Fell cleave fell cleave fell cleave… and that’s the way uh huh uh huh I like it!
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In today’s video, I talk about the issues I have with Dark Knight in Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail !
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Since Dark Knight is inspired by Berserk they should give it a transformation like Reaper, would be pretty sick if when you're in "normal mode" you have the slow animations like we have today but when you enter this transformation the animation changes and you just start going ballistic on the enemy just like Guts would do when he used the Berserker armor. The transformation could also give you sustain and maybe a little bit of mitigation (maybe remove oblation and put the 10% on that instead).
Kind of funny, Square takes away the busyness of the job to make it more accessible. Instantly job gets widespread calls for a rework. It's almost like… it wasn't actually a good idea to flatten a job since then there's nothing that will stick out.
DRK is the Hydroid of FFXIV and it's sad to see. Anything DRK can do the other Tanks can do better. Gutting the job and giving all it's tools to all the Tanks and taking the Speed Tank identity from DRK to give it to GNB is what has been plaguing the job for almost 8 years.
Living Shadow is just Scourge with less control.
Shadowbringer is just Dark Passenger without the Blind.
Disesteem is just Eventide but boring and locked behind Living Shadow.
The days of Low Blow and Reprisal parry procs for more damage are over.
Blood Weapon giving you Haste and speeding up your attacks has long been removed.
Blood Price, Sole Survivor, Shadowskin, Dark Arts, Plunge and Power Slash deleted.
TBN outpaced by other Tanks adjacent skills not requiring to use up their damage resource to use it.
Living Dead requiring Team Support while other Invulns do not.
Other Tanks get lots of self-sustain meanwhile DRK gets barely any.
And to top it off it does the lowest damage out of the 4 Tanks overall?
DRK is the deal that just gets worse all the time.
You are 100% right. Not only is the class mad brain numbing when your not in the burst windows. Otherwise every other tank does any other aspect of tanking much better. Gunbreaker is the best off tank right now, Paladin is the best option for main tanking with self sustain just baked into the damage of the class without having to use cool downs. While Warrior is just better in all aspects compared to Dark Knight. The job needs a rework real bad and needs to take inspiration from it's HW and SB versions of the job.
I actually think that SE should stick to one identity about the Dark Knight, which is the biggest problem with the job for me. My impression of Dark Knight is the "MP Tank", which means that its more powerful defensive tools should use MP.
It's why I actually miss Dark Arts. Even though it was clanky, it gave Dark Knight a unique identity about all its skills, but I don't want it to be implemented like how it was with Dark Arts.
The Dark Magic animations are awesome. The sword animations are a pain to watch, its so damn heavy for the player you womder why they actually use it.
Also lets just say it. Creative Studio 3 doesnt know what to do with it. Give us Dark Arts back and the old swoed animations that made weilding it looks effortless.
I always wanted Drk HP management. Below X% your weaponskills/abilities gain additional effects that heal shield or regen. You're still "flirting with death" but grow more resilient the closer you are.
They should make abyssal drain every 15 seconds it would be a little closer to the healing from blood whetting
Or give blackwst night 15 percent mit for like 4 seconds after then a regen
Make edge and flood of shadow and TBN cost 2000 instead of 3000. All moves that give 600 mana back should give 1000-1200 mana. A second combo action that grants more mana similar to delirium combo now. Tbn needs the shield timer removed or extended with the damage proc occurring every time the shield ends or breaks and have a version that covers the party as well like picto. There should also be a 15%damage reduction and a 25% of hp heal when the shield ends or breaks. The same amount as the shield gives you. Dark mind and missionary need to just be flat reductions not just magic. Bring plunge back. Untie carve and spit and abyssal drain. Make heal and damage potency of Abyssal Drain higher. Let Living a Shadow mimic our moves. And finally, give us 5000 mana cost transformation (like Guts) that has a one minute cooldown (maybe 90 seconds) where a high potency combo is available and gives damage mitigation, healing and mana regeneration. Call it something like Dark Arts.
I agree with the person in Xenosys Vex's chat that suggested putting Abyssal Drain in the same position as Holy Circle after a combo to add sustain. It does need a rework though from the top down. Including the shadow clone that lasts 20 seconds but it doesn't even start doing damage for 5 or 6 seconds.
