Some Dark Knight 4.0 feedback

[Nivarea]

First and foremost, I’m not english nor speaking it on a dailly basis, so I prefer to excuse right now for incorrect grammar and other mistakes I will surely make. Why I choose to write this in english is because the english forums are much more active than those of my own language (baguette reporting, don’t bully me =B). Don’t hesitate to correct me, even if it's a bit long. o/

This out of the way, let’s go to the meat of the subject that is DRK 4.0.

I chosed to main DRK back in 3.0 after falling in love with its playstyle, the busy tank. The button mashy feeling of the job was something I came to like after learning to tank with good old PLD, as FFXIV was my first MMORPG. DRK was a bit harder to play, but in my eyes far more interesting. The aestethic of the job, with the greatswords and cool animations (the edge is calling tonight!) was the icing on the cake.

From this point, I was a bit sceptical discovering the changes after the Media Tour. Losing one combo finisher, our beloved DoT (Scourge ;_ ; ) and oGCD to weave made me quite affraid to lose what made the DRK playstyle so different. Also, the new abilities were not that interresting at first glimpse. Well, beside The Blackest Night which looked awesome.
I still waited to play the DRK 4.0 all the way to 70, doing some dungeons and Susano Ex runs, before coming back and giving feedback on the job. Here it is.

The way to 70:

I’m not gonna lie, levelling DRK wasn’t an enjoyable experience at first. At 60, the job feels really incomplete, a shadow of its former self, an empty shell. Like all tanks, I saw pretty quickly the loss of DPS overall, even without taking skills removed into account. Only having one damaging combo sucked, and the lack of oGCD didn’t helped. I was pretty angry too when I discovered the HUGE nerf to Blood Price, the hard way, during a big pull on an HW dungeon (yep, we wipped). The potency nerf of Unleash weirdlly came as unnoticed, but that may be because I was already mostly spamming Abyssal Drain back in HW. Finally, I felt really squishy, and felt a lack of defensive CD now that Foresight is gone, Reprisal, Low Blow and Dark Dance dumped into cross-skill and stripped down of their synergies with DRK.
Only sunlight ray on this dark beginning, I was quite pleased with the up of the MP-gain given by Syphon Strike.

I had to make peace with 3.0 DRK. I had little fun before lv 66, when the augmented Blackblood trait kicked in. It made managing the gauge interresting, with a bit of a thought for the use of Delirium. It’s not really a deep mindgame, but it was refresing to have some depht and complexity back. Gaining Bloodspiller made the blood finally usefull on bosses. It’s at this time that DRK became a bit more fun. Finally, at lv 70, we gain TBN (Blackest Night), and all wrap together.

At 70, DRK is fun to play, as surprinsing as it can seems seing what was my opinion when starting the levelling. The trait, Bloodspiller and TBN make the blood gauge usefull, and the management of ressources (MP and Blood) is really fun. It’s still not as fun as DRK 3.0 tho, but I’m agreably surprised.

Tl:dr: Leveling is a pain, but the job plays surprisingly fine at 70.

At lv 70:

Here’s my thoughts about the good and the bad of 4.0 DRK :

The good:
-The interactivity between SB abilities and the blood gauge is well thought. We have to balance our MP and our Blood gauge to maximise our capacities. It’s not hard per sey, MP management is plain easy compared to HW, but it works well.
-The Blackest Night is an awesome defensive CD. And I can share it, double yay!
-Bloodspiller have NO animation lock AND don’t break combos. That were my concerns before SB, I’m glad they were not granted.
-Darkside is no longer draining MP, making MP management really easy.
-Syphon Strike returning double MP while on Grit is great.
-The synergy of Delirium with Blood Weapon feel good.
-Spamming Dark Arts is still amusing.

