Dark Knight Megathread

I'd prefer if DRK retained it's high APM, in the event the devs continue to refuse to give tanks interesting mechanics to work with. It's the only of the four I actually enjoy playing purely because it's high APM keeps me from passing out at my keyboard. That is to say, though, it's high APM doesn't make it interesting to me. In fact, I don't find DRK very interesting at all, but that's an issue I have with every tank currently. PLD feels half-baked (probably on purpose), WAR puts me to sleep, and GNB... well, I don't know what GNB does, as I can't stand playing it.

I could probably stand to have some of it's burst trimmed off, but unless it actually gets some meat to work with mechanically, I'd prefer DRK stayed busy during burst.

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Originally Posted by Mayhemmer

I'd prefer if DRK retained it's high APM, in the event the devs continue to refuse to give tanks interesting mechanics to work with. It's the only of the four I actually enjoy playing purely because it's high APM keeps me from passing out at my keyboard. That is to say, though, it's high APM doesn't make it interesting to me. In fact, I don't find DRK very interesting at all, but that's an issue I have with every tank currently. PLD feels half-baked (probably on purpose), WAR puts me to sleep, and GNB... well, I don't know what GNB does, as I can't stand playing it.

I could probably stand to have some of it's burst trimmed off, but unless it actually gets some meat to work with mechanically, I'd prefer DRK stayed busy during burst.

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It's not a matter of it being busy as much as not having a clear execution path without having to go to icy veins or some other website to tell you what it is. That and since it is busy the person has to watch their hot bar more than the fight until they have put a rather significant number of hours into it. Machinist can sort of fall into this category, but they are still a lot easier to work around than the DRK since they only got DPS cooldowns and the automata is sort of a fire and forget thing. RPR and WAR take way less hours to master and get good at.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

It's not a matter of it being busy as much as not having a clear execution path without having to go to icy veins or some other website to tell you what it is. That and since it is busy the person has to watch their hot bar more than the fight until they have put a rather significant number of hours into it. Machinist can sort of fall into this category, but they are still a lot easier to work around than the DRK since they only got DPS cooldowns and the automata is sort of a fire and forget thing. RPR and WAR take way less hours to master and get good at.

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I see all of this as a positive.

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Originally Posted by Mayhemmer

I see all of this as a positive.

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It just depends on which angle someone is coming from on it. In the old days where people weren't feeling pressed into being optimized killing machines in video games for the sake of getting purposefully thrown together grindfests completed, and having to fight end-game encounters literally built to take extreme numbers of hours to clear, it was generally kind of welcomed to have different options. That and comparing notes with friends was a lot more fun back then.

The issue is the kind of game they are building toward right now is a game where the developers have the highest amount of control as possible on the outcome, meaning they got to balance everyone the same. So the only thing that happens with something that is harder to master due to having a ton of abilities is that it gets weaker than the other options per ability, or they let it have an obvious edge over the other options and it becomes a necessity in every group that someone has to become a guru at. AST is basically living this cycle right now as a neglected job that requires a lot more effort to do the same thing a whm can, so it's getting the rework button. DRK is going to be on the chopping block at some point but they have to get through dragoon first because that one is literally backed into a corner.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

It's got too many OGCD options to fire off in the first few rounds with the way it is designed right now that is for sure. There's some kind of breaking point on having just the right number of cooldowns and too many cooldowns, and it gets hit somewhere between 70 and 90.

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Dark Knight should definitely retain its ogcd focus, its been a staple of the job since it came out.
People bitch and moan all the time that DRK is too similar to WAR, well chopping down its ogcd focus seems incredibly conter-intuitive to making it unique seeing as spamable Edge of Shadow and its critical mass of damage only ogcds is its identity.
Its a busy job, and its the hardest tank to optimize. That is not a bad thing, if you want to play a tank that has fewer buttons to press, WAR and PLD exist just for that.

If you want a tank with just as many buttons to press, but a more rigid and thought out rotation, play Gunbreaker.

It is okay to not like Dark Knight. But please don't ask them to change it to be even more like other tanks because you don't like doing what the job has done since its inception.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Dark Knight should definitely retain its ogcd focus, its been a staple of the job since it came out.
People bitch and moan all the time that DRK is too similar to WAR, well chopping down its ogcd focus seems incredibly conter-intuitive to making it unique seeing as spamable Edge of Shadow and its critical mass of damage only ogcds is its identity.
Its a busy job, and its the hardest tank to optimize. That is not a bad thing, if you want to play a tank that has fewer buttons to press, WAR and PLD exist just for that.

If you want a tank with just as many buttons to press, but a more rigid and thought out rotation, play Gunbreaker.

It is okay to not like Dark Knight. But please don't ask them to change it to be even more like other tanks because you don't like doing what the job has done since its inception.

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It's not really the number of oGCDs that are the issue, it's how they're utilized. You have no real odd minute bursts anymore, yes technically you still burst every minute but that's just because you don't want to waste cooldowns that are ready.

