Your Dark Knight players are unhappy. あなたの暗闇騎士プレイヤーは不幸です

So I have to wonder, "DRK is fine" why does it have to be mediocre? You didn't settle for fine with PLD, WAR, or GNB. Why couldn't you do a 4th? You had plenty of time and could of just copied the other 3 tank changes and made slight changes. When I look at the other 3, I had to ask, was he drunk the whole time writing it? Why was this not caught and had someone better do it. Instead you let them take the Bethesda approach to spellcrafting with dark arts, just remove it and put some bastardization in its place. I don't care if y'all can't handle harsh criticism, if you're going to be lazy, you're going to be called out on it. No one asked to be a terrible warrior, no one asked for Dark Arts to be removed, no one asked to have our skills ripped from us and given to other jobs as better version, and not a single person wanted backwards progress on animations.

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Originally Posted by Sacrilegion

...no one asked for Dark Arts to be removed, no one asked to have our skills ripped from us and given to other jobs as better version, and not a single person wanted backwards progress on animations.

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That isn't remotely true. For every bit of praise I shared about 4.0 DRK with others back in the day, I got an equal amount of dissenters lambasting Dark Arts and wishing for its deletion. Now that we actually lost Dark Arts, we seemingly forget the huge amount of feedback from actual players wishing that it was removed. Yes, some wanted it to get altered, but there were still a sizable portion that simply wanted it gone period.

Also, the animation bit is also a tad subjective. I won't pretend to say we lost a lot of cool animations over the years (RIP Scourge, Power Slash, and Sole Survivor), but Edge of Shadow, Flood of Shadow, Oblation, Stalwart Soul, and Shadowbringer are all incredibly awesome looking abilities. It is not fair in the slightest to say that all of the animations DRK has been given post 4.0 have been lackluster.

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Originally Posted by Garlan

That isn't remotely true. For every bit of praise I shared about 4.0 DRK with others back in the day, I got an equal amount of dissenters lambasting Dark Arts and wishing for its deletion. Now that we actually lost Dark Arts, we seemingly forget the huge amount of feedback from actual players wishing that it was removed. Yes, some wanted it to get altered, but there were still a sizable portion that simply wanted it gone period.

Also, the animation bit is also a tad subjective. I won't pretend to say we lost a lot of cool animations over the years (RIP Scourge, Power Slash, and Sole Survivor), but Edge of Shadow, Flood of Shadow, Oblation, Stalwart Soul, and Shadowbringer are all incredibly awesome looking abilities. It is not fair in the slightest to say that all of the animations DRK has been given post 4.0 have been lackluster.

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That is true, I hope the best way they can improve the job is take things people liked from the 2 iterations ( HW + SB vs ShB + EW ) and combine them into one. It sucks to work on animations and job design and then scrap those concepts, but that doesn't have to happen. Work on Scourge, Shadowbringer, Darkarts, Edge/Flood , Bloodprice, Livingshadow is amazing, but it should be put together into one strong version. I don't think the 2 versions of Dark Knight are opposite, I think they could complement each other very nicely.

There is a lot that both version can bring each other.

Yes, a lot asked for it to be deleted but many also asked for it to just be tweaked. I said either or. The just needed to tweak the numbers so you didn’t have to da so much… like HW

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Originally Posted by Hazama999

When I first laid eyes on the RPR trailer they showed us back in the second EW keynote, my first thought was "Goddamnit. I wish this mechanic had been employed on DRK." And I shook my head. Tbh I've never really been a fan of transplanting mechanics from one job to another, but even before RPR was announced, I envisioned DRK having a sort of "superpowered" form. Now, this ain't to say it'd have been the exact same thing as RPR, that is, super speedy attacks with a reduced GCD... But the idea of say, being possessed by our dark side just felt right for DRK.

You see, when they showed us the job action trailer for 5.0 and it ended with the DRK summoning Fray to fight alongside us, I was very excited! It wasn't long, however, before I started asking questions... Was there going to be some sort of interaction with Fray? Can we influence how he fights in any way? Do we just summon them and they just do their thing?

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This makes complete sense. Players have expectations around burst that relate to DRK's design as a resource management job, as well as the way greatswords have traditionally been portrayed in Final Fantasy games. Build up gauge. Unleash fast multi-hit sword attack with lots of 9999s. I think that if the assigned goal was 'build a melee DPS job around greatswords', nobody would bat an eyelid at this.

