Dark Knight Megathread

[VicariousXIV]

Question for those of you looking for excuses for why the "DRK isn't actually that bad," even contrary to evidence and actual experience most of us who level multiple tanks have had and seen;

Why must the DRK be the tank to be left as is? Why are the other tanks allowed to get so much QoL but the DRK isn't? Every tank was viable in ShB, they were all "serviceable" as they were, but the other three, mostly WAR and PLD, got so much nice shit and they feel absolutely amazing to play now! Why isn't the DRK allowed to have the same treatment just cause "it's viable where it is?"

Blood Weapon does it's job well, but it feels like shit.

Oblation does it's job well, but it feels worthless.

AoE rotations do their jobs well even as spells, but they feel like shit.

TBN does amazing work even though it uses MP, but it often feels awful.

LD doesn't do it's job well and it feels like shit...

For the WAR the Onslaughts did their job, Upheaval was fine, IR being on a duration worked well, but they ALL got adjusted for the sake of comfort.

The PLDs magic rotation was perfectly fine, everyone got along with it and it did it's job well, but that too got fixed up just to feel that much better.

So I ask again, why must DRK be the one left alone? Why can't it have nice things too?

That's the kind of stuff we're all looking for here, and why I'm tired of seeing people arguing that it's "FINE," cause that doesn't fucking matter.

[Shurrikhan]

Nitpicks, but...

TBN in concept is great. A shield where you take 0 damage while it is active is good in any content. The problem is that it's either viable in single targets or ineffective in dungeon pulls.

That's... not how damage works. The environment of the damage or number of its sources are irrelevant. Between a 25% HP shield and 25% mitigation, each over 7 seconds, the shield does more if you would have taken less than your maximum HP in damage over those next 7 seconds and the percentile mitigation does more if you would otherwise have taken more damage than your maximum HP over those 7 seconds. The vast majority of the time, 7 seconds of even a double-pull will not do more than your maximum HP unless you utterly neglect your other CDs.

And let's keep in mind that DRK was the "takes no damage" meme tank in Shadowbringers (behind only WAR in "unkillability" without tapping into lost offensive GCDs a la PLD). TBN hasn't been nerfed. HoS and Shelltron have perhaps surpased through their lv82 traits (Heart of Corundum and Holy Shelltron) through their attached heals, but TBN will still faintly lead in the majority of 7/8-second spans of damage intake in terms of actual mitigation and we've gained Oblation atop that, in place of the added regen. Warrior is the only outlier.

(Arguably, yes, Oblation+TBN having greater value than Holy Shelltron or Heart of Corundum is because we lack a general defensive (or PLD's block chance) in place of Dark Mind, but you cannot reasonably make the case that TBN&Oblation are weaker by nature or in practice than any of its equivalents save for Bloodwhetting/Nascent in AoE pulls.)

Ultimately TBN is the sole reason why DRK no longer has self sustain.

If that were the case, we wouldn't have had the most broken self-sustain (self-refunding Quietus casts under Blood Weapon that allow for infinite MP, which in turn allowed for DA-AD to make one unkillable) made possible in the same expansion TBN was added. StB, the expansion that added TBN, housed our (or any tanks') highest AoE self-sustain value, and our ST self-sustain value has not decreased (in fact it has very slightly increased) since.

No, we lost our AoE self-sustain as a side-effect of losing DA and having Stalwart Soul combo replace Abyssal Drain as our primary AoE source of damage. How did additions cost us core identity? Because this is DRK, and oversights are the majority of what glimpses we get.

Our single-target self-sustain was unaffected outside of, again, losing DA. (Though with Souleater producing such an increasingly small portion of damage as healing as level increased--as per DRG's Life Surge at the time--the cure potency attached to it now is stronger than the damage-to-healing we had in SB.)

Question for those of you looking for excuses for why the "DRK isn't actually that bad," even contrary to evidence and actual experience most of us who level multiple tanks have had and seen;

No one's said that we, on the whole, are "fine". Our mitigation? Sure. Our damage? Sure. But our polish, identity, engagement, or flow? No. Claims like "DRK has the worst short-mitigation CD" merely gets refuted when they fly, as you say, contrary to evidence (here being the actual numbers--logs, and breakpoints--rather than Tales from Duty Finder).

No one has said that Blood Weapon is good. No one has said that Oblation feels great. No one has said that it's fine for DRK spells not to scale with SkS. Saying that "No, a 25% HP shield didn't suddenly become worse than forms of mitigation that, in the vast majority of present contexts of the time, will absorb lower total damage" is not an attempt to excuse lazy design. It's correction; no more, no less.

