Dark Knight Megathread

[Archwizard]

Now, with regards to the greater TBN argument, my take:

Heart of Corundum and Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash can be used every 25 seconds.
The resources for Holy Sheltron/Intervention/Cover can be generated about every ~22.5 seconds, are only usable on other defensive utilities, and can be stored as charges for use up to twice in a row.
The resources for TBN can be stored for 3 casts... but it still has the hard CD of 15 seconds minimum between uses, a soft CD through its MP generation that means you will not have the resources to consistently use it every 15 seconds so the "shorter cooldown" is largely theoretical, and shares resources with damage skills that are a necessary part of our rotation so that failure to use TBN efficiently results in a damage penalty. Functionally, it's the worst of both worlds.

Now, on a design front, there are easier ways to accomplish having TBN be a more versatile defensive tool without resorting to the competing MP resource -- for instance, just giving it charges not unlike Oblation in its own kit or, for no other reason than proof of concept, Holy Sheltron.
The primary reason to maintain the competing MP resource is to preserve the illusion of a "counterattack" element, while also maintaining damage neutrality. However, this comes at the expense of the versatility of our MP-based toolkit: while Heavensward and Stormblood provided a small plethora of recastable utility spells and allowed MP to be used on Dark Arts, Shadowbringers and Endwalker have limited the job only to a pair of redundant oGCD options as alternative uses for MP, which cannot be altered without making our already bland DPS toolkit even more braindead. This is in spite of the job being designed and billed as the "magical tank" and progressively losing its magic, so that our main magical element is... what, Living Shadow?

Is this the same as saying TBN is at fault for our kit as it is? No, you can't blame the piece of gum for holding back the dam. As has been pointed out many times, TBN itself was concurrent with several MP-based skills in Stormblood, though its practicality at the time is another matter entirely since it was a rather different skill back then and the devs clearly moved on from that design for one reason or another.
However, do I think preserving the current design of TBN provides an obstacle for designs to expand the kit further? Yes. Especially when points of contention include DRK's lack of sustainability or utility -- things taken away with the shift in MP skills in ShB -- or the blandness of its damage toolkit which hangs heavily on its pool of oGCDs. Any new MP skill has to be weighed against the DPS value of both TBN and the Darkside skills and, as we've already discussed, any shift in Dark Arts' interaction has to consider the potential to abuse TBN for damage gain beyond the scope of its intent as a defensive tool, which I believe was one of its failings in Stormblood when it provided Blood Gauge.

In short, as of right now, TBN is designed to only account for Edge and Flood. Forever. That's... pretty limiting.

I would also point out that there are ways to preserve damage neutrality AND maintain the counterattack without resorting to having TBN on the same resource as a pair of damage skills. For instance, in PvP we see the option to have Dark Arts negate an HP cost on a damage skill that is otherwise a part of the rotation, effectively increasing the job's sustainability. There are creative ways you can use to reflect that in PvE, including but not limited to just copying the PvP interaction wholesale.

On the other hand, whether DRK needs to preserve the counterattack element in any theoretical future iterations is another issue entirely. One could argue that it serves to further inflate the myriad themes of the kit while diminishing each to make room, not unlike SMN's previous positions both as DoT and Pet Mage, and that such a position itself was largely outmoded with the change in DRK's kit come Shadowbringers and the removal of, say, Dark Dance/Reprisal and Blood Price.
Personally I could see either argument there, especially when I feel like GNB is a job that flounders from lack of its own distinctive tanking niche, though "trading elements between tanks to give them to tanks who might be better served from them (either thematically or mechanically)" is apparently a taboo suggestion. But, flipside, counterattacking is a core part of making TBN unique so, whatever.

[baklava151]

Is this the same as saying TBN is at fault for our kit as it is? No, you can't blame the piece of gum for holding back the dam. As has been pointed out many times, TBN itself was concurrent with several MP-based skills in Stormblood, though its practicality at the time is another matter entirely since it was a rather different skill back then and the devs clearly moved on from that design for one reason or another.
However, do I think preserving the current design of TBN provides an obstacle for designs to expand the kit further? Yes. Especially when points of contention include DRK's lack of sustainability or utility -- things taken away with the shift in MP skills in ShB -- or the blandness of its damage toolkit which hangs heavily on its pool of oGCDs. Any new MP skill has to be weighed against the DPS value of both TBN and the Darkside skills and, as we've already discussed, any shift in Dark Arts' interaction has to consider the potential to abuse TBN for damage gain beyond the scope of its intent as a defensive tool, which I believe was one of its failings in Stormblood when it provided Blood Gauge.

