Dark Knight Current State and the Hate

Been reading on here and other platforms that current state of the game that Dark Knight is the worst tank of all.

I\\'m just trying to understand what defines it as the worst. I\\'ve leveled mine so far up to level 65, played Heaven on High to get a taste of the 70 skills.

So far from what I played I felt most of its abilities flowed well and having the HP Regen from Souleater as part of the rotation is extremely helpful.

Now I will say I\\'m not a fan of Dark Arts since you do have to almost spam that on ever ability to make that ability have higher potency.

I know it\\'s getting reworked and hopefully a lot changes but as it stands right now, would anyone take a Dark Knight into a static group over the choice of Warrior/Paladin?

Just trying to understand the disdain that people have towards this class as a tank. Maybe I\\'m just misunderstanding some of it?

I haven't seen any form of hate towards the job since it's last round of buffs from several months ago. The main issues outside of the Dark Arts is how Walking Dead is absolute arse and how it can't heal itself for a worth of shite without being in Grit in small-scale encounters. Entering Grit costs a GCD. Can't use BW in Grit. Being in Grit sucks.

If anything, I've seen talk of people believing that Dark Mind is way too powerful for something with a cooldown that short, even if it is magic-specific. The reason people would take a DRK over a WAR/PLD is because they wanted too. It's not a make-or-break tank when it comes to clearing. It's extremely safe for progression.

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Originally Posted by Fushira

I'm just trying to understand what defines it as the worst.

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Living Dead is worse than Holmgang.

Blood Weapon (+ Delirium) is worse than Inner Release for capitalizing on burst windows.

This makes DRK worse than WAR as MT.

The Blackest Night is worse than Cover + Intervention + Divine Veil + Passage of Arms + Clemency.

This makes DRK worse than PLD as OT.

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Originally Posted by Fushira

So far from what I played I felt most of its abilities flowed well and having the HP Regen from Souleater as part of the rotation is extremely helpful.

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In high level content, not only is the standard play to not use defensive stances, meaning that a DRK will not be receiving any life from Souleater, but the minor amount of life it would give ends up being completely overshadowed by the Regen and shields provided by healers which will keep you topped up.

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Originally Posted by Fushira

Now I will say I'm not a fan of Dark Arts since you do have to almost spam that on ever ability to make that ability have higher potency.

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This is also part of the problem.

Managing Dark Arts and Blood (Especially if using TBN to mitigate damage, with your only Blood dumps being GCD's that require 50 Blood thus meaning that it's very easy to overcap Blood when TBN pops and gives you 50 Blood) to its fullest is quite difficult.

To the point where the majority of DRK players aren't very good at it. Which further devalues the job overall when it's likely that if a DRK is in your party, they're just being less effective than they can be.

As opposed to the other Tanks which are far more forgiving in their playstyle.

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Originally Posted by Fushira

I know it's getting reworked and hopefully a lot changes but as it stands right now, would anyone take a Dark Knight into a static group over the choice of Warrior/Paladin?

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Literally, there's nothing unique that Dark Knight brings over an equally skilled/geared Warrior or Paladin.

Like, at best, Dark Knights can boast about having the best sustain for AoE spam, but there's not much AoE necessary in the current end-game content and the little there is, is easily outperformed by Warriors short burst of massive AoE output thanks to Inner Release.

Dark Knights can also have the best personal damage mitigation thanks to Dark Mind and The Blackest Night. But that all means nothing when both Warrior and Paladin can easily get through all the content without these tools.

This isn't to say that DRK is a bad job. It is still a decent Tank and can still Tank all encounters in the game. It's just, if compared to the other 2 jobs, it comes out lacking. Which is why many look forward to the rework it is getting in Shadowbringers where hopefully it, along with the other Tank jobs, get overhauled so that there is a much smaller disparity between the capabilities of jobs.

Eh, Dark Knight's actually my favorite, but I'm not one for bells and whistles. Animations aside, Paladin and Warrior nearly have the same combat progression, and Dark Knight at least has the MP/Blood ping pong as a facet on top of that.

well first of all DRK is capable of doing everything but as some point up there DRK capabilitys are surpased by PLD and WAR combined with a clunky gameplay that heavy punish you for doing it wrong make the value of DRK even worse and the number of decent DRK pretty limited.

to give you a resume DRK just get the worse part this expansion, we lose the exclusivity of reprisal while PLD keep his utility and get new party tools and WAR get a new defensive aoe shield mid expansion, we lose dark dance, foresight (as a role skill) and blood price get nerfed hard so our defensive capabilitys under lvl 70 get badly gutted with still posible to everything ok but not as good compared to the other 2, and the deep and strategic use of dark arts in HW get replaced by the spaming fest we have now.

in resume DRK is a job that can do everything ok but its harder, get punished easily and his utility can't match the other 2, in term of numbers they are pretty close to the others surpasing PLD and WAR in mitigation outside of tank stance (war best on tank stance) for example, something that the actual no tank stance meta supports, but thats ends being meaningless when WAR can just skip half of the mechanics with holmgang and PLD offer defensive support on the other half but in terms of DPS they are pretty ok.

so enjoy DRK if you want, i really enjoy it despite the severe problems they have and the baddly support we get from the devs this expansion and lets pray for nice changes on SHB.

