Dark Knight Megathread

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Originally Posted by pikalovr

no actually i pretty much only use TBN for extra edges/not overcapping it's not needed at all for defensives which is why you want to push it as a party tool compared to a shield for yourself. also if you're just gonna refund the mana anyways if shield doesn't pop why not just make it free?

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You just answered your own question. It takes a would-be overcap that would have occurred outside of raid buffs and allows you to move the potency it affords into raid buffs.

But again, the question isn't whether or not it should be free. So long as any offensive proc is tied to it, it literally can't be; any potency it'd then make "free" would have already been siphoned from other parts of your kit, nerfed in turn. The question is whether you want it to (A) have a shorter cooldown and (B) offensive procs.

If no, then homogenize it, like all else. If yes, then retain its MP cost; that system is actually far less complicated than just about any other suggestion seen across this megathread attempting to "fix" it.

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this TBN would remain DPS neutral at worst (cause you're not eating the reources necessry to do what you would anyways.) and a DPs gain at best

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Again, that's not a thing unless you purposely ignore the surrounding kit. Imagine if Samurai's Third Eye was similarly buffed by 360% (DA's value relative to its own), to instead grant 40 or 50 Kenki per pop. Do you honestly expect that SAM wouldn't be tuned down as a result of that extra ~800 potency per minute?

If you waste the potential for dealing extra damage, that is not damage-neutral in practice. It's a damage loss. We can't exactly excuse blowing all our oGCDs late, outside of raid buffs, on the mere basis that they were free damage anyways.

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Originally Posted by BlackLion3173

Isn't 300 potency a tad bit too weak? Why not a 400 potency instead? Paladin's damaging spells have a 400 potency heal, and the only limit is their mana pool.

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EDIT: As RyuDragnier reminded me below, PLD's Divine Magic Mastery II trait also affects Confiteor and its follow up combo.

400 or even 500 would be fine. We don't have much of a flexibility advantage over PLD, after all. Though Req/Conf heals are wholly untimeable, thus largely going to waste, Bloodspiller heals wouldn't be much more flexible, but still significantly advantaged. At some 5.8 Bloodspillers per minute, 400 would put us at ~2320 free cppm, and 500 at ~2900, either of which seem reasonable.

(Original post below)
Because of the number of healing attacks done per minute -- or, more importantly, their total cure potency per minute (cppm).

PLD gets just under 4 heals per minute for a total of ~1600cppm. We'd get 5 or 6 Bloodspillers per minute, depending on the particular minute. That'd be 1500 to 1800cppm. Slap at least an Abyssal Drain's worth of cure potency, quite reasonably, onto Carve and Spit, and we'd be at 2000cppm. That's enough already for parity with all but the great and glorious outlier, who should probably be reined back slightly anyways.

I always felt that DRK should be more similar to Paladin than anything else, it is meant to be a magical tank after all.
Tacking a heal onto Bloodspiller would be nice but it would probably feel a bit dull, although I haven't got any better ideas rn.

Also, I don't think having Bloodspiller or CnS heal you would be enough, using Bloodspiller for healing would be a potential damage loss since you could be holding it for buffs, and CnS is used in your burst.
If you get hit hard, chances are you won't have CnS up and using a Bloodspiller to help heal would, again, be a loss of dps. Although, this would make mitigating during delirium much easier.

Ideally TBN should heal you like all the other big mitigations do on top of Bloodspiller, maybe a regen like Sheltron. I don't really like the whole dark arts bit, I'd rather get rid of it and make it free like the rest.
Obviously it'd need a longer cooldown too.
I'd like to try and come up with something snazzy for TBN, but DRK already has the most convoluted invuln (not that it's bad or anything).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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once again you never balance around the absolutely optimal TBN pops every x seconds gameplay. cause that's just unreasonable you will always have those moments when it doesn't proc you applied it to early or late, you have no way to pop it rn, etc... also yes it's an anti overcapper but thats basically ALL it is rn for DRK which is not what it should be used for as a SHIELD thats meant to be used to protect teammates and yourself.

also you really out here comparing a 4 second DR on a melee that's one of the top DPS on the game (also procs on any damage dealt to the SAM period mind you) to a 7 second shield on a tank that based on what we've seen so far that they want to keep as the DPS tank meaning having more DPS at the cost of optimizing when and where to use shields is not that far out of the ball park (some would argue thats what's happening with current TBN anyways look at holding DA procs for burst windows) and i've already explained multiple way to balance it without touching the potencies

you don't need to nerf potency just cause a skill is strong or can be used alot or right now SAMS shinten would be getting nerfed even more as thats all they really spam anymore so you're actually more so looking at for your example for SAM a 2k potency increase using third eye at 50 kenki gain every 15seconds. but instead of raising the reward for third eyes proper usage they lower the reward value but still make you lose nothing if it does be finnicky or if you for some reason cast it to late/early now imagine if for example it cost 10 kenki to use but gain 35 kenki on proc (it would still be better than TBN cause as i saisd it pops on any damage period done ot the SAM but) if for some reason you don't proc the third eye it's now a damage loss but if you proc it it's a straight DPS gain meanwhile now you get half a shinten with absolutely no downsides if it doesn't proc once again this is why it's a dmaage neutral skill with potential to be a damage gain

