Dark Knight Megathread

[The_User]

He is our inner darkness not the real fray nor a CNJ.


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I don't believe you need to wait for my permission to leave sir.

[Briarthorn]

Now in 14, it has to have some kind of off-tanking potential just to fit the role, and as the designated "magic tank", it doing so by weaving a barrier of runes around an ally is a compromise between practical concerns and job fantasy. (Your mileage may vary on the exact manner in which it does so fitting said fantasy, but for now, it does the job.)

On this point, not sure if this really has any real use. Using health has always been Dark knights thing in other games, but something that has never really happened outside of the new pvp mode.Yet eating shields is something the shield healers have been able to do for a while now. If there were a way to add some smaller shields to DRKs kit without throwing off its more damaged focused tank niche it could help it feel more like its job.

Sort of like sion from league and such it could sacrifice them when uneeded for damage and keep them when useful, trying to get a bit out of them in the mean time. Low healing would still probably need to be a weakness.

Probably not worth the hassle but, eh.

[Oizen]

I don't think we should be clinging to lore as a reason to withhold what a class needs.

Unless you want to tell me the lore reason that the devs loved TBN so much that every single tank basically became the same and got a variant of it.

[Archwizard]

I don't think we should be clinging to lore as a reason to withhold what a class needs.

Lore's sort of a guideline, but in DRK's case there are ways to give them what they need within their lore.

For instance, methods of self-healing? Drain magic is a historical precedent. We have Abyssal Drain and the new version of Living Dead already. Blood Weapon is named after a class of weapons and skills for self-healing through attacking.
My objection above wasn't related to self-healing, but rather the ability to direct heal other people. That's something we don't even need, much less fitting the job description.

I honestly don't mind DRK being more tuned around reducing damage taken over self healing. We don't need more self-healing tanks.

Again it's a dead horse, but... if you put a gun to my head, showed me the list of tanks with only the other FF games as context, and asked me which should be high mitigation and low self-healing, I would probably point to WAR or GNB before DRK.

[Archwizard]

if you put a gun to my head, showed me the list of tanks with only the other FF games as context, and asked me which should be high mitigation and low self-healing, I would probably point to WAR or GNB before DRK.

Which expanding on this, is a bit of an odd space particularly when you include Gunbreaker.

Like, if I had to sum up each of the jobs based on precedents across the FF series:
Paladin: A shield-bearing knight who combines the ability to Cover and use White Magic to protect and support allies, while smiting foes with holy blades.
While 14's PLD isn't 100% this description (given that Cover is sort of a niche skill and it rarely uses Clemency), as far as practicality is concerned it's close enough -- strong mitigation and access to healing magic.

Given that "Warrior" is sort of broad in the FF series but is supposed to be closest to a Berserker, the interpretation of it as a tank would probably be described as...
Warrior: A non-magical berserker who works himself into a battle frenzy, implacably fighting through all injuries or obstacles like a raging bull.
Dark Knight: A fallen knight who uses unholy magics to debilitate and drain from foes while growing more powerful through her own suffering.
IMO, 14's versions are a far departure from these visuals, since in execution both of these jobs ended up being swapped, especially as of Shadowbringers stripping down Dark Arts and introducing Nascent Flash.
You have WAR who is magically self-healing, and DRK who is being pressed as the raw mitigation tank. For all that has been pushed forward about DRK being the magical tank, it really just ends up feeling like an armor job that just happens to include Dark Mind.

Once again, I could not tell you what the central theme of GNB's mitigation style is supposed to be. The FF8 gunblade theme only informs its rapid attacks.
But okay, let's say I based it off of what we'd seen from Thancred, then...
Gunbreaker: A fleet-footed bodyguard who evades and outmaneuvers foes, tactically employing the recoil of his own attacks to retreat or engage.
Which of course is... basically nothing like what we have, since the only "evasion" part of the kit is like, Camouflage. And I guess their magical cartridges can just do whatever you want.

