Dark Knight Megathread

Maybe 6.05... on with PLD I go

Take the damage away from DRK and you might as well delete the whole job

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Originally Posted by Shin96

Take the damage away from DRK and you might as well delete the whole job

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Lol, might as well delete the job NOW for everyone that isn’t a savage speed racer or a wanna be.

I'm benching DRK as a statement to the devs, that shit is staying at 80 till they clean it up. I literally feel healers that aren't in my FC cringing when I play DRK at the entrance. While damage is nice, it's a tank not a dps.

Honestly just give Blood Weapon a bloodbath trait and reduces its CD to 25s and everything is fixed.

that doesn't even fix blood weapon itself just makes the problem more frequent

Blood Weapon isn't the problem. The problem is lack of sustain. DRK has multiple damage sources to make a bloodbath trait very good. Given that DRK is already at the highest damage you could take away its one contributing factor to damage which is increasing the blood gauge. That would also bring it in line with the entire rest of the series that contains blood weapons.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

Blood Weapon isn't the problem. The problem is lack of sustain. DRK has multiple damage sources to make a bloodbath trait very good. Given that DRK is already at the highest damage you could take away its one contributing factor to damage which is increasing the blood gauge. That would also bring it in line with the entire rest of the series that contains blood weapons.

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Blood Weapon is STILL one of its main problems since early ShB. And the devs turn into a blind eye saying "We never receive any form of complaints about blood weapon" which is a god damn lie, but its obvious that they don't play tank, just DPS.

And I agree that the lack of sustain is one of its problem that is lacking, but there's more to it than that.

And if we're going by YOUR way of decreasing its damage but increases the blood gain.... it's going to be a none stop bloodspiller spam. We've already had that in ShB, I don't want to see it again.

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Originally Posted by VeolE

And if we're going by YOUR way of decreasing its damage but increases the blood gain.... it's going to be a none stop bloodspiller spam. We've already had that in ShB, I don't want to see it again.

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I think you read that backwards. Freyt's suggestion was to get rid of Blood Weapon's blood contribution (leaving only MP gains).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I think you read that backwards. Freyt's suggestion was to get rid of Blood Weapon's blood contribution (leaving only MP gains).

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Okay, that make sense now. My apologies for reading it wrong.

Now that the expansion is out and players have had a chance to spend some time with DRK, I feel that my opinions and ideas that I expressed earlier in this thread still mostly stand.
Included in the collapsed section below is the majority of my previous post from HERE on pg.77 of the thread.
Keep in mind that my previous suggestions were all using pre-Endwalker potencies and so they may be off from where they would need to be now.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

So here is a more comprehensive post on my thoughts and ideas for Dark Knight after seeing the Endwalker media tour info on Dark Knight.

I will start off by saying that I supported and mostly liked the changes made to Dark Knight in the rework for Shadowbringer because I felt that it established a stronger and more refined foundation to have the job grow from. While I overall had positive feelings towards the rework, I will not deny that I also felt that there were issues that still needed to be addressed, especially long-standing issues that had been voiced for a while like the issues with Living Dead’s death penalty and Blood Weapon not always fitting the full number of GCD attacks within it.

Additionally, I also felt that while it was a better foundation, the rework was missing just a little bit of extra gameplay elements to put it at the same level of the other tank jobs, not from a balance perspective but from a game-play perspective. To me it seemed like the rework was primarily focused on cleaning up existing issues and addressing feedback from during Stormblood, but then fell short on going beyond that to add that extra layer of gameplay that would normally come with a new expansion. This left Dark Knight feeling as if it was one expansion behind in terms of game-play design and evolution.

Based off what has been revealed with the Endwalker media tour it feels like Dark Knight is lacking in direction to establish its own distinct gameplay style. The lack of any changes of real substance that would evolve Dark Knight’s gameplay is disappointing to say the least and just compounds with the existing issues and feeling of being less evolved already really make Dark Knight feel lacking as a job in comparison to the other tank jobs.

Below I go over some of the existing problems with Dark Knight and provide suggestions on how to address them.

I then go over what changes I would like to see for Endwalker that would better help evolve the job into something hopefully more fun to play.

Keep in mind the numeric values such as potencies, durations and recast times are only general “guesstimate” values and could be tweaked for the purpose of balance. It’s not the values that are important but the general gameplay concepts.

So let's get to it. First the existing problems and suggested changes.

