Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[vVAstrAVv]

I miss getting substantial mp on blood price. With big pulls it was freaking infinite while price is ticking

Now all the mp might amount to a total of a freaking unmend
And you only use it for the tiny dribble of blood you get

Dont look at war
Theyre only getting 20 to 30 job points per combo and have a move that gives them another 50 or ten seconds of infinity whenever they want
But dont worry about that. Bloods still good

...granted i guess tbn gives us 50 every 15 seconds so its not that bad lol

[Fal_Kearst]

Theres a difference between having fun with Drk (i do) and admiting its a job plagued with issues that went to worse with SB and despite the buffs it has received it needs a rework badly for 5.0. I love RDM but it was clear its potency was too low when even Bards could outdamage him, just to mention another example. Being fun for someone doesnt means its balanced which is what are we speaking about

And yes, Nightwing is cool but competing against Batman id say the odds are 1 to 10 in Batman's favor. Heck on New 52 Age (Prime Earth) Nightwing has been nerfed to kingdom come

I guess I do not look into job balance enough. Coming from XI, this game is far more balanced job wise than what I am used to. Trying to get a party on PUP when Aht Urghan first hit the stores. Samurais murdering everything with skill chains. Now that game was unbalanced!! lol.

[Bhearil]

I guess I do not look into job balance enough. Coming from XI, this game is far more balanced job wise than what I am used to. Trying to get a party on PUP when Aht Urghan first hit the stores. Samurais murdering everything with skill chains. Now that game was unbalanced!! lol.

I completely agree, FF XI was so crazily unbalanced it was ridiculous. Its true that they managed to make the jobs feel unique but at the expense of some jobs being so bad they were kicked from parties when not outright banned from joining one

[WhyAmIHere]

Correct, and the most interesting thing is when the expansion was launched WAR start being the DPS selfish tank without utility witch it was balanced, but when SE start buffing it they give it an amazing utility from nowhere without balancing the rest of his kit or thinking how affect the overall tank skill set balance with it was the biggest mistake they made, plus the complety unnecesary rework of inner release when it is DRK who suffer from desing flaws across the board, DRK feel off and is inferior the entire expansion for this and no proper fixing due ignoring our feedback with I hope they do better next expansion, buffing and reworking the wrong jobs constantly without notice the impact of such changes should never happen again.

Here's the most frustrating thing.
Nearly every gosh-dang time DRK changes are brought up, people ALWAYS reply with "yeah but that'd be OP / that'd make (WAR/PLD) weaker." How can people say "Yeah DRK needs some fixes, it's lagging behind it's counterparts," while at the same time denouncing any attempts to make suggestions to improve DRK's place in the game?
It's untenable.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

How can people say "Yeah DRK needs some fixes, it's lagging behind it's counterparts," while at the same time denouncing any attempts to make suggestions to improve DRK's place in the game?

[citation needed]

[Ignacius]

I have all the tanks at 70 and I play them relatively frequently. I specifically use WAR when I don't know the healers (when the defensive heals give me a bit of breathing room for myself if things go wrong) and when I really need to maximize offensive power. For everything else, I actually prefer DRK.

That might seem strange, considering DRK is unquestionably lagging behind PLD and WAR in statistical categories. I wouldn't at all mind DRK being brought up to snuff, at the very least. However, DRK is a LOT more adaptable when you need it to be. I tend to think of it a bit like a Ferrari. It can quite easily go out of control if you're not paying attention, but it's incredibly responsive once you know how everything works. For instance, Onslaught is obviously meant to work like DRK plunge, but DRK plunge is on a straight CD and doesn't cost any Blood, so you can mix it in pretty liberally.

More to the point, Dark Arts changes a lot of your abilities around. You'll never catch up to a WAR in a straight DPS match, nor be quite as survivable as a PLD, but DRKs can form a pretty wide gradient in between. I'm pretty sure a Dark Art-ed Power Slash combo is the most aggro you can generate in the game when you absolutely positively need it now, and it can give you that enmity even outside of Grit. Abyssal Drain tends to make add swarms, even the more dangerous boss ones, easier as you can help heal as you go. CaS can be tuned up for damage or help regenerate mana if you need it. It's all helpful.

The question is what to do so that DRK fills more of the gap. I don't necessarily think DRK NEEDS to be as powerful in DPS as a WAR, but tuning up their consistent damage so that it's more useful on bosses that tend to interrupt Inner Release phases would be a plus (as it stands, WARs even on bad fights are a leap and a bound ahead of the other tanks). As for catching up defensively with PLD, I think DRK can maintain its unique Ferrari-like identity by doing things like tuning Shadow Wall with Dark Arts (maybe using that to somehow turn Blood Price into a functional skill?) I think it can be done, but if SE wants to make sure DRK can be more viable without hurting the other tanks, I think expanding this sort of active decision making, shift-on-the-fly style more prominent and effective would be the way to go.

[WhyAmIHere]

[citation needed]

Do some research. Even within a post linked here about people suggesting DRK changes, there's plenty of people going "no that'd be OP / that'd break DRK / that'd make PLD/WAR inferior / etc etc."

So far the only change that hasn't been shunned by and large that I can recall is removing the grit-requirement for the HP gain on souleater. Any time LD is brought up it's "yeah it's kinda bad, but don't compare it to Holmgang/HG" like that's a valid reason for dismissing any attempts to put forth ideas to make LD better.

It's a running joke at this point in my eyes. "Yeah DRK is bad, but it's not that bad because >UCoB / UwU WORLD FIRST!" and "Dark Mind is OP!" and as soon as the mention of "DPS -v- Utility should mean DRK does damage comparable to WAR" comes up, you see WAR mains come out and say "nah."

