Dark Knight Megathread

[OdinelStarrei]

Still you cant say that DRK is on good state because the savage fights seems custom tailored to their mitigation skills unless they are planning to do that on every fight onwards

Yes, that's exactly why I didn't say that DRK is in a good state. I never have, and with this development team, I probably never will. I said that DRK is comfortable to defensively mitigate with. And in terms of statistics, that's true. Statistically, it's probably the 2nd best raid tank, minimum. Certainly not the worst. But I don't care about those things when I talk about playing DRK, and being a DRK main. DRK has not once amounted to what I believe is a solid design, just versions that are significantly more fun that other versions that they toss away for no reason. This version of DRK is playable, but only because they ripped every single interesting thing possible from the job rather than try and make it work. The typical SE remove to improve job design. I do not support the lack of rotational, or underlying changes that came with EW DRK, and I never supported the gutting that came with ShB DRK. I do not support where they are going with job design, even overall combat design outside of savage in general! But there's a time and a place for that conversation, which was not what I was intending with that comment. I was offering a rebuttal in regards to it's performance in the current tier, defensively, without making considerations for how I feel about the job personally, nor how it is in content that is not Savage. And to be honest? Of all the jobs that have existed in FFXIV, DRK more than any other has been the job that has raid encounters designed in it's favor, and not in spite of it, such as the case of PLD, or old BLM. You only need to look at the ratio of high damage instances of magic/physical since Heavensward to see that bias.

[baklava151]

All true and I didn't mean to imply DRK was in a bad spot defensively. The DoT is just so spicy that while I'm waiting for TBN to come off CD and watching my health tank, I'm wishing I had something else to help with it.

[RyuDragnier]

Especially considering DRK is the only tank without a heal to help during it. Abyssal Drain's 200 cure potency is not viable, nor is Souleater's 300 cure potency that you cannot even use while doing any Blood Gauge attacks.

[OdinelStarrei]

All true and I didn't mean to imply DRK was in a bad spot defensively. The DoT is just so spicy that while I'm waiting for TBN to come off CD and watching my health tank, I'm wishing I had something else to help with it.

I understand it's a threatening position to be in, not having any backup tools except for LD, but I am telling you, you do not need them. The DoT is very threatening, a big departure from previous encounters, but just alternate each buster with Shadow Wall or Rampart/Dark Mind/Oblation with an EARLY TBN. There are some exceptions, like Toxic Crunch being physical, and I think one of the Syngery hits is Phys? In terms of timing, the busters this time around all have around 6-8 seconds in cast length, so you should be able to get slammed with TBN up at about a second or two remaining. That gives you 7 seconds left on the cooldown, with another 14 seconds left on the DoT. I typically see it as "Regardless of who or how buster is mitigated, the final two bleed ticks are the ones I can get, invuln or not." And if we're coming out at around 100K HP with a bit of gear, it's plain to see how having 50K HP over the course the tankbuster hit and DoT without factoring in additive mitigations is nothing to shrug at. Help out your co-tank with the 2nd stack of Oblation as well, it alone typically reduces an entire tick worth of DoT damage on it's own during the duration. I really do not think you don't need the heals when planned. It's not necessary, and even if it was, why should there be tank that not only carries around TBN, arguably custom-tuned for situations just like this due to mitigation after DoT snapshotting not working compared to the universal usage of percentage shields, but also gain anything more than middling self heals during a standard rotation? The answer is not requiring the heals in the 1st place if sustain is a concern, especially when learning. This is same argument I hear about SGE. If the entirety of Haima is consumed during your DoT, meaning that it only shielded you, and did 0 actual HP recovery, the result is functionally the same or arguably better due to mits/impossibility of overheal. DRK gets to carry about a Haima-mini with a failure state every 15 seconds. To not abuse it during your learning experience is not utilizing the toolkit fully. This is how the busters should be designed, if I want to make the buster and DoT really comfortable, there should be an multi-person effort on the part of the receiving party, the support cast, none of this one tank solo's every buster/invuln swap every pull garbage we got for so long.

If I want to make a regen because I'm eating this buster with Rampart+3CDs and not Shadow Wall+3CDs, I'll ask my GNB to share his 2nd stack of aurora, shoot me if it's solo'd for the mitigation and excog-mini. I'll ask my WAR to give me Nascent so we can both benefit while he Equilibriums himself. I'll ask my PLD to make sure he Ramparts before he throws the Intervention so my TBN casually gets another 30% on it. With DRK, I not only get it myself, I can give it to others within the same buster for a similar result since their short low-CD mitigations have such a high base value with benefits that will take place during or after I've shielded them. They're just missing Enhanced Oblation with 10% basic + 10% additional magic mitigation. /s

Especially considering DRK is the only tank without a heal to help during it. Abyssal Drain's 200 cure potency is not viable, nor is Souleater's 300 cure potency that you cannot even use while doing any Blood Gauge attacks.

If I can survive P6 DSR with a good portion of my GCDs being Unleash/Stalwart Soul (therefore no real health regen for half the phase, usually as they are autoing in their base positions) and no invuln, or TEA, where P1 and P2 have a significant overemphasis on not using Souleater combo if possible, you can survive. PLD doesn't get it's self heals for over half it's rotation outside of Sheltron, you can't guarantee that magic phase heals are even going to be relevant when you are getting to that point. This is an issue that TBN just ignores if you count autos and don't spend too much outside the two minutes, something I think is reasonable to expect of players doing current raid content. You want to see a tank who STRUGGLES, who NEEDS assistance to just stay alive in content? DSR P6 no invuln Paladin. That's a real fight to the death.

