Dark Knight under review: Feedback to the Developers and Community Team

Well WAR also has a 10 second no penalty OGCD stance swap thats lets them burst heal should the situation require it DRK has no practical single target lifesteal without grit and lets not talk about how ridiculous Clemency is.

I always wondered how bad it would be if Derilium gave us a small potency heal, along with the MP as well. As a animation and the fact it uses Blood, it seems like it would be a fair change for it.

The only issue I currently see with the idea is that the CD would have to be increased again, which is something I am sure most people wouldn't like, we just got it decreased after all.

Reading through the OP's summary, as well as the response from the dev team makes me kind of hopeful that DRK will get some good, meaningful changes sometime in the near future. There's really not much I can add to the list of requests - it's all really spot on for how I hope the job will change and really come into its own, instead of just being... the tank that is not a WAR, not a PLD, and not really good at being inbetween all that well either.

Other than all that, please, please give darkside a better glow.

A total rework will probably have to wait until 5.0, but I think it's realistic to ask now for changes to a few underwhelming skills like Dark Passenger and Sole Survivor.

Like others have said, Dark Passenger could easily be made worth using just by lowering the MP cost or raising the potency. I'd like to see the Blind replaced too, since dodges don't trigger Blood Price. The "5% damage reduction" someone else suggested would be great.


Some ideas to make Sole Survivor a useful utility:

1. DRK receives 10% less damage from the target.
2. DRK recovers HP when attacking the target.
3. All party members recover some HP when attacking the target.
4. Target takes 5% increased damage.

I've always been of the mind that if DRK gets a heal option, it should be an attack like FF Tactics DRK.

Make Bloodspiller (or Souleater) heal you for the full damage of the attack, in and out of Grit. In Grit, buff the heal so it's relative to the reduced damage in tank stance (if they go with SE). If they went the BS route you'd still need 50 Blackblood so it wouldn't be spammable.

The advantage would be that we wouldn't have to lose DPS for it, but the downside is there has to be an enemy on-screen with HP to steal (kind of like Holm's trade-off in exchange for it's short CD).

If we end up retaining our less than desirable CD options throughout SB, it could be a nice boost to our personal survivability.

Make drk a dps n add new tank job.....profit

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Originally Posted by MonteCristo

Make drk a dps n add new tank job.....profit

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How about no? They will have to take my soul crystal from my dead hands for that

Here's hoping some positive changes come from this. As a slow up and coming tank, DRK is the only tank class that fits my playstyle, hard hitting and great hate control on trash which is the majority of the content so far (the moves are cool as hell to watch) and it makes dungeons fun imo.

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Originally Posted by MonteCristo

Make drk a dps n add new tank job.....profit

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that only creates more problems. they're stuck balancing two jobs, and one of them is already designed in a way that is frustrating at best and detrimental at worst.

Sole Survivor should give 50 Black Blood and be put on a 60-90s CD.

I think Dark Knight should be the highest DPS tank, in exchange for weaker utility and weaker defensive Cool downs. I'm not sure why WAR has been set as the "DPS" tank, but in every Final Fantasy Warrior has been a weapons master and normally deals damage through weapon weakness or debuffs through weapon skills, while DRK has always been one for dealing damage in exchange for it's life. I believe that having higher damage, but weaker cool downs and less utility it would fit this theme pretty well. I also think that Dark Mind should be made to take physical damage as well. It would also be nice to have something other than health be absorbed from a monster, such as MP or some type of stat as well as actual elemental magic rolled into their line up of combos.

As is, I feel that Dark Knight is a weaker version of FF11's Rune Fencer, which it's design doesn't fit into this game at all. It's becoming more and more obvious that DRK was shoe horned into Heavensward without much though put into it due to it fitting "thematically", rather than sticking true to the job and I'd like for this to change.

I really like the changed proposal for survivor.

Amazing post, it most have taken you a long time to put all of the Drk community concerns into words with such clarity. Thank you so much for this, with this post I really feel like you've touched most of my concerns about the job. Especially how there is a double standard in tank changes that have happened over the launch of Stormblood.

aint they say drk adjustment coming in 4.3 during the latest live letter?

Darkside is going to be nothing but skillbloat in its current form. It doesn't add to the playstyle of the class either. Literally just 20% flat dps increase for a loss of MP refresh. Turn it off during downtime and back on during uptime. That's not intuitive. Surely they could do something unique with this skill and incorporate the +20% damage it brings into the actual weaponskill potencies themselves.

