Ideas for Dark Knight Improvements?

DA is one of the featured mechanics of DRK but while the idea is interesting the actual implementation is boring and spammy. What are some ways to make the class feel more like how a Dark Knight should be?

My suggestion is to increase the mana cost but also increase it's power:

DA Syphon Strike - no longer adds potency but gives a powerful mana-over-time buff that restores mana over 18/21 seconds. This makes it very efficient when used correctly but just a mana-drain when spammed.

DA Souleater - 10% max hp damage to yourself but +280 potency. Basically choosing offense over defense, makes dark knight more "darky".

DA Power Slash - A wild, powerful strike that leaves both you and your target off-balance, increasing the damage you take by 5% but lowering the target's damage output by 5%. Utility.

I'm disappointed with the way DA is now because there is basically no thought or planning to use it atm, which results in DRK being more annoying to play than anything else.

Well, Syphon Strike alone already refunds like 90% of the amount of MP you used for DA if you add another MP over time refresh, you'll never go into "mana drain when spammed" if you just repeats the whole 3 GCDs combo.

And Having a move that damages yourself as a tank makes the healer's job more difficult. It's already bad enough with STR tanks on DPS Stance main tanking, now they need to deal with STR Tanks on DPS Stance taking 10% damage every 10 seconds? That's just terrible.

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Originally Posted by Iveriad

Well, Syphon Strike alone already refunds like 90% of the amount of MP you used for DA if you add another MP over time refresh, you'll never go into "mana drain when spammed" if you just repeats the whole 3 GCDs combo.

And Having a move that damages yourself as a tank makes the healer's job more difficult. It's already bad enough with STR tanks on DPS Stance main tanking, now they need to deal with STR Tanks on DPS Stance taking 10% damage every 10 seconds? That's just terrible.

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You don't have to make everything idiot-proof. That was the direction the devs took with stormblood and all it did was make the game boring. The MP restoration numbers can obviously be balanced by increasing numbers/effects of dark arts, the point is to introduce some more depth to the gameplay instead of just "spam DA when its up".

The new classes like red mage require almost no thought to play them either. But at least they're fun to play.

Start by removing it from Siphon Strike

Some ideas:

-More gameplay in Darkside, maybe go back to how it worked in 3.X
It was just more interesting when it could actually fall off in 3.X. Now it just stays on 24/7. I mean technically it has a drawback and giving the DRK the ability to turn it off makes sense, but in practice t just ended up being this thing you turn on, like starting your car before you begin.

-Remove DA effect from Carve and Spit.
The way it works with this ability is weird. It's basically two different abilities depending on whether it's DAd or not. It didn't use to work like this and it was better just as a plain old MP regen cooldown if you ask me.

-Buff DRK cooldowns or trim them to a few strong ones.
Too many of them are weak. Off the top of my head - Dark Mind, Living Dead, Blood Price
We have a lot of OCD abilities to have to weave in and a lot of them just suck. There are times I swear I used living dead but I died anyway. I even heard the sound effect so it may have something to do with animation time or just lag.

-Change Dark Passenger or remove it
Something about this move has to be done but I don't know what. It's technically a bad cooldown that could go in the above point but it's so bad it deserves it's own mention. Useless abilities need not exist.

-More stuff in the rotation, less stuff OCD
Currently DRK is an OCD cluster**** but only has a simple 3 button rotation combo otherwise. I would like to see that reversed a bit personally. This complaint includes the DA spam that is responsible for a lot of OCD pushing.


You may notice a lot of these points are just things that were in Heavensward. Well that's because Heavensward DRK was better. Dare I say, maybe they should just forget about what they've done in Stormblood so far and go back to that as a starting point.

Don't take this too seriously if you don't want, it's just spitting ideas.

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Originally Posted by Dregenfox

You don't have to make everything idiot-proof...

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Originally Posted by _Pigzig

-Remove DA effect from Carve and Spit.
The way it works with this ability is weird. It's basically two different abilities depending on whether it's DAd or not. It didn't use to work like this and it was better just as a plain old MP regen cooldown if you ask me.

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I'm sorry but too good XD

/10char

Bring back Shadow Skin and Dark Dance to fill our defensive suite for dealing with fluff damage.

Bring back our stun and scourge too please. And shadowskin as well, let them slot rampart alongside shadowskin.

There are two problems with Dark Knight right now.

1. DPS.
-Our damage is in the toilet relative to our utility. We should do more damage than PLD given that TBN does not come close to PLD's raid utility or raid mitigation. Jobs with less utility should do more damage. By this same logic, WAR should do more damage than both of us.

2. Mitigation.
-Outside of TBN our cooldown suite is garbage and needs to be buffed. All of it is geared around tank busters and none of them last longer than 10s which is ridiculous. We have to use a tank buster skill (TBN) to have any mitigation for fluff damage which feels awful.

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Originally Posted by Dregenfox

DA Souleater - 10% max hp damage to yourself but +280 potency. Basically choosing offense over defense, makes dark knight more "darky".

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the problem with this is that you are shifting your own class mechanic over to another player. you have basically no backdraw from such a skill, you just pop it and get the benefit - while the healer has to deal with the trade-off. that's why the whole "use your own life for damage" stuff is not part of DRKs gameplay in FF14. sacrificing mana instead of life, a resscource wich you have to manage all by yourself, makes much more sense in an MMO with a trinity.

