Dark Knight Megathread

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

It also somewhat fixes the issue of Darkside being a braindead buff that's permanently up all the time. It becomes more useful to use AD on cooldown, and thus Edge is just used to keep Darkside up, which makes it possible for the buff to actually fall off.

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I really like the ideas in this thread discussing Darkside being a resource. Having it that way reminds me of when DRK used to have it's MP constantly draining, which felt super thematic. I wish the DRK rotation felt more like controlled chaos rather than burst oriented... Resources constantly draining, fluctuating skill speeds, it would all just feel so dynamic...

If DRK can't have health sacrificing mechanics in PvE, the next best thing is to make the rotation feel chaotic; A complete opposite of the PLD rotation.

Dark Knight has always been a weird tank for me, I love it's design I like big swords, but the job feels really messy to play for me, Some people enjoy it and that's fine.

I think my personal issues:
is the lack of a fun rotation, 1, 2, 3 90% of the time intense weaving 10% of the time, I more like a consistent rotation with some weaving in between, drks rotation feels like a mess
no "dark magic" attacks (exluding unmend and aoe?), I get Paladin does this (with its holy spells and blade spells) but i feel like dark magic would really fit dark, you don't have to copy and paste paladin lmao, but I'd like to see some sort of magic attack on drk
Defensives are good but messy, Drk has a lot of defensives TBN, Is good but i feel like its worse then the others and can be a dps loss, others short cds are free to use, I'd say the barrier is better and in cases where you stack defensives thats pretty good, but i feel like other abilites such as Blood Whetting do way more for no risk, Dark mind is good... in magic only, Oblation feels like bloat but its decent.

I don't know Dark Knights look is so cool, I really like the look just playing it feels bad for me, I'd only pick it over Warrior out of the 4 tanks because I don't find war fun while i find PLD/GNB hit the more fun rotation spot with good defensives that feel unique, I wish dark got more attention but it feels like it was just given big numbers this expansion so everyone would be happy.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

is the lack of a fun rotation, 1, 2, 3 90% of the time intense weaving 10% of the time, I more like a consistent rotation with some weaving in between, drks rotation feels like a mess

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I've never understood why they've done that. Doesn't the fun of a job come fun consistently keeping you engaged? In savage, The Blackest Night does a good job at that. But in normals, DRK feels awful. I'd much rather have my MP management directly injected in my rotation.

That's why I love PLD and GNB so much; Both are consistent in how they play by making you constantly manage your rotation. You could argue GNB has the same problem of 1-2-3, but Gnashing Fang being on a 30 second CD does the job wonders.

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Originally Posted by Sazuzaki

I've never understood why they've done that. Doesn't the fun of a job come fun consistently keeping you engaged? In savage, The Blackest Night does a good job at that. But in normals, DRK feels awful. I'd much rather have my MP management directly injected in my rotation.

That's why I love PLD and GNB so much; Both are consistent in how they play by making you constantly manage your rotation. You could argue GNB has the same problem of 1-2-3, but Gnashing Fang being on a 30 second CD does the job wonders.

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Gunbreaker has a lot of GCD's with timers Outside of your 1, 2, 3 and gnashing fang combo, to be fair your going to be using that in your no mercy window, as gnashing fang is on 30 seconds it feels like I'm doing a lot more, often.
PLD's got this general flow to it, It's generally very enjoyable for me, it has that sword and shield caster feel I just really like the job in general, heck as much as you shouldn't use clemency it being good in rare situations means sometimes you shouldn't be following a standard rotation, This only seems to be useful in dugeons when the healer ded, but this happens to me a lot, I'm normally able to easily keep up the two dps.

TBN on drk is good, I think personally it's generally the weakest but that's up to others to decide (generally personal preference all do the jobs do short cds well, if this was SHB then obviously drks cd would be by far the best, but it's still very powerful), considering you also get oblation drks defensive kit is more spread out then the other tanks, which is fine imo. I don't think it's super weak or underpowered but it having a punishing style to its effect instead of rewarding the drk for a good use of TBN you get a refund, I dislike that it doesn't feel like I'm being rewarded, a good idea is giving it some sort of regen on break or something like that, a bit of self sustain on Dark Knight would be amazing (it doesn't have to be war/pld amounts) on drk like a slow overtime hp gain would make it feel more fun to tank with, some cool dark magic and some changes to its base rotation would make drk one of my most loved jobs, My frustration is more the disappointment with the "dark knight" I've always enjoyed playing edgy jobs and more traditional "protect the party", but sadly I feel like dark knight has a lot of potential to be so much better, the animations and weapons are so good.