I really wish they'd give both DRK and PLD equal treatment to WAR as far as their tank stance goes and just put it on a cooldown, make it OGCD, and have it cost no resources.

Dark really needs a strength or identity. It could be the dps tank, as mentioned, which would fit very well. It could also be the self-heal tank, it would make sense for a tank without a shield and utilizing dark energies to drain the life force of enemies to sustain itself. But it should excel at something, rather than being average to below average in every category.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It could also be the self-heal tank, it would make sense for a tank without a shield and utilizing dark energies to drain the life force of enemies to sustain itself.

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For me, it would have been much more interesting if its tank stance was a Dread Spike effect that would reflect and leech back 20% of the damage it takes, instead of a Shield Oath copy. It could have made it the tank that can keep its high even when being in tank stance, at the cost having to stay fairly high on HP to not be killed before the leech effect proc.

I want Dark passanger back in my rotation, end of. Coolest ability which made me play the class in the first place. Compensate the mana cost on single target or switch up the effect or better both...

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

For me, it would have been much more interesting if its tank stance was a Dread Spike effect that would reflect and leech back 20% of the damage it takes, instead of a Shield Oath copy. It could have made it the tank that can keep its high even when being in tank stance, at the cost having to stay fairly high on HP to not be killed before the leech effect proc.

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I loathe Grit it's a copy and i hate how it costs mana to switch it on, hate it.

Grit and darkside should have no mp cost associated with them. The same needs to be applied to Sword and shield Oath.

Or Grit needs the mp cost to be adjusted.

I just want Reprisal, Low Blow and their traits back. People keep suggesting a Dark Arts TBN to be an AoE effect as raid utility, but don't want another god forsaken thing to use Dark Arts on. I'd much rather have our thematic party utility restored to us since PLD and WAR already have their niches with Veil and SiO, they don't need either of these skiis in Cross Role. Plus, it'd do a lot to re-enforce the counter tank identity we had back in 3.X and would help with the monotony of "just spamming Dark Arts" that Stormblood DRK is stuck with.

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Originally Posted by Derio

Grit and darkside should have no mp cost associated with them. The same needs to be applied to Sword and shield Oath.

Or Grit needs the mp cost to be adjusted.

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Imagine having access to rampart whenever you wanted, for as many times as you wanted, all for no cost. Sounds ridiculous, right?

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Imagine having access to rampart whenever you wanted, for as many times as you wanted, all for no cost. Sounds ridiculous, right?

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the cost of Grit is a 20% damage decrease.

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Originally Posted by Tint

the cost of Grit is a 20% damage decrease.

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That's not really a cost when you would only activate as a cooldown. If you blew your CDs for whatever reason and a tank buster is coming up, there would be no real cost. You just activate grit, take the mitigated tank buster, and turn it off. At best, you'd only lose a GCD for -20% less damage, but for what is gained (unlimited ways to mitigate any tank buster), it's far too overpowered.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

That's not really a cost when you would only activate as a cooldown. If you blew your CDs for whatever reason and a tank buster is coming up, there would be no real cost. You just activate grit, take the mitigated tank buster, and turn it off. At best, you'd only lose a GCD for -20% less damage, but for what is gained (unlimited ways to mitigate any tank buster), it's far too overpowered.

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To quote someone who explained it better than I could.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

If I were to try and pick out one thing about warrior that is "Design" I would have picked out the extreme synergy the class has within itself. I wouldn't have said the thing that represents warrior's design is the ability to switch between tank and dps stances.

Consider:
(1) Tank stance gains strengths from its cooldowns reinforcing each other (convalescence and thrill of battle)
(2) Tank stance gains strength from party abilities and cooldowns (Healing output increases/bard songs/HP increases)
(3) Cooldowns for personal use can be transformed instantly into powerful party shields
(4) Offensive cooldowns turn into powerful defensive cooldowns in tank stance (try IR with Inner Beast and tell me the 20% mitigation for 15 seconds with 10k+ restored each hit doesn't feel defensive and powerful)

Those are the kinda of things that I felt defined warrior "design". Not whether or not its tank stance is oGCD. If I were to talk about the tank stance I would be talking about:
(1) Snap aggro/gap closer for quickly picking up adds that also functions as a guage dump
(2) Its ability to ignore its penalties
(3) Tank stance gives up damage to increase survivability
(4) DPS stance gives up survivability to increase damage

Those are the main highlights of the warrior tank/dps stance abilities. Whether a single move is oGCD or not on all tanks is such a far cry from homogenization I cannot help but need to point out this list to you.

