Dark Knight Megathread

Another combo would serve to apply either a debuff or secondary buff (maybe one that makes all attacks on that target give more blood gauge for 30 seconds ?) but yeah the loss of aggro management is a big hit to that.

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Originally Posted by jetfire117

yea the combos were perfect, in my opinion. But as of now, what would another combo do? Like Reinhardt said above, our (boring at this point) soul eater combo gives us what we need. So it's kinda hard to think of another combo they could give us since aggro doesn't exist anymore. At this point, I'm just hoping they change delirium to literally anything else.

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Bigger effects, i mean that's what it did in HW with was just doing more damage than Delirium, if we have a proc that for expample using bloodspiller allow us to finish out combo with a new more deadly skill that generate more blood and damage it would be the same as HW more or less, or could be with a returned DA or something similar, HW combo system was basically that, your normal combo and a enchanced finisher with bigger effects used at your total disposal as long you don't go to any of the extremes with your MP or have a better use for it like it was Dark passenger and DA+CaS.
At the end of the day there is many ways to play around with combos and for my personal take im tired of having everything oversimplified in this case everything on a single combo.

Personally, I think that having two combos can work well for melee DPS because they have to adapt their positioning accordingly.
For tanks, at the end of day, having two combos doesn't change much and only comes down to muscle memory.
In my opinion, simple skills like Gunbreaker's Sonic Break, Paladin's Atonement, or even Warrior's Upheaval are better designed than having a whole secondary 3 part combo.

I think there is definitely something to be said about the ridiculously low amount of weaponskills/spells that are on the DRK's GCD compared to other tanks. But I don't think a second combo would really add much complexity/identity to it.

My personal issue with the current DRK is that it is extremely bursty, which is what WAR was always designed to be...
It feels like SE wanted DRK to be relying on oGCD a lot (hence why there is so little different skills on the GCD), but due to the massive cooldown on most of their oGCD abilities and the MP cost of others, it actually is just bursty...they probably stopped halfway in the design choice when they realized that if it relies too much on weaving/double weaving, it could become difficult to weave in your defensive cooldown too. So they gave all the oGCDs an insane cooldown to make it less stressful... (or maybe they were afraid of making it busier than Gunbreaker when it was the main selling point of the new job...)

The result is a job where you press 3 buttons over and over again. And do your bursty oGCD heavy shit every minute or so, where you have to press all your oGCD as fast as you can, and go back to pressing your 3 buttons for a minute.

Having a rotation with 6 offensive oGCD which have a cooldown of one minute or more is part of what can make the job boring at times IMO. Cutting the cooldown on Carve and Abyssal in half while also reducing their potency would already make the job more enjoyable to me.

Also, something "Confiteor-like" needs to be added at the end of the Delirium window.

I think the DRK burst isn't what it was intended to be.
I do not feel like Edge of Shadow was meant to be spammed along Bloodspiller. It looks and feels very clunky.
When I look at it, it seems more like an OGCD meant to be used regularly to keep DarkSide up, and when you are close to max MP or have popped up TBN efficiently as "counter-attack" type of reward (which is something I do want to see on DRK, old reprisal and low blow were super satisfying).

But the most efficient way to use that kit is to spam Edge and Bloodspiller together while under Blood Weapon, overlapping both animations in something that looks very weird.
Of course, some amount of clipping in burst phases is to be expected (see GNB weaving Danger Zone or his DoT AoE within the Cartridge combo, there is a bit of clipping her too) but DRK is so big that it doesn't feel like it was the intention.

Yearly reminder that Living Dead is garbage outside of certain niche uses which must be heavily preplanned.

I really wish that Dark Knight still had Darkside. Like, I want them to make it so that generate Black Blood and then expend it to use Darkside.
Darkside kinda rolls Dark Arts old effects into it, while also providing a damage boost.
Change Bloodspiller into a costless combo action from Syphon Strike, with the same damage as Souleater.
Change Quietus to a costless GCD with the same potency as Unleash.
Darkside changes these two actions to be more useful when in Darkside, applying a stacking debuff on the enemy that, upon reaching a certain number of stacks, will either deal a large chunk of damage or apply a DoT.
Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow can be changed to powerful oGCDs on a small cooldown instead.
Delirium can be changed to provide an immediate 50 Black Blood.

So my experience with Dark Knight doesn't go far enough back to know anything about its previous iterations, but having played 3/4 of the Tanks for any length of time I'd unfortunately rank it below Warrior and Gunbreaker both in terms of, idk, feel and skillset? Hurts to say because Dark Knight was what I was gunning for basically from the start, so finding it underwhelming was not my ideal outcome...

In terms of feel the animations are lackluster, way too slow and clumsy and lacking impact, especially the basic combo. In comparison I feel like Warrior has the most impact, animations are nice and snappy and the sound effects are quite good, though Gunbreaker is no slouch either (technically cheating, because literal explosions... the womp-womp sound effect feels like a bit of a weird choice though). Both of those also have a lot more going for them in terms of skillset, multiple combos, DOT skills, etc. whereas DRK only really has its basic combo most of the time. It's kind of boring to play...

