Dark Knight Megathread

[Agner]

Hey lads, I recommend watching the first 20 seconds of XIV's new video if you want to know what it feels like to have played this job since it came out.

[Rosenstrauch]

Just as an aside, is anyone else going to be removing Abyssal Drain from their hotbars when servers go live too?

I've been thinking of making a new hotbar solely for most aoe skills/spells/abilities, since there's rarely any reason to use them outside of trash pulls in dungeons. Unleash, Stalwart Soul, Abyssal Drain, and Flood of Shadow will all be going on it. That should, if nothing else, free up a little space for me.

I should do the same for Dragoon. The addition of a third aoe weaponskill and the removal of the second st combo's starter completely wrecked my ability to play it in Shadowbringers, so shuffling my keybinds around after making space might help make it palatable again.

[KageTokage]

At this point I feel like they should just remove the MP cost on Blackest Night as well the associated Dark Arts effect because while it is still undeniably a strong ability, you are never going to be able to use it on cooldown without sacrificing DPS due to not always being able to take enough damage for it to fall off.

[Mekhana]

I'm tired of keeping us in the dark until the last moment when it comes to job design and balancing and then completely and thoroughly soul-crushingly disappoint us.

Tired, Tired, Tired.

I already quit in SB once before I'm not coming back this time if everything isn't fixed on 6.1

[ArthurATDayne]

At this point I feel like they should just remove the MP cost on Blackest Night as well the associated Dark Arts effect because while it is still undeniably a strong ability, you are never going to be able to use it on cooldown without sacrificing DPS due to not always being able to take enough damage for it to fall off.

That would be nice If DRK Devs removed the MP cost and associated Dark Arts effect on The Blackest Night, I'd probably lay off on the HP Sustain complaints.

If DRK can use TBN every 15s CD without resource worries then it'll be like having a semi permanent 25% Max HP bar 28s per 60s when used liberally on self off CD. I don't think I'll care about needing more HP Sustain besides 1-2-3 Soul Eater and Abyssal Drain at that point. Mana would be dedicated to just oGCD Edge/Flood and some new class mechanics can be implemented that works with Mana too without having to fight between TBN Mitigation and DPS needs.

I don't think it'll be overpowered because it's still on 15s CD and there's no Large On-Demand HP Sustain in DRK's kit. DRK seems like it's meant to Prevent Damage from happening anyway, might as well go all in on TBN, Woo Woo!

[KageTokage]

It feels especially dated when the short cooldowns the other tanks have never required them to burn a DPS resource and all got significant buffs to bring them much closer to TBN in effectiveness.

[Shurrikhan]

It feels especially dated when the short cooldowns the other tanks have never required them to burn a DPS resource and all got significant buffs to bring them much closer to TBN in effectiveness.

I feel like the practical (lack of) parity is all that should matter there. Frankly, I wish more tanks were able to trade (potential) throughput between the offensive and defensive. If anything, the issue with TBN is that it doesn't do that, at least when it works as intended.

I'd almost prefer TBN just generate "a X-potency barrier on self or target party member. 8s duration. Refunds a portion of its cost equal to barrier consumed." Voila - It doesn't scale as strongly with gear, but it's no longer so overpowered on tanks (and also has greater value on non-tanks).

[ArthurATDayne]

It feels especially dated when the short cooldowns the other tanks have never required them to burn a DPS resource and all got significant buffs to bring them much closer to TBN in effectiveness.

I agree, with Heart of Corundum, Holy Sheltron and Bloodwhetting straight up built to not only mitigate but replenish significant portion of HP Bar every 25s (in PLD's case they can now start with 100 Oath Gauge in Duties etc and cast again immediately after 1st Holy Sheltron expires), it seems fine to me to have some level 82+ Trait Upgrade for TBN removing Mana Cost.

GNB's Heart of Corundum is really nice, I like that it's a Guaranteed 900 Cure Potency on Self every 25s along with all the other cool mitigation effects. That's pretty awesome level of HP Sustain at Level 82 and up and they still got Aurora Heal over Time to further shore up HP Sustain Tanking needs. It really wouldn't hurt to have TBN be free to use every 15s to at least come close/compete with the HP Sustain of GNB/PLD/WAR via DRK's TBN Damage Prevention Identity.

[Siimodo]

The final changes going into this expansion are very lack luster for Drk. The tank that needed the most assistance got the most nerfs. Offense and defensive resources are split for all tanks, and they have done nothing to ease or modify the issues with Drk systems. Guess I am a Gunbreaker for this expac.

[Dingodrole]

In my opinion, TBN costing ressources is not the big problem here. The problem is that our defensive CD is tied to Damage.

Now, if you think about it, why is it frustrating in the first place ? Is it really because we need to use the same ressource that is our " main " dps output to also use TBN ? To me, it's because we don't have any CONTROL whatsoever about it : use TBN, and pray it breaks ( at least for non-TB situations )

To prove my point about the frustration being the lack of control about our tool is : Salted Earth. It's change in EW, placing it on the ground automatically, is kinda a nerf for a bunch of player, directly because we lost control over our possibilities ( it's also a QoL for players that doesn't care much about optimizing, and my point there is not to judge anyone's way of playing )

Back to TBN : What could possibly makes us have more control over it, without having to remove the MP cost entierely ? Make it more costly !

To me, we are entering a point in the game where more and more actions have that " follow up " action tied to the same button press ( Salted Earth > Salt & Darkness or Fell Cleave > Inner Chaos )

Why not do that to TBN then ? You press TBN, you loose 3K MP, but then you gain the ability to break it whenever you want, at the cost of let's say ... 1k or 1.5k MP, and when you do decide to break it manually, it deals a proportionnate ammount of DMG equal do the extra MP cost from triggering it, in order to make it dps neutral compare to the extra ressource cost.
On top of still getting your Dark Art proc.

To me, a change such as this is the solution to " everything ".
No need to get the full value out of your TBN if you can plan ahead for it, making us having an extra ressource management to do potentially ( thing that DRK is " meant " to be good at )
No stress to use TBN for Auto-attacks in raid content, where it's always the massive grey area of " will it break or not "
No stress to see that the dungeon you're in is with a WHM, using Holy and screwing you a bit

I don't see it as an OP change, if the question about " Yes but then DRK can spam TBN even more without downside " because it's wrong : your " trigger " button would cost even more ressources, so it would balances out, it would just be the solution to the eternal problem.

There's maybe flaws around the idea, but hey, we're here to share, and sadly, i don't think TBN would ever become like this