Dark Knight Feedback

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

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Paladin has incredibly short cds and is bad against nothing.

Oh magic? I get a 1 minute 30% mitigator for sauce, and 10% damage down debuff.
Oh physical? I get a 20 second parry buff with only a 1 min downtime, and a proc 10% damage debuff.

Paladins on physical: oh this is a laugh
Paladins on magical: help me -.-

The difference is that a paladin -always- is effected by their lowered damage vs other tanks, regardless of if their 'great defenses' apply or not.

I apologize in advance if I'm derailing. I'm only level 40DRK currently and having healed drk tanks in dungeons I found it to be a black and white difference when it comes to drk tanks using grit/not using.

As I am leveling drk my rule of thumb is on thrash mobs if I'm level synced down I can get away with out using grit. Otherwise I find myself only taking it off when I'm pairing it with shadow whatever to mitigate damage. This is prolly coming from my warrior stance dancing frame of mind. Is this the proper way to "stance dance" on dark?

The proper way to stance dance on DRK (in low level content) is to see what sort of heals are coming in and decide based on that.
DF healers vary greatly in their skill levels, so that's much more relevant than anything else at your level.
In high level content, dropping Grit is a little more complicated. You need to consider a few things:
Is the MP cost of putting Grit back on is worth the DPS that you gain?
Will you have the MP to put Grit back on if there was an emergency? (i.e. issues with threat)
Is the drop in mitigation going to put unnecessary strain on your healer and/or lead to wipes? (Mostly relevant with WHMs)

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Originally Posted by Faytte

Paladin has incredibly short cds and is bad against nothing.

Oh magic? I get a 1 minute 30% mitigator for sauce, and 10% damage down debuff.
Oh physical? I get a 20 second parry buff with only a 1 min downtime, and a proc 10% damage debuff.

Paladins on physical: oh this is a laugh
Paladins on magical: help me -.-

The difference is that a paladin -always- is effected by their lowered damage vs other tanks, regardless of if their 'great defenses' apply or not.

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If a fight is purely magic damage, you won't be able to use the -10% debuff. Even if it has autoattacks, you can't apply it reliably and certainly not with the precision to guarantee it will be up for meaningful damage.

Against a physical raid boss, Dark Dance is worth roughly 6% damage reduction and is extremely unreliable due to only providing 30% additional parry chance. It is effectively only useful for lowering fluff damage in between big hits, which in this game is largely trivial. Big, reliable cooldowns are intrinsically more valuable in the end game than these kinds of high uptime low effectiveness cooldowns. Over the duration of the fight, it might save your healer a handful of Cure 1s, but it can't be relied upon to help you survive anything crucial. If you use it on cooldown, it's worth a whopping 2% total average DR over the course of the fight.


Paladin tools vs Physical:
Sentinel (40%)
Rampart (20%)
Bulwark (Worth ~18% additional average DR, and significantly more reliable than Dark Dance.)
Sheltron (30% for 1 attack each 30 seconds)
STR down (Uniquely brought by Paladin)
30% Convalescence
Foresight (~5% DR)
Clemency
Stoneskin (Effectively +10% EHP for one hit)
Divine Veil (Effectively +10% EHP for the rest of the party)
Hallowed Ground (10 seconds of invincibility)
Natural block chance (~5-7% average damage reduction)
Natural Parry chance (~2% average damage reduction)


Paladin tools Vs magical:
Sentinel (40%)
Rampart (20%)
30% Convalescence
Clemency
Stoneskin (Effectively +10% EHP for one hit)
Divine Veil (Effectively +10% EHP for the rest of the party)
Hallowed Ground (10 seconds of invincibility)

Dark Knight tools vs Physical:
Shadow Skin (20%)
Shadow Wall (30%)
Dark Dance (~6% average damage reduction, low chance of actually doing anything)
Foresight (~5%)
20% Convalescene
Living Death (Still requires healing)
Natural Parry chance (~2% average damage reduction)
Soul Eater healing (Varies depending on gear/spec/DA/Crits. Not gained when AoE, Power Slash, or Delirium combos need to be used)

Dark Knight vs magic:
Dark Mind (30%)
Shadow Skin (20%)
Shadow Wall (30%)
20% Convalescence
Living Death (Still requires healing)
-10% int (Can also be provided by monk)
Soul Eater healing (Varies depending on gear/spec/DA/Crits. Not gained when AoE, Power Slash, or Delirium combos need to be used)

There is no fight in the game that Paladin isn't more than capable of handling with their toolkit, both magical and physical.

I would say that DRK has a noticeable edge over PLD when it comes to magic heavy fights, but it isn't really a huge gap assuming the Paladin knows how to take advantage of their kit. Paladin has an ENORMOUS advantage over DRK in physical-heavy fights, and a Dark Knight MT's marginally superior DPS doesn't make up for the difference.

In terms of DPS, Paladin in Sword Oath isn't much behind the others. In Shield Oath, yes, their damage is a bit low. I think the rest of their kit more than makes up for the lower DPS - it isn't a hindrance to progression for a competent group. It may make them less desirable for farm parties as people start to overgear content, but I find it doubtful it will ever reach the point that it becomes problematic since their hardiness will directly translate into more healer DPS.

Just some things I'd like to see on DRK. I'm only lvl 54 though so I don't know about the last 3 skills;

1. Plunge should have a 25y range. 15y is so pitifully small that it doesn't feel very fun/effective.

2. Blood Weapon should be usable with Grit on - if anything change the effect to a TP regen ability. Instead of regenerating MP on hit, make it TP while Grit is on. Either this or make DRG our cross-class instead of GLD.