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

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the worst bit is, current drk literally had all of these things, including awesome animations... and its all gone.

Its the worst tank in pretty much everything:
-lowest dps
-worst invul (kills you and doesnt grant true invul)
-worst gameplay loop (plays exactly like marauder, a class with no identity)
-least self sustain
-poorest margin of error during inner release window
-subjective but least "good" animations since they removed all the cool ones except abyssal drain
-most lag before ogcd window in ranged attack

the two areas it isnt last is the "fast" mitigation (tbn being the best) and sound effects (3rd place because gunbreaker baseball bat)

Yeah, I think I can agree with basically all of those points honestly. Been playing WAR again this evening since DRK's at 80 and I was letting all that Roulette experience go to waste, and it's kind of night and day... If anything, I think DRK should've been the one with a life leech combo, given its theme and everything...

After a long break from the game, i was really in the mood to tank.
I know i didnt care for the changes from HW DRK, and less so ShB DRK, but man... i literally just stopped playing mid raid. it was just so bad, and i didnt want to keep going for 30 more minutes having to play DRK anymore...
Its really just so bad. I logged off for the day, and figured id just unsub the next morning. (by next morning, i found something else to entertain myself with for now. but it sure isnt DRK...)

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

Yeah, I think I can agree with basically all of those points honestly. Been playing WAR again this evening since DRK's at 80 and I was letting all that Roulette experience go to waste, and it's kind of night and day... If anything, I think DRK should've been the one with a life leech combo, given its theme and everything...

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and it should have been the one to sacrifice HP to not die (superbolide from GNB)

The direction they're going with DRK doesn't feel me with much hope of them doing anything to actually fix the complaints players have had with ShB DRK. Its more accessible sure but it lost a lot of its fun factor and basically ruined what most old DRK mains liked about the job. If ShB DRK is anything to go by, they'll dumb down the job even more come Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by Keagian

The direction they're going with DRK doesn't feel me with much hope of them doing anything to actually fix the complaints players have had with ShB DRK. Its more accessible sure but it lost a lot of its fun factor and basically ruined what most old DRK mains liked about the job. If ShB DRK is anything to go by, they'll dumb down the job even more come Endwalker.

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Yea can't wait to have our single 1-2-3 combo (heck that's still too many buttons for some of yall) and one ogcd. I'm hyped.

Far too many people equate complexity and challenge.

HW DRK wasn't engaging because it was complex. It was engaging because it was a fast, uptime-focused job. Hit stuff as it comes off cooldown, keep scourge running, and keep your MP in an appropriate range. Simple enough. But it was the fights and the mechanics that kept it exciting and fresh. It doesn't take much to create a mechanical skill differential.

The Stormblood iteration was more 'complex'. You had the unnecessary addition of a second resource meter to manage. There were different potency trade-offs between blood and MP. You had more unnecessarily forced double weaves. Yet it was widely disliked. At the end of the day, it was slower, more clunky, and more ineffectual. And worst of all, it just wasn't fun.

What I want to play is a tank that is just purely uptime focused. Stay glued to the boss. Use movement tools (gap closer/gap extender/blink) to dance from target to target. Baseline haste with high APM. Minimal burst, maximum sustain, every GCD counts. Pretty much any degree of challenge that you want should just come naturally out of fight design.

Defensively, I want revenge procs and design that rewards a thorough knowledge of the boss' damage patterns. That knowledge is one of the few things that differentiates tank gameplay from melee dps. I also want cooldown management to be a thing again, and I think the best solution is to just remove invulns from the game. It's pretty much the best way to fix Living Dead.

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Originally Posted by Keagian

The direction they're going with DRK doesn't feel me with much hope of them doing anything to actually fix the complaints players have had with ShB DRK. Its more accessible sure but it lost a lot of its fun factor and basically ruined what most old DRK mains liked about the job. If ShB DRK is anything to go by, they'll dumb down the job even more come Endwalker.

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I highly doubt you can dumb down this job any more. I can say with 90% certainty that they won't, they would have to do something outright insane for this job to get more dumb. I'm talking, delete the blood gauge-level nonsense. Then again, SE tried to delete Energy Drain off SCH with no replacement, we lost Haste with no replacement, so maybe that's not TOO far-fetched.

I digress. When you're at the absolute rock bottom of the entire game in terms of interesting gameplay mechanics, you got two options. Either you move nowhere, or you go up. We have no GCDs to remove. We have two (technically three?) very limited MP and Blood spenders. We have a resource economy that is strictly limited and time-gated to prevent people from using too many skills. I think if Salted Earth was removed most people would be happy, not like it does anything useful anymore. The only real thing they can easily mess with on a design perspective without throwing "successful" ShB DRK in the conceptual trashcan is Darkside and Dark Arts, and both of those things are wasted potential at best, and outright non-mechanics at worst.

