Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[Jeeqbit]

an ability, even if it's identical in function, should at least reflect the identity of the job that is using it in animations.

That would be nice and I think it was an obvious disappointment that it wasn't like that when Role Actions appeared, but I can see why it's a bit repetitive to have identical actions across jobs.

The flaw with this system is that there are a lot of repetitive actions that are identical that are not Role Actions, including a lot of healer cures, attacks and dots, the 30% tank mitigations where the only one with any minor difference is Warrior's, ranged single target attacks on melee jobs, tank aoe combos and it starts to get to a point where if those were Role Actions then the animation differences would detract from the class they are meant to be.

under old BW, you'd regenerate thousands of MP instantaneously, which you fed into DA ADs for health sustain, and Salted would just kinda support the gradual Blood build up. Being a 45 second CD, and thus able to repeat this loop every pull made it a really compelling dungeon experience!

I agree that it was fun. But was it something that an average sprout doing a dungeon as a Dark Knight would do over just spamming Unleash? I don't really know because I mostly played tanks myself instead of being in a dungeon with someone else on one. Less people picked up tanks then as well, because explaining an enmity combo was enough to make someone think it was complicated.

SE seems to have been trying to streamline it so that it's intuitive and you don't just have to "figure out" that you're able to spam Abyssal Drain instead of Unleash.

I will admit my bias. I love buff extenders and internal mechanic interplay, even to the smallest degree.

I like it too. I can accept it in a small, minor way though (for example, Astrologians working towards Divination and putting useless cards into Lord/Lady or other Royal Road-like system).

I think that Dark Knight took it to extremes in Heavensward though. I played it, it was varied and fun the completely different ways you would use it in different situations or phases, and how you would have to reserve different amounts of resources for abilities like Dark Mind or to empower certain attacks for a burst (all whilst still tanking), but no part of me felt it needed to be that complicated.

I feel that there can be a compromise somewhere that has some mechanics that interact but that don't create a massive skill and usage gap where someone picking it up for the MSQ is using it completely different and only using a fraction of their actions, which I feel must have been the case with how it worked in HW given how sophisticated it was.

Of course. You got the jist of my point though. It's not that I want the old versions to return. It's that the things old versions did for DRK and other jobs are no longer congruent with current FFXIV job philosophies.

I see your point about just how much was removed from Dark Knight (although, given how they don't want us to have too many actions, if they had remained, most of them would have been upgraded through traits by now). I think the debate is healthier if we focus on how Dark Knight can be improved within its current iteration, rather than reducing it to "3.0 DRK" or "4.0 DRK", which SE almost directly refused in a live letter before EW where they said they saw the "3.0" debate but are happy with the "5.0" direction and want to continue it. Given that is their decision it's going to work better to focus on how the "5.0" version can be improved without simply backtracking to 3.0.

Back then, there was always jank, there was always inconsistent design choices, there were always counter-intuitive gameplay decisions (invincible, non-Grit dungeon tanking is the perfect example of this). It was always a flawed job, but it was always a fun job to me, even now to an extent.

I'm glad you acknowledge this because it feels like a lot of people forgot this "jank" that was in Heavensward - which I understand, it was a long time ago, we're all getting older and our memories become fuzzy, but we really shouldn't forget how these "amazing" class designs were built ontop of game mechanics that everyone was petitioning SE to remove (and they did remove).

Considering that there were not many bosses in all of Alexander that inflicted magic auto attacks, with the exceptions being Brawler, Swindler, and I think Manipulator???

One way or another, Alexander itself would hardly proc anything for me. I was on my knees begging it to proc. It did proc, but it was rare.

[jetfire117]

can they at least shorten a few ogcds to 30 seconds so we are not literally doing nothing for a minute? Mechanics don't fill the void either. My dream is still having the ability to keep living shadow on the field.

[baklava151]

can they at least shorten a few ogcds to 30 seconds so we are not literally doing nothing for a minute? Mechanics don't fill the void either. My dream is still having the ability to keep living shadow on the field.

Someone here had suggested reverting BW and Salted Earth to their HW/StB timings which while it may not be much, it would still help with breaking up downtime. Plus BW would still line up with 2 minutes and Salted Earth would be on its same 90 second cycle, just twice as often (assuming they don't change it in a future patch to a 60 or 120 second ability). Doesn't necessarily have to be old timers either but just having more varied ones.