Dark Knight moving forward: Job change ideas for 6.0

[Lammas]

I feel that to. Maybe we could've been able to extend Fray's duration after each shadow skill or something, but they decided that it was a bit OP. I'm just hoping they expand on it in 6.0 instead of removing it. Yea it's just a literal flashy DoT, but it's OUR flashy DoT.

Hard to say what the deal with the shadow was or if there was anything there begin with. For all we know it could've been clunky and felt bad to use and taken out because of that, too.

I don't believe we're going to lose the clone even if it won't get expanded. I can't think of any "capstone" abilities that have been removed and in its current state it's literally just a damage ogcd so it's not like it should be interferring with any future design either. That said, I share the sentiment that it's cool and no matter what I do want to keep it because it's flavorful.

[TouchandFeel]

I personally feel that trying to add an additional combo-ender or trying to force in more GCD based rotational aspects into DRK is not really the way to go with evolving the job.
There is only so much more that can be done in those regards and most of the ways to implement them has already been covered by the other jobs, so it would just be pushing DRK more into the game-play territory of the other tanks resulting in both of them feeling less unique.

I think that DRK should differentiate itself more through its oGCD kit and providing greater variation and complexity there. By providing more oGCD based game-play it should make the simple GCD rotation of DRK fade into the background and refocus players' active engagement into the oGCDs and properly executing them.

This would of course then require two things to really be doubled down on for DRK.

First is that the frequency of oGCDs available for use would need to increase so that there will always be an oGCD coming up that the player has to plan for so that they remain actively engaged instead of oGCDs just being something that they press every ~20s-30s.

Second is that there needs to be more interaction between oGCDs so that there is some level of thought and strategy into how you use them instead of what we currently have which is basically "use them if they are available". A fairly good example of such interaction already exists on DRK in Dark Arts, one oGCD provides the Dark Arts resource while another uses it up. Simple, straight forward and effective.

So how could this concept be expanded utilizing what is already in place for DRK? I would say, and other have also suggested, by simply expanding upon the resources/meters/timers that they already added to DRK with ShB.
Off the top of my head, here are some ways to do that which fit into the "resource management" game-play niche of DRK.

Expand Dark Arts so that it becomes more of another resource to manage and utilize by doing stuff like I suggested earlier such as expanding it so you can hold up to 2 Dark Arts and add more abilities or ability interactions that provide and use up Dark Arts.

Riffing off of a suggestion I saw in this or another DRK thread, make the Darkside timer into a resource. We already have Edge and Flood providing time to Darkside in excess, why not add an ability or abilities that actually remove time from Darkside when used? That way you have to be constantly balancing the trade-off of keeping enough time on Darkside to keep it from falling off with squeezing out as many other abilities that eat up that time. It would be very similar to the old Darkside upkeep mechanic that we used to have in Heavensward, just a little more encapsulated and detached from your primary resource of MP.

Those are only two examples of how to increase the complexity of oGCD game-play on DRK and I'm sure that others could think of many more ways, which just goes to show that it is not a hard direction to steer the job towards.

Also, just one caveat to all this. I do think that there is one place that DRK does need more GCD based complexity and that is in their Delirium burst period. Spamming 5 buttons in a row for their burst is lacking in the engagement factor and mixing that up, like with the suggestions I presented at the beginning of this thread, I feel are a must.

[DRKoftheAzure]

For a second combo they could give us Scourge back and stick it at the end of the combo ala Goring Blade.

I would rather them bring back Spinning Slash and Power Slash as a re-worked combo path than have to be an horrible amalgamation of current WAR and current PLD...

I personally feel that trying to add an additional combo-ender or trying to force in more GCD based rotational aspects into DRK is not really the way to go with evolving the job.
There is only so much more that can be done in those regards and most of the ways to implement them has already been covered by the other jobs, so it would just be pushing DRK more into the game-play territory of the other tanks resulting in both of them feeling less unique.

I think that DRK should differentiate itself more through its oGCD kit and providing greater variation and complexity there. By providing more oGCD based game-play it should make the simple GCD rotation of DRK fade into the background and refocus players' active engagement into the oGCDs and properly executing them.

This would of course then require two things to really be doubled down on for DRK.

First is that the frequency of oGCDs available for use would need to increase so that there will always be an oGCD coming up that the player has to plan for so that they remain actively engaged instead of oGCDs just being something that they press every ~20s-30s.

