Dark Knight Megathread

i'm gonna say this every once in a while, we need selfheals. idc how as long as we can heal ourselves. i'm not gonna shut up until they give us some d**n heals.

i've decided to put away the greatsword for this expansion for a couple of reasons:

1) The button bloat is insane. Whenever I start a pull I feel like there are 100 things I should be pressing and the sad part is that none of them feel satisfying. Sometimes I can't wrap my mind around what should be prioritized in big dungeon pulls.
2) The self sustain is painfully bad. I miss when I could spam dark arts and abyssal drain. Now, I don't like spamming dark arts, but at least I could mitigate a ton of damage.
3) The theme of dark knight feels lost. I love living shadow, but the rest feels like a mix between a dark caster and actual greatsword skills.
4) I think that mp management should be gone or be less punishing when it comes to TBN. I can't wrap my mind around why it costs mp when the other tanks' similar tankbuster skill doesn't cost anything and it's almost equally as good.

Sorry for the rant. I love the theme and aesthetic of DRK, but after tasting warrior leveling I can't go back anymore :/ .

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Originally Posted by Guts-BSM

i'm gonna say this every once in a while, we need selfheals. idc how as long as we can heal ourselves. i'm not gonna shut up until they give us some d**n heals.

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Unironically use the new HP potions they added for the new deep dungeon.

Shits pretty good

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Originally Posted by Guts-BSM

since they fixed living dead i haven't once died to it

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A rare case never happening to 1 person doesn't mean it never happens.

https://clips.twitch.tv/AgileDrabSno...LwmdLcYYp3Ix9K
^ SPOILER for The Omega Protocol(Ultimate) phase 4.

That clip shows the rare scenario I've described where they only got 3 GCDs under the effect of Walking Dead despite always rolling their GCDs.

Of course the other alternative to make sure it never happens, besides receiving a small heal from another party member, is to hold your GCD until Walking Dead procs. But I doubt SE intends for you to play around it like that.

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Originally Posted by Guts-BSM

i'm gonna say this every once in a while, we need selfheals. idc how as long as we can heal ourselves. i'm not gonna shut up until they give us some d**n heals.

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Why would you need heals when you could ask for more shields? If TBN was on a 10 sec recast instead it would be broken by most regards, even with the mp cost. Fact of the matter is that TBN functions under the concept that if you took 0 dmg, why do you need a heal? DRK also heals every combo rotation via souleater so to say that DRK has no access to heals is not true. Of course this is all speaking at savage, which your job is tuned to. Anything below that is not regarded, hence the fact that WAR is still great in dungeons ever since 2.0.

They had 10 years to fix how busted WAR can be in dungeons when it comes to self sustain but you know what, they only doubled down on it with nascent flash which can heal you and a party member. The only reason why they kept it is because in savage content it is comparable to DRK in most situations and neither is op. If they really wanted to fix the self sustain in dungeons for DRK they could have replaced Enhanced Unmend to Enhanced Stalwart Soul and instead of reducing plunge recast by 5 secs, it reduces the recast of AD/C&S. Problem fixed. It would work out even better now because there is rarely, if ever, a situation in savage where you want to use unmend because of uptime strats and the insanely large hitboxes.

I expect them to actually add 2 charges to TBN at some point in the future.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

Why would you need heals when you could ask for more shields?.

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Because, even if in far fewer cases than before, you can still die during living dead in single target situations by yourself. It was the same reason why people wanted stacks on blood weapon: You can miss that last GCD. Shields are not helping you remove that debuff in single-target, more healing is.

Healing through LD in mob packs is not an issue because you literally remove that debuff instantly in aoe.

You aren't using Souleater because it has passive sustain, you're using it because it's in your 1-2-3, that one Souleater you use during Living Dead isn't going to save you from dying if you miss that last GCD. That's why even having just one CD via any method that gives us self-healing would be of massive benefit. Because shields are effective hp, not healing. Dark Knight is by far the most defensive tank once it hits 70, which isn't much up for debate. It's just behind on some minor sustain it needs to be completely self-sufficient.

I don't even mind how DRK feels now when it comes to survivability, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't lacking in sustain. It doesn't even need to be anything huge.

I don't see them ever giving them 2 charges of TBN purely because of how powerful it would make it. It is good, but outshined by the other tanks cooldowns they received in endwalker, but would VASTLY outperform them if it had two stacks. Especially with how high our HP is going to end up next expansion, it would be essentially ShB TBN but even more cracked. Also no, having some minor sustain isn't necessarily going to make DRK immortal, TBN prevents incoming damage, but healing does not. If it were such an issue, they could just shift some mit around. (putting oblation on one use instead of 2 stacks, for example).

As a sidenote: When you mention TBN getting two stacks, I feel like that was the original plan for lvl 82, but they decided to make oblation instead, which is mostly paired with tbn anyway.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Because, even if in far fewer cases than before, you can still die during living dead in single target situations by yourself. It was the same reason why people wanted stacks on blood weapon: You can miss that last GCD. Shields are not helping you remove that debuff in single-target, more healing is.

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A quick question, though:

If the whole point of all these changes to Living Dead is to make it nigh impossible not to self-cleanse... why make it need to be cleansed at all? No other invulns lose their immunity early due to healing. No other invulns cost players their life from a lack of healing before that duration has even completed.

