Dark Knight and Sigmascape Savage Preliminary Thoughts

We have a new raid tier and I thought it would be useful to talk about how Dark Knight seems to fare in savage mode. Spoilers maybe? I have not cleared the tier at the time of writing, so I will only speak about what I have seen and experienced having run floors on both paladin and dark knight.

Mitigation: dark knight is again propped up by a large number of magical attacks this tier, making good use of dark mind is key to o5s and o6s. O7s is primarily physical tank busters, but they are spaced far enough apart that dark knight doesn’t seem to be at a major disadvantage. Dark Knight’s mitigation seems to shine more in o4s where the heavy hitting magical tank busters see great use of dark mind, but I have not cleared this turn so I cannot go into too much detail. That said, though tank busters could be well covered it still feels as though dark knight is taking significantly more damage in comparison to paladin even with fairly excessive TBN use.

Utility: This is where it is very obvious dark knight is trailing behind the other two tanks. TL;DR is that party shields are useful and so is cover in buying healer GCDs.

O5S: Cover and tempered see a number of uses in o5s to avoid knock backs and keep you and another teammate’s uptime higher. There aren’t huge benefits to frequent party wide shields, but they do play some roles.

O6S: Cover doesn’t see huge applications other than the normal ones in this turn. However, frequent party shields are very helpful in keeping party HP high through raid wide damage, and helping to mitigate some damage for the OT who is also taking damage from the boss.

O7S: Cover and party shields are extremely helpful for keeping part HP above 0. Cover in this turn helps free up healers tremendously because of a prey mechanic followed by a dot. Where healers can get very focused on keeping dps’s hp up through burns and bleeds, they don’t need to focus on the OT as much. Covering prey targets allows your healers to focus on themselves and dps who get hit with bleeds as it hits tanks for much less damage, TBN just isn’t great here as it gets eaten by a single dot tick on a dps. Frequent party shields are very helpful in keeping party HP up as you see plenty of raid wide damage in the second half of the fight.

DPS: It seems dark knight’s are hurt more than any other tank by having to separate from the boss. Because Dark Knight outputs steady damage any break in uptime lowers your dps, but this isn't news to anyone who knows the class. Every turn has forced down time, so we are likely to see dark knights be the lower dps of the three yet again. On a dummy things might look about equal, but in practice it appears dark knight will lose more dps than both paladin with its ranged attacks, and warrior with its very concentrated damage.

Optimizing the turns may change things a bit, but at this point it seems you lose quite a bit by not running a paladin warrior composition. Looks like another tier of less than desirable dark knight.

Given the above things it feels as though the concerns raised about dark knight being lacking in mitigation, dps, and utility are becoming more noticable as content become more difficult. Suggestions would be to raise the jobs base dps to make up for forced down time and to boost the duration, and lower the cooldown of Dark Knights mitigation. Dark Knight is definately missing a passive mitigation (like paladin) and I think the answer to this should be to allow for soul eater to life steal out of grit, this way dark knights answer to taking damage is to steal their enemies life force.

Even in normal, these issues are pretty noticeable. But personally, I can't get behind the idea of DRK getting a group shield. Because all the group shield archetypes have been done and I can't see them coming up with something thats worthwhile.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Even in normal, these issues are pretty noticeable. But personally, I can't get behind the idea of DRK getting a group shield. Because all the group shield archetypes have been done and I can't see them coming up with something thats worthwhile.

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I agree. I think the shield is really a paladin thing and any cost on it is just way too much dps to put out to be anything worthwhile . However, a sole survivor rework into a hp/mp/tp party regen wouldn’t be horrible and within our lore.

The point is that dark knight should not being doing lower dps.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I agree. I think the shield is really a paladin thing and any cost on it is just way too much dps to put out to be anything worthwhile . However, a sole survivor rework into a hp/mp/tp party regen wouldn’t be horrible and within our lore.

The point is that dark knight should not being doing lower dps.

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Oh agreed 110% on DRK shouldn't be this weak if we're to take their High DPS = Low Util mantra bs. I was just pointing out that Shields shouldn't be homogenized on jobs since that's what many people think would fix the disparity among tanks.

In regards to the sole survivor rework, I agree something akin to that would give us an edge. Maybe boost magic weakness on the target, enabling casters to do more damage. (MP/TP are infinite at this point in the game, imo)

Excellent analysis as usual, Chrono!

It just makes me wonder if they were planning on this raid tier having heavy magic damage already, or if it was adjusted to include more magic damage in an effort to make Drk more appealing. Could help explain why there were no major Drk changes.

Either way, maybe, just maybe, this will be enough evidence for them to finally make some meaningful adjustments to Drk's mitigation and utility kit.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

In regards to the sole survivor rework, I agree something akin to that would give us an edge. Maybe boost magic weakness on the target, enabling casters to do more damage. (MP/TP are infinite at this point in the game, imo)

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It helps bards with their song having another mana source and also helps dark knight push dark arts more (I like pushing that button). And helps healers recover if there have been multiple raises. It might not be always useful, but still useful.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Either way, maybe, just maybe, this will be enough evidence for them to finally make some meaningful adjustments to Drk's mitigation and utility kit.

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Well, I think across the 4 QA threads, the DRK posts sum over 400 likes iirc. And I don't think any other topic comes close so we'll see this Saturday what's the answer.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

It helps bards with their song having another mana source and also helps dark knight push dark arts more (I like pushing that button). And helps healers recover if there have been multiple raises. It might not be always useful, but still useful.

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I didn't say it wouldn't be useful, but a different option might help DRK have its own niche without overstepping on what another job can do and avoid being pushed aside because "x thing is done by y job better".

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Well, I think across the 4 QA threads, the DRK posts sum over 400 likes iirc. And I don't think any other topic comes close so we'll see this Saturday what's the answer.



I didn't say it wouldn't be useful, but a different option might help DRK have its own niche without overstepping on what another job can do and avoid being pushed aside because "x thing is done by y job better".

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I was primarily responding to the bit about TP and MP being infinite. I saw that as basically a self buff to dark knight with some small helps to bard and heaers. I only intended to point that out, not to analyze the usefulness. In general since a party regen doesn't exist on a tank right now, this is a nice place to carve out a complimentary niche with a skill like this.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Excellent analysis as usual, Chrono!

It just makes me wonder if they were planning on this raid tier having heavy magic damage already, or if it was adjusted to include more magic damage in an effort to make Drk more appealing. Could help explain why there were no major Drk changes.

Either way, maybe, just maybe, this will be enough evidence for them to finally make some meaningful adjustments to Drk's mitigation and utility kit.

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Thanks for the support, Whiskeybravo!

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I was primarily responding to the bit about TP and MP being infinite. I saw that as basically a self buff to dark knight with some small helps to bard and heaers. I only intended to point that out, not to analyze the usefulness.

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Iirc, Blood weapon still has the TP reduction, that was my pov. I do agree with it tho. My MP/TP being infinite was about how role actions from DPS achieve that.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Excellent analysis as usual, Chrono!

It just makes me wonder if they were planning on this raid tier having heavy magic damage already, or if it was adjusted to include more magic damage in an effort to make Drk more appealing. Could help explain why there were no major Drk changes.

Either way, maybe, just maybe, this will be enough evidence for them to finally make some meaningful adjustments to Drk's mitigation and utility kit.

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It was likely planned, considering magic is a key theme in FFVI.

Still, I hope we get some attention on our mitigation. Even over damage (which also needs to be bumped up), that's the key point. Even one more CD that worked as a physical filler would make a significant difference.