Dark Knight Megathread

[Kalaam]

I'd easily see Dark Missionary giving a bonus to healing received (I mean, a Missionary is someone who heals), Heart of Light I do not know what could be interrested. Maybe like heart of stone, apply the Brutal Shell barrier on the team ?

[Aranax]

They need to make living dead the lowest cooldown if they arent going to change how it works in endwalker. It is absolutely unbelievable how they are buffing holmgang and bolide to 10 seconds and did not touch living dead in the slightest. Swapping the holmgang and living dead cooldowns is an easy fix. Apart from that healing from blood gauge expending weaponskills similar to what paladin got on spell cats can help with the non existant sustain and also allow darkknights to maybe cleanse living dead themselves with enough forward planning, which will be especially helpful in solo play.

[ItMe]

The simplest solution would them just straight up changing the damage taken color based on damage type.

Hopefully they would do more than this.
I can't keep up with the text box when in combat.

[XSkeithX]

Hey IDK if this has been said yet. but if feedback gets heard i would very much like for Salted earth to remain the way it works now.
If possible maybe make it to where holding down the button places it at your location for those who want it that way. If the changes to the move happen then it will be more of a pain.

[Lyth]

Dark Missionary shows about as much creativity its design as the position. It should have taken them all of two seconds to design something that would match DRK thematically. Runic would have been a fantastic choice for bringing in some of that series nostalgia that they were looking for. Absorb some damage on the next raidwide, and steal some MP back. Throw in the classic FF6 animation for extra nostalgia points. The other alternative would be to just debuff the target. Remember Salt and Earth, on its 90 second recast? Could that not just as easily have added a damage down debuff to affected mobs, much like Shadow Flare used to do with Slow?

What I'm really looking for on tanks, though, is for them to come up with some thematic consistency outside of saying: here is your lifesteal button, here is your shield button, here is your damage reduction button, and so on on every tank. If I play a game like, say, Overwatch, and pick up any tank, they all feel quite distinct from each other. Zarya is the bubble shield tank. I'm not going to go on to Reinhardt and start deploying bubbles just because that's a 'tank' thing to do. You can easily design a tank where every defensive move is tied to bubbles and make it a unique job feature. Likewise, how easy would it be to design the Oath gauge such that none of your defensives had timed recasts, but your shield resource simply dropped off as you took hits until it broke? Could you not have a self-healing tank where big self heals were the job's main (and unique) defensive feature? It feels like because they mix and match aesthetics, and they're so keen to give every job 'their version' of the same actions, the gameplay of tank jobs feels more bland and less varied.

[Kreyd]

After focussing on GNB for a few days I really noted how squishy DRK feels, especially in wall to wall pulls.
It is viable, but it feels like it's at the bare minimum of beeing so.
Boring gameplay + ogcd fluff damage + worse versions of other jobs abilities.

DRK feels more like an placeholder than an actual Job.

[Agner]

Regarding what Kreyd said, I'm not going to give pure love to both HW and SB versions of DRK, but HW felt the most "complete" in terms of being an actually finished job for its time. SB felt slightly unfinished, though I will say HW and SB both had relatively satisfying gameplay loops—so I could excuse it. I have also said elsewhere HW DRK felt flawed from conception but somehow worked despite itself. Janky stuff can still be fun of course, as long as there is something redeeming about it.

With that out of the way, ShB DRK is definitely the most unfinished and irredeemable it has ever felt. It's a bit embarrassing that they are sticking for it with EW. This shambling, gutted corpse of a job feels like it has been in walking dead status for the past two years, so we can only really hope the timer runs out and it finally dies this expansion or gets healed, right? It's just weird that they really expect people to play... this for another couple of years. No more having this job feel like it plays as if it's multiple expansions behind, please. Unfortunately, all of these pleas likely fall on deaf ears all things considered.

At this point, I'd rather it just doesn't exist anymore. It's painful to see it walk around in this sorry, dilapidated state. Nothing but genuine fremdschämen for whoever designed the current and upcoming iterations.

