An update on my thoughts on Dawntrail’s iteration of of Dark Knight now that I’ve cleared the first ultimate of the expansion and the first major changes to the job in the 7.1 patch. This will also serve as my review of the Futures Rewritten (Ultimate) itself.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:27 Patch 7.1 Changes
02:44 DRK Gameplay State
11:10 FRU Review
22:43 Closing Thoughts
source
You think 7-1 Akh morn is cool wait until you see 1-1 Akh morn
Hate that dark knight mits are still all 10 seconds duration and theres a billion of them, makes kitchen sinking stuff obnoxious. Esp in P5 when you want to kitchen sink the wings tank busters. i've yet to find a way to kitchen sink that without either clipping my gcds or having a mit fall off cause I prepopped it early.
I've personally had an idea for months that is probably going too far: TBN does not require any MP anymore, but still provides a free charge of Edge/Flood when it breaks.
In DT, they've been trying to keep the jobs roughly the same while making them easier to play for newer people while also allowing an interesting play style for those willing to optimize it into existence. The Tsubame-Gaeshi change that basically completely changed SAM filter is really front and center when it comes to this (2.08 SAM being vastly easier but 2.14 SAM being quite a bit stronger while requiring much more awareness of the rotation state), but also the instant-cast Despair change allowing the return of the Infinite Paradox rotation. A TBN change like that seems in line with that sort of philosophy. It makes using it at lower skill levels easier (so many DRKs just spamming Edges whenever they get to 3000MP and then taking TBs without TBN), while higher skill level optimization would deal with finding all the mechanics that deal enough damage to break TBN as soon as it's on cooldown while also not overcapping on charge and still carrying an Edge into burst.
Probably an idea that's hilariously overcooked by now but looking at proposed DRK changes in the vein of SAM's Tsubame change should provide some food for thought at least.
Crackin one open for the picto rant. Never gets old
Idk if its just me but when i used carve and spit it healed me for next to nothing and its 60 seconds. I dont even feel it when im playing dsrk knight. Im curious on what dark knight mains think of it.
This just popped up on my feed. Very good video, great points and arguments.
I progged this fight on DRK and I decided to just not play it for reclears cause I'm still very annoyed about how boring the job feels despite it being strong (I was mad about the damage buff since the job was fine but they didn't fix the main issue with the gameplay). The mit changes were nice so they are actually useful and GNB/DRK comps don't get punished when u have a raid boss that's 90% physical damage. But in terms of job gameplay, holy… I miss shadowbringers and endwalker gameplay of the job. Having 90s Delirium, 2 target flood, Carve and Abyssal being separated buttons was sooo nice and I had so much fun playing DRK in TEA back then, it was great. Endwalker we still had more stuff on 1 min and before DSR we still had the jank Blood Weapon and trick being 1 min, making proper 1 min an actual thing. I remember when I was talking about this, I really hope on the job rework they add another spender cause only Bloodspiller feels really bad and the MP being the way it is feels really sad.
And PCT is broken af in FRU, I was helping a friend clear this week, we had our PCT die to the first set of exas and we still met the check (and we had a RDM fake melee, so even lower dps overall in our comp). We shouldn't have cleared on that pull but still did it cause even with the pct death the check isn't bad at all.
I will say, my strong feelings about DRK gameplay this expansion has opened the gates for me to play other jobs more often than I would in the past and I'm uncertain on what I'm going to main in the future. I do hope they fix the job gameplay (just short term fix of the MP is enough until 8.0).
Influencers please please please stop using the word "broken" as hyperbole. Devs hear/see this and take it literally (as they should honestly) and unfortunate things happen.
I think they balanced the fight around non-picto comps, because it actually feels pretty tight when you dont have a picto and/or when you go into pf and people are not pressing buttons.
I played DRK for savage this tier. Then i found out how boring it is, reason i switched to DRK this expansion was I found WAR a a bit too simple in EW.
But after doing FRU I went back to WAR. Yes it is the least played tank there but it requires more decision making, do i refresh eye or get more gauge, do i spend gauge or hold, do i press ir earlier to carry rend to other phase for extra usage or not, its much more interesting than just spamming 2 min burst whenever its ready. And as annoying it is, primal rend locking you in place also makes you plan when are you going to use it, definitely not under stressful mech with lots of movements. Add requiring 3x fell cleave for primal wrath and you have more time based decision on the job. You cant just press 2 min burst whenever its up for a close to optimum damage, simply not possible in some ecounter.
