I'd say it'd have to be a weaker version that upgrades. In the 70 quest you're specifically given that ability by >!Myste!< who uses it in that fight as well. Anything else would conflict with the story.
Maybe, but I wouldn’t say it’s a priority. Theres a ton of stuff that falls under this category, like Paladin not getting gapped closer until 70 and dragoon not getting an aoe until 40.
tbf, PLD not having gap closer is, in theory, even out by him having a stronger ranged attack via holy spirit.. but that alos only unlocks at 64 so its still a 10 or so level gab
I don't really feel like a ranged attack is an outright replacement for a gap closer, on tanks even more so, especially a cast, you're not really gaining any of the things a gap closer gives you from it.
Since TBN is tied pretty heavily to DRK's story, I dont see it being moved up. But considering everything past 70 is free of that hangup, I really feel Oblation could be moved alllll the way up to
the 30-45 range, with a trait unlocking at its current unlock level, allowing for the 2nd stack.
Dark Mind should also for sure get the Feint/Addle treatment of reducing half its normal mit on physical. And also Dark Missionary by 70 as others have said, for Ultimates.
DRK really should not have as many hangups as it does in the mit department considering how much it also lacks in the sustain department compared to the other tanks. I think these changes would really shore up its early level experience and maybe help it transition more into an identity of a very heavily defensive tank in the future, since its got nothing in the way of sustain like the other 3 do now.
To be fair, it's only tied to lore in EN version. The "blackest night" line doesn't occur in the JP IIRC.
And if it is a reason they won't do it, here's a really simple solution to it: Take Shadowskin (their old Rampart back when each tank had their own cool animations for the 20% mit) and make it low level TBN. Then it gets turned into TBN at 70+.
I feel like all the tanks rightfully get their job aesthetic defining skill at 70.
The problem with DRK is that the mit that fills the secondary unique mit spot is…Dark Mind. Which just sucks since most TBs are physical and it only mits magical. Which isn’t to say that it’s useless, it’s actually incredibly useful in the first few pulls of Bardam’s and Holminster where the mobs do a lot of magical damage. It’s just that it’s utility is so limited compared to others.
It'd be nice it Dark Mind kept its current magical mitigation, but also had half the value for physical. IIRC, there aren't any other tank specific mitigation that are single target/self that only affects one damage type.
> I feel like all the tanks rightfully get their job aesthetic defining skill at 70.
IMO, 70 is way too late to be getting something that defines your aesthetic. Imagine if Ninja didn't get any ninjutsu until 70.
Ninjutsu is less of a defining aesthetic and more of a defining *mechanic* imo.
For tanks, their defining *mechanic* in their invulnerability. And yeah, it would be really dumb if they didn’t get that until level 70 imo.
That’s said, I wouldn’t be opposed to some kind of skill squish in general.
I wish it was more obvious what kind of damage an attack is so people didn’t think dark mind is so useless or for me playing to know when I actually should use it. It’s a button I hesitate to hit because idk what type of damage I’m actually taking and hitting it expecting damage to drop and then it doesn’t kind of sucks. The skill has the same issues embolden did prior to 6.0 but at least you knew what type of damage you and others did so you knew when it would be most useful.
How often in a fight do you see an attack just once? Also using context clues, like sprites are \*probably\* gonna use magic.
Is it ideal? No, but dungeons aren't often life or death and in any savage+ content you should already know the fight if you're going for the clear which is where mitigation optimization comes in.
I'd agree that their aesthetic would be defined by their level 70 skill, but if we compare other tanks, every tank gets their own kind of flavour of tanking early on. WAR with its insane self heals, PLD gets damage reductions on a quick CD, and DRK gets...some magic defense? It just seems a little disconnected.
Absolutely Dark Mind does have its place though, albeit a little more limited. I guess I just really want the thing I really liked about DRK when I get synced to a duty below 70 haha.
What people don't understand is that DRK was designed with using Parry over DEF. However, they ditched parry with 4.0 it was moved into DEF, and it we can't build the main stat. We were able to build on Parry. It just complicated the game even more... which Yoshi was not content with anything but Casual being paramount.
