Sole Survivor

We all know there will be re-balancing in 4.05.
To bring DRK up to PLD's level, we need a little more defensive utility.

A good opportunity to allow this, would be to add an effect to sole survivor. Its currently equal to PLD's Divine Veil recast time of 120 seconds and currently only provides limited support in single target encounters.

It's great to use if there are killable targets through out the encounter but in those encounters with only one enemy, it provides zero use.

There was a lot of hype for a trick attack effect from the media tour (due to a mistake) but what if there was an effect to reduce targets damage dealt?

With a 120s recast time, it would compete with Divine Veil nicely.

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Originally Posted by Daniel_Fury

but what if there was an effect to reduce targets damage dealt?

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https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Reprisal

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Originally Posted by Kinkoz

https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Reprisal

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I understand it's like Reprisal but they didn't remove divine veil which has a similar result and leaving the other 2 tanks at a disadvantage. PLD can take reprisal too after all.

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Originally Posted by Daniel_Fury

I understand it's like Reprisal but they didn't remove divine veil which has a similar result and leaving the other 2 tanks at a disadvantage. PLD can take reprisal too after all.

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I'm saying Reprisal already does what you ask, being a skill that reduces a target's damage dealt. And it's on a shorter CD than Divine Veil.

In addition, Sole Survivor isn't intended to be the equivalent to a Paladin's Divine Veil and it has never functioned in such a way.

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Originally Posted by Kinkoz

I'm saying Reprisal already does what you ask, being a skill that reduces a target's damage dealt. And it's on a shorter CD than Divine Veil.

In addition, Sole Survivor isn't intended to be the equivalent to a Paladin's Divine Veil and it has never functioned in such a way.

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The problem is that Divine Veil is one of many PLD advantages. I'm just posting an idea to take a skill with very selected usage and make it more useful while shortening the gap between PLD and DRK. With Sole Survivor you could have the same effect as Reprisal over 15s, however, having two skills do the same thing could be pretty stale.

They ought to just give it the same effects as in pvp. Increase targets damage taken by 10% and maybe still restore blood gauge if target dies while it's in effect. That would make it much less situational and give some nice utility as well. Maybe reduce the duration of it to balance it out. Reduce to 10 seconds maybe, like our very own trick attack.

they could buff it with Dark Arts, that it gets an AoE effect.

I miss those little Handy playing tricks. Currently all that DRK does, is clicking oGCDs that "reduce incoming damage for x % for y seconds" and Dark Arts is used simple for more potency. That's incredibly boring. Paladin did that gameplay already. DRK has just become a weaker Paladin.

This would be cool. It would allow us that small window to unleash our burst (similar to berserk). On the current 2 minutes cd, it will line up perfectly with Delirium, blood weapon and carve and spit.

The only problem is that it might overdo it in terms of dps/dps utility provided.

You know what? I want a dark knight utility like this: chains with a party member, if this party member dies, he acquire walking dead debuff and stay undead until caster dies. The chain breaks upon both players die

I just want it to be better at what it is intended to do: reload the DRK on HP/MP after a kill.

To that end, just reduce the cooldown. If not more frequent, then more potent pure use: Another Victim is applied to nearby enemies of original target once it dies (think D3 Diablo2 Necromancer Corpse Explode)

Sole Survivor is worthless in PvE compared to PvP. And the MP restore is less then what you get from Siphon Strike. HP restore doesn't mean much when a healer is topping you off anyway. For how little it does the CD time is also twice as long then what it should be.

In PvP it is knocked down to 60 seconds and restores HP, MP, and Blood.

Other 2 tanks have skills that give them HP back on demand while DRK is a maybe.

they should at the very least, update the dam skill. 20% mana and hp feels really poor this xpac.
20% mana was kinda nice with the mana regen we had at 3.x, but now we have way more mana regen and a blood bar, and the regen from sole survivor feels VERY weak and with a long cd.
On the othe hand, i love the pvp version of it.

If i could reedo the skill, i would:

- make it a dot;
-take out the heath regen and place a dmg reduction effect for 5-10 secs;
-regen 25-30% mp and gives 30-50 blood;
-if the mob dies with the dot/debuff, you get the whole mp/blood regen and the dmg reduction buff;
-add a second button press of the skill, to detonate the dot before it expires;
-detonation means you deal the rest of the dot dmg instantly and recovers half the mp/blood, and get the dmg reduction buff with half the time;
-tweak the cd.

