So how to we fix Dark Knight?

[Tomasello]

It is a known fact that Dark Knight has become the "30 sec job". If we're not zerging we're not needed....

Compared to other melee jobs, are melee abilities just are not good. The problem I think is our inherit job abilities suck ass or are too short. I don't have any problem with scythe damage per say but we are forced to rely heavily on sub jobs to boost our abilities. Subbing ninja becomes almost detrimental to our damage output and subbing /sam or /war turns us into total mp leechs in most situations.

So here are a few suggestions I have devised to level the playing field:

1) Reduce the Absorb-Spell "Time to Cast" to 0.5 - SE is so insistent based on the shitty gear they keep putting out to encourage DRKs to use these spells. While the stats boosts are nice the casting time seriously fucks up our dmg output. If the spells went off quickly they would be actually useful. I'd leave the recast time and mp cost alone so it's not broken and maybe even give us a "Conserve MP" or "Auto-Refresh" trait as well.

2) Increase the duration of Last Resort to 2 minutes - 30 secs makes this not much of a benefit and I just don't see why they wouldn't increase it. Sams have unlimited Hasso, Wars 3 out of 5 minutes Berserk, so give this to us. I realize with full merits making this 3 minutes would be an overpowered Berserk (25% Haste and 25% Attack boost fully merited). So 2 minutes out of every 5 is reasonable and would make this worth wild. Maybe even make it so it overwrites Berserk or vice versa so we're not slamming shit at 50% attack boost. Like Metallic Body and Stoneskin won't stack.

3) Limit the damage taken by Souleater to the first hit of a multihit WS - Guillotine is our bread and butter. So why make a job ability that basically wipes out half our hp off after using it? It's retarded. Not to mention the giant hate boost right after for some sweet instant death. I don't have a problem with each swing taking 10% of our damage or even the enmity from it but for a job ability that's only used once every 5-6 minutes (depending on merits) reduce the damage taken a little so when we do WS with it, it doesn't get our ass killed.

Well that's it. Opinions or constructive comments would be appreciated. If your going to be emo about it go away.

 

[Icewolf]

I think you have no idea what your talking about. We're really not considered a 30 second job, dunno where your getting that from. Drk is just as useful as any other DD in endgame. Last resort is amazing for that 30 seconds, you want it to last two minutes? Absorb spells are pretty meh, dunno if i'd use them even with a .5 cast. And you lose half your hp, but you do 2k+ dmg, I don't have a problem with that at all. And /sam is definatly not an mp sink, I do everything /sam, you need to learn how to play it.

 

[jyakotsu]

isn't this the entire "Slit your wrists before entry" point of why dark knights are emo? haha j/k

But yea I agree to an extent, a little more meleeable lifetime would be nice for this job.

 

[jyakotsu]

I think you have no idea what your talking about. We're really not considered a 30 second job, dunno where your getting that from. Drk is just as useful as any other DD in endgame. Last resort is amazing for that 30 seconds, you want it to last two minutes? Absorb spells are pretty meh, dunno if i'd use them even with a .5 cast. And you lose half your hp, but you do 2k+ dmg, I don't have a problem with that at all. And /sam is definatly not an mp sink, I do everything /sam, you need to learn how to play it.

I disagree, most of my DRK friends who /sam are huge MP sinks. If you are dealing proper numbers in a zerg, usually the DRK or the MNKs w/ /drk are the first to die.

 

[Tomasello]

I think you have no idea what your talking about. We're really not considered a 30 second job, dunno where your getting that from. Drk is just as useful as any other DD in endgame. Last resort is amazing for that 30 seconds, you want it to last two minutes? Absorb spells are pretty meh, dunno if i'd use them even with a .5 cast. And you lose half your hp, but you do 2k+ dmg, I don't have a problem with that at all. And /sam is definatly not an mp sink, I do everything /sam, you need to learn how to play it.

You obviously don't realize most of the HNM community laughs at drks...

I also asked for CONSTRUCTIVE comments but you must not have read that line.

 

[Icewolf]

I disagree, most of my DRK friends who /sam are huge MP sinks. If you are dealing proper numbers in a zerg, usually the DRK or the MNKs w/ /drk are the first to die.

That would be because they are zerging jobs lol, nothing to do with their sub job.

 

[Rappa]

You obviously don't realize most of the HNM community laughs at drks...

And this affects you why? Every job has something they are good at. DRKs are good at incredibly high damage output in an incredibly short period of time. No job can do it better if geared correctly. "HNM community" laughs at most jobs, not just DRKs. And yet, they are more than happy to have a zerging DRK around, go figure.

Unless you just have an inferiority complex about yourself, you shouldn't give a crap what people think about you or the job you like to play. It's not really serious business.

 

[Tomasello]

And this affects you why?

Because I'm tired of not being asked to come DRK unless I bring my mercurial kris. Is it so much to ask to be able to hang with MNKs, SAMs, WARs, etc. /nin on dmg output?

DRKs are ffxi hookers right now, give me a quick 30 sec zerg handjob then gtfo. Maybe your content with that but I'm not.

 

[isolation]

I'd be content with a hand job.... hey, thats just me

 

[Rappa]

Because I'm tired of not being asked to come DRK unless I bring my mercurial kris.

You're doing the wrong things then. HNMs don't really need DRKs. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but they don't need most other jobs either. I use my DRK all the time though. I use it for Dynamis, I use it for Limbus, I even use it for ZNMs and other things. If I ever got drunk and wanted to do HNMs again, I wouldn't expect to do them on my DRK. That's just how the game works. It isn't S-E's job to make every job useful on every type of enemy. If they did the game would become ridiculously easy and boring.

