Dark Knigh needs some changes

I am adding this so that the Devs can see yet another person who want some DRK fixes.

Yea, DRK really needs a rework. I think the community understands that massive change can't happen for a while, so short term things that could really help are adding a good chunk of to MP bloodweapon and increasing the potency of abyssal drain heal.

We have to think about what is realistic from a dev perspective in the short term.
If we want to make it more in line with the other tanks, maybe decouple Abyssal Drain from C&S, make AD a 25s cooldown, increase the heal potency, and make the damage trivial enough to not use it in burst windows but still marginally useful in trash.
If the decoupling of the two is too complicated, just reduce the cd to 30 seconds.
It's hacky, but it would work.

Just that would make me really happy in the short term. Yea, the job is still uninteresting for the most part, but this would at least give us something advantageous. It is the worst

Edit: apparently I can't spell Knight*** correctly

I had been wondering about Abyssal Drain myself recently too. I agree, decouple it from Carve and Spit is the right move to make.

BUT at the risk of making it too homogenous with paladin, I wondered if it might not better be suited to being a third move in their AOE rotation? It may need adjustments to work, but giving dark knight a self heal on every third move of their AOE combo would help with self sustain and bring it more in line with the other three tanks for dungeon runs.

Also to your other point, I don't think decoupling them would be TOO difficult considering when the job launched, the two were separate skills, they were only combined into sharing a cooldown later.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

I had been wondering about Abyssal Drain myself recently too. I agree, decouple it from Carve and Spit is the right move to make.

BUT at the risk of making it too homogenous with paladin, I wondered if it might not better be suited to being a third move in their AOE rotation? It may need adjustments to work, but giving dark knight a self heal on every third move of their AOE combo would help with self sustain and bring it more in line with the other three tanks for dungeon runs.

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Please don't actually make it a third step aoe combo.

Just decouple Abyssal Drain from Carve and Spit and either make a 30s CD or make it a spell again please

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Please don't actually make it a third step aoe combo.

Just decouple Abyssal Drain from Carve and Spit and either make a 30s CD or make it a spell again please

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I only play the job very casually.... is there a reason dark knight shouldn't have a three move AOE combo? Paladin and gunbreaker already both have a three move combo, and I assumed getting a third move like paladin that restores health every time it's used would be a good thing for sustain in dungeon runs. But I'm willing to learn why that's not a good idea...

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Originally Posted by wereotter

I only play the job very casually.... is there a reason dark knight shouldn't have a three move AOE combo? Paladin and gunbreaker already both have a three move combo

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You just answered your own question.

No good reason to further homogenize the jobs.

Would rather they returned Abyssal Drain back to being a Ranged Spell like it was in HW and SB. They can make it cost 1000mp to cast so that you don't just spam it and have to decide if you wanna deal more damage with Flood of Shadows or need the extra heal from Abyssal Drain. This will also prevent button bloat of players using it as a ogcd if they decouple it from Carve n Spit during burst windows.

Secondly, they should lower the CD of Blood Weapon/Delirium to 40sec like it was in HW and SB so that we can generate more MP to make up for the lost 2gcd from the buff. Alternatively they could make it a 20sec buff that gives us haste like in SB which made the 123 combo not feel like crap.

Just bring back the good old Pre SHB DRK

idk why it cant just cost 3000 MP as a spamable oGCD replacement to adding darkside. it wouldnt be as abusable in boss fights, so it wouldnt really be much of an issue.
(Would prefer GCD, like another person suggested)

Mentioned this in another thread but had a somewhat similar idea...
"Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain, reduce CD to 30, give 2 charges adjust potency accordingly, C&S increase mp restored, AD remove mp restored & increase hp restored"
Basically a lil more to play around with while restoring mp or hp

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Mentioned this in another thread but had a somewhat similar idea...
"Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain, reduce CD to 30, give 2 charges adjust potency accordingly, C&S increase mp restored, AD remove mp restored & increase hp restored"
Basically a lil more to play around with while restoring mp or hp

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Instead of removing MP from AD, just slap a 600 potency cure on C&S so that they actually are ST/AoE variants of each other. I haven't run the numbers, but my educated guess is that extra 1200p cure per minute would still be less than PLD overall (to say nothing of WAR) but more than enough to catch up to GNB.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

BUT at the risk of making it too homogenous with paladin, I wondered if it might not better be suited to being a third move in their AOE rotation? It may need adjustments to work, but giving dark knight a self heal on every third move of their AOE combo would help with self sustain and bring it more in line with the other three tanks for dungeon runs.

