What about creating an ACTUAL Dark Knight?

[Rakshazi]

Mates, mates! Chill. Structurize what you don't like about the way DRK plays now and make the proposals about every point in the structure, so this tread won't fall in the ANOTHER living dead only conversation, somewhat like this:
- We can't rewrite the lore, so it stays the same: DRK must draw his power from the darkness/abyss type of magick
- What resource he need to utilize his kit that will come to play as the PRICE of said drak/abysall powers?
- What he must do to replenish said resources?
- What the main theme of his skills/spells should be to feel apropriate with resource usage/management?
- How those skills/spells will come in play as TANK oriented?

For example I can bring you this answers:
- Resource: as BLM utilizes a lot of mana in his black magick so must do DRK. I think it will be apropriate to mana be the main resource and with each cast/usage of spel/skilll the next SAME one will need to cost more, just as BLM's "Fire".
- Resource replenish: I think to create a PRICE for usage of the black/dark/abysall powers would be HP. For example - he uses all of his mana for the rotation or some costly skill/spell, to replenish it he will neeed to sarcrifice like... 20-30% of his MAX HP. Ofcourse we will need to have a skill in the rotation, that will give us the meanings to replenish said HP via combat. Thus we will need to manage our DPS output to stay alive and dealing damage, balancing the need for mana and HP.
- The main theme of the skills will not change to much:the power that DRAINS your mana dry if you will not find the way to sip it's power from the others (enemies, but not always). So the DRK will apear more like vampire knight or some. For example we can make him to drain HP from the foe (like now, but add a bit more vapiric touch to the skill rotation) or drain MP from his allyes (yo, bard, I need your mana, boots and bike).
- About tank orientation of the kit: he will, obiously, need the powers to protect himself and the allies in the battle, but this is quite easy to do even with our present enmity generation and shields. Like any other tank he will need the invulnerability, so we come to the Living Dead problem. I think if Living Dead will just allow us to not fall behind 1HP it's OK, but to make it work MORE LIKE the actual DRK (and to follow his new theme) we can make that he will NOT recieve any healing from ANY source, but his own skillsas drain. Make him actualy go full DEAD BERZERK, give him "Haste" and/or "Immunity to CC" during this "Undead rage" so he can DRAIN LIFE WITH EVERY SKILL/SPELL HE HAVE and, if in the end of the LD time he manages to cure some amount of HP he will be alive and recieve the HP of the amount he drained. The SE can even give us some gauge that will show us how much we have drained. This will actualy make DRK look more sinister and DARK (lol) and make his DPS windows a lot more predictable (have the mana - use it till it dry out and then some and if someone will try to hit you hard (LD windows) you will become only stronger and bleed them out).

[Nedkel]

I wish DRK would have an extra deffensive cooldown to play with, because that what we have now is simply underwhelming.

Dark mind is unnecessary ability, it serves little to no purpose since TBN is taking its place in any tank buster there is.
I would change it to the ability which heals us off for 20% of received damage (shield and hp).
It will make a great synergy with the TBN.

[Stepjam]

Dark mind is usually pretty good during raids cobsidering usually raid tank busters are magic damage. They got bad luck this tier.

But TBN alone puts Drk in a pretty great place tbh

[Reynhart]

This was literally 2.0 WAR and as cool as it was, it was a nightmare to heal imo.

In 2.0, WAR had literally one "mitigation" skill with Thrill Of Battle. The increase in healing received wasn't even tied to Defiance but to rage, which forced them to not use Inner Beast. PLD would have been a nightmare to heal too if it only had rampart and Shield Oath didn't reduced damage by itself.

[Kaedan]

Found my old explanation of the "road of DRK's identity":

I think in order to make DRK "feel like a DRK", we have to explore the identity of DRK.

It was first playable in FF3, but most of the NA audience never played 3. So really, our first exposure was FF4, in the form of Cecil. Cecil as a Dark Knight could use the ability "Darkness" which cost HP, but did damage to all enemies. He had high HP and Def and could use swords and shields and heavy armor.

It didn't appear again until FFX-2 as a dressphere. There, it also had Darkness (aoe) and Charon (single target version of Darkness), and Arcana. It also had proof against most if not all status ailments. It still had high HP and Def.