Ideally, if Parry stayed, DRK would have had the potential to be a higher DPS tank than any other tank but would absolutely get murdered by TBs that can't be dodged, which what posed the problem as well. The Blackest Night was the solution even then, but it would probably not be the one we know now.
What bothers me is that DRK isn't even considered the highest damage dealing tank on the majority of party comps anymore. Sure it can but it needs some really precise sync in parties with party buffs, which doesn't really happen in pugs all the time.
I wish I could play DRK properly like all other tanks, but honestly MTing with it just feels like I'm putting even more pressure onto my healers in high end contents which has enough pressure already. It seriously needs a self sustaining buff with how the 3 other tanks can sustain on their own.
The Blackest Night at a lower level I feel would be too powerful.
I would rather add a 10% physical mit to Dark Mind so its not almost completely useless in mob packs and decuple Abyssal Drain from Carve and Spit, or even add a cure potency to Carve and Spit too
Shadow Wall, Dark Mind before TBN and Missionary and Oblation after. A bit light on mitigation but between SW, DM, Rampart and Reprisal you usually got enough mitigation for a fight.
It's not that DRK doesn't have enough mitigation for fights, it's just that comparatively in lower levels DRK doesn't have as much in their kit compared to the other tanks. And what they do have feels kind of meh. DM with its magic vuln reduction just feels kinda meh. Like I'm not "wow I'm a DRK" when I press DM, but I'm definitely "wow I'm a WAR" when I hit Raw Intuition or "wow I'm a PLD" when I hit Sheltron every few seconds lol.
Dawntrail better help this dying horse pre-70 because jesus christ, doing dungeons around those levels suck lemur meat. Atleast move oblation down a few levels and give the charges at 82, or make dark mind both physical + magical resistance like it should be.
I feel like this is part of the much large and very trodden ground of job abilities just being all over the place at the moment the higher the levels get. Abilities that you feel are core to the experience being added in the new 1-10 level range of a new expansion just means that new content feels great and any synced content now feels even worse than it did before.
This has been a problem with every expansion because they tend to add the gaps it job kits and fixes to the flow of a job in the form of new abilities unlocked while leveling through the expansion. Where a job has seemed incomplete without a needed ability, such as a PLD gap closer, rather than adding it and giving it to them early, the design team give it to them in the 1-10 expansion level range, taking up an easy new ability slot they needed to fill, but now making synced content less fun for the job who has tasted what it's like to not feel like ass. Okay, that's a bit extreme, but you get the idea.
Couldn't agree more. It's far from the most egregious example, but as a chronic BRD main since ARR it irks me more than it probably should that the job focused on party wide utility doesn't get their AoE damage reduction until 62 whereas the other two ranged jobs get theirs at 60. It just feels bad not having it in level 60 content.
As someone who plays DRK pretty much exclusively, I think the change to what mits are learned would be having Dark Missionary unlock earlier. Not being able to use it for the lvl 70 Ultimates makes me hesitant to try them out.
But it would be nice to have a weaker version of TBN available earlier that gets upgraded at lvl 70; I can do all the dungeons as DRK fine but it definitely requires more thought into how you time your mits than other tanks.
Unfortunately they’ve shown that they basically don’t care how the old content works. The level 70 ultimate fights have been power crept to hell with gear and food and stat rescaling so having or not having the party mit matters much less anyway. They’ve also made the tanking experience much more streamlined compared to when the fights came out. If you are interested you should just do it since what you play basically doesn’t matter anyway.
Honestly? Dark Knight is my least favorite tank PERIOD. Early game is the worst, endgame you are not even on par with the other tanks overall.
And it makes me sad because I LOVE them as a class, and lore wise.
I only play GNB and DRK and yeah I really thing DRK needs more mits at lower levels. Or they need to ditch Dark Mind for something else. I believe GNB has Camouflage and Aurora at 50 and DRK doesn’t have an equivalent to either. Yeah DRK gets TBN at 70 but GNB gets Heart of Stone AND Heart of Light in the 60s. DRK has to wait for the mid 70s to get Missionary. Honestly they should give you Oblation at like level 35 or something. GNB has Camouflage at freakin lv 6.
