Dark Knight Megathread

Just remove TBN already and redesign DRK in another way, i wouldn't mind losing this skill to get a full coherent kit again

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Originally Posted by Danelo

Some have said it would be too powerful to up oblation to 15-20% dr with a regen so I propose it replace dark mind entirely. It may be an unpopular opinion but dark mind needs to die a gruesome death. It’s a relic from a time when sqex was supposed to have learned it’s lesson with pld only being able to block physical damage.

It was decent because of it strength when it was 30% magic resistance in hw. But it was ridiculous when it was nerfed in sb for no reason; and then there was dadm…. Damage specific mitigations are crap in concept. Their dr values have to be incredibly powerful to be viable and often leave the kit with a hole bcs devs view it as just another defense cd when they are niche at best and don’t add depth. In reality it is just another button to press since most players rarely can point to a time that it saved them from certain death.

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Honestly, I wouldn't hate Dark Mind if it was again paired alongside Dark Dance (increased parry and dodge chance), with a shared recast between them. I'd consider it a bit bloated, but not terrible. I'd also not mind it turning into just a general damage CD or getting the Camouflage treatment.

However, I doubt you will ever see it empower Oblation, since TBN is already both the equivalent of, say, Heart of Stone/Corundum, Shelltron OR Intervention, or Bloodwhetting OR Nascent Flash, with Oblation then acting as TBN's lv82 trait. Dark Mind holds roughly the same place as Camouflage (mostly physical), Thrill of Battle (either), and Paladin's block (which now also blocks magic). None of those can be cast on allies.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Just remove TBN already and redesign DRK in another way, i wouldn't mind losing this skill to get a full coherent kit again

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This, too, I wouldn't mind, but what do we replace it with? TBN is at least more interesting than any other extant defensive (just due to its lower cooldown being constrained by opportunities to actually break it). Any spitballs?

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Just remove TBN already and redesign DRK in another way, i wouldn't mind losing this skill to get a full coherent kit again

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they cant / wont.

I kind of liked using blind/dodge/parry but since those aren't doable anymore...
Though we could still put a blind on mobs in dungeons and raid adds etc, that'd still be fun. But go against wanting TBN to break

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

I kind of liked using blind/dodge/parry but since those aren't doable anymore...

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Tbf, that'd probably take a rehaul of the game's evasion and DR systems. Not that such hasn't been suggested already since ARR.

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Though we could still put a blind on mobs in dungeons and raid adds etc, that'd still be fun. But go against wanting TBN to break

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Personally, I don't necessarily find an anti-synergy to be any less interesting than a synergy.

Wanting a cooldown's duration to expire before your next TBN comes up is, in itself, a further consideration that other tanks don't have beyond basic issues of multiplicity (stacked CDs have additive gains to eHP but multiplicative and therefore wasteful gains to heal-efficiency on you). Such is, therefore, unique gameplay, even if not the very most exciting sort.

The same could be said for HW DRK and the anti-synergy of DA-DD and Low Blow/Reprisal, since you couldn't both dodge and parry and you needed parry procs for LBlow/Rep. When you DA-DDed, you were going for full personal defense, less utility. And that's fine, so long as the job is balanced mindful of those anti-synergies.

Here's a real knife's-edge hypothetical: Imagine if TBN counterattacked, a la Dreadspikes, while active. At that point, you'd want to mitigate TBN so it breaks as late as possible for more free damage... without pushing it for so long that it doesn't break. That level of risk might not seem commensurate to its reward under the present design (likely preferring that TBN instead give back a portion of MP equal half its % of shield consumed, or the like, if it doesn't fully break), but that's just food for thought.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

We're discussing the overall design of the job though, obviously TBN would have to be replaced.

But yeah, having a choice of "do I use TBN and try to manage it to get hit just enough" or "do I play safe and blind enemies to reduce damage more" can be interresting.

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I think removing TBN would be more a stylistic preference than anything "obvious", but sure. On the latter note, though, just keep in mind reactions to having two competing tools for doing the same thing. If they can be layered skillfully and choicefully ("I'm going to try to have my increased dodge chance [enemy miss chance] last for just long enough to deal with this special hit, and I'll have TBN ready to bust if it does hit me, before the next two seconds' worth of pack autos can finish me off, since that'll still be enough to break it," etc.), then it shouldn't be accused of bloat, but otherwise it may seem wasteful and unpolished.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

I meant they're paired, the Healer comp destroys Ast/Whm, there's nothing damaging enough to warrant them, except Whm having MP issues.



About this though, Drk had a DPS issue in SB, but it's pick rate pretty shot up for UCOB.

SHBs, Dark Knight had been a meta tank since the release with Gunbreaker, it was tough for Paladin to beat Dark Knight because of "TBN" alone, 25% HP barrier is ultra strong in raid content, Paladin only started making it's place over Dark Knight in Eden Promise, but still 1-2 fights Dark Knight had an advantage in Promise.

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Cool, all because of one skill and that alone. If you remove TBN, DRK is objectively useless as a tank. You can easily fix dps issues with potency increases, can't fix a half baked and terrible kit with living shadow (which uses up a huge chunk of it duration just standing there). SE refuses to change it because people like you defend lazy garbage such as this. It needs to be remodeled not given bandaids and kisses.