Blood Weapon

The issue with Blood Weapon is that it’s 10 second duration and the way that it activates, on landing a hit and not on activating/initiating the attack, causes the window to be far too tight and often results in not being able to fit all 5 attacks into the duration window. This is just compounded by the fact that Dark Knight’s AoE attacks are spells and tanks do not get spell speed to lower the GCD recast time of them, making it even harder to fit 5 in.
I suggest making Blood Weapon not work via a duration but to instead work with the stack system that has been established for most other such abilities that used to have short, tight timing windows such as Delirium.
Additionally, I have added a slight self-heal via a trait at lvl.84. This will help bring Dark Knight’s self-healing more in line with other tanks and is inspired by Paladin’s new trait that adds healing to Holy Spirit and Holy Circle. Blood Weapon also traditionally healed the user in the Final Fantasy series, so it is only fitting to have this iteration heal as well.

Lvl.35: Blood Weapon
Ability – Range: Self - Cast: Instant – Recast: 60s
Provides 5 stacks of Blood Weapon for a duration of 30s.
Upon landing a weaponskill or spell, 1 stack of Blood Weapon is consumed. When a stack of Blood Weapon is consumed; the Blood Gauge is increased by 10, MP is restored, and HP is restored with a cure potency of 200.

Dark Mind

The problem with Dark Mind is the fact that it only affects a specific damage type, magic, which greatly limits when it can be used effectively.
I suggest addressing this issue by removing Dark Mind and replacing it with the new Endwalker ability Oblation, which itself is removed from its place at lvl.82. I also increased the mitigation from 10% to 15% since this change would technically reduce the number of defensive abilities that Dark Knight has. Making it able to be used on a party member also helps distinguish it among the tank unique defensive abilities.

Lvl.45: Oblation (replaces Dark Mind)
Ability – Range: 0y -Radius: 30y – Cast: Instant – Charge Time: 60s
Reduces damage taken by a party member or self by 15%.
Duration: 10s
Maximum Charges: 2

Living Dead

This is one that players have been asking to be changed since Dark Knight was introduced in Heavensward. It is the only tank invulnerability ability that has a caveat effect that has a hardline requirement in needing 100% of total tank hp restored or it literally kills the tank. This makes this ability the only such defensive ability requiring such a high level of healing which makes it, as others have deemed it, “a healing black hole”. All other invulnerabilities require only just enough healing so that the tank doesn’t die right after their invulnerability wears off, which is almost always far less than what Living/Walking Dead requires. This problem is then complicated even more by the fact that how the ability even works is not messaged well. There is no good indication of when the transition from Living Dead to Walking Dead occurs, which often leads to being healed too early so Walking Dead never activates and the ability is wasted or not being healed at all or too late because the healer didn’t notice that it triggered. The remaining amount needing to be healed isn’t conveyed at all, making it a guessing game which can lead to over-healing and wasted resources, or not getting healed enough and the tank dying. Then to top it all off, once the healing requirement is met, the ability ends which means that an overzealous healer could heal too quickly and remove the invulnerability effect too early which can easily get the tank killed, and not to mention it guarantees that the Dark Knight will never get a full 10s of invulnerability since when that 10s is reached, the Dark Knight drops dead.
With all the above issues which have been around since Heavensward, making all other tank invulnerabilities 10 seconds long in Endwalker just makes the already problematic Living Dead that much worse by comparison.
At this point Living Dead absolutely must be addressed and preferably completely replaced.
I suggest replacing it with the ability below, Danse Macabre. This ability tries to keep the style and general concept but reworks the mechanics to make it match better with the other invulnerability abilities. It is designed somewhat to be a reverse Superbolide in which instead of being set to minimum HP, you are set to maximum HP and then it reduces you down by 33% per server tick over 3 ticks for a total of 99% of your total health. Functionally they are almost exactly the same asides from two important factors. First, going to full HP is less likely to give your healer a heart attack like dropping to 1HP would. Second, going to max HP and then having it decrease over ~9s makes it easier for a healer to lose out healing through over-healing if they cast the heals too early on. This little extra complication and consideration towards healing is what justifies the lower recast compared to Superbolide.

Lvl.50: Danse Macabre (Replaces Living Dead)
Ability –Range: Self - Cast: Instant – Recast: 300s
Recovers HP to full and renders you impervious to most attacks for a duration of 10s.
Additional Effect: Afflicts the Dark Knight with Death’s March.
- Death’s March effect: Gradually damages the Dark Knight over 10s for a total of their maximum HP. This damage cannot reduce the Dark Knight below 1 HP

Abyssal Drain

The problem with Abyssal Drain is that it is meant to act as Dark Knight’s equivalent to the other tank 60s self-heal abilities, however it is far too skewed towards being effective against large groups of enemies while being extremely weak against single targets.
I suggest the changes to the ability outlined below that instead provide a set potency cure on ability usage. While it may decrease the heal somewhat in large enemy groups of 6 or more enemies, it is far more effective in single target situations like boss fights. I also increased the damage a bit to the primary target while keeping it the same for any other enemies to make it have a little more “oomph” in single-target. Overall the goal was to make the ability better for boss fights, trials, etc. where you are fighting a single target since this is where the ability was severely lacking.

