Dark Knight Megathread

[Kalaam]

Who is ready for the Templar DPS job taking the holy fighter aesthetic away from PLD, the Berserker DPS taking the savage combattant away from WAR and Legatus DPS taking the gunblade stuff away from GNB ? xD

No more seriously though, it does hurt to see RPR getting so much stuff from DRK aesthetic, since it IS inspired by FF XI DRK.

[Sazuzaki]

Honestly I'd love for something like class specs to be added to the game. I came from Blade and Soul (yes I know it's hot garbage...) and one thing I REALLY liked from that game is that you had different specifications on how you played your class. For example Blade Master had a "Spirit Blade/Fire" spec where the class rotation literally revolved around holding down your RMB while managing your cooldowns. Meanwhile there was the chad "Lightning" spec where you had to continuously animation cancel by timing your LMB and your RMB to maximize DPS while managing very fast cooldowns. It was awesome and felt nice to pull off.

Now, imagine if we had something like say a "Shadow" or "Dread" spec for DRK where it was more reminiscent of the 3.0 DRK without all the DPS boosts you get from MT. Then there's Warrior I mean Delirium spec for DRK and it's basically just the simple version of DRK we have right now. For the people who can't really grasp the Shadow spec. Both specs would be equal in DPS.

Yes the "if I work harder, my dps should be higher" excuse still stands, but hear me out. This would fix the gap between the 5.0 and 3.0 enjoyers and add something that both can enjoy about the class, if done correctly. DRK could be the lowest DPS tank, but if it's fun to play and makes me actually use my brain, I wouldn't give a damn.

It would be a nightmare to balance I know. But if BnS, a game that doesn't even earn close to 10% of the money that FFXIV makes did it, why can't FFXIV? (I say "did it" cause they ruined the balance by adding the mentor spec in BnS, good job NCSoft :p)

[Llyud1996]

In Final Fantasy you can see the different jobs as a single spec. E.g every Tank is viable in every piece of content at the moment (tho others have more advantages in certain content, like DRK having no party wide mitigation in sub 80 content), but every single tank job has it‘s own core. So there is no real need for different specs for every single job. Imagine the balancing of 18 Jobs with 2 or more specs per Job. Coming from other MMOs I can understand why people want or suggest to bring specs for the different Jobs here, but we already have this, by splitting up all Jobs in different roles (Tank, Heal, Melee, Physical Range, Magic Range). If a party is looking for a magic dps, You can technically decide between BLM, SMN and RDM (spec).


But anyway, now to the important part. What I would love to see is:

- Stacks for Bloodweapon ; not having the ideal GCD Time, stresses me alot, because during a ping spike I wont hit the 5th GCD inside the window.
- Please remove the MP cost from The Blackest Night. We were told that tanks get a reward for better timing of their CDs (more mitigation in the first 4 seconds for the other tanks), but DRK still has a penalty of 500+ potency, if TBN is not soaking all the Damage. In the best case we get our 500+ potency back. Having a penalty bound to TBN is a straight disadvantage. As a Trade off a higher CD of The Blackest Night would be fair! To reduce button bloat, TBN could have the first 4 seconds an increased %mitigation of 10% and Oblation could get removed. 25 sec CD would be fair, just as the other Tanks. You could introduce this change with a trait, instead of the Unmend Trait at Lv 84.
- To reduce button bloat, we could make one button out of salted earth and abyssal drain and add a healing effect, while we are within the area of salted earth. Having 2 buttons with very low potency, is in my view pointless, since it‘s just one more button we press every minute or 90 secs. That has nothing to with personal skill, it‘s just an unnecessary button worth 150 potency every minute/90sec.
- Change Unleash and Stalwart Soul to Weaponskills and make Stalwart Soul available at lower level. Skill Speed does not affect our AoEs and we always sit on 2.5 GCD for Unleash and Stalwart Soul. I know that DRK knows magic abilities and that this is tied to Lore, but we could keep the magic abilities to our oGCDs, right?
- While Dark Missionary is DRKs equivalent to GNBs Heart of Light, I would like to see a change to Dark Mind. Personally I love Dark Mind as it is, since it gave me for certain encounter a good advantage above the other tank, but thats it‘s downside, for certain encounters, which means it‘s situational. Situational abilities are to my experience not used by the average player or just for one or two auto attacks, which isn‘t worth a button imo. Dark Mind could be changed to something with an effect like Aurora or Equilibrium. There are a lot of possibilities, but please remove the restriction of damagetype specific mitigation for a self target cooldown.
- With the Change of every Tank Invul having a duration of 10 secs, Living Dead is straight up the worst. While Holmgang and Superbolide bring you down to 1 HP, they do not have the trade off of require healing, you can just tank swap. Living Dead makes you invulnerable for 10 secs IF! triggered, but the DRK needs to get healed by 100% of it‘s max HP, which again is a penalty tied to a DRK ability. WAR & GNB don’t need immediate healing and can be healed via HoTs or with their own abilities after a tank swap, DRK requires immediate healing and has no ability to heal itself, except Soul Eater, but you know thats a joke. With Living Dead there is again an issue that the CD is tied to Lore, therefore it require the Healing in the case that the DRK would have died. Wouldn‘t it be possbile to change the ability by itself? In the case the DRK would have died from lethal damage, we become one with the Darkness and a Part of our Esteem absorbs the Damage that would kill us for 10 secs. This way Living Dead would basically be the same (press living dead, if triggered you get to be invuln for 10sec), but with a lore friendly change that DRK doesn‘t require 100% max HP healing anymore, and so it wouldn‘t have a penalty anymore in comparision to the other tank invulns.