We're discussing the overall design of the job though, obviously TBN would have to be replaced.

But yeah, having a choice of "do I use TBN and try to manage it to get hit just enough" or "do I play safe and blind ennemies to reduce damage more" can be interresting.

Precisely why asking for more buffs is an issue for Dark Knight, is because of TBN. TBN maybe trash in Dungeons, as I repeat again, high content this ability is super powerful and strong barriers is a dominant force for mitigation, vs reduction mitigation. TBN alone can soak a tank buster by it's self, specially now Oblation exist. Removing TBN, Oblation obtaining buffs, Dark Mind changed to all reduction to counter part HoC/NF/Intervention would actually solve one of the problems in balancing.

No TBN
Oblation 15% Reduction, 250 Potency Regen, 2 charges, 8 seconds Duration, 12s Regen, 60 seconds cooldown, can use on anyone.
Dark Mind 15% Reduction (Physical/Magic), 15 seconds duration, 90s cooldown.

Can at least survive all content than specifics, maybe a clone sadly since I can't come up with much, Barriers are a dangerous game.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

Removing TBN, Oblation obtaining buffs, Dark Mind changed to all reduction to counter part HoC/NF/Intervention would actually solve one of the problems in balancing.

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Said like "removing TBN" doesn't also mean yet another rework to the Dark Arts mechanic, on top of Oblation having to be dropped in level to make up for the loss of TBN... and DRK being the only job without a 25s CD which would only exacerbate DRK's issues in dungeons. And that Oblation as you've described it would be a clone of Holy Sheltron.

Also, you're comparing Dark Mind - a skill that can only be used by and on the DRK - to Intervention and NF...?

TBN in concept is great. A shield where you take 0 damage while it is active is good in any content. The problem is that it's either viable in single targets or ineffective in dungeon pulls. It's design is antiquated as well. It's the only tank cd, exception of LD, that actively punishes you for using it wrong while the other tank cd equivalents can be used almost anytime.

I think TBN should be on 2 charges. That way its more easily accessible. Ultimately TBN is the sole reason why DRK no longer has self sustain. If you take 0 damage then why would you need to heal?
Outside of that I think the change to SAD was unwarranted with the new aoe cursor limit option they added. It just feels more restrictive now as I have to physically move to the enemies to place an aoe.

Like I said, the bare minimum I expect to read in the patch notes this Tuesday is:

-TBN duration increased to 8 seconds

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Originally Posted by Marxam

Like I said, the bare minimum I expect to read in the patch notes this Tuesday is:

-TBN duration increased to 8 seconds

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I wish I could expect a full rework to DRK's mitigation and sustain on Tuesday, but more likely we're going to see a few small tweaks like this, and some vague mentions in the next Live Letter of a rework... to come in 6.1.

Dark Mind > Camouflage, 5% higher shorter time, vs a 50% parry 5% lower longer time.

Can shorten the cooldown on Oblation to 30s, I reckon I was being pretty mean.

Point is Oblation is a longer consistency. Intervention is 5% stronger 4s lower, weaker than Oblation after 4s, Paladin has to give up a cooldown to stay ahead of Oblation. Paladin isn't allowed to freely pop the regens, it needs the 2nd cast on more urgency plus always needs uptime. Oblation can keep the cooldown rolling for it's availability.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

I wish I could expect a full rework to DRK's mitigation and sustain on Tuesday, but more likely we're going to see a few small tweaks like this, and some vague mentions in the next Live Letter of a rework... to come in 6.1.

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Reworks have never happened unless the job was so poorly performing it effected the Week 1 kills too hard, happened in Edens Gate, AKA Ninja.

I think it's a split chance a rework will happen sooner or later. It's very obvious they don't know what they are doing with DRK, and the EW iteration didn't have enough time to develop. So I could def see it in the future, if not during 6.x

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

TBN maybe trash in Dungeons,

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It's not. It's really, really not. Setting Bloodwhetting aside, TBN's ability to mitigate sustained incoming damage in scenarios like dungeon pulls is better than the mitigation and healing of Holy Sheltron until you reach about 6000 incoming DPS, and better than the mitigation+healing of Heart of Corundum until you reach roughly 10000 incoming DPS.

This graph assumes stats that are close to current endgame, with TBN on a 77000 HP tank (roughly accurate in full gear in a party) and ~16.5 HP healed per point of potency on Sheltron/Corundum (which I believe is a highball estimate):

https://i.imgur.com/62DgR4E.png

This is the damage taken after other mitigation like Rampart, Shadow Wall/Sentinel, your healer's Kerachole/Exaltation/Temperance/whatever, etc. The hardest-hitting pull in any current level 90 dungeon tops out at around 6-6.5k incoming DPS, unmitigated, which tends to get dropped to 3.5-4.5k after standard mitigation like Rampart/Sentinel/healer stuff.