With all the TBs having bleeds this tier, I've gonna from thinking DRK will be fine back to "just a crumb of self-sustain". At least with TBN's short CD if you time it well you can use it twice during the bleed to help your healers out a bit.

Yea this savage tier you really have to time the TBNs to get it to cover the initial hit and then the end of the bleed DOT. However the lack of self sustain for DRK really shows this tier. I am wondering are they going to increase WAR and PLD damage since the recent onslaught of complaints and job exclusion. Sometimes I wonder what DRK would be like if bloodspiller and quietus had a small cure potency tied to them.

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Originally Posted by Derio

Yea this savage tier you really have to time the TBNs to get it to cover the initial hit and then the end of the bleed DOT. However the lack of self sustain for DRK really shows this tier. I am wondering are they going to increase WAR and PLD damage since the recent onslaught of complaints and job exclusion. Sometimes I wonder what DRK would be like if bloodspiller and quietus had a small cure potency tied to them.

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They could give Souleater raw lifesteal. Crit Souleater = like 15k HP restored which would be pretty cool, but could make DRK's 1-2-3 too good LOL.

I'm more on board with disconnecting CnS and Abyssal Drain, and giving Abyssal Drain a HoT effect. Or, y'know, put a regen on Salted Earth if you're standing in the puddle.

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Originally Posted by Sazuzaki

They could give Souleater raw lifesteal. Crit Souleater = like 15k HP restored which would be pretty cool, but could make DRK's 1-2-3 too good LOL.

I'm more on board with disconnecting CnS and Abyssal Drain, and giving Abyssal Drain a HoT effect. Or, y'know, put a regen on Salted Earth if you're standing in the puddle.

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Even just added the 400 Cure Potency on Bloodspiller/Quietus would do a lot to alleviate the issue. Hell, a lifesteal on hit effect added to Oblation alone would do a lot to help DRK and give it more flavor, since you essentially could give allies the ability to lifesteal.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

With all the TBs having bleeds this tier, I've gonna from thinking DRK will be fine back to "just a crumb of self-sustain". At least with TBN's short CD if you time it well you can use it twice during the bleed to help your healers out a bit.

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Honest question, why would you think this?

Transparency here, I only got to P8S in Week 1, no clearing the tier or anything, but I haven't felt this comfortable defensively on DRK since like, Sigmascape. We can literally TBN two times, per buster. That's 50% flat HP that can be allocated to either tank spots, or 25% to both tanks, (initial hit + last three ticks of bleed), and that's without taking into consideration the actual mitigation value of kitchensinking. I got tanks literally invulning O7S Condensed Aero, and I'm just like lmao, because I got 4 CDs I can comfortably waste on it and take marginal DoT damage afterwards and negate an entire tick of the bleed. So instead of focusing on the other tank, pre and post buster, just put the Kardia/Exaltation/Aquaveil/literally anything SCH-related on me instead, and just remove the other tanks DoT from the equation entirely. Because I can use it so much more often, I see it as superior to the 25s CDs in these instances, I don't need the self heals, some kind of short CD mitigation (DM/Obl/TBN) is always up, every TBN breaks in two autos, I'm guessing even at BiS because these autos chunk me for over 19K, MINIMUM on P5S. And if I actually get consistent HoCs/Nascents on top? WEW. I don't feel like I'm in danger because I'm playing DRK specifically, I feel like I'm in danger because the damage intake is high and I can't trivialize the tankbusters the same way I've been for the last few years, but I have very strong answers to these situations that puts me in control. You buff Souleater healing and give Oblation a regen combined with co-tank/dedicated healer support? I dunno man. Still want it on a 40 sec CD though.

If anything, you should be thinking PLDs are the ones getting reamed this time, because not only is their damage atrocious because of underlying game design problems, the blocks just don't work on the DoTs! Which is ridiculous, because the DoT damage is HIGHER than the buster damage, and contributes way more to what mandates the tank healing, and is usually followed up by another damage instance (autos/raidwides) that end up killing tanks. Looking directly at you, P6S. 20% on a bleed is about as good as an entire TBN in terms of overall damage mitigated that PLD just doesn't get for whatever reason. Real cool Hallowing the shared buster, only to immediately explode because the bleed wasn't mitigated with Sheltron, you literally have one less cooldown than other tanks, (two, if we count situations like bleeding Dark Missionary/Heart of Light from Syngery into the Dark IVs for double value) and the follow up raidwide only had party mitigations. Is anyone else getting flashbacks to Alexander right now? When you have busters with raw damage values that easily exceed 100K, and follow up bleeds that total to over 150K, even on the first two fights, I'm absolutely gonna bring the job that has a lot of shareable, low-cooldown "useless" abilities to snapshot those busters, and reduce their total output for a consistent HP profile in progression, compared to HP number go up right now(not saying those abilities are bad, they are good, just that again, like Gordias/Midas, it feels a lot like this tier was specifically designed for DRK mitigations to slap). I wholeheartedly accept those bleeds.

