Dark Knight Megathread

[Dingodrole]

That's been bugging me a bit, I'm glad you brought it up. Why is SquareEnix so Cheap with Dark Knight Mana Regen? Edge & Flood of Shadow is 3000 MANA, The Blackest Night is 3000 MANA to cast, that MANA will always get spent Fast but the Mana Regen is a measly 600 Mana per hit instead of 1000/1500 etc at least, that's some Cheap Ass, Penny Pinching, Tight Wad attitude they got.

At least with the Paladin if I expend my Mana doing the Requiescat Holy Spirit, Holy Circle, Confiteor Spam (and Self Clemency :P) I can fall back on Sword Phase DPS Goring Blade & Royal Authority-Atonement Skills to annihilate mobs and bosses. And my Short Cooldown Sheltron (soon to be Holy Sheltron) is on Oath resource, no cost to Mana, just 5 auto attacks easy.

Bloodspiller under Delirium gives 200mp, and Quietus gives 600mp. The 600 you see is from Bloodweapon, while the 200 comes from Delirium

[Agner]

snip

The mega tl;dr for DRK is: Functional, but boring.

It's always been clunky to some degree, but it was endearing and fun before. I'd even apply that for 4.0—it was clunky as hell, but I never wanted to play another tank! With ShB and other upcoming changes, I don't even know if I want to bother leveling it anymore.

I will confess my post prior was incredibly harsh and mean-spirited, but it genuinely just feels like this job was purely adjusted only for balance. It doesn't feel like any love/artistry/creativity was put into it. I'd play a job that was complete garbage in balance as long as I found it fun, even if it meant shooting myself in the foot—and ideally there would be a middle ground found for that kind of thing.

[Rosenstrauch]

I just noticed this. (Image)

Look at the MP gained from Bloodspiller. 600MP. If this goes live Delirium is going to be actively nerfed. Presently 5 Bloodspillers under Delirium would at least generate enough MP to allow one use of TBN/Edge or Flood of Shadow. That will not be the case come Endwalker.

A correction here: Presently, Bloodspiller generates 200 MP under the effects of Delirium, not 600. It generates 600 MP under the effects of Blood Weapon—these effects are separate, and so if you have both active you'll see "Bloodspiller 200MP" and "Bloodspiller 600MP", just like in that screenshot. Which means that, at least up to that build, Delirium and Blood Weapon's MP generation per weaponskill is unchanged from Shadowbringers. Which is to say we'll get 400 less MP from Delirium-enhanced Bloodspillers, not 1,200 less.

That aside, I still think it's bizarre that Delirium-enhanced Bloodspillers only generate 200 MP to begin with.

[ArthurATDayne]

Bloodspiller under Delirium gives 200mp, and Quietus gives 600mp. The 600 you see is from Bloodweapon, while the 200 comes from Delirium

SquareEnix's approach to Dark Knight Mana Regen is like those guys who split 2-ply toilet paper rolls into 1-ply and then tell you it's Good, More Than Enough.

Or those guys who hand out Coupon Books to employees instead of actual bonuses end of the year.

[TheRealQuah]

DRK was good before - it's still good now.
People who didn't like it before still don't like it - big surprise.

Blood Weapon is fine. 5 stacks would make more sense but there isn't anything wrong with it now if you know how to use it correctly.
Living Dead is still fine - you use invulns as a planned out cooldown in fights. It's not a "last resort" button - once again works fine if you know how. Only issue I have with it is that now all invulns are 10s in length, it's cooldown and holmgang should be switched,

People complaining about not having a buffed up defensive like the others? How do you add an extra effect to TBN? Heal on it is pointless. Excog on it is pointless. So we get an extra defensive.

DRK was already the best tank because of TBN - now they have 1 more defensive on top - lots of extra flexibility there. DRK is the undisputed king MT.

Intervention, Nascent, Heart - can all have their fancy effects. With a DRK - TBN + Oblation you don't take any damage anyway, so you don't need fancy effects.

On top of all this DRK has had the biggest increases in damage potential out of all tanks, and looks now to be rivalling GNB for being the biggest damage.

A lot of the doom and gloom I see around here is from people who do not play the game at a high level, or do not understand how jobs and skills interact in the game. If you don't like the gameplay loop then that's fair - there are 20 other jobs in the game for you to find something to like. I don't like MNK, SCH or GNB - too busy, too clunky, too boring - but that's okay.