Second is that there needs to be more interaction between oGCDs so that there is some level of thought and strategy into how you use them instead of what we currently have which is basically "use them if they are available". A fairly good example of such interaction already exists on DRK in Dark Arts, one oGCD provides the Dark Arts resource while another uses it up. Simple, straight forward and effective.

So how could this concept be expanded utilizing what is already in place for DRK? I would say, and other have also suggested, by simply expanding upon the resources/meters/timers that they already added to DRK with ShB.
Off the top of my head, here are some ways to do that which fit into the "resource management" game-play niche of DRK.

Expand Dark Arts so that it becomes more of another resource to manage and utilize by doing stuff like I suggested earlier such as expanding it so you can hold up to 2 Dark Arts and add more abilities or ability interactions that provide and use up Dark Arts.

Riffing off of a suggestion I saw in this or another DRK thread, make the Darkside timer into a resource. We already have Edge and Flood providing time to Darkside in excess, why not add an ability or abilities that actually remove time from Darkside when used? That way you have to be constantly balancing the trade-off of keeping enough time on Darkside to keep it from falling off with squeezing out as many other abilities that eat up that time. It would be very similar to the old Darkside upkeep mechanic that we used to have in Heavensward, just a little more encapsulated and detached from your primary resource of MP.

Those are only two examples of how to increase the complexity of oGCD game-play on DRK and I'm sure that others could think of many more ways, which just goes to show that it is not a hard direction to steer the job towards.

Also, just one caveat to all this. I do think that there is one place that DRK does need more GCD based complexity and that is in their Delirium burst period. Spamming 5 buttons in a row for their burst is lacking in the engagement factor and mixing that up, like with the suggestions I presented at the beginning of this thread, I feel are a must.

Honestly I would rather have more focus on attack based GCDs with Living Shadow basically making up for the fact DRK doesn't have attack based oGCDs. But mostly more GCDs in general...

[TouchandFeel]

snip

You are already playing GNB, why do we need to make DRK like GNB?
It's fine that you want to play a tank with GCD focused game-play, but there are already multiple tanks that cover that in different ways already.
I say let DRK be different.

There are enough complaints already of "tank homogenization" as things stand, some I agree with, others I don't.
Do we really need to be trying to make the tanks more alike in the one place that they should be the most different in, how they play?

Also, I don't know where you are getting this "fact DRK doesn't have attack based oGCDs". DRK is already the most focused on oGCD attacks of the tanks due to Edge and Flood.

[DRKoftheAzure]

You are already playing GNB, why do we need to make DRK like GNB?
It's fine that you want to play a tank with GCD focused game-play, but there are already multiple tanks that cover that in different ways already.
I say let DRK be different.

Also, I don't know where you are getting this "fact DRK doesn't have attack based oGCDs". DRK is already the most focused on oGCD attacks of the tanks due to Edge and Flood.

I like GNB because it's Continuation is ability is a perfect mix GCD and oGCD burst, and GNB just reminds me of the Switch Axe's sword mode in Monster Hunter.

And as for the "fact DRK doesn't have attack based oGCDs" part, it's IF the devs really wanted to make people like Living Shadow and just reworked a lot oGCDs into really strong GCDs with MP and gauge costs. And also, Edge/Flood of Shadow just feel like glorified GCDs and the same can be said for Carve and Spit just because of how long it's animation is...

Though that might be more of my inner omni-tank talking about how DRK isn't different enough to seperate it from WAR and/or PLD.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

Sigh ...

You could say any oGCD attack ability on any job, tank or not, "just feels lik a glorified GCD". It's the difference in how abilities are used, such as being GCD or oGCD, that is the most discerning factor of how they "feel". If the oGCDs on DRK feel that way but oGCD attacks on other jobs don't, well that's you simply deciding to hold DRK to a different standard compared to the other jobs.

You are also contradicting yourself in saying that DRK should be more GCD focused because right now it is too similar to WAR and/or PLD. Making DRK more GCD focused would make DRK even more like the other tank jobs because they are already more GCD focused compared to DRK.
Make DRK have another combo-ender, now it's more like WAR and PLD. Give it a GCD DoT to keep up, while DRK used to have Scourge, now it would just be the same as GNB's Sonic Break. Make Edge and Flood GCD and they basically become frequent use GCDs that you are weaving in every couple of combos, not unlike Burst Strike and Fated Circle on GNB and besides Blood Spiller and Quietus are already like that so you would basically be doubling up on the same kind of ability.

The other tanks already pretty much cover the implementation variants for a GCD focused rotation and making DRK more GCD focused in it's game-play would objectively make the job more like one or more of the other tank jobs, not less.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Sigh ...