Here's how you can truly tell the issues are deeply engrained and systemic:
You're saying all of the same shit I was saying LAST EXPANSION! Like, believe me or not, I said all of this nearly identically after the EW job actions trailer showed us that all DRK was getting was some bubbles on SE and another line AoE with a high potency. Everyone told me to shut up cause "it does so much damage stop complaining," to which my argument was "so?" Yeah I know damage is how most things are balanced but a job with no identity aside from "hit buttons for an opener, don't worry about order, you'll do good damage," didn't alleviate any of my concerns and issues, then DRK fell behind in damage the further into EW we went, but I was told to shut up cause "it still performs well in Savages and Ultimates and that's all that matters." But obviously that's elitist bullshit using a well known fact to justify letting a job essentially just decay, and not just for the majority of content which falls outside of the top 5%. Then DT drops and I'm almost preemptively told to shut up cause the community and DRK mains are so happy that LD is off of the Blood Gauge, the new Delirium combo looks so cool, and omg healing with Vigil! "DRK complainers can suck it!" But now after the first couple minor patches, the first tier of Savages being out, and the DRK is underperforming in ALL OF IT for the EXACT REASONS I WARNED ABOUT feels both vindicating to see so many videos and posts popping up with people FINALLY seeing what I saw an expansion ago but also annoyed cause this was so fucking obvious a couple years ago……
DRK had become nothing but loose damage potencies with individual timers not tied to anything else, so it lacks any kind of interconnectivity within it's own kit that the whole rest of the tank cast already have, the fact we had to actually fight for basic QoL changes every other tank got last expansion also showed how little squeenix actually understood the job and part of that was cause of how blind the community has been to it all but more so how loudly they defended it despite being so blind, and it's defensive capabilities were already subpar LAST expansion as every other tank got massive buffs and more QoL added onto their most commonly used skills while DRK got.. Oblation…..
My concern is they just give it a ton of damage potency buffs, it jumps up to highest tank damage, and everyone who's FINALLY seeing the deeper issues with the DRK kit now that it's been stripped bare and it doesn't have it's damage to fall back on as an excuse for bad design, will just conveniently forget all of this and start telling me to shut up again.
Until DRK gets a rework that actually gives it it's own identity and unique playstyle again I'm gonna continue commenting on anything I see and making posts where I can or want to remind everyone they were wrong and a rework is necessary at this point. I mean FFS people are actually upset that it lost PLUNGE! The most basic, boring, bland nothing skill aside from the mobility it offered and we still have, and people are legit upset, and you know why? Cause The DRK has become a kit of Plunges, all of it's skills are just different forms of Plunge that you throw in on priority based on how much potency it has, so despite it doing actually nothing people are clamoring to have it back and refuse to see WHY…….
ironic that dark knight was at its best in heavensward
I’ve always wanted to fire triple abyssal drains like Frey did during the DRK story quests.
My raiding CO tank is a Dark Knight and I am a Warrior and the amount of conversations we’ve had about this, where the warrior kit makes more sense for dark Knight is astounding. He does enjoy the magic management, but, I’ll tell him a Warrior story about some skin of the teeth victory I had tanking and he’ll be like I can’t talk to you right now. lol.
Something that I've always wondered about Living Shadow is why Square didn't take a cue from WoW and look at a similar skill Blood Death Knights have, Dancing Rune Weapon. For those who don't know, the way DRW worked, at least when I last played a couple years ago, is that when you summon it the weapon gives you a passive boost to your defenses, but also will mimic every attack ability you make. It acts simultaneously as both a defensive and offensive cooldown that's actively more impactful the better you are at your class and the fights, and it looks cool as fuck seeing this animated copy of your weapon follow beside you and attack when you do. Obviously there's more to DRK that would need fixing in terms of making the class feel more exciting to play, but I could see something in that vein potentially making Living Shadow a bit more interesting than it basically being a pseudo-DoT that also lets you use two abilities while it's summoned.
I've never seen a DRK in the early access & i've NEVER SEEN a DRK throughout my entire Dawntrail MSQ,that speaks volumes.Also,i haven't played DRK since HW and looks like they completely destroyed the fun of it's gameplay.What shame….that was a good class,what a rotten way to die.
with abyssal drain and carve and spit tied together doesn't even make sense anymore pld and gnb ocgd st and aoes can be weaved separately only war has a aoe/st version in upheaval/orogeny.
