Ideas for DRK substain buffs and more

I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to share to give DRK more utility some are just quality of life and buffs

1. Salted Earth : Keep the dot and make the bubble bigger, people inside the bubble get 10% midigation, Salt and Darkness upon execution grant Salted Wound giving a regen to people inside of it

2. Merge TBN and Oblation together Oblation is an upgrade of TBN giving TBN on lower level for Tankbuster (Possibly removing the MP cost on TBN you will see later on this post why)

3. Give Plunge back to Living Shadow to replace Shadow Stride that does no damage since its not affected by attacks anyway might as well keep an agressive gap closer to it

4. This one gonna hurt but maybe revisit Dark Mind it's amazing but not always and because of that not a lot of people aren't even using it

Before I go with my last idea I want to say quickly why I said Free TBN, DRK always been about handeling your ressources MP, Bloodgauge its something that should stay as the job as no other combo. If DRK and PLD are opposite but both use magic I got an idea that may be an interesting idea for both lore and gameplay

5. New ability, Seeking the dark

a skill that tap inside the Dark arts to grant you more life. it put on you or an ally a strong regen that eat constanly from your MP like the old Darkside at the same rate and cost of your MP Regen which is 200mp ever 2,3 sec or so. DRK will have to switch on and off this status a bit like the SCH fairy to make sure they dont drain all of their MP to attack with that plus TBN DRK will be able to protect themselves from further damage and heal back from it while being protected

Honestly I don't think DRK needs more sustain so much was WAR and PLD need less.

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Originally Posted by Basteala

Honestly I don't think DRK needs more sustain so much was WAR and PLD need less.

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I mean this is the third time we've seen big on patch content cleared healerless, and the 3rd time the comp involved PLD stacking with an additional WAR.
So either the XIV community hates pattern recognition or its a conversation no one wants to have

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Originally Posted by Basteala

Honestly I don't think DRK needs more sustain so much was WAR and PLD need less.

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I'm going disagree and agree.

Paladins self sustain is a case of a lot of it is actually just tied to your damaging attacks, which I think I rather they just remove the sustain from magic attacks and slightly buff up the sustain from holy sheltron (even normal sheltron), Clemency is fine you lose damage for using it, Divine veil could lose the healing aspect, but if dps get to keep healing i don't see why a "paladin" can't have one aoe heal. Honestly I think paladins sustain isn't even that "strong" outside of the healing you get from magic attacks.

Warrior has self healing on every single cooldown and is 10x more of a problem to paladin, it also scales with AOE pulls per enemy with bloodwhetting, It even gets a better version of veil that adds a regen.

Dark Knight while it doens't need more "self healing" I think giving it a tad more sustain on something like oblation would be nice, making cooldowns like Dark Mind and dark missionary more consistent, I'm also not a big fan of TBN but that's just personal opinion I guess.


I guess I'll go with the middle ground take that sustain should be reduced for warrior in particular, Paladin should get some adjustments to where their sustain is and can have some sustain in total be brought down, but I do actually think adding a little more sustain to dark knight isn't a bad thing.

Honestly, updating TBN alone would make DRK feel fresh again. But I agree, Dark Mind cannot just be magic mitigation the same way PLD can't just block physical damage with their shield. If shields can block any damage then Dark Mind should be able to mitigate any damage. Alternatively, you could make Dark Mind like Excog, if it doesn't block any magical damage then expires perhaps it makes your next TBN block X% more damage on the next use.

I wouldn't mind if oblation's buffs were put onto the blackest night instead of having it as a separate skill but I do remember seeing a post that brought up some good points regarding it and I do like the fact that you could throw out oblation on two party members and tbn on either yourself or the main tank.

Something I think would go a long way would be reducing the mp cost for tbn
That or increasing how much mp you gain with your combo and skills including carve and spit
Could even have an additional charge to the skill so that instead of picking between healing or getting mp you could do both, or you could heal twice with it or regain mp twice

Granted my dark knight is only level 92, so perhaps they gain additional charges later. I'll have to read traits I unlock later.
I do really like shadow vigil, it looks pretty cool and it seems to also have a healing effect when it expires or if you go below half health kind of like heart of corundum

I will agree on giving DRK sustain if they can make Healers do something more, and make fights that actually make proper use of Tank sustain as something other than Healer replacement...

