Dark Knight Megathread

[Undeadfire]

don't forget trick attack and Goad for ninja

I don't need to mention every detail, christ.... You can remove Trick and Ninja would likely still be picked because of Shadeshift, ability it's self adds enmity, and Smokescreen nerf enmity, it's the very thing responsible for no stance tanks.

Wait. What? You're seriously trying to argue that Heavensward WAR was useless and Heavensward DRK in comparison was OP??

Path: 10% damage reduction (physical and magical), 100% uptime (double that of Reprisal), WAR only, stacks with Reprisal
Delirium: 10% INT reduction (affects magic only, works out to be less than 10% magic damage down), 100% uptime, non-unique

Path -10% Both: 10% Reduction, Fell Cleave Crit enhances, Equilibrium, Raw Intution preventing moving, or remove the buff.
Delirium: -10% INT, Reprisal -10% Both, -20% INT, -10% STR downtimes included, Low Blow Spam, Blind, Enhanced Parry, MP Blood Price feed, GCD DOT, Double Dark Mind, only tank with Gap Gloser, 10s Invuln (Ast was useless till buffs, Whm always taken), Attack Speed increase.

Warriors OP, and Dark Knight is not? The literal difference in tools. Warrior is OP in damage, Drk has a ridiculous amount of tools, SE nerfed/removed a lot of their tools, I would just submit it lol...

WAR did so much damage that in some cases, it was actually worth it to go double WAR despite the limit break penalty.

Warrior wasn't that far above in certain fights vs Drk. Dummy fights then yeah Warrior destroys. Still who even does double? Originally I thought it be better, but logs proves it isn't. Only worked A1S.

Why would you ever deliberately use pre-buff (i.e. Stormblood's patch 4.3) DAPS in a group with WAR, especially when your WAR is better suited to pull on pretty much every fight?

You out gear content, Drk/Pld become better main tanks during those periods, spam Low Blow/Swipe, more DPS, simple logic.

Also, what 'first week' strategies?
Gordias WF completion time: 34 days.
Midas WF completion time: 17 days.

Ah yes, gear checks. Point still remains, better strategies get shared to groups, 1st week, World First strategies, majority of times are replaced.

[Lyth]

You don't look at tanks in isolation. WAR/DRK was better than WAR/PLD. Both of these were vastly better than DRK/PLD. And if you were running solo tank, WAR was what you went with, as was seen during Creator speedruns towards the end of Heavensward. I don't buy your point about buffs because both WAR and DRK brought two useful buffs. And if you're talking about outgearing content, the only one that is truly mandatory is Eye, which you generally want your WAR to be applying, not your NIN.

MT/OT designations were obsolete in Heavensward. WAR wanted to line up defensives like RI/Vengeance with their burst windows and had lengthy pre-pull timers to set up their initial burst. It made a lot more sense for WAR to open since they would be burning their defensive cooldowns anyways during that time period, and there was usually an early tankbuster that synced up well with this. You could just provoke whenever that was over to free them up. This was also back when Holmgang was on a three minute recast, which easily sealed the deal for WAR having the most powerful defensive kit. Even in a fight like A12S which is pretty much designed for DRK, it made sense to temporarily swap out to take advantage of WAR's robust cooldown set when they were going into a burst phase.

There was a fair amount of experimentation with double WAR around when Midas was active. I think the comps in general were more varied during that tier because it was the most mechanics focused.

There's a lot of misinformation that gets posted about older expansions. It's like a game of telephone, where you hear something that someone else told you from memory, and it gets more and more further removed from the truth with each retelling.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Path: 10% damage reduction (physical and magical), 100% uptime (double that of Reprisal), WAR only, stacks with Reprisal
Delirium: 10% INT reduction (affects magic only, works out to be less than 10% magic damage down), 100% uptime, non-unique

WAR did so much damage that in some cases, it was actually worth it to go double WAR despite the limit break penalty.

Speaking as someone who world prog'd during Gordias & Midas (and was one of the 6 groups that cleared LL before tome weapons, along with world 4th Brute Justice), neither WAR nor DRK were OP compared to each other, they were just both OP compared to PLD. At the same time, WAR really wasn't as OP as people believe compared to DRK.

DRK had reprisal, which while not 100% uptime, RNG could be manipulated in such a way between waiting on uses & dark dance usage that it was up for basically everything you needed it to be, effectively making it 100% uptime for everything that mattered on fights with physical autos, which was insanely important for things like Living Liquid week 1 & 2, Midas week 1 & 2, and Creator week 1. DRK was mitigating more party damage than WAR was on average, not to mention in later weeks optimal dps WARs would stop using path due to it being a large dps loss over time, compared to DRK who could always mitigate without a dps loss due to Delirium being a dps gain over non-DA'd SE.

You can check all of the fights in the expansion on FFlogs - DRK really wasn't that far behind, and was doing more than WAR in plenty of the savage fights. There was never an instance you'd bring 2x WAR over DRK, unless your DRK was just that terrible lmao.

WAR's dps really wasn't as crazy ultra high as your rose-tinted glasses remember. WAR only superseded DRK by such large margins when the fight included downtimes that played to WAR's favor in letting berserk recharge during said downtime, like Cruise Chaser.

