Dark Knight Megathread

[Awful]

I'm surprised that the SGE lvl 100 ability isn't what DRKs Sole Survivor should of been, imagine having a strong 3 min CD or even make it 2 mins where everyone attacking the boss gets healed per attack.

It woulda been some nice flavor for DRK but nope SGE gets old dark arts + a better Sole Survivor.

[TouchandFeel]

I feel like one major contributing factor to DRK game-play outside of the 2 minute burst feeling a bit boring is because the Blood resource and it's associated attacks are lacking some needed extra depth as well as the accumulation of Blood being a bit too slow.

With cartridges on GNB, outside of burst prep, using those feel pretty good because you are generating 1 per combo so you are either expending 1 at then end of every combo or pooling 2 and expending those after 2 combos. That helps break up the repetition of the 1-2-3 combo by regularly having additional weaponskills inserted between combos.

On Warrior it's fairly similar with Rage with the main difference being that it takes 2 combos to generate enough Rage to use Fell Cleave and then just 1 combo on the 3rd set of combos.

The problem with DRK is it only generates 20 Blood per combo and so it take 3 combos to generate enough to do a Bloodspiller then 2 combos on the next set, because of the 10 Blood left over from the initial 3 combos, and then rinse repeat.
That extra combo or two throughout the rotation before you can do something to break up that 1-2-3 repetition really starts to add up and contribute a lot to a sense of monotony with DRK, especially considering they don't have a lot else going on in terms of additional or alternative weaponskills to use that change up their rotation.

Now, I'm not saying that DRK needs a bunch of new weaponskills to break up the repetitive combo-heavy rotation. I actually like that DRK is more focused on OGCD ability usage and I want it to stay mostly as such. However, it definitely needs more to break up just using the 1-2-3 combo over and over for long periods in their GCD rotation.

What I would potentially like to see is an increased rate of Blood gain such as changing Soul Eater from only giving 20 to giving 30. That simple change would greatly increase the number of Bloodspillers that would be available to break up the 1-2-3 repetition.
While that alone could greatly alleviate the "combo fatigue" many players feel with DRK's rotation, Bloodspiller, and Quietus somewhat, by themselves are still a bit bland and perhaps an additional affect or buff added to them would increase the enjoyment of using them, especially if they synergized with a different ability. Even something as simple as giving the DRK a buff that causes the next Edge or Flood within X number of seconds to do additional damage would be a massive improvement.

[WhyAmIHere]

I feel like one major contributing factor to DRK game-play outside of the 2 minute burst feeling a bit boring is because the Blood resource and it's associated attacks are lacking some needed extra depth as well as the accumulation of Blood being a bit too slow.

With cartridges on GNB, outside of burst prep, using those feel pretty good because you are generating 1 per combo so you are either expending 1 at then end of every combo or pooling 2 and expending those after 2 combos. That helps break up the repetition of the 1-2-3 combo by regularly having additional weaponskills inserted between combos.

On Warrior it's fairly similar with Rage with the main difference being that it takes 2 combos to generate enough Rage to use Fell Cleave and then just 1 combo on the 3rd set of combos.

The problem with DRK is it only generates 20 Blood per combo and so it take 3 combos to generate enough to do a Bloodspiller then 2 combos on the next set, because of the 10 Blood left over from the initial 3 combos, and then rinse repeat.
That extra combo or two throughout the rotation before you can do something to break up that 1-2-3 repetition really starts to add up and contribute a lot to a sense of monotony with DRK, especially considering they don't have a lot else going on in terms of additional or alternative weaponskills to use that change up their rotation.

Now, I'm not saying that DRK needs a bunch of new weaponskills to break up the repetitive combo-heavy rotation. I actually like that DRK is more focused on OGCD ability usage and I want it to stay mostly as such. However, it definitely needs more to break up just using the 1-2-3 combo over and over for long periods in their GCD rotation.

What I would potentially like to see is an increased rate of Blood gain such as changing Soul Eater from only giving 20 to giving 30. That simple change would greatly increase the number of Bloodspillers that would be available to break up the 1-2-3 repetition.
While that alone could greatly alleviate the "combo fatigue" many players feel with DRK's rotation, Bloodspiller, and Quietus somewhat, by themselves are still a bit bland and perhaps an additional affect or buff added to them would increase the enjoyment of using them, especially if they synergized with a different ability. Even something as simple as giving the DRK a buff that causes the next Edge or Flood within X number of seconds to do additional damage would be a massive improvement.

call me conceited. idc. these arguments have been made for years now.
give it another 10 blood on Syphon Strike, for example. Or give it back another GCD combo skill to, oh idk, restore some health.
"WOW so its just WAR with shittier healing even more now."
Devs have screwed the job over and resources arent being put into it.

