Thread: DRK QOL changes for 5.4

I just really don't get the themes of DRK at all anymore.

PLD protects and his answer to a higher threat is to improve his defenses. Good makes sense. Sword, shield, big armor and abilities that protect others/heal very on point.

WAR is all about taking the hit and hitting harder back. Good makes sense in the berserker battle frenzy thing they got going on. Big axe, lots of wild swinging abilities and blood thirst type healing. Sure seems to be cohesive.

DRK is the, uh? Anti-hero? Maybe? Does it put it self before the party? No, and that wouldn't work well in an MMO. Does it use themes from the past DRK's? its got that 1 drain ability and a blood weapon that does the opposite of what it sounds like it should, no dots, no enfeebles, no real primary drain abilities.... Its got black armor and a big sword though! What a mess! The fact that the previous suggestion is based around DRKs ability to shield itself is just bonkers to me.

In what world do you see PLD WAR GNB and DRK and think..... Ya DRK would benefit the most from shielding it self, this makes sense.

Originally Posted by Valknut

I just really don't get the themes of DRK at all anymore.

PLD protects and his answer to a higher threat is to improve his defenses. Good makes sense. Sword, shield, big armor and abilities that protect others/heal very on point.

WAR is all about taking the hit and hitting harder back. Good makes sense in the berserker battle frenzy thing they got going on. Big axe, lots of wild swinging abilities and blood thirst type healing. Sure seems to be cohesive.

DRK is the, uh? Anti-hero? Maybe? Does it put it self before the party? No, and that wouldn't work well in an MMO. Does it use themes from the past DRK's? its got that 1 drain ability and a blood weapon that does the opposite of what it sounds like it should, no dots, no enfeebles, no real primary drain abilities.... Its got black armor and a big sword though! What a mess! The fact that the previous suggestion is based around DRKs ability to shield itself is just bonkers to me.

In what world do you see PLD WAR GNB and DRK and think..... Ya DRK would benefit the most from shielding it self, this makes sense.

As much as I agree with you, thats apparently the hand DRK been dealt in this game. The funny part is the removal of shadowskin, which would make sense that TBN would be sort of cloaking yourself in darkness to resist damage. It looks like DRK is now a Shadow Knight, using its shadow as a dot, and cloaking itself in a bubble of darkness. And thats about it. It also has a zombie tank invuln, we arent entirely sure how that happens, i guess he goes unconscious and his shadow takes over till it fades or something. Maybe he just sinks into the darkness and his only way out is being healed completely to full before he's swallowed whole. Theme's a bit of a mess. Though iirc the proper Japanese title for the job is "Shadow Knight" so... i guess thats what it is now. Just cant do anything cool like hold mobs down with its shadow powers, or anything. Even lost its ability to blind people with its darkness, so yeah. Your guess is as good as mine.

Originally Posted by ADVSS

Though iirc the proper Japanese title for the job is "Shadow Knight" so...

It's not.
The name that has been used for the Dark Knight job in the Final Fantasy series, as well as in a lot of other media depicting a "Dark Knight" character, is 暗黒騎士 (Ankoku Kishi). 暗黒 (Ankoku) means darkness, as in the noun form and being the absence of light. 騎士 (Kishi) means knight; coming from the idea that a knight is an elite warrior on horseback and the kanji for kishi are 騎 (horse) and 士 (person), as in a person who is defined by being on/riding a horse. Ankoku may be used to reference the darkness created by a shadow or that is a shadow, but it tends not to be used as a direct reference to the shadow itself. The word most often used for a shadow itself is 影 (kage).
So "Dark Knight" or "Darkness Knight" are pretty literal translations of the Japanese name.

Also, just a note not aimed specifically at you but to all in general, be very wary of relying on things like Google Translate or such tools for translating Japanese to English. Japanese is fundamentally different enough from English that a lot of it doesn't translate directly or cleanly over to English and I see a lot of mistakes or misconceptions by people who just type some stuff into Google to get translations and then slap them together and are like "look at so-and-so, it means such-and-such", when in truth it is basically gibberish or something different than what they think.

Originally Posted by ADVSS

It also has a zombie tank invuln, we arent entirely sure how that happens...