There's a caveat here in that this assumes that Holy Sheltron is being used once every 22.4 seconds, which is how long it takes to generate 50 Oath Gauge, but on some dungeon pulls you can come in with 100 banked gauge to get an extra use - and in those cases, Holy Sheltron does overtake TBN by a small margin. But A) That's not exactly leaving TBN in the dust or anything anyway, and B) Heart of Corundum has no such advantage, and people are hardly crying out for big HoC buffs in dungeon pulls.
(It's also assuming a fight of arbitrary length where things work out to be continuous, that incoming damage is uniformly distributed over time, etc, but these don't really fundamentally change the relation.)

People always fixate on "TBN breaks in a couple seconds and then you have no mitigation!" but they forget that until it breaks, it's effectively acting as 2-4 seconds of Hallowed Ground, and that they should be getting a significantly higher number of uses out of TBN than the other skills (save Sheltron with pre-banked Gauge). That adds up in a very obvious way once you start looking at actual numbers on it.

If people subjectively don't like the skill for whatever reason, then that's one thing, but objectively, mathematically speaking, TBN is a very strong dungeon skill relative to the PLD and GNB equivalents.

The thing is, due to how TBN is set up, you do NOT want to use mitigation with it, you want TBN to break, else you've wasted 3000 MP that could have gone to more damage with Edge/Flood. That's where the problem lies, IMO with TBN. What you want is to replace what TBN gives you for breaking, while also removing its effects on your DPS. Remove the MP cost on TBN, change it to 25s cooldown. TBN breaking burst heals you, TBN not breaking gives you a small heal. That changes TBN from something you want to break else it's a DPS loss, to something that you don't care whether it breaks or not, encouraging mitigation use alongside it.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The thing is, due to how TBN is set up, you do NOT want to use mitigation with it

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

You are not in danger of ever not having a TBN break in a dungeon double-pull, no matter what mitigation you use alongside it, in any situation other than "A WHM is spamming Holy and enemies haven't built up Stun resistance yet" or "There are two enemies left from a 7-enemy pull and they're about to die too" - situations where you don't really need any mitigation because you're taking close to zero damage.

Using TBN while Rampart is up is the equivalent of a 31.25% shield without Rampart; using TBN while Shadow Wall is up is the equivalent of a ~35.7% shield without Shadow Wall. It makes an enormous difference to your overall survivability and you should always be trying to pair TBN with standard mitigation in a situation like a dungeon pull where you know that incoming damage is high.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

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Honestly, I'm speaking mostly from the experience of trying to heal DRKs. Even paired with TBN, Oblation does not nearly stand up to the buffs Sheltron/HoS/RI get at 82, and you definitely feel that difference trying to keep them up; any other tank honestly feels like they're doing half the work for you. Once TBN's down it usually feels like the DRK is hardly using any mitigation at all and they just drop like a stone, and that only gets worse on a Barrier specialist, even popping all my CDs.

If you're not on a WHM, healing a DRK feels awful.

Though with some of the DRKs I've been playing with, it's entirely plausible they weren't using any mitigation other than TBN like you're asserting. I was a bit too occupied trying to panic-barrier to keep them out of WD to double check.

TBN will get better as HP values continue to rise, but right now with HP values where they are on an item level 577 DRK, TBN is worth roughly 1500 heal potency of shield. Holy Sheltron offers 1000 potency coupled with % based mitigation, Bloodwhetting offers 1600 just in single target situations, also with % based mitigation, and Corundum offers 900 potency again offering % based mitigation. "But Weeztlo," I hear you typing "you can just stack oblation with it." which is true, but 10% would still be the weakest mit of all of them and the other tanks' are baked in so they get it every single 25 seconds. TBN is good, not great. I think the first step would be just delete the mana cost. Then using it properly is rewarded instead of simply not punished. Yes, parsers will 100% deliberately take avoidable blows to squeeze even more DPS out of it but they do that already to greed melee uptime, doesn't mean the rest of the community has to suffer as a result.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Honestly, I'm speaking mostly from the experience of trying to heal DRKs. Even paired with TBN, Oblation does not nearly stand up to the buffs Sheltron/HoS/RI get at 82, and you definitely feel that difference trying to keep them up; any other tank honestly feels like they're doing half the work for you. Once TBN's down it usually feels like the DRK is hardly using any mitigation at all and they just drop like a stone, and that only gets worse on a Barrier specialist, even popping all my CDs.

If you're not on a WHM, healing a DRK feels awful.

Though with some of the DRKs I've been playing with, it's entirely plausible they weren't using any mitigation other than TBN like you're asserting. I was a bit too occupied trying to panic-barrier to keep them out of WD to double check.

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I can back this up as someone who does DRK in Expert fairly frequently. TBN is overrated, this is certain. But the two things it does INCREDIBLY well are the low recast timer, and how incredibly effective it is when you stack mitigation on top of it. Flat shields don't suffer from the multiplicative effects of percentage mitigations, TBN starts actually earning it's vaunted reputation under stacking. Oblation isn't strong enough to really pronounce this effect on it's own, but when you combine Rampart + Oblation + Reprisal with TBN sprinkled in between, you'll find the shields last quite a bit longer. It doesn't help that most DRKs who walking around right now throw Abyssal Drain at the first available opportunity rather than waiting until they can get maximum value vs overhealing themselves, without all the good parts of Bloodwhetting.

