Dark Knight Megathread

I miss the 15 seconds of God Mode when Blood Price and Abyssal Drain were a thing.

When it comes to Yoshida he always says one thing and does another. He talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

Blood Price was MP when you took damage. Blood Weapon was when you dealt physical damage. Blood Price was absolutely the better ability for MP regen on trash.

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That depends on the expansion you were in.

Heavensward Blood Price worked by scaling with damage taken from what I got told, which is where your argument may have come from.

Stormblood Blood Price gave MP and Blood per individual hit, namely 1/20th of a Dark Arts worth of MP and 1 Blood per hit, with an additional 4 Blood per server tick (20 max unless extended). It was also locked behind Grit being up.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Stormblood Blood Price gave MP and Blood per individual hit, namely 1/20th of a Dark Arts worth of MP and 1 Blood per hit, with an additional 4 Blood per server tick (20 max unless extended). It was also locked behind Grit being up.

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I'm pretty sure that was still significantly better for DAAD trash spamming, barring a White Mage screwing you over with Holy, which was the full scenario being discussed. Blood Weapon, as I recall, was still only physical damage at the time so only Quietus would help there which still meant you weren't spamming DAAD as much.

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Originally Posted by Hatfright

RIP Plunge, I will miss you and the sound you made.
That dash doesn't even look like dash. We're teleporting now. Ugh.

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I did not have "DRK learns to wavedash" on my bingo card

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

I miss the 15 seconds of God Mode when Blood Price and Abyssal Drain were a thing.

When it comes to Yoshida he always says one thing and does another. He talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

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You know for a moment I thought it'd be a bit unbalanaced to bring back.

But who am I kidding, WAR has effective dungeon invuln every 25 seconds. Too bad DRK playing exactly like WAR doesn't mean it gets to do anything better than WAR.

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

I'm pretty sure that was still significantly better for DAAD trash spamming, barring a White Mage screwing you over with Holy, which was the full scenario being discussed. Blood Weapon, as I recall, was still only physical damage at the time so only Quietus would help there which still meant you weren't spamming DAAD as much.

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It's not like you needed all that DAAD with the Rampart, Shadow Wall and TBN sprinkled in. TBN also lead to more frequent Quietus usage, which in itself lead to more MP for more DA and AD usage. And you could also expend the 50 Blood to reimburse the TBN cost in MP and extend Bloodweapon.

You gained way more MP with Bloodweapon and TBN -> Quietus than you ever did with StB Bloodprice. Again, it only gave you 120mp per hit taken out of 2400 for Dark Arts and around 1000 for Abyssal Drain. To put this into perspective, you needed around 20 mobs actively hitting you to get 2400mp every 3s, while one use of Quietus or BW-Quietus would cap or overcap your MP with around 6-8 mobs (the largest pull was around 10 or more in Ghimlyt Dark), because each enemy hit by any physical hit gave 480mp and 3 Blood.

Auto attacks with Bloodweapon as well as Plunge, + Carve and Spit triggered the MP regen, which all also gave you plenty more Blood, meaning more Quietus, meaning more MP, meaning more DAAD and TBN. I.e., the resource cycle.

Ignoring all of this, also meant no damage penalty from Grit and the Bloodweapon Haste affected Spells (Abyssal Drain).

They should take the particle effects, and potency from Bloodspiller, and the animation, and mechanics of Plunge, and replace Bloodspiller with this hybrid GCD.

Man, DRK mitigation is so bad, it’s been such a long time since I’ve picked up the job and I’ve forgotten just how fragile it is the moment TBN is not a factor.
Like at least bring back Shadowskin, or Sole survivor, just anything. PLD got Bulwark back, and WAR is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to healing. Surely DRK can get something.

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Originally Posted by CasterSvarog

Man, DRK mitigation is so bad, it’s been such a long time since I’ve picked up the job and I’ve forgotten just how fragile it is the moment TBN is not a factor.
Like at least bring back Shadowskin, or Sole survivor, just anything. PLD got Bulwark back, and WAR is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to healing. Surely DRK can get something.