OK here goes: I personally think Dark Knight is best it's been since Stormblood. Ty for your time
NO Drk doesn't have to be easy mode like War. I like it the way it is
Typical situation for a tank : healers are busy, my health is getting dangerously dangerous low from the boss auto-attacks.
=> PLD, GNB and WAR use small cd. Effective all the time, always feel great (especially WAR).
=> DRK use TBN (UNLESS you're OOM after your burst phase), you pray to god the boss isn't about to stop autos to cast something, and for the shield to pop. And if it doesn't you get punished, where every other tanks are rewarded.
I don't feel good when TBN works (and you know it won't always work), I feel relieved. Thats not a good thing
Been saying for years; Abyssal drain should heal you based on enemies hit; place salted earth at the feet of the target, and standing in salted earth grants you regen of hp or mp, and salt and darkness could do damage and mitigate some damage all as it's own 90s cd combo.
Some possible band-aids to make DRK enjoyable again:
Bring the 2 extra charges of blood weapon back. – mp management fix
Make Dark Mind offer 20% ALL dmg reduction. – being too squishy fix
Untie Abyssal Drain cd from Carve and Spit, reduce its dmg by 50%, reduce its cooldown to 30 seconds and increase the healing potency to 400 per target. – sustain and trash pulls handling
Remove TBN mana cost, remove the free dark arts when popped, give it a 10% dmg reduction for about 15 seconds and a different 10% dmg reduction for like 7 seconds, just like all other short defensive cds do, up the cooldown to 25 seconds. – overall quality of life/tankyness
This one is about "job identity" that people love to talk about: Dark Missionary and Heart of Light do the exactly same shit, give those 2 an extra effect to have a difference….idk, make Missionary cast a barrier with 10% of maximum hp for DRK while it applies a regen/burst healing for GNB – ALSO LOWER DARK MISSIONARY LVL TO 70! quality of life and further job identity improvement
ERASE ALL THOSE FUCKING TRAITS LIKE UNMEND AND LIVING SHADOW UPRADES! – give us enhancing traits that WOULD improve our GAMEPLAY, like enhanced salted earth: Make it a 60 secs cooldown, this would align that skill better with the rest of our kit.
Abou a rework? easy, only one good and fair path for us with uniqueness and choice power mid fights: BRING DARK ARTS BACK, MAKE IT ENHANCE EXISTING SKILLS WITH COOL EFFECTS! list of possible skills to enhance with Dark Arts:
Erase Flood/Edge of shadow – bring Dark Passenger back, make it deal Edge dmg to a single target and Flood dmg to all others around, Dark Arts can make Passenger blind enemies just like HW.
Dark Mind – Dark arts can give a extra 15% physical dmg reduction on top of the magic reduction.
ABYSSAL DRAIN – Double the healing potency, easy.
Soul Eater – Transform it into POWER SLASH or SCOURGE, Increase the healing potency, easy.
I don't know if yall know, this game isn't called RAID fantasy, there are trials, field operations, deep dungeons, open world shenanigans, roulettes and DRK really sucks in ANY content asides from raids because of its design flaws focused towards being covered by a full party enviroment.
Also don't take my opinions as absolute, say your ideas too, this is the time to TALK and maybe make them see how garbage DRK is right now!
I wonder if it would be a good idea to turn Abyssal Drain into a GCD Blood Gauge DoT that drains the damage dealt into an HoT. It functions similarly to Salted Earth where it's an AoE DOT, but it also stacks HoT procs. I'd say 30 potency for 30 seconds, and a maximum of 5 HoT stack.
I feel like living shadow should just become the ninja shadow clone ability (dont remember the name)
After using Dark Knight again, I enjoy playing the job again. But with that said, the only changes I would like is make Abyssal Drain a spell instead of an ability, allow TBN to give us 50 Blood Gauge instead, and most importantly give us Blood Price back. For those who don't know, Blood Price gives MP back and builds Blood Gauge from taking damage. Basically, current Dark Knight with some elements from Stormblood.
You're right, and Xeno's right
I have been saying it since Endwalker released, Dark Knight needs a rework. They gutted the job in Shadowbringers, the expansion in which it was the cover job, and have continued to remove more and more of it's identity.
Ever other tank dose the same things that DRK can do, but way better and are more fun to play.
