Your Dark Knight players are unhappy. あなたの暗闇騎士プレイヤーは不幸です

[Garlan]

...We want transparency. At least we want to know your thoughts, reasoning, and approach to things.

We know you can do better. We love your game and your work. However, please reconsider and reach out to the community.

Thank you.

To be absolutely fair to the developers, they stated the 5.0 rework was a direct result of community feedback, which is true. During 4.0 the forums and official subreddit were flooded with anti-Dark Art sentiments, and many players rejoiced after the 5.0 job action trailer. For better or for worse, the community as a whole is responsible for the rework due to backlash of player feedback.

Some changes I think we can realistically expect are fixes for BW, LD, possibly stronger options for non-shield sustain, and a slight revamp of when select skills become unlocked during the leveling path.

However, I'd LOVE to see Dark Arts return, but as a 25s oGCD with no mana cost. Since we have Edge/Flood, Dark Art's new purpose would be to solely enhance our defensive kit by altering select skills. I'm thinking things like DA enhancing Souleater's heal, DA allowing Dark Mind to include a 10% reduction to physical damage, DA increasing TBN's shield by an additional 5%, DA adding an additional effect of "increases HP recovery via healing actions by X%" to Oblation, or DA allowing BW to provide an additional HP leeching-effect for the duration.

[HyperiusUltima]

So how do we set up a two combo system that fulfills this? I think the easiest way to do this is to separate out MP and Blood into two different combos, and make this the basis of converting MP into Blood. Your baseline combo restores MP on each step. This is important because it ensures that you're never locked into a no MP state. You spend MP on Edge and Flood as normal, except this time to gain Dark Arts procs. You consume a Dark Arts proc to activate your second combo, which gives you Blood on each step. Get to 50 blood, use Delirium for your burst window (which we can talk about designing later). Once per minute, use Living Shadow to gain 50 blood for a burst window that's automatically synced up with raid buffs. That's how I'd see a two combo system working on DRK, rather than having a maintenance combo system. You'd have to similarly design the rest of your cooldowns to play off of exchanging MP for blood and vice versa.

I'm more than willing to work off this idea since it sounds the most reasonable. In general, I can see how this would change DRK rotations a bit(not accounting for potency mishaps), but there is one slight detail we're not accounting for: Living Shadow. As every DRK knows, Living Shadow is an over-glorified DoT that uses 50 Blood - something we didn't even ask for and thought was good, but turned sour in the long run because of animation delays on the button that we saw in Shadowbringers. If anything, I would not mind DRK getting a Bunshin equivalent so that it feels far better to use since it's copying every GCD you do for 5 GCDs. This means you get double the gains off of Siphon Strike and Souleater in a burst window, and have that burst of resources you want to blast through during raid buffs.

All aside, this is something that can be added on later after we deal with the issue of attempting to make DRK "Not Warrior, Not Gunbreaker, and Not Paladin".

[HyperiusUltima]

1) The job has to still be recognizable as 'DRK' to meet the expectations of anyone who has played any previous iteration of the job (i.e. Using either prior or currently existing gameplay elements and resource systems).
2) The job must still be accessible to the broader playerbase (i.e. It can't be more complex than the average melee dps job, you can't leave the player stuck in a resource starved state where they are unable to perform basic actions, and you can't introduce 15 new resource systems with new edgy names).
3) The job should feel distinct to play from the existing tanks.

1) We identify the core aspects of the job in lore and what it stands for, which will bring draw to those who do the DRK job quests. In this instance, Living Dead rework is what everyone has called for time and again. An idea I thought of was changing Living Dead to Shadows Die Twice, which would on a fatal blow restore all your HP and inflict you with Walking Dead - to prevent your HP from falling to 0 after the HP Restoration for 8s. I got the idea from someone in the DRK Megathread that mentioned 'Reverse Superbolide'.


However, the consideration of Dark Arts from back in Stormblood was something that is not entirely missed due to the 'treadmill' effect that people so hate.

So, I suggest we turn Dark Arts into an individual 30s CD that augments Souleater to become Power Slash(Sub 90)/Shadowbringer(90), forgoing Blood for higher raw damage equivalent to Blood Gain and granting Dark Requiem at 90 - recovering MP over time at a set rate. The worry of too much MP is heavily mitigated by the fact they've already simplified DRK's MP usage, which is mostly used on Edge/Flood/TBN. Adding a second combo is also a priority considering DRK is akin to how PLD was in simplicity in ARR currently - so adding a Blood Combo as you suggested in one of the later pages of this thread would be favorable. This would keep Souleater as your sustain combo, which generates 20 Blood per use, while this second combo would instead inflict a debuff on the target that grants DRK 10 Blood per GCD while it is up.

Scourge would make a return, considering the fact that we've always thought of "powerful" animations, and not a single DRK that played the job in HW forgets Scourge. It'd be a Single Target CD DoT akin to Sonic Break, but would be on GCD - it also would not break combo, giving DRK some needed breathing room when weaving oGCDs compared to now.

It would also make sense to replace Oblation with Sole Survivor, a buff that if your HP is <=50% Max HP, you would recover a set potency. This would lean towards DRK's lack of sustain that it desperately needs outside of Souleater HP Sustain buffs.

Changing Dark Mind from Magic Mitigation into a 10% would make things far better for low level as well, as learning it doesn't do much due to the heavy lack of magic damage in a majority of content that this ability is supposed to be used in.