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I don't agree with the proposed method, but saying that would be like having rampart whenever doesn't change anything, WAR already has "rampart" on demand and besides that, WAR can do anything on any stance with zero penalties because WAR doesn't have any penalties, even for the worst penalty in their toolkit, they have another skill that invalidates said penalty.

PLDs and DRKs are simply asking for a similar level of synergy in their toolkit like WAR has. And no, its not too much too ask.

I would also point out that if tank stances became oGCD I highly doubt they would be turn on turn off. I imagine they developers would add a time until the skill could be reused, much like the warrior stance. This idea that they would make the ability oGCD and on a 1 second cooldown is strained to say the least.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

When did I say anything about opposition to making them oGCD, this is about removing MP cost.

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I assume this is at me. I wrote this comment in a rush and did not fully push out what I meant. It still has a cost as we would still likely be locked into tank stance for a period of time taking the 20% penalty. Does it really need a mana penalty on top of that?

When did I say anything about opposition to making them oGCD, this is about removing MP cost.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I assume this is at me. I wrote this comment in a rush and did not fully push out what I meant. It still has a cost as we would still likely be locked into tank stance for a period of time taking the 20% penalty. Does it really need a mana penalty on top of that?

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Seems you wrote too much in a rush to see the context of my criticism. Do any of those comments I replied to imply that there would be some balance to removing the cost? By all means, if a tank is locked into tank stance a la defiance, then I may more inclined to agree. But flat out keeping grit/ShO as is, but with the removal of MP cost? Absurd.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Seems you wrote too much in a rush to see the context of my criticism. Do any of those comments I replied to imply that there would be some balance to removing the cost? By all means, if a tank is locked into tank stance a la defiance, then I may more inclined to agree. But flat out keeping grit/ShO as is, but with the removal of MP cost? Absurd.

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I'm a firm believer that balance is not the forums job. The forums job should be to say: I dislike how this works please change it to something else like this. Then if it the community agrees then its up to the developer to balance the idea.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

That's not really a cost when you would only activate as a cooldown. If you blew your CDs for whatever reason and a tank buster is coming up, there would be no real cost. You just activate grit, take the mitigated tank buster, and turn it off. At best, you'd only lose a GCD for -20% less damage, but for what is gained (unlimited ways to mitigate any tank buster), it's far too overpowered.

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imo this is true from ARR as the reference point. But @SB lvl 70, with the amount of defense & recovery skills spread across healers and tanks & offtanks, I think not so much. People are still going to avoid as much DPS negligence as possible (and dropped GCD is the worst perpetrator).

But in lieu of reducing cost, the other direction could be to justify the harsh cost of both Grit and Shield Oath, like they fixed with WAR more recently.

Give these stances more depth: adding additional effects to more skills, for example (BloodPrice not being such garbage another), where player action is a factor (CD management).

More tree branching design like they got right for WAR this iteration. Some progress on either front I'd enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Seems you wrote too much in a rush to see the context of my criticism. Do any of those comments I replied to imply that there would be some balance to removing the cost? By all means, if a tank is locked into tank stance a la defiance, then I may more inclined to agree. But flat out keeping grit/ShO as is, but with the removal of MP cost? Absurd.

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more absurd is having WAR being able to avoid all the penaltys to get what you call overpowered, im started to belive if they want to keep the penaltys on stances and no hurt WAR fluidness they should remove unchained to keep that feel when you play WAR but dont being op on that sense.

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Originally Posted by shao32

more absurd is having WAR being able to avoid all the penaltys to get what you call overpowered, im started to belive if they want to keep the penaltys on stances and no hurt WAR fluidness they should remove unchained to keep that feel when you play WAR but dont being op on that sense.

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Wrong. If lethal damage is approaching and a WAR switches to defiance to mitigate it, the WAR's current HP would not be sufficient. The fact defiance is oGCD is balanced with that fact. However, if you want to bring up equilibrium as a work-around, then we have to face the fact that WAR requires another cooldown to achieve what the others already do with only one button. That's ignoring the fact that it's on a 60 second cooldown. The same applies to unchained, but being on a 90 second cooldown instead. Those tools could not be abused all the time to achieve what I'm trying to discourage.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

snip

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if lethal damage is approaching and WAR switches to mitigate it its complety depend of when you do it and how you healers react to it, if you use defiance and you healer manage to put at you an emergency cast heal with swiftcast before the hit lands the effect is inmediat and WAR enjoy the bonus without using any extra tool, but of course is more easy say you use defiance and you dont get bonus without including timing, how many time you have before the lethal damage come and extra factors to this argument.