It's also worth mentioning that there are two competing greatsword aesthetics at work. The first is the traditional Monster Hunter/Dark Souls greatsword with a long wind-up and a big impact. That's a pretty fun approach to the weapon, but it's heavily dependent on effective use of hitstop, which DRK doesn't use in its animations. That's why Fell Cleave is viscerally satisfying while Bloodspiller is not.

The other aesthetic is Cloud Strife. They've been trying to move away from the latter towards the former, without an understanding of what visually makes each of these combat styles fun to use.

The one thing that's been consistent with every iteration of DRK is dissatisfaction with the burst window. In Stormblood, players complained about how Delirium felt ineffective. 8-15 extra seconds of resource generation? Exciting. But what are you going to spend that on? Dark Arts? Bloodspiller? In the past two expansions, the complaints have been about how Delirium and now Living Shadow are still fairly boring. And I think that people would be willing to accept Living Shadow if it felt like we were going somewhere with it. It still feels like there's a move missing that ties everything together.

I think that one thing that Reaper did extremely well was in making your burst window resource-gated rather than time-gated. Why am I building up resources? Ah yes, to spend them on this supermove. I think that's the first step in addressing DRK's burst window. Remove everything else from the Blood gauge. Put Delirium in at 50 blood, 15 second recast. Give it a fun dark flaming aura. You know, the one that Frey uses at Whitebrim. Or the one that Julyan uses in the Heavensward Hildebrand questline. Replace your existing combo actions with new ones that hit harder and faster. Replace your Edge/Flood actions as well.

The reason why we've avoided this sort of design previously is because of the issue of syncing up burst with buff windows. The answer to this is simple enough, you just need to make Living Shadow give you 50 blood when you activate it. That way, by intention, you enter your burst phase at the same time that that Frey shows up for a tag team. Just go the Kings of Lucis route with this. Let the moves you perform in this Delirium window give you stacks. When the window ends, all your stacks are consumed into a multi-hit finisher. One shadow for each of them.

I understand that at the end of the day this is a tank job and the actual gameplay itself ends up being an afterthought, but there really needs to be a central focus here rather than throwing new actions at random.

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Originally Posted by Small_potato

I think Yoshida has already received many suggestions and opinions but they do not have available resources to start reworking DRK. Rework of SMN is just a accident for them(Yoshida said they overtime for two nights, making the rework). And for the same reason, they leave the job identity and balance issues.

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This kinda prove there's no happy accidents...I'm just saying

Shameless repost.
Posted this on the Dark knight mega thread but got lost in the post storm. Personally I think something like this would give us back an original feel of the class, make us unique again and make us actually enjoy what we do.

Dark Knight Changes:

Remove the auto darkside and turn it into an OGCD toggle

When not in darkside all moves give mana back

When in darkside mana is constantly drained, the final move in the weaponskill combo and all OGCD all cost mana but all heal the Dark Knight.
Obviously numbers for this need balancing to not make it OP but ideally keep the cost of the abilities low but keep the constant mana drain moderate, allowing for at least one full darkside weaponskill combo with 2 OGCD weaved in which then leaves you zero mana and kicked from darkside. Realistically you would never want to use the whole of darkside and be zero on mana because you have no health regen moves outside of darkside, so the aim would be to balance the mana gain outside of darkside with mana cost of being in darkside, similar to the original design.

Take quietus and bloodspiller off the blood meter

Unlink C&S and Abysall drain

Remove the current delirium and bring back the old weaponskill

Remove Living Dead

New move Overwhelming Darkness to replace living dead so same cooldown time. Fills all darknight resources mana, blood and darkside meter, resources and health regen increased massively overtime for 15 seconds after 15seconds all meters are zero'd regardless of state when the ability ends and all gain for these meters are blocked for 5seconds.

Weaponskills:
Weaponskills to reflect what stance you're in. When in none darkside you're effectively just using a greatsword, once in darkside you start using some of the more darkness themed moves.

