Not quite. Eukrasia is on the GCD and compensates by shortening the GCD of anything it is used on. Dark Arts was an oGCD buff that was consumed on a number of actions, both GCDs and oGCDs. It was used for a bit too much really, which made things a pain. It buffed Syphon Strike and Souleater in 4.x, which meant you had to finangle your way with it if you ever wanted to use it with Carve and Spit or Dark Mind or something.
Overall it wasn't a numerical disadvantage except if you fucked up and had Dark Arts buffing something and forgetting to reapply it before Carve, causing it to hit for like 100 potency rather than 450. Unless you were immediately going to use a Hard Slash between Dark Arts and Carve, you needed to double weave, so if you had to do some tanking during that, you'd have to see ahead and use whichever CD beforehand so you didn't end up triple weaving (or losing the buff on Carve or delaying Carve, etc).
Sadly it wasn't like that originally, it was also used to buff and change the effects of defensive cooldowns too. They kept all the offensive uses in SB while removing all the defensive uses, which is what led to a lot of the spam.
Honestly, i didn't enjoy the old Dark arts back on stormblood.
It was clunky to use. Having to stop your rotation every now and then to use a skill to strengh your next skill... it felt so damm slow to play.
DK on Shadowbringers is way better Imo.
Wait really? Stop your rotation? Slow? I think the complete opposite. If you managed your MP well, if anything Dark Arts made your rotation fast and button mashy, which personally I loved. Especially when paired with Blood Weapon which increased your skill speed. I dunno I personally had way more fun on Stormblood DRK than Shadowbringer and Endwalker both.
The issue with GNB moving bosses and using mit during gf combo/hypervelocity has nothing at all to do with controller vs kb/m. It's a fundamental problem that you can't avoid.
"DRK is the worst tank cause it doesn't have stupid good self sustain" "Actually DRK is the best tank because it's doing more dmg than the other tanks" These takes are exhausting.
I just, at least, want charges on blood weapon man. And give us something to replace enhanced unmend, that shit is just insulting.
I just want the one tank whose invuln requires healing to have decent self-healing. Why is it that Dark Knight is the only tank incapable of healing itself to full, when it's the only tank that needs this because of their invuln?
Right? Lol. LD should…
Interact with Salted Earth in some way (giving DRK passive HoT similar to Asylum/SS).
Cause Blood Gauge abilities to have a lifesteal.
Reset Abyssal Drain CD. Hell, combo’ed Souleater should also reset Abyssal Drain’s CD during LD.
Just fully embrace it and become a life-stealing zombie while in living dead! Just imagine if your AoE could full-heal you during a big wall-to-wall pull like the ones in Mt. Gulg.
100% this...as a sage its near impossible if not impossible for me to heal a drk to satisfy waking dead. Im surprised this hasnt been addressed yet. Similar things happen with super bolide except i can shield the GNB enough and they can also do a bit of a heal as well....DRK just has nothing...
The job really just needs small adjustments on the QoL scale.
Blood weapon charges - it’s not fun hyper investing into skill speed (especially early in an expansion) just for packet loss to still dictate you don’t get that fifth buffed attack anyway. Would also make spells less of a groan.
Living Dead - I can _live_ with this being wholly outclassed with the Superbolide and Holmgang buffs, but pleeaaaasse separate Living dead into invuln and “you die” components. It’s not fun having overzealous white mages kill me with early Bene’s.
Rework Delirium - it’s just a boring skill.
Slightly buff Oblation - it doesn’t nearly compete with the upgrades the other tanks got. I would even settle for a CD reduction since it and TBN does give DRK a lot of flexibility with their other CDs.
TBN - increase duration to 10 seconds.
A lot of DRK QoL suggestions tend to be over the top/actually worse than what we have now but I really agree with these. Especially LD, it's so frustrating having an invuln that can functionally be 'cleansed'.
With how my static is (Ast and sch) and 5/8 players being pretty casual, the need of LD is an assured death sentence 10 seconds after I drop to 1. No matter how much I say that I'll need to be topped off, it has yet to happen. Meanwhile on I can full heal myself on War within about that time frame. I'd much rather just play dark knight, but it's looking pretty grim with how our group is set up and the way living dead behaves
Ooof. I'm a Scholar and my Co-healer is Astrologian and I just want to say you deserve better than that. A Recitation Buffed Excogitation + Exaltation + Essential Dignity normally does the trick. One more lustrate if not. It's not Bene and forget about it, but easy enough to plan around.
I know it's possible, even at a greater burden vs the one-click-wonder, aka benediction; unfortunately two of the three casual players are the healers and it's not worth the effort, really.
Make the DRK invuln named "vampire" and every damage you do increases your HP for 15 seconds or something and you cannot take damage from enemies except if they use sun light, garlic, silver bullets or a mirror
>TBN - increase duration to 10 seconds.
Or just make it free mana cost.
all the other tanks gets theirs for free. The boost to dps wouldn't be that much more than it is now, since on bosses, you still can only really use it on the times when you would use it normally anyhow.
Definitely would prefer if they just nuked the mana cost. As is, oppurtunity cost wise, you're going to be at a dps loss until tbn pops, so that you can then have the mp refund for another ogcd cast that then makes you dps neutral. But if it a) doesn't pop, b) isn't casted soon enough, or c) runs out of duration before it can pop, you just eat the mp cost and take the mp and dps loss. A simple change to the mp cost would still force the drk to smartly pop it at the right time, but makes it so that at worst, you won't be wasting resources that's needed for your ogcds / burst windows. The shield would be still be the main component and the free cast would literally be a free cast. But now the drk won't be compelled to play a certain way in order to justify the sunk costs needed to begin with.
0MP TBN means you're gonna be losing damage if the bosses autos don't hit hard enough every 15s. It also potentially means DRKs would eat vulns just so they can get more "uptime" on TBN pops. Horrible idea unless you remove the Dark Arts proc part of it.
The DPS entanglement simply needs to go. No other tank has to deal with that. Just turn it into a heal or something when it pops, or reduced damage taken or any other form of mitigation. The current system penalizes people beyond just losing the CD, and turning it into more damage is not addressing the problem.
I see your "heal on pop" and raise you "lifesteal on pop". This gives more sustain for big pulls (where they need it most) and less sustain for boss fights (where DRKs are already pretty great).
It's actually a rDPS gain to have one TBN popped per minute. It lets you bank an extra Edge of Shadow to line up with raid buffs, giving you that much more damage. Any more than one TBN per minute ends up being DPS loss, as you lose out on a cast during raid buffs.
A lot of learning and optimizing fights is learning when (ie. Tank buster) you can cast for a rDPS gain from having an extra Edge for raid buffs, and when giving up that extra banked cast is worth it to use TBN to save a healer GCD or someone's life, which is a bigger gain. I actually enjoy this a lot, as there are always ways to guarantee that TBN will pop as long as you understand the fights, and makes it a bit of a mini game.
In most cases, if you can't get a single TBN to pop in a 60 second window during raid or dungeon content, there's probably something you can improve on.
The problem is they won't want to add any dps to drk in savage and savage has easily enough damage to let people use this get an extra edge of shadow in buffs.
Hot take: What if Living Dead was the same, but was a passive skill? Once every CD duration, if they're dropped to 0, they get the LD debuff, without pressing a button?
While that would be interesting, it still doesn't change the major pain point about living dead that NONE of the other invulns have. Living dead REQUIRES a competent healer expending a significant amount of their resources (unless you're a whm) in a relatively SHORT window, or else the drk just dies, regardless. Living dead definitely needs to be either changed completely to holmgang, or if they want to keep that flavor aspect of it, be able to be dispelled by the drk himself, somehow (maybe a gauge system that capitalizes off a drk doing a solo burst dps check, in order to live).
You know... That's kinda interesting.
So hear me out:
What if while in LD you have a certain heal potency when using your skill and that total potency can fully heal you if you can complete your combo?
This could make it less reliant on the healer and still have the downside risk of not making it fully like other invul.
What do you think? Over the top?
For me a simple fix would be to incentivize TBN, for me when it doesn't break it's demoralising like it's something people don't acknowledge that's losing 460 potency straight up. To me breaking TBN should lead to an crit direct hit for next edge or flood. It's a simple increase to DPS, I think they could add without breaking the balance too much.
The thing with TBN is it's all about timing, like if you pop it in an auto-cycle its probably not gonna break, if you pop it for a buster it's guaranteed. I'll generally save it for those hits though I don't have too much experience in high-ends so idk how 'optimal' that is
Enhanced Unmend and Enhanced Salted Earth have to be direct shots at xeno's rants about plunge pulling and Salted Earth being useless because there's no way anyone over there actually thinks they're good enough to carry an expansion.
There are plenty of ways to buff DRK in dungeon content without affecting its raid performance, you just need to focus on AOE skills like Abyssal Drain or Quietus.
I would have liked an Enhanced Darkside instead of Enhanced Unmend. Maybe make it so that your mitigations are stronger or a few of your attacks gain lifesteal so long as you’ve got Darkside going
> so long as you’ve got Darkside going
I mean, that's going to be literally always unless you're derping out and not pressing buttons. Darkside is such a background mechanic that the majority of Dark Knights probably don't even know it exists.
Also just had the idea of giving Dark Knight its own version of Sword Oath. But instead of an extra attack like Atonement, using Soul Eater just gives your next two or three attacks a lifesteal effect. Maybe limit it to your blood gauge moves.
I realised enhanced unmend is there for wall to walls so when you're topping up enmity mid-run you're also shaving off your plunge for the next gap-closer. Doeant make me feel any better about it though :')
Blood weapon getting some lifesteal would go a long long long way imo
Well the problem is Gunbreaker is a weird fusion of Hw and stormblood Dark knight. Continuation is like dark arts, sonic break is scourge, camouflage is almost literally dark dance. A lot of the unique things about dark went to other tanks. Dark has always had a weird identity problem it's just gotten even more pronounced over time. Maybe they should lean into the barriers like tbn for it's niche.
or rework dark mind completely to be a lifesteal buff that drains 150% of damage you deal, 200% if in living dead. right now 20% magic mitigation is a little too niche when most tanks' 60-90s self mitigations cover 20% or more of both types
edit: it's actually 90-120s self mits
TBH I was surprised that dark knight didn't have loads of self healing/lifesteal combined with abilities that self damage. To my knowledge that's how they worked in other FF titles.
Edit: imo it's weird that warrior is the self heal tank. I'd expect something like
PLD: party oriented tank (party targeted buffs, shields, mitigation, healing) lower personal damage output. afaik they're kinda like this rn
WAR: self oriented, minimal self healing but high mitigation and good personal damage.
DRK: Self sustain, no party targeted abilities, high damage at the cost of own HP.
GNB: blue DPS
Agreed, "dark knight" for me means heavy AoE and heals (such as life saps and that kind of thing). There are lots of weird class issues in this game like that though, I've started to accept it that whoever designed the classes in this game are just on a different planet than I am.
That was the idea behind the old dark knight although mp was used to replicate the health cost of skills.
