Dark Knight Megathread

[Garlan]

It's honestly at a point where it needs to be reworked from the ground up or deleted as a job.

I don't mean to offend, but I hope that everyone who is desiring a full-blown rework understands that DRK has already received a redesign, so any subsequent revamps will likely result in the job losing even more iconic 3.0 abilities without adding any suitable equivalents. The reason 5.0 didn't preserve Dark Arts and the playstyle associated with it was because casual players hated how prevalent Dark Arts became, how it was nearly weaved into every oGCD window. They bemoaned how the frequent oGCD spam hindered their ability to slot in oGCD tank abilities, and the developers ultimately addressed their issues by removing Dark Arts completely and replacing it with the more costly Edge/Flood abilities. Dark Arts wasn't reworked - it was abandoned, and I have little doubt flavorful skills like Salted Earth (and the new Salt and Darkness) will simply be removed to appease casual fans and have their potencies shifted to other oGCDs, further diluting DRK's original identity.

My point is this - why would Square redesign DRK after stating they are happy using 5.0 as a base for DRK going forward? Why would they purposely include reverions to a design they felt the average player disliked, and one that was certainly less balanced than the 5.0 iteration? Don't get me wrong, I loved 3.0 and 4.0 DRK, but I understand that we will never see a return to those playstyles; that it is increasingly more important to provide feedback on what is feasible to change instead of beating a proverbial dead horse by ceaselessly demanding a reversion to an era the developers are clearly not keen to return to. Blood Weapon's window is too tight, Living Dead is still objectively the worst tank invuln, and DRK's non-shielding sustain is nearly non-existent - these are all desired changes that would dramatically improve DRK across all forms of content while being practical to achieve within 6.0's lifespan.

3.0 DRK is not coming back. The sooner the community accepts this fact, the sooner everyone can move on and begin to find enjoyment in the job again. As job balancing becomes more and more important to the developers with each expansion, I completely understand role homogenizing is becoming a huge concern, but I believe we can find solutions to DRK that respects the direction Square wants to steer the job into while establishing an identity for it other than "the job that people main for years, yet continuously bitch about".

Please, if simply for the developers sake, let 3.0 go.

[Undeadfire]

Have to agree with him, 3.0 Dark Knight was a broken OP Tank and rather it didn't return back. It made War useless than existing to enhance DPS back in the day, Pld made useless, can make Gnb useless depending on DPS levels. 3.0 Drk was a major spamming O-GCD job though out it's whole rotation, and permanent damage downs making any boss a complete wimp, too broken for the game.

Edge/Flood are essentially Dark Arts without the ability enhance and used on pure damage instead, now before you say it isn't, you're spamming the O-GCD as you always did for Dark Arts, isn't that the same thing?

[Rhais]

No, no it's not the same thing.

I imagine people would stop bringing 3.0 drk up when we are given an adequate replacement that is comparable in enjoyment. I highly doubt anyone expects 3.0 drk to come back, but everything since has fallen far short of creating the same level of enjoyment as HW drk for numerous people. Maybe if the devs would either bring back the good ideas from 3.0 or give what was removed suitable replacements you would see a diminished amount of comments about 3.0. Slapping the beast gauge, fell cleave, steel cyclone, and inner release on drk just didn't do it for many.

[Lyth]

????

