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  1. #1
    Old Odin
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    Dark Knight 4.0 - Blood Dark Blood Dark Dark Dark Blood

    Some initial impressions:

    For what little it matters, the "new" 60 DRK feels quite empty compared to the "old" 60 DRK, to say nothing of 50 and below. However once you have most of the Blood Gauge kit on the road to 70 it becomes pretty fun. Lot of buttons, lot of spamming Dark Arts.

    Blood Gauge strikes an interesting balance with Dark Arts and MP management (simplified now that Darkside doesn't drain MP). Gauge is gained by:

    10 for every Souleater (combo'd, of course).
    1 per tick, per target, for Salted Earth.
    3 per physical attack landed during Blood Weapon (requires trait at 66).
    1 per hit taken during Blood Price (w/66 trait).
    4 per tick while Blood Price is active (w/66 trait).

    The tooltips for gauge gain with Salted and Blood Price are pretty misleading.

    Delirium is a really nice cooldown as it gives extra duration on Blood Weapon or Blood Price (8s and 16s) as well as giving you a MP "chunk". The timer extensions generally make up a good chunk of Delirium's Blood Gauge cost as well.

    Quietus is a decent AoE spender for Blood Gauge (and notably you can rack up a lot of refunded MP if you use this in a pack with Blood Weapon). Bloodspiller needs no real introduction. Both of these WS also do not break your combo. Neither does Grit or Unleash, if those were not new changes.

    The Blackest Night seems like a very interesting way to gain Blood Gauge and good utility besides, especially given the low cooldown of TBN itself, however making the trade of MP for Blood probably needs to be weighed with the situation as TBN costs the same as Dark Arts and Dark Arts further enhances Bloodspiller and Quietus.

    Dark Arts potency gains:
    +350 - Carve and Spit
    +175 - Bloodspiller (Grit)
    +140 - Bloodspiller (no Grit), Syphon Strike, Souleater
    +110 and Blind effect - Dark Passenger*
    +50 - Quietus (AoE)
    Increased enmity - Power Slash
    HP Drain effect - Abyssal Drain
    15%->30% magic vuln down - Dark Mind

    *Passenger's MP cost is extremely high, same as Dark Arts, which makes it virtually the worst use of Dark Arts and even the base skill isn't that great now.

  2. #2
    Bagel
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    Seravi be very caution of the eggshells all around as they are explosive ones

    On a serious note, what you just posted gave me some light of hope so I am gonna ask you cause the OF is unreliable as we all know.

    How do you feel regarding DPS?
    How is the aggro management at 70? Did you completely ditch unleash for big pulls?


    I am still prompting myself whether leveling it or not as DRK's been my favorite job circa FFIV, but I am still unhappy about the STR locked state.

    However thanks for the detailed post.

  3. #3
    Old Odin
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    Truth be told I haven't hit 70 just yet. Halfway through 69 by way of Frontline.

    However I did some dungeoneering in Shisui, Bardam's, and Sirensong. While I didn't do big pulls much if ever, my go-to pack puller for DRK has always been facepull-Unleash (unless the stars align and everything will be bunched for facepull-Abyssal, such as the 3 guys before the archers in Shisui), and now Abyssal 2-3 times for enmity. After that I just spam Souleater combo. I haven't math'd out much if it's worth being more optimal here though Quietus at 64 obviously gets used once you have it. RDM going full tilt sometimes ripped off of me but it wasn't a big deal. I do currently find it hard to drop tank stance for an entire boss fight enmity-wise in 4man and I only do so during DPS-y phases or when I have cooldowns and a decent enmity lead.

    I think DRK can potentially do ok on big pulls because Blood Weapon Quietus is a massive chunk of MP (and potentially Blood Gauge gain? haven't checked if Quietus or Bloodspiller actually generate BG). However I can't speak in any concrete terms on DPS yet because I play on PS4 now.

    Xeno's initial impressions vid on DRK really changed my mind on it, however the 270 slaying meme really needs to go. I hate it. Pls SE. I think 70 DRK will be interesting in statics or VOIP groups with a clear goal in mind but possibly less useful in pickups unless tank synergy is high. To me it still feels fun, but not until at least 66 for the full extent of the Blood Gauge gains.

    Also probably not a surprise to anyone but Darkside does prevent casters from gifting you MP via Mana Shift. If you're truly thirsting you could probably coordinate in downtime phases to drop Darkside for it, but I'd sooner Shift the BRD for more Requiem.

  4. #4
    Relic Horn
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    AOE feels fine all the way from 60 to 70, but you can't sustain yourself in big pulls anymore. Unleash was never used over Abyssal Drain except to pick up mobs that you couldn't hit with Drain, so the Unleash nerf didn't actually change much. It did, however, make the job incredibly miserable when syncd below level56. Hoping they swap the levels of Dark Passenger and Abyssal Drain or something, it'd be a huge QOL change (also adjust Dark Passenger while they do that)

    The job feels fairly solid at 70, just different (oGCD busywork now mostly comes from DA spam instead of Reprisal/Low Blow/DP/etc). The Blackest Night is a gamechanging spell, and really fun to use.

    Enmity management is a group effort more than ever. If people are using Diversions/Dreams/Shirks (as they should be) then tanking becomes an entirely different experience. For me this means I probably won't PUG anything on tanks for the entire expansion, although this is more of a WAR complaint because using DRK in PUGs was already pretty bad in HW.

