Dark Knight Megathread

[WhyAmIHere]

DRK was good before - it's still good now.
People who didn't like it before still don't like it - big surprise.

Blood Weapon is fine. 5 stacks would make more sense but there isn't anything wrong with it now if you know how to use it correctly.
Living Dead is still fine - you use invulns as a planned out cooldown in fights. It's not a "last resort" button - once again works fine if you know how. Only issue I have with it is that now all invulns are 10s in length, it's cooldown and holmgang should be switched,

People complaining about not having a buffed up defensive like the others? How do you add an extra effect to TBN? Heal on it is pointless. Excog on it is pointless. So we get an extra defensive.

DRK was already the best tank because of TBN - now they have 1 more defensive on top - lots of extra flexibility there. DRK is the undisputed king MT.

Intervention, Nascent, Heart - can all have their fancy effects. With a DRK - TBN + Oblation you don't take any damage anyway, so you don't need fancy effects.

On top of all this DRK has had the biggest increases in damage potential out of all tanks, and looks now to be rivalling GNB for being the biggest damage.

A lot of the doom and gloom I see around here is from people who do not play the game at a high level, or do not understand how jobs and skills interact in the game. If you don't like the gameplay loop then that's fair - there are 20 other jobs in the game for you to find something to like. I don't like MNK, SCH or GNB - too busy, too clunky, too boring - but that's okay.

I think we will still see the majority of the games best tank players in the game going for DRK - it still seems to be the consensus that DRK/GNB will be the best combo.

There are some minor things that can be improved on, but right now DRK is looking very strong.

you are flat out wrong on so many levels.

Blood weapon is not fine. It does not play nicely with dungeon AoE usage, which is what amajority of players will interact with, i.e. the non-raiders.
LD is not fine, it never has been, and it's only getting worse.
DRK used to have an excog analogue in Soul Survivor. Reaper has a skill like that now, combining the shield of TBN with the heal from Soul Survivor.
""best"" is subjective. TBN is the one thing this job does, which is lazy development ideology.
You completely gloss over how bad the heal / sustain is for DRK, having only Souleater and Abyssal Drain for self healing. TBN cannot be up all the time, nor can oblation.
Numbers you purport are based on what, the media tour? Potencies are the one thing that's more than likely to change, so going off of what we have now and the general lack of improvement it's likely DRK will either stay where it is or be pushed further down in terms of tank DPS.
I play(ed) DRK at a ""high level."" Even then, you cannot just dismiss the more numerous playersbase's inputs just because you don't find their inputs valid. You dissect their arguments and present your own reasonings as to why you believe they're wrong, like i'm doing here with you. How long've you even been playing DRK for to formulate your opinions?
You're completely off the mark there. People are salivating over PLD and all the cool new toys it's getting. That and with WAR getting heals out the wazoo it's like to be a hard toss for PLD and either WAR/GNB, or PLD/WAR and GNB, in terms of what ""high end"" players will want to use, outside of sheer enjoyment factor. (which... wow, DRK isn't even changing much from 80 to 90, so... where's the fun in doing the same shit in EW as yo did in ShB?)

DRK looks about the same as it does now. Peppered Earth is just to make up for Salted's already nerfed potencies. Shadowbringer (hate the name) isn't going to be as impactful i feel outside of your (re)openers. Enhanced unmend is a meme.

EDIT::

A correction here: Presently, Bloodspiller generates 200 MP under the effects of Delirium, not 600. It generates 600 MP under the effects of Blood Weapon—these effects are separate, and so if you have both active you'll see "Bloodspiller 200MP" and "Bloodspiller 600MP", just like in that screenshot. Which means that, at least up to that build, Delirium and Blood Weapon's MP generation per weaponskill is unchanged from Shadowbringers. Which is to say we'll get 400 less MP from Delirium-enhanced Bloodspillers, not 1,200 less.

That aside, I still think it's bizarre that Delirium-enhanced Bloodspillers only generate 200 MP to begin with.

You right. My math was still off, but still want to point out the loss of overall mana gain with the change to DelIRium and hope for it to be addressed. But i won't hold my breath.

[Danelo]

Anyone supporting DRK in endwalker look no farther than the new trait: enhanced unmend. That’s a slap in the face and proof positive SQEX devs dont play... not DRK at least... I’d be surprised if they even play tested it for EW.

Anyone seriously want to take a stab at supporting that trait and explain how devs can care about a class but put that in the kit at the same time?

#BoycottDRK

[Shurrikhan]

Anyone supporting DRK in endwalker look no farther than the new trait: enhanced unmend. That’s a slap in the face and proof positive SQEX devs dont play... not DRK at least... I’d be surprised if they even play tested it for EW.

Anyone seriously want to take a stab at supporting that trait and explain how devs can care about a class but put that in the kit at the same time?

