Dark Knight: 5.0x Feedback Thread

[Chrono_Rising]

Dark Knight in 5.0 is flashy but there are a number of improvements that I think need to be made still. I will start this with some brief points about the playstyle, and then move on to looking at how Dark Knight is stacking up in Mitigation, Utility, Self Healing, and DPs. Nascent Flash is something of a powerful ability, so while I will generally try to keep things in their specific sections, nascent flash will be all over the place. In general, I consider shields to be mitigation and not self healing.

Playstyle
Dark Knight is fairly simple. There are some issues which are apparent and could stand for some quality of life touches.

Blood Weapon - This being a 10 second ability I was expecting it to have similar timing to other 10 second abilities like Inner Release or Delirium. The timing is more punishing than these skills. For reference, Inner release and Delirium generally fades 10.7 seconds after use, based on timing I believe blood weapon is wearing off 9.95 to 10 seconds after use. While this is a minor difference in timing it does pose an issue to those with low skill speed builds, requiring them to at times meld skill speed in order to be able to hit all 5 GCDs underblood weapon. Not hitting that 5th GCD is equivalent to around a 150 potency per minute loss. There are two ways I could see this being alleviated: returning the haste effect, thereby making the timing of the skill less cumbersome, or having its duration be similar to other 10 second skills like Inner Release and Delirium.

Speed - Outside of Dark Knights opener the job plays very slow. It would be nice to see more uses of oGCD skills. Either shortening oGCD skills to 30 seconds would help making things feel faster and more fluid or increasing resource generation: specifically mana to raise the frequency of Edge of shadow slightly. After my opener, the job feels like it runs slows down quickly.


Mitigation
Dark Knight feels slightly more squishy than other tanks in trash pulls. I believe this is because though TBN is on a 15 second cooldown we only have two other mitigation skills which are generally useful against large mob damage. While TBN feels great in single target, it feels like it is just buying time at times. Single target TBN feels great to use on tank busters, and auto attaacks + raidwide aoes, but doesn’t do much for fluff mitigation. While I believe all content will be clearable by all tanks, I do think Dark Knight is in a spot of feeling physically weak.

This appears to be comparable to the state paladin appears to be in, though paladin is also bringing many more utilities and damage to the party compared to dark knight more on that later. I can also imagine at the higher levels of block strength sheltron will overtake damage mitigation in terms of TBN, I believe this is already at 20% mitigation at ilvl 450. Not to mention in dungeon pulls Hallowed is a great option.

Warrior appears to be in a similar state but worse for early leveling (71-76), but once you have Nascent Flash the self heals I can generate over the three GCDs blow TBN out of the water. In large pulls I can easily restore 60 to 70k per GCD (you can fit 3 moves into a single Nascent Flash). This is enough to Holmgang => hit 1=> Nascent Flash => 100% HP. I mention this here and not in the self-healing because this is incredibly powerful and in trash pulls I believe should be favored over using Raw Intuition.

Gunbreaker has 4 mitigations, and I feel rather tanky in most dungeon pulls. I do understand how Camouflage parry aspect is underwhelming, but when 6 to 8 things are hitting you this 10% damage reduction paired with higher parry change seems to do the trick well enough. Paired with Superbolide (though I do need to warn healers), I have little problem being healed to full HP during the 8 seconds of invulnerability.


Utility/cotank support
Right now Dark Knight appears to be giving the least amount of utility and support to its cotank and party, or is at the least competing with warrior for this underwhelming title. Dark Missionary as magic mitigation is less than shield mitigation in all cases.

TBN and Nascent flash both have uses, both are good but neither are out of this world stellar, either shield someone for 25% of their hp with TBN or restore in the neighborhood of 20k HP with Nascent Flash, these appear to be two flavors of the same thing the main difference being in timing (before/after damage is done).

In comparison Gunbreaker can share its regen (which in terms of total hp restored is more than the damage mitigated by TBN), being able to grant a smaller shield to your cotank or party member, as well as having the same magic damage mitigation. In general it appears Gunbreaker provides more support to you as a cotank.

