Dark Knight Megathread

[Drkdays]

I just wish Unmend had a longer range :P

[Shin96]

Very interesting to see all the output people have brought forward. Thanks for that. I personally do not have much to add to this conversation however.

Even after periods of abstinence from FFXIV (I unsubbed like never before), the job feels relatively much the same; it's boring, plays like a weak WAR, and repetitive to a fault. Much would be changed by simply reworking Delirium. I'm aware they can't please everyone but they are trying to please everyone and I think this is where they're wrong.

You can settle for amazing, but also boring. It's not only the gameplay of DRK but the lack of sounds indicating the force of the animations, etc. overall this job deserves a complete overhaul to put it on par with its oldest iteration in HW, which was 3.0

[Sooru]

Disclaimer: I love playing Dark Knight at the moment, and I don't find the job boring at all.

With that said, I do have some things I'd like to see changed:

Living Dead:

My biggest issue with this ability is that it lacks the visual impact and clarity that I think it needs for it to function as it currently stands. It doesn't help that most players reduce visual effects either. Adding an hourglass animation on top of the DRK when it is used would be a huge help towards communicating "Hey, if I drop to 1 health, I need you to heal me!". And perhaps even add a timer/countdown on top of the Dark Knight for the Walking Dead effect. Communicating this information more clearly to healers is in my opinion the most important change needed for this ability, as it would make using it more intuitive and less punishing in non-coordinated environments. If this is not done however, then the ability would need some sort of change to help it be more in line with the other 3 "panic button" tank abilities (more intuitive and forgiving, most likely on a similar level to GNB's Superbolide).

Stalwart Soul:

My only issue with this ability is the level it is obtained at. Swap it with Dark Mind IMO, but as long as it is available before Abyssal Drain, it should be fine. If Dark Mind should be kept at level 45, then I would slot it at level 56 and put Abyssal Drain at level 58. This is 1 of 2 changes that I would make to alleviate DRK's "AoE combo" being lacking.

Abyssal Drain:

This ability feels underwhelming at times and also very satisfying at others. I would like for it to reach some middle ground and also alleviate DRK's "AoE combo" being lacking (this being the 2nd change to do that). Thus I propose a rework of the ability, with the new values underlined:

Cooldown: 60s -> 2.5s, oGCD -> GCD
Range: 15y -> 0y
Effect: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200 -> 100 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Combo Action: Stalwart Soul
Combo Potency: 200
Additional Effect -> Combo Bonus: Restores own HP
Cure Potency: 200 -> 100

Now while this isn't all of the things I'd consider changing about DRK, I think all of these changes would be a step in the right direction. The numbers can definitely be played around with as I am by no means an expert in balancing, but the concept behind the changes to me feels right.

One thing I would add is that if the "AoE" rework (Stalwart Soul + Abyssal Drain) changes were to go through, then I would definitely say that DRK would need another oGCD ability to compensate for losing Abyssal Drain on the oGCD toolkit. As to what that would be, I am not sure myself at the moment.

[Kalaam]

I think making Abyssal Drain a combo out of Stalwart Soul could work. Place the effect above DRK kind of like Holy Circle and change the character animation to the Grit one (I think this would make a nice flow to go from Unleash, to Stalwart, to that Grit character animation and Abyssal Drain popping above. Kind of like a "dark version" of Holy Circle)

[KatsuraJun]

1. What issue with Dark Knight do you have since 5.0?
it's boring, impossible to mess up, and slow - removing any semblance of resource management that defined DRK since the start. going from 4.x DRK's fast paced gameplay in both raiding context with oGCD keyboard piano and keeping your resources just low enough not to cap them but also not deplete them, and dungeons amazing aoe gameplay (jesus christ I still mourn the loss of our 4.x aoe gameplay which was literally the best dungeon gameplay in the history of this game) to 5.x's... everything, is depressing enough to quit tanking, and now I'm a bloody sam main.

