I miss Power Slash. mostly I just miss the animation. Striking the enemy then gathering dark energy into the hand allowing it to explode outward at the enemy.

It's worth mentioning for LD: Before 6.1, if you got healed to full (or rather, got 100% of your HP back), your invuln buff was just gone.

Abyssal drain spam in dungeons was so fucking fun man. Literally blood whetting before blood whetting but somehow even more satisfying.

I actually wanted to point out as well that during Stormblood pre-UCOB, because of the general skill level of DRK players since it had a decently high skill-floor, they were often locked out of random PF groups. This was largely due to general community sentiment and lots of reddit/forum threads at the time saying DRK was bad and not meta. For example, at the time before I had started my savage experience, only 1/10 EX farm groups would let you join as a DRK. They were more often than not locked to WAR/PLD only. It was like this until the doomer community opinion on DRK started shifting once world first UCOB had a DRK in their lineup.

Sole Survivor was changed during the expansion. It started off as targeting a party member you expect to die and then was changed to targeting an enemy. I guess the former was a bit mean.

Apologies for the rant... Dark Knight was my main through both HW and SB. Personally, I feel like its peak was in HW. I do recognize that some of this is nostalgia but also... the job just felt like it had so much flavor back then. It was the first tank with a gap closer in plunge, Sole Survivor was a neat way of getting HP/MP back, Darkside had a drain MP effect to it and was basically a stance you had to maintain. It wasn't hard to do so, but it was definitely something to keep in mind as you went through your rotation. I think there's something to be said for having something that *negatively affects* your job (the MP drain) and that you just have to manage. Idk... it just felt so unique to me and added some flavor to the job. Nowadays I honestly can't say I have half as much fun with it when I do play DRK. I think TBN was an interesting idea when they introduced it in Stormblood, but that was kinda it. I feel like it hasn't really been iterated on in interesting ways. Leading up to the release of Shadowbringers, I was up there with people hyped at the idea of being able to summon Fray to fight alongside you... but then I figured it would be essentially a really pretty DoT and well, that's pretty much what it turned out to be. It's a nice ability, don't get me wrong, but it is much too *passive* for what I wanted out of DRK playstyle. You hit that button and forget. Funnily enough, ever since going through the job story, I had always envisioned a mechanic where you let Fray possess you, enhancing your abilities or changing how they work... I swear I cracked up when Reaper was revealed and this was essentially its main gimmick (although with a voidsent). Over the years I've become disillusioned with the job. It just doesn't feel satisfying to play for me. This is also completely separate from any talk about balance. I almost never look at that when I pick a job to play. If it doesn't resonate with me when I play it, I simply don't bother with it beyond just leveling it up... and I'm sad to say DRK has kinda gone that way.

Interesting how dark arts changed from "situational" to "flat potency" to "we took out the middle man, you just use mp to attack now." It does keep the philosophy kind of the same but more accessible. The only major things I hope they change are bringing back unique animations for role actions and TBN working more like corundum. I do miss the jank a bit but I don't know how they could bring it back for each job outside of stuff like large scale content. I think the next time we'll see gameplay like it is whenever private servers become a thing.

Low Blow procs were definitely a thing back in HW. I had a friend who made a Parry heavy DRK for the memes and ended up talking about LBpS lol. Low Blows per second. It reminded me of the ridiculous PLD build I had at the end of ARR, dark times lol

I want Dark Arts back just more situational than it was in SB where it was used most GCDs. Eukrasia is basically the same thing but done more situational making it feel much better.

Dark Arts is basically melee sage. And I loved it

One thing to point out about dark passenger in stormblood is what made it not useful outside for enmity is that it deals magic damage so if you had slash resistance down it’s did less damage then dark arts would normally give compared to its reduced cost in heavensward making it actually mp efficient lol

If I recall, and I could be wrong, dark arts also increased the enmity gain effect on the enmity combo. So if you wanted to, you could use a dark arts enmity combo on the pull, in grit, and get a HUGE amount of enmity.

They should bring back the old job specific actions that have now become role actions, but keep them as role actions (and even the same name if they must) so that we can get that cool job-specific flavor animations back (and probably the icon too)

main DRK since HW, and yes i remember Low Blow resetting on a chance of a parry. At that time i remember saying that it was similar to Monk Evasion ability.

ah yes, our favorite tank: machinist

Funny thing that in trailer of ShB they use the sound of power slash for wol finish the sineater that was all ready gone that skill for drk in shb.. (so good that animation) I don't know if people notice that detail

Man I really do miss how silly dark arts abyssal drain was.