Lvl.56: Abyssal Drain
Ability – Range: 20y – Radius: 5y – Cast: Instant – Recast: 60s
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 300 to the target and 50% for all remaining enemies.
Additional Effect: Restores own HP on use.
Cure Potency: 1000

Delirium

I'm not going to go into the complaint of Delirium being a "discount Inner Release" or that spamming a single ability a bunch is boring, it is, because I think that making it 3 uses as opposed to 5 and at 60s instead of 90s will help alleviate some of this and not make it feel as bad.
My problem with Delirium, based on what we saw with the media tour, is that the ability restores far too little MP. I already felt that Delirium returned too little in the Shadowbringer version and with it going from 5 uses to 3 uses with Endwalker, the situation will just be exacerbated.
Personally I would like to see each stack of Delirium restoring 1000MP so that you end up gaining 3000MP from Delirium, enough for a single use of an MP spender ability.

Stalwart Soul

The problem with Stalwart Soul is not the ability itself but when it is acquired. All the other tanks get the second step for their AoE combo at level 40 while Dark Knight doesn’t get theirs until level 72. This makes the leveling process for the job or doing level synced down not as smooth or enjoyable as the other tanks.
My suggestion is simple, lower the level at which Stalwart Soul is acquired to 40 or somewhere thereabouts.

Living Shadow

While Living Shadow is a bit of a controversial ability with part of the community feeling that it is good while another part feeling that it is boring because it has zero interactivity with the player or with the rest of the kit.
I won’t be addressing those concerns here, addressed in later changes, and instead just wanted to suggest a very simple tweak that I have seen mentioned here and there for a while, to simply remove the Blood cost on the ability since it is already gated by a very long recast time for an offensive ability and having a resource cost in addition to the long recast is just excessive.
Additionally, effective uptime of the simulacrum can be diminished during periods where the target enemy moves around a lot which is a huge detriment to this ability. The base movement speed of the simulacrum should be increased to compensate for this.

Lvl. 80: Living Shadow
Ability – Range: 0 – Radius: 0 – Cast: Instant – Recast: 120
Conjures a simulacrum of your darkside to fight alongside you.
Simulacrum Attack Potency: 300
Duration: 24s

Now I will go over my suggested changes and ideas for levels 81 – 90 in Endwalker. I will outline all ability and traits gained during these levels, so you may see some things like the Melee Mastery trait in there or other stuff that is unchanged from what was shown in the media tour.
The main goal of these suggestions is to provide changes and an evolution to abilities more inline with changes made to the other tanks, as well as introducing new gameplay elements that would provide a more defined and unique feel to Dark Knight. Basically a bit to make DRK more like the other tank jobs where it should be more similar and a bit to differentiate it where it should be more different.

Lvl.82

Lvl.82: Enhanced the Blackest Night
Trait
When the barrier from The Blackest Night is absorbed the following additional effects are granted.
Additional Effect: Restores HP to self or target with a Cure Potency of 800.
Additional Effect: Grants Shadow’s Embrace to self or target for a duration of 10 seconds.
- Shadow’s Embrace effect: reduce damage taken by 10%.

This change is just simply to more closely mirror the buff changes made to the other tank frequent use defensive abilities. Seeing what was done to them while TBN went unchanged felt wrong and giving DRK Oblation was not enough to even things out.
Having the new additional effects be triggered from TBN breaking keeps the additional mitigation from potentially getting in the way of TBN breaking and while you don't get the benefit of the defensive effects stacking like the other tanks get, it does result in the effects being more spread out and therefore giving DRK a longer period of increased defenses which I feel is a worthwhile trade-off.

Lvl.84

Lvl.84: Melee Mastery
Trait
Increases the potency of Hard Slash to 210, Syphon Strike to 110, and Souleater to 110.

Same as media tour.

Lvl.84: Enhanced Living Shadow
Trait
Increases the potency of attacks dealt by your simulacrum to 300.

Same as media tour.

Lvl.84: Enhanced Blood Weapon
Trait
Provides the additional effect of restoring HP with a cure potency of 300 when a stack of Blood Weapon is consumed.