This would solve a few problems in one go, sole survive would give us a bit of dps/enmity, it would be useable outside of trash pulls And be used as a tank buster cd (detonation with halved dmg reduction time) or active mitigation (mob dies and you get full time on dmg reduction buff)

I'd say Sole Survivor is more of our equivalent to Equilibrium/Clemency than Divine Veil (all are gained at lv58 and are some form of self sustain) I'd like to see it be less.... unreliable myself. In the past I made a thread about this and someone (name Lyth) had a really good and fitting idea for it- here's the quote: (gahh 1000 character limit, see next post)

Here's 1/2:

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While every tank needs some form of self-sustain, direct heals don't really fit in with DRK's aesthetic. We're more likely to drain an opponent's HP and MP to keep ourselves alive. DRK is definitely in need of self-sustain, though.

Sole Survivor has a few issues. The 15 duration seems a little too easy to time, and there's no real benefit to applying it earlier over waiting until the last second to guarantee that the mob dies with it active. The benefit to self-sustain is limited by the fact that it requires a mob to die and that it's on a 2 minute recast. The name "Sole Survivor" might suggest otherwise, but it offers next to no survival value when solo. Its main use is to boost your MP, which you can then turn into potency.

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aaand 2/2:

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One thing that could be done with it is to let party members absorb part of the damage that they deal on the debuffed target as HP and MP. Now you have some unique self-sustain on DRK without having to copy over Clemency or Equilibrium. It retains the job's aesthetic of draining life force. It gives you some much needed survivability when solo. It also provides a bit of optional raid utility. You could even throw in a bonus bit of healing/MP at the end if the mob dies with it up, adding a bit of an extra skill ceiling if you want to try to time it perfectly to get the maximum heal potency out of it.

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Now that we have Shirk I'd rather just go back to the original description of getting the restore if a party member dies with Sole Survivor.

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Originally Posted by SummerScorcher

I'd say Sole Survivor is more of our equivalent to Equilibrium/Clemency than Divine Veil (all are gained at lv58 and are some form of self sustain) I'd like to see it be less.... unreliable myself. In the past I made a thread about this and someone (name Lyth) had a really good and fitting idea for it- here's the quote: (gahh 1000 character limit, see next post)

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Actually, what if you dark arts sole survivor and it gives you the 20% heal immediately and doesn't apply the "another victim" debuff?

That is actually close to my initial suggestion, which was to have it become a direct heal for yourself/a party member you have selected. Though as Lyth pointed out it doesn't really fit in with DRK's aesthetic, which is draining from the enemies. Besides, it'd probably have to be a spikier heal since you'd miss out on the MP and it's on a much higher cooldown than Equili/Clemency. Having it become a bloodbath-like effect once you put it on sounds pretty fitting to me, have it be like 75% of damage dealt into HP.

I would like sole survivor to suspend all resources costs for 12 seconds. This way we have a two phase dps system.

Another idea I had was that once you put Sole Survivor on an enemy, if you'd cast Abyssal Drain on it afterwards it will lose Another Victim but you receive 1000% of damage dealt as HP (so a 1200 potency heal.) Or even, if you Dark Arts that Abyssal Drain it would be 1200% of damage dealt restored. You'd have to sacrifice some DPS to use it just like the other tanks, it can be buffed to be even stronger to compensate the CD time and you have some reliable self healing for your DRK.

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Originally Posted by SummerScorcher

gahh 1000 character limit, see next post)

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You can get around this through editing your posts. Was amazing when I learned this.

I'll agree that Sole Survivor seems really weak now and just a remnant of the old DRK with no real place anymore. They could rework it, but I think I'd rather they just give us some serious attention and give us some new abilities while straight up removing some of the old ones, like Dark Passenger.

Moving the blind to Quietus seems like a better move, while perhaps also adding a silence effect to Quietus. I mean, at this point I don't even know why it's called that lol.

I will say, it feels like they focused on PLD this expansion and kinda just half-assed DRK/WAR with the intention of focusing on them at a later point.

Soul survivor is a bit of a niche ability. You use it for the MP gain rather than the healing. It's more about finding every possible moment when you can use it on something in a fight (such as Susano's sword and rocks), and then converting the MP into potency. The problem is that if you keep the MP gain on the ability, your DRK is going to prefer to use it for that instead of the additional effect. For example, having Sole Survivor also act as an additional TA or Reprisal means that you have to choose between these effects and the heal/MP gain. Depending on the additional effect, the same choice is nearly always going to win out every time.

I do like the idea of making Sole Survivor into a group lifesteal/mp steal, and I think this sort of change gives DRK a bit more reliable self healing and a bit of utility without being the sort of advantage that PoA or Veil is for PLD. Making Souleater give you lifesteal out of Grit would probably do a better overall job of improving DRK's self sustain to the point where it's more comparable to other tanks, though, unless you reduced the recast.