Quick Fix To Make Dark Knight more viable

[Syzygian]

nope

DRK was the world 1st MT in the current hardest fight in the game. It doesn't need any of what you are suggesting.

Cross class abilities: Foresight and Bloodbath are very useful. Bloodbath synergizes very well with Blood Weapon, accelerating the HP returns (you get way more out of it than PLD does, that's for sure), and Foresight is some much needed extra physical mitigation.

Foresight, I might add, is woefully underappreciated. It scales with gear. Right now popping Foresight gives my DRK over 400 extra defense. That's the difference between an wearing an i210 body piece and going topless.

Blood for Blood on a tank... so basically, if I wanna drop Grit and do more damage, I'd wanna pop this and do even more damage, and then I'd get hit by an auto and drop to 5K HP. You more than double the damage you incur from dropping your tank stance, and more than negate the mitigation of your tank stance if used concurrently by 5%. No, so much no. Healers HATE it when DPS don't turn this off for unavoidable damage. Imagine how they'll feel about a DRK having it. Remember B4B is a HUGE +25% damage taken on a job not named DRG. DPS can sorta afford this because they don't tank stuff. We do. So no. Of course, no.

Keen Flurry is only a 40% increase while cross classed which is barely better than what we already have (Dark Dance) and on a much longer recast time. You could argue Foresight is as good of a cooldown, possibly better.

TP issues are ludicrously overstated. I can't speak for A4S yet, but there's never a point in A1, 2, or 3 savage where TP is an actual issue. There are too many mechanical interruptions to ever run out, and Blood Weapon was buffed from being a net TP loss to a net TP gain. We are better off on TP than PLD, for sure.

DRK does not need an offensive cooldown like FoF or Berserk because its extra damage comes from oGCD skills. The reason DRK can keep pace with a WAR in content where they are both under obligation to be actively tanking (like in A1S) in spite of not having huge offensive CDs like Berserk is because in between their GCDs every minute they get
1 DA Carve (450)
2+ Low Blows (200min)
1-2 Reprisals (210-420)
1.5 Salted Earths (~787)
3 Dark Passengers (450)
3 Plunges (600)
=about 2700-3000 potency per minute in between the GCD, i.e. free damage.

WAR has
3 Brutal Swings (300)

PLD has
2 Spirits Withins (600)
2.1 Circle of Scorns (550ish)

DRK also suffers by the smallest margin from being in its tank stance vs. its maximum DPS out of tank stance, less than even WAR by about 5% iirc. PLD would kill for this.

Any flat, % increase of damage dealt is something that the potencies of all of your skills are being filtered through, and it is kept in balance but just how many skills you are getting off in the course of that buff. A DRK with 20s of an extra 10% damage dealt factoring in the multitude of high-base potency oGCDs that it can deliver in that time and accelerated attack speed through BW (this is why WARs value SS, to get off more GCDs during Berserk), would be crazy OP.

I'm not saying DRK should never get a buff, but people make some seriously kooky suggestions and a lot of them are based on flaws that are not actually present.

Also currently my raid group has a drk/pld tank comp with me being the pld. Normally we change up who is mt during different encounters based on what we think is most beneficial at the time for the group, like I mostly tank everything solo in A2S, most the drk does is bring mobs to me for me to tank or tanks couple mobs during the whole encounter, or on A3S I let our drk start the pull to build up aggro, since pld aggro generation sucks compared to the other tanks, so we both can be in dps stance for the rest of the fight faster, and longer. I still do around 650dps turtling in shield oath or 1000dps in sword oath. Since drk/pld is not the normal comp you will have to make up your own tactics as a group as you go. If people say you need to play warrior because of reasons then maybe find a better more open minded group.