This change just adds the self-heal to Blood Weapon as mentioned in the previous section.

Lvl.86

Lvl.86: Shadow Blade
Trait
Executing Edge of Shadow provides the effect Shadow Blade for 12s.
- Shadow Blade effect: allows the execution of Scourge.

Lvl.86: Scourge
Weaponskill – Range: 3y – Radius: 0y – Cast: Instant – Recast: 2.5s
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200 and additional damage over time with a potency of 60 for a duration of 15s.
Additional Effect: Restores MP and increases Blood Gauge by 10.
Can only be executed while under the effect of Shadow Blade. Effect fades upon execution.

This trait and new ability is to try to change up and add more of a unique feel to Dark Knight's rotation, specifically in the GCD aspect to break up the Soul Eater combo more. To me Dark Knight is supposed to be somewhat the antithesis of Paladin. PLD having a very strict and defined rotation fits very well with the overarching delineation that exists in the Final Fantasy series between Light/Order and Darkness/Chaos, with PLD representing order with a very ordered rotation and DRK representing chaos. To then build on this thematic difference, the idea of making DRK having a more freeform rotation made up of oGCDs and GCDs that are gated by resources moreso than a strict linear rotation or timers would hopefully result in a more dynamic and "chaotic" rotation.
The idea of having the GCD follow up from an oGCD came from the initial interpretation from the media tour teaser where the Shadowbringer ability was thought to be a weaponskill that seemed to follow from Edge, sort of like a reverse Continuation or sort of like the old version of Dark Arts.
I then made it a DoT to force spacing them out a little bit to remove the potential of having to spam it and in the hopes that with it being spaced out at more regular intervals that it would be more effective at changing up the GCD gameplay for the job.
It was made "Scourge" because people have being saying that they want that ability back and here was a way that fit.

Lvl.88

Lvl.88: Enhanced Dark Arts
Trait
Increases the number of Dark Arts that can be stored to 2.

This change adds more flexibility and strategy towards Dark Arts, essentially turning it into more of another resource to utilize and plan around.

Lvl.88: Salt and Darkness
Ability – Range: 0y – Radius: 0y – Cast: Instant – Recast: 15s
All enemies standing in the corrupted patch of Salted Earth takes additional unaspected damage with a potency of 500.
Additional Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 30.

This is basically the same as the media tour version, I just added a bit of Blood gain on usage just to have more abilities tie back into the resource gameplay of Dark Knight.

Lvl.90

Lvl.90: Shadowbringer
Ability – Range: 10yx10y line - Cast: Instant – Charge Time: 30s – MP Cost: 3000
Deals unaspected damage to all enemies in a straight line before you with a potency of 700 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies.
Maximum Charges: 2
Can only be executed while under the effect of Darkside.
If executed while under the effect of Dark Arts, a Dark Arts will be consumed instead of MP.

This change is meant to do a few things.
First it changes it from just another independent oGCD to one that is tied into your primary resource MP. This then connects Shadowbringer and Edge/Flood so that they will not compete for space in your opener/burst periods since Shadowbringer will be used in place of an Edge instead of having to fit it alongside. Making it cost MP also makes Shadowbringer less of a "fire when available and forget" ability since it will require at least a little bit of planning to make sure you have the resources to use it.
Second, it is changed from a 60s recast with 2 charges to a 30s recast with 2 charges to make it available more frequently. You will already be trying to use both charges in a single burst period and doing that every 120s is just too infrequent and so making it every 60s felt right.
Additionally the potencies were adjusted to compensate for the MP cost, rolling in the potency of edge/flood as a starting point and then layering on the additional potency of the media tour version of the ability to make my rework relatively equitable.

Lvl.90: Enhanced Living Shadow II
Trait
Allows the execution of Living Shadowbringer.

Lvl.90 Living Shadowbringer
Ability – Range: 10y x 10y line – Cast: Instant
Causes your simulacrum to use the ability Shadowbringer which delivers an attack to all enemies in a straight line in front of it with a potency of 500 for the first enemy, and 20% less for all remaining enemies. Your simulacrum will dissipate after execution. If not manually activated while your simulacrum is active, it will be triggered automatically before dissipating.
Additional Effect: Restores MP based on the amount of remaining duration for the simulacrum when used. No MP is restored if the ability is automatically triggered.
*This action cannot be assigned to a hotbar.

This change is basically a revision of Machinist's Pile Bunker for their Automaton Queen with the intent of taking the passive "your shadow now uses Shadowbringer" trait and turning it into something a little more interactive.

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In addition to my previous thoughts, below are some other thoughts and ideas that I have had since release.

