My biggest gripe with the PCT situation is we already went through this shit with DRK in Endwalker, its just so much worse because this isn't tank DPS now.
i love these ideas for short-term changes. as a very long-time DRK player (since i started in like 3.1), i'm a little bit sad to hear that a lot of people's hopes are only as high as Endwalker's iteration, since i thought it was pretty boring compared to what we had in HW and, to an extent, SB. i think it's a good target to aim for with what they can do in patches, but 8.0's gotta come out swinging with the changes for me to keep sticking with it. i miss having decision-making in my DPS rotation ;~;
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.
Yes, playing it without picto feels right. I am a caster in my static. I main RDM. I refused to play picto and thankfully got a lot of support from my teammates. But pf is... Well, I found my spot as a fakemelee in PF. It works. RDM is decent.
Spot on with the PCT talk. I honestly don't know how ultimate raiding recovers from this point if SE's stubborn refusal to go back on themselves continues. PCT isn't a well-designed job, it's an entirely optimised job design. You cannot make a more effective job design for the way fights in this game work. Getting that much out of downtime is conceptually overpowered in ultimates, there is absolutely no way to make it balanced. It will always either be dogshit in savage or broken in ultimate until reworked depending on if they come to their senses and nerf it or not. The main thing that gets me about that is that they have no issues making certain jobs dogshit in every aspect of the game, yet are clutching their pearls at the idea their favourite child shouldn't get to shit on the entire game. SMN is trash and MCH is so bad in FRU it makes PCT comps have a DPS check. DNC and BRD are incredibly rDPS-heavy jobs and they are bottom 2 for rDPS in the savage tier. Combine that with the decision to buff the damage of the tank so strong that parse parties were locking 2x DRK pre-patch and I end up thinking the people in charge of balance need to be cycled out, they have no idea what they are doing and are literally just playing favourites at the moment.
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.
The double carve & spit charges would definitely be great to fix the MP issues that DRK has at the moment, but I can't help thinking that the new heal tied to it has little use, or at least as a instant. I'm only in P4 in FRU atm but I've never felt like I *needed* the heal from it, nor in savage reclears, but its better than nothing
very true, a 500 potency heal on a 1 min CD isnt doing much for you but if they kept the heal on the 30s 2 charge version it'd probably be more noticeable. Especially if you press both charges back to back.
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...
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.
as someone who played both jobs in stb it feels like having had my arms sawed off playing jobs that used to be so involved now juggling gauges that mean nothing
definitely feels like more jobs than not are in a rough state right now. Fairy tether has always felt like the wimpiest and most cumbersome regen for the little time Ive spent on SCH and they have a whole gauge dedicated to it because they pruned away everything else lol
One thing you forgot to mention is Dark Arts as a job mechanic; it might as well not exist since you have no way to generate Dark Arts outside of The Blackest Night. Bring back Dark Arts the button to where it generates Dark Arts AND 60 second Darkside on a 30 or 60 second cooldown, and suddenly Dark Arts as a mechanic sucks SLIGHTLY less since you would now have a way to generate Dark Arts OUTSIDE of The Blackest Night. But yeah Dark Knight needs a MASSIVE OVERHAUL in terms of overall gameplay design... Like Blood Gauge being used for multiple GCD combos that happen to be on a 15 second cooldown that restore HP and MP, same with MP spenders only replace MP restoration with Blood Gauge generation, with your basic 1-2-3 combos restore a little bit of everything. And if the devs want Dark Knight to be slow but powerful, they can EASILY put oGCDs onto the GCD and buff the potency of those abilities accordingly. Because if they can turn GCDs into oGCDs easily, they can JUST AS easily turn oGCDs into GCDs. They no longer HAVE an excuse to NOT do that. Also make Unmend become a basic 1-2-3 ranged attack combo that gives you multiple stacks of Plunge Ready which changes Shadowstride into Plunge and the potency and/or AoE type of Plunge is based on how many stacks of Plunge Ready you have, and have that be the basis for expanding all melee jobs toolkits and making disengagements feel LESS bad. Also, I have NEVER liked Living Shadow on Dark Knight, because Dark Knight doesn't even LOOK LIKE a pet job, and the devs thought that Dark Knight needed a summon pet mechanic for whatever reason... like they could delete it and buff the potency of all actions Living Shadow used by the amount of what Living Shadow has, make Disesteem a basic 2 minute cooldown, and I would be GLAD that I no longer have a stupid summon pet mechanic that made NO SENSE for me to have to begin with...
i dont comment much on videos but that PCT rant is so fucking spot on, the jobs design is very good and feels fun to optimize and play but its numbers when under the circumstances of TYING LARGE POTENCIES TO LONG CASTS IN DOWNTIME was definitely an oversight by a mile good job design wise and gameplay wise, its numbers just needs the tweaking (personally it doesnt need the raid buff with how much damage it fucking pumps out even when considering the busted numbers)
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.