[AddictedToWitches]

I said this in my own thread but it'd be nice if DRK was the actual sustain/drain tank. They were originally in HW and SB and traditionally have self healing and lifesteal in other FF games. It's very weird they went the healing route on WAR instead. I feel like bloodwhetting should honestly have been what an upgrade to blood weapon should have been

[Claire_Pendragon]

stuff

as the above poster said about WAR, it was made the healer tank in 1.23 and 2.0 which is odd, since PLD is mostly based on the Knight jobs that could heal, and WAR is based on a mash up of Knights that couldnt heal, and Berserker. (Im not sure what Warrior was called in the japanese version of FFXI. I just know PLD was just called Knight. edit: double checked WAR, and its soldier/warrior depending on who does the translation)

With DRKs sometimes having heals, its not too far fetched to be the "drain" tank. (Id make it more complex than that personally, but imma not flood the thread with "what if" versions of DRK right now)

EDIT#2: most of the job design was changed when Yoshida stepped in, and wanted to base a lot of it on Lineage 2. So this is why DRK was the "Magic Defense Tank", and SMN was the "poison/DoT job".

[Shurrikhan]

I said this in my own thread but it'd be nice if DRK was the actual sustain/drain tank. They were originally in HW and SB and traditionally have self healing and lifesteal in other FF games. It's very weird they went the healing route on WAR instead. I feel like bloodwhetting should honestly have been what an upgrade to blood weapon should have been

I'm not sure where this myth comes from, at least as it pertains to XIV. Warrior literally started as the tank whose only means of sustain was drain. Their only native mitigation skill, Foresight, gave all of 3% mitigation. Bloodbath was their most significant defensive (lasting for 30s per 90), alongside healing for 3x the damage of Inner Beast. Storm's Path likewise predates Souleater.

That said, Blood Weapon giving MP instead of HP was already thematic and more useful, if only for the fact of it being more bankable. The controllable vampiric portion of DRK originally came from MP expenditure, enhancing the potency and therefore healing of Souleater or causing Abyssal Drain to heal for damage dealt, as Bloodbath already did but at a much higher percentage (100% instead of 25%).

The problem was just that they removed sustain control from MP in DRK. Though, tbf, they also removed its bankability from Warrior, who could previously bank gauge for the purpose.

[Kalocin]

I said this in my own thread but it'd be nice if DRK was the actual sustain/drain tank. They were originally in HW and SB and traditionally have self healing and lifesteal in other FF games. It's very weird they went the healing route on WAR instead. I feel like bloodwhetting should honestly have been what an upgrade to blood weapon should have been

Bloodbath was originally on Maurader, it always had self heals. Dark knight wasn't really a self healing tank necessarily, it was capable of doing some monkey magic with abyssal drain and blood price but that was only really for massive aoe pulls.

The Eukrasia effect on Dark Arts was the real mechanic and it was essentially the magic tank with strict mp management. A lot of the design philosophy has changed over the years to make it irrelevant. I imagine they could probably still have some kind of unique mana mechanic (ie using it for more mitigation, use in place of HP etc) but the 2m meta doesn't really allow for much variation in fights. It's possible but they'd have to rework the mana+damage aspect to be more functional than the afterthought it currently is.

[SargeTheSeagull]

I haven't kept up with the discourse much over the last few months and I'm not about to read through 476 pages, so I'll just throw this out there.

Drk is the only tank right now that, to me, doesn't feel invincible all the time. Playing the other tanks makes you feel like you cannot possibly die unless you are just terrible beyond belief and refuse to press buttons. I derive the fun in tanking from pushing the limits of how well i can manage my cooldowns, HP and other resources vs how much damage the enemies or boss are dealing to me. The closer to the line of dying (without actually dying), the more fun I have as a tank.
The issue is that this feeling is only achievable right now on DRK; this is an issue because it means that DRK just feels downright inferior to the other tanks when as far as I'm concerned the other tanks are just horribly overtuned.

IMO, the entire role, not just DRK suffers from an identity crisis. The only tank right now that feels like it knows what it wants to be is Paladin. You're a knight wielding a sword and shield and holy magic. You can boost your defense, heal yourself and your party members, and buff the crap outta your shield. GNB is close because its whole thing is that its a tank that plays like a dps, but in terms of its defense kit its sorta all over the place. DRK, which in older FF's and most other media depicting dark knights or similar, is all about stealing the health of your enemies or consuming your own life force to fight through. In 14 its... the barrier tank. Which imo just doesn't fit. Then you've got warrior which I honestly detest. I was a warrior main when i started back in HW but war just feels like its way too good at everything. It's got self healing, raw mitigation, barriers, HP bonuses, it feels like it's just "tank the tank".

I seriously hope that next expac the devs consider giving all tanks a soft rework. I think enmity is fine as is, but I don't like how their rotations are purely for dealing damage with basically no link to their survivability and I don't like how effortless they are to play. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you should have to have a PhD in neckbearding to tank a dungeon, but feeling a little bit of mastery aside from "can I do this fight without losing a gcd" would be nice.

[Rydia_Misuto]

DRK is worthless until it has an identity other than "WAR but it does less and isn't as good."

Stormblood DRK is right there as a thing to pull from. Having multiple basic rotations was good, actually. Having multiple resources to manage was good, actually.

Right now all I do is press 1 2 3 and then I have a few pitiful OGCDs I hit. Managing MP is not a mechanic because the only things that cost MP cost 3k MP exactly and regaining MP has no depth to it, and there's nothing interesting about it. What's the difference between 3K MP cost with a fixed 10K max MP VS getting 3 stacks of a resource that naturally builds over time? (This would be bad, for the record. Don't do that.)