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No that's pointless, just turn it into a spell or keep it as an ability with no CD but does little damage and is mainly there to heal you in AoE. Tanks shouldn't have 30 second sacrificeless heals every heal below a 90 second CD should make you lose out on damage.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

No that's pointless, just turn it into a spell or keep it as an ability with no CD but does little damage and is mainly there to heal you in AoE. Tanks shouldn't have 30 second sacrificeless heals every heal below a 90 second CD should make you lose out on damage.

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I take your point, but as a reminder, Holy Circle is exactly this. Heals the paladin and is the third move in their AOE combo, and I already said the skill may need to be adjusted (which includes potency changes)

Not to mention that Souleater, Brutal Shell, and Storm's Path on single target also are all third combo moves that heal the tank when they use them, and Paladin has Holy Spirit as a potential fourth move in their combo that does the same.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

I take your point, but as a reminder, Holy Circle is exactly this. Heals the paladin and is the third move in their AOE combo, and I already said the skill may need to be adjusted (which includes potency changes)

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I don't see how merely reverting Abyssal Drain back to a spell makes it the exact same as Holy Circle...They would be functioning entirely different.

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Originally Posted by Magikazam

Just bring back the good old Pre SHB DRK

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Step one: stop taking things away from Dark Knight.
Step two: give some of the things that have been taken away from it back.
Step three: don't take those things away again.
Step four: reinforce the gameplay loop that emerges.

I have a pet conspiracy theory that whoever has been in charge of designing the job for the last few expansions has deeply personal issues with either the job itself or someone who plays it, because sheer incompetence is not sufficient excuse with a trend this consistent; even a stopped clock is right twice per day, and even a total fool would have gotten something or other correct with the design across three expansions—or four, depending on who you ask. Why this has been allowed to continue escapes my conception, but this has gotten beyond the point of being merely silly and instead outright disconcerting.

"Butbutbut DPS and pick rates and clear speeds" to which I bid the Ninja mains be silent. It's a tank. It's not supposed to be a glass cannon, it's supposed to be a tank. Warrior manages both tankiness and damage, and Gunbreaker is very clearly supposed to be your speedy meat-mincer option while still being more defensively competent. This is clearly a solvable problem—in fact, it was a problem that had previously been solved and simply needed refinement of the solution, until Shadowbringers decided it was necessary to fix what wasn't broken and break was wasn't fixed.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Also to your other point, I don't think decoupling them would be TOO difficult considering when the job launched, the two were separate skills, they were only combined into sharing a cooldown later.

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I agree, I just don't know what dependencies may be there. If it was separate before, it shouldn't be too bad... Right???

To all of the other points. A can of worms has been eternally opened. They would either need to nerf the other three tanks, or bring drk up to their level. As much as I like tbn, it's still not up to the level of the others. You can mistakenly use all your mp and just not have it, but still not really gain any DPS.. there's a defensive benefit for having one in the tank, but you have to really make it count. Hoc and bloddewhetting are just basically always available with no drawbacks.

If they can come up with something unique, that would be great, but unique and bad is still bad. I'd rather it look similar to the others and be good. Making AD the 25s ability and keeping tbn would be different enough (you're dealing damage) and the defense buff portion is just tbn and oblation. You could cast them separately if you want, which is something GNB and war can't do. ( I suck at pld, can't really comment there )

Shadow vigil is just annoying.. I like the heal, but it is no comparison to hoc. GNB gets 4 900 potency heals for free in the same time span the DRK gets a single 1200.

