Drk: worst designed class

[Jandor]

The cost of a DA to multiply TBN by 4 or 8 times? Doesn't seem too costly to me, but maybe the base cost of TBN could afford to be cheaper. You shouldn't have to stop using your signature skills on the off-chance you need to pop your shield.

You can't make TBN cheaper without making what's supposed to be a defensive skill into a DPS gain. At the moment, so long as it pops it's roughly neutral. That's what makes it a bit interesting to use, you have to time it so it pops otherwise you'll lose damage.

DA-TBN would (currently) be 4800MP, to do something that the other tanks can do for free.

Tanks don't need party shields anyway. Paladin got one in HW and it was nice, and it was unique, and it fit the Paladin theme.
Then Warrior got one in SB because of course it did, the other tanks can't have anything that's just for them.
And now people think Dark Knight needs one, and they keep suggesting the worst possible implementation of it over and over again.

[Reynhart]

DA-TBN would (currently) be 4800MP, to do something that the other tanks can do for free.

Technically, it's not "free". Basically this game has three cost (soon, only two), which are TP, MP and time (Fun fact, DRK is the first job that got screwed by having Dark Passenger cost both MP and time). Divine Veil and Shake It Off both have a CD that prevent from using them too much. A 4800MP partywide TBN would have a far better uptime, if you're willing (or need) to sacrifice some of your DPS...which depending of how DA-TBN returns Blood, might not even be that big of a loss.

[Jandor]

Technically, it's not "free". Basically this game has three cost (soon, only two), which are TP, MP and time (Fun fact, DRK is the first job that got screwed by having Dark Passenger cost both MP and time). Divine Veil and Shake It Off both have a CD that prevent from using them too much. A 4800MP partywide TBN would have a far better uptime, if you're willing (or need) to sacrifice some of your DPS...which depending of how DA-TBN returns Blood, might not even be that big of a loss.

You missed gauge

I meant free in the sense that it doesn't hurt their damage output, although that's on me, I really wasn't very clear. PLD and WAR can throw out DV and SiO on cooldown without it really having any bearing on what they're doing.

I just don't think DA-TBN is a very good idea. I think it'd be pretty damn awkward in practice, all to get something that's not all that important to have, and that it is IMHO a rather boring way of giving DRK some party utility.

[Reynhart]

I meant free in the sense that it doesn't hurt their damage output, although that's on me, I really wasn't very clear.

It still bugs me how mitigation is valued on its impact on DPS, but I guess I'm too old fashioned...
Right now, TBN is mostly DPS neutral. If DA-TBN gives you 15 Blood each time one the shields is broken, you could gain enough to do 2 Bloodspiller for the MP cost of 2 TBN, so, it wouldn't hurt your DPS either. But you still wouldn't want to use it on CD, because not breaking almost all shields every time would be wasting some of your MP.

that is IMHO a rather boring way of giving DRK some party utility.

I agree that it's not the most innovative idea for DRK, but it could easily be implemented.

[Jandor]

It still bugs me how mitigation is valued on its impact on DPS, but I guess I'm too old fashioned...
Right now, TBN is mostly DPS neutral. If DA-TBN gives you 15 Blood each time one the shields is broken, you could gain enough to do 2 Bloodspiller for the MP cost of 2 TBN, so, it wouldn't hurt your DPS either. But you still wouldn't want to use it on CD, because not breaking almost all shields every time would be wasting some of your MP.

I agree that it's not the most innovative idea for DRK, but it could easily be implemented.

I wouldn't say I totally determine the value of mitigation based on its impact on DPS, just that I'm very aware of how these things tend to play out in-game.

I'd like defensive measures to have a bit more of active gameplay element to them in general to be honest, it's why I'm a fan of TBN and Sheltron, and to a degree it's the one thing I like about Oath gauge. You can build it by doing tanky things, and then you spend it on extra tanky things. It's a tad boring in practice, but I like the principle.

As for 15 blood AoE TBN. Hmm, maybe, I don't think it would work out like that in practice though.
Blood builds quickly but rather incrementally, it can only be spent in huge chunks though. You'll almost certainly end up wasting blood by going over 100, or wasting MP as some shields don't pop.

[Reynhart]

You'll almost certainly end up wasting blood by going over 100, or wasting MP as some shields don't pop.

"Wasting blood" is not really a problem. TBN breaking is DPS neutral because it costs the same as DA, so as soon as DA-TBN gives you two BloodSpillers, it would make up for its cost. With 15 Blood per shield, it would allow you to break even if 7 shield breaks, and, since out of Blood Weapon, you only gain 10 Blood per combo, 6 shields + 1 combo would reach 100 Blood. If all 8 shield breaks, you're even, and you've mitigated every damage you can, so the wasted Blood is not that big of a deal.

[Lyth]

The developer feedback around the DRK rework in 4.3 suggested that there were issues related to DRK's resource management and gameplay that still needed time to be addressed, so the general thought was that this would happen in the expansion as opposed to 4.4/4.5.

