Dark Knight where is my Identiy

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Now I shall try this again cause we need a direction so we don’t miss

The question we need answered are.
1. What is a drk?
2. How are they unique or how can we make them unique?
3. What do we want to fix so they can feel like the class they should be?

These are some of the ingredients to make the perfect drk. From what I got so far from you all.

Now I shall spit ball a few idea in my head cannon in hope we can trim the fat of this convo.

I’m gonna go with this one cause I thought hard on it for years and have multiple concepts

Living Dead
1. The small fix
Slap a healing buff on it and call it a day
Bandage fix but it’s something and LD isn’t bad but it isn’t good this is the problem we have with it. Yes we have a long invun time but what does it matter if I die when it’s over. Prolonged death isnt a good death

2. Get rid of invuns
It’s an option that I’m sure SE might take into consideration but doesn’t mean we would agree on it

3. Have during LD all damage is converted in to healing and all healing dmg
One of my favorite but might not be the best option for drk it might turn out like SuperB all over again

4. When waking dead expires instead of death sap all you mp and convert it into hp 100% = a maximum of 100k (just a estimate not gospel)
Last one that I think is perfect drk is all about sacrifice and this I think is bigger then death and unique to the class like Frey taking the bow for you and now you have to fight to replenish mp

This is a response to the ones stating about LD since we can only post but so much it was one of my idea I have more another with TBN etc but we need to decide each skill that we keep and the ones we don’t but in a practical was that doesn’t kill the devs

what is a Dark Knight? / to me, Dark Knight is a "physical melee Damager-tank that can use dark magic and blood magic." but, most of Dark Knights "magic" was removed, and made into what it is now. 3.x Dark Knight was best Dark Knight, and we need Dark Knight to go back in that direction, but as a different person said, "bringing back 3.x Dark Knight" does not mean copy-and-paste old Dark Knight. we need to take what 3.x Dark Knight was and "remaster" it into a new form that is like, but not is, the original Dark Knight.

How is Dark Knight unique? / no, no.. how "was" Dark Knight unique.
Dark Knight was a physical melee Damager-tank that could also use instant-cast Dark and Blood magic.
this is what Dark Knight should return to. Dark Knight should have physical GCDs and oGCD Dark and Blood magic. physical attacks and weave instant-cast magic between physical attacks. also, double weave. Dark Knight should have a lot of double weave, giving it a "fast" feeling, sort of like weaving both a oGCD physical attack, edge of shadow for this example, and either a Dark or Blood magic spell, between the GCDs.

and GCD should have variety. did you know that Dark Knight used to have two 1-2-3 combos, and one 1-2-3 Combo even had 2 different pick-one 3's to end the combo? Dark Knight needs to have this back, as well. GCD options, not just one damn straight-forward 1-2-3 combo.

What do we want to fix so they can feel like the class they should be? / the class that Dark Knight should be, is its original 3.x "identity", and Dark Knight should be half and half. combine 3.x Dark Knight things, bring back what we lost, and combine that with what current Dark Knight has. while, by "bring back what we lost", again.. not copy-and-paste. old skills that we lost should be remastered, all of 3.x Dark Knight should be remastered, into a similar, but new, form that can combine with current Dark Knight.

this is just a quick summary, though. I have a huge "re-Inventing Dark Knight" pet project that goes neck deep into re-Inventing and re-Designing Dark Knight in a way that is 3.x combined with current, in a way that I would like to believe would work.

[Vatom]

what is a Dark Knight?

Honestly I thought this thread was dead but here we are, thank you

I like the way you think not joking weaving on drk feels great and i love edge and flood - though I hate floods animations- I still love the feeling and yeah most of drk's magic was removed. I would love to hear your idea on how to bring back the old ways into a better light I'm sure we can do it

I wasn't stating that drk never had an identity, I just want us to be on the same page. We all see drk in a different light so I just wanted to be clear on what we want. Also yes I'm am aware of SS PS combo One of the best looking combos, scourge, Passage of arms (bubble party), deaths dance when reprisal was a proc, when salted earth didnt hurt bosses or and enemy that was in the air. I've played drk since HW i remember. I do wish for more buttons the 1-2-3 combo does get stale and seeing HS hurts me deeply but this is a one I would be satisfied if they just brought back PS as a combo finisher and make it give you something like mp/shield/dmg/or mit etc or do the SB machinist treatment and when heated was earned. With SE simplifying everything asking for two full combos seems to me like an improbability.

I would love to see more spells on drk

3.x was a good Drk more fine tuned and the gauge was the best in the game

I would like the idea of DA being used on other things not just a free Edge or flood.

