Dark Knight is playable, but BORING

[KrausBrave]

With that thought process I hope no one sees you in raid content on aether. They will kick you so fast is isn’t funny

Update. Parse blue in Savage raid [First-time mind you as a DRK] and parse purple in Extreme... [Also... first... time]. I can now confirm, that I wasn't kicked [The extreme party kicked someone else...], actually did more damage than the other tank as the MT. Now came to the conclusion that not only did my "3000" rule actually make this class easy. I also learned this class is 95% brainless. the 5% only is used for using TBN at the right time.

Also, if you want tips on how to play the class Aizen, I wouldn't mind giving a pointer or two.

[Dragonkat]

Honesty this is my opinion people need to stop baseing job "complexity" of dungeon and get there butts in raid content.

Please see my sig, and stop thinking being good at raid content means you know a class.

I'd say the people who understand i from the ground up having played it through all those dungeons you seem to poo poo know the class a whole helluva lot better then the people spending all day in the boringness of EX content, which honestly boils down to stand here for X and kill in X order if titainia was any indication. The exact same as any dungeon, the only difference is the dps check, and the twitch required to dodge the aoes in places like Eden 1 savage.

and these by the by are the people who are telling you it's boring, why it is, and none of this silly "do you even parse bro?" nonsense you're spouting is gonna change that.

A buster is a buster regardless of where it is. And those saying DRK is a one trick TBN pony are spot on. Without that skill which now only gives a DA instead of blood which had multiple options for use DRK lacks any synergy with it's kit, has become a stripped dumbed down WAR clone. And while functional in raids for it's dps and TBN use it's still boring as hell to play because there is nothing about the kit that works together now, and DA spam has been replaced with flood spam, great change that... Maybe if we also keep complaining loud enough Living dead will be made useful before the next spin on the what is delirium this time wheel? [/sarcasm]

The class has no identity anymore, everything that made DRK what it was and what made it fun (like AD and quietus spam to ping pong your mp and hp) is gone. It's a clunky slow playing skilless tank that may as well be called sword guy for all that's left of dark knight. It's disgraceful that shadowbringer's mascot class has gotten the treatment it has from the devs.

[RadicalPesto]

Please see my sig, and stop thinking being good at raid content means you know a class.

I'd say the people who understand i from the ground up having played it through all those dungeons you seem to poo poo know the class a whole helluva lot better then the people spending all day in the boringness of EX content, which honestly boils down to stand here for X and kill in X order if titainia was any indication. The exact same as any dungeon, the only difference is the dps check, and the twitch required to dodge the aoes in places like Eden 1 savage.

Raid content actually requires you to plan out your mitigation, use tank swaps, understand positioning, maximize uptime while performing mechanics and know when its best to use group mitigation skills like Dark Missionary. Dungeons can be successfully completed without any major issues without a single press of Reprisal, a single use of Dark Missionary, without any minding to maintaining your DPS uptime (and it doesn't matter if you say "go play a DPS instead", because "tanks and healers should optimize their DPS while performing their role" isn't an opinion, it's the fundamental design of FFXIV), with completely random or erratic usage of your mitigation skills, without using any interrupts, etc. In fact, given the aggro changes in Shadowbringers, you can feasibly complete every dungeon in the game as a tank while pressing a completely random assortment of AoE skills, since any damage will be enough to maintain aggro.

When you say things like this:

A buster is a buster regardless of where it is.

You indicate that you don't understand why people ask for balance and design to be done around Savage raids. A tank buster in a late Savage fight will instantly kill you if not mitigated properly, and will likely spiral out of control into a wipe unless your team manages to pull off a quick recovery. Not only that, because Savage fights are around 10 minutes long, you need to make sure you have good mitigation for every single tankbuster throughout the fight (which may require strategic tank swapping, to make use of both tank's mitigation toolkits), and these will at times hit hard enough to require the stacking of two mitigation buttons (TBN + Rampart, for example) just to ensure your basic survival. A buster in a dungeon will, if not mitigated, uh, hit you for half of your HP, which the healer will immediately restore with an off-gcd, and will require at most a single TBN to mitigate, and you will see two or three of them in a boss fight meaning there's no need to plan for running out of mitigation. Dungeon busters and Savage busters are such a completely different thing that Dungeon busters seem to largely exist to give you a way to actually break TBN sometimes, because they practically never represent a genuine threat to a tank's survival.