Dark Knight
We are aware of the feedback we received globally, and understand that we need to make adjustments to this job. However, adjustments to the fundamentals of a job requires a good amount of time. For this reason, it would be difficult to make these adjustments during the patch series, and we won’t be able to address all the feedback we have received at this time. Please note that we will make as many adjustments as we possibly can.

There have been a lot of comments to adjust the frequency of Dark Arts usage, but for these changes we haven’t made any major adjustments to Dark Arts. Instead we have made overall adjustments to increase their offensive/defensive capabilities and usability.

Most jobs get some amount of rework during an expansion, but to implement the above considerations with DRK you do need to re-evaluate the resource system and how certain actions are designed.

DRK has a lot of interesting ideas with questionable implementation. It's nice, for example to have the option to either use Carve and Spit to generate MP in AoE, while being able to use DA to boost its damage in single target. In practice, however, most uses of Carve and Spit occur under DA, and it's nearly always a double weave. Is it necessary? No. I'm not actually making two decisions. I just want to press one button with the cost attached.

Likewise, take Delirium. Do I ever want to use Delirium without Blood Weapon or Price? No. There are four conditions to get a benefit from using the action. You need to have the correct amount of blood. Blood Weapon/Price has to be up. You have to activate the buff first and then extend it with Delirium. You need a minimum of 16 seconds of continuous uptime on the boss. Most jobs have one button for their big offensive buff, with no resource costs attached. And nearly all of them have a significantly bigger impact than Delirium.

The other common point is the fact that DRK tends to be the middle ground between WAR's absolute offense and PLD's absolute support, and it really needs a direction of its own. Self-healing/lifesteal is a good direction from this, but it needs to be a thematic direction across the entire job. Bloodspiller is a good example. It needs to be more than just a weaker Fell Cleave clone. Even if it gave you a small bit of health back, it'd offer a bit of unique flavour.

By the way, it's not hard at all to change Bloodspiller's effectiveness without changing the balance on TBN. The single easiest way is to drop both the cost of Bloodspiller and the amount of blood generated by TBN by the same amount. That gives you more frequent Bloodspillers while keeping TBN dps neutral. The alternative is to change Souleater and Bloodspiller by the same potency, which keeps the frequency the same while changing the potency.

I do think that direct "heals" are more a PLD thing in FF series lore, though, while restoring HP through attacks is more a DRK thing.

Jandor reminded me about the comment from fanfest about shields being integrated with the HP bar in 5.0. At the time, I thought that it was just a neat idea (could we see the amount of healing required to cleanse Walking Dead implemented in a similar way?) But I didn't really consider potential ramifications. If shields are now a numerical resource, then they may not necessarily exist as discrete buffs. If you have Adlo, TBN, and Shake stacked, your shield resource measures the total.

So do you keep all the buff timers, and just display the total amount of shielding? Do you remove the timers, and just merge all shields together into a single resource which, say, decays over time? Is there a max shield value that you can attain?

At the moment, shields are pretty powerful. They don't suffer from diminishing returns the way % damage reduction works. There are some limitations placed in terms off SCH and Noct AST interactions, but groups can put out a lot of shielding at the moment. A shield resource with an upper limit would both address the power of shields and rein it in. This would have implications for both TBN as well as the Veil/Shake LB cheese, but we'll have to see what happens.

[Renato]

The other common point is the fact that DRK tends to be the middle ground between WAR's absolute offense and PLD's absolute support, and it really needs a direction of its own. Self-healing/lifesteal is a good direction from this, but it needs to be a thematic direction across the entire job. Bloodspiller is a good example. It needs to be more than just a weaker Fell Cleave clone. Even if it gave you a small bit of health back, it'd offer a bit of unique flavour.

This was my biggest issue with the job. It's always been my favorite job throughout the series and as far back as I can remember, it's always had abilities that relies on lifesteal and using health to deal larger amounts of damage. It seems like WAR is more akin to the traditional DRK than the DRK itself with 3 skills that lifesteal (opposed to DRK's two), a skill that uses HP difference to increase attack potency and even in some of it's skill aesthetics such as Inner Release that give that cool black fire animation and glowing eyes...I don't know what SE was thinking when they went this route.

I feel like DRK's defense should be it's offense. It mitigates damage because it's constantly draining health from the enemy.

[armandojc3]

This was my biggest issue with the job. It's always been my favorite job throughout the series and as far back as I can remember, it's always had abilities that relies on lifesteal and using health to deal larger amounts of damage. It seems like WAR is more akin to the traditional DRK than the DRK itself with 3 skills that lifesteal (opposed to DRK's two), a skill that uses HP difference to increase attack potency and even in some of it's skill aesthetics such as Inner Release that give that cool black fire animation and glowing eyes...I don't know what SE was thinking when they went this route.

I feel like DRK's defense should be it's offense. It mitigates damage because it's constantly draining health from the enemy.

This.

The dark night theme feels like a mage-tank.