If You Were A Class/Job Designer...

[Shurrikhan]

tl;dr: The main issue with DRK is they're built around WANTING TO BE HIT and then are given skills that clash with this ideal by bolstering dodge chance and inflicting blind at the expense of their main resource.

Ever since I decided to level DRK to 60, for exactly these reasons I've been asking that either DA-DD 1) nearly guarantee parry, instead of adding further dodge, 2) the dodge component stacks with the original parry bonus (perhaps adjusted 40/15% or so, to make the DA cost -> miti a bit less OP) or 3) [my favorite], Blood Price is changed to 'per attack attempted against you', and Low Blow and Reprisal become triggerable by dodges. Most times I bring the idea up though, I'm told I'm just making the job too easy. I just saw it as making a toolkit make sense and a bit more flexible, rather than locking a BP opener into normal DP, SW, and maybe a few DA-ADs. /shrug

[Syzygian]

snip

In AoE situations most DRKs let up on their AD spam about 1-2 GCDs before BP is gonna fall so they will be topped off on MP. From there its just HS (DA) SS (DD) DE (Awareness/Foresight or something) HS (DA) SS (DP) DE - and you still have about half your mana left and you're dodging left and right. You still get off the big DADP hits you just wait slightly until you're not gonna be losing BP returns from it. And honestly if you really must have all of your AoE lumped very nicely together, you could just weave your DADP into the tail-end of your AD spam.

The "why do I have abilities the let me dodge when I wanna be hit/parry stuff" grievance is as old as the expansion, but good players that main DRK have long-since worked around it, with fantastic results in the context in which it matters (dungeons/trash). Its just a matter of using your abilities efficiently and its fallacious to consider it a design flaw IMO. I could see the argument if BP was a persistent buff, but it isn't - you have 25 seconds of downtime in which DRK doesn't care if it is hit or not.

And yes, if you're dodging you'll see fewer LB/Reprisal procs, but remember the context we're discussing - AoE/trash/dungeons. Whether or not you get to poke 1-2 mobs out of 8-9 with LB or Reprisal is pretty moot, and the sheer math of the scenario suggests that even if you're dodging, with that many mobs hitting you, you'll still get procs. If this were a boss, yeah, that would suck. But you can't dodge bosses until you severely overgear them.

There are things about DRK I'd like to see improved on but the dodge/parry/proc/blood price mechanics have never really bothered me, nor has holding back on the crazy evasion CDs until BP has fallen. There's countless instances of jobs holding off on certain CDs or abilities for an opportune moment or point in their rotation, so its nothing new.

[Lyth]

While I'm really happy with DRK's skillset and how it plays, one thing that I'd love to see implemented in the class in some form or the other as flavour is Celes' Runic ability (FFVI), even just to have it in the game. At first I was envisioning this as some sort of mitigation move (just rename DM to Runic and give it the animation from FFVI), but it would be fun to see this as a targeted move that redirects the next magic attack from a party member on to yourself, while recovering the mp cost of the spell.

You could keep it in its original form and have it redirect heals as well, but I could foresee much shenanigans ensuing if you started stealing your co-tanks heals during tank busters.

[JackFross]

Stuff about DADD/DADP

Yeah, I'm aware of how to properly use them, and I usually do use them that way, I just feel they took two routes with DRK and couldn't decide which one was better.

It's like they built it as a parry tank (Low Blow resets, Reprisal, Dark Dance) and then, late in development, someone suggested maybe making it an evasion tank instead, so they added on some additional evasion skills for no real reason other than "why not?"

It's just disjointed and fractured, when you look at it from the outside. Sure, they can be used well if you understand them and apply them right, but I just think it's a little... stilted? Not handled correctly? Dark Arts could be an incredibly varied cooldown. Instead, it's used -solely- for offense in quite literally all raid content in the game, except for the incredibly rare (also borderline nonexistent) moments when DA+DM is actually worthwhile. Its options outside of Souleater and Carve and Spit are limited and not very impressive in the light of 22000+ maximum health and bosses who are immune to Blind and who have 100% hit rates, regardless of your dodge rate.

Maybe I'm just jaded, but it feels like they went all over the map with making Dark Knight's kit. It's NOT synergenic - skills do NOT compliment one another. It's the "magic tank" because Delirium and Dark Mind, but also tries to be the "parry tank" because it's packing dark dance and parry synergy. All of this couples with it being far and away the squishiest of all three tanks in normal situations (WAR packs buffer health and has an on-demand 20% damage mitigation, PLD packs 20% base mitigation and a shield and an on-demand auto-block, DRK packs... 20% base mitigation.) to make me feel like something was lost in translation when designing the Job.

That's not to say it underperforms OR that any of the mentioned skills are useless - it's just saying that the Job feels disharmonious.

