Dark Knight Megathread

[GoatOfWar]

Boy the Warrior hate is almost as mindless as the state of healing at this point. Either make fun of them because they deserve it or make fun of them because they have a good patch after a few not so fun patches.

How about instead we indeed get the other tanks up to snuff. Dark Knight very much could do with more self sustain, all the magical defensives being converted into full defensives because Dark Knight doesn't need to be the "magic defense" tank in a game where every tank can mitigate all damage. Lean more into their identity of leaning into MP to go ham with offense and defense, and get some more life leech as they drain the blood of their enemies. While were at it, give Dark Knight some extra GCD combos. I remember when they had more than one combo chain and it was a nice time.

Advocating for constant nerfs to something just because it's popular to hate on it is just asking for an argument where it isn't needed. Buff the others up so everyone can be happy enjoying good tanks. Wouldn't that be some good food for thought, because I would love for the job design to be better balanced overall so everyone can have a good time with their job and not feel sad.

Warrior should not be setting a new standard with the ridiculous gamebreaking amount of sustain that they have. We have healers for a reason.
The tank imbalance is mostly just War being so far ahead of the others. It was balanced when War had downsides in the form of slightly lower dps to counterbalance the sustain and utility. But yall didn't want balance.

[Shurrikhan]

Buff the others up so everyone can be happy enjoying good tanks

And that is how, through power creep, you not only get nerfed content and disproportion within each tank's kits (percentile sustain feeling increasingly less valuable except where uniquely preventing OHKOs, making their kits feel increasingly lop-sided or outright jank), but also role imbalance that makes healers, especially, feel like crap to play.

If there is an outlier, unless its direction would also improve the contexts of that role, it should simply be trimmed back or balanced more holistically (e.g., accounting for any healer GCDs saved and raid-positional opportunities afforded by taking the high-sustain-but-faintly-lower-damage tank over the lower-sustain-but-faintly-higher-damage tank). You shouldn't then just increase everything else to the outputs/affordances of that outlier.

[MikoRemi]

Warrior should not be setting a new standard with the ridiculous gamebreaking amount of sustain that they have. We have healers for a reason.
The tank imbalance is mostly just War being so far ahead of the others. It was balanced when War had downsides in the form of slightly lower dps to counterbalance the sustain and utility. But yall didn't want balance.

Healers could be more useful in the higher end content where not even Warrior level of healing can save them. Can you tell me the last time tanks learned how to LB3 to remove doom in Ultima Weapon's Refrain? I sure don't. I don't remember the last time Warrior's knew esuna either.

And that is how, through power creep, you not only get nerfed content and disproportion within each tank's kits (percentile sustain feeling increasingly less valuable except where uniquely preventing OHKOs, making their kits feel increasingly lop-sided or outright jank), but also role imbalance that makes healers, especially, feel like crap to play.

Or just boost the content and the other jobs to match the content instead of simply assuming content will be nerfed for the sake of it? Healers in general need their own kind of rework but I'm no healer so I wouldn't speak for them. A good start is focusing on more cleanses but not making it so obnoxious given Esuna is a GCD and all, but it's something they have that they can use freely. Unless you want to bring in a full party of Bards.

[Shurrikhan]

Or just boost the content and the other jobs to match the content instead of simply assuming content will be nerfed for the sake of it?

I'm not assuming that content would be actively nerfed "for the sake of it". Increasing players' power available at a given ilvl, such as by buffing an entire role's capacities up to that of its best in role in each, inherently reduces the difficulty of content. The difficulty of output needs is relative to output available.

And even boosting the content difficulty doesn't fix the problem you've then caused in balance between roles. While the increased sustain requirements may still reach the same difficulty in sum as before, the portions of contribution will have shifted to make healers that much more irrelevant.

[GoatOfWar]

Healers could be more useful in the higher end content where not even Warrior level of healing can save them. Can you tell me the last time tanks learned how to LB3 to remove doom in Ultima Weapon's Refrain? I sure don't. I don't remember the last time Warrior's knew esuna either.



Or just boost the content and the other jobs to match the content instead of simply assuming content will be nerfed for the sake of it? Healers in general need their own kind of rework but I'm no healer so I wouldn't speak for them. A good start is focusing on more cleanses but not making it so obnoxious given Esuna is a GCD and all, but it's something they have that they can use freely. Unless you want to bring in a full party of Bards.

So you think we should just put doom in every fight as a shoehorn fix to tank sustain running completely out of hand? Nah, you were given lower damage in exchange for ridiculous sustain and utility but you didn't want balance. Warrior mains wanted our damage, so now it's time to give up your sustain and utility so that you're on even grounds with us in that regard as well. This is the homogenisation you were asking for. War mains wanted to become Dark knight but with a simpler rotation and a better overall kit. Don't shy away from the downsides that come with that damage. It is time to accept the consequences of homogenisation. Endless powercreep will just break the game.

[MikoRemi]

Bold of you to strawman every warrior in such a way, shows where the priorities are.

It's funny you mention Doom though, especially lately in dungeons its been appearing more often for failed mechanics than before such as in The Fell Court of Troia, Lapis Manalis, and The Lunar Subterrane, so they're already planning along that route anyway, you can be the strongest Warrior ever and Doom will still kill you, and that's fine because it gives healers and even Bard a chance to shine.

