Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Healing is a form of damage mitigation. Getting health back is very important and if it can be stacked with mitigations the health returned is also more valuable

I never said healing can't... heal, but no, healing is not mitigation. It does not mitigate anything. Healing increases HP until it hits its maximum. It therefore cannot increase maximum eHP against a single strike. If a boss tankbusters you for what would, prior to active mitigation, be 130% of your health, no amount amount of healing will save you. To survive it you must increase your maximum eHP, effective Health Points, e.g., by using mitigation, that which decreases the damage you take, effectively, increase your HP, or by increasing your maximum (and current) HP. Barriers can be equally considered as either a maximum and current HP increase (exempting old interactions like Stormblood Upheaval) or damage reduction. Healing, however, does not increase maximum eHP, unlike the likes of barriers, percentile mitigation, or max and current HP increases (Thrill of Battle). Healing heals; nothing more. You do not "stack" healing with mitigation (be they barriers, percentile mitigation, or ToB). You survive via mitigation and then you or your healers can decrease the gap between current and maximum HP as needed.

so the flat percentage is frequently applied to the HP regained as well

Percentile mitigation increases the eHP of your existing HP. It does not uniquely further increase the value of healing received over that time. It merely increases the length of time, because your existing HP takes longer to deplete, for which you are alive in which to be healed, including by your own healing. But so does a barrier.

The only issue with the latter would be is if the barrier makes some (i.e., early) part of that healing excessive since it'd then do nothing. In practice, that does not happen unless you run into a fight with both incoming heals (Regen, AB, etc.) and a barrier pre-applied. That is far smaller vulnerability than the fact that the remainder of percentile mitigation can be wasted by death since the damage reduction is not as front-loaded (and therefore as immediate or sharply timeable) as on a barrier.

To be clear, a heal that doesn't overheal and a shield that protect before damage are only distinguishable from eachother in terms of mitigation when the shield provided actually prevents death.

By that token, all defensives are useless unless they prevent death. No. The difference between a heal and a shield is that the barrier margin of a shield can extend maximum HP. If one has some 600 potency worth of healing until maximum HP, a 600-potency heal and a 300-potency-heal-300-potency-barrier will have the exact same effect (unless the 300p barrier can prevent a damage-dealing, directly or otherwise, debuff), but if there's only 300 potency of healing left to be done, the latter's eHP increase will be double that of the heal because the barrier can also increase the target's maximum eHP.

Heals are only weaker because they happen after damage is taken rather than before, but there's not a single mechanic where a shield is necessary to survive it in the first place, so it's redundant, and even if it was necessary, we have SCH and SGE for it anyway.

Redundant =/= weaker. TBN stacks with Galvanize and Eukrasian Diagnosis and unless taking extreme amounts of (pre-mitigation) damage over time, it is quite simply stronger than the combined mitigation and healing of Holy Shelltron or Heart of Corundum. Outside of your stat-buffs from job diversity, you do not need variety just for the sake of variety. TBN is stronger, stacks, and then has Oblation available atop that; the mere fact that other shields exist does not somehow make TBN defunct.

This means in any sutuation that brought, as an example, Heart of Corrundum to the point the heal activates during the mitigation period and didn't outright kill the tank, then there is no situation where HoC alone didn't mitigate more than TBN even if you stacked it with Oblation.

It's not that complicated. For HoC to mitigate as much as TBN, it must absorb as much damage over its duration as 25% of the tank's HP minus what would be produced by 900 potency of self-healing under the tank's stats. Simple as that.

Let's put it this way. Let's grab... the highest GNB parse we can, which happens to be on Zodiark. That tanks has 80008 HP, so let's just say 80k. If they were a DRK, their TBN would be 20k. On a top-parse GNB, Heart of Catharsis hits for around 8k. To equal TBN, then, he must absorb 12k damage within your 4-second 30% and/or 8-second 15% window.

That could be from mitigating half your HP (40k) damage (after other mitigation but prior to HoC) over the opening 4 seconds, or your entire health pool (80k) over the later 4 seconds, or some combination of the two (30k in the first 4 seconds + 20k in the later 4 seconds). Whatever.

