Dark Knight is playable, but BORING

[Cedaelic]

Now before anyone says "Dark Knight is fine" or "it doesn't need another rework", etc, listen up.

Dark Knight IS fine. But it's the most boring, stale, straightforward job in the game now.

Yes, it gets the job done, but I don't just play a game (especially an MMO) to reach some end goal. If I wanted to do that, I'd just stick to working a 9-5 job, slowly losing my sanity. I play games to have a thing called fun. Because games are supposed to be fun... right?

The entire idea of Dark Knight in Stormblood was amazing. I don't care if you didn't like spamming Dark Arts, there was an equal amount of people who LIKED that mechanic, and honestly it was the only thing setting DRK apart from the other tanks. While I understand that it wasn't working for Savage progression raiders, not everyone in the game is at that level. At the same time, people who pick up a job and play it for a couple hours and don't like it shouldn't affect how a job is changed either. The middleman DRK mains are then screwed over by a handful of personal, narrow, & skewed opinions and a massive amount of inexperienced opinions. And while yes, I get it, Square primarily uses data rather than direct player opinions, data doesn't complain. So don't even try to bring that up.

At this point I have 175+ days and some hours in play time. And while there's no definitive way to find this, I think it's safe to say I spent around 30-40 of those days in total play time on Dark Knight, hence it being the second job I maxed. Not only that, I cleared my 1000 instance run achievement primarily on DRK (not all of those runs would have gone towards the Tank You achievement btw), so I think I have some reasonable grounds to judge this job on its current, sorry state.

Sustain
Dark Knight was the absolute KING of sustain next to Paladin being a borderline healer thanks to Clemency. Sure, Warrior has their self heal, but Dark Knight was healing constantly. While yes, I can understand where that would be a bit unbalanced, but at the same time I can look over and see Paladin soloing Shadowbringers dungeon bosses down from ~30% with their massive heal. With the loss of damage % based healing on Souleater and Abyssal Drain, DRK has now been future proofed to just always be bad at self sustain. I used to be able to get 25% of my health back with a direct critical, DA Souleater and now I struggle to even heal back half of a boss' auto attack. I don't think I need to explain why Abyssal Drain is bad now, you can probably look up 'joke' in the dictionary and you'd see the icon and tooltip for it.

[Cedaelic]

Mana Generation
On a mana reliant tank, I shouldn't be getting 1/5th of the mana I used to get from Syphon Strike, and I definitely shouldn't have to worry about when my 60 second cooldown is going to be back up to then time it into my GCDs so I can keep going through my combo and still get that tripled mana from Syphon Strike. This is at least BEARABLE compared to the awful AoE mana generation (Oh wait, it's gone). It seems almost pointless to even put Stalwart Soul into the game because while yes, it's giving you blood and mana, it only gives you mana back as long as you deal damage to one enemy rather than giving you mana back per hit, like Quietus was after it gained the effect in Stormblood. On top of all this, Blood Price, another great mana generator is just removed from the game, and Delirium is thrown out the window as well and all that's left is a sad imitation of IR without the direct hit guarantee and a tiny 200 MP generation on hit, which mind you is only giving you 1200 mana (considering you land 5 Bloodspillers in that time). But while doing this, you've now wasted all of those precious globals on 1200 mana when you could have just been using them on your 123 combo. And with the removal of BW duration extension, it's even more useless of an ability.

Carve and Split is the only ability in the mana department that was reasonably balanced.

Overactive Inactivity
Playing Dark Knight feels like I'm putting in way too much work just to function as a job (ironic since that was the #1 complaint back in Stormblood), and every action I take on DRK seems like a fraction of what other tanks can do. You are now working three times as hard to do half of what you could in Stormblood, and after you've used up your only decent cooldown, you're stuck with the same mind-numbing 123 combo. It feels like I could be doing so much more, but since my entire kit is hidden behind a 3000MP wall or a 60 second cooldown wall, I'm stuck doing nothing in that time.

Something is clearly wrong with DRK, and I believe anyone defending its current state must have just went and unlocked it when the Shadowbringers trailer came out and dropped it at 70 until release.

[Hierro]

Without the fast pace from blood weapon, high MP generation, and dark arts, DRK plays like a high-maintenance WAR.

[Absimiliard]

High-maintenance might be stretching things a bit, I feel. Well, unless you mean high-maintenance specifically compared to WAR, in which case you'd be right.

[Hanayumi]

Nearly all the jobs got easier to handle and in turn a tad bit boring especially tanks and healers, Shb is the "dumb down" expac for job... So just got to take it or leave it really, cant expect major changes anytime soon unless to job is a total mess or creates a Holy Gail in raid meta.

[Naoki34]

Nearly all the jobs got easier to handle and in turn a tad bit boring especially tanks and healers, Shb is the "dumb down" expac for job... So just got to take it or leave it really, cant expect major changes anytime soon unless to job is a total mess or creates a Holy Gail in raid meta.

Before Noob can't hold aggro, now everyone can hold aggro...
Before, it was necessary to fight to hold the aggro against fat dps, for that ShB is more boring for the tanking. Now you have aggro, you hold it until the end of the time...

it's not everything in the gameplay of the tank, but it's frustrating, on the other word, I don't have to complain anymore to a noob, but that does not stop them from slack happily...

[Quri]

ShB DRK feels like SB DK, but gutted all the stuff that synergize well with SB DK, and then slapped with a WAR kit, because it didn't work, or people played WAR and PLD, and figure another Resquiat for tanks would work well. DRK just like AST, feels like they reached a solution to a problem, and then did extra shit, resulting in things breaking. I'm not surprise that PLD and GNB are the most popular tanks right now, PLD didn't change and was only added to it kit, GNB seem like it was design with not only the current tank changes, but with a identity, something that DRK lacks.

I knew DRK was a WAR clone, but I didn't realize how bad it was, till I did the 71 dungeon, and had access to stalwart soul to realize that DRK constant revamp has severely damaged the class. There is 3 different kits within DRK that doesn't mesh and actively hinder the class, as the skills that are being added in each expansion are based on the previous kit before they decide to scrap it, but keep the skills as if it's an extension of the DRK before the revamp.

ShB DRK is the worst DRK so far.

Also if you're going to normalize the 30% dmg reduction skill, why make 3 of them be sentinel clones instead of them doing extra stuff. DRK get a mana regen from hit, GNB a shield, and PLD could have kept the 40% dmg reduction. Give them a 15 second duration while you at it also, this includes WAR vengeance skill.

[EpicOverlord85]

I miss HW Dark Knight

[Brightmore]

Making it easier for peeps don't bother me, but that 123 combo and 5 times same skill makes it boring. We had a diversity of skills that made the fight gorgeous, now i feel like a barbaric hitting my enemy with a club til they skull breaks...

[RyuDragnier]

I miss HW Dark Knight

Everybody who played HW DRK misses it.