DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by kashi11

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I do not think giving DRK a magic vulnerability debuff is a good idea.

If DRK is the only job that gets it, that is a huge raid dps boost which would make them potentially mandatory.

If it were to be balanced with the WAR slashing debuff, then that would require other jobs to get buffed in tandem by also giving them this buff. This creates two problems, first being that it messes with the balance of other jobs and second it results in the potential situation we see with WAR where the other jobs are looked to for providing the debuff and the value of the DRK having it is greatly diminished.

It would end up being either OP or of little value.

As for MP return, that could work but I personally would prefer differing effects depending on stance. For example in Grit it could increase the % of damage done returned as health from Soul Eater while out of Grit it increases the amount of MP returned from Syphon Strike.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

I do not think giving DRK a magic vulnerability debuff is a good idea.

If DRK is the only job that gets it, that is a huge raid dps boost which would make them potentially mandatory.

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It's an effective 1% increase on Magic damage (10% at 11% uptime is 1.1%)
This would affect some damage of Dark Knights, some damage of Paladins, healers, and casters.

Also, Summoners bring a variant of this (Contagion from Ranged summons). No one considers them mandatory as it is.

As far as I know, none of DRK's single target abilities run off magic vulnerability. PLD would end up benefiting from it far more than DRK would. The most benefit a DRK would see is Salted Earth at best.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

It's an effective 1% increase on Magic damage (10% at 11% uptime is 1.1%)
This would affect some damage of Dark Knights, some damage of Paladins, healers, and casters.

Also, Summoners bring a variant of this (Contagion from Ranged summons). No one considers them mandatory as it is.

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On the topic of utility -

Dark Knight's utility at the moment probably amounts to simply being the tank that loses the least from being in its tank stance (read: *being* in tank stance, not from the act of turning it on) due to Bloodspiller, and I'd say that's pretty much it. Its a good MT from a raid DPS standpoint, I guess.

As someone pointed out in another thread, TBN qualifying as utility is a very big stretch considering that at no time is a 5K shield necessary beyond what cooldowns the target is already likely to have running, and it also tends to be inferior in the long term to things like Apoc and Palisade, in addition to risking a DPS loss in comparison. So DRK definitely needs something else in this regard. And you can't give DPS-based utility to one tank without giving it to all of them lest you want to go back to huge discrepancies in personal DPS like those we had in HW.

At this point, since DRK's identity is kind of in the dumpster, I wouldn't be opposed to looking at some previous FF and FF-related games' lore for DRK abilities, without any of the HP sacrificing nonsense that would hurt DRK as a tank in this game.

Akin to sacrificing HP, DRK could get something of a defensive equivalent to Wildfire, that compiles all of the damage you take for, say, 15s, and then converts a percentage of the total into a raid-wide shield at the end of the duration. In this sense the DRK is indirectly sacrificing HP to benefit the group.

A possible Living Dead rework could be something similar to Last Resort or Life/Death from Bravely Default, wherein Walking Dead is simply cleansed by an Esuna equivalent, and during Walking Dead you get an added benefit of increase damage dealt/reduced damage taken.

Why we don't have some sort of self heal that costs mana/blood escapes me, as we are a tank, after all, and our self-healing is by far the weakest, and yet we do not have the ability to convert this one resource into HP even though half of our job is converting blood into mana, mana into blood, or either into potency. Seems we should be able to convert at least one of those resources to HP.

Given the nature of our mana as a resource, there's actually a lot of inspiration from BLM that I wish SE would take for DRK. A reverse Convert (sacrifice 20% of maximum MP to restore 30% of maximum HP) feels like a no brainer for DRK, as do abilities like Manaward and the old Manawall. Maybe something like the latter for ourselves, to shore up our physical mitigation, and the former to be cast on party members instead.

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Why we don't have some sort of self heal that costs mana/blood escapes me, as we are a tank, after all, and our self-healing is by far the weakest, and yet we do not have the ability to convert this one resource into HP even though half of our job is converting blood into mana, mana into blood, or either into potency. Seems we should be able to convert at least one of those resources to HP.

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I wondered the same, blood seems associated with life of vampirism at some point. I don"t get why spending blood does'nt restore us a portion of health (Something like, 5 or 10% of max HP for 50 blood spent). Delirium is also akin to fueling ourselves with a corrupted energy, as shown in the animation.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

All dis.

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Admittedly strange how blood works.