Now, let's look at the actual outgoing damage from Zodiark Ex. Only once over his 9-minute fight, and despite never pairing it with anything more than Rampart, does his HoC absorb enough damage to make up for that missing 12k stat-based throughput. Once. (And that's not even accounting for TBN being able to pull off two-thirds more casts over time (in practice, around 55% more casts per minute, going by leading parses).)

Again, across a 10-minute fight, there was only one situation where HoC plus its heal absorbed as much as TBN, let alone TBN+Oblation. That's not exactly indicating a majority of contexts by which HoC blows TBN out of the water, despite HoC having a 67% longer CD than TBN and its trait being included in the same skill.



Unless undergeared, TBN is not particularly weak relative to competing skills, especially for its trait-equivalent being a separate ability. And it's certainly not weak just because "other barriers exist anyways."

Nor does any of that change that fact that, yes, TBN wholly scales with gear while HoC, Bloodwhetting, and Holy Shelltron instead scale largely with content (HoC primarily with content, the other two roughly equal under current damage intake). And no, you cannot just scale fully with both gear and content. The percent on percentile mitigation does not increase with your gear. (The only example we've ever had of that is the now long-defunct Foresight action from Marauder.)

[Satarn]

Can't prog anything group content wise without healers and tanks.

Pretty sure this is exactly why we never get any proper attention - they look at content participation rates when deciding changes and even if tanks and healers are collectively in a shite state, they will always see 2 of each in every party - "clearly everything is fine, so many people playing tanks and healers in raids after all!". On top of that, since the party building mechanics essentially force you to take half of the existing tank/healer jobs (2/4), even if one is particularly bad it won't really see that much of a difference in participation, compared to when this happens with a DPS job.

When physical ranged was so bad at SHB launch that it wasn't worth the 1% main stat buff, people could just ditch them entirely. When NIN's output was laughable, people just played another dps and the job's clear numbers dropped. With support roles there isn't much to switch too and 4 people always have to "suffer" them for the rest of the raid, regardless of how bad they feel to play.

[Ryaduera]

I never said healing can't... heal, but no, healing is not mitigation. It does not mitigate anything. Healing increases HP until it hits its maximum. It therefore cannot increase maximum eHP against a single strike. If a boss tankbusters you for what would, prior to active mitigation, be 130% of your health, no amount amount of healing will save you. To survive it you must increase your maximum eHP, effective Health Points, e.g., by using mitigation, that which decreases the damage you take, effectively, increase your HP, or by increasing your maximum (and current) HP. Barriers can be equally considered as either a maximum and current HP increase (exempting old interactions like Stormblood Upheaval) or damage reduction. Healing, however, does not increase maximum eHP, unlike the likes of barriers, percentile mitigation, or max and current HP increases (Thrill of Battle). Healing heals; nothing more. You do not "stack" healing with mitigation (be they barriers, percentile mitigation, or ToB). You survive via mitigation and then you or your healers can decrease the gap between current and maximum HP as needed

Except the situation where you can't mitigate the damage to not kill you literally does not exist in this game, nor will it ever be to a degree that TBN is the only thing that can fill that gap because Squeenix will never design an encounter that requires a specific makeup and the healing from HoC and other like abilities does not take effect until after damage has already been taken so it does not actually overheal.

Percentile mitigation increases the eHP of your existing HP. It does not uniquely further increase the value of healing received over that time. It merely increases the length of time, because your existing HP takes longer to deplete, for which you are alive in which to be healed, including by your own healing. But so does a barrier.

I don't get why you went out of your way to agree with me angrily. You even left in the part where I said "as well". The heal is also instant from when damage is taken so it in effect is exactly the same as a barrier if you survived, and not even once have I had a situation where I couldn't just... survive... It's kinda what we do as tanks.