The free self-heal atop the initial death-prevention is nice, for sure, but it seems an incidental and convoluted feature to compensate for an issue we seem to want rid of regardless.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

A quick question, though:

If the whole point of all these changes to Living Dead is to make it nigh impossible not to self-cleanse... why make it need to be cleansed at all? No other invulns lose their immunity early due to healing. No other invulns cost players their life from a lack of healing before that duration has even completed.

The free self-heal atop the initial death-prevention is nice, for sure, but it seems an incidental and convoluted feature to compensate for an issue we seem to want rid of regardless.

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In hindsight I may have come across that it's the primary reason I want the sustain but it isn't, apologies for wording it poorly there.

The point is to help Dark Knight have more sustain in general, having it would just make handling Living Dead even easier.

I have stated in the past that I don't mind LD having that consequence in general, but so long as it exists people will inevitably complain about it. It took them 7 years just to give us what they did for Living Dead. Breaking it down, it would just be better if the death penalty got axed, because there really is no solution for it except for making it impossible not to cleanse, if they want to keep things streamlined.

The ideal scenario would just be to remove the death penalty but then it essentially becomes holmgang with cracked Bloodwhetting baked in so...what could we give to it to make it a bit different? We could just keep the activation upon "death" as the most simple solution. It more or less functions the same, it just mandates you actually would have died for the effect to activate.

I imagine they would likely nerf the HP restoration to anywhere from 200-300 potency per weaponskill or spell as well.

I will rewrite some stuff I thought on for a while again hopefully more people see it, or the right people see it and think about it.

Regarding defensives:
->TBN no longer has an MP cost. CD increased to 20 seconds, duration increased to 8 seconds. Dark Arts removed.
->Dark Mind changed to granting 10% damage reduction, with a further 10% reduction against magical. 60 sec CD. At level 82, this upgrades into Oblation, increasing the magic damage reduction to 20%, grants 2 charges, each with a CD of 45 seconds.
->Abyssal Drain removed. C&S has AoE falloff and gets a bigger animation.

New defensive:
->Sole Survivor: marks target and nearby enemies with "Another Victim" status. When surrounded by 3 or more enemies, also grants "Blood price".
"Another victim" effect: dealing damage to this unit heals the DRK who applied this mark for a potency of 250. Lasts 10 seconds.
"Blood price" effect: getting hit by any attack grants 25 MP and 1 blood. Last 10 seconds.

Regarding existing offensive attacks:
->Syphoon strike restores 1000MP and Souleater gains 15 blood.
->Darkside's damage bonus increased to 15%.
->Using Bloodspiller combos into 2 new attacks. Each attack costs 25 blood, including Bloodspiller.
Quietus removed, Bloodspiller has a new animation or the same animation but much stronger to justify having AoE falloff damage.
->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.
->Living Shadow before level 100, works the same it does now. At level 100 works as fallows: ( blood cost removed )
Merge with Fray, becoming one with your inner darkness, increasing the potency of all attacks by 150 potency for 20 seconds. 120 sec CD.
Gain a much visually stronger effect of Darkside, similar to RPR's Enshourd.
->Blood Weapon removed.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.

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I had a similar idea randomly today or maybe I suggested it before already, I can't remember, but I do want that Haste. I dunno if removing Blood Weapon would necessarily be a good idea, there might not be enough MP generation to keep up.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

Snip

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So, there's several issues I have and see with this. I'll mention what I do agree with and provide input or ideas regarding them, though.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

Regarding defensives:
->TBN no longer has an MP cost. CD increased to 20 seconds, duration increased to 8 seconds. Dark Arts removed.

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• Both parts of this. TBN should stay as it currently is, if they were to remove the mp cost, not only would they make it 25s and not 20s, but making it 8s instead of 7 wouldn't increase it's effectiveness since it would still be breaking in a mere couple seconds in mob pulls.
• Even if Dark Arts is a mere shadow of what it once was, outright removing it from TBN wouldn't be beneficial for the job overall. It is the only remaining cooldown that interacts with the kit that isn't just "you heal upon hitting thing(s)". It also is the sole thing that gives DRK any real skill expression.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Dark Mind changed to granting 10% damage reduction, with a further 10% reduction against magical. 60 sec CD. At level 82, this upgrades into Oblation, increasing the magic damage reduction to 20%, grants 2 charges, each with a CD of 45 seconds.

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My only comment here is that it should remain on 60s cooldown. Having it on 45s with 2 charges would make it far too powerful.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Abyssal Drain removed. C&S has AoE falloff and gets a bigger animation.

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I would like to refer to Lyth's idea for this, just modified a bit:
Abyssal Strike: Three-fold attack that deals unaspected damage to target and all nearby targets nearby it.
Additional Effect: inflicts Scourge
Scourge: Damage over time of [X potency] for 15-30s
It goes without saying that I would like an animation for Abyssal Strike that's incredibly similar to Scourge, being that it literally applies it.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

New defensive:
->Sole Survivor: marks target and nearby enemies with "Another Victim" status. When surrounded by 3 or more enemies, also grants "Blood price".
"Another victim" effect: dealing damage to this unit heals the DRK who applied this mark for a potency of 250. Lasts 10 seconds.
"Blood price" effect: getting hit by any attack grants 25 MP and 1 blood. Last 10 seconds.

