Blood Weapon / other DRK suggestions:

[Nektulos-Tuor]

You can't have a tank that sacrifices HP it would be a healers worst nightmare. DRK in ffxi was a dps not a tank and even then they hit the floor more than any other job. Yes DRK in ffxi could tank but it didn't use half of its skills to do so, you couldn't souleater, you couldn't last resort unless you used dread spikes, absorb spells and blood weapon and once those were all on cooldown you were just a gimpy PLD with no defensive cooldowns.

I don't know why you keep bringing up samurai, there is no samurai in ffxiv and in ffxi it played nothing like DRK does here. For the majority of people dark arts does feel rewarding when used right, I love getting 850 potency worth of damage off in the span of 1 GCD by using dark arts, or dark arts dark mind + shadowskin/wall for magical tank busters to watch them bounce off. Dark arts dark dance doesn't get enough credit, that + dark arts blindside in dungeons makes you dodge so much, it would be nice if it was a % chance to dodge rather than +evasion which is a non-existent stat by endgame though. But that's more a change I'd like to see to evasion cooldowns in general not DRK specific.

Shadowknight, Necromancer+Tank Pet, Dark Knight in XI (tank), Reaver in RIFT (before it was abolished and changed into a crappy DPS class..). And probably soon to be Dire Lord in Pantheon.
I think even Death Knights in WoW had HP sacrificing abilities before they were nerfed and dumped down and changed a million times.

Just because you don't know how it works doesn't mean it doesn't work. I also bring up Samurai because Dark Knight has Samurai skills, parry tanking sounds more like a Samurai thing, and the developers probably were making Samurai And Dark Knight and decided to shove those skills into Dark Knight because its easier.

Just blatantly saying it doesn't work tells me you have little experience in other games. It does work, you just have to be smart with it.

Also, Soul Eater could work: Sacrificing 10% life to make the next three attacks heal you for 10% each hit and deal more damage? I mean seriously, its that easy; sure its risky but that has flavor to it as well. Maybe your at full HP with no heavy hits coming with regeneration and simply don't need it? Maybe the White Mage is using his biggest heal and it will heal you to full regardless of how much HP you have, so you use it right before?

I don't think anyone, developers especially want to try new things. I mean, the developers are afraid to add anything in cause it can be abused. That is why we never get anything interesting in video games these days.

Here, I can make up an ability in 5 seconds that would work.

____________

Dark Mind
Activate to sacrifice 10% of your life. Your next 3 attacks deal 50 more potency and heal you for 10% of your max life each hit.

Dread Spikes:
20% of all damage is prevented and reflected as physical damage onto the enemy, while lowering damage dealt by 20% and increasing enmity.

Blood Price
Activate to sacrifice 10% of your life. Grants healing over time effect to self, Increases damage dealt by 10%.

Blood Weapon
Drench your weapon in your own blood. Sacrifice 20% of your own life over 20 seconds to increases attack speed by 10% and converts a large amount of physical damage dealt into HP. This combos well with Dread Spikes.

Abyssal Drain
Plunge your sword in the ground and root yourself and to channel an attack that drains all targets around you. Deals more damage in potency and heals more the more health the target has. Take the animation from Unleash.

Shadowskin
Pledge yourself to a demon of shadows surrounding you with a shield. Decrease life by 1% every second for 20 seconds.
Decreases damage taken by 20%.
Short recast.

Sole Survivor
Drain 8% health from all grouped allies to restore 15% of your own health every second for 5 seconds.

Unleash
Sacrifice 5% of your life to deal unaspected damage with a potency of 120 to target and enemies near it. Absorbs 100% of damage dealt as HP.

Syphon Strike
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Hard Slash
Combo Potency: 260
Combo Bonus: Increases your max health by 15% for 10 seconds.

Souleater
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Syphon Strike
Combo Potency: 320
Combo Effect: Heals the Dark Knight for 10% of his max life.

March of Death
Increases the party's casting speed reduction by 30%. When an ally or enemy dies add 5 seconds to the current duration, has no limit.

Stuff like this.

The largest issue with people is they think "Sacrifice life to improve dps!?"

[Awful]

The largest issue with people is they think "Sacrifice life to improve dps!?"

Yes it'd be nice if Dark Knights got more OT utility but not like this, so many tanks would use these sacrificing abilities because it "gives more emnity" or "does more dmg must use it for max threat!". After that they hit the floor harder then a Dragoon tanking the floor with an 8 ton brick attached to its ass. WoW did use these "sacrifice hp" abilities and did it work? Yes. In dungeons? Yes. Raids? No. And that's the issue with putting these abilities in FF14 they just don't work with the current set up and how the game is made. This isn't Rift, EQ2, WoW etc every time I see you post in the tanking forums you quote game after game go play them instead then? I know it's your opinion but your opinions are so allover the place that I can't help but cringe every time I read these retarded posts.

