DRK Rework - Ideas, and moving away from hand-me-downs

Intro
I've seen a lot of ideas for DRK changes to bring the job to a better place in terms of how it feels to play, many of which I admit I thought were good - such as every 1-2-3 giving a 4th button to hit like how PLD does. However, I think this approach would only serve as a short-term band-aid and not give DRK what it needs in the long run: a focus on its own identity coming from DRK-specific themes. I think post-ShB, DRK has always been too much like WAR and recent changes only served to further shine a spotlight on this observation.

I'll have to break this into multiple posts, so more to come.

Themes
So, what IS a Dark Knight thematically? Factoring in its historical appearances, I think there are 3 main components to what sets DRK apart from other melee combatants:

1. Sacrifice HP to do more damage. This is what most people think of first if they've played DRK in earlier series entries. Taking this approach directly for a tank job introduces a lot of issues for balancing for group/end-game content. However, that doesn't mean there aren't ways to represent this theme. Abstracting from this idea further, you can look at this concept as "I have a resource with a number that I want to spend for more damage. I want to drain this resource when I can, but I don't want this number to hit 0. (Unless I do, more on that later)"
2. Strength in Adversity. As a fight goes on and as the DRK is hit, it has tools to become stronger/turn taking damage into a benefit. There are passives and abilities from previous entries as well as FF14 that play on this theme. Using TBN as an example though, I feel like TBN really can be described as "You hit me, and if you hit me just enough I don't get punished" rather than an actual net positive occurring due to tying the ability to DRK's damage. So, while this theme is technically present I think there is room for much improvement in this area to set DRK apart from other tanks in terms of how its mitigation works.
3. Living Shadow/Darkside. This is a bit newer of an addition to the historical representation of Dark Knight unless you're counting certain character(s) from Kingdom Hearts. I admit, I really like this thematically and hope this addition continues to be implemented in some form for the job in future entries. However, only having your Living Shadow be represented in your toolkit once every 2 minutes minimizes the cool factor of this unique aspect among the tanks.

So, where does this leave us? I have a set of general changes to existing components I'd like to see, and a set of complete overhaul/new components I'd like to see in a future rework of the job that transcends just getting more hand-me-downs from the other tanks.

General Changes

• Separate mitigation tools from damage tools. Currently, TBN is the offender. It shouldn't have any resource cost that's tied to DRK's damage rotation. This is bad for how the job plays, and no other tank has to deal with this and for good reason. I think TBN should have something extra good happen if it breaks, but that something should not have any bearing on the DRK's offensive approach.
• Dark Mind and Dark Missionary need to do more. Going off of theme #2, I would suggest keeping the magic dmg only mitigation to maintain "uniqueness" but add a liturgy of the bell effect with Dark Mind being only for self and a weaker version added to the party on Dark Missionary. These heals of course wouldn't be as strong as Liturgy of the Bell and don't have to have the "heal for remaining stacks anyway" bit, but should be enough to be a meaningful addition to these mitigation tools.
• Walking Dead doesn't kill you. Keeping the limited self heals after triggering Living Dead would make this invuln more comparable to the others and I don't think this would put DRK as having the defacto best invuln. It would simply be good and do its job without too many strings attached in the context of this job being a tank in this iteration.
• Separate Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit shared CD. Other than this, I admit I've not really thought what else should be done. I think Abyssal Drain needs more significant changes, but I'll leave smarter people than me to decide what that should be as I focus on other areas.

Overhaul Changes

• Blood Gauge: No longer a resource builder copied from WAR. Instead, starts at 100 and is constantly regenerating similar to how SGE addersgall gauge does, except there is a visible number increasing. Souleater/Stalwart Soul gives a short duration buff that increases regen rate instead of an immediate gain. Goal is to serve as the DRK's "HP" resource you want to spend, but almost always don't want to hit 0.
• Strength in Adversity: Replaces the Darkside 10% damage buff. This buff is granted when the Blood Gauge hits 100 and stays active as long as the Blood Gauge doesn't hit 0, after which point the Blood Gauge must fill all the way back to 100 to refresh.
• From the Brink: 60/120 sec OGCD that immediately refreshes Strength in Adversity regardless of Blood Gauge value.
• Bloodspiller/Quietus: These skills no longer require 50 points of the Blood Gauge to use, but do spend 50 points when used. Their potencies are significantly reduced while not under the effect of Strength in Adversity.
• Funeral Pyre: When the Blood Gauge hits 0, this spell is readied and is a high potency nuke whose potency is significantly reduced while not under the effect of Strength in Adversity. Replaces Unmend while readied. Intended purpose is to completely drain the Blood Gauge to ready this spell and use From the Brink to reapply your damage buff so you can continue pumping damage without interruption.
• Darkside/Darkside Gauge/Dark Arts: Darkside is now an ability with a 1 sec. recast that requires at least 1 point of Dark Arts to use. You can now store up to 3 points of Dark Arts, which are gained when using Edge/Flood MP spenders. Darkside will dump ALL stored points of Dark Arts to ready 1-3 Darkside attacks, which replace Edge/Flood attacks as higher potency versions of them that don't spend MP. For flavor, these "Darkside's Edge" and "Darkside's Flood" attacks will come from the Living Shadow similar to Reaper's avatar or Ninja's Bunshin. The gauge itself can look pretty much identical to the current one, just with adjustments to the Dark Arts portion to fit 3 there. Goal here is to improve the rotation outside of burst window(s) while involving the Living Shadow more often than once every 2 minutes.