Before buffing dark knight we have to talk what tank suppose to do?

Let's identify tank tasks in fights so we can have clear job design for tanks.

- do tank have to have utility skills other than mitigations?
- do tank suppose to shield and heal party?
- what is tank role duty and is it interesting for majority of players?
- how tank changes could effect tank demand in this game.. will it increase player rate or decrease it?

if we answer these questions will let us know how to identify job design philosophy.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

I will agree on giving DRK sustain if they can make Healers do something more, and make fights that actually make proper use of Tank sustain as something other than Healer replacement...

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But they can't, so no buffs for DRK!

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Originally Posted by Basteala

Honestly I don't think DRK needs more sustain so much was WAR and PLD need less.

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That is also a pretty solid solution

I forgot to add something

between Tank and Healer there is a certain harmony that must be balance

Either all Tanks get more substain and Healer loose a few healing to replace with new attack or reduce healing potency since they have to careless for tanks

Or remove tank self healing more and keep healer that way because rn with WAR , PLD even GNB with their kit there is no need for crazy amount of healing spell

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to share to give DRK more utility some are just quality of life and buffs

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No.

WAR and PLD are already unhealthy for the game's trinity system. War and Pld (and GNB) self sustain needs to be brought down to Drk levels and their group shields/heals needs to be removed.

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Originally Posted by MisterNublet

No.

WAR and PLD are already unhealthy for the game's trinity system. War and Pld (and GNB) self sustain needs to be brought down to Drk levels and their group shields/heals needs to be removed.

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TRust me I agree too I actually prefer WAR back in shadowbringer but either they nerf tanks down because its rediculous right now or they rescale the tank role and healer role or they buff DRK to realign the tank balance and give healer more tool outside of healing

No, nerf the crap out of tank sustain. Bring the others down to drks level.

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Originally Posted by Basteala

Honestly I don't think DRK needs more sustain so much was WAR and PLD need less.

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I agree, and i'm a paladin main.
More healing needs to be like clemency if anything. Give up resources, not be passive free healing.
I died in a ex1 PF because i was trying out drk, the healer straight up said "sorry i'm not used to the tank needing healing" :skull:

God I feel so validated reading everything here. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one lamenting the state of tanking rn. Thank you for this whole post

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

I agree, and i'm a paladin main.
More healing needs to be like clemency if anything. Give up resources, not be passive free healing.
I died in a ex1 PF because i was trying out drk, the healer straight up said "sorry i'm not used to the tank needing healing" :skull:

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Nerfing tank self sustain may go some way to forcing healers to actually heal again, which may alleviate some of the complaining we've heard from healers for a while.

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Originally Posted by Basteala

Honestly I don't think DRK needs more sustain so much was WAR and PLD need less.

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I generally abide by the philosophy of "buff, don't nerf" except in extreme cases where it's unavoidable. WAR I agree needs changes, but why PLD? PLD is fine, and you also forget that if we're nerfing everything down to DRK's level, GNB would need to get nerfed too.

Tired brain: "Substain? Is that what we DRKs are?"

More relevantly, I disagree with each of the suggestions except #3.

• I do not want Salted Earth to be a 2/3s Passage of Arms.
• I do not want to see TBN made inherently harder to pop and our mitigation control reduced by Oblation being necessarily attached to it.
• I'm not digging the idea of Seeking the Dark; I'd rather sustain be a bit burstier and more active, and sacrificing a mere 4k MP per minute for a perma-HoT is not that.

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Originally Posted by Bibine_Bine

I generally abide by the philosophy of "buff, don't nerf" except in extreme cases where it's unavoidable. WAR I agree needs changes, but why PLD? PLD is fine, and you also forget that if we're nerfing everything down to DRK's level, GNB would need to get nerfed too.

