Dark Knight is playable, but BORING

[RadicalPesto]

I wonder, would it actually even cause any balance problems if TBN were to be extended all the way to 10 seconds? Other equivalent tank skills have short durations because, being percentage based reductions, the amount mitigated by them increases the longer they last, as a result of soaking more hits. But TBN is always the same total mitigation, a fixed amount of 25% of your maximum HP, no matter how long it lasts, so increasing its duration just makes it more flexible for fluff damage, and less likely to punish you.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I'm somewhat conflicted. I found DRK frustrating because I was always starved for mana in SB but at least the skills "felt" like they had large impacts on the fight. Now I have more tools for regaining mana but I'm still having to babysit 2 separate gauges that power either the Shadow Attacks or Quietus/Bloodspiller that functionally do almost the same thing. It feels so clunky, you might as well merge Edge of Shadow and Flood of Shadow with Quietus and Bloodspiller and have the blood gauge power up something more impactful and interesting.

Abyssal Drain combos into Quietus which then combos into Flood of Shadow and Edge of Shadow combos into Bloodspiller which then combos into Carve and Spit, all hits have an attack potency of 550, 600, and 650, with a 200 cure potency each but you can use AoE combo with MP and the Single target combo with blood gauge second unique recast that scales off of skill/spell speed that they need to rework how Darkside to make it so that spells scale off of skill speed, but the dev team won't do it because Yoshi-P won't allow because of his BLM bias.

[MerlinCross]

I would say from having savage experience with DRK. Stormblood DRK was the worse creation of DRK and just a job all together. Especially coming from HW, so when I hear someone say they like the DA spam Im sorry but play another tank cause hardcore DRK mains DO NOT WANT DA spam crap back I gave up the job because of that mess. I will say this after beating savage content with DRK and GNB there is some issues with DRK. Defensive cooldowns could use some work. I really like GNB it reminds me of what DRK was is HW but alot more stylish and complete. DRK on the other hand is missing synergy with LS and living dead is still garbage. Especially in a raid party with SCH and AST and no WHM... Overall I like the new DRK I can do savege content and is very viable as a Main tank. DPS wise with the tanks being so balanced I'm honestly hesitant for them to touch it and I think Yoshi hinted at it with the love letter. Fun wise I will admit DRK is not as fun as GNB or PLD. It's still a enjoyable job but GNB is just flash and Bam and maybe that's because it's new idk. PLD is is PLD, as for WAR that is to me the most boring tank with DRK not far off but ahead of WAR on that aspect.

Speak for yourself. I want the Dark Arts to come back. HW we only used it for one or two things so in Stormblood they gave us more things to use on. Now we can agree they went overboard for too much spam but they've also now gone too far in the other direction by outright removing it.

New DRK is serviceable but heck if I have any drive to play it now. It's so bloody boring.

[Freyyy]

The whole kit is just really disconnected. There's no burst window for optimal use of OGCDs

That's the whole point of resource-based jobs vs "steroid"-based jobs. The kit isn't disconnected in any way. You just have more freedom because you're not forced to put everything into an X seconds steroid. A resource-based job will instead maximize its resource-gain and these resources will then convert into direct damage when used. You can choose to delay your 'burst' damage while making sure you don't overcap on resources, and then later you can decide to just burn everything in a short amount of time (like a trick attack/brotherhood/litany window, a DPS check add, etc), resulting in incredibly high burst damage. But you can also decide to use your resources in a more "sustained" manner, providing less burst opportunities but giving you an easier way to prevent overcapping and/or MP starving in case you'd need a TBN. It's not dictated by the ultimate optimal rotation but by your choice to optimize it how you want it depending on your party composition, your preferred way of doing it, and the fight. This "issue" you're having with the job pretty much screams to me that DRK may not be for you. The job has worked that way since its introduction in HW and I think that they're very adamant on keeping it like that (which is a good thing imo).

One single weaponskill combo

WAR and GNB are the same on that. Just changing your ender once every X combos to maintain a buff isn't really more engaging than spamming one combo over and over again.

