Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[RylaBee]

PLD main here.

Recent buffs to DRK (cooldowns on mitigations mainly) are nice and technicaly make DRK just as viable as WAR/PLD.

The reason I still will not play DRK despite leveling it to 70 and having gear for it, is the shitty DA mechanics.

Can I be bothered to spam DA before every 2nd or 3rd weaponskill during the whole fight and still enjoy it?
For me: NO I CAN NOT.

[Aana]

snip.

I just dont see the fluid blood gain and the big spender as a very big problem. There is really only 1 way for the current blood gain to force you to waste blood. Use TBN and have 41+ blood AND SE is the next combo action (more waste if BW is also up). While that is annoying, and sometimes unavoidable, the punishment is still small (1-9 blood, so lets avg and say 5 over time for each occurence), and fairly infrequent considering only 1/3 of your gcds is SE, if you spend blood asap the odds of being 41-49 blood is ~1/5, and TBN is generally not used on CD every 15 sec so maybe 2-3 chances to make this alignment each minute. Drk's gauge management is the most simple/straightforward of all 3 tanks. You have 50 blood and BW up? Extend it. BW not up? Stab it in the face. 3+ mobs? Stab them ALL in the face. Theres no competing uses for the gauge. This simple gauge of course is balanced out by the more MP system splitting your attention, which makes sense. This is easily fixed by bumping the blood gauge to say, 110 to avoid those pesky, occasional, unavoidable overflows.

I find Drk very easy to manage it's resources when I play because they are not 'decisions' in most cases. When a resource hits the halfway point, use it. Half MP? Use a DA. This lets you keep a TBN on demand buffer at all times without capping. When your bar lights up and dings at you like a casino machine (half) your next GCD is BS. Maybe it's just me but the basic drk gameplay seems to be the most straightforward job in the game to me (until the war changes. RIP War's that actually planned). Pld and War used to both have to spend a period of time 'preparing' their resources for their burst phase (MP and Gauge) and their entire fight strategy was based around that. Drk just uses resources as they come in. MP comes in, use DA. MP comes in faster from BW? Use DA more. Hit 50 blood? BS. TBN popped? Use BS again. They completely neutered that with war much to my dismay and now is an even more watered down version of this principle because the burst phase is completely disconnected from everything else you do, moreso than Drk even. Clunky always seemed like an odd descriptor for me. The only thing clunky about drk arts is double weaving during BW. Everything else about drk could be described as 'boring', 'repetative', 'uninteresting', etc. But clunky seems like a poor choice with how smoothly it gains resources and spends them. It is the most fluid tank we have imo.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

You pretty much just repeated a lot of what I said in my post but spun it as positives while acknowledging yet downplaying the very issues that I mentioned as problematic.

I stated I didn't really have a problem with MP resource management, so that's not something that needs to be a part of this.

Your main argument is that the gauge is easy to manage because you just use Bloodspiller, Quietus or Delerium as soon as you hit 50+ gauge. You know what, I will agree it's easy to do and I said pretty much just that in my post but like I also said it feels really bad to me because I am forced into having to use it then, there is a distinct lack of control or decision which just leaves you feeling like you are slave to the ability and not its master. You do it that way "just because ..." and to me that is a problem. At least with WAR I've got a few more options that I can weave in and with PLD I can wait until I decide I want to use it. So, like sticking a car vac hose in your mouth and turning it on, it may be easy to do but its going to suck and probably not be very fun.

Also, your breakdown of Blood gain completely leaves out Bloodweapon, Blood Price and Salted Earth, so of course it seems simple and straightforward, you removed the actual fluid intake parts of it. Without those parts it is virtually the same as the way WAR gauge gain works which I said was pretty straightforward and simple. While it is still not too hard to predict the incoming flow of Blood from those abilities, it still is one more additional element of gauge gain that DRK has that the other tanks do not, so I stand by my statement that DRK has the most complex gauge gain of the three current tanks. WAR has the combo gain and burst gain from an ability aspects, while PLD has the getting hit and hitting things aspects. DRK has all of those plus a DoT.

