Dark Knight is playable, but BORING

[shao32]

DRK has much more heavy resource management on both HW and SB, thats just a fact, both versions of the job use to have more internal mechanics around you resources (MP drain, GCD manipulation, have to manage you resources to raid buffs since your buffs use to have higger uptime but diferen recast, resources spikes generation, ect ect) and this version of the job is really scripped like the rest of the tanks.

Every raid buff have 60s patterns of recast (60s,120s,180s) making blood weapon sync with all of them,making DRK a 60s burst bot like the rest, all raids buffs except TA have a minimun duration of 15s time enough to fit all what DRK need in that window, DRK don't manage anything, just build resources and trow everything on bloodweapon, having the capacity to just trow the 2 edges you can storage is not pretty diferent of a WAR trwowing fell cleaves/nascent chaos if they see a window, the only window that dont syn with blood weapon is brotherhood and edge don't get any buff from it so in resume the current DRK management is just a ilusion and nothing else, if you bloodweapon don't sync for whatever reason, party member dead, mechanic, party member messing a bit DRK would lose uptime since they wont be able to fit the extra resources of bloodweapon under such windows like any mortal job in the game that don't fit properly his buff window under X.

in resume as raid buff concern DRK just storage stuff and release everything every 60s just like PLD, the job just avoid overcapping a bit and thats a joke in his downtime, DRK is not so versatile as ppl want it to make it look.

[KrausBrave]

DRK is not dragging it is the best middle in fact WAR is dragging At this point. My ask to you is this Do you raid??
Alot of these opinions bank on that question and my reasoning behind that is there is no other content in this game that gauges job complexity besides raiding. If your a dungeon runner you will never understand the jobs complex roles period. I don\\'t care what anyone agrues to it each tank has a similar air rotation and you can easily mitgate dungeon Buster\\'s with just rampart. That\\'s how lamest terms dungeon running is. Now raiding (extremes and savage tiers) is how you truly judge the tanks. Right now from the balance discord and my experience DRK and GNB are 2 of the best tanks in raiding one for GNB DPS and 2 DRK TBN. DRK does more DPS then WAR in savage and works very well with raid party synergy like DNC and NIN and DRG. WAR is only good in one fight Leviathan because of nascent flash. Honesty this is my opinion people need to stop baseing job "complexity" of dungeon and get there butts in raid content.

Yes, I do Raid, thank you. And I do, do savage content. I don't solely base what I see on personal experience but through studying through every avenue that is presented. Currently, like I said. GNB & PAL are the most common parses and appear to do both the most damage and mitigate the most, that being Paladin. Though I misspoke about DRK a bit as they are parsing a bit more than Warriors. And again, I still feel like DRK is still a dumpster fire with TBN covering just how bad the kit works together.

Once you learn the "3000 MP" rule, it's hard to actually fail with DRK and if you do fail with DRK, SOMEHOW because how can you fuck up a 123 into an Inner Release and spam, back into 123 with the occasional weave of what's oGCD. What am I really managing? As long as I can maintain 3000 MP, which is fairly easy, their's nothing in the job. And the trade WITH TBN is still just meh. I would still much rather have a Paladin be my Co-Tank then a DRK.

And I doubt when I go into savage content and extreme content with my DRK, that my mind will be blown. It's, again, saving grace is TBN. But when ONE ability carries the ENTIRE kit. And a dull one at that. It needs a lot of work.

[Satarn]

So what are your parces with DRK when it was the "heavier resource management" tank how much raid content did you complete? Have you complete o12s or if you didn't like DRK then how about a12s??? Have you doing in extremes?

Yes, I have cleared entire Alphascape on DRK in SB and had a blast with it. I look quite fondly to that tier, due to not just the busy resource management, but also how much neat optimization could be done with old Salted Earth due to boss positioning in majority of fights and how well defensive cooldowns worked after the 4.3 changes. DRK might've been overall weaker than other tanks back then, but damn, was it a good tier for them fun-wise, which makes it feel even worse to then lose that job in the expansion right after.

Also you might want to reconsider attempts at discrediting people based on logs, just saying...

[Toohon]

Well many may not agree with me after reading through this whole thread but
I for one actually enjoy this new change.

I have played as DRK main since HW all the way through and have recently come back to ffxiv after a long long break playing GW2 to play ShB
My opinion is only after tasting the first few levels of ShB DRK but I have played HW and SB as DRK vigorously

My issue with the old HW and SB DRK was that it was very boring to play (my opinion ofcourse) as I found that :
HW DRK had only 1 2 3 combo and 1 2 soul eater combo as a real source of attack and the rest would have really long cooldowns
SB brought in the blood gauge but still it wasn't enough attacks to really make it much fun .. for me atleast

ShB has added some nice skills in addition to the attacks we can use not to mention finally getting a combo to our aoe skill

My only issue with the new DRK would be that Darkside is now no longer a active skill on its own but must be paired in with the new attack skills

But I do enjoy the challenge, keeping my mana up while dishing out as much damage and also keeping dark side up is quite fun for me

