Example Adjustments
A new ability that sacrifices TP gain to make attacks more powerful.
A new ability that raises the amount of damage the dark knight takes, but also raises the amount of magic and elemental weapon skill damage it deals.
The "price" that we pay is far too expensive for the mediocre results we can achieve.
Terrible ideas SE.
*Revamped the original OP from only whining to what I have carefully considered,via the DRK job forum, and myself.* 7/30/2011
SE please consider the following:
DRK requires more survivability "Making us take more damage," leaves many of us scratching our heads, I am not sure we have any more to sacrifice in the defense department.
However TP is certainly not what we should be sacrificing.
Bolster our job with something else to provide a buffer between us and death, when we are fulfilling our role as a "premier damage dealer"!
Blood Weapon
Square Enix, please make Blood Weapon a normal job ability for Dark Knight not a two-hour.
Give us a real two-hour. (Chainspell and Hundred Fists I'm looking at you.)
Dark Knight being praised for using a club (WHM weapon) or a dagger (Defnitley not a DRK weapon) is very silly, trite, stupid, boring, and retarded.
As such please balance Blood-weapon in the following way:
Blood Weapon:
Duration: 60s (1 Minute)
Recast: 480s (8 Minutes)
Heals the Dark Knight for the damage inflicted through melee swings, and physical Weapon Skills.
Effective only with a two handed weapon equipped.
Meaning that if you are using a Sword, Dagger, Club, Axe the Job ability will be 100% useless and provide no benefit whatsoever.
Souleater
Souleater currently has gotten an upgrade that I find most favorable, logical and most importantly useful. The only request I can see that makes any sense is that we get at least one more tier of Stalwart Soul nativley.
Lv. 95DRK Stalwart Soul V - Reduces HP consumption from souleater by 60%
Alternatively in addition to another tier of Stalwart soul allow us to merit the potency of souleater.
1 Merit: +2% additional damage to souleater that is not taken from HP.
2 Merits: +4% additional damage to souleater that is not taken from HP.
3 Merits: +6% additional damage to souleater that is not taken from HP.
4 Merits: +8% additional damage to souleater that is not taken from HP.
5 Merits: +9% additional damage to souleater that is not taken from HP.
Last Resort
Total win.
Dark Seal
Make this Job Ability maximize the magical accuracy of all spells of the darkness element and Dark magic spells: Sleep, Sleep II etc.
It would be nice to have some better utility from this skill.
The only reason its merited is because Diabolic Eye and Muted soul are garbage not even fit for blowing a commoner's nose.
Diabolic Eye
This Job Ability reduces our Maximum HP by 15% for a measly 20 accuracy, there are many ways to get accuracy and not be incompetent by sacrificing your HP.
You keep wanting us to sacrifice something, well MP is something we have in general abundance! So let's use that!
Diabolic Eye:
"The Dark Knight's killing intent allows them to percieve their enemies weaknesses, and the most effective and brutal ways to exploit them. Putting strain on the Dark Knight's mind lowering their total effective amount of MP."
Duration - 2minutes
Recast Fully Merited - 5 minutes
-15% Max MP for all Tiers.
Diabolic Eye I: -15% Max MP and + 2% physical and magical accuracy and damage.
Diabolic Eye II: -15% Max MP and +4% physical and magical accuracy and damage.
Diabolic Eye III: -15% Max MP and +6% physical and magical accuracy and damage.
Diabolic Eye IV: -15% Max MP and +8% physical and magical accuracy and damage.
Diabolic Eye V: -15% Max MP and +10%physical and magical accuracy and damage.
I could buy for a few seconds that for people in terrible gear or who put no effort into their job, the original Job Ability made sense at one point in time back in the day.
However this person is not me, and if it is you, you should feel bad.
With DRK in its current state, this job trait makes zero sense. Please SE do a combination of the following:
Increase Dark Knight's parrying rating to at least B+.
Give Dark Knight a Job Ability that works along the same lines of Perfect Counter or Third Eye that allows the Dark Knight to parry the next 1-3 attacks directed at them on command.