I actually just checked for curiosity and Plunge is still at 54. LOL I sometimes wonder what are the reasons for some of the leveling skills placements, even Duty Support tanks have gap closers from the get-go, which shows how important of a skill is, especially for dungeon runs. Let's not forget the DRK AoE combo was very late until recently, it's now at 40 which is still kinda high but tolerable, definitely better than 62 or whatever it was before!

Dark knight was the god tank in dungeons. You'd pop your defense boosting abilities and use blood price to basically heal yourself like warrior does now for the whole duration of blood price. Then after that wears off you use dark arts dark dance followed with dark arts and dark passanger and you turned into a tank with MASSIVE evasion because you got the bonus evasion from dark dance and your enemies were blinded from dark passanger. One time I died because my healer had NO idea what was going on and didn't know that eventually these buffs would wear off and it was absolutely hilarious. I miss HW dark knight for this reason and this reason alone. It was the most unique tank of its time and I loved every second of it.

Parry really reset Low Blow's cooldown, which made it interesting to use Dark Dance as kind of a damage cooldown. You could also dark arts Dark Dance for even more parries, which did find some usage in dungeons. Also Dark Arts only got busy during Stormblood, because there you regenerated so much MP that you had to get them off somehow. During Heavensward, I always felt like Dark Arts usage was reasonable. It was only during SB I came to despise the skill.

As someone that only started playing in shadowbringers, heavensward drk seems real interesting there's parts of its kit that are a little weird, but just interacting more with its MP is the precise thing I think the job needs right now

What timing. I spent an hour yesterday looking through older Job actions since i didn't play much before they started removing abilities left and right. It's nice to be able to explore and see what Jobs used to be like back in the day.

I love this job restrospective series and really happy you didn't forget DRK. ^.^

I liked OG dark arts at the time, but then they tried to tie even more skills to DA and it got to be too much. Funny that Sage got a version of DA that people approve of.

Whoever reminded Happy that DRK and AST hadn't gotten a video yet, thank you.

Bring Power Slash Back! even if it is only the animation, it was my favorite and its gone now, Mybe a second finisher that applys the scourge DOT?

I really missed the speed DRK use to have I don't really consider OGCD spam to be equivalent to how speedy the job was

Man, old DRK sounds pretty cool. I don't think it was weird to have blind on a skill while also having blood weapon; I imagine the ideal pulling strategy would be to blind everything when engaging the trash pull, synergizing with your white mage if there was one in the party (i.e. either waiting for stun resistance to kick in, or delaying their holies until blind wears off), and then popping another mit and using blood weapon to give you enough MP to burst the mobs to death

Man the more I see if the old Dark Knight the more I wish the job would try to bring back and rework its old abilites. Sole Survivor, Shadowskin Power slash, Scourge and Dark Arts being an actual mechanic. Sure parts of it weren’t perfect, but it stood out more then ‘here’s Warrior but with more oGcds’

I remember having fun with Blood Price. Doing massive pulls in dungeons and just getting so much resource to just spam AoEs. I know I was one of the dudes who didn't worry about minimizing Grit uptime, so I had fun with all those skills.

I cannot imagine we would get fights like DSR and TOP if tanks were still this complicated to play and deal optimal DPS with.

Dark dance alone was kind of bad, but enhanced would also increase evasion, and when paired with a DA enhanced dark passenger in dungeons it had the side effect of applying blind, so mob group accuracy was dropped low enough to proc parry like crazy or straight up dodge damage. Under rated combo at the time.

I miss you Heavensward Dark Knight

The fact he keeps referencing how you could blind and give yourself evasion would go against Blood price tells you he doesn't know what he's talking about. You just wouldn't use those at the same time. You would use Blood Price and Abyssal Drain spam during it and you were invincible in trash pulls. Just because the abilities don't synergize doesn't mean they're useless. It just means you use them separately. That's like saying Fight or Flight giving phys dmg up but your Requ spam phase doing magic damage doesn't make sense. It's just different parts of the utilization/rotation.

Still find it weird MrHappy uses wayback machine when the most reliable source for FFXIV info for the whole game is MrHappys own vids lol

Every time time you release one of I'm reminded of how much I miss every job having their own stun and 20% mit animation. I know it's a small thing, but I miss that.

