What makes a Dark Knight?

[Chrono_Rising]

Previous installments of the Final Fantasy series see the Dark Knight job realized in varying ways. Dark Knight shares a common theme through these iterations: sacrifice for power. The nature of the sacrifice has typically been lifeforce, delving into forbidden/dark magics, or both. The sacrifice often takes its toll on the dark knight, and many dark knight story themes deal with the decision to make sacrifices and whether such sacrifices were worth the personal cost.

A return to these themes is what makes the Dark Knight story quest one of the most enjoyed of the series. By dealing directly with the sacrifices of being the Warrior of Light and the personal toll that has taken on the character, the Dark Knight storyline finds narrative strength and a personal connection to each player. Dark Knight isn’t the only job which enjoyed success by being true to its roots. Both Paladin and Bard underwent transformations in 4.0 which highlighted their nature as a holy knight/protector and support dps respectively. The effect has been soaring popularity for these two jobs. There is appeal in the job design and gameplay matching the huge amount of lore behind the jobs, and this is often driven not only by the lore developed in Final Fantasy XIV but also the lore involved in the Final Fantasy series.

Historical themes of a Dark Knight.

Dark Knight has historically been something of a glass cannon. The most iconic Dark Knight skills are its ability to sacrifice health for damage. However, a variety of other themes have also emerged over time. Dark Knight often comes with a slew of other abilities which have a darkside, such as:
1. Dark Magic (bio, poison, death)
2. Resource Drain skills (drain, mana drain)
3. Enfeeblements (slowing, stat stealing, stat reductions, negative status ailments)
4. Using dark equipment with additional effects (blood armor)

Early installments of the final fantasy series focused primarily on the sacrifice of HP for power, but often included hints of more. Leon from Final Fantasy 2, the original Dark Knight, also had a higher than average magical base and could be trained to use magic effectively.

In Final Fantasy Tactics (Original Release), Dark Knight was only available to an NPC, but was hinted at not being unique. In this installment, Dark Knight did not have any HP sacrificing abilities, but instead focused on stealing HP and MP from enemies.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions Dark Knight was a playable job and had abilities which sacrificed HP for power, but also retained skills which drained HP and MP from enemies. Additionally, it added abilities which had a chance to debuff enemies with slow and stop.

Final Fantasy X-2 allowed for characters to use the Dark Knight dressphere, giving access to Dark Knight abilities such as sacrificing HP for power, access to Arcana, and black magic. These abilities focused on debuffing enemies (spells like confuse, break, and bio), spells to drain HP (Demi and drain), and others causing death or damage.

Final Fantasy XI introduced a major expansion of Dark Knight abilities, delving further into dark magic types and adding a number of job exclusive abilities. For example:
1. Drain II allowed for the absorption of HP and increased the maximum HP of the Dark Knight if more HP was absorbed than the dark knight’s maximum. This paired well with other skills which depended on the max HP of the Dark Knight.
2. Bio II debuffed an enemy with dark elemental attacks which lowered its damage and HP over time.
3. Dark Knights came with the ability to sap main stats from enemies weakening them while strengthening themselves.
4. Scarlet Delirium increased Dark Knight’s attack and magic based on damage taken.
5. Dread Spikes attacked those attacking the Dark Knight and drained HP.

What is a Dark Knight in Final Fantasy XIV?

Dark Knight in FFXIV is a tank job. It is what I would call a selfish mitigator. Dark Knight does not bring defensive utility to the party, instead Dark Knight focuses on living, and excels when defending against magical damage. This is achieved through direct damage reduction and shielding, using short duration cooldowns with very low recast timers.

How does Final Fantasy XIV’s Dark Knight gameplay reflect its lore and historical theme’s?

FFXIV’s Dark Knight primarily deals with the theme of sacrificing mana and mana regeneration for power. The primary offensive ability of darkside is a 100% uptime ability which stops all forms of outside mana regeneration to grant access to defensive and offensive abilities as well granting a 20% increase to all damage output. The skill Dark Arts sacrifices some mana in order to increase the power output of other abilities, or add additional effects.

The abilities of Souleater and Abyssal Drain can be turned into health drains when used in conjunction with grit or dark arts respectively. We see the enfeebling of enemies through the action of dark arts paired with dark passenger which inflicts blind on enemies.

A comment on these abilities and the realisation of class themes

The theme of sacrificing mana no longer feels like a sacrifice and feels more like a black mage’s casting costs during astral fire phase of its rotation. This is primarily due to an absence of any consequences for over spending your mana, the absence of meaningful consequences muddies the idea of sacrifice and simply makes these skills seem more like costs associated with using a skill. As the tank with the least amount of dps it also seems we can answer one of the common themes of the dark knight story, was the sacrifice worth it, with a no.