This is actually why I don't really understand why DRK + SGE is so vehemently bashed, since SGE's dedicated percentage based mitigation support skills mesh incredibly well with TBN and DRK's own personal mitigation. (Protraction for HP/Sacred Soil for mit also falls under this stipulation, I had no issues healing DRKs on SCH, provided they weren't idiots) I guess if the mobs don't die quick enough and both parties run out of resources it gets awful, but the pulls would have to last like a minute straight. Nevermind, I know exactly why, it's because LD is a ******** trashfire and we can't do anything about it if the SGE has already used their instants. FFS

Because it takes so much more effort to reach basic competency in big pulls, compared to 1 CD making you functionally better than invulnerable, the chasm on the surface is about as wide as the distance between Earth and the moon to a healer, PARTICULARLY if the DRK is bad, and are convinced the job is unplayable garbage versus requiring an entirely different, and frankly, unintuitive mitigation mindset for functional, but comparably worse results.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with what Crater is saying, but it still doesn't excuse them to be incredibly lazy and unimaginative with its kit. Now, look at what every other tank got in EW:

GNB gets Double Down, Hypervelocity, and HoC. Not only does Double Down and Hypervelocity feel really good to use, they change the rotation. They make EW GNB feel distinct from ShB GNB. Yet, the core didn't change, it still feels like GNB.

WAR is leaning more towards going back to lifesteal. Its rotation didn't change too much, and got dumbed down actually. Yet it feels better than ShB. Having the ability to force crit your BW heals with Inner Chaos is great, and the synergy between Thrill of Battle and Equilibrium is awesome.

PLD got its new Confiteor combo, as well as the long awaited upgrade to Sheltron. Its rotation gets changed up a little and just overall good changes like Spirits Within not being tied to health. The job can fairly main tank now without worrying about mitigation or damage.

What does DRK get?
Enhanced Unmend, enhancing an ability you normally never want to use.
Oblation, while good, feels underwhelming with its measly 10% mitigation.
They expanded upon a lame skill with Salt and Darkness that's on a 90 second recast.
And Dark Passen- I mean Flood of Shadow II. Wait, it's called Shadowbringer?

DRK still feels bad to play, DRK still has spells instead of weaponskills, Blood Weapon doesn't have stacks, Delirium is still IR, Darkside and Living Shadow are still boring, etc. The job is still stuck in Shadowbringers and got zero expansion worthy changes. We didn't even get half the QoL we asked for.

This isn't to say the other tanks don't have any problems at all, but DRK needs to be looked at and reworked. They just seem to skim over it and its a real shame. So much potential, only for it all to be wasted.

I feel DRK was very neglected this expansion. The balancing team spent all their time on WAR and PLD and barely looked at DRK. As a result, DRK got left behind.

Question for those of you looking for excuses for why the "DRK isn't actually that bad," even contrary to evidence and actual experience most of us who level multiple tanks have had and seen;

Why must the DRK be the tank to be left as is? Why are the other tanks allowed to get so much QoL but the DRK isn't? Every tank was viable in ShB, they were all "serviceable" as they were, but the other three, mostly WAR and PLD, got so much nice shit and they feel absolutely amazing to play now! Why isn't the DRK allowed to have the same treatment just cause "it's viable where it is?"

Blood Weapon does it's job well, but it feels like shit.

Oblation does it's job well, but it feels worthless.

AoE rotations do their jobs well even as spells, but they feel like shit.

TBN does amazing work even though it uses MP, but it often feels awful.

LD doesn't do it's job well and it feels like shit...

For the WAR the Onslaughts did their job, Upheaval was fine, IR being on a duration worked well, but they ALL got adjusted for the sake of comfort.

The PLDs magic rotation was perfectly fine, everyone got along with it and it did it's job well, but that too got fixed up just to feel that much better.

So I ask again, why must DRK be the one left alone? Why can't it have nice things too?

That's the kind of stuff we're all looking for here, and why I'm tired of seeing people arguing that it's "FINE," cause that doesn't fucking matter.

Nitpicks, but...

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Originally Posted by Marxam

TBN in concept is great. A shield where you take 0 damage while it is active is good in any content. The problem is that it's either viable in single targets or ineffective in dungeon pulls.

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That's... not how damage works. The environment of the damage or number of its sources are irrelevant. Between a 25% HP shield and 25% mitigation, each over 7 seconds, the shield does more if you would have taken less than your maximum HP in damage over those next 7 seconds and the percentile mitigation does more if you would otherwise have taken more damage than your maximum HP over those 7 seconds. The vast majority of the time, 7 seconds of even a double-pull will not do more than your maximum HP unless you utterly neglect your other CDs.

And let's keep in mind that DRK was the "takes no damage" meme tank in Shadowbringers (behind only WAR in "unkillability" without tapping into lost offensive GCDs a la PLD). TBN hasn't been nerfed. HoS and Shelltron have perhaps surpased through their lv82 traits (Heart of Corundum and Holy Shelltron) through their attached heals, but TBN will still faintly lead in the majority of 7/8-second spans of damage intake in terms of actual mitigation and we've gained Oblation atop that, in place of the added regen. Warrior is the only outlier.

