Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

I said this in my own thread but it'd be nice if DRK was the actual sustain/drain tank. They were originally in HW and SB and traditionally have self healing and lifesteal in other FF games. It's very weird they went the healing route on WAR instead. I feel like bloodwhetting should honestly have been what an upgrade to blood weapon should have been

I'm not sure where this myth comes from, at least as it pertains to XIV. Warrior literally started as the tank whose only means of sustain was drain. Their only native mitigation skill, Foresight, gave all of 3% mitigation. Bloodbath was their most significant defensive (lasting for 30s per 90), alongside healing for 3x the damage of Inner Beast. Storm's Path likewise predates Souleater.

That said, Blood Weapon giving MP instead of HP was already thematic and more useful, if only for the fact of it being more bankable. The controllable vampiric portion of DRK originally came from MP expenditure, enhancing the potency and therefore healing of Souleater or causing Abyssal Drain to heal for damage dealt, as Bloodbath already did but at a much higher percentage (100% instead of 25%).

The problem was just that they removed sustain control from MP in DRK. Though, tbf, they also removed its bankability from Warrior, who could previously bank gauge for the purpose.

[SargeTheSeagull]

I haven't kept up with the discourse much over the last few months and I'm not about to read through 476 pages, so I'll just throw this out there.

Drk is the only tank right now that, to me, doesn't feel invincible all the time. Playing the other tanks makes you feel like you cannot possibly die unless you are just terrible beyond belief and refuse to press buttons. I derive the fun in tanking from pushing the limits of how well i can manage my cooldowns, HP and other resources vs how much damage the enemies or boss are dealing to me. The closer to the line of dying (without actually dying), the more fun I have as a tank.
The issue is that this feeling is only achievable right now on DRK; this is an issue because it means that DRK just feels downright inferior to the other tanks when as far as I'm concerned the other tanks are just horribly overtuned.

IMO, the entire role, not just DRK suffers from an identity crisis. The only tank right now that feels like it knows what it wants to be is Paladin. You're a knight wielding a sword and shield and holy magic. You can boost your defense, heal yourself and your party members, and buff the crap outta your shield. GNB is close because its whole thing is that its a tank that plays like a dps, but in terms of its defense kit its sorta all over the place. DRK, which in older FF's and most other media depicting dark knights or similar, is all about stealing the health of your enemies or consuming your own life force to fight through. In 14 its... the barrier tank. Which imo just doesn't fit. Then you've got warrior which I honestly detest. I was a warrior main when i started back in HW but war just feels like its way too good at everything. It's got self healing, raw mitigation, barriers, HP bonuses, it feels like it's just "tank the tank".

I seriously hope that next expac the devs consider giving all tanks a soft rework. I think enmity is fine as is, but I don't like how their rotations are purely for dealing damage with basically no link to their survivability and I don't like how effortless they are to play. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you should have to have a PhD in neckbearding to tank a dungeon, but feeling a little bit of mastery aside from "can I do this fight without losing a gcd" would be nice.

[Rydia_Misuto]

DRK is worthless until it has an identity other than "WAR but it does less and isn't as good."

Stormblood DRK is right there as a thing to pull from. Having multiple basic rotations was good, actually. Having multiple resources to manage was good, actually.

Right now all I do is press 1 2 3 and then I have a few pitiful OGCDs I hit. Managing MP is not a mechanic because the only things that cost MP cost 3k MP exactly and regaining MP has no depth to it, and there's nothing interesting about it. What's the difference between 3K MP cost with a fixed 10K max MP VS getting 3 stacks of a resource that naturally builds over time? (This would be bad, for the record. Don't do that.)

[Carighan]

DRK is worthless until it has an identity other than "WAR but it does less and isn't as good."

It's not like Warrior has any real identity, either. It just so happens to be on average the best tank, on account of they sanded off most negative aspects of individual tank elements, which coupled with Warrior's always-useful unique thing (self-healing) and their short invuln CD left them as the de-facto top choice. But it's not an active design, either.

They really need to go a step back and first decide which tank is supposed to be .... what. What is their "identity". Then once that exists, start retooling individual elements in each job one by one to achieve this identity.

