Dark Knight Megathread

[WhyAmIHere]

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I love it when folks are able to be more versed than me in trying to convey what i'd want to convey. makes it easier to use their words for me.
But yeah this is the crux of my point. old Dark Arts was too widely spread in application, and when implemented in a more focused manner ala Kaiten or Continuation, you see the ability as meaningful. It's not as spammy, it's ony got a specific use for it, and it's not hit all the time.
Its that lack of focus and effort on part of the job design team that I lament. Dark Arts could've been cool to use had it's usage been adjusted at all, like how Kaiten is specific in what it's best to use on, or in Continuation, in that it's only able to be used after specific actions taken; those specific actions themselves are also not moves that the player will be hitting all the time, but in this case every 30 seconds.

Whoa, there's a lot of anger going on in here. Until I know exactly what the gameplay loop looks like, I would still say a lot of this preamble is premature, and there's no need to be this explosive. I know people are really tired of getting screwed every single expansion somehow and not being listened to. I went from hating LD, to viscerally hating Delirium, to now just biding my time. The biggest problem with DRK isn't Delirium, it's not Blood Weapon, it isn't the MP economy, it isn't the Spell 2.5 GCD, and it isn't Living Dead. It's this.



If this fundamental awful problem of being incredibly boring outside burst can be fixed in EW, I think it would take a LOT of focus off Delirium being the "core" of the DRK burst, even though it REALLY ISN'T. People laser focus on things like Delirium because the kit has nothing else worthwhile or engaging, except TBN, which is debatable. DRK resembles NIN minus mudras a lot more than it resembles WAR when you play it at the maximum, optimized potential. But again, SE has failed to make that obvious by being lazy with their cooldown design, and striking dummy-like boss design, causing this divide.

DRK is not strictly a WAR clone, it isn't, from where the majority of the damage bursts are, to the underlying mechanics, to how I actually approach things like mitigation and set-up.But I don't blame anyone for saying that it is when the rest of the kit is bone-dry like this, and PARTICULARY when there is like maybe two relevant fights in the entire game where DRK can really shine and set itself apart from other tanks. We needed way more information on how tanks are going to distinguish themselves in content in those LL slides than what we got. Since we didn't we just get to scream in the void at each other for a few more weeks.

I'd agree that DRK and NIN do play similarly, minus mudras. But the "All it does is spam it's 1-2-3 combo" isn't necessarily the biggest issue, but I'd say it's adjacent to the bigger issue: What does DRK do that makes it special? What sets it apart from it's peers, how valuable is it, what impact does it bring?

Personally, all I'm waiting to see is how DRK will/wont have changed going in to Endwalker. What will Salted Earth 2.0 do? Is it's potency increased? It's duration? What about this Peppered Earth ability? What'll that do? Is it a DoT, or just damage? Can it be used multiple times during Salted's duration? Does it generate MP/Blood?
Then there's the Dark Wave looking ability. Is it only available after using Edge/Flood of Shadow? Is it free or does it cost MP / Blood? Will it give a free Derp Arts* proc?
Abyssal Drain then, is it's heal being adjusted to make up for using it against a single target when compared to the potency heal given by Equilibrium/Aurora/Clemency? Is it's recast being adjusted? It's potency?

Other than that, typically job trailers will have shown off all abilities one can look forward to on launch. I didn't see any big move to end the Delirium window, but we also strangely didn't see 3x Bloodspillers after Delirium anyway. WAR? Nah, 3 Fell Cleaves, ending with the overhead leaping spinnaroonie bananaslamma smash.
That looked cool, that looked impactful. DRK failed to impress, and if it'll just be more of the same come EW, I think I'll keep posting here to voice my dissatisfaction with the job.

I miss my resource management. It's the tank that's most suited to that, with two individual gauges that used to be more interactive with each other. The skeleton for a unique identity and gameplay's there, but the amount of effort it'd take to develop and balance something as wide as that gameplay mentality is IMO something the dev team doesn't want to "waste developer time and resources on," so easy route it is, for an already small portion of the playerbase.