(Arguably, yes, Oblation+TBN having greater value than Holy Shelltron or Heart of Corundum is because we lack a general defensive (or PLD's block chance) in place of Dark Mind, but you cannot reasonably make the case that TBN&Oblation are weaker by nature or in practice than any of its equivalents save for Bloodwhetting/Nascent in AoE pulls.)

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Ultimately TBN is the sole reason why DRK no longer has self sustain.

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If that were the case, we wouldn't have had the most broken self-sustain (self-refunding Quietus casts under Blood Weapon that allow for infinite MP, which in turn allowed for DA-AD to make one unkillable) made possible in the same expansion TBN was added. StB, the expansion that added TBN, housed our (or any tanks') highest AoE self-sustain value, and our ST self-sustain value has not decreased (in fact it has very slightly increased) since.

No, we lost our AoE self-sustain as a side-effect of losing DA and having Stalwart Soul combo replace Abyssal Drain as our primary AoE source of damage. How did additions cost us core identity? Because this is DRK, and oversights are the majority of what glimpses we get.

Our single-target self-sustain was unaffected outside of, again, losing DA. (Though with Souleater producing such an increasingly small portion of damage as healing as level increased--as per DRG's Life Surge at the time--the cure potency attached to it now is stronger than the damage-to-healing we had in SB.)

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Originally Posted by VicariousXIV

Question for those of you looking for excuses for why the "DRK isn't actually that bad," even contrary to evidence and actual experience most of us who level multiple tanks have had and seen;

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No one's said that we, on the whole, are "fine". Our mitigation? Sure. Our damage? Sure. But our polish, identity, engagement, or flow? No. Claims like "DRK has the worst short-mitigation CD" merely gets refuted when they fly, as you say, contrary to evidence (here being the actual numbers--logs, and breakpoints--rather than Tales from Duty Finder).

No one has said that Blood Weapon is good. No one has said that Oblation feels great. No one has said that it's fine for DRK spells not to scale with SkS. Saying that "No, a 25% HP shield didn't suddenly become worse than forms of mitigation that, in the vast majority of present contexts of the time, will absorb lower total damage" is not an attempt to excuse lazy design. It's correction; no more, no less.

Please, stop treating the faintest bit of factual evidence that runs contrary to the "DRK is worthless" narrative as some broad apologist defense.

TBN also gets worse as gear gets better
because it gets harder to break so it becomes a Tank buster only CD at a certain point.

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Originally Posted by VicariousXIV

Question for those of you looking for excuses for why the "DRK isn't actually that bad," even contrary to evidence and actual experience most of us who level multiple tanks have had and seen;

Why must the DRK be the tank to be left as is? Why are the other tanks allowed to get so much QoL but the DRK isn't? Every tank was viable in ShB, they were all "serviceable" as they were, but the other three, mostly WAR and PLD, got so much nice shit and they feel absolutely amazing to play now! Why isn't the DRK allowed to have the same treatment just cause "it's viable where it is?"

Blood Weapon does it's job well, but it feels like shit.

Oblation does it's job well, but it feels worthless.

AoE rotations do their jobs well even as spells, but they feel like shit.

TBN does amazing work even though it uses MP, but it often feels awful.

LD doesn't do it's job well and it feels like shit...

For the WAR the Onslaughts did their job, Upheaval was fine, IR being on a duration worked well, but they ALL got adjusted for the sake of comfort.

The PLDs magic rotation was perfectly fine, everyone got along with it and it did it's job well, but that too got fixed up just to feel that much better.

So I ask again, why must DRK be the one left alone? Why can't it have nice things too?

That's the kind of stuff we're all looking for here, and why I'm tired of seeing people arguing that it's "FINE," cause that doesn't fucking matter.

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Answer, I'm tired of it being DRK-centric/ I'm just unwilling to continue to bash DRK specifically over it, we all know what's wrong with it. I've done this song and dance for too long, I've written too many words, held too many ted talks. Even if I do think it's fine in SOME aspects, that's such a pathetic goal for any expansion. It's called that for a reason, to expand on the design, and they've failed to do that, despite having every single opportunity to do so after a controversial rework. They've failed to listen to DRK mains, tank players, and the healers who are forced to deal with them time after time after time. There's a total lack of transparency between the people who are designing jobs versus the actual people who play them. There's a complete disregard for the NA/EU side of the game at every single level, from community support to server infrastructure to game design decisions.

A single person's experience in the game is fairly irrelevant. Mine included. But when this many people get splintered over a job, it's time to open up a dialogue, even if it's only one-way, and explain what is going on. Because that isn't happening, we are left to fester, to stew, to exaggerate, and to see malice where there is more than likely incompetence brought on by overworked developers working on a job none of them care about. Heavens, when the Living Shadow enmity thing happened last expansion I was pretty peeved. When I heard the response about Blood Weapon I was outright seething. I won't tolerate DRK just getting some fixes, I want some damn answers. I want the design document. Who are these people who have dragged us into this total anarchy of job discussion? Who is the specific individual who takes all the DRK feedback given by non-JP DRK players and throws them straight into the shredder? What is the point of DRK?