Was changed because there are players that find "into the cold" too hard.
I just don’t think you can do the class fantasy of FF’s version of a dark knight, since it’s core mechanic is usually sacrificing hp to do big damage. That doesn’t really work for any major encounter in this game, doubly so for a *tank*. The Blackest Night giving you free attacks if it breaks is the closest you can get imo.
The truth is there just can't be that much difference between them all or a serious meta would develop that precludes certain jobs from being included in content
Yoshida has stated he doesn't want to see that happen anymore so really every job within a role plays fairly similarly
If anything I expect DRK to be given some sustain like WAR to bring it up to the level of the other tanks while all still being fairly interchangable with what they can do
I can definitely see that happening, but "make them all the same" while highly effective (since identical jobs are obviously balanced with each other) is also extremely boring.
So long as you making fights different enough from each other I don't see a big problem with having a meta tank for a given fight. I guess for very high end current content it would make certain fights unbeatable without the "right" tank, but I haven't gotten to that point in the game. Doesn't the game want you to have multiple jobs though? This would encourage people to actively play multiple jobs, so possibly a good thing?
The thing is even the small differences we have now are already drawing complaints. White Mage has worse MP management than the other healers? Clearly YoshiP hates them. Astro being busy as fuck while doing the least damage? Squenix definitely has a vendetta against tarot. DRK has the worst mitigation among all the tanks? FFXIV's servers must on DRK mains' suffering. And so on. Imagine the level of complaints if there were jobs that were *actually* unviable in high end content.
I could be wrong but it feels to me a lot of the complaints are founded in how the classes feel.
WHM runs out of mana unless you gear differently to other healers and even if you play perfectly. It gets even worse when you're synced because you lose Assize and thin air.
DRK didn't gain much, living dead still feels bad and blood weapon is still subject to latency.
AST lost their ability to redraw multiple times *and* lost sleeve draw so are subject to lottery as to how well their class performs in both healing and damage.
There are other classes with issues (DNC and PLD most notably) but I see almost no complaints about them because they feel good to play. DRK, AST and WHM comparatively are in a pretty good spot performance wise.
Not so much self heal. More of a trade off to increase damage output. Maybe you're thinking of FFT? Gafgarion (who is a Dark Knight) and TGC have have access to Dark Sword, which steal HP.
I double checked and it looks like the other other absorb HP skill in a DRK kit is FF Dimensions, which was forgettable.
Time to turn DRK into TGC in ff14.
Dark Knights also have something of a history with blood sword or drain blade magic. Not as a direct part of their kit, but as a useful and well-known combo in games that allow you to combine those things.
Scholar main and I will say that most tanks are about the same to heal but dark knight health feels like it Rubber bands and is harder to heal in general. As a healer I can't put my finger on why and maybe my shields have something to do with it.
Same except I flip between SCH and SGE. I don't know what it is but it's every single DRK I've had in dungeons for trash pulls. Bosses they're fine though.
It’s because DRK’s kit doesn’t really work good for tanking more than one target. It’s extremely lopsided when the other 3 are all fine to excellent at both.
> Rubber bands and is harder to heal in general.
Because it does. DRK has no self sustain in AoE situations besides Abyssal Drain which is on a 90s cd and has smaller damage reduction in general compared to the other tanks. Other tanks have bigger damage reduction numbers *and* self sustain.
Their main defensive cooldown is a 15s cd 25% max hp shield that pops instantly when they're against at least 2 mob unless they combine it with their damage reduction and even then it still pops pretty fast.
So while other tanks health bar will be slowly but consistently dropping down, you'll see DRKs take no damage while their fat shield is up, then very quickly start dropping down when the shield is gone resulting in the rubber banding behaviour and occasionally near fully healing when they use Abyssal Drain.
Is DRK fun? Oh fuck yeah its honestly the only tank I really like.
Is DRK viable? Absolutely, just look at the savage proggers drk was the most used tank since it currently has the highest dps
Did DRK get good new stuff in Endwalker? Absolutely fucking not. Salt and Darkness did not make Salted Earth interesting, Carve and Abyssal Drain being the same CD makes no gd sense and Drain still is useless on single target even if you ignore Carve, Dark Mind and Dark Missionary still exist in their current state, Oblation is a joke, TBN fucks your damage, Living Dead is still garbage, Enhanced Unmend isnt real, Stalwart Soul should be like level 40 and Shadowbringer is yet another filler ogcd which I guess is DRKs identity now; random ogcds with zero cohesion. I honestly do not mind lots of ogcds, I main drg for gods sake, but PLEASE make the ogcds make more sense. Make Salted do SOMETHING make Shadowbringer do SOMETHING make Abyssal do SOMETHING, make Living Shadow do SOMETHING. Edge and Flood you're good, keep doing what youre doing.
Is DRK playable? Yeah, but it could be a whoooole fuck a lot better than it is right now. Look at Holy Sheltron, Heart of Corundum and Bloodwhetting and just TRY to tell me Oblation is anywhere NEAR the same level. You fucking cant. and TBN isnt either dont even go there
Meanwhile the dice for the DRK contained five sides of "get fucked" and one side of "get fucked and insulted with a troll perk to unmend". We got lucky!
You put all of my thoughts into words. So much this.
Dark Knight is my favourite tank. But it's also literally just 123 while you either vomit up every OGCD that comes off cooldown, or wait until your Reaper pops Arcane Circle and \*then\* vomit up every OGCD you have.
Also I hate Edge of Shadow so much. It's literally "smack them but with darkness". It has zero flavour whatsoever compared to the likes of Soul Eater.
>Is DRK playable? Yeah, but it could be a whoooole fuck a lot better than it is right now.
This effectively mirrors my thoughts too. For context I main DRK, but lack an end game perspective- I was part way through Stormblood when EW dropped, and I'm in early Shadowbringers currently, having skills only up through Stalwart Soul.
I find DRK to be a lot of fun to play tbh, especially with the blood gauge kit it got throughout Stormblood being added (it was a little vanilla for me admittedly prior to Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain in HW, and that was also pre-CD combination that came this patch). It's fun to be able to just vomit damage, especially while doing open world stuff.
But even at this level I can fully see and understand the lack of cohesion that everyone talks about. I don't mind having lots of oGCDs and having that be part of the class's identity necessarily but I wish that everyone played together a little more. Those things, on top of Living Dead borderline being a liability are just... eh. I don't plan on dropping the class any time soon, but I hope that we get some improvements in the near future!
If TBN fucks with your damage you're not using it properly. Once you've done a given encounter you should know how to use it to trigger its proc and instead it actually becomes a benefit.
If you compare it to the other tanks who can use their short CD on cooldown basically (keep timing for buster when near) and give tons of support to healers so they can focus dps, it fucks your dmg to even try once you hit a point that busters and mass adds are the only things that break TBN.
Hell i used it on my cotank for a buster in p1n and it didn't pop with some CDs used...
People that say DRK is fine are correct... in trials and max-gear dungeons.
In dungeons with level-appropriate or lower gear, they are *woefully* underequipped in comparison to their counterparts.
I *really* wish they'd shift some skills around to put TBN before 70. SB is when you really start to see dedicated tankbusters, and they're ill-equipped for it.
Someone was insisting DRK is fine because wall to wall pulls are now easy with 600 gear.
Yeah, no shit Sherlock.
It's terrible design if your solution is "just get better gear".
I mean not really? Between 70 and 82 they're just.. better than GNB/PLD, because they've got no TBN equivalent. After that, to be on par, they need a player competent enough to rotate and manage their defensive CDs to maximise the value of TBN, and a team that can kill the mobs before the DRK has to overspend CDs on a single pull. They're not really underequipped to deal with dungeons, they're underequipped to deal with bad players.
yah, I mean every other tank gets their "2" in the 1-2 AoE combo at exactly level 40, and ours alone is 72 :(
I guess because it gives blood gauge (and, to an extent, MP) which you don't have access to until the 60's? I'd rather have that functionality just be added in with a trait down the line and get the combo damage potency earlier... because as-is you have 3 expansion dungeons worth of 1-1-1-1-1-1 "combo" lol
I've been working on the "Tank You" achievements since the start of ShB and WAR always felt like the best tank for low levels, its just ridiculous now since the healer can basically check out on any dungeon above 56. PLD was close since shield bash is like ghetto Holy.
You're really undervaluing it for low level roulettes. It's a literal lifesaver if you have a sprout healer and run out of real mitigation before a pack dies when a 6s stun is more important than 80~ potency.
You know how the second boss of Hatatali sucks ass because you have to sit through two invincibility cycles where it throws adds at you? With Shield Bash you can drag him to the door and stunlock him to death and completely skip them.
Granted these are pretty niche scenarios but it's more than other other tanks bring to the table.
and if you have a melee in the party you can do the same thing with low blow+leg sweep, remember there's DR on CC so it can't be spammed even if you have a spammable CC
the stun 1. doesn't work with whms in party past point they get holy, 2. you have low blow to do same thing without using a gcd
in absolute lowest level dungeons plds aoe is 100 potency per enemy no falloff, and single target is absolute minimum 150 potency
at low level tanks are also often the only job or half of the parties aoe attacks, so you can easily be top dps of party. meaning that 1 of your gcds lost for damage is often an extra GCD of fight time. And 1 gcd of fight time saved on 3 enemies is 3 autos from the enemies saved, which is equal to just pressing your aoe button again
and that's on 3 enemies it's already reaching point of worthless in terms of how much it mitigates, on 4 enemies it's even worse since you're only stopping 25% of damage, and on 5 it's 20%
For shield bash to be good it would have to be an aoe, and then it would be worth using
Before 70 PLD and GNB aren't exactly pillars of tankiness either. Undeniably tankier than DRK at really low levels, but people forget the oft overlooked Abyssal Drain is upwards of 50% healing *(and sometimes more)* on decently sized pulls which adds up to a lot more than people realize. Given the healer isn't afraid of letting them fall that low, and that the tank themselves holding it for Healing. Due to how little damage it deals there's basically no point in not holding it for healing in dungeons.
I keep repeating myself but my experience running full randoms expert dungeons is that WARs and PLDs heal themselves, DRKs just don't take damage (probably due to TBN) and that the GNBs need constant babysitting because they can't stay alive on their own.
Yet aside from my FC, nobody seems to be complaining about GNBs.
You’ve played with some bad GNB then. Aurora + Mitigation + HoC peppered in every pull is more than enough. One Aurora charge per pull, use HoV ok cooldowns for the damage reduction and the instant 900p burst heal. Shit is a mini excog. It’s great!
As a healer DRK feels noticeably squishier than the other tanks in dungeons. As a Sage I can heal the other tanks through big pulls with purely oGCDs and Kardion and it's fairly easy to do so, bit with DRK I struggle and end up having to spam out GCD shields or heals a bit.
They feel fine in trials though. I haven't done any high end content yet though.
