Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

I've seen plenty of PLD players use it while actively tanking. This game hasn't relied on directionality for blocks and autos for some time now. You should feel completely comfortable doing uninterrupted damage while facing away from your target given how popular gaze mechanics are. If it's really an issue, though, just create a hybrid of Veil and PoA for new player accessibility.

[Ryaduera]

I've seen plenty of PLD players use it while actively tanking. This game hasn't relied on directionality for blocks and autos for some time now. You should feel completely comfortable doing uninterrupted damage while facing away from your target given how popular gaze mechanics are.

I'm not talking about blocking, guaranteeing a block isn't a big deal for balance considering you have RNG block anyway, you're just removing chance from your kit, which is just good design especially on PLD which is short 1 personal mitigation from the other tanks anyway. I really don't understand how PoA could possibly be considered "unfair" especially since even after the buffs PLD still sits low on the DPS charts from the other tanks. It should work the way it does, yes... If that's a problem I don't know what to say. Using it for a block in this way can only block one attack anyway, so I mean... Yeah. That's a good thing.

[Lyth]

My point is that it doesn't matter which way you're facing when you're tanking.

I don't buy the argument about balancing raid utility vs. damage. Everyone was more than content with the status quo during the Media Tour when the action descriptions looked to be massively in PLD and WAR's favour. Now we have dps numbers and those same people won't stop complaining, even with the buffs that PLD has already gotten. And it's much more easy for a job become overpowered after a few potency adjustments when they already have a utility/mitigation/sustain advantage, than it is for the reverse to come true.

[Ryaduera]

My point is that it doesn't matter which way you're facing when you're tanking.

Yes, I understand that, I just don't understand why it's relevant in the slightest. The ability works as intended and as it should and that upsets people???

I don't buy the argument about balancing raid utility vs. damage. Everyone was more than content with the status quo during the Media Tour when the action descriptions looked to be massively in PLD and WAR's favour. Now we have dps numbers and those same people won't stop complaining, even with the buffs that PLD has already gotten. And it's much more easy for a job become overpowered after a few potency adjustments when they already have a utility/mitigation/sustain advantage, than it is for the reverse to come true.

PLD knew their opener was awkward from the beginning and questioned why they'd need to use their buffs the way they do, that was not new, so I'm not really sure where you were getting this idea, I at no point saw PLD mains excessively excited t have scuffed cursed openers. Warriors were excited, but I mean they are kinda insane right now, so that makes sense. The reverse already is true, DRK has a lot of damage but lacks utility next to the other tanks so it feels imbalanced so I'm really not sure why you're pointing all of this out?

Seems like you're upset PLD has something it should instead of being upset DRK is missing something it needs...

[Lyth]

You seemed to not understand how Passage of Arms gets used in practice. You really don't need to channel it. That's why we corrected you on the subject.

As for why it matters? Well, every expansion seems to give us more and more mitigation tools. I don't think there's a point for every tank to have two raidwide mitigation actions on top of Reprisal as a role action. It just seems like overkill. It makes more sense to dial back PLD, than to add an additional action on every other tank. If you're struggling with using PoA correctly, which it sounded like you are during your initial complaint, then perhaps they should develop a functional hybrid between PoA and DV that serves as PLD's single raidwide mitigation tool. You really don't need to have access to both.

[Ryaduera]

You seemed to not understand how Passage of Arms gets used in practice. You really don't need to channel it. That's why we corrected you on the subject.

As for why it matters? Well, every expansion seems to give us more and more mitigation tools. I don't think there's a point for every tank to have two raidwide mitigation actions on top of Reprisal as a role action. It just seems like overkill. It makes more sense to dial back PLD, than to add an additional action on every other tank. If you're struggling with using PoA correctly, which it sounded like you are during your initial complaint, then perhaps they should develop a functional hybrid between PoA and DV that serves as PLD's single raidwide mitigation tool. You really don't need to have access to both.

No I understood it fine. We are on the same page, just disagreeing. Believe it or not the only thing I'm saying is that it is in fact fine for it to have both, they have their own functions and I don't think very many people see it as a problem given the design of PLD. I like how it's easier for you to assume I'm just an idiot than to think maybe I just... disagree.