Healers can heal if they have to, don't worry I'll make up the aDPS you MAY lose while we progress.

Still you cant say that DRK is on good state because the savage fights seems custom tailored to their mitigation skills unless they are planning to do that on every fight onwards

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Still you cant say that DRK is on good state because the savage fights seems custom tailored to their mitigation skills unless they are planning to do that on every fight onwards

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Yes, that's exactly why I didn't say that DRK is in a good state. I never have, and with this development team, I probably never will. I said that DRK is comfortable to defensively mitigate with. And in terms of statistics, that's true. Statistically, it's probably the 2nd best raid tank, minimum. Certainly not the worst. But I don't care about those things when I talk about playing DRK, and being a DRK main. DRK has not once amounted to what I believe is a solid design, just versions that are significantly more fun that other versions that they toss away for no reason. This version of DRK is playable, but only because they ripped every single interesting thing possible from the job rather than try and make it work. The typical SE remove to improve job design. I do not support the lack of rotational, or underlying changes that came with EW DRK, and I never supported the gutting that came with ShB DRK. I do not support where they are going with job design, even overall combat design outside of savage in general! But there's a time and a place for that conversation, which was not what I was intending with that comment. I was offering a rebuttal in regards to it's performance in the current tier, defensively, without making considerations for how I feel about the job personally, nor how it is in content that is not Savage. And to be honest? Of all the jobs that have existed in FFXIV, DRK more than any other has been the job that has raid encounters designed in it's favor, and not in spite of it, such as the case of PLD, or old BLM. You only need to look at the ratio of high damage instances of magic/physical since Heavensward to see that bias.

All true and I didn't mean to imply DRK was in a bad spot defensively. The DoT is just so spicy that while I'm waiting for TBN to come off CD and watching my health tank, I'm wishing I had something else to help with it.

Especially considering DRK is the only tank without a heal to help during it. Abyssal Drain's 200 cure potency is not viable, nor is Souleater's 300 cure potency that you cannot even use while doing any Blood Gauge attacks.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

All true and I didn't mean to imply DRK was in a bad spot defensively. The DoT is just so spicy that while I'm waiting for TBN to come off CD and watching my health tank, I'm wishing I had something else to help with it.

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I understand it's a threatening position to be in, not having any backup tools except for LD, but I am telling you, you do not need them. The DoT is very threatening, a big departure from previous encounters, but just alternate each buster with Shadow Wall or Rampart/Dark Mind/Oblation with an EARLY TBN. There are some exceptions, like Toxic Crunch being physical, and I think one of the Syngery hits is Phys? In terms of timing, the busters this time around all have around 6-8 seconds in cast length, so you should be able to get slammed with TBN up at about a second or two remaining. That gives you 7 seconds left on the cooldown, with another 14 seconds left on the DoT. I typically see it as "Regardless of who or how buster is mitigated, the final two bleed ticks are the ones I can get, invuln or not." And if we're coming out at around 100K HP with a bit of gear, it's plain to see how having 50K HP over the course the tankbuster hit and DoT without factoring in additive mitigations is nothing to shrug at. Help out your co-tank with the 2nd stack of Oblation as well, it alone typically reduces an entire tick worth of DoT damage on it's own during the duration. I really do not think you don't need the heals when planned. It's not necessary, and even if it was, why should there be tank that not only carries around TBN, arguably custom-tuned for situations just like this due to mitigation after DoT snapshotting not working compared to the universal usage of percentage shields, but also gain anything more than middling self heals during a standard rotation? The answer is not requiring the heals in the 1st place if sustain is a concern, especially when learning. This is same argument I hear about SGE. If the entirety of Haima is consumed during your DoT, meaning that it only shielded you, and did 0 actual HP recovery, the result is functionally the same or arguably better due to mits/impossibility of overheal. DRK gets to carry about a Haima-mini with a failure state every 15 seconds. To not abuse it during your learning experience is not utilizing the toolkit fully. This is how the busters should be designed, if I want to make the buster and DoT really comfortable, there should be an multi-person effort on the part of the receiving party, the support cast, none of this one tank solo's every buster/invuln swap every pull garbage we got for so long.