It next appeared in FFXI as a DPS class. It lost a lot of it's identity here, as it was basically turned into a hybrid caster/melee. Could use black magic and stat-absorb spells, had access to early Stun and could gain TP really fast. Also lots of Draining abilities.

It appeared in FF: Tactics PSP version (war of the lions), and there it focused on HP/MP drain.



So the major themes of DRK have been:

-High HP

-High Def

-Darkness (sacrifice HP for damage or later HP/MP drain)

-Drain/Absorb

-Ailment immunity and or infliction/absorb



I think FF14's DRK actually fits those themes fairly well. We don't have the HP sacrifice part, but they changed it to MP sacrifice (the mp management mechanics). They kept the high HP and Def themes, as well as the Drain/Absorb aspects.

I agree with the other poster that the biggest thing is just getting rid of the Dark Arts spam. Not only is it annoying, but it trivializes the "lore" of the ability as well to have to spam it so much.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Found my old explanation of the "road of DRK's identity":

I think in order to make DRK "feel like a DRK", we have to explore the identity of DRK.

It was first playable in FF3, but most of the NA audience never played 3. So really, our first exposure was FF4, in the form of Cecil. Cecil as a Dark Knight could use the ability "Darkness" which cost HP, but did damage to all enemies. He had high HP and Def and could use swords and shields and heavy armor.

It didn't appear again until FFX-2 as a dressphere. There, it also had Darkness (aoe) and Charon (single target version of Darkness), and Arcana. It also had proof against most if not all status ailments. It still had high HP and Def.

It next appeared in FFXI as a DPS class. It lost a lot of it's identity here, as it was basically turned into a hybrid caster/melee. Could use black magic and stat-absorb spells, had access to early Stun and could gain TP really fast. Also lots of Draining abilities.

It appeared in FF: Tactics PSP version (war of the lions), and there it focused on HP/MP drain.

You have a few things out of order here.

Dark Knight's 3rd appearance was in FFT(PS) (1997) as Gafgarion's exclusive job with 2 special attacks that dealt Dark element damage and recovered either HP or MP.

XI (2002) and the Advanced Job Dark Knight was released before X-2 (2003) and its Dark Knight.

[Reynhart]

but they changed it to MP sacrifice (the mp management mechanics).

MP is a ressource meant to be spent, you don't "sacrifice" it. And the MP management has been reduced to the bare minimum since we only have 3 skills to spend them, with basically the same end result.

Also in FFIV, if you look at Cecil's stats as a Dark Knight, he's actually pretty low in HP and stamina. It just so happens that several of your teammates are mages so they are weaker than you. Just compare his stats to Kain's or Yang's.

[Mahoukenshi]

You have a few things out of order here.

Dark Knight's 3rd appearance was in FFT(PS) (1997) as Gafgarion's exclusive job with 2 special attacks that dealt Dark element damage and recovered either HP or MP.

XI (2002) and the Advanced Job Dark Knight was released before X-2 (2003) and its Dark Knight.

There was also the the FF3 remake for Nintendo 3DS, where IIRC Dark Knight was only(?) a mid-tier job in the grand scale of things and had also the all-enemy hp-draining skill. It was recommended to use them with Bards for synergy during the parts the combo was valid.

[Reynhart]

There was also the the FF3 remake for Nintendo 3DS, where IIRC Dark Knight was only(?) a mid-tier job in the grand scale of things and had also the all-enemy hp-draining skill. It was recommended to use them with Bards for synergy during the parts the combo was valid.

In FF III, the only uniqueness of DRK was to be able to use Katanas...that prevent monsters from multiplying.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Also in FFIV, if you look at Cecil's stats as a Dark Knight, he's actually pretty low in HP and stamina. It just so happens that several of your teammates are mages so they are weaker than you. Just compare his stats to Kain's or Yang's.

Dark Knight Cecil's Stats are actually superior to Kain's for the level range that they appear together (and only really start exceeding DK Cecil's at the levels where you should have Paladin Cecil). Yang's stats are inflated to make up for Yang's inferior equipment.