Dark Knight NEEDS a remake/revamp

[(Farkon) 2m_anylootboxes]

Dark Knights in Shadowbringers is so boring compared to HW and StB and As it is DRK's current toolkit doesn’t work with itself and lacks the Dark Knight identity play style known throughout the series.

* DRK's rotation is the most simple of all classes. You just press one two three, with basically no complexity. It's boring.

* DRK has a lot of oGCDs, but none of them interact with each other in a tasty way. DRG, for example, Gunblades have oGCDs that naturally feed into each other to progress through the flow of your rotation. DRK, on the other hand, has buttons you need to press on cooldown to do damage - they do literally nothing besides damage, and interact with nothing else.

* All the other tanks have some very flexible defensive cooldowns (e.g. Holy Sheltron, Heart of Corundum, etc). DRK got substandard and basic cooldowns and only TBN.

* The Darkside buff might as well not exist, it's so easy to maintain and over the course of a 10 minute fight, you'll generate about 4 minutes of excess Darkside.

* DRK's traits that they are getting are a joke. Enhanced Unmend is next-to-useless, 1 trait increases your weapon skill potencies all tanks get this) and then there's two other traits to just increase the damage of your Living Shadow. That's it.

Dark Knights need a remake back to being a sustain tank like they were in HW so that they have an actually identity, instead of being known as dead weight from living dead.

[real hideo kojima]

just play warrior 5head

[galacticcorgi]

Just say you want to play WAR.

[Lusus Symphonia]

Remember when it was first added and it was the evasion tank that causes blindness and evaded hit after hit? made it very unpredictable to heal and if it wasn't played well, made them squishy.

Well, Dark Knights are just turret tanks at this point, basic 1,2,3 with some pew pew oGCDs to make up for your lack of damage.

You'd think having loads of oGCD's that deal damage that the class would be one of, if not the highest DPS tank.

[Jonas™]

Originally posted by Anakha:

Just say you want to play WAR.

^This, Dark Side is like an on-demand... whatever the WAR version is I forget... and it's a lot easier to maintain. Its oGCD, whereas WAR has to do a full standard rotation to refresh to 30secs.

Also TBN is the most OP on-demand defensive ability of any tank. Their kit is balanced around it, that is why they have less options for their long cooldown defensives compared to the other tanks.

Now if your complaint was about how lackluster and unpleasant their "oh s***" button is, then I would be right there with you. It's easily the worst of the 4 tanks.

[Om3ga-Z3ro]

I agree, I feel DRk got really half baked in EW, all other tanks get sweet upgrades to their quick DF CD's while we get... whatever the hell Oblation is.

[(Farkon) 2m_anylootboxes]

Originally posted by Om3ga-Z3ro:

I agree, I feel DRk got really half baked in EW, all other tanks get sweet upgrades to their quick DF CD's while we get... whatever the hell Oblation is.

Yea, every other tank is getting really cool stuff, but DRK is getting really bland and boring abilities and traits.

I get why they made Dark Knights so simple and easy to play for Shadowbringers, since the extreme casuals can get into the class, but now that it's a new expansion, DRKs should get their iconic playstyle back.

[causality]

While we lament about DRK and Enhanced Unmend can we stop to observe for a moment how SE made WAR, the easiest job in the game even easier?

[Rhyagelle]

I think they are fine now, and will most likely get even better with Endwalker.

[Yenkei]

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

* DRK's rotation is the most simple of all classes. You just press one two three, with basically no complexity. It's boring.

None of the tanks are hard to play, Most would say WAR is actually the easiest and GNB basically plays itself. The hardest tank to optimize is actually PLD, and it's not for reasons SE intended.

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

* DRK has a lot of oGCDs, but none of them interact with each other in a tasty way. DRG, for example, Gunblades have oGCDs that naturally feed into each other to progress through the flow of your rotation. DRK, on the other hand, has buttons you need to press on cooldown to do damage - they do literally nothing besides damage, and interact with nothing else.

That's most burst DPS. People like to compare DRK and WAR, but DRK actually has a lot more in common with NIN and has almost the exact same playstyle.

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

* All the other tanks have some very flexible defensive cooldowns (e.g. Holy Sheltron, Heart of Corundum, etc). DRK got substandard and basic cooldowns and only TBN.

TBN is really good for progression if you've ever done Savage/Ultimates on release. Sheltron before EW was just not very good, it needed a buff.

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

* The Darkside buff might as well not exist, it's so easy to maintain and over the course of a 10 minute fight, you'll generate about 4 minutes of excess Darkside.

It's not hard to keep up, but neither is Storm's Eye, Enochian, Huton, or BOTD. It's almost impossible to drop BOTD, there's a reason it's just becoming a trait.

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

* DRK's traits that they are getting are a joke. Enhanced Unmend is next-to-useless, 1 trait increases your weapon skill potencies all tanks get this) and then there's two other traits to just increase the damage of your Living Shadow. That's it.

Yeah it's pretty useless.

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

Dark Knights need a remake back to being a sustain tank like they were in HW so that they have an actually identity, instead of being known as dead weight from living dead.

DRK was never a "sustain tank". In HW it was good at mitigating magic damage thanks to old Delirium, and Dark Mind in a tier that was almost entirely magic damage. HW didn't have a "sustain tank" the closest to that was WAR with Bloodbath.