I'm way more angry about, and way more willing to criticize Square Enix's development over DRK itself now, because I also want those nice things. I want to be proud of my main. DRK is a symptom of a much larger problem, and if they don't fix it, what am I going to do? Complain about DRK for another two straight years? After complaining about ShB DRK for two straight years? Saying exactly the same thing I said back in ShB? Am I seriously going to complain about DRK for four-five consecutive years because the developers won't listen to the DRK players for anything ever outside of surface level complaints fixed by "bandaids" that don't matter or actively ruin the job? DRK is as much of a victim as the people suffering with it are.

People are right to be upset. They are more than justified. It goes beyond sour grapes at the tanks getting a better kit, I personally have active distrust towards the developers for killing DRK morale through death from a thousand cuts, their silence being many of them.

I got a silver lining out of it by still being able to enjoy the job somehow, but for those who don't, I don't blame them.

But I'm going to stick to the facts as best I can, or at least, to what SE has made blindly obvious to anyone paying attention over the years. I'm not going to make up nonsense to support negative feelings I have towards the job like this perpetuation of DRK is completely worthless dead weight, a wet paper bag in all content, and is now all of a sudden totally unviable. It's reductive and it's not true, but understandable. All the graphs and logs in the world won't make people feel like they aren't neglected and ignored. Living Dead is proof of that.

I'd ask that you not put words in my mouth if I'm not willing to completely give in to the outrage, though. I'm as discontent as the rest of you. I am the last person on earth who could be called a DRK-apologist.

To answer your other question, DRK must be left alone because JP doesn't hate it enough. You can't have nice things, because you aren't JP.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

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Oh I have been, but I've had to heal a LOT of DRKs who do not, simply because they want their cake and to eat it too from TBN breaking. It's part of why I despise TBN having an MP cost and being connected to doing more damage, it creates VERY bad tanking habits.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Oh I have been, but I've had to heal a LOT of DRKs who do not, simply because they want their cake and to eat it too from TBN breaking. It's part of why I despise TBN having an MP cost and being connected to doing more damage, it creates VERY bad tanking habits.

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I agree with this. Even as a SGE who's had to manage with bad DRKs, I've had multiple instances where a DRK on a big pull simply cannot upkeep itself without causing Healer MP to plummet, even with proper CDs. Typically the only healer who can really handle DRK's mechanic properly is WHM - and that's an issue since WHM has one button to fix it all. SCH/AST/SGE have to pour multiple resources(most of the time an entire gauge if they're desperate) to be able to heal DRK during Walking Dead and prevent a wipe.

TBN having MP cost is a cop out to try and keep DRK back in how it felt in HW, where you had to balance MP and properly manage it. Take that out, and DRK basically turns into Edge of Darkness spam once you hit 6000 MP for a burst window. It doesn't use MP literally anywhere else except offensives otherwise, and considering it also has the lowest amount of active defensives to throw(unless the damage is Magical) it hurts DRK's capability by a lot pre-70 and also in current content. DRK just needs a facelift and they need to redesign it. From Google Translating some stuff on the JP Forums, they've been talking about DRK's TBN and whether it ranges up properly to HoC/HS/BW in terms of active mitigation.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

From Google Translating some stuff on the JP Forums, they've been talking about DRK's TBN and whether it ranges up properly to HoC/HS/BW in terms of active mitigation.

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I google translated some stuff too, a lot also want the return of old Dark Arts. JP is pretty similar to us.

I think the most frustrating thing about Dark Knight is that its 5.0 rework actually looked pretty cool and like they could do a lot of cool things with it. But then, not only did they not do anything cool with it, they did cool things with every other tank. And it's just like... why. I really love what they did with both WAR and PLD. And while I don't like what they did with GNB, I can at least see the appeal from a surface-level monkey brain PoV. All DRK got is big damage buttons (that other tanks got too, and they either feel more earned or more impactful) and a "sure, why not" cooldown that's about as impactful as Foresight was in 3.0.

And then they gave reaper an ersatz Sole Survivor, one of my favorite skills from the olden days. This would be throwing salt into the wound if I didn't drop the job as a main back in late 4.0.

I don't doubt for a moment that they actually play their own game, but it's clear that some jobs get played more than others.

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

I think the most frustrating thing about Dark Knight is that its 5.0 rework actually looked pretty cool and like they could do a lot of cool things with it. But then, not only did they not do anything cool with it, they did cool things with every other tank. And it's just like... why. I really love what they did with both WAR and PLD. And while I don't like what they did with GNB, I can at least see the appeal from a surface-level monkey brain PoV. All DRK got is big damage buttons (that other tanks got too, and they either feel more earned or more impactful) and a "sure, why not" cooldown that's about as impactful as Foresight was in 3.0.

And then they gave reaper an ersatz Sole Survivor, one of my favorite skills from the olden days. This would be throwing salt into the wound if I didn't drop the job as a main back in late 4.0.

I don't doubt for a moment that they actually play their own game, but it's clear that some jobs get played more than others.

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They don't play Dark Knight, Ranged physical jobs, Monk, or Healers at all.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

They don't play Dark Knight, Ranged physical jobs, Monk, or Healers at all.