I had considered starting a discussion topic about the inherent problems with the Tank gauges, which serve as resource lists instead of timers, and how their current implementation and interactions are both flawed but solid concepts.

In the case of Dark, it was the feeling that while gauge generation was suitable (Having both active and reactive components), the ways it gets spent are not. It's between a lackluster cooldown, or a single target or aoe swing. (Quietus gaining the MP per hit though has given it a solid place for what it does, though)

The removal of many fun-if-ultimately-not-impactful OGCDs, but keeping Sole Survivor was a strange move. Sole Survivor itself could serve as the vehicle for some of Dark's current problems, though I personally believe a change to the basic function of Delirium would be a better long term fix.

Soul Survivor definitely needs a CD reduction. DP needs a rework.

I think TBN is good as it is for the most part but the time it shields needs to be like 3 seconds longer.

I think DRK is in the worst place right now but like WAR I feel like a few changes to some skills would fix most of the issues rather then needing a full rework.

Blood Weapon increases Damage dealt by 10% and increases parry rate by 20%.

TBN lasts 6 seconds.

I would like to see at least some of the following changes:

(1) TBN: break time increased to 6 seconds
(2) TBN added effect: breaking makes your next bloodspiller or quietus oGCD
(3) Sole Survivor: turns damage delt to enemy into hp and mp for 15 seconds (raid wide)
(4) Living Dead: Change to "Dark Pact" damage taken becomes hp restored for ten seconds
(5) Dark Mind: when struck has a chance of decresing enemy str/dex/int/mind for 6 seconds, can be refreshed

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I would like to see at least some of the following changes:

(1) TBN: break time increased to 6 seconds
(2) TBN added effect: breaking makes your next bloodspiller or quietus oGCD
(3) Sole Survivor: turns damage delt to enemy into hp and mp for 15 seconds (raid wide)
(4) Living Dead: Change to "Dark Pact" damage taken becomes hp restored for ten seconds
(5) Dark Mind: when struck has a chance of decresing enemy str/dex/int/mind for 6 seconds, can be refreshed

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I wouldn't be against any of these, although the "Dark Pact" one would totally be OP lol.

Quoting this here for how appropriate it is, originally from the tank balance thread:

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Originally Posted by Lyth

With regards to TBN, I don't think the devs are specifically balancing around it. The value of TBN depends on the relative potency of Bloodspiller to that of your average combo action. Make Bloodspiller more powerful, and TBN becomes more powerful. Make combo actions more powerful, then TBN becomes less so. What happened over the past two patches is this: in 4.01, Bloodspiller was buffed out of Grit. This made it a dps gain on average. In 4.05, SE was buffed. This made it a dps loss on average. In both patches, it is never a consistent gain or loss, either, as it depends on which GCD combo action it replaces.

What probably happened was this. The devs created an ability which blocks an attack for either yourself or a friend. And when the shield shatters, you launch into a counterattack! That feels pretty fun! And they probably didn't think about it a whole lot further.

The problem is that most of DRK's new actions are interrelated, so flat potency gains just shift around your priorities, rather than giving you the needed dps boost. DRK's issues at the moment are resource related, rather than potency related.

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DRK's rotation and damage dealing capabilities particularly when it comes to burst, feel the way they do because every action you make towards the job's priority system doesn't actually net you a gain of any kind, you're filling one cup and draining the other. Thus, we wind up with a job that looks like a meal on a plate that hasn't been touched, but its contents have been shuffled around to give the appearance of someone having actually eaten something. This is pretty much the entire dynamic of TBN-Bloodspiller, and it becomes the larger dynamic of DRK as a whole, since those two abilities were designed, almost single-handedly (a little help from Delirium) to replace a metric-fuckton of potency, utility, and mitigation that they removed, for reasons I still don't quite fathom.

Because they can't make up their damn minds what they want for us, its become an extremely frustrating job to optimize, as you're optimizing for pennies on the dollar. You're given the illusion of all these choices but in terms of DPS and even raid utility/mitigation, those choices make about as much difference as flavor response dialogue in most RPGs, and are similarly dissatisfying. Every time you pop a TBN and use Bloodspiller, the DRK next to you that didn't and simply DAed his Souleater is doing probably almost the exact same DPS, all other things being equal. Here's a resource. Use it. Doesn't matter how, just use it. Push buttons.