I unlocked Dark Knight maybe a few months after Shadowbringers dropped so I never got to experience the older versions and while I won't say I want the old DRK back in terms of how it played/felt since idk what that was like, I watched a vid on all the removed animations and getting some of those back would be really nice. They just look so much cooler than what we have now. Seeing stuff like Power Slash, Dark Arts, and Dark Passenger's animations integrated into our new skills or maybe even some animation upgrades for our current skills would be real nice if we can never get the actual skills back. Like don't get me wrong, Shadowbringer is a cool Cecil reference but you can't even see the full effect of it most times (and Eventide's animation is better for a skill with that name imo)

Ah, the Job that lost the most going through the transitions. I miss Power Slash, Dark Arts, Scourge...I miss a lot of the old animations, actually. And with how squishy DRK's are pre-Blackest Night having Dark Artsed Dark Passenger for the Blind was indispensable. Dark Dance too!...as little as that actually helped with the conflicting buffs it got from Dark Art's.

Oh Dark Knight. You used to be my favorite tank. What has happened to you.

I only started playing DRK in Stormblood, and while I miss some aspects of it, I did not care for how many abilities had a DA boost to them. I really wish I could have played Heavensward DRK cause it seems better than what it became in Stormblood for the most part. However, I don't really mind current DRK too much, but I would like to see some overhauls in DT to maybe bridge the gap between HW and EW DRK, because DRK currently seems to be at its breaking point, where it has too many buttons to press during its opener & 2 minute burst to add new things

Still miss HW and SB era way more than ShB onwards. Raided with it the whole time including ultimates back then, then barely raided with it after the major revamp. So much of what has been kept over from those days are so watered down for accessibility. Love it in PvP tho!

Dark dance was not so bad actually, the describtion missed the part where it could be buffed by dark arts which increases dark knights EVASION rate (i forgot the specific numbers), makes drk very tanky with huge pulls in dungeons

That’s a weird spelling for Dark Knight in the thumbnail

funny thing about sole survivor: its still in the game, but only in pvp, when you plunge at someone, they get the dmg up buff and you'll get healed and mp back if that target is killed

I just got my DRK up to level 60 today and it's WILD to me that Stalwart Soul used to be an attack you learned at level 72! It's so nice having an AoE combo before level 50.

I want Sole Survivor back. Give it shorter cool down and a reduced heal effect so it can be spammed ever 30 seconds or so. Next, give a nerfed, self target version of TBN at 30 or 50 that then upgrades to the true version at 70. This'll give those lower levels a fun toy to mess around with. Lastly, for the love of god, remove the shared cool down between Abyssal and Carve or reduce the timer to 30 seconds. I want that "badass edge lord, culling the weak" vibe back in. I'd like to see it worked with more hard hitting damage and self sustainability skills upfront, that then evolve into party support versions and defensive skills on the back end. Let me start as the edge lord and then learn the power of friendship. At present, it just feels like the odd tank out without a real identity. PLD has magic, WAR has berserker fuy, GNB has mad combo skillz. I'd like DRK to feel more tactical and methodical, like someone who has a response for every enemy action, but can also resort to just whooping your ass. I also had an idea for TBN where it takes health instead of MP, to be a bit more reminiscent of OG dark knights. It takes, like, 20% of you max HP and when the shield breaks, you get 10% health back. If used on an ally, they get healed afterwards, but you don't. I played DRK through Heavensward, during 3.0 rules. Took GBN into Stormblood during 4.0, and then PLD in Shadowbringers during 5.0. I leveled WAR in the backround, since it was the first job I really clicked with, but didn't fit my character thematically at the time. After experiencing Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting WAR, and then going back to DRK, I found that I had to play DRK so much more conservatively. It was just...boring, slow and lacked technicality compared to the other tanks. Personally, I really like the idea of just upgrading old skills into new ones over just adding more skills. It saves on bloat and can build off of existing concepts instead of having to create brand new ones that then have to intermingle with every other mechanic at play.

If there is one thing i honestly DON'T miss about the pre-ShB tanks, is enmity management. Way too many tanks back in the day basically had the mindset of "Aggro is literally everyone else's problem except mine because i'm NOT stepping out of DPS stance for anything in the world", which made it so if you had a high aggro opener like WHM then you were just going to have a bad time.

Thanks a lot, i main DRK so i always wondered what's up with peeps saying hw had better drk

I really wish they would add 10% mitigation for DRK while standing inside Salted Earth, combine Oblation with TBN and some form of self-heal single target. Also some old cool animations.

