Dark Knight Megathread

[KatsuraJun]

It still is horrendous. As a tank out of all jobs with boring and lazy animations is nothing but disappointing after many people complained about DRK. I was hoping for the Dark Arts 5.0 removal, it seems however they learned nothing and just expanded on what was already a pretty terrible job in its current iteration.

removing dark arts is exactly why DRK is the way it is now. they didn't learn nothing. they listened to exactly what people asked for back in SB and are sticking to it.

it's not a coincidence that all interplay between blood and mana is gone. it's not a coincidence that resource management has become simplified. SB dark arts was the lynchpin holding these gameplay systems together - it was essentially a 0 cooldown way to manipulate your mana to whatever number you needed it to be for your upcoming cooldowns or mechanics. without it, all these systems fell apart and were naturally excised from the game as a result.

people asked for this and that's why we have this.
and, enough people are happy with it now that it's not going to change - at least for the foreseeable future.

[Bhearil]

removing dark arts is exactly why DRK is the way it is now. they didn't learn nothing. they listened to exactly what people asked for back in SB and are sticking to it.

it's not a coincidence that all interplay between blood and mana is gone. it's not a coincidence that resource management has become simplified. SB dark arts was the lynchpin holding these gameplay systems together - it was essentially a 0 cooldown way to manipulate your mana to whatever number you needed it to be for your upcoming cooldowns or mechanics. without it, all these systems fell apart and were naturally excised from the game as a result.

people asked for this and that's why we have this.
and, enough people are happy with it now that it's not going to change - at least for the foreseeable future.

Really hope that those happy players keep playing tanks because i foresee a heavy lack of tanks coming this expansion, and no ammount of tank mounts is gonna fix that at this rate

[ArianeEwah]

people asked for this and that's why we have this.
and, enough people are happy with it now that it's not going to change - at least for the foreseeable future.

NO, "people" didn't ask for the removal of Dark Arts, they asked for the spam to stop. And I get that, SB DA was used 10x/minute at full uptime. That's way over the top for an ability. Even Onslaught held on CD would be 6x/min, and the action is situational!
HW DA was kinda clunky because of its long CD (3s) which was changed in SB to 2s, but unfortuntely with many other changes to the DRK MP system.

Nevertheless, the first DRK to clear UWU actually said, they played DRK because they thought it was fun. Well, if a "pro gamer" was happy with it, why did it have to change in the first place?

I don't think "enough people" are the reason why DRK doesn't change in EW, but the fact they just WANT to build upon 5.0 jobs - unless your job is SMN! - and they are heavily understaffed.
Also, I get the feeling that too many of todays DRK players are from the old SB Warrior faction, as well as mayn newcomers that wanted to play the poster boy of Shadowbringers. Just my theory!

[KatsuraJun]

NO, "people" didn't ask for the removal of Dark Arts, they asked for the spam to stop. And I get that, SB DA was used 10x/minute at full uptime. That's way over the top for an ability. Even Onslaught held on CD would be 6x/min, and the action is situational!

removing the spam* aspect of it is functionally deleting it in the context of SB DRK's gameplay loop

need proof? we basically have exactly what you're asking for: edge of darkness is functionally the same as a "less spammy dark arts" - an mp dump without a cooldown - except it costs 2x as much mp and does 2x as much damage - meaning you press it a lot less for the same result.

it's also terribly boring because of that, as dumping mp when you're about to cap becomes twice as easy. not that there's even a risk of that anymore now that BW+Delirium is also gone, because there's no meaning in *that* anymore either when you don't need to plan for it. SB DRK literally couldn't spend mp fast enough to deplete the mana you'd gain during BW+Delirium windows, which is why using dark arts exactly the right amount in preparation for those windows was important. if you were to transplant edge of darkness into SB era DRK, it would become trivial since you can spend mp twice as fast now so you don't need to prepare anything. thus, it too was excised.

*and to add, I don't consider it "spammy" because using it a lot - but not too much where you can't cast CnS/TBN/etc - is exactly how it played into resource management and the punishment for not doing it properly: your oGCD windows become clogged and you can't spend mp fast enough in the aforementioned BW+Delirium windows.

Nevertheless, the first DRK to clear UWU actually said, they played DRK because they thought it was fun. Well, if a "pro gamer" was happy with it, why did it have to change in the first place?

idk where you got the impression I wanted it to change
I didn't want it to change.
i'm still buttmad over it, really.

[ArianeEwah]

removing the spam* aspect of it is functionally deleting it in the context of SB DRK's gameplay loop

need proof?

Removing the spam means to change the MP system as a whole which was working well enough during HW, but not the removal of the action itself, that's my point.

I don't know what you wanna tell me with your "proof"!?? I know that Egde and Flood are essentially old DA, and the new DA (TBN proc) is mistreatment of the term. Tho, your math is off: DA cost in SB was 2.4k with 9.48k max MP pool. It's todays MP cost would lie between 2.5k-2.6k MP, thus Edge/Flood cost is roughly 20% higher than DA. (admittedly, maybe its twice its cost if you take the MP gain into account) Its potency however is even higher than 2x the old DA, even when we just look at Edge of Darkness, but more than trice the potency for Edge of Shadow.
But that's trying to compare apples with oranges, ShB DRK =/= HW/StB DRK.

WE both know that because of many aspects, the MP gain in StB and ShB differ way too much. But there is still the question: Was it really necessary to replace DA with Edge/Flood, when all they had to do was to adjust the potency and the MP cost? I think not. But I believe they made it, so it would seem they actually cared (which they didn't, they just made the job more flashy as the poster boy).

idk where you got the impression I wanted it to change
I didn't want it to change.
i'm still buttmad over it, really.

