Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[Chrono_Rising]

In the spirit of being clear, I would like to outline the core issues of what I feel is wrong with Dark Knight currently in 4.0 and beyond, time of writing is 4.1. I encourage others to leave their comments, feelings and interpretations. However, in the spirit of not trying to "suggest fixes" I hope others will follow in not posting how to fix the issues, only post what the issues are in their view.

Core Design Issue 1: Risk Reward
Dark Knight is an active and resource intensive tank, which necessarily incorporates risk/reward into its design. We turn resources into potency and mitigation, and in general we attempt to move towards mitigating what is necessary, pushing potency as we become more comfortable over time. This is engaging and I personally enjoy such min maxing and risk taking.

However, the reward for our risk taking is often too low, after optimizing we come up shorter than both Paladin and Warrior in both damage and mitigation. The risk reward ratio is out of balance with too much risk with little to no reward leading to less enjoyment of the class overall. I feel, fundamentally, that I am a detriment to my party because I am on the class I enjoy. Paladin and warrior can do my job, and they can do it better.


Core Design Issue 2: Lore driven tools
In the past, dark knights use dark magics to debilitate, weaken, and damage enemies. The system has been to enfeeble, absorb, and damage (usually through self-sacrificing ways). This does not come through as much with Dark Knight in ffxiv. We certainly have ways of siphoning off resources from enemies, something I would even like to see more of, and we certainly sacrifice our mana to damage our foes. But with the removal of reprisal as a unique aspect of our kit, as well as the complete loss of 3.x delirium, we have lost the enfeeblement feel of dark knight.

Overall, for a tank whose reputation is for stealing resources and debuffing foes with dark magic, I am not seeing it. I feel we play second fiddle to warrior in trying to regenerate resources, in particular when it comes to HP as they are not stance locked for generating HP through their own rotation as well as build their gauge at a rapid rate, our mana absorb is also not unique as paladin has many of the same tools, dps rotation building mana and mana restore by being hit with sheltron. At a time when we have 5 buttons with no use against single targets I cannot help but feel some of those buttons could be put to better use in increasing our lore based fighting.

Core Issue 3: Self-Sustain
A Dark Knight takes action because of their personal and individual view of justice, as such we find ourselves walking a lonely path. Overall, I feel dark knights would be the most self-sufficient of tanking classes. Instead we have the least ability to keep ourselves alive outside and inside a party. Even our ultimate ability requires us to be in a party to be useful. This does not mesh in my mind with what I am suppose to be.

Core Issue 4: Our Kit Offers Mostly Punishing Versions of Warrior and Paladin Abilities
This is partially tied to our risk reward management. Since we need to expend a dps resource to protect allies, other classes which can do the same thing without a damage resource are preferred, unless the reward is high enough.

Shadow Wall: objectively a bad sentinel and vengeance

Dark Mind: Must be paired with other mitigation or enhanced to 30%, costing a dark arts, to be on par with equivalents. Short cooldown but lower uptime than raw intuition. Guaranteed damage compared to bulwark but mitigates only half the damage.

The Blackest Night: Objectively powerful in grit, situational use out of grit

Grit: Leaving your tank stance on paladin and warrior are straight gains except in terms of mitigation and selfsustain. Dark knight loses these things as well, but also resource generation, slowing down its mana accumulation by punishing siphon strike and locking blood price which leads to a lower expected dps gain when dropping grit, and loses potency on our hardest hitting move. This doesn't happen to any other tank when leaving tank stance.

The existence of tanks who can do functionally similar things to dark knight but for 0 cost significantly lowers the benefits offered by dark knights. Furthermore, both Paladin and Warrior bring an actual full party utility beyond reprisal, leaving a hole in dark knights kit.


Core Issue 5: Unrewarding Conditionals Credit to SyzzleSpark

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...tional-Effects

The community believes there is an issue with dark knight, the front page of the tanking forum is littered with posts about these issues. Dark Knight as a class needs something to make it desirable to statics and parties.

[Vallamaria]

I have only the utmost praise for this thread and thank you for posting such a thing. Since it's nice to finally see a thread focusing on talking about the core issues rather than yet another thread about someone's wild ideas for suggested fixes.

Edit: I think it's worth noting that pre-4.0 Delirium also added to the enfeeblement feel of DRK. Since it could debuff an enemy's INT. Which was handy if there wasn't a MNK already in the party.