EDIT: Also, I never complained about PoA at all? I complained that Dark Missionary and Heart of Light are identical and then someone else complained about PoA which I defended saying it was fine, so I'm not really sure where this is coming from in the first place. I said you could weave it for a quick use, give up DPS to sustain it, or use it when there was incoming damage in downtime... Those are in fact 3 ways of using the ability...?

[Malthir]

The problems with DRK is more than just fixing a couple moves, the issues are endemic of all tanks it show a complete lack a crap given about tanking by the devs and it's not a quick fix, it's just more visible on Drk because they have the worse end of the stick. Here is a long winded tale of tanking in FF14

Realm Reborn, Paladins were off tank. Mechanics were basic for classes back then and although Warriors couldn't block white damage, their massive health pool basically made them primary tank in all content.
Gaining enmity was also alot harder back then, you had to use tank stance which reduced your damage, by I believe 15%, and only some moves gave enmity...... I know right, imagine having to actually have to do things to tank instead of being DPS with more health.

Heavensward came out and they started to improve class mechanics, Paladins are now the physical resistance tanks with some support moves, they also had buffs to increase block and moves that were triggered when they block.
Drks have always been the opposite of Paladins in FF lore so they became the anti magic tank, they had magic resistance and where paladins had support moves DRKs had debuff they could apply via dark arts, Drks had a buffs that increased their parry chance and moves that were triggered when they parried *cough* Reprise *Cough*, they were also built specifically with the tank stance in mind which is why they had a move called darkside which they would activate to give themselfs a 10% damage boots at the cost of constant mana drain.

Nothing changed fundamentally though, Warriors massive health pool kept them as main tank and you basically took a Paladin or Drk depending on content.

If they just buffed some numbers making Paladins and Drks more competitive with warriors things would have been fine, however that's not what they did. Instead they scrapped the idea of having any unique features to the tanks and gave them pretty much the same buffs, they removed the tank stance/damage stance feature of the tanks but seemingly forgot that they literally designed Darks and slightly less so Paladins around this feature. Paladins lost a buff and their identity as the physical block tank, Drk lost it's entire class identity, most of the debuffs from DA, removed the parry increase buff and reprise was given to everyone, just cause. Warriors weren't affected because they never really had a class identity outside of unga bunga hit things with axe (totally cool if you like that just saying they have always been simple). To be continued........

[Casualty]

Nothing changed fundamentally though, Warriors massive health pool kept them as main tank and you basically took a Paladin or Drk depending on content.

If they just buffed some numbers making Paladins and Drks more competitive with warriors things would have been fine, however that's not what they did. Instead they scrapped the idea of having any unique features to the tanks and gave them pretty much the same buffs, they removed the tank stance/damage stance feature of the tanks but seemingly forgot that they literally designed Darks and slightly less so Paladins around this feature. Paladins lost a buff and their identity as the physical block tank, Drk lost it's entire class identity, most of the debuffs from DA, removed the parry increase buff and reprise was given to everyone, just cause. Warriors weren't affected because they never really had a class identity outside of unga bunga hit things with axe (totally cool if you like that just saying they have always been simple). To be continued........

They removed it because for a vast majority of the game and the entirety of Dark Knight's existence, no one used tank stance outside of the first 4ish GCDs, barring weird exceptions like losing a healer and needing to stabilize until they were brought back up. The only tank who was reliably doing any "stance dancing" was Warrior, as DRK/PLD both lost a GCD and MP to turn it back on, and PLD lost that again to turn it off.

Grit had no interaction with your thesis of DRK being a magic tank. Speaking of which, they had only one ability that specifically mitigated magic damage, and three times as many that involved parry, but no one ever called them a "parry tank". Their defensive kit was not cohesive, but you definitely wanted them to tank over WAR back then, as WAR needed to spend their defensive abilities for their offensive rotation and DRK couldn't proc reprisal or low blow from an off-tank role.

I do not think anyone wants to go back to when there was a "magic tank" and a "physical tank". PLD was in a rough spot in savage back then, and part of it was due to a lot of the alexander raid tiers had unblockable magic busters.