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I actually think they do play healers plenty, but only play them in the context of playtesting fights. Healing is quite a bit more engaging when you don't out-gear content and are in a more coordinated group, but much of that is lost when you're above the power level the fights are designed for and have no need or ability to plan out your healing cooldowns. Dancer also more or less plays the way its supposed to, and has never received any changes that indicated a lack of developer investment. It's just boring and weak- not really the same as being poorly and neglectfully designed.

The other two ranged, however, are quite clearly not favored by the devs as much.

No disagreements on Monk either. It's pretty much always been a disaster, even at its best.

I don't know if anyone already has pointed this out but...the itlv 570 tank gear looks like Cecils...

Don't know about you, but this doesn't feel like just beeing ignored anymore. This feels like beeing active trolled by now...

This thread is getting bigger each day. They will not be able to ignore us if we keep being loud about it. That's how people got male viera in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Noctisnine

This thread is getting bigger each day. They will not be able to ignore us if we keep being loud about it. That's how people got male viera in the first place.

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I’m hopeful but I also remember the last 6 years...

The sad part is, they didn't even bother to rework DRK. Instead they make a whole new job that functions how DRK should have and converted it to melee dps. SE went out of their way to kick us in the balls for even hoping for a decent DRK. I am not buying the "ran out of time" bullshit because they had 3 expansions now to do it right.

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Originally Posted by Noctisnine

This thread is getting bigger each day. They will not be able to ignore us if we keep being loud about it. That's how people got male viera in the first place.

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I'm pretty sure the DRK community has been blasting out of an airhorn to SE about their problems with DRK since implementation and they have yet to get proper recourse. I'm not going to ramble on again about the issues since there are over 100 pages of thread for that argument alone if you want to read the entire book about DRK and its problems.

Maybe if the Developers took a moment to listen and not worry about the low end for once(because let's be honest, they did that with 5.X with playability) we could actually have even basic issues like LD and Dark Mind fixed.

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Originally Posted by Crater

If people subjectively don't like the skill for whatever reason, then that's one thing, but objectively, mathematically speaking, TBN is a very strong dungeon skill relative to the PLD and GNB equivalents.

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I don't like the shortcomings, because the benefits of it require more of my party than the others do. Let me explain, because I don't think it's weak, I just don't think it's the fulcrum of the various trade offs Dark used to have that justified it.

1. %Max HP of the target is not as good as Healing Potency for party support. On other tanks, fine, on anyone else, significantly less valuable. It's a near 20k "Heal" on tanks. It's a little over half of that on everyone else, with no mitigation component unless you throw Oblation on them as well. It also cannot crit, and while we generally do not worry about criticals when looking at defensive utility, the fact remains that HoTs and direct heals can critical, gaining a significant increase, and TBN cannot. Further - You can only spare some pain. They will eventually die. That's the advantage of healing potency vs %shielding.

2. This goes for all of them, really, but TBN doesn't scale with targets. Prior, neither did Nascent. It scaled with damage done, which in turn has greater limitations than it does now. You had specific cases where TBN and Nascent equal out, where TBN was better, and where Nascent was better. This is no longer true.

3. Every other tank received significantly increased defenses, increased healing, and two of them received improved invulns. Dark received 100 more DPS that may not last the night.

To restore parity (and enforce it, frankly new Nascent shouldn't have made it past QA), at least the following needs to happen.

1. Remove the target scaling on Nascent

1 should not remain. BW/Nascent scaling with targets effectively means to ensure parity of tanks in higher end encounters, we cannot ever have a situation where two, let alone more, enemies are present during high damage intake periods. Two is a slight DPS loss, but three is a gain, while being a stupid amount of potential HP influx that quite simply the other tanks cannot match, and we should be moving away from the path Nascent blazes instead of moving the other tanks along it.

This is a polarizing quality that limits encounter design. It's something that must either be shared, or removed. I, personally, vote on the path of removal, because to vote to share it only exacerbates the situation with the healers.

2. Remove the penalty on Living dead.

The fact that Living Dead still has the death debuff looming over it despite every other invuln now being put on 10s is unacceptable, plain and simple. This will go a fair ways for Dungeon darks who have been conditioned to never use it without a White Mage, and sometimes even then. Oh, and maybe now you can save yourself out in the world for pretending to be a tank and not eat dirt for the effort.

3. Change TBN to be % of the Dark Knight health instead of % of the target's health.

TBN scaling with only your HP instead of the target is a slight nerf when helping higher geared tanks, but a boon to everyone else. A general improvement to protecting non-tanks.

Haha hey, another case of a person who totally said they weren't gonna level it to 90 but did anyways. I do need time to form a more concrete opinion on it, and while it's definitely improved from Shadowbringers (the bar was a bit on the floor there, though.), I still can't shake the feeling it's just too... incomplete. The changes were decent for the job it was, but it doesn't feel expansion worthy. It definitely feels a bit more consistently busy as well, which is a plus! It's just that none of it feels... meaningful? Yeah, that was kind of my big worry with it. The job just doesn't have much going for it mechanically to make it interesting past spitting out a ton of oGCD for burst.