Forgive a DRK noob here. So with Darksode and Grit both on all the time it negates the DPS loss right? So just normal damage without severely losing out on DPS in Tank stance like other tanks.

Maybe I'm reading the skills incorrectly?

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Originally Posted by Fushira

Forgive a DRK noob here. So with Darksode and Grit both on all the time it negates the DPS loss right? So just normal damage without severely losing out on DPS in Tank stance like other tanks.

Maybe I'm reading the skills incorrectly?

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At higher-level play tanks dont stay in tank stance that long during a fight anyway, just during the initial pull or if DPS are really bad with their aggro cooldowns. You should always have darkside on when you have it since its needed for many abilities, so that can be viewed as your 'normal' damage potential so Grit would still make you take a 20% hit.

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Originally Posted by Fushira

Forgive a DRK noob here. So with Darksode and Grit both on all the time it negates the DPS loss right? So just normal damage without severely losing out on DPS in Tank stance like other tanks.

Maybe I'm reading the skills incorrectly?

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Technically... No.

They stack multiplicatively. So with Darkside and Grit both active you're doing 0.8 * 1.2 = 0.96 or 96% damage.

Not only that, but losing access to Blood Weapon is also a DPS loss, because of how much worse Blood Price is for generating MP/Blood.

But again, towards the higher end of gameplay, defensive stances aren't used. So DRK having 120% damage due to Darkside, WAR having 105% damage due to Deliverance and PLD having their extra damage on auto-attacks becomes the "Default" damage outputs.

Without Grit though DRK loses access to the health regen from Souleater? I know they still have Abyssal Drain and the 120 second cooldown ability but that's a bit of a hit to the sustain from DRK, right?

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Originally Posted by Fushira

Without Grit though DRK loses access to the health regen from Souleater? I know they still have Abyssal Drain and the 120 second cooldown ability but that's a bit of a hit to the sustain from DRK, right?

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yes, abyssal drain is useless with single target objectives so its not reliable on boss combats but is amaizing on dungeons and aoe situations, sole survivor is a nice heal but since you have to wait 15 sec to get the heal you can't sync it properly and you can be healed already when the heal pops so use sole survivor for the mp gain.

outside of grit DRK don't have any selfheal you can trust, you will realize how paradoxical is being a DRK with living dead that need to be heal by you max HP to don't die and don't have any form to do that by yourself.

Living Dead is a nightmare when you cant self heal back before dying and the healer is ressing other people, etc. Of course a clutch scenario but
I still think the self heal/sustain should be alot better and LD reworked to do something, anything different

The more finer points stated above before are even bigger issues than just that.
Looking forward to see the rework

It’s simply that anything DRK can do the other tanks do better. DRK brings nothing unique to a party and It’s clunky to play with dark arts and the blood gauge. Since it got some buffs it’s in a better spot, but it’s still just plain worse than PLD and WAR for reasons already noted in the thread.

As for grit souleater’s heal, it may be DRKs only form of self healing other than sole survivor but it is not worth giving up 20% damage and blood weapon for it in any content that matters.

When I first got DA, before even reading anything about it I just knew there would be multiple videos/threads going on how clunky/spammy/redundant it feels. I definitely wasn't wrong.

I know they are doing a big revamp for DRK which sounds good because stylistically it's my favorite tank so far. I feel so far when I am on my DRK I am planning/calculating about 10x more than on my warrior.

There's so much I really like so far with DRK playstyle but DA is definitely one of those abilities/mechanics that makes me go: "If only DRK didn't have this".

In terms of raid scene and ex trials DRK is the worst of 3 due to the WAR + PLD being the best combination. DRK is getting a rework in 5.0 so we will have to wait and see what happens.

For dungeon content though DRK is the best in terms of 70 dungeons, but it struggles in the below lvl 70 content due to its kit being stripped back in 4.0

Well, DRK has always been a mess that never really embraced why fans love the class in previous FF titles, IMO. And, the problem with drk currently is that it was a functional mess in 3.0 that relied on the glut of abilities of 3.0's button bloat to be effective and competitive with pld and war who did not need that bloat to function properly. It's still a bloated mess, tbh

DRK is actually the greatest pleb filter in-game tbh

That's true. You don't typically recruit and train knights from the lower social strata. Don't worry, though. If you can't afford a greatsword and platemail, you could always just find yourself an axe and start smashing stones together in the local tavern, instead. Ungabunga!

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Originally Posted by Hierro

DRK is actually the greatest pleb filter in-game tbh

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Better hope they dont place them in the MT classification, which would make sense, and have it outshine WAR 100%