A (maybe) different outlook on the current DRK situation

[NightHour]

From a DRK player gone GNB heres my thoughts on DRK in Endwalker



Besides the already known issues with Living Dead, Blood Weapon and TBN...


There's some less talked about issues with DRK which imo are:




1. AoE Combo being Spells and not Weaponskills.

This has to be an oversight.. Why would a job designed to be in Melee need "Spells"?.

This also means your skill speed has no effect on AoE and you cannot AoE during Blood Weapon or you'll miss the 5 GCD's needed.






2. AoE Combo not being fully unlocked until level 72.

Why... ?

Gunbreaker gets their basic AoE combo the moment they unlock the job.
Warrior gets it's basic AoE combo by level 54.
Paladin gets it's basic AoE combo by level 40.

Why does Dark Knight have to wait until level 72 to have it's basic AoE combo?


Yes I'm aware GNB gets a filler AoE spell at 72 but I'm referring to basic combo.

Stalwart Soul in my opinion is the basic part of DRK AoE and Quietus is the filler.




3. Dark Missionary not being unlocked until 76.

Another oversight to be honest.

Dark Missionary should be unlocked at level 70 which is the same level that Passage of Arms and Heart of Light get unlocked.

I also don't understand why Shake it Off is unlocked earlier when it's prob tied for the strongest with Passage of Arms.

[HisShadowX]

The Ugly:
And here's where the issues I mentioned above become far worse when combined with the current meta. It's one thing to look at a class in isolation, but when you put it alongside all other classes, issues will appear. And DRK has some ugly ones.

First, the obvious: as the tank with the weakest self-healing in the entire roster, endgame-level healers have to adjust their way of healing whenever they get matched up with a DRK. I've seen this multiple times. It's often no fault of the healer; they just spent the last 10 matchups healing immortal Paladins and Warriors, and suddenly now they're matched up with a DRK that can't heal self-heal to save her own life.

Second, and this is a particularly egregious "special case" of the first issue: DRKs match up HORRIBLY with Sages. Ponder with me for a second: what happens when you have a shield-based Tank with bad self-healing and match her with a Healer with the weakest panic burst of all current healers? Yeah. Not good.

DRK + SGE is a matchup made in hell. Most of the times I died in endgame dungeon pulls, I was matched up with a Sage. Often a Sage who complained that "maybe I didn't use enough cooldowns", all the while I stared at my hotbar, all icons definitely on cooldown.

...Well, all except for Living Dead, because if Sage has issues healing DRK in *normal* conditions, can you imagine one trying to top-off a DRK, from zero to full, before the counter reaches zero, after running out of their already tiny pool of panic burst healing?

Yeah. DRK + SGE brings the worst from both classes, and it showcases their worst aspects. Two AMAZING and INCREDIBLY FUN classes, mind you. They're my favorite tank and healer. But they have flaws, and they compound in a very, very bad way.

...Which makes me sad, because again, they're my favorite classes. And also singe Sage is a new class, I get matched up with them a lot. That gets annoying fast.

The Dark Knight historically has been a DPS class and a DPS focus but was changed in this game to get more people tanking. Historically Dark Knights do not have a self heal they have instead using their own HP to damage other people.

[Undeadfire]

The Dark Knight historically has been a DPS class and a DPS focus but was changed in this game to get more people tanking. Historically Dark Knights do not have a self heal they have instead using their own HP to damage other people.

It's a Tank/DPS depending how FF set it. 10-2 had DRK as a Tank role, 11 based it hybrid DPS/Tank role it could do both.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Oh my god, seriously Square Enix what is your problem with this. I don't care that the UI designer came on and said "It's impossible!" It isn't, you just don't want to. "It'll take more QA time! Our internal processes aren't built for checking the DAMAGE TYPES on the abilities we DESIGN before implementation!"

Are you kidding me? I don't care. I shouldn't have to utilize an external repository to find out what damage types are. Full stop, end of discussion. This literally only punishes DRK, less so GNB, and maybe SCH now. If you're going to make Addle and Feint both damage types, you have to do something to or with Dark Mind or the way damage is dealt to keep parity, and I LIKE Dark Mind.

Change something in the battle log. God this makes me so mad.

I am so glad this isn't just me. I somehow convinced myself that all raid-wides were magic and that probably PLD and WAR--which I don't really use--worked identically, because why else would they limit my raid-wides to magic damage? But the fact that I had to make up a heuristic to justify DM/HoL has never sat well with me, because it was based on a presumption I really didn't have the patience to confirm.