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DRK has Dark Mind. In the context of where it matters it is extremely strong (Raids essentially) as long as there are moments of impactful magic damage, due to the low cooldown.

The main thing I could see is Dark Mind getting an additional 10% physical mitigation to have closer functional parity to Camouflage and a rework to Abyssal Drain (decoupling it from Carve, making the first target worth 800 heal potency, 2nd 400 heal potency and rest 200p) to slightly assist with sustain without going overboard.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

DRK has Dark Mind. In the context of where it matters it is extremely strong (Raids essentially) as long as there are moments of impactful magic damage, due to the low cooldown.

The main thing I could see is Dark Mind getting an additional 10% physical mitigation to have closer functional parity to Camouflage and a rework to Abyssal Drain (decoupling it from Carve, making the first target worth 800 heal potency, 2nd 400 heal potency and rest 200p) to slightly assist with sustain without going overboard.

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I think this is really all DRK needs or add a life steal effect after CS or AD

what they should do tho is move Dark missionary to lvl 66 and just merge the two blackblood traits for lvl 62

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Originally Posted by Duskane

I think this is really all DRK needs or add a life steal effect after CS or AD

what they should do tho is move Dark missionary to lvl 66 and just merge the two blackblood traits for lvl 62

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Yeah pretty much. Also while I get the reasoning for Missionary (parity with other tanks) the Lv70 ultimates are to my knowledge and experience as DRK not too intense where not having it is a genuine detriment. DRK also makes dealing with busters significantly easier and can, unlike WAR, dish out targetted mitigation, but at this point the point of comparison is probably rather Gunbreaker which has... everything for some reason.

...of course if they readjust damage/HP values with a semi-rework this would definitely be a whole different story.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

DRK has Dark Mind. In the context of where it matters it is extremely strong (Raids essentially) as long as there are moments of impactful magic damage, due to the low cooldown.

The main thing I could see is Dark Mind getting an additional 10% physical mitigation to have closer functional parity to Camouflage and a rework to Abyssal Drain (decoupling it from Carve, making the first target worth 800 heal potency, 2nd 400 heal potency and rest 200p) to slightly assist with sustain without going overboard.

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I wouldn’t mind something that at all, when Dark Mind is good it’s really good, but in so many situations (like 90% of dungeons)! it’s a dead button because everyone’s gone to the school of the right hook.
Plus it calls back to older abilities like Dark dance

Personally I'd like it a lot if Dark Mind and Dark Missionary weren't dead in so much content

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Personally I'd like it a lot if Dark Mind and Dark Missionary weren't dead in so much content

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Which is partially due to how stale and formulaic the "core content" design is. You could have more magic damage and a higher frequency of it in all content to make both of them actually useful, but every trash pack in every dungeon is just 6 dudes auto attacking you and maybe once in a full moon casting a magic AoE that you just dodge out of.

Conditional mitigation has no gameplay value unless it is connected to a player decision (i.e. giving the player the chance to swap from physical only to magic only based off of an animation tell on a tank buster). In its current form it just ends up being a limitation that arbitrarily puts DRK at a mitigation disadvantage at the whims of the fight designers.

I'm curious about whether the move to a 15 second Reprisal/Feint/Addle represents a shift in raid design that could benefit Dark Missionary/Heart of Light's longer durations, but I'm not holding my breath without direct nerfs to both Shake it Off and Divine Veil. I think they might have their ducks in a row by the time that the 8.x reworks roll around and the next tank job is ready to be released, but my gut feeling is that it's probably safer to give DRK a hard pass for Dawntrail.

Tank design is far too unbalanced in favor of WAR right now, and I haven't seen much to suggest that this is going to change anytime soon.

Anyone else seen the videos from the media tour, Jesus christ have them made everything 100x worse.