Drks are meant to be tanks the most SE would do with Drks is make them lifestealing tanks in 4.0 there's nothing wrong with Drks toolkit it's how you use it and clearly you don't use it effectively as every damn post you have on the forums mocks the class into oblivion. I main Drk and I love it for what it's worth no class is perfect and SE has to balance so much on this game, hell just look at paladins when Gordias Savage came out no one played paladin why didn't you bitch then? Oh wait that's right no experience whatsoever my bad lol.

Just gonna leave this here as quoted by someone in the past about you:

Your opinions are complete moot because you have no personal experience.

Me: I like pie!
You: I hate pie! Pie should be changed! Note: I never had pie in my life, but it should be changed in every way, remove pie, or make it taste different, look and smell different.
Also, you try hard to weave this game into your personal likings IE. WoW or Everquest or whatever games you played then promptly complain about near all aspects of this game.
Everyone else is making suggestions based on what they have done and wanting some new, or like how the systems works.
It makes absolute no sense to attack people because you hate how this game works, and the kicker of it all: YOU DON'T EVEN PLAY THE CONTENT to be making any arguments.
You bring not much into the discussion because you have not done the content to discuss anything

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Yes it'd be nice if Dark Knights got more OT utility but not like this, so many tanks would use these sacrificing abilities because it "gives more emnity" or "does more dmg must use it for max threat!". After that they hit the floor harder then a Dragoon tanking the floor with an 8 ton brick attached to its ass. WoW did use these "sacrifice hp" abilities and did it work? Yes. In dungeons? Yes. Raids?[/B]

Not really mocking when you try to give class flavor and lore. Honestly, I can't stand how puppet people are thinking Dark Knight is actually a unique class.

Shadowknights were actually the prefered tank in some of the hardest raids due to their health manipulation because some times healers got stuff on them or had to cure cures and couldn't focus on completely healing and doing mechanics themselves. Yes though, different games. However, the classes of this game are just way too similar. You can't even deny that and .. you honestly didn't.

I'm truly sorry, but lol. Go away Nektulos, just get out and never come back. You have no idea what you're talking about, period. You've been told this many times, and you just proved it to me, even though I've always seen you as a wannabe creative person, but that was me putting in some effort and turning a blind eye on your threads.

DRK is designed to be the antithesis of a tank in FFXI (not gonna go over the classic iterations again) by giving it its signature ability/ies-high risk/reward DD role, so give up there. Just give up, learn to love DRK here, which is a tank, like I did, or stick to WAR and shut up already, because at this point, you've got someone else against you, me. And you've got enough people on these forums against you already.

Dark Knight was actually designed in FFXI to be a DPS class, not a Tank class. So yes, it was that way; however the issue is they turned it into a tank class but added none of the fun or the flavor. I do love Dark Knight, as what it should be; a class that is based upon sacrifice; aka the perfect guardian.

People defend this game's choices to death honestly. I've never seen so many people who will just love anything; just because. Even when people make suggestions 10 people come in and defend it asking for it to stay the same; as if people can't even see the balance, unbalance, or how unflavorful things are.

The classes themselves, lack lore; and the stories are based upon someone else, not about the class or you.

Anyways; I don't like arguing with either of you; because you don't even offer suggestions that are better then mine. You don't really bring anything interesting to the table to me; just like the current state of the class you lack flavor and creativity.

Now, enough of these forums.. Back to DS3!!!

You want to know what really ruined today's genre of games? Roles. If FFXI didn't focus so much on roles and focused more around classes and what they could do; like the original final fantasy, updated the graphics and engine to not be bad like FFXIV they would of probably had quite the amazing game.




To best describe Dark Knight right now though, its pretty much bread and cheese. Not cooked, not anything. Just plain jane american cheese and bread. I offer to put tomado on it to give it some flavor and ham and people go nuts saying its perfect.

[Tanathya]

You just keep proving that you barely know anything. I will always be disappointed in what they turned DRK into, so I stopped looking at it as a DRK and enjoy it as is. I will never defend their choice but sadly it's what we got. You don't like it? No one's forcing you to play it. DRK's way of protecting others is by killing them quick and sacrificing themselves in the process, but they made it a generic tank, so again, learn to love it or leave. If it was for me, this game would've been closer to what FFXI was/is, but no one's put a gun to my head to play this. Like I said countless times, they had to take its classical ability in order to make it a tank, that's done and they're no turning back. So please, stop.

