Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[Soge01]

Because in its current form, its just an edgy version of Warrior. Would a rework help Dark Knight gain some form of identity back and also what would your ideas be for a reworked Dark Knight?

For myself,

I would just want to make it like Guts from Berserk before Guts got the Berserker armor and have its attacks and abilities more focused on stealing as much HP/MP as possible to keep itself fighting. Sort of like how it used to be in HW.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather not simply roll the dice on a rework from the present... trio(?)... of job devs.

If a rework could be sufficiently warranted, though, I'd like to take a core concept, such as Sin (in the sense of transgressing against assumed norms, moralities, or even metaphysics and asserting our own path and domain instead), and build around whatever ways that could fit with our blue, red, and black visual motifs from thus far atop the physical aspects unique to wielding a greatsword, likely with sub-themes towards those blue and red sides (perhaps red uniquely ignoring the mass of the blade for more rapid movements and blue adding yet more to it, etc.) with little if any fushia-colored muddling of the two...

It would also likely need a thorough examination of where its sustain should come from -- be that primarily healing or mitigation, or alternating between the two via some sort of resource system entwined with the aforementioned red and blue overtones / visual themes -- and intended procedural personality (how playing it makes one feel, such as direct/strong, tricky/bastardly, "big-brain", rhythmic or opportunistic, etc.).

Also, Guts is just a warrior. Every part of his identity we've also seen among WAR lore, from giving oneself over to the beast (Berserking), the self-sacrificing wrathful abandon aspects (which, in Berserk, depend on relic armor anyways), to even his move-set. He's a decently fun model, sure, but we're not going to get any more distinct a DRK if centering the job around him. You'd just get a Warrior with a sword.

[VentVanitas]

Ideally speaking, yes. I would like DRK to have more cohesion between its skills and not this weird mess of disconnected unrelated oGCDs and borrowed mechanics. As for its aesthetics, this is just a me thing but I would not mind leaning more towards swordplay and less spellsword. Would make it more distinct from RPR which pretty much just ripped off of DRK visually anyway.

Realistically speaking and as Shurrikhan aptly put it, with the current team- no. I don't have any faith that they would know what is currently wrong with DRK and reworking it would most definitely put it in a worse state.

[Reimmi]

Ideally yes, it just feels like a more complete warrior atm
(by that i mean warriors base with more ogcd's to press)
i'd like to see it redesigned alongside warrior getting more to do

[Jeeqbit]

Warrior is a GCD tank, Dark Knight is a weave-heavy tank. Instead of just a GCD resource for Bloodspillers, there is an off-GCD resource for counterpart abilities like Edge of Shadow.

Warrior is more about self-heals while Dark Knight leans more on mitigation and absorbing damage.

Short cooldown tank abilities have gained some equivalence to The Blackest Night in Endwalker, by having a combination of barriers, raw mitigation, regens and self-heals applied to them, and this combination of effects might be proving a little better against the variety of attacks we get in this expansion such as dot-busters, but it was definitely one of the best tanks in this area in Shadowbringers.

This is how I see them as different. These are the differences I explain to new players. Some people want to play something faster-paced like Dark Knight and some people want it to be slower like Warrior.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Would probably be labeled as "too complicated" but I wouldn't mind DRK being a tank that possessed self destructive skills for a sizeable amount of burst damage paired with sustain/recovery based around stealing HP from enemies. FFXI probably hit this niche the best as DRK in that game had access to a majority of the plate tank armor along with a VIT stat and HP pool comparable to PLD and even had a skill with a built in emnity boost in Last Resort which spiked enmity like a small provoke while boosting attack and lowering defense. The kit also had Souleater which converted your own HP into raw additional damage and it's trumpcard ability with a 2hr cooldown Bloodweapon which converted your damage into raw absorbed HP (unless you were stupid enough to try using it on undead cause that game actually had normal JRPG mechanics). It also had access to magic though the only real notable spells were specifically classified as dark magic which included Bio spells which in FFXI was a DoT that weakened the enemy's offense and Drain, Drain II, Aspir, and a set of Absorb spells that would temporarily steal stats from the target like str, vit, dex, etc...

At the same time I feel like a tank with self destructive spike damage skills would probably have alot of healers complaining because they have to pay more attention. I know insta-KO'd myself in FFXI using a 4 hit scythe weaponskill with souleater active while wearing gear items that boost it's effect paired with gear that granted passives for double or triple attack and having one of those proc on every hit of the Weaponskill... >.>; I recall making a macro for souleater that said something along the lines of "Wheee~ Look at my HP fly away!" XD

[OdinelStarrei]

You do not want DRK to get reworked again. This isn't a "You think you do, but you don't" situation, this is a "Square Enix has consistently proven that they have no idea what they are doing with the job." situation. Right now, DRKs are at a point where the basic GCD to GCD gameplay is incredibly stagnant, 123ing for 45 seconds between each soft burst, before a massive dump of potency in the 2 minutes is the basic framework.