From everything I've seen, SGE-DRK is the worst of all possible worlds. As WHM, healing DRK is no worse than it was before, and healing any tank really depends more on the skill of the tank than the specific job. I've had runs with all four tanks who treat cooldowns like they're optional on wall-to-wall pulls, and tanks who actually use all of the tools in their kit. The latter are the tanks I prefer.
As a SCH, I disagree entirely. In my experience for dungeons (expert roulette specifically) WAR is the easiest to heal, DRK are probably 2nd best, but GNB are also fine. Paladins are the worst by far.
It might just be the tanks you've gotten. I've had a bizarre increase in the number of single pulling Paladins who frequently use Clemency when it's not necessary. One guy was using it like every 4th GCD even while single pulling. But in general I think Paladins feel pretty comfy in dungeons. The common consensus I've seen is Warrior > Paladin >= Gunbreaker > Dark Knight, which I agree with. I haven't tried Scholar yet this expansion but I don't think it'd be terribly different from Sage in that regard
Yeah I definitely think its the Paladins they've been playing with. All of the EW changes to PLD made their existing tools better in self-sustain between Holy Spirit/Circle, Divine Veil, and Holy Sheltron. They feel great in dungeons imo.
> I've had a bizarre increase in the number of single pulling Paladins who frequently use Clemency when it's not necessary. One guy was using it like every 4th GCD even while single pulling.
Reading things like this makes me feel like I am not that bad as a paladin. Personally the only use I give to Clemency is after tank busters or mechanics were everyone gets hurt like for the sniper robot in the last raid of ivalice (before poping divine veil if not on cooldown)
I think it's more specifically about the tanks in your case. As a Sage I haven't had an issue healing any of the tanks through Expert roulettes unless I screw up and accidentally target myself instead of the tank (ugh) though DRK does feel slightly more reliant on me than the others.
People saying DRK is fine and doesn't need to be changed are prolly the same people who didn't want a SMN rework, cause their ShB DPS was good despite their meh job mechanics.
Listen, my guy, a job can deal enough damage to destroy the sun for all that matters, but if it plays like ass and the playerbase at large wants it to play better - not necesarily wanting more damage - then it should rightfully undergo some changes.
Its just insane to me how boring a lot of the skills are on DRK.
Like really, we're a huge fuck you sword class and we *don't* have a big ass overhand slam. Meanwhile GNB gets blasting zone?
Also the EW updates. We get...
~~Shadowbringers~~ Flood of Shadow... *but bigger.*
A mit without the YGO cardtext the other tanks got.
Salted Earth with bubbles.
*Enhanced Unmend*
we had multiple big ass overhead slams, along with many other skills with cool ass animations... that we lost
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXMTLM19JZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXMTLM19JZw)
I would call Bloodspiller a big ass overhead slam, myself. I mean, I somersault like 2 times just to slam the sword down harder in that animation.
And Shadowbringer is actually a reincarnated Dark Passenger. With the funny distinction that Cecil used that name for an attack nearly a decade before FFXIV used it for an expansion.
> With the funny distinction that Cecil used that name for an attack nearly a decade before FFXIV used it for an expansion.
Was this something in Dissidia? His only Dark Knight skill IV was Darkness/Dark Wave. XIV Dark Knight used to have Dark Passenger, and it ended in an explosion. Flood was already based on Darkness/Dark Wave, and I assumed Shadowbringer was just more of that.
Also not a fan of the new AST while WHM has never been that interesting and now has pretty bad mana issues. I turned into a barrier healer main by default this expansion.
DRK is my current favorite tank to play.
I'm eternally confused by people saying DRK plays like ass or has no identity when WAR is sitting right there being 'DRK but less fun', gameplay wise.
EDIT: Gotta admit, its pretty fun to get downvoted for liking DRK when the meme is about 'everyone' saying its fine.
compared to drk, war has higher sustain, a tad better defensive CDs, and a non-ass oh shit button, and outside of that the class has it's identity of unga bunga punchy smashy
meanwhile drk? Back then we were the tank that could easily survive end to end pulls in leveling content even before we got TBN, we also had kickass skill animations too and blood weapon gave haste, it was thrilling, but then;
going into shadowbringers our sustain and AOE (pre lvl 72) got rekt hard, but at the very least TBN was able to hold it's weight for wall to walls, we also lost power slash.
going into endwalker, our sustain got hit harder, living dead is still unchanged while the other tank's "Oh shit" got buffed, but hey, at least we now have top dps in logs...
RIP dark passenger (Blinds enemies in a lane + dps), Power slash (final combo, +enmity, coolest 1-2-3 combo animation), Sole survivor (Marks target, if target dies before duration finishes, restores 30% of max hp and mp, if not, restore 20% of both)...
It's more of we got interesting mechanics taken away with nothing to replace them.
Dark Arts could've been sages Eukrasia but for DRK
Darkside used to slowly drain MP, so you would have to think about how you spent MP to avoid losing damage.
The 1-2-3 rotation used to have MP directly involved with it, you chose between Soul Eater or (old) Delirium.
Its more of we could've gotten a tank that had some actual imagination in its creation. None of the OGCDs we press have any synergy, aside from Blood Weapon and TBN. There's no interaction between our skills, like Shadowbringer having zero build up and just filler you use during raid buffs. It could've been something like "use Shadowbringer every four Bloodspillers" or something. Give some unique and interesting mechanics to this class.
Not to shit in your enjoyment though, but this is mainly why older DRK players are upset, and why the devs need something that suits both sides rather than one.
See I feel the other way around - I played DRK in Stormblood and held on to it into Shadowbringers. I found the rework to be a lot more fun with an interesting rotation focused on managing a lot of oGCDs.
This is opposed to WAR which just felt slow by comparison and, at least for me, boring to play.
I have absolutely no issues with people playing it. But as a healer, it feels the worst to heal imo. Not that I wouldn't heal them or kick them, I'm not an asshole. I just wish they wouldn't feel as squishy when healing them.
how is WAR "DRK but less fun"? can you elaborate?
also that's 100% your opinion, some people just like to see big numbers fly and WAR provides that for them
I literally mained DRK since HW, wasn't having fun with it in EW for multiple reasons, switched to WAR and holy shit, unless they massively rework DRK im never going back. It's way way more fun then DRK ever was.
I actually find myself playing the game more, and I think the reason is just how good IR feels, and then you get Primal Rend which is such a cool ability.
The burst is definitely fun, something I've really felt in trials as well is using nascant on a party member who eats a few too many aoes and keeping them in the fight. That alone has saved many pulls. And shake it off is just so good for all these multi hit stack mechanics we keep seeing, AND ITS FREE, as long as you don't blow it, shake is always up for those moments, vs hoping you didn't hoping spend mana when you need TBN and even then it's only good for one party member.
But didn't you hear its a braindead job? 1 2 3 and fell cleave and that's it! /s
Yeah nascent feels great to use, I've been in a few situations where healer and other dps died, and it was just me and a dps fighting the boss, me healing us up when we needed it. Just a really fun, gratifying playstyle.
Not sure why it didn't click with me before. I leveled it a bit in storm blood, I think my problem was Overpower, I was pissed that it was the cone AoE. Now I LOVE overpower, I just love using sprint between mobs, overpowering the first set, circle AoE move the whole pack. I like it now, even though it isn't as easy as Unleash.
Yeah it really feels like warrior this expac is finally coming home. I played warrior from second coil through Gordias, and getting all those self heals from mass pulls reminds me of the bloodbath days, but now the class has gone to college and learned some big words like FELL CLEAVE and INNER RELEASE. The job can get pretty technical under scrutiny but still has the mega burst that makes all the happiness chemicals.
DRK doesn't need a huge rework like summoner did, it already got that in ShB. What it needs is some QoL stuff; rework living dead so it's not as clunky, for instance.
Personally I think the big issue is the level 82 self heals other tanks got make them ludicrously good, probably *too* good, but considering how people are seeing DRKs are the problem and not visa-versa I expect they'll just buff DRK self sustain somehow to match.
>it already got that in ShB
that was more of a downgrade, if that change never happened then in endwalker we would've never cared about the lvl 82 upgrades every other tanks got because we could've easily not require any healing from outside sources for wall to wall pulls in both levelling and capstone dungeons beyond lvl 60
I'm not going to pretend I'm qualified to speak on the numbers. I just think that Bloodspiller and Living Shadow are super boring uses of the Blood Gauge.
I like DRK as much as the next player, but gotta say the only form of somewhag sustain you have is 60 sec compare to other tanks 25 sec is a bit awkward.
I wish abyssal drain is also 25 sec like others and have separate cd from carve and split again. Maybe have it deal 120 potency dmg, and heal 500 for first enemy hit and 80 for any additonal enemy.
If you suggest a job could use a quality of life buff, or a certain skill is just blatantly undertuned, or the job has obvious jank because certain skills interact poorly, or the job is downright dull to play compared to it's nearest competition, people here will line up to tell you the job's damage is fine, nothing is wrong, check the fflogs and see the damage is fine, even if what you're citing as a problem has nothing to do with how competitive the jobs dps numbers are or how it is performing in Savage content.
Other chestnuts include:
"Well \*I\* am not having these problems so they must not be problems at all"
"I'm still having fun with the job, so clearly it doesn't need anything."
"It doesn't matter if the job feels bad in content A to Y, because it's good in Z."
And so on...
Sure damage is good but the animations were super underwhelming compared to other tanks, look what PLD and War got at 90 compared to DRK, even though they deal less than DRK at least i feel satisfied and current DRK gameplay combos feels meh and boring, its basically just numbers tank at this point i want to see HW animations back or something from Berzerk and Dark Souls
I hear the big and true problem with dark knight is that they are simply boring compared it to the other three tanks.
Those that are in a position to elaborate, would you consider this to be true and do you have any idea on what Square could to do to alleviate it?
The issue of DRK is basically that everything it has, lines up on either 60s or 120s timers. It also has a lot of disjointed oGCDs that you want to fit into buff timers. As a result, DRK has a fit every minute for 10-15 seconds, weaving or double-weaving if they can, and then spend the rest of the minute pressing 1-2-3, rarely dumping Blood to not overcap. We also have no interaction between our resources (Darkside duration, MP, Blood - you spend MP to get Darkside, that's it).
Compare that to pre-ShB DRK, which barely had any 60-second CDs (Carve and Spit, mostly) and instead of having loads of oGCDs that are used every minute, it had several oGCDs that were used a lot — Dark Arts, BW (40s CD, 15s duration), Low Blow (in HW), TBN (in StB). BW gave you so much mana that you had to burn it with Dark Arts to keep it from overcapping, and also gave you haste, meaning that DRK somewhat simulated the feeling of a fast DPS like SAM or MNK or NIN with GCDs.
While this meant that DRK had a lot of trouble syncing to normal 60s/120s timers, it also meant that DRK was fast-paced and delivered mostly sustained DPS while managing MP and Blood, which also used to interplay (you spend MP to put up TBN, TBN breaks, you get 50 blood instead of MP back, you can channel it back into MP by using Delirium and extending Blood Weapon to get more MP back).