Great video! I also progged FRU on DRK and share similar sentiments. I'll talk about your DRK suggestions first! I really like the 2 charges on Carve and Spit idea. It will make the 1 minute feel not as dull. I think that this single change however, fails to address one of the larger issues in DRK's rotation, that being there is nothing to do between the bursts. All the other tanks have a job mechanic to manage between bursts: GNB has Gnashing Fang, WAR has Storm's Eye (and infuriate timer), PLD had Holy Spirit, but DRK just has it's 123. I think they can address this issue by introducing a 30s cooldown with 1 charge, giving us (1) something to manage both outside and inside bursts and (2) a small and inoffensive amount of rigidity to our rotation (which sorely lacks it). I would suggest decoupling Carve and Spit from Abyssal Drain and making Abyssal Drain this 30s cooldown. On Disesteem, I think making Disesteem generate mana is a change that few people would dislike. With 2 charges of CnS, a seperate use of Abyssal Drain, and Disesteem generating MP, DRK would have to think about MP management more, making it a little bit more skill expressive. Of course, more MP means that its potencies would have to get nerfed to keep its damage the same, but it would become more interesting! I'll talk about FRU now! I agree 100% that Thancred is a significant improvement to looper. It's so much more fun, and having tanks actually do mechanics instead of being the same as everyone else also adds to the fun of that phase, especially compared to TOP P1. Something I really like about FRU P2 is forcing the tank to move the boss for Mirror Mirror. That felt like something really lacking from the EW ultimates, and I'm glad they are returning to that aspect of tanking, even if it's just a little bit for right now. Hopefully they crank this up in the future! Apoc is my favorite mechanic in the whole fight. As the tank who baits, resolving that properly feels amazing. I do agree that they undercooked with Darklit a little bit, but I'm also a big fan of CT and it's one of the highlights of the fight for me for sure. P5's mitcheck confirmed a lot of my fears going into DT from EW. The tanks and healers got extra mitigation, effect times of feint, addle, and rep all got increased, but I feared that the damage during fights would not be adequately increased to match this. And my fears were confirmed in this last phase. This mit check is a joke compared to TOP and even DSR's last phase. It really felt like they designed the damage of P5 for the mits we had last expansion. Other than that, the tank towers in P5 were amazing and I want more tank mechs like that! If you've ever done runs without a Picto, the DPS check feels fine and honestly feels like an on content ultimate. But Picto absolutely destroys the balance of this game and needs to be nerfed. The devs shot themselves in the foot by not nerfing picto because they needed to design the fight to be cleared with all jobs, which assumes that a Picto slot could instead be filled by a SMN or RDM. Balancing around picto would completely destroy the caster balance, even moreso than it is now. They really need to nerf it. For me, FRU ranks as my second favorite Ultimate after DSR. Great video! Looking forward to the next one 😁
I dont know why I never considered giving disesteem mana generation that makes so much sense actually. I'm trying to MT more in pf when people will let me and I agree boss movement was completely non-existent in EW and its very refreshing to have it back somewhat. Let's hope all the feedback about fight balance and PCT reaches the devs.
The issue with the Pictomancer situation is that, to see play over the casters with resurrections, it needs to be competitive with at least half of the melees or more. In the current state of battle content, rezzes are actually useful on casters for the first time since, realistically, Shadowbringers. While I do agree that PCT needs a very slight adjustment to bring it down to, say, top 4-5 in savages and fights with full uptime, it's still going to be wildly overperforming in ultimates and fights with consistent downtime unless its full uptime DPS is brought down to be more comparable to RDM and SMN. At that point, there wouldn't be much point to bringing it over an RDM that can chain spam rezzes or a SMN that has a stupidly easy rotation. Personally, I'd say that there are two reasonable solutions. Bring PCT down a little to bring it closer to the other DPS but leaving it at the top of downtime fights. Or, they can move some potency into other parts of the kit instead of the motifs. The issue with that though would be that it could radically change the job's rotation in a negative or unintended way. Personally, I tend to prefer the first because I feel like it would probably keep the job performing close to the devs' original intentions. Either way, BLM, SAM, and VPR need to be better than PCT in at least full uptime fights. There's no reason why they shouldn't be. However, since the devs have made it apparent that PCT is supposed to be a damage caster by the lack of a rez, I do think it should probably be top 5 in the game with some wiggle room for an extra melee.
I mean, Pictos downtime buttons are completely seperate from it's uptime buttons and it's issues might be able to be addressed by making the potency of those buttons lower and making them interact with the filler in such a way that boosts the filler rotation (like vipers one combo buffing other etc) because you use paintings, making it so it's uptime damage isnt changed much however downtime gain is less. Without making painting useless in uptime.
@mirageowl In a way, you aren't wrong, and in my original comment I made a point that does agree with yours. I don't necessarily think that moving "some" potency from the motifs to the main combo is a bad idea, but they have to be really careful to make sure that motifs are still a net gain over the main/empowered combo because if they're weaker than the potency of the combos, then there's no point to using the motifs at all. While PCT's damage is universally acknowledged to be too high, the big issue with FRU and DSR in particular is about how the fights are structured in such a way as to give PCT the biggest inherent advantage over other jobs. It's the game's first downtime-friendly job and that means that the devs have to acknowledge that it's going to really overperform in encounters that play to its strengths. Unless they rework the job or nerf it into nigh-unusability in full uptime fights, PCT is going to be the king of any fight that suits it. They can try to bring it down a bit with some damage adjustments to make the disparity between it and other jobs smaller, but I think that we are going to have to accept that it's just going to be a top performer as long as the devs make fights with large amounts of extended downtime.
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.
PCT was still the strongest RDPS job in savage in 7.05 which doesn't have all the downtime while also beating BLM in ADPS so at the very least bringing it in line with the other casters would be a good start
@@DankTankXIV To me I think doing away with the 2 minute meta would nerf Pictomancer in savage without even having to change potencies. In ultimates it charges attacks which is why it destroys in savage it has the best burst in the game. Pictomancer has always had a weak filler, weaker than even 7.05 BLM. If CDs didn't align and Pictomancer had like it's big burst every 3 minutes instead of 2 I feel like it's damage profile would be strong but not insanely high. Though I doubt they will just make CDs different again mid expansion so messing with potencies is the only realistic option at this point.
@@AOffensiveJoke ah yes, instead of nerfing the single overpowered job let's redesign the entire structure of how groups deal damage in the entire game in a mid-expansion patch
@@Saterienne clearly didn't read my final sentence when I made this point did you? Though it's hilarious that this meta carried on into dawntrail because it caused the most broken job ever to be created and CBU3 was too stubborn to change the 2 minute meta despite everyone besides top end raiders in JP saying it was a bad design philosophy, hopefully 8.0 will destroy this meta so sustained damage jobs can exist again and high scaling burst jobs don't destroy everyone else.
Its hard to agrue against anything that would change the umend trait tbh lol, and while I think 40s shadowbringer would be more interesting I have my doubts that SE would willing give us a "non-standard" CD timing. The fact that salted earth has lasted this long as one of the few remaining 90s CDs still surprises me.
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).
Even the little bit of Shadowbringers I did get to play, separated carve and abyssal felt great. It's a shame that because they never want to revert changes it will probably never be a thing again. Maybe its stockholm syndrome that keeps me from dropping DRK as my main but its current state has definitely made me branch out to the other tanks and healing to get some breaks from it. Might be time to omni-role FRU since its on the easier side, but DPS seem to be in pretty bad shape themselves or at the very least they dont really give you a reason to optimize with how the DPS checks have been lately. At least until 8.0 I'm not expecting anything crazy, I just want to have stuff to do outside of my 2 min and even that feels barren compared to what we used to have.
