Dark Knight Megathread

[Hyde_Evydance]

To be honest, the reason I outlined Sole Survivor specifically is because more than likely the animation for it and probably the code to implement it still exist, and if needed, they could use those to implement on-demand healing. Also SE is not against returning old abilities historically, like they did with Minor Arcana, Energy Drain in 5.01, Miasma in 4.01 etc.

The cooldown is arbitrary, of course. Could be a 60s CD with 2 charges if we are gonna go wild with ideas

[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.

[FoxCh40s]

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.

Someone gets it.

[Kalaam]

That "Free Clemency on block/shieldtron" is such a simple and elegant solution.

[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.

[Alcomancer]

Honestly I just want Blood Weapon to get the delerium treatment so bad. The fact that I still need to push my skill speed to fit in 5 GCDs under it feels awful because if I'm on during a night where I have bad ping I will miss a tick of it and lose DPS.

Living Dead feels awful and I never use it outside of high end content because I will die, which is a gameplay style that basically teaches most casual players never to use their invuln button. It's also just really frustrating to get killed by your invuln but I think the actual worst part about it is that casual dark knight players just basically never use it, ever. It's a button on their hotbar just collecting dust, and I do not trust healers in dungeons to heal me through it. Frankly if I'm popping Living Dead its because the rest of my party is dead and I'm tanking the last 1% of the bosses hp.

TBN costing mana also just makes it frustrating to use because if my timing is off then all I've done is sacrifice DPS by eating mana for mitigation I basically didn't use.

Some defensive changes would be nice but overall I think other than those two things the job performs 'okay'. I would love to see some cool effects with my bread and butter defensives like other jobs get though, but I'm not sure what those would be so I'm not gonna list them here.

[Weetzlo]

Ehh, kinda feels more like you're describing PLD there, pre-shenanigans. DRK has from the start been themed around "Sacrifices are acceptable and may be necessary," and outright "You know what, f*ck these idiots" energy. "No half measures," and "Reject outside preconceptions" have always been their more unique core than "Protect the weak." Their selflessness is borne out more by finding their health, their fears, their reputation absolutely irrelevant than by any hero image you'd find among those popularly considered, by themselves or others, as "selfless".

I think its totally fair to describe DRKs in that selfless way. The official job description reads

"None dare to administer justice to these sacrosanct elite residing outside the reach of the law. Who, then, defends the feeble from the transgressions of those meant to guide and protect them?

A valiant few take up arms to defend the downtrodden, and not even the holy priests and knights can escape their judgment. Pariahs in their own land, they are known by many as “dark knights.”

The culmination of their job quest line is "You can only maximize your hate for something if you have something you love to protect from the target of your hate."

Plus the first DRK was a PLD so it makes sense that they'd have comparable attitudes.

[Sacrilegion]

Getting angry shouldnt provide ANY healing at all, and it doesnt make ANY sense whatsoever. I would understand it if a angry WAR would be numb to pain (like getting increased defenses for example) but lifesteal effects and a 1200 potency self heal ( literally the strongest single target heal when you exclude Eggs Benediction) is way over the top.

But i do agree that if anyone should ever get lifesteal effects, its DRK. It should also be designed then in a way where it compensates (along with other skills) for Living Dead, if it should stay the same (or at least, with a reduced healing treshold required).

Warrior should be bad at something or suffer a drawback. PLD's is dps, GNB is a middle ground, DRK is just bad at everything. Warrior gets broken self sustain, ability to shield people now, guaranteed DH and crit, and is literally brain dead easy to play. DRK is artificially difficult because of the massive handicaps placed on it by negligence and being stuck in HW with everything ripped from it.

[Kalaam]

DRK is a more "do what has to be done" kind of knight, mixed with a "avenger those who have been wronged by the powerful" type. Thematically it kind of translated with "dirty" fighting moves like low Blow and blinding ennemies.
Now the identity is also to protect those you care about with your love manifesting through TBN as the most powerful single target shield any tank can use, and that's part of its lore and identity, that's fine.
But we kind of lost the "compensate the lack of shield/strength with occult magic". Raw darkness blasts are fun but feels a bit off. Especially with how big they get past level 70 (I'll be honest, I kind of prefer edge/flood at lower level, still feels like using a sword then)