Dark Knight Megathread

[DaiTenshu]

Level 70 Trait - Dark Arts: Now this is where some of the more controversial changes are taking place as this might make or break what I’m proposing as well change Dark Knight balance considerably. From what you read of my adjustments, I’m putting a lot more emphasis on Dark Arts, as back in Heavensward and Stormblood, Dark Arts was integral to the job’s gameplay; While in Shadowbringers, it's only brought up when The Blackest Night is involved. My take here is that Dark Knight is supposedly the oGCD Tank Specialist with a myriad of oGCD abilities to use despite only having 1 weaponskill combo. This case is further supported with the new abilities we get in Endwalker and no additional GCD’s added. With that being the case, I believe it is perfect to put more emphasis on Dark Arts to help support the fantasy of the Dark Knight whose heavy swings with their Sword are supported by the swift and harsh darkness within them. As of current and likely in Endwalker, Using The Blackest Night is at worst a dps loss, and at best a slight dps gain (only if you have a party) and in the middle, a dps neutral. The advantage of using TBN and using Dark Arts after is that you mitigate a good portion of damage while not sacrificing your own. While in parties, your healers may not need to use as many resources to heal you than with other tanks and can focus more on dps. However having Dark Arts be just a free cast of Flood or Edge isn’t the most rewarding gameplay, Especially since this expansion is giving more rewards for timing mitigation better for other tanks. With all other tanks getting some sort of additional mitigation, the Gap between The Blackest Night and other cooldowns is getting smaller and smaller. Allowing Dark Arts to Restore HP would give a nice addition to the Dark Arts Mechanic that isn’t just damage and helps with Sustain. Plus making Dark Arts a trait allows for more cool and wacky stuff to be added later on.

Level 72 Trait - Master Our Soul: Very simple one. Allows Stalwart Soul to increase Blood Gauge like how it does now since we would get this spell earlier.

Level 80 Living Shadow: Not exactly a necessary one but I’d like to explain my reasoning. From a thematic standpoint and the Damage it brings, Living Shadow is an amazing ability and it's part of the top 5 most beloved skills in FFXIV for me. From a gameplay standpoint, it is a very flashy DoT and it doesn’t feel as satisfying to use as other skills (Even though it gets better later on). Living Shadow is also slightly weird in that it doesn’t exactly enhance any other mechanics of the Dark Knight. You use this over Bloodspiller and Quietus but after that, you just let it do its own thing. It is similar to MCH’s automaton Rook/Queen but has even less control. Giving Living Shadow the ability to grant Dark Arts allows a sort of connection between Dark Knight mechanics and will have the shadow leave a more satisfying impression once it's done helping you maim a target.
Continues.

[DaiTenshu]

(New) Level 80 Trait - Enhanced Dark Arts: Since Living Shadow can grant Dark Arts as well as more actions later on do too, it would be appropriate for Dark Knight to be able to hold 2 in case of overlap. Also this might make the job icon look more stylish, with 1 Dark Arts highlighting the sword icon in the job icon, while a 2nd Dark Arts may highlight a bigger sword outlining the first Dark Arts.

(New) Level 82 Trait - Dark Mind Mastery/Oblation: When People saw what other Tanks got at level 82, and then saw Oblation, our first thoughts were “wow that's underwhelming”. While I do think the 2nd effect Vigilante's Tenacity might be unnecessary, Oblation should at least have a 2nd effect to make it sound strong. Oblation’s animation though does look amazing and Dark Mind upgrading into it just sounds natural to me. The effect of increasing HP restored or barriers given to targets could help Dark Knight more in the supportive category. In my mind I believe that the Dark Knight is a bit of a selfish Tank using many of its mitigation for personal use, but not leaving someone to die is also how I perceive my image of them. The HP restored or barriers given will help healers immeasurable and might give a hidden complexity to DRK as TBN would be affected too as well as Living Dead to help out healing.

(New) Level 84 Trait - Enhanced Dark Arts II: Not a necessary one, but I figured that if we are to make Dark Arts a more prominent part of Dark Knight’s kit, then it would stand to reason that it too would become stronger to help out. One of the most satisfying experiences for me as Dark Knight is mitigating a tankbuster with TBN and then follow it up with a critical Edge of Shadow. I think it would help Dark Knight’s damage slightly and the critical hit would also affect the HP restored and help Dark Knight’s self sustain slightly more.

Level 86 Salt and Darkness: With its current potency, giving this ability to generate Blood Gauge might sound a little too strong, but since oGCDs and Blood Gauge are a big part of Dark Knight’s kit, it strikes me as odd that not a single oGCD helps increase the Blood Gauge directly (Blood Weapon does not count). I believe an increase of 30 would be perfect as that combined with Soul Eater or Stalwart Soul can lead to an extra BloodSpiller or Quietus. If you were to ask me if I preferred the current potency or an increase to blood gauge, I would choose the latter as that would tie in the Dark Knight’s identity more.
Continues.

