The Current state of DRK

[Noox-115]

Honestlyy i think oblation should be an evolution of TBN and give TBN at a lower level let's say 60 and then at 82 it evolve into oblation

[Jeeqbit]

DRK's pretty fun. I leveled it recently. It can be as good as Warrior with survival if used right (regular TBN+cooldowns) and using Abyssal Drain as a heal on trash when you're low.

I do agree it felt more varied and fun when its cooldowns weren't all on 60s and had 5 stacks, but it's alright as well. I think the biggest problem with it right now is the burst at the start. There's just too much at the start and it could use a progressive unlocking of those actions, such as one oGCD unlocking another which unlocks another so that you don't have a million buttons to press at the beginning. I also think Salted Earth procs the next attack too fast to overwhelm you even more. Getting used to Living Shadow not glowing also takes a bit and maybe they should make it do that.

When I mained DRK in Shadowbringers, I got pretty bored of it until I stacked Skill Speed. I tried not stacking it and got miserable, so I went back to it and found it fun again. So having some speed element would be nice for people playing it long-term.

As for making Dark Mind not mitigate just magic, that would homogenize it with all the other mitigation. The exact thing the community is complaining about! The community literally can't decide here.

Being magic-only means you actually have to use your mind to identify what is magic and what is not and what the best use-case for it is. Dark Mind, like the other tanks' Thrill of Battle, Camouflage and Bulwark, have things they are good at and things they are not and are better used in the situations they are strongest against.

For example, Thrill is good when you want to buff your heal and shield potency or rarely if that extra HP will somehow help, Camouflage is going to work best against trash due to parry (especially those dealing physical damage), and Bulwark is going to work best against things not using DoTs. Likewise, Dark Mind works against magic (sprites and casters).

Honestlyy i think oblation should be an evolution of TBN and give TBN at a lower level let's say 60 and then at 82 it evolve into oblation

Also second this. It must have been easy for the developers to see that there would be yet more weaving trouble for DRKs if they want to use Oblation and TBN together, perhaps with a third CD. I'm already weaving lots and I need to use Oblation in addition to all my mitigation and damage CDs, just so I can show the party that I'm "using my kit". If they were merged it'd help.

[Oizen]

I apologise for this being in so many parts - I just feel very strongly about the class and wanted to get this all off my chest as it feels as if the class isn't getting any love/attention from the Developers.

Thank you to those who read it all, whether the TL;DR or the whole post. I hope you have a wonderful morning/afternoon/evening/night, wherever you are.

Just a heads up, you can bypass the character limit on these forums by posting, then editing your post. Its a bit weird.



I hope they do something with the job this expansion as its not in a great spot, and this is the most light I've ever seen on it since ShB. I dont expect much, especially after how DTs been going but we can pray.

[Zimmerson]

My POV comes from the view of raiding/ultimates - I've been doing the savage tier and M1S/M2S/M3S hardly have any magical attacks whatsoever, basically rendering Dark Mind useless. Sure, it has it's place in M4S, but most of the raid tier it's pretty much useless, meaning DRK only has:

Oblation x2
Rampart (all tanks have that)
Reprisal (all tanks have that)
Shadowed Vigil
TBN
Dark Missionary (yes, but this too is magic only, i'm more on about self-mitigation)

It wouldn't be as bad if DRK could at least heal itself some more - the problem is, DRK doesn't have the Potency (Damage) to risk taking. Why take DRK when I can take a WAR that can do more DPS and heal myself, or take PLD and heal myself with some of my attacks and have overall better mitigation than DRK, or GNB with the HoTs, Heart of Corundum and Great Nebula, etc.

Every tank can fully use its mitigations, no matter whether it's physical or magical, yet DRK is railroaded towards magical, making physical attacks hit harder due to less mit. I genuinely think Dark Mind needs changing, but that's just me.

[LisseyCrowe]

I'm not a big Dark Knight or Tank player, but I did level all jobs and occasionally return to it so consider this a very casual view of the job.