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• It is called Sole Survivor, after all. It should remain purely between the DRK and one target.
• That another victim effect is horrifically overpowered. If every party member's attack on that mob heals the DRK you would be essentially immortal in every scenario that isn't a wipe mechanic, irregardless of the potency.
• 25mp and 1 gauge wouldn't really be all that useful outside of trash pulls. As much as I would like having Blood Price back in the form of it's own defensive, it never will because that would be tying a defensive to offensive output in the form of a damage gain, which is a damage loss whenever you aren't MT.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

Regarding existing offensive attacks:
->Syphoon strike restores 1000MP and Souleater gains 15 blood.
->Darkside's damage bonus increased to 15%.
->Using Bloodspiller combos into 2 new attacks. Each attack costs 25 blood, including Bloodspiller.

• Quietus removed, Bloodspiller has a new animation or the same animation but much stronger to justify having AoE falloff damage.

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• Unless we are buffing the gauge generation significantly it would be better just to make Bloodspiller cost 50 and give us access to said combo actions after bloodspiller for free.
• I'm fairly certain Bloodspiller being turned into aoe would warrant a new animation on it's own, which I am for.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.

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• I am..at a toss on this. This could potentially work but without much higher mp generation than we do now we could potentially run out of it due to TBN needing 3k reserved. (This would be a tad more lenient if TBN got the mana cost removed, though)
• I think the gauge generation would be best if it was 5 bonus gauge generation per GCD used. You lose 5 Darkside, you gain 5 more blood gauge. not counting that incredibly high tick rate, 2 every quarter second could throw some people off and potentially cause misalignment and clipping due to the faster GCD rolling from the skill speed boost. On the topic of the SkS boost, make it a haste since your aoe GCD's are spells.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Living Shadow before level 100, works the same it does now. At level 100 works as fallows: ( blood cost removed )
Merge with Fray, becoming one with your inner darkness, increasing the potency of all attacks by 150 potency for 20 seconds. 120 sec CD.
Gain a much visually stronger effect of Darkside, similar to RPR's Enshourd.

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I've stated my agreement with this in the past. However, I still think it should be on a 3-5 stack system. 20s may be too long and therefore too powerful, and there is, as ever, the issue of missing a gcd.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Blood Weapon removed.

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No. Why? Syphon strike being upped to 1k mp restore wouldn't be enough to warrant this, and we still would need this for gauge generation regardless.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

• It is called Sole Survivor, after all. It should remain purely between the DRK and one target.
• That another victim effect is horrifically overpowered. If every party member's attack on that mob heals the DRK you would be essentially immortal in every scenario that isn't a wipe mechanic, irregardless of the potency.
• 25mp and 1 gauge wouldn't really be all that useful outside of trash pulls. As much as I would like having Blood Price back in the form of it's own defensive, it never will because that would be tying a defensive to offensive output in the form of a damage gain, which is a damage loss whenever you aren't MT.

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I mentioned when the DRK attacks the marked target it heals the DRK who applied the mark.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

I mentioned when the DRK attacks the marked target it heals the DRK who applied the mark.

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Ah, I misinterpreted it then. I was reading it as all attacks from anyone in the party, not just the user, my bad

My main point is just to address these issues:

-> Darkside doesn't do anything other than grant you 10% damage, and you keep using x4 - x5 Edge/Flood of Shadows, which seems kind of incomplete in terms of design, as perhaps you are supposed to do more with the Darkside timer?
-> Bloodgauge is literally copy paste Warrior. 50 blood for Fell Cleave, but DRK's version. That's not very unique at all.
-> Delirium is the same as Inner Release. Let's make it different, maybe a combo or a unique buff helping blood / MP generation? Or something else entirely unique to DRK!
-> Living Shadow while certainly unique, is just a damage over time that has several gameplay issues:
1. It has a 5 second spawn animation, what if you need that damage instantly?
2. It starts with the weaker attacks and gets stronger as times goes along.

I am all for uniqueness but its C&S and Bloodspiller fall out of 15 second raid buffs, I don't have any control to help how much damage I want to do and its literally just a fire and forget. That's supposed to be my powerful and amazing 2 min button? Not very fun.

As far as defensive abilities go my only issue with the job are the lack of self sustain ( not even comparable to PLD or GNB ) and Dark Mind and Oblation existing at the same time on a job with so many oGCDs. Just merge the last 2, I don't think anyone would mind.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->TBN no longer has an MP cost. CD increased to 20 seconds, duration increased to 8 seconds. Dark Arts removed.

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Unless you were facing really (s)low damage but without a healer (and none of the other sustain increases), isn't this just a nerf? It's a flat barrier, so the duration quickly becomes redundant/excessive, and Dark Arts previously gave back its MP cost anyways. In the end, you've simply increased its cooldown by a third and called it a day.

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At level 82, this upgrades into Oblation, increasing the magic damage reduction to 20%, grants 2 charges, each with a CD of 45 seconds.

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Given the portion of tankbusters that are magical, a total of 30% magic mitigation on a short CD seems excessive. Just the charges and/or CD reduction alone would likely be fine, especially if you allow multiple instances of Oblation to be applied to the same target simultaneously at lower effect (similar to the old stacking of DM and Oblation, both).

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->Sole Survivor: marks target and nearby enemies with "Another Victim" status. When surrounded by 3 or more enemies, also grants "Blood price".

