Dark Knight Megathread

[Ryaduera]

I'm not disagreeing with that.

I just don't feel that "I can sustain periodic Flood casts, so my Flood is now mostly just a rotational element" is necessarily any more interesting or fun a design than "I can't sustain my Flood casts -- they instead act largely like CDs -- so it's doubly important we burn everything here and now."

I've got 2 DRKs at 80, another at 62, and all but one tank each leveled to 80 across both main characters, and the last 8 levels of DRK are just nearly noticeable enough a change for me to call the pre-Stalwart gameplay stifled or even comparatively bad (relative to any other tank at that level) -- certainly not to the point that I'd want yet another shared tank mechanic slapped atop DRK with so little thought.

I see what you're saying, but homogenizing tanks is not what we're asking for. It is impressively bad design to require a resource in order to play optimally without also providing a way to gain that resource back, to the point that it is better design to give a resource that you have nothing to do with. Remember 3.0 PLD and Riot Blade giving MP? That was bad design because you got MP with nothing to do with it, but the complaints on PLD wasn't even the mana. Their mana regeneration was tied to their single target DPS combo while their mana consumption was tied to Flash for leveling, which was their AoE utility. The problem wasn't mana, the problem was the design of the job.

Removing flood and get Stalwart early is just putting a bandaid on a wound that clearly needs stitches. The gameplay at its core needs changing, not the progression. If you have a resource that must be used to generate another resources, there should be a way to loop these resources, especially in a game that uses a rotation based design philosophy. Most tank gauges are fine because they are buildups for something big, but Darkside is just a joke of an excuse to halt progression entirely in favor of saying "But flood does early DPS." You don't even get the Blood Gauge, another resource that should be managed, until level 62 because they use the Darkside timer as an excuse to not add another resource, but you aren't even trying to manage Darkside as a resource, you overcap on it repeatedly on accident because you might as well just use it off cooldown.

Since we're sharing credentials as if it means anything, I'm a mod author for a handful of games, most of which have classes. If FFXIV were not an MMO, DRK would be the only class I'd write a mod for that rebuilt the class from its bare bones. Every other job (that I have played) is fine and most I wouldn't even touch, usually this games design is excellent. Dark Knight is just fundamentally flawed right down to its bare bones, I would absolutely gut this job if this was a game I could mod. There needs to be better implementation of Darkside and a layer of mechanical execution that actually rewards the player in a meaningful way. DPS increase is meaningful, but you take away all depth when overcapping feels more like a necessity than a mistake. As it stands right now, dumping all of your MP in literally every situation and overcapping on Darkside is not a mistake, but a necessity. That's the same gameplay flaw twice in a single mechanic, and I can't express enough how abysmal that design philosophy actually is.

tl;dr: The jobs entire design is based around a system that has no reward for proper execution, if you want braindead gameplay, it would be better to stop hiding it and just make it braindead on a surface level as well, which is also still bad design, just better. Please, square... Give us a decision to make and make resource management actually matter.