The completely REASONABLE changes to the Dark Knight job thread

[saber_alter]

-snip-

the evasion of modifier of dark dance works against DRK's other mechanics because of two skills: blood price and reprisal.

blood price requires you to be hit for it to function, evasion counter-intuitive in pulls where it would originally be useful at the start. by the time blood price falls off, more often than not there aren't enough things alive to deem it worthwhile to waste the MP, or you have better cooldowns off cd that don't require MP to use. the second -reprisal- requires a parry to even use, and despite the fact a successful evade is 100% mitigation, it also means potentially another wasted second reprisal could have been put up to mitigate damage in the overall engagement. replacing the evasion modifier with magical parry would allow us to apply it on purely magical bosses, and give us more potential uptime on bosses that use both physical and magical.

[Faytte]

1. 10% parry to grit...so you want something -better- than Shield Oath? Haha
2. It's an off GCD attack that deals lots of damage. I don't have an issue with that if it gets a nerf to its damage to compensate
3. No issue here.

On Delirum: You don't always have a monk? There are other, similar debuffs that dont stack in the game (ninja/warrior share one for instance).
On Carve and Spite: Agreed. I think in addition, Blood Grit should be based on damage received--so its not so godly in dungeons, but more useful in raids and bosses.
On Tool Tips: Agreed

[DesFenrir]

I did read the entire thread. I still mean what I say. You have more than enough tools to maintain mp whether you are Mt or ot. Syphon combo, c&s, blood weapon are suffecient to maintain mp. I feel like the majority of mp problems stem from a lack of understanding of resource management. Mp problems when main tank is almost a laughable complaint with the ridiculously short cool down on blood price. The squshiness of the class is also attributed mostly to the people who spec strength and rock str accessories for fights they can't face roll. Remember also that dark arts is optional for dark dance as well. Most of these problems will be ironed out once a better understanding of how to play the class is gained. I haven't had any issues with the class so far. I also accept the fact that I am not a dps when I tank unlike most.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

I did read the entire thread. I still mean what I say. You have more than enough tools to maintain mp whether you are Mt or ot. Syphon combo, c&s, blood weapon are suffecient to maintain mp. I feel like the majority of mp problems stem from a lack of understanding of resource management. Mp problems when main tank is almost a laughable complaint with the ridiculously short cool down on blood price. The squshiness of the class is also attributed mostly to the people who spec strength and rock str accessories for fights they can't face roll. Remember also that dark arts is optional for dark dance as well. Most of these problems will be ironed out once a better understanding of how to play the class is gained. I haven't had any issues with the class so far. I also accept the fact that I am not a dps when I tank unlike most.

I like how you say blood weapon is good for maintaining MP and you love being a tank, but don't realize that you can't be in GRIT and use Blood Weapon, you have to drop Grit. Going back into grit requires a LOT of mana and a GCD. It is not recommended to come out of it.

That extra Health does NOT help your sustain in any way. You die just the same wearing vitality or strength accessories. I should know since I have both. Dark Knight lacks the mitigation and sustain Paladin does, and lacks the damage and sustain warrior does.

If you actually do the math, Paladins out damage dark knights in single AND aoe fights in fights that last longer then 30 seconds.

Here is what I would do:

Grit:
Reduces damage taken by 15%
Increases enmity gain.
Drains MP over time. Ends when you run out of MP.
Does not reduce damage at all.

Darkside
Increases damage done by 15%.
Increases accuracy by 5%
Drains HP over time. Ends when you run out of HP or are knocked out.
Does not raise damage done to you, it just increases damage.

Yes, you can use both Grit and Darkside at the same time. However you might have to drop one or the other depending if you have health or MP issues. You can also choose to just stay in Darkside. You can also choose to use neither.

Blood Weapon
Raises attack speed and lowers TP cost by 10%.
Darkside additional effect: also restores 10% of all damage done as HP.
Grit additional effect: also restores 10% of all damage done as MP.
Same duration and recast.

Blood Price:
Raises healing received by 10% and restores a small amount of TP over time.
Darkside additional effect: 10% of damage taken is converted to HP.
Grit additional effect: 10% of damage received is converted to MP.
Same duration and recast.

I want Dark Knight to be a completely different tank from Paladin and Warrior. A class that is about resource management (MP/HP) rather then stances.

