Dark Knight where is my Identiy

[FallenWings]

Except that it isn't just Delirium being functionally identical. Several aspect of DRK's gameplay mirrors WAR in some way or another. Blood Weapon, for example, is essentially a weaker Infuriate. Through five GCDs, you're given 50 gauge and 3,000 MP except you have to play against a finicky server tick, potentially causing your fifth GCD to miss the effect. Warrior, on the other hand, simply pushes a single button. And because Inner Chaos is guaranteed to DCrit, they achieve similar damage output despite DRK having to work significantly harder.

So by that logic, Bloodfest from GNB is a weaker Infuriate because it's 90 seconds and only opens up 2 more Burst Strikes(GNB Fell Cleave) and thus is a candidate for being called a WAR Clone. Samurai's Ikkishoten, Ninja's Mug, Machinist's Barrel Stabellizer are also clones of Infuriate because they generate resources instantly and thus are WAR clones?

Nevermind that we complain about Delirium being too mechanically similiar so when a comparative skill is mechanically different, it is also a bad thing? Bloodweapon again, still serves its primary function of being a resource gain buff and not only acquires blood for BS/QS/LS it also generates 3k mana for TBN/Edge/Flood. The number of resources gained being similiar is but a balance decision at the end of the day.

Going further down the list Dark Missionary is a weaker Shake, both in the latter having a potential buff added and not having to play a guessing game on damage type. Abyssal Drain is laughably inferior to Nascent Flash in every aspect, having nearly four times the CD length in spite of being weaker.

Heart of Light must be a weaker shake. Nevermind that these buffs excel in different areas like how shell ones like SiO and DV(oh no! A copy of WARs SiO!) are better for single instances of damage below your max hp and DM/HoL are greater for catching 2 instances of damage within its duration and instances of raid wide damage that far exceed max hp. But I guess all tanks who need raid wide mit are now WAR clones. Abyssal Drain is not even a direct comparison to Nascent Flash lol. It would be Equilibrium versus AD, the latter of which being weaker at ST but better at AoE. TBN is compared to Nascent and the former achieves a higher "heal" thanks to its duration and lack of required Inner Chaos being used with it.

You mention resource management yet... ShB DRK's iteration is the least resource intense the job has ever been. You essentially only pay attention to your MP under two thresholds: Is it above 9,000 or below 3,000? Anything in between doesn't matter outside burst windows. You ideally want to enter every buff window with roughly 9k and then let it build back up for TBN if necessary. As a result, this makes Dark Arts v2 incredibly passive... not unlike a certain other tank whose buff has become so easy to maintain you actively need to go out of your way for it to fall off. Keep in mind, everything I said only matters at an optimized level. For the vast majority of players, Edge of Shadow is little more than a spammable Upheaval. Which brings up an important point. Ever notice how Upheaval is rarely mentioned when identifying Warrior? That's because it's largely a forgettable skill you simply press. Fell Cleave defines the job. Edge of Shadow is similar; it's entirely forgettable. You'll simply press it, however due to the passive nature of Dark Arts, it lacks impact. Unfortunately, Dark Knight has no "Fell Cleave" to fall back on.

The change on the rate of gain for MP is subjective at the end. There are those who prefer stockpiling and using them in a controlled manner. And there are those who prefer to babysit a bar that won't stop overfilling with only a 140 ogcd pot button to keep it down. That's at the end of the day an opinion on which is more fun, not superior or inferior. I personally see Edge/Flood as oGCD Fell Cleaves/Decimates but better because they don't have the draw back of costing a GCD. To me they have huge impact as button presses because of the aforementioned potencies and MP costs. They very much define DRK rotation and optimization. If people can see Holy Spirit and Holy Circle as ranged magical Fell Cleave/Decimate then the same regard should be given to Edge/Flood.

And that brings us to the only truly unique and identifying attribute DRK has: The Blackest Night. A cool ability, and undeniably better than any of its counterparts. Except being defined by one mitigation tool in a game centered almost entirely around damage is, well... underwhelming.

Forgive a tank class for having a supremly iconic barrier ability *alongside* its also unique mana resource kit that interplays with eachother I guess.

I suppose it's not as good as a party wide mitigation buff that is only used for cutscenes or tapped on because of the drawback of forcing your character to hold still.

I suppose it's not as good as a 90 second cooldown that limits tank gearing options, caps your damage ceiling and only offers 5 free button presses as an identity.

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Blood, Quietus and Spiller came in SB. No one batted an eye then and the current changes is not exclusive to DRK but tanks as a whole for a more symmetrical balanced state. PLD gains the same static amount of resources for every Requis. GNB pretends to have management. On the whole DRK retains key skills and their respective functions. Several actions just changed in numbers for the sake of balance.

Like I've said before, if people find pressing 1-2-3 more often and 10% faster its up to them lol. Having high apm means nothing when the majority of it is spamming a low potency button over and over(See Machinist).

Ninja doesn't double weave and no class with 2.1 or lower GCD speed has forced double weaves. SE deliberately designed away from that as well with current GCD Mudra ninja because of how restrictive it is and how unfun it was to play with how often it clipped. It's also a big complaint to the Dark Arts spam from before. In HW it worked because Dark Arts wasn't eaten by literally every GCD other than Hard Slash with Scourge also as a buffer. Again, I personally prefer quad double weave burst over 1-2-3 at 110% speed but I wouldn't be against a kit that involves both at different intervals.

WAR only focuses on it's GCDs and the way it plays around Nascent Flash, Infuriate reduction and charges reflects that. DRK is primarily focused around it's oGCDs with its GCDS supplementing that. GNB can also be reduced to just 1-2-3 only outside of every minute burst. It's regarded as the easy to optimize tank class along WAR and with reason because it's not anymore special than the other tanks. It shares an Infuriate, Fell Cleave/Decimate equivalent but no one has given it the same CLONE conclusion.