Dark Knight Megathread

[Falar]

Yeah those animations alone were awesome. It's really sad nothing is left of them anymore.

I loved Delirium too.

[Ryaduera]

If you understand the theory that using TBN more than once per minute is a DPS loss because it drags an Edge outside of raid buffs, then you should realize that removing the Dark Arts charge entirely is automatically a nerf in a DPS-optimized scenario because it means you can't shift an Edge from your 60s window to your 120s window. Realistically though, we should also recognize that "You can only use it once per minute" is a bit of an outdated viewpoint, because the only 60s raid buff is Trick Attack, and Ninja isn't exactly mandatory these days. Realistically, it's more like "You can use TBN all you want on every odd-numbered minute, but you want to use it exactly once on every even-numbered minute."

(There is a problem with the skill there, in that DPS optimization does require that you limit your usages of TBN when you should be encouraged to use it as often as possible in situations where it will break, but the solution to that is to allow the storage of multiple charges, not to remove the interaction entirely.)

However, outside of DPS-optimized scenarios, where we only need consider its defensive properties, TBN's most valuable trait is its shorter, 15-second recast compared to the other tank skills. In a sustained-damage situation, like a dungeon pull, TBN's shield is roughly equivalent to a 1500 potency shield. On a 15s recast, the mitigation throughput there is roughly 100p/sec. What you are asking for is an 800 potency HoT to be added to it, in exchange for increasing the cooldown to 25s. That reduces its mitigation throughput to 92p/sec, including the heal. That is an enormous loss of power in those sustained-damage situations.

Not necessarily true. See, an often overlooked aspect of self healing abilities is when the healing is applied and the intention behind it. You don't use Blood Whetting at full HP in trash pulls for this reason. Other cooldowns stacked on top of a HoT make it more valuable. So while it would, on paper, be less potent after the heal, the healing itself changes value based on the situation. As an example, right now DRK is parsing higher than GNB in healing, but nobody feels like it actually is. That's because the healing that DRK is doing matters significantly less. I am, however, still against adding a HoT to TNB because there is an issue that would cause portions of the heal to entirely go to waste. If you use TBN at full HP and it breaks, the first tick is overheal. Assuming you had mitigation on, the damage you are taking must bring you below the heal value in order to actually be effective in the first place. (This is what I meant by it changes on the situation.) Even though timed healing can be incredibly valuable, you aren't actually timing this heal most of the time, it does not change the way the skill is used at all, keeping all the same flaws but on a longer cooldown.

On top of that, you're asking for the heal to come in the least useful form possible: a weak, 200p/tick HoT. If we're talking about a tankbuster situation rather than sustained incoming damage, that 200p HoT is going to do exactly as much to save you from any followup damage as the current version of TBN. The useful version of what you're asking for, which is still a nerf, is an instant 800 potency heal. But that's not even an area where TBN even needs help; healing and shielding are both flat-value mitigation/recovery mechanics, and in terms of flat-value mitigation/recovery, TBN is already very strong, at roughly 1500 equivalent potency to HoC's 900 and Holy Sheltron's 1000, though Bloodwhetting definitely rules that particular roost at 2000.

Because of the same reasons above, a flat value would be pretty bad except for against tank busters. When it comes to how tanks handle tank busters the only thing that matters is the condition of the tank after it has happened. There's three stages to any buster. Preparing to take the damage, actually getting hit, and recovering from it. The only stage that matters in terms of tank balancing is what the tank looks like after stage 3. Dead? Bad. Low HP? Not as bad, but not great. High HP? Good. If you dropped to 1 hp but lived and a heal kicked in and got you to 50% within 3 seconds, you dealt with it better than the tank that got dropped to 10% hp.

Because of that high amount of flat-value mitigation, TBN acquits itself quite well against incoming damage that lands in the range of 40-60% of your max HP (which, realistically, is the most relevant tank damage in high-end content, because it tends to come while the healers are busy with their own mechanics or party healing, instead of the fight grinding to a halt for a very slow, telegraphed heavy tankbuster to come in). On a per-use basis, it tends to be marginally more effective than the other skills at the point of impact, then marginally less effective once the other skills' healing has come in. This is already completely fair and in-line with the other tank skills, because that 'marginally less effective in total' drawback is more than made up for by the lower 15-second cooldown.

Where TBN does fall short, in comparison to the other tank skills, is against the kind of extremely-heavy tankbuster - something dealing 90-120% of your max HP after Rampart, Shadow Wall, etc - where flat-value mitigation and healing has relatively little value. In those cases, TBN does fall massively behind the other skills, but the solution is not to give it more flat-value mitigation and healing, but rather to pair it with the percentage-based mitigation that gives the other skills their huge advantage to begin with. This is the purpose of Oblation, except Oblation is too weak. The solution here isn't to change TBN, but the change Oblation to make it better at shoring up this particular weakness of TBN.