I’m not sure I need to point out how paladin shines in the area of utility but: Passage of arms, divine veil, cover, intervention, and clemency are all strong abilities (though clemency is situational it is helpful in learning and recovering).

Self Healing
No tank is amazing here. Paladin probably does this best with Clemency spam, followed by Warrior with Path, Thrill of battle, and Equilibrium, and Nascent flash if you're using double Infuriates once a minute. Gunbreaker and Dark Knight are pulling up the rear here, Auroa works out to be a 1200 potency heal along with its slightly more spammable Brutal Shell restoring HP and shielding (150 potency heal). While Dark Knight has Abyssal Drain which single target is 200 potency along with Soul Eater being a 300 potency heal. I am considering shields as mitigation, as it is damage prevention which does not restore HP.

DPS
Right now in the raid scene Dark Knight appears to be the lowest in terms of damage output. Our tank order here appears to be Gunbreaker, Paladin, Warrior, Dark Knight. Though our opening burst appears to be powerful we need to wait 6 minutes to see that burst again. One of our burst windows (delirium) is not much more powerful than paladin’s normal combo without fight or flight. The difference in dps is small, but I have a feeling it will become larger as people learn how to play their classes more effectively.

Summary
Across the areas of mitigation, utility/cotank support, self healing, and dps Dark Knight once again appears to be in either 3rd or 4rth place in many key areas of tanking. This is a state similar to the one we were in through stormblood, not so lacking we couldn't clear content, but also not shining in any particular area and often being behind the other tanks. I hope we see some adjustments before savage.

What do you think about Dark Knight? What would you like to see adjusted?

[Mithron]

I really like how they play in SHB, but I hate how low their damage is for the effort required to play properly particularly over PLD. IMO, the tank DPS should be WAR > GNB > DRK > PLD with their utility reflected off that.

[Chrono_Rising]

I really like how they play in SHB, but I hate how low their damage is for the effort required to play properly particularly over PLD. IMO, the tank DPS should be WAR > GNB > DRK > PLD with their utility reflected off that.

Though I agree that utility should at least be reflected in the opposite order of dps; I think asking for a rework of every tank might be a bit taxing. Based on what our current kit utilities are balancing around a dps order of DRK >= WAR > GNB > PLD is probably easier to ask for since you would not need to add utilities or effects and could simply change "numbers".

[DemonicNeko]

I really like how they play in SHB, but I hate how low their damage is for the effort required to play properly particularly over PLD. IMO, the tank DPS should be WAR > GNB > DRK > PLD with their utility reflected off that.

Honestly I think this class is to simple. Then again the most complex class gunbreaker is not super complex ether. Tanks kinda fallen into this roll face on keyboard and win play style. Which is why I am guessing Savage is having triple tank busters in a row. As tanks are to boring to play now. Specially DRK who is just a shittier version of Warrior. I left WoW because they dumbed down the classed to the point they where two easy. At this rate I might leave FF14 to go back to Classic WoW where classes where hard to play and the game was hard to play.

With it also having the less amount of of utility. It honestly DRK should be like the SAM, BLM of tanks. Where it focus more on dps then utility. I how ever feel they should be more Dark Knight like from FF4. Using it HP for damage buffs or defensive abilities. We can add in stuff like reflecting percent of damage back to bosses. Though I think one of the biggest problems is not a tank problem but a terrible boss design problem.

FYI Warriors have a ton of Utility. If DPS for Utility/Mitigation was a thing. It would got DRK>GNB>WAR>PLD. Got to add in the Mitigation to the mix. As that one of the biggest reason why you take a tank into a savage/ultima raiding. Let's not forget that the game is balance around those two content. Everything else the game is not designed around. Even though that where 90% of all the players tend to be in. It funny how they balance the classes and content around a minority of the player base.

The "Anti-Magic" tank sucks as an idea currently because we as players have no good / reliable way to determine what is magic damage and what isn't. SE needs to develop a way for us to figure that out. Used to be Raw Intuition. Can't use that anymore.

Which they can fix so easy. Just change colors around. Yellow for physical damage. Orange for magic damage. Boom we can just look at the color the boss has hit us with and know instantly if it physical or magical. Even if they last min change a boss ability from physical to magical. This would not effect the combat damage colors. As they are program to show one color for physical and another for magical. Not everything being yellow numbers when the boss hits us.