You could say any oGCD attack ability on any job, tank or not, "just feels lik a glorified GCD". It's the difference in how abilities are used, such as being GCD or oGCD, that is the most discerning factor of how they "feel". If the oGCDs on DRK feel that way but oGCD attacks on other jobs don't, well that's you simply deciding to hold DRK to a different standard compared to the other jobs.

You are also contradicting yourself in saying that DRK should be more GCD focused because right now it is too similar to WAR and/or PLD. Making DRK more GCD focused would make DRK even more like the other tank jobs because they are already more GCD focused compared to DRK.
Make DRK have another combo-ender, now it's more like WAR and PLD. Give it a GCD DoT to keep up, while DRK used to have Scourge, now it would just be the same as GNB's Sonic Break. Make Edge and Flood GCD and they basically become frequent use GCDs that you are weaving in every couple of combos, not unlike Burst Strike and Fated Circle on GNB and besides Blood Spiller and Quietus are already like that so you would basically be doubling up on the same kind of ability.

The other tanks already pretty much cover the implementation variants for a GCD focused rotation and making DRK more GCD focused in it's game-play would objectively make the job more like one or more of the other tank jobs, not less.

Yeah... I'm beginning to realize with the conversation with you is that the more I think about it, DRK has too many issues that maybe because of the fact that it just didn't evolve past Heavensward and just constant devolving/degrading going into Stormblood which got some evolution half way into Stormblood, but it the devs basically made it so pointless when the media tour info for Shadowbringers dropped to where I actually regret choosing not only my forum username based on DRK, but picking up DRK when I finally unlocked it back when I finally picked up FF14 during Heavensward...

[TouchandFeel]

snip

I will not deny that DRK has some issues and I often voice my opinions on those, but to be fair all the tanks, heck even all the jobs have issues.
As to whether DRK has evolved or devolved since it's initial introduction in Heavensward is debatable and based more on opinion since how evolution and devolution is defined and approached will vary person to person. What can't be denied is that DRK has changed, for better or worse.

Now here is my summation of the evolution/devolution of DRK in each expansion based on my own observations and what I have gathered on other players' opinions.

Heavensward:
DRK is the new shiny tank job with a cool, edgy aesthetic which obviously makes it immediately popular with players. As for game-play, it was all over the place. It had a lot of things going on which could be engaging to manage, but could often end up being awkward or contradictory. Also, a decent number of players found the "all over the place" design of DRK too complex and difficult to manage.
So basically it's chaotic design made it at times exciting to play but also potentially frustrating. Also I feel there is a great deal of rose-tinting to people's memories when they look back at DRK at the time, likely from the excitement of it being a new cool job for them to play.

Stormblood:
Here we see the first attempt by the devs to streamline and smooth out the chaotic design of DRK. They redesigned and simplified many aspects of DRK, many of these aspects being things that were cut from the game entirely like attribute down debuffs and evasion as a defensive stat, while others were things that players complained about like Darkside apparently being too hard to manage (I completely disagree with that myself). So with so much culling of stuff the devs tried to add activity and engagement back into DRK by introducing some good stuff like TBN but also some stuff that may have sounded good in theory but didn't work out so well in practice like adding Dark Arts to Syphon Strike and pushing the frequency of Dark Arts usage a bit too far, making it feel "spammy" instead of active and engaging.
Additionally, they missed one big thing that resulted in probably the biggest complaint for DRK during this expansion. At this point in the game, they really began to solidify the game-play of regular strongly defined burst periods that lined up with raid buffs. They gave WAR more Fell Cleaves to spam and introduced the Requiescat + Holy Spirit spam on PLD. DRK on the other hand didn't get something like this and still had a more consistent damage model as opposed to the burst damage model implemented for the other jobs, leaving DRK a bit out of sync with the game-play direction they were now defining and players noticed this.

Shadowbringers:
So we finally arrive at the current iteration. Again we see DRK having gone through a pretty severe rework, both to try for another attempt at streamlining the game-play for the job as well as trying to adjust for player feedback. Like before, this had some positives and negatives.
Most of the positives were the devs attempting to account for player feedback during Stormblood, like getting rid of the potential value ambiguity of the MP to Blood trade-off from breaking TBN by making them exactly the same value of the same resource through the Dark Arts and Edge/Flood changes. Attempting to address the complaints of "feeling like you are having to do two actions for every one action you execute" with the old Dark Arts mechanics by just replacing that with Edge and Flood which are direct attacks. Provided a defined strong burst period with the new but contentious Delirium.
But again there was something overlooked which rippled through the job design and has led to many of the current complaints and perceived negatives of DRK in ShB. That thing, as best as I can tell, was that they were overly focused on reworking DRK based on player feedback, player feedback that was all based on where DRK stood in Stormblood. So when all that time and effort was put in and the rework was done, it was based too much around where tanks were in Stormblood and didn't account for the fact that the other tank jobs would change, evolve and have more stuff added to them for Shadowbringers, leaving DRK feeling like it changed but didn't necessarily evolve and that it was an expansion behind and not "with the times" so to speak.
Basically they ended up reworking DRK to make it what people said they wanted during the last expansion instead of making it what it should have been for this expansion.