[Hierro]

Do some research. Even within a post linked here about people suggesting DRK changes, there's plenty of people going "no that'd be OP / that'd break DRK / that'd make PLD/WAR inferior / etc etc."

So far the only change that hasn't been shunned by and large that I can recall is removing the grit-requirement for the HP gain on souleater. Any time LD is brought up it's "yeah it's kinda bad, but don't compare it to Holmgang/HG" like that's a valid reason for dismissing any attempts to put forth ideas to make LD better.

It's a running joke at this point in my eyes. "Yeah DRK is bad, but it's not that bad because >UCoB / UwU WORLD FIRST!" and "Dark Mind is OP!" and as soon as the mention of "DPS -v- Utility should mean DRK does damage comparable to WAR" comes up, you see WAR mains come out and say "nah."

I think removing the grit requirements on a heal would be OP. Currently, DRK has no issue healing for 5k per DASE combo while in grit. Imagine tacking on an extra 20% in healing. That would push healing to practically 10% of our HP every combo. For context, WAR's Storm's Path combos heals for about 2k for each path combo, and that's not spammed repeatedly. This proposed DRK heal would be nearly half of what a Clemency can do, and PLD has to use an entire GCD and resources that set back its DPS for it.

DRK just isn't bad. It's not the highest DPS, and doesn't offer two AoE shields, but it doesn't need to either when it's come as far as it has, and especially during a time when tank DPS has never been so close together as before. I'm sorry you don't like objective evidence when it comes to evaluating a class.

I miss getting substantial mp on blood price. With big pulls it was freaking infinite while price is ticking

Have you ever tried a big pull with quietus and blood weapon? Yep, now there's infinite MP right there, and it's a hell of a lot stronger than HW's days of spamming AD. I think you're missing the point about blood price, when its purpose has been refitted to give primarily blood to be used for the stronger Quietus, and refunds more MP that way too.

[ArianeEwah]

I think removing the grit requirements on a heal would be OP. Currently, DRK has no issue healing for 5k per DASE combo while in grit. Imagine tacking on an extra 20% in healing. That would push healing to practically 10% of our HP every combo. For context, WAR's Storm's Path combos heals for about 2k for each path combo, and that's not spammed repeatedly. This proposed DRK heal would be nearly half of what a Clemency can do, and PLD has to use an entire GCD and resources that set back its DPS for it.

DRK just isn't bad. It's not the highest DPS, and doesn't offer two AoE shields, but it doesn't need to either when it's come as far as it has, and especially during a time when tank DPS has never been so close together as before. I'm sorry you don't like objective evidence when it comes to evaluating a class.

I am not sure whether your post was ironic on purpose or not. If yes, you forgot "/s", and if not, you totally proved WhyAmIHere's point.

You just said "that would be OP" without suggesting any other solution, or even going into detail. You even claimed DRK "isn't bad" when the job is - without a doubt - underperforming. And saying "it's fine" 'cause they have "never been so close [...] as before" is like saying "I broke my leg once, you just strained yours this time, so it's fine." It's not fine!

Fact: DRK DPS is closer to PLD DPS, it's neither higher nor lower in general. And while their self-mitigation tool kit might be on par, PLD provides more utility. In self-healing and mitigation it's on par with WAR (WAR heals with SP, DRK has TBN; no tank stance), but DRK suffers from having (way) less DPS. DRK also has the highest skill ceiling of all tanks, which means DRK gets even worse than the other tanks when played on lower skill level. And even when played on high skill, it still doesn't exceed the other tanks in any aspect.

Now b@Souleater, Souleater life leech without Grit on 100%/~88% would indeed too strong. But changing it to 50%/~44% without Grit, while 100%/~88% with Grit would be at least a start. Yes, DRK uses Souleater more frequently than WAR uses Storm's Path, but WAR has more DPS than DRK. That will balance it.

[Megguido]

I am not sure whether your post was ironic on purpose or not. If yes, you forgot "/s", and if not, you totally proved WhyAmIHere's point.

You just said "that would be OP" without suggesting any other solution, or even going into detail. You even claimed DRK "isn't bad" when the job is - without a doubt - underperforming. And saying "it's fine" 'cause they have "never been so close [...] as before" is like saying "I broke my leg once, you just strained yours this time, so it's fine." It's not fine!

Fact: DRK DPS is closer to PLD DPS, it's neither higher nor lower in general. And while their self-mitigation tool kit might be on par, PLD provides more utility. In self-healing and mitigation it's on par with WAR (WAR heals with SP, DRK has TBN; no tank stance), but DRK suffers from having (way) less DPS.

DRK is behind WAR and PLD on damage and utility, we got it. But DRK's damage is not way less than WAR. The difference between those two is around 5% (250 DPS or so), please stop that hyperbole. If DRK needs buff, it's a slight damage up and some QoL, boost that DRK damage by 20% and it'll outclass both WAR and PLD by a good margin (actually way more than WAR/PLD vs DRK right now).

I'm not saying all tanks are perfectly balanced (and that's an utopia), but they are well balanced right now. DRK's still the most durable tank when going full DPS. Both WAR and PLD have to sacrifice damage for their oh-so-great mitigation or healing. Cast Clemency and f.ck up your rotation, turn Defiance on for some Inner Beast and say goodbye to Fell Cleave.

All we can do is suggesting things and hoping for devs to look at it. Giving exact values is kinda pointless since we don't have the big picture. Also, if a job is harder to play properly, should it be more powerful than an easy one ? That question is a tricky game design problem imo. If the harder job is "meta" then everyone will play it regardless of difficulty (means a greater gap between good and average players, which is something SE wants to stay away from), else it will just be under used, which is pretty much DRK's case now.