If I want to make a regen because I'm eating this buster with Rampart+3CDs and not Shadow Wall+3CDs, I'll ask my GNB to share his 2nd stack of aurora, shoot me if it's solo'd for the mitigation and excog-mini. I'll ask my WAR to give me Nascent so we can both benefit while he Equilibriums himself. I'll ask my PLD to make sure he Ramparts before he throws the Intervention so my TBN casually gets another 30% on it. With DRK, I not only get it myself, I can give it to others within the same buster for a similar result since their short low-CD mitigations have such a high base value with benefits that will take place during or after I've shielded them. They're just missing Enhanced Oblation with 10% basic + 10% additional magic mitigation. /s

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Especially considering DRK is the only tank without a heal to help during it. Abyssal Drain's 200 cure potency is not viable, nor is Souleater's 300 cure potency that you cannot even use while doing any Blood Gauge attacks.

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If I can survive P6 DSR with a good portion of my GCDs being Unleash/Stalwart Soul (therefore no real health regen for half the phase, usually as they are autoing in their base positions) and no invuln, or TEA, where P1 and P2 have a significant overemphasis on not using Souleater combo if possible, you can survive. PLD doesn't get it's self heals for over half it's rotation outside of Sheltron, you can't guarantee that magic phase heals are even going to be relevant when you are getting to that point. This is an issue that TBN just ignores if you count autos and don't spend too much outside the two minutes, something I think is reasonable to expect of players doing current raid content. You want to see a tank who STRUGGLES, who NEEDS assistance to just stay alive in content? DSR P6 no invuln Paladin. That's a real fight to the death.

You should not look at DRKs in isolation. This keeps happening every time I peek my head in here. I have a co-tank and two healers in raids, who can easily provide me the spot heals/regens in that emergency situation without GCD investment where I come into a buster with anything less 3/4ths of my HP, or they can make my TBNs even stronger with their own shared percentage mitigation suites. How are Equilibrium spot heals, passive regens, and GCD self heals going to help you if you just evaporate to the 170K Tyrant's Darkness after those shared 20K per tank autos? (Edit: This is a bad point. You can just spot heal yourself pre-hit, and precast your regens to get value from not immediately exploding to such a combination of damage.)

Do I think that it's asinine that CnS doesn't have a heal potency since it got paired with Abyssal Drain? YES. Do I think it's to the detriment of DRKs everywhere that Abyssal Drain is an oGCD and not the monster it was in HW/SB? YES. Do I think Bloodwhetting/HoC are in general more useful, more intuitive and easier to plant into fight timelines? YES.

But if I'm gonna talk **** about XIV jobs which I will continue to do, it needs to make sense. TBN, whatever you think about it in the terms of DRK's kit, is really solid this tier with how they've changed the busters, on hit, and post-hit. Every single mitigation you put on a DRK , self-applied or by the team, major or minor, just serves to cement TBN further on every buster and with practice, every raidwide>auto attack follow up. This has been very valuable in my progression experience, high HPS abuse through TBN shielding is very comfortable from what my healers say. What are people complaining about? Tanks are too strong. Healers have nothing to do. Nothing hits hard. We need this kind of damage intake, so the kits can be properly leveraged in content and actually work towards the tentative balance we have for mitigating them in different, but effective ways. (Except PLD DoT blocks, that is ridiculous, no rotation-specific self heals make up for the fact you can't mitigate the DoTs with Holy Sheltron blocks.)

If you don't like having to weave 4-5 defensive oGCDs in the middle of your 2 minutes to be competitive with other mitigation suites in the same situation, I understand. There is an argument to be made that skills should be useful in their totality and not require hard content or infrequent encounter design for them to reach their full potential for the sake of a consistent gameplay experience.

This job sucks conceptually for a lot of reasons, but not in a literal sense due to numbers/encounter design. I prefer older versions still, the kit is disjointed, Darkside is worthless, TBN should not carry the job design THIS HARD, and the GCDs are boring. I still like it regardless, and I've come to terms that won't change. But the ultra specific things I've been whining about have far extended past Dark Knight itself, it's the substat system, it's the 2 min raidbuff consolidation that DRK and other jobs are abusing to an absurd extent, it's the flattening of the skill curve. Starting to realize that maybe the combat philosophy these last two expansions just suck.

You're right, now's not the time to ask for more sustain just because things get dicey for a bit. I should be welcoming and eating the extra damage, and asking Square for seconds like a REAL tank. I'm kinda joking but also being serious, I think them adding the dots after a TB was a great idea. I just wonder if that's going to be the standard going forward since it gives tanks more challenge but is also a way to stop players from trivializing them with invulns.