DRK to me felt and still feels like I'm just pressing my buttons for the sake of it. I'm not building towards anything, nor looking forward to anything. It has an "active" phase but it's basically just a bunch of cooldowns being up at the same time. The fix doesn't need to be (in fact it probably shouldn't be) "here's a 1 minute CD rotation" but I don't have enough experience with the job to say what it should be, other than "I like how PvP DRK uses HP for stuff, I'd like to see that".

One random idea is some form of mitigation (perhaps a TBN rework) who's potency scales depending on how much HP you've spent before casting it. I don't know how well that would play though.

But yeah, I don't know, sorry if this isn't helpful. DRK just doesn't give me the impression that it has an identity. The other tanks don't have that issue, Warrior feels like a brute, Gunbreaker like a skilled merc, Paladin like a holy protector. Dark Knight looks edgy, but playing doesn't make me feel edgy at all. Living Dead does more to the job's identity than the rest of the kit, you could recolor the skill VFX to red and call it Flame Templar and could probably get away with it.

[Jeeqbit]

My POV comes from the view of raiding/ultimates - I've been doing the savage tier and M1S/M2S/M3S hardly have any magical attacks whatsoever, basically rendering Dark Mind useless. Sure, it has it's place in M4S, but most of the raid tier it's pretty much useless

I've not done the new savage raids yet, but if it's really that much of a problem, can't the other 3 tanks share some of their excessive mit/healing? I often gave flash to DRKs as a pity heal last tier lol.

I do think they could do something else, maybe buff the heal on Souleater since Abyssal drain's heal is only good on aoe.

[CVXIV]

Dark knight is my favorite tank and it's a shame that it's in the state that it is.
When I first started playing the game I actually wanted to go dark knight but was unable to for obvious reasons, so I picked up paladin instead.
By the time I got to heavensward as a sprout it was the first thing I did, unlock that job and I really enjoyed it.
It's been one of the jobs I've always enjoyed in the franchise ever since I could be one in FFIII

One suggestion I would have is more in line with completely revamping it to resemble more what the job is based off of, a job that uses its own hp to deal major damage.
I know that's what the blood gauge is meant to represent, but I think having high risk/high reward would be a lot of fun, and it could have more self sustain to keep itself alive in a pinch
However I don't know if it would really work in an mmo setting, as cool as the idea sounds to me in my head

I think merging tbn and oblation would be a really good idea especially if the mp cost was either reduced or went away entirely
It could maybe be bumped up to 15% damage reduction on top of the shield, but maybe that'd be too strong
I mention the increase because other tanks like paladin and gunbreaker have around that for their 25 second cooldown, on top of the other bonuses they provide

[Silver-Strider]

I'm going to say this from a healer's perspective. I believe DRK is balanced within the context of the Trinity System and that the other tanks are currently outside the scope of balance.

Having said that, DRK does suffer from a lack of damage and mitigation in comparison to its peers, so I'd be fine with increasing those aspects of its toolkits.
For Dark Mind and Dark Missionary, let's add on a buff that increases the amount of healing received for people under the effects of these buffs.
Add back Shadowskin as a low level version of Oblation that provides only 10% mitigation and upgrade into Oblation that grants a 2nd charge and increases the mitigation effect to 15%. Reduce the CD of both to 45s.
Reintroduce Dark Passenger and Scourge as proc upgrades for Flood and Edge of Shadow when TBN breaks.
Decouple Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain.

[ApolloGenX]

DRK is one of the coolest concepts and one of the weakest executions of the concept...

[Doomfist]

I played DRK a lot in Endwalker, and really liked having to manage 2 gauges (MP and Blood). In Dawntrail I did the MSQ as this job so I could have the worst possible tanking experience in the new dungeons, in order to feel the thrill of surviving on this frankly underwhelming tank. But the changes to DRK made it more dull to play, you build up MP slower so you press your magic buttons less, and you no longer have to worry about overusing blood before your even minute bursts. Now I'm too scared to even use TBN, and while darkside now needs more careful mp usage, it's more boring than last expansion's gauge management.

I'm not going to repeat any improvements other posters have put forth, but I wonder if we could remove Edge of Shadow, but rework Flood to be one of those "Higher single target damage with aoe falloff" attacks. That would free DRK up to have one new attack, either an ogcd or an addition to our gcd combo.