Yes! Haft and haft, I feel like that was a core of drk as for could 3.x drk fix this i would have to brainstorm on that one but really I would love to read more. If you got a doc please let me know. As for me I haven't written it out but i have many ideas as well, but I wanted to see what everyone who plays drk feels before i make a concrete decision.

[Shurrikhan]

Now! Drk identity what we got anyone got ideas?

Hair-brained idea (though actually from back before DRK's release):

I'd like DRK to be a sort of blackguard archetype, sort of the bastard pragmatist dirty-fighting tank with significant toolkit breadth at its disposal by which to accomplish fairly fine manipulations, favorable trade-offs, exploitations, capitalizations, etc.

Thematically, it should center around Blood and Shadow. Shadow comes from MP spent. Simple enough. Now the crazy part: I'd like DRK's "Blood" resource to actually come from... blood -- that is to say, from HP stolen or spent. Yes, you can spend HP.

If that sounds antithetical to a tank, let me be concise: you're mistaken. A tank is the only role for which HP-spending makes sense (as for any other it just turns into externally-derived maintenance (heal requirements) that is either obligatory and disruptive or undertuned and never used) and the capacity to spend HP during damage lulls to generate resources by which to defend against damage spikes can be a tremendously useful unique advantage.

Basically, I want DRK to be a gigabrain tank with uniquely interesting healer co-play and exceptional reason to vary its pacing while playing around certain pivotal CDs or soft-CDs (e.g., DoTs, like a returned Scourge).

I can provide details later if this hasn't already summoned torches and pitchforks.

[Absurdity]

I doubt people are gonna bring out pitchforks for this. Really anything is welcome to shake up the stale formula of

1. A basic 1-2-3 combo that generates some kind of job resource
2. The same 20%, 30%, invuln, party mitigation, short duration/cooldown mitigation with no further interaction besides pressing a button
3. Phase where you spend all your job resource for slightly more damage
4. Stand there and get hit in the face while cycling through points 1-3

Will it ever happen? Unlikely considering the effort required to redesign all tanks, which will be necessary to not have one tank end up strictly superior or inferior to all others, and the potential imbalance this redesign would bring.
For your idea to work we can't leave the other tanks in their current state, because then you just end up with another case where DRK has to spend resources for mitigation that the other tanks don't have to spend anything on.

[Shurrikhan]

For your idea to work we can't leave the other tanks in their current state, because then you just end up with another case where DRK has to spend resources for mitigation that the other tanks don't have to spend anything on.

Correct, though that's not to say that anything and everything has to be barred behind those two resources (as compared to the resource being, say, a way to "rush" their cooldowns or press the skill again during its effect in order to spend towards a secondary effect at no further button-cost).

If I were to detail it all out completely, that would of course be in the context of similar ground-up reworks to achieve the most depth, enjoyable flow, and distinction for each job that I can manage at minimum convolution (here being negative or "bloat"-like mirror to the more positively-spun "depth").

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Hair-brained idea (though actually from back before DRK's release):

I'd like DRK to be a sort of blackguard archetype, sort of the bastard pragmatist dirty-fighting tank with significant toolkit breadth at its disposal by which to accomplish fairly fine manipulations, favorable trade-offs, exploitations, capitalizations, etc.

Thematically, it should center around Blood and Shadow. Shadow comes from MP spent. Simple enough. Now the crazy part: I'd like DRK's "Blood" resource to actually come from... blood -- that is to say, from HP stolen or spent. Yes, you can spend HP.

I mentioned Blood Magic before. technically speaking, original Dark Knight did not have Blood Magic, just Dark Magic... but I think that Dark Knight should utilize Dark and Blood Magic. It is nice to see that someone else is also thinking about how to add Blood Magic into Dark Knight's design.
there are three kinds of Blood Magic, the first being the more friendly one, the other two being sacrifice, and sacrifice of? either sacrifice of your own blood, or sacrifice of the blood of others. my ideas were the first and third, so I like that you have ideas for the second.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Honestly I thought this thread was dead but here we are, thank you

I like the way you think not joking weaving on drk feels great and i love edge and flood - though I hate floods animations- I still love the feeling and yeah most of drk's magic was removed. I would love to hear your idea on how to bring back the old ways into a better light I'm sure we can do it

I wasn't stating that drk never had an identity, I just want us to be on the same page. We all see drk in a different light so I just wanted to be clear on what we want. Also yes I'm am aware of SS PS combo One of the best looking combos, scourge, Passage of arms (bubble party), deaths dance when reprisal was a proc, when salted earth didnt hurt bosses or and enemy that was in the air. I've played drk since HW i remember. I do wish for more buttons the 1-2-3 combo does get stale and seeing HS hurts me deeply but this is a one I would be satisfied if they just brought back PS as a combo finisher and make it give you something like mp/shield/dmg/or mit etc or do the SB machinist treatment and when heated was earned. With SE simplifying everything asking for two full combos seems to me like an improbability.

