more enjoyable gameplay is to adjust the potency for an non-boosted C/S higher (from 100), lower the boosted C/S potency (from 45), but also give the boosted C/S TP return. So, for example: a regular C/S might have 250 or 300 potency while restoring MP. But a boosted C/S might have 350 or 400 while restoring TP. Or you can give both TP and MP return on unboosted C/S and leave the potencies the same, giving the player a pretty solid choice: replenish or go for damage.

As it is now I think C/S is a pretty awkward skill but some adjustments can make it a lot more enjoyable instead of a headache, worrying about sacrificing such an enormous amount of MP for a bit of burst damage.


Skill synergy:

5. Dark Dance when boosted gives evasion. But one of the best skills drk has, Blood Price, requires you to actually be hit to restore MP. Furthermore, Low Blow also activates when you parry an attack. Dark Dance really requires a rework. One thing I think might work is this: Remove Dark Mind as its own standalone ability and make that Dark Dance's boosted ability, replacing the evasion. So a normal Dark Dance would give 30% parry bonus. A DA boosted Dark Dance would give the 30% parry bonus as well as 30% magic damage reduction.

Grit and stance changing:

6. Grit is way too expensive and stance/role swapping in the same fight is made innately difficult. While some might offer that PLD also uses MP and has dealt with stance swapping just fine, there is a glaring, monumental difference: MP is DRK's main resource. In many fights tanks are expected to switch back and forth as necessary to complete their tasks. For WAR it's a matter of pressing a button without consequence. For PLD there is some consequence because switching between oaths costs a GCD, costs MP, and also kills any combo you were in the middle of. While it is clunky, the consequence is minimal because PLD isn't reliant on MP to handle primary actions.

DRK, however, uses MP for everything. If a DRK doesn't have MP, they are seriously hampered in their ability to perform. But as it is, stance switching is currently tied into MP cost at such a high number, switching grit off and then back on can end up destroying your available MP pool. Let's say you have 2k MP, you head to the carapace on bismark to do damage, and you drop grit while maintaining darkside. Bismark pushes you off before you kill the carapace, you now have 1k MP and adds will spawn soon. Unfortunately you don't have enough MP to put grit back on and you don't really have any great immediate options. And unfortunately this is one of the very common occurrences of any fight that will happen because of grit's very high cost. Again, having an oath cost 20% of a PLD's pool is not a big deal because they don't require MP to be functional. But a DRK will have pretty big lapses in function without it.

Right now I have to think twice about taking grit off because it might affect every action I make for the rest of the fight. It makes stance swapping extremely awkward. But at the same time just keeping grit on works counter to the things I might be required to do (like increase my damage for a phase). Stance swapping is an integral part of a tank's ability to optimally handle a fight. It should be independent of your primary resource. It most definitely shouldn't be tied in to MP because doing so prevents said tank from actually being able to complete their task efficiently. So lower the cost significantly, maybe from 20% to 10%. Even to 15% would help take some of the burden away, but in its current state it is tough to work with.

But it's not just Grit. Darkside itself takes a lot of your MP as well so toggling it off and on sometimes doesn't even feel worth it. And all this adds up to a not so great experience. Playing DRK makes me feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'd rather just play WAR or PLD if I'm forced to make decisions that don't feel fun.

Reprisal and OT utility:

7. Reprisal offers a great effect but only if you are the main tank. As an OT it can't be triggered and as such DRK doesn't bring as much utility to the table as a WAR. I can't imagine too many groups who are built for optimal progression wanting to take a DRK tank over a WAR, ever. And being lower on the totem pole of any job without offering extra benefits is pretty much a death knell for said job. One simple option might be to just put Reprisal on a straight cooldown without needing to trigger the parry. If the timers are the same (30 second cooldown, 20 second duration) it's actually highly useful without necessarily taking away from a PLD or a WAR's role.


I really want to like DRK a lot. But it is hard to justify playing it sometimes. It's awkward, clunky, and the gameplay isn't smooth. Playing it often is like you are fighting a battle against the job itself. But I think if some of these issues were addressed it could be made to be extremely enjoyable.

Why are you being goons. Just have reprisal, and Low blows also proc off evasion.
I don't think twice about switching Grit off, Blood weapon replenishes a heap of mana and our two strongest damage combos require Syphon strike *anyways*.

The blood price deal is so trivial.

