Dark Knight Megathread

[FoxCh40s]

For whatever reason, FFXIV game designers see things like lifesteal as just tools to be divvied across all tanks. You can argue about whether WAR or DRK is more suited to be this game's vampiric tank, but that doesn't change the fact that PLD also now casts vampiric holy magic. So there's no real identity to be had in any of this.

The silly thing is that there are plenty of ways to achieve the same effect while preserving the uniqueness of each job. Let's look at self-sustain as an example. PLD has Clemency, which is a healing spell. It's more costly and less efficient than what your healers get, which makes sense because you're not a WHM. The counterpoint to this is that it costs you your damage output to use it, so outside of clutch raid-saving moments, you're probably not going to use it.

The simple fix for this is to create situations under which its not a dps loss to use. Back during Gordias, Frosty did a show on tanks, and Layla noted that all you need do is give PLD a free swiftcast proc for Clemency off of either a successful block or off of Sheltron. It's a very elegant solution, and that was back in Heavensward! Now you have a versatile self-sustain ability. If you need to use it on demand, you can do so at the cost of your dps. But at baseline, you'll also get instant cast procs that you can weave into your rotation for no cost and no damage loss. Now you don't need all this Holy Vampiric Spirit nonsense. This is a PLD self-sustain aesthetic: I cast healing spells on myself and my allies. Sometimes they're free, but I also have the chance of putting out more to keep the team alive at the cost of dps.

Let's talk about WAR for a moment. So if we've agreed that simple direct healing is a PLD thing, there's no need for that on WAR. You don't need the likes of Equilibrium. Just do it all through lifesteal. I've suggested this before, but you could even make it so that WAR can bank their overhealing as temporary HP as a defensive mechanic, such that you want to align your burst with high damage parts of the fight.

DRK is probably the easiest one to find a unique aesthetic for. Dread Spikes. You already have a tank that aesthetically feels like it needs to be preventing damage. But what if successfully preventing damage gave you back some HP on hit? Now you have more reason to double down on them as barrier tanks.

GNB already has a bit of a regen theme going with Aurora. You could make a tank which just always regenerates HP slowly at baseline, and then give them actions that accelerate their regeneration rate. Perhaps give it a stimpack/soldier feel. Variations on a theme.

It's fine to have jobs with varying amounts of self-sustain. But I do think that if you want to have self-sustain on every tank, it's preferable to find unique aesthetic approaches for each, rather than giving every tank blanket lifesteal.

Someone gets it.

[Kalaam]

That "Free Clemency on block/shieldtron" is such a simple and elegant solution.

[Alcomancer]

Honestly I just want Blood Weapon to get the delerium treatment so bad. The fact that I still need to push my skill speed to fit in 5 GCDs under it feels awful because if I'm on during a night where I have bad ping I will miss a tick of it and lose DPS.

Living Dead feels awful and I never use it outside of high end content because I will die, which is a gameplay style that basically teaches most casual players never to use their invuln button. It's also just really frustrating to get killed by your invuln but I think the actual worst part about it is that casual dark knight players just basically never use it, ever. It's a button on their hotbar just collecting dust, and I do not trust healers in dungeons to heal me through it. Frankly if I'm popping Living Dead its because the rest of my party is dead and I'm tanking the last 1% of the bosses hp.

TBN costing mana also just makes it frustrating to use because if my timing is off then all I've done is sacrifice DPS by eating mana for mitigation I basically didn't use.

Some defensive changes would be nice but overall I think other than those two things the job performs 'okay'. I would love to see some cool effects with my bread and butter defensives like other jobs get though, but I'm not sure what those would be so I'm not gonna list them here.

[Weetzlo]

Ehh, kinda feels more like you're describing PLD there, pre-shenanigans. DRK has from the start been themed around "Sacrifices are acceptable and may be necessary," and outright "You know what, f*ck these idiots" energy. "No half measures," and "Reject outside preconceptions" have always been their more unique core than "Protect the weak." Their selflessness is borne out more by finding their health, their fears, their reputation absolutely irrelevant than by any hero image you'd find among those popularly considered, by themselves or others, as "selfless".

I think its totally fair to describe DRKs in that selfless way. The official job description reads

"None dare to administer justice to these sacrosanct elite residing outside the reach of the law. Who, then, defends the feeble from the transgressions of those meant to guide and protect them?

A valiant few take up arms to defend the downtrodden, and not even the holy priests and knights can escape their judgment. Pariahs in their own land, they are known by many as “dark knights.”

The culmination of their job quest line is "You can only maximize your hate for something if you have something you love to protect from the target of your hate."

Plus the first DRK was a PLD so it makes sense that they'd have comparable attitudes.

[Sacrilegion]

Getting angry shouldnt provide ANY healing at all, and it doesnt make ANY sense whatsoever. I would understand it if a angry WAR would be numb to pain (like getting increased defenses for example) but lifesteal effects and a 1200 potency self heal ( literally the strongest single target heal when you exclude Eggs Benediction) is way over the top.