Making AD a third aoe is just boring imo. I'd rather them just make a new ability.
Also - just makes the darkside 10% buff. It's stupid when you get a res and have to regain all that mana when WAR just has to hit a single 1-2-3 and they're back on track with next to zero defensive lots.

It's utterly ridiculous

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Originally Posted by wereotter

I take your point, but as a reminder, Holy Circle is exactly this. Heals the paladin and is the third move in their AOE combo, and I already said the skill may need to be adjusted (which includes potency changes)

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Not really holy circle is a damage loss if you use it as a spell, it's designed to be a combo action while abyssal drain as a spell would be designed for sustain. It's also just really really boring, having active planning self sustain would actually make DRK unique and fun. At most I would say you can use a delirium action to make it an instant cast.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

holy circle is a damage loss if you use it as a spell

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I think this is why i personally like the idea of abyssal drain being both a separate spell and have combo action.
Need to spam it for surival and not for DPS? need more DPS?
Id actually make it DPS neutral in the combo, so it serves no real purpose other than for the increased healing from being apart of a combo. (But technically a DPS loss due to costing MP)
So if spammed, its effective healing would be at 70%. if used after unleash, its combos to 80% efficiency. and only after Stalwart Soul would it be at its current 100% effectiveness. (If combos after unleash, it wont combo after the following Stalwart Soul)
so you ideally use it based on how desperately u need the heal, and how effective you want to be with the MP. (Could also alter MP consumption instead of healing potency)
EDIT: (to even go further with this, Id almost wanna have it possibly combo off quietus or blood spiller, with 2 different effects, and even a 0MP cost. It wouldnt require the rest of the combo either, so u can use it in delirium, and have increased dmg (not enough to replace quietus/bloodspiller)

A solid heal would be nice but I guess that's probably asking for too much.

Lazy fix -
Reduce all mp costs by 1/2
Decouple Abyssal Drain from Carve & Split
Assign 5 devs to play the role at different levels so maybe we can actually get some balancing here.

As Yoshi-P so eloquently put it in an interview some years back "Do these developers even play their own game?"
My thoughts exactly Yoshi-P... my thoughts exactly!

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Originally Posted by Erit

Step one: stop taking things away from Dark Knight.
Step two: give some of the things that have been taken away from it back.
Step three: don't take those things away again.
Step four: reinforce the gameplay loop that emerges.

I have a pet conspiracy theory that whoever has been in charge of designing the job for the last few expansions has deeply personal issues with either the job itself or someone who plays it, because sheer incompetence is not sufficient excuse with a trend this consistent; even a stopped clock is right twice per day, and even a total fool would have gotten something or other correct with the design across three expansions—or four, depending on who you ask. Why this has been allowed to continue escapes my conception, but this has gotten beyond the point of being merely silly and instead outright disconcerting.

"Butbutbut DPS and pick rates and clear speeds" to which I bid the Ninja mains be silent. It's a tank. It's not supposed to be a glass cannon, it's supposed to be a tank. Warrior manages both tankiness and damage, and Gunbreaker is very clearly supposed to be your speedy meat-mincer option while still being more defensively competent. This is clearly a solvable problem—in fact, it was a problem that had previously been solved and simply needed refinement of the solution, until Shadowbringers decided it was necessary to fix what wasn't broken and break was wasn't fixed.

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At this point I'm starting to think that whoever is responsible for DRK must be religious and thinks DRK is "satanic", "evil" or something, so they've been actively screwing up the job as much as they can get away with for the last years lol (And DRK having high dps in EW was an accident)

Maybe reduce the cool down to 30 seconds for abyssal drain???

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Originally Posted by wereotter

I only play the job very casually.... is there a reason dark knight shouldn't have a three move AOE combo? Paladin and gunbreaker already both have a three move combo, and I assumed getting a third move like paladin that restores health every time it's used would be a good thing for sustain in dungeon runs. But I'm willing to learn why that's not a good idea...