I would love to see more spells on drk

3.x was a good Drk more fine tuned and the gauge was the best in the game

I would like the idea of DA being used on other things not just a free Edge or flood.

Yes! Haft and haft, I feel like that was a core of drk as for could 3.x drk fix this i would have to brainstorm on that one but really I would love to read more. If you got a doc please let me know. As for me I haven't written it out but i have many ideas as well, but I wanted to see what everyone who plays drk feels before i make a concrete decision.

I acknowledge your thanks. =w=; some person had to come around poking the threads and making some noise, I was happy to be that instigator.

1, on weave / a lot of people liked old Dark Knight for its "speed".. and FFXIV has two kinds of speed... Monk GCD speed, and weave "illusion of speed".
I feel like the best thing for Dark Knight is the illusion of speed, that comes from weaving oGCDs between GCDs. but Dark Knight's current weave is dull and redundant... just Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow spam and the occasional big-CD oGCD.
to summarize my ideas, four words: various oGCDs, weave rotation. / GCD rotations and CD rotations exist, why not a weave rotation?

2, "bring back the old ways into a better light" / I literally have a more-than-20,000 characters(I forgot the word count) head-canon pet project for Dark Knight, that I call "Re-inventing Dark Knight: Blood Magic, Blood Weaving, and the Blood Sigil", where-in I have taken every action that Dark Knight has ever had, HW, SB, PvP-redisgned-into-PvE, and ShB, re-designed and remastered the old, tweaked the current, and completely over-haul re-designed Dark Knight, based off of taking its various versions and combining all of it, and then taking all of that and re-designing it to fit my Dark Knight head-canon.

3, on differing opinions / sadly, same issue as bard. I have even seen a fairly big "What is Bard?" thread, and it sad that it even needs to be questioned. Dark Knight has this same issue, a literal identity and existential crisis, and when asked "what is Dark Knight?", not all Dark Knights say the same thing. not even all dark knights want change and improvement, only a lot of us want change and improvement. but here-in lays the issue... we all want "change", there is little agreement on the what and how of this change.
different people see Dark Knight in different ways, and at this point, Dark Knight even has different fan "factions/groups", that split all of us up and divide us, based on what we want Dark Knight to be and/or think that Dark Knight is... I have no idea how to resolve that conundrum.

4, more spells on Dark Knight / I agree with that, and even went so far as to remaster Dark Knight's old deleted spell actions, and then even created some of my own actions and/or spell-actions, out of my own head-canon of Dark Knight.

5, about Dark Arts / go check out the Dark Arts-focused thread "Should Dark Arts Come Back in 6.0? If so, What Should the Skill Do?"
old Dark Arts is being debated to death.

6, whether or not I have a Doc / I do, but my pet project "re-inventing Dark Knight" is too amazing and high-quality "for FFXIV to handle". I would need to(be forced to?) dumb down at least half the thing, down to FFXIV level of dumb and simple, to make it "FFXIV-friendly and more compatible", unless I could convince the dev team of other-wise. And I will do that if I have to, I mean the dumb-down, as I did at least create my own ideas and remaster old actions to be theoretically completely compatible with FFXIV... I just.. am a complex woman, and so are my ideas, but FFXIV has been made dumb and simple, so my "not compatible" concern is being blown off and rejected over "too complex".

[Vatom]

Thematically, it should center around Blood and Shadow. Shadow comes from MP spent. Simple enough. Now the crazy part: I'd like DRK's "Blood" resource to actually come from... blood -- that is to say, from HP stolen or spent. Yes, you can spend HP.

No pitch forks here, kinda like the idea though i can see some complications with LD but if Blackest night can mit some of that damage could see this working pretty smoothly and it would help if it doesn't pop either. As for resources drk uses Mp and gauge adding another might be alot for less seasoned players but idk that will need more thought.

5, about Dark Arts / go check out the Dark Arts-focused thread "Should Dark Arts Come Back in 6.0? If so, What Should the Skill Do?"
old Dark Arts is being debated to death.

Checked it out, read it all, brain hurts but saw some good concepts
Still dont think we need to have a spam dps button but! I do like the concept of it being on the gauge and changing your combo to another move, it could bring back other combos in a clever way.

Gonna spit ball a concept real quick see if this is a good one just a few ideas I was thinking about

Delirium have it give you unaspected dmg instead and haft you mp cost of all abilities for a duration and its on the gauge (cost 25-50)

Blood weapon Give it back the haste and keep the mp/ gauge gain but also give it 2 stacks same CD or longer

"New" Dark Arts (Just to give this idea a name) on the gauge cost (10 - 25) 10 might be too low this changes you 1-2-3 combo into different types of moves like scourge or power attack (Similar to the Mach treatment with heated back in SB)

Bloodspiller and quietus take them off the gauge and give them the atonement treatment where if you perform finisher like Stalwart or soul eater or enhanced versions it allows you to use like 3 for a duration of 25s

though I look back at this now and think maybe this is a bit much Se might not ever do that. Ill keep brainstorming.