Right now, I use TBN any time I think it will pop, not because I know its a gain or a loss, but because if I don't I'm just ignoring that button outside of tankbusters, and then it feels like I'm not playing my full job. Having to participate in a zero-sum mechanic out of nothing greater than a personal obligation to use all of your job's tools even if it makes no difference to your performance is an awful feeling. And honestly, its this kind of banality that drives me up the wall, as it doesn't jump out as a problem in such a way that people will complain loudly about it.

In the spirit of that sentiment, us all keeping this thread on the front page until the next patch will hopefully go some distance towards getting the kind of changes we want to make the job satisfying on this level again.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I would like to see at least some of the following changes:

(1) TBN: break time increased to 6 seconds
(2) TBN added effect: breaking makes your next bloodspiller or quietus oGCD
(3) Sole Survivor: turns damage delt to enemy into hp and mp for 15 seconds (raid wide)
(4) Living Dead: Change to "Dark Pact" damage taken becomes hp restored for ten seconds
(5) Dark Mind: when struck has a chance of decresing enemy str/dex/int/mind for 6 seconds, can be refreshed

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opps I forgot one of the super important things because it was late and I was tired.

(6) Grit: take this off the GCD.

I'm personally in favour of seeing TBN used as a dps optimisation tool, much like how Third Eye gets used on Samurai to squeeze in a bit of extra dps in exchange for fight knowledge.

The simplest solution with regards to TBN is to have it grant the DA effect on your next blood action. The DA effect reimburses you for the cost, and the Bloodspiller/Quietus is your reward for performing it correctly. This guarantees that it is a potency gain when you break it and a potency loss when you don't, without having to buff Bloodspiller's potency to the moon.

As far as Bloodspiller itself goes, I'm in agreement with Brannigan's earlier suggestion that it have an MP restoration effect. The TBN > Quietus interaction is a lot of fun in AoE. Of course, the flipside is that if you make Bloodspiller stronger, you make Delirium weaker, which is kind of already the case in AoE.

Between BW and BP, BP is fairly underwhelming. It needs to be rebalanced so that it's effective in single target.

Defensively, the main issue is resource costs. Half of your defensive abilities (in particular, the ones with the shortest recasts) cost MP. Grit costs 18% of your MP. TBN costs 25%. DADM costs 25%. This is a lot of MP to stockpile, especially if you're stance dancing. Resource-based mitigation only really works if all tanks pay to access their mitigation moves, or if you have a higher baseline dps to offset the losses.

At a bare minimum, Grit should not have an MP cost and DM's DA effect should be baseline. This stuff is just too expensive. There's also no reason why Grit should terminate BW and BP. If they are to be mutually exclusive, just keep one single buff and have the effect swap with stance.

As far as Sole Survivor goes, it's not really used for self-sustain. They could probably swap out the HP gain effect and replace it with blood gain.

Finally, with Living Dead, I think they need to reconsider how it fits in the spectrum of tank invincibility moves. If the effect is left as is, then they should swap the recast with Holmgang to bring it in line with the 3 minute Benediction. As it stands, it does not represent a middle ground between Holmgang and Hallowed. If they want to keep the recasts where they are, then it needs to be a better ability than it is now. Extend the invincibility duration to a full 10 seconds regardless of when the effect is cleansed, and give the player longer to cleanse it. Perhaps give MP restoring effects lifesteal when the effect is active so that the DRK can help their healer out.

Yeah I agree with that. What do y'all think of the suggestions I put in post #191 page 20?

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

And honestly, its this kind of banality that drives me up the wall, as it doesn't jump out as a problem in such a way that people will complain loudly about

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Everywhere I've seen pretty much everyone thinks DRK is the best MT/OT... I'm over here thinking War & DRK still need buffS to be on plds level. Even then when people say "yeah they literally the best" I ask them how, all I get is "they have TBN"

Because we have one utility we are now an amazeball tank the likes that has never been seen?
I honestly don't get it, is it because Warrior doesn't have Utility? I honestly don't get it, and I've played this job through every raid and every piece of content. What do we have that Warriors don't other than TBN!?!

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

Everywhere I've seen pretty much everyone thinks DRK is the best MT/OT... I'm over here thinking War & DRK still need buffS to be on plds level. Even then when people say "yeah they literally the best" I ask them how, all I get is "they have TBN"

Because we have one utility we are now an amazeball tank the likes that has never been seen?
I honestly don't get it, is it because Warrior doesn't have Utility? I honestly don't get it, and I've played this job through every raid and every piece of content. What do we have that Warriors don't other than TBN!?!