My personal favorite is Paladin as a support-y tank, Warrior as a damage-ignore tank, Dark Knight as a self-healing tank and Gunbreaker as a ranged tank, but really it doesn't matter which becomes what.

[GoatOfWar]

DRK is worthless until it has an identity other than "WAR but it does less and isn't as good."

Stormblood DRK is right there as a thing to pull from. Having multiple basic rotations was good, actually. Having multiple resources to manage was good, actually.

Right now all I do is press 1 2 3 and then I have a few pitiful OGCDs I hit. Managing MP is not a mechanic because the only things that cost MP cost 3k MP exactly and regaining MP has no depth to it, and there's nothing interesting about it. What's the difference between 3K MP cost with a fixed 10K max MP VS getting 3 stacks of a resource that naturally builds over time? (This would be bad, for the record. Don't do that.)

That's more to do with the powercreep and streamlining to the tank roster than it is about job identity.
Various of Drk's unique tools were given to all the other tanks over the years and it didn't really get anything in return. (Nothing that lasted longer than an expansion)
They're all kinda just.. the same. Some tanks are just arbitrarily better than others at tanking. All the tanks are 123 builders with a 4 spender, some ogcd's mixed in and a 1 or 2 minute heavy hitter.
When was the last time you were actively engaging with the fell cleave meter?

[SargeTheSeagull]

I'm gonna be that guy. Honestly CS3 needs to take after WoW again. Each WoW tank feels wholly unique, especially with the hero talents added in TWW. To give a basic overview:

Blood Death Knight uses a basic attack to build stacks of bone shield that increases its defense. A stack of bone shield is consumed after taking X damage. It uses a heavy hitting attack to heal itself for the damage you've taken in the last few seconds and there's a cap on how much it heals. Its basic rotation is based around putting wounds on the target and using other attacks to cause the wounds to burst.

Protection Warrior is the basic tank. It's main thing is spending its resource on "ignore pain" a barrier it puts on itself and shield wall, think bulwark if it had no CD and consumed MP. It's main offensive spender costs the same resource as shield wall, but deals extra damage when shield wall is up. It's also got tons of ways to stun and interrupt enemies.

Protection Paladin puts down an aoe centered on you. While in the AoE you heal yourself a bit over time, your defense is higher, and enemies take damage over time. Your main spender deals damage in a cone in front of you and increases your defense. You've also got light themed cooldowns like blinding enemies nearby as well as classics like putting an invuln on yourself or a party member.

Vengeance Demon Hunter is pretty squishy and based around two things. Maintaining "demon spikes", a short CD with two charges that increases your defenses a bit and soul shards. Every basic filler attack breaks X soul shards from nearby enemies. You can consume these to heal yourself and damage nearby enemies further. They also can increase the damage the enemies take for a few seconds. The other focus of VDH is sigils. Placeable AoE's that cause different effects on enemies within. One locks them in pace, one silences them, one causes them to flee in fear, one causes them to shatter extra soul shards for you etc. It's also insanely mobile being able to double jump, glide, and one of its basic attacks works like shukuchi.

Brewmaster Monk is super squishy, but that's mitigated by its "stagger" mechanic. Half of all damage you take is directed into a gauge which empties and deals all that damage to you over the next few seconds. Its rotation is based around increasing your dodge chance (so the stagger gauge doesn't fill as much) and its cooldowns (which are all various brews or kung fu techniques) are all different ways to interact with the gauge. One CD drops half of it for example.

Guardian Druid is boring as shit so I don't play it. You turn into a bear and can use lunar magic to inflict DoT's. Very much baby's first tank.

Then you've got hero talents, I won't go into depth here but for example, Prot Paladin can throw holy armaments to allies, letting them deal extra damage with the holy sword or create a barrier with a shield. Brewmaster monk stores a bit of the damage it deals in a buff, you can use a defensive CD to cause all that damage to empty from you as chi dealing damage to nearby enemies. One of VDH's hero talent trees makes it a pseudo ranged tank, letting it infuse its weapons with fire and throw them at enemies. I could go on but I won't.