In conclusion, we have ended up with DRK being a job that has gone through consistent reworks due to player feedback which the devs have, to their merit, tried their darnedest to provide for, but which has also resulted in the job repeatedly changing direction instead of increasing forward momentum, or another way to put it alteration instead of evolution.
So it could be argued that DRK has not evolved if you are defining evolution as consistent and progressive forward change that builds on itself, that is undeniable. It sure has changed though and a lot.
Also, we should never forget that the devs aren't just reworking jobs like DRK on a lark, it is all based on our feedback and so really DRKs current state is very much because of us the players and is a strong reminder for those that don't like what has happened with DRK, be careful what you wish for.

If you want DRK to evolve instead of being caught in a constant loop of being reworked and inevitably falling behind designwise, take that into account when you think about, formulate and express your feedback, because the devs are listening and they just might give you exactly what you ask for. Keep asking for severe reworks and that is what you may get, and so the cycle will continue along with the discontent.
If you stay stuck in the past and don't think about how to move forward step by step, you'll never get anywhere.
If you want something to grow, don't burn it to the ground expecting something new and better to spring forth from the ashes like a phoenix.

That is actually why I approached this thread the way I did, not as a proposed rework, but looking at how to build on and evolve what we have in order to move the job forward in a direction that the players seem to want it to go.
It's by no means a complete or perfect set of ideas or solution, but if nothing else hopefully it will get players thinking about how to build up DRK and progress it instead of trying to hit the reset button yet again.

Also I will state that while I most definitely have issues with the current version of DRK in Shadowbringers and feel that it falls short of where it should be at this point in the game, I still feel that the dev team did a very good job with the rework in creating a solid game-play foundation with lots of elements to build off of to take DRK in a fun and unique direction. I just wish they had added an extra layer or two on top of this foundation to give DRK that little bit more complexity and uniqueness to better match the level of those things found on other tanks.

[Nedkel]

How would we differ it from Bunshin?

I'm not saying the similarities to Bunshin would preclude the possibility of such a version of Living Shadow, but is there anything more we can do to give the change its full bite?

Bunshin is 5 stack mechanic, living shadow would be with us for X duration, this is the big enough difference.
Also it would apply all secondary effects of the skills like blood gauge, MP regen or HP regen, so using soul eater with living shadow would give us twice the blood and twice the heal, same for abyssal drain or carve and split.

That would be so OP and cool, making it working that will speed up the DRK gameplay by giving it more resources to manage.

[Shurrikhan]

Bunshin is 5 stack mechanic, living shadow would be with us for X duration, this is the big enough difference.
Also it would apply all secondary effects of the skills like blood gauge, MP regen or HP regen, so using soul eater with living shadow would give us twice the blood and twice the heal, same for abyssal drain or carve and split.

That would be so OP and cool, making it working that will speed up the DRK gameplay by giving it more resources to manage.

Unless you're going to nerf potencies, though, the resource gains during that version of Living Shadow will have to be compensated for by resource loss elsewhere, making the lulls lower just to make the peaks higher, and not necessarily even in a way that'd be all that impressive*. Already, DRK runs very close to the "Engage for 10 seconds, snooze until CD is back up" level of compressed gameplay.

* What I mean by that is that while it'd provide a large amount of numeric force, so long as Bloodspiller doesn't feel all that impressive, increased Bloodspiller frequency isn't going to feel all that impressive, either, which is all Living Shadow would amount to in typical play. I love that it'd at least finally have more flexible AoE potential, similar to Bunshin, but that'd just be a buff to dungeoning AoE (alongside the doubled Abyssal Drain), an area where DRK is... already quite strong. In raids, though, it'd just be like more Delirium atop your Delirium, giving even less lenience to overcapping during BW-LS, forcing LS to be paired with as many offensive abilities as possible, and then effectively just tuning DRK to punish every time you don't put in as many oGCDs into LS as possible.