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PLD and GNB don't have 3-move combos. They have resources built by their 2-step combos and spent separately, which is a hell of a lot more flexible.

Making Abyssal Drain a 3rd step would be the worst of both worlds. Same-y feeling (even if not actually the same), except worse (less flexible). It'd feel like hand-me-down shoes without sole or laces that you're then obliged to wear over your previous perfectly fine pair (that was degraded to make room for the hand-me-down).

Closer, oddly enough, to PLD and GNB would just be to have DRK generate a hell of a lot more MP, so that you'd be looking at nearly a Flood per combo's time, perhaps with Abyssal Drain then becoming a spammable GCD at MP cost. Similar in CPM distribution across AoE... but distinctly DRK.

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Originally Posted by Stizzle

Lazy fix -
Reduce all mp costs by 1/2

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Unless you want an even lesser portion of Edges to be used outside of 2-minute buffs, it makes more sense to instead double our MP generation.

Decreasing MP costs and increasing MP generation equally allow for more MP spenders, but...

The lower the MP cost with same generation, the more "charges" bankable (3.33 -> 6.67 for 50% less cost) and charge time bankable (e.g., needing 2 edges outside of burst -> only needing 1).

The greater the MP generation at same MP costs, the lower the amount of charging time bankable (spreading the added casts more towards your otherwise especially dull between-bursts periods).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The greater the MP generation at same MP costs, the lower the amount of charging time bankable (spreading the added casts more towards your otherwise especially dull between-bursts periods).

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I'm in favor of a less lazier fix as well. My approach was more "at the least you could", while yours is more of a "while you're at it".

Anything is better than what we have now-

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Originally Posted by Stizzle

My approach was more "at the least you could", while yours is more of a "while you're at it".

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Yeah, this has always been the issue when discussing fixes to jobs. Besides "At least" and "Start over", you also have those who argue the numbers game too, saying basic theories arent possible, because they numbers supplied were slightly off. Getting everyone on the same page is pretty hard.
Another issue is that sometimes ppl list 4 different possible ideas, where they arent intending all 4 to be applied. then someone brings up how all 4 arent possible, because they clash with eachother, when they were meant to be 4 separate ideas on their own.

And sometimes... people just like the current version, so they will say "Dont bring back old ideas, they didnt work at all!" when all they needed was slight adjustments to fix them. (example being 2.0 DRKs using the blind effect and the evasion in conjunction, which brings them down to nearly running out of mp for darkside, and all AoEs were MP costs, so they couldnt hold threat, so to get MP back, they had to use blood price, which only grants MP to the DRK *IF* the enemies actually land hits on the DRK... which isnt very likely. and if you were paired with a WHM keeping the enemies on stun lock during that window? you were SooL for getting your MP back. This would have been an easy adjustment, rather than a complete rework, like what was in StormBlood)

For a quick help, I wish they'd remove the CD from TBN and fold Oblation into it: After TBN ends. no matter how, 10s of -10% damage taken.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

For a quick help, I wish they'd remove the CD from TBN and fold Oblation into it: After TBN ends. no matter how, 10s of -10% damage taken.

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Oblation being separate and not directly tied to TBN is actually its greatest strength, allowing you to stack it with TBN when you want to increase the effectiveness of the shield or using it elsewhere when the rate of damage coming in isn't high enough to guarantee the shield breaking in 6s or less.
Removing that flexibility and forcing it to just occur after TBN would greatly reduce its overall effectiveness.

That said, they could reduce the base HP while increasing mitigation while the barrier is active. In that way the damage required to break it goes unchanged (same total eHP) but it will have a lingering effect against the excess damage of the attack that pops it.

Small buff that could be nonetheless worthwhile against very large hits.

25% barrier HP = 25% eHP.
20% barrier HP + 20% mit while active = 20/.8 eHP = 25% eHP (but with reduced impact from overbreak damage).