2. Is there a viable solution to your problem? If so, write it down.
yes, unironically undo everything to 4.x DRK and expand on that instead. DRK in it's current state is not salvageable without another rework. there's no core concept tying the gameplay of DRK together. it's just a bunch of random damage abilities thrown together with no real gameplay synergies and spoopy black edgy magical colors. here, examples:

-TBN used to be a powerful button that required you to keep your blood below 50 so you don't cap it, but also have enough MP to cast when needed. now its just a generic powerful shield because there's no reason not to hold your mp all the time. why would you NOT want to hold your mp before? because of:
-Delirium, which used to be a button that wanted you to have at least 50 blood and a near-empty MP bar or else you'd cap MP. see how it wants the opposite gamestate from TBN? now it's just generic damage ability because you don't need to care about your blood meter cause TBN can't pop and overcap your blood if you have more than 50.
-and on a related note, CnS used to be a button you wanted to have mp for when you it came up, which added to the MP balancing gameplay. now it's literally just generic damage.

these all offered conflicting gamestates that you wanted to be in, so it was playing a delicate balance to make sure you had everything ready when you needed it. Dark Arts was the button that tied all of this together as an MP dump to manipulate how much MP you had at the moment, and you were punished for not thinking ahead because it would clog your oGCDs hard if you didn't press it enough earlier and were forced to press it frantically trying to dump your MP before Delirium, or leave you with no MP for your important skills if you pressed it too much. now it's just edge/flood and yet another generic damage thing.

see a theme here? that's why current DRK is not salvageable. a bunch of generic "i do the damages" buttons is not exciting or fun gameplay. and holy jesus don't get me started on the aoe gameplay. I know I refuse to shut up about that but the aoe gameplay. I can't believe we went from 4.x aoe gameplay to 1212121212121212121212 IS IT DEAD YET 12121212121212121212121212 and adding a 3 will not fix that

3. What did you like about previous iterations of Dark Knight?
gotta go fast

4. How did DRK capture your interest while playing FFXIV?
edgy and gotta go fast

[HyperiusUltima]

My issue with DRK in 5.0: Remember how PLD was the "1-2-3" Job in 2.0? Yeah. This is DRK in 5.0. Only has one combo, and a handful of oGCDs it can spam. If anything, I think the devs decided to do a hard reset on this since DRK was getting to the point where "Dark Arts Treadmill" was bad and they didn't want to convolute anything with HW DRK(imo still the best DRK iteration I remember). As many DRKs know, DRK right now plays too damn similar to WAR. The Delirium rework was complete garbage from the start and we also need to talk about DRK's AoE Weaponskills, as well as stuff going forward. Also, Living Dead is still convoluted and is not new player friendly in describing its effects.

My issue with DRK in 5.0: Remember how PLD was the "1-2-3" Job in 2.0? Yeah. This is DRK in 5.0. Only has one combo, and a handful of oGCDs it can spam. If anything, I think the devs decided to do a hard reset on this since DRK was getting to the point where "Dark Arts Treadmill" was bad and they didn't want to convolute anything with HW DRK(imo still the best DRK iteration I remember). As many DRKs know, DRK right now plays too damn similar to WAR. The Delirium rework was complete garbage from the start and we also need to talk about DRK's AoE Weaponskills, as well as stuff going forward. Also, Living Dead is still convoluted and is not new player friendly in describing its effects.


Fixing the problems I have with DRK:

1) Restructure Leveling for DRK. Yoshida and Combat Devs, I implore you. Take a good look at GNB, WAR, and PLD. What do they all have in common? All their AoEs have a combo at Lv 40! DRK has to wait until Lv 72 to even get their AoE combo, so until then they're either sitting there spamming Unleash when they have no MP for Flood, or waiting on oGCDs. Considering this job starts at Lv 30, we definitely need to fix this so it's more streamlined.

2) Delirium. Good lord. Old Delirium was a debuff we could cause on the boss, but ever since they changed it to be like WAR's Inner Release, it really hasn't done DRK any favors. One thing that this game tends to do best is making certain to differentiate the jobs' functionality so that they retain their own identity. When things like this overlap and you notice that two jobs are literally doing the same thing and the buttons they use for it are the same action essentially, that's where we need to reconsider. Putting it in this perspective, we have two options: One, it can be made functionally like WAR in terms of generating resources, which defeats the purpose of differentiation of jobs. Two, we rework the Gauge itself and how resource is generated. If we want to keep current Blood Gauge for sake of familiarity, then we need to just rework the button, which would be Three.