#BoycottDRK

To be fair, let's not pretend that an even-numbered level with literally nothing to show for it hasn't happened yet, nor that the creative space is, to the devs, so rife with possibilities that this threw a better one out the window.

The only [weeze] issue, honestly, is that it's not enough. Plunge itself has only 150 potency and Unmend will remain a similarly massive ppgcd loss over typical play. What harm would there be, really, in letting it grant an entire charge? It's not as if, upon reaching the target, we'd want to continue devaluing our ppgcd by using it further.

(And if DRK were Warrior, instead of its shadow, we'd likely have gotten that an alpha-iteration later.)

/attempt_complete

[Danelo]

To be fair, let's not pretend that an even-numbered level with literally nothing to show for it hasn't happened yet, nor that the creative space is, to the devs, so rife with possibilities that this threw a better one out the window.

The only [weeze] issue, honestly, is that it's not enough. Plunge itself has only 150 potency and Unmend will remain a similarly massive ppgcd loss over typical play. What harm would there be, really, in letting it grant an entire charge? It's not as if, upon reaching the target, we'd want to continue devaluing our ppgcd by using it further.

(And if DRK were Warrior, instead of its shadow, we'd likely have gotten that an alpha-iteration later.)

/attempt_complete

I’ll give it to you that it’s obviously a filler but still is weak sauce even for that. I understand the devs wanted to add some kit connectivity, a complaint of 5.0, and couldn’t use bloodspiller to lower a timer on bw or delirium for fear of further cementing “WAR-lite 2.0” but they couldn’t come up with something better than enhanced unmend? I just want something that feels good to play. There was a thrill to getting 3.0 down. Right on the edge of loosing control and pushing to hard with mp consumption or not doing enough and playing it “safer”. I know hw DRK will never come back but the full package doesn’t seem like it will be exciting in 6.0 - certainty not comparatively anyway. Strong maybe, they can buff anything to be op, but I need fun to play. Moving forward, I want to play 6.0 DRK, not 5.0 for another two years.

[AziraSyuren]

snip

The funny thing is that DRK actually has the second best (costless) self sustain of any tank. Souleater in particular really adds up over the course of a fight.

Then, come Endwalker, it's looking to get blown out of the water by the other two tanks.

DRK really can't catch a break.

[WhyAmIHere]

The funny thing is that DRK actually has the second best (costless) self sustain of any tank. Souleater in particular really adds up over the course of a fight.

Then, come Endwalker, it's looking to get blown out of the water by the other two tanks.

DRK really can't catch a break.

DRK: When both the developers and players can only scratch their head at the mess, and with a sigh extol "well, what do we do with this mess?"

[OdinelStarrei]

DRK was good before - it's still good now.
People who didn't like it before still don't like it - big surprise.

Blood Weapon is fine. 5 stacks would make more sense but there isn't anything wrong with it now if you know how to use it correctly.
Living Dead is still fine - you use invulns as a planned out cooldown in fights. It's not a "last resort" button - once again works fine if you know how. Only issue I have with it is that now all invulns are 10s in length, it's cooldown and holmgang should be switched,

People complaining about not having a buffed up defensive like the others? How do you add an extra effect to TBN? Heal on it is pointless. Excog on it is pointless. So we get an extra defensive.

DRK was already the best tank because of TBN - now they have 1 more defensive on top - lots of extra flexibility there. DRK is the undisputed king MT.

Intervention, Nascent, Heart - can all have their fancy effects. With a DRK - TBN + Oblation you don't take any damage anyway, so you don't need fancy effects.

On top of all this DRK has had the biggest increases in damage potential out of all tanks, and looks now to be rivalling GNB for being the biggest damage.

A lot of the doom and gloom I see around here is from people who do not play the game at a high level, or do not understand how jobs and skills interact in the game. If you don't like the gameplay loop then that's fair - there are 20 other jobs in the game for you to find something to like. I don't like MNK, SCH or GNB - too busy, too clunky, too boring - but that's okay.

I think we will still see the majority of the games best tank players in the game going for DRK - it still seems to be the consensus that DRK/GNB will be the best combo.

There are some minor things that can be improved on, but right now DRK is looking very strong.

Why are you being so condescending? Even as someone who has come around to 5.0 DRK, and plays it at an aDPS orange percentile, there is absolutely zero basis for you to say that people who complain about this job are some gray parsing glue eaters who don't understand how the game works. At least when I talk to people who have actual, tangible compliments about current events, they don't go out of their way to insult the players who have put forth way more effort than is reasonable to see the job improve in a way that is comparable to the other tanks.


Are the people asking for reworks and their OC DRK ideas misguided? Perhaps, but that passion comes from a place of love for the job, or ire towards SE for not fixing things.