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A slashing debuff. Oh wait.
A gap closer. Oh wait.
A decent skill that temporarily prevents death. Oh wait.
An oGCD that restores health. Oh wait.
A large health pool to take advantage of the HP-based shield. Oh, wait.

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

Everywhere I've seen pretty much everyone thinks DRK is the best MT/OT... I'm over here thinking War & DRK still need buffS to be on plds level. Even then when people say "yeah they literally the best" I ask them how, all I get is "they have TBN"

Because we have one utility we are now an amazeball tank the likes that has never been seen?
I honestly don't get it, is it because Warrior doesn't have Utility? I honestly don't get it, and I've played this job through every raid and every piece of content. What do we have that Warriors don't other than TBN!?!

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I have no idea who you're hanging out with but DRK is not the best at anything right now other than perhaps pulling the boss. So maybe you could say they're the best MT for the first 20-30s of a fight, but best OT? Where did you read that, Erowid? What cocktail of drugs is required to come to that conclusion?

TBN is not utility. If it saves the current MT, all it means is that they mucked up their CD rotation. If they survive with appreciably more than 5K HP, TBN was not necessary. Moreover, it does not mitigate enough damage to actually replace anything in your co-tank's cooldown rotation. Tankbusters are dealing upwards of 70-80K right now. A 5K shield is peanuts, and I would argue that it is not any more valuable than WAR's slashing debuff, except that the latter can actually be of value depending on your group composition.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

I have no idea who you're hanging out with but DRK is not the best at anything right now other than perhaps pulling the boss. So maybe you could say they're the best MT for the first 20-30s of a fight, but best OT? Where did you read that, Erowid? What cocktail of drugs is required to come to that conclusion?

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You'd be surprised what's on Reddit and off forums as there's a general mindset that DRK is basically the same from 3.0 with people saying things like we get mana back from blood price still. Anytime I see posts regarding tank balance, there's always some DRKs in there trying to tell em how it is but usually not as prominent as warriors or paladins talking. There's no downvote system here so luckily it's less of a hive mind.

Most recent that comes to mind (I couldn't find it unfortunately), right after OS4 was cleared, someone took a fight scene in an anime throwing in all their skills in the video that more or less implied that Dark Knight was OP and better than all others. A lot of people thought it was funny and true while a lot of Dark Knights posting were like "Yeah I wish", but most just assuming that's how it was.

There was another one too saying the TBN has made off-tanking fun, same kind of mindset there too. (With most of the negativity being that pre-lvl 70 is boring without TBN).

Gist version: Lots of ignorance regarding the job from those who do not play it or a tank in general.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Why we don't have some sort of self heal that costs mana/blood escapes me, as we are a tank, after all, and our self-healing is by far the weakest, and yet we do not have the ability to convert this one resource into HP even though half of our job is converting blood into mana, mana into blood, or either into potency. Seems we should be able to convert at least one of those resources to HP.

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Reverse convert/self clemency is a great idea, one of those things that once mentioned you wonder how you never noticed it was missing.

That plus a more useful sole survivor and TBN breaking giving you a free dark arts and I think DRK would be in a pretty good spot. Although I'd still miss scourge.

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Originally Posted by Kalocin

Gist version: Lots of ignorance regarding the job from those who do not play it or a tank in general.

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@Syzzle Trust me, I more than a good few know the garbage spot we are in. Ever since O4s/V4s was cleared with a DRK for world first everyone somehow though "DRK IS FINE WAR IS GARBAGE LOLOLOLOLOL" since players at a higher level of play than 99.9% of the population cleared it first with this certain comp

I'm pretty sure DRK was only brought for the approx 5k shield on the other tank because world first. That and most people in the race geared PLD/DRK because warrior was bad and no one knew for certain what changes they would get

Then people look at Warrior and go "WELL SHAKE IT OFF" yet people forget we have Dark Passenger, another useless ability. They also SOMEHOW(no clue how) believe that our mitigation suite is as good as PLD, and that warrior is lacking.

TL;DR - World first ruined majority of reddit mindset for class balance, as usual.

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

I'm pretty sure DRK was only brought for the approx 5k shield on the other tank because world first.

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nobody cares for that 5k shield. except warriors who like to point out how awesome a 5k shield is... (do they even believe their own words?)