[SummerScorcher]

Shadow Wall needs its recast adjusted and/or an additional effect, personal defense outside TBN is very lacking. Speaking of TBN, its duration is too short to use on bosses without wanting to pull your hair out, and it isnt a clear DPS gain from using it.
Leveling-dungeons are not very fun with the way Blood Price works atm IMO.
Self sustain is still very bad on DRK.
Party utility is nothing compared to what WAR/PLD can do now.
Dark Passenger and its confusingly large MP cost.
Blood Price locking behind Grit. I can understand why they went for this, but its just an unused button if youre soloing content/helping kill the boss faster as MT or just dont want to (waste a GCD and half a Dark Arts of MP) to turn tank stance back on to grab an add.

Those are just off the top of my head, mightve missed some points but yeah

Edit: woops, posted this before refreshing the page/seeing the actual post. Oh well.

[Daniel_Fury]

This is a really good post. It identifies the failed core mechanics of DRK and further delves into its lack of identity. It also offers a simple explanation to why the core mechanics of the other two tanks are superior.
Kudos to you, mate.

[EuronTribal]

I 100% agree with everything you said. For me, I love the class, but I feel too much like I have to be baby sat as the main tank. We just don’t have the tools to help out. And when I use living dead the coordination it takes to make sure I don’t die from it is way more than any other. And what adds to that is the inability to remove it myself. Tanking as dark makes me feel like too much of a burden for everyone else for the minimum of what the others can do.

[MauvaisOeil]

My hat for more self sustain. Life-draining shit out of everything.

[Ekimmak]

Dark Knight wasn't even supposed to be a tank, they were literally "physical attacks hit harder, but cost HP", so arguing over how it doesn't match up to lore is a losing battle.

Blood Price's advantage now isn't the MP return, it's the blood gauge it builds, which can then be spent on Quietus against multiple targets. DRK isn't nearly as good at AoE as it used to be, and I don't think the devs are ever going to revoke those changes.

I also can see why they altered reprisal and removed 3.0 delirium, since it was part of the issues with the tank balance. Moving it to a 60 second shared cooldown helped to balance things out.

TBN is the equivalent of an extremely costly 15 second Thrill of Battle/Infuriate. That is absurdly powerful. But I won't act as though that lets it stand equally with other tanks.

[Chrono_Rising]

Dark Knight wasn't even supposed to be a tank, they were literally "physical attacks hit harder, but cost HP", so arguing over how it doesn't match up to lore is a losing battle.

Blood Price's advantage now isn't the MP return, it's the blood gauge it builds, which can then be spent on Quietus against multiple targets. DRK isn't nearly as good at AoE as it used to be, and I don't think the devs are ever going to revoke those changes.

I also can see why they altered reprisal and removed 3.0 delirium, since it was part of the issues with the tank balance. Moving it to a 60 second shared cooldown helped to balance things out.

TBN is the equivalent of an extremely costly 15 second Thrill of Battle/Infuriate. That is absurdly powerful. But I won't act as though that lets it stand equally with other tanks.

TBN is one example of the higher risk to lower reward ratio. To get the benefit from it you need to use it frequently, even on auto's since you have no passive damage down. But if that shield doesn't pop, you just wasted a full dark arts. If it does pop, you get to do bloodspiller, but because it has a lowish potency compared to your average GCD you take a loss for using it as compared to using a dark arts. I won't get into numbers here but there are several posts on the breaking point at which TBN takes higher priority over dark arts when out of grit.

It is a skill designed to be used frequently but is only situationally beneficial to your dps, 90% of the time out of grit you would prefer to not use TBN. No other tank has such a heavily relied upon skill which comes out to a loss. This move also functions as our utility, you can compare it to the paladin and warrior versions, and you'll find their shield mitigate for about the same in a 2 minute window, but theirs are free to use.

I can see how they thought making dark knight a tank made sense, with adjustments to HP mechanics to mp mechanics, I think if they addressed the core issues outlined that dark knight could really offer something to parties.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I tip my RDM hat off to since I decided to level RDM while waiting for DRK to get and clearing O4S dummy with 10 seconds left on DRK with Avg. ilvl of 330 definitely shows that DRK is severely underpowered for what it does... also doesn't help that Tanks would be a lot better with full strength on their tank as well as making tenacity effect direct hit rate might make all tanks do better DPS overall but DRK REALLY NEEDS fixes to what should make DRK. In some of the other complaint threads I posted what I wanted to see DRK changes that make DRK... So gg on pointing out DRK lack of tank identity.

