Dark Knight Media Tour Feedback

[Otorinth]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

Aesthetic. Being able to use a Greatsword and be a tank is something I've rarely seen in the 1,000+ MMORPGs I've played since 2003.
While the "speed" and "complexity" was neat, it's a "take it or leave it" thing for me. I don't generally look for that kind of stuff in something like a Tank. I just want what I play to look cool, feel cool, (and not be dead last in terms of performance.)

[Giubba]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

Aesthetic and heavensward gameplay.

Yes it was that good for me T_T

[Agner]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

Plenty of things. To start with more shallow reasons: I love edge without a hint of irony, great swords are my favorite weapon type in games, I like magic (dark magic especially) but don't get much enjoyment out of playing casters, and tanking is my favorite role.

Getting into actually playing it, and much like others said, speed (high apm via haste and various ogcd usage) was a large factor in enjoyment. I've never much cared for the pace of PLD or WAR, but DRK hit the sweet spot and felt much more rewarding to play. Not to say ShB DRK won't still have potentially rewarding gameplay elements (i.e. TBN -> E/FoS) but other aspects like actual management of MP and gauge seem to have been made both considerably easier and slower, which is impressive albeit in a bad way. I did not play DRK to have a slower and easier time, and I'd like to think most dedicated DRK mains didn't either. In short, all of the management mixed with the speed and flow of the job made it extremely enjoyable.

Other things aside from gameplay that isn't just aesthetics would be that DRK is my favorite job in terms of thematics and story. Sincerely, it is almost everything I like in one job. I don't want to ditch it for a job I'll have more fun with, but that seems like it'll be the case in ShB. I will still level DRK to try it, but my expectations for it are fairly dismal. Sure, none of us have played it, but something might be a bit off if a lot of people think it looks like a shell of its former self after looking at it extensively.

By the by, thanks to you Chrono, as well as Lyth and Mute for making well-constructed posts on this topic. It's encouraging to know people care this much about the job, so hopefully it goes somewhere good this time around.

[Kreyd]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

I was PLD in ARR and HW. But when PLD became the godly jesus tank with 4.0. and everyone seemed to jump on it, I didn't want to be a part of it and choosed the underdog.

Edit: But then I started to love it's style and gameplay and was sad about the things it lost with SB.

[ADVSS]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

Hands down my favorite job from the classics. The greatsword was a cool addition-So the aesthetics were a bonus . The HW gameplay, with the speed and being able to boost
abilities, gave it more of a dynamic over the other tanks(well when you didnt think of the frequency in terms of wrath stacks). The management of mp, I believe got a lot more lax in SB,
but I did like the difference in tanking style (Plunge in HW just made tanking so much more enjoyable)
But it seems like every shred of new that it brought as a -tank- was just given to the others, which is only good because that meant that it was a good direction it was going when it was introduced(for its ffxiv rendition). But as a fan, I could get into the MP sacrifice over HP because it had to be a tank.
Every other aspect, seems to be them turning its actual ages old identity, on its head, and
thats what I dislike the most - a theme that isnt the right theme. As far as viability, itll still be ok
but it could be great, if theyd get back to its roots and stop butchering its iconic identity, so that if its going to give its cool different abilities to everyone else, it should get some similar things in return, and i dont mean IR, I mean a burst self heal, etc. These arent really identity breaking, theyre just basic tank toolkit abilities anyway(DM im looking at you)
Will still level it first in ShB, but I probably wont pop LD, like ever-Ill just save the healer the trouble since theyre going to end up raising me anyway.

[Kyni]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

At first I used DRK as mainly my dungeon tank, because I really enjoyed how the class played in dungeons . With blood price during HW (which at this time was kinda overpowered), aoe tanking was just so much more fun and involved than war or pld (war was mostly just overpower spam and pld had only flash), also unlike war you could use sprint back then.

With SB the change to quietus (mp regen per enemy hit) created a nice interplay between the 2 resources. This interplay was what got me interested in trying it out in more single target oriented content, and while I wasn't as present it was still fun to manage them ( and gcds) with tbn and delirium. The busyness and higher apm made sure that it didn't get boring even with only 1 combo.
I also loved the volatility of the 2 resources, tbn creating a spike in your blood pool was something you had to account for, when using tbn and the use of delirium while blood weapon was up spiked your mp quite noticeable, so you were either taking precaution to not overcap or waste resources.

But yes the aesthetics and job quest definitely did help too, also I really like abilities like tbn, that you can just throw up in an emergency.

[Lyth]

I wanted to be able to tank on DRK back in ARR, well before the job was announced. My co-tank at the time was PLD, and WAR while fun at the time, didn't really feel right. I felt that if they introduced DRK as a tank, it would be the correct fit for me.

I always wanted to use a greatsword as a tanking weapon. Since the PS1 era, greatswords have been Final Fantasy's most iconic weapon. FF7 made the oversized sword aesthetic cool, but FFT really drove it home by expanding out our selection of named greatswords. In addition to classic sword names like Excalibur, Ragnarok, and Apocalypse, all of which could have been 1H or 2H depending on the game in question, you had new uniquely 2H swords like Defender and Save the Queen which went on to become series staples. My hope is that at some point we'll actually get one of these legendary weapon names as the final form of a greatsword relic.