[Tanathya]

Shadowknight, Necromancer+Tank Pet, Dark Knight in XI (tank), Reaver in RIFT (before it was abolished and changed into a crappy DPS class..)

I'm truly sorry, but lol. Go away Nektulos, just get out and never come back. You have no idea what you're talking about, period. You've been told this many times, and you just proved it to me, even though I've always seen you as a wannabe creative person, but that was me putting in some effort and turning a blind eye on your threads.

DRK is designed to be the antithesis of a tank in FFXI (not gonna go over the classic iterations again) by giving it its signature ability/ies-high risk/reward DD role, so give up there. Just give up, learn to love DRK here, which is a tank, like I did, or stick to WAR and shut up already, because at this point, you've got someone else against you, me. And you've got enough people on these forums against you already.

[Cabalabob]

Shadowknight, Necromancer+Tank Pet, Dark Knight in XI (tank), Reaver in RIFT (before it was abolished and changed into a crappy DPS class..). And probably soon to be Dire Lord in Pantheon.
I think even Death Knights in WoW had HP sacrificing abilities before they were nerfed and dumped down and changed a million times.

Just because you don't know how it works doesn't mean it doesn't work. I also bring up Samurai because Dark Knight has Samurai skills, parry tanking sounds more like a Samurai thing, and the developers probably were making Samurai And Dark Knight and decided to shove those skills into Dark Knight because its easier.

Just blatantly saying it doesn't work tells me you have little experience in other games. It does work, you just have to be smart with it.

Also, Soul Eater could work: Sacrificing 10% life to make the next three attacks heal you for 10% each hit and deal more damage? I mean seriously, its that easy; sure its risky but that has flavor to it as well. Maybe your at full HP with no heavy hits coming with regeneration and simply don't need it? Maybe the White Mage is using his biggest heal and it will heal you to full regardless of how much HP you have, so you use it right before?

I don't think anyone, developers especially want to try new things. I mean, the developers are afraid to add anything in cause it can be abused. That is why we never get anything interesting in video games these days.

Here, I can make up an ability in 5 seconds that would work.

____________

Dark Mind
Activate to sacrifice 10% of your life. Your next 3 attacks deal 50 more potency and heal you for 10% of your max life each hit.

Dread Spikes:
20% of all damage is prevented and reflected as physical damage onto the enemy, while lowering damage dealt by 20% and increasing enmity.

Blood Price
Activate to sacrifice 10% of your life. Grants healing over time effect to self, Increases damage dealt by 10%.

Blood Weapon
Drench your weapon in your own blood. Sacrifice 20% of your own life over 20 seconds to increases attack speed by 10% and converts a large amount of physical damage dealt into HP. This combos well with Dread Spikes.

Abyssal Drain
Plunge your sword in the ground and root yourself and to channel an attack that drains all targets around you. Deals more damage in potency and heals more the more health the target has. Take the animation from Unleash.

Shadowskin
Pledge yourself to a demon of shadows surrounding you with a shield. Decrease life by 1% every second for 20 seconds.
Decreases damage taken by 20%.
Short recast.

Sole Survivor
Drain 8% health from all grouped allies to restore 15% of your own health every second for 5 seconds.

Unleash
Sacrifice 5% of your life to deal unaspected damage with a potency of 120 to target and enemies near it. Absorbs 100% of damage dealt as HP.

Syphon Strike
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Hard Slash
Combo Potency: 260
Combo Bonus: Increases your max health by 15% for 10 seconds.

Souleater
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Syphon Strike
Combo Potency: 320
Combo Effect: Heals the Dark Knight for 10% of his max life.

March of Death
Increases the party's casting speed reduction by 30%. When an ally or enemy dies add 5 seconds to the current duration, has no limit.

Stuff like this.

The largest issue with people is they think "Sacrifice life to improve dps!?"

Don't know about shadowknight, but your other examples... FFXI DRK was not a tank it was a dps that could do tank things kind of sort of not really, necromancer + tank pet... Really? That's like trying to claim SMN with Titan pet here is a tank... And your other examples by your own admission were changed or reworked because it didn't work... So all you have is shadowknight and based on every other example you gave that's probably not true either.

So your argument that it is too much like samurai is because it parries... Ignoring the fact that parry is the only defensive stat in the game, WAR uses parry more than DRK does having +10% parry from defiance and raw intuition making it 100% parry from the front, is WAR just a samurai too? How about dragoon? Samurai's have been known to use spears and dragoon has keen flurry, is dragoon now just a samurai clone?

It doesn't work because the whole point of a tank is to mitigate damage, it's insanely counterintuitive to have your mitigation hurt you. Either it has to compensate for itself which defeats the point of it even hurting you, or it's going to be a healers nightmare as they have to heal through the damage you're taking as well as the damage you're inflicting on yourself... To prevent damage?!

