Dark Knight: 5 Reasonable Changes To Balance DPS

I would like to Balance Dark Knight DPS in a way that is completely reasonable, reasonable here meaning requiring no new additional effects. Given that Dark Knight offers no raid wide utility to a party, and the single target utility we do offer comes at a loss to our dps, I believe that to balance Dark Knight it should be the highest dps tank of the three choices. Since Dark Knights are approximately 300 dps behind warrior I would ideally like to increase our dps by 350 to 400 dps putting Dark Knight at 50 to 100 dps over Warrior. I believe this can be done with 5 changes.

The Changes

1) Reduce the recast of blood weapon/price to 30 seconds

2) Reduce the recast of Delirium to 60 seconds

3) Reduce the recast of Carve and Spit to 30 seconds

4) Reduce the recast of Salted Earth to 30 seconds

5) Remove the mana cost from Dark Passenger

The Analysis

To raise us by 350 DPS we need to increase Dark Knight Rotation Potency by 350/17.3 =21 potency per sec (current gear transforms potency to damage as a factor of 17.3), to keep it below 400 we want to aim for below 400/17.3 = 23 potency per second.

The goal is to raise Dark Knight potency per second by by a number between 21 and 23 potency per second

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Blood Weapon Change
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Blood weapon nets us about 6000 mana which is 2.5 dark arts and 37 blood or 450 potency.
Potency per second change: 450*(1/30-1/40) = 3.75 potency per second

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Delirium Change
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Delirium works out to 440 potency every 120 seconds. Source Crater (see: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4456675 )
Delirium per second Change: 440(1/60-1/120) = 3.67 potency per second

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Carve and Spit Change
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Carve and Spit is 450 - 140 = 310 potency. Dark arts potency removed since we must invest a mana cost.
Carve and Spit per second Change: 310(1/30-1/60)= 5.67 potency per second

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Salted Earth Change
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Salted Earth is 525 potency.
Salted Earth per second Change: 525(1/30-1/45)= 5.83 potency per second

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Dark Passenger Change
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Dark Passenger is 100 potency, but its cost doesn't justify using it currently. Making this free of cost and keeping the potency at 100 turns this into a good skill
Dark Passenger per second Changer: 100/30= 3.33 potency per second

Grand Total: 3.75+3.67+5.67+5.83+3.33=22.25 potency per second which is about a 385 dps increase.

Please like below if you support these changes.

If I may, I'd suggest that, instead of one of those two changes...

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

3) Reduce the recast of Carve and Spit to 30 seconds

4) Reduce the recast of Salted Earth to 30 seconds

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...the MP cost of Blackest Night should be reduced so that breaking the shield for Blood would be a slight DPS increase, making it a skill that we'd actually want to use more.

It would turn TBN into something we need to spam for damage. I would rather it just be a true break even so we can use it as we please.

Had time to do the math now.

In order to turn TBN into the dps gain to put us to the same level, TBN would have to have a cost of 920 while still returning 50 blood. This would be a huge adjustment. However, it also means we would lose the ability to mitigate on demand with TBN, as I said before it would need to be used on cooldown to achieve this level of dps. This is a large adjustment and would tie up one of our mitigations to becoming a dps source. I'm not sure this is the best move for the job.

Totally in favor of this at a glance. Simple, gives as a niche, instead of making us a carbon copy of WAR and PLD.

Still a bit dicey on the mitigation side though, and makes oGCD congestion in our rotation even worse. C&S DA effect into the base, having it instead cost 1200-2400 mana as a baseline, that'd be helpful. Cut Plunge's animation lock significantly.

For mitigation I would at the bare minimum have DM work on all damage, and remove its DA effect to compensate.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Totally in favor of this at a glance. Simple, gives as a niche, instead of making us a carbon copy of WAR and PLD.

Still a bit dicey on the mitigation side though, and makes oGCD congestion in our rotation even worse. C&S DA effect into the base, having it instead cost 1200-2400 mana as a baseline, that'd be helpful. Cut Plunge's animation lock significantly.

For mitigation I would at the bare minimum have DM work on all damage, and remove its DA effect to compensate.