DRK is more of the same, atleast they did not make it worse like BLM

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Originally Posted by Laerune

DRK is more of the same, atleast they did not make it worse like BLM

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They've removed plunge and replaced it with nothing, so our core rotations now missing about 15% of its DPS.
For context, a burst on Drk looks like this:
Delirium>Bloodspiller>Edge of Shadow>Plunge>Bloodspiller>Plunge> Shadowbringer> Bloodspiller>C&S>Shadowbringer, back to 1,2,3 weaponskill
So now we lose 2 plunges, meaning we need to fill it with edge of shadows, but they cost 3k MP each which means you can't use 3 of them and then have any kind of window for TBN as you need to ensure you have 3k for TBN

Also, all the new animations are going to be locked behind being level 96, so guess what, 90% of the game you're spamming the same crap currently there but with an inferior kit to what we currently have. At this point just delete the class from the game, it would be better than what SE are doing to it.

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Originally Posted by Malthir

They've removed plunge and replaced it with nothing, so our core rotations now missing about 15% of its DPS.
For context, a burst on Drk looks like this:
Delirium>Bloodspiller>Edge of Shadow>Plunge>Bloodspiller>Plunge> Shadowbringer> Bloodspiller>C&S>Shadowbringer, back to 1,2,3 weaponskill
So now we lose 2 plunges, meaning we need to fill it with edge of shadows, but they cost 3k MP each which means you can't use 3 of them and then have any kind of window for TBN as you need to ensure you have 3k for TBN

Also, all the new animations are going to be locked behind being level 96, so guess what, 90% of the game you're spamming the same crap currently there but with an inferior kit to what we currently have. At this point just delete the class from the game, it would be better than what SE are doing to it.

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Living Shadow now does not cost Blood so you just replace both plunges in the opener with Living Shadow and Deesteem.
My slight concern is that Blood Weapon is now 3 stacks only, as such how much MP total it restores.

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Originally Posted by Flay_wind

Living Shadow now does not cost Blood so you just replace both plunges in the opener with Living Shadow and Deesteem.
My slight concern is that Blood Weapon is now 3 stacks only, as such how much MP total it restores.

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Plunge acted as a filler between weaponskills as an OGCD, we already pressed LS during our core rotation, so we're now left with a big gap in rotation in between weaponskills

I won't miss Plunge.
It should've been a mobility tool from the start.

You'll still use 3~4 Edge of Shadow, C&S, Salted Earth and shadowbringers in 2 mins. It's not like your oGCD windows are now suddenly empty.

I will miss it
Not as a damaging ability, but the animation itself reminding me of Guts and Artorias mainly, the "feeling" of a dark knight

But yeah i agree, as a mobility tool it would have been better.
(and please if the devs insist on replacing it with this weird teleport/instant step thing, put in a black mist when you teleport instead of those weird floating orbs, at least do it so the ability make sense with the class fantasy)

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Conditional mitigation has no gameplay value unless it is connected to a player decision (i.e. giving the player the chance to swap from physical only to magic only based off of an animation tell on a tank buster). In its current form it just ends up being a limitation that arbitrarily puts DRK at a mitigation disadvantage at the whims of the fight designers.

I'm curious about whether the move to a 15 second Reprisal/Feint/Addle represents a shift in raid design that could benefit Dark Missionary/Heart of Light's longer durations, but I'm not holding my breath without direct nerfs to both Shake it Off and Divine Veil. I think they might have their ducks in a row by the time that the 8.x reworks roll around and the next tank job is ready to be released, but my gut feeling is that it's probably safer to give DRK a hard pass for Dawntrail.

Tank design is far too unbalanced in favor of WAR right now, and I haven't seen much to suggest that this is going to change anytime soon.

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This is why I'd love something like a tank that could Augment or shared cooldowns with abilities, Such as Dark mind, could be Augmented from magic to physical... this could be made important if there was more variance on different damage types.

