Dark Knight Megathread

[DaiTenshu]

Hello I made a thread here but someone suggested putting this on the main thread. I’d like to start with that I’m a huge fan of the FFXIV Job Balance team, as there is no other MMO that comes close to the balance and performance between each job and role it is in. As well as the fact that despite the lack of impact Endwalker Dark Knight seems to have over tanks, I am overall still excited to play it when Endwalker drops as it is my favorite job to play and I love the way it plays now. I wanted to add some adjustments to the job tooltip kit to make it stand out more from (or be more aligned with) the other tanks, as many people I know believe Dark Knight is a bit on the more bland side of things lately, especially with the supposed new toys the other tanks got. I personally love the way it plays in Shadowbringers, yet I hope the adjustments I propose are fair and worth taking into consideration as at least half of what I’m about to say are mainly QoL changes. I won’t add potency numbers save for cure potencies, as I am by no means an expert on calculations and the cure potencies are there to give somewhat a comparison of Dark Knight’s self sustain versus other tanks. I will first propose what my adjustments are, and then give an explanation of each change at the bottom.
PLEASE NOTE I am not removing anything from Dark Knight’s kit as I believe it works fine now, save for one skill that upgrades to another. Of Course all of this is done with the assumption of the Current Endwalker Dark Knight tooltip kit. Here are my adjustments and additions. Continues...

[DaiTenshu]

Level 35 Blood Weapon: Grants 5 stacks of Blood Weapon. Each stack allows weapon skills or spells to restore mana and give 10 blood gauge Duration: 15 seconds.

Level 45 Dark Mind: Change 20% magic reduction to 15% damage reduction. Duration: 10s 2 charges. Allows to cast on Self or Party Member

Level 50 Stalwart Soul: (Without the Blood Gauge Increase)

Level 50 Living Dead: Living Dead Duration and Walking Dead Duration increased to 12s

Level 62 Bloodspiller: Additional effect: Restores own HP. Cure potency: 400

Level 64 Quietus: Additional effect: Restores own HP. Cure potency: 300 (multi-approved)

Level 68 Delirium: Grants 3 stacks. Each Stack allows the execution of Bloodspiller and Quietus, Restoring MP AND increasing HP restored when landing either weapon skill.

Level 70 The Blackest Night: Increase Duration from 7s to 8s. If Barrier isn’t completely absorbed, restore a small portion of its mana cost. (600 MP or 1200 MP)

(New) Level 70 Trait - Dark Arts: When The Blackest Night Barrier is fully absorbed, or using certain actions, gain Dark Arts. Casting Flood of Darkness/Shadow or Edge of Darkness/Shadow under Dark Arts costs no mana and restores HP. Cure Potency 200/400.

Level 72 Trait - Master Our Soul: Allows Stalwart Soul to increase the Blood Gauge by 20.

Level 80 Living Shadow: The last Weapon skill your simulacrum casts grants Dark Arts.

(New) Level 80 Trait - Enhanced Dark Arts: Allows for 2 charges of Dark Arts for storing.

(New) Level 82 Trait - Dark Mind Mastery: Upgrades Dark Mind to Oblation allowing additional benefits.

Level 82 Oblation: Damage Reduction 15%. Additional Effect Sole Survivor: HP restored or barriers given to target are increased by 20% duration 10s. Additional Effect Vigilante’s Tenacity: reduce damage taken by 10% Duration: 6s. 2 charges can cast on self or party.

(New) Level 84 Trait - Enhanced Dark Arts II: Casting Flood of Shadow or Edge of Shadow under Dark Arts guarantees a critical hit.

Level 86 Salt and Darkness: Increase Blood Gauge by 30.

Level 90 Shadowbringer: Additional Effect: Grants Dark Arts

(New) Level 90 Trait - One Brings Shadow: Reduces Shadowbringer recast time by 5 seconds when landing Flood of Shadow or Edge of Shadow. Reduces Shadowbringer recast time by 5 seconds when The Blackest Night Barrier is fully absorbed.

As you can tell, my adjustments range from simple QoL changes to some more substantial/controversial takes.I have an explanation for each adjustment I made and of course all of this is fan stuff from a guy who simply wants the job to shine in its own way. If you want to give critique or other changes, let me know. First, Allow me to explain.
Continues.