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I agree, I've only attempted to address our damage here. QOL and mitigation I've completely ignored.
Things I want to see change in order of priority:
1) DPS
2) Mitigation
3) QOL

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

The Changes

1) Reduce the recast of blood weapon/price to 30 seconds
2) Reduce the recast of Delirium to 60 seconds
3) Reduce the recast of Carve and Spit to 30 seconds
4) Reduce the recast of Salted Earth to 30 seconds
5) Remove the mana cost from Dark Passenger
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1-4: It works.

5: If you added 100 potency to plunge, C/S, or Salted Earth, you'd get the same effect here. I honestly feel the No MP Dark Passenger would just be next on the chopping block for things to get rid of. Dark Passenger can use some value, but it really should be in an avenue besides "Single Target Spam ability"

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

1-4: It works.

5: If you added 100 potency to plunge, C/S, or Salted Earth, you'd get the same effect here. I honestly feel the No MP Dark Passenger would just be next on the chopping block for things to get rid of. Dark Passenger can use some value, but it really should be in an avenue besides "Single Target Spam ability"

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Except that dark passenger right now isn't anything except something we use when we are about to really overcap on mana. It is barely part of our AOE rotation as is. Adding any additional effects to it is also against the heart of this thread. These are easy changes which do not add a large amount room for unforeseen consequences. It would be cool if Dark passenger could keep its mana and add an effect which buffed us is any number of ways, but that opens alot of doors that I think maybe the devs are afraid of opening.

These aren't the only 5 changes we could have made, it is just the simplest I think without buffing a single skill to the moon.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

These aren't the only 5 changes we could have made, it is just the simplest I think without buffing a single skill to the moon.

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Just saying. You get the same effect by boosting one of the other OGCDs without adding another button in what would be a very spammy button fest at times.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Just saying. You get the same effect by boosting one of the other OGCDs without adding another button in what would be a very spammy button fest at times.

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This is fair, and I did consider trying to remove the DA condition on C&S, but I didn't want to lose its trick attack synergy, hence the 30 second adjustment. It is definitely food for thought.

If you removed the DA condition from C&S and make Salted Earth 35 seconds I think the two would balance out, but that requires removing and effect, which might be equally difficult to swallow. I'll give it some thought.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

This is fair, and I did consider trying to remove the DA condition on C&S, but I didn't want to lose its trick attack synergy, hence the 30 second adjustment. It is definitely food for thought.

If you removed the DA condition from C&S and make Salted Earth 35 seconds I think the two would balance out, but that requires removing and effect, which might be equally difficult to swallow. I'll give it some thought.

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What if Delirium also extended the duration of Salted Earth?

If it extended it by 9 seconds, that'd be another 225 every 60 seconds, or another 112.5 every 30. A slight bit stronger, another interaction which in turn makes Delirium a bit better, and a scant bit more blood though that probably won't factor in any meaningful way.

Honestly, if they dont find a way or use ideas from people on these forums to fix doubleweaving with blood weapon. This would oficially drive me away from drk. More doubleweaving with more blood weapon uptime. Drk is fun to play but not worth that struggle when i can just equip an axe and not worry about that doubleweave mess.

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Originally Posted by Mycow8me

Honestly, if they dont find a way or use ideas from people on these forums to fix doubleweaving with blood weapon. This would oficially drive me away from drk. More doubleweaving with more blood weapon uptime. Drk is fun to play but not worth that struggle when i can just equip an axe and not worry about that doubleweave mess.

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I just put up a seperate thread on our Quality of life and play issues. Feel free to vent! I could only think of three main issues (though some have multiple applications) so please feel free to make suggestions about QoL stuff!

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Had time to do the math now.

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Someone did this math to calculate the potency loss of using TBN to proc Bloodspiller.
If his calculation are correct, increasing BS potency by 10 would make procing BS with TBN a potency gain of around 2.34 without any change to TBN. (It's hard to exactly break even without weird potency or mp cost numbers)

On your proposed change on Delirium, if we instead put the CD at 90s, the potency gain is 440(1/90-1/120) = 1.22 potency

And in the end, the final equation would be 3.75+1.22+5.67+5.83+3.33+2.34=22.14, so something really close to your goal.

And since we have a really low self sustaining ability, SoulEater should really leech even out of Grit.

What do you think ?

It is 2.34 potency every 15 seconds not every second, which makes its contribution .156 and some extra contribution from bloodspiller. It also still makes us have to use TBN for dps and not as mitigation. I agree that soul eater should leech out of grit, but this thread is very specific in its requirements for considering anything to be reasonable, that includes no new additional effects. Adding the self sustain to soul eater out of grit is a new additional effect, and it doesn't effect our dps, which is the other prime purpose of this thread.