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The benefits of Blood Price will scale pretty linearly with target count (* their average attack speed) anyways, so I'd just guarantee Blood Price. That said, do we really want to deal with such granular values of Blood?

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->Syphoon strike restores 1000MP and Souleater gains 15 blood.
->Using Bloodspiller combos into 2 new attacks. Each attack costs 25 blood, including Bloodspiller.

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Then it will effectively take 15 GCDs to prepare a single GCD action that is not your spam-combo, twice what it takes now. Yes, the Blood spenders will take up a slightly higher portion of GCDs now, but the ramp up will be significantly worse. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Especially if this is to be a fixed combo.

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Quietus removed, Bloodspiller has a new animation or the same animation but much stronger to justify having AoE falloff damage.

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Sure, I guess? Animation-wise, that's easy enough. It emits a broadening column of darkness at the end, anyways.

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->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.

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I worry this could end up being worth holding damn near infinitely just to spam Syphon Strike with, unless the MP gen on Blood spender skills (formerly on Delirium) gets made baseline... I'll need to map out the potencies in a bit, but what rotational implications, if any, were you hoping this would have?

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->Blood Weapon removed.

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That'd make the longer time until using any Blood spenders an even harder pill to swallow, ngl.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Unless you were facing really (s)low damage but without a healer (and none of the other sustain increases), isn't this just a nerf? It's a flat barrier, so the duration quickly becomes redundant/excessive, and Dark Arts previously gave back its MP cost anyways. In the end, you've simply increased its cooldown by a third and called it a day.

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It would technically be a nerf, yeah. We already hold 3k for tbn to begin with regardless of where we are in the rotation, so essentially it would be increasing the cooldown and removing the sole kit interaction in the form of a damage neutral for..what exactly?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Then it will effectively take 15 GCDs to prepare a single GCD action that is not your spam-combo, twice what it takes now. Yes, the Blood spenders will take up a slightly higher portion of GCDs now, but the ramp up will be significantly worse. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Especially if this is to be a fixed combo.

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This is something I noticed near immediately. It sounds decent on paper but the build up would ultimately feel worse. Which is why I suggested just being able to use it all upon using Bloodspiller at 50 gauge. and even then, It would quickly lose flavor at how often we would have it, which is why I would opt it to be only usable during Delirium anyways...given it's implemented.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I worry this could end up being worth holding damn near infinitely just to spam Syphon Strike with, unless the MP gen on Blood spender skills (formerly on Delirium) gets made baseline... I'll need to map out the potencies in a bit, but what rotational implications, if any, were you hoping this would have?

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Because it would be worth keeping up permanently and would render souleater an overall damage loss. Why would anyone go for the full combo when they go for that edge of shadow in 6 GCD's, when using the entire combo for all would take 8-9 GCD's to get that 3k?

I thought about this particular point a bit and it more or less would just be a "dps stance" but instead of it being Darkside it would be Delirium. Which if that is the case, I would bring back Darkside as an actual togglable ability when it drained mp for actual resource management and make Bloodspiller/Quietus and Delirium be more about regenerating your mp, and go back to when Delirium gave a flat amount of mp back on a 60s cooldown. (as a spitball, Bloodspiller and Quietus, or the aoe version of it as suggested by ItsUrBoi, could give 1,500mp back per use. Delirium gives 3k)

(This would likely mandate some other mp generation and cost adjustments other than what I just listed above, but that could be solved in a number of ways.)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That'd make the longer time until using any Blood spenders an even harder pill to swallow, ngl.

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I don't see a reason in any scenario to remove Blood Weapon unless they just nuke it's effectiveness or relevance into obscurity, honestly.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I don't see a reason in any scenario to remove Blood Weapon unless they just nuke it's effectiveness or relevance into obscurity, honestly.

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The only thing Blood Weapon does right now is it makes sure you get exactly 3000 MP and 50 blood every minute within exactly 5 GCDs at a certain moment. Its use mainly is also to help you get Living Shadow out early in the opener. Both of these purposes could be moved into Delirium ( the blood generation ), or put into your Souleater combo path in order to allow you to get the same amount of MP over 1 minute, you will not get the same amount of MP in a short time span in your 1 and 2 minute windows, BUT I think we already have enough oGCDs right?

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

The only thing Blood Weapon does right now is it makes sure you get exactly 3000 MP and 50 blood every minute within exactly 5 GCDs at a certain moment. Its use mainly is also to help you get Living Shadow out early in the opener. Both of these purposes could be moved into Delirium ( the blood generation )

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I'd suggest including that into your mock-up and then reexamining it briefly, as that will be a necessary component to making the Blood spenders not feel painfully sluggish.

We talk often about "potencies can be adjusted later," but when potencies (per uptime) or resource generation (indirectly still potencies per uptime) form breakpoints in what you actually do, they're vital to imagining out that gameplay. This is one of those times. If you don't want to math anything out just yet, at least state the intended timings, breakpoints, and/or playflow.

My optimism about job design is gone but if we get something a little more to do between the 1min/2mins and more sustain I'd be happy.

@Mekhana
While there are some greater ambitions for the job's features I'd have... if we had the content in which to make use of them... honestly, same.

