Dark Knight Megathread

[OdinelStarrei]

Yup, DRK time again. I'm not going to have another diatribe, just...here's some issues. Drafting this up pre 7.05 later tonight, hoping for changes.

1. Living Shadow is becoming seriously problematic. Esteem disappears when you get launched in M1, this causes you to ghost hits. Also, Shadowstride on Esteem is still coded as a "physical ranged attack" so it takes up space in it's "rotation" when enemies disengage. This has to be some kind of oversight, because if enemies disengage and you are forced to move Esteem, and it may delay, dash, and then not have enough duration to get off the final hit. What's the final hit? Disesteem. So, there's 620 potency lost because Esteem wanted to Shadowstride instead. If it Plunged instead, it would only be a loss of 200 using base Simulacrum potency.
2. The decrease in APM, regardless of intent, is seriously diminishing my enjoyment of the job.
3. Blood Weapon being only 3 stacks, down from 5 is a baffling decision, both pre and post Delirium acquisition. Nerfing MP on DRK means less Edges and less TBNs. But it STILL isn't enough to make Darkside an interesting damage buff to maintain. So that's a mistake in both directions, when every other tank is getting more. More explosion combo on GNB, much more buzzsaw fantasy and ground aether on WAR, PLD gets free oGCD for Blade Combo. What are we BUILDING towards? Why is this entire job so boring?
4. CnS is almost vestigial at this point, 60 seconds is far too long for a cooldown that matters this little both in it's pitiful 510 potency and "additional effect" of a minimal amount of MP. 30 seconds, 2 stacks. Come on! Blasting Zone is 800 potency with HALF the cooldown!
5. Enhanced Unmend being nerfed unintentionally due to the addition of Shadowstride is the final straw for this job for me. It's embarrassing how legitimately confused I was when I realized this. Turn Enhanced Unmend into a trait that turns Shadowstride into Plunge to offset the potency loss from disengagement. Or something...

I'm playing Reaper, actually crazy how the job can change so little going into DT but still have some serious gas in the tank, Double Enshourd windows with Perfectio are peak. That's a job that remained pretty much exactly the same, but tangibly had an attempted upgrade in a minor fashion, and I think, they succeeded and improved on the base. DRK feels like, yet again, things were taken away, and not enough was given in exchange to make it worthwhile. Barebones job, I have more interesting resource management on Reaper with 3 Enshrouds per every 2 mins. I feel like I'm playing EW DRK, but worse. Which was just ShB DRK, but worse, due to 2 min consolidation.

DRK is such a letdown, and I didn't even have expectations.

[ApolloGenX]

I'm tired of damage being the only thing that matters with a tiny utility being the difference. Why can't we have 4 well defined good tanks with different playstyles...not just who hits more buttons??

[Oizen]

I'm tired of damage being the only thing that matters with a tiny utility being the difference. Why can't we have 4 well defined good tanks with different playstyles...not just who hits more buttons??

They only balance the game for week 1 savage specifically with all other forms of content being deliberately disregarded, and the community gets really upset if you imply they should balance around anything else.

[Somnolence]

I'm tired of damage being the only thing that matters with a tiny utility being the difference. Why can't we have 4 well defined good tanks with different playstyles...not just who hits more buttons??

Problem is, DRK in addition to all the issues is still lowest dps tank overall. While the gap might be lower than before due to buffs, being at the bottom is bad optics and only contributes to the perception is that the job sucks.

No wonder it is least played one for the new savage (Tank breakdown for M1S: WAR 34%, GNB 27%, PLD 22%, DRK 17%).

[hotaruchan]

Problem is, DRK in addition to all the issues is still lowest dps tank overall. While the gap might be lower than before due to buffs, being at the bottom is bad optics and only contributes to the perception is that the job sucks.

No wonder it is least played one for the new savage (Tank breakdown for M1S: WAR 34%, GNB 27%, PLD 22%, DRK 17%).

I mean even if the dps was the same down to the last digit between the four tanks, taking damage 100% out of the equation. Why would you bother bringing drk over any of the other 3? Less party utility, less sustain, one of it's major mitigations is pointless for major chunks of a physical damage predominant encounter set up. TBN has been propping up the job since it's inception and it's getting old.

[Shurrikhan]

TBN has been propping up the job since it's inception and it's getting old.

TBN was useful but hardly invasive in its inception in Stormblood. That just happens, though, to be a time in which tank active healing was both very high and at-cost, whereas now its less interestingly provided and (unless you fail to pop TBN) entirely "free". It's not what caused that shift though, but merely the sole survivor of it (save in that it now grants MP cost nullification instead of 50 Blood, all so we could pretend Dark Arts still exists by carrying over its name onto an effect irrelevant to its prior function).

[Oizen]

I think Dark Knight is particularly bad this tier because its a very Physical Damage heavy fight, thus you're only going to get to use Dark Missionary and Dark Mind like once.
This pairs very well with TBN's psuedo 120s CD due to the MP nerfs

The World First team did run a DRK though but I feel like it was in spite of the job, not because of anything it brought. Damage wise the tanks are pretty equal right now

[Derio]

Damage wise the tanks are all very close. With this tier being mostly physical damage, including the tank busters. Dark mind becomes a wasted button for the all of M1 and M3. And Dark missionary as well. This limits your effectiveness to only M2 and M4 which is a problem because that means 1 of the 4 tanks have 2 abilities that serve no purpose to the fight which mitigation numbers wise puts them at a disadvantage.

Ultimately it doesnt matter because you can clear the content. The real question is will we see changes in 7.1

[Shurrikhan]

Ultimately it doesnt matter because you can clear the content.

A job having a third of its defensives arbitrarily made useless is bad for its gameplay regardless of whether it can still clear content. And as this is a game, said gameplay should be valued.

[Kaixern]

A job having a third of its defensives arbitrarily made useless is bad for its gameplay regardless of whether it can still clear content. And as this is a game, said gameplay should be valued.

Which is also hilarious because most of the time the argument one could hear about DRK is that:

"Dark mind is really powerfull and has a really short CD, with the amount of magic damages in raids it still puts DRK above the other in terms of mitigation"

In theory, maybe.
but in cases like that, well.....