Before DT i have always seen DRK as a step up from WAR in difficulty. They played aimilarly but DRK has more buttons. But its not the case anymore, DRK is simpler nowadays I would argue, despite its higher damage.
Oblation feels horrible and not impactful or satisfying enough to press for a job with so many weaves already. Whenever i press oblation to get rid of excess stack and i got hit and it reduced like 3k auto dmg… and the duration so short i was like "ugh why did i have to press that" and it also kinda works against TBN if you want to make it pop against autos. Horrible concept, horrible animation.
TBN is a bit more satisfying but its not very strong despite requiring MP. For it to be a good design it either needs to be stronger to justify MP usage or just remove MP altogether. And after doing a fight for a while everything including TBN is mapped up anyway (because unlike damage, mits and autos arent so affected by kill time), so there is not a lot of decision making going on, just annoyance.
You think the blood gauge is boring, SCH is even worse lol. Using that tool for only a single target, slightly stronger regen is the most boring ability they ever have, still be used. I would rather have a AoE regen nuke with 3-5% mitigation for 12-15secs if exceed 80 gauge than that.
going to yap a lot here but i felt moved to, i like these videos
i feel like im constantly saying it but all three tanks were greatly affected by the removal of alt stances, but in drk's case every change from shb on has felt like an effort to fix problems they created by ripping out the core of the job's functionality and not really offering a meaningful replacement.
its frustrating thinking and talking about mp econ and whether or not tbn should go or various long cd mits etc etc when like. i really miss having anything to do outside of burst. it feels like a dead conversation entirely because despite playing the job all the way through enw i just can't care anymore lol i've just been playing paladin and enjoying how much utility and movement it gets even though the rest of the job is as whitebread as it gets
you use the word "broken" when talking about drk and people might call it hyperbole but the thing is anyone who has played this job in stormblood is aware that this job is compromised of chunks and pieces from a past version of this job, glued together to make it baseline function, but not flow together holistically. so much of its kit either exists on an island, or has been made redundant so as not to be inferior to other tanks. and sqex succeeds, but it's not fun!!
the dark mind change gets a resigned sigh out of me not because i think it wasn't necessary but because we would not be having this conversation if sqex had the creativity and desire-to-do needed to make it so the rest of its kit offered enough merit that could allow dark mind to exist as a nice bonus vs magic damage instead of it being "the same as other tanks but numerically worse here". same with carve and drain, the bone-dry 1-2-3, living dead, and worst of all edge of shadow.
all the people who fussed about dark mind spam and now we have something ten times more mindless to spam attached to gauges that mean less than nearly any other gauge in the game. i sound so negative but i think seeing how much creativity is going into dt's raids has me bitter that they couldn't figure it out in time to breathe some into the jobs too.
(also my hot pct take is not that pct is the problem its that every other job has been sanded down to a point where a job basically designed to be Mister 2 Minute Burst was always going to be good and no amount of number adjustment will ever change that without outright ruining the job. i think its fine that pct is the goat in anything with full downtime, but we need other jobs to be able to fill that space in other fights and as it stands, outside of PCT, they don't design jobs to do that- unless pct is a sign for what's to come. then i'm actually excited)
Bruh first was dark knight is weak now it’s boring. Yoshi p has a lot of patience with you guys
30s cooldown and 2 stacks for Carve and Spit is something I can stand behind, fully. But if Square Enix remains stubborn and keeps CnS and Abyssal Drain cooldowns tied to each other, then I'd recommend to allow the Blood Gauge the reduce 50% of these skills' current cooldown – spending 50 Blood Gauge reduces CnS and Abyssal Drain's current cooldown by 50%; each time Blood is spent.
For an alternative use of the Blood Gauge, I'd like to see it be used like Paladin's Oath gauge for it's defensive cooldowns(Y'know, playing like a tank). Oblation, for one, could be tied to the Blood Gauge and given an additional heal-over-time effect.