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Originally Posted by Hundred

Why are you being goons. Just have reprisal, and Low blows also proc off evasion.
I don't think twice about switching Grit off, Blood weapon replenishes a heap of mana and our two strongest damage combos require Syphon strike *anyways*.

The blood price deal is so trivial.

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The amount of MP Grit costs to put back up at 60 makes stance dancing for Blood weapon almost pointless.

Honestly Blood Price just feels like a redundant ability the way it is now. It would've been easier to just change Blood Weapon to the same thing when Grit is up and save us a hotbar space. Not to mention it doesn't synergize well with a lot of the DRK kit which seems to be a common problem with the class. Dropping Shadow wall to 120 sec, folding Blood Price into Blood weapon when Grit is up, and lowering the MP cost of various spells including Grit could be a great start. I mean Dark Passenger is way more expensive then it actually should be especially with Dark Arts and Darkside combined.

Dark Knight's need some serious changes, or they will not be wanted over the other 2 tanks. They have less dps and kind of silly mechanics. They also have less sustain, and worse cool-downs.

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Originally Posted by Cidolfas86

The amount of MP Grit costs to put back up at 60 makes stance dancing for Blood weapon almost pointless.

Honestly Blood Price just feels like a redundant ability the way it is now. It would've been easier to just change Blood Weapon to the same thing when Grit is up and save us a hotbar space. Not to mention it doesn't synergize well with a lot of the DRK kit which seems to be a common problem with the class. Dropping Shadow wall to 120 sec, folding Blood Price into Blood weapon when Grit is up, and lowering the MP cost of various spells including Grit could be a great start. I mean Dark Passenger is way more expensive then it actually should be especially with Dark Arts and Darkside combined.

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You don't drop grit for Blood weapons MP, you drop it to lose the damage debuff.

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Originally Posted by Hundred

You don't drop grit for Blood weapons MP, you drop it to lose the damage debuff.

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Most people aren't dropping it for that reason though. They're MP starved. And the MP cost for stance dancing as DRK still makes this prohibitive in the MT position. Grit costs way too much MP for no reason.

Grit cost way to much MP to be dropping it and then putting it back on. Blood weapon will restore just a little bit over the amount of the cost to cast grit and Dark Arts so its not worth it.

I have not had a problem with TP as DRK, unless the fight is insanely long and I dont have to do alot of movement.

I think last survivor should be set to 60s instead of 180s. Many of DRK cooldowns are crazy long. At least they are fixing the Dark Arts bug on Monday.

I find the class functions very well and does adequate dps for its role. I think people are disappointed that it doesn't have game breaking dps. Instead it's a solid and reasonable tank class for people who tank, not try to be pseudo dps.

The fact that we lose MP when being healed under Darkside is a bug, right? When will it be fixed?

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Originally Posted by DesFenrir

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read the rest of the topic. DRK has pretty big problems that prevent it from doing well as a main tank or off tank. As a main tank it has (somewhat) gimped defensive cooldowns that don't have much synergy with eachother. As an off tank it's utility is gimped because some of it's abilities require you to be hit or parry to work effectively. stance dancing doesn't work either because of the cost of grit, and the SS boost blood weapon gives us often leaves us TP starved before the fight even reaches a half-way point. some of our abilities are also redundant or work too similarly other skills to justify their existence (abyssal drain- higher cost unmend+unleash in one GCD. blood price could have been combined with blood weapon to function differently depending on stance.)

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Originally Posted by Aerya

The fact that we lose MP when being healed under Darkside is a bug, right? When will it be fixed?

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yes, and it extends to any cooldown we pop, let fall off, and any DoTs and Hots on us.

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Originally Posted by DesFenrir

I find the class functions very well and does adequate dps for its role. I think people are disappointed that it doesn't have game breaking dps. Instead it's a solid and reasonable tank class for people who tank, not try to be pseudo dps.

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Game breaking? Even before the removal of Double Dark arts, it already had lower damage than WAR while being unable to sustain it for all but a short period of time. After the removal, not only is our damage now considerably lower, but our sustain hasn't changed at all, leaving us likely to be the worst DPS of the tanks over the period of a fight.

But that's not even close to what matters most. What matters most is our mediocrity as a main tank, while completely lacking utility and value as an off tank.

We don't survive as well as the other tanks, we don't support as well as the other tanks, we don't even do damage as well as the other tanks. What do we do?