[Sazuzaki]

Please remove the MP cost from The Blackest Night.

If this is the case, what other things would we have to spend MP on? Only EoS/FoS? The job is already easy enough, it doesn't need to be dumbed down even more. TBN is extremely powerful BECAUSE you have to take a risk. But TBN isn't even that hard to break, and with how easy most of the fights are, you can just completely ignore it anyway and have barely any consequences.

I feel pretty indifferent towards stacks for BW. I like having to manage the timing of my BW but I can see why it would suck for higher ping players. Dark Mind honestly could just be 10% dmg reduction tied with 20% magic dmg reduction, to kind of keep that "magical tank" feeling

[Kalaam]

Ideally we'd have more ways to use all of our ressources (MP, Darkside and Blood) but that would require a deeper rework that we cannot expect for the 6.x patch cycle, and even less for release.
I wish we'd have a Dart Art style MP dump to augment some abilities (to generate another ressource or stuff), while Darkside could be spent to gain Blood, and Blood to gain MP or vice versa. Making the 3 Gauges communicating vessels of some sort.
Darkside being something we can spend would also discourage overcapping it.

[Sazuzaki]

Ideally we'd have more ways to use all of our ressources (MP, Darkside and Blood) but that would require a deeper rework that we cannot expect for the 6.x patch cycle, and even less for release.
I wish we'd have a Dart Art style MP dump to augment some abilities (to generate another ressource or stuff), while Darkside could be spent to gain Blood, and Blood to gain MP or vice versa. Making the 3 Gauges communicating vessels of some sort.
Darkside being something we can spend would also discourage overcapping it.

I'm on board with this, there's just no real synergy with DRK's kit rn aside from your 1-2-3 generating blood and some mana and TBN giving a free EoS.

[Kalaam]

Honestly, having the 1 2 3 generate 2 out of 3 ressources isn't bad since it is a slow and steady gain. We just need to make it bounce around more with other abilities.
Have Abyssal Drain generate Blood, Shadowbringer refresh your DarkSide to full after spending it all on some powerful abilities or using MP on something stronger than just spamming edge/Flood at the cost of risking being out of Darkside.
Maybe Bloodspiller under Dark Art gives back a massive amount of MP, either DA cost MP itself, so it's only useful after a successful TBN, or it costs Dark Side. There is a lot of ways to go about it.
Salted Earth should still be giving something like 5 Blood every tick, Salt and Darkness could give more blood, or either darkside/MP for every ennemy hit.
Delirium, well...delirium could be a lot of things. Stays the same, change to allow Edge/Flood spam, extend a buff, apply a new buff... It could be used to prolong Living Shadow too, so every other LS use can have like...10 more seconds or something.
Living Shadow costing Darkside would make sense, same with TBN too.

[Sazuzaki]

PLEASE I would love having TBN Dark Arts have some more uses. It's not like you have to be MT to get those rewards anyway since you can put it on other people.

Darkside too, there's no real class (I don't think at least) that uses a gauge that's also a timer, so I feel like this would add a bit more "chaos" and identity to DRK's rotation. But hey, EoS generously gives you 30 seconds of Darkside so it's not like it would be too hard. Delirium could be changed to anything that isn't what it is right now and I'd be happy.

[Marxam]

Ideally we'd have more ways to use all of our ressources (MP, Darkside and Blood) but that would require a deeper rework that we cannot expect for the 6.x patch cycle, and even less for release.
I wish we'd have a Dart Art style MP dump to augment some abilities (to generate another ressource or stuff), while Darkside could be spent to gain Blood, and Blood to gain MP or vice versa. Making the 3 Gauges communicating vessels of some sort.
Darkside being something we can spend would also discourage overcapping it.

Sounds like you should have played during heavsward. Darkside was an OT stance that you could keep up during Grit, which was different to WAR/PLD who had to switch to their OT stance. However, it reduced any MP regen from outside sources except from siphon strike and blood weapon. DA could also buff gcds, ogcds and defensive cds. DRK was a heavy resource management tank between MP and TP. It was jank and annoying at times but to those that manage to master it were rewarded heavily with engaging gameplay and tons of utility.

[Kalaam]

Sounds like you should have played during heavsward. Darkside was an OT stance that you could keep up during Grit, which was different to WAR/PLD who had to switch to their OT stance. However, it reduced any MP regen from outside sources except from siphon strike and blood weapon. DA could also buff gcds, ogcds and defensive cds. DRK was a heavy resource management tank between MP and TP. It was jank and annoying at times but to those that manage to master it were rewarded heavily with engaging gameplay and tons of utility.

I did, that's why I have those ideas xD
Having MP so standardized right now is doing more harm that good I feel.


Also: Maybe draining from a timer would be complicated, bu then just change Darkside gauge to an actual ressource that has a steady drain.