Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

Repeat after me everyone! People play the job they enjoy!

This is a nice sentiment, but it's not necessarily true in a game where you have to work together with other players. Sometimes you play the job that your team needs you to play, even if you don't particularly like it. Everything has a cost.

It's hard to comment what this expansion's balance is like, in part because people are still gathering information about how the jobs play and can be optimized. Shadowbringers, in fairness, did have a fairly tight balance within roles. Heavensward and Stormblood most definitely did not. A lot of your post reads as someone naive to this game's earlier history. Double ranged is not a new phenomenon. It was actually the mandatory comp at one point, and you needed a DRG to make it work.

I think the reason why many tanks are currently downplaying damage output is because of two factors: first, because of how close the numbers were in Shadowbringers, and secondly, because of a declining contribution of tanks to overall raid damage. But it doesn't take much for this to start mattering again. PLD was probably overall the best defensive tank in Heavensward, especially where physical damage was concerned. DRK was often still a better choice even when it was at a significant defensive disadvantage. Why was that? I'll let you guess. Hint: It wasn't because of Living Dead. Why was WAR a mandatory pick in every comp in Heavensward? Again, I'll let you guess.

I agree that jobs should be designed first and foremost for fun. Both Heavensward DRK and the current iteration of RPR are fast paced with a strong focus on uptime and resource management. Jobs like these don't have to be the absolute best at everything for them to be fun. But you do still need to be in striking range of the best. It's incredibly frustrating to play a job that's really well designed yet no matter how mechanically polished your gameplay becomes, you're still not competitive. That's why damage balancing is so critical.

You do need to remember that you'll always see players from all jobs campaigning to see their chosen job buffed to unreasonable amounts of power. Oh, it's so unfair that my job, which is the only tank with two job-specific raidwide mitigation tools both of which work against all types of damage, has one which requires a heal proc. And we don't do the highest dps this expansion despite having a massive utility advantage over everyone else, that's unacceptable. With a dev team that's so focused on pleasing everyone and so afraid to show open disagreement, you always see the same jobs as the most common picks. And that's not because everything was perfectly designed for fun in ARR, it's because older jobs have more of a backing. But it creates a culture where you feel compelled to demand more unreasonable things to keep up.

[Caurcas]

I enjoy topping the damage charts, and kit wise everything works fine enough. The opener is busy, but single weaving is easily doable. Double not so much due to some animation lock. I do wish they would revert Delirum to its SB version and have it increase BWs duration rather than budget IR. Seems like WAR/DRK might be the combo.

[CKNovel]

This is a nice sentiment, but it's not necessarily true in a game where you have to work together with other players. Sometimes you play the job that your team needs you to play, even if you don't particularly like it. Everything has a cost.

It's true in FF XIV.
ShB job balance remained perfect, despite disagreeing with it, you will bring more to your party with a job you really know than playing a job because it has better numbers.
Don't worry i'm quite familiar with HW and SB raiding, even if I limited myself to savage during SB.

I raided with a SMN and a PLD, during HW, even if it was short we were discovering raiding.
I raided as a MCH during SB and no one rejected my job, except at the very beginning where entering Overheat was a DPS loss.
And we didn't had rDPS back then so on paper, everyone thought BRD was much better.

I do agree that PLD strength debuff was lackluster compared to DRK's delirium but that was another time.
While we are working to gather numbers on this expansion, I believe SQEX will try to find SHB's balance, Yoshida mentionned he was happy about the balance.

Of course, nothing is set in stone but remember they don't want ranged to be broken again, they don't want HW difficulty, they don't want to repeat the same balancing mistakes.

[RLTygurr]

the problem with DRK 6.0 is that its too close to 5.0 and that the other tanks got COOLER new toys than DRK?

Although this is true for most of us, many more simply feel that the things DRK got in 6.0 were either A) worthless or B) add absolutely nothing to the class.

Enhanced Unmend is...a joke. I'm sure the design team thought "I bet this would help someone make sure they have plunge off cooldown during a mechanic where you can't have uptime for when it ends!" but most of us have brains and save plunge for when we need it.
Oblation on its own isn't bad, but we already have TBN. Other tanks got Oblation but far better, and without cost like TBN has. It felt like a way of saying "we gave DRK something at level 82 too!" but it feels empty. There's no reason for it to exist. It's just another button that they could have tacked onto TBN as a buff after the shield is broken.
Salt and Darkness isn't terrible, mostly because DRK had abysmal AOE damage before.
Shadowbringer is just another OGCD button to press in between your 1-2-3 combo. It adds nothing to the class from an identity standpoint, has no interesting dynamic with the rest of DRK's kit, and really doesn't feel like "the big bad move you get at level 90". It's just another button, and a ripoff of an existing DRK skill, at that.