None Darkside weaponskill combo
1 Hard slash
2 Syphon strike
3 Delirum

In Darkside weaponskill combo
1 Powerslash (our old combo finisher where we shot the blast from the hand)
2 Soul eater
3 BloodSpiller

OGCD non darkside
1. Unmend is now a OGCD
2. Scourge (bring it back)
3. Spinning slash (now aoe and a OCGD)
4: Carve and slice reduce cooldown to 18 seconds reduce damage
5: Plunge no change

OGCD darkside
1. Unmend becomes Abyssal drain
2. Scouge becomes Quietus
3. Spinning slash becomes Flood of Shadow
4. Carve and slice becomes Edge of Shadow
5. Plunge no change
6. Shadow bringer unchanged

Current UI elements

The counter for darkside is now the darkest night counter, instead of counting down it counts up while you're in darkside for however long you were in darkside. This is the resource pool for darkest knight and living shadow, at 50 is used to cast darkest night at living shadow can be triggered any point over 50 but last longer the more you use. Add in a second press to living shadow allowing the DRK to destroy the shadow early to return a portion of the cost to the counter.

Keep the blood gauge but give us a move that lets you absorb a portion of the blood gauge to either give a chunk of mana or heal depending on whether you're in darkside or not you could use the old dark arts animation for it.
(In a later change I would like to see this as a modifier with old dark arts. So give us dark arts as a button and bring back status effects either buffs or de-buffs on our some moves, have this bar the resource that is used for dark arts. As I said this would require substantial dev time so it is not needed right now unlike the rest of the changes listed above.)

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Originally Posted by Garlan

That isn't remotely true. For every bit of praise I shared about 4.0 DRK with others back in the day, I got an equal amount of dissenters lambasting Dark Arts and wishing for its deletion. Now that we actually lost Dark Arts, we seemingly forget the huge amount of feedback from actual players wishing that it was removed. Yes, some wanted it to get altered, but there were still a sizable portion that simply wanted it gone period.

Also, the animation bit is also a tad subjective. I won't pretend to say we lost a lot of cool animations over the years (RIP Scourge, Power Slash, and Sole Survivor), but Edge of Shadow, Flood of Shadow, Oblation, Stalwart Soul, and Shadowbringer are all incredibly awesome looking abilities. It is not fair in the slightest to say that all of the animations DRK has been given post 4.0 have been lackluster.

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I recall a lot of people wanting the SPAM of it removed rather than Dark Arts itself, but I suppose that's maybe a moot point in the design space.

I do agree with the fact that animation is super subjective. I found Edge and Flood just to be so... bleh? In fact I think you can go too far. Looking at you Living Shadow you glorified DoT. But such talk between DRK is probably best left to the side. (COUGH Side note, WAR Storm Path, WHY you so limp?).

But it could have the best animations in the game and well.... don't care? I dropped it in Shadowbringers because of how badly it felt to play to the point I just didn't care to see what new abilities we WOULD get. And from what I've seen here, it doesn't seem like anything has really changed about the job.

I think the overall ideas here are great however a few things worth mentioning:
1. An invulnerability shouldn't be anything else other than an invulnerability. Regaining health fast to full and then going to 0 after 10 seconds is ok, but the other resources no. People can use it offensively. Instead I have another idea. ( 2 )
2. Instead of Living Shadow at level 90 , add a trait which makes Fray fuse with you, and grant you a massive regen on ( blood and MP while granting access to 10 Darkarts empowered actions or perhaps a new combo )
3. C&S frequency should be 30 seconds, instead of 18. To align with raid buffs.
4. The combos you mentioned could be tweaked a bit to look like one ability flows into the other. ( using Powerslash -> Souleater doesn't seem to flow well, does it? )
5. Darkarts could be an off GCD with a CD of 5 seconds to augment 1 action ( GCD / OGCD ) changing not only its potencies but also the animation.

One suggestion of mine without scrapping the kit would be to make DRK Living Shadow grant SkS and a new combo ( that combo granting you access to Darkarts as well ). Kind of inspiring from Reaper's idea of you gathering resources and using them on a big spender which makes YOU go crazy - not a shadow that you can forget about.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

I think the overall ideas here are great however a few things worth mentioning:
1. An invulnerability shouldn't be anything else other than an invulnerability. Regaining health fast to full and then going to 0 after 10 seconds is ok, but the other resources no. People can use it offensively. Instead I have another idea. ( 2 )
2. Instead of Living Shadow at level 90 , add a trait which makes Frey fuse with you, and grant you a massive regen on ( blood and MP while granting access to 10 Darkarts empowered actions or perhaps a new combo )
3. C&S frequency should be 30 seconds, instead of 18. To align with raid buffs.
4. The combos you mentioned could be tweaked a bit to look like one ability flows into the other. ( using Powerslash -> Souleater doesn't seem to flow well, does it? )
5. Darkarts could be an off GCD with a CD of 5 seconds to augment 1 action ( GCD / OGCD ) changing not only its potencies but also the animation.