[DRKoftheAzure]

HW DRK had only 1 2 3 combo and 1 2 soul eater combo as a real source of attack and the rest would have really long cooldowns

Counter argument on the combos; Aggro combo which is 1 Hard Slash-2A Spinning Slash-3 Power Slash which could generate more aggro if you used Dark Arts(which all tanks had aggro combos in Heavensward), 1 Hard Slash-2B Syphon Strike-3A Souleater which was on of your alternate combo paths but was more DPS combo path if you used Dark Arts(all tanks had 3 combo paths to choose from based on specific situations or were mandatory for certain boss mechanics) and 1 Hard Slash-2B Syphon Strike-3B Delirium which was not only other DPS combo you could alternate between if you had no MP for Dark Arts, but also inflicted INT down debuff(I am one of those people who gets the most enjoyment out of rotating between my combo paths).

Stormblood did see a rework of Delirium but I still got some enjoyment out of rotating between Power Slash combo and Souleater combo.

Shadowbringers was just the worst expansion for Dark Knight period, because Dark Knight lost so much going into the expansion that it's basically Warrior with a Greatsword(Warrior was also made even more boring by just removing more cool looking skills and given stuff that people complained about in Stormblood with skills sharing a recast timer to make it's "balanced")...

[Duskane]

Delirium has had a different effect every expansion
i bet next will do the same

[Satarn]

My issue with the old HW and SB DRK was that it was very boring to play (my opinion ofcourse) as I found that :
HW DRK had only 1 2 3 combo and 1 2 soul eater combo as a real source of attack and the rest would have really long cooldowns
SB brought in the blood gauge but still it wasn't enough attacks to really make it much fun .. for me atleast

ShB has added some nice skills in addition to the attacks we can use not to mention finally getting a combo to our aoe skill

My only issue with the new DRK would be that Darkside is now no longer a active skill on its own but must be paired in with the new attack skills

But I do enjoy the challenge, keeping my mana up while dishing out as much damage and also keeping dark side up is quite fun for me

You are of course entitled to your opinions and you'll enjoy what you enjoy, but that said, I have no idea how could you arrive to conclusion that SHB DRK is the one with the most skill variety and especially that HW cds were "too long", when SHB increased the timers.

While HW DRK didn't have Bloodspiller, you had Delirium and Scourge, so that's already more gcds even completely disregarding the enmity combo.
For ogcds you had Reprisal, Low Blow, Dark Passenger(which at the time was still useful in single target, unlike SB DP or Flood now). Salted Earth and Blood Weapon also both had much lower cooldowns than they have in SHB.

Edge of Shadow can't exactly be counted as a new skill, as it's a direct replacement for Dark Arts with less frequent usage(due to new MP rates).
Flood is kind of in between DA and Passenger, so I'd count it as half-a-skill lost rather than one gained(since we lost first half of DP in SB, by making it more-or-less AoE-only).
Living Shadow is completely new, but at 120 second recast, it's the very definition of "really long cooldown".
Abyssal Drain has been turned into an ogcd, but it's so much more forgettable now than when it was a spell and 60 seconds is not exactly short either.

MP pooling has always been there and now it's actually much simpler and nearly scripted, once you actually understand how the MP rates interact with party buffs.
Darkside upkeep is an illusion, because it will stay up as long as you just spend MP at all twice per minute.
One more thing people bring up is TBN, but that was also an SB addition and - just like MP management - had more complexity and choice to it back then.

Neither HW nor SB DRK were perfect, but so far majority of things people say they enjoy in SHB version, were already present in the past, but with more complexity and synergy to them.

[shao32]

Delirium has had a different effect every expansion
i bet next will do the same

i hope so or they complety remove it and let it die, this version of delirium is trash.

[LegolasT]

Yes, I do Raid, thank you. And I do, do savage content. I don't solely base what I see on personal experience but through studying through every avenue that is presented. Currently, like I said. GNB & PAL are the most common parses and appear to do both the most damage and mitigate the most, that being Paladin. Though I misspoke about DRK a bit as they are parsing a bit more than Warriors. And again, I still feel like DRK is still a dumpster fire with TBN covering just how bad the kit works together.

Once you learn the "3000 MP" rule, it's hard to actually fail with DRK and if you do fail with DRK, SOMEHOW because how can you fuck up a 123 into an Inner Release and spam, back into 123 with the occasional weave of what's oGCD. What am I really managing? As long as I can maintain 3000 MP, which is fairly easy, their's nothing in the job. And the trade WITH TBN is still just meh. I would still much rather have a Paladin be my Co-Tank then a DRK.

And I doubt when I go into savage content and extreme content with my DRK, that my mind will be blown. It's, again, saving grace is TBN. But when ONE ability carries the ENTIRE kit. And a dull one at that. It needs a lot of work.

With that thought process I hope no one sees you in raid content on aether. They will kick you so fast is isn’t funny

[Hierro]

With that thought process I hope no one sees you in raid content on aether. They will kick you so fast is isn’t funny

They'd probably sooner kick a grey tank than a blue tank.