Dark Knight Megathread

[Crater]

Regarding tanks' self sustain. It going to be pretty problematic, when both tanks take damage for prolonged amount of time. Like go to P3 as DRK and be an OT there. See how fun it is.

That's a particularly bad example. From a defensive standpoint, DRK can handle the OT role in P3N substantially better than PLD or GNB, and about as well as WAR. You can use TBN on cooldown and have it reliably break, creating a situation where TBN is (as always) only 80% as effective as the other tanks' 25s mitigation skills on a per-use basis, but producing substantially more value in a sustained-damage environment because it's usable every 15 seconds, not every 25. The only problem with DRK as OT in that fight is that using TBN on cooldown means that you have to use a Dark Arts proc every 15 seconds, meaning that you're pulling them out of raid buff windows. That's a reason to change Dark Arts and/or Edge of Shadow - not a reason to change TBN or to shove a bunch of extra healing into the class just because all the other kids are doing it.

Whether that's relevant in Savage or not, I can't say.

[Mekhana]

At least that damage is Magic I believe so you can throw a Dark Mind in there but boy I can see already I'm not getting past that boss in Savage in Week 1 OR 2.

[Lyth]

With the standardization of all tankbusters to either red arrow or red circle, I don't know why we haven't just moved to a format where timing your short recast correctly (HS/BW/TBN/HoC) on certain designated tankbuster moves just gives you a job appropriate counterattack proc for free. You're not obliged to use them on recast then, but on the designated tankbusters.

Damage type specific mitigation is beyond dumb and I don't know why it's still in the game. You're just giving PLD/WAR a cooldown advantage on certain fights for no good reason.

[Crater]

I like that tanks have some specificity to their defensive kits; I just think the balance is a little poor on them.

In theory, the idea is that Dark Mind, Camouflage, and Passage of Arms are all made to be the best tool for the job in specific situations and weak or useless outside of those situations, with Thrill of Battle existing as the jack-of-all-trades option that's always useful but never has the power of the other three in their respective elements. I like that idea a lot.

In practice, only Passage and Camouflage really live up to the ideal: Passage is hyper-specific to "threatening raidwide damage where the party can stack up behind you" and accordingly strong in that situation, but useless otherwise, while Camouflage is almost a second Rampart against incoming sustained physical damage (eg: a dungeon pull) but is unsuited to tankbusters because the parry is unreliable. But Thrill has too many advantages for being the 'universal' skill (it should either have its cooldown bumped up to 120s, or lose either the increased healing or the initial heal), and Dark Mind is undertuned for what it is (duration should be bumped to 15s or 20s, mitigation to 25% or 30%).

I'm sure there's a way for it all to work so you have the same level of specificity without damage-type specificity, but at that point you're going in a pretty wide circle just to end up roughly back where you started. And if the other alternative is to give universal applicability to every skill, then I definitely don't want to go down that road.

[Kalaam]

I wish we had Sole Survivor back, and an AoE variant.
Something like: 30% HP/MP on single target, and 5% per target on AoE maybe ? Still with the effect that, if the duration end you get a weaker heal, like half of normal after 15 or 20 seconds. That's all the sustain that DRK needs, and it's achieved in a way that is unique enough, also rewards your DPS party members for doing well during big mob pulls, since they'll help keeping you alive.

[RefundEndwalker]

I don't see why people can't just look at the disgustingly low effort of "Reduce Living Shadow's potency for no reason except to give it back at level 88" and see that these idiots aren't actually trying to update DRK, they're too busy touching themselves thinking about how cool their new PLD and SMN are.

[Oizen]

Regarding tanks' self sustain. It going to be pretty problematic, when both tanks take damage for prolonged amount of time. Like go to P3 as DRK and be an OT there. See how fun it is.

Just experienced this myself and holy shit the entire raid if you're OT, you need to pop TBN every single second you can save for when the boss just isnt attacking at all.

I'm worried they're designing future content with the idea tanks have self sustain in mind, without actually giving any to DRK.

[Sazuzaki]

Anyone know how to check the parse stats for each tank of FF logs? I wanna see for myself but have no idea how to use the site.

Just need some more hopium for a DRK rework....

[RyuDragnier]

Get rid of dark mind and buff oblation to 15% reduction with a hot. Keep the 2 charges on it but add that you can’t stack them.

I like this idea, especially if the HoT is there by default when obtained at level 45 and level 82 only gives it the 2nd charge.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I don't see why people can't just look at the disgustingly low effort of "Reduce Living Shadow's potency for no reason except to give it back at level 88" and see that these idiots aren't actually trying to update DRK, they're too busy touching themselves thinking about how cool their new PLD and SMN are.

They reduced it because every physical class's potencies got reduced due to the normalization of Weapon Damage between physical & magic jobs. Go take a look at how Attonement got gutted down to 420 potency from 550 for an easy look.

Due to the increased Weapon Damage, Living Shadow's 240 potency in EW is the rough equivalent of SHB LS's 300 potency. So no, they didn't 'reduce it just to give it back'. They reduced it so its potency would equalize out to what it would be before the WD equalization, then the 88 trait buffs it. LS at 88 is roughly 20% stronger than LS was in SHB, relatively. Please go read up on the countless articles and live letters where they explain the potency adjustments on top of the Weapon Damage normalization, then also go take a look at how every other tank had their potencies slapped by roughly 20% across the board due to the same change.

Getting offended at non-issues will do nothing to help DRK, when DRK has plenty of actually real issues to address.