[Zegreiart]

Core Design Issue 1: Risk Reward
Dark Knight is an active and resource intensive tank, which necessarily incorporates risk/reward into its design. We turn resources into potency and mitigation, and in general we attempt to move towards mitigating what is necessary, pushing potency as we become more comfortable over time. This is engaging and I personally enjoy such min maxing and risk taking.

This is how I feel we're still Dark Knights. We might not sacrifice our health, but our mana is just as important as it should be directly tied into keeping our health up. I love the point you made, because I would love to see some serious high risk/high reward potential from the job. Especially when Heavensward was coming out and Yoshida told us that these jobs would be more advanced and harder to play. I expected more but got less once we hit Stormblood. We don't need a dozen buttons to be complex.

Core Design Issue 2: Lore driven tools
In the past, dark knights use dark magics to debilitate, weaken, and damage enemies. The system has been to enfeeble, absorb, and damage (usually through self-sacrificing ways). This does not come through as much with Dark Knight in ffxiv. We certainly have ways of siphoning off resources from enemies, something I would even like to see more of, and we certainly sacrifice our mana to damage our foes. But with the removal of reprisal as a unique aspect of our kit, as well as the complete loss of 3.x delirium, we have lost the enfeeblement feel of dark knight.

I feel like our dark magics could use a bit more apparent application. Heavily non-aspected magical attacks coupled with the Ochs-style swordplay: our MP is our defense and our offense. We should be able to choose to unload heavy amounts of burst with our MP or using it to save ourselves. I don't mind being a 'selfish' tank that isn't puking group utility everywhere, but instead being able to save my own ass even harder than the other two tanks. Conversely, if you wanted to add in a layer of complexity, our attacks would also fluctuate based on our missing HP, making them stronger, instead of a lowered potency. Dark Knights thrive on becoming closer to the abyss. This became the main arc of Heavensward for Dark Knights between Sidurgu and Rielle; her compassion and his reckless abandon to embrace the abyss. The idea of being an 'all-or-nothing' tank is what comes to mind when I think about Dark Knight.

Core Issue 3: Self-Sustain
A Dark Knight takes action because of their personal and individual view of justice, as such we find ourselves walking a lonely path. Overall, I feel dark knights would be the most self-sufficient of tanking classes. Instead we have the least ability to keep ourselves alive outside and inside a party. Even our ultimate ability requires us to be in a party to be useful. This does not mesh in my mind with what I am suppose to be.

I'd love to be built around our two most iconic abilities: Dark Passenger and Souleater.
Dark Passenger is the iconic Dark Knight ability with Souleater right behind it. It should be our Steel Cyclone in Grit and without it our Upheaval. This attack should make us excited every 30s to hit DA+DP. It should generate moderate enmity, sit on a pretty high potency (like 400 or something, I dunno, let someone figure that out), and generate 50 bloodgauge. The Dark Arts empowerment should debuff the target (like Summoners with their Ruination thing) with a cute little ghost icon called Soul Consumption, empowering ̶S̶o̶u̶l̶e̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ all our self-healing, while it's active.

Souleater is a lot more straight-forward. Take another look at its heal potency. The attack doesn't need to do boatloads of damage, but the healing should rival a healer just hitting their normal heal with the 3 GCDs and DA effect. Make tenacity shine with it so that it dips into crit and direct hit that really makes us a force to be reckoned with. If we're dumping MP into healing, we aren't dealing as much damage. A sidenote, the DA effect for Syphon Strike should empower Blood Price back to its HW version.

Can Darkside also get a cool swirling abyss-looking animation? Please, SE?

Core Issue 4: Our Kit Offers Mostly Punishing Versions of Warrior and Paladin Abilities
This is partially tied to our risk reward management. Since we need to expend a dps resource to protect allies, other classes which can do the same thing without a damage resource are preferred. In terms of mitigation, shadow wall is worse than both sentinel and vengeance, dark mind is nifty but doesn't mitigate enough on its own and most be combined with other mitigations or enhanced with mana. TBN is objectively powerful, but only when the dark knight is main tanking in grit.

The existence of tanks who can do functionally similar things to dark knight but for 0 cost significantly lowers the benefits offered by dark knights. Furthermore, both Paladin and Warrior bring an actual full party utility beyond reprisal, leaving a hole in dark knights kit.

The community believes there is an issue with dark knight, the front page of the tanking forum is littered with posts about these issues. Dark Knight as a class needs something to make it desirable to statics and parties.

I tried to think of something to add to what you said here, but I got nothing. You nailed it, sir.