⚔️ Dark Knight Job Class Suggestions for Improvement (Patch 7.2 and Beyond)

Dark Knight Job Critique – Final Fantasy XIV (Patch 7.2)

Summary:
Dark Knight (DRK) is the edgiest of FFXIV’s tank jobs, wielding a greatsword and dark magic to deliver punishing bursts of damage while protecting allies with shadowy power. However, it also struggles with sustainability and quality-of-life issues that hold it back, particularly in casual content and long-form encounters.

Strengths:

• High burst damage: With Delirium, Blood Weapon, and Living Shadow, DRK brings one of the strongest offensive bursts among tanks.
• Stylish and satisfying kit: Visually, DRK’s animations and theming are among the most striking in the game.

Weaknesses:

• Lack of self-sustain: DRK lacks the on-demand healing of Warrior or Paladin, making solo or low-healing content more punishing.
• Outdated utility: Skills like Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain feel underwhelming compared to newer tank abilities.
• Minimal party utility: Outside of TBN, DRK brings little direct support to the group compared to Intervention or Shake It Off.

Suggested Improvements:

1. Reduce Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain cooldowns to 30s:

• A 30s cooldown aligns them with modern tank skill pacing and enhances rotational flexibility.
• Abyssal Drain in particular becomes more viable as a sustain tool in dungeon and solo content.

2. Improve Abyssal Drain healing scaling:

• Increase its healing potency slightly and have it scale off target count more meaningfully (e.g., +10% healing per additional target hit up to 5).
• This makes it a true AoE sustain tool like Warrior’s Bloodwhetting or Gunbreaker’s Aurora.

3. Rework Living Dead for modern viability:

• Instead of a two-phase "cheat death," simplify it into a flat "damage reduction + life steal" mode (e.g., 10s duration, 20% mitigation, 20% of damage dealt is returned as HP).

4. Quality of Life Enhancements:

• Let Plunge charges scale with level (e.g., gain a second charge at level 94+).
• Auto-place Salted Earth under the target.
• Buff Blood Weapon to be more fluid with global cooldown usage (e.g., no delay from server tick rate desyncs).

5. Add passive regen or shield on The Blackest Night break:

• When TBN breaks, add a 100 potency shield or minor regen over 6s. This makes it a more proactive defensive tool rather than a purely offensive refund mechanic.

Conclusion:
Reducing cooldowns on Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain, updating Living Dead, and enhancing TBN’s support capabilities would round out the job’s kit—preserving its identity as a brutal, high-risk, high-reward tank while giving it more tools to thrive in all content types.

Ignore this thread, AI written wrong suggestions

But if you want to read some replies, go for it!

1) Here's better solution to carve and spit / abyssal drain situation:
Make abyssal drain a stronger single attack with 50% aoe falloff. Make it 30s cooldown, adjust damage potency to match it.
Make Carve and Spit a seperate attack (not sharing cooldown with AD), ideally a 300 potency with 1200 mp regen to give back what was lost in plunge and 2 blood weapon stacks.

2) Current aoe healing from Abyssal Drain is pretty much a full heal anyway, unless ur fighting very few enemies.

3) Your Living Dead suggestion goes against the purpose of invulns in current design. What I would suggest is to make it castable on others as a conditional ressurection. Of course it would make it a very powerful skill, but i would put it up for discussion what trade off would justify it, maybe higher cooldown or suffering ress sick yourself would make it enough.

4. You seem to forgot plunge no longer exists and current gapcloser already has 2 charges. Are you even playing the job?
I dont agree with salted earth targeting, placing it on your feet gives you more control. I would however like it to do more than just damage, either afflict enemies with a debuff or give you buffs for standing in it, this could tie to your abyssal drain suggestion and the increased healing from it. For example - each mob hit with abyssal drain that stands in the puddle will give an extra % and take more damage.
I havent really encountered problems with blood weapon tbh aside from the 2 stacks lost in previous patches, leaving drk mp starved.

5. With tbn i would actually agree to an extent. I would say a defensive advantage when breaking it on yourself (like a small regen) and an offensive advantage when breaking it on others (to incentivise helping out your party), idk a 20% dmg buff to next edge/flood of shadow would be decent.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

• Minimal party utility: Outside of TBN, DRK brings little direct support to the group compared to Intervention or Shake It Off.

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Oblation and Dark Missionary do exist.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

1. Reduce Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain cooldowns to 30s:

• A 30s cooldown aligns them with modern tank skill pacing and enhances rotational flexibility.
• Abyssal Drain in particular becomes more viable as a sustain tool in dungeon and solo content.

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Reducing the cooldown doesn't' enhance rotational flexibility', you just use it twice as often.
However, more uses for Abyssal Drain in a dungeon is a valid point and is the only reason you need to reduce them to 30 seconds.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

2. Improve Abyssal Drain healing scaling:

• Increase its healing potency slightly and have it scale off target count more meaningfully (e.g., +10% healing per additional target hit up to 5).
• This makes it a true AoE sustain tool like Warrior’s Bloodwhetting or Gunbreaker’s Aurora.

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Abyssal Drain is already 500 potency per target hit, that is ~10% of your HP. On a pack of mobs with 5 enemies, that is ~50% HP restoration every 30 seconds, it doesn't need more. No need to make it the same as Warrior after all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

3. Rework Living Dead for modern viability:

• Instead of a two-phase "cheat death," simplify it into a flat "damage reduction + life steal" mode (e.g., 10s duration, 20% mitigation, 20% of damage dealt is returned as HP).