I don't give a damn how strong DRK is, or how much damage it does, or where it is in the meta. I didn't in HW, I didn't when it was getting meme'd and people didn't even know what TBN was in SB, I didn't during my long fence-hopping journey with the rework in ShB, and I don't give a damn now. Of course DRK is a fantastic prog tank. No one sensible should be denying that. SB DRK was viable too, almost every job in this game's lifetime, regardless of patch has been viable, but that doesn't mean things didn't need adjustments.

"If you know how to use it correctly" when people much better than you or I, who already play at Ultimate level, have significant grievances with Blood Weapon. I know how to use it properly, it just sucks.

Living Dead isn't fine anymore. It now has zero advantages over every invuln, and now technically has the shortest effective duration, since it needs to be healed before the timer hits 0. That is a problem. I agree with switching the cooldown timers with Holmgang.

How I feel about Oblation will be significantly influenced by how often things like prey mechanics on DPS, or times where a personal mitigation for myself, TBN for the cotank, and two Oblations for DPS can be used on something like a Optical Sight split team stack marker appears in EW. I'm willing to wait on this one.

Is this apocalyptic butthurt about things not changing a good thing? No. Anyone who thought things would significantly change were tying the noose around their own necks.

But being pretentious like you are somehow above people for accepting garbage is arguably even dumber.

[Luin]

DRK was good before - it's still good now.
People who didn't like it before still don't like it - big surprise.

Blood Weapon is fine. 5 stacks would make more sense but there isn't anything wrong with it now if you know how to use it correctly

Living Dead is still fine - you use invulns as a planned out cooldown in fights. It's not a "last resort" button - once again works fine if you know how. Only issue I have with it is that now all invulns are 10s in length, it's cooldown and holmgang should be switched,

DRK was already the best tank because of TBN - now they have 1 more defensive on top - lots of extra flexibility there. DRK is the undisputed king MT.

Intervention, Nascent, Heart - can all have their fancy effects. With a DRK - TBN + Oblation you don't take any damage anyway, so you don't need fancy effects.

Blood Weapon - I didn't know "just get a better internet connection" counted as "knowing how to use it correctly". I wonder why NIN got a rework, why didn't people just get faster internet?

Living Dead - Objectively the worst invuln. You even agreed in your post that Holmgang is strictly better. Holmgang has same duration. No risk of KO. Less healing requirement. Shorter CD. Living Dead is a joke.

King MT - Using TBN more than once per minute shifts MP out of raidbuffs, it's a DPS loss. Compared to similar cooldowns from other tanks, it mitigates less throughout an entire fight. DRK is the worst MT.

TBN+Oblation - All the other tanks would do the exact same thing but better.

Balance isn't even the point here. Balance is just shifting numbers and potency, that's easily fixed, and it's the easiest to compare. The complaint here is QoL that's been requested for years, like Blood Weapon, isn't being addressed, and DRK isn't receiving any updates to its gameplay.

[Jirah]

Admire the furry but can someone quote me a nice list of all of DRK issues plz? In their own words. I could read every post but rather get cliff notes

[ForteNightshade]

Admire the furry but can someone quote me a nice list of all of DRK issues plz? In their own words. I could read every post but rather get cliff notes

Blood Weapon being 10 seconds makes timing extremely tight. Since I know you're, reluctantly, familiar with MCH, think Hypercharge and ping issues. Additionally, because Unleash and Stalwart Soul are classified as spells, they're unaffected by Skillspeed, and thus, will never allow you to get the full 50 Blood.

Living Dead is now strictly inferior in every way to the other tank invulns due to Holmgang and Superbolide being buffed to 10 second durations. The former is up a full minute faster, and neither require a full heal. For reference sake, it currently takes two Essential Dignities and an Excog/Lustrate to heal LD. Contrast that with Warrior whose ridiculous sustain allows it to completely heal itself through Holmgang. Which makes that minute difference between it and LD laughably imbalanced.

The Blackest Night is simply getting outshadowed by Holy Sheltron, Nascent/Bloodwhetting and Heart of Conrundum. That's not to imply TBN isn't strong, because it is. Just nowhere near enough to be an entire job's whole identity. Furthermore, none of the aforementioned abilities are tied to your damage. TBN is a loss after two uses in a minute due to misaligning Fade of Shadows under raid buffs. In heavily optimized settings, DRKs actually need to break a TBN, even if it means intentionally taking damage to avoid overcapping. All so they can spam Flood under buffs. All of this makes TBN a risk without any reward. You're only ever punished.

Delirium is essentially budget Inner Release. They do the exact same thing except Delirium doesn't DhCrit. Which, hilariously, makes it better in a way since it doesn't ignore buffs like Battle Litany or Chain Stratagem. From a gameplay perspective, it's incredibly boring and unimaginative.

Those are pretty much the core issues with DRK. Is it bad? No. It'll be just as competitive in terms of functionality. That doesn't make the kit cohesive or exciting.