Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

I can understand your reservations about series nostalgia. It's so much more preferable and safer to stick with WAR hand-me-downs from the previous expansion, as we have traditionally done. But usually that leaves us with an inferior, soulless knockoff. Look forward to a new triple axel Dark Rend as the highlight of of 7.0.

Living Shadow is an interesting concept, but the dev team don't really have a direction that they can take it. For it to serve as a tanking tool, it would need a HP bar, which summons in this game haven't had for a while. People tend to get fairly upset when their 120s damage cooldowns take too much damage and die. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to play with MCH's automaton queen for yourself, but they do obviously know how to make the concept more interactive. LS could easily swap targets based on what you're attacking at any given moment, have a duration that depends on your gauge expenditure at the time of summoning, and a finisher that lets you terminate the window early. But we're also playing a tank, which is likely why we get the 'simplified' version.

I think the questions that need to be asked are: what should be DRK's design direction? How do we tie all these abilities together? The other three tanks are in a state where they could get away with purely graphical upgrades and still feel complete in themselves. DRK still feels like it's perpetually waiting on new actions to round it off.

To me, the answer to this lies in DRK's resource system. Right now, most jobs are driven by timers. Hypercharge broke away from this by being resource-gated, and Shroud refined it further such that you have a resource-gated system that also grants you one burst that naturally syncs up with raid buffs. It's pretty easy to see how this could be applied to DRK. Get to 50 blood, activate Delirium to perform an upgraded burst combo. Perhaps add in a shadowy after-effect with multiple hits because you're 'seeing double'. Every 120 seconds, activate Living Shadow, which automatically puts you in Delirium when you activate it so that you stay synced with buffs. Sync up the two such that Frey attacks your target. Tag team finisher with multiple hits.

Now, if you haven't played any other Final Fantasy games, this is just focusing DRK down to a single central theme. If you like series nostalgia, this is a nod to the likes of Omnislash and the Lucii. It doesn't really matter either way. People tend to get hung up on irrelevant details.

One of the advantages of drawing on inspiration from previous games is because more often than not, somebody has already come up with a solution in the series' 30+ year history. Let's talk raidwides for a second. Dark Missionary and Heart of Light both do the exact same thing. Are we completely out of ideas? We shouldn't be, because Celes had an answer to this with Runic nearly 30 years ago. Now, you obviously can't go around negating bosses' spells and stealing their MP because that's just rude. But it's a starting point for brainstorming. What if you absorb part of the damage and restore MP based off of the number of people you protect? If MP gains are an issue because we're afraid of rewarding tanks for using their mitigation abilities correctly, what if you restored HP instead? What if you redirected damage from the raidwide to yourself and mitigated it?

Either way, when you have so much series lore to draw on for inspiration, it seems beyond daft to completely ignore it. Gameplay fun comes out of how clever your implementation is, and really has nothing to do with how you get your ideas.

[Shurrikhan]

Either way, when you have so much series lore to draw on for inspiration, it seems beyond daft to completely ignore it.

I don't think anyone's advocated for ignoring series lore altogether. Rather, some iterations contradict the many, or may be less synergetic with our current basis than others, leading one to wonder which span of that lore to draw from.

Now, if you haven't played any other Final Fantasy games, this is just focusing DRK down to a single central theme.

Right, it's just a matter of whether building up to accelerated or empowered blows is a theme we want everything else to stem from.

Personally, I'd be fine with it --it plays well from our Dark Passenger theme, and both controlling our attack speed and having charged, truck-weight hits are both pretty broadly representative of DRK's series identity-- but I could also see why others might want to instead base it first around traded resource, sin (in the sense of transgression / making one's own rules / "I reject your reality and substitute my own" full fledged Dynamis / Void magic), or whatnot.

What if you redirected damage from the raidwide to yourself and mitigated it?

Would love this. Reverse the spell VFX (so it collapses on you instead of emanating from you) and it'd fit Dark Missionary to a tee. That'd hardly be Runic at that point, but that's fine; Runic needed only lead us to stumble over this idea. And this would be unique and fitting. That's the extent I would at minimum want to see from DRK's kit in terms of kit diversity.

If MP gains are an issue because we're afraid of rewarding tanks for using their mitigation abilities correctly, what if you restored HP instead?