As for my choice of using clunky as a descriptor, I find it to be perfectly apt. As I've said and you have reaffirmed, Bloodspiller and the other Blood abilities have to be used immediately when you hit 50+ Blood to avoid potentially overcapping; no if, ands or buts about it. While simple, it's very restrictive in how and when you use it. It's in control and not you. Having so little control is unwieldy to me and hence the usage of clunky.

Lastly you keep going on about how easy the gauge mechanics are on DRK and I agree that they are not difficult, then again none of the tanks have difficult gauge mechanics. I never said it was difficult, I said it did not feel good in the way it functioned. Something can be very "simple" and "easy" yet can still be utterly unenjoyable to do.

You know what, let's completely forgo the whole easy or difficult debates, as I think think we agree that it's not that hard, and whether it's "clunky" or "smooth" since I feel we are looking at it from quite different angles.

Instead just simply answer the following questions if you so please.

Which of the three tanks has the most complex methods to gaining gauge resources and why?

Which of the three tanks has the most restrictive methods to using their gauge resources and why?

[Lyth]

'Anything you can do...'
It's difficult to have a conversation about difficulty. Even when you factor out individual player agendas in making their respective claims ('the job I play is difficult, please be impressed with me'), your subjective impressions of difficulty are coloured with your amount of experience (or more accurately, amount of time spent practising).

When you don't have very much experience with playing a job, it's going to seem easier because you don't yet have the competence to actually see the mistakes in your gameplay. On the other extreme, if you have a lot of experience with something, you can easily underestimate the effort required to perform a given task. Either way, there's no point speculating about how easy or difficult it is to achieve a given performance level on a job if you haven't managed to pull it off yourself.

You watch a musician play a piano concerto. "That's so easy. You're just pressing a bunch of buttons in order." The musician offers you the bench. "Yes. Now play."

Armchair speculation about a job is pointless. Now play.

Assessing difficulty
There are some objective measures of difficulty, however. One approach is by direct observation. What jobs within a given role have the greatest variation in performance? If you can identify a specific performance parameter (like dps), you can compare the 'spread' (i.e. variance, interquartile range, etc.) of players in a given role across different skill levels. More forgiving jobs in a given role will tend to have less of a performance drop if you make a mistake, so there will be a smaller spread.

We can also try to assess difficulty from first principles. Jobs with more actions per minute create more potential opportunities for mechanical error. Likewise, the more conditions that you add in order to correctly execute an ability, the more the difficulty goes up. You could simplify C+S by building in the MP cost, for example, or simplify Delirium by merging it with Blood Weapon or by removing its 50 gauge activation cost. On WAR, merging Berserk and IR, as well as removing the 20 gauge activation cost from IR made the burst window easier to setup and execute. The subsequent removal of the gauge costs from the window itself further simplified it.

Another parameter of interest is the number of decisions made per minute. A fixed rotation can be practised. Fixed resource gains on the GCD can be anticipated for. You can plan everything out in advance. These are not 'decisions'. Decisions happen when you have procs, or resources which build off of less predictable sources like autos. Little variations accumulate over time, forcing you to be less reliant on a memorised fight script.

I don't want to downplay the effort involved in creating a spreadsheet. But that is not a test of in-game decision-making.

Another factor is the effect of uptime. We know that uptime influences performance. But how does uptime vary with performance? Having a powerful but short burst window that accounts for a large proportion of your dps is preferable. It means that your total uptime over the course of the fight becomes less important, and little uptime mistakes over the course of the fight have a smaller effect on your overall performance.

Difficulty is not really all that important in isolation, though. What matters is the impact that it has on job diversity.

Difficulty and job appeal

...

This is an interesting point. But difficulty is not enough in itself. It has to be tied in to a sense of accomplishment.