One suggestion of mine without scrapping the kit would be to make DRK Living Shadow grant SkS and a new combo ( that combo granting you access to Darkarts as well ). Kind of inspiring from Reaper's idea of you gathe resources and use them on a bit spender which makes YOU go crazy - not a shadow that you can forget about.

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I'm happy with pretty much any idea of an invuln change at this point, the reason I wrote the idea like that is basically give the DRK something slightly different and yes it could be used offensively but with 5secs of zero mana and resource gain, if the rest of those changes are done it means you're a sitting duck for 5 seconds, no self heal abilities. But ultimately yeah I like your idea too have Frey fuse with you and give you mega regen.

Pretty much all DRK weapon skill animations could be used one into the next. Due to the GCD, your character reverts to their in combat stance at the end of each weapon skill. Every weaponskill for DRK has an initial attack swing then a final swing before the reset to in combat stance, this is true for all moves, so it doesn't really matter which one you use after the other.

Returning Dark Arts in it's original incarnation, which was to modify certain moves, giving them additional damage and a status effect would be nice but would require some serious design work. The issue is that alot of the status effects didn't apply to bosses so made them moot, would be good to maybe change them into buff and debuffs. Instead of us being a budget warrior we could be the buff/debuff tank.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

I recall a lot of people wanting the SPAM of it removed rather than Dark Arts itself, but I suppose that's maybe a moot point in the design space.

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I mean, if they took the coolest part of a job, broke it over their knee, and turned it into a thoughtless spamfest with no real nuance, I'd want it removed too. It's pretty clear they didn't know how to take Dark Arts and turn it into something actually interesting or evolve the concept after 3.0. Which sucks because, as much as some people hate to believe it, they've done just that with plenty of other jobs, including tank jobs (namely PLD).

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

I mean, if they took the coolest part of a job, broke it over their knee, and turned it into a thoughtless spamfest with no real nuance, I'd want it removed too. It's pretty clear they didn't know how to take Dark Arts and turn it into something actually interesting or evolve the concept after 3.0. Which sucks because, as much as some people hate to believe it, they've done just that with plenty of other jobs, including tank jobs (namely PLD).

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Which is why I said it was a rather moot point as the two were so meshed. Rather than go “oh they hate the implementation” it was “Oh they hate dark arts. Better kill it”. Though my own thought on Dark Arts was salvageable. More things or ways to spend it yeah okay, just scale it back to the pace of HW and make it more viable in the moment to moment choice. But it was just easier to ax it then walk it back or fix.

That said I did like the speed DRK felt in stormblood but we also still had speed on Blood Weapon so, column A column B.

The quick fix for 6.08:
BW: 5 stacks
LD: take the KO away
AD: unlink w/ c&s, make it a gcd with small heal per target at the cost of DA proc or 30seconds of DA uptime. Take damage pot away if necessary.

Take the time for a thoughtful integration of TBN and oblation or rework oblation separate from tbn by 6.1.

This is until the rework hits in 6.2. I know some will call me unreasonable but I expect to see results for my money and I know they CAN do better. Will they?

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

Which is why I said it was a rather moot point as the two were so meshed. Rather than go “oh they hate the implementation” it was “Oh they hate dark arts. Better kill it”. Though my own thought on Dark Arts was salvageable. More things or ways to spend it yeah okay, just scale it back to the pace of HW and make it more viable in the moment to moment choice. But it was just easier to ax it then walk it back or fix.

That said I did like the speed DRK felt in stormblood but we also still had speed on Blood Weapon so, column A column B.

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Yeah, I'm just kinda salty that people pretend 4.0 DRK was its high point when it was a disaster all around. It might've been more fun than its 5.0 variant, but its overall terrible design made its lows a hell of a lot lower.

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

Yeah, I'm just kinda salty that people pretend 4.0 DRK was its high point when it was a disaster all around. It might've been more fun than its 5.0 variant, but its overall terrible design made its lows a hell of a lot lower.

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I think most Older DRKs would say Heavensward was peak DRK. Even with the Glasses off but those days the game was different in how they handled fights and job balance around them.