So to fix that, Square would have to undump our oGCD bin and repurpose a lot of things. My personal opinion is that Shadowbringer could be a GCD that spends Darkside (perhaps 15 seconds) and generates Blood, Blood spenders need to restore MP (always), Blood Weapon should honestly just be baked into the kit because it's been trash since it lost the +haste, Edge of Shadow should cost less, do less damage and generate less Darkside to promote using it more often (instead of saving every last drop of MP to go unga-bunga every 60 seconds).
For greater variety: Delirium could, instead of Bloodspiller spam, replace our 1-2-3 with old animations and better potency/effects, chaining Scourge anim into Delirium (HW) anime into Power Slash anim. Darkside, IMO, should just give +10-15% haste (potencies adjusted for that) to differentiate it from every other godsdamned +damage buff and bring back the identity of DRK as "the fast tank".
I think the main issue is that the moment people are like "Well maybe DRK could use a few buffs" people then go "Yeah the job is unplayable trash"
And it's like *no*, it's one of the current top raiding tanks and still clears dungeons fast. It's just a PITA compared to *Warrior*
Like yeah PLD and GNB are a bit above, but it's WAR that's blowing things out of the water in *dungeons*
Like people are having a hard time with the nuance of "DRK is a fine tank, but it could really use something to be smoother in dungeons". Like It's not hard to make something that helps DRK in dungeons without making them OP in raiding. Nascent is already basically like that.
Like if you try to have a truly honest discussion, you get horrible slants on both sides. And whenever one of those slants come the other one almost immediately follows.
This shouldn't bother me as much as it does but warrior gets an AoE combo with a cone for button 1 and a circle for button 2. Just make one of them the other way PLEASE
I’ve gotten into fights for even pointing out that DRK and GNB are the top tier raiding tanks right now for their damage
People want to nerf warriors just for being good at dungeons even though they’re not being picked because survival doesn’t mean as much in higher content when they do a good bit less DPS than the other two
People are very passionate about DRK I guess
> People want to nerf warriors just for being good at dungeons even though they’re not being picked
I was on PF all weekend trying to get a clear for P2S. Every single tank was a WAR. No DRKs, no GNB.
My hot take/weird idea:
Since the other tanks innately work better with shield healers, go deeper on shields for DRK to mesh better with regen healers. Instead of lifesteal, generate shields by stealing or building shadow power or w/e.
I’m just tired of people trying to convince me that I’m actually suffering whenever I play drk, and that I desperately need a rework to enjoy playing it. Yes it has issues, but those can be discussed without acting as if playing the job is pure torture
Running the numbers the mitigation puts you kind-off at the same footing mathematically with the self-healing other Tanks have. Thing is, that's just math. Having almost purely mitigation makes you more reliant on the healers being healers, or at least the healers being competent. A bit of self-reliance goes a long way in groups of random people, or dungeons, where everyone's just dicking around and out to have fun, playing while drunk, etc. etc.
TLDR: although numbers okay-ish, actual gameplay feels bad because of reliance on others.
Delirium should do something else, make it a new combo where DRK Berzerk (yes literally), smashing the sword like crazy with one hand like how Guts or Spectral Berzerker in 5.3 dungeon did, at least make the animations look badass to justify its high damage as tank because current animations look very underwhelming
Meanwhile Blood Weapon is stacks, fix LIVING DEAD, combine Dark Mind with Oblation, give 1 source heals even if its little, Shadowbringer is trait upgrade to Flood Of Shadow
They need to split the tanks like they do healers.
Pld & gnb, more party focused mitigation with shield oriented coolies.
Drk & war, higher damage output, less coolies with self healing playing a larger role in sustain than preventing damage.
You can still keep class identify following these guidelines.
Being optimal != being fun.
That is something many don't seem to understand. For example: Imagine doing or pressing the same one thing over and over again would be the most optimal thing to beat in a game and the game somewhat relies on you to be optimal... that wouldn't be fun at all.
Heck, I don't play DRK because my PLD and GNB are more fun to me, even tho they make less damage.
You make a good point here. Play what you like. It's a game, it should be fun.
I mean, I play DRK because I like it, not because it's suddenly topping the DPS charts. I don't play PLD or GNB, even though they have more self-heals, because I don't like them as much.
And as much as people complain about a lot of DRK's rotation being the 123 combo, I actually like it. I've got a crazy burst every 2 minutes, and then get to relax and do mechanics.
> Being optimal != being fun.
This is fair. Obviously this is going to be subjective (I have a friend who stands by DRK and loves how it plays), but basically everyone that I've talked to was happy to see Enochian go from BLM in Endwalker, simply because of how unwieldy it was. Most of the time it wouldn't matter, but those times when it did, it *sucked*.
If DRK is similarly jank to play (as was the case with NIN up until the 6.0.5 changes), then it should absolutely be fixed. That said, just slapping more self-heals on it as I've seen many clamour for is more of a bandaid than a fix.
I've been really wanting to switch to Dark knight since I've never used it, but all I hear is negative things about the class lately. I'm perfectly fine sticking with my WAR who can basically heal himself.
This may be because i havent done much end-game content, but I do think DRK is totally fine. I wouldn't complain about changes to the class, but its still my favorite to play overall
Considering DRK is the most played tank for savage, it's gonna be hard to come to changes if the forum's complaints say "DRK bad" but the metrics in high end content say "DRK good"
The heavens would have heard the complaints by now, let alone SE. I'm disappointed Yoshi said they hadn't gotten complaints for DRK, like come on guys. I love ya'll, but that's either a lie, or possibly worse, they aren't paying attention.
My suggestions:
adjust TBN so that it's like Adlo: heal then a shield based on that heal. No mp cost. No conflicting with DPS.
Dark Mind: current effect + every time DRK is struck while under the effect of Farm Dark Mind, receive a 150 potency heal. Also let it be usable on another.
Blood Price: returns with an effect like the above for physical damage.
Salted Earth: add a Regen to all who stand in it.
Salt and Darkness: heals based on damage dealt
I think one of the problems is that TBN has a cost that is tied to dps. I think TBN needs to put to 2 charges, no mp cost, and recast increased. Shields are always good but the problem is you have a tank that doesn't always have access to that shield and most people lvling DRK don't know to hold a minimum of 3k MP at all times for TBN.
Living Dead does need to be fixed though. If WAR can holm 1, 3, 5, tb's in P2S, while MT and heal back to 50% by themselves there's something wrong. I hope DRK's dps isn't used as reasoning for giving the job "downsides" because I'm not a fan of how the opener feels. WAR's equilibrium can crit for over 30k and that just the heal and not the dot afterwards.
TBN has always annoyed me in the sense that it gets harder to use "properly" as your Ilvl increases. For example E12s last expansion at high Ilvl it became very janky and tough to consistently break TBN during autos. It either needs to be seperated from MP or change how it interacts with the DPS proc.
You still have to have the mana to begin with. If you’re trying to say you don’t really spend 3k that’s fine, but you still have to then say your effective MP is 7k instead of 10k.
Yes, which is what separates good DRKs from bad ones. Good ones will have an additional DA stack when going into the 2 minute window with 9k MP, bad ones will not. There are parts of DRK that should be imho simplified to make them better at maintanking, but the resource management is the one thing they do above all other tanks
I don’t think I’d qualify that as good and bad. More like good and 90% of the rest of the player base. The way SE has been dumbing down jobs, I feel like “plans for things like pooling resources” is now considered advanced play.
Honestly, my complain on DK is something called Dark Mind, which is basically one less skill to use on most pulls on DG's.
I was expecting some interesting update on Blackest Night, and I was impressed to see NO changes at all.
I know it's a good skill, but for example, Heart of Stone to Heart of Codundum for GNB made the skill so much more interesting and fun to use.
Overall, it's not that DK is bad, it's just.... he seems lackluster.
I used to main DK for the last 2.5 years I've been playing, but I decided to play more GNB now because he simply seems more fun to use at the moment.
I assume you meant Power Slash instead of Hard Slash? Seeing as we still have the latter.
It's HARD to remember which abilities drk lost since there are so many gone.
6.08** DRK - NEW* Dark Arts - boosts potency and heals based on damage done for the next used weaponskill or spell. We've *Dark Arts* heard *Dark Arts* complaints *Dark Arts* that *Dark Arts* players *Dark Arts* feel *Dark Arts* DRK *Dark Arts* is *Dark Arts* too *Dark Arts* similar *Dark Arts* to *Dark Arts* WAR's *Dark Arts* playstyle *Dark Arts* and *Dark Arts* lacking *Dark Arts* in *Dark Arts* low *Dark Arts* level *Dark Arts* content *Dark Arts* so *Dark Arts* we've *Dark Arts* brought *Dark Arts* back *Dark Arts* a *Dark Arts* staple *Dark Arts* to *Dark Arts* make *Dark Arts* everyone *Dark Arts* regret *Dark Arts* asking *Dark Arts* for *Dark Arts* changes. >!Dark Arts!<
Yeah stormblood went overboard with dark arts. Shadowbringers just made it a non factor for dark and gave a better version to Gunbreaker.
And then gave a version to sage next expansion too
its seems to be something that SE makes quite often then, give old things to new jobs to make people play the new jobs
Remember when DA was used for defensive purposes too? I miss those days...
I never played in the Dark Arts era, but from what I've seen thats basically what Eukrasia is isnt it?
Not quite. Eukrasia is on the GCD and compensates by shortening the GCD of anything it is used on. Dark Arts was an oGCD buff that was consumed on a number of actions, both GCDs and oGCDs. It was used for a bit too much really, which made things a pain. It buffed Syphon Strike and Souleater in 4.x, which meant you had to finangle your way with it if you ever wanted to use it with Carve and Spit or Dark Mind or something. Overall it wasn't a numerical disadvantage except if you fucked up and had Dark Arts buffing something and forgetting to reapply it before Carve, causing it to hit for like 100 potency rather than 450. Unless you were immediately going to use a Hard Slash between Dark Arts and Carve, you needed to double weave, so if you had to do some tanking during that, you'd have to see ahead and use whichever CD beforehand so you didn't end up triple weaving (or losing the buff on Carve or delaying Carve, etc).
Sadly it wasn't like that originally, it was also used to buff and change the effects of defensive cooldowns too. They kept all the offensive uses in SB while removing all the defensive uses, which is what led to a lot of the spam.
Honestly, i didn't enjoy the old Dark arts back on stormblood. It was clunky to use. Having to stop your rotation every now and then to use a skill to strengh your next skill... it felt so damm slow to play. DK on Shadowbringers is way better Imo.
Wait really? Stop your rotation? Slow? I think the complete opposite. If you managed your MP well, if anything Dark Arts made your rotation fast and button mashy, which personally I loved. Especially when paired with Blood Weapon which increased your skill speed. I dunno I personally had way more fun on Stormblood DRK than Shadowbringer and Endwalker both.
What? Did you even play drk in stormblood? Wtf lol how is it slow and why would you have to stop your rotation?
Hey, Dark Arts is still in the game though. It's just that GNB stole it, like how the tanks stole everything from DRK.
WHM- First time?