the fact about why defiance-equilibrium-unchained its op or if you preffer too strong for being a thing is because even with cooldown this tools are too strong making you avoid every WAR penalty and use this tools in other ways the other 2 tanks cant, defensive strats include, while the other 2 face the penaltys and eat it no matter what they do, why will you use equilibrium anyway? for what? if you survive in deliverance you never go to defiance for the heal, in single bosses fights equilibrium have more value as removing the heal requeriment by using defiance that using it as a heal for anything, out side of that the skill is unused bcs you dont have the necesity to use defiance for anything except dungeons trash pulls.

WAR switch cost gauge and unchained tied to inner release make the combo balance compared to grit and shield but you guys have to complaing for it even when you spend 99,99% of the time on deliverance and now WAR is the pull tank again for unchained making it the default MT and unfairly enjoying adventages that the other 2 dont have, but if we ask to be at WAR levels we are so op right?

Either way you look at it, going into defiance and equilibrium is basically trading TBN for instant access to more HP and equilibrium can crit for 20k+ while TBN is only around 12k HP shield currently. I literally cannot think of any other reason someone would go into defiance currently with your current mitigation kit, in that sense unchained having a 90 second cooldown isn't even something to worry about... Atleast you can acheive nearly dps stance damage in tank stance. Who's better off at that point? A drk using TBN at 75% hp or a war going into defiance and using equilibrium from 75% hp, hopefully the drk even has enough MP to use it. The whole "have to use another tool" point is moot when equilibrium is useless for anything other than the healing anyways. DRK usually has to apply TBN for 20% mitigation cooldowns like rampart and tank stance anyway cause it will leave you at near 0 HP if you dont and auto attack damage could kill you.

One of the reasons war's have it easy anyways is vengeance>Holm>repeat for tank busters. You guys don't even need anything else. I can't even think of a reason war would need its tank stance for anything short of emergency HP with equilibrium. Meanwhile if drk has no cooldowns left or its a physical buster, tank stance might be its only emergency access beyond TBN which isn't strong enough by itself in most cases. Our invincible is only as useful as our healers are able to cure through it. So tank stance and TBN for nearly half our MP in an emergency while losing DPS and a GCD. This all sounds very fair in a raid environment where DPS is key on tank as long as you can survive.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Wrong. If lethal damage is approaching and a WAR switches to defiance to mitigate it, the WAR's current HP would not be sufficient. The fact defiance is oGCD is balanced with that fact. However, if you want to bring up equilibrium as a work-around, then we have to face the fact that WAR requires another cooldown to achieve what the others already do with only one button. That's ignoring the fact that it's on a 60 second cooldown. The same applies to unchained, but being on a 90 second cooldown instead. Those tools could not be abused all the time to achieve what I'm trying to discourage.

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So I see this argument come up in so many places and it never really has context other than everything is on cooldown. To me this situation feels so artificial and contrived to make warrior have a disadvantage.

(1) everything is on cooldown.
Ok, so we have one of two options:
(a) You don't know the fight well enough to plan out your cooldowns.
Conclusion: clearly you didn't know the fight as well as you thought and shouldn't be out of tank stance yet in the first place.

(b) Things went south, so south you felt you needed to turtle up with cooldowns and decided to not enter tank stance. Now you are faced with a tank buster, have no mitigation, and its on such short notice that you have just enough time to press defiance before being smashed.
Conclusion: You were taken by surprise, maybe through no fault of your own, but didn't know the fight well enough to think about upcoming tank busters to be able to mitigate on the fly. Again, I feel this points to the question of if you should be out of tank stance yet, clearly you should have been in it much sooner.

(2) In either case why didn't we swap with our cotank for them to use their mitigation on the tankbuster? Again, the only conclusion here seems to be that we don't know the fight well enough that we should have swapped for an upcoming tank buster.

(3) Next, tank stance would have saved you on dark knight or paladin, but not on warrior. But would it have?
Depends on how short a window we are talking about.
(a) You had enough time to get into defiance but not enough time to equilibrium. Assuming we are activating tank stance this late it should be pointed out Paladin and Dark Knight have not entered stance yet. No one survives in this example.