I do wish that they changed the Dark Arts effect on The Blackest Night. I'm running through Lvl 70 dungeons, and actually getting it to pop for the free Edge/Flood of Darkness.
However, it still doesn't feel worth it at all. It would be preferable if Dark Arts was altered to be more defensive, rather than a niche offensive effect(which feels more like a PvP ability, than a PvE one).
When you use The Blackest Night, Dark Arts activates immediately; and if you have Darkside active, it gives DRK a 10% general(for both physical and magical; please Square Enix) damage reduction for the duration of TBN. Increasing TBN's duration from 7s to 10s would be nice Qol, and it would allow you to retain your damage reduction with Dark Arts, even after the barrier gets used up. An additional plus would be if the barrier gets destroyed, you get refunded 50% of mana spent. As how it would work with putting TBN on allies, they receive the %hp barrier, while DRK keeps the 10% general damage reduction(while Darkside is active), but only DRK gains the 50% mana refund.
Though I guess they'd have to make Dark Arts have it's own timer if it were to function like this, which I'd recommend 10 seconds. And this is basically a rework for TBN, so this suggestion can stay on hold for now.
i just notice that every ff14 raider youtuber video when they rant about something. They ALWAYS always "sigh" at the end.
not a complaint just a funny coincidente
boo hoo, boring gameplay, wah wah. Dark knight is near perfect as is in my honest opinion and only needs changes to Oblation. It should be unlocked at level 30 with the job, have a regen from level 30 to 81 and at 82, the level you currently acquire it, gain the 10% mit it currently has. Once we get that, the job will be perfect and need no further changes for the rest of the game's existence outside of maybe potency changes. being unsatisfied with the changes we got in 7.1 and going so far to keep griping about dark knight is just ridiculous at this point. Players who complain at this point have no idea what boring actually looks like. Just ask yourself "Which would you rather do? Grind agility in Runescape, or play dark knight in FFXIV. Play 5 minutes of Star Trek Online's menu simulator experience, or play datk knight in FFXIV." In the end, you'll choose dark knight because the experience is still far more engaging than most of the other options.
What would be your opinion on Shadowbringer being a 40s CD w/ the 2 charges and the Unmend trait giving 200MP instead of reducing shadowstride CD?
Another cooked take, it’s not drk it’s the game, the game is stale drk is perfectly fine, the game on the other hand is quite frankly not enjoyable anymore and modern games prove to be fun, yeah we sunk hours into the game but it ain’t what it used to be
Agree with pretty much everything, honestly I feel a lot of DRK players lost hope on the supposed 8.0 rework with how things are being designed right now, which kinda causes a general feeling of apathy for the game.
I honestly don't mind the state of DRK right now due to it being arguably the best ulti tank, but damn, sometimes I envy how complex GNB rotation is in comparison and I wish I had a reason to put hours into DRK and feel like I'm getting better, and not just trying to gain +1 usage of CnS on FRU for example.
BRING BACK DPS PLUNGE!
I wish they'd stop being so afraid of taking numbers away from jobs, it's so much easier to get things to a point where you can just leave it rather than constantly adding numbers to shit here and there trying to do some bizarre balancing act. They finally get shit to a decent spot by the end of an expac just to start all over again and forget everything they learned before. And the number of people online that are/were upset by YoshiP even mentioning BLM buffs is insane, yeah other jobs could be buffed too obviously no shit, but the real solution to like everything is just nerfing PCT.
Dank tank video lets gooooooo!!!!
The gameplay is very weird, it's like you're using na strats or something
I still really dont know how they can nerf Pictomancer without ruining the job because its literally just designed to be the ultimate destroyer just by it's core structure of charging big attacks.
Even with nerfs of potencies on the motifs its still free damage in any case of downtime which no other job has to the same level. But if they omega nerf its motif potencies to counter the ultimate synergy then in all other content Pictomancer will feel way worse, i really don't know what the fix is besides giving Pictomancer a debuff in ultimates or making ultimates have less downtime or something.
This was chill to just listen to, valid points on tank status, picto, FRU stuff
tank wishlist
PLD : reduce hallowed ground by 30 sec
WAR : buff a little bit his dps, and add a 5 or 10% mitigation on thrill (warrior is very weak on reduces damage)
DRK : delete the share cd of AD and CS, everyone ask for this seriously, and put AD to 30 sec (in fact, we've lost a little bit more of 1200mp cause, when we do diseesteam, we dont do 123 combo so mp gain is retarded)
GNB : oof
I wanted to share some suggestion for Gunbreaker.
