Dark Knight Megathread

[Tsiron]

It never occurred to me until now how ironic it is that DRK got gutted to hell in the expansion it was the poster Job for lmao...

[Jakulo]

I feel the drk hate has really ruined what should have been a exciting time for me. If dark knight died then it was sb that killed it, shb drk just took its place. I liked sb drk as well as shb drk. The latter needed more things added but I enjoyed it none the less. All I wanted in ew was more depth added to the job and a delirium rework. The depth part we'll have to wait and delirium is here to stay which is a big disappointment but I can live with it. I feel like a lot of people don't realize that drk can only go up since the rework, whether the new stuff will be enough to satisfy those that hated the rework is yet to be seen but I have no doubt it will be better as long as nothing is removed this time which seems to be the case.

The new line aoe being a gcd (the yellow aura when it was used) is very interesting since so far it doesn't seem to interact with darkside or blood. It was only used during living shadow after an edge of shadow with exactly 10 second in between. The tank panel basically ignored it only mentioning esteem will use it when you get it. Someone earlier mentioned it could just be like drg's nastrond but why didn't they just tell us drk can use a new action during living shadow like they did with the rest of the jobs?

Smaller things:
Salted earth's duration is unchanged and the cd is either still 90s or changed to something other than 60s.
Dark art wasn't shown but the gauge is still there, it wasn't shown during shb's show case either so maybe breaking tbn is just a pain. The new defensive cd isn't tied to tbn but I wonder if it has any interaction with dark art.
Mp generation and cost is unknown. The cost of abilities used during the showcase was barely possible at current values if the regen tick was perfect, assuming none of the new abilities cost mp.
Bloodspiller wasn't used but living shadow still had it.

[OdinelStarrei]

Your response seems like an inner conflict and I do not blame you. You made alot of great posts in the past and did your best to contribute in a positive way yet, we ended up with this version of DRK. You quoted me directly, so I know this is somewhat serious.

This sticks out to me quite a bit. I'll be first to admit that I have had an inner conflict for years now, there was a serious fire in me since the original reveal to push back against the change, and return to a DRK I found not necessarily, or objectively better, but one that fit me more accurately. The only reason I have a forum account is to take the knowledge I've gained from years of play, talk with other people, and try to make some constructive improvements to my main.

Two and a half years later of ShB, over five years of a DRK main later, I'm just tired now. The fire has gone out, and I can't keep praying and hoping for something I know isn't going to happen. Going from someone who was on the front lines of the Anti-rework side for so long, and now actually trying to defend and support the rework is draining in ways I didn't think were possible for a class in an MMO.

With that said, I think people are being melodramatic. We don't need more eulogies about how good the previous versions were, all it's doing is tying us down, and ensuring no one will ever be happy with the job. And I think that's the reality we need to face, that certain people are straight up never going to be happy with the job again, and the new version of it for better or worse, is here to stay.

To justify this change in tone, I'd like to point to the last job action trailer, one I had significant problems with back then. We had so much more information, we had MP information, we had Blood change information, we had actual knowledge of what Darkside did, what EoS did, and could surmise what Esteem's function was. Most importantly, we were able to have tooltips literally the next day, and start planning rotations, gameplay loops, etc etc. And a lot of us didn't like what we saw, justifiably.

Compare that to this time. We have very little idea of what meaningful changes are coming, if any. The only thing we have are animations, but we know almost nothing of the interactions, or how things lead to each other. This time around, we have actually zero information on the things that actually impact the gameplay loop, that AoE GCD being the primary point of interest. SE, as is their typical style, didn't say anything worthwhile. We don't have tooltips for another month, so we can't do anything but speculate. We don't have enough information to make wide-swept statements like what's been prevalent across the DRK-scape lately. It's too early. There are too many unknowns, things gaining charges, cooldown reductions that might affect the MP/Blood economy, BW changes, what the new shield even does, none of that stuff is going to be things we can gleam without someone putting up a list of tooltips.

That being said, we do know one thing. We lost. The core of the rework and gameplay experience stays. So, with that fact in mind, people need to come an end of the road for this. Either you deal with what we have, make the best of it, and move forward. Or you hang up the greatsword, and maybe the game as a whole. We will not be going back. This has made people actually miserable, and I know more than a few people from HW/SB who dropped because of ShB go and pretty much put the nail in the coffin for the job with the trailer. And I just think we need more concrete information first before making any judgements on EW, even if what we have right now isn't too exciting.

I'm going to try to look for positives this time, and if there are none to be found once I have actual, real information, that'll be okay with me. There is no shame in giving up.

(Except if new line AoE GCD is just Nastrond on DRK. I'll be pretty disappointed.)

[Baxcel]

It never occurred to me until now how ironic it is that DRK got gutted to hell in the expansion it was the poster Job for lmao...

There's a reason most people joke about the poster job being destroyed for its expansion.. at least from StB onwards.

Monk got hit kinda hard is StB and was changed..
SAM was a shared poster job and it was nerfed down(fair it needed it at the start)
DRK got destroyed in ShB
We were saying RIP to pally not to long ago.. but SE might of broken their "break the posterboy" curse with pally changes.. tho of all they got was the 3 new confinder skills that's pretty lame too

[Lyth]

...

Like I said earlier, I don't have enough information to judge the upcoming iteration. I'm mainly worried about what they're going to do with the defensive actions.