(b) You had enough time to use tank stance and equilibrium but not the next GCD, but decided not to use equilibrium. Well sorry that is not the fault of the job though, you didn't do your job. Sure you have to press two buttons to survive, but hey dark knights need to pair dark mind and TBN for almost every buster so they share your pain. If this is your sticking point the conclusion is switch to paladin. Also, Dark Knight and Paladin die in this example. But they could have used tank stance earlier! So could have warrior and then they could have gotten healed and not needed to press two buttons.

(c) Enough time passes that everyone gets into tank stance. Well everyone lives \o/.

(d) You did tank stance and equilibrium but it didn't heal back enough HP that you had your full HP buffer. This is where warrior actually is at a disadvantage.


The number of times I have found myself in the above situations? Fairly few if ever, but I play safe until I know what I'm doing.

Consider how many things had to go wrong in order for the above to have happened:
(1) Party had to mess up enough distracting healers from healing the tank
(2) You had to have been taking enough damage that you needed to pop every cooldown to live
(3) You went into a tank buster and forget to swap with your cotank/messed up the swap
(4) Did not have an incoming heal from the healers heading into tank buster/activated your tank stance too late so the heal went off before tank stance.
(5) Have used equilibrium earlier for some reason/it doesn't heal for enough to give you the HP buffer you need.

This is such a contrived example, we need to go 5 mess ups deep to be unrecoverable for the warrior. This isn't something we should be balancing for.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

By all means, if a tank is locked into tank stance a la defiance, then I may more inclined to agree. But flat out keeping grit/ShO as is, but with the removal of MP cost? Absurd.

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I'd rather they keep the MP values and be oGCD. Imo, them STAYING as GCDs is the bigger cost.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

Wrong. If lethal damage is approaching and a WAR switches to defiance to mitigate it, the WAR's current HP would not be sufficient. The fact defiance is oGCD is balanced with that fact. However, if you want to bring up equilibrium as a work-around, then we have to face the fact that WAR requires another cooldown to achieve what the others already do with only one button. That's ignoring the fact that it's on a 60 second cooldown. The same applies to unchained, but being on a 90 second cooldown instead. Those tools could not be abused all the time to achieve what I'm trying to discourage.

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Everything about WARs "Oh shit" moments lie on OGCDs, TB happening and you're in panic mode? Def+Eq and pop unchained to not lose DPS due to Def. 3 buttons, within 3seconds?

And Eq being back up in 60s is a boon, not a handicap. You consistently have a cool down you can keep using or saving without a trade off.

How's PLD? on demand heals but resource dependent, no MP? No heals.
And DRK? Sole survivor is so convoluted in requirements and with a much longer cool down it might as well not be considered.

WAR is OP because it has everything on demand and the synergy of everything they have is down right amazing and repeating the cards of "if lethal damage..." is moot because like Chrono just pointed out, WAR needs to be 3 feet in deep shit to be unable to make up for the mistakes. PLD and DRK? I'd be surprised if they survive past the first foot.


Edit: And I am ignoring WARs fight dynamic that makes Infuriate be available almost all the time due to Inner Release and the Fell Cleave Spam. Which means a free IB if that is required, which could in turn save them an Eq usage or double dip on the self heal + additional 20% def. Since we wanna play wibbly-wobbly stretchy-noodle hypothetical scenarios.

Ironically enough Hp restore skills can still save you between the cast for a buster skill ending and being hit by it. If you use a mitigation skill after a cast for a tankbuster ends, it won't mitigate it, I've had this happen on war, but Equilibrium just before tank buster can literally save you while popping a mitigation cooldown too late wont. Every now and then on DRK I've been late with a TBN and it goes right through it if used after a cast bar ends. RIP greedy gcds.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Edit: And I am ignoring WARs fight dynamic that makes Infuriate be available almost all the time due to Inner Release and the Fell Cleave Spam. Which means a free IB if that is required, which could in turn save them an Eq usage or double dip on the self heal + additional 20% def. Since we wanna play wibbly-wobbly stretchy-noodle hypothetical scenarios.

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This is also an excellent point. Optimal warrior play holds guage for the crit rate bonus. The only time they don't have this is after they dump all their guage after trick attack. Which means that warrior is also the only tank which is almost never without a cooldown to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

(d) You did tank stance and equilibrium but it didn't heal back enough HP that you had your full HP buffer. This is where warrior actually is at a disadvantage.

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i am not too sure... the full HP buffer is 25%, while Grit and Shield Oath reduce damage only for 20%...

how much % does equilibrium actually heal? when it's below 20% then WAR is at a disadvantage - when it's more than 20% WAR is actually in an advantage here.