[Shurrikhan]

Which expanding on this, is a bit of an odd space particularly when you include Gunbreaker.

Like, if I had to sum up each of the jobs based on precedents across the FF series:
Paladin: A shield-bearing knight who combines the ability to Cover and use White Magic to protect and support allies, while smiting foes with holy blades.
While 14's PLD isn't 100% this description (given that Cover is sort of a niche skill and it rarely uses Clemency), as far as practicality is concerned it's close enough -- strong mitigation and access to healing magic.

Given that "Warrior" is sort of broad in the FF series but is supposed to be closest to a Berserker, the interpretation of it as a tank would probably be described as...
Warrior: A non-magical berserker who works himself into a battle frenzy, implacably fighting through all injuries or obstacles like a raging bull.
Dark Knight: A fallen knight who uses unholy magics to debilitate and drain from foes while growing more powerful through her own suffering.
IMO, 14's versions are a far departure from these visuals, since in execution both of these jobs ended up being swapped, especially as of Shadowbringers stripping down Dark Arts and introducing Nascent Flash.
You have WAR who is magically self-healing, and DRK who is being pressed as the raw mitigation tank. For all that has been pushed forward about DRK being the magical tank, it really just ends up feeling like an armor job that just happens to include Dark Mind.

Once again, I could not tell you what the central theme of GNB's mitigation style is supposed to be. The FF8 gunblade theme only informs its rapid attacks.
But okay, let's say I based it off of what we'd seen from Thancred, then...
Gunbreaker: A fleet-footed bodyguard who evades and outmaneuvers foes, tactically employing the recoil of his own attacks to retreat or engage.
Which of course is... basically nothing like what we have, since the only "evasion" part of the kit is like, Camouflage. And I guess their magical cartridges can just do whatever you want.

I feel like it comes down to what functions should be deliberate/separable among each, and what that's supposed to afford.
For PLD, support feels like it should be a key, core, deliberate feature. Intended affordance: On-demand (esp., emergency) support. Thus, Clemency (especially at its 20% more powerful and Req-affected potency) made a lot of sense. Cover, especially with neither a gauge cost nor built-in additional mitigation, made a lot of sense.

For WAR, there's little that feels like it ought to be separable, while the intended affordance appeared to be the ability to be less affected by functioning outside of normal party support (having a bit more burst damage potential in itself to shut down key targets, its sustain being less context-dependent as to be less dependent upon timely help, etc.). Thus, self-healing being tied to and around damage-dealing made sense.

For DRK, offense and defense were to be a bit more separate of choices than WAR, but from a shared resource, such that it offered, as its affordance, timely control of that balance. One was to be rewarded for correctly shifting inputs towards their variably useful tools to greatest possible output. They were a bastard with a bag of tricks, with a higher than average performance gap from those tricks' utilization.

And I've no idea what GNB was ever supposed to have meshed or afforded, as it's never felt like anything more than a fairly rigid DPS with some tank CDs slapped atop it.

Gunbreaker: A fleet-footed bodyguard who evades and outmaneuvers foes, tactically employing the recoil of his own attacks to retreat or engage.

I'd jump for the soonest opportunity to play GNB if that were what it actually was.

[Archwizard]

For PLD, support feels like it should be a key, core, deliberate feature. Intended affordance: On-demand (esp., emergency) support. Thus, Clemency (especially at its 20% more powerful and Req-affected potency) made a lot of sense. Cover, especially with neither a gauge cost nor built-in additional mitigation, made a lot of sense.

And while I agree with that, in practice, you end up avoiding supportive skills almost entirely.
Of the four tanks, three of them can heal other people (DRK can't and that's fine IMO), but until Endwalker, PLD was the only one who had to lose momentum and stop damage-dealing to do that; even now, optimally, you avoid Clemency entirely and leave it to healers. Also, Requiescat was specifically reworked in Endwalker to only give Clemency the instant cast time -- no more healing buff.
Likewise, Cover is such a risky maneuver (unless you're using HG) that you're encouraged to just use Intervention instead. Even its most iconic support skill, Passage, has some DPS cost to use outside of downtime.