The only issue with the latter would be is if the barrier makes some (i.e., early) part of that healing excessive since it'd then do nothing. In practice, that does not happen unless you run into a fight with both incoming heals (Regen, AB, etc.) and a barrier pre-applied. That is far smaller vulnerability than the fact that the remainder of percentile mitigation can be wasted by death since the damage reduction is not as front-loaded (and therefore as immediate or sharply timeable) as on a barrier.

Again, never really came into a situation where with my mitigations being used properly I actually died, meaning no value of the percentage mitigationwas lost unless going into downtime, which brings things off cooldown anyway, so null point on that.

By that token, all defensives are useless unless they prevent death. No. The difference between a heal and a shield is that the barrier margin of a shield can extend maximum HP. If one has some 600 potency worth of healing until maximum HP, a 600-potency heal and a 300-potency-heal-300-potency-barrier will have the exact same effect (unless the 300p barrier can prevent a damage-dealing, directly or otherwise, debuff), but if there's only 300 potency of healing left to be done, the latter's eHP increase will be double that of the heal because the barrier can also increase the target's maximum eHP.

I'm pretty sure I covered this, but pop off.

Redundant =/= weaker. TBN stacks with Galvanize and Eukrasian Diagnosis and unless taking extreme amounts of (pre-mitigation) damage over time, it is quite simply stronger than the combined mitigation and healing of Holy Shelltron or Heart of Corundum. Outside of your stat-buffs from job diversity, you do not need variety just for the sake of variety. TBN is stronger, stacks, and then has Oblation available atop that; the mere fact that other shields exist does not somehow make TBN defunct.

It's not that complicated. For HoC to mitigate as much as TBN, it must absorb as much damage over its duration as 25% of the tank's HP minus what would be produced by 900 potency of self-healing under the tank's stats. Simple as that.

Let's put it this way. Let's grab... the highest GNB parse we can, which happens to be on Zodiark. That tanks has 80008 HP, so let's just say 80k. If they were a DRK, their TBN would be 20k. On a top-parse GNB, Heart of Catharsis hits for around 8k. To equal TBN, then, he must absorb 12k damage within your 4-second 30% and/or 8-second 15% window.

That could be from mitigating half your HP (40k) damage (after other mitigation but prior to HoC) over the opening 4 seconds, or your entire health pool (80k) over the later 4 seconds, or some combination of the two (30k in the first 4 seconds + 20k in the later 4 seconds). Whatever.

Now, let's look at the actual outgoing damage from Zodiark Ex. Only once over his 9-minute fight, and despite never pairing it with anything more than Rampart, does his HoC absorb enough damage to make up for that missing 12k stat-based throughput. Once. (And that's not even accounting for TBN being able to pull off two-thirds more casts over time (in practice, around 55% more casts per minute, going by leading parses).)

Again, across a 10-minute fight, there was only one situation where HoC plus its heal absorbed as much as TBN, let alone TBN+Oblation. That's not exactly indicating a majority of contexts by which HoC blows TBN out of the water, despite HoC having a 67% longer CD than TBN and its trait being included in the same skill.



Unless undergeared, TBN is not particularly weak relative to competing skills, especially for its trait-equivalent being a separate ability. And it's certainly not weak just because "other barriers exist anyways."

Nor does any of that change that fact that, yes, TBN wholly scales with gear while HoC, Bloodwhetting, and Holy Shelltron instead scale largely with content (HoC primarily with content, the other two roughly equal under current damage intake). And no, you cannot just scale fully with both gear and content. The percent on percentile mitigation does not increase with your gear. (The only example we've ever had of that is the now long-defunct Foresight action from Marauder.)