The leveling experience was honestly fine. Having a not so great healer was a lot more noticeable than it was with other tanks, and I definitely wasn't soloing bosses down from 50%, but I also never got so close to dying in mass pulls that I felt any particular sort of anxiety. Anyways, some quick comments that definitely vary in meaningfulness:

1) It occurred to me that Oblation's animation doesn't "return you to GNB stance" as some have said. It's the pose at the end of the Shadowbringers trailer, down to the slight grin and head tilt. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to changes for this ability. It's not great, it's not terrible, it's "just okay". But this job in general is also "just okay" and we should be settling for more at this point, not less.

2) Getting Enhanced Unmend was the most depressing part of the leveling process next to only receiving a Living Shadow trait at 88.

3) Salt and Darkness has the limpest animation for a 500 potency ability I may have ever seen. Sometimes, I don't even notice I activate it.

4) Giving Living Shadow trait upgrades does not make it fun. Please give it some interactivity. It happens once every two minutes! You could even turn it into a sort of continuation with an alternative combo, I don't know. Do something with it, because it is a very sad ability to get, especially at level 80.

5) For the love of all that is holy, please change the limp Souleater combo animations. If you're going to give us only ONE combo, make them at least feel like they hit hard. Scourge -> Old Delirium -> Power Slash feels very hefty, and works pretty well with current animations. Literally just change the animations and change the Interject animation if Dark Knight is going to be stuck with it. Jumpyspinnyslash eater is not cool.

6) Shadowbringer is just... alright. It suffers from feeling the same to use as Flood, though. Despite tying Abyssal and Carve together, our heavy oGCD usage still make us feel like we're flopping around quite a bit. The job in general needs a lot more work in the animation and "heft" area, if you understand me.

Overall, I feel as much about DRK as I do about Oblation. Not great, not terrible, just okay, but we should settle for more. It's lacking in flavor and intrigue as far as actual job mechanics go.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

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Just quoting this as reference to what I am generally talking to and not a direct response to the quoted bit itself.

I honestly think that DRK for the most part feels bad defensively because the incoming damage pattern is very "spikey", at least from my experience leveling DRK via dungeon runs and doing wall to wall pulls.
While TBN+other mitigation is up, you of course take no damage for up to 7 seconds, then suddenly you are taking all the damage virtually unmitigated and your HP starts to drop very quickly. With the other short defensives, like Holy Sheltron and Heart of Corundum, the main mitigation portion lasts approximately the same duration at 8s, as long as TBN is popping close to the max 7s, but the extra heal aspect of both those abilities that extend beyond that and the fact that you are still taking some damage during the main mitigation period results in a smoother incoming damage pattern.
Now why does "smooth" vs "spikey" matter and how could it make DRK defensively feel worse in large dungeon pulls where there is prolonged high incoming damage?
Simple, the more the damage taken is concentrated into shorter periods of time, the less time that the healer has to react and counter the damage. This inherently feels more frantic and stressful. For the tank it feels more stressful because they are seeing their HP drop and fluctuate more quickly once TBN has broken and many tanks freak out a bit when they see their HP drop below 50%, especially if they are running with people they don't know in a duty roulette run. So even if in both situations the amount of damage mitigated is approximately the same, the smoother incoming damage pattern will always feel better and be more comfortable to react to. Additionally, the more a person is put under stress and is forced to react quickly, the more likely they are to make a mistake which in this case would be messing up healing and ending up with a dead tank and a potential wipe.
So while the objective potential is the same, one discernibly feels worse for many people and is more prone to mistakes.

Me personally, I still really like TBN and still find it probably the most fun defensive ability in the game because it requires a bit more thought to it than the other short defensive. Before I use TBN I always have to consider how best to leverage my other defensives with or around it to get the best results for the situation and I love that. I even like that I can screw it up burning too much MP and then not having one available when I need it or mistiming it and the shield not breaking, although I do still think that the duration should be increased a bit to 10s to provide a slightly more generous cushion to not screw it up.
I would hate to have TBN changed to just another 25s short defensive that you pretty much fire off when available with little to no thought, talk about boring.

However, despite liking TBN and not wanting it to change, I do feel overall changes to DRKs' defensive capabilities should happen, just that the changes should happen elsewhere.

Preferably I want to see Oblation better utilized to do interesting and fun things by giving it conditional effects depending on what other defensive abilities it is paired with.
I had previously suggested having Oblation pop TBNs' shield, giving a Dark Arts when that happens, and then throwing up another potentially slightly stronger shield in addition to the base % mitigation basically turning the combo of TBN and then Oblation into a sort of "Super TBN". I mean the Oblation animation basically looks like that already. This same idea could be extended to pairing Oblation with other defensive abilities and providing additional defensive only effects. For example, pair it with Dark Mind and it gives the bonus additional effect of some physical damage mitigation (10%?), making Dark Mind more flexible at the cost of a use of Oblation.
It would also be awesome if the recast was shorter, like 45s, so that this kind of strategic layered approach to defenses could be leveraged more frequently.

Asides from that adding a bit of additional self-sustain somewhere is all DRK would really need. I would prefer this to be integrated somehow into Blood Weapon for thematic and homage purposes, but I am not overly picky on the subject of where to do it.

P.S. Man, a lot of these back and forths in the DRK threads have gotten antagonistic in the way people are speaking to each other, moreso than usual.