[Dragonkat]

It funny how they balance the classes and content around a minority of the player base.

DING!

This right here is the standout sentence. and half of the problem as i see it right now. The DPS > all meta game and the complaints from the people espousing it who are the 5% of the playerbase playing savage content ending up balancing 95% of the rest of the game for us are how we got into this role based hot mess. Off the top of my head.

AST got turned into a balance bot, why? "Balance is the only useful card cause we need more DPS!"

Ninja is getting booted from savage content, why? "Their DPS is too low on FF logs!"

DRK got it's utility gutted, it's skills/sustain nerfed, why? "Cause spamming DA is too annoying and if i don't I lose DPS!"

Anyone see a pattern yet? Across every class utility powers and abilities that actually differentiated the classes got sacrificed on the almighty DPS altar. And for what? so people can clear savage 0.42 seconds faster for endgame loot that basically is just a glamor game anyway when 440-450 gear is pretty much all you need for clearing the MSQ with a reasonable skill level? It's hilarious how the devs attempts to make every class have a place and role feel useful had the exact opposite effect. Or one could say (and did) if it aint broke, don't fix it.

It's why people complaining about BLM and MNK being overpowered, and people saying tanks are fine because of a DPS parity I feel are missing the point. Or at the very least looking at it backwards. The problem isnt their DPS relative to other classes, it's the fact DPS has become far too much a priority. and it's not doing 14 any favors.

I for one would love to see the devs take a different look at things. and for gods sake stop balancing the game around the end. They seem to have forgotten about those other 79 levels.

[RadicalPesto]

DRK got it's utility gutted, it's skills/sustain nerfed, why? "Cause spamming DA is too annoying and if i don't I lose DPS!"

But Stormblood Dark Knight was by far the worst tank in terms of utility and could not provide any form of protection for AoE damage (outside of the universal role skill Reprisal) until the introduction of Dark Missionary, and the one utility it had, which was casting TBN on other people, was buffed in this expansion.

Also the game is balanced for savage because savage and ultimate are the only content where balance actually matters. In content below savage a lot of utility skills, such as raidwide AoE mitigators, or healing boosts like Mantra, almost never make a difference because damage is so undertuned. Content with no enrage timers can effectively be cleared without any DPS players, and is in fact perfectly safe to do with a team of 6 tanks and 2 healers, which is why you really can't balance around it.

[Dragonkat]

But Stormblood Dark Knight was by far the worst tank in terms of utility and could not provide any form of protection for AoE damage (outside of the universal role skill Reprisal) until the introduction of Dark Missionary, and the one utility it had, which was casting TBN on other people, was buffed in this expansion.

Also the game is balanced for savage because savage and ultimate are the only content where balance actually matters. In content below savage a lot of utility skills, such as raidwide AoE mitigators, or healing boosts like Mantra, almost never make a difference because damage is so undertuned. Content with no enrage timers can effectively be cleared without any DPS players, and is in fact perfectly safe to do with a team of 6 tanks and 2 healers, which is why you really can't balance around it.

Spoken like a true savage raider who has no respect for the rest of the games content. So nothing else matters till you get to the "real" game? Which Savage is? We shouldn't worry what happens to anyone in the first 79 levels or the MSQ? Balance doesn't matter at all? Thank god you and your ignorance aren't on the dev team that's all I can say. Given you seem to have forgotten in terms of utility DRK had...

* Dark Passenger to blind mobs for mitigation (oh my god though you had to press an extra button for DA!)

* Carve and spit where you had the =choice= for MP regen or extra damage (OMG DA SPAM!)

* Blood Price where DRK could more easily sustain MP during mass pulls to keep TBN and AD up

* Blood weapon with extra regen AND attack speed to bring more dps to the table if that floated your boat, making DRK excellent OT's since it was a non tank stance buff.

* Delirium providing extra uptime to both of the above instead of just being a warrior wannabe burst window

* Quietus providing a meaningful use in terms of sustain with mp regen per hit, unlike it's near uselessness now, and being rapidly outclassed by stalwart soul combo.