Here are some potential alternate ideas from what I posted previously in regards to the suggested Dark Mind/Oblation and TBN changes.

* Instead of adding on additional effects to TBN when it breaks to make it more similar to the additions to the other tanks (my previous suggestion), TBN roughly stays as it currently is with the exception of increasing its duration to 8s-10s.
* Leave Dark Mind as is instead of replacing it with the tweaked version of Oblation.
* You still get Oblation at lvl.82 but it is changed as follows ...

Oblation - Lvl.82 - Ability - 45s - 30y
Reduces damage taken by party member or self by 10% for 15s.
Maximum Charges 2
If target is under the effect of The Blackest Night; The Blackest Night barrier is consumed, granting a Dark Arts and the additional effect Shadows' Embrace.
Shadows' Embrace effect: Creates a barrier around target that absorbs damage totaling 40% of target's maximum HP. Duration: 15s.

These alternate ideas, which all go together as a set, would keep things a bit closer to where they currently are and keep DRKs' defensive game-play a little more varied compared to the other tanks as opposed to trying to make it more alike, particularly playing off of the idea that Oblation is sort of there to layer on top of TBN to enhance it, an idea which to me seems reinforced by how much the visual fx for Oblation looks like a more powerful TBN. Additionally this idea leans into ability interaction and player skill, both of which are things that many players feel has been diminished over time for DRK.
In terms of player skill it introduces a number of factors. On the reward side it provides a way to manually "break" TBN to guarantee a Dark Arts and gives you the chance to utilize some of the TBN shield before breaking that and replacing it with the stronger shield. On the risk side it requires you to use TBN on yourself or another before being able to get the most out of Oblation, and also there is the very real risk of messing up its execution by trying to ride out the TBN shield as long as possible and it breaking before you use Oblation.
Also note that the charge time/recast was reduced from 60s to 45s which makes it slightly more frequent and puts it at a rate of approximately one usage for every two usages of the other tanks' upgraded short recast defensives (Holy Sheltron, Bloodwhetting, Heart of Corundum) and so this ability should be a bit more powerful than the upgraded other abilities, that way the combination of the more frequent plain TBNs and the less frequent Oblation+TBNs roughly equal out.
As stated in my previous post, all numeric values such as the shield strength, recast and durations are all just "guestimates" and are open to changes based on balance needs.

A bit of a random thought that I had, but in terms of interaction with your Living Shadow, it would be kind of neat if you gave each other a buff when near each other similar to Dragoon's Dragon Sight ability. Not a must have that I am pushing for right now, just a bit of a musing.

Lastly, an additional set of changes that I would like to see revolves around the last minute change to Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain where they got their recasts tied together.
* I would like to see both abilities' recast times reduced from 60s to 45s. This will make them available a bit more frequently since you can no longer use both but either/or. Setting them at 45s as opposed to say 30s would also hopefully desync their usage a bit from the 60s burst cycle to help make it a tad bit less crazy, while also spreading out ability usage a little so it is not so dead in the periods between bursts.
* I think that the potency of Carve and Spit should be reduced a bit (450 pot so it's just under Edge?) while drastically increasing the MP it restores, placing greater emphasis on the resource generation aspect of the ability, which can then feed back into damage. Too many of DRKs' abilities are basically just additional direct damage with little else going on and it could use a bit more variance, particularly aspects playing more into the resource management game-play.
* I am perfectly fine with CnS not getting a heal on it as long as some decent self-healing is added elsewhere like to Blood Weapon as I suggested; however I feel that because of the loss of Abyssal Drain in single-target, weak as it was, the heal potency for Soul Eater should be increased a bit to compensate with it being at least 350 potency if not more.

Hmm that may work....

I've been healing a ton on Sage and I dunno why but DRK feels like they're the hardest to heal.
They're the only tanks where I feel like their health can just go from full to 20%- in a split second I dunno why they're so squishy?

This is only in dungeons tho I dunno about Extremes.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I've been healing a ton on Sage and I dunno why but DRK feels like they're the hardest to heal.
They're the only tanks where I feel like their health can just go from full to 20%- in a split second I dunno why they're so squishy?

This is only in dungeons tho I dunno about Extremes.

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Dark Mind cannot be used unless there is magical damage, meaning there's one less cooldown that can be used. TBN has no upgrade, so while the other tanks gain the ability to heal themselves using their signature cooldowns, DRK is unable to. Meaning mostly sustain reasons, the other tanks are able to keep themselves afloat to help with the healing, but DRKs have nothing anymore that can help with that.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Dark Mind cannot be used unless there is magical damage, meaning there's one less cooldown that can be used. TBN has no upgrade, so while the other tanks gain the ability to heal themselves using their signature cooldowns, DRK is unable to. Meaning mostly sustain reasons, the other tanks are able to keep themselves afloat to help with the healing, but DRKs have nothing anymore that can help with that.

