Dark Knight Megathread

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

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It's just the first thing I come back to when I try to think of what can be done with tanking as an actual role, since we already had it in the past and was something I actually liked. My obvious bias is obvious.

That said, I really am trying to wrap my head around what actually can be done given the current iteration, and I can't help but feel like the answer directly related to how the tank jobs are designed themselves.

I've thought of debuffs coming from your aoe/ST, buffs to yourself from them, etc. Which essentially is just storms eye or what flash/Dark Passenger were. This also would imply bosses would be allowed to have these debuffs, which is incredibly unlikely I imagine.

Say...

DRK:
Salted Earth gets its pvp variant. It pulls mobs to you
Dark Passenger comes back as an upgrade to Flood of Shadow when TBN pops. Edge gets an ability that does the same. They both apply blind and it also applies to bosses.

WAR:
Storm's Eye remains the same
Orogeny/Upheavel increase the potency of your next fell cleave/Decimate by X and gives a vulnerability debuff to the mob(s) hit by them.

Those are just examples though, and are more interactive and passives we really don't need to pay attention to, as we would be using them anyway. Which solves almost nothing.

Draw-in and knockback effects on jobs were fairly common on jobs prior to Stormblood. They were removed because bosses need to be stationary to perform actions and large forced movements can cancel even uninterruptable actions.

If you want tanking to be more interesting, you just need to have tanks position bosses. On any fight where you don't do this melee is significantly more fun.

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

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Additions:
-> Scourge: [ Weapon Skill ] Deal damage with a potency of 700. 1 minute CD, reduced by SkS.
-> Sole Survivor: [ Ability ] Marks target and all nearby enemies with "Another Victim" debuff. 120 sec CD.
"Another victim" : Dealing damage to this unit will heal the DRK who applied this mark for a potency of 200 per attack. 15 second duration. Attacks hitting multiple enemies do not multiply the effect.
-> Enhanced Living Shadow III: [ Passive ] Upgrades your simulacrum to merge with you, increasing the potency of all your attacks by 350 for 20 seconds. ( insert Reaper Enshroud kind of effect but for Dark Knight )
-> Enhanced Dark Arts: [ Passive ] Dark Arts adds a healing effect to Flood or Edge of Shadow.

Changes to existing abilities:
-> Dark Mind upgrades into Oblation. Dark Mind grants 10% magical, 10% damage reduction. Oblation increases the magical damage reduction to 20%, works on 2 charges, 45 sec CD / charge.
-> Dark Missionary moved to lvl 70.
-> Bloodspiller combos into another 2 new attacks, Bloodspiller consumes 25 blood, and the 2 new attacks 25 blood each. Delirium allows the execution of this combo for free.

Additions:
GCD attack, uses blood but has a long cooldown - essentially upheaval from before it was cooldown only, but on the gcd so it's not yet more carpal tunnel
Something that consumes darkside
Something to generate 15 or 25 blood so it doesn't feel like it's a gauge that goes to 10.

Other changes:
Removal of living shadow
Removal of stalwart soul, abyssal drain being given a sensible cooldown and mp cost. Aoe now revolves around mp generation to fuel abyssal drain's sustain.

What I expect:
Living shadow potency buff
Yet another oGCD to fit under burst
Enhanced plunge reducing the cooldown on provoke by 5s
A brand new duration based buff that makes all spells free for the duration requiring weird sps melds to make the most of.

Honestly anything to make it feel more coherent and less like it's throwing the kitchen sink every other minute and comatose the rest of the time.

I'd be impressed if they could add new abilities without a bunch of upgrades and buttons that transform into other buttons, and that would probably still bloat the already bloated opener unless they focus on GCDs. I'm gonna tangent to that particular point, I think they could alleviate a bit in a few ways

- Take damage off Plunge
- Make CnS a GCD
- Remove Salt and Darkness, I honestly can't imagine anyone would miss it

I like having a ton of oGCDs for DRK, I think it's a cool part of its playstyle, but there's a point where it's too much unless they find a way to more evenly spread out DRK's APM rather than having it all happen in a 15-second period every two minutes.

No idea as far as new abilities go for 7.0, I imagine they'll play it pretty safe.

now that goring blade is no longer a combo finisher, WAR is literally the only tank with a branching combo, and this gives me a tiny bit of hopium that they are planning to give DRK another combo finisher so the amount of tanks with branching combos and only a basic 1-2-3 combo is even.

I don't think having a second combo finisher gonna fix everything wrong with current DRK's playstyle, but is still better than getting another random oGCD to press every 2 mins that doesn't interact with the rest of the kit whatsoever.

but knowing SE, they are probably just planning to remove Storm's eye from WAR :,)

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Originally Posted by Zairava

1) The main reason why the enmity generation would be nerfed so hard is because we currently generate way more than we know what to do with currently.

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I agree that, if you want to make anything approaching gameplay out of Enmity, the current Enmity modifiers are excessive, but you still need to account for initial enmity grab and for AoE. That's why we originally had further enmity modifiers on Unleash (while spammable GCD Abyssal Drain did not), Flash (Total Eclipse did not), Overpower, etc., alongside Shield Lob, Unmend, and Tomahawk. If you want to put added stress on Tank Enmity, you'd also need to put back in those modifiers.