That said, I didn't think 4.0 was a disaster. We picked up some good things, pruned some stuff that could stay or go, and saw improvements. Though at the same time the Devs were kinda starting to fumble with the idea of "How does Tank" which still struggles to this day depending, so some of the things were just odd or different. The main problem was at least to me of course the issue around Dark Arts, it had other problems like a focus still around Parry and Magic tank, but DA spam was the main downside. Myself, I liked it as it didn't feel like I was always 'building up' to a full gauge like other jobs, just get enough to burn DA onto something. No having to worry about when I get to go off the leash like say PLD or WAR. To me it felt very much like an upkeep job like DRG's Blood of the Dragon, just keep that plate spinning where as other jobs want to wait for their big burst and dump everything into it, when the ability is off CD or their gauge is up.

This IS however, with me having poor memory these days and it was what 3 years ago by now? 4? So I will admit I could be forgetting things or just have rose tinted glasses. I liked what I liked, saw some problems it had or could have going forward but I was still pretty hopeful to see just what they would do. Possibly Naïve.

To put it into a picture though; I'd give Heavensward ward a grade of B+ to A. Very good.
Stormblood drops to C- or B. Decent, like some ideas, really need to settle on some of them.
Shadowbringers drops to D or lower with a note of "Who actually wrote this?" on the side.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

snip.

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The thing is that 5.0 DRK, as boring as it was, had few major design flaws. 4.0 DRK had a load of problems that just didn't mesh well with the overall game design at the time. It lacked a slashing debuff, which basically forced a composition containing some of the most already-broken jobs in the game (and Samurai, lol), locked multiple skills behind either tank or DPS stance-preventing you from ever using them the moment you wanted to optimize- and arguably had more trouble holding aggro than any other tank until late into Stormblood. Not all of these things are bad on their own, mind- heck, the only thing I'd argue was an objective design flaw was locking abilities behind tank stance- but your reward for what was more or less the most difficult tank to play was the lowest damage and worst party utility out of every tank by a pretty sizable margin. It was profoundly unrewarding the moment you cared about anyone other than yourself.

I found its gameplay loop pretty fun, don't get me wrong, but I've never been so thoroughly annoyed with how reliant upon others it was than I was with 4.0 DRK, and as thematically fitting as that might be, I really don't think it was worth it.

And that's just it. 4.0 DRK just wasn't worth the effort to play compared to the other two. 3.0 and even 5.0 DRK was. It's hard for me personally to enjoy a job when I feel like I'm dragging down the rest of the party by playing it. The job was all take and no give, which I strongly believe a tank shouldn't be.

(and that's not even getting into how bad it felt in dungeons KEKW)

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

Snip

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Weird, I never had problem holding hate as DRK. But then again, I was a bad tank because I used actual Tank Stance which was the incorrect thing to do at the time if my memory from posters is correct(Yes I was told I was a bad tank if I couldn't hold hate when not in Grit when part of my kit wanted Grit anyway). As for the locking of abilities, well, yeah. Back then they were trying to make things function as MT focus or OT focus. You didn't NEED certain abilities if you were focused on damage or tanking. But this isn't me fully defending it as Peak design, that was Heavensward. I just didn't see or care about the problems listed because I either didn't play that way or that level of content. DRK did less damage than WAR, so, I ran dungeons all day. Killing something 5-10 seconds faster really didn't effect me that much. Some of those complaints only really felt like they mattered when you needed to push every little number as far as it could go and well, I just don't like playing that way most the time. I was hopeful they could somehow do something better in the next expansion, maybe find a way to fuse both of them.

But instead we got..., a very effective version of DRK in 5.0. I'll admit it, 5.0 DRK is good. It's just so mind numbingly slow, boring, and just so bland; I went and leveled WAR, never looked back. And even then, I only tank these days for the fast times, tanking in general is just bleh to me these days. A class can be powerful and top the charts, I won't play it if it feels wrong. I forced myself to level BLM because "It MUST be good, everyone likes it" during Shadowbringers and well...., My mind just refused to record any moment of my BLM time because I was just so put off by the job. Heck if I recall for a time in Shadowbringers, MNK was really good.... for as clunky as the player base made it out to be. Though that's also info I picked up when people were all a buzz and those numbers/opinions changed like per week or day. What I'm reaching for is this; the point in making an effective Job if the cycle of play is just so awkward, off pace, and clunky.

But then again, that's also why a lot of people quit 4.0 DRK. They just also had the numbers to back them up where as now I can only say "I don't like how it plays". The numbers seem to be against me but from what I'm seeing of PLD being maybe fun but lacking, maybe I'll go give that one a shot.