Maybe the cost could be removed from TBN and we get some big MP spender (more than 3k) that could be used in an opener to avoid overcapping, something like Reaper's Soulsow/Havest Moon could be interesting.
It'd work thematically too considering that DRK is meant to be a dark magic tank, I think it'd be nice to have some sort of big spell to use.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Because of the number of healing attacks done per minute -- or, more importantly, their total cure potency per minute (cppm).

PLD gets just under 4 heals per minute for a total of ~1600cppm. We'd get 5 or 6 Bloodspillers per minute, depending on the particular minute. That'd be 1500 to 1800cppm. Slap at least an Abyssal Drain's worth of cure potency, quite reasonably, onto Carve and Spit, and we'd be at 2000cppm. That's enough already for parity with all but the great and glorious outlier, who should probably be reined back slightly anyways.

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Wait, wouldn't that be 8 heals instead of 4 heals? Holy Spirit x 4, then Confiteor, then the 3 Blade combo. All of them heal. That's 8 attacks that have 400 cure potency attached to them a minute, isn't it? Meaning more like ~3200cppm, unless there's something about the PLD rotation I'm not aware of.

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Originally Posted by pikalovr

once again you never balance around the absolutely optimal TBN pops every x seconds gameplay.

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Nor did I say they would. But you do balance around some degree of TBNs popped per minute, which means any time you don't pop as many TBNs per minute as the devs determined as a reasonable balancing point, you underperform. Moreover, any time DRK would manage to pop more TBNs per minute than that balancing point, they'd perform as if overtuned.

Is that really a balancing lever you want? At present, the first TBN pop is a ~60-93 potency bonus, depending on one's raid buffs, because it shifts that MP back and into raid buffs. Because Trick no longer exists, any MP spent on TBN thereafter that would otherwise have been spent to avoid overcapping MP (so long as the DA stack is spent before being overriden) is DPS-neutral. Each that moves MP out of raid buffs is then a 60-93 potency loss, depending on one's raid buffs.

If you used TBN on CD right now, but popped each (and popping a TBN is not nearly so unlikely as you seem to make out), you could lose no more than 420-650 potency per two minutes. What you have been suggesting would instead cost you 460 every 15 seconds you fail to pop TBN, or 3680 potency per two minutes for not optimizing TBN. You'd trade a flexible defensive for a use-as-near-as-possible-to-on-CD offensive tool.

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Originally Posted by Nosaji_

Maybe the cost could be removed from TBN and we get some big MP spender (more than 3k) that could be used in an opener to avoid overcapping, something like Reaper's Soulsow/Havest Moon could be interesting.
It'd work thematically too considering that DRK is meant to be a dark magic tank, I think it'd be nice to have some sort of big spell to use.

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We worry about overcapping MP because it's MP that can't be spent in our raid buffs. Why would we purposely use a big MP spender, which to have reason exist must have more potency per MP than Edge of Shadow, outside of raid buffs?

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Wait, wouldn't that be 8 heals instead of 4 heals? Holy Spirit x 4, then Confiteor, then the 3 Blade combo. All of them heal. That's 8 attacks that have 400 cure potency attached to them a minute, isn't it? Meaning more like ~3200cppm, unless there's something about the PLD rotation I'm not aware of.

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Shoot, you're completely right. I had forgotten it's not just Holy Shock and Holy Circle. Yes, we'd want to double PLD's rotational free cure potency then (nearly 3200cp per minute), which would then give DRK reason for a 400-potency or even 500-potency BS to compete.

My apologies.

Regarding Bloodspiller/Quietus giving back HP and since we're back to the topic of DA again, they could make it where DA adds a lifesteal to those abilities. Just making it a more active choice rather than something that passively happens when you use your Blood abilities is more appealing to me.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

Regarding Bloodspiller/Quietus giving back HP and since we're back to the topic of DA again, they could make it where DA adds a lifesteal to those abilities. Just making it a more active choice rather than something that passively happens when you use your Blood abilities is more appealing to me.

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If that's coming at cost to the free Edge/Flood, then we'd have to actively avoid using Bloodspiller/Quietus until having used DA on Edge/Flood. Even some 600 potency of healing isn't going to be worth losing 460 ST or 160 AoE potency for.

So long as something is sufficiently bankable, its timing is an active choice (sometimes favoring raid buffs, sometimes favoring the reduced chance of a DF healer panicking and using a GCD heal). Locking the heals behind TBN, moreover, means making that healing far less responsive, something you may have to prep up to 8s in advance.