I think we will still see the majority of the games best tank players in the game going for DRK - it still seems to be the consensus that DRK/GNB will be the best combo.

There are some minor things that can be improved on, but right now DRK is looking very strong.

[Kabooa]

People complaining about not having a buffed up defensive like the others? How do you add an extra effect to TBN? Heal on it is pointless. Excog on it is pointless. So we get an extra defensive..

I'm generally not one for doom and gloom either, but with the information we have at hand, TBN is the weakest short CD of them all by a significant margin.

Oblation is...uninspiring in its current form and does not shore up the difference between TBN and its peers.

[RyuDragnier]

IDK how to best signal boost our voices from here, but we shouldn't just do what we have been for the last 6+ years and expect it to work now.

It's simple. Don't take DRK into endgame content, instead take anything else. Let the numbers on raid clears for DRK fall so far down that they're forced to react to it. They'll react to the numbers showing that nobody is raiding with it, since that means that obviously something is wrong with the job.

[ItMe]

Let the numbers on raid clears for DRK fall so far down that they're forced to react to it. They'll react to the numbers showing that nobody is raiding with it, since that means that obviously something is wrong with the job.

Is this something they monitor?
Do they check our raid clears as an indication of... job satisfaction?

The only metric I was aware they used was "did people make this jobs relic?"

[RyuDragnier]

Is this something they monitor?
Do they check our raid clears as an indication of... job satisfaction?

The only metric I was aware they used was "did people make this jobs relic?"

They tend to balance around endgame, and watch the metrics closely. I remember them making on a statement on a job in the past that nobody really took into savage raids and ended up buffing them a patch or two later.

[ArthurATDayne]

How do you add an extra effect to TBN? Heal on it is pointless. Excog on it is pointless. So we get an extra defensive.

A lot of the doom and gloom I see around here is from people who do not play the game at a high level, or do not understand how jobs and skills interact in the game.

Doom and gloom my ass, a lot of the suggestions on this thread have plenty of merit, these guys clearly care about having fun and want to better enjoy the Dark Knight class. A lot of your rhetorical questions and comments can be addressed by going back and RAFFO (Read and F-----gFind Out), here's a suggestion I posted earlier to make that 80-90 Dark Knight experience not so Lame and a lot more rewarding:


Level 82 Integrate Oblation's 10% damage reduction into The Blackest Night when bubble pops or expires 5 Seconds Reduced Damage Taken Effect, Hell, make it 15% or have a small Heal over Time whatever, will save on a Skill and Keybind too.

The 10-15% Reduced Damage Taken will only have a total of 20 seconds uptime per 60 seconds because The Blackest Night can only be used 4 Times Per Minute due to 15 Second CD. If The Dark Knight takes enough damage to pop that TBN shield long before TBN's 7 second duration, it's a pretty damn good sign the player is going to need to hit some other mitigation cooldown soon anyway. Ease of Use, Quality of Life Improvement and Improved short cooldown tank mitigation in line with PLD/GNB/WAR upgrades.

Level 84: Living Shadow acquires Trait Move Your Ass and immediately Moves his or her ass to the enemies and starts fighting instead of posing and catwalking wasting time. This will at least be better than Enhanced Unmend LMAO

Level 86 and 88: The same increases potency of Melee & Living Shadow attacks

Level 90: Shadowbringer replaces Bloodweapon, 2 Charges of Shadowbringer 60 second Cooldown OGCD Line AOE or AOE attack. Each use restores 25-50 Blood/1500-3000 Mana, Usable while under Darkside or Mana < 3000 (low mana situation). Kit Interaction in Meaningful Way, Part of Rotation in Meaningful Way, DONE.

Level 90: Living Shadow II, Your Living Shadow Now uses Shadowbringer instead of Flood of Shadow while still remembering to immediately Move His/Her Ass in a fight instead of posing and doing everything obnoxiously slow.

Could even Make Living Shadow II also trigger a decent Heal Over Time Regen that lasts 24 second duration on Dark Knight so it's not just a glorified DOT skill that is useless when Boss takes a break and players have to disengage, or Mobs die early. Yeah, now it's a DOT and a HOT on a 2 minute timer. If that's too much, could even make it a 12 second Regen or a 20 second reduced damage taken buff, there's plenty of ways to make it more than just a glorified DOT.