Following the philosophy of a tanks measure being by how they deal with damage (Reduction, Healing, and Shielding are all forms of tanking) most tools in every other tanks kit are actually more effective in anything as little as 70% of the tanks hp. In the case of HoC and Bloodwhetting, you may end up with lower HP immediately after the hit, but healing yourself immediately after more than compensates and leaves you at a greater hp value than TBN would have. In my opinion, TBN is only ever ideal in a scenario where the other tank has stacked their unique cd on you as well.

Ultimately, there's little value to be gained in adding a HoT to TBN, and the skill is mostly just fine the way it is (aside from needing to allow you to store multiple DA charges), offering unique gameplay from the other tanks' equivalent skills, with a healthy balance of advantages and disadvantages that make it sometimes-better, sometimes-worse than its counterparts. That's what balance in game design is supposed to look like, and it's what we should be encouraging and asking for more of.
In the one area where TBN falls so short that it's unfit for purpose, it has a companion skill meant to help it through: Oblation - except that Oblation is meant to make TBN feel powerful in those scenarios, but is so weak itself that it only manages to make TBN feel slightly-less-weak. Oblation absolutely should get a buff (or more involved rework) that makes it effective enough to serve its purpose when paired with TBN.

I agree adding a heal to TBN would be pretty bad because the heal would almost never be fully utilized outside of high damage scenarios, in which percentage mitigation is just better in every way. However, consider we as a collective stop treating TBN like it's meant to be HoC/Intervention/Nascent and treat Oblation like this? Fix the clunkiness and bizarre DPS-entwined awkward design choice of TBN by making it never actually be a DPS loss simply by giving a charge on expiration as well. Then it's fixed and can be used to gain Dark Arts stacks (plural assuming multiple charges) to use in a burst window with raid buffs for an actual increase. Then bring Oblation to a point where it can compete with the other skills. A 60 second recharge is not a 60 second cooldown, it's more akin to a 30 second cooldown. To me, this is the skill people should be comparing. If I heal were attached to Oblation, for example, the heal could be used with intent, making it more valuable.

But, no, it should absolutely not be changed into a risk-free skill with a slightly more potent effect in exchange for a massive nerf to its strongest and most useful point, it's short recast time. If that's what you want out of a tank, three out of four of the tanks in this game are already giving you exactly what you're asking for. You don't need all of them to cater to your specific tastes at the expense of those of us who prefer this skill the way it is.

I loathe entirely when people argue TBN recasting time is it's strongest point. It's recast time is not only tied to your MP regeneration, but in order to argue this it has to actually want to be used off cooldown, which it is not. Its uptime is nowhere near it's cooldown outside of maybe 2% of this games content. It's cooldown means little to nothing if you don't use it off cooldown, which is a guaranteed DPS loss.

Yeah, the fact that these bandwagon ideas are catching on so much and seem to just be oblivious to the actual effects of what they're asking for is really alarming.

Ignoring playstyle issues in favour of talking about efficacy - and my position has always been that post-5.0 DRK has had playstyle issues, but not efficacy ones - Dark Knight's current position is probably best described as 'in a decent spot, but its position there is precarious'. It's definitely been shortchanged in a handful of key places, and it has some legitimate QoL issues, but it also has some pretty strong advantages that make it uniquely well-suited to tanking certain parts of the current raid tier, and many of these common suggestions are people basically explicitly asking for those advantages to be nerfed and taken away in exchange for miniscule improvements to convenience and basically fixing Xeno's personal pet peeves.

What a lot of people actually seem to want is a glamour prism that lets you play Warrior with a Dark Knight skin on top and all your skills nerfed by 5%.

No, what we actually have right now is already a Warrior with Dark Knight Glamour. We only want cohesion and consistency... and a tank invuln that doesn't kill you.

I get the nostalgia value, but do we really want to use up a button to have a 2-minute cooldown... that gives less than a TBN's worth of healing (not shielding, healing), and requires the enemy's death for full effect?

We've so many other ways to build in healing on demand. We don't need to make it badly constrained by both cooldown and conditions.

/agreed on most other notes in that list

Put Sole Survivor on Oblation, perhaps? Heals the DRK + the target the DRK used Oblation on? Idk just a thought.

EDIT: I kind of recall there was a translation error in the early stages of Heavensward release and the English speaking world thought that Sole Survivor only healed the DRK if an ally died, an interesting thought that could be riffed off of maybe... If Target of Oblation dies DRK gets both heals.

