Dark Knight Megathread

[Absurdity]

I had a feeling this is how it would go down. I don't think we'll get touched this expansion.

Why would you be surprised by this? They announced well in advance that the patch would only include potency changes, it's doing completely fine when it comes to raw potency. What dark knight needs is basically another rework.


Now if they do absolutely nothing with the job in 6.1, which wouldn't be too unlikely given their track record, then you can get your pitchforks out.

[Danelo]

I think if they don't share they thoughs about DRK it's bcs there are none, it wouln't look good if they just openly recognice they didn't planned anything for the job and instead of do what the playerbase asked and fixed all the numerous complaints and design flaws we have been reported since HW they just decide to ignore all the complains and just slap worthless traits on worthless skills to fullfill the base requeriments of the expansion and dedicate design efforts on other jobs while they keep forcing the current version of the job on us bcs (instead of going back to HW we just preffer on "build" from SHB) in other words "we didn't want to spare resources on fix the job".

They aren't going to share anything on us, and i doubt they will considering the job design team still consist in 3 members and 1 intern that have to keep balancing and pamper they favorite jobs so they aren't going to have time to spare on such things.

Obviously this is all, more than likely, true. But I’m trying to give the devs an off ramp from continuing the direction they are going and have been going for years. Will they take the off ramp? Doubtful. And when they don’t they’ll continue to get blasted, I’ll unsubscribe and play single player TW3 until they fire the current dev team and start fresh.

[Archwizard]

Please stop suggesting to merge Blood Weapon and Delirium Q_Q
Blood Weapon is one of the coolest animations DRK has.

People have been asking for Blood Weapon to get the Delirium treatment and have the effect be a fixed number of stacks instead of a short duration affected by ping.

They have the same exact CD, so they're already perfectly aligned.

Merging is just a practical consequence, especially given button bloat.

Now, I wouldn't object to them retaining Blood Weapon's name and animation and just having Delirium's effects be a trait on it, especially since this isn't the first or only "Delirium" DRK has had access to...

[Archwizard]

GNB and DRK should not have identical party mitigations. Period. I don't care which one gets what, but the fact that they are literally the same thing infuriates me to no end, especially since DRK gets it so much later. They should be different. For this reason I hate both, even though they are a good ability.

Thinking about it now... if PLD lost Divine Veil and went all in on Passage of Arms as its partywide defense, then that would show a push for each tank to get a unique partywide and make room for one of GNB or DRK to replace Dark Missionary or Heart of Light, respectively.

DRK's got some potential, I think, for a PoA-like ability where they plant their sword, kneel behind it and channel an area of defense around themselves. As you say, DRK is the shadow cast by PLD, so it would make sense.
The question then being "what exactly would it do differently." With the big push for DRK as an anti-magic tank, Dark Missionary is already the logical partywide for it; I just find GNB a bit too... thematically vague to come up with an alternative for it, while DRK has untapped potential from the abyss.

[Undeadfire]

With the big push for DRK as an anti-magic tank, Dark Missionary is already the logical partywide for it;

They tried this in Heavensward, it's terrible balancing and causes problems with tanks pick rate for clears. Paladin couldn't mitigate most of the savage raid bosses, while Drk can netflix chill it.

Yoshida wants all jobs to reliably clear all content, and I'm sure people don't want to be driven out because job sucks. I am aware of the Endwalker problems and honestly, I have no clue what they're doing at the moment.

[Archwizard]

it's terrible balancing

Oh trust me, I know. I'm only bringing it up since we still have Dark Mind/Missionary, and apparently Yoshi-P has gone on record about wanting DRK to be very "magical" as a tank.

[Ryaduera]

Thinking about it now... if PLD lost Divine Veil and went all in on Passage of Arms as its partywide defense, then that would show a push for each tank to get a unique partywide and make room for one of GNB or DRK to replace Dark Missionary or Heart of Light, respectively.

