Dark Knight Megathread

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

I feel that I agree with lyth a lot, again...

I have a much, much better understanding of how RPR works than I do Endwalker DRK.

Same with me, and one of the causes of my current anger --> frustration --> grief cycle, until I calm back down and think straight again.

What do we know?

Abyssal Drain still has a life leech effect.
Blood Weapon gives you 10 blood off of each GCD. It's 10 seconds or 3 hits, don't know which.
Soul Eater still gives you 20 blood and still has a life leech effect.
Salted Earth is still 6 ticks/15 seconds.
This new Blood Boil ability does damage, but doesn't appear to apply a buff or debuff.
TBN is still 7 seconds.
TBN 2.0 is 10 seconds.
Living Shadow still costs 50 blood and still has a 24 second duration.
Edge still gives you 30 seconds of Darkside.
Frey's Abyssal Drain doesn't heal you.
Stalwart Soul still gives you 20 blood.
Flood 2.0 doesn't cost blood and looks like an oGCD, but can't say for sure.
Frey's Edge doesn't affect your Darkside.
The follow-up Flood 2.0 happens 10 seconds later. Either it's usable on demand (unlikely), or it's linked to your Living Shadow window somehow.
Delirium doesn't cost blood.
Quietus is free under Delirium.
Carve and Spit still looks like it gives you MP.

If you have the capacity to look critically, you'll find yourself with more questions than you have answers.

That's the point. Everything looked like it worked exactly like it did before in ShB. Unless there are some major changes (haste on Darkside? EoS/FoS MP cost reduction?) that SE chose not to show, I can only surmise that ShB DRK is pretty much unchanged, with some extras bolted on.

And then I agree with these two points, as well... I did examine the showcase for Dark Knight with a proper analytical view, and did have much more questions than answers, which led to disappointment and some paranoia, and then on the emotional over-reaction side, I complete agree with Ignimortis...

These two things are another two of the causes of my current anger --> frustration --> grief cycle, as I had been to think to myself for months, that if Dark Knight does not improve, in a way that I regard as improvement, come 6.0... I will do drastic Dark Knight related things.

Now the real question is: What abilities are gone? There is no actual gameplay footage of tanks, so it's hard to tell. The only abilities that we didn't see previewed were Shadow Wall, Dark Mind, Dark Missionary, and Living Dead. DRK is only at 25 actions, so they in theory should remove fewer actions than they do from other tanks.

Perhaps, just perhaps... ShB Dark Knight is so dull and shallow that Dark Knight "got lucky" and no old actions got the delete injustice? just perhaps...

I don't have enough information to judge this properly.

And I must agree... I realize that my current state of mind has too much emotion influence, but I have also thought within just enough reason, to come to the same conclusion... I need to over-react because of emotion influence less, and wait for further information more, before I do any drastic Dark Knight related things.

I think the vast majority of players have very different, yet fixed opinions on how DRK should play, none of which are compatible with the others. This is compounded by the fact that DRK has changed into a completely new job with every expansion.

Hieh... I think(?) that I did already type this at least once, but.. I do not like just how accurate, correct, and true that this is...

If only FFXIV had in-class("job" in this case) diversity...

Maybe the fact that they've finally stopped doing this is a good thing, and we can hopefully work towards something that is enjoyable for most.

Ah... Verily, forsoothe, indeed... And then we have this. I hope(no sarcasm, much serious) that Dark Knight players, come 6.0, enjoy to play Dark Knight and only see their improvement from there... (bias emotion warning) Alas.. There must, of course.. be a sacrifice. There must be at least one part of the Dark Knight community made to be the sacrifice... And any whom akin to myself, have been given confirmation that I am a part of that sacrifice...
This makes four, to keep count... It was anger, and then frustration, while now I just feel terrible...but!, at least I will have a Reaper avatar.. to talk about all of the things with...

...after I bury my Dark Knight self in a coffin and never turn back...

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Was pretty disheartened about the drk reveal. Nothing new that made me go wow im excited to get that skill, nothing that changes my current complaints with the job feeling like a budget warrior. Very sad. Holding on to hope that the expansion afterward I can love my edgy tank again wholeheartedly like I did in Stormblood.

[Kabooa]

I'm in a wait and see when it comes to Dark. Both Paladin and Gunbreaker I can mostly work out how it will go as there's not that much that needs further context. The "Greater reward for correct defense use" is the only thing that might throw a wrench in things. War I mostly just need to know if Nascent Anger does anything truly different or if they just removed Raw Intuition and baked that into Nascent Flash.

The (apparent) lack of interactivity with the Shadow will remain a disappointment. Whether Bigger, Blacker Night plays back into your resource game and how that fits into "Greater reward for defense", as well as how that interacts with the Shadowbringer action will determine whether it's just the same or better. Here's hoping.

[Xtrasweettea]

Honesty I am not surprised.

