Dark Knight Megathread

[Drkdays]

Missing plunge :c

The new gap closer does no damage, so it's not nearly as useful, plus plunge reminded me of Guts and wasn't that the point??

[WhyAmIHere]

The only feedback they care about comes from streamers.

but only for some jobs.
coughWARcough

[Shurrikhan]

We also got this delirium change because people request it. Don't try to shift the responsibility.

People also requested to reduce Blood Weapon to a (more impactful) 40s CD so BW and Del weren't just Bloodlirium Part 1 and Bloodlirium Part 2...

It seems a bit odd to assign blame based on a group's "If nothing else..." especially when that fallback option was paired with more MP generation to make up for its APM loss.

[Drayman1985]

I'll start with the good they added.

-I think Disesteem is alright. Not the best addition but certainly not the worst
-I think the additional effects to Shadow wall is good, but the two minute cooldown makes it unreliable.
-I love the Delirium combo, but it's a stand in for all that was lost this expansion.

Now for the problems
-Combining blood weapon and delirium was a terrible move for the job. Blood weapon was used often as resource management. When it had 5 stacks you could effectively gain another TBN or Edge/Flood of Shadow to use AT ANY TIME with extra (total mp regeneration was 4200 if using basic combo). Delirium was a dps button that allowed for 5 blood spillers with full gauge (was up to 7 in ShB) now it's only 3 with the new combo adding a grand total of 600 potency at level 96 (20 potency more than the single bloodspiller we lost) and now we don't have the mana regeneration on top of that.

-Plunge. Where do I begin? I didn't think something so simple would have such an impact on my rotation or how the job felt to play. I lost 300 potency in the burst, and then I lost the ability to weave 150 potency throughout the fight. The animation just feels bad. I can't explain it, but after playing it as my main for ShB and Endwalker, it just doesn't feel right without it.

-There is still no change to dark mind/dark missionary. There is no real indicator as to what is or isn't magic damage so they sit as a dead buttons if they are used at all.

Now for the changes
-Turn Dark mind and dark missionary into full mitigations or make it so that dark mind gives us a window for mana regeneration similar to what blood weapon did before.

-Separate blood weapon from delirium and put both to five stack with Delirium activating the new combo ( I'll take delirium going to 3 stacks like it is now. I just want the mana regeneration back).

-Make abyssal drain cure for more potency with a lower cooldown.

-The Blackest Knight, once hailed as the best tank mitigation has really fallen off. Add some life gain to it, please, or mana regeneration and 20% mitigation on top of the shield and remove oblation. Keep the same cooldown time as it is tied to a resource that is used for dps as well as defense. All the other tanks have this with their signature cooldown. Why not us?

[Oizen]

I've cleared the first extreme and peeked into the second, my general findings of the DRK changes is the job is actually harder now, which I feel is unintentional.
That 1200 mp per minute we lost is actually really important, as with only 3 mp spenders between burst windows, it indirectly makes Darkside Management a real thing, which inturn means TBN is even more punishing if it doesn't break.

And whats worse is post Burst window, I'm finding it takes significantly longer to return to 3k MP for TBN usage. This bit feels unintentional.

[Vallerie]

-The Blackest Knight, once hailed as the best tank mitigation has really fallen off. Add some life gain to it, please, or mana regeneration and 20% mitigation on top of the shield and remove oblation. Keep the same cooldown time as it is tied to a resource that is used for dps as well as defense. All the other tanks have this with their signature cooldown. Why not us?

Problem is that adding more to TBN itself without you having control over whether or not you add it in the moment has high potential to be counterproductive, especially in anything below savage.
Add mit? Well now TBN is harder to break and get a refund on, meaning you can only use it on bigger hits, effectively taking more damage from smaller ones.
Add healing at the end or on use? If the hit is small enough, or you've thrown on enough mit, there is a high chance the healing will be wasted.
Keeping the refund to equal to cost is also good, because it keeps it as mitigation focused, if you make refund greater, it pushes you to burn TBN just to get extra potency.

And I'm pretty sure devs are aware of this, which is why Oblation exists. It's a genuinely good solution to TBN, because you can choose whether or not to use it alongside TBN, bypassing the issue #1. Now, they could've/should've added more to Oblation, but it's a good button. Oblation good.
The other 'solutions' take the risk aspect away, either by giving you refund on the first hit instead of break, or simply turn it into free mit like the other tank mits, and idk about you, but I don't want that.