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i have the feeling that dark side and dark arts are just fluff skills since 4.0. they just could remove both skills, put the potencys of all attacks on dark arts level and what would really change? you don't have to spam dark arts anymore, wich we all hate. tweek the numbers a bit to bring the dps output in line with the other tanks and call it a day...

Dark Passenger: 240 potency, 380 potency with DA.
Additional Effect: Reduces damage taken by 5% for 30 seconds.

The Blackest Night: Cooldown doubled to 30 seconds.
When the shield breaks, it procs "The Brightest Flame".

The Brightest Flame: Certain Dark Arts attacks will have new effects.
DA Bloodspiller: Resets the cooldown of Carve and Spit.
DA Quietus: Resets the cooldown of Dark Passenger.
DA Souleater: All Abyssal Drain attacks casted for 10 seconds will automatically have the DA effect.

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Originally Posted by Tint

the problem with this is that you are shifting your own class mechanic over to another player. you have basically no backdraw from such a skill, you just pop it and get the benefit - while the healer has to deal with the trade-off. that's why the whole "use your own life for damage" stuff is not part of DRKs gameplay in FF14. sacrificing mana instead of life, a resscource wich you have to manage all by yourself, makes much more sense in an MMO with a trinity.

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It doesn't matter how it's implemented as long as they shift more decision-making into DA. They could put in other drawbacks like bind/root for a few seconds in exchange for extra power. DRK should be the harder tank class w/ the most decision making.

But yea atm DA is just a pointless mechanic besides making people press more buttons for the sake of pressing buttons.

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Originally Posted by cetrei

Dark Passenger: 240 potency, 380 potency with DA.
Additional Effect: Reduces damage taken by 5% for 30 seconds.

The Blackest Night: Cooldown doubled to 30 seconds.
When the shield breaks, it procs "The Brightest Flame".

The Brightest Flame: Certain Dark Arts attacks will have new effects.
DA Bloodspiller: Resets the cooldown of Carve and Spit.
DA Quietus: Resets the cooldown of Dark Passenger.
DA Souleater: All Abyssal Drain attacks casted for 10 seconds will automatically have the DA effect.

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That one is a very nice idea. We might have a little drawback in mitigation but the effect on DP should make it even. Right now the job is boring, One combo, spam dark arts with no brain.

The problem is our DPS and utility we have no utility, Paladin trumps us when it comes to both, warrior is in the same boat but brings its own DPS what we need is:

- Shadow Wall to 40% instead of 30%, warrior has Vengeance, Pld has Sentinel beats Shadow Wall by a huge margin
- BloodSpiller to OGCD with Quietus
- Carve and Spit to do a bit more damage 30-40 potency
- Give Drks some utility (PvP Soul Survivor vulen debuff, DA + Power Slash to give a damage reduction, some kind of active reduction ability Dark Spikes(?) I see people talk about this a lot) something like this http://www.wowhead.com/spell=203720/demon-spikes for physical damage reduction but make it cost DA.
- Deliriums CD is too long shorten it 90 seconds would be good
- Allow Soul Eater inside and outside of Grit to give more lifesteal or add lifesteal to Darkside while it's up
- Retune Living Dead it's outdated by quite a bit, requires healers to top you off War and Pld don't have this issue
- TBN while good, it's CD is too long and doesn't stay on the Drk long enough needs 1-3 more seconds to take the full hit
- Dark Passenger is really REALLY bad it needs fixing, not even worth the mana

As it stands Drk is just boring and clunky with no real good mitigation, bottom of the barrel DPS, no utility, it's not in a great spot it's functional but outshined by the other 2 tanks. It feels like Drk is the most incomplete tank its kit doesn't compliment it while leveling or max level, it's playable in dungeons and all the content we have but it's not as fun/practical as it was before.

Dark Mind should be reduced to 10% mitigation, but effective against all types of damage.
Dark Arts + Dark Mind should add 20% mitigation against magic attacks then.

then we keep our 30% magic cooldown, but are getting a 10% cooldown for auto attacks / in between tankbusters situations, where DRKs defensive kit is lacking.

Shadow Wall- CD reduced from 180 seconds to 120.
The Blackest Night- Effect lasts 10 seconds instead of 5.
Delirium- CD reduced from 120 seconds to 90.
Carve and Spit- Potency increase from 450 to 500.
Dark Mind- ^What he said.
Dark Passenger- Make it what it was before.

These would be my ideal changes, outside of a general DPS increase to match Paladin.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cetrei

Dark Passenger: 240 potency, 380 potency with DA.
Additional Effect: Reduces damage taken by 5% for 30 seconds.

The Blackest Night: Cooldown doubled to 30 seconds.
When the shield breaks, it procs "The Brightest Flame".

The Brightest Flame: Certain Dark Arts attacks will have new effects.
DA Bloodspiller: Resets the cooldown of Carve and Spit.
DA Quietus: Resets the cooldown of Dark Passenger.
DA Souleater: All Abyssal Drain attacks casted for 10 seconds will automatically have the DA effect.

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I like the idea the only problem is with TBN being pretty much our only viable CD I can see some issues arising so the recast timer is fine as is.....Unless we get better CDs instead of that garbage they call unmend lol and shawdow wall isn't good enough for its CD timer

Well I meant dark mind but yea