[Windklinge]

you can forget about that hp drain thing. devs said they tought about it and dropped it because they didnt want a TANK class to be handicapped by a hp drain.

currently imo considering the INSANE mp costs of dork arts i find that keeping mp up is just plain STRESSFUL for not much gain actually outside of beeing "cool". dark arts definitly needs a mp cost nerf. its not as powerful to justfy such an absurd cost. aroun 800mp would be fine. but over 1000? come on SE. thats plain over the top. you cannot spam it either way.

also just allow blood weapon within grit and mp managed becomes less annoying while adding mirco management to the class like the devs seem to want.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

you can forget about that hp drain thing. devs said they tought about it and dropped it because they didnt want a TANK class to be handicapped by a hp drain.

currently imo considering the INSANE mp costs of dork arts i find that keeping mp up is just plain STRESSFUL for not much gain actually outside of beeing "cool". dark arts definitly needs a mp cost nerf. its not as powerful to justfy such an absurd cost. aroun 800mp would be fine. but over 1000? come on SE. thats plain over the top. you cannot spam it either way.

also just allow blood weapon within grit and mp managed becomes less annoying while adding mirco management to the class like the devs seem to want.

Its optional. You can tank without it, and its not a handicap. You can overcome the drain with Blood Weapon and Blood Pact if you actually read it.

It is also bugged atm. If you have read the many threads. Every time you get a buff or debuff it drains your mana.

The developers said they didn't want to increase the damage done to dark knights, or have a health cost for an attack or attack power. If Darkside also gave you access to powerful defensive abilities as well as giving you lifetaps then that is a lot different then what they originally stated.

If played correctly, you can easily outweigh that health cost of Darkside, or choose not to use it.

The developers didn't want to give them abilities like this:
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Blood_for_Blood

[Xenosan]

At the risk of being a broken record, but if you could imagine

adding something similar to this:


to this:


to create a slightly inferior version of this:

..
Let Souleater's HP absorb surpass our maximum HP - when this happens a buff is placed on the DRK.

Like IB, this buff mitigates 20% of all damage received. The downside, the buff wears off the moment the amount of damage received is equal to or exceeding the amount of HP Souleater over-absorbed.

IE: DRK is at 9500/10000 health, Souleater deals 2000. 20% mitigation Barrier is created. Barrier wears off after 1500 damage is received.

If the 20% mitigation effect seems too OP to happen, just allowing Souleater's absorb to surpass our maximum HP would be enough for me (whether it's through a barrier buff or just adding it straight to the HP pool - same thing).

I'd settle with the later, if you think former is too OP.

I'd prefer a change like this before other drastic changes. I like DRK's design, I don't think it needs a rehaul - or 'new' tanking features. It just needs this one aspect - self healing - to be more fore-front. And I'd love the blood tank 'Damage into Mitigation' meta for DRK because that's more FF franchise-friendly. Much better more fitting than a carbon-copy Paladin CD rotation play style.

(Not to mention fun, getting a 3-4k crit souleater would be so exciting, not just the deeps, but knowing it's being converted into a legit EHP increase)

[Faytte]

You guys want more defenses, you know you will HAVE to lose offense for that. Right now you have incredible aoe damage, and off GCD damage (over 2K per minute!) and mobility. So yeah, you don't mitigate as well as paladins--the comparison to paladin honestly needs to stop. They have no real aoe, burst damage of any sort, and their heal is interrupted by heavier hitting boss attacks. They are going to out mitigate you and out group utility you.

Not saying you cant use some tweaks, but if you are looking at mitigation, Warriors are your closest comparison and all they get is (in terms of raw damage reduction) is IB for 20%, Vengeance for 30% and a parry buff. Their -kit- is better than yours for tanking, but if you give DRK who already have a rampart and a weaker sentinel access to a spamable damage reducer, you have just created something very overpowered. I.E if you want an IB like effect, you have to give up shadow skin--unless you just want to be broken.

[Kiteless]

What offenses do we have to lose for that? We already have the worst damage output of the tanks. 2000 damage in oGCDs per minute is nothing when you compare it to the 800-1000 damage PER SECOND that the other tanks are capable of throwing out, and for far longer than the depressing 2 minutes that we can manage to sustain ourselves for as well.

You keep making claims about offenses that we just do not have. And sure, you could nerf DRK's offenses to give it some form of useful mitigation, but I don't really see the point in nerfing the offenses on a class that already has the worst offensive and defensive potential of its role.

[Faytte]

Other tanks?

For one, only warrior can do this, Paladins parse lower than Dark Knights. The highest Paladin parse ive been able to find is 700, meanwhile 2 seconds on google netted me a variety of 800 dps parses on Dark Knight (a new class). Until VERY recently, the higher parses i saw on war were 800-900 (same ball park) and today, the 1K one came out. However, warrior is doing NONE of that while tanking--with their tank dps being nothing special.

You are purely wrong on your offensive capabilities, and your AOE and sustained healing is amazing. You have weak points sure, your offense is amazing (the base potency of your soul eater combo WITHOUT dark arts is nearly the same as a paladins Royal Authority Combo, which most Dark Knights dont seem to know (150+200+340 vs 150+250+260=30 potency dif, add in DA every third rotation and it makes up the difference).