Dark Knight Megathread

[Zairava]

And I think the biggest offender for this is Living Shadow. The coolest ability DRK gets being a glorified DoT is unforgivable. It should replicate what you do instead of what it currently does. Better be a flavorful damage buff than a fire and forget DoT.

Can't agree enough here, it basically says what needs to be said.

I have to wonder, though... is that so bad? Alone, you need only not overcap; in buffed parties, you should bank as much as you can without overcapping. But... is that really a problem to, when solo, have more freedom / fewer constraints / less direction than most? Tanks aren't generally something one wants to play solo anyways, and outside of a WHM-or-SGE/SAM-BLM-or-MCHx2 light party, you're going to have some manner of buff that'll oblige those timings in the same way a No Mercy or Fight or Flight would.

Nor is there any real synergy other than that among any tank job anymore; Upheaval and Spirits Within interactions with HP, stances, etc., are all a distant past.

That's not to say I don't agree that it's lackluster and could be improved, but... in what way did you want to see improvement, because it seems only two jobs offer anything more in that regard, and DRK falls only a generic damage buff window away from them?

I think both sides have good arguments, really. I don't personally find it a bad thing to have fewer constraints, but I would honestly prefer to have a higher skill ceiling that isn't just "dump everything into your burst window and just spam 1-2-3 and use bloodspiller to not overcap otherwise."

At the very least, I would like my downtime to be more interesting.

Tentatively agreed. It's worth noting though that in the past every MP expenditure had a tanking benefit outside of Carve and Spit (which was a mere margining mechanic). DA-Souleater meant more self-healing, too; DA-Power Slash gave a metric ton of threat; DA-Dark Passenger also added a blind for mitigation; DA-AD was the only way to get it to do any healing; and all else were buffs to your next defensive among Dark Mind or Dark Dance. In that sense, the MP generation on Blood Weapon was almost always also a means of sustain; it was just perhaps out of balance, overly favoring only DA-CnS, -SE, and -AD for AoE sustain.

If, for instance, it returned to that (with Edge/Flood/Shadowbringer healing or adding to current shielding, etc.), would BW's granting MP alone still seem to lack sustain flavor (rather than just seeming a more bankable/timeable means of self-sustain)?

I think the mp spenditure in itself is ridiculously streamlined compared to what it once was, and would do with some revisioning in order for BW to have any merit of feeling more than just being enough for one more tbn or edge/flood. The problem is, the best way to do this would be to tie some defensives with mp in some way, shape, or form...which is the exact path they strayed from to begin with. The only reason why DA exists as is is because it's currently a damage neutral. This doesn't mean they couldn't expand upon it, but the methods for doing so while continuing that damage neutral path is incredibly limited. Unless they went full throttle and made Dark Arts purely offensive again (albeit not as spam heavy as Stormblood), I'm not sure we'll ever see meaningful mp management. With or without sustain or status effects being added to the abilities it modifies.