DRK's got some potential, I think, for a PoA-like ability where they plant their sword, kneel behind it and channel an area of defense around themselves. As you say, DRK is the shadow cast by PLD, so it would make sense.
The question then being "what exactly would it do differently." With the big push for DRK as an anti-magic tank, Dark Missionary is already the logical partywide for it; I just find GNB a bit too... thematically vague to come up with an alternative for it, while DRK has untapped potential from the abyss.

It's okay for abilities to be similar, like how Veil and Shake are similar, what really bothers me is that Heart of Light and Dark Missionary are exactly identical. They even have opposite names. I've always found it strange that PLD has a cover and DRK doesn't and I imagined up an ability where DRK gets a "special" shield that is part of an ability with an AoE cover, damage is transferred to the Dark Knight and it is only this damage that can damage this special shield and when the shield is broken the damage transference stops. Functionally this is very similar to Veil since it doesn't actually shield the DRK, but where the PLD is the knight that protects you from harm, DRK is the knight that carries your burdens for you. However, Dark Missionary also suits DRK and keeps the magic-tank gimmick so if it stayed that would be perfectly fine, but then I'd want to see Heart of Light change. This is just an idea that might, mechanically and actually coding-wise, be hard to actually create from a systemic angle. But you're right, Dark Missionary does suit DRK thematically, but again, my issue isn't the ability, it's that it exists twice.

GNB is in many ways treated as an offensive bodyguard in the quest line so something could be done to work with it from there. Perhaps a cartridge (thematically, not an actual spender) is loaded into your gunblade and fired into an area in front of you that makes targets deal less damage if you are behind the wall? The wall being placed in front of the GNB by 3 yalms. Pretty similar to Passage of Arms but still different enough that it would have a unique feel to it. But you're right, there's not much thematically to create from what we have, and balance wise eople would just start using this as a personal mitigation unless it locked the GNB in animation or was unique to a specific scenario, weather it be damage type or something else that would just end up making it niche.

[Shurrikhan]

GNB is in many ways treated as an offensive bodyguard in the quest line so something could be done to work with it from there.

I feel like Heart of Light's twist-to-activate pylon crystal or whatever the hell makes Heart of Light goes off... is actually kind of... fine(?). It's Dark Missionary that disappoints me more in terms of wasted thematic potential. I mean, we've got so much slightly megalomanic/psychotic (anti-)hero complex vibe to work off of there.

Of course, if we were completely retooling GNB to actually make use of different ammo types, an ammo that can create force shields a la Garlean gunblades' lingering force blasts to be projected out later would be... amazing. Simply put, though, I'd prefer for adjustments to Heart of Light's or its function/niche (raid mitigation) to be an incidental result of GNB getting a cohesive system (rather than just "here, have lots of buttons to stick in your damage window") rather than simply from directly targeted attempts to make it somehow different from Dark Missionary (which I'd also like to play off of cohesive, integral/core mechanics).

What to do to better tie that capacity to DRK's theme, though....

[Ryaduera]

I feel like Heart of Light's twist-to-activate pylon crystal or whatever the hell makes Heart of Light goes off... is actually kind of... fine(?). It's Dark Missionary that disappoints me more in terms of wasted thematic potential. I mean, we've got so much slightly megalomanic/psychotic (anti-)hero complex vibe to work off of there.

Again, I think both are fine thematically since it's just a generic defense-up buff and that's like... what tanks do... I don't actually have a problem with either ability individually... just... why are they the same, and being the same why does DRK get it so late...

[Lyth]

I don't understand why PLD needs to have access to both Passage of Arms and Divine Veil. You can easily limit each tank to just one unique defensive raidwide mitigation tool in a way that is fair and balanced. And if worst comes to worst, just get rid of all of them and give tanks the Troubadour/Tactician/Shield Samba treatment. Why is there so much mitigation bloat?

I also don't understand the naming choice for Dark Missionary. What does that even mean? Is it a religious order? Is it a position? It just sounds like they completely ran out of ideas after giving all the good stuff to PLD and WAR.