So Drks getting rekt 3 expacs in a row great job devs

[Vallerie]

Omnislash is a melee combo, and sword beam would replace whatever that shitty looking ranged GCD is supposed to be.

I will not stand for this Unmend slander, it’s the second best looking ranged GCD on a melee job.

The best one is Harpe.

[Emitans]

I miss Sole Survivor. And Dark Arts. And Dark Dance. And Shadowskin. And Plunge (enjoy it while it lasts)

[Kaixern]

And Dark passenger. And Scourge. And Power Slash (this is getting depressing)

[Emitans]

Oh god I forgot Power Slash.... How could I forget you?

[Noox-115]

The sad part is i Joined in Shadowbringer I will never experience old DRK and honestly it's shame HW DRK look so cool

[Zairava]

The sad part is i Joined in Shadowbringer I will never experience old DRK and honestly it's shame HW DRK look so cool

I honestly envy the DRK's who joined post Stormblood and remain unaware of how DRK used to play. It's depressing to see how much of a shallow husk it's become.

Take me back, Eorzean roads..

[MagiusNecros]

The sad part is i Joined in Shadowbringer I will never experience old DRK and honestly it's shame HW DRK look so cool

Man HW DRK was so good. New players have no idea.

[Kaixern]

Not only we had so many more animation that weren't just "edgy" but more in line with the idea of a Dark Knight (remembering characters like Guts or Artorias for example)

These abilities had different effects than didn't just consist of either "do direct damage" or "mitigate damage by a certain %"
A dot, a blinding effect, a parry, an ability proc on parry, an ability that could empower some others, they could be offensive or defensive, and i may be forgetting some
But to summarize it was more on the idea of gameplay and effects rather than just "hit hard and harder"
Of course some (maybe even many) of these abilities were clunky but they were a part of what made a "Class identity"

The "issue" at the time was that, like many other classes, some abilities weren't useful in Raids and harder content (because for some reason, every ability in existence must be optimized to the maximum even at the expense of the class identity, sometimes even the lore itself)
Which creates cases like Dark Knight where the only good thing you can hear about it are "TBN", "Dump all your spells every two minute" or "cool aesthetics"
Still recall at the beginning of Endwalker, whenever the question of the dark knight class identity was brought (don't recall if it was ingame, on reddit, discord, or maybe even here), it deviated a lot to the idea of "2 min burst feels nice" or "highest damage tank so it's fine"
Not that it's bad in any way to like this class for those reason, just that it's sad to see what we had to sacrifice so much to come to this point

(like i know "sacrifice" is the motto of this class but there is a point where one should stay "stop!" ......)

[Kreyd]

...

To be fair, a lot of these things were taken out of the game in general and not only from DRK.
Like enmity combos, debuffing enemies, one button dots etc.

But yeah, I'd take back a Dark Arts buffing system over Edge/Flood of Shadow anytime.

[Malthir]

Not only we had so many more animation that weren't just "edgy" but more in line with the idea of a Dark Knight (remembering characters like Guts or Artorias for example)

These abilities had different effects than didn't just consist of either "do direct damage" or "mitigate damage by a certain %"
A dot, a blinding effect, a parry, an ability proc on parry, an ability that could empower some others, they could be offensive or defensive, and i may be forgetting some
But to summarize it was more on the idea of gameplay and effects rather than just "hit hard and harder"
Of course some (maybe even many) of these abilities were clunky but they were a part of what made a "Class identity"

The "issue" at the time was that, like many other classes, some abilities weren't useful in Raids and harder content (because for some reason, every ability in existence must be optimized to the maximum even at the expense of the class identity, sometimes even the lore itself)
Which creates cases like Dark Knight where the only good thing you can hear about it are "TBN", "Dump all your spells every two minute" or "cool aesthetics"
Still recall at the beginning of Endwalker, whenever the question of the dark knight class identity was brought (don't recall if it was ingame, on reddit, discord, or maybe even here), it deviated a lot to the idea of "2 min burst feels nice" or "highest damage tank so it's fine"
Not that it's bad in any way to like this class for those reason, just that it's sad to see what we had to sacrifice so much to come to this point

(like i know "sacrifice" is the motto of this class but there is a point where one should stay "stop!" ......)

I loved the HW Drk it was the only thing that got me through HW story (I am one of the vocal few who think HW story sucked). The reason they nuked it the way they did is because most of the kit made no sense, it didn't synergise well at all, but it was hella fun to play, this is the issue with a design philosophy of overturning things so everything is optimal. At some point you end up no longer playing a game and instead are playing a shiny spreadsheet with particle effects. Since they are adding the combining weaponskills to 1 button thing, I would rather see them bring back multiple weaponskill comboa, nuke our damage from orbit and reduce the GCD to balance it, pressing more buttons seeing my character do more things is just way more enjoyable than, press 5 buttons every 2 minutes and these 3 for the next 2m, Yawn. Just my opinion