Dark Knight Megathread

[Duskane]

4.0 Warrior wasn't that bad
only shake it off was useless since bersek no longer gave pacify anyway
if we still had old IR and Berserk with Charge infuriate WAR would be a lot more interesting than what we have now
plus IR and Infuriate wouldn't be awkward with Chaos cleaves

[Marxam]

Adding a shield to Shake It Off in my book was a pretty big buff just to mention one in StB

well that was one of those things where it could be seriously OP by removing mechanic buffs and even weakness, or, extremely underwhelming like only removing the doom in Exdeath. Though it was a good idea for tanks to have a self-cleanse, especially in content like bojza or DRS but designing content around one ability is generally a bad idea.

The shield change was a good idea on their part (especially when you consider that Selene had an aoe esuna), though I think it needs to be buffed a bit given the fact that you are giving up cds for it. A 1% buff per cd used would make it almost worth it to burn all 3 cds for a 24% barrier for big hits. As it stands most of the time you just burn an RI for it for a 17% barrier which is okay but could be better.

[Shurrikhan]

4.0 Warrior wasn't that bad
only shake it off was useless since bersek no longer gave pacify anyway
if we still had old IR and Berserk with Charge infuriate WAR would be a lot more interesting than what we have now
plus IR and Infuriate wouldn't be awkward with Chaos cleaves

To be fair, even if Shake it Off had just worked as a self-Warden's Paean (a purge and a single shield-against) and could actually remove all that Esuna could, it would have merely been "lackluster" rather than "trap" quality.

I'd argue that old IR still should have also doubled gauge generation, as to make it less backloaded, but otherwise, yes, it would have indeed been a more interesting playflow than what we have now -- and far more so than what we're in for with the 60s form in Endwalker.

[WhyAmIHere]

oh boy. it's embargo end day guys! Who's excited to see how vastly improved DRK is going to be going in to EW? Who's excited to see if LD got adjusted, or if our sustain is improved, or what the deal is with Peppered Earth, or if Dark Wave is gonna significantly impact our rotation, or how the change to delirium could shake up DRK gameplay?

[OdinelStarrei]

A word, since I'm pretty chill at the moment.

If things aren't shaking out in a fashion that you are happy with, or your actual in-game identity isn't 100% soul bound to Dark Knight, seriously consider changing mains. That ain't just for the people here, everyone that lurks the thread, or plays the job this also applies to.

There will be plenty of people who are going to play it, maybe some offer feedback per usual, and enjoy themselves. If that's not something you can see yourself doing, you're doing yourself a massive favor by disengaging with it entirely. I see a few are already on that path, and for those, I hope it goes well, and you are fulfilled elsewhere.

I'd like to keep the doomerism in check, at the risk of me sounding like a hypocrite, and hash out some sentiment outside of "We're screwed, hang me now", maybe talk some tank compositions, any interesting edge cases, maybe some tidbits from the interviews that might be fun to discuss, but I don't know. There's a big, angry raincloud over us right now, and there has been for a long time. Either get the umbrella, or please evacuate for your own sanity.

[Duskane]

A word, since I'm pretty chill at the moment.

If things aren't shaking out in a fashion that you are happy with, or your actual in-game identity isn't 100% soul bound to Dark Knight, seriously consider changing mains. That ain't just for the people here, everyone that lurks the thread, or plays the job this also applies to.

There will be plenty of people who are going to play it, maybe some offer feedback per usual, and enjoy themselves. If that's not something you can see yourself doing, you're doing yourself a massive favor by disengaging with it entirely. I see a few are already on that path, and for those, I hope it goes well, and you are fulfilled elsewhere.

I'd like to keep the doomerism in check, at the risk of me sounding like a hypocrite, and hash out some sentiment outside of "We're screwed, hang me now", maybe talk some tank compositions, any interesting edge cases, maybe some tidbits from the interviews that might be fun to discuss, but I don't know. There's a big, angry raincloud over us right now, and there has been for a long time. Either get the umbrella, or please evacuate for your own sanity.

appreciate the sentiment
but some people are most likely gonna keep the Stockholm syndrome on DRK anyway.

[Rosenstrauch]

Nah. There's no singular group we can pin the IR change to, given that it was well received by players in every category, but the purpose of giving consistent results to the IR / Berserk window was a sticking point to those who care about the result, not the build up.

Mitigating RNG isn't something I see chief among concerns of the more casual playerbase.

Ah. Yeah, I'm not surprised about that. I've seen enough of competitive TF2 to know just how much competitive players hate randomness.