Another example is to change a Mitigation into a Healing effect... Such as Warrior having to choose between Mitigation or healing, I really dislike how EW changed that aspect about warrior. I think this is core to balancing warriors sustain, It has to be a choice, Instead of just getting both effects with already absurdly strong healing effects equilibrium... but it looks like they're sinking more sustain onto its cooldowns (which makes no sense because it's sustain is already bar none the best in the game)

Right now The mitigations are just going to be absurd... we have so much defensives already and the tank passive is staying so I doubt we're going to have more importance on timing those mitigations. PLD's in paticular looks very... strong but whats the point when we're all gonna use it to kitchen sink in hard content, in easier content it's barely going to even matter.

Plunge already literally was a mobility tool, though? That's the use case from which it could produce the most damage -- by saving uptime that would otherwise be lost.

???

Well the embargo lifted and damn these sure are changes, its about as bare minimum as you could expect.

Biggest loss is actually the loss of 1200 MP from the merged BW/Delirium, they did not bother to offset the mp generation so have fun with that I guess. I'm sure TBN being less available wont have any lasting balance impacts on 70-90 content.
But hey we got an Excog heal

Current Blood Weapon grants 5 stacks each restoring 600 MP so a total of 3000 MP. Media tour Blood Weapon is the same but with only 3 stacks, perhaps a good idea would be to have it generate 1000 MP per hit so we reach the same total amount of MP?
DRK is somewhat fun because of the oGCD spam and reducing Blood Weapon to just 1800 MP instead of 3000 MP makes you lose out on Edges across fights.

I wanted to ask (genuinely, i want to be sure)
Does an excog that is meant to be activated at 50% of your life and a shield that is meant to prevent your life to go down at all/as much as possible syngergize well?

(Maybe this question is stupid and those defensive abilities were never meant to be used together, etc...but i would rather ask this to dark knight players, and even many of those who have raided and did ultimates for some, in order to be sure what i "feared" was unfounded, even if the question was unecessary)
(Also sorry in advance for my bad english in case of mistakes)

edit: just looked a bit better and saw the excog activated at the end of the duration so it's good then right?

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Originally Posted by Kaixern

I wanted to ask (genuinely, i want to be sure)
Does an excog that is meant to be activated at 50% of your life and a shield that is meant to prevent your life to go down at all/as much as possible syngergize well?

(Maybe this question is stupid and those defensive abilities were never meant to be used together, etc...but i would rather ask this to dark knight players, and even many of those who have raided and did ultimates for some, in order to be sure what i "feared" was unfounded, even if the question was unecessary)
(Also sorry in advance for my bad english in case of mistakes)

edit: just looked a bit better and saw the excog activated at the end of the duration so it's good then right?

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yeah it just procs at 50% or less HP or when time is out
so excog or heart of corundum

Heal potency is pretty stacked on it tho 1200 same as equilibrium, name goes hard too Shadowed Vigil

....And i assume they won't increase damage taken from tanks so healers will get even more bored/depressed by the gameplay
(as always i hope to be proven wrong)

all I wanna say is, I hate how the new dash skill animation looks

Plunge looks epic when we are leaping towards the enemy with our swords raised up

Meanwhile the new dash looks dumb and takes away the "power" feel that is tied to a fighter class using a melee weapon

Please think about keeping the plunge animation instead of a "teleport" or maybe they can make the plunge transform into teleport when only living shadow is active for whatever duration

Why are they so adamant on linking Dark Knight's identity to that crappy shadow clone??

I'm not wasting my time this go around, not making the same mistake I made the last two media tours.

The fact that Dark Knight has experienced no meaningful progression in it's job gameplay since the rework in Shadowbringers is disappointing. I am literally playing the same, dumbed down job for longer than actual good versions of DRK have existed. It'll be...probably late 2027 in 8.0 to get another chance for the job to mature. 7.0 isn't even out and I'm already writing off the entire expansion in terms of job engagement.

Everyone who was telling me that reworking DRK was a good idea so they had a foundation to build on in future expansions, I was right to doubt you, and the development team back then.

It's incredible to me that I can expect nothing from this developer team in job design, and still walk away shaking my head.