Or, put more simply, you'd be better off investing little to no Enmity above what is proportionate to potency dealt into finishers, because you'd no longer have the tank stance affect the GCDs prior to those finishers to, albeit at DPS-cost, cover those low-Enmity GCDs.

In that regard, the old tank stances would appear to me to work much better than what you suggest here, but at minimum, you'd need to push the enmity budget nearer to opening GCDs, with a Damage Finisher likely doing no greater enmity than an opener and a Enmity finisher still doing only, say, 2x an opener, as not to only ever secure Enmity in the 3rd GCD (and only on one target, at that). As such, the practical constraints would then make those differences in Enmity between the Enmity Finisher and the Damage Finisher seem rather lackluster.

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2) I would like to make the finishers separate, but it's more to avoid not using the finisher in itself in turn for more dps.

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Right, but you'd be doing that anyways, just via a more convoluted route (hitting 1-2-[DPS-Stance]3[Stance-Off] instead of 1-2-4 for one's alternative combo).

Put a CD on the DPS stance and it becomes 123-12[S]3, then turning the stance off as soon as possible, and activating it again just before the next Finisher. But I still don't really see the gameplay value there.

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3) The overarching goal of it is for something for us to pay attention to and monitor, especially in downtime between bursts. To keep the current low skill floor and make the skill ceiling higher.

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Okay, but...

A. You don't actually need to pay attention to it until nearing the end of the fight, so long as you're not being absurdly excessive in Enmity generated. Any extra Enmity from raid buffs, since that Enmity allows for more Damage Finishers (instead of Enmity Finishers) is just going to turn equally into damage as well, so long as enough TTK remains. The only complexity there is that you simply only ever swap to tank stance just before the finisher, and try never to swap in before unloading resources (Gnashing Fang, oGCDs, Bloodspillers, Conf combo, etc.), because it punishes you on all GCDs while only rewarding you on a single action.

B. Is that margining really... satisfying? If there's one thing most players have been least annoyed to lose (and the greatest number of players happy to lose), it's been any pure maintenance mechanics. Thus far your system is effectively just an extra combo finisher, but it appears to be used in among the least nuance-capable and knowledge-rewarding ways possible. Old Storm's Eye would add a rhythmic anchor, but this one --worse even than stacking up to twice-- would stack infinitely. A DoT combo like old Goring Blade, for instance, at least adds a rhythmic anchor and varies its use over target count (at least til 3+), but this instead faces only anti-synergy, especially as DPS start using AoEs instead. Perhaps consider what else that extra GCD or finisher option might be used for instead, and what gameplay those alternatives could provide?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

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• Scourge on either a 30 or 60s CD (30s preferably).
• Sole Survivor: instead of upon the enemy dying though, just make it so it gives us some hp equal to a 200/300 potency heal upon hitting them.
• Living Shadow getting a passive that makes it merge with you upon activation, increasing damage dealt by 10% or so.

As for changes to existing ones:

• Dark Mind turning into Oblation. Fusing the magical and overall damage mit, adjusting as needed.
• Remove Salt and Darkness.
• Reduce Shadowbringer to one use, remaining on a 60s cd.
• Give Bloodspiller combo actions upon using Delirium.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

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If we assume there are no significant changes to overall combat system, what I would like is

Additions -
Return of Sole Survivor - I like the idea of keeping old heal/MP restore on kill, but changing the persistent effect from heal at the end of the duration, to some sort of over time effect. Whether that's heal on hit, or simply heal over time as long as the debuff is active.
Some sort of additional spender for blood - probably on CD (30s?), cost 25 Blood?
Low level variant of TBN

Changes -
Salted Earth with 45s CD, Salt and Darkness restores 600 MP and 25 Blood < traited at 90+
Merge Oblation into TBN at 82, increase TBN duration to 10 or 12s, TBN gets Oblation VFX/SFX
CnS becomes a GCD with 60s CD, restores 1500 MP and 25 Blood < resources restore is a trait
Abyssal Drain gets 510 single target potency with 60% AoE falloff, 600-800 cure potency on first target and 200 for any targets beyond it
For the sake of limiting number of active buttons, Bloodspiller and Quietus become one button with AoE falloff and new animation
Obviously potencies are rebalanced as necessary.

Net effect should be no additional oGCDs in 2min windows, but the monotony of the downtime should be broken up by the new blood spender, Salted Earth, and extra resources from S&D and CnS.

Mind, this is coming from the perspective of someone who mostly enjoys the current gameplay, just thinking downtime could use extra oompf

The cure potency for Living Dead should be buffed slightly. Just enough so that a Dark Knight can heal themselves, without receiving healing from other party members, within 3 GCDs on a single target. Normally a Dark Knight heals themselves with just 4 GCDs under Living Dead. However, if their GCD is slow(such as a 2.5 GCD or near that) and Walking Dead procs right after their GCD cooldown starts, the bad timing can make it so they can only get 3 GCDs under Walking Dead. If all 3 of those GCDs don't critical hit and roll low for variance, the Dark Knight can die while near the HP restoration requirement. This is a rare case and can never happen if you just give the Dark Knight any slight amount of healing. However, I assume the last Living Dead change was to eliminate any need for healing assistance from other party members.