So yeah, we're not exactly thrilled lol

[shao32]

Players just pick a job for specific reasons and not for the gameplay only, for example I know many ppl just played SHB DRK bcs TBN feel busted for them and his sole existence justified his poor gameplay.
When a job have a element like that ppl tend to go to it like moths to the light like how fell cleave feel so busted back in HW and everyone was uhh fell cleave this fell cleave that.

Other ppl just picked DRK bcs the animations and the expansion heavy theme to the Warrior of Darkness leaving DRK as the only option for rp purposes, and of course but not less many ppl would just play a job or abandon it if the balance is very noticeable on a side or another.

At the end of the day very little ppl pick DRK just for how his gameplay is, in fact the vast majority pick the job for any other reason except the gameplay Wich or they don't care or they don't like but the other reason they picked the job justified it somehow. It's even funny when I saw some ppl making tier list of the jobs and some was like "TBN S-tier, DRK D-tier"

[Lyth]

...

It depends on what your end goal is. You can clear any content you like on any job that you like. That doesn't mean that it's going to be the most efficient method for yourself and your team to progress through content.

There's also the assumption that there's a large disparity between what you can or cannot play effectively. If you invest all of your time into one job then that's probably the case. If you're more versatile and aim to be a 'role specialist', then you will always find fights that provide benefit from you swapping, even if you have a personal favourite. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. That being said, if you want to be able to onetrick, then the balance decisions really need to support that. You cannot have massive disparities in job performance, even if they are situational.

Delirium wasn't really the reason why DRK was a better choice. You could run Dragon Kick on MNK with the same effect. And in the trade-off between Reprisal and Veil, what would have been a more relevant point, there were fights where Veil won out, especially if you didn't have a target. On balance, I'd say that A7S was still the one fight that unambiguously favoured PLD during progression. But in most cases, if you could comfortably bring a DRK, you did so because of the dps advantage. But the expectation at the time was that if you played DRK, you also were comfortable playing PLD and vice versa. At least that was the progression mindset. The slot didn't allow you to onetrick.

[Mekhana]

Its true. Besides, its not like choosing dps or even healer where difference between jobs is like night and day. Tank is another word for vapid. I've been leveling up again thanks to EW and its great to unlock like so many things at once. As a tank you are lucky to get one trait most of the time.

Also, a lot of DRK traits don't do anything new or add any visual flair.

[Undeadfire]

ShB job balance remained perfect, despite disagreeing with it, you will bring more to your party with a job you really know than playing a job because it has better numbers.

While we are working to gather numbers on this expansion, I believe SQEX will try to find SHB's balance, Yoshida mentionned he was happy about the balance.

Of course, nothing is set in stone but remember they don't want ranged to be broken again, they don't want HW difficulty, they don't want to repeat the same balancing mistakes.

Cassia is correct on this motive, you will always do more DPS on job you're much more used too, than a job you're still practicing.

SHBs job balance started really rough for 1st week Edens Gate raid clear, Ninja was a meme job, it costed a week 1 clear nearly.

HW Savage Raids I say wouldn't be difficult anymore, and would be a welcome addition. SE jumped the difficulty bar too much everyone was used to, making issues clearing Gordias/Midas, now compared to Eden Savage raids vs Alexander Savage raids it would literally be on par these days, Pandaemonium Savage will likely take it further to evolution the battles. A3S/A8S had a gear check priority, their damage numbers were strongly too high for full crafted only.

[Lyth]

Cassia is correct on this motive, you will always do more DPS on job you're much more used too, than a job you're still practicing.

That is a strawman. Nobody sensible is going to ask you to swap off of off doing 90th percentile PLD gameplay to put out 4th percentile DRK gameplay when you lack the skill to play it. For equivalent skill, job balance matters and does influence what players pick. There are plenty of players who chose to invest their time into jobs that give them a competitive advantage even if they don't find them to be particularly entertaining, because the outcome is more important than the process to them.

[Shin96]

There are plenty of players who chose to invest their time into jobs that give them a competitive advantage even if they don't find them to be particularly entertaining, because the outcome is more important than the process to them.

Where are the statistics? I doubt it's going to be many players.

Anyhow, I play whatever I want. Every job in this game is viable enough for Savage or Ultimate. I'm not going to pick something for the greater good and lock myself out of enjoying this game. If someone wants you to change constantly because DUH Meta, just find another static or drop them like a hot potatoe. They ain't worth it.

Played plenty of jobs I hated. Was very good at them, exceptionally so. In the end, made me almost quit the game but hey whatever suits you.

Sure, some jobs are fundamentally stronger in DPS output, but I would still pick RDM over MCH or SMN if I had more fun by playing.