The only themes which feel reasonably expressed through the dark knight kit is HP drain, and when playing single target this theme drops away as well as the majority of single target play is done without tank stance and many of these targets are immune to blind, and thus souleater loses its drain aspect and dark passenger loses its enfeeblement aspect.

Why should we care about alternatives to Direct Damage Reduction on tanks?

Dark Knight has value as a tank, but the FFXIV incarnation of Dark Knight does not meet its promise of a Dark Knight tank. In particular the way in which Dark Knight mitigates and buffs its damage feels much more like a paladin warrior hybrid with active offensive buffing (dark arts). On a job which is so multidimensional it strikes me as hollow that the traditional Dark Knight themes could not be reasonable expressed within its kit.

Consider some skills from Final Fantasy 11 Dark Knight:
1. Bio 2: Damage on hit, damage over time, damage down inflicted on enemy
2. Drain 2: Dark Knight exclusive skill which drain’s HP from an enemy and raises max HP when draining over your max HP.
3. Unique Sap abilities centered around absorbing main stats from enemies, enfeebling them while strengthening the dark knight
4. Dread Spikes: Damages attacking enemies and absorbs HP.

These are already great tanking skills which don’t exist on the other tanks. They achieve similar results to direct damage reduction but are actually backed by dark knight lore.

Opening the door to enfeeblement based tanking leads to a variety of ideas for dealing with damage in unique ways. As an example, we have access to skills like blood weapon which reduce our auto attack timer, why not add enfeeblements like an aoe slow which reduces the rate at which enemies auto attack and cast directly? It would function similar to damage reduction by literally slowing the incoming rate of damage.

Enhancing the skill set to include more enfeeblements also creates new branches and interactions between the skills. This creates gameplay which is more interesting than the current “push your buttons as quickly as possible” playstyle. As an example, a mitigation tool to turn 50% of incoming damage into a dot on the player, and a slow debuff to cause the dot to tick less often over the same duration gives an alternative to direct damage reduction. This would be as effective as mitigating the damage directly with damage reduction skills and is an effect of pairing different mitigations to achieve unique outcomes.

An investment into an enfeeblement tank would open an new avenue for tanking in FFXIV that achieves an active playstyle and gives an alternative to the traditional direct damage reduction we currently have. Enfeeblement tanks also enjoy a status of something akin to a support tank in that enfeeblements do not lose value when you are not tanking and provide additional support to your co-tank. This gives a unique aspect to the job rather than simply turning into a weak dps with high defense when not actively tanking.

Many of the issues with expressing Dark Knights lore through its abilities is the one dimensional way in which tanks deal with damage. Every tank in FFXIV deals with damage in primarily the same way, direct damage reduction. By making dealing with damage one dimensional expressing a Dark Knight’s true potential is extremely limited. Unless the developer gives themselves some freedom to design outside of the direct damage reduction box, this limited ability to express class identity through a kit will remain for tanks. Enfeeblement/sap tanks and HP/Healing buff tanks are viable methods of tanking and ones which are not realized in FFXIV. These absences are a detriment to the tanking community. Each of these methods of tanking come with their own unique sets of advantages and disadvantages, which helps to separate tank identity and purpose and gives the feeling of making a meaningful choice when choosing a tanking job.

Many players may point to the failure of 2.0 warrior when talking about this subject, but the primary issue with 2.0 warrior was not the method in which damage was mitigated (HP buffs) but a dearth of buffs which could be used together. Paladin having access to a 20% damage reduction and a 40% damage reduction was matched on warrior by only a 20% max HP increase on warrior. A 20% max HP increase, via thrill of battle, is not the same as rampart by about 5% in terms of eHP and lacks a buff to self-healing to help restore HP after damage is taken. Thrill of Battle being the only defensive cooldown accessible to 2.0 warrior other than its invulnerability skill and tank stance made it a squishy tank as it lacked a high strength cooldown analog to sentinel. This problem could have been alleviated by adding a 45% max increase to HP and healing CD rather than a 30% damage reduction added to vengeance.