Increase our controllable sustain (including, likely, by attaching a heal to CnS). Slightly reduce Blood costs (e.g., to 40 per skill). Raise the apm across lulls via more MP gen over time and MP costs on Shadowbringer and CnS/AD. Give us a second charge of Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain and reduce their CDs to 40s. Voila.

(Maybe give us an alternate combo to make use of beyond just returning Power Slash as a Storm's Eye analog or Scourge as a(n old) Goring Blade analog.)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd suggest including that into your mock-up and then reexamining it briefly, as that will be a necessary component to making the Blood spenders not feel painfully sluggish.

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I will try again to adress the issues mentioned before in more detail:

->Delirium: Grants 3 stacks of Delirium. 1 min CD.
Delirium effect: Increases MP by 1000 and blood by 15 when landing weaponskills. 15 secs duration.
[ Blood weapon was moved here to generate resources you will need ]

->Quietus and Blood Weapon removed.

->Bloodspiller: An attack with a potency of 400. Combos into Bloodcarver. Blood cost: 70 blood
->Bloodcarver: An attack with a potency of 450. Combos into Bloodgorer.
->Bloodgorer: An attack with a potency of 500.
All 3 of these attacks have 60% AoE falloff.
[ This is what you are aiming for, as many usages of this combo as possible. ]

-> Enhanced Living Shadow: Merge with Fray increasing the potency of all actions and abilities by 300 potency and 100 respectively. 20 sec duration. 120 sec CD. No cost.
[ Every 2 minutes all your attack are much stronger and you gain a cool visual effect similar to RPR's Enshroud, but instead you do more damage. You have more control and instant access to the damage. ]

-> Dark resolution : Converts 30 seconds of Darkside into 15 blood. 1 second CD.
[ Darkside is binary, you either have it, or not. The idea would be to generate Darkside using MP via Edge / Flood of Shadow, and then consume this to obtain Blood which you use on the Bloodspiller combo. In the case you are capping on Darkside, you'd want to use this ability to maximize your blood gauge, but without losing Darkside! It also works very well with storing 1 free Edge via TBN. ]

-> Darkside's damage bonus increased to 15%.
[ Some people might feel interested in dropping Darkside to do more Bloodspiller combos ]

-> Souleater grants 10 blood.

-> C&S and Abyssal drain moved to be a GCD with a 60 sec CD. They still share a CD.
-> Abyssal Drain leaves behind a patch of Salted Earth, staying in it heals you over time. Combo action Salt and Darkness, which heals you for 50 potency per enemy hit.
[ This will reduce the amount oGCDs you have. You use C&S in single target, and Abyssal Drain in AoE. Abyssal Drain's "combo" should be a damage gain against 2 or more targets. ]

Gameplay:
Use MP on Edge/Flood of Shadow to gain Darkside. Consume Darkside via Dark Resolution to gain blood.
Never run out of Darkside, but use it to gain more blood.
Do bloodspiller combo.
Living Shadow and Delirium help you generate resources and do more damage.
Damage rotation:
Edge of Shadow or TBN -> Delirium -> Souleater combo -> Living Shadow - Dark Resolution -> Bloodspiller combo with Dark Resolution - Edge double weaved in between each GCD -> C&S
When you finish your Souleater combo you will have 70 bood. 10 from Souleater, 45 from Delirium, 15 from Dark Resolution. This is for the opener.

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Originally Posted by Mekhana

My optimism about job design is gone but if we get something a little more to do between the 1min/2mins and more sustain I'd be happy.

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All we can hope for at this point is DRK gets more thought put into it with whatever it gets in 7.0.

One of my biggest gripes with Endwalker DRK is how everything in Endwalker it got can be summarized with "We did not feel like trying, so just have 2 of em"

-2 Shadowbringers
-2 Oblations
-2 Salted Earths
-2 Living Shadow Traits

Can't wait to get our 2nd charge of Carve and Spit as a lv 92 trait

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Originally Posted by Oizen

All we can hope for at this point is DRK gets more thought put into it with whatever it gets in 7.0.

One of my biggest gripes with Endwalker DRK is how everything in Endwalker it got can be summarized with "We did not feel like trying, so just have 2 of em"

-2 Shadowbringers
-2 Oblations
-2 Salted Earths
-2 Living Shadow Traits

Can't wait to get our 2nd charge of Carve and Spit as a lv 92 trait

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lv 94 we can store a second dark arts
lv100 skill, we summon myste alongside fray (so 2 living shadows). functionally identical to the current LS, but with different VFX

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Originally Posted by Oizen

All we can hope for at this point is DRK gets more thought put into it with whatever it gets in 7.0.

One of my biggest gripes with Endwalker DRK is how everything in Endwalker it got can be summarized with "We did not feel like trying, so just have 2 of em"

-2 Shadowbringers
-2 Oblations
-2 Salted Earths
-2 Living Shadow Traits

Can't wait to get our 2nd charge of Carve and Spit as a lv 92 trait

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Oblation still makes me angry. They give it to us at the level when all the tanks get an upgrade to their primary mitigation tool, instead of...I don't know...adding it in ARR so we have an extra cooldown to help make up for the fact we don't get TBN until 70? And then upgrading it so it does something else on top of the mitigation so it'd feel better overall to use? Nope, gotta give it to us at a point where IT ISN'T AS USEFUL and feels bad to have, and doesn't do anything more than just be a flippin 10% mitigation.

