Dark Knight 6.1 feedback and future of Dark Knight

[Duskane]

I would like to keep the Job feedback train rolling in hope Dark knight can get some more major adjustment in the future.

I'll start with the 6.1 QoL changes

Stalwarts soul now being lvl 40 is very good just makes the job nicer in lower levels and doesn't make Quietis awkward

Blood Weapon now granting 5 stacks fixes the issue with AOE and ping/sks

Living Dead now Dark Knight can very easily sustain itself and negate the death penalty of Walking Dead.

All these changes are amazing and I'd like to thank dev team for finally addressing these issues but Dark knight is still has alot of flaws in its kit

Dark mind
20% magic mitigation this ability is niche at best,
most enemies in this game do physical damage so Dark mind just goes unused most the time.

Oblation
10% damage reduction on 2 charges
this ability is not terrible but this ability is gotten way to late for it to make any major impact on the jobs especially compared to every other Tank lvl 82 ability,
best case scenario would be to merge these two into one ability 10% physical and 20% magical with 2 charges.

The Blackest Night
a fairly controversial ability in Dark knight kit its either praised or hated since SB,
this ability shorter CD does not justify the MP cost as its no where near as good as blood whetting or Heart of Corundum despite these having no cost at all,its good for mitigating Tank busters and on occasion some mean DOTs on players but this ability needs a rework to be on par with what PLD,WAR and GNB received.

Game play
Dark knights game play is very very basic and only real enjoyment of this job is seeing big numbers rivaling DPS in openers or Just aesthetic
but in terms of gameplay this Job has nothing
no identity,no gameplay mechanic
nothing to manage,nothing to build you just
1,2,3 don't overcap and you are good,
even though PVP Dark Knight has 7 buttons it still has more identity and a game plan which is sad since PVE is main focus of the game.

so i hope Dark Knight is still on the radar for the dev team.

[Duskane]

I understand we have the Megathread but i would like this to be a more direct source of feed back that Yoshi was asking for.

I also know many of us have been voicing our concerns about Dark knight in these forums for years but i would like people to add what i missed and keep voicing your concerns and hopefully this is last time we have to do this.

[Lyth]

I think that DRK is in a pretty good place overall right now. I have a few concerns about Living Dead's implementation, given that the heal or die requirement is still present, but we'll see how it fares against future fight design.

As far as damage-specific mitigation is concerned, it's really only acceptable if you're getting something clearly stronger in exchange for the action being more situational. Otherwise it gets perceived as just a liability. Take something like Warcraft's Spell Reflection or Anti-Magic Shell as an example. Reduces magic damage and reflects back spell damage. Absorbs magic damage and prevents the application of harmful effects. Sure, these sorts of things are situational, but in exchange you get a unique situational benefit.

I think Dark Mind isn't too bad in this regard because of the recast being so short. Dark Missionary feels pretty awful, though. It's significantly worse than Shake and less versatile than Veil, on top of being just a reskin of the GNB equivalent. I was thrilled when I saw that Stranger of Paradise's Void Knight had the classic FF6 ability Runic as its primary action, which absorbs magical attacks and gives you MP. There are so many ways that they could have made a unique raidwide mitigation tool out of this in FFXIV. Redirect magical damage towards yourself. Recover HP based on the damage mitigated. Recover MP if you want to be daring. Make the limitation feel like a strength by adding some thematic flavor.

Oblation is a bit underwhelming, and I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of a change to it (either treat it as an upgraded trait for TBN, or increase the mitigation slightly). I wouldn't touch TBN itself.

But rather than talking about the short term, I think it's worthwhile to have a look forward to the next expansion. You'll probably get three new actions at most. DRK still has one of the lowest action counts on any tank, so they don't necessarily have to be upgrades. I think that what would improve DRK's playstyle the most right now is more GCDs. We've got four in single target and three in AoE. I don't think that a traditional maintenance combo would be a good idea, but it might be nice to utilize the Dark Art gauge allow you to cycle through an Enhanced Combo much like Soul Reaver stacks do on Reaper. I'd also like to see a proper finisher (Omnislash?) that makes Living Shadow more interactive. On the utility side, I'd like to see a non-damage dealing movement ability. Perhaps something that turns you shadowy and dramatically increases your movement speed temporarily similar to Lost Impetus.