If we had to rework Three, I'd honestly just have it halve all MP Costs(TBN, Edge, Flood) on DRK for a set time since oGCDs can be used faster and more reliably than GCDs. Compared to the other three tanks we only really have one Tank that operates on that kind of burst power alone for opener: GNB. If we make Delirium recover 6000 MP on top of that, it perfectly sets up for a window where you're at 4000 MP(i.e. in the middle of raid opener) since normally it costs 3000 MP to use Edge/Flood/TBN and adds more burst power into the rotation. I don't think we've had anyone that manipulates MP cost either for burst; and it's not like DRK would have any weird MP problems like in the past since MP is more rounded now. I also did the calculation at base with Darkside 5x Bloodspiller(full 10s) vs. 8x Edges(Darkside after first Edge), and it winds up to being an additional 1,050 potency. I don't know if it'd need tweaking, but the burst would feel better than trying to deal with Skill Speed or Latency issues trying to get your 5th Bloodspiller within that 10s window.

3) Living Dead. Yes. We've beat a dead horse on this over and over, but I'm not going to stop until SE actually makes the ability make sense instead of a jumble of words. Simply put: There's too much wording happening for a simple skill. Healers(I being one of them nowadays) have complained about DRK's Living Dead being extremely draining to heal for healers, and for some(SCH in particular sticks out) impossible to if they are in a situation where they've already used resources before for this. The only one that has always reliably 100% kept DRK alive is WHM for its Benediction since it's only 1 CD they use compared to about 3 for AST and sometimes 4 for SCH. To make it easier, DRK's Living Dead should work as such: When HP is reduced to 0, your status will change to Walking Dead. Walking Dead prevents HP from dropping below 1 and recovers HP equivalent to damage dealt by Weaponskills for the duration. This would allow DRK to be able to sustain itself in the Overworld when leveling, as it would not have to worry about dying afterward if they procced Walking Dead on the Overworld for some reason or another.

4) Blood Weapon. I feel like this needs to be fixed in some way. Blood Weapon as it is used to have that fast effect, but they took it away because of how old DRK worked(plus the DA Treadmill, and weird MP Maxes). Since MP has been made static at 10,000, I think Blood Weapon should have that haste effect back; it'd give that same feel like back in Heavensward, but with the MP values it gives currently so DRK doesn't get to Full MP on an entire trash pack and can spam Flood.

5) Dark Mind. This is given to DRK early on in its leveling process. However, most dungeons frontload Physical Damage compared to magical a majority of the time. While it's still good stand-alone as a magic mitigation tool, it could have that slight bit of survivability added to it so that the leveling process is a bit smoother up to 70, where TBN is. Adding 10% Physical resistance would work similar to Camouflage in this sense so that each job has proper ways to mitigate evenly across the spectrum going up to that point.

That's...really all I have to say on my piece in regards to DRK's issues. The rest of its kit seems to stay to its theme, and allows it to stand out as a job.

As for previous iterations, it's literally Heavensward DRK that was the best. You had all sorts of things to play with, and it was a very interesting job. A lot of people liked both the aesthetic and the gameplay. I can't really say much else since HW DRK has been a thing of the past forever ago, but I just remember it being really fun to play with.

For how DRK caught my interest, it was for one the writing, the way it was written to evoke certain emotions and feelings, as well as convey that darkness isn't necessarily bad all the time; just if you dig too deep.

[Shurrikhan]

1) Restructure Leveling for DRK. Yoshida and Combat Devs, I implore you. Take a good look at GNB, WAR, and PLD. What do they all have in common? All their AoEs have a combo at Lv 40! DRK has to wait until Lv 72 to even get their AoE combo, so until then they're either sitting there spamming Unleash when they have no MP for Flood, or waiting on oGCDs. Considering this job starts at Lv 30, we definitely need to fix this so it's more streamlined.

I get the desire to have some actual AoE play prior to Shadowbringers, but I kind of hate that we so quickly seem to forget that depth in AoE can exist without the bloat of A-B spam of "AoE combos".

Yes, it's the stale bread we've already been served and—since Unleash and Abyssal Drain's budget has already been siphoned off into Stalwart Soul—would be serviceable, but I really don't see the appeal of having opening AoE burst reduced and AoE GCDs made less modular by turning a class's AoE into a two-button/-two GCD of still singular decision.

[HyperiusUltima]

I get the desire to have some actual AoE play prior to Shadowbringers, but I kind of hate that we so quickly seem to forget that depth in AoE can exist without the bloat of A-B spam of "AoE combos".

Yes, it's the stale bread we've already been served and—since Unleash and Abyssal Drain's budget has already been siphoned off into Stalwart Soul—would be serviceable, but I really don't see the appeal of having opening AoE burst reduced and AoE GCDs made less modular by turning a class's AoE into a two-button/-two GCD of still singular decision.

