Dark Knight Discussion

[Artifact]

Thank you to the both of you. I will have a huge learning curve since I have never MT'd in XIV. I will keep VIT accessories on me at all times. :X

[Niiro]

If you can stomach the investment and/or find crafters who won't charge you your firstborn, I feel melded i150 (Slaying with VIT 4 4 3 3 3) will be the best investment. Beats even i200 accessories from what projections imply it should be; you would be trading ~50 VIT for ~150 STR compared to full Fending. You can play cheaper with 4/1 or 3/2 split of VIT/STR accessories. The only downside with melded is maybe having accuracy concerns down the line, but I think it can be managed.

Put all 35 attribute points in STR, no questions asked. The total of attribute now is barely an accessory's worth.

My melded i110 accessories still give more net STR/VIT than i180 ones, it's no question that crafted accessories (fending with STR or slaying with VIT) are and will continue to be ideal for the forseeable future.

The only issue for now is trying to fill them with proper stats without TV materia, but even if you can't cap their STR/VIT they're still better.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Yeah, I'm still wearing even a couple Ruby pieces with 3 Platinums and I'm trading ~30 VIT for ~45 STR by using them, compared to assorted 4VIT/1STR. Which is barely 700 HP. Drops my ilvl by like 20 though lol

[Kiarax]

Well, this patch completely broke DRK. All sorts of buffs and stuff are now killing DRKs MP for absolutely no reason. Every tick of HoTs and DoTs drain your mana, random assortments of buffs are draining your MP, even some of your own buffs like Dark Mind will drain some mana both on use AND when it wears off. I was joking when I said RIP DRK about them fixing the Dark Arts bug, but this patch actually completely fucked over the class with new bugs. RIP for reals.

Edit: Apparently just a visual bug, still not 100% confirmed but weh.

[kisada]

fixing my life mistake and fating in north than on war as we speak!

[LinktheDeme]

Well, this patch completely broke DRK. All sorts of buffs and stuff are now killing DRKs MP for absolutely no reason. Every tick of HoTs and DoTs drain your mana, random assortments of buffs are draining your MP, even some of your own buffs like Dark Mind will drain some mana both on use AND when it wears off. I was joking when I said RIP DRK about them fixing the Dark Arts bug, but this patch actually completely fucked over the class with new bugs. RIP for reals.

Well this is shit

[Kiarax]

Seeing some people say it's just a visual bug (every time you get or lose a buff or are subject to some HoT/DoT tick your client forces an update on the MP tick, rather than updating every 3 seconds), others saying they've noticed hugely increased rates of MP draining, especially with Astros. Too late for me to try and test it but hopefully people can clarify a little later, hopefully it is just a visual bug. I had a friend Regen me in town and my MP couldn't tick back up to full even though I was out of combat, something that would never happen before, also noticed it dropping with a bunch of buffs but not fast enough to actually lose MP (just enough to lose a small bit and then have it immediately tick back to full). Should be easy to tell in a real combat situation though, hopefully all the people posting elsewhere about it are wrong.

[Niiro]

Sound like a good old fashioned SE "fix one thing, break 10 others" situation.

[Seravi Edalborez]

I'm definitely not imagining that my MP goes down the moment Shadowskin wears off for example despite being in town and out of combat. There is definitely something funky.

[Dein]

I just went and pulled one of those small enemies in the Mists that poison you and I noticed no MP drain from the poison effect. Something I have noticed before this hotfix is that sometimes the MP drain from Darkside get unaligned from the natural mp regen timing so I'll gain mp and then lose some from Darkside's effect a moment after.

[Kiarax]

More and more people confirming its just a visual bug, any effects hitting you will force your MP to tick down but on the next server tick it will fix itself and go back to whatever it is supposed to be at. Apparently it's possible to falsely show your MP lower than it is and potentially put you under the MP required to cast a skill, so it still can be a hindrance, but for the most part it's just a visual bug and shouldn't effect you at all.

Spoiler: show

Still RIP DRK tho

[LinktheDeme]

More and more people confirming its just a visual bug, any effects hitting you will force your MP to tick down but on the next server tick it will fix itself and go back to whatever it is supposed to be at. Apparently it's possible to falsely show your MP lower than it is and potentially put you under the MP required to cast a skill, so it still can be a hindrance, but for the most part it's just a visual bug and shouldn't effect you at all.

Spoiler: show

Still RIP DRK tho

Honestly DRK was poorly designed, if it was compared to where people were back when all of the classes were 50 it'd be fine. However with abilities that are counter productive to the classes design (why would you dark arts, dark dance ever? Do they not know what reprisal does?) it'll remain lower.