Also I too have thought of a overhaul to Drk that involved Darkside coming back as a stance dance but no in the keep aggro sort of speak but enough of that what is this Dark sigil? sounds sick.

[Shurrikhan]

No pitch forks here, kinda like the idea though i can see some complications with LD but if Blackest night can mit some of that damage could see this working pretty smoothly and it would help if it doesn't pop either. As for resources drk uses Mp and gauge adding another might be alot for less seasoned players but idk that will need more thought.

• Suggestion that involves a damn near from-scratch rework.
• Assumedly, Living Dead, of all things, would remain exactly the same...
• ???

I kid, but really, don't worry. There are many ways to handle LD's niche without it being a miserable disappointment at odds with any given set of adjustments.

For instance, LD could, in effect, just allow you to go into negative HP for 10-12 seconds, while a trait like Blood for Blood (a.k.a. "healer's bane") more than linearly increases DRK's self-healing based on their missing %HP (including that negative portion from LD, or, say, damage delayed by Dark Dance) for some sweet, sweet empowered Souleaters or Abyssal Drains. Since it'd technically provide no mitigation, it could also afford a shorter cooldown than most while having iconically DRK-ish slight DPS value in its optimization (and not just through healing spared).

[Kabooa]

Basically, I want DRK to be a gigabrain tank with uniquely interesting healer co-play and exceptional reason to vary its pacing while playing around certain pivotal CDs or soft-CDs (e.g., DoTs, like a returned Scourge).

Rubs hands together with gigabrain intent.

No more MP. Hear me out.

Using Edge/Flood now reduces maximum HP, as well as losing any HP over the excess of your new HP total. You cannot reduce your maximum hp to 0%. This is the 'blood' cost of utilizing your dark skills. The cooldown of these skills will likely also be increased, but frankly, for a hypothetical build, they can stay at 3s for all I care.

You are given this visual information with the new Blood Gauge - 3 notches indicating your current status. Each gauge of this that is filled grants you 20% mitigation, stacking additively, as well as 20% penalty on all healing received, and the -25% maximum health.

Boring Math as to why.

Let us say you have 100 HP. You Edge yourself down to 25 HP.

You have an additional 60% mitigation, meaning you effectively have 60 HP.

The Blackest Night grants you health equal to 1 Blood pip, improving your baseline EHP to 50. At 60% mitigation, you have 125 EHP.

The healing penalty keeps healing proportionate to your damage intake and curbs abuse cases with Non-TBN shields. TBN for the Dar Knight is a cornerstone defense, and it is tuned so that the Dark's EHP upon using it is equivalent at all blood pips.

How much blood each Edge/Flood generates will be based on how stupid this should get. For the sake of sanity, it should probably generate '3'.

'2' and you're constantly doing simple arithmetic. Whether that's a problem or not is up to the individual.

'1' and, well.

Utilizing Blood skills restores your maximum HP, but it does not necessarily heal you. This means in order to get moar Floods/Edges, you need to dump your blood gauge, but do so in a manner that won't end up with you dying as a result. Lets go over a few options.

Bloodspiller/Quietus - Now that Blood is no longer a fill-gauge, these weaponskills instead cost 1 of blood. The exact dynamic of these skills can vary widely, but they'd always be available, but at reduced potency. These are your last choice in managing Blood. Probably turn these into buff granters.

Abyssal Drain - Remains an OGCD with a cooldown. Removes all Blood, dealing AoE potency scaling up for each pip removed, and healing for damage dealt.

TBN - Cooldown increased as it no longer has an MP cost. TBN, upon breaking, removes 1 Blood and heals for 25% of your actual maximum HP.

Blood Weapon - Costs 1 Blood, has a recast. Grants your weaponskills %Lifesteal.

Delirium - Removes all blood, has a recast. Shortens the recast of Edge/Flood of shadow.

Living Dead - Locks your blood gauge as well as abilities that utilize it for 8 seconds. Nullifies most attacks, removing 1 blood for each attack nullified. Ends at 0 Blood, after 8 seconds, or upon pressing Living Dead again (with a short internal CD to prevent misfires).

The effective goal, obviously, being more Edges / Floods, and avoiding utilizing GCDs to do so, and avoiding doing it in a such a manner that you end up paste, while also taking advantage of huge TBN effectively being a 100% Max HP shield, and taking advantage of timed healing skills like Earthly Star, Excog, group AoEs, etc to an extent that other tanks don't.