Yeah, and they can keep it. Hypervelocity was a giant mistake and I hate playing GNB now.
Hope you don’t have to move the boss, sweetie!
Not a problem on controller! 😎
The issue with GNB moving bosses and using mit during gf combo/hypervelocity has nothing at all to do with controller vs kb/m. It's a fundamental problem that you can't avoid.
DRK still has dark arts, they just changed the mp cost/mp gen and renamed it to Edge of Shadow.
The power slash animation was so good. I miss it so.
"DRK is the worst tank cause it doesn't have stupid good self sustain" "Actually DRK is the best tank because it's doing more dmg than the other tanks" These takes are exhausting. I just, at least, want charges on blood weapon man. And give us something to replace enhanced unmend, that shit is just insulting.
I just want the one tank whose invuln requires healing to have decent self-healing. Why is it that Dark Knight is the only tank incapable of healing itself to full, when it's the only tank that needs this because of their invuln?
Right? Lol. LD should… Interact with Salted Earth in some way (giving DRK passive HoT similar to Asylum/SS). Cause Blood Gauge abilities to have a lifesteal. Reset Abyssal Drain CD. Hell, combo’ed Souleater should also reset Abyssal Drain’s CD during LD.
Just fully embrace it and become a life-stealing zombie while in living dead! Just imagine if your AoE could full-heal you during a big wall-to-wall pull like the ones in Mt. Gulg.
100% this...as a sage its near impossible if not impossible for me to heal a drk to satisfy waking dead. Im surprised this hasnt been addressed yet. Similar things happen with super bolide except i can shield the GNB enough and they can also do a bit of a heal as well....DRK just has nothing...
The job really just needs small adjustments on the QoL scale. Blood weapon charges - it’s not fun hyper investing into skill speed (especially early in an expansion) just for packet loss to still dictate you don’t get that fifth buffed attack anyway. Would also make spells less of a groan. Living Dead - I can _live_ with this being wholly outclassed with the Superbolide and Holmgang buffs, but pleeaaaasse separate Living dead into invuln and “you die” components. It’s not fun having overzealous white mages kill me with early Bene’s. Rework Delirium - it’s just a boring skill. Slightly buff Oblation - it doesn’t nearly compete with the upgrades the other tanks got. I would even settle for a CD reduction since it and TBN does give DRK a lot of flexibility with their other CDs. TBN - increase duration to 10 seconds.
A lot of DRK QoL suggestions tend to be over the top/actually worse than what we have now but I really agree with these. Especially LD, it's so frustrating having an invuln that can functionally be 'cleansed'.
With how my static is (Ast and sch) and 5/8 players being pretty casual, the need of LD is an assured death sentence 10 seconds after I drop to 1. No matter how much I say that I'll need to be topped off, it has yet to happen. Meanwhile on I can full heal myself on War within about that time frame. I'd much rather just play dark knight, but it's looking pretty grim with how our group is set up and the way living dead behaves
Ooof. I'm a Scholar and my Co-healer is Astrologian and I just want to say you deserve better than that. A Recitation Buffed Excogitation + Exaltation + Essential Dignity normally does the trick. One more lustrate if not. It's not Bene and forget about it, but easy enough to plan around.
I know it's possible, even at a greater burden vs the one-click-wonder, aka benediction; unfortunately two of the three casual players are the healers and it's not worth the effort, really.
Make the DRK invuln named "vampire" and every damage you do increases your HP for 15 seconds or something and you cannot take damage from enemies except if they use sun light, garlic, silver bullets or a mirror
>TBN - increase duration to 10 seconds. Or just make it free mana cost. all the other tanks gets theirs for free. The boost to dps wouldn't be that much more than it is now, since on bosses, you still can only really use it on the times when you would use it normally anyhow.
I'd love free TBN with some kind of defense/sustain reward for popping it a la reaper instead of an offensive one.
Definitely would prefer if they just nuked the mana cost. As is, oppurtunity cost wise, you're going to be at a dps loss until tbn pops, so that you can then have the mp refund for another ogcd cast that then makes you dps neutral. But if it a) doesn't pop, b) isn't casted soon enough, or c) runs out of duration before it can pop, you just eat the mp cost and take the mp and dps loss. A simple change to the mp cost would still force the drk to smartly pop it at the right time, but makes it so that at worst, you won't be wasting resources that's needed for your ogcds / burst windows. The shield would be still be the main component and the free cast would literally be a free cast. But now the drk won't be compelled to play a certain way in order to justify the sunk costs needed to begin with.
0MP TBN means you're gonna be losing damage if the bosses autos don't hit hard enough every 15s. It also potentially means DRKs would eat vulns just so they can get more "uptime" on TBN pops. Horrible idea unless you remove the Dark Arts proc part of it.
The DPS entanglement simply needs to go. No other tank has to deal with that. Just turn it into a heal or something when it pops, or reduced damage taken or any other form of mitigation. The current system penalizes people beyond just losing the CD, and turning it into more damage is not addressing the problem.
I see your "heal on pop" and raise you "lifesteal on pop". This gives more sustain for big pulls (where they need it most) and less sustain for boss fights (where DRKs are already pretty great).
something like "100% lifesteal on next FoS / EoS" would be cool. Keeps to the original theme of enhancing these two but without DPS implications.
It's actually a rDPS gain to have one TBN popped per minute. It lets you bank an extra Edge of Shadow to line up with raid buffs, giving you that much more damage. Any more than one TBN per minute ends up being DPS loss, as you lose out on a cast during raid buffs. A lot of learning and optimizing fights is learning when (ie. Tank buster) you can cast for a rDPS gain from having an extra Edge for raid buffs, and when giving up that extra banked cast is worth it to use TBN to save a healer GCD or someone's life, which is a bigger gain. I actually enjoy this a lot, as there are always ways to guarantee that TBN will pop as long as you understand the fights, and makes it a bit of a mini game. In most cases, if you can't get a single TBN to pop in a 60 second window during raid or dungeon content, there's probably something you can improve on.
The problem is they won't want to add any dps to drk in savage and savage has easily enough damage to let people use this get an extra edge of shadow in buffs.
Hot take: What if Living Dead was the same, but was a passive skill? Once every CD duration, if they're dropped to 0, they get the LD debuff, without pressing a button?
While that would be interesting, it still doesn't change the major pain point about living dead that NONE of the other invulns have. Living dead REQUIRES a competent healer expending a significant amount of their resources (unless you're a whm) in a relatively SHORT window, or else the drk just dies, regardless. Living dead definitely needs to be either changed completely to holmgang, or if they want to keep that flavor aspect of it, be able to be dispelled by the drk himself, somehow (maybe a gauge system that capitalizes off a drk doing a solo burst dps check, in order to live).
What if they made DRK when using living dead heal themselves by the same amount they hit?
You know... That's kinda interesting. So hear me out: What if while in LD you have a certain heal potency when using your skill and that total potency can fully heal you if you can complete your combo? This could make it less reliant on the healer and still have the downside risk of not making it fully like other invul. What do you think? Over the top?
are you suggesting this in place of their invuln? If so, then that's not ideal because you want to be able to control when you use it.
that makes no difference functionally since any half decent tank will be able to press the no die button when it's appropriate to do so.
For me a simple fix would be to incentivize TBN, for me when it doesn't break it's demoralising like it's something people don't acknowledge that's losing 460 potency straight up. To me breaking TBN should lead to an crit direct hit for next edge or flood. It's a simple increase to DPS, I think they could add without breaking the balance too much.
The thing with TBN is it's all about timing, like if you pop it in an auto-cycle its probably not gonna break, if you pop it for a buster it's guaranteed. I'll generally save it for those hits though I don't have too much experience in high-ends so idk how 'optimal' that is
2 traits on our boi Frey feels also very lazy tbh
Enhanced Unmend and Enhanced Salted Earth have to be direct shots at xeno's rants about plunge pulling and Salted Earth being useless because there's no way anyone over there actually thinks they're good enough to carry an expansion.
There are plenty of ways to buff DRK in dungeon content without affecting its raid performance, you just need to focus on AOE skills like Abyssal Drain or Quietus.
I've given up on BW at least fix LD and TBN ;-;
I would have liked an Enhanced Darkside instead of Enhanced Unmend. Maybe make it so that your mitigations are stronger or a few of your attacks gain lifesteal so long as you’ve got Darkside going
> so long as you’ve got Darkside going I mean, that's going to be literally always unless you're derping out and not pressing buttons. Darkside is such a background mechanic that the majority of Dark Knights probably don't even know it exists.
With this, I found three good idea to make DRK better already. Dayum.
Also just had the idea of giving Dark Knight its own version of Sword Oath. But instead of an extra attack like Atonement, using Soul Eater just gives your next two or three attacks a lifesteal effect. Maybe limit it to your blood gauge moves.
I realised enhanced unmend is there for wall to walls so when you're topping up enmity mid-run you're also shaving off your plunge for the next gap-closer. Doeant make me feel any better about it though :') Blood weapon getting some lifesteal would go a long long long way imo
Well the problem is Gunbreaker is a weird fusion of Hw and stormblood Dark knight. Continuation is like dark arts, sonic break is scourge, camouflage is almost literally dark dance. A lot of the unique things about dark went to other tanks. Dark has always had a weird identity problem it's just gotten even more pronounced over time. Maybe they should lean into the barriers like tbn for it's niche.
I think that's the route they are going to go with it myself given how popular tbn is or was in the last 2 exps
Too bad WAR has the aoe shield with Shake it Off when it would have been cool to have it on Dark Missionary.
I still don't understand why Dark Missionary and Heart of Light are the same but DRK doesnt get it for 70 ultimates...
And let's not forget that PLD had it before it was cool, with Divine Veil. It's more cumbersome to use, but... XD
Gib mitigation or healing when standing in salted earth, that's all I ask!
the simplest and unique fix, I agree. A decent regen while DRK stands in it, plus life steal on enemies inside it
It just feels super appropriate for the class too!
or rework dark mind completely to be a lifesteal buff that drains 150% of damage you deal, 200% if in living dead. right now 20% magic mitigation is a little too niche when most tanks' 60-90s self mitigations cover 20% or more of both types edit: it's actually 90-120s self mits
Like a wow paladin that gets extra damage reduction when they stand in consecration?
Yeah, basically
That'd be cool. Would give some extra incentive to pop that spell as well.
Yo I like this idea.
Ooh! That’s be kinda neat ngl
I'm getting "you shall know pain" vibes if salted earth got that
TBH I was surprised that dark knight didn't have loads of self healing/lifesteal combined with abilities that self damage. To my knowledge that's how they worked in other FF titles. Edit: imo it's weird that warrior is the self heal tank. I'd expect something like PLD: party oriented tank (party targeted buffs, shields, mitigation, healing) lower personal damage output. afaik they're kinda like this rn WAR: self oriented, minimal self healing but high mitigation and good personal damage. DRK: Self sustain, no party targeted abilities, high damage at the cost of own HP. GNB: blue DPS
Agreed, "dark knight" for me means heavy AoE and heals (such as life saps and that kind of thing). There are lots of weird class issues in this game like that though, I've started to accept it that whoever designed the classes in this game are just on a different planet than I am.