People never understood. DA + DD combo'd with DA + DP was a god tuer mitigation tool.

In regards to WAR/DRK still being the go-to during Stormblood. It pretty quickly became WAR/PLD because Paladin was simply the better support tank with Passage and Veil for the party, Cover being free 20% mitigation (and shared knockback immunity through Tempered Will), some ranged capabilities through Holy Spirit, actually competitive dps on fights where they could keep high melee uptime and Shields not having a Block Strength/Rate cap yet so by the end of the expansion it provided a whopping ~35% mitigation for now both physical and magical damage. Dark Knight was still good after a few buffs but Paladin just provided so many safety nets on top of being easier to play.

I remember unlocking Dark Knight and getting it up to level 60 not too long before the Stormblood patch that let us take all 10 role actions. I'm sure part of it was my shitty computer that was playing at 10-15 FPS, my lack of experience with the game, my ADHD making it hard to remember which did what with Dark Arts, and just having trouble seeing patterns to higher DPS in the skills and abilities, but I *hated* Dark Arts. It was so difficult for me to double weave (and sometimes single weave) that I was constantly clipping my GCD. Which considering that two of the most useful things to use DA on were both oGCDs, meant I found actually using Dark Arts to be something of a detriment to my experience with the job, despite my absolute love of the lore and aesthetics of it (in fact it was the job that I wanted to play the most) The reason I enjoyed Edge and Flood more than Dark Arts is because they were just straight up damage + a buff to maintain. I could use them whenever I wanted to if I had the MP to spare, and I wouldn't end up wasting the MP on the wrong GCD or ability. I didn't actually get to make good use of the Blood Gauge before Shadowbringers came out, so I can't give my opinion on that change. It also didn't help that I didn't feel like Dark Arts was very interesting to begin with. Abyssal Drain was fantastic, but for everything else it was just "deal more damage". And yet, ironically, if I were able to somehow go back in time and replay Dark Knight as it was at that time, I have enough experience that I would be better at learning to use Dark Arts and double weaving and being able to pay attention to the battlefield all at the same time. And if I had done that... maybe my opinion on Dark Arts would've been much more positive. Ah well. Flood of Shadow lets me fire a beam of darkness out of my sword and that appeals to me.

end of stormblood drk was my jam. I loved it so much.

Now we just need AST retrospective

While i do somewhat miss dark arts, i think a lot of peopel forget how much people complained about it, saying the job was either too busy or too reliant on the skill

I unironically miss Heavensward DK. It just felt different and had flavour. With how Eukrasia functions, they really could just bring it back since it feels way better to use than Dark Arts. Unfortunately, I think someone on the dev team just really hates DK.

I always think its interesting how war took the lead on the “its just warrior”. In reality paladin did it first with requiscat, THEN warrior got the reworked inner release, then dark knight.

Here's a drinking game. Take a shot whenever he says Dark Arts. You won't survive.

I miss Sole Survivor. It died for Oblation.

out of all the tanks currently, dark knight is the most that needs a bit of shake up in its design imo

Best change ever were the Living Dead changes. I may have despised EW's story for reasons I will not go into in a streamer's comment section, but they did do *some* gameplay aspects right.

I would kill to get old DRK back ... At least it felt different

God, looking back and thinking about how all this stuff would be used in ShB Savage or Ults, let alone EW Ults, makes me cringe. Whenever people talk about old class design, PLEASE keep current boss design in mind because...Holy heck would this not work.

Just wanna say before I finish the video. God its a good reminder just how jank DRK used to be lmao. I remember running out of TP and MP frequently and whenever I needed to sprint for a mechanic oh boy. There goes all my TP. One thing that's been implemented into PvP but I would like to see in PvE is reword Sole Survivor. It got better in Stormblood near the end if I recall but now it's gone entirely. I think it could be added to plunge similar to how it is in PvP.

RIP Dark Arts and Darkside, my loves

I legit dropped DRK because I couldn't take another expansion of soul eater combo for another 2 years and all the stuff they took away and DIDN'T REPLACE. I really hope they fix it next expansion...

Thumbnail retrospective

The fun thing to remember about Living Dead is that in its original form you needed to be healed TO 100% HP, not EQUAL TO 100% HP, making it even more difficult to survive than its better remembered version.

Low blow procs were absolutely a thing in pve back in HW

what gun glam is that?

Look at how they massacred my boy...

RIP dark knight 2015 - 2019

Machinist?

