Dark Knight Megathread

[RyuDragnier]

Ppl that ask for reworks or rework the job themselfs always keep the oGCD nature of the job, they just make it cohesive and add actual mechanics you care of to the gameplay like how the job use to be, extra combos or better say GCD diversity is for kill the dull soul eater combo spam that is visually boring.

It's also because we're the only tank with a single GCD combo. PLD has Goring Blade and Royal Authority combos, GNB has Solid Barrel and Gnashing Fang combos, WAR has Storm's Path and Storm's Eye combos. DRK only has Souleater, we're just asking for a second GCD combo so we're less boring on that front when everything is down.

[Lyth]

And I think that's something very reasonable to ask for, and could easily be expanded on without rebuilding the entire job from scratch.

I think some people just demand reworks because they worry that if DRK is not seen to have issues, then they won't have anything to talk about on the forums. It doesn't matter how well you fix the job and how content the players are, they'll still be demanding that you rework the rework.

[baklava151]

Not really sure what another button could add to it, it already felt like a stretch to bring Darkside up to 3 buttons for the ST rotation.

Honestly I don't have any concrete ideas, my thought is having more than one spender for a gauge is generally more interesting.

Also an option! I won't discount it, I just wanted to make Darkside feel like an occasional but very powerful burst mechanic, rather than something you alternate into until you're using it more than your basic rotation (which is a flaw I found in my earlier attempts to rework the rotation).

Yeah I was thinking the same with my idea, might just end up too spammy. Maybe there's a balance somewhere but finding it would require too much brainpower from me.

That's actually why I only added the Heavy -- it's ultimately harmless. There's already enough changes to the damage reduction and personal upkeep of the job, so adding on even more from SE would be extraneous in my opinion.
Since most bosses are immune or have movement carefully controlled by tanks anyway, CC effects generally have minimal impact on EX trials and Savage raids -- only casual content like dungeons and such, where a Heavy to keep crowds in the damage zone could at least find a modicum of value.

Honestly though, I just think it's weird that Salted Earth is just a DoT patch? I'm already struggling to think of what could be done with S&D beyond "one instance of damage". Personal taste thing.

Maybe a draw-in like others said, but yeah it's definitely just eh as is.

[Archwizard]

Any time that you make a decision to rework a job, you're effectively pressing a big reset button.

Is it "effectively pressing a big reset button" when the most common suggestions are to dial back changes they already made, and bring back elements the job lost to oversimplification?

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Is it "effectively pressing a big reset button" when the most common suggestions are to dial back changes they already made, and bring back elements the job lost to oversimplification?

Considering those elements will never come back (at least in a form that's not streamlined & simplified to heck and back again) due to the fact the devs removed those elements because they want to keep systems on tanks easy and streamlined, yeah, it's basically a reset button.

Just take a look at a bunch of jobs that got reworked:

WAR - gauge management completely eradicated, suffers from auto CRT/DH problems today
DRK - Dark Arts completely streamlined into Edge/Flood
MNK - GL management completely nuked, followed by positional management nuked for new Blitz system.
SMN - Whole job got nuked, shares almost nothing with its previous iteration, many people complain job is way too simple.

and plenty of other jobs that got semi-reworked almost universally end up in a worse situation on the other end (MCH, and most recently, SAM)

Asking them for a rework to DRK is playing an extremely dangerous game of russian roulette. For all we know, they might just decide to think the reason people are calling for a rework is because people find the current job too complex, and then obliterate MP management and give Edge/Flood charges & remove MP cost and change nothing else.

Talking about potential reworks for the job is a pointless endeavor - given their extremely evident stance that they want tank kits to be simple overall (evidenced through constant watering down of all tanks and even this expansion's attempts at completely obliterating Atonement optimizations, along with the change to IR to make it impossible to mess up), pretty much 99% of people's fanfiction in this thread would be disqualified due to being even slightly complex. Far more productive conversation if you want the devs to take it even remotely seriously is as Lyth said - to talk about the current gaps of the job and what can be done to improve or add-on to the current kit come 7.0, keeping in mind the dev's intention to keep tank offensive kits simplified.

