Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

For whatever reason, FFXIV game designers see things like lifesteal as just tools to be divvied across all tanks. You can argue about whether WAR or DRK is more suited to be this game's vampiric tank, but that doesn't change the fact that PLD also now casts vampiric holy magic. So there's no real identity to be had in any of this.

The silly thing is that there are plenty of ways to achieve the same effect while preserving the uniqueness of each job. Let's look at self-sustain as an example. PLD has Clemency, which is a healing spell. It's more costly and less efficient than what your healers get, which makes sense because you're not a WHM. The counterpoint to this is that it costs you your damage output to use it, so outside of clutch raid-saving moments, you're probably not going to use it.

The simple fix for this is to create situations under which its not a dps loss to use. Back during Gordias, Frosty did a show on tanks, and Layla noted that all you need do is give PLD a free swiftcast proc for Clemency off of either a successful block or off of Sheltron. It's a very elegant solution, and that was back in Heavensward! Now you have a versatile self-sustain ability. If you need to use it on demand, you can do so at the cost of your dps. But at baseline, you'll also get instant cast procs that you can weave into your rotation for no cost and no damage loss. Now you don't need all this Holy Vampiric Spirit nonsense. This is a PLD self-sustain aesthetic: I cast healing spells on myself and my allies. Sometimes they're free, but I also have the chance of putting out more to keep the team alive at the cost of dps.

Let's talk about WAR for a moment. So if we've agreed that simple direct healing is a PLD thing, there's no need for that on WAR. You don't need the likes of Equilibrium. Just do it all through lifesteal. I've suggested this before, but you could even make it so that WAR can bank their overhealing as temporary HP as a defensive mechanic, such that you want to align your burst with high damage parts of the fight.

DRK is probably the easiest one to find a unique aesthetic for. Dread Spikes. You already have a tank that aesthetically feels like it needs to be preventing damage. But what if successfully preventing damage gave you back some HP on hit? Now you have more reason to double down on them as barrier tanks.

GNB already has a bit of a regen theme going with Aurora. You could make a tank which just always regenerates HP slowly at baseline, and then give them actions that accelerate their regeneration rate. Perhaps give it a stimpack/soldier feel. Variations on a theme.

It's fine to have jobs with varying amounts of self-sustain. But I do think that if you want to have self-sustain on every tank, it's preferable to find unique aesthetic approaches for each, rather than giving every tank blanket lifesteal.

[Danelo]

DRK is probably the easiest one to find a unique aesthetic for. Dread Spikes. You already have a tank that aesthetically feels like it needs to be preventing damage. But what if successfully preventing damage gave you back some HP on hit? Now you have more reason to double down on them as barrier tanks.

It's fine to have jobs with varying amounts of self-sustain. But I do think that if you want to have self-sustain on every tank, it's preferable to find unique aesthetic approaches for each, rather than giving every tank blanket lifesteal.

Agreed.

I am truly surprised that dread spikes hasn’t made an appearance. Same with absorb-x, drain, or aspir. Why can’t we have str or tenacity attached to DRK weapon skills and absorb that attribute from bosses while an a tank buster is incoming? It could be like a debuff for the tb and also a boost our attack. Any of those could have been worked in to proc based system. Absorb strength could fill a gauge overtime as prods stack up to unleash a massive attack. I’ve read most all the threads on DRK for years and many of them were great ideas even if the pots were OP. I’m sad to see where DRK has ended up.

[Archwizard]

Dread Spikes is also a theoretically useful tool to pair with TBN. And currently WAR has a Spikes effect with Vengeance, albeit without the healing component, so it's evidently not out of the question.

If they added it to Oblation, the ability would actually be rather attractive and go a long way to resolving DRK's sustain issues in W2W.

For whatever reason, FFXIV game designers see things like lifesteal as just tools to be divvied across all tanks. You can argue about whether WAR or DRK is more suited to be this game's vampiric tank, but that doesn't change the fact that PLD also now casts vampiric holy magic. So there's no real identity to be had in any of this.

I can at least get PLD's take on it -- Holy spells that heal the PLD in the same instant they smite their foes, sort of like Assize. The job was always meant to combine damage blocking with healing magic, dating back to FF1's Knight; the issue was only ever that spending GCDs doing your healer's job instead of contributing to damage output is often a waste. Might have been less of one if Clemency was just an oGCD with an MP cost, or had a small radius of effect as a form of utility for off-tanking, but if this is the way they want to handle it then... as long as it works in the end, right?