However, I plan on putting up a 3rd thread later tomorow on dark knight mitigation/self sustain, which you are more than welcome to show support for this there. (unless someone wants to beat me to it and put it up lol)

Compared to some of the DRK suggestions flying around these are fairly reasonable, my only gripe would be the amount of oGCD pushing DRK has to do is already pretty absurd and with all these reductions in recasts it would be even worse, barely any window between salted earth falling off and having to reapply it, with delirium and blood weapon on such short recasts you’d have near constant up time on them, DP would be a use on CD button, using DA carve and spit more frequently, that’s a lot of button mashing.

I think i’d rather they just made blood weapon and blood price into stances and rebalance the numbers to be fair with constant uptime and rework delirium into a move that boosts their output temporarily.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Compared to some of the DRK suggestions flying around these are fairly reasonable, my only gripe would be the amount of oGCD pushing DRK has to do is already pretty absurd and with all these reductions in recasts it would be even worse, barely any window between salted earth falling off and having to reapply it, with delirium and blood weapon on such short recasts you’d have near constant up time on them, DP would be a use on CD button, using DA carve and spit more frequently, that’s a lot of button mashing.

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Agreed, this is even more button pushing, though all the button pushing is partially why I enjoy dark knight lol. We could play around with potencies I'm sure, but it would certainly make some of them very high. I think the most important changes that I would want to see from this set are the delirium and blood weapon change since this would at least round out our resources out of grit. It is worth noting that the difference between circle of scorn and salted earth would be about the same in this example.

The uptime on blood weapon would be about 63% and 75% on blood price, so we are approaching stance territory here. Turning the effects of blood weapon and blood price into stance effects of grit and dark side would be a nice solution.

Actually always on bloodweapon and always on bloodprice would be a neat change to drk as passive traits for in and out of grit but the speed increase and mp amounts would need to be different. Like a speed increase of 3% and some low % of MP returned always on when grit is off with changes to blood returns as well and being hit returns MP always in grit. Delerium could be used to bump the speed up to its original amount and increase resource gains to their original amounts thus giving delirium an actual serious boost of power for say 20 seconds or so and you wouldn't have to wait for bloodweapon/price to be available to use it.

Does not fix doubleweaving but it would help for all the time that delirium isn't up. It frees up 2 skill slots for the return of skills we lost without adding any. Dark dance could replace blood weapons slot and give us 20% parry/evasion with or without darkarts for the return of some physical mitigation without needing a role skill since its a low lvl skill it aligns well with it at point you would receive it. Give back old reprisal with new name for blood prices slot.

None of this will happen probably but its a neat idea to contribute to overall discussion.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

5) Remove the mana cost from Dark Passenger

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1-2is fine. 3 just remove DA cost. 4 is ok I guess will give more blood per minute as well. 5 sounds unreasonable, there's no need to remove the mana cost. A slight potency increase is enough, like a potency of 120.

I think giving BS DA priority would give TBN a possible dps gain because DABS has a higher potency than DASE.

Nice ideas though

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The uptime on blood weapon would be about 63% and 75% on blood price, so we are approaching stance territory here. Turning the effects of blood weapon and blood price into stance effects of grit and dark side would be a nice solution.

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On this field : having BP baked in Grit and Blood weapon beeing the DPS stance would fit enough. I allways found odd that we have no "dps stance", as Darkside is more of a Storm's Eye counterpart.

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Originally Posted by hoax

1-2is fine. 3 just remove DA cost. 4 is ok I guess will give more blood per minute as well. 5 sounds unreasonable, there's no need to remove the mana cost. A slight potency increase is enough, like a potency of 120.

I think giving BS DA priority would give TBN a possible dps gain because DABS has a higher potency than DASE.

Nice ideas though

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Actually with Dark Passenger at 120 potency it is still a loss to use against single targets since the same 2400 mana could fund a 140 potency Dark arts instead, this is before you consider things like slashing debuff. Even at 154 potency it is now just a break even on single targets. To make it any sort of meaningful gain with this mp cost we need to buff it north of 200 potency. Another way to do this is to remove the mana cost associated and leave the skil potency as is, that is why I picked this route.