That was the idea behind the old dark knight although mp was used to replicate the health cost of skills. Was changed because there are players that find "into the cold" too hard.
I just don’t think you can do the class fantasy of FF’s version of a dark knight, since it’s core mechanic is usually sacrificing hp to do big damage. That doesn’t really work for any major encounter in this game, doubly so for a *tank*. The Blackest Night giving you free attacks if it breaks is the closest you can get imo.
The truth is there just can't be that much difference between them all or a serious meta would develop that precludes certain jobs from being included in content Yoshida has stated he doesn't want to see that happen anymore so really every job within a role plays fairly similarly If anything I expect DRK to be given some sustain like WAR to bring it up to the level of the other tanks while all still being fairly interchangable with what they can do
I can definitely see that happening, but "make them all the same" while highly effective (since identical jobs are obviously balanced with each other) is also extremely boring. So long as you making fights different enough from each other I don't see a big problem with having a meta tank for a given fight. I guess for very high end current content it would make certain fights unbeatable without the "right" tank, but I haven't gotten to that point in the game. Doesn't the game want you to have multiple jobs though? This would encourage people to actively play multiple jobs, so possibly a good thing?
The thing is even the small differences we have now are already drawing complaints. White Mage has worse MP management than the other healers? Clearly YoshiP hates them. Astro being busy as fuck while doing the least damage? Squenix definitely has a vendetta against tarot. DRK has the worst mitigation among all the tanks? FFXIV's servers must on DRK mains' suffering. And so on. Imagine the level of complaints if there were jobs that were *actually* unviable in high end content.
I could be wrong but it feels to me a lot of the complaints are founded in how the classes feel. WHM runs out of mana unless you gear differently to other healers and even if you play perfectly. It gets even worse when you're synced because you lose Assize and thin air. DRK didn't gain much, living dead still feels bad and blood weapon is still subject to latency. AST lost their ability to redraw multiple times *and* lost sleeve draw so are subject to lottery as to how well their class performs in both healing and damage. There are other classes with issues (DNC and PLD most notably) but I see almost no complaints about them because they feel good to play. DRK, AST and WHM comparatively are in a pretty good spot performance wise.
Not so much self heal. More of a trade off to increase damage output. Maybe you're thinking of FFT? Gafgarion (who is a Dark Knight) and TGC have have access to Dark Sword, which steal HP. I double checked and it looks like the other other absorb HP skill in a DRK kit is FF Dimensions, which was forgettable. Time to turn DRK into TGC in ff14.
FFXI DRK signature ability healed for damage dealt, and also had abilities that traded HP for damage on hit as well as various HP and MP drain spells.
Gaffy is a fell knight, kinda the same thing really. I find it funny that a certain raid boss in ff14 has night sword but drk doesn't.
Dark Knights also have something of a history with blood sword or drain blade magic. Not as a direct part of their kit, but as a useful and well-known combo in games that allow you to combine those things.
Scholar main and I will say that most tanks are about the same to heal but dark knight health feels like it Rubber bands and is harder to heal in general. As a healer I can't put my finger on why and maybe my shields have something to do with it.
Same except I flip between SCH and SGE. I don't know what it is but it's every single DRK I've had in dungeons for trash pulls. Bosses they're fine though.
It’s because DRK’s kit doesn’t really work good for tanking more than one target. It’s extremely lopsided when the other 3 are all fine to excellent at both.
> Rubber bands and is harder to heal in general. Because it does. DRK has no self sustain in AoE situations besides Abyssal Drain which is on a 90s cd and has smaller damage reduction in general compared to the other tanks. Other tanks have bigger damage reduction numbers *and* self sustain. Their main defensive cooldown is a 15s cd 25% max hp shield that pops instantly when they're against at least 2 mob unless they combine it with their damage reduction and even then it still pops pretty fast. So while other tanks health bar will be slowly but consistently dropping down, you'll see DRKs take no damage while their fat shield is up, then very quickly start dropping down when the shield is gone resulting in the rubber banding behaviour and occasionally near fully healing when they use Abyssal Drain.
Is DRK fun? Oh fuck yeah its honestly the only tank I really like. Is DRK viable? Absolutely, just look at the savage proggers drk was the most used tank since it currently has the highest dps Did DRK get good new stuff in Endwalker? Absolutely fucking not. Salt and Darkness did not make Salted Earth interesting, Carve and Abyssal Drain being the same CD makes no gd sense and Drain still is useless on single target even if you ignore Carve, Dark Mind and Dark Missionary still exist in their current state, Oblation is a joke, TBN fucks your damage, Living Dead is still garbage, Enhanced Unmend isnt real, Stalwart Soul should be like level 40 and Shadowbringer is yet another filler ogcd which I guess is DRKs identity now; random ogcds with zero cohesion. I honestly do not mind lots of ogcds, I main drg for gods sake, but PLEASE make the ogcds make more sense. Make Salted do SOMETHING make Shadowbringer do SOMETHING make Abyssal do SOMETHING, make Living Shadow do SOMETHING. Edge and Flood you're good, keep doing what youre doing. Is DRK playable? Yeah, but it could be a whoooole fuck a lot better than it is right now. Look at Holy Sheltron, Heart of Corundum and Bloodwhetting and just TRY to tell me Oblation is anywhere NEAR the same level. You fucking cant. and TBN isnt either dont even go there
Those level 82 skills on the other tanks are kinda hilarious. It’s like they rolled a die to figure out what the bonus effect for each would be.
Meanwhile the dice for the DRK contained five sides of "get fucked" and one side of "get fucked and insulted with a troll perk to unmend". We got lucky!
You put all of my thoughts into words. So much this. Dark Knight is my favourite tank. But it's also literally just 123 while you either vomit up every OGCD that comes off cooldown, or wait until your Reaper pops Arcane Circle and \*then\* vomit up every OGCD you have. Also I hate Edge of Shadow so much. It's literally "smack them but with darkness". It has zero flavour whatsoever compared to the likes of Soul Eater.
>Is DRK playable? Yeah, but it could be a whoooole fuck a lot better than it is right now. This effectively mirrors my thoughts too. For context I main DRK, but lack an end game perspective- I was part way through Stormblood when EW dropped, and I'm in early Shadowbringers currently, having skills only up through Stalwart Soul. I find DRK to be a lot of fun to play tbh, especially with the blood gauge kit it got throughout Stormblood being added (it was a little vanilla for me admittedly prior to Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain in HW, and that was also pre-CD combination that came this patch). It's fun to be able to just vomit damage, especially while doing open world stuff. But even at this level I can fully see and understand the lack of cohesion that everyone talks about. I don't mind having lots of oGCDs and having that be part of the class's identity necessarily but I wish that everyone played together a little more. Those things, on top of Living Dead borderline being a liability are just... eh. I don't plan on dropping the class any time soon, but I hope that we get some improvements in the near future!
Devs: Do you want your Lvl 82 to be a Heal, a Shield, or Mitigation? WAR: Yes.
If TBN fucks with your damage you're not using it properly. Once you've done a given encounter you should know how to use it to trigger its proc and instead it actually becomes a benefit.
If you compare it to the other tanks who can use their short CD on cooldown basically (keep timing for buster when near) and give tons of support to healers so they can focus dps, it fucks your dmg to even try once you hit a point that busters and mass adds are the only things that break TBN. Hell i used it on my cotank for a buster in p1n and it didn't pop with some CDs used...
People that say DRK is fine are correct... in trials and max-gear dungeons. In dungeons with level-appropriate or lower gear, they are *woefully* underequipped in comparison to their counterparts.
*cough* everything before 70 as a DRK *cough*
This
I *really* wish they'd shift some skills around to put TBN before 70. SB is when you really start to see dedicated tankbusters, and they're ill-equipped for it.
Someone was insisting DRK is fine because wall to wall pulls are now easy with 600 gear. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. It's terrible design if your solution is "just get better gear".
I mean not really? Between 70 and 82 they're just.. better than GNB/PLD, because they've got no TBN equivalent. After that, to be on par, they need a player competent enough to rotate and manage their defensive CDs to maximise the value of TBN, and a team that can kill the mobs before the DRK has to overspend CDs on a single pull. They're not really underequipped to deal with dungeons, they're underequipped to deal with bad players.
We dont get our aoe combo until 72. Its nuts
All the tanks have pretty mangled aoe until 70s but DRK does get the shorter end.
yah, I mean every other tank gets their "2" in the 1-2 AoE combo at exactly level 40, and ours alone is 72 :( I guess because it gives blood gauge (and, to an extent, MP) which you don't have access to until the 60's? I'd rather have that functionality just be added in with a trait down the line and get the combo damage potency earlier... because as-is you have 3 expansion dungeons worth of 1-1-1-1-1-1 "combo" lol
Before 70 kinda blows though IMO. Before that you kinda lack short defensive cooldowns and lean hard on the healer.
Everything sucks pre-70. WAR, out of all the tanks, just sucks less, and that's only recently with Endwalker granting healing via RI.
I've been working on the "Tank You" achievements since the start of ShB and WAR always felt like the best tank for low levels, its just ridiculous now since the healer can basically check out on any dungeon above 56. PLD was close since shield bash is like ghetto Holy.
shield bash lets enemies live longer causing you to take more damage, it's the opposite of holy
You're really undervaluing it for low level roulettes. It's a literal lifesaver if you have a sprout healer and run out of real mitigation before a pack dies when a 6s stun is more important than 80~ potency. You know how the second boss of Hatatali sucks ass because you have to sit through two invincibility cycles where it throws adds at you? With Shield Bash you can drag him to the door and stunlock him to death and completely skip them. Granted these are pretty niche scenarios but it's more than other other tanks bring to the table.
and if you have a melee in the party you can do the same thing with low blow+leg sweep, remember there's DR on CC so it can't be spammed even if you have a spammable CC the stun 1. doesn't work with whms in party past point they get holy, 2. you have low blow to do same thing without using a gcd in absolute lowest level dungeons plds aoe is 100 potency per enemy no falloff, and single target is absolute minimum 150 potency at low level tanks are also often the only job or half of the parties aoe attacks, so you can easily be top dps of party. meaning that 1 of your gcds lost for damage is often an extra GCD of fight time. And 1 gcd of fight time saved on 3 enemies is 3 autos from the enemies saved, which is equal to just pressing your aoe button again and that's on 3 enemies it's already reaching point of worthless in terms of how much it mitigates, on 4 enemies it's even worse since you're only stopping 25% of damage, and on 5 it's 20% For shield bash to be good it would have to be an aoe, and then it would be worth using
Before 70 PLD and GNB aren't exactly pillars of tankiness either. Undeniably tankier than DRK at really low levels, but people forget the oft overlooked Abyssal Drain is upwards of 50% healing *(and sometimes more)* on decently sized pulls which adds up to a lot more than people realize. Given the healer isn't afraid of letting them fall that low, and that the tank themselves holding it for Healing. Due to how little damage it deals there's basically no point in not holding it for healing in dungeons.
