Dark Knight Megathread

I think flood should be removed, and replaced with Abyssal Drain (not C&S shared cd). It should be the AoE version of Edge. Also, give it a combo action off of unleash(still oGCD), so it can drain HP at its current amount. (and less if not used after unleash)

Fixing AD is as simple as splitting it from C&S. Making it cost 3k mana and extend the darkside timer. And allow it for when TBN breaks you get a free edge, flood or AD.

Fixing Dark Mind is as simple as giving it 10% physical damage mitigation as well.
Fixing Dark Missionary and Heart of light is as simple as giving them the faint and addle treatment where they have 5% damage mitigation for physical attacks.
Fixing TBN is as easy as providing a regen for half the damage prevented or essentionally 12.5% of your max health over 10s and making a weaker version for lower levels.

Small tweaks to DRK can go such a long way. We dont need drastic changes. Just quality of life changes.

If there is one thing I think DRK could steal from PLD is giving it its own Atonement combo. Like put Carve & Spit on the GCD, and build a new combo from it, and that combo procs off Souleater. This new Carve & Spit combo could regenerate MP from each hit.

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Originally Posted by Kitkat

And while I get people don't want Drk to be like other tanks with the self sustain, (...)

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Who? Almost all suggestions I've seen include some form of self-sustain. I've said before that DRK doesn't need as much sustain as other tanks, but it definitely needs more than it has now. At very least it needs to have its HPS brought up to GNB levels (absorbs from TBN included).

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Originally Posted by Derio

Fixing AD is as simple as splitting it from C&S. Making it cost 3k mana and extend the darkside timer. And allow it for when TBN breaks you get a free edge, flood or AD.

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Would this come with any changes to AD beyond swapping it to a CD-less MP spender? If not, I suspect that Flood and Drain would cause one or the other among them to feel like extra baggage.

I could see Drain becoming an at-cost option for sustain, inflicting its enemies struck with a debuff that then causes you to heal for a portion of damage dealt to them and allowing them some synergy and Drain greater ST value, but if Drain remains a simple damage + direct heal per enemy struck, then you're just looking at the likes of 160p with no healing vs. 100p with some healing. The difference would feel all to small, I suspect.

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Originally Posted by Kitkat

And while I get people don't want Drk to be like other tanks with the self sustain

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That much is simple.

Sustain actions (whatever keeps you alive for longer without relying on denying your enemies their uptime) breaks down into four types:

1. Increases maximum and current eHP, scales primarily only with players' stats.
2. Increases maximum and current eHP, scales also with incoming damage.
3. Increases current eHP only, scales primarily only with players' stats.
4. Increases current eHP only, scales also with incoming damage.

Whatever scales mostly off of one's own stats has to be comparatively overtuned for low-incoming-damage situations to be able to compete in high-incoming-damage situations. And, all else being equal, whatever also increases maximum eHP is stronger than whatever does not.

The Blackest Night, along with any other %HP or potency-based shields or heals, scales just with your own stats, not incoming damage. And, of course, it increases maximum eHP (since it's a barrier, not just a heal); so long as that shield is fully consumed within its duration, it faces no disadvantage from not being permanent.

As such, if you were to amp up those strengths high enough to be competitive in content with the highest amounts of incoming damage, building around what DRK has done most uniquely since Stormblood while making its total sustain competitive with PLD or WAR... would actually put it ahead of either of them, reaching a new level of overpoweredness / unkillability.

As such, many are willing to take a bit more of a mix of types 2, 3, and 4 to keep it relatively balanced across the full slew of content. You may have noticed the overlap with those who want Bloodwhetting nerfed in dungeons (such as by having it heal off of damage dealt, rather than getting the full single-target value from each and every enemy struck).

Not a DRK main, but I think turning C&S and Abyssal into MP skills like Flood/Edge that regen HP instead of refreshing the Darkside timer would be interesting. It gives DRK some self-sustain and makes it so that you're not constantly overcapping the Darkside timer for no reason. I do also think the MP generation needs to go up while also reducing the MP cost needed for these skills.


Some other things I think would be neat to give DRK some personality + self sustain:


Dark Mind: It needs added parry effect. Yes, this does basically make it Camouflage, but DRK was the Parry tank first.