I have a vague IDEA of where they are going with the job, but for a Level 80 job, what we have right now is barely a Level 70 on other jobs, it is a skeleton, a framework of a job. It never should have released this basic, this empty. There's zero skill expression, there's no reason for someone to say "Yeah, I main DRK." and actually feel good about it, outside of that stupid TBN crutch. There needs to be more, or people are just going to keep saying, "Eh, but TBN right?

Wish more people would talk about how truly screwed tanks got this entire expansion. I can't get as hyped for the Endwalker as I would've been otherwise because I'm viewing the game through the lens of a jaded DRK main. Really hoping the Job Action trailer will change that, and I think it will, if they finally give DRK more things than they take away for once.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What I want to play is a tank that is just purely uptime focused. Stay glued to the boss.

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I like the idea, but, isn't that effectively an identity based predominantly on a far-worse-than-average restriction -- on, a weakness?

Granted, we could say the same for Monk, and it kicked ass until they decided to move away from that weakness... I guess my concern is more that, nowadays, how would one sell that idea (to those other than veteran Monks), given that we've gone the way of even gutting job identities as needed to placate those who'd complain about exactly this kind of weakness, or any identity based upon it?

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Use movement tools (gap closer/gap extender/blink) to dance from target to target. Baseline haste with high APM. Minimal burst, maximum sustain, every GCD counts.

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Damn that sounds fun, though. (Even if it's exactly how I pictured... Gunbreaker, instead, while I've always thought of DRK as deserving to be the job with the most deliberate and rapid changes in pace.)

I can agree a lot with Lyth's above comment... Not quite my own preference, but I like how it reads, and while I will no longer play the current Dark Knight, I would for certain play that...

My own selfish desire is for Dark Knight to be more like the Dark Warrior.. not WAR Clone, I mean a fantasy subclass archtype from a few decades ago,
or at the least, I want FFXIV's Dark Knight to be a remaster improvement of the original 3.x version, that also more resembles the Dark Knight as it did appear in other FF games of the FF franchise.

It would also interest me a lot to see the Dark Knight be the full sustain, little burst, "Speed" type of the Tanks, whether that be literal low-GCD speed,
or better than that, the illusion of speed; through constant oGCD weaves and the always-active thrill of full sustain attacks, instead of being held back by "just wait for the burst" and "it is all in the burst".

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Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai

I can agree a lot with Lyth's above comment... Not quite my own preference, but I like how it reads, and while I will no longer play the current Dark Knight, I would for certain play that...

My own selfish desire is for Dark Knight to be more like the Dark Warrior.. not WAR Clone, I mean a fantasy subclass archtype from a few decades ago,
or at the least, I want FFXIV's Dark Knight to be a remaster improvement of the original 3.x version, that also more resembles the Dark Knight as it did appear in other FF games of the FF franchise.

It would also interest me a lot to see the Dark Knight be the full sustain, little burst, "Speed" type of the Tanks, whether that be literal low-GCD speed,
or better than that, the illusion of speed; through constant oGCD weaves and the always-active thrill of full sustain attacks, instead of being held back by "just wait for the burst" and "it is all in the burst".

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Contrary to how greatswords are depicted in most media, they would've been reasonably fast weapons (as were most tbh, can't really afford to be slow in a fight) since 1) they were heavy, but not unreasonably so 2) being a two-handed weapon meant more control and leverage. Hypothetically, if the other tanks (particularly WAR and GNB) didn't exist I could've seen DRK being a speedy glass cannon, able to sustain itself not through defence but life leech (steal it from WAR) and other skills of the sort

They didnt even make LD new player friendly. I dont think dark mind will be adjusted either. Hopefully they will at least fix blood weapon and replace salted earth with an AOE version of scourage.

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Originally Posted by Tsiron

Contrary to how greatswords are depicted in most media, they would've been reasonably fast weapons (as were most tbh, can't really afford to be slow in a fight) since 1) they were heavy, but not unreasonably so 2) being a two-handed weapon meant more control and leverage. Hypothetically, if the other tanks (particularly WAR and GNB) didn't exist I could've seen DRK being a speedy glass cannon, able to sustain itself not through defence but life leech (steal it from WAR) and other skills of the sort

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A spadone, montante, zweihander, etc., can be deceptively fast--especially when maintaining momentum--but that's a far cry from the "greatswords" we typically see wielded here by most FF iterations of DRK.

Historically, FF's Dark Knight job has always centered iconically on slow but seriously meaty hits, more in keeping with temporary bursts of (magical) strength by which to use otherwise unfeasible weapons.

That would be the case, yeh... My own thoughts are along the lines of FFXIV's Dark Knight takes those Dark Magic enhancements, and puts the inhumane strength into fast and constant sustain, instead of slow and heavy burst.
Wield that GreatSword like no normal mortal ever could, with a speed that defies reason and sense.