I think a neat change would be to make Dark Arts stack up, and perhaps give DRK a couple more ways to get dark arts. That way you can stack maybe up to 3 and have them ready in case you need to shield up yourself and others, or, line them up for a bigger burst window. I definitely dont think DRK needs more damage, but it has no personality. I feel like I do more damage on my warrior, just solely because the cooldowns, spenders, and burst windows feel good to use. Disclaimer I have never set foot in an ultimate in my life, I am extraordinarily casual, so I guess take my feedback with a grain of salt?
I've considered multiple dark arts stacks a lot but the more I imagine it, I can only really see degenerate uses of farming TBNs for it over actual mitigation and it will always be limited by mana we can generate. Alternate methods of generating them could be interesting though so at the very least it could be a substitute for mana generation.
This wouldn't change DRK's burst because 2 Edges of Shadow are needed during the off-minute to upkeep Darkside, but it would still make TBN usage more flexible...
@@DankTankXIV My brain farted out because I've been dragging my knuckles (playing warrior) too much and I forgot Dark Arts cant be spent on more TBNs. I thought perhaps that was a good sign that I needed to swap over and get my sea legs under me again and let me tell you, when you are doing dungeons as a DRK, after having leveled as a warrior, you *feel* it. When the rework comes, I hope they don't make DRK *like warriors* because I think they need to fill their own niche and its good for them to play differently, but right now you have basically no way of sustaining yourself without a very attentive healer, and when you're doing your roulettes, thats a gamble. I think an easy change would be just to strip TBN of its mp cost, but then the mp bar starts to just be a "drain for damage and dont overcap" bar the same as the blood gauge, and I think that would make the job even more boring.
Some totally random stream of thoughts from a casual DRK player who hasnt played dawntrail yet, but This is probably unrealistic but what would be cool to see is balancing out huge dps vs losing health or overfilling the darkness meter. Since thats how the questline suggests it works, so youd have to exercise control and thought into the rotation
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.
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.
Definitely not just you, a 500 potency heal on a 1 min CD is not going to do a whole lot for you, just a step in the right direction as it was always dumb how you just lost the ability to heal in single target
One thing you no it wrong is that we didn’t lose much mana…. They added no recovery to carve and spit (atleast I don’t remember it having mp recovery before the delirium change) AND 200mp to each hit of the delirium combo
the 200 mana from each hit of delirium and the 600 mana recovery from carve have both been in the game for a very long time. We lost 1200 mana from losing 2 stacks of Blood Weapon
It’s really funny to me, Picto and Dark Knight are the two jobs that encapsulate my feelings on the non-healing gameplay the best. Dark Knight became more and more boring overtime, with everything being moved to burst phases and nothing in between (mana management for TBN is basically the only decision point currently), with the 1-2-3 filler being boring. Worse, it still somehow manages to feel button bloated. Thankfully though, they fixed the memes of it randomly missing basic parts of a tank kit that barely matter in hard content but make it just feel bad in other stuff (my personal pain point was it being so much worse for soloing old content than the other tanks). So then they actually go and fully design a job that plays differently around the 2 minute design. Instead of just doing mindless filler, you have to do the motifs, so you get more interesting downtime phases (and the transforming buttons really help avoiding the bloat feeling). Of course, the problem comes in with the motif style being impossible to balance without making it feel extra clunky (by requiring a target). You can either gut the damage if it’s a high uptime fight to make it balanced in low uptime fights, have it in its current state, or do something really clunky like require a target to paint, gutting its feel in all content (the Aetherflow change that did that still feels bad). As for the future of the jobs, short term, I don’t know what they’ll do, as it’s a precarious spot. For 8.0 though, I’m expecting one of three things. The first is nothing changes, or it’s just minor changes like better ability distribution while leveling (unfortunately, this feels very possible based on track record). The second is everything gets homogenized more and either everyone gets Picto-esque downtime power building or everything requires a target to function. The third (and one I’m hoping for) is that we break the whole 2-minute meta and give jobs different pacings and strengths so that we have better distributions of jobs in content. The problems with that last one is that there’s basically only 2-3 fights per tier that matter, the last two savage fights and the potential ultimate. Plus, all the old content balanced around the current design becomes messy to rebalance. There just isn’t enough meaningful content where having different strengths and weaknesses is really doable.
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.
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 agree with the sentiment and I definitely overuse the word as a catch all phrase for "overtuned". In general FFXIV has usually been very good about keeping even the strongest jobs and abilities that end up being outliers in terms of balance relatively close to their competition, but lately tank/healer mitigation and just PCT as a whole have felt deserving of the term. If they're going to give us these tools and incredibly strong jobs they should design their high-end encounters to match that and keep up with us and our growing power.
The problem is that it all depends... If we are talking about DK then "broken" is probably an unnecessary hyperbole. If we, however, are talking about picto then "broken" is a criminal understatement.
We need to shake this game in 8.0, or it won't survive next 10 years. Jobs became so stale, content so formunal. I'm having harder and harder time playing this game, after 7 years.
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
"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.
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 definitely felt this in P5 as well, after reviewing a vod ive learned that after the half way point of the Wings cast is good for any 10s or less mits but this gave me an idea. What if TBN and Obl added to each other's duration instead of being separate buffs. For example, if you press TBN its still 7s but if you press Obl before or after the 10s + 10% mit would be added to the duration instead so it would be 17s total if pressed on the same GCD. Would be a cool synergy for when you accidentally TBN too early and you know it will fall off, you can Obl to extend it and not lose the dark arts proc or just make kitchen sink weaving less annoying.
@@DankTankXIV Idk if the game can implement this type of buff synergy with how janky the engine is but yeah it would be nice, honestly I'd just prefer like a 5 second duration buff on dark mind and oblation atleast. I dont even mind if they have to nerf dark mind and oblation's cooldown to have this happen just don't make kitchen sinks and mits during 120 windows suck horribly.
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.