2 charges is bleh when the others actually do other tangible things to help. Camouflage gives 50% parry rate in addition to 10% mitigation (while it's a bit meh that it never gets upgraded, it at least can help with more mitigation). Raw Intuition has a bloodbath caked into it AND gets upgraded into Bloodwhetting for more mitigation AND AN HP SHIELD in addition to the bloodbath. Shelltron gets flippin upgraded into an HP regen along with more mitigation. Compared to those 10% mitigation tools, Oblation only gets 2 charges and nothing more. At LEAST add something tangible to it, like idk, when you unlock the 2nd charge it also heals you for half the damage you take while it's going (I know that sounds broken, just throwing out ideas and nothing more).

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Originally Posted by Mekhana

My optimism about job design is gone but if we get something a little more to do between the 1min/2mins and more sustain I'd be happy.

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Same. My optimism in regards to job design has fallen deep underground by this point. All we can really do is hope they actually give DRK some real heart put into it. I really didn't like what they did to it in 5.0 but I accepted it as its clean slate to grow upon. EW feels like just a slap in the face considering sage got eukrasia the literal expansion after they butchered Dark Arts, instead of, ya know, putting it on the literal job that had it to begin with and making it work there.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Same. My optimism in regards to job design has fallen deep underground by this point.

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That's kind of where I'm at with job design right now. Between classes becoming more homogenized, existing classes seemingly getting forgotten or their core identity changed, and refusing to address the issues existing classes have, I've kind of given up on getting some actually unique classes.

Just as a few examples:
- Summoner got reworked for EndWalker. This was a really good change on paper. Yeah it sucks that DoTs were removed but the rework actually looked and felt more akin to a summoner. Then you played it and realized "... Oh. It's really, really boring".
- White Mage started off as "nature's healer". You had a few different elemental and nature things to do, then out of nowhere for Shadowbringers and beyond that identity sort of fell to the wayside. Sure you got these lilies and you have this bell, but your attacks don't make sense anymore. Where'd stone and aero go? Who knows it's all Glare and Dia from here on.
- Ninja got its identity removed (that being trick attack, a debuff on the enemy for the party's benefit every 60 seconds). Trick attack is still there but it's worse off in my opinion. Now rather than having a debuff that you're slightly annoyed with when the boss becomes untargetable, you're now more angry because that debuff affects YOUR damage specifically every 60 seconds.
- Dark Knight.... I swear they just forget Dark Knight as a tank. Dark Knight was a really neat new tank in HW and has just been gimped and torn apart in future expansions in favor of giving other classes the abilities Dark Knight used to have.

Don't even get me started on re-introducing old abilities to existing classes. Lest anyone forget Dark Knight's "Shadowbringer" ability literally existed back in HW before it was removed. It was known as "Dark Passenger". The only real difference between our new ability and the old is we have two charges and we can't blind anymore. It really feels like a majority of the time Dark Knight is just an after thought for tank changes. Almost like:
"Alright we gotta add some stuff to Gunbreaker."
"Wait don't forget about WAR and PLD. They need some tweaks as well."
"What about Dark Knight?"
"That's a DPS class isn't it?"

I feel like the way they will expand the job into the next expansion is to give it a combo off of blood spiller and add one more GCD to the job because they took away Quietus from Living Shadow and after using x3 Bloodspillers you still have another Souleater combo under raidbuffs, and that don't feel right, or it feels like they left space there for 3 more actions, whether they be as a combo or another gcd.

I'd still want Delirium to be somewhat unique and for Dark Mind to be merged into Oblation as its a big too many buttons to press.

gib selfheals to drk

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Originally Posted by nguyentri11

A rare case never happening to 1 person doesn't mean it never happens.

https://clips.twitch.tv/AgileDrabSno...LwmdLcYYp3Ix9K
^ SPOILER for The Omega Protocol(Ultimate) phase 4.

That clip shows the rare scenario I've described where they only got 3 GCDs under the effect of Walking Dead despite always rolling their GCDs.

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yea i have seen this live and i agree with what you said but that looks like a skill speed issue to me

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Unironically use the new HP potions they added for the new deep dungeon.

Shits pretty good

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pardon my ignorance but hyper potions or something else ?

I am expecting a full restructure of abilities on all jobs to make the leveling experience easier.

I'm not sure if that will come up next expansion, though. There's been some talk in interviews with Yoshi-p about what he wants to do with the levelling system after Lv. 100. It sounds like they're undecided at the moment but that they probably will do something different. The levelling issue itself arises from the fact that job reworks and removed actions result in very uneven action acquisition as you level up. But if the entire levelling process stands to be reworked in 8.0, they'll probably wait until that point to do major restructuring.

I don't really have strong feelings about self-healing on DRK at the moment, simply because damage negation is a pretty fun effect as it is. I wouldn't be surprised if Oblation ends up being bundled together as an upgraded TBN, but it will probably come at the cost of recast. They'll have to rethink what to do with the current Dark Arts system if they do. The action that bothers me the most is Dark Missionary. Raidwide mitigation on tanks has been fairly unbalanced since Stormblood. Missonary and Heart of Light just feel like they were running out of ideas after giving all the best raidwide defensive designs to PLD and WAR. If we're going with conditional defensives, why not an effect inspired by Runic to let you either redirect or absorb magical raidwides? Or alternatively, just give DRK a second way to temporarily debuff the boss outside of Reprisal. That way it feels a bit less like an inferior hand-me-down.