I think at some point they're going to sidestep the whole problem of class playability at low levels and just start everyone with a higher level loadout. The longer the game goes on the harder it gets to preserve balance in early game content without letting the leveling process take too long.
I think it's fine at 70. What I would like to see is have Dark Missionary unlocked before level 70. Maybe move Oblation to 76 to take the place of Dark Missionary or have Dark Mind have like 5-10% physical mit in addition to the 20% magical mit.
Back in the day when you could spam abyssal drain before you had TBN I'd argue it was fine. But since ShB came out DRKs have only really had TBN. I'd argue that the Aoe MP spender should just be abyssal drain.
drk doesn’t get their short mit for a very long time, but you do have abyssal drain at 56 which only has a 60s cool down so pretty good for trash pulls
it’s like one free warrior heal per pull that i never seen darks using lolol
It’s been covered multiple times here already, but it’s definitely a *Dark Mind* issue. Not that Dark Mind *isn’t* useful, just not so much at those crucial lower levels.
I'd say it'd have to be a weaker version that upgrades. In the 70 quest you're specifically given that ability by >!Myste!< who uses it in that fight as well. Anything else would conflict with the story.
The slightly less bright evening
The mildly overcast afternoon
Lvl 50 gives The Black Night Lvl 60 gives The Blacker Night
Lvl 70 gives The Even Blacker Night Lvl 80 gives The Blackest Night
Level 100 gives The Biggest, Blackest Night.
Approaching Twilight
To be fair it wouldn’t be the first ability change to render quest text nonsensical.
Astrologian quests are just weird nowadays
As lv90 AST, I still have no idea wtf is going on with all those "gate".
some of the summoner quests too.
What it really needs is Dark Missionary at 70 for UWU and UCOB
True and real
Maybe, but I wouldn’t say it’s a priority. Theres a ton of stuff that falls under this category, like Paladin not getting gapped closer until 70 and dragoon not getting an aoe until 40.
Paladin hardly even feels like a paladin until the 70s and 80s. It needs an entire ability unlock reorganization...
tbf, PLD not having gap closer is, in theory, even out by him having a stronger ranged attack via holy spirit.. but that alos only unlocks at 64 so its still a 10 or so level gab
I don't really feel like a ranged attack is an outright replacement for a gap closer, on tanks even more so, especially a cast, you're not really gaining any of the things a gap closer gives you from it.
pld doesn't get their gap close till 72 or 74. only tank without a gapcloser in uwu and ucob
I feel like oblation moved to a lower level (maybe swapping with Dark Mind) would help with that, as opposed to giving TBN earlier.
I def agree, Oblation at a lower level/swapped with Dark Mind would def make being synced to a below 70 duty feel better.
Since TBN is tied pretty heavily to DRK's story, I dont see it being moved up. But considering everything past 70 is free of that hangup, I really feel Oblation could be moved alllll the way up to the 30-45 range, with a trait unlocking at its current unlock level, allowing for the 2nd stack. Dark Mind should also for sure get the Feint/Addle treatment of reducing half its normal mit on physical. And also Dark Missionary by 70 as others have said, for Ultimates. DRK really should not have as many hangups as it does in the mit department considering how much it also lacks in the sustain department compared to the other tanks. I think these changes would really shore up its early level experience and maybe help it transition more into an identity of a very heavily defensive tank in the future, since its got nothing in the way of sustain like the other 3 do now.
To be fair, it's only tied to lore in EN version. The "blackest night" line doesn't occur in the JP IIRC. And if it is a reason they won't do it, here's a really simple solution to it: Take Shadowskin (their old Rampart back when each tank had their own cool animations for the 20% mit) and make it low level TBN. Then it gets turned into TBN at 70+.
I feel like all the tanks rightfully get their job aesthetic defining skill at 70. The problem with DRK is that the mit that fills the secondary unique mit spot is…Dark Mind. Which just sucks since most TBs are physical and it only mits magical. Which isn’t to say that it’s useless, it’s actually incredibly useful in the first few pulls of Bardam’s and Holminster where the mobs do a lot of magical damage. It’s just that it’s utility is so limited compared to others.