TBN: I think this should actually come in at a lower level, somewhere in the HW range or early StB while the current TBN level of 70 gets replaced by Oblation (Oblation will upgrade TBN and rolls the current Oblation effect into TBN) Oblation will gain two charges at 82.


To replace Oblation, I had a mind to bring back Blood Price, but, instead of "getting hit regens MP" it's "getting hit regens HP", and the buff can be passed to others.


Living Dead: The changes make it almost perfect, but I think that, once you hit the safe area to not die, you should still have the HP steal effect like how WAR has two separate effects for Internal Release to keep the knockback resist even after all three stacks are consumed.

I genuinely believe for the first time since ShB dropped, DRK feels good to play
the only problem being the lack of sustain compared to other tanks. In a perfect world, if other tanks didnt have such insane sustain, DRK would be in a perfect spot.
Though honest to god, thematically speaking AND going into classic FF dark knight, DRK should be the only tank that actually has insane sustain, and it used to in stormblood. Aoe pulls in stormblood with DRK were legitimately so fun because of blood price + abyssal drain spam

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Originally Posted by Terhix

Who? Almost all suggestions I've seen include some form of self-sustain. I've said before that DRK doesn't need as much sustain as other tanks, but it definitely needs more than it has now. At very least it needs to have its HPS brought up to GNB levels (absorbs from TBN included).

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Answered your own question, didn't you? 'Almost all' is not 'Everyone' therefor the statement was accurate.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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I very well understand the breakdown of each tanks strengths and weaknesses, I also understand how they scale also. The suggestion was based on how to improve what is already in the kit to make the job more desirable for content. Also, TBN scales off the target players HP%, not the drk using it IE a Drk with 150k HP doesn't give a Shield of 37,500 to someone else other than themselves or someone else with 150k hp. Similarly, Shake it off works this same way, it is 15% of the targets HP, not based off the War using it HP (The only change occurs when used with modifying abilities up like ToB, Damnation, Bloodwhetting changing it to 17%, 19%, or 21% of the targets HP and is easy to test and verify). Thus the suggestion given ends up only 10~4% stronger than Shake it off and they could make it similar to how they have Rphys Dmg mit shields where they can't overlap with one another. This makes it to where it becomes an alternating option of raid wide mitigation similar to how paring a War and Pld already can do.


Divine Veil on the other hand scales on the PLD's HP IE a Pld with 150K HP gives a 15k shield, a Pld with 200k HP gives 20k shield.


Alternatively they could make it so the wording on using Dark Missionary states "When used with The Blackest Knight will spread effect to party absorbing a total of X% of targets maximum HP" where X can be a different % of what the single target ability gives since it is a separate ability.


Again, the intent was to offer alternative ideas to simply giving self sustain and instead playing off the mentality that Drk is a Mitigation tank opposed to other tanks being Self Sustain/mit.

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Originally Posted by Kitkat

I very well understand the breakdown of each tanks strengths and weaknesses, I also understand how they scale also. The suggestion was based on how to improve what is already in the kit to make the job more desirable for content.

Also, TBN scales off the target players HP%, not the drk using it.

Again, the intent was to offer alternative ideas to simply giving self sustain and instead playing off the mentality that Drk is a Mitigation tank opposed to other tanks being Self Sustain/mit.

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Okay, and my post had nothing to do with the strengths and weaknesses of the tanks as they are presently, but merely tried to answer your question as to why players weren't suggesting increases to DRK survivability based purely on stat-based mitigation, etc. Which is, again, because for it's that much less possible to balance for multiple content types simultaneously and because there is already, in nearly all situations, an inherent advantage to mitigation over healing.

Yes, TBN scales off its target's HP, but prey tell, whom is it used on in situations where DRK's total survivability falls to the lowest portion of that of other tanks'?

I'm all for approaching its survivability a bit more uniquely, but beware of making that uniqueness primarily just be that it's generally stronger in practice (see Warrior's historical trend).

M3S shows how cringe TBN is.

You come along for shared TB Knuckle Sandwich. You either put it on yourself or MT, not both. All you can give to the other tank is oblation.

Its multi-hit TB so TBN is gone away after first hit. Dark Mind is useless for this as well.

The difference in required outside mit/healing between WAR+PLD pairing and GNB+DRK pairing here is tangible.