It has the tools, yes. They're implemented in such a manner they get pushed into the background, however, especially when someone like WAR or GNB can toss their equivalents around freely.

For WAR, there's little that feels like it ought to be separable, while the intended affordance appeared to be the ability to be less affected by functioning outside of normal party support (having a bit more burst damage potential in itself to shut down key targets, its sustain being less context-dependent as to be less dependent upon timely help, etc.). Thus, self-healing being tied to and around damage-dealing made sense.

And I get conceptually, 'sating your bloodlust' encourages creating an active mitigation playstyle, such as self-healing through damage actions.
But, ignoring that that doesn't make drain attacks the sole domain of WAR like some people in this thread would believe, you have two parts of that which make its existing implementation somewhat uncomfortable:

1) The fact that the Warrior can heal other people the same way. There's no way about it: that's magic.
The one tank who's supposed to be banned from magic is performing healing on other people, no bandages or potions or gadgets being tossed like GNB's excuse, just aether manipulation. As I said before, I understand the point of Shadowbringers was offering off-tanking tools to all tanks... but one can't reasonably say party healing makes little sense for DRK (who at least can do magic, just the wrong kind) while allowing it for WAR.
2) There are other ways to have an active mitigation playstyle beyond direct-healing actions, including having it build raw DR/armor or even stackable barriers -- things that increase maximum EHP in conjunction with external sources of healing.

Not to say that WAR shouldn't have any healing -- a second wind via Equilibrium or an EHP boost from Thrill make sense, even has Storm's Path for exactly the "heal by attacking" element -- but the existing method is a bit far beyond the job descriptor.

[DRK was] a bastard with a bag of tricks, with a higher than average performance gap from those tricks' utilization.

And now it doesn't even have a bag of tricks, owing to only having three ways to spend MP -- with two of them being the same and the last just facilitating the others.

And you wouldn't want "tricks" anyway, since now you're just encouraged to have the barrier get eaten before it runs out; things like Blind and Slow become counterintuitive.

And I've no idea what GNB was ever supposed to have meshed or afforded, as it's never felt like anything more than a fairly rigid DPS with some tank CDs slapped atop it.

GNB really feels like the repository job -- "Let's take every idea that we felt didn't work for the direction of any other tank and slap them together." It has barriers, on-demand DR, parry boost, HoTs, Excog... none of which are iconic to it, none of which flow into each other except for its invuln or give a clear idea of its niche... it just does everything, but poorly compared to a specialist.
How it somehow works in spite of that is either a miracle or grand illusion.

If DRK wasn't so embroiled in the concept of counterattacking as part of its own identity, I would think it would be a fine place for GNB considering its only defining feature is, y'know, its weapon and continuous slashing style. FF8 even opens with a Quickdraw with swords, while Thancred is constantly counterattacking in the ShB trailer.

[HyonaCookie]

I honestly don't mind DRK being more tuned around reducing damage taken over self healing. We don't need more self-healing tanks. Just buff Oblation and make Dark Mind also mitigate physical damage. And make magical damage be more noticeable. Also would like to do more damage, maybe make our AOEs a gain on 2 instead of 3-4.

[The_User]

If 14 is faithful to ff lore then we wouldn't see WAR got drain ability. Blood Weapon would behave like Blood Weapon used to be in 11.

DRK wouldn't have to rely on a barrier. It would be the strongest drain tank.

WAR wouldn't have Defiance&Deliverance sacrifice hp for dps style that we know it used to belong to DRK.

PLD wouldn't restore hp by Holy Spirit&Circle.

If the d team are even faithful to 14's lore then DRK wouldn't have to lose Dark Dance and Dark Art concept to GNB and other job.

Reaper who obviously got ability and style of DRK is also the living proof that they don't stick to lore as long as it make the company earn more cash.

[The_User]

Arcane Crest *cough* *cough*