[Shurrikhan]

For all we know, they might just decide to think the reason people are calling for a rework is because people find the current job too complex, and then obliterate MP management and give Edge/Flood charges & remove MP cost and change nothing else.

Wait, that's not what those asking for TBN to have its MP cost removed were going for?



That is, after all, the only difference between the two outside of the MP-less version being slightly less oGCD-dense during burst, slightly more oGCD-dense during lulls, and being slightly less punished by downtime.

:: (It's odd how often people don't think about the implications of requested changes until job-wide descriptors blow back into their field of view.)

[RyuDragnier]

Removing the MP cost from TBN merely makes it so that it's on par with other defensives without having to sacrifice potential damage to use it. Besides, they can always add job identity and kit synergy in other ways. They could:

A. Bring back Dark Arts in a Eukrasia form on a charge system that alters what things do, such as (if they make Oblation available at level 45) using DA on Oblation just changes it to Dark Mind, sacrificing the physical defense portion for the heavy magic defense. Or making it so using it on Unmend changes it to Abyssal Drain.

B. Make it so using Blood moves requires the Darkside buff to be up, but using a Blood move drains your Darkside buff by 15s per use, so instead of being some passive that may as well not exist, it works with your kit. Combine with removing TBN's MP cost, and our MP ends up being used to keep Darkside up instead of just used whenever possible. So a Delirium use would essentially be -45s on Darkside, so you're using 1-2 Edges in that Delirium burst to avoid losing Darkside.

C. Combine the above two.

[Shurrikhan]

...

Oh, we could certainly make MP matter in other ways. It's just that for the time being, TBN is the only difference between having "MP" and "3 (Accelerable) Edge/Flood charges".

[baklava151]

Asking them for a rework to DRK is playing an extremely dangerous game of russian roulette. For all we know, they might just decide to think the reason people are calling for a rework is because people find the current job too complex, and then obliterate MP management and give Edge/Flood charges & remove MP cost and change nothing else.

I was joking with someone a while back depending on how the DRG/AST changes go in 6.2, I might just start saying the job is perfect as is for that reason lol

Talking about potential reworks for the job is a pointless endeavor - given their extremely evident stance that they want tank kits to be simple overall (evidenced through constant watering down of all tanks and even this expansion's attempts at completely obliterating Atonement optimizations, along with the change to IR to make it impossible to mess up), pretty much 99% of people's fanfiction in this thread would be disqualified due to being even slightly complex. Far more productive conversation if you want the devs to take it even remotely seriously is as Lyth said - to talk about the current gaps of the job and what can be done to improve or add-on to the current kit come 7.0, keeping in mind the dev's intention to keep tank offensive kits simplified.

Thing is I don't think there's any real glaring problems with current DRK that they would fix this expansion, maybe Oblation still being pretty underwhelming and lower self-sustain than other tanks but fixing those things won't make its gameplay any better. Going into 7.0 the big issue is still its rotation, and I don't think there's any way to improve it while keeping it simple. Not that they have to go in the complete opposite direction and make it the most complex and obtuse thing in the world that takes hours on a striking dummy to learn but I think people asking for something a bit more complex and engaging is still valid feedback. Otherwise you mind as well go tell healers they're forever stuck with a dot and nuke for their DPS kit.

[baklava151]

It's also because we're the only tank with a single GCD combo. PLD has Goring Blade and Royal Authority combos, GNB has Solid Barrel and Gnashing Fang combos, WAR has Storm's Path and Storm's Eye combos. DRK only has Souleater, we're just asking for a second GCD combo so we're less boring on that front when everything is down.

I've been bouncing around the idea in my head of the second combo being used for Darkside maintenance but it would need something else to not strictly be a Storm's Path copy. Having Blood drain Darkside like you said below might be one answer though to make it more active.