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If it cannot prevent a death from lethal damage, you have now made Dark Knight much, much worse than all the other tanks by a long way. The ability to not die is vital in many places and Dark Knight technically has the one that is the most useful for the longest period. It doesn't need changing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

4. Quality of Life Enhancements:

• Let Plunge charges scale with level (e.g., gain a second charge at level 94+).
• Auto-place Salted Earth under the target.
• Buff Blood Weapon to be more fluid with global cooldown usage (e.g., no delay from server tick rate desyncs).

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Plunge doesn't exist and the replacement already has 2 charges when you learn it. Do you even play Dark Knight?
Salted Earth is already auto placed under the tank, which is probably the best place in most situations.
I have no idea what you mean by that, but Blood Weapon doesn't even exist at higher levels, instead upgrading to Delirium, of which, the effect has nothing that could be affected by server ticks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

5. Add passive regen or shield on The Blackest Night break:

• When TBN breaks, add a 100 potency shield or minor regen over 6s. This makes it a more proactive defensive tool rather than a purely offensive refund mechanic.

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100 potency over 6 seconds, so, 200 potency. That would barely register as anything. Also, TBN, like all shields, are there to reduce the damage as much as possible, adding a regen to something like that would be almost pointless. You would be better off giving a % mitigation after.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

Conclusion:
Reducing cooldowns on Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain, updating Living Dead, and enhancing TBN’s support capabilities would round out the job’s kit—preserving its identity as a brutal, high-risk, high-reward tank while giving it more tools to thrive in all content types.

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For the last one, this is probably the least offensive list of suggestions, which is surprising considering the others.

Like the GNB, still reads like you don't actually play the job. I'm sorry to put it this bluntly. :(

Basically all that Mikey said.

If you want TBN to scale better against larger hits, meanwhile, the better solution is to have it give %DR while active. In this way, the hit that breaks the TBN is still affected by that mitigation.

So, 20% HP with 20% mitigation = 25% eHP increase, except now you also get, in effect, a further 20% mit on the overkill damage (the remainder of the what broke the shield).

As for Salted Earth, just un-cluck macros in general, or at least the first actionable line in each, so that we're free to place at cursor, on target, on self, or whatever we feel like.


Tl;dr: It might help to have played DRK this expansion before making a suggestion set about... how you'd change some mix of Endwalker DRK or possibly even earlier versions of it?

I don't think the sustain issue on DRK really holds weight anymore after 7.2, Living Dead, Vigil and Abyssal/Carve is a decent amount.

At most I think Abyssal should be on a 30s CD, but I'd probably split it from Carve for that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nilsandres

Dark Knight Job Critique – Final Fantasy XIV (Patch 7.2)

Summary:
Dark Knight (DRK) is the edgiest of FFXIV’s tank jobs, wielding a greatsword and dark magic to deliver punishing bursts of damage while protecting allies with shadowy power. However, it also struggles
Strengths:

• High burst damage: With Delirium, Blood Weapon, and Living Shadow, DRK brings one of the strongest offensive bursts among tanks.
• Stylish and satisfying kit: Visually, DRK’s animations and theming are among the most striking in the game.

Weaknesses:

• Lack of self-sustain: DRK lacks the on-demand healing of Warrior or Paladin, making solo or low-healing content more punishing.
• Outdated utility: Skills like Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain feel underwhelming compared to newer tank abilities.
• Minimal party utility: Outside of TBN, DRK brings little direct support to the group compared to Intervention or Shake It Off.

Suggested Improvements:

1. Reduce Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain cooldowns to 30s:

• A 30s cooldown aligns them with modern tank skill pacing and enhances rotational flexibility.
• Abyssal Drain in particular becomes more viable as a sustain tool in dungeon and solo content.

2. Improve Abyssal Drain healing scaling:

• Increase its healing potency slightly and have it scale off target count more meaningfully (e.g., +10% healing per additional target hit up to 5).
• This makes it a true AoE sustain tool like Warrior’s Bloodwhetting or Gunbreaker’s Aurora.

3. Rework Living Dead for modern viability:

• Instead of a two-phase "cheat death," simplify it into a flat "damage reduction + life steal" mode (e.g., 10s duration, 20% mitigation, 20% of damage dealt is returned as HP).

4. Quality of Life Enhancements:

• Let Plunge charges scale with level (e.g., gain a second charge at level 94+).
• Auto-place Salted Earth under the target.
• Buff Blood Weapon to be more fluid with global cooldown usage (e.g., no delay from server tick rate desyncs).

5. Add passive regen or shield on The Blackest Night break:

• When TBN breaks, add a 100 potency shield or minor regen over 6s. This makes it a more proactive defensive tool rather than a purely offensive refund mechanic.

Conclusion:
Reducing cooldowns on Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain, updating Living Dead, and enhancing TBN’s support capabilities would round out the job’s kit—preserving its identity as a brutal, high-risk, high-reward tank while giving it more tools to thrive in all content types.

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Auto-placing salted earth under the target is actively making it worse. At the moment you can place it if you know the boss is moving soon

All of this guys posts are Chat GPT slop. You can tell by the layout and the fact they mention old abilities or asking for changes they already made. This guy does not play any tanks he's just asked an AI to make posts for him and you can tell because the AI has scraped old resources that aren't relevant anymore.

Good case for why AI generating stuff is so bad. xD

I did not use AI to write my thread. I've been using Dark Knight extensively for months now and I'd like to see these changes. The biggest of which is the reduction of cooldown for Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain to 30 seconds. As for living dead, they already changed the way it works several times. I just happen not to be a fan of the way it currently works. I did not forget that Plunge no longer exists. When I wrote the thread I could not remember the name of the actual charge skill that Dark Knight currently has. When they removed damage from the dive skills, I basically stopped using them. You can dodge most attacks just fine without them and DRK has TBN in case you screw that up.