Blood Weapon getting the Requiescat treatment it desperately deserves to have. 5 stacks, 5 GCDs of MP.

Keep Delirium, but instead of it being the same 'Unga Bunga' button that WAR is used to, have it grant a buff that for every 3000 MP you have, convert it to a stack of Premonition that can stack up to 3 and does not have a timer associated with it. It can only be used during battle so as to not cause any pre-pull issues. To prevent conflict with TBN, TBN should simply be a shield with no MP Cost, no Edge/Flood tied to breaking so the ability doesn't become convoluted into "I need to break it to get more DPS" like it has been since Stormblood.

2) The job's leveling scheme needs shaping up, since at low level it feels horrible to play, even all the way to max level, due to one less defensive caused by Dark Mind, which is useless in 90% of content. Moving some abilities such as Stalwart Soul down to the 40 baseline like other tanks would bring it more in-line with what is expected in a new-player experience, and would make it feel less like a drag outside of the story gameplay wise. At 72, it'd have the trait where it would grant Blood upon combo.

3) By distinct, it needs to attain an identity. The only identity I remember that made it stand out in Heavensward was the fact that it had this focus on MP Management - something we should bring back in some shape or form that would fit the bill rather than just slap "Just use Edge/Flood/TBN" considering I chose to bring Dark Arts as a Finisher augment.

There's probably more that can be done to make the job distinct, but this is all I can think of right now in terms of what may make the job actually 'feel' better in terms of flow.

[Quintessa]

All they gotta do is bring back Blood price/roll Abyssal Drain back to HW levels and maybe reintroduce Dark Arts again minus the Dark Arting everything.

[Oizen]

All they gotta do is bring back Blood price/roll Abyssal Drain back to HW levels and maybe reintroduce Dark Arts again minus the Dark Arting everything.

Clearly the correct answer is to remove 20 skills from the class and give it a worse version of WAR's healing move.

[Sacrilegion]

To be absolutely fair to the developers, they stated the 5.0 rework was a direct result of community feedback, which is true. During 4.0 the forums and official subreddit were flooded with anti-Dark Art sentiments, and many players rejoiced after the 5.0 job action trailer. For better or for worse, the community as a whole is responsible for the rework due to backlash of player feedback.

Some changes I think we can realistically expect are fixes for BW, LD, possibly stronger options for non-shield sustain, and a slight revamp of when select skills become unlocked during the leveling path.

However, I'd LOVE to see Dark Arts return, but as a 25s oGCD with no mana cost. Since we have Edge/Flood, Dark Art's new purpose would be to solely enhance our defensive kit by altering select skills. I'm thinking things like DA enhancing Souleater's heal, DA allowing Dark Mind to include a 10% reduction to physical damage, DA increasing TBN's shield by an additional 5%, DA adding an additional effect of "increases HP recovery via healing actions by X%" to Oblation, or DA allowing BW to provide an additional HP leeching-effect for the duration.

What the devs didn't get is that DRK players didn't want to be a terrible version of warrior. We didn't want our identity and useful skills ripped from us and given to other jobs. I don't know where along the line of "just tone down Dark Arts spamming" jumps to completely gutting the job and making it to a barely functional tank.

[Sacrilegion]

At least if they are going to make us a knock off of warrior, make us a damn good one.

[Hazama999]

To add a small bit to the salt pile...

When I first laid eyes on the RPR trailer they showed us back in the second EW keynote, my first thought was "Goddamnit. I wish this mechanic had been employed on DRK." And I shook my head. Tbh I've never really been a fan of transplanting mechanics from one job to another, but even before RPR was announced, I envisioned DRK having a sort of "superpowered" form. Now, this ain't to say it'd have been the exact same thing as RPR, that is, super speedy attacks with a reduced GCD... But the idea of say, being possessed by our dark side just felt right for DRK.

You see, when they showed us the job action trailer for 5.0 and it ended with the DRK summoning Fray to fight alongside us, I was very excited! It wasn't long, however, before I started asking questions... Was there going to be some sort of interaction with Fray? Can we influence how he fights in any way? Do we just summon them and they just do their thing? When the embargo lifted on the media tour and the info came flooding in, I was disappointed. You just hit a button and Fray showed up and just kinda did their thing. I thought "this is a dope concept but it just kinda looks like a really pretty DoT." :/ Sure enough, I eventually took DRK to 80 and pretty much confirmed my suspicions. The ability just felt... really passive, which, Idk about you, but "passive" ain't part of the DRK identity to me. Having a capstone ability that was essentially "hit the button and then you continue on doing your own thing while your simulacrum does its thing in the background" doesn't sit right with me.

[Shinimas]

The fact that there's a countdown timer on the Shadow implies some sort of intended interaction, but they just never added. Right now it's the same as PLD having a Goring Blade timer on their Oath Gauge. What's the point? It's like the timer on Darkside, it's like fake mechanics.

[Shurrikhan]

The fact that there's a countdown timer on the Shadow implies some sort of intended interaction

It's a duration timer. You can also find them on your status bar, with similarly no implication that you will do anything further for them.

It's on the gauge because Darkside is on the gauge. You can safely move both timers off your screen, just as you could safely ignore them if they were both still Status Effects shown only on the normal Status Effects bar.