I actually called August of last year:

DRK is never going to be "fixed." SE has moved DRK away from its HW iteration and StB iteration to this new ShB iteration. We can complain all we want, but SE is not going to adjust DRK to be like any previous iteration.

DRK ShB will be the new norm for now on. 6.0 DRK will be using ShB DRK as a base.


As for the DPS jobs: DPS jobs are SE's priority; not tanks nor healers.

DPS jobs are going to get the fixes since those jobs cater the majority. SE wants to "fix" BRD even, but they don't know how since the player-base is not committed to a specific theme for BRD.

SE is satisfied with tanks right now. ShB tank iterations are meeting what metrics SE has for tanks. Now it is just maintenance of whatever subs are left, which will more-than-likely be playing DPS and not tanks.

Thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...54#post5394754

I don't know why everyone here was holding out hope for us going back to a HW or StB type DRK when SE was clearly going to just make a ShB DRK 2.0.

The direction of the non-dps classes are simplification. Their goal is to keep those metric outputs at or above their targets. Apparently they saw success in ShB for tanks and healers. To SE, at the moment, DRK is right where they want it.

[shao32]

Honesty I am not surprised.

I actually called August of last year:

Thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...54#post5394754

I don't know why everyone here was holding out hope for us going back to a HW or StB type DRK when SE was clearly going to just make a ShB DRK 2.0.

The direction of the non-dps classes are simplification. Their goal is to keep those metric outputs at or above their targets. Apparently they saw success in ShB for tanks and healers. To SE, at the moment, DRK is right where they want it.

Well i personally have hope for better changes bcs i belive in Yoship words when fun comes first, always listen to the playerbase and that kind of coments that works for any job with the sole exception of DRK and SCH.

[Lyth]

????

Dark Knight always fired off beams of purple energy out of their weapons. This dates back to FFIV. It's also been a feature of the job since it was released in Heavensward. Because nostalgia.

I'm baffled at the number of people who want me to remember things that never happened. There was someone in the healer forums earlier going on about the things Healers had to do during their week one clears of Gordias. A raid that took over a month for the first clear to happen. I know everyone wants to fit in, but it's incredibly simple for anyone to check if you were actually around back then. And to be honest, it doesn't really matter when you started playing at the end of the day. It doesn't add any weight to your opinions.

I remember Scourge. But what was it that you liked about it? I'll accept that it looked cool. But what did you like about it from a gameplay standpoint? The fact that it reset your combo? The fact that it was a standalone DoT that most people struggled to break 80% uptime on? The fact that it was 500 potency, and was replaced by Bloodspiller, which was also around 500 potency at the time? I remember Delirium. All three completely different iterations of it. Again, the first one did look cool, and was well designed in the context of the Dark Arts system that existed at the time. The INT down buff was gamechanging, and it was hilarious to see influential naysayers in early Heavensward who claimed that DRK would never be meta eat their words on the first raid tier itself. Stormblood had the worst iteration of Delirium, being both ineffective and contributing to the MP overflow problem that we had at the time. Hopefully they'll just pick a concept and stick with it. Power Slash? I don't remember Power Slash, and you don't either. Nobody used it outside of gpose.

5.0 didn't remove the 'branching combo'. If you want to argue combo pruning, then 4.0 did that. In 4.0, we lost Delirium as a combo step. But your enmity combo? Who cares? Everyone lost their enmity combo after Stormblood because they weren't being used.

I know everyone wants to jump on to the forums and just react to the info dump that they've just received, and that's fine. If you want to critically assess current issues in job design and more importantly raid design in the context of the proposed changes, then even better. But I don't understand why there are so many people posting this nonsense about 'remember Heavensward' when they very clearly don't remember it themselves.

[Shin96]

It is what it is. I wouldn't expect an entire staff of developers to listen to the complaints of a few, but that was and is all that I could do, at least for myself. Now, we don't exactly know what DRK will be like, but I assume it will be much of the same. One should not forget that we do not represent the playerbase in any kind of way. I doubt the developers even look at the forums. Clearly by the look of how poorly they are moderated. I would say they don't look at them at all, except maybe the JP forums.

Do not give up your hopes, but base them on reality. There are factors and decisions that were made regarding that job trailer. As one poster mentioned, DRK is where they want it and I believe that's inherently true. The developers at Square Enix are very talented and capable individuals, so they most likely are aware of what the reception could be.

I think everyone needs to know their own reasons as to how much is enough before you quit the game. I can live with Reaper as a job, but DRK is and will remain the same. We have done enough, let them at it and draw your own conclusions. I truly sympathize with everyone that did their best to voice their opinions here, I'm sorry we didn't get what we want, but that's the way things are now. I wish the best.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

...To be honest, the original HW Dark Knight does not interest me all that much... My interest was different, and less simple. I want to see a remaster of the most of interest parts about the original HW Dark Knight, not quite the return of it...
What I want to see is a modern Dark Knight that abandons WAR clone style game-play, to be a mix of a original Dark Knight remaster, and the current things that ShB Dark Knight has... Any person can see that even the original Dark Knight had issues and problems, and I would loathe to see those issues and problems return.