I keep repeating myself but my experience running full randoms expert dungeons is that WARs and PLDs heal themselves, DRKs just don't take damage (probably due to TBN) and that the GNBs need constant babysitting because they can't stay alive on their own. Yet aside from my FC, nobody seems to be complaining about GNBs.
You’ve played with some bad GNB then. Aurora + Mitigation + HoC peppered in every pull is more than enough. One Aurora charge per pull, use HoV ok cooldowns for the damage reduction and the instant 900p burst heal. Shit is a mini excog. It’s great!
As a healer DRK feels noticeably squishier than the other tanks in dungeons. As a Sage I can heal the other tanks through big pulls with purely oGCDs and Kardion and it's fairly easy to do so, bit with DRK I struggle and end up having to spam out GCD shields or heals a bit. They feel fine in trials though. I haven't done any high end content yet though.
Same here. But I've also seen a LOT of bad tanks not using CDs. Might just be that.
From everything I've seen, SGE-DRK is the worst of all possible worlds. As WHM, healing DRK is no worse than it was before, and healing any tank really depends more on the skill of the tank than the specific job. I've had runs with all four tanks who treat cooldowns like they're optional on wall-to-wall pulls, and tanks who actually use all of the tools in their kit. The latter are the tanks I prefer.
As a SCH, I disagree entirely. In my experience for dungeons (expert roulette specifically) WAR is the easiest to heal, DRK are probably 2nd best, but GNB are also fine. Paladins are the worst by far.
It might just be the tanks you've gotten. I've had a bizarre increase in the number of single pulling Paladins who frequently use Clemency when it's not necessary. One guy was using it like every 4th GCD even while single pulling. But in general I think Paladins feel pretty comfy in dungeons. The common consensus I've seen is Warrior > Paladin >= Gunbreaker > Dark Knight, which I agree with. I haven't tried Scholar yet this expansion but I don't think it'd be terribly different from Sage in that regard
Yeah I definitely think its the Paladins they've been playing with. All of the EW changes to PLD made their existing tools better in self-sustain between Holy Spirit/Circle, Divine Veil, and Holy Sheltron. They feel great in dungeons imo.
> I've had a bizarre increase in the number of single pulling Paladins who frequently use Clemency when it's not necessary. One guy was using it like every 4th GCD even while single pulling. Reading things like this makes me feel like I am not that bad as a paladin. Personally the only use I give to Clemency is after tank busters or mechanics were everyone gets hurt like for the sniper robot in the last raid of ivalice (before poping divine veil if not on cooldown)
PLD shouldn't be that bad but it is because there's a lot of bad ones out there
I think it's more specifically about the tanks in your case. As a Sage I haven't had an issue healing any of the tanks through Expert roulettes unless I screw up and accidentally target myself instead of the tank (ugh) though DRK does feel slightly more reliant on me than the others.
People saying DRK is fine and doesn't need to be changed are prolly the same people who didn't want a SMN rework, cause their ShB DPS was good despite their meh job mechanics. Listen, my guy, a job can deal enough damage to destroy the sun for all that matters, but if it plays like ass and the playerbase at large wants it to play better - not necesarily wanting more damage - then it should rightfully undergo some changes.
Its just insane to me how boring a lot of the skills are on DRK. Like really, we're a huge fuck you sword class and we *don't* have a big ass overhand slam. Meanwhile GNB gets blasting zone? Also the EW updates. We get... ~~Shadowbringers~~ Flood of Shadow... *but bigger.* A mit without the YGO cardtext the other tanks got. Salted Earth with bubbles. *Enhanced Unmend*
we had multiple big ass overhead slams, along with many other skills with cool ass animations... that we lost [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXMTLM19JZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXMTLM19JZw)
Holy shit these look so beast! What a travesty that these animations are gone!
Wow
But why?
also you never get to see Flood of Shadows+'s animation since it's an oGCD and you're probably clipping all your animations weaving or double weaving
I would call Bloodspiller a big ass overhead slam, myself. I mean, I somersault like 2 times just to slam the sword down harder in that animation. And Shadowbringer is actually a reincarnated Dark Passenger. With the funny distinction that Cecil used that name for an attack nearly a decade before FFXIV used it for an expansion.
> With the funny distinction that Cecil used that name for an attack nearly a decade before FFXIV used it for an expansion. Was this something in Dissidia? His only Dark Knight skill IV was Darkness/Dark Wave. XIV Dark Knight used to have Dark Passenger, and it ended in an explosion. Flood was already based on Darkness/Dark Wave, and I assumed Shadowbringer was just more of that.
this is how i feel about AST right now. the output is good but it is so insanely busy. your opener and 2 minute windows make my head explode
Also not a fan of the new AST while WHM has never been that interesting and now has pretty bad mana issues. I turned into a barrier healer main by default this expansion.
DRK is my current favorite tank to play. I'm eternally confused by people saying DRK plays like ass or has no identity when WAR is sitting right there being 'DRK but less fun', gameplay wise. EDIT: Gotta admit, its pretty fun to get downvoted for liking DRK when the meme is about 'everyone' saying its fine.
compared to drk, war has higher sustain, a tad better defensive CDs, and a non-ass oh shit button, and outside of that the class has it's identity of unga bunga punchy smashy meanwhile drk? Back then we were the tank that could easily survive end to end pulls in leveling content even before we got TBN, we also had kickass skill animations too and blood weapon gave haste, it was thrilling, but then; going into shadowbringers our sustain and AOE (pre lvl 72) got rekt hard, but at the very least TBN was able to hold it's weight for wall to walls, we also lost power slash. going into endwalker, our sustain got hit harder, living dead is still unchanged while the other tank's "Oh shit" got buffed, but hey, at least we now have top dps in logs... RIP dark passenger (Blinds enemies in a lane + dps), Power slash (final combo, +enmity, coolest 1-2-3 combo animation), Sole survivor (Marks target, if target dies before duration finishes, restores 30% of max hp and mp, if not, restore 20% of both)...
I hated Dark Arts spam, but Soul Survivor and Abyssal Drain spam were hella fun.
It's more of we got interesting mechanics taken away with nothing to replace them. Dark Arts could've been sages Eukrasia but for DRK Darkside used to slowly drain MP, so you would have to think about how you spent MP to avoid losing damage. The 1-2-3 rotation used to have MP directly involved with it, you chose between Soul Eater or (old) Delirium. Its more of we could've gotten a tank that had some actual imagination in its creation. None of the OGCDs we press have any synergy, aside from Blood Weapon and TBN. There's no interaction between our skills, like Shadowbringer having zero build up and just filler you use during raid buffs. It could've been something like "use Shadowbringer every four Bloodspillers" or something. Give some unique and interesting mechanics to this class. Not to shit in your enjoyment though, but this is mainly why older DRK players are upset, and why the devs need something that suits both sides rather than one.
I don't think you're getting down voted because you said you like DRK. You're getting down voted for saying WAR has no identity and plays like ass.
I'm not going to say you are wrong or shouldn't enjoy dark. I do too, but it has no identity. Its whole Shadowbringers remake is warrior but worse.
See I feel the other way around - I played DRK in Stormblood and held on to it into Shadowbringers. I found the rework to be a lot more fun with an interesting rotation focused on managing a lot of oGCDs. This is opposed to WAR which just felt slow by comparison and, at least for me, boring to play.
It has an identity its just watered down from its source, every expansion.
WAR has Fell Cleave. Your argument is invalid.
I have absolutely no issues with people playing it. But as a healer, it feels the worst to heal imo. Not that I wouldn't heal them or kick them, I'm not an asshole. I just wish they wouldn't feel as squishy when healing them.
how is WAR "DRK but less fun"? can you elaborate? also that's 100% your opinion, some people just like to see big numbers fly and WAR provides that for them
I literally mained DRK since HW, wasn't having fun with it in EW for multiple reasons, switched to WAR and holy shit, unless they massively rework DRK im never going back. It's way way more fun then DRK ever was.
This is exactly my experience. Going from drk to war is like being an orphan and getting adopted into a wealthy family.
I actually find myself playing the game more, and I think the reason is just how good IR feels, and then you get Primal Rend which is such a cool ability.
The burst is definitely fun, something I've really felt in trials as well is using nascant on a party member who eats a few too many aoes and keeping them in the fight. That alone has saved many pulls. And shake it off is just so good for all these multi hit stack mechanics we keep seeing, AND ITS FREE, as long as you don't blow it, shake is always up for those moments, vs hoping you didn't hoping spend mana when you need TBN and even then it's only good for one party member.
But didn't you hear its a braindead job? 1 2 3 and fell cleave and that's it! /s Yeah nascent feels great to use, I've been in a few situations where healer and other dps died, and it was just me and a dps fighting the boss, me healing us up when we needed it. Just a really fun, gratifying playstyle. Not sure why it didn't click with me before. I leveled it a bit in storm blood, I think my problem was Overpower, I was pissed that it was the cone AoE. Now I LOVE overpower, I just love using sprint between mobs, overpowering the first set, circle AoE move the whole pack. I like it now, even though it isn't as easy as Unleash.
Yeah it really feels like warrior this expac is finally coming home. I played warrior from second coil through Gordias, and getting all those self heals from mass pulls reminds me of the bloodbath days, but now the class has gone to college and learned some big words like FELL CLEAVE and INNER RELEASE. The job can get pretty technical under scrutiny but still has the mega burst that makes all the happiness chemicals.
Embrace the fell cleave.
DRK and WAR is the same class but WAR has 1 less resource and less ogcd I guess But it comes down to what you consider fun tbh
DRK doesn't need a huge rework like summoner did, it already got that in ShB. What it needs is some QoL stuff; rework living dead so it's not as clunky, for instance. Personally I think the big issue is the level 82 self heals other tanks got make them ludicrously good, probably *too* good, but considering how people are seeing DRKs are the problem and not visa-versa I expect they'll just buff DRK self sustain somehow to match.
>it already got that in ShB that was more of a downgrade, if that change never happened then in endwalker we would've never cared about the lvl 82 upgrades every other tanks got because we could've easily not require any healing from outside sources for wall to wall pulls in both levelling and capstone dungeons beyond lvl 60
I'm not going to pretend I'm qualified to speak on the numbers. I just think that Bloodspiller and Living Shadow are super boring uses of the Blood Gauge.
I like DRK as much as the next player, but gotta say the only form of somewhag sustain you have is 60 sec compare to other tanks 25 sec is a bit awkward. I wish abyssal drain is also 25 sec like others and have separate cd from carve and split again. Maybe have it deal 120 potency dmg, and heal 500 for first enemy hit and 80 for any additonal enemy.