I mostly find WAR and DRK's designs weird, because WAR is meant to be a berserker who shrugs off attacks due to simply being too angry to care about pain, while DRK is based on a job who treats HP as a resource and uses dark magic both to sustain himself and purge the wicked.
Now, I can sort of get WAR's "attack with reckless abandon" aesthetic translating into rewarding attacks with self-sustain, and how DRK's method of protecting an ally would likely involve using their dark magic to form rudimentary barriers, but that those became their respective primary methods of sustain is still very backwards.

Like, you would think WAR's effects would build some amount of damage absorption on every swing, and DRK would have to consume his own HP to cast a barrier on an ally*, which he would buy back later by leeching health from his foes, y'know?

... and then GNB just feels like them throwing spaghetti at the wall. Evasion, parry up, regen, barriers, Excog, basically everything short of jabbing himself in the neck with a stim or... I dunno, literally shooting down incoming attacks. It sure works, but it's still weird.

I suppose you could make the argument that at least WAR having self-healing works well with Holmgang just as GNB having Aurora does with Superbolide, but that still leaves DRK out of luck with LD.

* Though on consideration, this would also be a good compromise for the people who complain about TBN having an MP cost and the otherwise impracticality of a tank who uses their own HP for damage. Have it cost HP instead, protect for the HP consumed with DA when it breaks, and then give DRK a 25s personal mit+leech CD in its place like Dread Spikes.
Tack on LD getting reworked to instead full-heal and invuln the DRK on activation but consume 10% HP every sec, have either Blood Gauge attacks or Shadow/Darkness oGCDs restore HP on hit, and tada, you have a functional vampire tank.

[The_User]

PLD has Clemency, which is a healing spell. It's more costly and less efficient than what your healers get, which makes sense because you're not a WHM. The counterpoint to this is that it costs you your damage output to use it, so outside of clutch raid-saving moments, you're probably not going to use it.

The simple fix for this is to create situations under which its not a dps loss to use. Back during Gordias, Frosty did a show on tanks, and Layla noted that all you need do is give PLD a free swiftcast proc for Clemency off of either a successful block or off of Sheltron. It's a very elegant solution, and that was back in Heavensward! Now you have a versatile self-sustain ability. If you need to use it on demand, you can do so at the cost of your dps. But at baseline, you'll also get instant cast procs that you can weave into your rotation for no cost and no damage loss. Now you don't need all this Holy Vampiric Spirit nonsense. This is a PLD self-sustain aesthetic: I cast healing spells on myself and my allies. Sometimes they're free, but I also have the chance of putting out more to keep the team alive at the cost of dps.

If my memory serve me right,you can requiescat+Clemency but it still trigger a gcd...

[Shurrikhan]

...

If my memory serve me right, you can requiescat+Clemency but it still trigger a gcd...

That is correct. Even as an instant cast, Clemency is still a damage loss. It breaks combos and, more importantly, consumes a GCD in a very, very GCD-locked rotation.

While I agree with most of her post (linked above, and quoted by The_User), unless Lyth's proc would forcibly replace Clemency, a spell, with an ability by the same name, it'd still be a damage loss, so I don't Lyth proposed an instant-cast Clemency as an alternative means to providing free sustain.

Of course, just do that and, voila, it's fixed. It'd increase PLD's dependence on actively tanking to get full value from its kit, but frankly... we shouldn't shy away from that. Tanks should feel like they want to be tanking. (Yes, I will regret these words come the first Alliance Raid.)


On that note...

I'm not a fan of non-timeable heals like Holy Shock/Circle's (both basically just a 4-cast function of Requiescat for a rigidly timed 1600cp per minute) unless they purposely under-tax the user's budget (making them slightly OP if they can be fully exploited but functioning under the assumption that they typically won't). However, I don't see how "releasing holy light, healing myself as it passes through me" as necessarily "vampiric".

Being healed for a flat amount per a given action, even an offensive one, is not sufficient to create form that identity. Healing as a percent of damage? Yeah, that sounds either like vampirism or being enthralled by the thrill of the fight. Healing only from one's obviously Blood-themed attacks? Sure; that sounds vampiric. Also having that portion be designated specifically as bonus damage, such that you inflict and heal for that same, separate "drain" amount? Absolutely.

But when it's a flat heal from a holy spell, there are far more fitting ways of looking at that, thematically, than 'PLD is a vampire now'.

So long as there are multiple, at-least-slightly-differed procedures of self-healing from offensive actions, or they're clearly contained within different thematic grounds, I don't think we need to constrain them to just particular tanks. I would take the aforementioned "next Clemency becomes an instant-cast oGCD" proc over that for Paladin, but PLD, too, having a bit of constrained healing upon using certain offensive actions doesn't bug me.