[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.

[Monochromatic]

There's a lot of ideas for a rework, instead of just a revert. Bring back the glory days of Dark Knight and balance it again from there, the game is at a point for tanks where it's completely feasible. Paladins need the rework more to compete if this happens since Warrior has a solid place and Gunbreaker only requires a bit better rotation timing buff to swap offense/defense better (or just slightly more offense potency).

DRK players will be happy. Paladin players will, to my knowledge, also be happy for a soft rework since their class is either hit or miss depending on an encounter as it is right now. DRK's hit or miss can at least be instantly solved with a revert and then retooling of rotations or potencies.

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

Blood Weapon (Trait): Recover HP equal to 50% of damage dealt each time you inflict magical damage.

Sorry if I'm jumping the gun and there were more edits to come before un-hiding this, but would this include both AoEs and the likes of Shadowbringer, Edge, and Flood? (Admittedly, I need to double-check that they are magic damage, but they sure look like it.)

If so, that's... plenty potent, but would also put all nearly self-healing onto MP, with Blood playing no part, which just seems a little anti-thematic. It would also make Blackest Night nigh pointless in AoE, depending on MP restore per hit received during Dread Spikes (which would then amount to Flood damage, which then amounts to healing). The latter would also likely make Blood Spikes redundant unless urgently needing immediate burst healing and entering its duration with full MP.

[ItsUrBoi]

A far as my experience and knowledge go the problem with current DRK is the fact that it doesn't have anything special going for it in its kit. Paladin is the slow , GCD tank with a full "rotation. GNB is the off GCD tank cuz it weaves to a some may say restrictive degree ( which is understandable, you cannot double weave defenses during continuation, but you can use defenses before thanks to their duration ) and Warrior is the big burst tank.
DRK is a combination between warrior ( fill gauge, use gauge on Bloodspiller ) and every 2 minutes spam every OGCD you have under raid buffs. Flood doesn't feel different to Shadowbringer. Living Shadow is a "cool" DoT. DarkSide and Blackblood do not interact in any way - the class just uses 5 or 6 edges and refreshes a resource wasting ~27secs of it since its capped at 60.
-> A suggestion would be to make it the fast paced GCD tank with augmenting abilities! Having a tank with ~2.08 GCD would feel unique to the job.
-> Bring back Dark Arts under the form of something with a CD of like ~5 seconds to augment ability potencies/effects and a slightly better animation ( people loved Paladin due to the beautifully looking animations ), its cost being DarkSide.
-> Living Shadow could be at early levels what it is now, but at later levels ( 90? ) it could merge with the player , granting a permanent DarkArts during its duration.
-> Passively DarkSide could grant SkS. ( if its active you get SkS )
-> Scourge could be a cool way to grant us another combo or keep it as an OGCD.
-> Delirium could not be just Inner Release. It can be give 3 stacks of DarkArts. The old Delirium animation could be used for another powerful ability costing DarkArts to be even used.
-> Actions could be separated into actions that are always available but enhanced by DarkArts ( HardSlash -> Syphon Strike -> SoulEater , Bloodspiller, Quietus, Edge/Flood ), and actions which are only available with DarkArts ( Scourge? , old Delirium animation, PowerSlash, Spinning Slash , Carnal Chill, Tar Pit )
-> TBN could be the 25% shield we all like, but without MP cost, on a 25 sec CD, granting 1 DarkArts stack if broken.
-> Dark Mind could just be removed ( and as compensation a buff to Oblation could be given where first 4 secs its 15% dmg reduction, next 4 secs, 10% ) and replaced with "Sole Survivor" this time granting Blood, HP and MP upon death of enemy or effect running out.

Under DarkArts, Edge/Flood could heal for a certain amount , Bloodspiller/Quietus could just do more dmg and have a more impressive animation.
So the overall feel and loop of the job would be to use as much Edge/Flood to fill DarkSide, spend DarkSide on DarkArts ( btw breaking TBN could give you 1 free Darkside ), spend DarkArts on either special actions or on augmenting normal actions -> go into ur burst under Living Shadow where you always have DarkArts, spend Blackblood on Bloodspiller/Quietus.

[Shurrikhan]

-> TBN could be the 25% shield we all like, but without MP cost, on a 25 sec CD, granting 1 DarkArts stack if broken.

This sounds... so much worse. The punishment for failing to break the shield would be the same, a lost Edge/Flood, but now you'd have a 67% longer cooldown atop that. Moreover, we'd now have to balance our potency-per-minute budget around the possibility of getting off an extra 2.4 Edge/Floods per minute since they'd be free, at best, rather than merely refunded.

Essentially, we'd lose damage for not having at least two perfectly-timed opportunities per minute to pop TBN, rather than solely losing damage (beyond some scant average of <20 potency) only when we use TBN at an outright wrong time.

This would be objectively a hefty nerf once balanced around.

If you want to homogenize TBN, so be it, but strip the DA proc off it before your suggestion forces a ppm nerf in 95+% of all serious content (all while badly constraining its available timings).