It feels like because they mix and match aesthetics, and they're so keen to give every job 'their version' of the same actions, the gameplay of tank jobs feels more bland and less varied.

It is sad to both agree with this and also find DRK to be the most bland of the tanks. I don't know how this has been handled so poorly.

[DustyBlue]

I feel like Stormblood dark knight was underrated and much strife could have been avoided if they simply put Dark Arts on a cooldown instead of using it on every third GCD as a default. Use it less, but when you DO use it, it hits big and hard. Dark Arts a Souleater INTO a Bloodspiller, every 30-60 seconds or so. Putting it kind of in line with GNB's Gnashing Fang combo or Kasatsu jutsus. Just with this simple elegant solution, they could have prevented flushing everything good about DRK down the toilet in favor of the completely creatively bankrupt lobotomy of ShB DRK.

With or without restoring it to its previous framework of depth, the devs must finally address the elephant(s) in the room by acknowledging that the reputations of the very terms Living Dead, Dark Arts, Dark Mind, and even Delirium at this point are forever ruined and must be excised from the very vocabulary of the game. After this many years of torment, the terms as something cool sounding (as opposed to traumatic memories) are unsalvageable and keeping the name but changing the effect just makes matters so confusing in talking about the entire history of the job. Absolutely no reason for the Edge/Flood of Shadow proc to be associated with the term Dark Arts if they were trying to get away from the gameplay of Dark Arts and what it represented. Keeping the name does the opposite of that.

If they want to bother keeping them around despite the community baggage: for Living Dead they can add Convalescence or big life leech onto it. Or both, if you want to make DRK players REALLY happy, for once. Change the ability name to Numb for a wicked sick Linkin Park reference. Or call the ability Grim Omen and the buff/healer warning Grim Reminder. The term itself absolutely needs to die though, merely fixing it into something baseline tolerable is not quite enough for a true dev redemption arc. Plus that hourglass icon is so old looking... For Dark Mind, they can replace it with the return of Dark Dance (they saw fit to give GNB Camouflage and they are getting away from magic/physical damage distinction anyway much like elemental resistances before it, so why not, nobody likes Dark Mind but people do like Dark Dance). For Delirium, they just need to turn it into anything other than mash the same button a bunch of times, dark knight should not be a mash the same attack kind of job, warrior already has that covered with Fell Cleave, as well as paladin with Holy Spirit casts, we already have two jobs that do that and DRK should have more finesse and clever technique than that to set itself apart. Even just a Gnashing Fang combo ripoff would convey that and be more welcome than a Fell Cleave spam ripoff (with none of the other benefits that come with Inner Release). This is why Delirium in its current effect will never shake off the stigma of being a dollar store Inner Release. Purge it, trash it, once and for all.

[DustyBlue]

(contd.) With this crucial groundwork done, you can focus on flashy new abilities. I propose a high damage AoE called Nevermore that releases a vortex of pure deep black darkness swirls around you (like Street Fighter IV focus attack ink smudges, but gnarled and thorny and dense). On par with GNB's Double Down in power and satisfaction. Put some AoE DoTs on it to tit-for-tat Confiteor IV. It can be usable only when Living Shadow is out, since people want Living Shadow to be more interactive. To reduce button bloat, it can transform from Stalwart Soul (I never did quite care for Stalwart Soul's weird purple light laser animation for dark knight). You can have a whole array of actions usable only during Living Shadow, which are likewise pure black themed, which can be further added to in future expansions and transformed from the usual attack buttons. Put other sorts of debuffs on those attacks maybe, to evoke Scourge. Scourge was 18 seconds, you know, about as long as the Living Shadow lasts. Make Shadowbringer a tandem finisher attack with the shadow, comparable to SMN's demi-Bahamut Akh Morn exit.

