2107: Dark Knight Chronicles

Continuing to level Dark Knight in Final Fantasy XIV, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I wasn’t quite prepared for how much more powerful it feels than Paladin, but I’m really enjoying the overall feel of it a whole lot — much more than Warrior, which seemed enjoyable enough, but didn’t quite “click” with me for some reason.

I think the reason I like Dark Knight so much is that it appears to be a little less dependent on strict rotations to perform its job most effectively — or, rather, there’s more than one rotation to play around with. I particularly enjoy the fact that when playing Dark Knight it’s absolutely okay — even encouraged — to drop out of Grit, the main “tank stance”, in order to do some additional damage. This appears to be of particular benefit when fighting single-target bosses, since taking fewer overall hits means that Blood Weapon (increase attack speed, drain MP from enemy with every hit, only available when not in Grit) becomes a more efficient means of restoring MP than Blood Price (gain MP when taking damage).

Even though many of the abilities are somewhat similar in function to those found in Paladin, they somehow feel more satisfying to use. Dark Knight has an area-of-effect damage over time skill called Salted Earth, for example, that bathes an area in black and red lightning, whereas Paladin’s nearest equivalent is Circle of Scorn, which has its own little pyrotechnics display but somehow doesn’t feel quite as enjoyable to use. Dark Knight also has Scourge, which is a damage over time that can be immediately applied rather than only used at the end of a three-hit combo like Paladin’s Goring Blade. When everything lines up nicely and you can apply Scourge and Salted Earth to an enemy before letting rip with a non-Grit Dark Arts Souleater combo for a significant amount of damage, it’s a great deal of fun.

Learning my way around Dark Knight has been enjoyable, and it’s helping me rediscover my respect for Final Fantasy XIV’s combat system. People who come to FFXIV from more traditional, customisable role-playing games are sometimes a bit put out at the relative lack of personalisation FFXIV offers in terms of abilities — everyone gets the same abilities at the same levels, and the only real flexibility is in any cross-class skills you choose to use, but even here there are only certain ones that are particularly useful — but in practice it works enormously well, behaving, of all things, more like a fighting game than anything else. A slow-paced fighting game, admittedly, but a fighting game nonetheless.

Allow me to clarify. Modern fighting games demand that players learn specific button and directional inputs to perform various special moves. In order to get good at a fighting game, you need to develop a certain degree of muscle memory to be able to pull these moves off automatically. Once you’ve done that, you need to master the timing of these moves to chain them together into effective combos, and then you need to understand what the most appropriate situations to use these individual combos are.

Final Fantasy XIV is exactly the same, just at a fraction of the pace of your average fighting game. Positioning is important; responding to your enemy’s moves is important; using the right ability at the right time is important. Even muscle memory is important, particularly if you’re playing on controller — while you’re not doing Hadoken button inputs to throw a fireball at someone, you do need to be able to remember where you put all your most important abilities and be able to practically automatically perform combos with no gaps for the most efficient possible damage output. For example, on Dark Knight, my average combo runs something along the lines of LT+Y, RT+Y, LT+A, LT+RT+X, A, LT+RT+B, LT+X, RT+B, RT+X, RT+A, RT+LT+B, RT+LT+X, RT+LT+up, RT+LT+A. This pulls an enemy with Unmend, cements aggro with Unleash, kicks them in the bollocks to stun them for a few seconds, drops a Salted Earth on the ground, applies Scourge, blasts them and anything near them with Dark Passenger, does my three-hit aggro combo then my three-hit, Dark Arts-buffed Souleater combo for a nice chunk of damage. And this isn’t even getting into the situational weaving in of various defensive cooldowns to ensure that I don’t take too much damage, or other skills to support the battle.

That may all sound exceedingly complicated, but I’ve done it so many times now that it feels “automatic” to be able to perform these abilities in the order that seems to work most effectively at my level. I’m sure I’ll have to shake things up a bit as I get closer to 60 and challenging more difficult content, but for now it’s extremely satisfying to nimbly pull off these combos without breaking a sweat.

Onwards to 60 then… I should hit 54 tonight, all being well.