A video showcasing all of Dark Knight's removed job actions. Thoughts?

[Oizen]

I just wish it was... more, rather than merely "Free AoE DoT damage per 90s, with the constraint that mobs must remain with it."

That's not to say that the constraint is bad or that the skill as a whole lacks any creativity; it just feels like it could be far more interesting.

Granted, most further mechanical opportunities it'd have would require complex enough fights for those to feel uniquely advantageous.

I mean thats one of the biggest issues with DRK right now. No identity, just a bunch of random unconnected ogcds, and Endwalker doubled down on this.
Its gotten to the point where Carve and Spit giving 600 mp feels like a mistake rather than a useful feature of the ability.

[Maulclaw]

I mean thats one of the biggest issues with DRK right now. No identity, just a bunch of random unconnected ogcds, and Endwalker doubled down on this.
Its gotten to the point where Carve and Spit giving 600 mp feels like a mistake rather than a useful feature of the ability.

How would any of you fix it then? Should SE bring back any of those old skills? Genuinely curious.

[Mekhana]

Careful in suggesting any cool ideas. The devs will take them away an expansion later and give better versions to other tanks.

[Maulclaw]

Careful in suggesting any cool ideas. The devs will take them away an expansion later and give better versions to other tanks.

Wow. That hurt to read.

[Kalaam]

Because it feels true.

But honestly, a lot of those old abilities would be welcomed, and not just out of nostalgie. Repurposing some of them, even with new effects, would be nice.
As we saw with a lot of more recent player seeing them for the first time those skills look good and are pleasant to see. They'd have some nice use and would be a great ressource to use to save time and money on reworks. I don't think anyone would complain.

[Oizen]

How would any of you fix it then? Should SE bring back any of those old skills? Genuinely curious.

With the exception of something like plunge, make them all give a resource?
Maybe make Bloodspiller/Quietus into another healing move
Make Shadowbringer give blood
Maybe some enhanced resource generation while inside of Salted Earth?
Oblation or Darkmind should just be the return of something like blood price, take damage to gain resource, which is honestly the only remaining identity Dark Knight currently has, carried solely by TBN.

Just random spitball ideas here, but anything would be better than Dark Knight having so many weird ogcds that don't really do anything other than damage. Its kinda sad we've gotten to the point where DRK has so many ogcds that it managed to get top DPS while feeling so jank.

[Undeadfire]

Oblation or Darkmind should just be the return of something like blood price, take damage to gain resource, which is honestly the only remaining identity Dark Knight currently has, carried solely by TBN.

SE won't do this anymore, not ever again.

Examples > Low Blow, Shield Swipe, Blood Price, getting more DPS taking damage, losing DPS if the job isn't main tanking, it only encourages comps to soak more damage they should be avoiding to get more DPS.

[Oizen]

SE won't do this anymore, not ever again.

Examples > Low Blow, Shield Swipe, Blood Price, getting more DPS taking damage, losing DPS if the job isn't main tanking, it only encourages comps to soak more damage they should be avoiding to get more DPS.

I would argue that TBN already does this to some level.

[Crater]

In a vacuum, DRK doesn't really have "too many oGCDs", and the only one that actually feels bad to use is Living Shadow.

The reason they feel bad is that you smash all of them (except for every second SE/SaD) out inside of 60s and 120s raid buff windows, so the gameplay 'feel' of them is that you're just smashing buttons nonstop for 15 seconds and there's no sense that any of them are particularly fun or meaningful, despite the fact that every oGCD DRK has (except maybe Plunge when you don't need the movement) is objectively, mathematically impactful and effective, and every one except Living Shadow has a nice audio and visual aesthetic. It's like trying to eat 30 cupcakes in ten minutes; they can all be delicious and there can be a huge variety of styles and flavours, but it's just going to taste like trash sugar when you're just mindlessly plowing through them.

Low Blow in 3.x was, in terms of potency and overall effectiveness, a total pile of shit compared to any GCD in EW DRK's repertoire. But it was a more satisfying button to hit than anything Endwalker DRK has, not because it was your stun or because the cooldown-reset mechanic turned it into a spammable like Bloodletter, but because at a baseline it had a 25-second cooldown (with infrequent resets) which meant that it didn't line up with anything. It was just as likely to show up during a burst window as during what would otherwise be downtime, during a Blood Weapon (also on an irregular 40-second cooldown that didn't cleanly line up with burst windows) where it could give you an extra bit of MP, etc.

Dark Knight is going to feel worse, not better, if they reduce the number of oGCD attacks it has, and it isn't going to get better if you go around adding little bonus effects to differentiate the attacks it does have. If you want the class to actually be fun, you have to get Yoshi-P's attention during that Live Letter "We've re-adjusted cooldowns to better line up with 60/120s windows" Powerpoint slide and say "Hey, don't do that."

The fun of the class always came from feeling chaotic and hectic. It's impossible to get that feeling when everything lines up cleanly and gives you the same kind of predictable, disciplined, highly-regimented rotation that suits classes like Paladin and Gunbreaker.

Edit: That said, there are things you can do to the oGCD suite to make them more differentiated and more 'interesting' - but it's a difficult thing to campaign for because most of the things that would make the gameplay interesting in that way are "There's a right way and a wrong way to use this skill, and the performance gap between people who can use them correctly and people who use them incorrectly is high". Considering that some of the most popular suggestions floating around here are basically "Please remove the part of this skill that allows it to be used incorrectly", I don't think most of the people here would actually even want that.

[Luin]

Souleater's not a great animation. Any other ability could have replaced it and looked better, especially Power Slash.

I dislike Bloodspiller animation. The coolest part of the skill, the dark pillar falling from the sky onto the target, cant even be seen by the DRK.

Shadowbringer looks similar to Flood.

These are minor complaints compared to the gameplay of DRK, but an extreme minority of Gunbreakers complained about a soundeffect and it was immediately addressed.

It'd be nice if the game officially allowed us to pick and choose animations client-side, but considering we never see animations before they're canceled by another action, it hardly matters.