Dark Knight Feedback

[Allyrion]

I'm aware of the situations in which Sole Survivor is usable. I take advantage of it whenever I can, because why not.

However, that doesn't make the ability good or particularly useful. It restores roughly 1300 MP, so not even enough for a single Dark Arts. It grants you one additional Abyssal drain every two minutes in the absolute best case scenario. The HP restore is largely inconsequential since it's not something your healers will be anticipating. If you're low enough for the healing to matter, they likely already have a heal queued up for you. It is almost always overhealing, or causes the next healing spell to be so.

Not saying my suggestion is even a great solution - these are really just throwing ideas at the wall in order to spark a discussion about potential solutions to what I feel are pretty underwhelming parts of the Dark Knight kit. I personally feel that this ability needs to provide more than what it currently does.

Do you feel that it's really useful in its current incarnation?

I do.
Why? Because it's free HP & MP in pretty much any sense.
It has no other effect and it's off the GCD. The only sacrifice is time off the GCD, which pretty much doesn't cost anything.

It doesn't need to be amazing because it makes a dramatic difference, since it's already amazing because gives those returns for free.
1300 MP return for nothing is a lot in that sense. It has a very large 25y range.

On the healing portion, like I said it could be entirely overheal. It shouldn't save your life, but it can save your healers mana.
Healers adjust for incoming heals all the time between themselves. If you're not close to topped off and you jump up 20%, good healers will adjust accordingly.
And it's easy to imagine situations where healing is tight enough that any little bit counts and 20% isn't anything to scoff at.

I wouldn't mind if the returns were better somehow.
But considering its place where you get it just because there's an add in the fight, if the returns were better they may end up limiting it in some other way.

Right now I think it has a good place.
It's useable in any of the real fights, and it has no downsides (except the animation delay).

If it were to be buffed, it should keep it's niche. Either lower CD or 25% return instead of 20%.

That's not what efficiency means, but actually looking at the values again I was wrong. They're nearly identical in terms of mana efficiency. Abyssal drain will yield more DPS since it is higher damage per cast for the same mana efficiency.

This is entirely missing the point however. They are nearly identical spells that fill exactly the same role. There's really no reason to have both.

Yes, I understand the mechanical difference and marginal usefulness in having a spell that requires a target vs. a PBAoE. I just don't think that's enough to justify a spell slot.

I can agree with that.
If AB's lifesteal was built-in, it would be justified though.
I think putting the DA effect on AB wouldn't be too OP since it's already expensive enough that you can't spam it.

Right now, they compete for the same spot while using both is pretty hard even with Blood Price because DA-AB is absurdly expensive to weave in.
If AB didn't need DA, then you could weave it in more reasonably as part of an AoE rotation and they wouldn't compete so much.

[Calib0s]

I do.
Why? Because it's free HP & MP in pretty much any sense.
It has no other effect and it's off the GCD. The only sacrifice is time off the GCD, which pretty much doesn't cost anything.

Fair enough.

[Kallera]

Currently my drk is 51. I often find i run into issues where i either maintain hate on mobs but lose darkside, or keep darkside but some mobs pull away in combat. Would DAunleash help?

Any pointers as to controller setup before i get the new actions?

[Reynhart]

You have a shared debuff you can put up all the time.
You have a unique debuff you can put up while your tanking.

The other tanks don't have 'two' debuffs that reduce damage. While they have 'one' unique one, you have to keep this in mind when you are asking for things. You could, with some skill, have both of your debuffs up at the same time for a critical attack--so yes, of course your stand alone debuff isnt going to be unique.

And of course....you might not have a monk *GASP*

Indeed, I might not have a MNK with me when tanking a magical boss...so I can use my basically only debuff, since I won't parry magical attacks to use my other debuff.
Or I be might facing a physical boss, and so, my Delirium is useless, MNK or not, and my reprisal unreliable...and the party would be far better with a PLD anyway.
Or I might be facing a magical boss as an OT, with a MNK in my party, thus, having 0 usefull debuff.
Or I might be facing a physical boss as an OT, so...yeah, you see what I mean

This is Dark Knight the might...y tank

[Xyphon]

I've made quite a bit of my own suggestions regarding what should be done to "spruce up" drk a bit. I agree that some skills are redundant, and don't seem to fit into one theme. Such as drk has been suggested as a magic tank. Skills such as "dark dance", seem a bit out of place imo. If drk was a full on parry tank, then this would have been a different story.

I'm also not really a fan of dark passenger, even though I do use it in my rotation. Like abyssal drain, it doesn't seem to work very well on single targets. Its funny to, because Yoshi P kept saying over and over how much he hated speed runs....

I feel like they made drk a mixture of to many things, instead of one main focus. The main focus imo is the mp mechanic. I've already suggested some ways to remove certain skills by integrating them into "grit", and "darkside". That way other skills such as a skill to exchange mp for tp, could be added. (look at how many things are integrated into to the warrior stances).

My suggestion for grit was to scale a version of blood price natively into it, and scale a version of blood weapon into darkside (which could be only used without grit active). As it stands now, this is the current theme of how you MT and OT. Meaning; blood price for MT, and blood weapon for OT.

I completely agree about the tp issue, and how mana costs seem pretty obscene. I tend to end up OTing in alot of situations, probably because most of the time I'm rocking my str acc lol. I almost wish that as a counter to the tp issue, you could use mp as OT to some how dps till your tp gets back to a reasonable level. Such as if war was AOE tanking, after your tp gets lower you can just simply switch to using flash.