 

[Tyrath]

If a HNM can be done with melees, drks can work fine on it. Maybe not the best DD on it, but they work. Now if a HNM is only done with BLMs mostly thats a completely different story.

Not to mention, HNMs aren't the only things in endgame. Drks are sick in salvage and nyzul isle. They have plenty of uses in endgame, if not necessarily used on every HNM.

As for your ideas, I do wish Last Resort lasted longer, but its been so long, I don't think they'll fix it ever. Especially not now that you can get 25% haste during it with fully merited Desperate Blows.

 

[K. Ishitar]

I disagree, most of my DRK friends who /sam are huge MP sinks. If you are dealing proper numbers in a zerg, usually the DRK or the MNKs w/ /drk are the first to die.

i think it's better to say overall most dd jobs with /sam are generally sinks I'm not sure if it's just bad luck or if they don't bother taking off their precious hasso and doing seigan and third eye. I'd like to say the latter but no experience with that.

Except a few almost every dd i've pted with /sam i've had to heal more(unless they don't do as much damage as the top person or second most).


/nin on the other hand is a more secure(and easier you could use lazier here I dunno) to stay alive but no damage benefits like /sam but you have to toggle hasso on and off maybe that's the problem?

 

[Tristam Green]

you shouldn't give a crap what people think about you or the job you like to play.

Bottom line, end of story really.

I don't do HNM, but if someone seriously "laughed" at me because I am a Dark Knight, I'd really tell the person where to place his laughter.

I know that my DRK is exceptionally welcome in Dynamis, Einherjar, and on any other event that I happen to do, so HNM can actually kiss my ass in that respect.

 

[Jakey]

If a HNM can be done with melees, drks can work fine on it. Maybe not the best DD on it, but they work. Now if a HNM is only done with BLMs mostly thats a completely different story.

drk can certainly compete with any other DD in anything outside of zerg where drks can just crush everyone else (unless they die too early and the drg beats them mwahaha)

also really good drks can be solid tanks when /nin, main example I think of when I'm thinking of this is serise who I've tanked with before, his drk/nin and my pld/nin and his drk seemed to do just as well if not better than my pld on fafnir tanking wise, but also put up tons of damage, though I imagine apoc probably helped a lot in making this set up more viable, I know wars can also tank fafnir effectively so it shouldn't be too far out of reach for many of the better geared drks out there if they really need to play drk more.

Also let me say as somone who's played "loldrg" for years now I really have never seen people laugh at drk as a job, maybe individuals for being dumb but not the job, drk job has always been solid and I really don't see how people can laugh at it, even outside of zerg its one of the top DDs especially with 2hand buff.

the reason you can't play drk more is same reason I can't play drg more most groups tend to be low on support and many events don't go well if you're too melee heavy due to tp spam. This is just the nature of how FFXI is it has nothing to do with if your DD job is gimp or not, it has to do with mobs generally get more tp than you do when you hit them and many have much worse ws's.

oh and about /sam becoming a mp sink it is mostly because people use hasso when they should use seigan full time seigan should block 60-80% of attacks depending how much you tank, utsusemi depending on haste and how much you tank 70-90%. ideally though if you're going with /sam you want some sort of an oh-shit macro so you don't get owned if third eye goes down especially as a drk who might be using some +% damage taken gear usually.

No I'm not a drk but I'm somone with a lot of respect for several drks and really don't see how they need any sort of fix. drk has plenty of potential just the way they are imo.

 

[Caerloc]

DRK is my absolue favorite DD in the game, no melee job is as multipurpose and usefull as a drk. When i pick melees for HNM or endgame events i always pick DRK's first. I dont know what kind of dumb shell wouldnt. They can tank, stun, dd, crowd controll, kite. Its an amazing job, and ppl saying drk needs a buff should be smacked over the head.

 

[Neisan]

Most likely Thf syndrome, where too many people playing the job do bad at it. Although that's true for any DD really. If it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it.

 

[Redshift]

Reducing casting time of ABS spells would be really helpful and encourage DRKs to cast more often. Still would only cast ABS TP and maybe ABS ACC

 

[Tristam Green]

Reducing casting time of ABS spells would be really helpful and encourage DRKs to cast more often. Still would only cast ABS TP and maybe ABS ACC

You know, it really pisses me off to no end to see people saying "Dark Knights should never cast spells aside from Stun, Drain, Aspir, and Absorb-TP", because it's really quite bullshit lol. At 75, yeah I do cast my Absorbs a little less frequently, but until I got to 75, anyone pulling a mob to my camp got a nice little Absorb-XXX spell based on what they were, but generally an Absorb-STR and Absorb-DEX as a debuff.

I don't really think it's all that necessary to lower the casting times of the spells since they really don't take all that long to cast to begin with.

 

[Tyrath]

You know, it really pisses me off to no end to see people saying "Dark Knights should never cast spells aside from Stun, Drain, Aspir, and Absorb-TP", because it's really quite bullshit lol. At 75, yeah I do cast my Absorbs a little less frequently, but until I got to 75, anyone pulling a mob to my camp got a nice little Absorb-XXX spell based on what they were, but generally an Absorb-STR and Absorb-DEX as a debuff.

I don't really think it's all that necessary to lower the casting times of the spells since they really don't take all that long to cast to begin with.

I may be misreading redshift's intention, but I automatically assume we're talking about 75 when such things are said.

 

[Redshift]

I was speaking in terms of 75 as this thread is about 75 DRK, but that can be applied to leveling up as well.

How is it bullshit? What reason do you bother to even cast ABS STR/DEX? To improve your over all damage? Well, it doesn't compared to the swing you didn't take.