Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

Repeat after me everyone! People play the job they enjoy!

This is a nice sentiment, but it's not necessarily true in a game where you have to work together with other players. Sometimes you play the job that your team needs you to play, even if you don't particularly like it. Everything has a cost.

It's hard to comment what this expansion's balance is like, in part because people are still gathering information about how the jobs play and can be optimized. Shadowbringers, in fairness, did have a fairly tight balance within roles. Heavensward and Stormblood most definitely did not. A lot of your post reads as someone naive to this game's earlier history. Double ranged is not a new phenomenon. It was actually the mandatory comp at one point, and you needed a DRG to make it work.

I think the reason why many tanks are currently downplaying damage output is because of two factors: first, because of how close the numbers were in Shadowbringers, and secondly, because of a declining contribution of tanks to overall raid damage. But it doesn't take much for this to start mattering again. PLD was probably overall the best defensive tank in Heavensward, especially where physical damage was concerned. DRK was often still a better choice even when it was at a significant defensive disadvantage. Why was that? I'll let you guess. Hint: It wasn't because of Living Dead. Why was WAR a mandatory pick in every comp in Heavensward? Again, I'll let you guess.

I agree that jobs should be designed first and foremost for fun. Both Heavensward DRK and the current iteration of RPR are fast paced with a strong focus on uptime and resource management. Jobs like these don't have to be the absolute best at everything for them to be fun. But you do still need to be in striking range of the best. It's incredibly frustrating to play a job that's really well designed yet no matter how mechanically polished your gameplay becomes, you're still not competitive. That's why damage balancing is so critical.

You do need to remember that you'll always see players from all jobs campaigning to see their chosen job buffed to unreasonable amounts of power. Oh, it's so unfair that my job, which is the only tank with two job-specific raidwide mitigation tools both of which work against all types of damage, has one which requires a heal proc. And we don't do the highest dps this expansion despite having a massive utility advantage over everyone else, that's unacceptable. With a dev team that's so focused on pleasing everyone and so afraid to show open disagreement, you always see the same jobs as the most common picks. And that's not because everything was perfectly designed for fun in ARR, it's because older jobs have more of a backing. But it creates a culture where you feel compelled to demand more unreasonable things to keep up.

[CKNovel]

This is a nice sentiment, but it's not necessarily true in a game where you have to work together with other players. Sometimes you play the job that your team needs you to play, even if you don't particularly like it. Everything has a cost.

It's true in FF XIV.
ShB job balance remained perfect, despite disagreeing with it, you will bring more to your party with a job you really know than playing a job because it has better numbers.
Don't worry i'm quite familiar with HW and SB raiding, even if I limited myself to savage during SB.

I raided with a SMN and a PLD, during HW, even if it was short we were discovering raiding.
I raided as a MCH during SB and no one rejected my job, except at the very beginning where entering Overheat was a DPS loss.
And we didn't had rDPS back then so on paper, everyone thought BRD was much better.

I do agree that PLD strength debuff was lackluster compared to DRK's delirium but that was another time.
While we are working to gather numbers on this expansion, I believe SQEX will try to find SHB's balance, Yoshida mentionned he was happy about the balance.

Of course, nothing is set in stone but remember they don't want ranged to be broken again, they don't want HW difficulty, they don't want to repeat the same balancing mistakes.

[Shin96]

Fun comes first. I remember SMN being very strong to start with, but I just couldn't get into it.

I actually pulled a Cecil in Endwalker and went with GNB (yes it's not PLD but comes near close to me) and what can I say. At 90 it plays very smooth. You get Hypervelocity and Double Down. What did DRK get?

Bubbles and Dark Passenger 2.0. It's nothing to write home about. I feel there was potential to give us a continuation from Souleater but that didn't happen... then sharing a recast timer with Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain.. I guess Enhanced Unmend wasn't enough?

In short the developers wanted you to play anything but DRK. That's all you need to know.

[Kiteless]

The biggest problem facing DRK as a class going forward is that it's kit and niche were originally envisioned as being built around (quick thinking) resource management, where the dev team seems to be moving in a more rigid direction that directly conflicts with the variability and versatility that such a design philosophy could be built around.

Compare the HW DRK's resource management and overall flow (HW-era problems be damned) when it actually had an identity to the overall design trends of today, and it simply doesn't fit. To give the people the DRK class that they (they being those who do want a push towards that identity of resource management over whatever the current state of things is trying to be) want, you'd require quite a departure from the current trends of design for jobs in FFXIV. I'd love something more free-form and versatile in its construction, like those days of old in 3.0, but it'd require the dev team to open themselves back up to more open-ended class designs, and the increased balancing designs that come with it.