In short, as of right now, TBN is designed to only account for Edge and Flood. Forever. That's... pretty limiting.

I don't think it's TBN that's necessarily the limiting factor in this case, if we're talking about adding more MP spenders to spice up the kit then it's more how to make sure Edge and the new MP spender don't have a clear winner in every situation. Two ways I can think of is a) new spender does more damage but doesn't add Darkside and b) new spender has a CD. I think it'd be possible to add both of those with a 3K MP cost and they'd fit in perfectly fine with TBN. I can't think of a reason for them not to cost 3K MP but if they do need to then limit Dark Arts to only working on Edge/Flood.

[Archwizard]

I don't think it's TBN that's necessarily the limiting factor in this case

Again, I don't think TBN's exclusively at fault. I just think its current design, particularly around Dark Arts, is an obstacle. It would be more accurate to say it's an issue of the Darkside abilities as a whole, but TBN is presently balanced around them as its counterattacks, which reinforces the issue.

if we're talking about adding more MP spenders to spice up the kit then it's more how to make sure Edge and the new MP spender don't have a clear winner in every situation. Two ways I can think of is a) new spender does more damage but doesn't add Darkside and b) new spender has a CD. I think it'd be possible to add both of those with a 3K MP cost and they'd fit in perfectly fine with TBN. I can't think of a reason for them not to cost 3K MP but if they do need to then limit Dark Arts to only working on Edge/Flood.

That's a marginal difference though, and only adds buttons for the sake of buttons; at best you find yourself alternating which of the two you use in the rotation every thirty-ish seconds, and the choice isn't particularly meaningful since you're still focused on which does optimized damage, particularly based on what's compatible with Dark Arts.

If you compare it to the days of original!Dark Arts granting increased healing or enmity or causing attacks to inflict Blind, as well as the potential growth into other sources of mitigation and utility -- tools that actually expand our gameplay and ability to react situationally -- our immediate use of MP for almost exclusively damage purposes and to limit TBN remains pretty narrow, even in that scenario.

Right now, you can't really diversify our use of MP without adding buttons that are all basically equal (or only situationally superior) in damage value; any less and you won't use them, no matter what other utility they may provide. Even having them be buttons that consume variable amounts of MP has to be weighed against you spending 3k to activate TBN to get Dark Arts; if it costs more then bursting TBN's barrier becomes a damage imperative, and if it costs less then spending Dark Arts on them becomes an inherent damage loss.

[baklava151]

That's a marginal difference though, and only adds buttons for the sake of buttons; at best you find yourself alternating which of the two you use in the rotation every thirty-ish seconds, and the choice isn't particularly meaningful since you're still focused on which does optimized damage, particularly based on what's compatible with Dark Arts.

If you compare it to the days of original!Dark Arts granting increased healing or enmity or causing attacks to inflict Blind, as well as the potential growth into other sources of mitigation and utility -- tools that actually expand our gameplay and ability to react situationally -- our immediate use of MP for almost exclusively damage purposes and to limit TBN remains pretty narrow, even in that scenario.

Right now, you can't really diversify our use of MP without adding buttons that are all basically equal (or only situationally superior) in damage value; any less and you won't use them, no matter what other utility they may provide. Even having them be buttons that consume variable amounts of MP has to be weighed against you spending 3k to activate TBN to get Dark Arts; if it costs more then bursting TBN's barrier becomes a damage imperative, and if it costs less then spending Dark Arts on them becomes an inherent damage loss.

We're on the same page then, I agree the ideas weren't super interesting but that's where we're at now where you can't do much more. ItsUrBoi had another idea a few pages back that I thought could work, where MP/Darkside would be used for damage exclusively and Blood would be for utility such as self-healing or anything else you might want to add. TBN would still be a sticking point in this scenario depending on if you like it as is or not but you get the opportunity for more utility still. Or you could flip it around and have MP be the utility resource while Blood is the damage resource, along with whatever necessary reworks that needs (Edge would have to go, its Darkside increasing effect moved elsewhere and you lose the counterattack aspect from TBN). Point being that you fully separate out the utility and damage and no longer have to worry about those two things competing, and it gives DRK some diversity in its gauges rather than having Damage Meter 1 and Damage Meter 2 that never interact.