What I meant by FFXIV's Dark Knight more to resemble other Dark Knight versions across the FF franchise, was a reference to the self-sacrificial Blood Magic. A lot of Dark Knight versions sacrifice their own HP for power, and it would interest me to see FFXIV Dark Knight use that kind of self-sacrificial Blood Magic, dare to spend the HP bar as a resource.

Dark Knight could also have strong self-healing to sustain the risk and reward, or.. since the Dev Team insists that Healers heal more and DPS less,
then Dark Knight could just have this high heal-demand that forces Healers to heal more often.

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Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai

Dark Knight could also have strong self-healing to sustain the risk and reward, or.. since the Dev Team insists that Healers heal more and DPS less, then Dark Knight could just have this high heal-demand that forces Healers to heal more often.

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Parse-run communities: I sense a disturbance in the forcelogs.

Dark Knight is supposed to sacrifice their hp for unreasonable amounts of power. The GNB Super Boilide would actually make sense on DRK. I also think they would benefit thematically from two combo chains. One that allows them to gain MP and HP like we have now but another more powerful 3 part combo that sacrificed 5% HP with each attack. The second attack would grant a self haste in my vision and the last attack grant the damage buff like Edge and Flood currently provide. This self damaging combo could be used in conjunction with The Blackest Night to neutralize the hp loss and more daring Tanks could really push the limit with it depending on how much they trust their healers. Idealy switching between the two combos back and fourth with TBN on cooldown would make a perfectly neutral scenario where they can't take more health from themselves then they gain naturally with each individual able to decide how safe or risky they want to be by how often they use each combo tree.

A tank that sacrifices health on anything but an immunity (which even that is questionable) is never going to fly with the community. DPS is king, and anything that lowers DPS (such as a tank forcing healers to heal more often) is going to be shunned into non-existence.

Read my hate filled forum thread "DRK tanking. A little bit of pain" and enjoy! I wrote the idea while thinking of a certain character who shall go unnamed (who the entire class is widely acknowledged to be based on) and received a lot of...unenthusiastic replies regarding the changes I suggested, yet the idea keeps circling back around and I'd still like them to take further steps towards making the class better reflect that heroic struggler.

Wow. Good ideas

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

A tank that sacrifices health on anything but an immunity (which even that is questionable) is never going to fly with the community. DPS is king, and anything that lowers DPS (such as a tank forcing healers to heal more often) is going to be shunned into non-existence.

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That would be literally irrelevant. There is no reason for a HP-sacrificing tank not to gain in bonus throughput and/or eHP commensurately to the HP they spend (and healer throughput they'd thereby consume). It's not like this would be designed in to be solely a weakness, with nothing to leverage in the exchange (spending something for effectively nothing). The larger problems would be only

1. synergies (or less positively termed, dependencies), such as already the case with Living Dead and Benediction (even if that's still a far less than ideal pairing),
2. errant, and especially if varied, community perception as to whether the exchange is worthwhile,
3. DRKs greeding for extra resource when others need timely healing (an added skill ceiling element).

None of those, however, are unique or crippling issues.

Oh, are we doing the "What DRK truly is supposed to be in FFXIV" again?

Come on now. You can't even get people to heal LD, a 5 minute cooldown, without complaining about it, after risk-reward playstyles via stance dancing were deleted, HP draining, especially after B4B on DRG got the damage vulnerability up portion removed, is not a realistic direction for almost any job except maybe WAR? High risk playstyles in this game can't work post-ShB, because tanks are straight up are not allowed to be rewarded unevenly in their gameplay loops to keep the all-important "balance" intact. SB DRK and 4.1 WAR prove this, High risk, loads of "wow I was an idiot with my job actions and ruined everything", just to not be an outright detriment to the group and those two only impacted themselves in job resources, not a universal thing like HP. DRK already has to be carried on jobs that utilize raid buffs to be even slightly interesting/competitive, and I don't want to rely on healers pumping me full of HP so I can abuse high-potency draining actions at the detriment of what little remains of their play experience, because that's what would happen to pad ADPS DRK numbers.

Would I PREFER something that interacted with the kit more? Yeah, sure. Honored Sacrifice drains your HP in Bozja, and with enough Fortitude stacks, it's an objective benefit over Noble because you can TBN and significantly reduce the amount of self damage. But that's not something you can take in regular content, because you'd have to either A. Introduce systems on other tanks that could also outright kill them for doing basic rotations to keep disparity low, so healers don't immediately say "We are never taking a DRK in content, they literally kill themselves LMAO" or B. Make DRK so OP with this, people don't get a choice, which completely shatters balance ala HW WAR. Can you imagine doing an opener in something like God Kefka or Oracle or Exdeath or Cruise Chaser where your HP gets dropped to 1, and you're disproportionally punished because you aren't allowed to use your damage rotation for a period of time, unless you are catered to specifically? "Hey guys, I'm going to take this Bahamut triple tankbuster at 70% post-trio, my TBN is getting eaten by my own damage skills, just use more GCD heals on me." That sounds really frustrating! Even if you completely neutralized the HP drain in concept, people are still going to kill themselves, a narrative is going to form, and we're going to be right back to "Delete MNK" and "Dark Arts the Dark Arts" tier.