War has powerful sustain but lacks mitigation in it's place, that's pretty fair. Comparing dungeons is pointless.

Paladin has good sustain, but has no control of it and not on demand who cares really. Also the job is a current meme griefer.

Gnb has small sustains on demand, but essentially pretty weak and don't help overall than emergency provisions.

Drk has little to no sustain but has TBN which is extremely useful in current Savage/DSR considering how hard content is hitting, and stacking cooldowns reduce % values while TBN is a straight 25% HP cut, this is still pretty huge and can be exploited for extra Edges during 2 min windows.

I doubt you'll get many people asking for more DRK sustain until Criterion dungeons come out and the meta ends up being Bloodwhetting only.

In which I think GNB will also come up short.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I doubt you'll get many people asking for more DRK sustain until Criterion dungeons come out and the meta ends up being Bloodwhetting only.

In which I think GNB will also come up short.

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Everyone and their grandma leveled up Warriors in the past few Weeks/Months.
80% of the tanks in all the Rulettes are Warriors.

Criterion Dungeons will be a Shitstorm i can allready see it. no way they can balance it for Tanks without touching the Tanks themselfs.

Tldr: There is a High chance Warriors will shit on all the other jobs in Criterion.

I feel like if they thought DRK needed more sustain for Criterion, they would have made that change in 6.2. Yoshi godmoded the mobs when they were demoing it in the LL, so it's hard to tell how hard they hit. It still remains to be seen until 6.25 releases if it'll be necessary or not.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

I feel like if they thought DRK needed more sustain for Criterion, they would have made that change in 6.2. Yoshi godmoded the mobs when they were demoing it in the LL, so it's hard to tell how hard they hit. It still remains to be seen until 6.25 releases if it'll be necessary or not.

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That however, goes under the assumption that the devs play all the jobs. As we've seen with the P8S debacle, they do not.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

That however, goes under the assumption that the devs play all the jobs. As we've seen with the P8S debacle, they do not.

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Well in this case I'd at least hope it'd be easy enough to swap out tanks to test the mobs and notice quickly if any are falling behind or not but who knows.

I'm also kinda hoping their difficulty doesn't necessarily just come from hitting harder and having more HP, but also having more interesting mechs, maybe stuff that requires us to dust off our CC abilities. Otherwise I can see them just being normal dungeon pulls but more tedious.

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Originally Posted by Zordrage

Everyone and their grandma leveled up Warriors in the past few Weeks/Months.
80% of the tanks in all the Rulettes are Warriors.

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Overall I agree with you but to be fair though the issue is that War (specifically Bloodwhetting) is incredibly over tuned for dungeon content compared to the other 3 tanks. Like I have all 4 to 90 but why would I bother wanting to run any of the other 3 when I can easy mode through such casual content. If Criterion is anything like the regular dungeons it would beg the question of why wouldn't anyone take the thing that has the obvious advantage.

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Originally Posted by Sancho_Nyanta

Overall I agree with you but to be fair though the issue is that War (specifically Bloodwhetting) is incredibly over tuned for dungeon content compared to the other 3 tanks. Like I have all 4 to 90 but why would I bother wanting to run any of the other 3 when I can easy mode through such casual content. If Criterion is anything like the regular dungeons it would beg the question of why wouldn't anyone take the thing that has the obvious advantage.

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For normal expert dungeons I actually prefer dark knight over warrior, the extreme overhealing from warrior just isn't needed and dark knight does significantly more aoe damage, making the run faster. If criterion savage actually deals some tank damage however warrior will be the obvious choice.

Are people legit being preemptively concerned about WAR getting to have a niche? DRK has savage raids and up already. Let poor WAR have something it can be the best at, if things even end up playing out that way. This remains to be seen.

Even if it is, that does not diminish DRK in any capacity. It will still be perfectly viable.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Are people legit being preemptively concerned about WAR getting to have a niche? DRK has savage raids and up already. Let poor WAR have something it can be the best at, if things even end up playing out that way. This remains to be seen.

Even if it is, that does not diminish DRK in any capacity. It will still be perfectly viable.

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I find niches based on hard-specialization on content types (Warrior vs Dungeons because of excessive healing, DRK vs Raids because of excessive DPS contribution and cooldown relevance, etc) incredibly revolting. Tanks should feel unique, but they should not go above and beyond based on the type of content you play to the point where you feel sorry for not being a specific job and letting people down.