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

On this field : having BP baked in Grit and Blood weapon beeing the DPS stance would fit enough. I allways found odd that we have no "dps stance", as Darkside is more of a Storm's Eye counterpart.

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I am really liking the idea of making blood weapon and blood price be traits to our stances, and having grit be the toggle between the two. Especially if it means we get two spots back for some moves we actually could use, like reprisal!

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I am really liking the idea of making blood weapon and blood price be traits to our stances, and having grit be the toggle between the two. Especially if it means we get two spots back for some moves we actually could use, like reprisal!

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uhh you dont even main DRK you're just complaining to just complain.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

uhh you dont even main DRK you're just complaining to just complain.

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You dont need main a job to defend It from the current status.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

uhh you dont even main DRK you're just complaining to just complain.

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Oh funny what you quoted doesn't really look like a complaint, it looks more like an expression of enjoying an idea. I also didn't recognize you since you switched your main display from warrior to monk. Maybe you remember when I switched over from dark knight to paladin since I could do more damage and support my team better for the same amount of effort as a paladin.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

uhh you dont even main DRK you're just complaining to just complain.

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Don't have to be a Drk main to see the job is preforming less than War/Pld, even Rauhban can see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch but apparently you'll turn a blind eye because "it's your main and you're edgey and bright colors are for pussies look at all this black and red death".

If you can't see the difference between Drk being "viable" in conjunction with "tank balance" then you need to go outside and think on it, I used to be a Drk main, still shows on my forum thingy here but I switched to War on another toon and I main War now because how Drk is. A lot of Drks have jumped ship in the raiding scene but hey guess we're complaining just to complain right?

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Oh funny what you quoted doesn't really look like a complaint, it looks more like an expression of enjoying an idea. I also didn't recognize you since you switched your main display from warrior to monk. Maybe you remember when I switched over from dark knight to paladin since I could do more damage and support my team better for the same amount of effort as a paladin.

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Apparently I'm only allowed to comment on Goldsmith.

Oh man, goldsmith can barely participate in fates. Definitely not even viable. Plenty to post about

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Oh man, goldsmith can barely participate in fates. Definitely not even viable. Plenty to post about

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GSM has nothing to complain about, look at Godbert, goldsmith definitely OP, stop complaining.

Where is the right forum to ask for Miner beeing able to deal heavy damage on mineral bosses ?

Weren't they meta for some 1.x bosses?

Gathering classes are too OP.

I don't think I agree with this...kind of.


DRK needs more then just DPS increases, they need to change how the kit interacts with itself, and then add on a dps increase as an additional change. But the focus should be on reworking TBN and DA and other aspects like...lack of CD which I think are an issue even if some others do not.

Also making it do more dps then WAR...uh...eh...I mean it wouldn't be a bad thing but what would be the point of warrior then? By far the most complicated rotations and the hardest to play optimally gets out dps'd by a class with a rotation even more brain dead then PLD...? In a vacuum that doens't really make any sense as a way to save the job.

This is why I think it'd be better to focus on making the job itself feel/flow better and then adding additional dps (which can be done at the same time). If DRK did end up doing more damage then war but the job itself made more sense and flowed better then I don't think I'd have an issue with it. But just straight up increasing the dps to more then war. I don't think that's a good idea. I think you can make the job as a whole feel better and make it do more dps at the same time. Because I think that increased DPS is just a band-aid. (Though it does help a lot in fixing some issues, not trying to downplay it's uses)

And I don't feel that your changes do both those things. You need to make DRK stand out for more then just DPS. Needs to feel/flow better, be a better contributor to the team, have more sustain. Hope the post makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Tegernako

I don't think I agree with this...kind of.


DRK needs more then just DPS increases, they need to change how the kit interacts with itself, and then add on a dps increase as an additional change. But the focus should be on reworking TBN and DA and other aspects like...lack of CD which I think are an issue even if some others do not.

Also making it do more dps then WAR...uh...eh...I mean it wouldn't be a bad thing but what would be the point of warrior then? By far the most complicated rotations and the hardest to play optimally gets out dps'd by a class with a rotation even more brain dead then PLD...? In a vacuum that doens't really make any sense as a way to save the job.