Back in SB, when we still had DA (a noticeably worse version of it, but hear me out), DRK still only had a 123 combo with a gauge dump skill. However, the key difference was that DRK had a few underlying job mechanics that set it apart from WAR specifically, both pre and post 4.1 rework. Things like, converting Blood into straight MP, Blood buildup being more a consistent trickle upwards compared to big Souleater CHUNKS like on WAR, buff extending, and most noticably, Blood Weapon hastes. See, with Blood Weapon back in the day, resource generation worked on both weapon skills, and auto attacks while speeding up your gameplay massively. Due to BWs high uptime because it had a cooldown of 40 seconds, you'd spend more time inside of Blood Weapon, going fast, greeding uptime for the max amount of MP possible, and choosing where to dump all your MP via Dark Arts. This led to my all-time favorite FFXIV build, SkS DRK. AND it was VIABLE.

The issue is that it was too hard, or rather, had too many failure states. The reason DA spam is such a meme is because Square Enix deliberately went out of their way to mess with Dark Arts potencies, delete MP drain, and not give people any way to compensate leading to overflows. With the old DA system, it meant that as long as a GCD was DA-able, it kinda didn't matter what GCD it was, only that you had some raidbuffs to go along with it, and if you were in a big raidbuff window, a priority of DA-BS for the chance of a big, big crit. This is what made Bloodspiller (now a Fell Cleave clone), actually a bit different from it, because getting to a Bloodspiller (your reward for managing Blood) was not only a bit different due to a lack of immediate, instantaneous acquisition ala Infuriate/IR post 4.2, and Delirium having a higher priority for more "go fast", it was mainly seen as a mandatory gauge dump skill to prevent Blood overcap, that just happened to have a somewhat high base potency, but not SO high that it contributed the same ratio of total damage that WAR's Fell Cleaves would in it's rotation at the time. Don't even get me started on TBN breaks giving 50 Blood instead of the new "Edge, but later".

Edge of Shadow now, is what Stormblood Dark Arts WOULD have been if tweaked under that high MP regeneration economy, in my opinion, since Edge of Shadow is just high potency Dark Arts with direct damage applications and high MP costs, ala Heavensward DA. The basic gameplay is the same. They just cut off the MP regeneration abilities so that instead of pressing other buttons during your downtime to keep your MP under control in anticipation of a burst moment, you just threw up all of your MP every 1 minute. The difference back then is that if you DA-spammed for no reason, you'd be a trash Dark Knight. Now, you don't really have the option of messing that up unless you intentionally overcap your useless Darkside meter outside of burst windows, which effectively doesn't change a DRK's rDPS output. It was the removal of the things that made DRK unique for the sake of ease of use that have relegated it to the WAR clone in most basic playstyles of the job. Like, there was no reason Soul Survivor needed to get deleted, or for haste to get axed from the job entirely, to be replaced with this weaving monstrosity in the 2 min burst(I'm actually a fan of the weaves, but I know some aren't). When you start doing things like DA proc manipulation to fit more Edges into raidbuffs, you get some semblance of depth, but it's a far cry from previous iterations, and everyone who said that "Of course the rework is simple, they're going to expand on it in next expansion!!!" Well, just look where that got them.

Square Enix cannot be trusted to rework DRK anymore. They will just mess it up even further. Just leave it alone, keep doing things like fixing the abilites (LD, new BW) that people have been complaining about for years and add in some kind of gameplay in between bursts. Delete the 2 minute burst gameplay of EW too, thanks. If I had to choose what they do next, give me back fast DRK via Hastes built into the job kit, and reduce some of these cooldowns so I'm not pressing a 123 combo mindlessly for so long, or nerf the Darkside gauge acquisition so it's something I actually need to pay attention to outside of prolonged downtimes.

And no, Esteem showing up for the world's most powerful, but least engaging DoT every 2 MINUTES (goddamnit everything is 2 MINUTES), is not engaging either. I don't care how cool a double Shadowbringer is. The defensives are pretty good though.

[NekoMataMata]

No. DRK just needs a tiny bit more sustain tacked on somewhere in its kit to put it on the same level as the rest of the tanks. Nothing too major because DRK has a lot of mitigations but still something.

Also, also... remove the shared CD between abyssal drain and carve and spit please.

[Bsrking5]

No
/10char

[RyuDragnier]

Yes, ever since they butchered it going into Stormblood, it has been needing a full rework to bring it back to its former glory. No, I don't care that they said they would be looking away from HW setups for jobs, you just need to give DRK an actual resource to manage and a few small fixes for their defensive and dungeon sustain. MP is spend and forget unless you're main tanking, Blood Gauge is pretty WAR levels of dumb.

Bring back the actual resource management, like Bloodspiller and Quietus having Darkside duration costs in addition to the gauge, make TBN cost Darkside duration instead of MP (with a proper TBN breaking giving you back the amount you spent on it), make Darkside THE resource you're managing. Hell, make Shadowbringer cost a huge chunk of Darkside duration so it's not so damned braindead and forgettable, it doesn't interact with anything in the kit atm.

Replace Flood with Abyssal Drain on the MP cost, buff the cure potency to 400, make it do as much damage as Edge with an AoE falloff while giving no Darkside.

Give Dark Mind the Addle treatment and have it reduce physical damage taken by 10% in addition to its 20% magic damage reduction.

Adjust Oblation to being learned in ARR (like level 48) so DRKs have some more defensives to make up for their lackluster defensive capabilities until level 70. The trait upgrade would give it the 2nd charge and an extra effect of a Bloodbath style buff that heals the player for the next 3-5 attacks they do.

All of those are ways they can just make DRK feel so much better.