I personally don't think that the Living Dead ability is meant to be anything to do with zombies or some undead state, although with the names Living Dead and Walking Dead coming to such a conclusion makes sense.
I think that it is actually meant to be more along the lines of something like the terms "dead man walking" or "you're already dead, you just don't know it yet", encapsulating the idea that your physical body may have been dealt a mortal blow but your sheer force of will (i.e. grit) is keeping you going, at least for a bit.

I come to this conclusion from two things.
First is we see a reflection of this very thing in the story of Frey, where Frey fought beyond his/her physical limitations and later died from it.
Second, Yoshi-P commented way back when that they pulled a lot of inspiration for their version of Dark Knight from the character Guts in the manga/anime Berserk (https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Guts).
In Berserk, Guts acquires the Berserker Armor (https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Berserker_Armor) which basically allows Guts to fight beyond his normal physical limits and helps keep him alive after sustaining severe wounds by injecting metal spines/spikes from within itself to do things like realign and set broken bones, essentially keeping him temporarily "held together" when he should be crippled or dead.

So basically I don't think the ability is the Dark Knight turning into an undead zombie, but is them using their willpower to temporarily live past being dealt a mortal blow and keep fighting even though technically they have been killed, which actually makes the way the ability works and this concept line up pretty succinctly, which from a conceptual stand-point is pretty cool.
Don't get me wrong though, I still really dislike the implementation of the ability when compared to the rest of the tank invulns and think that it should be changed to bring it more in-line with the others or vice-versa.

Originally Posted by Lyth

The arbitrary healing requirement on Living Dead doesn't really make sense in a "Dead Man Walking" concept. "Give up on me. Farewell, friend. I'm already dead, and I'm going to use my final breaths to get my revenge. But by the way, if you heal me for an amount equivalent to my maximum health in the next 10 seconds, I might change my mind." What.

I believe that it fits quite well conceptually to the "Dead Man Walking" idea. You take enough damage to kill you but refuse to die, basically becoming someone who is "already dead", or should be dead, but through sheer force of will is waylaying that fate and still walking around, i.e. a "Dead Man Walking". The "dead" part of that doesn't literally mean that they are in fact actually dead, it means that they should be or are as good as dead and that your inevitable fate will catch up with you. It's pretty straight forward.
As for the healing part, if the thing that has determined that you are to die was taking lethal damage and someone then heals that damage before you give in to death, they would then be undoing the cause of death and therefore you would not end up dying , so it makes sense. Sure the amount required being the total of your health pool is arbitrary, but the concept makes sense.

I also at no point defended the ability itself and how it works in this game, especially when compared to the other tank invuln abilities. I simply pointed out my belief that Living/Walking Dead has nothing to do with zombies or the undead, what I believe the concept behind it actually is and my reasoning why I believe such. I even ended with clearly stating that I don't like the ability and that it should be changed.
You of all people, who has engaged in DRK discussions quite extensively for a while now, should know that I am not a fan of the way this ability works, as I have been saying such over and over since the job was released.

Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

I believe that it fits quite well conceptually to the "Dead Man Walking" idea. You take enough damage to kill you but refuse to die, basically becoming someone who is "already dead", or should be dead, but through sheer force of will is waylaying that fate and still walking around, i.e. a "Dead Man Walking". The "dead" part of that doesn't literally mean that they are in fact actually dead, it means that they should be or are as good as dead and that your inevitable fate will catch up with you. It's pretty straight forward.
As for the healing part, if the thing that has determined that you are to die was taking lethal damage and someone then heals that damage before you give in to death, they would then be undoing the cause of death and therefore you would not end up dying , so it makes sense. Sure the amount required being the total of your health pool is arbitrary, but the concept makes sense.

I also at no point defended the ability itself and how it works in this game, especially when compared to the other tank invuln abilities. I simply pointed out my belief that Living/Walking Dead has nothing to do with zombies or the undead, what I believe the concept behind it actually is and my reasoning why I believe such. I even ended with clearly stating that I don't like the ability and that it should be changed.
You of all people, who has engaged in DRK discussions quite extensively for a while now, should know that I am not a fan of the way this ability works, as I have been saying such over and over since the job was released.

