Dark Knight needs serious help

[Ryskim]

Dark Knight needs spells like in FFXI.

It needs the Absorb-HP/STR/DEX/ACC series of spells to make it interesting to use. DRK should be a Tank/Caster hybrid after all.

And Power Slash should either return or replace Souleater.

Remove Carve and Spit entirely. The sound effect is terrible, too.

Abyssal Drain should be a spell with 3s spellcasting animation and no CD, a much stronger effect, and 3000 MP cost.

Scorched earth should drain HP of enemies inside it.

Flood of Darkness/Shadow has one of the most pathetic and awful animations I have seen in this game, only compared in ugliness to some MNK animations. It needs to be completely reworked or removed. The purpose is good, but the animation hurts my eyes.

The battle stance of the DRK is also kind of aesthetically bad. The sword should not be pointing towards the ground.

[Elkanah]

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

So basically homogenization with WAR and creating a second tank to invalidate the existence of dungeon healers.

Not thrilled. I much prefer the 25% shield on a 15s cooldown. The flexibility of that cooldown does not go unnoticed when optimizing it beyond dps.

[Shurrikhan]

The battle stance of the DRK is also kind of aesthetically bad. The sword should not be pointing towards the ground.

Guards held above chest level will (and should) predominantly be aimed downward. A resting position can still point upward, sure, that's it's not in place to defend and would not typically therefore be considered a guard.

DRK's stance is basically just finestra or a pretty typical hanging guard but sagging as if from the weight of the sword. It looks a bit lazy / doesn't look as sharp as one would expect from a trained fighter, but it isn't illogical.

It needs the Absorb-HP/STR/DEX/ACC series of spells to make it interesting to use.

Dex and Acc effectively do not exist (for DRK), as hit chance is already guaranteed (meaning that the most it could actually do is a be a uniquely weak Blind status effect) and DRK gets absolutely nothing from Dex.

We already have Absorb-HP, just in a way that no longer scales with damage amplifiers. Absorb-STR is essentially just pre-buffed Feint for the enemy + a damage buff for the DRK, which would be doable, but isn't likely to be especially interesting.

You can theme DRK around being a stat-stealer, but it would mean that its burst is coupled to its (raid) mitigation, which would go against its identity across its iterations in XIV of being able to seriously unload offensively on a given enemy via decently high-APM flurries of attacks.

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

...Which version and level of Raw Intuition? Referring to its functionality or to its tuning?

Moreover, just... why? Why homogenize it? In Savage, a DRK will already be putting out up to some 1200 HPS off TBN without any unpopped shells or any significant potency loss, and that effectively doesn't even include the lv82 bonuses against which TBN is compared. (For contrast, many of the top WAR healing+mitigation parses still manage less than 600 HPS off Bloodwhetting.) It's not as if TBN is weak.

It just doesn't AoE scale (but neither does anyone's but WAR's, i.e., the outlier's). Which Abyssal Drain does anyways, so even that's a non-issue. If you feel DRK truly needs more AoE-scaled healing, just buff AD.

[MikoRemi]

snip

To be fair, you’re one of the more sane individuals on the forums even if I disagree personally. Having come from games where nerfs strike upon popular jobs constantly(can be up to or over a year in some cases, thanks Elsword), I’d rather not hurt a good tank doing good things. In Elsword’s case, it basically meant rerolling a character or paying to enhance your gear to negate the nerfs to your damage(doesn’t change how your skills feel though if they got hurt). For a more funny example, Dark Souls 2 put in so many nerfs to weapons/armor/rings/spells that they had to nerf the enemies just to rebalance them once again.

The devs are going to have to address the overall design because it won’t be fixed by screwing over Warrior, Dark Knight and even Gunbreaker as I said in the past can still get plenty of improvements. Warrior is really not that strong enough to be considered powercreep, the moment Warrior’s Fell Cleave can chunk off 10% of a bosses hp in one shot, that’s when we got a big problem.

The moment we have nerfs being used on all the good classes, it just becomes unfun. Again though, that’s just a personal disagreement having seen the other side of things.

[Rithy255]

Snip

Power creep in terms of defensive value more then anything (this can be also attributed to autos as well), I actually like tanks doing a lot of damage and not hitting like a tiny mouse lol. (60-75% of a actual DPS is Ideal), But right now all tanks feel really strong defensively that coupled with lacking autos means you're no longer really managing your defensives... you either hold all of them for the kitchen sink or you can just not really think about using them, dungeons as well are just super easy to wall to wall without even being healed.

I think with warrior it hurts the game more then helps the game to actually have that sort of sustain in AOE, because what is it going to teach new healers? to afk or damage they dont have a job this somwhat applies to other tanks too.. but that can be fixed by more damage warrior just in that department would be very high to cap out. I know dungeon content may not be important to you or hard core raiders but it's content that 90% of the player base does on a regular basis.

