Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[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.