That said, if they'd not want to go down that route, then they really need to have a serious discussion amongst themselves, and maybe with the playerbase, about what they want DRK to be instead. Because right now, languishing as a muddy mess isn't doing anyone any good. You can't attempt to fulfill the class fantasy of old while constantly denying its validity on a core, fundamental level.

[Duskane]

really hard for me to justify playing any of the tanks at the moment dont care for PLD or WAR,
while i like the aesthetic of DRK and GNB the gameplay right now isn't too fun while GNB can be solved with a simple patch, DRK i don't see any changes till second tier if any.

[Mekhana]

I'm not comfortable with DRK having good DPS because that can change very quickly with nerfs. With a crappy kit and playstyle and post dps-nerf, the job will be literally horrible.

[Kalaam]

It is true that a reactive, stance dancing DRK is likely a thing of the past. As much as this saddens me and I'll be missing proc based reactions to manage ressources.

But DRK can still be compelling to play. I still advocate for a return of Dark Art as a cornerstone mechanic, similar to Eukrasia. Rather than turning skills from "bad" to "the actual good version", change them to artificially augment the number of button. Turn Hard Slash into Scourge, Siphon Strike into a debuff strike, Soul Eater into Power Slash or vice versa. Have it consumme Dark Side meter to avoid spamming it, maybe even give it a 5 or 10 second CD.
Then, keep the Dark Art proc on a well used TBN, but remove the MP cost from it (and increase cooldown). Using TBN under Dark Art could be one instance of just making the skill stronger, but at a cost. From a 25s CD that grants a 20% shield, to a 15s CD that gives, I dunno, 40% shield that reapplies as a 20% shield when broken. That's the way a DRK could survive without a healer like a PLD would with using clemency etc.

[Niyuka]

Ah now I am starting to understand. Since DPS is apparently not what anyone wants, but FUN, and since DRK hasnt been fun since Heavensward (which I personally agree with, but the reasons for that have a lot to do with precisely what many here are advocating, comfort and ease of play), the problem with DRK 6.0 is that its too close to 5.0 and that the other tanks got COOLER new toys than DRK?
I mean, DRK got more than was removed, its doing fine with top tank DPS in current content, and outside of these forums I dont see a shortage of DRK players either. One tank HAD to be the one where people thought it got the worse new toys. One tank HAD to be the one where people wanted a fundamental rework (although thats a demand in every single class forum, and I suspect has a lot to do with the recent influx of players from you know where), but I fail to see how the gameplay of the class fundamentally changed, or even slightly changed, for the worse since 5.5. Less charges means less spammy playstyle (something TONS AND TONS of people asked for, in this very thread nonetheless), it has better numbers, and while there is one trolly trait that really does leave a bad impression, the new toys are straight up buffs AND add a little bit of gameplay consideration too.

And since there are no raids yet, we dont know whether DRK, with the best and most interesting AOE playstyle, might (for example) be the sudden king of new boss designs - they have been rebalancing AOE capabilities to a suspicious degree, after all

[RLTygurr]

the problem with DRK 6.0 is that its too close to 5.0 and that the other tanks got COOLER new toys than DRK?

Although this is true for most of us, many more simply feel that the things DRK got in 6.0 were either A) worthless or B) add absolutely nothing to the class.

Enhanced Unmend is...a joke. I'm sure the design team thought "I bet this would help someone make sure they have plunge off cooldown during a mechanic where you can't have uptime for when it ends!" but most of us have brains and save plunge for when we need it.
Oblation on its own isn't bad, but we already have TBN. Other tanks got Oblation but far better, and without cost like TBN has. It felt like a way of saying "we gave DRK something at level 82 too!" but it feels empty. There's no reason for it to exist. It's just another button that they could have tacked onto TBN as a buff after the shield is broken.
Salt and Darkness isn't terrible, mostly because DRK had abysmal AOE damage before.
Shadowbringer is just another OGCD button to press in between your 1-2-3 combo. It adds nothing to the class from an identity standpoint, has no interesting dynamic with the rest of DRK's kit, and really doesn't feel like "the big bad move you get at level 90". It's just another button, and a ripoff of an existing DRK skill, at that.

So yeah, we're not exactly thrilled lol

[Caurcas]

I enjoy topping the damage charts, and kit wise everything works fine enough. The opener is busy, but single weaving is easily doable. Double not so much due to some animation lock. I do wish they would revert Delirum to its SB version and have it increase BWs duration rather than budget IR. Seems like WAR/DRK might be the combo.