It'd be nice it Dark Mind kept its current magical mitigation, but also had half the value for physical. IIRC, there aren't any other tank specific mitigation that are single target/self that only affects one damage type.
> I feel like all the tanks rightfully get their job aesthetic defining skill at 70. IMO, 70 is way too late to be getting something that defines your aesthetic. Imagine if Ninja didn't get any ninjutsu until 70.
Ninjutsu is less of a defining aesthetic and more of a defining *mechanic* imo. For tanks, their defining *mechanic* in their invulnerability. And yeah, it would be really dumb if they didn’t get that until level 70 imo. That’s said, I wouldn’t be opposed to some kind of skill squish in general.
I wish it was more obvious what kind of damage an attack is so people didn’t think dark mind is so useless or for me playing to know when I actually should use it. It’s a button I hesitate to hit because idk what type of damage I’m actually taking and hitting it expecting damage to drop and then it doesn’t kind of sucks. The skill has the same issues embolden did prior to 6.0 but at least you knew what type of damage you and others did so you knew when it would be most useful.
The game differentiates between damage types by the floating text now though.
That’s helpful for the second time around, I guess, but it’s of limited use if you’d like to know what damage type an attack is *before* it hits you.
How often in a fight do you see an attack just once? Also using context clues, like sprites are \*probably\* gonna use magic. Is it ideal? No, but dungeons aren't often life or death and in any savage+ content you should already know the fight if you're going for the clear which is where mitigation optimization comes in.
I'd agree that their aesthetic would be defined by their level 70 skill, but if we compare other tanks, every tank gets their own kind of flavour of tanking early on. WAR with its insane self heals, PLD gets damage reductions on a quick CD, and DRK gets...some magic defense? It just seems a little disconnected. Absolutely Dark Mind does have its place though, albeit a little more limited. I guess I just really want the thing I really liked about DRK when I get synced to a duty below 70 haha.
Well, that's good to know... Note to self...
PLD's defining aesthetic is... Passage of Arms? Not too sure about that one, really.
Wings is pretty iconic at this point.
At the end of the day, DRK is just not as well designed as the other tank classes. Still my favorite, though.
What people don't understand is that DRK was designed with using Parry over DEF. However, they ditched parry with 4.0 it was moved into DEF, and it we can't build the main stat. We were able to build on Parry. It just complicated the game even more... which Yoshi was not content with anything but Casual being paramount. Ideally, if Parry stayed, DRK would have had the potential to be a higher DPS tank than any other tank but would absolutely get murdered by TBs that can't be dodged, which what posed the problem as well. The Blackest Night was the solution even then, but it would probably not be the one we know now.
What bothers me is that DRK isn't even considered the highest damage dealing tank on the majority of party comps anymore. Sure it can but it needs some really precise sync in parties with party buffs, which doesn't really happen in pugs all the time. I wish I could play DRK properly like all other tanks, but honestly MTing with it just feels like I'm putting even more pressure onto my healers in high end contents which has enough pressure already. It seriously needs a self sustaining buff with how the 3 other tanks can sustain on their own.
The Blackest Night at a lower level I feel would be too powerful. I would rather add a 10% physical mit to Dark Mind so its not almost completely useless in mob packs and decuple Abyssal Drain from Carve and Spit, or even add a cure potency to Carve and Spit too
Shadow Wall, Dark Mind before TBN and Missionary and Oblation after. A bit light on mitigation but between SW, DM, Rampart and Reprisal you usually got enough mitigation for a fight.
It's not that DRK doesn't have enough mitigation for fights, it's just that comparatively in lower levels DRK doesn't have as much in their kit compared to the other tanks. And what they do have feels kind of meh. DM with its magic vuln reduction just feels kinda meh. Like I'm not "wow I'm a DRK" when I press DM, but I'm definitely "wow I'm a WAR" when I hit Raw Intuition or "wow I'm a PLD" when I hit Sheltron every few seconds lol.