It all falls down to DRK optimization starting to require negative things to happen to the DRK, while other jobs do not have that stipulation (outside of 3m BLM Convert I guess?). That's enough to ensure something like that never happens to keep the homogeneity intact, without a complete restructuring of the entire job to accommodate what is essentially a parasitic design path through HP restoration increases, eHP increases, ability reworks, and trimming/removing what systems currently exist to reduce bloat. Basically a new job entirely at that point, one that would be far more apt as a DPS than a tank. If we had more barriers than we do, I could actually see this working, but that's tying defensives to offensive actions again, and I'm skeptical about that design direction based on previous removals.

DRK already has two resource gauges, and potential for a third if Darkside ever gets expanded on. Drain that instead, there is MORE than enough Darkside to drain. Do more stuff with revenge procs with TBN, take damage, get Dark Arts, deal damage. Expand that system. We've continued to ask for Haste restoration. Build upon systems, please stop deleting entire sections of the job with no replacements. I think this would be a big backpedal on SE's part considering what happened to tank stances. But then again, whether that's good or not is debatable. I certainly think we need some backpedaling at this point.

I'm not saying it's impossible, or a bad idea, I'm saying that complex and intricate systems are just open to SE messing it up again, they cannot be trusted to make such an experimental system like that properly. So many things could go wrong, and patches/fixes for issues too infrequent. Too far in either direction and you have a dead job, or an overcentralizing one. If you keep reworking and redefining DRK to whatever idea you think it's "supposed" to be, you're just going to further disappoint yourself when it isn't YOUR DRK.

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Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

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I would agree, a risk reward gameplay would not fly going forward. Square is trying to make the game as simple as possible and remove as much possibility for the party to accidently wipe themselves. I would prefer them to follow a similar combo empowering moveset similar to DRG with Raiden Thrust.

Instead of Inner Delirium like we have now, it could instead be a buff that empowers our 123 combo with new animations and additional effects or increased effects. The DRK of old will not work as a Tank sacrificing HP to empowered moves brings too much inconsistency and put too much pressure on healers. Living Dead already causes healers to get stressed and more stress for only the DRK to benefit from is something that I'm sure Square wouldn't want.

We would never go back to SB 4.3 DRK as they made healers redundant to bring to dungeons as DRK and WAR could self heal themselves so much to the point that it brought to question why healers were needed for dungeons if a DRK and WAR could go an entire dungeon without needing healers assistance and ask why not bring another DPS. Which is thus nerfed in ShB so that healers will occasionally need to heal the tank and they had their overall damaged increased should their ever come a point that Tanks somehow learned to keep themselves alive indefinitely without the aid of their party members.

HW DRK while fun, had little synergy across all its skills which was one of its main complaints but its high APM was what made many like it as well as its amazing animations and effects.

With keeping those things in mind, their are few paths to take to give DRKs the mechanical change that many want, make it feel like DRKs of previous expansions but not accidently make another role or job obsolete. DRKs hated Dark Arts Spam but if we were allowed to spam Edge of Shadow, I'm sure many would be fine with it as its not clipping our other GCDs and we don't have to think about when we should use it, it comes out fast enough that we still get the sense of DRKs high APM in HW, if they increased the amount of MP we generated from Syphon Strike and Carve and Spit to 1000mp generated, DRKs would be much happier with the flow of DRK as you would be allowed to use Flood or Edge more often even if it meant they would lower the potency of both skills, as it retains the high paced HW DRK and some sustain of SB DRK. I would have also given Abyssal Drain two charges, so that you would have at least one Abyssal Drain for every wall to wall pull, strong but not overpowered.

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Originally Posted by Keagian

HW DRK while fun, had little synergy across all its skills which was one of its main complaints but its high APM was what made many like it as well as its amazing animations and effects.

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This is not really true, HW DRK has so much synergy betwen skills and mechanics it was fantastic, DA have synergy with almost everything but the most important aspect is that skill make priority MP system dinamic and the combo system too, you couln't use certain skills without having Darkside on running around and even on the defensive department have sinery with DA, everything was conected somehow.

What ppl complained about HW DRK was the DA effects of Dark dance and Dark passenger that make the enemies blind and increase your dodge chance making it contra producent with the proc system and generate MP by being hit with Blood price if you use them at the same time but those who complained about that never understud that the MP generate phase and the dodge/make blind everyone should be used separately and you become so strong defensively on mass pulls that was really fun to manage.