Making TBN a dmg gain that is free to use has me worried for how many avoidable AoEs DRK players would willingly walk into for a small gain, myself included lol
@DankTankXIV I'm just thinking about all the arena edges that aren't instant kills in normal and alliance raids, but you can already just step into those to proc tbn pre-fight and i hardly see that ever happening. As for ignoring or straight up walking into mechanics to proc it, outside of a premade you'll always be limited by how much bullshit the healer is willing to tolerate (or is even capable of fixing). BA actually has a pretty nice form of this in Double Edge which puts a brutal DoT on you if you chain it but also a massive damage boost. No one chains those without express permission from the healer.
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.
@DankTankXIV saw final phase like 16 times before clearing, far more than any other ultimate for me. Admittedly 4 of the wipes were my fault, but mechanics are definitely asking alot more than Dragon king or golden did for basically identical phases in structure. Heal and mit checks easier though. Won't be back home to go for a second clear for another week
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)
The easy 1-2-3 spam made more sense back in SB when you were playing at 2.1s GCD speeds for half the fight and you were doing twice the # of weaves modern DRKs do.
@@armorparade completely agree with the sentiment that the creativity they're putting into the encounters this expansion has been great but it's being wasted on jobs that are in a pretty barren and poorly balanced state right now.
I think I'm starting to see the issue with the FFXIV community...ppl complain way too much about everything. I mean I've been around since 1.0 and have seen everything. Drk was gawd awful when it was first introduced. Nobody would play that class, due to the complexity and nonsense to do decent damage. Overall, the class was stupid and goofy, it was the same with Mch and Ast and people complained back then. Square has actively gone back and fix the mess that were those classes and yet people still complain...it's like there's nothing they can do to make the vocal minority happy. If you want to play a goofy tank class that doesn't offer much but need to do more just play GNB and stop complaining. Most OG drk players are eating good. Is the class perfect no, but dude it's a hell of a lot better than what it was back then. If you don't like a certain class because it is too simple...don't play the class. Not everyone is a deci-legend man. People still have to focus on mechs while doing their rotations. If you want complexity in a rotation play a dps or caster.
I'm not sure what the purpose of this mentality is, the devs actively encourage feedback and staying silent is a great way to make sure nothing changes. I don't envy their task of trying to please the entirety of their player-base, but If I'm having less fun with a job that I very much enjoyed in EW after very recent changes, I think that is something they'd want to hear about.
@@DankTankXIV I was thinking the exact same thing when I was watching this. Like I understand why people have some complaints about the classes in this game, but the ACTIVELY fix them/ work on them, people still throw a fit. I'm not saying to blindly love them, but man you have to see that all the youtuber content being made these days. At this point I think you will enjoy the game more if you stop playing for a while.
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
Meh, it's a job design problem, full stop. Half the jobs in the game, maybe more, either feel like dogshit to play, or are so God damn bad for one reason or another (lack of damage, terrible rotations that feel bad, disjointed rotations that feel glued together) that its a slog to play them. This is exemplified when syncing down to old content when half the jobs straight up don't work. Healers, sge and whm pale in comparison to sch and ast. Sch feels bad tho cause fairy gauge is a fuckin meme. Tank, they do feel nice by and large but they all feel the same to a degree, I can't explain how but swapping between tanks it just feels like I'm doing the same stuff. Dps, half of 'em are sad comparisons to the other half for above reasons. Honestly though, i think at the end of the day, for me, personally, I'm just tired. I think the design is too safe these days. Been playing the same game for a decade plus, and it shows.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
okay but hallowed sepulchre in osrs and anachronia agility in rs3 are actually kinda sick though. Especially RS3 and I say that as an OSRS player, optimizing surges and dives and more was really fun when I dabbled in RS3 for a couple months in 2023. As for DRK you just wouldn't get it unless you played DRK in HW or SB...
@AOffensiveJoke almost a year ago, yes. That was more a problem with NA being mostly tidepod eaters who can't be bother to stop watching netflix to heal the dark knight. A prime example of why raw intuition and bloodwhetting should just be a tank role ability. When healers get a tank that actually needs healing, they can't do their job, but at the same time, they think they are entitled to gripe about having nothing to do in dungeons. If Square Enix gave them what they want, the tank shortage would return again cause nobody would want to play a tank job that dies just from the enemy looking at them
@@lolmuffins1 From personal research, I believe dark knight was beyond overpowered back then because Abyssal Drain was more spammable than raw intuition/bloodwhetting. Aka, the entire reason SE nerfed it and treated the job like crap for 5+ years. Don't need to have played it back then to realize how good the job is now. Does TBN feel bad when it doesn't break? So what if it does. Learn from it and use it more effectively next time. There are good suggestions out there, but none are from sources that are as excessively butthurt about dark knight as those who want heavensward dark knight back, TP included.
Idk i’d like Dark Mind become Shadowskin (cool animation yo) and have 2 charges while Oblation can have the regens but single charge. Oh and make the Torcleaver combo unlockable with Delirium.
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
Came to support Dank, stayed for the PCT rant
I miss raiding with Red Mage
Tried to nerf ourselves with a mch, but pct too stronk
Oh I’m here for that now lmaooo
My biggest gripe with the PCT situation is we already went through this shit with DRK in Endwalker, its just so much worse because this isn't tank DPS now.
i love these ideas for short-term changes. as a very long-time DRK player (since i started in like 3.1), i'm a little bit sad to hear that a lot of people's hopes are only as high as Endwalker's iteration, since i thought it was pretty boring compared to what we had in HW and, to an extent, SB. i think it's a good target to aim for with what they can do in patches, but 8.0's gotta come out swinging with the changes for me to keep sticking with it. i miss having decision-making in my DPS rotation ;~;
Pretty much the best change suggestions i've heard. Those little changes would make the job a lot more engaging.
Crackin one open for the picto rant. Never gets old
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.
Yes, playing it without picto feels right.
I am a caster in my static. I main RDM. I refused to play picto and thankfully got a lot of support from my teammates.
But pf is...
Well, I found my spot as a fakemelee in PF. It works. RDM is decent.
@@DrZlow I am sorry for being one of the people locking my pf caster slots to picto, but it's a rough world out there with pf dps.
