Personal wishlist of DRK changes before/at patch 4.2

[Aniya_Estlihn]

I don't rightly understand the OP's desire to have Grit and Darkside fall off when MP hits 0; as well as the drain effect... are you mad? That's actually the only change from 4.0 that is even remotely decent for our job, and returning to that sort of pointless resource management; when we now have a gauge to manage, would be beyond excessive. Especially considering you lose the damage increases from Darkside if you bottom out your MP, but don't drop Darkside itself as on 4.0. We can't get any better than that as far that skill is concerned and forcing a Dark Knight to drop their tank stance due to an unrelated resource is just... silly.

My wishlist for the jobs is fairly standard I'd say:

For starters our MP costs are too high. Dark Passenger being 2400 MP is just excessive and using Dark Arts on it feels like a waste as you'll be bleeding yourself dry of 4800 MP. Yes, MP is plentiful but the costs for our MP skills are simply too high and create a feeling of the job flow being disjointed—it's not fun.

Also speaking of DA DP, the blind effect is pointless and should be replaced entirely, the MP cost for DP should also be removed and instead be replaced with a cost of 25 Blood while placing it on a 30s CD and upping the potency; rather than the 50 that all our other gauge actions use.

Unleash should have its potency restored and be given a Dark Arts effect to make it more compelling to use in an AoE situation rather than "Spam Abyssal to Win."

Blood Price's MP gains are garbage and need to be restored to justify the skill's further inclusion in our kit, otherwise the MP effect should be removed or replaced. Yes it is good for Blood but it is practically worthless until you get Enhanced Black Blood is which a problem for early leveling—when it is introduced.

Shadow Wall's recast time is far too long and should be made to have the recast time same as Sentinel.

Dark Arts is vastly underutilized, despite supposedly being what makes us unique and should be used for far more than just the few actions it has.

They should add more gauge related skills, much like WAR, and vary the costs between 25/50/75, rather than just having them all cost 50 blood.

The Blackest Night was supposed to tie everything together, but it doesn't, we need something more, a change somewhere to make play more cohesive and compelling. I'm not about to suggest a change like that, as there are far more qualified players and individuals who could think up a much better solution than I, but the obvious changes they could make are the ones they have ignored and mostly consist of the pointless nerfs we received at Stormblood's release.

Now...if I were to suggest a major change, it would be a Dark Arts effect that spreads The Blackest Night to all party members within 10y of your target as a 5% shield and removing the Death penalty from Living/Walking Dead; as no other invuln will outright kill you if you aren't fully healed... its just dumb.

Our base identity should be High Risk, High Reward yet that should not come at the cost of having a half-baked toolkit that has little to no synergy between our actions and skills. They stripped us of all the skills that made us a Dark Knight and now we're just edgelords flinging around swords that provide very little to a raid group.

[SoulSkyheart]

Monk lost Demolish,

Umm... Monk didn't lose demolish, what you're thinking of must be Touch Of Death. Pointing it out to not mislead others.

[hynaku]

Only thing wish for is Drk's to hold argo better in large pulls. Ticks me off all time they do large pull and 2 or more mobs break off and start attacking my summoner. When I'm attacking them all.

[347SPECTRE]

Only thing wish for is Drk's to hold argo better in large pulls. Ticks me off all time they do large pull and 2 or more mobs break off and start attacking my summoner. When I'm attacking them all.

Are they using unleash and DA + abyssal drain and are you waiting for them to settle before starting to attack?

[Aniya_Estlihn]

Only thing wish for is Drk's to hold argo better in large pulls. Ticks me off all time they do large pull and 2 or more mobs break off and start attacking my summoner. When I'm attacking them all.

If the SMN attacked the enemy on approach using their DoTs before the Dark Knight could establish hate, that is their own fault; and is often the case with SMN/SCH. We hold aggro perfectly find, two unleash + abyssal, if a caster is pulling its usually not the tank's fault.

[RLofOBFL]

snip

While I agree with most of your post, you said mp cost was too high, then you said DA TBN(4800mp) should be a thing? I personally strongly disagree with that idea that I constantly see floating around. PLD and WAR use their shields at no cost whatsoever but DRK should pay half its mp? That's 280 potency minimum, 2 whole DAs.

[Chrono_Rising]

If I really think about it, I think 4.x Dark Knight represents a huge missed opportunity to me. As far as I can tell, no job in the game currently converts one resource into a different resource and back again. Every job I can think of builds or maintains their gauge and uses it for dps. If there is something I feel that is missing on dark knight it is more ways to convert our mp to blood and our blood back into mp.

If we were to get new job mechanics I would love to see this type of mechanic be trialed on dark knight.

One clear place this could work could be on dark arts itself.

1. Press dark arts and make the next action deal more damage as well as drain some blood/mp/hp from the target.

2. Use dark arts on Dark mind: Gain blood from taking damage (equivalent to 1 DA use).

3. Use bloodspiller (expend blood), gain an mp refresh.

4. Use TBN gain 50 blood and next 3 weapon skills drain blood from target.

Then you could balance dark knight kit in a way that allows us to mitigate, but still be gated behind a resource cost. Once finished the cost is refunded with a little extra for your troubles.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

While I agree with most of your post, you said mp cost was too high, then you said DA TBN(4800mp) should be a thing? I personally strongly disagree with that idea that I constantly see floating around. PLD and WAR use their shields at no cost whatsoever but DRK should pay half its mp? That's 280 potency minimum, 2 whole DAs.

I mean, I did say "a major change" which isn't likely. I also said costs should be lowered, which implies that Dark Arts would likely be lowered as well. It's all written under the context of the changes I have proposed. Now I won't suggest what those costs should be as I am not the kind of person to theorycraft like that, I only comment on the feel and flow of the job, rather than the math and calculations that go into its potencies.

I am glad that you agree with most of my thoughts on the job, as I've put a lot of thought into what they could feasibly do to fix the job right now without upsetting the applecart.

Apologies that I didn't clarify what I meant with my initial post though. As it was written under the assumption that the reader understands that all of my suggestions are ignoring Dark Knight's current costs and potencies and that my comments and changes proposed are made in the context of my post itself, rather than what they are at current.

[Kazzoey]

Don't necessarily need DRK upgrades, just more content built for DRK. Their best trait, from the time I've played them, came from their crowd control and area damage. They get stronger and tankier the more targets they go up against, but unfortunately they don't get to shine in that department in meta content. While not as bad as 3.0 PLD (Almost half the job didn't work), they are in a similar position as PLD was: A fine job in it's role, but not enough content built around making use of that role. PLD was a physical tank in an era where it was all magical damage. DRK appears to be an AoE tank in an area that features little to no AoE content outside of dungeons.

If anything, I'd like for a whole job rework because DRK in FFXIV feels little to nothing like a Dark Knight in any of the other final fantasy games. To be honest, it feels like a generic DPS class and not much like a tank (or dark knight) in general. For example, they could give a big berserker buff to Walking Dead so it encourages them to suicide (Dark Knight) for a significant damage/mitigation increase. Or they could change Sole Survivor into a negative status effect for a party member that increases damage intake, but the DRK can siphon free HP/MP (Not at the cost of the party member though). Or giving them a heavy hitter "Super" like SMN's Deathflare or BLM's Foul that consumes HP to cast. While I enjoy the playstyle, this class is no "Dark Knight" class.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Preliminary patch notes are out and they clearly don't know how to balance all 3 tanks and don't even listen to what people are even saying... I'm just going to play the story content and new raid for 4.2 and not bother renewing my sub when it runs out...

EDIT: I take back that last part; I'll just keep playing as DRG...