GNB has its "second combo" locked behind a 30sec CD, you basically just have to use it on CD just like you'd do with every basic damaging oGCDs in the game. It's not thought-provoking at all and it doesn't act like a second "choice" of combos to use in your rotation, especially since it automatically ligns up with No Mercy. GNB is just a one combo job with a 30sec nuke that lasts 3GCDs and makes you spam Dark Arts the SB-way between each hit. Sonic Break has the same issue. It's a DoT but since it has a CD and auto-aligns with No Mercy, you don't have to think about keeping uptime on it or big brain esports-mathematician optimization which can involve clipping it sometimes for timing purposes (like some DPS jobs can do with their DoTs, or even Paladin in some fights). You just use it on CD. It's dumb. This job is very fun to play and feels busy but that's all an illusion. There's pretty much zero thought process involved. It's by far the easiest tank. (And the cartridge system is the easiest """resource""" to """manage""" in the game right now).

The only tank that isn't based around a single combo is PLD (you don't repeat any of its combos back to back, you always go from one way to deal damage to another one), which is funny since it used to be the one-combo tank in ARR. With that said, I agree on the fact that DRK should get at least another combo with an interesting effect and an actual thought-process behind it (no fixed rotation or dumb CD on it tho please).

and Delirium is merely a time to do 5 Bloodsplitters while IR interacts with Upheaval, Infuriate and Storm's Eye. Not even having to reapply Darkside during the window is a problem since it's tied to an OGCD.

Delirium makes you unable to spend your Blood Gauge outside of using LS. Since the timer sometimes aligns itself with BW which makes every GCD give 10 blood, it has an interesting interaction with your resources. You don't want to delay your BW when it comes up, so you'll use it. But you're at risk of overcapping, so you'll have to pre-emptively use a Bloodspiller before entering Delirium while making sure you don't delay Delirium too much in the process, but you also have to watch LS's CD, since it will sometimes align with Delirium, which prevents you from generating blood for 5 GCDs if it's not aligned with BW (but sometimes all three will align !). Can you see where I'm going ? When LS is coming up, you don't want to enter Del with low blood. When BW is coming up, you don't want to enter Del with high blood. When all three are coming up at around the same time, you want to enter Del with just enough blood to be able to use LS without having it overcap during the Bloodspiller spam because of BW.

Delirium actually has a different interaction with your blood gauge depending on both BW and LS being available or not. It definitely requires a lot more thought process and preemptive-thinking than IR which just requires you to brainlessly use Upheaval on CD because it automatically comes back up every single time you go IR, and restrain you from using Infuriate during its 10sec (which is now very easy to achieve since Infuriate has a charge system). Every single IR phase is the same as the last one and has the exact same interaction with your resources everytime (0). BW (60sec), Del (90sec), LS (120sec) can align in five different ways during a 10min fight which all require different blood level to properly be executed without either overcapping or severely delaying LS. And I'm not even talking about fights with downtimes that force you to delay the usage of some of these CDs even more, making LS or BW come back up at a different timing within your Del window, or sometimes just before, and sometimes right after.

And all of that while keeping track of your MP regen rate which is also regularly altered by BW, Del and C&S, and also keeping in mind the MP you need for TBN at certain fight-dependent timings and using the DA proc in the best way possible after that (keep it for a burst phase ? Spend it because MP is going to be too high so you'll need to be able to spend them to prevent overcapping ?)

But you can only see this "depth" in fights that actually last long enough to create these scenarios for you.

I actually think that DRK is a very good example of a job that's very accessible to new/casual players by having a very easy to understand and achieve base-level of mastery for dungeons and trials, while still maintaining an actually pretty high skill-ceiling for people who like having to think about ways to optimize both their damage output and mitigation in relevant content (savage+).

I'd propose making Dark Knight have something like Dark Arts, but cut down on the Dark Arts frequency Dark Arts of times Dark Arts you'd have to press Dark Dark Arts Arts in a Dark Arts combo.

So, Edge of Shadow ?


____________



All in all I see a lot of different complaints about DRK being "too ez" or "not fun anymore" but almost every suggested changes I've seen so far would vastly simplify the job and make it way easier and basically just plain worse while killing what remains of its identity.
I'm not saying that current DRK is perfect. It definitely could use more work and could be way more complex and fun. But it's currently very good.