[Malthir]

They removed it because for a vast majority of the game and the entirety of Dark Knight's existence, no one used tank stance outside of the first 4ish GCDs, barring weird exceptions like losing a healer and needing to stabilize until they were brought back up. The only tank who was reliably doing any "stance dancing" was Warrior, as DRK/PLD both lost a GCD and MP to turn it back on, and PLD lost that again to turn it off.

Grit had no interaction with your thesis of DRK being a magic tank. Speaking of which, they had only one ability that specifically mitigated magic damage, and three times as many that involved parry, but no one ever called them a "parry tank". Their defensive kit was not cohesive, but you definitely wanted them to tank over WAR back then, as WAR needed to spend their defensive abilities for their offensive rotation and DRK couldn't proc reprisal or low blow from an off-tank role.

I do not think anyone wants to go back to when there was a "magic tank" and a "physical tank". PLD was in a rough spot in savage back then, and part of it was due to a lot of the alexander raid tiers had unblockable magic busters.

From what I remember Tanks stance never cost you mana but i could be wrong, it did fire the GCD which was a pain. The point I was labouring at was, they act with a hammer when what they need is a scalpel, they remove things that didn't need removing, and replaced them with uniformity and boredom. for example make tank stance OGDC, add modifiers that change how your moves function based on stance. Literally anything other than turning Tanks into braindead DPS with more health roles. How about not making every boss fight a game of Dance Dance and have some environmental mechanics?

Don't get me wrong DRk was a mess in heavensward, however it was FUN. playing the class for every expac and each time it's become less and less enjoyable.

Also believe it was 2 or three moves were anti magic, they had dark mind. I can't remember the name but I'm fairly certain there was another magic resist buff and then delirium which used to debuff the opponents MIND.

Also not expecting them to go back to being a parry tank or anti magic tank, but at least back then you weren't just a Warrior with a sword and a worse kit.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

snip

Just for clarification's sake, Dark mind was IIRC the only anti magic cooldown. Delirium slightly lowered the opponent's INT stat, which affected magic damage.

Shadowskin - Omni
Shadow wall - Omni
Dark Mind - Magic
Delirium - INT down (magic)
Dark Dance - Parry (physical), Evasion (DA power up)
Reprisal - Omni (required a parry to proc)
Low blow - stun (parry procs reset CD)
Dark passenger - Evasion (DA power up)

DRK's HW kit synergized more with physical autos & attacks than it did with magic, iirc. It just had a slightly better way of dealing with magic than PLD as a tradeoff for most of its physical kit being based around RNG procs. Grit also did cost MP to activate, but not to turn off (it also didnt trigger the GCD when you turned it off as well), which is what you might be thinking of.

If any identity for DRK was correct, it was the 'needs to MT or it loses mitigation & dps' tank, due to low blow, reprisal, blood price all requiring to get struck in order to proc their effects. Whether it was fun or not, even the HW version of DRK had a lot of anti-synergy between its abilities going on (Several abilities giving evasion as a DA bonus for one thing, when dodging hits prevents you from getting procs for reprisal & low blow, as a key one) and by end of HW's life, the defensive applications of Dark Arts were completely ignored in raid outside of niche use with DM due to the emergence of dps > all raid design.

Also as a side tangent, WAR was basically never the actual community standard MT anytime through its life until SB. PLD remained the defacto MT throughout ARR due to the stigma WAR had from 2.0, along with passive block & wanting block procs for shield swipe to slow their horrendous TP burn. DRK lost too much to not MT in HW, so the ideal tank setup was DRK tanking as long and as much as it could, with WAR only tanking when it needed to. WAR only started seeing MT usage around SB when it had the absolutely easiest time pulling and maintaining early fight aggro, before a brevity of shirks & vokes would prevent anyone else in the party from ever catching up again. But SB is also the expansion when they started dipping more mechanics & fight designs that blurred MT & OT lines.

As far as your point about the lack of care about tanks:

It's not that they don't care, it's that the devs have a very specific design vision for this game, and ARR/HW/SB style tanking isn't it. The devs have clearly stated with words & actions that they want jobs to be accessible, that every job will have a high skill floor and a low skill ceiling. The devs want tanking to be easy, they know exactly what they've been doing making it easier over the years; you just don't agree with it, it's not that they don't care. They want every tank to have the tools to handle any fight regardless of design, there'll never be tank niches, only slight variations on extra tools.