DRK was brought because he still has awesome magical mitigation and the tank busters in omega do magic damage. so DRK is actually the best maintank in omega.
the problem here is that you have design fights specifically in a way to suite DRKs magical mitigation - otherwise it's the worst tank out of the 3.

with the removal of Foresight and 20 seconds Reprisal our physical mitigation is lacking now and TBN alone can't make up for the loss. especially since TBN only works well for tanbusters, excatly like the new 5 seconds Reprisal. we have not much left for autos and stuff.

Allow Warriors to use greatswords too and give scythes to DRK

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Originally Posted by Tint

nobody cares for that 5k shield. except warriors who like to point out how awesome a 5k shield is... (do they even believe their own words?)

DRK was brought because he still has awesome magical mitigation and the tank busters in omega do magic damage. so DRK is actually the best maintank in omega.
the problem here is that you have design fights specifically in a way to suite DRKs magical mitigation - otherwise it's the worst tank out of the 3.

with the removal of Foresight and 20 seconds Reprisal our physical mitigation is lacking now and TBN alone can't make up for the loss. especially since TBN only works well for tanbusters, excatly like the new 5 seconds Reprisal. we have not much left for autos and stuff.

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That's precisely why making DM reduce all damage instead of just magical would fix most of the mitigation issues for DRK without essentially being OP. As of right now, they are tuning the fights to make DM very good, by making bosses deal mostly magic damage (except V3S), just like in Gordias. Making DM reduce all damage would allow them to put more physical damage without negatively impacting DM's usefulness, and would bring us roughly to the same level as the other tanks in terms of self-mitigation. Not higher like some people tend to think. Look at V3S, the boss there deals mostly physical damage, magic damage being only raid-wide in this fight. DRK suddenly has a harder time properly mitigating damage as MT in this fight than the other tanks, while in O1S, O2S and O4S it's roughly equal to the other tanks.

The only reason why PLD are OTing right now is not because DRK has higher magic mitigation, it's because they can bring extra mitigation to the MT while OTing, and this mitigation would be unused most of the time if the PLD was MTing (Unlike TBN, Intervention cannot be used on self, so making PLD MT would be a waste, same for Cover, since now it gives 20% mitigation to the PLD on top of covering, it's just like tank-swapping + popping Rampart for 10sec, but without the tank-swapping part, which is amazingly strong). DRK and PLD are roughly equal in terms of magic mitigation, and I'd even say that WAR is too, since they got Rampart, and even before having Rampart, WAR was really good in both physical AND magical mitigation. DRK just falls behind a LOT when it comes to mitigating physical consistent damage, like autos and cleaves. TBN doesn't make up for the lack of something like Bulwark or Raw Intuition at all. And DM could fill this role if it wasn't magic-only.

With Dark Mind I would like the 30% DMGreduction to be made base - no DA required. Feels that DADM and TBN step on eachother's toes, and that triple weave is gross and can be difficult to avoid - don't want to pop TBN first due to it's short duration, and fitting a GCD between DA > DM is most impossible to do because 3-of-4 of your likely WSs will consume the DA instead. Not to mention it's half your MP.

Give the full 30% for vanilla DM, and remove the DA or change it to something else.

Some adjustment to DA+DM where you'd DA+DM, or DM+TBN, but rarely both, depending on single hit VS multi hit / prolonged damage, I suppose.

Shadow Wall could have a Darkside requirement + DA effect too. A DA effect extending SWall to 20s could justify a low 90s recast, as DRK would have to be wary of overusing DA+Shadow Wall, since it could amount to a substantial DPS loss overtime.

Or better self healing could fill a lot of gaps too. DEL having a 2700 potency HP restore in Grit makes sense to me,

Maybe Blood Price grants a 150 potency HoT, and increase HP recovery via healing magic and absorbs by x% and y%.

Fair fact: If blood weapon increase attack speed and generate blood and mp by swinging, blood price should reduce damage taken while generating blood and mp while hit.

Not much, like 10%. Actually the skill is so niche...

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

Give the full 30% for vanilla DM, and remove the DA or change it to something else.

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DM being 30% vanilla and the DA version covering physical as well as magic could be a nice change.

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

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From a lore standpoint, too, it does make sense.

Ishgardian Citizen: So as I was saying, that heretic was fighting like a man possessed. Even after he took several wounds, he showed no sign of pain─though there was no mistaking the blood.
Ishgardian Citizen: As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realized it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted...