The problem a lot of groups that are using PLD have is that they keep trying to stuff PLD into the MT slot when it is extremely DPS-inefficient to do so. WAR loses about 5% less of its maximum OT DPS than PLD from MTing, and DRK almost 10% less, whereas a PLD OT is not all that far behind either in DPS. The major deficiencies are in MT DPS and currently DRK has the highest, and if a DRK is tanking outside of Grit, able to take advantage of BP, BW, Reprisal and Low Blow procs all at the same time, its practically god-mode.

In current content at least, the fact that DRK cannot keep Reprisal up as an OT is largely moot because most of Alex Savage requires the OT to be tanking something, and even then, making the DRK OT is, again, inefficient for raid DPS. Reprisal is up about 50-60% of the time with the DRK MTing. It'll never be allowed to have 100% uptime because then DRK would have a Dragon Kick and an oGCD, non-combo-gated Storm's Path both with 100% uptime making it the undisputed king of raid mitigation. The fact that it stacks with Storm's Path is blessing enough, and in practice, I don't know a single WAR that keeps Path up 100% of the time, as it is a DPS and/or enmity loss, and in fact, FFLogs for many WAR/DRK compositions will show that Reprisal is actually on the boss far more over the course of the fight than Path is, b/c DRK will use Reprisal 100% of the time that it is available, and WAR will commonly only put up Path for TBs in DPS-heavy fights.

The big theme with people's complaints or jabs at DRK is that they are all based on hypothetical, on-paper situations that almost never actually come to pass, in practice, in actual raid content with proper play and raid composition/awareness.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

DRK was the world 1st MT in the current hardest fight in the game. It doesn't need any of what you are suggesting.

Cross class abilities: Foresight and Bloodbath are very useful. Bloodbath synergizes very well with Blood Weapon, accelerating the HP returns (you get way more out of it than PLD does, that's for sure), and Foresight is some much needed extra physical mitigation.

Foresight, I might add, is woefully underappreciated. It scales with gear. Right now popping Foresight gives my DRK over 400 extra defense. That's the difference between an wearing an i210 body piece and going topless.

Blood for Blood on a tank... so basically, if I wanna drop Grit and do more damage, I'd wanna pop this and do even more damage, and then I'd get hit by an auto and drop to 5K HP. You more than double the damage you incur from dropping your tank stance, and more than negate the mitigation of your tank stance if used concurrently by 5%. No, so much no. Healers HATE it when DPS don't turn this off for unavoidable damage. Imagine how they'll feel about a DRK having it. Remember B4B is a HUGE +25% damage taken on a job not named DRG. DPS can sorta afford this because they don't tank stuff. We do. So no. Of course, no.

Keen Flurry is only a 40% increase while cross classed which is barely better than what we already have (Dark Dance) and on a much longer recast time. You could argue Foresight is as good of a cooldown, possibly better.

TP issues are ludicrously overstated. I can't speak for A4S yet, but there's never a point in A1, 2, or 3 savage where TP is an actual issue. There are too many mechanical interruptions to ever run out, and Blood Weapon was buffed from being a net TP loss to a net TP gain. We are better off on TP than PLD, for sure.

DRK does not need an offensive cooldown like FoF or Berserk because its extra damage comes from oGCD skills. The reason DRK can keep pace with a WAR in content where they are both under obligation to be actively tanking (like in A1S) in spite of not having huge offensive CDs like Berserk is because in between their GCDs every minute they get
1 DA Carve (450)
2+ Low Blows (200min)
1-2 Reprisals (210-420)
1.5 Salted Earths (~787)
3 Dark Passengers (450)
3 Plunges (600)
=about 2700-3000 potency per minute in between the GCD, i.e. free damage.

WAR has
3 Brutal Swings (300)

PLD has
2 Spirits Withins (600)
2.1 Circle of Scorns (550ish)

DRK also suffers by the smallest margin from being in its tank stance vs. its maximum DPS out of tank stance, less than even WAR by about 5% iirc. PLD would kill for this.