A word, since I'm pretty chill at the moment.

If things aren't shaking out in a fashion that you are happy with, or your actual in-game identity isn't 100% soul bound to Dark Knight, seriously consider changing mains. That ain't just for the people here, everyone that lurks the thread, or plays the job this also applies to.

This is pretty good advice, yeah. I don't intend to switch away from DRK, despite my misgivings, since I really love the job's aesthetics and it's tied into my character's identity. Otherwise I'd probably be moving on to Gunbreaker or Paladin.

[Beddict]

appreciate the sentiment
but some people are most likely gonna keep the Stockholm syndrome on DRK anyway.

Yeah that was me in Shadowbringers. I enjoyed DRK in SB and while I wasn't pleased with it in ShB I stuck with it out of stubbornness, hoping there would be changes in EW. Clearly that was monumentally stupid of me, since raiding on the Job meant nothing more than me approving of the Job according to whatever metrics SE uses. I'm just one person which means very little compared to how many people actually play DRK, but I still feel like I contributed to the bullshit that's continuing into the next expac. Going forward, screw it, I'll go with PLD or GNB.

[Wayback]

Embargo is lifted, time to sulk.

They didn't even TRY to improve Dark Knight. All we got was one or two uninspired "press on cooldown" buttons that remain totally disconnected from the rest of the kit.

Living Shadow should interact with our kit, it should represent a shiny burst window where we can pour our MP and oGCDs to increase the output. Have some interplay between the oGCDs and our otrher abilities, give us something else to spend blood on and let more abilites stack up Blood - Salted Earth used to build Blood over time which was really cool. Abyssal Drain used to be really impactful for healing, which was really cool. I don't know, maybe give us more than 3 attacks in our basic rotation?? Give us more than 2 things to spend MP on. Give us back Soul Survivor or old school Dark Arts where we could selectivly enhance our next ability by paying some MP.

The new 2 charge 10% mitigation is boring and uninspired, especially with how much love every other tank was showered. The new line AoE Shadowbringers has a nice amount of damage but it's just.... there. It doesn't even grant MP or Blood?? It's just "Here's another ability you cast inbetween pressing 1, 2, 3. It will not change your experience or give you any decisions to make."



Living Dead remains a joke. It should be really easy to actually change this effect to something more fitting, too! When Walking Dead procs, 2 things should happen:
1) It should grant full invunerability for the duration
2) It should grant a number of stacks (in this example lets say 4 stacks of Walking Dead) that drop off as you heal, and inflict damage if they're still up at the end of the duration.

Example: Gain 4 stacks of Walking Dead for 10s. While under the effect of Walking Dead, you cannot be KO'd by most attacks and are invunerable to most damage. When you receive healing equal to 25% of your health, lose 1 stack of Walking Dead. When the duration of Walking Dead ends, you take damage equal to 25% of your health for every remaining stack of Walking Dead. This damage cannot be reduced.

Changing it to be 'damage suffered' at the end of the effect and granting stacks like this will preserve the feel of the risky, self sacrificing technique, but does 2 things to make it feel better:
- It makes it easier for the DRK and healers to know how close you are to recovering, because the stack count reflects healing progress.
- It gives shield healers more value to the DRK since a strong shield can absorb some of the resulting damage even if you don't hit full health. It also allows the DRK to shrug off 1 or 2 stacks themselves with TBN.


Honestly, this really frustrates me. I think this is another situation where they're going to bandaid some fixes a month in, like when they screwed up Monk in SHB. We'll see what happens, but this really sucks.

[Ignimortis]

Yeah that was me in Shadowbringers. I enjoyed DRK in SB and while I wasn't pleased with it in ShB I stuck with it out of stubbornness, hoping there would be changes in EW. Clearly that was monumentally stupid of me, since raiding on the Job meant nothing more than me approving of the Job according to whatever metrics SE uses. I'm just one person which means very little compared to how many people actually play DRK, but I still feel like I contributed to the bullshit that's continuing into the next expac. Going forward, screw it, I'll go with PLD or GNB.

Pretty much same. I'll do the MSQ as a DRK, then switch to RDM or RPR (if it catches me mechanically) for the rest of the expac. I've been dissatisfied with tank design as a whole in ShB, and perhaps walking away is the best way to show it.

Anyway, the embargo's lifted. Everything that I expected to happen, happened (except fixes to Blood Weapon — do they really not even care?). Everything I hoped that would happen, did not.