[DaiTenshu]

Blood Weapon: we’ve seen a stack system added for Delirium/Inner Release/Manafication. So I fail to see why this wasn’t done for Blood Weapon. This adjustment is for ping and AoE issues such as Unleash and Stalwart Soul, as for some reason they have a different recast timer than weapon skills and so it's harder to get 5 uses of current Blood Weapon. Giving Blood Weapon a stack system should alleviate the AoE issue and help those with unstable ping.

Dark Mind: Outside of raidwide damage, I believe specific single damage mitigation is archaic. and severely limits a job. While Camouflage exists and parry rate only affects physical damage, the 10% damage reduction still has uses for magical damage. Dark Mind being locked to only magic damage severely limits its uses and unlike Camouflage, it has little to no use in dungeon pulls. Changing Dark Mind to 15% general damage reduction and having 2 charges helps Dark Knight’s lacking defense pre 70 and helps leveling the job.
.
Stalwart Soul: Since Paladins get Circle of Scorn at level 50, I believe Dark Knight should get Stalwart Soul at level 50. Although Dark Knight has a spammable AoE before other tanks, not gaining it’s AoE finisher until level 72 makes the level progression for Dark Knight a little unsatisfying and unfun. Getting Stalwart Soul earlier (Without the Blood Gauge Increase) would make leveling more bearable.

Living Dead: A somewhat controversial change. Living Dead is one of two invulnerabilities that come with a risk, the other being Superbolide. The difference however is that while Superbolide only just reduces Gunbreaker’s HP to 1, the Risk for Dark Knight is literal death. So when Superbolide and Holmgang got buffed in duration, it just made Living Dead even worse to use. The Simplest change I can see without changing the whole theme of Living Dead is increasing the duration to 12 seconds. If it's the Invulnerability with a huge risk, then it should be in a way stronger than the others.
Continues..

[Jakulo]

I'm just gonna post this and hope the devs take notice.

Actions

Lv. 1 Hard slash
Lv. 2 siphon strike - Restores 800mp
Lv. 6 Unleash
Lv. 10 Grit
Lv. 15 Unmend
Lv. 20 Shadowskin - 15% damage reduction for 10s, 30s recharge 2 charges.
Lv. 26 Souleater - 300 cure potency, grants 20 blackblood.
Lv. 30 Flood of Darkness - 2500mp 150 potency, grants 30s darkside and extends it by 15s. Darkside increases all damage dealt by 10%. Cost 0 mp under dark arts.
Lv. 30 Edge of Darkness - 2500mp 250 potency, grants 30s darkside and extends it by 15s. Darkside increases all damage dealt by 10%. Cost 0 mp under dark arts.
Lv. 35 Blood Weapon - 60s recast, 10% reduction to weaponskill and spell recast time for 10s. Restores 600mp and grants 10 blackblood when landing weaponskills or spells.
Lv. 38 Shadow Wall
Lv. 40 Stalwart Soul
Lv. 43 scourge - 18s dot weaponskill. 160 initial potency and 40 potency over time, reduces darkside by 15s only usable under darkside.
Lv. 45 Dark Passenger - 25s recast line aoe 400 potency, reduces darkside by 30s only usable under darkside. Does not drain the darkside under dark arts.
Lv. 48 Dark Mind - 60s recast, 25% magic damage reduction.
Lv. 50 Living Dead - 300s recast. Grants living dead for 10s, if you fall below 1 hp, you are healed for the same amount of hp you had at the time of activating living dead. Cannot receive damage or healing for 10s. Can receive shields.
Lv. 52 Salted Earth - 15s ground dot 90s recast. 50 potency and increase passive mana regeneration rate for the duration.
Lv. 54 Plunge
Lv. 56 Abyssal Drain - 1000mp 45s recast. 200 potency aoe damage and 200 cure potency, the main target will be afflicted with a 10s debuff. If they died during the 10s, restore 25% max hp and 15% if not.
Lv. 60 Carve and Spit - 60s recast and extend darkside by 15s, 250 potency and restores 800mp.
Lv. 62 Bloodspiller - 50 blackblood 500 potency, Restores 400mp and 350 cure potency.
Lv. 64 Quietus - 50 blackblood 220 potency, Restores 400mp and 350 cure potency.
Lv. 68 Delirium- 2000mp 30s recast, grants dark arts. Dark arts negate the cost of certain abilities and is consumed upon their execution.
Lv. 70 The Blackest Night - 2500mp 20% max hp shield, 7s duration 15s recast. Grants dark arts when broken and if the effect ends before that restore 1000mp.
Lv. 72 Flood of Shadows - 2500mp 250 potency, grants 30s darkside and extends it by 20s. Darkside increases all damage dealt by 10%. Cost no mp under dark arts.
Lv. 72 Edge of Shadows - 2500mp 350 potency, grants 30s darkside and extends it by 20s. Darkside increases all damage dealt by 10%. Cost no mp under dark arts.
Lv. 74 Dark Missionary
Lv. 76 Power Slash - 24s dot weaponskill. 200 initial potency and 40 potency over time. Reduces darkside by 15s. Only usable under darkside.
Lv. 80 Living Shadow - 50 blackblood 24s duration, halts the countdown of darkside. You also gain the effect of every attack done by esteem.