The release of the job in Heavensward made both of those dreams a reality. I remember the original announcement at Fanfest. It was incredible.

In terms of gameplay, it's easy to see why the job caught such interest in Heavensward. It was the first tank to have a gap closer. It was really fast. It's amazing how the slow, but fluid GCD actions blend together with a steady stream of oGCDs to create an endless whirlwind of swordstrikes. Hard Slash blended into Reprisal, you pulled out of Siphon Strike to flip back with a Plunge, as you twirled back into Delirium, firing off a blast of magical energy in Dark Passenger. It was visually beautiful and very engaging.

The resource management element was also a big draw. Activate Blood Weapon or Blood Price and watch those green numbers pile up as you siphon off your opponent's magical energy. We didn't quite get to live up to the vampiric archetype of FFT Gafgarion's Fell Knight, but it was still satisfying.

I think Stormblood and now Shadowbringers have progressively eroded at what makes this job enjoying. The aesthetics are still fantastic (although it's disappointing that even our Shadows get a better aura than we do). But there's more to aesthetics in a job. You need to have a sense that you can do at least one thing very, very well. For PLD, it's party support. For WAR, it's big, big numbers. I'm not sure what DRK's thing at the moment. I would have liked it to be lifesteal and self-sustain. But if there's something there at the moment, I'm just not seeing it.

I'm interested to see how DRK works into the storyline from a lore perspective. But if it doesn't work out, I've made my peace and am fully prepared to jump ship to GNB if I have to. It's sad though. In terms of lore, weapon choice, and aesthetics, it could very easily have been the most enjoyable job in the game. But the core issues just keep getting worse, and there's no sign of seeing longstanding flaws in the job being fixed.

[Freyyy]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

Dark Knight has been my favourite FF job since FF3 (with Monk/Black Belt as a close second). On top of that, I'm a huge fan of FF4 and Cecil. I just loved the overall aesthetics and the idea of sacrificing something (back then it was HP) to deal big damage, while also being able to steal back HP in some games (or with some specific weapons). It has always been a high risk - high reward job in the franchise and I really dig these playstyles. I also really love giant greatswords in general. Whenever I play a game where I can choose my weapon (whether it be by class choice or just equipment) I tend to go greatsword by default. And finally, I've always been a tank main in every MMORPG I've played, I just love this role.

Back when I started playing FF14 (ARR), there was no Dark Knight, and no greatsword job. So I started with the two default tanks and MNK and mained these jobs for most of ARR (while also playing a lot of other jobs when I wanted to change roles). For the entirety of ARR I hoped for the Dark Knight job to be implemented one day, and hopefully as a tank since my second favourite job (MNK) was already in the game as a DPS. Tanking with a greatsword was all I could ask for. Then Heavensward's job reveals came and it was like a dream come true. Dark Knight was going to be in the game as a new tank, using a greatsword, with incredible aesthetics and a potentially high-risk playstyle. The very first thing I did at the start of HW was picking up Dark Knight and levelling it from 30 to 60. I mained it for the entirety of HW and I had a blast with it (my co-tank back then even switched from PLD to WAR so that I could raid as DRK). I fell in love with its complex and fast-paced resource-based gameplay. The only other time where I recall having such an amount of fun tanking was back when I played as a tank Warrior in Tera (which used to also be a very fast paced class with a high risk high reward playstyle), which was way before ARR's release.

So yeah. That's why I'm pretty upset with what SE is doing with the job (I think they don't even know themselves what they want to do with it at this point).

[Nivarea]

To any dark knights still reading this post, why do you play dark knight and what game play style brought you to this job?

I came for the greatsword, stayed for its playstyle. It's a combination of its aesthetics (Greatsword and cool animations), its fast and busy playstyle and its focus on ressource management that made me fell in love with DRK.

The fast playstyle had been achieved by the amount of different oGCDs DRK got, both in HW and SB, and the haste effect on BW (I'm siting at a 2.07 GCD under blood weapon with my current set, feels good). While Dark Arts spam was a bit too pronunced in SB, I ultimately didn't mind it and learned to actually love this version of DRK and being sad to see it go away. HW DRK is still my favourite, despite its own flaws, mostly because of how Dark Arts acted as a Skill modifier back then contrary to just a skill enforcer as of now, and because of all the micromanagement and on the fly decision to actually manage your MP and the Darkside drain. The blood management in SB replaced what complexity the MP management lost and I would have loved to see it improved upon with more blood spenders with different costs. The fact it didn't had a linear progression and having us working on its flow with our abilities (Blood Weapon, Salted Earth, Delirium ewtending BW timer, etc.) was what made it unique.

So Yeah, ShB DRK seems like a complete departure by being slower paced and having its ressource management really dumbed down with the lowest MP generation to this date (as of Media Tour Build, of course) and the blood generation being more linear. These are my biggest fears with the rework. Nothing that can be improved mid-extension tho, and I will give it a fair shot by playing it and making my mind about it myself, some ideas are still interesting.

[shao32]

Bring back Heavensward DRK yoship, we don't like SHB version.
#MakeDRKfunagain #reworkDRK2019SHB