Sometimes, this means being able to do something game-changing in a display of skill. In a game like Overwatch, for example, Tracer has lower win-rates in nearly every skill bracket in comparison to a more forgiving hero, like Soldier. Both get represented competitively at high levels, and both have had their time in meta. But players are willing to invest the extra effort into harder character like Tracer or Genji with the hopes of being able to pull off some game-changing plays at higher skill levels. They'll even do it if it means losing a lot in their present skill bracket. When you watch a skilled player do something really cool, there's a sense of awe, but also a desire to be able to pull that off yourself. That sense of "spectacle" ends up being a draw for the character.

There also has to be at least some sense of reward for effort invested. In a racing game, having good handling and acceleration helps you recover from mistakes. But you often have to trade-off something else, like top speed, to get there. In FFXIV, acceleration is like burst, and sustained dps is like top speed. There's no point playing a job with poorer "handling" (burst) if you're still going to lose out in "top speed" (sustained dps) as well.

Lastly, if you're going to do something a more difficult way, there needs to be at least an equivalent way to achieve the same result as easier approaches. In Heavensward, we had this. If you have a knockback, you can negate it on PLD or WAR, or use a timed gap closer on DRK. It's more effort to time against the knockback, but you gain in mobility as a reward. In Stormblood, we now have a better version of the gap closer on WAR, in addition to two additional ways of simply ignoring knockbacks, in the event that you couldn't be bothered. Meanwhile, the frequency with which knockbacks occur has increased. So you lose in all areas.

The reason we've seen such a drop-off in DRK players in harder content over the course of this expansion is because of a systematic erosion in these areas. There's no longer a sense on DRK that you bring some unique potential to the table. This is at least in part because the devs have "fixed" WAR over the course of 4.0 to 4.2 such that it outperforms the other two tanks in nearly every area. And with fewer people actually playing DRK, there's less of an understanding of what challenges exist on the job. Outperforming your WAR co-tank (and the odd straggler dps) in Heavensward was given a certain recognition for the time you spent practising. The effort that it represented was understood.

What DRK needs, more than ever, is an opportunity to bring something unique to the table that lets other players sit up and take notice. If the devs want to bring diversity back into tanking, they need to stop trying to wow players with their clever redesign of the new 17 hit fell cleave combo, and work on giving DRK a proper niche in the coming expansion.

Set aside the perennial focus on WAR, SCH, and NIN for a second. Bring diversity back.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Syphon Strike needs to have Souleater effect, minus being locked into Grit as well as removing Grit lock on additional MP recovery and generate 10 blood.



Souleater needs Grit lock removed.



Delirium needs to be turned back into a level 50 Weaponskill that recovers MP and generates 10 blood with the same potency and Dark Arts Potency as Souleater which increases.



Blood Weapon needs to be consolidated into Blood Price but needs to have TP cost reduction removed and at level 62 it gains Bloodbath effect and duration is increased to 20 seconds(if they want to keep Grit lock on a lot of abilities then Blood Price also needs to have Grit damage penalty to be ignored at level 35).



Darkside needs to be consolidated into Dark Arts but increases MP and TP cost by 10%.



Abyssal Drain needs the 140 Dark Arts potency increase.



Sole Survivor needs to increase targets damage recieved by 2%(that is the only thing that is missing from Sole Survivor).



Quietus needs full 140 Dark Arts Potency increase and needs to extend Blood Price duration(max 30 seconds).



Bloodspiller needs to extend Blood Price duration(max 30 seconds).



The Blackest Night needs to be a group shield that generates 10 blood per shield broken, 5 blood if shield fades naturally.



If we get these changes before or at 4.45 then I will gladly continue my subscription, otherwise I'm cancelling my subscription until next story patch. I recommend other Dark Knight mains in doing the same thing.

[Kabooa]

If we get these changes before or at 4.45 then I will gladly continue my subscription, otherwise I'm cancelling my subscription until next story patch. I recommend other Dark Knight mains in doing the same thing.

These are all terrible changes.