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Don't know about shadowknight, but your other examples... FFXI DRK was not a tank it was a dps that could do tank things kind of sort of not really, necromancer + tank pet... Really? That's like trying to claim SMN with Titan pet here is a tank... And your other examples by your own admission were changed or reworked because it didn't work... So all you have is shadowknight and based on every other example you gave that's probably not true either.

So your argument that it is too much like samurai is because it parries... Ignoring the fact that parry is the only defensive stat in the game, WAR uses parry more than DRK does having +10% parry from defiance and raw intuition making it 100% parry from the front, is WAR just a samurai too? How about dragoon? Samurai's have been known to use spears and dragoon has keen flurry, is dragoon now just a samurai clone?

It doesn't work because the whole point of a tank is to mitigate damage, it's insanely counterintuitive to have your mitigation hurt you. Either it has to compensate for itself which defeats the point of it even hurting you, or it's going to be a healers nightmare as they have to heal through the damage you're taking as well as the damage you're inflicting on yourself... To prevent damage?!

Necromancer + Tank pet was one of the first classes to raid tank a boss due to its ability to ignore control effects. Unfortunately they are not a problem in this game because nobody can get charmed and CC is almost nonexistent.

Depends. If your hurting yourself to mitigate three times the damage you lost by hurting yourself or more, then how is it counter intuitive?

If it was 100/100 I would agree with you, but there would be no point to it.

It is essentially gambling yourself, and extremely skill based at that. Of course, can't have it being 'too' hard for players.

I also don't consider parry a defensive stat. I consider critical hit rating much more 'defensive' because it actually raises your damage, and more damage means less time in combat which reduces damage you take in the first place.

[Claymore65]

I also don't consider parry a defensive stat. I consider critical hit rating much more 'defensive' because it actually raises your damage, and more damage means less time in combat which reduces damage you take in the first place.

Definition of Defensive: "Made or carried on for the purpose of resisting attack: "

Please. Don't make the "Offense is the Best Defense" argument with regard to stats in games. While on some level I agree that high damage can push phases/etc, on a basic level parry reduces more damage than crit, because it actually reduces damage. It reduces damage, thus it is a defensive stat. Saying otherwise negates the basic definition of defensive.

While I disagree with your entire post on Dark Knights, especially since Dark Arts is the mechanic I'd want to see expanded instead of made useless, this just goes too far. Crit is an offensive stat, and Parry is a defensive one (albeit one that isn't particular effective). Saying otherwise is inane.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Definition of Defensive: "Made or carried on for the purpose of resisting attack: "

Please. Don't make the "Offense is the Best Defense" argument with regard to stats in games. While on some level I agree that high damage can push phases/etc, on a basic level parry reduces more damage than crit, because it actually reduces damage. It reduces damage, thus it is a defensive stat. Saying otherwise negates the basic definition of defensive.

While I disagree with your entire post on Dark Knights, especially since Dark Arts is the mechanic I'd want to see expanded instead of made useless, this just goes too far. Crit is an offensive stat, and Parry is a defensive one (albeit one that isn't particular effective). Saying otherwise is inane.

If a fight lasts 10 minutes, and a fight lasts 1 minute, what really reduced more damage?

I know that is a very crappy example. However Parry is just not a useful stat, its worthless pretty much in the long run; only really good for procing things on Dark Knight. Seriously though? I don't mind if the Dark Arts abilities were buffed to be as good as other classes and Dark Arts made them even more so, but it seems like some abilities are gutted so that Dark Arts makes them actually good, not a cool bonus. The other fact is you can't Dark Arts everything. So you end up with abilities that are just tattered versions of other classes.

Also, having high offense IS a defensive mechanic. Just ask the Tiger Tank Vs the Sherman and see interviews of Sherman Tankers.

Also, according to the Japanese Forums; I think they are going to redesign it to be much better.

[Kabooa]

If a fight lasts 10 minutes, and a fight lasts 1 minute, what really reduced more damage?

False equivalence. The Dark Knight stacking Crit vs stacking Parry isn't going to cut a fight by 90%.

The question is really more "If a fight lasts 10 minutes with parry, and 9 minutes and 52 seconds with crit, what really reduced more damage?"

Parry.

That however isn't the issue. The issue is that parry simply isn't worth taking. It's -better to take more damage- because parry isn't factored into Boss damage. Parry is a bonus when it happens, and that's a terrible way to approach defense stats.

That's why, in most MMOs, straight up hardline health, via the "Health" stat and "Armor" stats are the most important factors.