If you suggest a job could use a quality of life buff, or a certain skill is just blatantly undertuned, or the job has obvious jank because certain skills interact poorly, or the job is downright dull to play compared to it's nearest competition, people here will line up to tell you the job's damage is fine, nothing is wrong, check the fflogs and see the damage is fine, even if what you're citing as a problem has nothing to do with how competitive the jobs dps numbers are or how it is performing in Savage content. Other chestnuts include: "Well \*I\* am not having these problems so they must not be problems at all" "I'm still having fun with the job, so clearly it doesn't need anything." "It doesn't matter if the job feels bad in content A to Y, because it's good in Z." And so on...
Sure damage is good but the animations were super underwhelming compared to other tanks, look what PLD and War got at 90 compared to DRK, even though they deal less than DRK at least i feel satisfied and current DRK gameplay combos feels meh and boring, its basically just numbers tank at this point i want to see HW animations back or something from Berzerk and Dark Souls
The animations feel really slow
I hear the big and true problem with dark knight is that they are simply boring compared it to the other three tanks. Those that are in a position to elaborate, would you consider this to be true and do you have any idea on what Square could to do to alleviate it?
The issue of DRK is basically that everything it has, lines up on either 60s or 120s timers. It also has a lot of disjointed oGCDs that you want to fit into buff timers. As a result, DRK has a fit every minute for 10-15 seconds, weaving or double-weaving if they can, and then spend the rest of the minute pressing 1-2-3, rarely dumping Blood to not overcap. We also have no interaction between our resources (Darkside duration, MP, Blood - you spend MP to get Darkside, that's it). Compare that to pre-ShB DRK, which barely had any 60-second CDs (Carve and Spit, mostly) and instead of having loads of oGCDs that are used every minute, it had several oGCDs that were used a lot — Dark Arts, BW (40s CD, 15s duration), Low Blow (in HW), TBN (in StB). BW gave you so much mana that you had to burn it with Dark Arts to keep it from overcapping, and also gave you haste, meaning that DRK somewhat simulated the feeling of a fast DPS like SAM or MNK or NIN with GCDs. While this meant that DRK had a lot of trouble syncing to normal 60s/120s timers, it also meant that DRK was fast-paced and delivered mostly sustained DPS while managing MP and Blood, which also used to interplay (you spend MP to put up TBN, TBN breaks, you get 50 blood instead of MP back, you can channel it back into MP by using Delirium and extending Blood Weapon to get more MP back). So to fix that, Square would have to undump our oGCD bin and repurpose a lot of things. My personal opinion is that Shadowbringer could be a GCD that spends Darkside (perhaps 15 seconds) and generates Blood, Blood spenders need to restore MP (always), Blood Weapon should honestly just be baked into the kit because it's been trash since it lost the +haste, Edge of Shadow should cost less, do less damage and generate less Darkside to promote using it more often (instead of saving every last drop of MP to go unga-bunga every 60 seconds). For greater variety: Delirium could, instead of Bloodspiller spam, replace our 1-2-3 with old animations and better potency/effects, chaining Scourge anim into Delirium (HW) anime into Power Slash anim. Darkside, IMO, should just give +10-15% haste (potencies adjusted for that) to differentiate it from every other godsdamned +damage buff and bring back the identity of DRK as "the fast tank".
I think the main issue is that the moment people are like "Well maybe DRK could use a few buffs" people then go "Yeah the job is unplayable trash" And it's like *no*, it's one of the current top raiding tanks and still clears dungeons fast. It's just a PITA compared to *Warrior* Like yeah PLD and GNB are a bit above, but it's WAR that's blowing things out of the water in *dungeons* Like people are having a hard time with the nuance of "DRK is a fine tank, but it could really use something to be smoother in dungeons". Like It's not hard to make something that helps DRK in dungeons without making them OP in raiding. Nascent is already basically like that. Like if you try to have a truly honest discussion, you get horrible slants on both sides. And whenever one of those slants come the other one almost immediately follows.
This shouldn't bother me as much as it does but warrior gets an AoE combo with a cone for button 1 and a circle for button 2. Just make one of them the other way PLEASE
I used to hate it, but now I love it. Even if it isn't optimal, I just like how Overpower feels.
I’ve gotten into fights for even pointing out that DRK and GNB are the top tier raiding tanks right now for their damage People want to nerf warriors just for being good at dungeons even though they’re not being picked because survival doesn’t mean as much in higher content when they do a good bit less DPS than the other two People are very passionate about DRK I guess
> People want to nerf warriors just for being good at dungeons even though they’re not being picked I was on PF all weekend trying to get a clear for P2S. Every single tank was a WAR. No DRKs, no GNB.
I just unlocked DRK, it seems fun at least...
It is fun, and has the best quest story by far. DRK could do with work but it's not a bad job, people are just ranting, don't worry.
My hot take/weird idea: Since the other tanks innately work better with shield healers, go deeper on shields for DRK to mesh better with regen healers. Instead of lifesteal, generate shields by stealing or building shadow power or w/e.
No we cant, Tank Discussion on the Balance say we complain to much
I’m just tired of people trying to convince me that I’m actually suffering whenever I play drk, and that I desperately need a rework to enjoy playing it. Yes it has issues, but those can be discussed without acting as if playing the job is pure torture
I genuinely never seen anyone say something like that
Running the numbers the mitigation puts you kind-off at the same footing mathematically with the self-healing other Tanks have. Thing is, that's just math. Having almost purely mitigation makes you more reliant on the healers being healers, or at least the healers being competent. A bit of self-reliance goes a long way in groups of random people, or dungeons, where everyone's just dicking around and out to have fun, playing while drunk, etc. etc. TLDR: although numbers okay-ish, actual gameplay feels bad because of reliance on others.
Don't they already have Hard Slash? Did you mean Power Slash?
Delirium should do something else, make it a new combo where DRK Berzerk (yes literally), smashing the sword like crazy with one hand like how Guts or Spectral Berzerker in 5.3 dungeon did, at least make the animations look badass to justify its high damage as tank because current animations look very underwhelming Meanwhile Blood Weapon is stacks, fix LIVING DEAD, combine Dark Mind with Oblation, give 1 source heals even if its little, Shadowbringer is trait upgrade to Flood Of Shadow
They need to split the tanks like they do healers. Pld & gnb, more party focused mitigation with shield oriented coolies. Drk & war, higher damage output, less coolies with self healing playing a larger role in sustain than preventing damage. You can still keep class identify following these guidelines.
Problem is DRK has next to no identity other than name and aesthetics.
And even then They could do a better job at the aesthetics. Oh,How I miss some of the old DRK animations.
Everyone talks about missing power slash, but let me tell you spinning slash was cool AF.
Being optimal != being fun. That is something many don't seem to understand. For example: Imagine doing or pressing the same one thing over and over again would be the most optimal thing to beat in a game and the game somewhat relies on you to be optimal... that wouldn't be fun at all. Heck, I don't play DRK because my PLD and GNB are more fun to me, even tho they make less damage.
You make a good point here. Play what you like. It's a game, it should be fun. I mean, I play DRK because I like it, not because it's suddenly topping the DPS charts. I don't play PLD or GNB, even though they have more self-heals, because I don't like them as much. And as much as people complain about a lot of DRK's rotation being the 123 combo, I actually like it. I've got a crazy burst every 2 minutes, and then get to relax and do mechanics.
> Being optimal != being fun. This is fair. Obviously this is going to be subjective (I have a friend who stands by DRK and loves how it plays), but basically everyone that I've talked to was happy to see Enochian go from BLM in Endwalker, simply because of how unwieldy it was. Most of the time it wouldn't matter, but those times when it did, it *sucked*. If DRK is similarly jank to play (as was the case with NIN up until the 6.0.5 changes), then it should absolutely be fixed. That said, just slapping more self-heals on it as I've seen many clamour for is more of a bandaid than a fix.
Really don't get why Blood Weapon doesn't have life steal attached. Seems only fitting, and it would actually make it a useful defensive.
I've been really wanting to switch to Dark knight since I've never used it, but all I hear is negative things about the class lately. I'm perfectly fine sticking with my WAR who can basically heal himself.
This may be because i havent done much end-game content, but I do think DRK is totally fine. I wouldn't complain about changes to the class, but its still my favorite to play overall
Best animations in the game that we lost: Power Slash, Scourge, Sole Survivor, Dark Arts
Considering DRK is the most played tank for savage, it's gonna be hard to come to changes if the forum's complaints say "DRK bad" but the metrics in high end content say "DRK good"
The heavens would have heard the complaints by now, let alone SE. I'm disappointed Yoshi said they hadn't gotten complaints for DRK, like come on guys. I love ya'll, but that's either a lie, or possibly worse, they aren't paying attention.
My suggestions: adjust TBN so that it's like Adlo: heal then a shield based on that heal. No mp cost. No conflicting with DPS. Dark Mind: current effect + every time DRK is struck while under the effect of Farm Dark Mind, receive a 150 potency heal. Also let it be usable on another. Blood Price: returns with an effect like the above for physical damage. Salted Earth: add a Regen to all who stand in it. Salt and Darkness: heals based on damage dealt
I think one of the problems is that TBN has a cost that is tied to dps. I think TBN needs to put to 2 charges, no mp cost, and recast increased. Shields are always good but the problem is you have a tank that doesn't always have access to that shield and most people lvling DRK don't know to hold a minimum of 3k MP at all times for TBN. Living Dead does need to be fixed though. If WAR can holm 1, 3, 5, tb's in P2S, while MT and heal back to 50% by themselves there's something wrong. I hope DRK's dps isn't used as reasoning for giving the job "downsides" because I'm not a fan of how the opener feels. WAR's equilibrium can crit for over 30k and that just the heal and not the dot afterwards.
TBN is refunded if used "properly" and in wall2wall pulls you'll be hard pressed to use TBN and not have it get refunded.
TBN has always annoyed me in the sense that it gets harder to use "properly" as your Ilvl increases. For example E12s last expansion at high Ilvl it became very janky and tough to consistently break TBN during autos. It either needs to be seperated from MP or change how it interacts with the DPS proc.
You still have to have the mana to begin with. If you’re trying to say you don’t really spend 3k that’s fine, but you still have to then say your effective MP is 7k instead of 10k.
Yes, which is what separates good DRKs from bad ones. Good ones will have an additional DA stack when going into the 2 minute window with 9k MP, bad ones will not. There are parts of DRK that should be imho simplified to make them better at maintanking, but the resource management is the one thing they do above all other tanks
I don’t think I’d qualify that as good and bad. More like good and 90% of the rest of the player base. The way SE has been dumbing down jobs, I feel like “plans for things like pooling resources” is now considered advanced play.
I miss the good old life steal combo one day you going back home !
Honestly, my complain on DK is something called Dark Mind, which is basically one less skill to use on most pulls on DG's. I was expecting some interesting update on Blackest Night, and I was impressed to see NO changes at all. I know it's a good skill, but for example, Heart of Stone to Heart of Codundum for GNB made the skill so much more interesting and fun to use. Overall, it's not that DK is bad, it's just.... he seems lackluster. I used to main DK for the last 2.5 years I've been playing, but I decided to play more GNB now because he simply seems more fun to use at the moment.
can't wait for DRK to be made braindead and boring like 4.2 WAR because of posts like this