The bad:
-Darkside is no longer draining MP… I liked that aspect of DRK, it was challenging in a good way.
-The nerf on Blood Price is awfull. Being lock behind Grit, I can live with that. Nerfing its MP drain to ridiculous level, even with the blood gain, I can’t.
-The nerf on Unleash can make the aggro difficult. I’m not that bothered because I already spammed AD, but AD is not always the best AOE.
-Dark Passenger. What were you thinking? It’s basically useless or at least very VERY situationnal now.
-We already were the tank with the less CDs, it’s worse with SB and three of em put on Cross Skill and losing all synergy with our kit. Yes, TBN is awesome, but we’re lacking in this area compared to PLD and WAR.

The worst:
-Scalling on STR. Seriously? I can live with less average dmg, but locking our SB accessories to Vit only is bad. Right now, aggro is harder to keep than before, it will not go easier as patches goes if we’re not gaining as much main dmg stat as DPS classes.


DRK 4.0 is… a weird success I guess? I have my qualms with it, but in the end, I’m having fun. I may have some suggestions to improve the job, while trying to keep what seems to be the new philosophy of DRK.


Changes and upgrading ideas:

Note : I don't want all of this to be added, or even think that one of this thing would eventually be tuned as I propose here. DRK is mostly fine as it is, but it can be improved to be akin to a PLD level (which is really awesome in SB, plz don't nerf SE).

What I think it necessary:

-Changing the scalling back to STR, or put STR on Tank Accessories alongside VIT.

-Dark Passenger.
Ideally, reverting it to what it was before would be the best, but I don’t think it’s an option. Upping its base potency back to what it was would make it worth the cost more. Or you can keep the potency nerf, but halve the price. Or remove the DA effect, and put in on vanilla DP, blindness can make it a bit more worthwhile ?
I don’t know. There is many ways to make it usefull again, but right now, it sucks.

-Blood Price.
Revert it back, or at least make it worth on the MP drain side. Half what it was before would still be better that what we have now.

What would be really usefull:

-The Blackest Night.
It’s Awesome. But it can be clunky with its short activation window. 5 sec is not even two server ticks, and I was already trolled with them concerning TBN. Adding one or two sec would make it more reliable. More would be pretty OP I guess.

-Shadow Wall.
Right now, Shadow Wall is by far the weakest « big CD » of the three tanks. 30% reduction like Vengeance, but without its added effect, and with the cooldwon of Sentinel, which is more powerfull, with 180 sec compared to 120 for Vengeance. It’s inferior in every ways! Do someting about that SE.

-A small up to Bloodspiller.
Bloospiller is a really good skill. Its damage is really great. But I think a little up to it potency under Dark Arts, only 10 or 20 max, would make it better in every way, and will improve a bit the decision making of DRK. As of now, aside of C&S, DA always add 140 potency, making its use mindless. Adding a little more potency on Bloodspiller will make us prioritise it use on it, making us thinking about our use or DA more carefully if we want to optimize our damage output.

-A new « small » defensive CD.
Making Dark Dance coming back for exemple, or something akin to Bulwark. Just something to soften the damage.

Quality of Life stuff:

-Bring back Shadow Skin Animation.
Okay, Rempart is for all tanks, but tweaking the animation for each tank, using already exsisting animation, would be better.

-Unleash.
Up the aggro generation if you really want to keep the potency nerf. It’s mostly for leveling tho.


The dream:

-Bring back Scourge.
PLD kept its DoT because it was on combo, so why not making our old DoT the new third combo? Tweaking the potencies as necessary, but really, the animation was kickass, and it still was our best damaging skill back in HW. I can dream dammit!
More seriously, it will add diversity to our combos, and adding back DoT management.


Here it is. Sorry for my broken english, but I really wanted to display my opinions to the more people I could. ^^ You’re free to discuss, add things, even sharing your own feedback as well, but the idea is to say what works and what needs to be improved, with the hope that SE will take our feedbacks into account to make the tanks better (the DRK in this case). I’m not crazy enough to think that any of the improvements I suggested would make into the game (all of them would be reeeaaaaally too much anyway), but it’s still interresting to try to solves problems and lacks we felt while playing.