In your darkest hour: DRK's identity crisis

[Mycow8me]

it doesn't matter if damage is still going out and no healing is nullyfied. you don't have to actually fill up the health bar to 100%, you have to heal equal to 100% of the DRK's healthbar. if the DRK has 50k HP you have to heal for 50k, regardless if he gets hit in the meantime for another 20k. then Walking Dead is cleansed when the DRK sits at 30k HP.

I haven't been playing drk long enough to notice this happen I guess, the tooltip is not a very good explanation either: "While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd."

Thanks for correcting me.

Edit: Perhaps a better wording of it would have been "if not healed for an amount equal to your maximum hp within 10 seconds you will be KO'd"

[Crater]

A friend sent me this:
FFXIV tanks in a nutshell:

Paladin: Divine veil, passage of arms, intervention, cover, all the love and care in the world for the party

Warrior: Shake it off, deals highest damage among the 3 tanks, also known as a dps tank

Dark Knight: *uses blackest night on self* You guys take care of urself ktnxbye

"Alright, Mr. Healer, I'm going to put Blackest Night on you so you survive this attack. Now all you have to do is raise the other healer and all four DPS."

[Lyth]

...

It's always better to negate damage. It frees up your healers, who might be otherwise occupied. If you think back to a fight like A7S, there's a tankbuster during the second cat phase which was a popular choice for Hallowed. One healer was targeted with a flamethrower, the other was trying to raid heal. Having an invulnerable tank was one less thing to worry about.

When you create these sorts of differences as "flavour", you are always going to run into situations where one tank has a less effective solution. But if you do that, you should also give every tank a chance to shine, as well. There are plenty of situations in which you can find a "workaround" on DRK, but it's clearly less optimal than the other two. But you don't generally see the reverse (i.e. a situation which DRK handles more smoothly.) That's part of the issue with identity.

...

The original artwork by Amano was actually completely different from the NA box artwork, the latter which was probably designed to evoke the player's memories of Dungeons and Dragons. To be fair, there are a lot of miscellaneous weapons in Final Fantasy games. Whips, Maces, Bells, and Axes. There's even a character who uses an Anchor/Harpoon as his primary weapon! I'm sure if you look hard enough, you'll find something. Not that you should feel bad about liking a particular aesthetic of course - it's just that there are some things in the series' 30 year history that players are particularly attached to.

[Shurrikhan]

It's always better to negate damage. It frees up your healers, who might be otherwise occupied.

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that. I just meant that all three are still 100% damage negation. The difference is in what, if anything, they left to spare when their durations ended, or alternatively, the conditions for that damage negation. Pedantics, really.

When you create these sorts of differences as "flavour", you are always going to run into situations where one tank has a less effective solution. But if you do that, you should also give every tank a chance to shine, as well. There are plenty of situations in which you can find a "workaround" on DRK, but it's clearly less optimal than the other two. But you don't generally see the reverse (i.e. a situation which DRK handles more smoothly.) That's part of the issue with identity.

Completely agreed. It would be nice to miss DRK at some occasion, but such are few and far between. But on the other hand, I'd much rather see differences between tanks and have one occasionally left behind or one be clearly favored in some way by the timings or types of situations within a particular fight than for all three tanks to essentially become one over time. Better sometimes n-1 than just just ~1, so to speak.

The necessary equilibrium, compromise, or mutually exclusive factors involved in such are frequently overstated, of course, but IF it came down to that, I'd rather have players be forced to play multiple tanks, swapping between them, than for all tanks to feel mostly the same -- especially given the whole "all jobs on one character" concept to this game (despite that actually following that concept can be largely disadvantageous).

[Chrono_Rising]

I completely agree that dark knight is lacking an identity, while it seems that warrior and paladin fill almost all roles. What could be done to fix this though? Is our only hope a drastic overhaul of the class?

[Cheyze]

What could be done to fix this though? Is our only hope a drastic overhaul of the class?

Stop the homogenization of jobs/roles.

[Heleth]

I'm just wondering specifically what type of content dk is found sub par/lacking? Are we talking end game raiding? Or are we including normal duty finder roullettes/raids/whatever?

[Cheyze]

I'm just wondering specifically what type of content dk is found sub par/lacking? Are we talking end game raiding? Or are we including normal duty finder roullettes/raids/whatever?

Generally speaking. But the disparity in DPS, mitigation and utility is most apparent when considering a setting where all of those are highly desired, savage raids and extreme primals.

Although, DRK does have some issues in leveling content. Not so much in regular 70 content such as expert roulettes etc.

[Ekimmak]

Generally speaking. But the disparity in DPS, mitigation and utility is most apparent when considering a setting where all of those are highly desired, savage raids and extreme primals.

Although, DRK does have some issues in leveling content. Not so much in regular 70 content such as expert roulettes etc.

It's the problem of their best part of their mitigation also being the final skill they earn.

I've wondered if the devs should make TBN a level 50 skill with no blood gain, and level 70 simply gives it a trait that grants 50 blood after the shield expires.

[Cheyze]

I've wondered if the devs should make TBN a level 50 skill with no blood gain, and level 70 simply gives it a trait that grants 50 blood after the shield expires.

It'll be hard to justify making TBN a level 50 skill when the skill itself is as thematically intertwined into the level 70 job quest as it is.

Return of Shadowskin, adjusting the type of damage mitigated by Dark Mind, the popular suggestion of reducing Shadow Walls CD, or even going with returning Dark Dance + new procc effect...

Things like that could both address leveling content aswell as the lack of mitigation in end-game content.