With no doubt, I can say that the return of the original Dark Knight is not a good idea... I think only that to use the best parts of the original Dark Knight, as a foundation to build up from, rather than WAR clone foundation, is the good idea.

And to add to what Shin96 did post... Any Dark Knight players that can stomach what Dark Knight has become, may they enjoy it... It was said clear and plain that Dark Knight players similar to myself will be disregarded and ignored, so Dark Knight and its future now lays in the hands of other Dark Knights, not mine. May that go well and end well.

[Shin96]

-bunny-

I have to keep this short so. All I read is basically: "Well why does it matter bla bla nobody did it anyway, it wasn't efficent bla bla". Alright.

First of all, when I make posts, I don't try to convince anyone. Your response seems like an inner conflict and I do not blame you. You made alot of great posts in the past and did your best to contribute in a positive way yet, we ended up with this version of DRK. You quoted me directly, so I know this is somewhat serious.

I didn't want you to remember anything. The sole reason I keep posting in this thread is for the reason I made it. Now of course one could say it's useless but I do enjoy reading posts by other people as well, not only mine. Now, this account was made during Stormblood, I used an account during the HW era but this is besides the point.

Scourge looked cool, it was fun to use when you did, and generally it was fun to apply a dot. It works for GNB, they could have made adjustments anyway, as they usually do for anything that isn't DRK.

5.0 has removed the branching combo. Fact. Using Souleater in repitition is probably what burns people out, in combo with Inner Delirium. Power Slash was a way to maintain aggro, a system which existed before 5.0 but was heavily altered into a process of simply turning on your Tank stance. How boring.

I don't even know what to say to all of this. You're basically jumping on me for just saying how much I liked the previous iterations of DRK. You are putting words in my mouth when I never had the intention of making anyone remember anything. Heavensward is in my opinion a superior expansion and it will always be my favourite. Yes, I also loved enmity and I am sorry you hated it. Whatever the reasons may be, it's fine to disagree on this topic but you should probably try to be more reasonable in the future, you always are for the most part, right?

[Xtrasweettea]

Well i personally have hope for better changes bcs i belive in Yoship words when fun comes first, always listen to the playerbase and that kind of coments that works for any job with the sole exception of DRK and SCH.

This phrase, especially the bolded, is not what SE is saying when they say this. We are interpreting this incorrectly, bolded part mainly.

SE is always listening to us. They're not coming into the forums, Twitter, and Reddit and listening to us in those locations. They're listening to us all the time in the game.

Everything you do in that game is recorded and stored in multiple databases. There's multiple tables that are continuously updated with information. Information like: where you log in, where you log out, the time stamp you changing from one job to another, the job you queued for Leveling Roulette, all actions in combat, etc.

Every little thing is stored. This includes the current iLvl on the main hand for your DRK.

SE can query that data from across multiple tables to answer any question they can ask:

• "How many people did OS11 on September 18th of 2021?"
• "Give me the average usages of Circle of Scorn in Mayto this past month."
• "Give me the top three sources that people use to get Rock Salt."
• ETC.

They can also set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and use that same data to measure and report on those KPIs:

• OS11 needs to be completed by 10% of the playerbase by patch 6.0
• The average iLevel Main Hand for DNC should be a minimal of 500 and expected of 515 for 75% of DNCs by the last day of September.
• ETC.

So anything that meets or beats a KPI target is a success. I can guarantee they have KPIs for DRK.

• % of DRKs with iLevel growth targets
• % of DRKs that participated in Ultimates within Y period of time.
• Average time aggregate players are on DRK.
• ETC.

As long as those KPIs are met. SE considers it a success. They start "listening" to players when those KPI targets are not met. SE might look at the forums, Twitter, Reddit, etc. to help them with their root cause analysis (RCA). More-than-likely they will not though.

SE will go to Mr. Happy, Xenos, MTQ, etc. and look at those people and their audiences for help on the RCA. Asmongold, the new guy in town, who doesn't even know there was a HW DRK and a StB DRK will be looked at.

Not you, the random person on the forum. Not Shao32, who has played much longer than Asmongold and has a deep appreciation for DRK. SE will go to Asmongold because Asmongold's influence and audience can cause changes to the data on a much larger scale than you... or me... or anyone else here.

SE wants those targets met every cycle (monthly, daily, etc.). So any changes will come from people who can change the data.

If you want "improvement", there has to be enough KPIs not met over a long period of time in order for SE to do anything. You better hope that whoever SE goes to has the same idea of improvement that you do.

So, yes, SE is always listening to the players. It's just not the way most people think it means.