There are many things that they could do with it: DR, a thorns effect, a dread spikes trait. Alternatively, they could add some kind of a damage boost to it, just to contrast the slow, ponderous swings of Grit with the fast, lighter swings out of it. It wasn't a bad ability when stacked on BW, but when you're forced to choose, it becomes fairly underwhelming, especially when it has 25% of the MP restoration and a third of the blood generation of BW per tick (not to mention the fact that bosses have a much slower rate of attacks when you factor in casts than you do).

One more thing that I'd like to mention: reducing DA's animation time would be an extremely nice quality of life improvement, given that pretty much every forced double weave involves it. Would help those who are worse for wear after the server move.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

One more thing that I'd like to mention: reducing DA's animation time would be an extremely nice quality of life improvement, given that pretty much every forced double weave involves it. Would help those who are worse for wear after the server move.

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This is a huge thing for me. I know my ping doubled after the move as I live in the northeastern US. The amount of forced double weaves we have is insane and makes me really resent DA-Syphon, although I see its value in our new rotation.

Part of me wishes DAs could be stacked so that if you use it twice in a row without an ability that benefits from it they'd stack up to say 3-5 times.

Example:

You just finished an SE combo and now: SE (DA) -> HS (DA) [now at 2DA] -> Syphon [-1 DA] (C&S) [-1 DA, now at zero]-> SE

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Originally Posted by Jandor

DM being 30% vanilla and the DA version covering physical as well as magic could be a nice change.

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well balanced with the other tanks in mind... :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Jandor

DM being 30% vanilla and the DA version covering physical as well as magic could be a nice change.

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IDK if paying a DA for that is something that I would do. I'd rather have the vanilla version work on all damage types, and keep the +15% increase from DA (for both).

If DM gets a rework like the ones we've been talking about, I'd actually like to see its duration increased. Its power could be dialed back to compensate. Example:

Dark Mind
Recast: 60s
Reduces damage taken by 10% for 20s
DA effect: increases damage reduction to 25%.

We just so desperately need a cooldown that lasts longer than 10s. Its insane that we don't have one in spite of our mitigation suite being so under-powered and resource intensive.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

IDK if paying a DA for that is something that I would do. I'd rather have the vanilla version work on all damage types, and keep the +15% increase from DA (for both).

If DM gets a rework like the ones we've been talking about, I'd actually like to see its duration increased. Its power could be dialed back to compensate. Example:

Dark Mind
Recast: 60s
Reduces damage taken by 10% for 20s
DA effect: increases damage reduction to 25%.

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That would be much better yeah.

Even if it becomes 30% magical mitigation vanilla, I don't see why we'd have to pay extra MP just because a fight is designed with physical damage. This is just arbitrary. It would still not be balanced at all and would still make DRK's overall performance dependant on the encounter design, since we'd have to sacrifice multiple DAs for DM in physical fights, whereas in magical fights we'd just freely use it. Having it like Syzzle just said would be much better and would actually fix most of the mitigation issues that DRK has, while making it just as useful in every encounter, whatever the damage type is. We don't really lack an extra big short-duration 30% tank-buster CD (10% would be enough), we lack a longer duration, weaker CD that is able to soften consistent auto-attack damage like other tanks can, and like Dark Dance did pre-4.0.

If they did that on top of fixing Shadow Wall which is still weaker than both Sentinel and Vengeance for no reason, DRK mitigation would be right on point.

probably a silly question, and maybe even a worse suggestion, but amongst all the desired changes that've been brought up.

What about making DP a 3rd combo path (with potency adjustments) and maybe keeping it's blind effect for a DA amplification, or adding in something else for it to do.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

probably a silly question, and maybe even a worse suggestion, but amongst all the desired changes that've been brought up.

What about making DP a 3rd combo path (with potency adjustments) and maybe keeping it's blind effect for a DA amplification, or adding in something else for it to do.

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Neat idea, but probably not something they're gonna do, which chaps my ass because of things they did to re-arrange other jobs' combos in 4.x (savage blade, dancing edge/shadow fang, etc.)

Like with what they did with DE/SF I find it unfathomable that they didn't simply buff Scourge's base hit to 280 potency and put it where the old Delirium was. And DP is practically Shake It Off-levels of bad (not wholly useless on the same level, but it may as well be with how ludicrously expensive it is)...

And honestly, with us being the current lowest tank DPS, its not like making any of these changes would make our DPS overpowered. They have plenty of headroom to do things like this.