Weapon Bash:
Weapon Bash sorely needs to be looked at. I'm very certain that if I walk over and bash my Caladbolg into your face, it is going to hurt just as much if not more than any other hard object.
Also, why does Samurai have a meritable Weapon Bash that also inflicts Plague.
Does anyone not notice that this makes absolutely zero sense. And is a shining example of Samurai SE favoritism? It makes no sense thematically at all, if anything DRK should have gotten plague on its weapon bash via an update a long time ago.
That was then this is now, simply give it to us too and I don't see any of us making a fuss about it.
Weapon Bash needs some the following adjustments:
+ Damage to target based on the damage rating of your weapon or weapon bash needs to do as much damage as a normal swing, with the chance to crit.
- Weapon Bash and Blade Bash should not be allowed to multi-strike under any circumstance.
+ Dark Knights deserve to have Plague on their weapon bash .
+ Blade Bash and Weapon Bash should both give the user the TP return.
Magic:
SE is resolute Dark Knight becoming more magical, I see that their decision cannot be swayed. Let's try to make it bearable.
Notes on the current state of Dark Knight casting:
Absorb Spells: Need to not decay, there are a lot of them and they don't last very long. This needs to be adjusted by either keeping the duration at its current and removing decay, or slowing the rate of decay/increasing potency.
Dark Knight is in desperate need of gaining some magical celerity if you will. Our spells take too long to cool down, and too long to cast. Absorbs decay far too quickly, and don't even get us started bout the inefficiency of elemental magic.
A combination of any of the following would be appreciated, here are some ideas:
Dark Celerity - Dark Magic casting times and recast times are reduced, stackable with all other forms of Fast Cast and Dark Arts.
Lv. 60 - 15% Casting time and recast time reduction.
Lv. 95 - 20% Casting time and recast reduction
Magical Attack Bonus - We need at least Tier I, with all this talk about Elemental Magic and Elemental Weapon Skills I am still wondering why we did not have this with the advent of Occult Acumen itself.
Avarice - A straight % increase to the potency and effect of Dark Magic, mainly Drain and Aspir and Dread Spikes.
Lv. 45 - +5% Potency to Drain and Aspir and Dread Spikes.
Lv. 65 - +10% Potency to Drain and Aspir and Dread Spikes.
Lv. 85 - +15% Potency to Drain and Aspir and Dread Spikes.
Black Mages have Elemental Celerity, we are sort of cousins or whatever. (Since you keep trying to push us in that direction perhaps you wish to give us tier 1 of that. . . this all seems incredibly backward. . .)
NEW DARK MAGIC:
Drain/Aspir III
Bio III (SE said they are revamping merits, so I'm hopeful that will fix many problems like this.)
Dispel: One of the few Darkness based enfeebling debuffs, DRK has native Enfeebling
Magic and nativley has Sleep/II, Poison/II, and Bind.
Absorb-ENH:Absorbs a Beneficial effect from the target to the Dark Knight. Blue Mage can do this, why can't we. Some DRK mobs can do this by simply swinging. Seeing as how there is a weapon in the game that can do this simply through melee (Sagasinger), this update is long overdo.
Absorb-ATK: Absorbs a straight percentage of the target's attack (with a cap) and bestows it upon the Dark Knight, stackable with all other forms of attack down.
Absorb-DEF:Absorbs a straight percentage of the target's defense (with a cap) and bestows it upon the Dark Knight, stackable with all other forms of attack down.
Absorb-SPD:Haste in the form of Dark magic that also slows down the afflicted, stacking with all other forms of slow. Reducing their attack speed and recast timers.
+15% "Haste" to DRK and -15% to the afflicted.
As far as this stacking with Haste itself, I am not too sure about that. It should be effective in its enfeebling aspect for sure however I see it stacking with other forms of magical haste as overpowered.
Plague: Reduces enemy tp and mp, pretty logical and standard stuff here folks. Blue Mage also has Plague, thematically this makes little sense for us to not possess it.
Terror: Again I don't see this as a stretch.
Stun II: Everyone gets stun, we are the first to get Stun, I think a new stun with noticable potency would be good.
Darkness: Analogous to Holy instant cast, instant damage good synergy with occult
acumen.