WAR is the damage tank - they can shit out an incredible amount of damage in a short period of time.

PLD is the heavy tank - they take the least damage in most circumstances and are just generally bulkier than the others.

DRK is the other tank - it just kind of exists as a third option. Fun as shit to play, but it doesn't have a niche. And, imo, that's a problem.

[MagiusNecros]

I imagine the DRK's kit is a mish mash of PLD and Samurai concept idea's all thrown in together and the only thing even vaguely DRK related is Dark Arts and the aesthetic look of skills. Samurai were known for dodging and parrying/countering attacks. So here you got Dark Dance, Reprisal and what have you.

It's just evidence of what happens when you decide not to release Samurai as planned and decide to somehow gut the kit you had for that and plop it on and butcher the iconic Dark Knight class.

[InfiniDragon]

I imagine the DRK's kit is a mish mash of PLD and Samurai concept idea's all thrown in together and the only thing even vaguely DRK related is Dark Arts and the aesthetic look of skills. Samurai were known for dodging and parrying/countering attacks. So here you got Dark Dance, Reprisal and what have you.

It's just evidence of what happens when you decide not to release Samurai as planned and decide to somehow gut the kit you had for that and plop it on and butcher the iconic Dark Knight class.

Except to my knowledge, Yoshida never planned to release Samurai as a tank. He's said several times he always envisioned his Samurai as a DPS class. Tanaka's Samurai may have been parry based but I highly doubt Yoshida took ideas from that for DRK since he scrapped his own changes in 1.23 for jobs and reimagined them for a third time when 2.0 was released.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Dark Knight is nothing like it should be; its really just a copy of Paladin with some AOEs and a half baked mechanic thrown into it. Should be about Life Manipulation; shouldn't even have a mana bar honestly. Just a bigger life pool and abilities that take life to use; and lifetaps.

Honestly though with Paladin changes they do 8 times more healing then Dark Knight can; and in Sword Oath they have near the same DPS. (Dark Knight does way more aoe dps though.)

I loved the "Dark" class in RIFT who was all about health manipulation.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Except to my knowledge, Yoshida never planned to release Samurai as a tank. He's said several times he always envisioned his Samurai as a DPS class. Tanaka's Samurai may have been parry based but I highly doubt Yoshida took ideas from that for DRK since he scrapped his own changes in 1.23 for jobs and reimagined them for a third time when 2.0 was released.

Yoshi-P actually said that he personally saw the Samurai as more of a DpS but did not deny that it was a potential Tank. He also mentioned that both Samurai and Dark Knight were considered for the tank slot for HW, but they decided on Dark Knight due to the "Japanese" Ninja having just been added and Dark Knight fitting the more European feel of the expansion.

[MagiusNecros]

I will simply laugh if Samurai sacrifices HP for damage whenever it gets released. That's all I gotta say.

[JackFross]

Dark Knight is nothing like it should be

butcher the iconic Dark Knight class.

I'm honestly tired of this same argument being slapped at Dark Knight again and again. It doesn't use its health, therefore it's not a Dark Knight GOSH HOW WORTHLESS.

It boils down to one very important dichotomy:
Can they heal back all of the damage that they inflict on themselves?
Yes! - Why is this a mechanic then? What's the point?
No! - Instantly the weakest Job in whatever role it's placed in, since they'd be squishier on principle.
**But more health!!!!!
****Then why bother wasting my health on skills when I can just utilize that bonus health as additional mitigation and trivialize many mechanics?

Basically, it's near impossible to balance a Job (ESPECIALLY a tank) in this game around spending and restoring its own health. You will - no matter what - end up making it too strong or not strong enough. It should be able to heal back the damage it deals so that the healers don't need to spend additional resources to keep the DRK up compared to other tanks (Let's not discuss LD here, this is about core mechanics), however, if it CAN heal back that damage it's doing to itself, wouldn't you theoretically be able to just ignore all of the health-costing spells and use your self-heals to regenerate from incoming attacks? If spending health is sufficiently powerful to make it worthwhile, wouldn't it then become optimal to just burn your health out and have a healer keep Regen flowing on you? Wouldn't that therefore either outmode another tank (because it can deal WAY more damage) or make DRK completely worthless (because healers need to spend GCDs on keeping it up)?


Sure, I'm a LITTLE peeved we didn't get Darkness that drains health for more damage, but at the same time, I'm really glad? It would have shifted the dynamic of battles to have the Dark Knight get babied and focused, or it would have solidified PLD/WAR as absolutely 100% optimal, or made it so that the benefits of DRK's self-heals would drastically outweigh any additional dps brought by a WAR, making DRK/DRK ideal.

So, no. This idea is terrible and shouldn't be touted as being what the Job should have been. Seriously, please stop.