Dark Knight: Quality of Life/Play Issues and Suggestions

Dark Knight as a job has become a mess of skills. Some of these skills actively take away from the enjoyment of the class. Here are some suggestions which would make game play more fluid and enjoyable, hopefully without impacting our place in the balance of tanks. The short of it is that animation locks and double weaving without clipping or burnning dark arts is becoming an issue. The 3.x ideas in the 4.x system are crashing together and it makes for a number of flow issues.

1) Plunge, please decrease the animation lock. Dark Knight thrives on double weaving, which has become difficult especially on the NA server, the server move has increased the latency for many of us and double weaving itself has become difficult, plunge only makes this issue more difficult because of its excessive animation lock.

2) Plunge, please increase the range to 20 yalms to match most other gap closers in the game.

3) Baseline additional effects from oGCD abilities that are dark arts effects/build the mana effects into the skills directly when applicable. 3.x had an interesting feature of augmenting our abilities with dark arts to grant new and additional effects. 4.x has introduced us to standardizing dark arts as a dps increase to moves, usually 140 potency increases. The two systems together don't flow right. Often times the dark arts effect on these abilities only serves to further congest our double weaving.

Example: Carve and Spit is almost always used with dark arts, removing the dark arts effect, baselining the 450 potency, and building the 2400 mana cost into the skill would reduce double weaving and improve game flow. Carve and spit 450 potency oGCD Cost 2400 mana (no dark arts effect)

Example: Dark Mind is rarely paired with dark arts since The Blackest Night and Dark Mind usually mitigate more damage for the same cost (and with the potential to reward that cost almost entirely), removing the dark arts effect from dark mind would have little impact except to reduce accidental uses of dark arts. Even better, baseline the 30% magic vulnerability for no cost and call it a day.

Please leave thoughts and other suggestions below, as always like to show support. I'll update this post with other players suggestions who seem to have community support through the like system.

The Plunge animation lock becomes even worse during Blood Weapon, and that's often what you end up saving it for, in order to get that extra oGCD mp.

I would like for Dark Arts to be tuned a bit,

But there's a little more to it than simply 'speeding up' the animation. The effect could happen a little more instantaneously, but also, like Card Draw / Ninjitsu, a second oGCD action can be queued to the input buffer and interrupt/overwrite the last 100 or so MS of DA's animation. If DRK could clip that point of Dark Arts animation it would save considerable time I think. DRK already doubles DA like a NIN, except it's not locked to a 30second recast. Let's see some of that unique action behavior, considering.

Also I'd like to hold more than one Dark Arts at a time. This way there's more freedom in spreading out your oGCDs, dumping MP to avoid capping, and no risk of blowing -140potency because you (I) forgot that we're using a Hard/Spinning Slash and just refreshed a DA buff x_x

world first for ultimate had dark knight in party /threads about dark knight being bad.

Removing the requirement for C&S sounds like a downgrade to gameplay. It's the core of the skill that makes it worth stocking a bit of MP, or restore some in AOE situation if needed.

To reduce weaving, siphon should be undark arted as it was in 3.0, and the flow of mb/blood less eratic.

I have nothing against the plunge and DM change, even If I would like DM to be more "interesting" than just a 30% magic cooldown. However triple weaving isn't a thing and thus, DA DM + TBN is not possible due to cost ans GCD delay reasons.

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

Removing the requirement for C&S sounds like a downgrade to gameplay. It's the core of the skill that makes it worth stocking a bit of MP, or restore some in AOE situation if needed.

To reduce weaving, siphon should be undark arted as it was in 3.0, and the flow of mb/blood less eratic.

I have nothing against the plunge and DM change, even If I would like DM to be more "interesting" than just a 30% magic cooldown. However triple weaving isn't a thing and thus, DA DM + TBN is not possible due to cost ans GCD delay reasons.

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I'm suggesting to make the 2400 mana as part of the skill, package the cost and dark arts ability in the same skill rather than double weaving it. Hit C&S and deal 450 potency, lose 2400 mana. It means we lose the use of it to gain 1200 mana, but who uses that?

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Originally Posted by Gojin

world first for ultimate had dark knight in party /threads about dark knight being bad.

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This points to a skilled player, not a balanced job. In fact their response for the reason for using it was "I like playing DRK", not exactly a strategic reason.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

world first for ultimate had dark knight in party /threads about dark knight being bad.

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Thats not a counter argument.

back in 2.0 and 3.0 when ppl complained they couldnt clear content with certain jobs, like WAR in 2.0 and PLD in 3.0, SE said they play tested every group combination and cleared every fight.
if what ur saying should be seen as a counter argument, then there was no imbalance.

DRK still doesnt bring a single thing to the fight, a WAR doesnt already bring, and better.

The issue with Ultimate, is almost everything is instant kill, which is what makes DRK useless. U cant TBN through an instant kill.
Raid wide dmg is better mitigated with AoE shields, rather than a single target shield.

PLD and WAR are still going to do more DPS, while offering more out of tank stances.

Imbalance still remains.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

world first for ultimate had dark knight in party /threads about dark knight being bad.

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Just because it's technically not unplayable doesn't mean it's not still in a worse off state than the other two Tanks in terms of mitigation, party utility, and DPS. Also, as Chrono already pointed out above me that World First clear DRK used it because they find DRK fun to play and not because they found it better than WAR.

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It means we lose the use of it to gain 1200 mana, but who uses that?

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I do, in AOE situation to get 3 more AD (one for the 1200 mp, two for the DA I don't use on it)

Fair enough, I think that it would make the class much smoother and more streamlined if we only spent dark arts on GCD actions, and considered abilities separate from dark arts. I don't see a huge advantage to our dark arts additional abilities to justify their existence, but of course we all have different play styles.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Fair enough, I think that it would make the class much smoother and more streamlined if we only spent dark arts on GCD actions, and considered abilities separate from dark arts. I don't see a huge advantage to our dark arts additional abilities to justify their existence, but of course we all have different play styles.

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I see the point and I can't but agree that having no double weaving would soften the situation. But to me the best answer is removing DA from Siphon strike and reducing the MP we gain with blood weapon, in favor of more emphasis on MP usage (A more powerfull DA, and DP if it still cost something).

I would also like to see more emphasis on DA with BS. As our rare big hit, I would love that we MUST DA it because it's a better way to spend MP than DA'ing a SE.