Best example is Shadowbringer, it has a 60 second cooldown but do you use it every 60 seconds? No, because it has 2 charges so of course you bank both for the actual burst every 2 minutes.
Every oGCD is essentially funneled into the party buff window which creates a complete spamfest when it happens but when it isn't happening you're just going through utterly bland filler.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

It's not a matter of it being busy as much as not having a clear execution path without having to go to icy veins or some other website to tell you what it is. That and since it is busy the person has to watch their hot bar more than the fight until they have put a rather significant number of hours into it. Machinist can sort of fall into this category, but they are still a lot easier to work around than the DRK since they only got DPS cooldowns and the automata is sort of a fire and forget thing. RPR and WAR take way less hours to master and get good at.

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Every ''con'' you listed in this thread so far is exactly what made me play the job. You don't have to like or play Dark knight, just don't advocate for it to turn even more into the one tank i as an actual Dark knight player, want to play the least.. If i was looking for slow, straight forward, and uninteresting i would be playing Warrior.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

Every ''con'' you listed in this thread so far is exactly what made me play the job. You don't have to like or play Dark knight, just don't advocate for it to turn even more into the one tank i as an actual Dark knight player, want to play the least.. If i was looking for slow, straight forward, and uninteresting i would be playing Warrior.

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I can see where you might get this impression, but keep in mind the context of this entire thing. Having a lot of OGCDs isn't a problem if there is a structure to the usage. Machinist has a structure to the OGCDs so there is a rhythm to using them, but DRK loses its rhythm because too many of the OGCDs unintentionally compete with one another at the very onset. That's why it turns into "face roll on keyboard" as an opener and why in some cases a player has to sacrifice a DPS ogcd for a mitigation during some fights. Dropping the number of OGCDs is only one solution to the problem. Another is just going through and redoing the OGCDs so a clear structure exists.

I'd like High Apm, but more throughout it's rotation not just during bursts.

I also think Just having OGCD's doesn't always make the gameplay better, actually having GCD's and combo path attacks would add a lot to tanks in general, but it's been something very lacking in the tank design, the more "complicated" tanks try to be OGCD heavy, which I think gunbreaker strictly just does it better, while DRK is left being very thin on GCD actions while it's ogcd gameplay is all at once. I always saw PLD as a more GCD heavy tank but now it's just spam the lightup button like other tanks, but Honestly I just want more diverse DPS buttons on all tanks... the current design isn't great for anyone.

I think it comes down to mainly a tank issue in general, tanks have just become so meaningless in differences that holding onto the current design of Dark knight is more a thing because of how it can get worse, I mean just look at Paladin, it's not exactly likely they're going to add any complexity to the job, if we're going by the current way jobs are designed/reworked anyway.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I'd like High Apm, but more throughout it's rotation not just during bursts.

I also think Just having OGCD's doesn't always make the gameplay better, actually having GCD's and combo path attacks would add a lot to tanks in general, but it's been something very lacking in the tank design, the more "complicated" tanks try to be OGCD heavy, which I think gunbreaker strictly just does it better, while DRK is left being very thin on GCD actions while it's ogcd gameplay is all at once. I always saw PLD as a more GCD heavy tank but now it's just spam the lightup button like other tanks, but Honestly I just want more diverse DPS buttons on all tanks... the current design isn't great for anyone.

I think it comes down to mainly a tank issue in general, tanks have just become so meaningless in differences that holding onto the current design of Dark knight is more a thing because of how it can get worse, I mean just look at Paladin, it's not exactly likely they're going to add any complexity to the job, if we're going by the current way jobs are designed/reworked anyway.

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The FFXIV pitfalls mostly are in "drift" and "OGCD bloat". Gunbreaker has the problem that because SE moved to a strict 2 minute window, all the OGCDs have fixed cooldowns that can't be modified by skill speed or spell speed materia. So if someone has a janky connection they start to drift and the window goes with it. That's part of the reason that Yoshi P. likes the reaper so much, because there is no strict self buff window that turns into a minigame of how much you can squeeze into it. Both the Arcane Circle and the Enshroud are fixed with enough give that it is very difficult to not fit the right number of attacks into the burst windows.

Gunbreaker and paladin have drift due to the "Fight or Flight" damage buff OGCD because it doesn't care about how many attacks fit in the window, nor does it care if it was the first OGCD in a set of two or the second OGCD in a set of two.

I don't like the 2 minute window and wish buffs didn't work the way they did. I'd rather just have additive buffs rather than multiplicative buffs, since it means no one has to adhere to a 2 minute window, it just matters that everyone gets their buff in. The math behind it would be different and I don't know if they could pull off changing it though.

Direct Hit would apply a bonus of 25% base damage.
Crit would provide double base damage
Direct damage increases would be x% base damage.

so total damage would be calculated as base damage + 25% base damage + 3% base damage on a direct hit with a damage buff for example, rather than 103% of 125% base damage.