Any flat, % increase of damage dealt is something that the potencies of all of your skills are being filtered through, and it is kept in balance but just how many skills you are getting off in the course of that buff. A DRK with 20s of an extra 10% damage dealt factoring in the multitude of high-base potency oGCDs that it can deliver in that time and accelerated attack speed through BW (this is why WARs value SS, to get off more GCDs during Berserk), would be crazy OP.

I'm not saying DRK should never get a buff, but people make some seriously kooky suggestions and a lot of them are based on flaws that are not actually present.



The problem a lot of groups that are using PLD have is that they keep trying to stuff PLD into the MT slot when it is extremely DPS-inefficient to do so. WAR loses about 5% less of its maximum OT DPS than PLD from MTing, and DRK almost 10% less, whereas a PLD OT is not all that far behind either in DPS. The major deficiencies are in MT DPS and currently DRK has the highest, and if a DRK is tanking outside of Grit, able to take advantage of BP, BW, Reprisal and Low Blow procs all at the same time, its practically god-mode.

In current content at least, the fact that DRK cannot keep Reprisal up as an OT is largely moot because most of Alex Savage requires the OT to be tanking something, and even then, making the DRK OT is, again, inefficient for raid DPS. Reprisal is up about 50-60% of the time with the DRK MTing. It'll never be allowed to have 100% uptime because then DRK would have a Dragon Kick and an oGCD, non-combo-gated Storm's Path both with 100% uptime making it the undisputed king of raid mitigation. The fact that it stacks with Storm's Path is blessing enough, and in practice, I don't know a single WAR that keeps Path up 100% of the time, as it is a DPS and/or enmity loss, and in fact, FFLogs for many WAR/DRK compositions will show that Reprisal is actually on the boss far more over the course of the fight than Path is, b/c DRK will use Reprisal 100% of the time that it is available, and WAR will commonly only put up Path for TBs in DPS-heavy fights.

One thing I do want is Darkside buffed to 18.75% (in Grit) so its actually 15%.

[Cynric]

I like the idea of making blood weapon usable in grit but restoring HP instead of MP in tank stance. As for reprisal I don't really know what I'd like to see done, but I don't like the idea of having moves I can't use OT or MT and absolutely must be MT.

[Ashkendor]

One thing I do want is Darkside buffed to 18.75% (in Grit) so its actually 15%.

DRK already have good damage in tank stance. Asking for more is kind of silly.

[Freyyy]

3 Dark Passengers (450)
3 Plunges (600)

Dunno bout you but my Dark Passenger and my Plunge both have 30sec CD and I'm kinda confident that 1min is 60sec unless I'm mistaken

[Ashelia_Ferron]

Dunno bout you but my Dark Passenger and my Plunge both have 30sec CD and I'm kinda confident that 1min is 60sec unless I'm mistaken

I'm pretty sure he's counting the fact you could use it immediately, then 30 seconds latter, and then 30 seconds after that. So that's 3 times in one minute (just for opener at least).

Although I don't think anyone immediately uses Dark Passenger on pull

[Freyyy]

I'm pretty sure he's counting the fact you could use it immediately, then 30 seconds latter, and then 30 seconds after that. So that's 3 times in one minute (just for opener at least).

Although I don't think anyone immediately uses Dark Passenger on pull

It's stupid to count like that because it means that only the first minute is containing 3 DP/Plunge, the other minutes are still containing 2 of them. The 3rd DP/Plunge is the 1st of the 2nd minute, not the 3rd of the 1st minute. Plus he didn't apply this kind of calculation for the other oGCD moves so I guess he just did a mistake and thought DP/Plunge had 20sec CD.

[Parasite]

they should just make Scourge dot be a slashing debuff.

Well welcomed. ^^

[Zenji]

Drk doesn't need anything, it already pulls numbers close to warrior. You might not be playing the job correctly if you think it needs a buff. Pallys need a buff though.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Drk doesn't need anything, it already pulls numbers close to warrior. You might not be playing the job correctly if you think it needs a buff. Pallys need a buff though.

No, its DPS is actually close down to Paladins. Warrior are way above us both.