[DRKoftheAzure]

These are all terrible changes.

Care to give me your reasoning on why my suggested changes to keep me and possibly others to keep playing the game are terrible...?

[347SPECTRE]

Not gonna outright quit because my main is a bit lacking. I'll still play DRK, just not as much and most likely not outside of expert dungeons. I honestly just wish there wasn't such a huge focus on keeping WAR as top tank.

[Azerhan]

snip

I really think it's a little too much, even if I like every buff / mods you said.

For my part, I'd say we need to remove the "burst" from the DRK - like exchanging BS with the return of Scourge and olf Delirium, like : Scourge : add 10 sec on Blood Weapon / Blood Price + regain mp each ticks, and Delirium like : reset BW or BP by 10 sec (+ 10 Blood Gauge)
And I really like the 2% vulne from SS.

Edit : ofc, Delirium will do more dmg than SE.

[Kabooa]

Syphon Strike needs to have Souleater effect, minus being locked into Grit as well as removing Grit lock on additional MP recovery and generate 10 blood.

Souleater needs Grit lock removed.

Delirium needs to be turned back into a level 50 Weaponskill that recovers MP and generates 10 blood with the same potency and Dark Arts Potency as Souleater which increases.

Blood Weapon needs to be consolidated into Blood Price but needs to have TP cost reduction removed and at level 62 it gains Bloodbath effect and duration is increased to 20 seconds(if they want to keep Grit lock on a lot of abilities then Blood Price also needs to have Grit damage penalty to be ignored at level 35).

Darkside needs to be consolidated into Dark Arts but increases MP and TP cost by 10%.

Abyssal Drain needs the 140 Dark Arts potency increase.

Sole Survivor needs to increase targets damage recieved by 2%(that is the only thing that is missing from Sole Survivor).

Quietus needs full 140 Dark Arts Potency increase and needs to extend Blood Price duration(max 30 seconds).

Bloodspiller needs to extend Blood Price duration(max 30 seconds).

The Blackest Night needs to be a group shield that generates 10 blood per shield broken, 5 blood if shield fades naturally..

The primary reason Dark Knight has fallen out of favor, even with mechanical short comings addressed, is that it's been reduced to Dark Arts spam. It is effectively a tank that emphasizes the idea of 'Activity is not engagement'. Basically every change you have cited here emphasizes that to the extreme.

Soul Eater doesn't matter now. It'll never get used, because your version of Delirium gives MP. Ask anyone how "Damage vs defense" goes when making the choice. Especially since Syphon Strike gets the health restore in your version, so you literally lose nothing in this transition. You Syphon -> Delirium every time, Soul Eater sees less play than Power Slash.

Darkside into Dark Arts doesn't change gameplay. Folding this into Dark Arts does nothing, and I'm sure just as many people will be upset that their full time damage buff is now also on Dark Arts. Spam it more, that's what people love, right?

Your Blood Weapon change isn't that clear. Does it become Blood Price? Does it share the CD / Ability slot with Blood Price? Moving forward all your duration increases refer specifically to Blood Price.

If not: Meh. Who cares. You just moved the duration increase from Delirium to Blood Weapon.

If so: Full time Blood Price/Weapon upkeep? This is maybe the only change that might result in interesting decision making, but even then, also completely nullified by the vast amounts of blood you want your Dark Knight generating.

Quietus, maybe. Abyssal drain, no. Full DA scaling on Abyssal Drain is dumb. You're talking something like a 4k heal per enemy hit on a basic GCD that's fairly easy to maintain in large pack. Blindly spamming buttons is what we need less of, not more.

Sole Survivor change is counter intuitive and ultimately meaningless. It's a selfish ability. Making it something to blow during a party burst window means you don't get to take advantage of it as you need to. It's just another buff you throw onto the boss every 2 minutes, but 2% is also such a small number, its presence would not only be unnoticed, but not missed.

TBN: Stop trying to turn Dark Knight into Dark Warrior.