Dark Knight Megathread

[fulminating]

I have tried to be fair, and avoid going too heavily into optimisation or anything.

Bloodspiller changing to Torcleaver combo under delirium: I will need to play it to have a full opinion. I suspect that the variety in animation will make it feel less samey. This is a tentative positive.

Blood weapon: The loss of 2 stacks is a bit of a negative. Stapling BW and Delirium together reduces flexibility for both the devs and players. Currently you regenerate 600mp per attack for 5 hits under BW. In the media tour, it seems that you regenerate 600mp for each hit of the torcleaver combo, being 1200mp short of current. We will also be 20 blood short of current due to the reduced blood weapon effect, but then up 25 per minute due to the reduction in cost for Living Shadow. As a secondary point, it also seems we will be losing another of dark knight's better animations at level cap. *Looking at some footage, it seems that the Torcleaver combo is generating 600mp and 200mp for each hit, which is only a deficit of 600mp, but I can't see that in the weaponskill tooltip.

Disesteem: This comboing from Living Shadow looks like it should further break up and add some variety to raid windows. While it doesn't look like it will quite add some interaction with LS entity itself, the long duration of Scorn and it hinging on LS has the potential to be interesting.

Plunge: I am quite negative on this one. Exchanging one of the better feeling buttons for a highly situational movement tool does not strike me as particularly good. Losing something so strongly ingrained to FFXIV's Dark Knight aesthetic, present since its inception is a bit concerning. It does not really matter that it is commonly used under burst for damage, this is both part of dark knight's high apm playstyle and provides a use for an otherwise highly niche keybind. Since uptime is so central to doing good damage, moving one plunge out of raid buffs to improve uptime more than compensates for the theoretical damage loss there. Unfortunately the loss of plunge also will make odd minute deliriums feel emptier, which is already a not uncommon complaint about DRK downtime.

Salted Earth: I am still not entirely happy that I can no longer manually place it, particularly after the ground targeted aoe qol improvments this past expansion, but it is nice to see it stick around.

Shadowed Vigil: I think the secondary effect, similar to excogitation is a good attempt at adding some sustain to DRK. I do not think this will bring it remotely close to the other tanks as it's a 2 minute cooldown, but its impact should be perceptible in every other trash pull during dungeon content.

Abyssal Drain: This action remaining a shared ability with Carve and Spit confuses me somewhat. Everyone remembers or at least knows that it used to be a spell, and key part of DRK's sustain and aoe rotation. The fact that it is also a drain type spell, historically associated with DRK in prior games, and left to such a niche role doesn't quite sit right. I think that reexamining this could be a particularly strong option to improve DRK sustain in dungeons, be it through conversion to a high (5k-6k)mp cost spell or a reduced cooldown or something more creative.

Enhanced Unmend: As much of a meme as it has been treated, I am glad to see it remain. It's more for flavour than practical use, but does help display DRK's identity. It is somewhat unfortunate that Shadowstride is a less valuable refund than plunge, and that shadowstride is clearly magical rather than being the aggressive sword strike we had before, but I suppose it cannot be helped.

The Blackest Night: I'm happy to see it remain a 15s cooldown with mp cost. I know it could be homogenised to not cost mp, but I am of the belief that it would strongly negatively impact how DRK plays both at high and low competency.

Overall impression: Somewhat apprehensive. I'll give it a go when DT releases, but can't see myself playing it as much.

edit: Astronis has corrected me on the crossed out bit