@@adognamedsally for pf? Understandable. But allow other casters to melee spots :)
gz on 1k subs!
@@Minizor27 Thank you, much appreciated!
This was chill to just listen to, valid points on tank status, picto, FRU stuff
Spot on with the PCT talk. I honestly don't know how ultimate raiding recovers from this point if SE's stubborn refusal to go back on themselves continues. PCT isn't a well-designed job, it's an entirely optimised job design. You cannot make a more effective job design for the way fights in this game work. Getting that much out of downtime is conceptually overpowered in ultimates, there is absolutely no way to make it balanced. It will always either be dogshit in savage or broken in ultimate until reworked depending on if they come to their senses and nerf it or not.
The main thing that gets me about that is that they have no issues making certain jobs dogshit in every aspect of the game, yet are clutching their pearls at the idea their favourite child shouldn't get to shit on the entire game. SMN is trash and MCH is so bad in FRU it makes PCT comps have a DPS check. DNC and BRD are incredibly rDPS-heavy jobs and they are bottom 2 for rDPS in the savage tier. Combine that with the decision to buff the damage of the tank so strong that parse parties were locking 2x DRK pre-patch and I end up thinking the people in charge of balance need to be cycled out, they have no idea what they are doing and are literally just playing favourites at the moment.
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.
The double carve & spit charges would definitely be great to fix the MP issues that DRK has at the moment, but I can't help thinking that the new heal tied to it has little use, or at least as a instant. I'm only in P4 in FRU atm but I've never felt like I *needed* the heal from it, nor in savage reclears, but its better than nothing
very true, a 500 potency heal on a 1 min CD isnt doing much for you but if they kept the heal on the 30s 2 charge version it'd probably be more noticeable. Especially if you press both charges back to back.
@@DankTankXIV might feel like a short tank cooldown that heals like what War and Pld have...
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...
These are actually some banger suggestions. Good video!
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.
as someone who played both jobs in stb it feels like having had my arms sawed off playing jobs that used to be so involved now juggling gauges that mean nothing
definitely feels like more jobs than not are in a rough state right now. Fairy tether has always felt like the wimpiest and most cumbersome regen for the little time Ive spent on SCH and they have a whole gauge dedicated to it because they pruned away everything else lol
One thing you forgot to mention is Dark Arts as a job mechanic; it might as well not exist since you have no way to generate Dark Arts outside of The Blackest Night. Bring back Dark Arts the button to where it generates Dark Arts AND 60 second Darkside on a 30 or 60 second cooldown, and suddenly Dark Arts as a mechanic sucks SLIGHTLY less since you would now have a way to generate Dark Arts OUTSIDE of The Blackest Night.
But yeah Dark Knight needs a MASSIVE OVERHAUL in terms of overall gameplay design... Like Blood Gauge being used for multiple GCD combos that happen to be on a 15 second cooldown that restore HP and MP, same with MP spenders only replace MP restoration with Blood Gauge generation, with your basic 1-2-3 combos restore a little bit of everything. And if the devs want Dark Knight to be slow but powerful, they can EASILY put oGCDs onto the GCD and buff the potency of those abilities accordingly. Because if they can turn GCDs into oGCDs easily, they can JUST AS easily turn oGCDs into GCDs. They no longer HAVE an excuse to NOT do that.
Also make Unmend become a basic 1-2-3 ranged attack combo that gives you multiple stacks of Plunge Ready which changes Shadowstride into Plunge and the potency and/or AoE type of Plunge is based on how many stacks of Plunge Ready you have, and have that be the basis for expanding all melee jobs toolkits and making disengagements feel LESS bad.
Also, I have NEVER liked Living Shadow on Dark Knight, because Dark Knight doesn't even LOOK LIKE a pet job, and the devs thought that Dark Knight needed a summon pet mechanic for whatever reason... like they could delete it and buff the potency of all actions Living Shadow used by the amount of what Living Shadow has, make Disesteem a basic 2 minute cooldown, and I would be GLAD that I no longer have a stupid summon pet mechanic that made NO SENSE for me to have to begin with...
I agree with your changes and yeah there needs to be something to spend blood on that feels meaningful
i dont comment much on videos but that PCT rant is so fucking spot on, the jobs design is very good and feels fun to optimize and play but its numbers when under the circumstances of TYING LARGE POTENCIES TO LONG CASTS IN DOWNTIME was definitely an oversight by a mile
good job design wise and gameplay wise, its numbers just needs the tweaking (personally it doesnt need the raid buff with how much damage it fucking pumps out even when considering the busted numbers)
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.
Here we go!
Great video! I also progged FRU on DRK and share similar sentiments.
I'll talk about your DRK suggestions first! I really like the 2 charges on Carve and Spit idea. It will make the 1 minute feel not as dull.
I think that this single change however, fails to address one of the larger issues in DRK's rotation, that being there is nothing to do between the bursts. All the other tanks have a job mechanic to manage between bursts: GNB has Gnashing Fang, WAR has Storm's Eye (and infuriate timer), PLD had Holy Spirit, but DRK just has it's 123. I think they can address this issue by introducing a 30s cooldown with 1 charge, giving us (1) something to manage both outside and inside bursts and (2) a small and inoffensive amount of rigidity to our rotation (which sorely lacks it). I would suggest decoupling Carve and Spit from Abyssal Drain and making Abyssal Drain this 30s cooldown.
On Disesteem, I think making Disesteem generate mana is a change that few people would dislike. With 2 charges of CnS, a seperate use of Abyssal Drain, and Disesteem generating MP, DRK would have to think about MP management more, making it a little bit more skill expressive. Of course, more MP means that its potencies would have to get nerfed to keep its damage the same, but it would become more interesting!
I'll talk about FRU now! I agree 100% that Thancred is a significant improvement to looper. It's so much more fun, and having tanks actually do mechanics instead of being the same as everyone else also adds to the fun of that phase, especially compared to TOP P1. Something I really like about FRU P2 is forcing the tank to move the boss for Mirror Mirror. That felt like something really lacking from the EW ultimates, and I'm glad they are returning to that aspect of tanking, even if it's just a little bit for right now. Hopefully they crank this up in the future! Apoc is my favorite mechanic in the whole fight. As the tank who baits, resolving that properly feels amazing. I do agree that they undercooked with Darklit a little bit, but I'm also a big fan of CT and it's one of the highlights of the fight for me for sure.
