Dark Knight is playable, but BORING

[MerlinCross]

I find the executive decision-making that comes with a well-used TBN to be both important and challenging. You can save a lot of grief by targeting non-tanks in your party to help absorb damage from a variety of mechanics, not to mention GCD's saved by healers who don't have to heal as much to recover from those mechs (good example here being Hell Wind + Towers in E2S).

I don't see how this is any different from how it was before only that TBN is stronger now and thus can be used to block better.

For instance your opener can change quite a bit depending on what comp you have, and what you do during "downtime" (as in, what you do when delirium and blood weapon aren't available) also changes depending on what comp you have. PLD and GNB don't give a squat whether they have a MNK or BRD, they're gonna mash those No mercy and FoF buttons the moment they're available and cram every single off GCDs within that window regardless of what outside buffs they receive.

Expand on this? I don't see why a DRK or WAR would wait to slam their "Go Ham" buttons like the other two.

[Praesul]

I don't see how this is any different from how it was before only that TBN is stronger now and thus can be used to block better.



Expand on this? I don't see why a DRK or WAR would wait to slam their "Go Ham" buttons like the other two.

They still use their HAM buttons at the same time they would normally, but when they use their off GCDs differs. You can move certain off GCDs later on during your opener depending on if you have a NIN or popping a potion, or if you have a DNC etc etc. You got a ton of room to play with edge/flood of shadow. For example let's assume you get 10 uses of Edge of Shadow in an instance, you cannot increase your uses of it, the max will always be 10. You can mash them immediately they're available, or you can wait to use them during more opportune moments when buffs are up.

And that's just the opener, as some buffs misalign you have to decide when it's best to spend your MP. This tends to happen a lot when you have a BRD in the group since it's up every 180 seconds instead of every 60, or AST buffs which are RNG when they're up, the SCH crit buff etc etc.

You get a ton of room for play with DRK, and almost none with PLD and GNB who need to spend their resources during their burst window because the damage increase from their own abilities is much more impactful than anything an outside source can provide. You need X MP going into Requiescat, so you don't use MP outside of it unless you fuck up or emergencies require Clemency uses. For GNB, you need X amount of cartridges going into No Mercy, and you need to spend cartridges to prevent overcapping before that point.

[MerlinCross]

They still use their HAM buttons at the same time they would normally, but when they use their off GCDs differs. You can move certain off GCDs later on during your opener depending on if you have a NIN or popping a potion, or if you have a DNC etc etc. You got a ton of room to play with edge/flood of shadow. For example let's assume you get 10 uses of Edge of Shadow in an instance, you cannot increase your uses of it, the max will always be 10. You can mash them immediately they're available, or you can wait to use them during more opportune moments when buffs are up.

And that's just the opener, as some buffs misalign you have to decide when it's best to spend your MP. This tends to happen a lot when you have a BRD in the group since it's up every 180 seconds instead of every 60, or AST buffs which are RNG when they're up, the SCH crit buff etc etc.

You get a ton of room for play with DRK, and almost none with PLD and GNB who need to spend their resources during their burst window because the damage increase from their own abilities is much more impactful than anything an outside source can provide. You need X MP going into Requiescat, so you don't use MP outside of it unless you fuck up or emergencies require Clemency uses. For GNB, you need X amount of cartridges going into No Mercy, and you need to spend cartridges to prevent overcapping before that point.

And yet if you don't use those 10 Edges in your example during the most opportune times, you're bad because your DPS isn't maxed so what's the point of blowing them early? You CAN blow them early, but then you're just putting unneeded pressure on the DPS to make up for your misused damage right?

Doesn't matter that you can use them differently if the community gives you flack for not using it 'right' and playing the job 'wrong'. For something that's supposed to have more room to play, it's disheartening to be told "It has to be used this way". Much like how Dark Arts was previously, if you didn't use it "THIS WAY" you were bad and your opinion discarded. If you don't use Edge/Delirum right, your opinion is bad, you're a bad player, and thus can't address anything on Dark Knight it seems.

[Praesul]

And yet if you don't use those 10 Edges in your example during the most opportune times, you're bad because your DPS isn't maxed so what's the point of blowing them early? You CAN blow them early, but then you're just putting unneeded pressure on the DPS to make up for your misused damage right?

Doesn't matter that you can use them differently if the community gives you flack for not using it 'right' and playing the job 'wrong'. For something that's supposed to have more room to play, it's disheartening to be told "It has to be used this way". Much like how Dark Arts was previously, if you didn't use it "THIS WAY" you were bad and your opinion discarded. If you don't use Edge/Delirum right, your opinion is bad, you're a bad player, and thus can't address anything on Dark Knight it seems.

It's skill expression. Having way to separate good from bad players is good, we should want more of this type of thing rather than less. Being able to adapt to your party makeup and your party's skill (for instance if they're late on their buff timings you can't just go on auto-pilot and have to change your edge timings) is a great way to separate yourself from other DRK players.

Also I'd like to add that a significant portion of DRK's damage coming from off GCDs means that you can pool resources to burst something down during prog in harder encounters, sure blowing a bunch of edge of shadows longterm is a DPS loss but not killing something before it explodes and murders everyone is an even bigger loss.

[Quor]

I don't see how this is any different from how it was before only that TBN is stronger now and thus can be used to block better.

It's drastically different. In SB you wanted to avoid TBN usage because DA was almost always more of a gain per MP than TBN was. Hence, TBN was used almost exclusively to absorb incoming tank buster damage, instead of being something you used more or less on CD for what amounts to free mitigation on top of damage. Buster's are scripted to the point where you can safely manage your other CD's plus TBN and still have plenty of TBN uses on non-tanks to help with a variety of mechanics, and you're now actively incentivized to do so due to the feedback loop of popped TBN = free Edge/Flood. This, on top of the saved healer GCD's with TBN's 25% max hp value for everyone (instead of the 20 self/10 other it was in SB).