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This technically doesn't matter. All that matters is the amount of mitigation over a fight (or, technically, the amount of mitigation when and to an extent it matters over a fight).

Take Heart of Corundum's 30% mitigation (for 4s, 15% for 8s) and self-Excogitation on a 25s CD. Do you think a job with so superior a 25s, and all other skills being roughly equal, would be worse off even than in ShB (or than DRK presently) even if Camouflage were made physical-only?

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

IIRC out of the tanks DRK is the lowest played out of them all. I'm fairly positive PLD or WAR (one of the two) has about double the players on certain fights.

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Could have fooled me, all I got were DRKs when I leveled my healer.

The 3rd fight in the new raid feels like its made with the other 3 tanks 25s mitigation in mind. Having on demand healing/mitigation every 25 seconds feels like a requirement. Outside of Dark mind it was kinda of rough with the autos. Anyone else have the same experience or was it just me? Really wonder how it'll play out in savage

Every encounter is always designed with the lower comon denominator in mind, aka PLD and his inferior amount of CDs in order to keep it viable, so all that stuff of TBN short CD adventage has never been an actual adventage at all in raid enviroments and on dungeons has been semi ok bcs is a shield and not a mitigation wich works better there.

Its so weird, SE changed a lot from Shadowbringers while adding almost nothing. I guess I'm the only person who doesn't have an issue with the blackest night and its reliance on MP and its recast. My biggest peeve is the auto salted earth placement, when I heard it was announced I didn't think it would bother me as much as it does. I wish they would let you pick between auto-placement and manual placement, oh wait, they did and they removed it because people can't learn to macro (despite full in-game tutorials). Now there is no option, a strict downgrade. Not a fan of drain and C&S being on the same timer either. Also, how have we made it this long without a living dead fix? Do they even look at any dark knight discussions?

Its not as if this class is the whipping boy, just seems like they don't care.

Does anyone ever get the feeling that DRKs kit is one bandaid on top of another?

-the wave of the future was working within burst windows so we were given delirium to replace sustained damage in shb.
-tbn was made the beast of a shield in shb bcs LD sucks and se doesn’t want to fix it.
-oblation seems a lazy patch for no changes with dark mind.

And a side note for all that say “but DRK does the most damage!” That’s all well and good when it plays into the kit (like war doing spike damage for big heals) but for that to be the sole theme for the expansion without anything paired with it is sad… And that’s before the you factor for all the items left untouched or do a deeper comparison between the tanks.

I’m sure DRK will be okay in raids but why should I have to switch to another tank to not struggle in dungeons or old ex trials for solo? I don’t think I’m the only one that feels this way. There should be a baseline that tanks can do since sqex is all about homogenization these days.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

Does anyone ever get the feeling that DRKs kit is one bandaid on top of another?

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Welcome to everything from ShB onwards.

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Originally Posted by Aluja89

Could have fooled me, all I got were DRKs when I leveled my healer.

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WHEN you leveled your Healer... DRKs getting to max level do some end game stuff then they Drop the Job because its shit. im seeing it constantly. MANY people switching to other tanks.

Im starting to feel that every time i get into a Trial or dungeon that i should start with an apology to the healers for playing a DRK before i start pulling lol

Add a Convalescence effect to Living Dead. Make it easier for Healers to actually get you out of Living Dead
Increase the damage of Abyssal Drain to be a DPS gain on 3 targets instead of the current 4 and up the cure potency to at least 250.
Add a Health Restore effect to Carve and Spit of 250 as well. If it's going to share a CD with AD, it should do the same thing
Have Salted Earth provide a Regen of 100 potency for the DRK while active . Have Salt and Darkness offer a 400 potency heal on top.
Either add a Life Steal effect to Dark Mind or just merge Oblation and Dark Mind into 1 skill that provides 15% Damage Mitigation to the DRK or a player of their choosing.

Nothing too crazy but DRK does need more mitigation and/or self sustain because right now its pitiful.

OR, or, what about reducing the healing on the other tanks?

It just seems like the sheer quantity, and quality, of the other tanks's sustain is cultivating this mentality of "DRK isn't worth it if I gotta heal," and conversely "If it's not a DRK I don't have to worry about healing."