PLD can negate a Tank Buster with Holy Sheltron and Guardian and feels better than TBN, not to mention how Oblation is just a cheap dollar store knock off of Intervention.
HoC on GNB is better, in pure numbers, than TBN in every way. The job is also busier than DRK and is FUN because of it.
And not to mention that WAR took every thing that was gutted and removed from DRK and ran off with it while making it simpler and easier to use.
DRK used to be my Favorite Tank, my Favorite Job, in FFXIV back in Stormblood because all my buttons felt GOOD to press. but now it is barely a shadow of that job
One thing that might be interesting is making DK like a Inverse Paladin: Paladin's filler is physical skills and then you burst with your magic skills, why not have DK's basic rotation be magic and then have their burst utilize their giant sword. This allows the basic skill animations to be a lot lighter and flow better and then allows those heavier animations in its big burst windows. They can even double down on the 1/2 minute burst if they want to give it more coordinated raid utility kinda like what Ninja does. As someone who basically only tanks with Paladin(Warrior base class is like level 4, GB I don't like due to not having as many mitigation tools), I don't really have reasons to want to play DK other than it's kinda like Reaper but you don't die as hard which is not exactly enough to make it worth playing
Rant warning:
The problem with DRK is that is straight boring. You have a tank whose attack animations are almost the same across the board but with different tints of purple.
The DRK can't recover MP properly or at all, and it does not have sustain outside of the minimal soul edge. Meanwhile pally abilities drain a lot of mp but the pally has an entire 1-2-3 that not only does damage but also recovers a lot of pm and can be done almost any time you want. Plus pally skills can be used as AoE, to recover yourself or others, and many of them are on instant cast thanks to requiem.
Meanwhile DRK uses their defensive CD and there goes a third of your mp. After your mp is around 800, then to go 1-2-3….1-2-3 until you get back those 3000 mp or delirium is up 😂😂
All this was just comparing it to an aspect of what Pally is. As for Warrior and Gunbreaker, both are incredible fun jobs that get better each expansion. Drk gets worse with every expansion.
DRK have to wait a full minute for delirium to get 600 mp per action, where its most meaningful actions cost 3000 mp 😂. Ah yes…I forgot about " shadowbringer". That lame OGCD. You can get a War do 4 fell cleaves with crit guaranteed, while the DRk uses 2 stacks of shadowbringers, 1 stack per minute…yay!
as a normal only player that mostly plays tanks, hard agree here. I LOVE DRK. It is by far the best looking tank and thematically the most awesome… Unfortunately, this just means I have bigger reason to suffer its weaker kit instead of playing any other tank.
PLD need heals? Push literally any button and you have it. Every single button heals that thing to being near immortal for everything.
GNB Need heals? Push these short CD spam skills that heal/shield you and a party member for no cost.
WAR Need heals? I think this thing has 3? wouldnt know the other two because bloodwheting alone puts my healers to shame. This thing is immortal solo vs an AOE fate of any size 10 levels+ above it.
DRK need heals? sorry, its on cooldown and you are already still dying…..
DRK does not feel like a tank. it feels like low damage DPS with higher ilvl gear for defenses. DRK has to worry about dying while the others require no thought to near afk their way through fights.
Remove all forms of magic damage resistance from all tanks, this stat no longer works with the direction the game went for years now. Keep that stuff on BLU, I have no idea what an incoming attack is going to be magic or not so I put the button and hope for the best.
Why do DRK attacks not all always life drain? isnt that thematically supposed to be what it is? how did it become the worst at this when it was supposed to be its identity?
At this point, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if SE just deleted the job from FF14 given how much they seem to despise it…
Strictly from a casual perspective, I 100% agree. I don’t play enough “hard core” to care about flashy numbers or graphs and tables about optimal anything.
I do dungeons and raids and daily stuff here and there. And once I got all jobs to 100, boy was the gap between DRK and the other tanks so apparent.
It is NOT fun to play. It’s boring. It’s mediocre to how other tanks feel. Even GNB which I’m not a fan of felt smooth and thought out in its design.
I really hope more people see this and it gets brought up to the design team. They did an amazing job PLD, hope they can do the same for DRK.