On one hand, Raw Intuition / Blood Whetting / Nascent Flash provide an obscene amount of sustain in AOE scenarios where one could suggest a reduction there-of for AOE abilities only (so 400 on single target, 150-200 per target on AOE) to reel the healing potential of Warrior in a bit. On the flipside, the damage values of PLD / WAR should not have a massive gap like we had on the start of 6.2 in the first place.

That aside, community perception is unforgiving. If for any reason WAR for Criterion (Savage) becomes "mandatory"-meta and people start locking all other tank jobs, then we have a reverse-Abyssos case where WAR's sustain shines too bright to not use for optimisation.


I won't straight up speak doom and gloom, but it is prudent to be wary.

I've honestly seen my GNB out burst my DRK in AoE mobs more reliably because of how long it takes for Fray to pump out, most of the mobs die or it's time to move on before he can usually. These little nuances might be really important in Criterion.

But I'm expecting to see WAR, WHM, DNC SMN comps a lot for this, at least early on.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

IBut I'm expecting to see WAR, WHM, DNC SMN comps a lot for this, at least early on.

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I wouldn't count SGE out. SGE and WAR make for an extremely potent combination when handled correctly.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I wouldn't count SGE out. SGE and WAR make for an extremely potent combination when handled correctly.

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Oh definitely. Toxicon is amazing, better than Holy usually, but I think they'll have MP management issues depending on how much/if we can recover HP/MP between pulls.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I've honestly seen my GNB out burst my DRK in AoE mobs more reliably because of how long it takes for Fray to pump out, most of the mobs die or it's time to move on before he can usually. These little nuances might be really important in Criterion.

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DRK's AoE is very decisively worse than GNB's AoE as of 6.2, because Living Shadow's AoE was nerfed significantly and the buff to Abyssal Drain does very little to make up for it. At this point DRK's AoE damage is a lot closer to WAR and PLD than it is to GNB.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Are people legit being preemptively concerned about WAR getting to have a niche? DRK has savage raids and up already. Let poor WAR have something it can be the best at, if things even end up playing out that way. This remains to be seen.

Even if it is, that does not diminish DRK in any capacity. It will still be perfectly viable.

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Theres having a niche, and then theres having so much AOE healing that you might as well have Hallowed Grounds on a 25s CD.

Before it's added that "SE doesn't balance around dungeons", they may start when Criterion hits since they're supposed to be difficult content for 4-man groups. Nobody wants to see a tank nerfed over Criterion, so I'm sincerely hoping they do a few things to make every tank viable. Such as the bosses actively challenging the tanks full kit so every tank feels like they're giving it all, mobs where Bloodwhetting doesn't trivialize them, and hopefully looser DPS checks (see P5S and P6S) where the difference in tank DPS doesn't result in some tanks being taken less over others.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Before it's added that "SE doesn't balance around dungeons", they may start when Criterion hits since they're supposed to be difficult content for 4-man groups. Nobody wants to see a tank nerfed over Criterion, so I'm sincerely hoping they do a few things to make every tank viable. Such as the bosses actively challenging the tanks full kit so every tank feels like they're giving it all, mobs where Bloodwhetting doesn't trivialize them, and hopefully looser DPS checks (see P5S and P6S) where the difference in tank DPS doesn't result in some tanks being taken less over others.

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Depending on it's popularity. SE are always testing different styles content to see if it's worth continuing.

According to the roadmap, there are two more sets of Criterion dungeons already planned for around 6.4/6.5, as well as an additional Deep Dungeon in 6.3.

Balance for these dungeons is going to intrinsically be very different from raid content. We already know that job-specific raise abilities are not allowed in Criterion dungeons and have been replaced by Variant Raise (which in turn is not allowed either in Savage Criterion). If there's a specific defensive or utility effect that ends up being a problem then it's likely to be addressed in a similar way. Dungeon dps balance is also intrinsically different as there's a focus on AoE. Some effects like Living Shadow and Gnashing Fang are primarily single target without a real AoE analogue. Jobs that excel will be versatile at both (although once again, your DPS choices will be the make or break here).

Either way, let's see what happens.

The problems at least for me in the current state of the job are these:

-> When mitigating you have too many buttons to press for little gain ( ex: Dark Mind , Oblation ). While Dark Mind is good against magic damage and it has a low cooldown of 60 seconds, Oblation adds only a 10% while sharing the same cooldown. It makes absolutely no sense for both of these abilities to remain on a job that is already double weaving during its burst for roughly 8 GCDs straight. If I were to fix this I'd make Oblation grant 20% damage reduction and a regeneration effect for 150 potency for 12 seconds, with its duration also increased by 2 seconds due to the way healing ticks work. The heal over time is kind of necessary because the job has no healing in its kit and sometimes you'd wish you could heal yourself a little bit to not die, every other tank can do this. Dark Mind should be removed as it has no use against attacks that aren't magical, and weaving it along with Oblation and TBN is a pain. Every other tank does just fine against most big hits if they just use their 30% and their personal mitigation ( PLD , GNB ) , while Warrior can do the later but with Thrill, but it has nowhere near the amount of oGCDs DRK has.