While I agree that the devs seem like they'd be adverse to potency-gains for main-tanking (and doing so 'well'), I'll never really understand why, as that bit of difference isn't going to be enough to really adjust when we do or don't take a second tank, so I figure we might as well milk the obviously tank-ish gameplay where reasonable. /shrug

Hypercharge broke away from this by being resource-gated, and Shroud refined it further such that you have a resource-gated system that also grants you one burst that naturally syncs up with raid buffs.

Until such time as SkS is actually worth taking, there's no real difference between a 50-gauge spender and having 2 charges that start on cooldown and can only cool in combat (save being a little further screwed by downtime). I'm all for having two charges (in gauge-form or otherwise), but the difference at that point is simply whether we want to nerf DRK's opening burst.

Gauge skills, in isolation, simply drop those tied actions from the first raid window -- i.e., assuming we don't thrust bloat skills upon it just to undo that ramp-up (see Barrel Stabilizer); thereafter, they don't change how you play whatsoever. Having those gauges is, unless they do more than simply afford a use every X seconds to a max of Y charges, is identity only on paper, much like Darkside's being a "mechanic".

tl;dr: I'd be fine with more gauges, and would definitely like to see added flexibility, but let's not overestimate the in-practice impact of gauges' UI flair or treat that as somehow adding to identity. Its novelty is very short-lived.

[MerlinCross]

I can understand your reservations about series nostalgia. It's so much more preferable and safer to stick with WAR hand-me-downs from the previous expansion, as we have traditionally done. But usually that leaves us with an inferior, soulless knockoff. Look forward to a new triple axel Dark Rend as the highlight of of 7.0.

And Shadowy Omnislash instead fixes... what problems? Besides people going “OMG it’s the move from the thing I know!!!”

Living Shadow is an interesting concept, but the dev team don't really have a direction that they can take it. For it to serve as a tanking tool, it would need a HP bar,

Darkness Shell - Living shadow generates an HP based shield(Or maybe Blood/MP) while active , on completion, or shares a CD timer with it. I’m sure there’s ways to make it defensive with HP but this also goes into the tug of war that is Defense or Damage and we both know who wins that.

I'm not sure if you've had a chance to play with MCH's automaton queen for yourself, but they do obviously know how to make the concept more interactive.

The Queen that I understand has a habit of hitting the wrong target? No at this point I don’t trust them with any form of non player AI so it would be closer to how Summoners work now. Or keep it as fancy dot.

I think the questions that need to be asked are: what should be DRK's design direction? How do we tie all these abilities together? The other three tanks are in a state where they could get away with purely graphical upgrades and still feel complete in themselves. DRK still feels like it's perpetually waiting on new actions to round it off.

While I agree, I do t trust them not to shoehorn in something on the off chance it might work. Honestly DRK feels like they need to go to the drawing board again and start over again cause it feels like such a clunky patchwork job trying to keep itself together, I don’t think adding in new flashy abilities is going to fix it.

Now, if you haven't played any other Final Fantasy games, this is just focusing DRK down to a single central theme. If you like series nostalgia, this is a nod to the likes of Omnislash and the Lucii. It doesn't really matter either way. People tend to get hung up on irrelevant details.

I’d accept it but be annoyed if it was called Darkness Omni and didn’t actually fix anything wrong with the rest of the kit. Your example still sounds stiff and awkward to the point it seems like we get punished more if we don’t make sure we’re on the right time table of raid buffs. Also it just sounds like NIN now with extra steps.

One of the advantages of drawing on inspiration from previous games is because more often than not, somebody has already come up with a solution in the series' 30+ year history. Let's talk raidwides for a second. Dark Missionary and Heart of Light both do the exact same thing. Are we completely out of ideas? We shouldn't be, because Celes had an answer to this with Runic nearly 30 years ago. Now, you obviously can't go around negating bosses' spells and stealing their MP because that's just rude. But it's a starting point for brainstorming. What if you absorb part of the damage and restore MP based off of the number of people you protect? If MP gains are an issue because we're afraid of rewarding tanks for using their mitigation abilities correctly, what if you restored HP instead? What if you redirected damage from the raidwide to yourself and mitigated it?

