Ideas for Dark Knight Improvements?

[Dregenfox]

DA is one of the featured mechanics of DRK but while the idea is interesting the actual implementation is boring and spammy. What are some ways to make the class feel more like how a Dark Knight should be?

My suggestion is to increase the mana cost but also increase it's power:

DA Syphon Strike - no longer adds potency but gives a powerful mana-over-time buff that restores mana over 18/21 seconds. This makes it very efficient when used correctly but just a mana-drain when spammed.

DA Souleater - 10% max hp damage to yourself but +280 potency. Basically choosing offense over defense, makes dark knight more "darky".

DA Power Slash - A wild, powerful strike that leaves both you and your target off-balance, increasing the damage you take by 5% but lowering the target's damage output by 5%. Utility.

I'm disappointed with the way DA is now because there is basically no thought or planning to use it atm, which results in DRK being more annoying to play than anything else.

[Iveriad]

Well, Syphon Strike alone already refunds like 90% of the amount of MP you used for DA if you add another MP over time refresh, you'll never go into "mana drain when spammed" if you just repeats the whole 3 GCDs combo.

And Having a move that damages yourself as a tank makes the healer's job more difficult. It's already bad enough with STR tanks on DPS Stance main tanking, now they need to deal with STR Tanks on DPS Stance taking 10% damage every 10 seconds? That's just terrible.

[Dregenfox]

Well, Syphon Strike alone already refunds like 90% of the amount of MP you used for DA if you add another MP over time refresh, you'll never go into "mana drain when spammed" if you just repeats the whole 3 GCDs combo.

And Having a move that damages yourself as a tank makes the healer's job more difficult. It's already bad enough with STR tanks on DPS Stance main tanking, now they need to deal with STR Tanks on DPS Stance taking 10% damage every 10 seconds? That's just terrible.

You don't have to make everything idiot-proof. That was the direction the devs took with stormblood and all it did was make the game boring. The MP restoration numbers can obviously be balanced by increasing numbers/effects of dark arts, the point is to introduce some more depth to the gameplay instead of just "spam DA when its up".

The new classes like red mage require almost no thought to play them either. But at least they're fun to play.

[Mithron]

Start by removing it from Siphon Strike

[_Pigzig]

Some ideas:

-More gameplay in Darkside, maybe go back to how it worked in 3.X
It was just more interesting when it could actually fall off in 3.X. Now it just stays on 24/7. I mean technically it has a drawback and giving the DRK the ability to turn it off makes sense, but in practice t just ended up being this thing you turn on, like starting your car before you begin.

-Remove DA effect from Carve and Spit.
The way it works with this ability is weird. It's basically two different abilities depending on whether it's DAd or not. It didn't use to work like this and it was better just as a plain old MP regen cooldown if you ask me.

-Buff DRK cooldowns or trim them to a few strong ones.
Too many of them are weak. Off the top of my head - Dark Mind, Living Dead, Blood Price
We have a lot of OCD abilities to have to weave in and a lot of them just suck. There are times I swear I used living dead but I died anyway. I even heard the sound effect so it may have something to do with animation time or just lag.

-Change Dark Passenger or remove it
Something about this move has to be done but I don't know what. It's technically a bad cooldown that could go in the above point but it's so bad it deserves it's own mention. Useless abilities need not exist.

-More stuff in the rotation, less stuff OCD
Currently DRK is an OCD cluster**** but only has a simple 3 button rotation combo otherwise. I would like to see that reversed a bit personally. This complaint includes the DA spam that is responsible for a lot of OCD pushing.


You may notice a lot of these points are just things that were in Heavensward. Well that's because Heavensward DRK was better. Dare I say, maybe they should just forget about what they've done in Stormblood so far and go back to that as a starting point.

Don't take this too seriously if you don't want, it's just spitting ideas.

[Xenosan]

You don't have to make everything idiot-proof...

-Remove DA effect from Carve and Spit.
The way it works with this ability is weird. It's basically two different abilities depending on whether it's DAd or not. It didn't use to work like this and it was better just as a plain old MP regen cooldown if you ask me.

I'm sorry but too good XD

/10char

[TankHunter678]

Bring back Shadow Skin and Dark Dance to fill our defensive suite for dealing with fluff damage.

[Tegernako]

Bring back our stun and scourge too please. And shadowskin as well, let them slot rampart alongside shadowskin.

[SyzzleSpark]

There are two problems with Dark Knight right now.

1. DPS.
-Our damage is in the toilet relative to our utility. We should do more damage than PLD given that TBN does not come close to PLD's raid utility or raid mitigation. Jobs with less utility should do more damage. By this same logic, WAR should do more damage than both of us.

2. Mitigation.
-Outside of TBN our cooldown suite is garbage and needs to be buffed. All of it is geared around tank busters and none of them last longer than 10s which is ridiculous. We have to use a tank buster skill (TBN) to have any mitigation for fluff damage which feels awful.

[Tint]

DA Souleater - 10% max hp damage to yourself but +280 potency. Basically choosing offense over defense, makes dark knight more "darky".

the problem with this is that you are shifting your own class mechanic over to another player. you have basically no backdraw from such a skill, you just pop it and get the benefit - while the healer has to deal with the trade-off. that's why the whole "use your own life for damage" stuff is not part of DRKs gameplay in FF14. sacrificing mana instead of life, a resscource wich you have to manage all by yourself, makes much more sense in an MMO with a trinity.

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i have the feeling that dark side and dark arts are just fluff skills since 4.0. they just could remove both skills, put the potencys of all attacks on dark arts level and what would really change? you don't have to spam dark arts anymore, wich we all hate. tweek the numbers a bit to bring the dps output in line with the other tanks and call it a day...