->Dark Missionary and Heart of light are the same. Make them slightly different, Dark Missionary could heal over time for 100 potency, while Heart of light could heal whenever you deal damage.

->Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit should be lowered to 30 seconds cooldown for a couple of reasons. The job is very boring when its not bursting ( every 1 min, and every 2 mins ), so having to use either one of them every 30 secs would make it more interesting. In dungeons this would mean you'd get to use abyssal drain more often per pack ( twice ). The damage should be cut in half to make up for it, however please buff Abyssal Drain's heal potency to 250, or make its area of effect larger ( 5 y -> 8 y ) so that it hits every mob pack easier.

The 10% mitigation from oblation should just be give to Dark Mind. Oblation needs to be either a 10% shield or some kind of sustain.

In terms of dungeon balance. DRK will be in the bottom unless paired with SGE simply due to the healer having to do more for DRK than the other tanks.

Honestly they could remove the damage component on Abyssal Drain, give it 2 charges on a 60s cooldown, increase the heal potency, and put some of that potency on flood.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

The problems at least for me in the current state of the job are these:

-> When mitigating you have too many buttons to press for little gain ( ex: Dark Mind , Oblation ). While Dark Mind is good against magic damage and it has a low cooldown of 60 seconds, Oblation adds only a 10% while sharing the same cooldown. It makes absolutely no sense for both of these abilities to remain on a job that is already double weaving during its burst for roughly 8 GCDs straight. If I were to fix this I'd make Oblation grant 20% damage reduction and a regeneration effect for 150 potency for 12 seconds, with its duration also increased by 2 seconds due to the way healing ticks work. The heal over time is kind of necessary because the job has no healing in its kit and sometimes you'd wish you could heal yourself a little bit to not die, every other tank can do this. Dark Mind should be removed as it has no use against attacks that aren't magical, and weaving it along with Oblation and TBN is a pain. Every other tank does just fine against most big hits if they just use their 30% and their personal mitigation ( PLD , GNB ) , while Warrior can do the later but with Thrill, but it has nowhere near the amount of oGCDs DRK has.

->Dark Missionary and Heart of light are the same. Make them slightly different, Dark Missionary could heal over time for 100 potency, while Heart of light could heal whenever you deal damage.

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I think that is my main issue with DRK atm. It's that they kept the double weave of 4.0 DA spam but removed the utility and flexibility of the job. DRK is even more braindead than most ppl think. Just because it has a lot of buttons doesn't make it hard. They are all sync'd to two mins and pressing an ogcd on cd is not hard (with the exception of some skills you save for 2 mins). A lot of this job comes off as redundant If shadowbringer was 120 secs, one use, and 1200 potency it would achieve the same effect it currently has in-game because you never press these two buttons outside of bursts or less than 5% and even then you can just spam EoS. Oblation being a 10% mit on 60 secs is pretty meh when you consider reprisal is identical, but an aoe. If Oblation was 10% HP, then I would consider DRK op, especially when paired with TBN on top of that but as it stands it's only "good" for its dmg. A flat mit shield is nice but let's not ignore the fact that SCH exists in the game.

Honestly makes me think how things would be if WAR and DRK dealt the same dmg. People also forget that WAR has SiO which literally lines up with every major raid wide and in the current tier raidwides are far more deadly than tankbusters which always have the option to invuln some of them but raidwides always need to be mitigated, healed and reprisal.

However, its as you said, I'm sure most players who actually main tank agree that giving a ogcd heavy tank more ogcds is difficult, especially on controller. I just barely manage on PS5 and even then I clip gcds if I have to target anyone other than the OT.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit should be lowered to 30 seconds cooldown for a couple of reasons. The job is very boring when its not bursting ( every 1 min, and every 2 mins ), so having to use either one of them every 30 secs would make it more interesting. In dungeons this would mean you'd get to use abyssal drain more often per pack ( twice ). The damage should be cut in half to make up for it, however please buff Abyssal Drain's heal potency to 250, or make its area of effect larger ( 5 y -> 8 y ) so that it hits every mob pack easier.