Something I noticed today after reaching level 70 on Paladin and taking it to the Susano Extreme dummy was a discrepancy in the HP values. I'm item level 317 on Dark Knight, as a fresh Paladin I made it with 313 and did almost equal damage.. What interested me after doing them back to back was that the Paladin dummy seemed to have a little more HP, as if the developers expected Dark Knight would do less.

This may seem like common knowledge that Dark Knight does the least damage out of the three tanks, but the fact that it seems explicitly intended is a bit of a downer. Having brought this up to friends of mine, they say this was to compensate for The Blackest Night overall gains that one wouldn't be receiving on a dummy.

It's my understanding that The Blackest Night, if used on cooldown and always activated, is a very small gain in Grit (which one wouldn't have used on a dummy) and very close to even or even a loss outside of Grit, due to pushing back Syphon Strike and Souleater. I'd like to know the exact math on that at some point, but that's my understanding of the dynamic.

This taken into account, I also know that Paladin has a basically free 150 potency attack in Shield Swipe that also wouldn't be taken into consideration on a dummy. So my question is, would any gain from The Blackest Night be comparable to the gain a Paladin would receive for guaranteed Shield Swiping? I know the math in this game a little less than I'd like, but what it sounds like to me is that the loss of Shield Swipe is a much bigger handicap than the loss of Blackest Night in a striking dummy situation, meaning the increased HP on a Paladin dummy implies even moreso that Paladins were intended to be doing more damage.

If this is all true so far, then my feedback is of course, vehement disappointment. 3rd place in many areas, including DPS, seems to be intended by the developers at this point for Dark Knight. I too have my own personal feelings about the uselessness of Dark Passenger and Blood Price, the overuse of Dark Arts, relative mitigation scarcity, the strange MP -> Blood -> Potency ratio which feels like pushing vegetables around on a plate, etc.
However, if the developers themselves have Dark Knight on this seemingly intended back burner, that needs to be addressed first of all, I believe.

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Originally Posted by Valdegarde

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Oh no, you're totally correct. The SSS dummies for DRK have less HP than the others. In fact the only job for whom dummies have less HP is AST.

TBN is a gain in Grit, but then you're in Grit. Its a loss out of Grit, or possibly you can break even. The math has been done many different ways but any time you use TBN for Bloodspiller you must subtract a DA's worth of potency (because you used TBN) from that Bloodspiller against your PPGCD, and also factor in Syphon's MP gain (~70 potency) and Souleater's Blood gain (roughly 8.4 potency considering BS is on the GCD) into that PPGCD, to see that TBN is usually a tiny DPS loss. It can be a gain but the results of optimizing it can't be seen without the aid of a fucking nanoscope, which is why a lot of the somewhat more hardcore DRK playerbase are very annoyed with the job right now.

Shield Swipe is a FREE 150 potency which makes even natural Bloodspillers, which are a roughly 40 potency gain against your PPGCD look like peanuts, and versus TBN Bloodspillers, its no contest.

While nothing is so bad that DRK cannot do content, we're also in an extremely magic-focused raid tier (again) and were the tables turned, DRK would be in the toilet. As Lythia pointed out in the Blood Price thread, 4.x DRK in a fight like A7S would be a potato, only squishier. The only fight in this raid tier that is overtly physical is O3S, and by virtue of the nature of the TB in that fight, Awareness acts as roughly 35% mitigation, which is the only saving grace for DRK there as well.

I also agree with your conclusion that DRK definitely feels as though it is on the backburner. They took threads from our 1-60 kit and unraveled them, and made our 60-70 kit while nuking the existing 3.x job. These problems were largely overshadowed by WAR's stance issues at the start of the expansion, which have since been not just mitigated but altogether reversed. Their stances are now completely costless and Unchained/IR now cost you nothing to use as well. So I would argue now that DRK isn't even the easiest tank to play (WAR is, now, hands down). Why they saw fit to put us on the bottom in all these areas, I can't say, especially given that we were never really overpowered in the first place. But they really did eviscerate pretty much everything about the job. Our DPS is lower (as you've pointed out), our mitigation is weaker (Shadow Wall/DM/LD are pale imitations of their co-tank's counterparts), and our utility is all but gone (TBN is not utility).

I don't think any of us want DRK to be the best tank hands down across all categories, but it'd be nice to be the best at 1 thing, or at least good at a couple of things.