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Originally Posted by shao32

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While i partially agree with you, theres more to it than that. BUT I'd also say HW DRK had more synergy than SB, and ShB. Also, the tanks in general were usually lacking in their designs anyways. WAR was the closest to having its abilities work well with eachother.

anyways, back on point, your statement is "they work well together, as long as you dont use them in any conjoining way together..." which basically means "they dont work well together".
Also, DRKs animations were (and 1 still is) clunky, and exceeded the GCD when double weaved, which dark arts required double weaving, as it joined with oGCDs. which means the design of the class having "long oGCD animations that cant be double weaved" didnt work well with "you have to double weave by design".

this isnt to say i didnt love HW DRK, i absolutely loved it, and its been my favorite tank, much less favorite version of DRK.

DRK doesn't need a buff or a nerf, it really needs a massive rework to be more synergized with the rest of the jobs.

for instance:
1. They really need drain skills or the ability to heal themselves (im looking at you pvp buff) so they are not an extreme burden on the healers. Too many times i said really wished i played PLD.
2. Reduce their initial burst dps but increase their sustained dps so they don't fall completely flat.
3. Living Dead can straight go to hell with its debuff that just kills you if the healer fails by 1% (you should not be killed if you have at least 50% hp)
4. Living Shadow should COMPELETLY mimic your abilities (with reduced damage)
5. Niche skills (dark missionary, dark mind) really should give mana if hit by a magic attack as blood weapon doesn't really last long enough and Delirium gives too little and adds more counter options besides TBN.

The high risk high reward style is dark knight in a nutshell. always has been in every itteration of the job throughout the series. I'd be happy if they went back to that. would they be kicked to the curb in a nano second by the majority of the comunity also probably true so where does that leave you? Leave as is or just make something random up which people are likely to complain about "Because it doesn't fit the class"

I just wish Unmend had a longer range :P

Very interesting to see all the output people have brought forward. Thanks for that. I personally do not have much to add to this conversation however.

Even after periods of abstinence from FFXIV (I unsubbed like never before), the job feels relatively much the same; it's boring, plays like a weak WAR, and repetitive to a fault. Much would be changed by simply reworking Delirium. I'm aware they can't please everyone but they are trying to please everyone and I think this is where they're wrong.

You can settle for amazing, but also boring. It's not only the gameplay of DRK but the lack of sounds indicating the force of the animations, etc. overall this job deserves a complete overhaul to put it on par with its oldest iteration in HW, which was 3.0

its more so the risk is not worth the reward.
with living dead, if its not pre planned, you are going to die.
with the 50% rule, its not as punishing to the healers, but it would not fade upon reaching 50% meaning you could still take damage at the last second that would put you under 50%.
also, having the ability to sustain yourself more would put less pressure on the healers and make you a little bit less dependent on them.

Disclaimer: I love playing Dark Knight at the moment, and I don't find the job boring at all.

With that said, I do have some things I'd like to see changed:

Living Dead:

My biggest issue with this ability is that it lacks the visual impact and clarity that I think it needs for it to function as it currently stands. It doesn't help that most players reduce visual effects either. Adding an hourglass animation on top of the DRK when it is used would be a huge help towards communicating "Hey, if I drop to 1 health, I need you to heal me!". And perhaps even add a timer/countdown on top of the Dark Knight for the Walking Dead effect. Communicating this information more clearly to healers is in my opinion the most important change needed for this ability, as it would make using it more intuitive and less punishing in non-coordinated environments. If this is not done however, then the ability would need some sort of change to help it be more in line with the other 3 "panic button" tank abilities (more intuitive and forgiving, most likely on a similar level to GNB's Superbolide).

Stalwart Soul:

My only issue with this ability is the level it is obtained at. Swap it with Dark Mind IMO, but as long as it is available before Abyssal Drain, it should be fine. If Dark Mind should be kept at level 45, then I would slot it at level 56 and put Abyssal Drain at level 58. This is 1 of 2 changes that I would make to alleviate DRK's "AoE combo" being lacking.

Abyssal Drain:

This ability feels underwhelming at times and also very satisfying at others. I would like for it to reach some middle ground and also alleviate DRK's "AoE combo" being lacking (this being the 2nd change to do that). Thus I propose a rework of the ability, with the new values underlined:

Cooldown: 60s -> 2.5s, oGCD -> GCD
Range: 15y -> 0y
Effect: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200 -> 100 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Combo Action: Stalwart Soul
Combo Potency: 200
Additional Effect -> Combo Bonus: Restores own HP
Cure Potency: 200 -> 100

Now while this isn't all of the things I'd consider changing about DRK, I think all of these changes would be a step in the right direction. The numbers can definitely be played around with as I am by no means an expert in balancing, but the concept behind the changes to me feels right.

One thing I would add is that if the "AoE" rework (Stalwart Soul + Abyssal Drain) changes were to go through, then I would definitely say that DRK would need another oGCD ability to compensate for losing Abyssal Drain on the oGCD toolkit. As to what that would be, I am not sure myself at the moment.