P5's mitcheck confirmed a lot of my fears going into DT from EW. The tanks and healers got extra mitigation, effect times of feint, addle, and rep all got increased, but I feared that the damage during fights would not be adequately increased to match this. And my fears were confirmed in this last phase. This mit check is a joke compared to TOP and even DSR's last phase. It really felt like they designed the damage of P5 for the mits we had last expansion. Other than that, the tank towers in P5 were amazing and I want more tank mechs like that!
If you've ever done runs without a Picto, the DPS check feels fine and honestly feels like an on content ultimate. But Picto absolutely destroys the balance of this game and needs to be nerfed. The devs shot themselves in the foot by not nerfing picto because they needed to design the fight to be cleared with all jobs, which assumes that a Picto slot could instead be filled by a SMN or RDM. Balancing around picto would completely destroy the caster balance, even moreso than it is now. They really need to nerf it.
For me, FRU ranks as my second favorite Ultimate after DSR. Great video! Looking forward to the next one 😁
I dont know why I never considered giving disesteem mana generation that makes so much sense actually. I'm trying to MT more in pf when people will let me and I agree boss movement was completely non-existent in EW and its very refreshing to have it back somewhat. Let's hope all the feedback about fight balance and PCT reaches the devs.
The issue with the Pictomancer situation is that, to see play over the casters with resurrections, it needs to be competitive with at least half of the melees or more. In the current state of battle content, rezzes are actually useful on casters for the first time since, realistically, Shadowbringers. While I do agree that PCT needs a very slight adjustment to bring it down to, say, top 4-5 in savages and fights with full uptime, it's still going to be wildly overperforming in ultimates and fights with consistent downtime unless its full uptime DPS is brought down to be more comparable to RDM and SMN. At that point, there wouldn't be much point to bringing it over an RDM that can chain spam rezzes or a SMN that has a stupidly easy rotation.
Personally, I'd say that there are two reasonable solutions. Bring PCT down a little to bring it closer to the other DPS but leaving it at the top of downtime fights. Or, they can move some potency into other parts of the kit instead of the motifs. The issue with that though would be that it could radically change the job's rotation in a negative or unintended way. Personally, I tend to prefer the first because I feel like it would probably keep the job performing close to the devs' original intentions.
Either way, BLM, SAM, and VPR need to be better than PCT in at least full uptime fights. There's no reason why they shouldn't be. However, since the devs have made it apparent that PCT is supposed to be a damage caster by the lack of a rez, I do think it should probably be top 5 in the game with some wiggle room for an extra melee.
I mean, Pictos downtime buttons are completely seperate from it's uptime buttons and it's issues might be able to be addressed by making the potency of those buttons lower and making them interact with the filler in such a way that boosts the filler rotation (like vipers one combo buffing other etc) because you use paintings, making it so it's uptime damage isnt changed much however downtime gain is less. Without making painting useless in uptime.
@mirageowl In a way, you aren't wrong, and in my original comment I made a point that does agree with yours. I don't necessarily think that moving "some" potency from the motifs to the main combo is a bad idea, but they have to be really careful to make sure that motifs are still a net gain over the main/empowered combo because if they're weaker than the potency of the combos, then there's no point to using the motifs at all.
While PCT's damage is universally acknowledged to be too high, the big issue with FRU and DSR in particular is about how the fights are structured in such a way as to give PCT the biggest inherent advantage over other jobs. It's the game's first downtime-friendly job and that means that the devs have to acknowledge that it's going to really overperform in encounters that play to its strengths. Unless they rework the job or nerf it into nigh-unusability in full uptime fights, PCT is going to be the king of any fight that suits it. They can try to bring it down a bit with some damage adjustments to make the disparity between it and other jobs smaller, but I think that we are going to have to accept that it's just going to be a top performer as long as the devs make fights with large amounts of extended downtime.
21:00 the p5 mitcheck is if you waate the lb3 end of p4 and have to mitcheck pandoras box raw (with tank lb1)
You think 7-1 Akh morn is cool wait until you see 1-1 Akh morn
I lost my mind when I saw it, the 2 tanks stacking at the end for the morn afah entirely invalidating the mechanic is extremely funny.
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.
PCT was still the strongest RDPS job in savage in 7.05 which doesn't have all the downtime while also beating BLM in ADPS so at the very least bringing it in line with the other casters would be a good start
@@DankTankXIV To me I think doing away with the 2 minute meta would nerf Pictomancer in savage without even having to change potencies. In ultimates it charges attacks which is why it destroys in savage it has the best burst in the game.
Pictomancer has always had a weak filler, weaker than even 7.05 BLM. If CDs didn't align and Pictomancer had like it's big burst every 3 minutes instead of 2 I feel like it's damage profile would be strong but not insanely high. Though I doubt they will just make CDs different again mid expansion so messing with potencies is the only realistic option at this point.
@@AOffensiveJoke ah yes, instead of nerfing the single overpowered job let's redesign the entire structure of how groups deal damage in the entire game in a mid-expansion patch
@@Saterienne clearly didn't read my final sentence when I made this point did you?
Though it's hilarious that this meta carried on into dawntrail because it caused the most broken job ever to be created and CBU3 was too stubborn to change the 2 minute meta despite everyone besides top end raiders in JP saying it was a bad design philosophy, hopefully 8.0 will destroy this meta so sustained damage jobs can exist again and high scaling burst jobs don't destroy everyone else.
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?
Its hard to agrue against anything that would change the umend trait tbh lol, and while I think 40s shadowbringer would be more interesting I have my doubts that SE would willing give us a "non-standard" CD timing. The fact that salted earth has lasted this long as one of the few remaining 90s CDs still surprises me.
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).
Even the little bit of Shadowbringers I did get to play, separated carve and abyssal felt great. It's a shame that because they never want to revert changes it will probably never be a thing again. Maybe its stockholm syndrome that keeps me from dropping DRK as my main but its current state has definitely made me branch out to the other tanks and healing to get some breaks from it. Might be time to omni-role FRU since its on the easier side, but DPS seem to be in pretty bad shape themselves or at the very least they dont really give you a reason to optimize with how the DPS checks have been lately.