Almost every balance thread has somebody like you drop their anti-raider manifesto and think they're unique for not enjoying Savage content, and its always full of comments such as "why should the classes be balanced around Savage?" and the answer is this: Because the alternative would be to bring every single 4 person dungeon, normal mode raid and 24 person raid to a difficulty level comparable to Savage, a difficulty level where a class bringing Divine Veil, or interrupts, or strong mitigation skills, or the best DPS actually matters. You can't balance around content where out of 30 skills you can easily clear every fight pressing only 6, and that means you have to either balance around Savage and Ultimate, which require you to use either all or a majority of your skills, or make the entire game as difficult as Savage and Ultimate, and I guarantee you that absolutely nobody in their right mind wants that.

[Satarn]

I'd say it's savage and ex content which really highlights how boring DRK is right now. Back when I was just going trough SHB MSQ on the job, killing quest mobs and running dungeons for the first time, there were moments when I'd kinda space out and enjoy myself briefly.
Easy content gives you the freedom to more-or-less roll your face on keyboard and use skills pretty much at random and quick fights with long breaks between them can fool you into thinking the job is "busy", because all your cds and mana are up to use every time. That said, the change of AoE mechanics is hurting the job's gameplay in dungeons specifically, so I can see how even more casual players can be dissatisfied.

The illusion breaks however as soon as you hit more structured, longer lasting 8 man content and try to fit things into raid buffs. Then you see how all you got is a linear af rotation, which fits nearly every ogcd into a small burst window and then chills pressing 123 for the next minute, only to repeat the exact same thing.

You know how BRD has to constantly watch and weave procs in Ballad and Minuet, but then Paeon is basically a "finger resting song" which you only sit in for around 20 seconds?
SHB DRK gets a bit over 10 seconds of frantic double-weaving and then goes back to its "resting song" for majority of the rotation.

And we don't even get the speed procs to make the raw gcds less boring.

[MerlinCross]

Havee to either balance around Savage and Ultimate

So what, it’s okay to make a class boring or clunky so long as it pareses well in savage? That it doesn’t matter that the leveling is annoying, “You’ll be great in E1S we promise”. That you actually don’t enjoy the class but every expects you to play it cause Savage?

Well I guess that explains MNK these days but that’s a forum down the way. Personally I’d like a class that is fun to play both in baby causal content and Savage but if DRK is unfun to me for 10 levels why would I even try to have fun in savage with it?

[Rhais]

A job being boring/clunky is a separate issue from a job being balanced. The leveling process being fun or not has nothing to do with balance.

[MerlinCross]

A job being boring/clunky is a separate issue from a job being balanced. The leveling process being fun or not has nothing to do with balance.

If it’s good for only one part of the game, it’s fine because that’s the part it’s balanced for.

That’s what you’re saying right? It’s okay to be unfun as long as it FFlogs well.

May as delete the kits and make them 2 buttons then and balance around those two buttons.

[Rhais]

If it’s good for only one part of the game, it’s fine because that’s the part it’s balanced for.

That’s what you’re saying right? It’s okay to be unfun as long as it FFlogs well.

May as delete the kits and make them 2 buttons then and balance around those two buttons.

No that's not what I'm saying at all.
A job that is well balanced for savage can be either boring and/or clunky or it can be fun and engaging. It being balanced has little to do with that, it has little to do with the leveling process as well. Balance is primarily how the job performs in comparison to other jobs within the role and while it is going to affect what abilities a job has since they need to be able perform their role it has nothing to do with how a job mechanically functions.

This notion people have that savage/ultimate shouldn't determine job balance is irrational as well. It's the only thing tuned to such a degree that job balance really matters, and if they get that right every job will be performing fine in all the much easier content as well.

[Rufalus]

The best suggestion I've seen on the forums for making low lv stuff less boring is to add weaker versions of the key high lv abilities to the lv15-30 kit and just upgrade those by trait into the stronger versions at high lv.

Low lv dungeons should let you use a fun attack rotation, like how jumping into pvp gives you a mini version of max level pve rotation right away.

[RadicalPesto]

So what, it’s okay to make a class boring or clunky so long as it pareses well in savage? That it doesn’t matter that the leveling is annoying, “You’ll be great in E1S we promise”. That you actually don’t enjoy the class but every expects you to play it cause Savage?

Well I guess that explains MNK these days but that’s a forum down the way. Personally I’d like a class that is fun to play both in baby causal content and Savage but if DRK is unfun to me for 10 levels why would I even try to have fun in savage with it?

Fun design and balance are actually separate parts of what makes up a class, which is why some of the currently best classes in Savage are ones I would never bother playing, whereas Bard, a middling DPS class in serious need of buffs, remains one I consider a lot of fun to play. "I want this class to have a more fun design" is something that applies to almost all content. "Balance", on the other hand, applies exclusively to content that forces you to correctly use your class's entire kit, including all support options, and the only content we have that does that is Savage and Ultimate.