Conclusion

Dark Knight as a tank is a viable idea, but in its current incarnation it is restricted by over reliance on direct damage reduction skills. As a whole, the Dark Knight kit doesn’t express its job themes well. Dark Knight “sacrifices” for power while being the lowest damage output tank, it drains HP but only in a stance you rarely use, and attempts to enfeeble with blind which is useless except in trash pulls. A more true-to-lore direction would be to take Dark Knight in an enfeeblement/sap tank direction. This would address both its self-buffing and defensive buffing. By expanding the methods by which tanks deal with incoming damage, a more interesting and enjoyable landscape for tanks can be realized in game. Creating a viable Enfeeblement tank and HP buff/restore tank should be a goal for SE. This would expand the appeal of tanking to the larger community while also solidifying the identity of the jobs. Each tanking job, and each job in general, having a lore driven kit and theme is attractive for the player base and should be a primary goal of the developers heading into the next expansion.

Editted by Sapphire Ella

[SophoclesRex]

good post, really interesting stuff

[Valdegarde]

I think this is a wonderful write up! I would like to add, that many of the themes presented here are also seen in Tactic Ogre's Terror Knight, which I'm convinced the Heavensward Dark Knight is partly inspired from. Especially considering its greatsword usage, tankiness, and even the blatant armor set from the series itself. This supports your argument however, especially with the emphasis on draining and enfeeblements. While their counterpart tank, the Knight, used Phalanx to cut their damage down to single digits and created a wall that units could not move past, Terror Knights exhibited an aura of fear and caused enemies stats to dramatically decrease by being hit, or even just by being around them.

I think a lot of the reason people want Scourge, Delirium, and Reprisal back is because it created a stacking effect for debuffs on an enemy. Even though Scourge is denoted as "just" a DoT, it was cool to be able to stack effects for uptime. I too would like to see this stacking effect be more incorporated and used for things such as a draining DoT or other debuffs. I feel this could be possibly incorporated in the future through usage of Dark Arts, instead of it being mostly just a 140 potency damage buff button, something even Samurai has with more complexity.

Thank you again for the interesting analysis!

[TimeraiderGaranyi]

Fully this. Just hoping that the devs realise that having a less powerfull combination of mediocre mechanics from the other 2 tanks does not really set it apart that well

[Mycow8me]

Well, I don't know much about the history of DRK in FF games but the quests lead you to believe dark knights are empowered by their emotions or draw power from them. This could have played a significant role in its identity and skills, even their names some how similar to the naming scheme for Delirium. I believe DRK could have been a self buffing class playing on short windows similar to how bloodweapon opperates.

Malice: HP sacrificing Attack power buff (Use at your own peril, toggleable) Replaces Darkside and adds risk vs reward to the class.
Misery: TBN (cause misery loves company)

Can only have 1 of the following up at any time Maybe a future skill will allow 2 at a time (rotational, all last 15 seconds and have a cooldown of 60 seconds):
Delirium: attackspeed buff, absorbs MP, on outgoing damage and incoming damage. Replaces bloodweapon/bloodprice
Pain: HP stealing buff (be good for during Malice or during auto attack/raid wide phases) Replaces Soul Survivor.
Jealousy: Similar to Absorbing skills (lowers a single target physical attack power by 10% and increases yours by 10% or something) Uses bloodprices slot since it was combined into delirium.
Rage: Drains MP to 0 and increases attack power over time up to 15 seconds or till MP reaches 0. Doesn't replace anything, DRK will regain a skill slot, it currently has less skills than both warrior and Paladin.

There's still 1 more skill slot that could be filled with another buff or another blood skill which I think is what DRK needs, instead of delirium after all the above is considered. Some kind of blood skill that uses 20 blood (deliriums cost) a smaller cooldown than what Delirium had. I was thinking some kind of skill that does damage and receives a chunk of HP for it to help with Malice usage in small amounts with a lower cooldown, like 30 seconds...

Much of this would require a serious revaluation and look at DRK anyway and how these kinds of things would play off the blood and MP kits while keeping current skills that use MP and blood. The added damage from darkside being lost would have to factor into this as well. This is all just a thrown together idea that will amount to nothing but its fun to talk about what DRK could have been if it related more to its lore.

Personally I'm guessing the only concern SE really has with DRK is the double weaving issue that dark arts is forcing onto our current and future instant skills. As much as I'd like to see some huge change to DRK or just to see some actual Identity to the class, I really don't thing the devs will go as far as some of us are hoping. There was a time I enjoyed the shotgun style dark arts gave DRK but now I find myself enjoying the bloodweapon windows more than anything, this leads me to believe I'd enjoy a self buffing tank that mixes risk vs reward. So this is the best Idea I could come up with for what I might enjoy on a DRK while still remaining true to its past and current lore.