If you have a DRK and a shield healer it is redundant but nobody said weaker. It was only said that it would not be the deciding factor in your survival. TBN is not stronger. Here's the math from the first set of tomestone gear as a base for HP. I don't know why you say it's not complicated to me, I understand it's not complicated, calculating damage mitigation is extremely simple. It's basic math and I happen to be smarter than the average rock.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778466

I'm not going to pretend to understand why you're going on about gear not increasing percentage. Like... yes, you are correct, that point was never refuted. Not to mention damage also scaales with ilvl so the porpotion of damage generally stays the same anyway. But heals from those abilities do, and healing is mitigation even if you don't want to think it is. Drain Tanks are a thing that have existed in many games because healing is a form of mitigation. Post damage mitigation and pre damage mitigation both exist, but when talking about tanks it's traditionally pre damage mitigation people consider, but post damage mitigation is just as important. This usually takes the form of regeneration or reactive healing, like applying life steal buffs after damage is taken instead of before. Theoretically, with high enough max HP all you need is heals to be considered tanky, which is exactly what Warrior is, as well as it having a plethora of defensive utilities. But they are an outlier right now, so take that with a grain of salt. Bottom line is, post damage mitigation counts as long as you can stay alive, which every tank in this game can do without shields, so it's not that having shields from healers and the off tank is bad, but it is redundant, which, you're correct, is not bad, but saying you succeeded because of the second shield is just copium. You don't need it, you have never needed it, and you will never need it. It's just... nice. That's all it is, calling it better because it does something that is absolutely not necessary is really reaching for justification of such an overrated skill being the reason the DRK can't have better defensive tools.

It really just feels like you angrily agreed with some of my points and tried to say I was wrong about things that I didn't even refute... The only thing I really refuted was that healing is in fact a form of mitigation, because it is whether you want to believe it or not. Especially since every single tank heal can or is automatically applied after damage is taken.

[crystalcat]

Going off the first post and putting in my own two cents...

1. What issue with Dark Knight do you have since 5.0?

Dark Knight is, currently, a reskin of Warrior. It may not have all the same actions and the same 'flow', but the general mechanics -- 'keep up 10% damage buff, build gauge, spend gauge, occasionally enter a buffed state where gauge attacks are free' is identical to Warrior. I want all four tanks to have their own unique mechanics and identity, and currently DRK is just WAR in a different set of clothes and carrying a few different tools. Same core -- I've actually resorted to leveling Warrior instead, for its monstrous self-healing and self-sufficiency. Which brings up a second issue; Dark Knight has the worst sustain and mitigation of all tanks. The Blackest Night was powerful for Stormblood and Shadowbringers, but now that the other tanks have gained a similar-power skill in Endwalker, Dark Knight's flaws mitigation-wise have been exposed. Speaking as a healer main (AST and SGE), Dark Knight is extremely hard to heal compared to all the other tanks; they routinely drop lower than other tanks and simply cannot be brought back up from Living Dead, at least on SGE, when they have to pop it.

2. Is there a viable solution to your problem? If so, write it down.

I believe Dark Knight needs a full rework, 6.0 Summoner style. Bring back Dark Arts, make it into a more 'involved' tank like Heavensward/Stormblood Dark Knight (which I never played, but which was apparently wonderful).

I have concepts for a DRK rework which I'll put in a separate post given that including them blew past the character limit.

Honestly, just give DRK core mechanics that aren't a reskin of WAR's "keep up 10% buff, gain gauge, spend gauge, have gauge supermode' mechanics. Give it HW/SB-era Dark Arts, give it *something* interesting and unique.

3. What did you like about previous iterations of Dark Knight?

I never played HW/SB Dark Knight (got into the game during the tail end of Shadowbringers) but I love the concept of those iterations, especially Dark Arts and the cool animations that seem to mostly be cut now, sadly. Eukrasia is proof they can do *something* with the Dark Arts concept. Give it back to DRK. I would also love for some of the cut animations to be added back -- perhaps swap Syphon Strike's animation to Spinning Slash / Delirium, Souleater's animation to Scourge / Power Slash? The current animations feel too 'floaty' and not weighty enough.

4. How did DRK capture your interest while playing FFXIV?

I love the concept of a tank that weaves magic into its tanking -- Dark Knight is basically that. Plus, the job storyline is amazing. However, the job as it stands is simply lacking gameplay-wise compared it its three companion tanks, which is sad as I love the flavor and the class fantasy.

[crystalcat]

Separate post because character limits.