At least until 8.0 I'm not expecting anything crazy, I just want to have stuff to do outside of my 2 min and even that feels barren compared to what we used to have.
Dank tank video lets gooooooo!!!!
I think a neat change would be to make Dark Arts stack up, and perhaps give DRK a couple more ways to get dark arts. That way you can stack maybe up to 3 and have them ready in case you need to shield up yourself and others, or, line them up for a bigger burst window. I definitely dont think DRK needs more damage, but it has no personality. I feel like I do more damage on my warrior, just solely because the cooldowns, spenders, and burst windows feel good to use.
Disclaimer I have never set foot in an ultimate in my life, I am extraordinarily casual, so I guess take my feedback with a grain of salt?
I've considered multiple dark arts stacks a lot but the more I imagine it, I can only really see degenerate uses of farming TBNs for it over actual mitigation and it will always be limited by mana we can generate. Alternate methods of generating them could be interesting though so at the very least it could be a substitute for mana generation.
This wouldn't change DRK's burst because 2 Edges of Shadow are needed during the off-minute to upkeep Darkside, but it would still make TBN usage more flexible...
@@DankTankXIV My brain farted out because I've been dragging my knuckles (playing warrior) too much and I forgot Dark Arts cant be spent on more TBNs.
I thought perhaps that was a good sign that I needed to swap over and get my sea legs under me again and let me tell you, when you are doing dungeons as a DRK, after having leveled as a warrior, you *feel* it. When the rework comes, I hope they don't make DRK *like warriors* because I think they need to fill their own niche and its good for them to play differently, but right now you have basically no way of sustaining yourself without a very attentive healer, and when you're doing your roulettes, thats a gamble.
I think an easy change would be just to strip TBN of its mp cost, but then the mp bar starts to just be a "drain for damage and dont overcap" bar the same as the blood gauge, and I think that would make the job even more boring.
Some totally random stream of thoughts from a casual DRK player who hasnt played dawntrail yet, but
This is probably unrealistic but what would be cool to see is balancing out huge dps vs losing health or overfilling the darkness meter. Since thats how the questline suggests it works, so youd have to exercise control and thought into the rotation
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.
The dankest tank out here spitting facts, good video 👍
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.
Definitely not just you, a 500 potency heal on a 1 min CD is not going to do a whole lot for you, just a step in the right direction as it was always dumb how you just lost the ability to heal in single target
One thing you no it wrong is that we didn’t lose much mana…. They added no recovery to carve and spit (atleast I don’t remember it having mp recovery before the delirium change) AND 200mp to each hit of the delirium combo
the 200 mana from each hit of delirium and the 600 mana recovery from carve have both been in the game for a very long time. We lost 1200 mana from losing 2 stacks of Blood Weapon
It’s really funny to me, Picto and Dark Knight are the two jobs that encapsulate my feelings on the non-healing gameplay the best. Dark Knight became more and more boring overtime, with everything being moved to burst phases and nothing in between (mana management for TBN is basically the only decision point currently), with the 1-2-3 filler being boring. Worse, it still somehow manages to feel button bloated. Thankfully though, they fixed the memes of it randomly missing basic parts of a tank kit that barely matter in hard content but make it just feel bad in other stuff (my personal pain point was it being so much worse for soloing old content than the other tanks).
So then they actually go and fully design a job that plays differently around the 2 minute design. Instead of just doing mindless filler, you have to do the motifs, so you get more interesting downtime phases (and the transforming buttons really help avoiding the bloat feeling). Of course, the problem comes in with the motif style being impossible to balance without making it feel extra clunky (by requiring a target). You can either gut the damage if it’s a high uptime fight to make it balanced in low uptime fights, have it in its current state, or do something really clunky like require a target to paint, gutting its feel in all content (the Aetherflow change that did that still feels bad).
As for the future of the jobs, short term, I don’t know what they’ll do, as it’s a precarious spot. For 8.0 though, I’m expecting one of three things. The first is nothing changes, or it’s just minor changes like better ability distribution while leveling (unfortunately, this feels very possible based on track record). The second is everything gets homogenized more and either everyone gets Picto-esque downtime power building or everything requires a target to function. The third (and one I’m hoping for) is that we break the whole 2-minute meta and give jobs different pacings and strengths so that we have better distributions of jobs in content. The problems with that last one is that there’s basically only 2-3 fights per tier that matter, the last two savage fights and the potential ultimate. Plus, all the old content balanced around the current design becomes messy to rebalance. There just isn’t enough meaningful content where having different strengths and weaknesses is really doable.
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.
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.
All my caster friends have been forced onto PCT, can't imagine how difficult it is trying to join pfs on anything else
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 agree with the sentiment and I definitely overuse the word as a catch all phrase for "overtuned". In general FFXIV has usually been very good about keeping even the strongest jobs and abilities that end up being outliers in terms of balance relatively close to their competition, but lately tank/healer mitigation and just PCT as a whole have felt deserving of the term. If they're going to give us these tools and incredibly strong jobs they should design their high-end encounters to match that and keep up with us and our growing power.
The problem is that it all depends...
If we are talking about DK then "broken" is probably an unnecessary hyperbole.
If we, however, are talking about picto then "broken" is a criminal understatement.
We need to shake this game in 8.0, or it won't survive next 10 years. Jobs became so stale, content so formunal. I'm having harder and harder time playing this game, after 7 years.
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
"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.
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 definitely felt this in P5 as well, after reviewing a vod ive learned that after the half way point of the Wings cast is good for any 10s or less mits but this gave me an idea. What if TBN and Obl added to each other's duration instead of being separate buffs. For example, if you press TBN its still 7s but if you press Obl before or after the 10s + 10% mit would be added to the duration instead so it would be 17s total if pressed on the same GCD.
Would be a cool synergy for when you accidentally TBN too early and you know it will fall off, you can Obl to extend it and not lose the dark arts proc or just make kitchen sink weaving less annoying.