What in Etheiryis are you on about? WAR easily had the highest damage output in Heavensward, in addition to having Path, which was an on demand 100% uptime damage mitigation buff, in addition to having Eye as a 100% uptime slashing buff which, even if you had NIN in the party, it was still preferable for the WAR to apply. That's also not including the fact that WAR was just flat out better at establishing and retaining enmity without outside assistance, with an enmity combo that was a damage gain. If you thought WAR was broken in Stormblood, it was even moreso in Heavensward. There were two tank raid slots in Heavensward: a situational PLD/DRK slot, and a pretty much mandatory WAR slot. And there were fights from a progression standpoint where it was definitely preferential to go PLD over DRK. The WF for A1S, A2S, A7S, and A9S all used PLD. A2S required the use of Cover on your healer if you didn't use the Equilibrium trick. A4S was a close contender when people were figuring out how best to cheese Nisi. PLD was hands down a superior choice for A7S, given the amount of physical damage, the fact that PLD was better to spin and stunlock the heart in a pinch, the fact that Hallowed was hands down a superior choice to LD during second cat phase. Interestingly, many groups did prog on A8S with PLD/DRK due to the duration of the Final Punch/Apocalypse/Beam combo, but then again, some groups did it with double WAR as well. Creator was the point in time where everyone's favorite abacus started excluding non-standard group formats, because speedrun groups just as often dropped the second tank for solo WAR. Useless WAR in Heavensward of all things? No, this is bizarre revisionist history at best.

[Undeadfire]

What in Etheiryis are you on about? WAR easily had the highest damage output in Heavensward, in addition to having Path, which was an on demand 100% uptime damage mitigation buff, in addition to having Eye as a 100% uptime slashing buff which, even if you had NIN in the party, it was still preferable for the WAR to apply. That's also not including the fact that WAR was just flat out better at establishing and retaining enmity without outside assistance, with an enmity combo that was a damage gain. If you thought WAR was broken in Stormblood, it was even moreso in Heavensward. There were two tank raid slots in Heavensward: a situational PLD/DRK slot, and a pretty much mandatory WAR slot. And there were fights from a progression standpoint where it was definitely preferential to go PLD over DRK. The WF for A1S, A2S, A7S, and A9S all used PLD. A2S required the use of Cover on your healer if you didn't use the Equilibrium trick. A4S was a close contender when people were figuring out how best to cheese Nisi. PLD was hands down a superior choice for A7S, given the amount of physical damage, the fact that PLD was better to spin and stunlock the heart in a pinch, the fact that Hallowed was hands down a superior choice to LD during second cat phase. Interestingly, many groups did prog on A8S with PLD/DRK due to the duration of the Final Punch/Apocalypse/Beam combo, but then again, some groups did it with double WAR as well. Creator was the point in time where everyone's favorite abacus started excluding non-standard group formats, because speedrun groups just as often dropped the second tank for solo WAR. Useless WAR in Heavensward of all things? No, this is bizarre revisionist history at best.

If you think permanent -10% INT and near permanent Reprisal isn't OP, then you seriously need to drop the Copium, Virus was nerfed to the ground for being spammed, and classic Reprisal uptimes 20s with a 10s downtime, except reduces all forms of damage. Enmity doesn't mean crap no matter how strong it was, every team mate willing to optimise used all means of enmity reductions, and using Ninja for shift, one DA Power Slash, Tank stance is never used again.

World First doesn't mean anything, it's a content rush fast as possible using terrible strategies just to kill it asap, every raid tier. Every raid group killing the new raid tier again are extremely advised not to do first week strategies, they're very tended to suck balls, and very relied on RNG, and time waste... a lot...

[WhyAmIHere]

-snip-

The developers are the ones who took away everything that DRK was and gave nearly nothing back in return. Do not defend their actions, or try to rewrite reality. They were the ones to have made Dark Arts as spammy as it was because there was no play testing nor balancing for just how damning the SB changes were to DRK's mana economy.

It's entirely within their ability to do anything to appease 3.x and beyond DRK players. They instead chose to put those resources into other jobs.

[Weetzlo]

The developers are the ones who took away everything that DRK was and gave nearly nothing back in return.

They actually gave it pretty much all back, just to the wrong jobs. Most of them came to GNB... in the DRK expansion. Kind of weird to call Dark Arts "Eukrasia" but I'm just glad to have it back.

[Ryaduera]

They actually gave it pretty much all back, just to the wrong jobs. Most of them came to GNB... in the DRK expansion. Kind of weird to call Dark Arts "Eukrasia" but I'm just glad to have it back.

And don't forget some old job actions are just role actions now.