To the staff of FFXIV (assuming they read this), I hereby disclaim any and all creative right to the ideas I set out below -- use them as you see fit. (Overkill perhaps, but I play MTG, and the designers of that can't even look at player designs.)

My concepts for a DRK rework or change, using current assets and animations:

Turn Dark Arts into a Eukrasia-style 'activate it and certain skills change to other skills' thing, costing perhaps 2000 MP, in place of Edge and Flood of Shadow's MP cost. Use the current Darkside icon for Dark Arts: the 'un-Darkside' for no Dark Arts up, the 'active Darkside' for Dark Arts up.

Candidates for a Eukrasia-style 'upgrade' in current DRK would be Hard Slash and Unleash transforming into Edge of Shadow and Flood of Shadow respectively (with no 10% damage buff anymore, just a potency increase), Syphon Strike and Souleater (upgrade in potency and animation change, using one of the 'cut' animations from the other DRK combos), etc.

In terms of cut abilities' animations, perhaps Syphon Strike might become Delirium or Spinning Strike, Souleater become Power Slash or Scourge.

Cut Delirium as it stands -- the 'temporary super mode' feels far too close to WAR. Find some replacement. Perhaps either cut Blood Gauge entirely or make it 'fills when receiving damage', to make it feel properly Dark Knight-like and fit with the flavor expressed in the class's opening quest ('blood shroud').

In this 'Dark Arts' rework idea, The Blackest Night becomes either a Dark Arts upgrade to a mitigation tool or just a non-mana-linked, but longer-cooldown, skill. Actually, a concept; give DRK a short-cooldown mitigation tool like Raw Intuition, and The Blackest Night can be a Dark Arts upgrade of that -- which then also means it can get upgraded at 82 like the other short-cooldowns.

The general core of this rework idea is to give Dark Knight a mechanic to itself that's not just a rework of Warrior's mechanics -- interpret with that in mind.

General changes:

More self-sustain. More self-sustain. More self-sustain. Dark Knight should be all about draining the health of enemies and using it to fuel yourself; lean into that one hard. Where WAR heals itself with things like Equilibrium and Thrill of Battle because it's too angry to die, DRK should heal itself by drawing the vitality from enemies. Raw Intuition / Bloodwhetting is exactly the style of effect DRK should have. Maybe an oGCD that makes the next attack lifesteal, or giving Blood Weapon lifesteal.

Change Blood Weapon to a charge-based system instead of a time-based system, like Berserk was changed in Endwalker.

Fix. Living. Dead. It is the most terrible 'invuln' ability to ever exist. The only time a Dark Knight pops it is when they're anticipating imminent death, and they will likely die anyway from the healer being unable to heal them -- unless they're with a WHM who keeps Benediction earmarked for Living Dead.

[Baxcel]

----

I was actually just thinking something simular on my way to work with the Dark Arts = Eskurian thing.

But not having the MP on Dark Arts but the skills themselves..

Keep the 1 2 3 with DA Hard slash changing into a dot.. Scourge.
Add HP regain on Syphone Strike when on DA
Add additional HP on Soul Eater w/ DA
Unleash DA adds a group DoT
Stalwart Soul DA adds a bloody explosion on enemies with dot but also removes dot from enemies with a short immunity.

Keep the flood an edge the same with MP costs but DA Flood is Dark Passanger/Shadowbringer and Edge upgrades to Power Slash adding a timer that gives blood to DRK as it ticks

Unmend DA upgrades to Abysal Drain, no cooldown for use

Living Shadow maybe gets two forms? Without DA it stays as normal an with DA it becomes controllable like Reaper fusing with the voidsent an copying your moves or just impowering.

As much as I currently hate the WAR copy on bloodsplitter I don't have much of an idea currently or the time to think of one during this post..

[Shurrikhan]

It really just feels like you angrily agreed with some of my points and tried to say I was wrong about things that I didn't even refute... The only thing I really refuted was that healing is in fact a form of mitigation, because it is whether you want to believe it or not. Especially since every single tank heal can or is automatically applied after damage is taken.