All this being said, the DRK playerbase is noticeably smaller and quieter than that of the other two tanks, which isn't doing us any favors right now.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

All this being said, the DRK playerbase is noticeably smaller and quieter than that of the other two tanks, which isn't doing us any favors right now.

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Yet our consolidated feedback thread is 24 pages, PLD is 6 pages, and WAR only 4. I really hope SE will hear us on the way to 4.1.

Ok, some changes I'd make :p.

Blood Price:
Delivers an attack with a potency of 30 every time you suffer damage.
Damage dealt by this attack is converted into MP.
Would still generate blood.
MP regen from it would probably still be rather lackluster but free damage is always nice, and it fits thematically.

Dark Mind:
10% damage reduction for 20s, 60s cooldown.
Dark Arts effect: Grants HP regen for the duration (roughly on par with WHM regen.)
10% DR with 33% uptime seems pretty nice, DRK could do with a decent self heal as well. Not sure it's worth losing a 30% magic damage CD for though. Maybe 15 or 20% with 90s cooldown?

Shadow Wall:
CD changed from 180s to 120s.
Would just be nice, especially when compared to Sentinel and Vengeance.

Sole Survivor:
Marks target with status ‘Another Victim’
A portion of damage dealt to the target is converted into HP & MP (everyone.)
If that target should be KO'd in battle, 20% of maximum HP and MP will be restored (DRK only.)
Gives DRK some light utility, cheaper DPS for casters and healers, plus a pseudo party heal provided in a way that's suitably *dark*.

Bloodspiller:
Scrap all the "Grit Potency: 475, Dark Arts+Grit Potency: 650" stuff. Why complicate matters, just give it a nice high potency, a nicer higher DA potency, and have it ignore grits penalty.
The weird tooltip just bugs me...

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

Yet our consolidated feedback thread is 24 pages, PLD is 6 pages, and WAR only 4. I really hope SE will hear us on the way to 4.1.

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More like the true DRK player base is so small that the "other DRK" don't care because they don't main DRK.... Seriously I see more healer and tanks who main a caster DPS job over melee job or even tank... Balance is that bad for tanks right now...

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Bloodspiller:
Scrap all the "Grit Potency: 475, Dark Arts+Grit Potency: 650" stuff. Why complicate matters, just give it a nice high potency, a nicer higher DA potency, and have it ignore grits penalty.
The weird tooltip just bugs me...

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Probably because it's a way to say "use this in Grit" without locking the ability behind it. Kind of like how Holy Spirit generates 20 gauge when in Shield Oath.

If we're looking to simplify things, I'd remove the Dark Arts requirement and just make it 540 potency outside of Grit and 650 in Grit. That would remove some of the decision-making from using it since you'd pretty much use it whenever you have 50 blood gauge without MP being a factor at all, though.

Bloodspiller doesn't quite ignore the Grit penalty. When you factor in Darkside, it does 480 potency out of Grit and 475 potency in Grit. Similarly, DA brings the potency values up to 648 potency out of Grit (net gain of 168) and 650 potency in Grit (net gain of 175). In short, you lose 5 potency for using the baseline ability in Grit and gain 2 potency for using DA Bloodspiller in Grit. You also gain 35 potency every time you apply DA to it in Grit. The reason for this weirdness is because they buffed the Bloodspiller potency by 20 while leaving the Grit potency unchanged.

The main problem with Bloodspiller buffs are that they end up devaluing Delirium, which is already a fairly punishing ability to begin with. If you mess it up, it's only a 3 potency gain over Bloodspiller, and if you execute it correctly and have a full uninterrupted 23 seconds of BW uptime, it is a 261 potency gain over Bloodspiller, every two minutes. If you increase the baseline potency of Bloodspiller to include the DA cost, Delirium is going to be a 93 potency gain every two minutes if you execute it perfectly (and a dps loss most of the rest of the time).

My personal preference is to see Bloodspiller gain a DA proc specifically when TBN breaks to make TBN a fixed dps gain, and perhaps have something like a Siphon Strike MP gain effect on Bloodspiller to setup Blood > MP > Blood combos like you can in AoE. However, in doing so, you still run into the same problem with Delirium because MP is potency.

More than Bloodspiller, the crux of the problem is Delirium, Blood Weapon, Blood Price, and their interactions with Grit (and its associated MP cost). That's the main place where DRK gets punished from a dps perspective.