Thread: Dark Knight moving forward: Job change ideas for 6.0

Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

- Unleash, Stalwart Soul and Unmend are changed from spells to weaponskills like every other tank. Them being spells makes no sense and conflicts with tanks stats.

Them being Spells is fine and they are not alone in the Weaponskill/Spell medley as Paladin also has to deal with Holy Spirit, Holy Circle and Confiteor being Spell and Sks not shortening cast/recast timers. DRK having an inverted AoE rotation (Spell normal rotation/Weaponskill burst rotation) in comparison to the Paladin's (Weaponskill normal rotation/Spell burst rotation) lets both be a bit distinct from the other 2 tanks.

Originally Posted by shao32

So to the point dark mind needs to be touched, DRK mitigation kit is busted we all know that and against magical TB the job is beyond broken thanks in great part to dark mind + TBN so yeah for the sake of balance dark mind needs to be nerfed to avoid being abused like it's currently being done and changed a bit to DRK no longer have to be in the situation of being weak on physical or to busted on magical without middle term.

No Dark Mind doesn't need to be nerfed or altered DRK is fine where it is the only things they need to touch are small QoL buffs such as Blood Weapon it's mitigation is stellar and that's what makes it stand out vs the other 3 tanks. It's got great uses in all forms of savage content before 5.2 comes out (E1S Lazors/double Lazors, E2S TBs, E3S TBs/double stack in Tsu 2/Black Smokers, E4S for Titans magical fists and Tumults) it flows nicely and TBN lines up naturally with almost all TBs/critical damage like E1S bleeds or Titans car attack.

If we're talking useless look at PLD in HW where it couldn't block magic and it was a detriment to bring vs WAR/DRK which was busted that's a better example of busted mitigation where you have Storms Path + Reprisal + old Delirium + Dark Arts'd DM where poor PLD didn't have that luxury.

I think AOE combo needs to be like PLD where you can perform the combo before lvl 50. As tanks often we are the most requested role for leveling or 50 dungeons and having it locked at its current state or lvl 52 is just bad.

Living Dead should just be you cant die for 10 seconds, remove the healing requirement.

Dark Mind, you should add a parry chance or an effect where magical attacks heal you for a percentage of the damage done.

Blood Weapon should decrease weaponskill recast timers and last for 5 GCDs not 10s.

Abyssal Drain should be a 30s cooldown and have 2 charges at the cost of potency.

Delirium-->

Resets the cooldown timer for living shadow.
Grants 50 Blood
Activate Delirium again after cast to cast scourage which applies an AOE dot.
There needs to be a big finisher move at the end of this burst window

Really anything other than what delirium is now.

Wouldn't mind if DRK got some more HP related abilities to tie it with older designs.

New trait: Gain blood gauge when loosing HP in combat, 1k hp = 1 point on guage

New ability: Dread Spikes, similar to WAR vengeance, but instead of the dmg reduction, the DRK is healed for the damage amount dealt to enemies

New trait for blood weapon: When out of tank stance, blood weapon will now drain 5% of the DRK's HP per WS and convert it into extra damage. This 5% HP lose will trigger the first trait, giving more blood guage.

Originally Posted by Kisshu

Wouldn't mind if DRK got some more HP related abilities to tie it with older designs.

New trait: Gain blood gauge when loosing HP in combat, 1k hp = 1 point on guage

New ability: Dread Spikes, similar to WAR vengeance, but instead of the dmg reduction, the DRK is healed for the damage amount dealt to enemies[/quote]

These sorts of Main tank abilities are unlikely to return as they want to keep the MT and OT rotations and DpS as close to the same.

New trait for blood weapon: When out of tank stance, blood weapon will now drain 5% of the DRK's HP per WS and convert it into extra damage. This 5% HP lose will trigger the first trait, giving more blood guage.

You are pretty much designing a suicide move here that will only make the healer's job harder. They have also said that they are not doing hp sacrificing moves since they don't really work in ffxiv's design.

Rather than remove Salted Earth, I would much rather have that skill reworked. I despise using it, but not because of how watered down it's become. It has always been a pain in the ass to use and feels clunky. I would much rather the AoE generate from the DRK so he/she does not have to deal with the placement marker. I love using skills like Arms Length and Reprisal, which effectively mitigate incoming damage, so I would love a way to return that damage in the same manner.

Delirium rework is a must. x5 Bloodspiller has got to go. The power of Delirium should be on par with its animation, which is awesome as eff. That is about all I have to say on that one.

My stance on Living Dead has changed. Healing has not scaled in the same manner that tank HP has. This needs to be addressed either on the healing side or LD reworked.

Remove gauge cost for Living Shadow. It has a 120s CD for crying out loud. This will likely happen in 6.0 anyway, and DRK given another blood spender with an equally long CD duration.

I dislike Edge/Flood being MP spenders while their non-weaponskill GCDs are MP free. I can be far more reckless with my MP so long as I have enough in the chamber for TBN, and upkeep of Darkside is equally brainless. I feel it should be reversed to give DRKs more engagement and interactions with their kits.

I like that shattering TBN grants Dark Arts. I strongly dislike that Dark Arts makes Edge/Flood free. Dark Arts == Dark Hulk. In all seriousness though, I think that this upkeep should be similar to SAMs Shifu and Jinpu, and it increases dmg and speed for the DRK.

Completely QoL, but give DRKs the option to choose between Darkside and Grit animations when activating tank stance.

Other than that, my only issue with DRK is its identity crisis. It is in dire need of the drain/absorb/sacrifice skills it is known and loved for. It has a little bit of these virtues present today, but not enough to give it an identity of its own. It might be wishful thinking at this point though, as I am not sure this version of DRK fits into FFXIV.

DRK's shadow ought to feed off of Dark Side, so that you have to truly upkeep and fire off Edges to feed it. In a way, you'd be upkeeping the shadow and your own damage buff with it and it'd make it more engaging to have to choose whether to fight more edges in burst windows, or keep your shadow alive and on the field at all times.

Another thing they could do: Make a combo finisher be based off of a DA proc, instead of a free Edge, make it so that you are encouraged to use TBN to access a powerful finisher move, and keep DA procs only at being able to bank 1 at a time, so you can't spam the other thing: so you'd be spending edges to power your shadow and darkside at all times, the shadow would be on the field all the time, so long as you had Darkside to feed it, you'd be using Edge more often and TBN would have interactivity where you'd be using it defensively and be rewarded for smart usages of it.

DRK would have a combo finisher, like NIN has Shadowfang, you could even....gasp....use a DA proc from TBN for: SCOURGE so you'd not want to use it all the time, just tbn when you need to refresh it and spend the DA proc on it, when you need the DoT again.