I refuted only four points, on which in no case did I agree with you:

1. That "healing is a form of damage mitigation." It's not. In the same sense that healing isn't a shield, and Sprint is not normal movement speed. Yes, a shield may do no more than healing when there is no context by which to get to its unique advantages, just as bonus movement speed may do no more than normal movement when you would have dodged anyways or still would not have lost uptime, but they are not literally the same thing.
   
   
   
2. That having one's gear scale partly from content, instead of one's gear, is inherently better or, as you put it, has...
   
   

   All of the benefits with none of the drawbacks.
   It doesn't. Having a bit of column A (gear-scaling) and a bit of column B (content-scaling) does not give you "all of the benefits" of each, or even of either one. It's merely proportional.
   
   
   
3. That the existence of SGE/SCH shields somehow reduces the value of TBN. It doesn't. They stack. Having multiple forms of mitigation of the same type does not reduce their efficiency.
   
   I mentioned this only because you brought up their being "redundant" as if that were a matter unique to barriers and TBN that HoC and HS were stronger for having avoided.
   
   
   
4. That percentile mitigation scales with gear just because some other part of the same ability does. It doesn't. It trims a portion of damage you take over a given duration. That is not literally the same thing as increasing the efficiency of all healing taken, since that healing is not bound to that duration. As you said, percentile mitigation doesn't scale with gear if the "mitigation... doesn't provide damage reduction after the fact," and no mitigation provides damage reduction after its duration has elapsed.
   
   For percentile mitigation to fully scale with gear, the healing must be entirely your own and must be both generated and consumed over the duration. Otherwise, they do not have the same frame of reference.

[ShinShimon]

Our DPS is fine, TBN is fine, our opener and rotation are fine. All we need is some ability to restore our own HP, especially in dungeons.

Change Abyssal Drain to something like its old Dark Arts version. 3000MP, no cooldown, no MP restore. Same damage and cure potency it has now.

Change Oblation to provide a powerful HoT if the shield from TBN breaks on the same target, or if target has Walking Dead.

Change Walking Dead to provide a big lifesteal to all attacks for its duration. Decent DPS and the Oblation HoT should be enough for a DRK to heal their way through.

[Sazuzaki]

our opener and rotation are fine.

I agree with everything you said but that, pressing 1-2-3 for 45 seconds isn't fun. Opener just feels like you're spewing out random attacks without any synergy, same thing applies every minute.

[Shurrikhan]

I agree with everything you said but that, pressing 1-2-3 for 45 seconds isn't fun. Opener just feels like you're spewing out random attacks without any synergy, same thing applies every minute.

Agreed on both counts, but... most openers at this point fit that description fairly well. Not an excuse for DRK, by any means, just... a complicator.

I'm sure it can be 'fixed'... sort-of, but it's hard to come up with a solution off the top of my head that wouldn't also feel constraining (nearly as much as it'd also feel better for having reinvigorated and given some through-line or cohesive goal to burst phases). Of course, we could also bring back *gasp* mini-burst phases to deal with some of the problems of the long lulls.

Change Abyssal Drain to something like its old Dark Arts version. 3000MP, no cooldown, no MP restore. Same damage and cure potency it has now.

Change Oblation to provide a powerful HoT if the shield from TBN breaks on the same target, or if target has Walking Dead.

Change Walking Dead to provide a big lifesteal to all attacks for its duration. Decent DPS and the Oblation HoT should be enough for a DRK to heal their way through.

These would be solid changes, save that with Flood only doing 130->160 potency anyways, Abyssal Drain's potency would need to be less for Flood to be worth casting when taking even the slightest damage not already covered by Kardia et al.

Given its CD, though, it'd be wholly fair to have Walking Dead provide lifesteal AND still remove the chance of dropping its "cannot drop below 1 HP" effect early and get rid of the alt-Doom effect outright.

(I don't think Oblation necessarily needs a powerful HoT, let alone that it needs to be bound up to TBN --though that makes thematic sense-- since both heavily limit its applications, but I wouldn't be opposed to it getting some form of buff.)