Sorry for yet another DRK rework post, but I was seeing a lot of suggestions that I felt were either only good for the short-term or leaning too much toward just borrowing existing things from other tanks and wanted to take a shot at more long-term divergent changes.

Lastly, on the off chance that any devs see this and like any of the ideas, feel 100% free to take as few or as many of the ideas as you'd like.

you want a tank to sacrifice hp to do damage whilst taking autos and busters? please dont make suggestions about tanks going forward.

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Originally Posted by Zryn

you want a tank to sacrifice hp to do damage whilst taking autos and busters? please dont make suggestions about tanks going forward.

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That was your take away? Something they explicitly said they're not doing because

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Originally Posted by Ravoku

Taking this approach directly for a tank job introduces a lot of issues for balancing for group/end-game content. However, that doesn't mean there aren't ways to represent this theme.

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Anyway,

Dark Mind and Dark Missionary are weird. Dark Mind is simply outdated from old tank design where Paladin was physical mit and DRK was magical mit while Dark Missionary is directly one to one shared with Gunbreaker.

Dark Mind should just straight up do something different, maybe a barrier that trait upgrades into TBN or something so DRK can't be polarized based on if the devs decided to make a TB magic.

AoE barrier utility for Dark Missionary is already taken by other tanks so what if it was actually a party-based personal damage boost like Meditative Brotherhood (Monk gains chakra when allies use GCDs) and instead defensively DRK got a shorter CD on Reprisal for raidwides (they actually invented it)

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Originally Posted by WeakestZenosEnjoyer

Anyway,

Dark Mind and Dark Missionary are weird. Dark Mind is simply outdated from old tank design where Paladin was physical mit and DRK was magical mit while Dark Missionary is directly one to one shared with Gunbreaker.

Dark Mind should just straight up do something different, maybe a barrier that trait upgrades into TBN or something so DRK can't be polarized based on if the devs decided to make a TB magic.

AoE barrier utility for Dark Missionary is already taken by other tanks so what if it was actually a party-based personal damage boost like Meditative Brotherhood (Monk gains chakra when allies use GCDs) and instead defensively DRK got a shorter CD on Reprisal for raidwides (they actually invented it)

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Yeah, I'm much less inspired for what exactly to do with those two, so I tried to go with something other tanks (to my knowledge?) don't have - mit buff that translates to Take Damage->Trigger small potency instantaneous heal. Not a regen, not a shield etc. I don't think anyone has something like that? This way, the % mitigation could potentially justify staying magic only and would shine more in cases where magic damage was happening while making these abilities at least not complete wastes in every other scenario. Maybe I wasn't super clear on that, but I wasn't trying to add an AoE barrier utility to step on PLD's toes.

Not entirely against a party-based dmg boost though. It would certainly be the first tank to have something like that. I think the only concern I'd have with compensation the lack of party-wide mit in that case with a lower CD on reprisal would be that you could still have reprisal overwrite from other tanks, so maybe it could get a reprisal-but-not? (lol)
Or maybe oblation could turn into a -10% damage done debuff to the boss instead of a targeted buff in this circumstance? Not sure, but definitely love the discussion and additional suggestions!

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Originally Posted by Ravoku

Not entirely against a party-based dmg boost though. It would certainly be the first tank to have something like that. I think the only concern I'd have with compensation the lack of party-wide mit in that case with a lower CD on reprisal would be that you could still have reprisal overwrite from other tanks, so maybe it could get a reprisal-but-not? (lol)
Or maybe oblation could turn into a -10% damage done debuff to the boss instead of a targeted buff in this circumstance? Not sure, but definitely love the discussion and additional suggestions!

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Legally distinct Reprisal is probably more realistic depending on the back end structure anyway,

Oblation comes way later than Dark Missionary is the thing there