@@DankTankXIV Idk if the game can implement this type of buff synergy with how janky the engine is but yeah it would be nice, honestly I'd just prefer like a 5 second duration buff on dark mind and oblation atleast. I dont even mind if they have to nerf dark mind and oblation's cooldown to have this happen just don't make kitchen sinks and mits during 120 windows suck horribly.
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.
Making TBN a dmg gain that is free to use has me worried for how many avoidable AoEs DRK players would willingly walk into for a small gain, myself included lol
@DankTankXIV I'm just thinking about all the arena edges that aren't instant kills in normal and alliance raids, but you can already just step into those to proc tbn pre-fight and i hardly see that ever happening. As for ignoring or straight up walking into mechanics to proc it, outside of a premade you'll always be limited by how much bullshit the healer is willing to tolerate (or is even capable of fixing). BA actually has a pretty nice form of this in Double Edge which puts a brutal DoT on you if you chain it but also a massive damage boost. No one chains those without express permission from the healer.
BRING BACK DPS PLUNGE!
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.
DRK is fucking cool
It really is, just make my big sword job more fun to play pls that's all I ask
Lost so many runs to exalines huh? I wonder what you're talking about. Could never be me! :gaythiccdead: :ptsdcat:
LMAO I wish those were the only runs, I've gotta have over 50+ P5 pulls at this point and I only have 4 clears...
@DankTankXIV saw final phase like 16 times before clearing, far more than any other ultimate for me. Admittedly 4 of the wipes were my fault, but mechanics are definitely asking alot more than Dragon king or golden did for basically identical phases in structure. Heal and mit checks easier though. Won't be back home to go for a second clear for another week
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)
meant dark arts spam not dark mind spam but u get what i mean
The easy 1-2-3 spam made more sense back in SB when you were playing at 2.1s GCD speeds for half the fight and you were doing twice the # of weaves modern DRKs do.
@@armorparade completely agree with the sentiment that the creativity they're putting into the encounters this expansion has been great but it's being wasted on jobs that are in a pretty barren and poorly balanced state right now.
I think I'm starting to see the issue with the FFXIV community...ppl complain way too much about everything. I mean I've been around since 1.0 and have seen everything. Drk was gawd awful when it was first introduced. Nobody would play that class, due to the complexity and nonsense to do decent damage. Overall, the class was stupid and goofy, it was the same with Mch and Ast and people complained back then. Square has actively gone back and fix the mess that were those classes and yet people still complain...it's like there's nothing they can do to make the vocal minority happy. If you want to play a goofy tank class that doesn't offer much but need to do more just play GNB and stop complaining. Most OG drk players are eating good. Is the class perfect no, but dude it's a hell of a lot better than what it was back then. If you don't like a certain class because it is too simple...don't play the class.
Not everyone is a deci-legend man. People still have to focus on mechs while doing their rotations. If you want complexity in a rotation play a dps or caster.
I'm not sure what the purpose of this mentality is, the devs actively encourage feedback and staying silent is a great way to make sure nothing changes. I don't envy their task of trying to please the entirety of their player-base, but If I'm having less fun with a job that I very much enjoyed in EW after very recent changes, I think that is something they'd want to hear about.
@@DankTankXIV I was thinking the exact same thing when I was watching this. Like I understand why people have some complaints about the classes in this game, but the ACTIVELY fix them/ work on them, people still throw a fit. I'm not saying to blindly love them, but man you have to see that all the youtuber content being made these days. At this point I think you will enjoy the game more if you stop playing for a while.
Let's be real, the job design for 3 expansions now has been dogshit
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
Meh, it's a job design problem, full stop. Half the jobs in the game, maybe more, either feel like dogshit to play, or are so God damn bad for one reason or another (lack of damage, terrible rotations that feel bad, disjointed rotations that feel glued together) that its a slog to play them. This is exemplified when syncing down to old content when half the jobs straight up don't work.
Healers, sge and whm pale in comparison to sch and ast. Sch feels bad tho cause fairy gauge is a fuckin meme.
Tank, they do feel nice by and large but they all feel the same to a degree, I can't explain how but swapping between tanks it just feels like I'm doing the same stuff.
Dps, half of 'em are sad comparisons to the other half for above reasons.
Honestly though, i think at the end of the day, for me, personally, I'm just tired. I think the design is too safe these days. Been playing the same game for a decade plus, and it shows.
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.
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
The gameplay is very weird, it's like you're using na strats or something
If I had a nickel for every time someone thought I wasn't from NA I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's wierd that it happened twice.
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.
Bruh first was dark knight is weak now it’s boring. Yoshi p has a lot of patience with you guys
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
cya in 7.2
I unsubbed, the game is just in the pits
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.
okay but hallowed sepulchre in osrs and anachronia agility in rs3 are actually kinda sick though. Especially RS3 and I say that as an OSRS player, optimizing surges and dives and more was really fun when I dabbled in RS3 for a couple months in 2023. As for DRK you just wouldn't get it unless you played DRK in HW or SB...
Oh lmao I've seen you on the forums. The one that complained about your living dead getting griefed lmfao
@AOffensiveJoke almost a year ago, yes. That was more a problem with NA being mostly tidepod eaters who can't be bother to stop watching netflix to heal the dark knight. A prime example of why raw intuition and bloodwhetting should just be a tank role ability. When healers get a tank that actually needs healing, they can't do their job, but at the same time, they think they are entitled to gripe about having nothing to do in dungeons. If Square Enix gave them what they want, the tank shortage would return again cause nobody would want to play a tank job that dies just from the enemy looking at them
@@lolmuffins1 From personal research, I believe dark knight was beyond overpowered back then because Abyssal Drain was more spammable than raw intuition/bloodwhetting. Aka, the entire reason SE nerfed it and treated the job like crap for 5+ years. Don't need to have played it back then to realize how good the job is now. Does TBN feel bad when it doesn't break? So what if it does. Learn from it and use it more effectively next time. There are good suggestions out there, but none are from sources that are as excessively butthurt about dark knight as those who want heavensward dark knight back, TP included.
Idk i’d like Dark Mind become Shadowskin (cool animation yo) and have 2 charges while Oblation can have the regens but single charge.
Oh and make the Torcleaver combo unlockable with Delirium.
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
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 =/
UR and Apoc were definitely the biggest pf prog walls of the entire fight and it wasn't close