This is why I think it'd be better to focus on making the job itself feel/flow better and then adding additional dps (which can be done at the same time). If DRK did end up doing more damage then war but the job itself made more sense and flowed better then I don't think I'd have an issue with it. But just straight up increasing the dps to more then war. I don't think that's a good idea. I think you can make the job as a whole feel better and make it do more dps at the same time. Because I think that increased DPS is just a band-aid. (Though it does help a lot in fixing some issues, not trying to downplay it's uses)

And I don't feel that your changes do both those things. You need to make DRK stand out for more then just DPS. Needs to feel/flow better, be a better contributor to the team, have more sustain. Hope the post makes sense.

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I'm actually more that ok with the way dark knight flows and plays. From optimizing dark arts use, to strategically breaking TBN to get off bloodspillers in trick attack windows. I think the reward for TBN could be better, and hope for that change, but I don't think that is ground breaking on its own. The problem with TBN is the risk reward factor, not necessarily the mitigation is provides. as far as adding new effects, I am extremely doubtful that will happen before 5.0 as we are fairly far into the expansion. The best I think we can hope for is number tweaking.

Warrior has enough toys to play with, being a flexible class with multiple cooldowns to rotate and even "no activation needed" shields to help the party. By the developers own logic, warrior now offers the intermediate party utility, it should do intermediate dps. It doesn't need dps to be run, people play it because its fun, flexible, and has raid shields available. Having a complicated rotation is not a reason to have the best dps (even if it feels like it should), it wasn't this way in HW and there is no need for it to be that way now.

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Originally Posted by Tegernako

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I'm with you on that. It's kind of a hidden stereotype in online games that people just water everything down into making things do more DPS. It was the same thing with PLD in 3.0 as well: everyone just complaining about giving them more damage. Since DRK's release, I've been pretty disappointed for the play style. It's not that it isn't entertaining, it's that the job doesn't feel ANYTHING like a Dark Knight in any final fantasy game of mine. It feels more like a generic DPS class that has some passive siphon and mitigation. I would put far more value on a rework to showcase the Dark Knight's position in the Tank department. Paladin is off-healing and support, Warrior is heavy duty burst DPS/mitigation, and what is Dark Knight? .............. consistent? As you said, increasing DPS to put it on par with or surpassing warrior makes no sense. They need to reinforce a more specific position/niche that revolves around the job instead of playing the "I have more DPS" game. Machinist used to have this problem as well back in 3.0 but now they've found the design and it works well. Of the 3.0 jobs, Dark Knight is now the odd one out as the aimless "What is the point of this job again?" job.

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

I'm with you on that. It's kind of a hidden stereotype in online games that people just water everything down into making things do more DPS. It was the same thing with PLD in 3.0 as well: everyone just complaining about giving them more damage. Since DRK's release, I've been pretty disappointed for the play style. It's not that it isn't entertaining, it's that the job doesn't feel ANYTHING like a Dark Knight in any final fantasy game of mine. It feels more like a generic DPS class that has some passive siphon and mitigation. I would put far more value on a rework to showcase the Dark Knight's position in the Tank department. Paladin is off-healing and support, Warrior is heavy duty burst DPS/mitigation, and what is Dark Knight? .............. consistent? As you said, increasing DPS to put it on par with or surpassing warrior makes no sense. They need to reinforce a more specific position/niche that revolves around the job instead of playing the "I have more DPS" game. Machinist used to have this problem as well back in 3.0 but now they've found the design and it works well. Of the 3.0 jobs, Dark Knight is now the odd one out as the aimless "What is the point of this job again?" job.

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While I don't disagree that dark night needs more lore driven tools, I think that waiting for those just means dark knight will be a forgotten tank until 5.0. The job needs help, and if we cannot expect such tools outisde of an expansion then we need something to offer.

I also think your view of paladin in 3.0 is missing some key details. Paladin's felt crippled in dps, thats for certain being 20% behind for most of the expac will do that. However, their utitlity and defense were also issues. Not being able to block magic and having a strength reducing effect meant half of their kit went out the window in magical tiers. No blocking meant no sheltron, no bulwark, no passive blocks, and cover only moved physical damage from one target to another. That is what made Paladin bad in 3.x. Paladin did have divine veil, but comparing that to reprisal + delirium + the warrior effect and you can see the issue of uptime.

That said, DPS is seen as the most valuable resource. If dark knight is going to not offer a way to deal with raid damage (either by lowering it directly, shielding it, or give a way to help heal up), offer little relevant utility, and have less self sustain than other tanks, then yes I think the only reasonable position to increase is damage.