I'm all for tanks getting some form of method to keep themselves alive. WAR was always (as far as i remember playing) king of survival. But, I'm more worried that this current tank and healer meta/design ethos is just a sign that the devs in charge of job changes and adjustment don't play tanks/healers at any level of seriousness and don't roundtable the ramifications of their decisions because "well it heals / tanks enemies, what more does it need?" It's a runaway cycle that's only gonna get worse if someone doesn't rein in the shiesty antics of non-DPS design.

Or I'm just a nutjob. IDK.

I feel like I'm the only one that likes Endwalker DRK. It makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I said no one should level it, tried it at 80 and hey it's not actually that bad.

Dark Knight needs a better version of Delirium, call it Dark Arts 2.0 renewed or whatever. The gameplay loop is definitely a lot smoother than ShB's DRK and speedier. All they need to do is fix the disjointed feeling you have while playing like Shadowbringer being an OGC instead of being a GCD.

Oblation needs to be cut down by one and have a cooldown of 15 seconds with HP regen additionally. Make it like all the other tanks. For gameplay I suggest adding a DoT similiar to Reaper, making your target 10% weaker to your damage. Living Dead obviously needs a fix! Overall, I enjoy it but I hope everyone else gets a better deal out of it someday.

DRK isn't my main anymore but I definitely enjoy its change from ShB, that was an absolute trashfire and felt way too slow. Not too mention Inner Delirium.

Just delete the other tanks self sustain it and boom DRK is king after all they are tanks not healers lol

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

OR, or, what about reducing the healing on the other tanks?

It just seems like the sheer quantity, and quality, of the other tanks's sustain is cultivating this mentality of "DRK isn't worth it if I gotta heal," and conversely "If it's not a DRK I don't have to worry about healing."

I'm all for tanks getting some form of method to keep themselves alive. WAR was always (as far as i remember playing) king of survival. But, I'm more worried that this current tank and healer meta/design ethos is just a sign that the devs in charge of job changes and adjustment don't play tanks/healers at any level of seriousness and don't roundtable the ramifications of their decisions because "well it heals / tanks enemies, what more does it need?" It's a runaway cycle that's only gonna get worse if someone doesn't rein in the shiesty antics of non-DPS design.

Or I'm just a nutjob. IDK.

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after playing the new raids, the new self-sustain options are welcomed and understandable.

Regarding tanks' self sustain. It going to be pretty problematic, when both tanks take damage for prolonged amount of time. Like go to P3 as DRK and be an OT there. See how fun it is.

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Originally Posted by Shin96

I feel like I'm the only one that likes Endwalker DRK. It makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I said no one should level it, tried it at 80 and hey it's not actually that bad.

Dark Knight needs a better version of Delirium, call it Dark Arts 2.0 renewed or whatever. The gameplay loop is definitely a lot smoother than ShB's DRK and speedier. All they need to do is fix the disjointed feeling you have while playing like Shadowbringer being an OGC instead of being a GCD.

Oblation needs to be cut down by one and have a cooldown of 15 seconds with HP regen additionally. Make it like all the other tanks. For gameplay I suggest adding a DoT similiar to Reaper, making your target 10% weaker to your damage. Living Dead obviously needs a fix! Overall, I enjoy it but I hope everyone else gets a better deal out of it someday.

DRK isn't my main anymore but I definitely enjoy its change from ShB, that was an absolute trashfire and felt way too slow. Not too mention Inner Delirium.

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Get rid of dark mind and buff oblation to 15% reduction with a hot. Keep the 2 charges on it but add that you can’t stack them.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

oblation to 15% reduction with a hot

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I take it.

We have so many 10% damage reduction crap going on that i have no idea why they had to add ANOTHER one that does nothing extra...it was so they can say look we gived DRK new abilities too LOL !
its just button bloat at this point in its current form.

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Originally Posted by Flay_wind

Regarding tanks' self sustain. It going to be pretty problematic, when both tanks take damage for prolonged amount of time. Like go to P3 as DRK and be an OT there. See how fun it is.

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That's a particularly bad example. From a defensive standpoint, DRK can handle the OT role in P3N substantially better than PLD or GNB, and about as well as WAR. You can use TBN on cooldown and have it reliably break, creating a situation where TBN is (as always) only 80% as effective as the other tanks' 25s mitigation skills on a per-use basis, but producing substantially more value in a sustained-damage environment because it's usable every 15 seconds, not every 25. The only problem with DRK as OT in that fight is that using TBN on cooldown means that you have to use a Dark Arts proc every 15 seconds, meaning that you're pulling them out of raid buff windows. That's a reason to change Dark Arts and/or Edge of Shadow - not a reason to change TBN or to shove a bunch of extra healing into the class just because all the other kids are doing it.

