Dark Knight Megathread

[OdinelStarrei]

All aesthetic and design decisions aside, have you even seen the opener?

I've created a little picture to visualise it (order of oGCDs for optimal play might differ):


Your very first 9 GCDs are filled with oGCDs, there is no space to weave even 1 mitigation CD!... well, maybe 1 if you can use Delirium pre-pull, but that's it. If you thought GNB was loaded, that's a joke compared to this opener!

Salted Earth and Abyssal Drain - especially Abyssal Drain - deal too little fluff damage (on single target) to justify them taking that many slots. There has to be done something about it... and/or change how the new actions work.

Of course, I would prefer a full rework, DRK is a mess. And yes, even if DRK was always somewhat of a mess, this expansion is taking it way too far!

To be honest, with the way things are currently set up, it's going to be even more cursed than that right now. -15 Pre-pull Delirium so you can save that weave slot, the standard pre-pull Blood Weapon to have Living Shadow fit all of the attacks within raidbuffs at 3rd GCD, (since CnS will just barely not make it if it's on 4th GCD), the usual pre-pull TBN for the DA proc, adding an additional edge to this. If there's mitigation or any movement that needs to be done after the first 3 GCDs, it's going to be rough.

Seriously, -15 Delirium is going to be weird in pugs. But you are absolutely going to gain a usage on some killtimes, for literally zero cost to the Dark Knight, unlike WAR, where pre-pull IR ruins Infuriate and Inner Chaos.

On the bright side, Shadowbringer and Abyssal Drain can be combined together for ranged oGCD weaving spots of movement, unlike GNB's forced melee Continuation. It's no PLD Req, but silver linings, I suppose.

[WhyAmIHere]

All aesthetic and design decisions aside, have you even seen the opener?

I've created a little picture to visualise it (order of oGCDs for optimal play might differ):


Your very first 9 GCDs are filled with oGCDs, there is no space to weave even 1 mitigation CD!... well, maybe 1 if you can use Delirium pre-pull, but that's it. If you thought GNB was loaded, that's a joke compared to this opener!

Salted Earth and Abyssal Drain - especially Abyssal Drain - deal too little fluff damage (on single target) to justify them taking that many slots. There has to be done something about it... and/or change how the new actions work.

Of course, I would prefer a full rework, DRK is a mess. And yes, even if DRK was always somewhat of a mess, this expansion is taking it way too far!

Oh I see the problem.
You've got a strength potion where your mitigation should go!

[Duskane]

I have a theory
they got the pvp team to work on DRK because unmend trait sounds exactly like something for frontlines

[Ryaduera]

All aesthetic and design decisions aside, have you even seen the opener?

I've created a little picture to visualise it (order of oGCDs for optimal play might differ):


Your very first 9 GCDs are filled with oGCDs, there is no space to weave even 1 mitigation CD!... well, maybe 1 if you can use Delirium pre-pull, but that's it. If you thought GNB was loaded, that's a joke compared to this opener!

Salted Earth and Abyssal Drain - especially Abyssal Drain - deal too little fluff damage (on single target) to justify them taking that many slots. There has to be done something about it... and/or change how the new actions work.

Of course, I would prefer a full rework, DRK is a mess. And yes, even if DRK was always somewhat of a mess, this expansion is taking it way too far!

This would be very easily fixed if we had an on global that consumed our Darkside time to deal damage. It would add a global that wouldn't take away from the burst time and give us reason to not use 5 of the same ogcd as soon as possible. But Squeenix is scared of giving us one more on global and actual resource management.

[ItMe]

All aesthetic and design decisions aside, have you even seen the opener?

I've created a little picture to visualise it (order of oGCDs for optimal play might differ):


Your very first 9 GCDs are filled with oGCDs, there is no space to weave even 1 mitigation CD!

Oh god...
This has big "healers adjust" energy.

[Absurdity]

Oh god...
This has big "healers adjust" energy.

Shadowbringer and Salt & Darkness are definitely an issue, because now you don't have a single weave slot available in your opener/reopener, whereas before you could swap a lot of those oGCDs around in case you needed mitigation.

And while you rarely ever get a tank buster in the first 30-40 seconds of a fight, this opener is not only a big problem for mitigation, it also makes it impossible to disengage the boss without losing damage.



And while we're at it, why do potions still take up 2 weave slots? That really shouldn't be a thing.

[ArianeEwah]

And while we're at it, why do potions still take up 2 weave slots? That really shouldn't be a thing.

Oh I see the problem.
You've got a strength potion where your mitigation should go!

We should just remove potions altogether /s

snip

I agree. There might be some variation, such as pre-pull TBN+BW to open 1 or 2 slots. But looking at this, I doubt any DRK would want to actually pull the boss in EW which will put DRK into a forced OT position for at least the first 20s of a fight.

Shadowbringer should just have been a GCD as many (myself included) have expected it to be after seeing the job action trailer. Y'know, yellow vfx which indicates GCD usage instead of blue vfx for oGCD, yada yada.

An even bigger issue will be the "downtime" between your bursts. While the burst windows will become more hectic than ShB iteration, the more bland will be rotation between said windows. At least WAR and GNB have 30s CDs to make use off, and PLD has a longer "burst phase" than any other job. DRK however has none of it. Well, there is still Salted Earth - but considering how stressful your opener/re-opener gets, this feels odd and out of place.

[shao32]

Well we can sustitute any Edge of shadow with TBN since at the end TBN is a 2 step edge of shadow and I guess the only aviable way to dealt with a early TB it would precasting rampart since have the longest duration and the only potential loss is an Edge on raid buffs or on the best case the underwhelming Abyssal drain or salted heart but yeah considering the current awfully opener no DRK main would want to pull ever if possible.
And another important question is where is Shadow skin?! They haven't saw that feedback either? They see any kind of feedback at all? Bcs removing rampart from role skills and bring back Shadow skin and foresight for WAR was a popular request from the JP too.

[ArianeEwah]

They haven't saw that feedback either? They see any kind of feedback at all?

They don't and they lie! Apparently, YoshiP was handed the question why Blood Weapon was still on 10s duration instead of stacks in an interview (I think it was with MrHappy) and his answer was, they "weren't aware it was an issue" - disregard it as a "just NA/EU things we barely hear about". They are lying! There are tons of highly voted posts packed into those Megathreads (including your Shadowskin example) - about Blood Weapon, about (Blood) Delirium being a budget IR, the slow disconnected gameplay, Living Dead objectively being the worst invul for years, the list goes on and on.

They did mention, 6.0 was built on 5.x, and only a few jobs got reworks - namely SMN and MNK. Others gained to complement their playstyle, e.g. MCH got Chainsaw which generates 20 battery gauge, so you can call your Queen during your first opener!

DRK really is the one and only job that gets treated like they have done some last minute additions - see Unmend trait, 2 Living Shadow traits, and this mess of an opener, and I highly doubt Shadowbringer was intended to be an oGCD, and was changed last minute, too. Despite being the poster boy from last expansion, you really have to ask yourself if the dev team even plays the jobs they create and wtf they were thinking presenting this... something as a finished product.

[RatCopter]

All aesthetic and design decisions aside, have you even seen the opener?

I've created a little picture to visualise it (order of oGCDs for optimal play might differ):


Your very first 9 GCDs are filled with oGCDs, there is no space to weave even 1 mitigation CD!... well, maybe 1 if you can use Delirium pre-pull, but that's it. If you thought GNB was loaded, that's a joke compared to this opener!

Impressive. Very nice.

Lets see the high ping opener