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I think if they want to keep some sustain buffing drk to GNB and nerfing pld/war to gnb would be fine as well
That should be as high as tank sustain should ever be

Whatever SE do or think they need to change stuff either tank are bulky and just hard to kill without self healing like a tank should be or they change how the two roles Healer and Tank work together. Honestly DPS are pretty fine there is unbalance and some job are overtune for no reason overall the DPS role is pretty fine but the Relation between tank role and healer role is the worse I ever seen on a MMO

I get it its hard to do I thought tank were better without any self substain maybe PLD a bit because they have white magic and still I feel like it would be more like : "the light protect me" than just healing but since they took that path it's going to be really hard to go back now that it's done

And I maybe wasnt clear in my starting post but I DONT WANT DRK to be able to heal. I want DRK to get in line with the other tanks thats all I wish they would revert what they did with tank self healing but its just more likely that the dev to that instead of going back

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I mean this is the third time we've seen big on patch content cleared healerless, and the 3rd time the comp involved PLD stacking with an additional WAR.
So either the XIV community hates pattern recognition or its a conversation no one wants to have

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Its more like I dont think SE will go back it would piss too much players who play this job especially WAR (one in particular)

I main DRK despite the fact it's in the state it's in. A lot of people have repeated the same ideas and i agree with a lot of the more realistic ones like putting excog on TBN and removing it's CD as well as making dark mind do both physical and magical. I'm toughing it out but I'm hoping it won't take until 8.0 to see any changes.

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Originally Posted by Noox-115

Its more like I dont think SE will go back it would piss too much players who play this job especially WAR (one in particular)

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I'm aware, and if this is their answer then DRK needs buffs in this area.

You know... Maybe we could respond to it all with the same arguments healers get.


If you don't like it, go play some other role.
They shouldn't add too many abilities to the Job, it might scare away people from trying it.
If they have too many non-mitigation abilities, people might not be able to focus on tanking.

I am late to a lot of these threads as I dont normally post on forums but figured I'd throw this out there. I made a sheet of drk changes I think would be cool and bring drk up to a place that makes it truly stand out on its own. my changes still need tweaking so any imput would be great. If enough ppl think these are cool changes to the job hopefully square sees it and put some in to the game. here is the sheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?gid=0#gid=0

DRK should be the de facto sustain tank over the others
it used to be before the shadowbringers rework completely ruined the job in every way. Dawntrail DRK is at least more fun but the lack of good mitigation and no sustain really shows

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Originally Posted by AddictedToWitches

DRK should be the de facto sustain tank over the others
it used to be before the shadowbringers rework completely ruined the job in every way. Dawntrail DRK is at least more fun but the lack of good mitigation and no sustain really shows

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(Sustain generally includes both mitigation (flat potency and percent DR) and healing (flat potency/%HP and percent of damage taken) combined. Else we'd just say "healing" if by "sustain" we only meant healing.)

...And why should DRK have higher healing, let alone sustain, than any other tank?

Warrior was the original self-healing tank of XIV, with virtually no mitigation -- solely healing from damage dealt. You can disagree on whether that was ever the right call, but ARR launched with those dynamics set very clearly.

Yes, it would be great to regain the Dark Arts interactions with Abyssal Drain, Souleater, etc., or something of similar agency. But that's not to say the job that DRK needs to be "the" self-healing tank or the like.

I’d like aspir and drain on dark knight, but the way I’m imagining it would involve a pretty full on rework. It would also involve deleting the loathsome stalwart soul which is just a benefit really.

At its core would be
(Abyssal) drain gcd costs mp to give you hp.
(Quietus) aspir costs blood to give mp.
Unleash costs posssibly mp possibly a delay of a couple of turns of being damaged and generates blood. (They’re great big spikes, surely this would cause some blood loss)
All of this would be per enemy hit, but hp would be as a portion of damage dealt because it’s not the single target rotation. It also means there’s a tank that doesn’t have the same 1-2 pbaoe 5y radius aoe combo.

I don’t actually think they can take nascent effect off warrior at this point, or at least not without adding something even less healthy as compensation. It’s pretty easy to forget just how bad the average person is. Healers having a comical maximum throughput and tanks being largely unkillable with a bit of effort means a terrible support doesn’t end a dungeon run before it begins, but it also means anyone remotely competent invalidates the existence of their non-red counterpart.