That's how it is at Lv 40 for all the other tanks; it just feels extremely out of place. Still I think I understand since DRK mostly spams Flood once they get it in trash pulls. If we wanted to make AoE Combos simply one button, then they'd all be circles regardless of what it is. In fact, it'd open up slots for some better abilities they can add now that I think about it, so thank you for this insight.

[Shurrikhan]

That's how it is at Lv 40 for all the other tanks; it just feels extremely out of place.

Fair enough. I just wish we were more willing look at what's leveled stale, rather than solely at the nail still standing. That's not to say any job should go without involved and interesting play in ST or AoE or whatever else for significantly longer than any other job. Rather, I just think AoE combos do us a disservice by shushing that discussion with a one-style-fits-all barebone answer.

Their benefits, moreover, aren't new or unique; they merely take what other options could otherwise more intuitively and interestingly fit. Heck, just look at the presently single-target skills we have across our tanks: the majority look like cleave attacks. That's all the more case when we consider lost skills like Power Slash and its shockwave, Scourge, Delirium, Savage Blade, Shield Swipe, etc. It's not as if we've been at a loss for varied seemingly-AoE weaponskill (or spell, in DRK's weirdly disadvantaged case) animations.

The benefit of separate rigid rotations for AoE skills, too, are debatable at best. It's a system of constraints. If you use an ST skill, you are effectively locked out of AoE for 2 further GCDs; if you cast an AoE, you're effectively locked out of ST for 1 further GCD. Such does technically add depth, but that addition is far less, generally, than what would be provided by the nuance available to deliberately mixing-and-matching between two skill-sets (AoE and ST), hybridized skills with fitting under-mechanics (presently vague for brevity--I apologize), or similarly "open" options that nonetheless have a context-dependent optimal course.

Imagine, for instance, if every AoE skill were removed (at least, as simple AoE [generator] attacks) and slashing skills were simply allowed to... slash, actually cleaving as they appear to. There'd be some few cases wherein you'd miss the ammo-in-2-GCDs of GNB's AoE combo or the quick buff extension of Mythril Tempest, but on the whole, very, very little would change insofar as actual decision making. Now, imagine then if the AoEs were then returned, not as a 2-or-more enemies replacement for single-target skills, but a real decision -- or even as a utility skill of sorts. Perhaps Overpower would have a chance based on recent potency dealt (and enemy stats) to slam the enemy to the ground. Perhaps Total Eclipse would be a quick, but not always the most efficient, way to burn through Sword Oath charge. Perhaps Unleash would prime enemy targets to take further magic damage from your attacks (at least, those with a shadowy aspect) to enemies nearby and Stalwart Soul would be charged by, well, Soul charged, while Blood Weapon would give your skills alternate, red-bladed animations and increased reach and reduced fall-off in their cleaves. That's spitball pipedream BS, of course, but that's also the thematic ground that AoE combos have already dammed upstream of us.

Still I think I understand since DRK mostly spams Flood once they get it in trash pulls.

As they should, so long as that's what the kit obliges. For the purposes of this thread, though, the only pertinent question is whether the kit should oblige that, leaving Flood/Edge largely a non-decision (Edge for a single enemy, Flood for multiple).

If we wanted to make AoE Combos simply one button, then they'd all be circles regardless of what it is.

Not necessarily. Look at those players who macro in hotbar- (and thereby skill-) swaps to achieve that same effect. Even working without direct support, it's not as if it's particularly difficult for them to manage, say, a conal opener into a radial second step in their AoE combo. Which of the two AoE shapes is better is subjective, even, so long as the conal has at least slightly greater radius than the radial (360-degree) AoE to compensate for the lost angle. Personally, I tend then to prefer conals, as I'll almost always have enemies grouped to one side of me and I appreciate that bit of extra range. (Ideally, though, I'd make the conal AoEs target-less, but then separately allow people to squelch target-less combat animations in-city.)

In fact, it'd open up slots for some better abilities they can add now that I think about it

That's pretty much my hope, yep: more depth and options in the AoE skills themselves or room for such through new skills that'd take their place.

[Bhearil]

Seems DRK got shafted on this expansion, look forward for the 7.0 rework. The new skills looks so "more of the same" that i didnt even noticed them with the animation update. Really hope that it plays much better than it looks because right now saying "underwhelming" is being generous and is not a matter of numbers