Paladin (PLD) and Warrior (WAR) need to perform their 1-2-3 combos before bursting: PLD does it to unlock the Atonement combo, and WAR for its damage buff.
The issue with Gunbreaker (GNB) is that it needs to perform the 1-2-3 combo twice to generate two cartridges, unless you save them in advance.
A potential solution could be: making Double Down the fourth GCD hit in the Gnashing Fang combo. This way, it would only consume one cartridge to unlock everything:
1 cartridge = Gnashing Fang > Savage Claw > Wicked Talon > Double Down.
This entire sequence would start with Gnashing Fang and require only one cartridge.
Another idea would be to separate cartridge generation into two sources:
Two cartridge slots (on the right of job gauge) unlockable ONLY through the 1-2-3 combo.
Two additional cartridge slots (on the left of job gauge) that can ONLY be unlocked via Bloodfest.
Also GNB have 2 diferent burst (2 minutes is diferent of 1 minute) its awlfull to me, maybe put bloodfest to 1m and so, delete other ogcd (blasting zone & bow shock) for balance the gain of APM with bloodfest to 1 minute, I dont know man …
What do you think?
Thanks for your reading and your video!
I kind of with they give GNB a buff, right now it feels more weak then DRK to be honest. I don't know, compared to Paladin, Dark Knight and I would say Warrior but considering Warrior is just overcompensating child class I won't compare it to the others, but compared to other two GNB just underperforming.
100% agree on taking being a weaker class if we can get more interesting design in exchange. In the end all the numbers are arbitrary, sqex has (or, SHOULD have) the numbers to make whatever class they want to be the strongest the strongest. What's more important is making sure the classes are engaging and fun to play. Also they really need to stop being afraid of nerfing classes and reduce potencies as necessary.
Idk man I love the new Delirium attached fo Blood Weapon fixes my ocd of wanting exact 100 to do my spiller stacks so i can dump em all.
yes i also do this on warrior and drk just does this better now and i love em
re: pct
nerfbat their raid buff and everything else can stay
Lost so many runs to exalines huh? I wonder what you're talking about. Could never be me! :gaythiccdead: :ptsdcat:
"I'd rather be weaker but have better gameplay." As a Dragoon main, I feel this heavily right now. Just give me back at least one Nastrond in exchange for a nerf.
I have a million other suggestions that I would consider reasonable to make the game more fun, particularly at lower levels, but above all just give me back the Nastrond stack, nerf to compensate if you need to, and then give us an AoE at a lower level that upgrades to Doom Spike. Super easy.
I'm glad someone else is concerned about old content being stomped by power creep. While you're probably saying that mainly as a concern for old ultimates, as a casual player who still wants a bit of engagement – and with very little capped casual content atm – getting synced down so often in say roulettes and having the content be trivialized and our toolkits made even more boring/scuffed at lower levels because of current class design… it's just not good. Not good for casuals, and not good for people going through the game for the first time…
I'm a former BLM that swapped to PCT. I don't even like PCT, but no one is mad at seeing a decent PCT versus a decent BLM.
Let's be real, the job design for 3 expansions now has been dogshit
The best part of this ultimate is that PLD/DRK is my favorite tank duo combo and also lore accurate to the fight o/
Though it does feel good to actually put Sword cleaves to good use in p4.
Picto is dumb….Friend was in a pf with an Summoner and they cant fill last melee spot for 2 hour meanwhile like 10 other groups filled from 1 to 8 EASY
they have the data and i hope they fucking open their eyes and look how giga busted picto is for this fight and make the neccessary changes because i really dont think they can ever make another hard dps check with the way picto is now if they tune it around picto groups you will see people forcing picto in every group and if they dont tune it around pct then bringing a pct shreds the dps check to oblivion
I really dislike the idea of splitting carve and spit into two charges just to have more "things to do".
Agree pretty much with most of it. But dude, try progging LR, UR or APOC in pf, not even talking about CT.. It's a fucking nightmare.. rip =/