[InfiniDragon]

I'd be totally down for a debuff based DRK as long as they handle it well (and keep TBN). Old Reprisal would be great if it was DRK only as their way of mitigating party damage.

[Steelbreeze]

Dead parents in an alley?

...too soon?

[Lyth]

Homages to previous games
It's worth noting that FFXIV sometimes incorporates several intersecting job concepts with a similar theme. As an example, it would be difficult to implement a unique Thief job which didn't also play similarly to Ninja. As a result, FFXIV's NIN incorporates flavour from both (such as the Mug ability).

Likewise, DRK lies at the intersection of several Final Fantasy archetypes. Dark Knights, Rune Knights, and Magic Knights are all variants on a theme. While they all have their nuances, it's difficult to incorporate all of these into the same game without running the risk of making them appear very similar. You can't really have a separate SOLDIER job wielding a Buster Sword when 2-handed swords are DRK weapons.

The solution is to pay homage to these reference jobs in the skillset, so that they are adequately represented. FFXI is a good starting reference for new actions, but there are plenty of iconic abilities that are yet to be represented in game outside of that.

Take Runic, for example. In FFVI, Celes uses this iconic ability to absorb spells and regain MP from them. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity that TBN wasn't named after it. Even the animations are similar.

We've talked about DRK's relative lack of burst options. Consider the following: your Delirium buff keeps a running tally of your DA usages while it is active. At the end, you launch into a high-speed set of sword slashes based on the cumulative total, in the same vein as Omnislash.

What if PLD had Leo/Beatrix's Shock as a magical AoE? What if WHM used float to move without interrupting their spell casts? What if MCH had access to Edgar's Chainsaw or Bio Blaster? The series has a vast library of untapped abilities outside of what was presented in FFXI. I want to see more new abilities that pay homage to the series as a whole, instead of falling back on the usual upgrades to Stone 12 and Malefic 17 each expansion.

DRK in FFXIV
"Sacrifice is to renounce that which binds you. To recognise that which matters─and forsake all that does not."

FFXIV's Dark Knight, from a lore perspective, has some very important differences from other games in the series. Through the quest series, you learn to free yourself from your shackles: be it the organisations looking to control you, or even your own past and regrets.

A chorus of voices cries out for a hero, and she comes. She smiles. She nods. And she remains silent... But she too has a voice... I will be heard... Listen to my voice. Listen to your heartbeat.

DRK here has more in common with knight-errants. It's not really about debilitating your foes or breaking them. It's about finding your voice and living in accordance with your inner sense of justice. 'Sacrifice' is about giving up your self-imposed constraints and learning to live freely. It's not about dying in servitude to another's ideals.

"Serve... Save... Slave... Slay... I've sins aplenty, aye, but regrets? Not so much."

Grit and Tenacity are also important themes here. Dark Knights in FFXIV are often depicted as unyielding when fighting for what they believe in. Consider the following:

"So as I was saying, that heretic was fighting like a man possessed. Even after he took several wounds, he showed no sign of pain─though there was no mistaking the blood. As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realised it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted..."

It's a bit of a shame that Blood Price doesn't quite live up to this description.

FFXIV's lore takes us down a very different path from the journey made in FFIV. Where others are bound by their oaths to serve corrupt institutions and tyrants, Dark Knights are free to aid and protect those that they care about. Not because they're asked to, obliged to, or required to, but because they want to. It's a journey to find yourself, and free yourself.

After all...

"Justice deserves no less."

[Steelbreeze]

You can't really have a separate SOLDIER job wielding a Buster Sword when 2-handed swords are DRK weapons.

I'm not so sure about that. There are 2 staff classes and 2 2h sword classes already, and I don't see any issue with them adding a nuance to the SOLDIER job weapon to differentiate it. Like maybe an actual buster sword weapon class. They already made samurai swords and DRK swords different even though they are both 2h swords.

[Lyth]

There are still clear aesthetic differences between WHM and BLM weapons, part of which comes out through the spell animations. Final Fantasy historically has made a distinction between them by classifying them as Staves and Rods respectively. You're going to start a second war of the Magi if you treat them like they're the same. I'd also say that visual differences between weapons are even more important in melee jobs, as the weapon plays a defining part of the job's animations. It's more than just a spell focus.

SAM katanas and DRK greatswords are also generally quite visually different. There are a few weapons that transgress the boundary, like the Odenta. But it's a bit like claiming that Cloud and Sephiroth use the same weapon type.

Besides, we've already taken Cloud's /vpose and /bstance. You can't have them back.