[shao32]

Im all up for fixing Obliation, Dark mind distributing mitigation value properly betwen the kit and wash DRK Gameplay in to a more unique experience by reworking delirium and implementing mechanics so the job don't spend ever again +45s spaming souleater combo only but i don't think the Dev team are whiling to do more of what we recive already since recent changes has been more to make us shut up and belive they are whiling to do more just to be totally dissapointed, i can't but think they are going to leave the rest unsolved as always.

[Derio]

Literally just make TBN the same as the PVP version.

Add lifesteal to gauge costing abilities. Make AD cost mp since its only used in dungeons anyways. Grant oblation either a small shield or small heal/regen effect. Make dark mind have physical mitigation as well.

[Xrison]

Hell, just make PvP and PvE DRK the exact same (with lower potencies, of course) the new PvP DRK is a freaking BLAST to play.

[Duskane]

Dark missionary could do with some secondary effect to make it a little different but
it really needs to be unlocked at a lower level so missionary can be used in 70 content.

[Luizgazen]

Give PVP Salted Earth to PVE and it would fix most if not all problems with our survivability

[Archwizard]

DRK's chief issue for the future -- that is, 7.0 or any other X.0 rework -- is that since the removal of the Dark Arts spell, its core rotation has been a watered down version of WAR's.
Blood Gauge is accumulated and used exactly the same way WAR's Beast Gauge is; the differences are largely a matter of splitting hairs, like DRK not having WAR's innate Direct Crits and WAR not having an MP cost on its damage oGCDs, but even then they are used with near equal frequency. There are variances to allow for player skill, but the main difference really is that our Surging Tempest equivalent is combined with our answer to Upheaval.

Now, there is a degree of greater complexity than WAR when it comes to our usage of defensive skills, but this generally comes out to "it's more difficult for DRK to do the same things the other 3 tanks can do with relative ease."
Not to say that DRK is incapable of performing in the same position... it's just harder as a DRK, especially on healers.
We don't have any form of self-sustain like Aurora, Equilibrium or healing spells. Our mitigation skills are more conditional than other tanks as well, with Dark Mind having little use in dungeons, for instance, while Oblation is of low enough potency that it is best used when stacking mitigation effects.
And then there's The Blackest Night, which keeps an eternally awkward position: the barrier must be deployed in circumstances where it is guaranteed to break or it comes as a damage loss for the user. We have to constantly weigh whether stacking mitigation effects on top of it will make it a waste of resources.

Which is actually something I find ingenious about DRK's PvP rework: instead of TBN competing for an MP cost against damage skills and refunding that on a successful use, it instead negates an HP cost on a damage skill. It becomes a double-or-nothing effect for survival, and furthermore, combines the classical Dark Knight as someone who consumes their own HP for power with 14's emphasis on barriers and counterattacks.
I've suggested in the past having an iteration of DRK as a tank who consumes his own HP or grows in strength as he comes closer to dying; this raised practical concerns, however, in having a tank whose main damage resource interferes with his survival. The PvP variant of TBN may be a solid direction to consider for a future iteration of the job, as it sidesteps this issue entirely.

... it would also, of course, invite more use of life-draining attacks for use in burst phases and dungeons, of a similar caliber to PvP's Bloodspiller/Quietus/Undead Redemption and PvE's new Walking Dead. Food for thought.

All the same, Dark Mind and Oblation remain underwhelming. Though Dark Mind isn't as high of a priority as Living Dead was, as of 6.1 clearing away some of the cobwebs, I believe it is now the most problematic skill in our arsenal. It needs some use outside of purely mitigating the rare magical tankbuster (which requires trial and error for players to anticipate, at that), or perhaps even total replacement.

[baklava151]

As far as what's reasonable to expect the devs to change in EW, I don't really have much I can think of. Oblation is still pretty underwhelming and feels like it needs something on top of the damage reduction, whether it's a heal or if I'm feeling really ambitious, some resource gain. Also I want PvP Salted Earth, though it might be need to be neutered a bit.

For 7.0 DRK, I'd like them to move away from the strict 2 minute rotation we're stuck on. Stop giving everything 60s/120s CDs and encourage more kit interactivity. I've already complained enough about DRK's 1-2-3 downtime but the fact that we can go into our burst window with next to no setup (apart from banking resources but what class with a gauge isn't that true for) and have everything be ready to use to just mindlessly spam is kind of ridiculous. Spread our skills out more and give them more interaction, let us use our resources in more interesting ways, don't gate everything behind a CD. It would kill me if we get to 7.0 and Delirium is still the same while we get Enhanced Unmend II and Enhanced Living Shadow III