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Originally Posted by Kiteless

Game breaking? Even before the removal of Double Dark arts, it already had lower damage than WAR while being unable to sustain it for all but a short period of time. After the removal, not only is our damage now considerably lower, but our sustain hasn't changed at all, leaving us likely to be the worst DPS of the tanks over the period of a fight.

But that's not even close to what matters most. What matters most is our mediocrity as a main tank, while completely lacking utility and value as an off tank.

We don't survive as well as the other tanks, we don't support as well as the other tanks, we don't even do damage as well as the other tanks. What do we do?

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Cloud Strife better then them all! Its the price we pay for edginess and the red aura.

However yeah, we need "SOMETHING"

Screw being reasonable. Classes always have things that are "unreasonable". Making DRK reasonable will still make it weaker.

DRK is the only class that has a stance that increases attack damage, and it's sustained by MP. Then tell me why is it that DRK is not doing the most damage as a tank? Sustained DRK should have it. As far as spike, WAR gets that.

As far as defense is concerned, to make DRK really stand out for that is to give it an way to "parry" magic attacks. It makes no sense that it can control the power of darkness, but still has to take a fireball to the face. Adding that form of mitigation will make it a preferred choice against primarily magic based bosses.

All I really want to be changed for DRK is a way to make the off tank TP situation more bearable. Very minor mitigation buffs aside (maybe 5% overall?), that is my biggest complaint with the job.

I should not have to stop hitting an enemy after two minutes (2:10 if I'm lucky with TP regen I guess) to spam my magic ranged attack in melee distance on anything. If DRKs lasted 3:15 or 3:30 of sustained WS on an enemy while OTing that'd be much more acceptable.

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Originally Posted by MoriSylvanos

Screw being reasonable. Classes always have things that are "unreasonable". Making DRK reasonable will still make it weaker.

DRK is the only class that has a stance that increases attack damage, and it's sustained by MP. Then tell me why is it that DRK is not doing the most damage as a tank? Sustained DRK should have it. As far as spike, WAR gets that.

As far as defense is concerned, to make DRK really stand out for that is to give it an way to "parry" magic attacks. It makes no sense that it can control the power of darkness, but still has to take a fireball to the face. Adding that form of mitigation will make it a preferred choice against primarily magic based bosses.

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That is a good idea actually if DRK could be a tank that can parry magic.

Thats the whole point of the evade on Dark dance, because Magic attacks can still be evaded but not tanked. Evade is a 100% mitigation if successful -_-. Granted Evade also has inherit issues of its own but are we not looking at the realities in front of us?

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Originally Posted by Hundred

Thats the whole point of the evade on Dark dance, because Magic attacks can still be evaded but not tanked. Evade is a 100% mitigation if successful -_-. Granted Evade also has inherit issues of its own but are we not looking at the realities in front of us?

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Problem is evade is not exactly reliable its the same reason warrior's don't really take feather foot.

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Originally Posted by shinros

Problem is evade is not exactly reliable its the same reason warrior's don't really take feather foot.

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Neither is parry. Evade is more potent mitigation but less reliable to proc works on magical & physical,, Parry has greater % chance to proc but mitigates less damage works solely on physical.

The actual main reason we don't take fleet of foot is 1) The % chance is simply too low and we're served better by other cross class skills which can offer us equivalent if not greater mitigation, utility or damage 2) There have been encounters where you are not going to evade. Are there instances where I consider Fleet of Foot on my warrior? Sure but I'm not going to hot swap between pull and boss when its not necessary, that just slows down runs and you certainly don't have the privilege in trials either.


Dark Dances long term viability is based on 1) Square figuring out where the % chance needs to be 2) Keeping their encounter Design with consideration for DRK's moving forward and any other possible Evade users they may introduce in the future speaking long term.

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Originally Posted by Hundred

Neither is parry. This is a non-argument. Evade is more potent mitigation but less reliable to proc, Parry has greater % chance to proc but mitigates less damage.

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You can evade spells, but you can't parry them.

Parry is a bad mechanic overall.

Now if Dark Dance was:

Parry spells, and attacks that take more than 10% of your life.

That IS a good parry mechanic. No RNG involved.

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Originally Posted by Hundred

^ Missing the entire point of Dark Dance, Keen Flurry and Bullwark.

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P.S. I wasn't talking about those. I was talking about Parry as a mechanic, it can be made to not be RNG if implemented correctly. Bro.

^ Missing the entire point of Dark Dance, Keen Flurry and Bullwark.