Half-baked Thoughts of a Filthy Casual DRK

[Ekimmak]

If people want a HP-sacrifice ability, why not give one that still supports the role of tank?

Like sacrifice 20% of HP to gain a 40% HP barrier? Still giving that HP sacrifice effect, but it's not actually contradicting the purpose of the tank.

Maybe a skill that doubles maximum HP but inflicts a bleed on the Dark Knight and prevents natural HP recovery? Having a huge HP gap for healers to fill in could make for an interesting skill.

Make the spell fencer job, and give them a darkness element. Then all the people who want their Dark DPS can just go there.

[ADVSS]

Im actually ok with the mp sacrifice replacing hp sacrifice because it is a tank, I'm just not ok with how it works against all support jobs, ast, and yet isnt even self reliant enough to justify not needing these roles and jobs in party, not only that, how the huge mp sacrifice seems to grant results that seem to little or no avail or dont even synergize with the abilities and set it has

[alimdia]

Blind doesnt work on content that matters.
I do agree that dark passenger dark arts should be changed, but only because blind actually doesn't do anything on content that matters.
Evasion doesnt work on content that matters. plus nobody dark arts dark dance on purpose in content that matters. but 60% parry sounds good.
Also your suggested carve and spit is a nerf.

How is mp management too high of a skill floor?
No living dead doesn't suck. You have to plan around it. Its more pug unfriendly than HG.

comparing the 3...
Hallowed:
Longest cooldown
best effect
Living dead:
Mid cooldown
does nothing if doesnt die
Holmgang:
Low cooldown
Does nothing if doesnt get to 1 hp. BINDS YOU IN PLACE.

[Violette]

Yes. Paladin has Cover, its iconic ability

But, Paladin has cover.......and that's it. Dark Knight has Darkside and Souleater, 2>1 gg.

Dark Arts represents the "health" cost of that is usually HP. Osmose won't work in this game because enemy monsters don't have MP, so we can't drain it. Darkside is only hefty if you're bad at managing me. Didn't even call it a offensive stance, Drk has Grit On/Grit off, like War in 2.xx.
I could debate the rest of what you said, but it's obvious you're being facetious or have a poor knowledge of the class. If you cannot manage the mp costs, Dark Knight probably isn't for you. It's a mechanic that is highly rewarding when you respect it, but treating it like Maim is just asking for trouble.

[ADVSS]

But, Paladin has cover.......and that's it. Dark Knight has Darkside and Souleater, 2>1 gg.

Dark Arts represents the "health" cost of that is usually HP. Osmose won't work in this game because enemy monsters don't have MP, so we can't drain it. Darkside is only hefty if you're bad at managing me. Didn't even call it a offensive stance, Drk has Grit On/Grit off, like War in 2.xx.
I could debate the rest of what you said, but it's obvious you're being facetious or have a poor knowledge of the class. If you cannot manage the mp costs, Dark Knight probably isn't for you. It's a mechanic that is highly rewarding when you respect it, but treating it like Maim is just asking for trouble.

Perhaps yore right, at this point were talking about semantics, like having to steal enemies actual mp. Drops grit like warrior, pops cooldowns like paladin, some really situation and not useful for "content that matters" totally see its identity now that I think about it.

[AI_wass]

Blind doesnt work on content that matters... Evasion doesnt work on content that matters.

The vast majority of debuffs don't work on content that matters. That's the fault of the content, not the skills.

[Drkdays]

If people want a HP-sacrifice ability, why not give one that still supports the role of tank?

Like sacrifice 20% of HP to gain a 40% HP barrier? Still giving that HP sacrifice effect, but it's not actually contradicting the purpose of the tank.

Maybe a skill that doubles maximum HP but inflicts a bleed on the Dark Knight and prevents natural HP recovery? Having a huge HP gap for healers to fill in could make for an interesting skill.

Make the spell fencer job, and give them a darkness element. Then all the people who want their Dark DPS can just go there.

Death Knight in WoW did something fairly similar and it worked well. It's a class with many interesting techniques, though Dk in WoW can more accurately be related to vampires or undead. I like your thought direction.

[Tanathya]

I have to kick Darks on a nearly daily basis in dungeons.
As someone who mains all tanks i find the way most people play dark Knight just offending in general as a tank.All most of them do is cast unleash and tank hate combo and then afk rest of fight.

And these people do not use Darkside. My solution, as always, is to kick them.

[Tanathya]

Snip

Sorry, but what it represents is not equal or an excuse of what it should've been but it ultimately isn't so they could shoehorn it into the tank role. You're okay with it, that's fine, but you're not right against the argument given to you: PLD has its iconic skill and DRK does not.

Skill names are familiar, so is the dark knight name. None of what they do is iconic, and there is no way you can argue that; you don't spend HP to enhance your attacks, that's factual. Then again no, MP isn't HP.

[MagiusNecros]

Gonna have to agree with the people saying the abilities for DRK are in a way not iconic as per tradition. People who have never played a FF with the Dark Knight won't care but those that have will.

In some games they have a skill called Darkness/Darkside and it either is an attack that hits every enemy in the encounter or buffs your stats in a way. Darkside does increase your damage but IMO not by much since it's a Tank class and will never reach the high power it had on par with the heavy hitters on both the Magic and Melee side.

Sometimes the areawide attack is referred to as Souleater and what happened is you sacrificed a portion of HP for your attack to hit all enemies/or big damage on a single enemy. In XIV you sacrifice MP to hit for decent damage and in Grit you get a heal off of it(something that generally does not happen with Souleater which in fact kinda inverses it's traditional effect).

Furthermore when you look at their iconic attack it's clear that it's iconic area sweeping attack is Dark Passenger and in other games it could be used every turn, yet here it has a recast time of 30 seconds thus limiting the use of your iconic attack.

And when it comes to the Lore of DRK in this game I must agree, all the quests have you traveling with either Fray or Sidurgu and you never ever have outside help and wouldn't make much sense to receive outside help from the like of Healers. However due to the nature of the DRK's job design it is utterly reliant on a Healer to survive especially when Walking Dead procs and requires Party Members to make full use of it's kit in content such as SoSu in the event the DRK can't take down the enemy in time.

Dark Arts in itself is mainly borrowing itself from the Job Command in Bravely Default series which for the Dark Knights's Job commands is under the moniker "Dark Arts".

Which has skills like Minus Strike, Dark Bane(ST attack), Black Bane(All Enemies), Gloom(boosts Dark Attacks), a flat Absorb Magic, Life or Death where everything is boosted but Doom is cast on you, etc.

And those that think Minus Strike can't work I find puzzling. Why not rework Reprisal into Minus strike and simply counter with the same damage you took that had proc'd that reprisal? I've thought about Minus Strike for a while now and concerns always seemed to dwell that an attack reliant on Low HP is bad Tank Design so why not think a bit differently then? I imagine the damage parried would be greater then the damage it currently does now.

Furthermore in some topic someone mentioned LoL and I thought about Aatrox and how his Ult works in comparison to Living Dead. We have LD which requires a full heal on WD proc whereas if you look at Aatrox he can die and get a 25% on the spot restore through his Blood Well Passive ability. So why not have WD end and depending on how much damage you did a percentage is refunded to you as HP this way you don't immediately die if the healer can't make the heal check? Especially with a 300 second cooldown there.

Guess I'll wait to see if it gets better down the road. DRK is functional and can work as a tank but it feels more like a Magic Knight instead of a Dark Knight IMO.