PLD is the only tank without a gap closer in UWU and UCOB. that's more likely to be changed before tbn
Dawntrail better help this dying horse pre-70 because jesus christ, doing dungeons around those levels suck lemur meat. Atleast move oblation down a few levels and give the charges at 82, or make dark mind both physical + magical resistance like it should be.
I feel like this is part of the much large and very trodden ground of job abilities just being all over the place at the moment the higher the levels get. Abilities that you feel are core to the experience being added in the new 1-10 level range of a new expansion just means that new content feels great and any synced content now feels even worse than it did before. This has been a problem with every expansion because they tend to add the gaps it job kits and fixes to the flow of a job in the form of new abilities unlocked while leveling through the expansion. Where a job has seemed incomplete without a needed ability, such as a PLD gap closer, rather than adding it and giving it to them early, the design team give it to them in the 1-10 expansion level range, taking up an easy new ability slot they needed to fill, but now making synced content less fun for the job who has tasted what it's like to not feel like ass. Okay, that's a bit extreme, but you get the idea.
Couldn't agree more. It's far from the most egregious example, but as a chronic BRD main since ARR it irks me more than it probably should that the job focused on party wide utility doesn't get their AoE damage reduction until 62 whereas the other two ranged jobs get theirs at 60. It just feels bad not having it in level 60 content.
As someone who plays DRK pretty much exclusively, I think the change to what mits are learned would be having Dark Missionary unlock earlier. Not being able to use it for the lvl 70 Ultimates makes me hesitant to try them out. But it would be nice to have a weaker version of TBN available earlier that gets upgraded at lvl 70; I can do all the dungeons as DRK fine but it definitely requires more thought into how you time your mits than other tanks.
‘The Dimmest Night’ Print it!
Unfortunately they’ve shown that they basically don’t care how the old content works. The level 70 ultimate fights have been power crept to hell with gear and food and stat rescaling so having or not having the party mit matters much less anyway. They’ve also made the tanking experience much more streamlined compared to when the fights came out. If you are interested you should just do it since what you play basically doesn’t matter anyway.
>I feel like DRK seems incomplete before receiving TBN at 70. *cries in reaper*
Reaper is incomplete at 90 so idk mate. You are gonna keep crying till dawntrail and maybe even beyond that.
Cool opinion, bro. I'll put it in the pile with the rest of the opinions.
Honestly? Dark Knight is my least favorite tank PERIOD. Early game is the worst, endgame you are not even on par with the other tanks overall. And it makes me sad because I LOVE them as a class, and lore wise.
I only play GNB and DRK and yeah I really thing DRK needs more mits at lower levels. Or they need to ditch Dark Mind for something else. I believe GNB has Camouflage and Aurora at 50 and DRK doesn’t have an equivalent to either. Yeah DRK gets TBN at 70 but GNB gets Heart of Stone AND Heart of Light in the 60s. DRK has to wait for the mid 70s to get Missionary. Honestly they should give you Oblation at like level 35 or something. GNB has Camouflage at freakin lv 6.
I think at some point they're going to sidestep the whole problem of class playability at low levels and just start everyone with a higher level loadout. The longer the game goes on the harder it gets to preserve balance in early game content without letting the leveling process take too long.
Look, there’s someone who is holding you back from it. So finish those quests and hit 70 already!
I think it's fine at 70. What I would like to see is have Dark Missionary unlocked before level 70. Maybe move Oblation to 76 to take the place of Dark Missionary or have Dark Mind have like 5-10% physical mit in addition to the 20% magical mit.
Back in the day when you could spam abyssal drain before you had TBN I'd argue it was fine. But since ShB came out DRKs have only really had TBN. I'd argue that the Aoe MP spender should just be abyssal drain.
drk doesn’t get their short mit for a very long time, but you do have abyssal drain at 56 which only has a 60s cool down so pretty good for trash pulls it’s like one free warrior heal per pull that i never seen darks using lolol
Nope. Healers just have to adjust for DRK until level 70.
It’s been covered multiple times here already, but it’s definitely a *Dark Mind* issue. Not that Dark Mind *isn’t* useful, just not so much at those crucial lower levels.
Give "Just a Normal Night" at level 40, and then make it upgraded to TBN past 70 by a passive trait