Dark knight abilities. Uncreative.

[Tila]

I wish they could would incorporate some more team and hp based skills. I had it in my head that they would be HP manipulators, and that their CD's would be dependent on how much HP they had. Like "Shadowskin" could have been "Blood Armor" and become a stronger mitigation % based on how low your HP was (i.e. at 90% hp you would get 10% damage reduction, down to 10% hp granting a 90% damage reduction).

The earlier mentioned "Death March" could have been their lvl 50 super CD where they draw a little HP from ever party member and create a shield like SCH that blocks a parallel amount of damage as HP siphoned (something like amount x number of pt members) + ads a DET up to every party member. It would exchange a portion of the HP pool for mitigation, DPS, and Heals buff.

We'll see what the future holds.

That would be dreadfully bad design. Having a tank mitigation hinge on how low their hp is, may sound neat. But in practice it would be a nightmare.

[Mook_Mook]

Most of the abilities are just uninspired, there isnt a whole lot of thought in the class. The dark arts there main gimmick is very under utilized and boring, very few abilities are worth using. Carve and spit, soul eater and dark mind your emnity combo will be used oince maybe twice. The class is too safe to just be generic tank it has no flavor it has no really anything that distinguishes self to play differently. I mean ever scourage is just a glorified fracture how creative. Really pushing the boundaries there square! As a tank fine, the lore behind dark knights cool. THe class its self, great animations cool for the class but just dull. So dull.

[dragoelete]

honestly when i first saw the dark knight i was thinking something more along the lines of elesis from elsword (as a dark knight/crimson avenger). where she would do attacks that in her attack stance would drain her hp for a huge increase in damage (10% hp for 25% damage boost if i rem right). while also having another stance that would make other abilities give her a percentage of the damage done as HP (25% of the damage returned as health). making it where even though she had almost no defensive skills ... or stats to speak of she was near unkillable anyway...

[Tila]

honestly when i first saw the dark knight i was thinking something more along the lines of elesis from elsword (as a dark knight/crimson avenger). where she would do attacks that in her attack stance would drain her hp for a huge increase in damage (10% hp for 25% damage boost if i rem right). while also having another stance that would make other abilities give her a percentage of the damage done as HP (25% of the damage returned as health). making it where even though she had almost no defensive skills ... or stats to speak of she was near unkillable anyway...

From what I can gather, Warrior was originally based around self healing through damage. It sucked a big one. I think SE is really avoiding that sorta mechanic now. As they should, self healing is usually a very poor form of mitigation in any MMO.

[Ditto]

From what I can gather, Warrior was originally based around self healing through damage. It sucked a big one. I think SE is really avoiding that sorta mechanic now. As they should, self healing is usually a very poor form of mitigation in any MMO.

They sucked because SE made them suck.

Not because self healing sucks.

[Yhximott]

That would be dreadfully bad design. Having a tank mitigation hinge on how low their hp is, may sound neat. But in practice it would be a nightmare.

I think the problem is the opposite. People think it sounds bad on paper, but I don't think it'd turn out as poorly as anyone believes. Everyone is too scared to try for it to even be considered. Much like Essential Dignity, no one would ever wait until 1% HP to capitalize on the maximum potency.

[Phoenicia]

From what I can gather, Warrior was originally based around self healing through damage. It sucked a big one. I think SE is really avoiding that sorta mechanic now. As they should, self healing is usually a very poor form of mitigation in any MMO.

WAR self-healing in 2.0 sucked not because it was self-healing, but because how it worked with itself. The old WAR kit conflicted with itself in many ways and was just lacking.

Defiance heal boost came from Wrath, not Defiance itself, and it was capped at 15% and was just not enough. "Consuming" the healing received buff to heal yourself was kind of counter-productive in continuous damage. Using Inner Beast before tank busters may let you survive the buster but made healing you after receiving big damage a bitch.

The other issue with WAR in 2.0 was that because they had no way to reduce damage, in many situations, the damage intake was too high that they wouldn't survive long enough to heal themselves. Twintania hitting you for ~70% of your HP with DS left little space for you to utilize your self-heal. In many cases you would die before you get off Inner Beast.