I know that some people wanted a new combo. There's a few problems with this. First, with about three new abilities each expansion, that's your expansion worth of new abilities right there. Not terribly exciting. Second, there's an action budget for every job. If you look at the tanks, DRK and WAR have 23 job specific buttons, GNB has 25, and PLD has 26. (For reference, BLU's create your own job action list has 24 slots.) You can see that they've tried to further merge down some actions on GNB already by turning Gnashing Fang into a one button combo. I wouldn't be surprised if PLD had some button merges as well. The question is what do you give up to fit that extra combo in? Maybe Salted Earth? If we're going to be trading in new actions for old ones, I'd rather see something with a bit of synergy with existing actions, especially Living Shadow.

Nobody used the 'branching combo' in 4.0. It's not like you were adding in a bit of variety with Power Slash. The addition of Shirk meant that you just didn't have to use it. I'll accept that 4.0 removed a dps combo that may have provided a bit of variation in your rotation. But the one-combo job meme actually dates back to Stormblood's launch, used mostly by other tanks who wanted to prove that the job wasn't as complex as it once was. I think a lot of the drive to add on more combos stems from a reaction to those taunts. So none of this sentiment is new, and the overwhelming majority of DRK mains hated the Stormblood iteration with a passion when it was out. Most of the actions that people wax nostalgic about were actually removed during the job changes at Stormblood's launch. Shadowbringers just streamlined and added quality of life changes to what was left over of the job after Stormblood.

...

We can't comment on their internal decision-making process, but I've seen plenty of changes previously suggested here or on reddit before they get implemented in game. They just don't always acknowledge that they're looking at something before they do it. The 4.3 revision pretty much came straight from the forum feedback, as did the removal of Dark Arts. The removal of tank stances followed after a series of discussions here as well. Reworks to Raw Intuition as well as the upcoming Onslaught change were things that I've seen players specifically ask for before being brought in. The movement towards MCH being more Edgar themed to bring in some series nostalgia was also something that I've seen asked for on these forums dating back to Stormblood. We've had multiple discussions in these forums more recently about rewarding timed mitigation moves, so it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that as well.

I don't think the issue is their awareness of feedback, it's more that you can't tell what's being looked at and how they're processing that information, because there just isn't that two way back and forth. And sometimes things get implemented with good intentions in a less than ideal way.

[Garnix]

The job actions trailer is just showing the new flashy things.
PLD got 3 new flashy spells. But I really doubt that it will add much to the job aside from looking even flashier.
So I don't see a reason for DRK to complain they did not get anything.

They obviously pick a job or two for a full rework in each expansion.
Dark Knight already got it in 5.0, so IMO it would have been surprising to see it completely reworked already.

I still believe that a lot can be done for the current DRK with simple cooldowns changes and the addition of some more oGCDs.
Delirium becoming a 60s recast is already a really good improvement IMO.

[AC9Breaker]

Dark Knight is fine guys, lol

[shao32]

snip

I know they look at our feedback in a way on aonther, idk about the influencers part bcs if that's true it would be extremly unfair that my fav job changes depend of the WAR fanboy xenoxys vex.

To be more precise i have with SE a constant feeling that DRK feedback it's never taken in to real consideration due how they decide to make changes on the job, you can look at any other job in the game and see they get way more accurate ajustments and reworks, look at summoner how finally get those good loocking primals attacks that ppl have been asking but when DRK spend 2 years complaing for example about Inner delirium that even the JP forum hate and request changes on the skill bcs Bloodspiller is not fun to spam what they do? keep it of course, i don't know who they operate from inside but for me is they have something against DRK, im so tiring to fight for this job and don't even get the most fair and justificable complains that can be solve easily like Delirium or living dead, they have zero consideration specially when they say they don't want to bring HW complexity and such and then proceed to show PLD new fantastic magic swrod combo on top of what they have.

Probably im just to burn right now of dealing with this for so long but i just wanted the same dedicated treatment other jobs get, i guess thats was just much to ask.

[Shin96]

-snip-

Well a streamer brings in new players, which translates into profit for SE. The gaming market has opened up to all kinds of people, and the majority of them are casuals. It's debatable that alot of people we have today will stick around after Endwalker, some of them may quit earlier, but regardless, that company is going to rake in massive profits. Every company nowadays is getting greedier progressively. FFXIV is definitely an exception to the rule as SE is offering a solid product here for the most part.

The reason we are on the losing side is because your average FFXIV player doesn't necessarily care all that much about gameplay. On average, you're not going to find an expert on rotational experience. It's incredibly easy to satisfy a person with lower standards; they just want to have fun. Dumb it down, make it easy. The fact that alot of players wanted Male Viera more than a Deep Dungeon or gameplay changes speaks volumes for itself. That's your core demographic and any company's blessing in terms of a customer base.

I think we got disappointed so much by ShB that we ended up with a jaded view on future aspects involving this job. Wait it out, see what happens. If it's anything like 5.0.. At least Scholars are joining us, that's something.

[RinaB]

I wasn't angry with the live letter, just sort of left going...hmm what's the point? I was hoping they would try and find some sort of compromise between the 5.0 DRK design and the HWS design since so many people loved it but we got a cracker with nothing on it...I will be maining WAR in EW as their changes are gonna feel really good....I think lol