[Duskane]

Job re-works are entirely possible for .1, .2, .3, .4, .5, but we have Dragonsong ultimate coming in 6.1 so I am gonna assume it will be .2, or .3 it may come.

SE has to be careful making changes on jobs, potency increases, buff tunings, can make wild changes with rotations, etc. A simple change for a job can end up with more problems than solving a solution. The job not being fun it's self is a different subject.

Ninja got reworked in 5.1 and Alexander ult was soon after

[Duskane]

Like overall dps rotation and mechanics, DRK plays like shb DRK in my particular case I enjoy it. But as said its pretty weird that Blood Weapon and No Mercy didn't receive Delirium and IR treatment?
.

No mercy and similar abilities should never get the stack treatments
because you would lose out on extra damage with ogcd like bow shock,blasting Zone and Continuation
which is something WAR lost was crit dh onslaught and upheval during IR

it should only be for abilities to make it ping friendly or more comfortable in the rotation
Inner release,Delirium,Blood weapon,heat blast

[Runeslayer]

I've been keeping with these DRK threads off account for a bit now and I think I finally want to come in and put down my two cents.

Putting aside numbers, putting aside cohesion and balance, putting all that to the side; One of my biggest problems with DRK is it's currently unimpressive and unsatisfying on aesthetic level.
I cannot stress how much things like animations, effects, and impact help the job maintain a sense of 'yeah, I'm doing this thing and it feels good even if its just 2 damage!'

DRK's animations and skill effects are boring as all sin, slow and clunky and lack any *oomph* you might get from the other tanks. I don't feel the hard hits of the sword that weighs as much as it looks, especially when referring to their basic 1 2 3 combo. Take reaper for example; even their most basic of attacks are aesthetically pleasing and very active through the entire GCD, keeping you satisfied during its slow moments and building anticipation for its burst. You can tell lots of love and care went into the impact and aesthetic of every skill, and the culmination of the graphic teams decade of experience went to its design.

DRK has instead regressed from its old skills, clearly many people love what DRK had just on a *visual* level back when it released. You give DRK a nice animation and sound overhaul and I guarantee it will do some measure of good for how the class feels, without even touching the actual skills themselves.

Now as for cohesion and balance it's been talked to death at this point and not everyone agrees with a direction. I have my own thoughts but my overall hope is the dev team stop treating the class as an oGCD dump and give it a meaningful system where their skills have a time place and synergy with the rest of their kit to get rid of all the ugly disjointedness.

My overall sentiment is no matter how good it is in raid, no matter how good its defensives actually are, no matter how viable it is, it still feels like ASS to play and its moment to moment is uninteresting as is.

[Kalaam]

A good question to ask about the feel of a job is: "if I completely disable all UI elements, including damage number, does it feel satisfying to play from pure mechanics and visuals"
Of course, damage numbers are part of the feedback, that's one thing satisfying with Inner Release. You see big numbers and exclamation marks (the actual value of those numbers is irrelevant). The game shows and tell you "you just hit very hard" and it feels good.

[Shurrikhan]

A good question to ask about the feel of a job is: "if I completely disable all UI elements, including damage number, does it feel satisfying to play from pure mechanics and visuals"
Of course, damage numbers are part of the feedback, that's one thing satisfying with Inner Release. You see big numbers and exclamation marks (the actual value of those numbers is irrelevant). The game shows and tell you "you just hit very hard" and it feels good.

I think the opposite is equally important, though. If you can turn off most visuals (outside of simplified UI) and the job still feels satisfying, now that's a real success, and probably one that XIV would struggle with far more than the "visuals only" test.

[Jandor]

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.

I don't know why they're so set on getting rid of things like AD god mode. Stuff like that seems like a natural opportunity to flesh out some job identity without worrying too much about balance concerns.

AD god mode felt good, it felt "dark knighty," and no one really cared that other tanks couldn't do it because it was only relevant in Expert roulette.

[Kalaam]

I think the opposite is equally important, though. If you can turn off most visuals (outside of simplified UI) and the job still feels satisfying, now that's a real success, and probably one that XIV would struggle with far more than the "visuals only" test.

Mechanically, yes I aggree. But still, without seeing actual numbers. (or just placeholder ones)

[Shurrikhan]

I don't know why they're so set on getting rid of things like AD god mode. Stuff like that seems like a natural opportunity to flesh out some job identity without worrying too much about balance concerns.

AD god mode felt good, it felt "dark knighty," and no one really cared that other tanks couldn't do it because it was only relevant in Expert roulette.

The odd thing is, they haven't (Bloodwhetting [Nascent + shield] still exists, and Expert Roulette damage is never so high that Warrior can't survive for the 17 seconds until the next 8s of self-Benes). It's just painfully straightforward and limited to a single job now.