TLDR: The way tanks in WoW work is that their basic rotations either increase their defense (which is relatively low by default), heal themselves so healers can focus on the party (damage in wow is nearly constant) or interact with their main class gimmick. Their CD's all play super heavy into their class fantasy and none of them feel like reskins of the others while all of them are viable in everything under mythic raiding (ultimates essentially).

While basically none of these would work in 14 1 to 1, the dev team could take tons of inspiration from them. Like why does DRK not have an on demand powerful attack that heals you for the damage it deals? Outside of living dead obviously. Why does gunbreaker not focus on using cartridges to stun enemies or have a ton of barrier esque CD's? Why do none of the tanks' rotations play into their defense kits at all? This imo is the main point. Tanks in 14 don't feel like tanks because outside of pressing a "take less damage button" nothing I do is any different, really, than playing a melee DPS.

[Carighan]

I'm gonna be that guy. Honestly CS3 needs to take after WoW again. Each WoW tank feels wholly unique, especially with the hero talents added in TWW.

Which is really saying something, considering that compared to the glory days of early~mid TBC, modern WoW tanks are carbon copy sameyness, too. They're still significantly more unique than FFXIV tanks, but they used to be more unique by multiple orders of magnitude.

[Terhix]

I've been defending TBN with DA procs for the sake of not homogenizing tanks any further, but after playing PLD semi-seriously for a week and bringing it to Savage, I have to say my opinion has changed. Putting aside which CD is mathematically better, Holy Sheltron is better at being TBN than TBN: it's always available if you use it just before a TB (or use Intervention on someone else before since that doesn't share a cooldown at all), and you are actively encouraged to use it for autos whenever you hit or about to hit 100 Oath, vs being actively discouraged in case of TBN.

I don't think this can be fixed while keeping DA procs and TBN conflicting with Edge. You could Sheltronize it by giving it a 25s cooldown, 2 charges, and always granting DA on expiration if it didn't break. Long term I think DRK needs to split its resources and make MP its tanking resource and Blood its DPS resource, with the only interaction being spending Blood to gain MP and never the other way around.

[SalamanderIX]

Bumping this thread back because there's so many Dark Knight idea threads now. I have one of my own; and that is adding in actual spell-casting as a way to carve out Dark Knight's identity as well as providing it a more unique tool and advantage in game-play from the other tanks.

The way I would envision it, Dark Knight would have two spell-casting abilities, one is a gauge builder and the other is a gauge spender.

Working this into the current system, it would work something alike to this:
You cast ASPIR, a ranged spell casting ability, it does a good deal of damage,but not so much as making it worth more than your melee combo, such as 360 potency. Aspir fills a gauge, this could replace the Dark Arts gauge (TBN dark arts can just be a buff instead of a gauge, if it even needs to be kept at all...), and be called say, the "Dark Mana" gauge, this would have 6 stacks.
Once every minute, you could cast an spell called say "DARK FLARE", it would cost 3 stacks of Dark Mana. The Potency would always be of benefit. Something like 800 potency. I worked it out this way so there could be more flexibility in where the Aspirs go. So while yes, the first Dark Flare would require 3 casts, the next two could be front loaded.

Both spells would have actual cast time. 1.5 seconds, enough to comfortably weave with. I'd consider this vital to feel and challenge. And to distinguish from Paladin and their frequent instant casts. Is the system still a bit like making Dark Knight more like Paladin? Yes, although I think I'd rather see the job become a bit like Paladin and Warrior, than just being a bit *only* like Warrior.

To gameplay, there's is the introduction of Dark Knight having things to do during disengagement, even if you're not forced to be use only in range. The Aspir would reward fight knowledge by placing them in disengage, rather than simply casting them to fill your gauge blindly. It also grants a variety in action, something in GCD do other than your Combo. Since optimally you would want to be casting 3 of these every minute, or 6 every two minutes. (or 2 and 4, if this much casting is too much?) Regardless of how such a system would, or should work; I really would like to see the concept of using Dark Magic/Dark Arts in more of an integration into game play and class fantasy

[Derio]

I really wish they bring back OG dark arts. Not as spammy has HW, but at least give DRK an identity. I feel like they took it and then gave it back as SGE