I love berserk, but if we're going to compare the berserker armor to living dead, i want DRK to be able to swing harder than his body can handle, to move faster consciously or unconsciously, or get some advantage to having sacrificed his life for a 'final stand' your interpretation may be "spot on" to how the developers thought of it, but the comparison is rather luke warm, in the context imo. It does sort of sound like a self destruct, but if you heal me enough i guess ill change my mind. In theory, stalling death for a mere ten seconds sounds like a cool idea, in practice its not really anything you'd want to do, with no benefit at all to why you would even bother. Thematically, it could be put in like was mentioned earlier, Fray stayed alive to get the retribution, that is fine and all, but one would think theyd put all their resolve in that final blow.
Now lets go back to nit picking the difference between shadow and darkness. How does a darkness knight go about using its bipolar shadow clone to dot up the enemies any different from a shadow knight who pulls out his shadow clone to dot up enemies? The differences in verbage may be huge in japanese, but in english it really is about the same thing regardless of whether it was "twilight knight, Night Knight, Void knight, Abyss Knight, or my favorite AF set still, the Chaos Knight. What it really translates to, and what it actually does is two different things, which was my original point. In english shadows and darkness are pretty synonomous as being antithetical to light, or the paralell opposing it. Regardless of what you call the job, the skill does what it does, and can only be explained lore wise as your character having a delusion. How it interacts and looks to other players, is that you summon a shadow clone(skill verbiage a "simulacrum" or your inner self (why its called Esteem and not Fray) So to me...a shadow clone....using shadow powers.

Originally Posted by ADVSS

snip

The Berserker Armor allowing the wearer to surpass their physical limits and hit harder is different than it holding the wearer together to help keep them in the fight and not die. Although it accomplishes those things through similar means, they are not the same thing. The armor strengthens Guts AND allows him to keep going despite taking lethal damage, not the armor strengthens Guts when or because he took lethal damage. So it isn't a matter of doing more damage because you are taking your "final stand", that has nothing to do with it.
Besides, you say you want something that allows you to hit harder than you should normally be able to, the Darkside buff does that for you.

As for the whole "it's a self-destruct" argument, that makes no sense to me. If you do not take lethal damage under Living Dead you do not enter the Walking Dead state. The death mechanic is only under the Walking Dead state. If it were a self-destruct, you would be killing yourself regardless, which is not the case with the ability. Yes, you can die because of the ability, but it is not by any means a "self-destruct".
Also what are you even supposedly "changing your mind" on? You haven't resigned yourself to death, you are doing the exact opposite and defying death for a long as you can, which for the purpose of game-play balance just happens to be a measly 10 seconds. You are essentially taking damage that should kill you and saying "no, I won't die, not yet".
As for the healing part, as I already stated, if the cause of death, the lethal damage, is negated through healing before actual death occurs, then why would the DRK still die? That doesn't make logical sense at all.

As for the whole shadow versus darkness thing, you said and I quote "Though iirc the proper Japanese title for the job is "Shadow Knight" so...". You are putting forth the assertion that the "proper title in Japanese" is "Shadow Knight" as opposed to Dark Knight. I pointed out that based on what the actual Japanese title is for the job, that is not correct and Dark Knight is correct. Also, the argument you present about the how in English there is a level of interchangeability between words such as shadow or darkness , while relatively true depending on the context, is a complete tangent from your statement that I spoke to. You didn't say "proper English title", you said "proper Japanese title". Your second argument regarding English verbiage is completely different than your first argument regarding what the proper title in Japanese is, and the second argument in no way proves or makes the first one correct.
Besides if we were to approach the first argument under the context of accepting the second argument as true, then the first argument would actually be made false by the second argument simply because if, as the second argument posits, all such words are contextually interchangeable, then none of them could be the "proper" one because they would all carry equal weighting due to being interchangeable, and so "Shadow Knight" being the "proper title" would be a false statement. So, you actually kind of argued against yourself with that.
If you want to conceptualize the powers that a Dark Knight wields, such as Living Shadow, as shadows, fine with me. You are free to conceptualize such things however you wish if it makes you happy. Hell, conceptualize it all as chocolate for all I care, more power to you (and that sounds pretty deliciously awesome). That still has nothing to do with "Shadow Knight being the proper title in Japanese" not being correct.