Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Incorrect. No other tank got something that useless, only DRK did.

Trait for a 3rd charge of Onslaught being oh so useful?

What PLD get at lv 84

Because the level is the only thing to matter when judging the performance increased by EW traits?

Level 62 Paladin's must be furious. Here you got Bloodspiller for significant ppm increases that level and they only got Intervention, which shares resource cost with Cover anyways.

No. You look at the whole EW set. Exempting altogether new skills (rather than soft upgrades), each job received...

WAR:

1. Updates its on-demand
2. Buff to its one-minute heal (1000cp, a relative overbuff, at least until PLD's got buffed, at which point it just became two jobs winning out and two losing out)
3. Melee Mastery
4. 3rd Onslaught charge

GNB:

1. Updates its on-demand
2. Buff to its 1-minute heal (bonus charge on a skill that already wasn't worth holding; no actual potency increase)
3. Bonus Cartridge (if not for Double Down, this would be of only mild value; together, the two notoriously made GNB's burst phase wonky).
4. Melee Mastery

DRK:

1. 2-minute ST CD buff
2. A further 2-minute ST CD buff
3. Melee Mastery
   
4. Enhanced Unmend

(Buffs to on-demand avoided as not to create anti-synergy. New, separate defensive given instead. It's notably undertuned.)

PLD (the "big" winner):

1. Updates its on-demand (both forms)
2. Gets a one-minute heal (Req heals, originally worth a total of 1600cp, then overbuffed to 2000cp, or 3200 at level 90)
3. Melee Mastery
4. Divine Veil gets a bonus 400cp.
5. Spirit's Within gets AoE falloff

DRK's joke trait didn't come at cost of an added charge or potency to a self-heal any more than WAR's or GNB's near worthless traits did. The devs just maintained their determination, held since Stormblood ended, that DRK deserves only minimal self-healing. (They then, naturally, tuned the tankier GNB to deal more damage than the low-sustain-but-high-damage tank, DRK.)

[Archwizard]

Trait for a 3rd charge of Onslaught being oh so useful?

... arguably?

I mean the way I see it,

Every tank:
- Melee Mastery

Every tank except DRK:
- Updates to its on-demand/primary off-tanking tool

PLD (the "big" winner):
- Massive healing during Requiescat, which can be used to trigger Divine Veil and avoid damage lost to Clemency
- Raidwide heal upon activating its raidwide barrier
- damage buff on Spirits Within and contribution to AoE output

GNB:
- An extra charge on a HoT it can throw on allies, or can use an additional time on itself during W2W, or can hold for use during Superbolide
- Bonus Cartridge capacity and increased effect on Bloodfest, which benefits not only Double Down but contributes direct burst potential from Bloodfest
- bonus damage on normal combo finisher

WAR:
- Nearly doubled potency on its one-minute heal
- An extra charge on an oGCD that can, if nothing else, be used for free damage in its opener... or allow for withholding charges for an additional length of downtime at lower damage loss

DRK:
- Two separate, consecutive traits to increase the potency of the same CD (literally the only reason not to combine them is just to fill an extra trait slot)
- A CD reduction for its gap-closer... triggered by a spell we avoid using unless literally no other option is available to us

Enhanced Unmend is the only EW tanking trait doesn't affect a rotational skill or defensive tool. Even arguing it as an effective potency buff on Unmend is marginal given how we're meant to avoid it, not look for opportunities to employ it.
It's a stretch to say any of the others got something as bad or worse.

(Buffs to on-demand avoided as not to create anti-synergy. New, separate defensive given instead.)

Even that is something they could have worked around -- like having a mitigation effect trigger when Dark Arts is gained, or adding a Drain effect when spending Dark Arts, or using self-healing as a substitution for additional mitigation, or (as you yourself have suggested before) just reducing the potency of the barrier outright while adding mitigation on top of it to reach an effectively equal (or marginally offset) potency.
The addition of a separate defensive measure as a "solution" just ends up further bloating our oGCD pool.

Now granting, part of it is the unique nature of TBN since its barrier effectively already is the "upfront" effect that they were trying to give other tanks with Endwalker, but we keep coming back to how they missed the other side of the equation, since they added so much additional sustain to the others after the "upfront" effects expired.

[The_User]

So nobody is gonna try to encourage dev to rework/improve it?


If we let them shove something like this on us and let it stick for the rest of the expansion without having to take responsibility then what could guaranteer that they wouldn't do it again in 7.0?


But I guess DRK commu aren't SAM commu

[Shurrikhan]

So nobody is gonna try to encourage dev to rework/improve it?

It's already been done. You can probably find a few different concrete suggestions theretoward in this thread.

A third charge is worth the affect gap closer's damage times their raid buff multiplier (i.e., less than 60 potency bonus per two minutes, while requiring that one have no mobility action for 90 seconds thereafter). Enhanced Unmend, meanwhile, increases the relative potency of Unmend and has a small chance to refresh a charge at a useful time (reduces time until next mobility action rather than obliging that that time be increased by 50% for any damage bonus). That's worth 33.3+ potency. Just doubling the CDR would put DRK on even ground so long as there's reason to use Unmend at least once, on average, per 2 to 2.5 minutes (depending on uptime saved by a timely reset, too).

One suggestion, for instance, was to greatly increase its CDR (e.g., to 10 or 15s), on the assumption that forced downtime via range are decreasing in modern raids and thus there would not be as many opportunities to Unmend as there would be raid cycles, and make it empower Plunge (by the portion of (over)charge) if both CDs are already readied, such that the trait cannot go to waste.

[The_User]

By rework I mean give us something else that we can really count on instead of this extremely niche once in a lifetime hidden card shenanigan.

[Shurrikhan]

By rework I mean give us something else that we can really count on instead of this extremely niche once in a lifetime hidden card shenanigan.

Given that every tank got something similarly niche/useless, or nothing in its place, your choices there seem to be pretty straightforward.

[The_User]

What PLD get at lv 84 : Divine Magic Mastery II


What WAR get at lv 84 : Enhanced Equilibrium


What GNB get at lv 84 : Enhanced Aurora


What DRK get at lv 84 : Enhanced Unmend

[Vatom]

I feel you but at this point my morale is at its lowest its hard to even want to think of whats going to happen next expansion let alone now
The fight just seems pointless like I'm shouting in the aether and waiting for a response
Keep up the fight guys maybe you can do it no hidden joke there

Im just done to the point I wonder what would be a good replacement

[The_User]

Whats going to happen next expansion?


Same thing with this expansion


Same old trick for a cash grab and then go back to dump all their effort for FF16

[Vatom]

Whats going to happen next expansion?


Same thing with this expansion


Same old trick for a cash grab and then go back to dump all their effort for FF16

Pretty much