You should not look at DRKs in isolation. This keeps happening every time I peek my head in here. I have a co-tank and two healers in raids, who can easily provide me the spot heals/regens in that emergency situation without GCD investment where I come into a buster with anything less 3/4ths of my HP, or they can make my TBNs even stronger with their own shared percentage mitigation suites. How are Equilibrium spot heals, passive regens, and GCD self heals going to help you if you just evaporate to the 170K Tyrant's Darkness after those shared 20K per tank autos? (Edit: This is a bad point. You can just spot heal yourself pre-hit, and precast your regens to get value from not immediately exploding to such a combination of damage.)

Do I think that it's asinine that CnS doesn't have a heal potency since it got paired with Abyssal Drain? YES. Do I think it's to the detriment of DRKs everywhere that Abyssal Drain is an oGCD and not the monster it was in HW/SB? YES. Do I think Bloodwhetting/HoC are in general more useful, more intuitive and easier to plant into fight timelines? YES.

But if I'm gonna talk **** about XIV jobs which I will continue to do, it needs to make sense. TBN, whatever you think about it in the terms of DRK's kit, is really solid this tier with how they've changed the busters, on hit, and post-hit. Every single mitigation you put on a DRK , self-applied or by the team, major or minor, just serves to cement TBN further on every buster and with practice, every raidwide>auto attack follow up. This has been very valuable in my progression experience, high HPS abuse through TBN shielding is very comfortable from what my healers say. What are people complaining about? Tanks are too strong. Healers have nothing to do. Nothing hits hard. We need this kind of damage intake, so the kits can be properly leveraged in content and actually work towards the tentative balance we have for mitigating them in different, but effective ways. (Except PLD DoT blocks, that is ridiculous, no rotation-specific self heals make up for the fact you can't mitigate the DoTs with Holy Sheltron blocks.)

If you don't like having to weave 4-5 defensive oGCDs in the middle of your 2 minutes to be competitive with other mitigation suites in the same situation, I understand. There is an argument to be made that skills should be useful in their totality and not require hard content or infrequent encounter design for them to reach their full potential for the sake of a consistent gameplay experience.

This job sucks conceptually for a lot of reasons, but not in a literal sense due to numbers/encounter design. I prefer older versions still, the kit is disjointed, Darkside is worthless, TBN should not carry the job design THIS HARD, and the GCDs are boring. I still like it regardless, and I've come to terms that won't change. But the ultra specific things I've been whining about have far extended past Dark Knight itself, it's the substat system, it's the 2 min raidbuff consolidation that DRK and other jobs are abusing to an absurd extent, it's the flattening of the skill curve. Starting to realize that maybe the combat philosophy these last two expansions just suck.

[baklava151]

You're right, now's not the time to ask for more sustain just because things get dicey for a bit. I should be welcoming and eating the extra damage, and asking Square for seconds like a REAL tank. I'm kinda joking but also being serious, I think them adding the dots after a TB was a great idea. I just wonder if that's going to be the standard going forward since it gives tanks more challenge but is also a way to stop players from trivializing them with invulns.

[Undeadfire]

War has powerful sustain but lacks mitigation in it's place, that's pretty fair. Comparing dungeons is pointless.

Paladin has good sustain, but has no control of it and not on demand who cares really. Also the job is a current meme griefer.

Gnb has small sustains on demand, but essentially pretty weak and don't help overall than emergency provisions.

Drk has little to no sustain but has TBN which is extremely useful in current Savage/DSR considering how hard content is hitting, and stacking cooldowns reduce % values while TBN is a straight 25% HP cut, this is still pretty huge and can be exploited for extra Edges during 2 min windows.

[Oizen]

I doubt you'll get many people asking for more DRK sustain until Criterion dungeons come out and the meta ends up being Bloodwhetting only.

In which I think GNB will also come up short.

[Zordrage]

I doubt you'll get many people asking for more DRK sustain until Criterion dungeons come out and the meta ends up being Bloodwhetting only.

In which I think GNB will also come up short.

Everyone and their grandma leveled up Warriors in the past few Weeks/Months.
80% of the tanks in all the Rulettes are Warriors.

Criterion Dungeons will be a Shitstorm i can allready see it. no way they can balance it for Tanks without touching the Tanks themselfs.

Tldr: There is a High chance Warriors will shit on all the other jobs in Criterion.

[baklava151]

I feel like if they thought DRK needed more sustain for Criterion, they would have made that change in 6.2. Yoshi godmoded the mobs when they were demoing it in the LL, so it's hard to tell how hard they hit. It still remains to be seen until 6.25 releases if it'll be necessary or not.

[RyuDragnier]

I feel like if they thought DRK needed more sustain for Criterion, they would have made that change in 6.2. Yoshi godmoded the mobs when they were demoing it in the LL, so it's hard to tell how hard they hit. It still remains to be seen until 6.25 releases if it'll be necessary or not.

That however, goes under the assumption that the devs play all the jobs. As we've seen with the P8S debacle, they do not.