    Overall some changes were good, others not so much. Feels like an entirely different class in some ways, which understandably means reception from old DRKs is going to be fairly mixed. Personally I'm still having fun with it, but I really miss the HW procs and Scourge.

  5. #5
    Old Odin
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    There was something special about Low Blow procs lighting up all day but as is I think we're okay.

    Challenge in my raid group is wondering who is going to open fights between myself or the WAR, or if I should just gear a pocket PLD.

    Also I did not do dungeon pulls much in HW DRK so I don't have a lot of context for what I should be doing currently. I'm wondering when/if I should just spam Abyssal vs doing Souleater combo. SE average potency is like 680/3 so seems like I need to hit at least 3 enemies for Abyssal to be worth the GCD but Dark Artsing it is where I don't exactly know what to do.

  6. #6
    Hyperion Cross
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    I just use this:

    Unleash to round up mobs, 1 or 2 will suffice
    Blood Price (unless WHM is retarded and spams Holy as well, in which case you try and hold it for the initial 10 seconds)
    Spam Abyssal Drain til dry
    Mobs should be 75% HP if DPS aren't retarded
    Souleater combo until full
    Resume Abyssal spam and/or weave in Souleater Combo in slight prep for next pull; if it's 3 targets and 1 is low I generally stop Abyssaling at this point to conserve MP for next pull.

    Under 56 with no Abyssal I do the same thing with Unmend instead. Once hate is established I souleater to full and repeat if DPS are smart and AOE with me, otherwise single target whichever target they are boning on.

  7. #7
    Bagel
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    4.01: "Enmity has been increased for unleash and spinning slash, potency increased from 380 to 400 for Bloodspiler" I wonder if they really don't understand why so many are upset or if they're just being bossing their way.

  8. #8
    a p. sweet dude
    Pens win! Pens Win!!! PENS WIN!!!!!

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    I don't understand what you think the problem is they should be fixing.

    Bloodspiller buff should make The Blackest Night a DPS gain with or without Grit so long as the shield gets dropped.

  9. #9

    Sweaty Dick Punching Enthusiast

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    I saw that Xeno video, and even said to myself that if he thinks DRK is OK, then maybe I should keep pushing forward.

  10. #10
    Old Odin
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    To be fair Bloodspiller didn't look great on paper (in practice, it's up quite often due to pretty bursty Blood Gauge gain) and Blackest Night is better than it has any right to be. Not OP but an extremely solid ability.

  11. #11
    Old Odin
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    Aside from just every tankbuster it's proving fun to find places where I can just slot in TBN for a free bloodspiller. The very short window makes it a challenge sometimes.

  12. #12
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    TBN is kinda annoying to use on how easily it overcaps your blackblood.

  13. #13
    A. Body
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seravi Edalborez View Post
    Both of these WS also do not break your combo. Neither does Grit or Unleash, if those were not new changes.
    fyi: not new changes. Only unmend and abyssal drain would, and still do, break combo.

  14. #14
    Old Odin
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eludi View Post
    TBN is kinda annoying to use on how easily it overcaps your blackblood.
    I try to never sit on 50+ blood for this reason unless delirium is about to come up, or at least just spam Bloodspiller asap. Sometimes you get lucky with animation delay stuff.. The great thing about Bloodspiller is not needing to DA it so it's highly flexible.

  15. #15
    Daniel Rand
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    What is good materia for drk? I put 2 critical vi on susano sword, which I guess is safe. I kind of want to spam skill speed to blood combo faster for mp, but figure I'd ask here.

    Sent from my SM-T560NU using Tapatalk

  16. #16
    Puppetmaster
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    direct hit is basically the best stat to meld for any tank since we get incredible value from it, relatively, since we start off with jack shit DH wise.

    i believe that for right-side accessories that STR is the optimal meld there. Optimalest is most likely going to be getting the new crafting vit accessories, getting str in the first slot, overmelding a dh vi in the second, and then dh vs for the remainder.

  17. #17

    right side STR always, left side direct hit.

    Direct hit is king for tanks always.

  18. #18
    Daniel Rand
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    thx. looks like i will have to stock up on DH materia thankfully its easy to get now

  19. #19
    Old Odin
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    Even though tier 6 is not uncommon due to hunts, I'm hesitant to meld anything until we get more "permanent" gear for this tier.

    While it's not specific to DRK and probably already brainstormed elsewhere or among individual groups, my co tank (WAR) and I are trying out some new tech for maintaining hate lead over DPS (specifically our SAM). I posited this idea in Lakshmi when our WAR mentioned he wanted to voke from time to time to keep number 2. I suggested the following order instead:

    OT shirks (semi optional at this point), then provokes.
    MT then shirks and provokes back.
    Later on, repeat this once more.

    If it isn't obvious, what you're doing here is generating free extra enmity when the MT shirks and vokes back to themselves. It's probably overly convoluted and only applies in this specific fashion to Lakshmi because of the lack of actual tank swapping. However this isn't without merit on other fights. In Susano we can do this before the sword phase once, and in theory we could also do this when tank swapping if we also set Ultimatum and pair that with Shirk so we save Voke for actual swaps.

    I dunno. It's shaky experimental tech but that's ShirkVoke. Or the technical ShirkUlti

  20. #20