[Tunda]

Why not just assign the person who design dark knight pvp to dark knight pve

Pvp dark knight is very rewarding

[Avorie]

So after actually playing with the changes to DRK. I was trying to give it benefit of the doubt but....I hate it.

Plunge change I can stomach, but both the Blood Weapon and Living Shadow are straight up downgrades to the class made for no reason. Living Shadow lost its only tie to the rest of the kit that was its cost, so now it's just empty button to press. Blood Weapon losing 2 stacks means our mana economy is worse, both making the problem of everything outside of 2 minutes being non-rotation worse, and it makes TBN feel worse to press, which just...awful.
And all we got in return is this lousy GCD. Thanks, I hate it.

Give BW its 2 stacks back, increase the MP gain on the 3 stacks it has, hell, reduce CD on Delirium to 40 seconds....anything. The other tanks are at worst the same as they were before, or slightly better, only DRK just got...worse.

Yeah, Blood Weapon being tied to Bloodspiller is actually awful. Instead of getting the 600 mp from the normal 1-2-3 We instead have to do Bloodspiller because Blood weapon is now directly tied to our damage.
I'd be ok with it, if Delirium/Bloodweapon still allowed you to get 600 mp with Bloodspiller, and was 5 stacks. But honestly, It feel like this is a oversight from the devs. However, the 3 stack is probably because they don't want you doing Bloodspiller for too long.

[CKNovel]

Honestly, kind of disappointed with DRK, I just started leveling it but the loss of 3 oGCDs on a rotation that already had a barebone GCDs and oGCDs diversity hurts a lot.

All the GCDs are 1 2 3 and Bloodspiller.
oGCDs consist of spamming Edge of Shadow with a sprinkle of C&S, Delirium, Salted Earth and Shadowbringer.

It's not great, DRK needs more diversity GCD and oGCD wise. I don't think Disesteem will make it more fun.

[TouchandFeel]

Overall, I am generally "meh" with the changes to DRK and it's state in Dawntrail.

There are some changes that I sort of like, such as changing the Delirium Bloodspiller spam somewhat even if really it being mostly just a visual change. I also like the removal of damage from the gap-closer so that I can hold them for movement instead of having to burn them for damage, although I wish there was some compensation in the APM department to balance out no longer having them as OGCD attacks like maybe slightly higher MP gain rates so that you are doing a little more frequent Edges/Floods or something or perhaps a reduced recast time for Carve and Spit/ Abyssal Drain of 40s instead of 60s.

As for the cons, I feel like overall not much was added to the job with this expansion that changes up the feel or game-play that we have already been doing for the entirety of Endwalker. This is an issue I have overall with the evolution of the tank jobs with this expansion and I am really hoping that they do more with the content and fight design to counter-balance this by making tanks have to do more with the tools they already have to help keep things from quickly feeling stale.

In terms of the DRK specific issues that came with this expansion, while I stated that I liked the removal of damage from the gap-closer, it does then highlight and add to an already sore point for DRK of pointless and questionable traits that seem like nothing more than spreadsheet filler than actually impactful additions to the job. If you couldn't guess already, I am talking about the Enhanced Unmend trait. It was fairly pointless before but at least you could maybe squeeze out a smidge more dps under specific circumstances, but now with the removal of damage from the gap-closer it has essentially no point at all and is not worth the screenspace used to display its underwhelming description and should be removed and replaced with something that actually adds to the job.

Personally, I would like to see as a part of initial X.1 update job tweaks that tends to happen every expansion, some clean up of these questionable "filler" traits for DRK and using that to then provide game-play elements for the job that many have been asking for for a long time.
I created a bespoke post to my thoughts on cleaning up those "filler" traits here ...
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-filler-traits

Also, as others have voiced, I think one of the biggest problems with DRK in terms of game-play is that it is too reliant on the 120 second burst with it's ability usage, then only really having the new Delirium combo at 60s to break up the basic 1-2-3 rotation asides from the occasional Blood Spiller.
DRK needs a bit more going on in the times between these 60s and 120s intervals to break up the the basic combo rotation and this doesn't need to necessarily come from new abilities, it can come from tweaking the resource economy for DRK a bit such as increasing the rate of Blood gain to increase the frequency of Blood Spillers to mix up the 1-2-3 GCD combo. Bloodspiller potency can be adjusted as necessary for balance. Additionally, the recast times for some of the job's abilities can be tweaked so that they can be more frequent but still falling into that 120s burst cycle such as changing Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain to be 40s recasts instead of 60s. Those are both just some off-the-cuff ideas around trying to mix up the 1-2-3 combo monotony on DRK.