I think making Abyssal Drain a combo out of Stalwart Soul could work. Place the effect above DRK kind of like Holy Circle and change the character animation to the Grit one (I think this would make a nice flow to go from Unleash, to Stalwart, to that Grit character animation and Abyssal Drain popping above. Kind of like a "dark version" of Holy Circle)

1. What issue with Dark Knight do you have since 5.0?
it's boring, impossible to mess up, and slow - removing any semblance of resource management that defined DRK since the start. going from 4.x DRK's fast paced gameplay in both raiding context with oGCD keyboard piano and keeping your resources just low enough not to cap them but also not deplete them, and dungeons amazing aoe gameplay (jesus christ I still mourn the loss of our 4.x aoe gameplay which was literally the best dungeon gameplay in the history of this game) to 5.x's... everything, is depressing enough to quit tanking, and now I'm a bloody sam main.

2. Is there a viable solution to your problem? If so, write it down.
yes, unironically undo everything to 4.x DRK and expand on that instead. DRK in it's current state is not salvageable without another rework. there's no core concept tying the gameplay of DRK together. it's just a bunch of random damage abilities thrown together with no real gameplay synergies and spoopy black edgy magical colors. here, examples:

-TBN used to be a powerful button that required you to keep your blood below 50 so you don't cap it, but also have enough MP to cast when needed. now its just a generic powerful shield because there's no reason not to hold your mp all the time. why would you NOT want to hold your mp before? because of:
-Delirium, which used to be a button that wanted you to have at least 50 blood and a near-empty MP bar or else you'd cap MP. see how it wants the opposite gamestate from TBN? now it's just generic damage ability because you don't need to care about your blood meter cause TBN can't pop and overcap your blood if you have more than 50.
-and on a related note, CnS used to be a button you wanted to have mp for when you it came up, which added to the MP balancing gameplay. now it's literally just generic damage.

these all offered conflicting gamestates that you wanted to be in, so it was playing a delicate balance to make sure you had everything ready when you needed it. Dark Arts was the button that tied all of this together as an MP dump to manipulate how much MP you had at the moment, and you were punished for not thinking ahead because it would clog your oGCDs hard if you didn't press it enough earlier and were forced to press it frantically trying to dump your MP before Delirium, or leave you with no MP for your important skills if you pressed it too much. now it's just edge/flood and yet another generic damage thing.

see a theme here? that's why current DRK is not salvageable. a bunch of generic "i do the damages" buttons is not exciting or fun gameplay. and holy jesus don't get me started on the aoe gameplay. I know I refuse to shut up about that but the aoe gameplay. I can't believe we went from 4.x aoe gameplay to 1212121212121212121212 IS IT DEAD YET 12121212121212121212121212 and adding a 3 will not fix that

3. What did you like about previous iterations of Dark Knight?
gotta go fast

4. How did DRK capture your interest while playing FFXIV?
edgy and gotta go fast

My issue with DRK in 5.0: Remember how PLD was the "1-2-3" Job in 2.0? Yeah. This is DRK in 5.0. Only has one combo, and a handful of oGCDs it can spam. If anything, I think the devs decided to do a hard reset on this since DRK was getting to the point where "Dark Arts Treadmill" was bad and they didn't want to convolute anything with HW DRK(imo still the best DRK iteration I remember). As many DRKs know, DRK right now plays too damn similar to WAR. The Delirium rework was complete garbage from the start and we also need to talk about DRK's AoE Weaponskills, as well as stuff going forward. Also, Living Dead is still convoluted and is not new player friendly in describing its effects.

My issue with DRK in 5.0: Remember how PLD was the "1-2-3" Job in 2.0? Yeah. This is DRK in 5.0. Only has one combo, and a handful of oGCDs it can spam. If anything, I think the devs decided to do a hard reset on this since DRK was getting to the point where "Dark Arts Treadmill" was bad and they didn't want to convolute anything with HW DRK(imo still the best DRK iteration I remember). As many DRKs know, DRK right now plays too damn similar to WAR. The Delirium rework was complete garbage from the start and we also need to talk about DRK's AoE Weaponskills, as well as stuff going forward. Also, Living Dead is still convoluted and is not new player friendly in describing its effects.


Fixing the problems I have with DRK:

1) Restructure Leveling for DRK. Yoshida and Combat Devs, I implore you. Take a good look at GNB, WAR, and PLD. What do they all have in common? All their AoEs have a combo at Lv 40! DRK has to wait until Lv 72 to even get their AoE combo, so until then they're either sitting there spamming Unleash when they have no MP for Flood, or waiting on oGCDs. Considering this job starts at Lv 30, we definitely need to fix this so it's more streamlined.