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Originally Posted by Guts-BSM

yea i have seen this live and i agree with what you said but that looks like a skill speed issue to me

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There is a DRK BiS set that runs 2.5 GCD, however. If a player(casual or not) wants to run a slow GCD, why should they be punished for it on a rare occasion just because they prefer a slow GCD?

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Originally Posted by nguyentri11

There is a DRK BiS set that runs 2.5 GCD, however. If a player(casual or not) wants to run a slow GCD, why should they be punished for it on a rare occasion just because they prefer a slow GCD?

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that's something i can't argue about.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I don't really have strong feelings about self-healing on DRK at the moment, simply because damage negation is a pretty fun effect as it is. I wouldn't be surprised if Oblation ends up being bundled together as an upgraded TBN, but it will probably come at the cost of recast. They'll have to rethink what to do with the current Dark Arts system if they do. The action that bothers me the most is Dark Missionary. Raidwide mitigation on tanks has been fairly unbalanced since Stormblood. Missonary and Heart of Light just feel like they were running out of ideas after giving all the best raidwide defensive designs to PLD and WAR. If we're going with conditional defensives, why not an effect inspired by Runic to let you either redirect or absorb magical raidwides? Or alternatively, just give DRK a second way to temporarily debuff the boss outside of Reprisal. That way it feels a bit less like an inferior hand-me-down.

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The negation is fun as is, the problem is more we just need a bit of sustain to be in line with the others. Nothing drastic, just...a bit. That's why I bring up sole survivor every time when this topic comes up. As nice as it would be, I don't think they would put it on an offensive ability purely because it wouldn't be on-demand, you would still being using Carve and Spit for damage anyway so some healing could potentially get wasted. They brought bulwark back, so there's some hope...right?


I see Dark Arts going one of two routes if they decide work on it again. either purely offensive or both offensive and defensive. purely defensive is very unlike due to you needing to use and OGCD to get the maximum effect out of your mits, and putting this even a few abilities that is relevant now in raiding...well..we would be literally treading into a dual DRK meta if the dps was to stay the same in 7.0

General DRK modifications to keep in mind moving forward within this post:

• Shadowbringer is on a mana cost with a single charge
• Delirium is on a mana cost and gives a flat 50 gauge
• TBN still keeps its mana cost, and provides a free edge/flood when broken. (the effect name is something different. Dark Retaliation for example.)
• Dark Arts has no mana cost and is togglable just like gundam DA is (it's Eukrasia I'm referring to)
• lvl 100 gives your Living Shadow a trait that makes your darkside merge with you and increases the potency of abilities by 10% for 15s
• Sole Survivor returns?

purely offensive route is just as it was in Stormblood but toned down significantly

Upon Dark Arts Activation:

• Scourge Replaces Souleater or hard slash as a combo action. (This, of course, means Scourge is returned as a DoT or weakness debuff that allows the DRK themselves to deal more damage to the target(s). otherwise, souleater's or hard slash's existence are pointless)
• increases the potency of bloodspiller by 50
• increases the potency of Quietus by 20 or 30
• increases the potency of stalwart soul by 20 or 30 (in the event scourge is not aoe)

Both offensive and defensive:

• Scourge replaces souleater or hard slash as a combo action. (Again, this does, of course, mean that scourge returns as a DoT or weakness debuff to the target.) The weakness debuff in this case, however would be that Scourge, on the same potency as Souleater/Hard Slash, makes the target deal 5-10% less damage in both physical and magical damage. This would mean that DRK has a form of sustained mitigation. Solo or otherwise
• Increases the potency of bloodspiller by 50
• Makes Salted Earth provide a 10% mit while standing in it
• Gives TBN a bonus 10% mit on top of the shield. (same button presses...kinda? more interesting and satisfying feel, I'd think)

Before we could tell what was physical or magical I'd be inclined to agree with Dark Missionary, but I don't mind it being there now as a form of party mit.

Alright, I have yet another idea for DRK, but this revolves making the current iteration of TBN something more...by essentially giving it more impact. I wouldn't consider this a new idea, but the execution is a bit different.

Let me start with how TBN is modified

• It now gives a 20% shield instead of a 25%. This is done intentionally to make it easier to break outside of Tankbusters.
• Now gives a second status on top of Dark Arts. We'll use "Bathed in Blood" from my prior concepts as the placeholder here. They could show this as a UI element next to the Dark Arts icon

If you've seen some prior posts here this direction may not be surprising. Dark Arts and Bathed in Blood upgrade actions, plain and simple. This where it makes up for the TBN nerf.

Let's start with Dark Arts.

• Flood of Shadow upgrades into Dark Passenger, dealing the same potency as Flood, granting darkside, etc, but it will inflict blind status on all enemies hit for 6s (except bosses)
• Edge Of Shadow evolves into ???(uses old Delirium animation). This provides a 10% mit for 6s. Again, same potency.

Now we'll get into Bathed in Blood:

• Souleater evolves into Scourge. It has the same potency as Souleater and provides a 700 potency heal instead of 300.
• Stalwart Soul evolves into Abyssal Drain, which is the same potency as Stalwart Soul, and provides a 300 potency heal per enemy hit (this, of course, means that Carve and Spit is unlinked from Abyssal Drain).