DRK is in a good spot right now and didn't need many changes, I would really rather not go back to spamming Dark Arts.

[Killance]

Sounds like you want a WAR, but with dark anime powers.

Just play a WAR.

[(Farkon) 2m_anylootboxes]

Originally posted by Yenkei:

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

Dark Knights need a remake back to being a sustain tank like they were in HW so that they have an actually identity, instead of being known as dead weight from living dead.

DRK was never a "sustain tank". In HW it was good at mitigating magic damage thanks to old Delirium, and Dark Mind in a tier that was almost entirely magic damage. HW didn't have a "sustain tank" the closest to that was WAR with Bloodbath.

DRK is in a good spot right now and didn't need many changes, I would really rather not go back to spamming Dark Arts.

DRK is in a ok spot balance wise, but extremely boring compared to other tanks. It's also a class that's known throughout the series for absorbing enemy hp and sacrificing it's own to do more damage, doesn't even do any of this. (Unless you consider a 2% SELF-cure at the end of a combo is absorbing)

HW you could get roughly 7-9k HP at max level with a soulstealer combo, when the max hp was around 37k, that's around 40% and pretty significant. Even the new healing class (sage) is getting drk's old Dark Arts mechanic added in, yet it's somehow unfeasible to give the same to DRK?

As it is DRK's current toolkit doesn’t work with itself and lacks the Dark Knight identity play style known throughout the series.

[00yiggdrasill00]

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

Originally posted by Yenkei:

DRK was never a "sustain tank". In HW it was good at mitigating magic damage thanks to old Delirium, and Dark Mind in a tier that was almost entirely magic damage. HW didn't have a "sustain tank" the closest to that was WAR with Bloodbath.

DRK is in a good spot right now and didn't need many changes, I would really rather not go back to spamming Dark Arts.

DRK is in a ok spot balance wise, but extremely boring compared to other tanks. It's also a class that's known throughout the series for absorbing enemy hp and sacrificing it's own to do more damage, doesn't even do any of this. (Unless you consider a 2% SELF-cure at the end of a combo is absorbing)

HW you could get roughly 7-9k HP at max level with a soulstealer combo, when the max hp was around 37k, that's around 40% and pretty significant. Even the new healing class (sage) is getting drk's old Dark Arts mechanic added in, yet it's somehow unfeasible to give the same to DRK?

As it is DRK's current toolkit doesn’t work with itself and lacks the Dark Knight identity play style known throughout the series.

i do agree with this argument (though i think you needed to phrase your opening argument much better) they are indeed missing much of their loreful playstyle and i do see that as an issue. no class is ever going to suite everyone so "boring" is very subjective.

[RIMANAH]

no he doesnt

[Yenkei]

Originally posted by 2m_anyloo̐̔͞tboxes (Farkon):

DRK is in a ok spot balance wise, but extremely boring compared to other tanks. It's also a class that's known throughout the series for absorbing enemy hp and sacrificing it's own to do more damage, doesn't even do any of this. (Unless you consider a 2% SELF-cure at the end of a combo is absorbing)

HW you could get roughly 7-9k HP at max level with a soulstealer combo, when the max hp was around 37k, that's around 40% and pretty significant. Even the new healing class (sage) is getting drk's old Dark Arts mechanic added in, yet it's somehow unfeasible to give the same to DRK?

As it is DRK's current toolkit doesn’t work with itself and lacks the Dark Knight identity play style known throughout the series.

It did 7-9k if it crit maybe, but it was always around 8% of your HP. You also used Souleater a lot less in HW than you do now, since you had to do Delirium and Power Slash too. It doesn't heal as much at once as it used to but you actually heal a higher % of your HP overall now than you did in HW, since all you have is Souleater and now TBN.

But most if it is overhealing anyway, and very few healers will actually heal a DRK with Souleater in mind. It's just not that kind of game, and hurting yourself regularly on purpose isn't a good idea as a tank. There's a reason things like Blood for Blood was removed. I don't think comparing it to past entries and expecting it to just do what other games did is very fair either, this isn't a turn based game.

DRK is still the most popular tank for people to play, and It's just my opinion but I don't really think anything is wrong with it's design at the moment other than TBN being tied to it's resource, and LD being a bad invuln.

I think people just don't like the homogenization SE has been doing with all of the Tanks/Healers, and I don't really blame them, It sucks to see all of the unique/cool abilities get removed for the sake of balance, but it's what lets them balance the game as well as they do.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Few jobs really have a unique identity though. As someone pointed out, the jobs in the game have been mostly homogenized for balance's sake.

DRK is in a unique position that I don't fully understand though, as the majority of "World First" content clears use at least one Dark Knight, if not two, likely for TBN spam.

Dark Knight, at least in lore, is kind of the opposite side of the coin to the Paladin, in that they use Dark Magic to sustain themselves, if I were to do anything to DRK, it probably would have been to make them unique in giving them a ranged spell combo rotation that heals HP/MP mirroring their melee combo, giving them an edge in uptime during mobile fights. So like Unmend into another ranged spell and maybe even a third

>Unmend (P:150)

Combos to

> Aspir(P:100)
(ComboP: 100)
(Combo Action: Restore MP)

Combos to

> Entropy(P:100)
(ComboP:100)
(Combo Action: Damage over Time P:60 D15)
(Combo Action: Restore HP over time, Potency:60 D15)