I think what you look for in a Job, is different from what I look for in a Job.

They could make a tank that's interesting, fun to play, and can be effective. But the devs seem to be in a war of "Balance/Enjoyment/Ease/Popularity" when it comes to balance so I don't think they're going to be able to please both of us at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

The quick fix for 6.08:
BW: 5 stacks
LD: take the KO away
AD: unlink w/ c&s, make it a gcd with small heal per target at the cost of DA proc or 30seconds of DA uptime. Take damage pot away if necessary.

Take the time for a thoughtful integration of TBN and oblation or rework oblation separate from tbn by 6.1.

This is until the rework hits in 6.2. I know some will call me unreasonable but I expect to see results for my money and I know they CAN do better. Will they?

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What I wouldn't give for DRK to have a real invul

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Originally Posted by Oizen

What I wouldn't give for DRK to have a real invul

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What I wouldn’t give for some legit communication from the dev team or Yoshi on the state of and vision for DRK. They clearly have seen this posting and others talking about the dissatisfaction with DRK despite it’s high DPS.

This thread “you’re DRK players are unhappy” has over 70 likes. You normally would be lucky to get 7…. Surely they’ve noticed. Maybe they should communicate as much and follow it up with something: we are working on it, expect it [time]! Or f$$k you, we don’t care what you think… something is better than nothing because most DRKs naturally default to the latter at this point.

The entire player base should really pay attention here. For the last 6+ years it’s been DRK, as well as other jobs to a lesser extent, but the mentality of “we know best, you pay and enjoy” will be coming to your main job soon. And God forbid you complain or voice your discontent in anything other than the most polite hushed tones to be followed up with flattery of Yoshi for saving the game over 10 years ago; Yoshi will call you out for being pissed after years of ignored polite comments.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Danelo

The entire player base should really pay attention here. For the last 6+ years it’s been DRK, as well as other jobs to a lesser extent, but the mentality of “we know best, you pay and enjoy” will be coming to your main job soon. And God forbid you complain or voice your discontent in anything other than the most polite hushed tones to be followed up with flattery of Yoshi for saving the game over 10 years ago; Yoshi will call you out for being pissed after years of ignored polite comments.

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I don't know man, Dark Arts was removed because of community feedback during Stormsblood, suddenly wanting it back is a taste of irony.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

I don't know man, Dark Arts was removed because of community feedback during Stormsblood, suddenly wanting it back is a taste of irony.

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I think it would be more accurate to say OG DRKs wanted the frequency of dark arts pared back the HW levels BUT, if they couldn’t have that, then they would rather it removed entirely…. I wasn’t the only one saying that at the time.

But that’s one thing.

It's like that dude said before, Dark Arts was getting used less, and less, pushing to the end of HW, even I know it was becoming less used over time, wasn't any need for it.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

It's like that dude said before, Dark Arts was getting used less, and less, pushing to the end of HW, even I know it was becoming less used over time, wasn't any need for it.

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I don’t mind they ditched dark arts, spammy or not, but I think the point remains about it being not being listened to responded to

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

It's like that dude said before, Dark Arts was getting used less, and less, pushing to the end of HW, even I know it was becoming less used over time, wasn't any need for it.

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Except that doesn't even make sense. It couldn't have been used less and less as it was a part of the dps contribution to your rotation. It may not have been used to buff dark mind very much toward the end of HW, but saying the ability itself was used less and less is a complete fabrication.

The community did not like what they did to dark arts for SB, that doesn't equate to just wanting it outright removed.

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Originally Posted by Rhais

Except that doesn't even make sense. It couldn't have been used less and less as it was a part of the dps contribution to your rotation. It may not have been used to buff dark mind very much toward the end of HW, but saying the ability itself was used less and less is a complete fabrication.

The community did not like what they did to dark arts for SB, that doesn't equate to just wanting it outright removed.

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It's because the use of Dark Arts was overstated in the fact that it literally turned into "ADD 150 Potency to THIS and THIS and THIS" on 5 or 6 different buttons(which was VERY annoying. Dark Arts Plunge? Why?). What made DRK feel great to use Dark Arts in HW was actually planned usage. Outside of your combos, you actually had some parity of choice in what you used it on. Dark Passenger for Blind, Dark Arts Dark Dance? Sure. What the Battle Development Team needs to focus on is what made DRK actually fun to play before - not dumbing it down to the point where everything is desynced at end-game.

