Dark Knight needs serious help

[Elkanah]

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

So basically homogenization with WAR and creating a second tank to invalidate the existence of dungeon healers.

Not thrilled. I much prefer the 25% shield on a 15s cooldown. The flexibility of that cooldown does not go unnoticed when optimizing it beyond dps.

[Shurrikhan]

The battle stance of the DRK is also kind of aesthetically bad. The sword should not be pointing towards the ground.

Guards held above chest level will (and should) predominantly be aimed downward. A resting position can still point upward, sure, that's it's not in place to defend and would not typically therefore be considered a guard.

DRK's stance is basically just finestra or a pretty typical hanging guard but sagging as if from the weight of the sword. It looks a bit lazy / doesn't look as sharp as one would expect from a trained fighter, but it isn't illogical.

It needs the Absorb-HP/STR/DEX/ACC series of spells to make it interesting to use.

Dex and Acc effectively do not exist (for DRK), as hit chance is already guaranteed (meaning that the most it could actually do is a be a uniquely weak Blind status effect) and DRK gets absolutely nothing from Dex.

We already have Absorb-HP, just in a way that no longer scales with damage amplifiers. Absorb-STR is essentially just pre-buffed Feint for the enemy + a damage buff for the DRK, which would be doable, but isn't likely to be especially interesting.

You can theme DRK around being a stat-stealer, but it would mean that its burst is coupled to its (raid) mitigation, which would go against its identity across its iterations in XIV of being able to seriously unload offensively on a given enemy via decently high-APM flurries of attacks.

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

...Which version and level of Raw Intuition? Referring to its functionality or to its tuning?

Moreover, just... why? Why homogenize it? In Savage, a DRK will already be putting out up to some 1200 HPS off TBN without any unpopped shells or any significant potency loss, and that effectively doesn't even include the lv82 bonuses against which TBN is compared. (For contrast, many of the top WAR healing+mitigation parses still manage less than 600 HPS off Bloodwhetting.) It's not as if TBN is weak.

It just doesn't AoE scale (but neither does anyone's but WAR's, i.e., the outlier's). Which Abyssal Drain does anyways, so even that's a non-issue. If you feel DRK truly needs more AoE-scaled healing, just buff AD.

[Reimmi]

My thought for DRK was that they could turn TBN into a similar WAR Raw Intuition. 10% damage reduction, 6s timer, 25s recast timer. Has the same effect as RI.

Nah the warrior one is already too strong, don't need another like it. warriors needs toning down, and more tanks need mit like drk imo

[Mortex]

So basically homogenization with WAR and creating a second tank to invalidate the existence of dungeon healers.

Not thrilled. I much prefer the 25% shield on a 15s cooldown. The flexibility of that cooldown does not go unnoticed when optimizing it beyond dps.

I mean drk back in stormblood was the “war” we have now sustain dungeon wise. Abyssal drain and blood price healed you the entire time too full in every trash pack. Boss fights we’re the only one we’re it was a bit more spicy.

[Shurrikhan]

I mean drk back in stormblood was the “war” we have now sustain dungeon wise. Abyssal drain and blood price healed you the entire time too full in every trash pack. Boss fights we’re the only one we’re it was a bit more spicy.

Yes, at one point in time (Stormblood, the same expansion that added TBN), DRK had the highest AoE sustain in the game, though still not far above Warrior with IR-IF at the ready.

Some small corrections, though: at that time, AD didn't heal without DA, at which point it still healed for just it's damage dealt (160p per target) and cost over a third of your MP, while each hit received during Blood Price generated only enough MP for maybe 7% of that cost, iirc, and AoEing in any other way came at cost to sustain since it took up MP otherwise usable by Souleater or AD.

What allowed for DA-AD spam wasn't Blood Price, btw; its MP generation was too slow. It was Quietus, especially if/when paired with BW. BP did give some Blood with which to use Quietus, but literally just 1 blood per hit taken; the majority of its Blood gen was passive and dwarfed by Blood Weapon.

BP would net you an extra cast or two at 10 or so targets, depending on their attack rate. At that same count, though, BW-Quietus would be self-refunding and net generate over half your MP per action.

Tl;Dr: BP itself didn't heal and couldn't keep up with the demands of DA-AD except in the highest of rates of hits taken.

[Mortex]

Nah the warrior one is already too strong, don't need another like it. warriors needs toning down, and more tanks need mit like drk imo

I argue warrior is just so strong because BW is a aoe heal per mob hit. Like if you compare BW against HoC and HS you can see that both HS and HoC are both stronger in a single target situation. It’s just drk has tbn and shields scale way better with enough % mit. The problem is dungeon wise you won’t have enough mit for all groups, same with why drk as main tank isn’t good. All other tanks have sustain backed in the 25 sec cds, plus way better mit. Drk is just in a super weird spot in my eyes, it’s the tank that has the most need for Raid buffs too deal effective dmg and has off tank wise really good sustain (so do all other tanks) but he’s a really meh main tank in comparison too all the other ones. Also if a buster isn’t magic drk just flat out loses a strong defensive button.

[Oizen]

I'd very much like to see Abyssal Drain just be more available overall and not handcuffed to carve and spit.

[Lyth]

What's most likely to happen is for Carve and Spit to merge with Abyssal Drain into an Expiacion-style upgrade that generates HP/MP in both single target and AoE. It feels like a problem that was deliberately created in order to make the fix feel like an upgrade. If this does occur, I want a Minus Strike type effect for lifesteal, that restores more HP the lower your HP becomes, rather than a flat heal. Some blood generation would be nice as well. A straight merge without adding any fresh nuance would be frustrating.

The biggest discrepancy that I see is with the raidwide defensives. My personal preference would be for them to just burn Shake/Veil/Passage/Missionary/HoL to the ground and let everyone get by with Reprisal on a level playing field, which is what they should have done from the start when Reprisal became a role action rather than exposing their inability to design unique but fair equivalents on all jobs. I have no idea why they made WAR into a barrier tank here, and the aesthetic choices are simply terrible. You can tell that they completely ran out of ideas when it came time for Missionary and HoL to be grudgingly added.

Failing that, Dark Missionary needs some sort of advantage to offset its inability to mitigate physical damage and its lack of healing. The solution is going to require the addition of a unique effect like a raidwide movement speed boost at minimum to offer parity.

[Grizzlpaw]

A Healer's job is to keep their allies alive.
A tank's job is to hold aggro and to keep themsleves alive.
The DPS job is to pump out as much damage as possible and avoid taking unecessary damage

Warrior's niche is that they are the lifesteal tank. We don't need to use them as an excuse to rob tanks of the single thing that makes being a tank fun (Besides dealing damage). Keeping yourself alive with smart play in spite of the mistakes of other people in your party.

I love DRK, and as jealous as I am that WAR took the lifesteal niche away from us. I don't want to see others lose the things they find fun so we can all be equally miserable. I'd like to see DRK see some improvements to their gameplay so they can have fun too.
To that end... I wouldn't mind sacrificing a bit of DRK's ability to just not take damage if they don't want to in exchange for some of that lifesteal back. But I'd like for it to be life steal with a trade-off.