Easy fix to the class would be to make dark dance 60 base parry rate and with dark arts to either make it 80-100%(I'd lean towards 100% otherwise it'd be really RNG dependent when you run out of CDs like Ravana Ex) or to give it a sheltron effect with 100% parry on one hit with the remaining being 60%. The fact that keen flurry is better is the silliest thing I've seen. In addition to that dark arting Delirium should apply a STR debuff instead of an INT one or they should have some sort of method of putting on the STR down debuff. This would allow DRK and war to actually be as effective as PLD and WAR. Also increase it's viability as a MT


As a DRK OT, they need some serious balancing issues to blood weapon because without a ninja goad this class can't even compete with it's TP issues before factoring in MP issues. Although MP issues are were a lot more manageable.

[Voyage1970]

They really shoud have just let DRK cross-class LNC instead of MRD. MRD offers nothing really worthwhile since they still refuse to make Foresight actually do anything useful and Bloodbath is still a joke especially for DRK considering it's main use in AoE pulls doesn't work with Unleash/Abyssal Drain since it's magic damage. LNC would offer Keen Flurry for a proper Parry buff akin to Bulwark, you could change Dark Dance to match Sheltron with a longer cooldown but allow Dark Arts to 100% parry 2 attacks, and would allow Invigorate for TP issues. Frankly PLD could use this too but one step at a time.

As far as DRK OT goes I like the idea of making a Dark Arts effect for Delirium apply STR instead of INT down. Either that or add a magic resistance down debuff. As it stands you aren't making any choices on what to use your Dark Arts charges on while OTing and it lacks any unique skill that would make people want to bring it.

[Niiro]

That's actually a really good idea, make DRK's STR and INT down's mutually exclusive so they apply whichever is appropriate for the setup.

Dark Dance could be better if it worked like Seigan+Eye in XI where the parry rate started off high and decreased gradually (either over time or with each successful parry).

But as wasted as Keen Flurry is being inaccessible to all tank jobs, I don't think we want tanks (expecially DRK) having access to B4B...

[solracht]

Oh we're playing the "buff my job" game here too?

Let me sit on the Reprisal proc for up to 10-15s, turn Souleater overhealing into an HP shield, give Delirium a weak TP regen, make Sole Survivor's debuff increase damage taken by the mob (5-10%) and reduce the CD of Shadow Wall.

[Arthars]

drk is just an "okay job" but with fuck tonne of things to press and also useless cross class >.>

i 2nd to keen tho, but i think SE seriously dont want us, tanks, to use blood for blood haha

dark arts + dark dance is awesome for hugs pulls, but then if you evade, you dont get MP from blood price

im so mindfucked by what SE want us to do really

[Voyage1970]

They could very easily just disallow B4B usage on tanks. It's not like they aren't above limiting cross-class actions for the sake of BARANSU.

@Niiro
For Dark Dance to work similar to Seigan I could see it granting a stacking buff with each stack granting a certain % of parry rate. 5 stacks at 20% each so your first parry is guaranteed and drops a stack each time you parry. I don't know what you could change the Dark Arts buff to though. Maybe making each stack also increase parry strength by 2%?

[Niiro]

I'd rather just see it decrease with time like Innin/Yonin/Sentinel, otherwise it would be useless for large pulls as it would wear almost immediately.

[Arthars]

dark arts should work like aetherflow or wrath!

[Eej]

More and more people confirming its just a visual bug, any effects hitting you will force your MP to tick down but on the next server tick it will fix itself and go back to whatever it is supposed to be at. Apparently it's possible to falsely show your MP lower than it is and potentially put you under the MP required to cast a skill, so it still can be a hindrance, but for the most part it's just a visual bug and shouldn't effect you at all.

Spoiler: show

Still RIP DRK tho

I'm the one doing a lot of testing right now with the mana costs. So far what I've found is that Buffs, HoT ticks and, worst of all, anything that affects your MP (like all your abilities) will hit you with a double Darkside tick, which gets fixed by the next server tick. For example, you can easily kick yourself out of Darkside if you spam Unmend because it basically costs twice as much as what the tooltip says (since the MP cost is a little more than a double Darkside tick). However, it's not consistent because if you use an ability close to a server tick, you don't get hit by this bug. I don't think it's possible to align Regen ticks with server MP ticks though so yeah your MP bar will constantly be -2*Darkside Degen Tick at all times with a Regen on.

e: on a side note, through this testing I've discovered that you never actually get positive MP ticks in Darkside during combat. All the times you think you get MP back is just the server refunding you the MP you were overspending.