DRK needs a revision

[Veritas-Ancora]

I seriously need to get off these forums till SB hits. All these doom and gloom threads are gettin to me. The theory Crafters have made their points and said their pieces. Can we stop with this crap now and pick it back up when we're all 100% sure that it's actually garbage after we've played it?

The average player doesn't post on these forums. If they are irritated with the game, they don't provide feedback. They quit.

That's why Squeenix gives us this medium. They know how easy it is to lose players, and Yoshi P acknowledged the forums in the LL. It isn't doom and gloom, it's concerned players fearful of the outcome.

[Reynhart]

With the removal of Scourge and Delirium, DRK is basically a 2.0 paladin with Dark Fell Cleave and some extra oGCDs.
I think DRK will end up performing fine, but the gameplay changes are weird.

It's sad that Dark Arts has exactly the same effect on Syphon Strike and SoulEater. If that was different DRK would have the interesting option of customizing its own combo even with only three WS.

For example, Syphon Strike could absord HP instead of MP with Dark Arts, and SoulEater could have two new effects wether you use Dark Arts or not.
3 skills, 4 combos !

[aqskerorokero]

Basically a dps type player worried about a tank job... Solution? Change job...

For a normal tank holding aggro is first, followed by staying alive ( make party stress less), then pull out much dps as one can.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Basically a dps type player worried about a tank job... Solution? Change job...

Other than jobs pull out more DPS, which is half the problem.

Also, do you seriously want LESS tanks in already bad queue times with the release of more DPS? This is not the solution to or problem. It's balance.

[Claymore65]

I'm underwhelmed by the Job changes for Dark Knight. While our total DPS might end up fine (Bloodspiller, the 5% increase on Darkside, and the blood gauge in general might make a huge difference), I feel like none of the changes addressed any of the existing problems with Dark Knight, in favor of simply adding a gauge similar to the Warriors Inner Beast gauge (offering a Fell Cleave, Decimate, and a MP restore option), except we interact with it less.

In terms of problems to address:

• Living Dead is still the hardest to use "Emergency" option, requiring the most Healer intervention to be effective and proving useless without lots of coordination
• Our AOE situation, while strong, is a mess. We already had superfluous skills with both Unleashed and Abyssal Drain, which would have been excellent contenders for a combine, but instead they made one completely useless. While Quietus might be fun, it doesn't feel especially necessary.
• The Power Slash combo still feels terrible to use. You not only lose out on a significant amount of potency, but also MP restore and health. In fact, it got even worse, since Power Slash doesn't provide additional Blood Gauge like Souleater does. Adding some MP restore or some other effect would have made it not feel so gross.
• Stance Dancing is still awkward. Between the GCD and MP cost, going in and out of Grit doesn't feel right. Perhaps outgoing damage will drastically increase in Stormblood, encouraging us to just stay in Grit, but considering Blood Weapon is still unusable while in Grit, we're seemingly encouraged to drop out of it as well.
• Dark Mind is now pretty much the only major Tank Cooldown focused on a particular damage type. While it still seems useful, it just seems odd after Paladin got effective against all damage types, and Warrior always was.
• Aside from the old Delirium and Reprisal (which all tanks have now), Dark Knights always struggled to provide additional utility when not in the Main Tank role. While Blackest Night might provide some of that, they still feel lacking. Some kind of damage buff (possibly Sole Survivor?) might give us a real edge.

I'm not confident that Dark Knight is in a bad spot exactly, as "Blackest Night" seems to have a lot of utility, our DPS might end up fine (and the final potencies are still under revision), and the Darkside drain will make MP management easier, but I don't feel like our previous issues were addressed. Considering how phenomenal the Paladin changes are, fixing their major weaknesses while further emphasizing their Holy Knight identity, Dark Knight seems to have received very little attention.

[Reynhart]

simply adding a gauge similar to the Warriors Inner Beast gauge

Yeah, the gauge feel a little shoehorned...

First, it's the only tank gauge that's not tied to an existing skill, and thus, above lvl 60. And second, it's doesn't really fit into DRK's lore.

What could have been interesting, IMO, would have been a Darkness Gauge, obtained with Darkside. This gauge would have filled overtime and only be reduced by using Dark Skills (Dark Arts, Dark Passenger, etc...).
The higher the gauge, the more powerful your skills are, but let it fill completely and you'll receive the Down for the Count debuff for a few seconds (Like the DRK lvl30 quest) emptying the gauge and canceling Darkside.

The trick would be to keep the Gauge at a certain level and managing your MP so that you always have a way to reduce your Darkness. And each Dark Skills would have a different "cost" on the Darkness gauge.

[aleph_null]

Yeah, the gauge feel a little shoehorn...

They need to come up with something fancy looking so drks wouldn't feel left out when they see other jobs' gauges.

I do agree that drk's gauge seems to be added just for the sake of adding a gauge.

[Jandor]

I do agree that drk's gauge seems to be added just for the sake of adding a gauge.

Same with PLD and WHM tbh. They're just gauges for the sake of it, don't really add anything to the jobs.

[aleph_null]

Same with PLD and WHM tbh. They're just gauges for the sake of it, don't really add anything to the jobs.

True. At least with warrior it's just a reskin of the stack system, and tracking a number would be more practical than counting 10 dots (especially since with the new lv 70 skill we'll have "half" stacks too).

[Marz_kid_EST]

At least give us Scourge back SE. For the love of Hydaelyn! It was perfect.