In summary, Oblation is not even a new ability (TBN), Shadowbringer is not even a new ability (Flood of Shadow AND Dark Passenger; just another redundant generic oGCD attack when we already have enough weaving of so-so abilities that we don't really even get to appreciate the animations of since they are relegated to blink-of-an-eye filler as opposed to a proper spotlight-taking attack in their own right), Edge of Darkness is not even a new ability (Carve & Spit), Salt & Darkness is not interesting if it is just used the one time and accessible immediately... these are all just filler abilities that only seem to sell themselves by slapping undeserved fat numbers on them to compensate for their unexciting-ness, and are not cleverly expanding the DRK toolkit. Injecting sheer potency to bland job gameplay loop is not the solution to the underlying systemic issues of DRK's design, it's a Band-aid short-term solution just to keep it functional/viable in the game balance, which it certainly is, but not really pushing the job design forward or delivering it out of its current state of identity crisis and bored monotony. Long identified as weakpoints of the job are Living Dead, Delirium, Blood Weapon, Dark Mind, Dark Missionary, Dark Arts, Edge of Darkness/Shadow, the one Souleater combo, and the lack of HP sustain. That's a majority of the DRK's kit that has problems, and the devs stubbornly double down and refuse to change any of them or at least allude to future work being done in retooling them, causing further friction with their players. Fans have been shouting for years about the injustice done to abilities people actually liked in Scourge, Power Slash, Dark Passenger, etc. Listen to them and actually deliver the hype you promised in Shadowbringers, please. Give back what people liked, delete/redesign what people don't like. Should really be as simple as that!

[DustyBlue]

And, for me personally, change the name of Salt and Darkness to Oblation since that makes more sense to me (definition being an offering to the gods, Salted Earth being a sort of ritual circle and the animation being skyward), and get rid of Oblation, since even more TBNs is not the solution when we already have TBN and DRK micro-managing cycling through the party list so much. This is almost a sheer copy/pasted ability, and leveraging even harder DRK's TBN gimmickry is not the path forward for this job, they are leaning too hard into pleasing TBN Stans and I think it's unhealthy in the long run. I know TBN has a lot of hype and love for it, but in my mind, TBN was an effective but not very creative ability that SB DRK provisionally crutched on just so that it can say it had anything going for it at that time, and should not be the wagon the entire job's identity hitches itself so zealously to. And the MP and break requirements are even causing problems for it at this point. So TBN needs a buff, but not a whole other mini TBN ability, I think. We do enough TBN-ing with just TBN, thank you very much.

And just get rid of Edge of Darkness/Shadow. Flood of Darkness/Shadow already gets the job done (while also being evocative of the original classic FF darkness ability), you don't need two flavors of the same ability, the AoE version works just as well for single-target too. Plus, Flood of Darkness can be used ranged, while Edge can't. And Flood unlocks earlier too. You might as well just be using Flood and Flood only. I felt the same way about BLM's Foul and the new Xenoglossy; Foul was already great for single-target in the first place in SB, as your hardest hitting spell single-target OR AoE. Xenoglossy did not add anything, while taking up two buttons for two purposes when the first button was already dual-purpose (but not anymore now that there is a new equivalent that does nothing but change a number making the original ability unnecessarily obsolete and relegated SOLELY for AoE rorations when it was originally more flexible and universal) When I see the same ability on two buttons being given under the pretense of a hype new ability that we were totally asking for, I for one do not get hyped, I get very much unhyped, but that's a whole other conversation that extends beyond just DRK and into their broader philosophy of coming up with new ability ideas (SMN's Energy Syphon, SAM's Senei, perhaps WAR's Orogeny...).

On an even more trivial note, why does Flood/Edge of Darkness even upgrade to Shadow? Darkness itself is more than a mere shadow so it's not the conveyance of power they think it is, and it's a waste of a trait and having separate animations and icons taking up the ability list... and Shadowbringer is already the name of a weapon, so the hype of calling something that bold name has already been spent and they are essentially telling the same joke twice, for an ability that really doesn't even warrant it