The problem with Dark Arts over time was that if Dark Knight was offtank, then a lot of the uses for Dark Arts fell off in importance, because a lot of the abilities required the Drk to be the Main Tank to be effective. This also ties into a lot of the abilities that were removed over the various expansions. Blood Price, Dark Dance, Reprisal, Dark Passenger. Most of these benefited the Dark Knight when they were the main tank. They didn't really make sense for Drk to use them if they were OT.

I mean, Dark Arts + Dark Dance and Dark Arts + Dark Passenger was fairly effective as a combination on a huge pull when tanking. Dark Knight had great synergy for many of those skills. But those skills required the Drk to be actively tanking.


Dark Arts should be more central to the class I feel. The issue is how to balance it. We would effectively have 3 resources to maintain if they added stacks of Dark Arts back.

I honestly feel we should be rewarded for tanking, and unleashing Dark Arts in reprisal of attacks against us, or our friends, should be the reward for that. TBN right now is the ONLY form of Dark Knight's original feel of " Punch you back in the face " for every hit you slam me with that remains.

Allowing Dark Knights to gain Dark Arts from other abilities that we slap on ourselves, or others, would help restore that feeling of Reprisal for the pain dished out against us, or those whom we are protecting.

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Originally Posted by Dracosavarian

The problem with Dark Arts over time was that if Dark Knight was offtank, then a lot of the uses for Dark Arts fell off in importance, because a lot of the abilities required the Drk to be the Main Tank to be effective.

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I... have no issue with this. I see little point to the later obsession that tank's must be able to apply their mitigation even without being the one's attacked over just... reducing Voke's cooldown and increasing the number of tankbusters (especially, multi-hit TBs) and the overall rate of incoming damage as to more frequently oblige tanks tagging in/out.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I... have no issue with this. I see little point to the later obsession that tank's must be able to apply their mitigation even without being the one's attacked over just... reducing Voke's cooldown and increasing the number of tankbusters (especially, multi-hit TBs) and the overall rate of incoming damage as to more frequently oblige tanks tagging in/out.

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Oh, I was just explaining the reasons why those abilities, and Dark Arts by extension, was largely removed. Hence the large portion of Dark Knight's very identity being severed from the job as a result.

I am just citing the reason why those abilities were likely removed. Because they ended up being button bloat, when in a good majority of the content they didn't serve much use if the Drk wasn't Main tank. A lot of the kit that Drk had revolved around those abilities and Dark Arts boosting them. But since they are gone, Dark Arts only extends to when TBN is burst now.

I'd like to see Dark Arts brought back, but bring back that sense of retaliation by allowing us to slap abilities on others, even as Off Tank. And be rewarded for those uses with a charge of Dark Arts that can boost various things.

I think that would help bring back Drk's identity as the Tank that Retaliated for getting punched in the face. So to speak.

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Originally Posted by Dracosavarian

Oh, I was just explaining the reasons why those abilities, and Dark Arts by extension, was largely removed.

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Oh, that was clear. Sorry for hyjacking your post / taking it in a new direction.

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I'd like to see Dark Arts brought back, but bring back that sense of retaliation by allowing us to slap abilities on others, even as Off Tank.

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I'd like to see DA brought back if done well* (not causing the base skills to feel merely watered down to point of uselessness nor their augmented forms not worth their potency cost), but I don't think it much needs to be OT-applicable. You've a fair bit of banking, and I'd like for tanks to typically swap in and out rather than their being so long-defined an "MT" and "OT".

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I think that would help bring back Drk's identity as the Tank that Retaliated for getting punched in the face. So to speak.

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I think it'd help all of the tanks, to be honest, to have a bit more of their potency bound up in reactives/retaliation (and, by extension, more towards presently tanking).

PLD could retain identity in that external mitigation capacity though a less crippled / more integral, but apart from that OT options really should be a last resort or consequent to systemic changes (like virtually all attacks actually being to some degree soaks --T10 style if linear-- or hits-first-target skillshots). Even then I'd argue that something like that for Warrior should be a split-according-to-proximity sort of strike-leader effect rather than a single-target external mitigation and shared-healing tool (Nascent).

Not terribly relevant to the trajectory of the larger thread, but just my two cents on preferable tank gameplay, aesthetic, and thereby identity/feel.