I will play launch, because my friends are, provide feedback once I have my hands on it, and then I'm probably done.

And don't tell me, it's just the media tour build, things will change at launch. It won't, I'm not stupid.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Well the embargo lifted and damn these sure are changes, its about as bare minimum as you could expect.

Biggest loss is actually the loss of 1200 MP from the merged BW/Delirium, they did not bother to offset the mp generation so have fun with that I guess. I'm sure TBN being less available wont have any lasting balance impacts on 70-90 content.
But hey we got an Excog heal

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Ehh, like it is annoying it's not really that much lost MP when you really think about it. It's 3000 MP lost every 2.5 mins, or 1200 MP/min. The bulk of our MP was coming from Siphon strike which hasn't changed.
Only thing that will really change in 70-90 content is that you may have to hold a single edge where you previously didn't. Even then, there's not many fights/phases in the game anyway where you're TBNing that much in a short period of time that 1200 MP per minute is going to make or break TBN usage. Like double dragons, TOP p3/6 are really the biggest places in my own recollection where you're going to want to be more vigilant on MP consumption than you were before.

Not just an excog heal though, the rampart +15% healing isn't anything to scoff at either. Sure the other tanks get it too, but for like a job like WAR/PLD they were already self-healing more than the enemies could damage them so unless DT dungeon damage massive shoots up, it was already redundant for them anyway and thus has a more prominent effect on DRK's survival in dungeons than theirs.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

Ehh, like it is annoying it's not really that much lost MP when you really think about it. It's 3000 MP lost every 2.5 mins, or 1200 MP/min. The bulk of our MP was coming from Siphon strike which hasn't changed.
Only thing that will really change in 70-90 content is that you may have to hold a single edge where you previously didn't. Even then, there's not many fights/phases in the game anyway where you're TBNing that much in a short period of time that 1200 MP per minute is going to make or break TBN usage. Like double dragons, TOP p3/6 are really the biggest places in my own recollection where you're going to want to be more vigilant on MP consumption than you were before.

Not just an excog heal though, the rampart +15% healing isn't anything to scoff at either. Sure the other tanks get it too, but for like a job like WAR/PLD they were already self-healing more than the enemies could damage them so unless DT dungeon damage massive shoots up, it was already redundant for them anyway and thus has a more prominent effect on DRK's survival in dungeons than theirs.

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Apart from the loss of 1 edge every 2 which added up is a massive loss in dps, and considering the job got gutted because "We do the highest damage so we can't have other things" Then they buffed all other tanks dps and have just nerfed ours, It's a complete slap in the face to all Drk players. I wish the whole dev team gets stuck in crunch for eternity in repayment for this expac.

Not really shocked, not really surprised, just about what i expected. Nothing substantial and just annoyed disappointment....

This doesn't really fix any of the problems people have with Dark Knight, well, maybe a little bit regarding sustain. But aside from that, these changes don't really fix or provide meaningful change to the job's lack of identity and lack of meaningful resource management.

At least if nothing else there's not another 'Enhanced Unmend'-worthy change of so dull it comes across as a joke or insult.

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Originally Posted by Kazamaiya

At least if nothing else there's not another 'Enhanced Unmend'-worthy change of so dull it comes across as a joke or insult.

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Remember, this is only the media tour, there can still be changes.
For better, and (most of the time) for the worse....

(i repeat myself i know, but please devs prove me wrong)

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Originally Posted by Kaixern

Remember, this is only the media tour, there can still be changes.

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True enough, I guess i still got some hope that it won't get any worse from Media Tour to Release.

Well if you want to be technical enhanced unmend did get strictly worse by the change to plunge.

In what world are we using gap closers so frequently for the purpose of gap closing where a trait like this needs to exist at all now

Dark knight somehow manages to be even more braindead in DT than Warrior.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

Dark knight somehow manages to be even more braindead in DT than Warrior.

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I wouldn't go that far at least dark knight's barrier costs mp.