But i do agree that if anyone should ever get lifesteal effects, its DRK. It should also be designed then in a way where it compensates (along with other skills) for Living Dead, if it should stay the same (or at least, with a reduced healing treshold required).

Warrior should be bad at something or suffer a drawback. PLD's is dps, GNB is a middle ground, DRK is just bad at everything. Warrior gets broken self sustain, ability to shield people now, guaranteed DH and crit, and is literally brain dead easy to play. DRK is artificially difficult because of the massive handicaps placed on it by negligence and being stuck in HW with everything ripped from it.

[Kalaam]

DRK is a more "do what has to be done" kind of knight, mixed with a "avenger those who have been wronged by the powerful" type. Thematically it kind of translated with "dirty" fighting moves like low Blow and blinding ennemies.
Now the identity is also to protect those you care about with your love manifesting through TBN as the most powerful single target shield any tank can use, and that's part of its lore and identity, that's fine.
But we kind of lost the "compensate the lack of shield/strength with occult magic". Raw darkness blasts are fun but feels a bit off. Especially with how big they get past level 70 (I'll be honest, I kind of prefer edge/flood at lower level, still feels like using a sword then)

[Shurrikhan]

DRK is just bad at everything.

If PLD's weakness is DPS and Warrior's DPS is only faintly higher, while both are noticeably behind DRK, how is DRK likewise bad at DPS (which you've just made a criteria which would fall under "everything"?

Warrior gets broken self sustain

Agreed, but...

ability to shield people now

If granting a 400 shield is itself strong enough to be worth mentioning, then what of our effectively ~1500 potency shield, on only 60% the cooldown of their 400-potency shield?

guaranteed DH and crit

Is actually a nerf, as one is still balanced around that effective potency regardless (though clearly insufficiently to rival GNB and DRK) but cannot benefit from Crit or Direct Hit buffs like Battle Litany, Chain Strategem, or Battle Voice. A 600-potency guaranteed Direct Crit skill is effectively just a ~1050-potency skill that cannot Direct Hit nor Critical Hit.
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Well then maybe that's too much, maybe it could only increase to 210 or something. But I want something that feels satisfying to use when the time is right without becoming part of the rotation.

Even a 210 Plunge, if allowing for a free Plunge, would put Unmend at 360 ppgcd, making it obligatory as often as it's available. So long as you want to trait to grant a free Plunge, it cannot also increase Plunge's damage by more than 10 potency without its being used for damage over mobility.

In general, without Plunge being moved onto the GCD --which, trust me, you do not want-- you're not going to be able to achieve some big whopping hit via Enhanced Unmend without it either becoming obligatory even outside of gapcloser moments and/or it becoming a trap, of sorts, for less knowledgeable players.

The best you can likely manage, if you want the big hit more so than the mobility or convenience, is to remove the cooldown reduction entirely and instead just have Unmend grant 'Plunging Shadows' for an added 150 potency on your next Plunge. (This would, identically, put Unmend at 300 ppgcd, slightly under normal rotational ppgcd at that level, but with a bigger hit on one's next Plunge --which should then be saved for raid windows if possible-- rather than freeing up both Plunge charges to be used within raid cooldowns through the convenience of offering a free Plunge cast.)

[Kalaam]

HP increases might be causing issues mecanically, if there was more than one. Does it increases from the normal amount of HP ? The current one ? How will it stack up when max HP gets to very high numbers etc

[RatCopter]

Happy 200 pages, mates. I've been thinking about what I actually want from Dark Knight, and wanted to pose a question to you guys first;

What is that skill in DRK's repitoire that, when you use, you feel a kind of visceral satisfaction of "HELL YEAH, I just used ____"?

Because I've been playing WAR lately and they have a lot of those skills. Primal Rend, Bloodwhetting, Inner Chaos/Cyclone, Equilibrium when it crits. But when I sit down and look at DRK's kit and try to make a comparison, I don't have an answer. Hell, the closest I've come to an answer is setting up the infinite mana machine in Stormblood and throwing out DA AD constantly.

[MagiusNecros]

Happy 200 pages, mates. I've been thinking about what I actually want from Dark Knight, and wanted to pose a question to you guys first;

What is that skill in DRK's repitoire that, when you use, you feel a kind of visceral satisfaction of "HELL YEAH, I just used ____"?

Because I've been playing WAR lately and they have a lot of those skills. Primal Rend, Bloodwhetting, Inner Chaos/Cyclone, Equilibrium when it crits. But when I sit down and look at DRK's kit and try to make a comparison, I don't have an answer. Hell, the closest I've come to an answer is setting up the infinite mana machine in Stormblood and throwing out DA AD constantly.

Dark Arts Dark Dance + Dark Arts Dark Passenger dodge tanking in dungeons was where I got that visceral hell yeah let's fucking go feeling. But that was back in Heavensward.

Other then that the Stormblood Abyssal Drain god mode was the only other time things felt great.