Whether that's relevant in Savage or not, I can't say.

At least that damage is Magic I believe so you can throw a Dark Mind in there but boy I can see already I'm not getting past that boss in Savage in Week 1 OR 2.

With the standardization of all tankbusters to either red arrow or red circle, I don't know why we haven't just moved to a format where timing your short recast correctly (HS/BW/TBN/HoC) on certain designated tankbuster moves just gives you a job appropriate counterattack proc for free. You're not obliged to use them on recast then, but on the designated tankbusters.

Damage type specific mitigation is beyond dumb and I don't know why it's still in the game. You're just giving PLD/WAR a cooldown advantage on certain fights for no good reason.

I like that tanks have some specificity to their defensive kits; I just think the balance is a little poor on them.

In theory, the idea is that Dark Mind, Camouflage, and Passage of Arms are all made to be the best tool for the job in specific situations and weak or useless outside of those situations, with Thrill of Battle existing as the jack-of-all-trades option that's always useful but never has the power of the other three in their respective elements. I like that idea a lot.

In practice, only Passage and Camouflage really live up to the ideal: Passage is hyper-specific to "threatening raidwide damage where the party can stack up behind you" and accordingly strong in that situation, but useless otherwise, while Camouflage is almost a second Rampart against incoming sustained physical damage (eg: a dungeon pull) but is unsuited to tankbusters because the parry is unreliable. But Thrill has too many advantages for being the 'universal' skill (it should either have its cooldown bumped up to 120s, or lose either the increased healing or the initial heal), and Dark Mind is undertuned for what it is (duration should be bumped to 15s or 20s, mitigation to 25% or 30%).

I'm sure there's a way for it all to work so you have the same level of specificity without damage-type specificity, but at that point you're going in a pretty wide circle just to end up roughly back where you started. And if the other alternative is to give universal applicability to every skill, then I definitely don't want to go down that road.

I wish we had Sole Survivor back, and an AoE variant.
Something like: 30% HP/MP on single target, and 5% per target on AoE maybe ? Still with the effect that, if the duration end you get a weaker heal, like half of normal after 15 or 20 seconds. That's all the sustain that DRK needs, and it's achieved in a way that is unique enough, also rewards your DPS party members for doing well during big mob pulls, since they'll help keeping you alive.

I don't see why people can't just look at the disgustingly low effort of "Reduce Living Shadow's potency for no reason except to give it back at level 88" and see that these idiots aren't actually trying to update DRK, they're too busy touching themselves thinking about how cool their new PLD and SMN are.

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Originally Posted by Flay_wind

Regarding tanks' self sustain. It going to be pretty problematic, when both tanks take damage for prolonged amount of time. Like go to P3 as DRK and be an OT there. See how fun it is.

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Just experienced this myself and holy shit the entire raid if you're OT, you need to pop TBN every single second you can save for when the boss just isnt attacking at all.

I'm worried they're designing future content with the idea tanks have self sustain in mind, without actually giving any to DRK.

Anyone know how to check the parse stats for each tank of FF logs? I wanna see for myself but have no idea how to use the site.

Just need some more hopium for a DRK rework....

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Originally Posted by Danelo

Get rid of dark mind and buff oblation to 15% reduction with a hot. Keep the 2 charges on it but add that you can’t stack them.

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I like this idea, especially if the HoT is there by default when obtained at level 45 and level 82 only gives it the 2nd charge.

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Originally Posted by RefundEndwalker

I don't see why people can't just look at the disgustingly low effort of "Reduce Living Shadow's potency for no reason except to give it back at level 88" and see that these idiots aren't actually trying to update DRK, they're too busy touching themselves thinking about how cool their new PLD and SMN are.

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They reduced it because every physical class's potencies got reduced due to the normalization of Weapon Damage between physical & magic jobs. Go take a look at how Attonement got gutted down to 420 potency from 550 for an easy look.

Due to the increased Weapon Damage, Living Shadow's 240 potency in EW is the rough equivalent of SHB LS's 300 potency. So no, they didn't 'reduce it just to give it back'. They reduced it so its potency would equalize out to what it would be before the WD equalization, then the 88 trait buffs it. LS at 88 is roughly 20% stronger than LS was in SHB, relatively. Please go read up on the countless articles and live letters where they explain the potency adjustments on top of the Weapon Damage normalization, then also go take a look at how every other tank had their potencies slapped by roughly 20% across the board due to the same change.

Getting offended at non-issues will do nothing to help DRK, when DRK has plenty of actually real issues to address.