2) Delirium. Good lord. Old Delirium was a debuff we could cause on the boss, but ever since they changed it to be like WAR's Inner Release, it really hasn't done DRK any favors. One thing that this game tends to do best is making certain to differentiate the jobs' functionality so that they retain their own identity. When things like this overlap and you notice that two jobs are literally doing the same thing and the buttons they use for it are the same action essentially, that's where we need to reconsider. Putting it in this perspective, we have two options: One, it can be made functionally like WAR in terms of generating resources, which defeats the purpose of differentiation of jobs. Two, we rework the Gauge itself and how resource is generated. If we want to keep current Blood Gauge for sake of familiarity, then we need to just rework the button, which would be Three.

If we had to rework Three, I'd honestly just have it halve all MP Costs(TBN, Edge, Flood) on DRK for a set time since oGCDs can be used faster and more reliably than GCDs. Compared to the other three tanks we only really have one Tank that operates on that kind of burst power alone for opener: GNB. If we make Delirium recover 6000 MP on top of that, it perfectly sets up for a window where you're at 4000 MP(i.e. in the middle of raid opener) since normally it costs 3000 MP to use Edge/Flood/TBN and adds more burst power into the rotation. I don't think we've had anyone that manipulates MP cost either for burst; and it's not like DRK would have any weird MP problems like in the past since MP is more rounded now. I also did the calculation at base with Darkside 5x Bloodspiller(full 10s) vs. 8x Edges(Darkside after first Edge), and it winds up to being an additional 1,050 potency. I don't know if it'd need tweaking, but the burst would feel better than trying to deal with Skill Speed or Latency issues trying to get your 5th Bloodspiller within that 10s window.

3) Living Dead. Yes. We've beat a dead horse on this over and over, but I'm not going to stop until SE actually makes the ability make sense instead of a jumble of words. Simply put: There's too much wording happening for a simple skill. Healers(I being one of them nowadays) have complained about DRK's Living Dead being extremely draining to heal for healers, and for some(SCH in particular sticks out) impossible to if they are in a situation where they've already used resources before for this. The only one that has always reliably 100% kept DRK alive is WHM for its Benediction since it's only 1 CD they use compared to about 3 for AST and sometimes 4 for SCH. To make it easier, DRK's Living Dead should work as such: When HP is reduced to 0, your status will change to Walking Dead. Walking Dead prevents HP from dropping below 1 and recovers HP equivalent to damage dealt by Weaponskills for the duration. This would allow DRK to be able to sustain itself in the Overworld when leveling, as it would not have to worry about dying afterward if they procced Walking Dead on the Overworld for some reason or another.

4) Blood Weapon. I feel like this needs to be fixed in some way. Blood Weapon as it is used to have that fast effect, but they took it away because of how old DRK worked(plus the DA Treadmill, and weird MP Maxes). Since MP has been made static at 10,000, I think Blood Weapon should have that haste effect back; it'd give that same feel like back in Heavensward, but with the MP values it gives currently so DRK doesn't get to Full MP on an entire trash pack and can spam Flood.

5) Dark Mind. This is given to DRK early on in its leveling process. However, most dungeons frontload Physical Damage compared to magical a majority of the time. While it's still good stand-alone as a magic mitigation tool, it could have that slight bit of survivability added to it so that the leveling process is a bit smoother up to 70, where TBN is. Adding 10% Physical resistance would work similar to Camouflage in this sense so that each job has proper ways to mitigate evenly across the spectrum going up to that point.

That's...really all I have to say on my piece in regards to DRK's issues. The rest of its kit seems to stay to its theme, and allows it to stand out as a job.

As for previous iterations, it's literally Heavensward DRK that was the best. You had all sorts of things to play with, and it was a very interesting job. A lot of people liked both the aesthetic and the gameplay. I can't really say much else since HW DRK has been a thing of the past forever ago, but I just remember it being really fun to play with.

For how DRK caught my interest, it was for one the writing, the way it was written to evoke certain emotions and feelings, as well as convey that darkness isn't necessarily bad all the time; just if you dig too deep.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

1) Restructure Leveling for DRK. Yoshida and Combat Devs, I implore you. Take a good look at GNB, WAR, and PLD. What do they all have in common? All their AoEs have a combo at Lv 40! DRK has to wait until Lv 72 to even get their AoE combo, so until then they're either sitting there spamming Unleash when they have no MP for Flood, or waiting on oGCDs. Considering this job starts at Lv 30, we definitely need to fix this so it's more streamlined.

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I get the desire to have some actual AoE play prior to Shadowbringers, but I kind of hate that we so quickly seem to forget that depth in AoE can exist without the bloat of A-B spam of "AoE combos".

Yes, it's the stale bread we've already been served and—since Unleash and Abyssal Drain's budget has already been siphoned off into Stalwart Soul—would be serviceable, but I really don't see the appeal of having opening AoE burst reduced and AoE GCDs made less modular by turning a class's AoE into a two-button/-two GCD of still singular decision.