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.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

Mostly agreed, but, I have to wonder... are there really even "sides" there, per se?

Is it a matter of "Native Damage Buff Window Good"? If there's a side for that, the only camp opposite it I'd represent for instance, is just that a native damage buff window isn't necessarily good.

That is to say, I don't particularly find all that interesting any damage buff window that doesn't rely of at least potentially active sync even in 100% uptime (or, via a striking dummy). If you could just pick the right GCD and thereafter hit your damage buff on CD (or, on CD +/- using at end of the GCD-gap), I'm not convinced it does anything. Add in a skill that you specifically want to start and stop on, like Goring Blade, and it gets a bit more potentially interesting, but even then, not necessarily. It's contextual, though contextual to one's toolkit.

Greater freedom, on the other hand, offers a higher ceiling for contextual nuance based on the encounter... not that we ever see that exploited in XIV outside of the very rare add phase. More bankable = more (frequently) available deviation between "best" cases and "normal" cases.

Neither seems inherently superior, though I'll admit that when I lack enough encounter-contextual nuance to exploit, I tend to look enviously at kits with a bit more internal nuance; though even the latter requires a fair deal of supportive context, else you more often end up with just finnicky-ness, not nuance.

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.

I could go either way at this point. Either MP could remains just a DarkShinten gauge where you make sure not to overspend for fear of delaying a necessary Senei/TBN, or maybe it could go back to cutting every defensive in two such that you have soft and full uses available to each while making sure not to overspend for fear of losing out on the efficiency of DA-CnS. Neither's perfect; neither is altogether bad. I faintly prefer the latter, but only if it's decently balanced, because I'm tired of pretense of depth essentially just widening performance gaps through otherwise short-lived gaps over unintuitive understandings (e.g., that most of X options are actually awful).

The only reason why DA exists as is is because it's currently a damage neutral.

I don't even consider it as existing, so much as just being an unnecessary, fancy throwback name for TBN's "Don't just throw this out on CD / even at the dumbest of times" minor constraint, haha.

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.

I don't think that would give us "meaningful MP management" even then. In the end, meaningful MP management will essentially be just a matter of rewarding factor-dense understanding of a given fight in a particular situation (with the latter becoming decreasingly relevant as one's party increasingly optimizes / gits gud).

It's a matter of being rewarded for putting the best bets forward / putting your mana where your returns will be highest. That requires those bets being complex ones, which in turn requires there being a lot going on contextually.

[Zairava]

Mostly agreed, but, I have to wonder... are there really even "sides" there, per se?

Is it a matter of "Native Damage Buff Window Good"? If there's a side for that, the only camp opposite it I'd represent for instance, is just that a native damage buff window isn't necessarily good.

I guess what I mean is, I like buff windows, but not when all the damage is packed into that one single burst window, because some of that damage could be more spread to make the job leagues more interesting to play continuously. Which I suppose is a common sentiment with the whole 2-minute meta debacle.

Though it's more how it's actually designed, is why I can still go back and play Reaper and enjoy it. The downtime is infinitely more enjoyable for me than most jobs in the game. The abilities are all satisfying to press, even the main combo, and there's more than just the 1-2-3 to use thanks to Soul Slice and Soul Scythe.

I could go either way at this point. Either MP could remains just a DarkShinten gauge where you make sure not to overspend for fear of delaying a necessary Senei/TBN, or maybe it could go back to cutting every defensive in two such that you have soft and full uses available to each while making sure not to overspend for fear of losing out on the efficiency of DA-CnS. Neither's perfect; neither is altogether bad. I faintly prefer the latter, but only if it's decently balanced, because I'm tired of pretense of depth essentially just widening performance gaps through otherwise short-lived gaps over unintuitive understandings (e.g., that most of X options are actually awful).

I don't think that would give us "meaningful MP management" even then. In the end, meaningful MP management will essentially be just a matter of rewarding factor-dense understanding of a given fight in a particular situation (with the latter becoming decreasingly relevant as one's party increasingly optimizes / gits gud).

It's a matter of being rewarded for putting the best bets forward / putting your mana where your returns will be highest. That requires those bets being complex ones, which in turn requires there being a lot going on contextually.

That's the issue, though. unless they bring back Dark Arts as an actual ability that amplifies both offensives and defensives, MP will remain one side or the other, and the only way I see them doing this is if Dark Arts is toggleable like Eukrasia without a mana cost, since that would mean putting mp somewhere else that isn't damage. Which begs the question...how would that actually be able to be accomplished if DA were to be on a mana cost? They would obviously look for a way to refund such mp usage, but would that, then, remove any meaning behind it in the first place?

Something that comes to mind...is that Bloodspiller and Quietus could be used to regenerate such mp, and blood weapon could be smacked down to a 40s cooldown like it used to be. Using Dark Arts could give us..idk, 10-20 gauge per use?


On an entirely different thought, could our Blood Gauge and mp usage fuel our Darkside?

What I mean is, and this is basically ripped from reaper, we get a second meter, and it's our Darkside. When this meter fills, we get to use Living Shadow. This would obviously mean that it merges with us, empowers us, that whole bit we've discussed many times over. How often this would happen is up for debate (though I expect it would be either a 60s, 90s, or 120s thing). This would mean that the Blood Gauge has more importance than just being a beast gauge in disguise. Though, this does make it more of a Soul/Shroud gauge copy... I would sooner bring back DA as it was the core of DRK, but it's unclear what they would do with it that isn't just over-glorifying the tbn proc.