While HW was the most fun iteration of the job at the cost of being the most ghetto one, ShB has a very good and well-designed foundation for the devs to build on and make it the greatest its ever been. We're not there yet but I can definitely see it in the future (not now tho, some DPS jobs and the state of healing are top priority IMO).
It's way better than brainless just-spam-DA-faster-than-your-MP-regen SB DRK.

[kazzel120]

A mess? You think so? Idk I always liked it personally. The MP management, Dark Dance+Reprisal procs, etc.

I honestly don’t agree that 123 over and over again feels good. And we’re still spamming Dark Arts, it’s name has just changed. Additionally I really don’t like how we’re are a carbon copy of Warrior, I miss when we had a tool kit that was unique to us.

No really HW DRK was a mess and lets face it dark dance was used on trash only. Mp management was even more of a nightmare then it currently is and was in SB.

In all honesty DRK lost 1 defensive cool down. Dark dance thats it. Its always had shadow wall, rampart, and dark mind.

It works just fine how it is now and no just because they made Deler.... i mean internal delirium its not even close to a discount war. WAR right now is the worst tank to play its just bad.

[shao32]

No really HW DRK was a mess and lets face it dark dance was used on trash only. Mp management was even more of a nightmare then it currently is and was in SB.

In all honesty DRK lost 1 defensive cool down. Dark dance thats it. Its always had shadow wall, rampart, and dark mind.

It works just fine how it is now and no just because they made Deler.... i mean internal delirium its not even close to a discount war. WAR right now is the worst tank to play its just bad.

what are you talking about? you didn't have any idea how HW DRK use to work right? first of all dark dance was used everywhere, apart of being free and nice fluff mitigation tool, increase the chances to proc low blow and replisal with mean more overall mitigation and dps.

his MP management was more controled that SB in the first place since in that expansion you generate way more MP that bad players can manage, in HW the rate was nice and consistent and you didn't have to save anything for TBN since didn't exist in the first place, you just have a confy amount based on you preference to don't let darkside fade off.

actually lose dark dance, the uptime of reprisal (20s each 30s recast) and foresight (role WAR skill) witch was the perfect counterpart of dark mind leaving DRK lower leves feel like trash since didn't have TBN until lvl 70 just like now actually since that didn't change.

DRK have almost the same GCD pace of WAR right now leaving the only diference betwen both jobs being edge/flood, the slow MP management and TBN vs infuriated mechanic, they aoe rotation its literaly almost the same too.

[TheForce]

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.

Surprisingly, the opposite happened with PLD! ShB added a bit more complexity to the class, which is greatly appreciated. Granted, it's still nowhere near as intricate as past iterations of DRK, but I find myself thinking a bit more now as I use PLD compared to the 4.X era.

[TheForce]

Personally find ShB DRK way better than SB. Never played HW.

Edge/Flood and their interaction with TBN is the most interesting mechanic any of the tanks have right now.

Now...your opinion is your opinion. But I gotta say, I highly, highly, HIGHLY disagree.
Most interesting mechanic of any Tank?! Whaaaaa.

I don't understand how getting to use one attack (yes one, because edge and flood are literally the same move, just one is single target while the other is aoe) for free after a shield breaks is interesting. It's so scripted, there's no actual choice in this situation, just press this button if the shield breaks, and you're done.

Compared to PLD's beautiful Req mechanic that requires MP management, and drastically boosts spell potency (both healing and attack), as well as removes cast time from all spells, the TBN mechanic seems like a joke imo. Even next to GNB's unique cartridge combo TBN is overshadowed to me.
Hell, even DRK's abysmal 5.0 Delirium mechanic is more interesting if you ask me since you can do more with it than just press one button a single time when the game commandeth thou.

[Kabooa]

Compared to PLD's beautiful Req mechanic that requires MP management, and drastically boosts spell potency (both healing and attack), as well as removes cast time from all spells, the TBN mechanic seems like a joke imo. Even next to GNB's unique cartridge combo TBN is overshadowed to me..

It requires MP management in the same way that Gunbreaker requires Powder management.

AKA none. The rotation literally handles the resource management for you.

[TheForce]

It requires MP management in the same way that Gunbreaker requires Powder management.

AKA none. The rotation literally handles the resource management for you.

What a boring and dull way to view it. Nonetheless, It still adds an extra layer of play to pay attention to.