I miss HW DRK, was my most played job. After it got changed into a Walmart-brand Warrior, it was the hardest and easiest switch of a main job I've ever done.

Eukrasia is basically Dark Arts, bring it back.

I miss the old summoner with dots

posting obligatory "lol the thumbnail says machinist" comment before it gets changed

Modern DRK and all of its CLEAR flaws are derived from such arbitrary removals....the class is a hollow husk of what it used to be.

Your background music was kind of offensively loud in this video, otherwise good nostalgia trip.

Only started playing in 6.0, but Dark Arts in StB just sounds awful. If it was to come back I would like to see there to be reasons to use the unbuffed version of the skills instead of just a required button press. That said, Darkside is what I would love to see back, that MP management sounds real interesting to me.

arm's length is still 2m today lol

As someone who played Dark Knight since 3.0, I definitely have some *strong* feelings about how the kit has changed and how it basically had half of its skills ripped out, given to the other tanks as role actions only for them to be abandoned come 6.0

I was wondering why you were taking so long to do Dark Knight and Astrologian. That makes sense that you forgot and thought you already did them.

so u telling me that dark knight was an actual dark knight back in the day and not a dark version of warrior

Wait I thought gunbreaker didn’t come out until Shadowbringers

No, low blow having a reset wasn't a PVP thing only

Rip Scourge

HW dark knight was the best iteration. I really hope they bring back stuff like sole survivor

I remember DRK on release. It felt awful to play. It was probably equal in complexity to SMN and MNK. I also remember that leveling DRK sucked because they didn't have access to their tank stance until later than the other tanks. Running Hauke Manor, I believe that's the lowest dungeon at the time for leveling, was really hard to tank. DRK was such a niche tank during HW days.

IT'S HEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!!!

When DRK was simplified it felt like the rug had been pulled from underneath the class. There are so many creative ways to give drk a class identity but that’s “too difficult”. I’d like the skill ceiling to be increased for all tanks and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing to ask for.

I love your content I truly do but that bg music is so loud, esp on the high notes, it distacts something awful and causes fatigue. Sorry for old man grump ears

Man I wish they would bring back the OG version of DRK….it was very rewarding to play I found

🤣🤣it’s a joke drks are often seen as machinist for playing the class my cousin even calls me that cause I main drk

Honestly, I miss dark arts and MP management in general. Eh, oh well.

I mained Dark Knight since day 1. I fail to understand why people want Dark Arts and Scourge back. I do want Dark to have more of its own identity, but that ain't it. Flood and edge are a better version of Dark arts as they A. Shortcut to doing the same thing (more damage), B. Give you the option between more AoE or Single target damage, C. Look cool as hell. Ive heard some people say that Dark Arts was making a choice. But the ONLY time you can really argue that was Carve and Spit, where you either did more damage or got MP back. Every other time was not a choice. DRKs were basically expected to always be Dark Arts-ing otherwise their parses would go way down. It wasn't interesting, it wasn't fun (ESSPECIALLY in stormblood), and it created a massive gap between casual and high level players, which isn't healthy. What you miss about old dark knight was the cool animations and the illusion of options, you aren't missing how awful it felt to play before shadowbringers. Also why do people want DoT upkeep on every job? I can't stand that, I already have other systems to engage with and DoTs are the least interesting form of management. I am much happier with the groundwork Dark is working with now, but as I said before I want to see them make Dark Knight more its own thing, and less like warrior, or at least, make warrior less like it. Either or.

This and summoner are easily the most butchered jobs

I like the EW iteration of DRK. Aside from the aesthetics, I enjoy the high APM in burst, build and spend nature, short cooldowns, and how TBN plays into all that. The reception of this job has been the wildest in this expansion as well. Pre-EW launch was full of doomposting. During the first few weeks, it was pure doomium performance-wise. Then more and more started to realize how cracked the job is in the EW encounter design. I think it went over a lot of people's heads that the other tanks got buffs to keep up with DRK, especially with damage. Despite the buffs, DRK is still favored in parsing groups and speed clears. Design-wise, everyone wants a different flavor of this job. Each expansion has been different from each other as well. ShB to EW was kinda the only exception here. EW mostly just ironed out some kinks of the job. In most communities I've been to, people just argue with you if you like the job design even if you admit the job can still be improved on.

Would love to get HW or SB Dark Knight back. Absolutely cannot stand the current one. It just feels like budget Warrior now.

The class is a mess now, it was way more fun to play in Heavensward and Stormblood.