Simplifying which abilities they actually effect between the two, Dark Arts effects OGCD's, Bathed in Blood effects GCD's.

This would help sustainability in both dungeons and single-target, and make the procs provide something more than just a refunded edge/flood. All without making it a damage gain.

As such, that's why TBN itself is nerfed a bit. To ensure that it isn't overwhelmingly powerful because of what comes after.

They could just as easily give the base abilities themselves the effects when DA and BiB procs, but that wouldn't really make the job feel any different. They have a surplus of old animations they removed from Dark Knight, so I don't think it would be too much to ask to have them back via this method.

The reason there is another status given is to avoid conflict between Dark Passenger and Abyssal Drain, and ???(old delirium animation) and Scourge.
Bloodspiller isn't included in the evolved abilities from Bathed in Blood is because at that point, it is a dps gain, as Bloodspiller and quietus are stronger than Souleater and Stalwart Soul, respectively.

It's okay for DRK to have a weakness in self-sustain. I would sooner have DRK focus on damage negation as a defensive style unique to the job than I would have all tanks have identical heals, damage negation shields, and damage reduction effects. The only point that I would suggest around self-sustain on DRK is that it be more consistent between single target and AoE.

The biggest issue that I have with self-sustain is that it moves us one step closer to an action MMO format where everyone is responsible for their own healing/defensives. You should always be dependent on your tanks and healers to play well, or else why would you pick those roles? When you weaken that dependence then the playerbase shifts away from those roles. And a lot of self-sustain effects are fairly passive, requiring little to no judgement from the player around timing. It would be quite a bit different if lifesteal operated on a 'heal back x% of damage done to you in the past y seconds'.

Just started playing the class, so don't know how fit I am to add my thoughts here about the topic (GNB main during both Endwalker tiers, for reference), but I cannot believe how disconnected the kit really is. Like, the class is a collection of oGCD buttons only tied to their own CD that you can sort of press whenever. In a no buff comp, you can just press those buttons at any time, in any way and it wouldn't ever matter as long as you don't cap up resources or lose usages through the fight.

And I think the biggest offender for this is Living Shadow. The coolest ability DRK gets being a glorified DoT is unforgivable. It should replicate what you do instead of what it currently does. Better be a flavorful damage buff than a fire and forget DoT.

Mitigation wise, and this is pretty minor as I like the mit kit of the job, Dark Mind and Oblation should be swapped level-wise. Going through early dungeons as DRK is a bit of a pain, with just 2 CDs, reprisal and Arm's Length. The second charge could be added with a trait at a later level if it is of any concern for whatever reason. Also Dark Missionary not being available in lvl 70 content feels wrong.

Also, Blood Weapon should have an on-hit healing effect just for flavor alone.

And just to preface, I'm here just to vent, not to propose changes to SE. I think it is a shame that the class is a convoluted and disconnected mess, as I really dig the aesthetics and the mana related part of the kit.

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Originally Posted by Roquepo

Just started playing the class, so don't know how fit I am to add my thoughts here about the topic (GNB main during both Endwalker tiers, for reference), but I cannot believe how disconnected the kit really is. Like, the class is a collection of oGCD buttons only tied to their own CD that you can sort of press whenever. In a no buff comp, you can just press those buttons at any time, in any way and it wouldn't ever matter as long as you don't cap up resources or lose usages through the fight.

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I have to wonder, though... is that so bad? Alone, you need only not overcap; in buffed parties, you should bank as much as you can without overcapping. But... is that really a problem to, when solo, have more freedom / fewer constraints / less direction than most? Tanks aren't generally something one wants to play solo anyways, and outside of a WHM-or-SGE/SAM-BLM-or-MCHx2 light party, you're going to have some manner of buff that'll oblige those timings in the same way a No Mercy or Fight or Flight would.

Nor is there any real synergy other than that among any tank job anymore; Upheaval and Spirits Within interactions with HP, stances, etc., are all a distant past.

That's not to say I don't agree that it's lackluster and could be improved, but... in what way did you want to see improvement, because it seems only two jobs offer anything more in that regard, and DRK falls only a generic damage buff window away from them?

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And I think the biggest offender for this is Living Shadow. The coolest ability DRK gets being a glorified DoT is unforgivable. It should replicate what you do instead of what it currently does. Better be a flavorful damage buff than a fire and forget DoT.

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Agreed.

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Also, Blood Weapon should have an on-hit healing effect just for flavor alone.

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Tentatively agreed. It's worth noting though that in the past every MP expenditure had a tanking benefit outside of Carve and Spit (which was a mere margining mechanic). DA-Souleater meant more self-healing, too; DA-Power Slash gave a metric ton of threat; DA-Dark Passenger also added a blind for mitigation; DA-AD was the only way to get it to do any healing; and all else were buffs to your next defensive among Dark Mind or Dark Dance. In that sense, the MP generation on Blood Weapon was almost always also a means of sustain; it was just perhaps out of balance, overly favoring only DA-CnS, -SE, and -AD for AoE sustain.

If, for instance, it returned to that (with Edge/Flood/Shadowbringer healing or adding to current shielding, etc.), would BW's granting MP alone still seem to lack sustain flavor (rather than just seeming a more bankable/timeable means of self-sustain)?