* Abyssal Drain providing mass HP regen on mass pulls, and the "utility" powers to make sure you could keep it going. Without being locked on a cooldown that makes it even more useless

* TBN giving blood instead of this new broken DA where you either lose dps, or gain one extra free hit, and just replacing one brand of DA spam with another for a DPS boost that is barely even noticeable. Unlike the old version where you had a =choice= with 50 blood to deal extra dps or gain extra mp regen. And the MP regen skills that gave a wider skill window unlike the current 123 BS spam we have now.

But DRK didn't have any utility... Ah but I forgot none of the above matters to you, because it's just progression play, and only scrubs do that, we don't need to worry about anything but savage right? *eyeroll*

[DemonicNeko]

DING!

This right here is the standout sentence. and half of the problem as i see it right now. The DPS > all meta game and the complaints from the people espousing it who are the 5% of the playerbase playing savage content ending up balancing 95% of the rest of the game for us are how we got into this role based hot mess. Off the top of my head.

AST got turned into a balance bot, why? "Balance is the only useful card cause we need more DPS!"

Ninja is getting booted from savage content, why? "Their DPS is too low on FF logs!"

DRK got it's utility gutted, it's skills/sustain nerfed, why? "Cause spamming DA is too annoying and if i don't I lose DPS!"

Anyone see a pattern yet? Across every class utility powers and abilities that actually differentiated the classes got sacrificed on the almighty DPS altar. And for what? so people can clear savage 0.42 seconds faster for endgame loot that basically is just a glamor game anyway when 440-450 gear is pretty much all you need for clearing the MSQ with a reasonable skill level? It's hilarious how the devs attempts to make every class have a place and role feel useful had the exact opposite effect. Or one could say (and did) if it aint broke, don't fix it.

It's why people complaining about BLM and MNK being overpowered, and people saying tanks are fine because of a DPS parity I feel are missing the point. Or at the very least looking at it backwards. The problem isnt their DPS relative to other classes, it's the fact DPS has become far too much a priority. and it's not doing 14 any favors.

I for one would love to see the devs take a different look at things. and for gods sake stop balancing the game around the end. They seem to have forgotten about those other 79 levels.

I honestly think classes should not be their focus on Savage. Good boss battles is what they should be focusing on. Tank busters spam is not good boss design. Ton of hp and a ton of damage is not a good boss design. Challenging and creative boss mechanics are good boss design. They honest focus to much on balance the classes around Savage content. I think they should focus on reworks that make the classes fun to play. Not simple 123 rotations. Which as a dark knight that what you will be hitting 90% of the time. I saw someone make a funny picture about dark knight rotation. Which I had saved it. Cause it so funny and dead accurate. It was basicly just a Darkside up? Yes no? Then a lot of Bloodspiller spamming. Which honestly outside of putting on darkside and 123 spam. We are just spamming Bloodspiller.

[Dragonkat]

I honestly think classes should not be their focus on Savage. Good boss battles is what they should be focusing on. Tank busters spam is not good boss design. Ton of hp and a ton of damage is not a good boss design. Challenging and creative boss mechanics are good boss design. They honest focus to much on balance the classes around Savage content. I think they should focus on reworks that make the classes fun to play. Not simple 123 rotations. Which as a dark knight that what you will be hitting 90% of the time. I saw someone make a funny picture about dark knight rotation. Which I had saved it. Cause it so funny and dead accurate. It was basicly just a Darkside up? Yes no? Then a lot of Bloodspiller spamming. Which honestly outside of putting on darkside and 123 spam. We are just spamming Bloodspiller.

And spoken like someone who actually gets it. That's the other part of the mess. When your boss design basically boils down to tankbuster -> rarrrh -> dodge mechanic -> tankbuster -> ENRAGE! Against hp sponges and DPS > all with classes whose only options are MOAR DEEPS since any utility is gone. . .

I guess when every savage run looks like a nail we just have to keep hammering?

[Deceptus]

I for one would love to see the devs take a different look at things. and for gods sake stop balancing the game around the end. They seem to have forgotten about those other 79 levels.

Also note, all the changes they did made the lower levels suuuuck.