Continues...

[TouchandFeel]

Just a heads up, you can go back and edit a post to get past the initial character limit. That way you can create one longer consolidated post instead of a stream of posts that tend to add more "noise" to a thread and make it harder for readers to follow what is being said.

Also if you want to post a huge wall of text but don't want your post to take up a huge amount of space, when editing your post you can click "Go Advanced" and then use the "HB tag" button, looks like a word bubble with a ? in it, to collapse down and hide part of your text until a reader clicks "show" in your post, like so ...

Big ol' wall o' text

Here is an example thread that I created way back at the beginning of Shadowbringers that utilizes HB tags to condense a post and make it easier to parse.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...oposed-Changes

[DaiTenshu]

I see, thank you and I'll take that into consideration for next time. I apologize for the bloat, just wanted to get some of my ideas out there since my friends suggested me to do so.

[TouchandFeel]

No worries, just providing some suggestions to help with better organizing posts so that they are clearer and easier for people to read, and therefore more likely to get people to read and understand them.
There's a lot of newer posters on the forums recently and many likely don't know about these options when making their posts.

[DaiTenshu]

Right, I'll do that for sure next time. With that being the case, what do you think of these adjustments/changes? I didn't want outright change anything save for Dark Mind and having it upgrade to Oblation. I'd like to know your opinions.

[TouchandFeel]

Right, I'll do that for sure next time. With that being the case, what do you think of these adjustments/changes? I didn't want outright change anything save for Dark Mind and having it upgrade to Oblation. I'd like to know your opinions.

Honestly, I think that overall your suggested changes, while not bad, don't change things enough in terms of evolving the game-play feel of DRK. They mostly just add a little more to what already exists, like you said was your intent, and those extra bits are a mixed bag for me. Some I like and some I don't.

Below are some of my specific thoughts.

- Blood Weapon using stacks instead of a duration is a pretty common and well liked suggestion. I'm all for it.
- I felt there was a bit too much self-healing added to different parts. I agree that DRK needs way better self-healing, but I feel that it should be more consolidated into specific abilities instead of spread out over many.
- I think that TBN breaking shouldn't directly refund any MP and that it awarding a Dark Arts to then fuel an Edge or Flood is more dynamic since it links more of the kit together, particularly the defensive to offensive aspects. It also shouldn't be MP positive which giving it an MP refresh when broken on top of a Dark Arts would do, since this would result in players trying to just use and break TBN on cooldown to maximize their dps. TBN is best kept dps resource (MP) neutral like it is.
- I don't think Dark Mind should evolve into Oblation and I personally think Oblation as a whole should just be nixed and TBN should get some extra goodies like the other tank short-cooldown defensive abilities got.
- I'm all for increasing the amount of Dark Arts that can be stored and I have been suggesting that since the beginning of Shadowbringers.
- I think Living Dead needs to just be completely redone or replaced instead of just increasing the durations of LD and WD by a couple of seconds.

[DaiTenshu]

I see that makes sense. If you were to edit or change some things that I suggested what would you do, which ones would you keep? What spells or weaponskills can give healing instead? I'm okay with Dark Mind being separate from Oblation but I wish they can make it more than just 20% magic damage or something else. If you were to change Living Dead how would you do it?