Where did I say, that YOU wanted it to change? You stated that "enough people" were "happy" with the ShB changes for them to stay, I simply brought in an example to counter that argument. If the first pro to complete UWU on DRK said it was fun to play, how and why did SE change the job in the first place?
I just believe "they HAD to be lazy" about the job. The job was a mess, but imo a more fun mess than what we have now, or what we will have very soon. And "they HAD to be lazy" because they are lacking manpower, probably even without any dude there playing tank in the first place. DPS jobs get all the attention they can get, but we tanks are nothing more than 2nd class jobs! Healers might even be 3rd class, or share the seat with us.

It was kinda excusable for ShB because they reworked much more in a shorter time period of 1 month after the last patch, leading from StB to ShB.
HOWEVER, the last patch for ShB was in July! The release of EW is in November. Whole 4(!) months, 300% MORE time to rethink and adjust literally ANYTHING, and this is the result? A freaking 2 more actions with pretty much no adjustment on any tank job?
They have no excuse for this much of a horrendous flop!

I could've though of a 3rd cartridge gauge increase, actually 90% of GNB predicted this! Most also thought of a 2 cartridges cost move. (looks good tho)
2/4 tanks now have a burst finisher move, and DRK has a semi-burst finisher move (Edge -> (new?) upgraded Flood)
They thought of finisher moves for ALL jobs, and if that's the only change to tanks, well... then even a kindergarden kid could've thought of this!
If they are acting around those mental states, we really have to question whether it's actually worth putting our money into their "work".

[KatsuraJun]

Tho, your math is off

don't forget potency creep too. I know the math doesn't exactly line up so neatly, but the general idea is the same - it increased the damage and mp cost so you'd press the button less for roughly the same result.

Was it really necessary to replace DA with Edge/Flood, when all they had to do was to adjust the potency and the MP cost?

that's kinda what I was getting into with my "proof." you are right that SB DRK =/= ShB DRK. that's my point of *why* they removed all these things. let me explain with more clearly with proper capitalization lmao

cont.

[KatsuraJun]

cont.

So what were the big additions to DRK in SB? TBN and Delirium. These things replaced some of the old timer/rotation gameplay in DRK's HW kit (keeping old delirium and scourge up) with one that was entirely focused on managing your resource bars - Blood and Mana. How did this work? Forgive me if you already know, but I need to describe it to set my point up.

-TBN: Was, and still is an incredibly powerful tool at the time. But it worked differently in SB in one critical way: the fact that it added 50 Blood, instead of adding an Edge cast, meant you wanted to use Bloodspiller to keep your Blood below 50 if you were going to shield. Of course, you still wanted to have mana so you could actually cast the thing.

-Delirium: Was a huge injection of mana. Such a big injection, actually, that you couldn't empty your MP bar faster than you could spend it even if you used Dark Arts on every single oGCD possible during its window. So ideally, you wanted to keep your MP bar low before a Delirium through Dark Arts. But it cost 50 blood, so you also wanted to keep 50 Blood.

You can see how these two abilities - the most powerful in SB DRK's arsenal - wanted the exact opposite gamestates for your Blood and MP. And what was the punishment for messing this balancing act up? Well, this ties into why Dark Arts is so "spammy" - if you didn't plan ahead before a Delirium window, you would be forced to mash Dark Arts on every oGCD window available to minimize the loss. It ran the very real risk of pushing your other oGCDs backwards, or making it difficult to cast defensives, especially with the faster GCD during Blood Weapon. It was the punishment for not playing properly. Of course, if you mashed Dark Arts too much trying to prepare for this, you'd end up at 0 mana without the ability to cast your other stuff.

Adjusting the MP and potency for less "spam" removes this penalty for messing up, because then you could easily dump your MP even in during Delirium fast enough that it's a non-issue. There becomes 0 risk to just holding enough MP to do whatever you might need it for without planning ahead, because if you even come close to the risk of capping, you can dump your entire bar with 3 Edge of Shadow casts windows easily. It would render the entire thing I described up above rather meaningless, which is why I think they pretty much deleted it all.

You stated that "enough people" were "happy" with the ShB changes for them to stay, I simply brought in an example to counter that argument.

I hate to say this - but outside of the OF, I've seen more people rejoice new DRK than revile it. That's why I say "I guess people are happy with it." Yeah, I hate it. But on Discord, Reddit, etc a lot of people are fine with it. Some even love it. I'm not gonna speculate on whether they're former WAR mains or whatever, but that's what i mean by - it is what it is. Unfortunately. All you or I can do is sit here and seethe about it, really. Up to now, I hoped they were in the minority - but we look here and DRK remains the same. So I can only assume the opposite is true, I suppose. SE is the one with the player stats, after all.

[Shin96]

I hate to say this - but outside of the OF, I've seen more people rejoice new DRK than revile it. That's why I say "I guess people are happy with it." Yeah, I hate it. But on Discord, Reddit, etc a lot of people are fine with it. Some even love it.

That's usually the hive mind mentality around these places. Say something else and you're shunned or might be confronted on something stupid like Inner Delirium. It's alright if people like the "new" DRK but it leaves you with a bitter aftertaste for what's to come in the future. All we can do is keep this thread alive with seemingly no hope for reconciliation on the developers part. Or, the more painful option; quitting the game or simply adjust.