[DaiTenshu]

Level 90 Shadowbringer: The Name, The Animation, the damage, and cool factor are all 10/10. Yet the ability still feels like it's missing something. If we compare what other tanks get at level 90, each other tank gets something that leaves a satisfying impression. Paladin’s Blade combo after Confiteor leaves a stunning finale to it’s rotation and what made an otherwise normal downtime very dynamic. Warrior’s Primal Rend is an amazingly strong finisher to Inner Release and also acts as a gap closer besides. And Gunbreaker receives a much needed powerful AoE Cartridge attack that would help Dungeon Pulls and boosts the job’s damage significantly. What exactly then is Shadowbringer’s purpose? Just more damage? With its current kit and new additions, Dark Knight isn’t exactly hurting for more AoE attacks, (though Shadowbringers does help a lot). The Conclusion I came to is that Shadowbringer was created to give Dark Knight even more oGCDs to onslaught the enemy and I am perfectly happy with that; it gives shape to Dark Knight’s Identity as the oGCD specialist. Yet I feel that an additional effect would make this ability even more Incredible. That’s right, the ability to grant Dark Arts is what would be awesome and tie it all together. 2 additional Dark Arts would absolutely have Dark Knights destroying enemies with a myriad of attacks and free up the mana costs that can be used for TBN instead. Or use every single drop of mana and Dark Arts to just barrage the enemy with Edges and Floods sounds absolutely fun.

(New) Level 90 Trait - One Brings Shadow: And what better way to make the final ability of Dark Knight to be more powerful than to use it again and again and again. Many people claim that the Dark Knight is like Discount Warrior, but I fail to see it other than similarities between Inner Release and Delirium. However if I were to shamelessly take something from Warrior, then I would steal something like Warrior’s Infuriate (as for me that is one of the best parts of Warrior) and give it to Dark Knight and make it a flavour of its own. Since Flood/Edge of Shadow and The Blackest Night are integral parts to Dark Knight, using them more and rewarding the player with more Shadowbringers would make the job in my opinion ultimately more fun to play than it already is now.

[DaiTenshu]

And there we have it, these are all my suggestions to make Dark Knight stand out more and give it tools that would make the job more rewarding and fun to play. Its Identity as the oGCD Tank that is somehow too stubborn to die despite having no ability to directly heal themselves was my first and foremost goal. The other goal being to suggest QoL changes that I believe players would have wished for a while ago. And the last goal being to make it more rewarding to play by giving what is currently a slightly forgettable mechanic into something more. Some of these changes are a bit out there, but I think with everything in mind, I think its right for jobs to feel ultra powerful at this point of the game, as this is the Final Arc of Hydalen and Zodiark Saga. Of Course these changes may or may never come true or that some can only be considered while others not, so if I ever had to prioritize certain changes then it would go like this. Quality of Life Changes (Blood Weapon, Stalwart Soul (+trait), Bloodspiller/Quiteus, Dark Mind/Oblation, Dark Arts (Trait), then buffs (Living Dead, Blackest Night, Salt and Darkness, Shadowbringer)), and lastly some of the more absurd buffs/changes (Enhanced Dark Arts (1+2), Living Shadow, Delirium)

I hope all the suggestions I came up with sound fair or at least taken into consideration as I believe Endwalker Dark Knight will be absolutely fun to play but needs slightly more to make it the best it can be. If you have any critiques or would like to add on, please let me know, I’d love to discuss with any of you about what we can do to make The Dark Knight even more amazing.

[TouchandFeel]

Just a heads up, you can go back and edit a post to get past the initial character limit. That way you can create one longer consolidated post instead of a stream of posts that tend to add more "noise" to a thread and make it harder for readers to follow what is being said.

Also if you want to post a huge wall of text but don't want your post to take up a huge amount of space, when editing your post you can click "Go Advanced" and then use the "HB tag" button, looks like a word bubble with a ? in it, to collapse down and hide part of your text until a reader clicks "show" in your post, like so ...

Big ol' wall o' text

Here is an example thread that I created way back at the beginning of Shadowbringers that utilizes HB tags to condense a post and make it easier to parse.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...oposed-Changes

[DaiTenshu]

I see, thank you and I'll take that into consideration for next time. I apologize for the bloat, just wanted to get some of my ideas out there since my friends suggested me to do so.

[TouchandFeel]

No worries, just providing some suggestions to help with better organizing posts so that they are clearer and easier for people to read, and therefore more likely to get people to read and understand them.
There's a lot of newer posters on the forums recently and many likely don't know about these options when making their posts.

[DaiTenshu]

Right, I'll do that for sure next time. With that being the case, what do you think of these adjustments/changes? I didn't want outright change anything save for Dark Mind and having it upgrade to Oblation. I'd like to know your opinions.

[Axxion]

Can someone tell me, how good is having tbn and Oblation on at the same time? I was browsing around on reddit and someone mentioned that was good. And how likely is that going to be used

[mistaya]

Oblation is literally just reprisal but for you. Is it nice to have reprisal when you have TBN? You'd think the answer would be "yes" but because TBN must break in order to be mana neutral the answer is "sometimes."

With Bloodwhetting, Holy Sheltron, and Heart of Corundrum in the game, TBN needs to have it's mana cost removed and Dark Arts deleted completed from the game. It should just cost nothing like everyone else's and be DPS neutral like everyone else's and then the answer would be "YES" all the time. They can nerf it to 25 seconds instead of 15 for balance.