Please, stop treating the faintest bit of factual evidence that runs contrary to the "DRK is worthless" narrative as some broad apologist defense.

[OdinelStarrei]

Question for those of you looking for excuses for why the "DRK isn't actually that bad," even contrary to evidence and actual experience most of us who level multiple tanks have had and seen;

Why must the DRK be the tank to be left as is? Why are the other tanks allowed to get so much QoL but the DRK isn't? Every tank was viable in ShB, they were all "serviceable" as they were, but the other three, mostly WAR and PLD, got so much nice shit and they feel absolutely amazing to play now! Why isn't the DRK allowed to have the same treatment just cause "it's viable where it is?"

Blood Weapon does it's job well, but it feels like shit.

Oblation does it's job well, but it feels worthless.

AoE rotations do their jobs well even as spells, but they feel like shit.

TBN does amazing work even though it uses MP, but it often feels awful.

LD doesn't do it's job well and it feels like shit...

For the WAR the Onslaughts did their job, Upheaval was fine, IR being on a duration worked well, but they ALL got adjusted for the sake of comfort.

The PLDs magic rotation was perfectly fine, everyone got along with it and it did it's job well, but that too got fixed up just to feel that much better.

So I ask again, why must DRK be the one left alone? Why can't it have nice things too?

That's the kind of stuff we're all looking for here, and why I'm tired of seeing people arguing that it's "FINE," cause that doesn't fucking matter.

Answer, I'm tired of it being DRK-centric/ I'm just unwilling to continue to bash DRK specifically over it, we all know what's wrong with it. I've done this song and dance for too long, I've written too many words, held too many ted talks. Even if I do think it's fine in SOME aspects, that's such a pathetic goal for any expansion. It's called that for a reason, to expand on the design, and they've failed to do that, despite having every single opportunity to do so after a controversial rework. They've failed to listen to DRK mains, tank players, and the healers who are forced to deal with them time after time after time. There's a total lack of transparency between the people who are designing jobs versus the actual people who play them. There's a complete disregard for the NA/EU side of the game at every single level, from community support to server infrastructure to game design decisions.

A single person's experience in the game is fairly irrelevant. Mine included. But when this many people get splintered over a job, it's time to open up a dialogue, even if it's only one-way, and explain what is going on. Because that isn't happening, we are left to fester, to stew, to exaggerate, and to see malice where there is more than likely incompetence brought on by overworked developers working on a job none of them care about. Heavens, when the Living Shadow enmity thing happened last expansion I was pretty peeved. When I heard the response about Blood Weapon I was outright seething. I won't tolerate DRK just getting some fixes, I want some damn answers. I want the design document. Who are these people who have dragged us into this total anarchy of job discussion? Who is the specific individual who takes all the DRK feedback given by non-JP DRK players and throws them straight into the shredder? What is the point of DRK?

I'm way more angry about, and way more willing to criticize Square Enix's development over DRK itself now, because I also want those nice things. I want to be proud of my main. DRK is a symptom of a much larger problem, and if they don't fix it, what am I going to do? Complain about DRK for another two straight years? After complaining about ShB DRK for two straight years? Saying exactly the same thing I said back in ShB? Am I seriously going to complain about DRK for four-five consecutive years because the developers won't listen to the DRK players for anything ever outside of surface level complaints fixed by "bandaids" that don't matter or actively ruin the job? DRK is as much of a victim as the people suffering with it are.

People are right to be upset. They are more than justified. It goes beyond sour grapes at the tanks getting a better kit, I personally have active distrust towards the developers for killing DRK morale through death from a thousand cuts, their silence being many of them.

I got a silver lining out of it by still being able to enjoy the job somehow, but for those who don't, I don't blame them.

But I'm going to stick to the facts as best I can, or at least, to what SE has made blindly obvious to anyone paying attention over the years. I'm not going to make up nonsense to support negative feelings I have towards the job like this perpetuation of DRK is completely worthless dead weight, a wet paper bag in all content, and is now all of a sudden totally unviable. It's reductive and it's not true, but understandable. All the graphs and logs in the world won't make people feel like they aren't neglected and ignored. Living Dead is proof of that.

I'd ask that you not put words in my mouth if I'm not willing to completely give in to the outrage, though. I'm as discontent as the rest of you. I am the last person on earth who could be called a DRK-apologist.

To answer your other question, DRK must be left alone because JP doesn't hate it enough. You can't have nice things, because you aren't JP.