I feel like it would be cool if DRK had a 25-secons defensive that, based on the damage reduced/absorbed/whatever, DRK gained a major damage boost, or some kind of major resource that they could then spend to punish the enemy back, while also gaining a lifesteal effect.
Dude, it's obvious from your video that you don't do high end content. Missionary and HoL are great for almost every single raidwide. Dark mind is situational, but makes drk a great option for fights involving magic damage because of its shorter 60s cd. If they made it 30%, that would be great because in magic fights, drk could use it and shadowed vigil for tankbusters, and use rampart and oblation for boss autos. And yes, in savage, ultimate, and extremes, I LOVE oblation. It's freaking great. Even in some trials I've been able to save a party by having it. Popping it on a healer with two vuln stacks while also using rep is enough to keep them alive so they can heal, lb3, focus on res, etc. Or keep a dps alive so healers don't have to res. Oblation is epic, and it sounds like you shouldn't rate drk skills on only dungeons. TBN breaks after two or less EXT. Savage, or ultimate boss autos. In that content, you can almost keep that skill on cooldown. It feels great. I do agree that abyssal drain and carve and spit need separate cooldowns. They shouldn't have done that in EW. In Dawntrail, they fucked up by removing plunge(damage ogcds, not gap close) and removing blood cost from living shadow. No point to a gage if you don't have a choice to make using the build up you receive from doing your stuff. You can see that in how awfully boring warrior is to play. Pally and gunbreaker are ok, but I'm not a fan of the inflexible gcd rotations. You start drifting in either class and it feels bad. Dark knight is supposed to be the busy burst class that doesn't have an inflexible gcd rotation. It does that, but it needs more ogcds. That's why it needs work. Put a leech effect on salted earth. That would be awesome. Maybe a second charge on abyssal drain. Add a couple quick low potency ogcds to replace the removal of plunge. Idk. I feel like shadowed vigil, living dead, and abyssal drain provide more than enough sustain to make it feel good, if you use TBN and other mits properly.
Then there is what you said about living dead. I feel like it's objectively false. Living dead is one of the best invulns in the game. Here is why. War and gunbreaker require other skills in their tool kit to heal up after using it. If their stuff is on cooldown and they just don't have anything, they die as soon as the invuln window is up. Paladin doesn't take damage, but theirs can only really be used once a fight. The cooldown is stupidly long. Now dark knights invuln timer is so short you can usually get 2, sometimes 3 uses out of a raid boss or a dungeon. 4 gcds is the most it takes to heal 100% of your health. That's it. No cooldown skills at all. No heals needed from a healer. Living dead makes it super easy to pull large in dungeons during no healer runs. I will do a LD+Rampart followed by oblation and TBN spam for first pull, Shadowed Vigil+ arms length followed by rep+oblation and TBN spam for the next. Bosses are ezpz on drk. Rinse and repeat.
Drk mitigation feels good, but you have to use all your buttons,amd I love it. It sounds like you want Dark knight to have the same level of healing and mits that pally or war has, but they are a different style of tank. Dark is more in line with gunbreaker, and I would argue that Dark mits feel better. So, a rework, no. Not necessary. Some minor fixes and maybe an iconic new skill…. Yes.
job lore:
DRK, using the enemies power to empower themselves
WAR, goes ungabunga and ignores damage taken
which sounds more like self barrier tank and which the self healing one?
DRK might not need a full rework, but an ENORMOUS overhaul needs to happen.
TBN should last twice as long as it does now at a bare minimum, it should give you a damage buff while the shield is live and/or heal you when it disappears (regardless if its broken or not)
Dark Mind needs a total rework. I have NEVER seen anyone actually use it except maybe in some niche scenarios. It should give you 10% resistance to ALL damage and 10% Lifesteal (Meaning 10% of all damage you do comes back to you as health)
Abyssal Drain & Carve and Split should NOT share a cooldown. I also really liked the idea in Xeno's chat with just making it similar to Holy Spirit or Holy Circle
Salted Earth (PvE) really should just be the same as its PvP version
Lastly, I think DRK should have some sort of "transformed" state like Reaper. I mean, part of the inspiration was Guts , you could see it most blatantly with Plunge where its animation was taken STRAIGHT from how he fights while wearing the Berserker Armor.
So them having a "berserk" mode where their animations change to be WAY faster & more brutal would be awesome. Especially if it it makes their Crit Rate and overall damage go up too.