I'd say all tanks have been getting power creed defensively (everyone getting their own "TBN"), again warrior is easy to point to because of the AOE healing and the strongest raid wide (paladin too but passage personally needs to just be changed to be less situational and annoying). Ironically having such strong defensives and low damage ongoing makes tanks feel less like tanks to me because all you need to focus on is a basic dps rotation, not to mention bosses move on themselves now lol? I get this isn't a "overhaul tank" issue but it feels like every change that has been made is to make tank into boring dps.

I feel like 7.0 is the time to make nerfs because mid expansion nerfs generally don't go over well, But I think they need to Overhaul all tanks more then just blind nerfs to sustain or defensive value, I just doubt that tanks or healers will get any positive changes sadly if that's the case. At the end of the day I feel like job design for tanks/healers will keep declining or go more towards the boring defensive DPS / boring Healing DPS route they have been for a long while now. Not to say dpsing isn't fun but I don't play tank for boring dps, I actually want to manage my defensives and raid wides... meh.

[MikoRemi]

Snip

It sort of depends on the tank. I mean for WAR admittedly, 50% of the time I'm using up Vengeance because of that silly physical damage reflect, so most of the time it's Rampart and/or simply Bloodwhetting at the right time. Thrill is for special occasions and Reprisal for some AoE's, standard stuff. Going wall to wall in dungeons is part of the fun but the only sad part is some tanks have it easier than others.

I mean a good tank will end up making that happen regardless(other than DRK somewhat). A PLD eats pain pretty close to WAR, a GNB can last for a decent while but also has Superbolide for fun, DRK...I mean with proper mitigations even dungeon pulls can eat into the defensives a little slower, but Dark Mind needs help to be that little extra kick. Also this only really applies to low level content since especially with the recent extreme, that doom and stack buster can be a little nutty if the healers just AFK. Thing is, you can't adjust for one thing and not affect the other inadvertently, and I tend to do more dungeons lately compared to extremes, and I haven't raided seriously since P1-3S(a month and a half of Darkened Fire/Add parties will do things to you).

The bosses could afford to be moved around a bit more since it is pretty fun, but being beefier than the Stormblood era is quite a godsend. Being a dps with more HP back then wasn't really enough, especially with how jobs were back in the day anyway. If anything it feels more tanky because well, they don't get eaten up like wet tissue paper.

I'd have my doubts about nerfs to anything at this point. Nothing really stands out that much like Summoner pulling WAY ahead of BLM/SAM long ago, not even WAR since it's more or less an easier tank but less maximizing on the overall damage which is fine. They're already reworking DRG/AST as well, and if MCH has taught me anything, if it isn't a bit issue then it'll go into the next expansion with nothing but new toys at most. It's just a difference in values though I suppose. I manage things fine in higher end content which is where that sort of things matter. Dungeons are meant to not be too much of a hassle or we get more "The Burn" and "Bardam's Mettle", where the average folk unfortunately had issues dealing with them so things had to be adjusted. I'd like for healers to get worked over but that's for healer threads. DRK could just do with some saves of it's own since well...this is the thread for that. Better to wish for that than nerfs that aren't needed, only a few months left and all.

[Reimmi]

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

Nah the warrior one is already too strong, don't need another like it. warriors needs toning down, and more tanks need mit like drk imo

[Mortex]

So basically homogenization with WAR and creating a second tank to invalidate the existence of dungeon healers.

Not thrilled. I much prefer the 25% shield on a 15s cooldown. The flexibility of that cooldown does not go unnoticed when optimizing it beyond dps.

I mean drk back in stormblood was the “war” we have now sustain dungeon wise. Abyssal drain and blood price healed you the entire time too full in every trash pack. Boss fights we’re the only one we’re it was a bit more spicy.

[Mortex]

Nah the warrior one is already too strong, don't need another like it. warriors needs toning down, and more tanks need mit like drk imo

I argue warrior is just so strong because BW is a aoe heal per mob hit. Like if you compare BW against HoC and HS you can see that both HS and HoC are both stronger in a single target situation. It’s just drk has tbn and shields scale way better with enough % mit. The problem is dungeon wise you won’t have enough mit for all groups, same with why drk as main tank isn’t good. All other tanks have sustain backed in the 25 sec cds, plus way better mit. Drk is just in a super weird spot in my eyes, it’s the tank that has the most need for Raid buffs too deal effective dmg and has off tank wise really good sustain (so do all other tanks) but he’s a really meh main tank in comparison too all the other ones. Also if a buster isn’t magic drk just flat out loses a strong defensive button.