The last thing is WAR had absolutely no ways to prevent certain death. Which made WAR unable to handle a lot of the sticky situations.

The old WAR could pull neat things though like self-healing itself from 20% to full with 2 zerked Inner Beasts. So if the damage they take was not so high, a WAR could do some fights without a healer at all.

These issues were fixed by removing the heal boost from Wrath and integrating it into Defiance itself and increasing it to 20%, adding a defensive component to Inner Beast, Vengeance and Storm Path, and changing Holmgang.

Personally, I would've liked Inner Beast stayed the same (300% damage healed but no mitigation) but with all the other changes. I think that might've made a more interesting game play. But that's me and it's not like I don't love the way WAR plays now anyways.

[Khalithar]

Salted Earth- It is just damage, but being able to place it where ever you want is actually very useful. That's actually what makes the ability so nice.

Dark Passenger- The fact that it's off the GCD actually makes it more useful than you would think, I don't like that you have to invest so much MP for the blind debuff.

Plunge- I don't know if you've tanked in other MMO's, but in most MMO's a gap closer is actually a mandatory tanking tool, useful for initiating, grabbing adds that spawn or quickly getting back to a boss when they cast an AOE where you have to run away from them. I was actually glad to see at least one tank with a gap closer of some kind instead of having to run to every enemy. In most of the MMO's I've played, the tank class I always picked did have one of these Charge style moves, mobility is a wonderful thing to have as a tank. I really wish war and pld had a similar sort of move. Pld maybe could use a different kind of speed boost, but I definitely believe charging at an enemy fits the warrior theme.

Carve and Spit- It's a solid attack with high potency despite the long cooldown and of course you wouldn't use it unless you are under the effect of DA.

Shadow Wall/Shadowskin- I'd rather have the flat damage reduction compared to unreliable things like increased parry.

Unleash/Abyssal Drain- Unleash would probably be too strong if it had the drain effect. The AOE drain fits in with the Drk theme though but they can't put Drain on too many things otherwise they'll have to reduce the amount of healing it does.

Living Dead- Definitely needs a heavy rework of some kind, I agree.

Overall I have to agree with the sentiment that drk feels mostly like a reskinned pld but with enough differences to make it unique. My biggest issue with Drk and I've mentioned in several other threads, is that I absolutely hate the drk stance with the weapon drawn, that sort of stance does not look right with a claymore style weapon.

[Kelg]

--

I think you missed my point.
Abilities like Salted Earth and Plunge(you could remove this ability and tanking would be no different on DRK, not needed at all) have no purpose other than dealing damage. You could put skills like these on any Job and it work just as well. Dark knight is not a DPS job, so I am just a tad bit disappointed that the Dark Knight's skills don't work as support for it's own kit or even serve a tanking purpose... They're just kind of randomly thrown on there with no thought put into them, almost like they are filler abilities.

Go check out Warrior's abilities, and see how most of the abilities work well together to make a well designed job.

[Khalithar]

Snip

I'll have to disagree with you on Plunge, a gap closer shouldn't be considered a "damage" move, it's main purpose is for utility/mobility. It just so happens they decided to let you use it even if you're standing right up in the enemy's grill, again, a difference from other MMO's where you usually have to be a certain distance away before you can use the gap closer. As for salted earth, it's definitely useful for drk's dps, but it doesn't really fit in to the tanking role I agree, maybe they should add a buff for the drk of some kind for standing in the red. As for the kit, I think it might work better if they lowered the MP costs or changed the way dark arts worked. One thing to clarify, I don't think Salted Earth and Unleash need to be on Drk, I believe Drk should ONLY have salted earth honestly, if only to differentiate it more from the other tanks.

As for the Warrior abilities, I really can't comment on them, I only leveled it high enough to unlock Warrior so I don't really know how the class mechanics or it's buff works, I've read up on their abilities of course, but without actually playing the class I don't really "get" it. I only know how warrior is by seeing them in action when tanking with them, I don't really know the specific intricacies of the class.