If you hate Warrior so much, that's on you but personally coming from many different MMO's, just asking for constant nerfs to other classes solely because you hate them just leads to other people not really caring for your own class or ideas and leads to people being unhappy in general. I'd rather other classes such as Dark Knight get changes that make them better overall since I've played Dark Knight alongside just about every job in the game(not counting Scholar, personal preference), and I'm not satisfied with what it could be. I guess it doesn't matter though, you'd rather see the real old Warrior's that couldn't even main tank back in the old days of ARR from your general attitude.

Everyone likes their classes to be fun and interesting, and it'd be nice to band together over that rather than try to put one over the other just because the balance is skewing towards the other end. Be surprised, a Warrior main wants every job to be satisfied rather than your interpretation of us wanting to be the best in spite of other jobs.

[MikoRemi]

Because I would rather have NO tanks have the amount of party healing War does, not even War. It's completely unnecessary when we have healers as an actual role. Even it's self-sustain could be toned down a be toned down a bit, to about PLD's level without clemency.

Dark Knight does not desperately need the increased self-sustain people like to say it does. That, and magic defense is one of the few things DRK can say it's better at than the other tanks thanks to Dark Mind, I'd like to not lose that. They can give us a better offensive kit that isn't essentially WAR with extra oGCD's to burst with. IF we get that added self-sustain in the process then I'm not going to complain (especially if we by some miracle get old Abyssal Drain back).

Ok and I find it cool to have that sustain to make comebacks in case healers end up eating the dust. It's more of a shame that Paladin and Warrior are the only ones with good amounts of healing. Dark Knight could use it, it used to have Abyssal Drain usable via MP and while Dark Arts was pretty whatever to use, it did boost the effectiveness quite a bit. Sure you can say the boost to magic defense is great but then again, every tank can just mitigate all damage, it doesn't even really do it that much better. Why stick for something less just for the sake of identity. It used to have a old Living Dead and it sure set itself apart from other invulns by being absolutely awful, but that got fixed to be much much better now. Yes I would rather it not try to be Warrior in terms of execution, that's just a weird thing they did that they obviously didn't do with Paladin or Gunbreaker.

But hey, if people wanna run in circles and say how horrible Warrior is for their fates, so be it.

[Oizen]

I kinda view it as problems that compound on eachother, DRK doesn't need more sustain in raids.
But what if you're not in a raid?
And what if the content you're in doesn't break TBN?
And what if that damage you're taking isn't magic based, and what if thats below lv 82 so you don't even have Oblation?

Thats where DRK feels the shittiest to me. But now that we're in a world where tanks can do more damage and have higher sustain and utility,
I see no real reason to play this back and forth anymore. DRK having sustain wouldn't be a big deal. Its also pretty much completely unprecedented to see them actually care to nerf something instead of play catch up.

Gonna quote myself from different thread with random idea I had:

I think DRK could be tied together nicely if it had a GCD that consumed all accumulated darkside and did damage/provided healing based on how much was consumed. Give it a 30s CD and it gives you something to do between bursts, gives the job the much needed healing its missing, and makes darkside a real resource that you'd care about overcapping.

Maybe throw some of those cool PVP features of Salted earth into PVE.
I really don't think the job is that far off, and between the two I view it as the more fun version of WAR. Its just it never really gets the attention or push it needs to make it feel complete.

If I were to try to fix DRK's core issues with 1 skill thats how I'd do it, and I'd probably aim it as a rework to Abyssal Drain rather than adding a new skill so its present earlier in the kit.
Gives the job something to do outside of bursts, gives it the healing it doesnt have, gives darkside a purpose. Doesn't change too much of the job outside of that.

[Oizen]

I mean its really not helping WAR's case that their skills all read like modern yugioh cards.
Take a drink every time you read "Additional Effect"

And no one is saying to nerf WAR's damage, the thing that made it not brought to p8s (which was nerfed anyway). Keep the damage, I don't care.

The shit that needs to be toned back is Shake it Off Overtime (revert this buff), Nascent and Bloodwhetting. I'd just remove overtime as it was never needed to begin with, make BW/NF only heal per gcd instead of target, and then remove the double dip from NF. If they want to replace it with a (small) direct heal on Nascent instead of constant lifesteal that be fine.

[Kalaam]

For a while I thought each tank kind of had its gimmick as to how they tanked:
PLD would be raw damage reduction with % and some direct healing through committed ability use (clemency)
DRK with single target shield/tempHP and less versatile but more powerful magic damage mitigation. (and for a time stuff like blind to deal with packs of trash, where shields aren't as useful)
GND seemed to a little bit of everything (getting a bit of heal and shield in its base combo) supporting a fairly sturdy regen.
And WAR with just big lifesteal to soak up the damage back.

But now WAR has like... everything. Big shields, big direct heal, big regen, big damage reduction. All the ways you can reduce damage WAR can do it as well or better than the other tanks.
I always figured WAR would be a tank that works by having a very big HP pool and ways to "shrug it off" either by having regen or effects that increase healing received tremendously or increase their total HP even more.