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I have a feeling in 7.0 they will merge those two buttons and give it the expiacion effect of 100% dmg to first target and drop off for the rest. I'm also predicting the same with WAR upheaval upgrading to orogeny. If not, I think they should change EoS animation to C&S and keep AD a one min heal button similar to WAR's equilibrium.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

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Originally Posted by Derio

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I disagree highly with giving DRK any kind of HoT effects it can put on others. Not because it doesn't need sustain -- I assure you, it absolutely does -- but because that's not the way the job should receive said sustain.
We are, after all, in a Final Fantasy game. Being able to put healing effects on your allies is the domain of White Magic and Holy Knights/Paladins; Dark Knights sustain themselves selfishly, with Blood equipment and Drain magic.
Not to mention that giving a cure potency to Oblation is just... turning it into Aurora. With extra mitigation, so Aurora+. Given that DRK and GNB already occupy parallel positions as "higher damage, lower survival" tanks, cloning Aurora is just begging for homogeny.

Instead, I propose DRK take a step backward and return to using direct "heal for damage dealt" effects. Take the 300p cure off Souleater and the 200p/target off Abyssal Drain, and just make them heal based on damage dealt like they did in HW/SB.
Not only is this significantly more powerful for a tank since we don't have the cure potency bonuses healers receive, but it would give a slight differentiation between DRK and WAR in terms of "life draining" discussions; WAR heals for a fixed amount whenever it swings encouraging you to be reckless, DRK only heals for what it drains with specific attacks encouraging you to be methodical.
You can take this a step further as well with Dark Missionary and Heart of Light: HoL becomes an AoE Aurora (which GNB can then stack with actual Aurora), Dark Missionary becomes an AoE Bloodbath (which DRK can then use with its heavy burst mechanics).

Additionally, I further propose that AD be swapped with Flood of Darkness, becoming our new AoE MP spender beside Edge. Given that we don't have access to TBN until level 70, this would at the very least level out our sustain for content up through Stormblood, so that we don't feel like a stripped-down melee who happens to have Shadow Wall and Rampart. Essentially it gives AD a charge system based on our MP, so we can hold some in reserve for when we actually need healing -- or risk it all for raw damage, which is extremely fitting for a Dark Knight. This would also mean having the option of Dark Arts contributing to our survivability, like the bonuses to other on-demands after level 82.
As I've said before, we don't need Flood to be the "Dark Wave" attack now that we have Shadowbringer, nor is it "classic" since it was a replacement for Dark Passenger. In contrast, AD actually is a classic since DRK's inception in 14, not to mention one of our few callbacks to classic Final Fantasy Dark Knights having Drain magic, even being one of Fray's signature attacks during the questline.
Normally I would suggest just bringing back Dark Passenger in AD's place as "AoE C&S" or at least making Flood a Blind, but as Marxam noted, it seems likely we'll see Orogeny/Upheaval and AD/C&S get the Expiacion treatment, especially since DRK is nearly as button-bloated as PLD. C&S already has an animation that supports a cone, just add falloff damage and it's golden.

And speaking of button bloat... the way I see it, there are only two options with Oblation.
1) Dark Mind upgrades into Oblation at 82 (or 84), and Oblation gains an extra 10% boost to Magic resistance in addition to the flat 10% DR it already has. Now you have a Dark Mind you can put on other people, Oblation is potent enough to warrant the button, and you trim a button, though your overall mitigation does decrease slightly.
2) Oblation is just baked into TBN, like it should have always been. Either make it a mitigation that applies at the moment the barrier breaks, or reduce the potency of the barrier slightly but have the mitigation apply separately for the entire duration. Of course, this would be easier to balance if TBN had a cooldown more in line with other tanks, and leaves Dark Mind in the same position it was before, but you at least cut the button which is the vital aspect.

We're a bit beyond that sort of identity now seeing that WAR is basically already doing that with Bloodwhetting.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

We're a bit beyond that sort of identity now seeing that WAR is basically already doing that with Bloodwhetting.

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I'm literally suggesting a tweak to how Souleater and Abyssal Drain -- two abilities that already heal as they attack -- calculate the healing they already do.

The only thing I've suggested adding beyond that is putting Bloodbath on DMis, which we've previously discussed, it and HoL are weaker than SiO and DV, and the two of them need a distinction from each other. If WAR doesn't claim an AoE Bloodbath buff, it's on the table for someone else to.

Besides, the difference in this case is that Bloodwhetting is exclusively used when you're about to need healing. Souleater and AD are -- much like PLD's spells -- part of the rotation, whether you need healing or not.
The whole "WAR already heals by attacking" thing hardly matters if the two do so by different methods and encourage different behaviors.

they pretty much catered this tier to DRK in terms of mitigation to go "see it fine".