3. Make Reprisal instantly usable if Dark Arts is active. (and consume Dark Arts).

4. Dark Passenger should be free to cast. Most skills with lengthy cooldowns are free in this game. It takes too much MP to cast DA+DP combo that I can almost never afford to use it.

5. Living Dead should just be a trait you get at level 50, that has a 6 minute cooldown and does not need to be activated. It should also not require 100% HP regen in order for it to work, as there are very few times where heals can actually get you to 100% health. Make it 50-75%.

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Originally Posted by Calib0s

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Pretty sure that Divine Veil doesn't apply to the PLD. Only to his party members.

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Originally Posted by LoreChief

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1. More range on Plunge would be nice. I agree that it feels a bit short, but I don't feel that it's a game-breaker.

2. I agree that it's awkward to lose access to Blood Weapon while Grit is on, but it's not really problematic either. I would like to see you get more out of Blood Price. TP is certainly a concern. I don't know if Lancer cross-class skills are necessarily the answer, though I wouldn't mind per se.

3. This would be a nice change.

4. Agreed, DA+DP is probably too expensive. It would be nice to be able to throw this out on smaller trash packs. In generally I find that it has to be quite a large pull to justify the expense.

5. Living Dead needs a change, but I don't know that this really fixes its inerrant problems.

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Originally Posted by LoreChief

Just some things I'd like to see on DRK. I'm only lvl 54 though so I don't know about the last 3 skills;

1. Plunge should have a 25y range. 15y is so pitifully small that it doesn't feel very fun/effective.

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I think Plunge is fine as it is. Other things need changes more, imo.

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Originally Posted by LoreChief

2. Blood Weapon should be usable with Grit on - if anything change the effect to a TP regen ability. Instead of regenerating MP on hit, make it TP while Grit is on. Either this or make DRG our cross-class instead of GLD.

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This doesn't help us. We need TP regen more when we're out of grit than when we're in it. In grit, if we just weave in an Unmend every once in a while, we're good for TP. And changing our cross-class from MRD to LNC has problems of its own (Keen Flurry, Blood for Blood, loss of Foresight, Bloodbath).

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Originally Posted by LoreChief

3. Make Reprisal instantly usable if Dark Arts is active. (and consume Dark Arts).

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How would this be implemented? If using Dark Arts while Reprisal is on CD resets the Reprisal CD and eats the DA, then we'd never get to use DA for anything else. If it resets the CD but doesn't eat DA until Reprisal is actually used, then we could simply use Reprisal after using the DA (which is OP). If it only becomes available when on CD if DA is active, that's gonna require some new code on the client side just to handle this one ability. I agree this needs a change, and your suggestion is good thematically, but it would be a nightmarish minefield for the devs to implement.

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Originally Posted by LoreChief

4. Dark Passenger should be free to cast. Most skills with lengthy cooldowns are free in this game. It takes too much MP to cast DA+DP combo that I can almost never afford to use it.

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Hmm...this is an interesting change, but I'm not sure it's needed. The skill is useful as-is.

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Originally Posted by LoreChief

5. Living Dead should just be a trait you get at level 50, that has a 6 minute cooldown and does not need to be activated. It should also not require 100% HP regen in order for it to work, as there are very few times where heals can actually get you to 100% health. Make it 50-75%.

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No. LD needs a change, true, but this isn't it. I want to be able to control when this happens - especially given how much stress it places on the healers in its current form. This change would make some healers never want to heal a DRK ever.

--Erim Nelhah
(Master, Astral Descendants <AD>, Malboro)
(60 DRK Main)

my changes for dark knight.

grit: need add magical parry
dark dance: remove evasion whith dark arts and add 10% more of parry chance.
reprisal: i like the idea to add free to use in DA.
sole survivor: meaby add a 5% recover of vit and mp to all member party in x yalms, and for you the actual 20%
carve and spint: meaby 200 mp more recover when use normal

if the ppl are right and the full bis parry give 30% chance i think dark knight can be fine like this go fine like a parry tank, but well how know what happen to hem.

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Originally Posted by Erim-Nelhah

How would this be implemented? If using Dark Arts while Reprisal is on CD resets the Reprisal CD and eats the DA, then we'd never get to use DA for anything else. If it resets the CD but doesn't eat DA until Reprisal is actually used, then we could simply use Reprisal after using the DA (which is OP). If it only becomes available when on CD if DA is active, that's gonna require some new code on the client side just to handle this one ability.

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Huh? If they went this route with Reprisal change, I don't see the issues you list. There's plenty of WSs already that require a buff to be executed (Geirskogul?). Would it be OP? If they adjusted the recast to 20 seconds so that 100% uptime is possible - yeah would lean to heavily on DRK/WAR WAR/DRK groups. But to compensate for that all they'd have to do is make it so it doesn't stack with Storm's Path.Of DRK's entire toolkit, Reprisal is near the bottom of my list of concerns - but a change to it isn't unrealistic I think.

It's just preference - but I would hate to see more Parry focus for DRK. That's not their intended design. If SE goes that route it's stepping away from MP management & Spell focus tanking. They already share too much in common with PLD, trying to buff Parry use to work like a PLD's Shield for both physical and magical hits.. not very original.. and DOA imo