I've also suggested before that it would be nice to see more skills with a dark arts side, such as sole survivor. It would be nice if you had a way to use sole survivor on a single target, like a boss. Since it originally gives hp/mp on the death of the enemy, perhaps the dark arts version could do some form of drain. Or perhaps it could do an "absorb" skill, like ffxi .

I suggested a while back that giving magic vuln from delirium would be the way to go, and it would fit with the theme of drk being a magic tank (aka a knight that hunts down mages).

When I first heard that drk was getting "dark arts", I was like omg drk is going to be able to use black magic. Thinking of something similar to what scholar got in ffxi. Sadly, it sure wasn't what I expected lol.

[NovaLevossida]

It'd be nice if DRK had a trait that powered up attack magic the lower on TP you got or a damage boost for spells automatically kicked in for 30 seconds with a 60 second cooldown once you go under 100 TP. Just something to meaningfully use that MP resource while your TP resource is empty. The main concern to me is going empty on TP, I can see how that will be a bigger issue later on, and sitting around without TP isn't very fun either.

[Faytte]

snip

If you are facing a physical boss, you face the same issues paladins now face when facing a magical boss (a4, the buster in savage a1, etc).

Your not in a bad situation? You have a very valuable debuff--and you dont always have monks in your party (Hell, I avoid having a monk in favor of lancer/bard/smn/ninja. That seems a better combo personally).

Then when you tank, you have a proc based added 10% mitigation you can apply as extra sauce. Its a fantastic kit that so far, is more applicative in alexander than the paladin kid has been. Cant block lasers or the A1 savage buster. Cant block buster in A4.

[Reynhart]

If you are facing a physical boss, you face the same issues paladins now face when facing a magical boss (a4, the buster in savage a1, etc).

Indeed, but against a physical boss, every PLD tool is always useful.

(Hell, I avoid having a monk in favor of lancer/bard/smn/ninja. That seems a better combo personally).

Wether I play in Duty Finder, join a Party Finder or join a static, I play with whatever job other people want to play with.

Then when you tank, you have a proc based added 10% mitigation you can apply as extra sauce. Its a fantastic kit that so far, is more applicative in alexander than the paladin kid has been. Cant block lasers or the A1 savage buster. Cant block buster in A4.

But that 10% mitigation is based on parrying. Can't parry anything from boss in A4.

The problem with DRK is that they have a toolkit for magical that's good, a toolkit for physical that's average, but no toolkit that's really great. (DRK's magical mitigation doesn't come anywhere close to PLD's physical mitigation)

If they want us to be the "magical" tank, get rid of everything tied to parry (or evasion) or add an effect to Grit where we can parry (or evade) magical attacks.

[Zorthos]

We have 2 incoming dmg ‰ reduction abilities... One at 20% 60s the other 30% 180s CD... You also have 30% magic reduction at 60s . You can cross class foresight which I think is another 20‰ dmg reduction at 120s CD. You can also cross class convalescence which increases all incoming heals by 20‰ which is on a 120s CD... On top of that you have living dead as your death save. On top of all that if your build is proper you can heal yourself for 1.3 - 3k(critical) in tank stance every ~6sec.... All that is amazing. I never run out of CD or feel like I'm going to die. If you're OTing adds dark dance is a beautiful thing.

[Armo]

I've noticed few things while tanking with warrior and dark knight.

It seems like needed things on drk are couple button presses away and in hurry and moving you more easily mess it up for that.

Warrior combos have meaning and BB is for both damage and enmity making the use of combos simpler: apply the debuff and do enmity/damage up until you have to reapply debuff.

CDs on warrior work with each other. I don't have to remind myself not to use some cd with some other.

Warrior seems fluid and pleasant to play. Everything has it's place and it feels powerful when you use cds.

If the intention was to make more complex tank when designing drk the result is a success. Just not the way it should be. I like the idea of Dark Arts but it seems to make everything a little too messy. When you have 3 combos that you have to choose and cds that have two variants of themselves and you have to remember what to use and not to use with what it kinda makes it a bit annoying and too slow.

I suggest that combos did this: enmity combo does high damage and with dark arts it also gives a tp regen. The souleater combo gives back hp and a stack of dark something that in 3 would give a regen in grit and without it would reset the cooldown of Carve and Spit. Delirium should be magic resistance down with a cooldown tbh.

Blood Price and Dark Dance doesn't work well with each other and it seems to me drk would work better with absorb than avoidance. Why not make Dark Dance an adloquium kind of absorb shield that works with blood price too? Or make it empower souleater with increased parry chance. Since Blood Price is bad with bosses and it seems you don't get enough back with combo Blood Sword should be able to use on Grit too.

I like Reprisal but it should proc from something else than it does atm. Is it from crits or dot ticks or even unmend or without a proc altogether I don't care but it should be more easily accessed and as ot with better availability. Low blow might be actually a good skill to give it a guaranteed proc from. Compared to warrior once again it's a clunky as it is.

Making drk more fluid to play would be achieved through simplifying the use of grit and dark arts. Also giving the abilities more synergy. If for example if Delirium had magic resistance down effect Dark Passanger would spread it to all mobs when having a pack. I like how Unmend and Unleash work together. Should have more of that.

Living Dead is a bit annoying. Just make it 5 second mirror damage back and I'd be happy.

I'd like drk to be more fluid and more with a feeling of magic tank than it is. Atm it feels like a mix of Paladin and Warrior.