They took Dark Dance away from us. I don’t expect them to give us something like it again. Could you picture DRKs wanting to MT or get hit with something for the DPS gain cause they can fit in more spell attacks? Also I wouldn’t have thought to compare it to Celes but hey Void Ruinc probably would connect those dots. And just what we need. Another way to get healer hate. We can’t design abilities to sound cool in a vacuum, you pushed for a more straight raid buff timer above, getting blasted with more damage cause we need it for the DPS gain from MP gen is a sure fire way to get some glares. Or if the HP healing suggested instead, too high and we get hate for another reason. We can’t blindly look to the past for a solution unless we want to play the “Look at the thing I know!” card.

Either way, when you have so much series lore to draw on for inspiration, it seems beyond daft to completely ignore it. Gameplay fun comes out of how clever your implementation is, and really has nothing to do with how you get your ideas.

I’m fine drawing on the past. I’m against using it as a crutch or distraction to hide clunky design or poor choices.

[Colt47]

Took DRK for a spin, and it kind of clicked what doesn't work at all with them.

1) TBN is strong. TBN is great when fighting in trials and end game raiding. TBN sucks when you are dealing with multiple angry midgets with hammers smacking your knee caps while double pulling packs of mobs in dungeons, which is why I feel like it basically doesn't have TBN during dungeon runs.
2) They got WAAAAAAAAAAAY too many OGCDs. There's no way a drk can spare enough OGCD slots to blow enough cooldowns to survive some scenarios while also using the same OGCD slots for half the stuff they got to throw out. You're either firing everything on full cylinders like a DPS or your trying to dump enough cooldowns to survive a major tank buster.

[baklava151]

2) They got WAAAAAAAAAAAY too many OGCDs. There's no way a drk can spare enough OGCD slots to blow enough cooldowns to survive some scenarios while also using the same OGCD slots for half the stuff they got to throw out. You're either firing everything on full cylinders like a DPS or your trying to dump enough cooldowns to survive a major tank buster.

The start of P3S is a nightmare for this reason between getting everything off under raid buffs + getting mits up for the first tankbuster.

[Undeadfire]

The start of P3S is a nightmare for this reason between getting everything off under raid buffs + getting mits up for the first tankbuster.

It's scuffed as hell yeah, got to ask GNB to HoC you, you can Rampart before the raid buffs begin.

[ItsUrBoi]

2) They got WAAAAAAAAAAAY too many OGCDs.

You forgot to mention how DRK needs to push 3 off GCDs to mitigate ( Dark Mind OR Rampart / Shadow Wall + TBN + Oblation ) to mitigate. While the other's use 2 buttons usually combining their short CD mitigation and the 30% or 20%.
Also the shield tank design is not bad, but what about more shields - rather than just one?

[MerlinCross]

You forgot to mention how DRK needs to push 3 off GCDs to mitigate ( Dark Mind OR Rampart / Shadow Wall + TBN + Oblation ) to mitigate. While the other's use 2 buttons usually combining their short CD mitigation and the 30% or 20%.
Also the shield tank design is not bad, but what about more shields - rather than just one?

Because the devs have seemingly had a dislike/hate relation with shields for the longest time but have dug themselves into this hole.

To wit; if we got more shield/barrier abilities, how does that work with SCH/AST?

[Colt47]

You forgot to mention how DRK needs to push 3 off GCDs to mitigate ( Dark Mind OR Rampart / Shadow Wall + TBN + Oblation ) to mitigate. While the other's use 2 buttons usually combining their short CD mitigation and the 30% or 20%.
Also the shield tank design is not bad, but what about more shields - rather than just one?

Probably because shield mitigation sucks against multiple targets. I think the idea is that TBN is sort of like warrior's self heal button, but if that is the case you'd think they would have a defense cooldown that gives bonus defense plus a short duration percentage shield.

Also going to mention DRK is my favorite tank in aesthetics, but feels like the worst tank to play right now even over gunbreaker, which has some interesting ping requirements.

[Xrison]

Probably because shield mitigation sucks against multiple targets. I think the idea is that TBN is sort of like warrior's self heal button, but if that is the case you'd think they would have a defense cooldown that gives bonus defense plus a short duration percentage shield.

Also going to mention DRK is my favorite tank in aesthetics, but feels like the worst tank to play right now even over gunbreaker, which has some interesting ping requirements.

I pray for the day that it will be feasible for me to go back to maining DRK over GNB.