Blood Weapon / other DRK suggestions:

[Nektulos-Tuor]

You seem to get a pretty bad wrap around here about bemoaning everything and anything so I decided, during my downtime (And I have a LOT of downtime lately) at work, to analyze your recommendations. Because, let's be honest everyone, the forums are here for people to make recommendations about how they see things.



So here's to it:

Blood Weapon - Make it usable in Grit - Instead of Restoring MP, it Restores a little bit of HP. Or.. just make it usable in Grit.

The point of Dark Knight tanking is to stance dance, actually. You're supposed to be able to dance from your Grit stance to without it to increase your damage. It's supposed to be a choice: You get more mana regen if you are out of Grit but only if you know how to handle the increased amount of damage. I have had no issues whatsoever running most of the content I do by disabling Grit and enabling Blood Weapon and getting threat and my healers keeping me alive. Know when to use it and when not to; that's the idea behind a Dark Knight. It's to know when to sacrifice your defense for an all out offensive assault. I love that feel of Dark Knight and I feel like Blood Weapon would just be another cooldown and negate the requirement of watching your mana and being smart about it. Dark Knight is a lot more resource intensive and requires the player to pay attention to that. So removing that aspect would bore me, personally.

Sole Survivor - Add (Cannot be used on enemies unless they are under 15% health, cannot be used on bosses. [after all, if the boss is dead you wouldn't need HP or mana anyways. Its good on Adds/Trash/Fight Mechanic things.])

I feel like your suggestion is more of a fact that you simply have a hard time using Sole Survivor at the right time. To me, I think that's just a fact that you need to learn when to use it and when not to. Why should the game make it simpler for you to manage your cooldowns? Get better and learn how to use your cooldowns at the right time. I've mucked up and had my timer run out because of x reason (choosing the wrong target the dps went, dps switching on me to another target so wasted the cast, not actually managing the cooldown in the timeframe of the enemy to die..). That's my fault. Not the game. The CD is a QoL thing and not absolutely required. It's a dull skill, I will say that.

Dark Dance - Remove Dark Arts Effect and add 5% Damage Reduction base. Evasion is cool but it doesn't really fit his kit. Hes a hulking armored man with a Greatsword.

I can't really complain about this change. Evasion is evasion and I will say that yeah, it doesn't fit the whole idea that this is a slow wielding two handed beast but Dark Arts is a channeling of dark energies to empower a skill so you could easily make it that the tendrils of darkness add shadows to your Dark Dance which increases the evasion because an enemy would target said shadow over you. It works on a lore stance but I will agree it's kinda of a boring trait. I actually have never really used DA on DD and didn't even realize it had a DA effect. Go me. =/

Scourge - Make it Physical Damage.

While I am fine with more damage for my DoTs, is this the same thing for every other class that has a DoT or is the dot based on a magical attack? Just says potency of 100. What's your reasoning, exactly, for this change? You just state this but you don't give reasoning; S-E won't really care about your requests if you don't back it up...

Dark Mind - Remove Dark Arts Effect, make it 30% base. Its a defensive cooldown and the Dark Mind macro before it makes it delayed. Which kind of stinks anyways since its for one type of damage.

This is another case where it's more QoL than the skill, honestly. Most fights in this game follow a script so it's up to you to know when you need to activate DADM and not just DM. The point of Dark Knight is to manage your mana and to make it so that you decide right. That's also why they made it that you only have to focus on Vitality so you only have to mitigate damage that comes into the fights. As a tank, that's about the only role other than positioning. So why would you want to make our job more boring because you rather not think about how to actively think when it is. This is active mitigation, honestly. Use your head and use your skills accordingly.

Living Dead - If nothing happens, heal the Dark Knight for 25% of his life.

Honestly, 25% of a life is still as boring as what Living Dead currently is. At this point, you pretty much need to make a macro and yell "Living Dead use, let me die!" and then watch for Walking Dead and say "Blast me with everything, healing wise!". The whole skill needs a rework because it simply isn't a very nice cooldown for a tank; it relies on you wanting to let yourself die which is completely against the tank ideology. I would look at a rework but I have no idea on what could be done.

Shadow Wall - Decrease cooldown to 120s from 180s.

While it's a long cooldown, you're not giving a reason why to do this. You have enough cooldowns that you don't need to drop your 30% all resist down a cd. Everyone else has this CD on a 3 minute CD. Why should we be different?

Dark Passenger - Remove Dark Arts effect; give it 200 potency base and a 6 second blind.

I disagree with this. I use Dark Passenger as a part of my AoE rotation and this would almost make me always have to use it even in single target rotations (which you should but sometimes depending on mana, I can hold back.) I'm honestly not very keen on this, personally.

Abyssal Drain - Remove Dark Arts effect and make it heal basely.

No? Again, the point is to make you decide when and where to use Dark Arts...starting to see a trend here which I'll address below.

Delirium - Reduces MND and cast speed of the target by 10%.

The idea is to loop into the requirement if we ever don't have a Monk. I'm fine with the current incarnation as it doesn't require me to do that rotation if we ever do have a Monk, and if we don't, it adds a layer of complexity for my rotation as well. You would make Dark Knight required for every content because no other class does this and that makes no sense. You're overpowering a class for no reason.



In conclusion, I have a very strong feeling you just don't like the fact of mixing Dark Arts into anything, and hate the skill Dark Arts, period. I'm not sure if it's laziness on your end because you don't want to decide when to use it or not but to me, Dark Arts adds a layer of complexity that the other tanking classes don't have and it separates the good and the great Dark Knights. So while I can understand your frustration, maybe Dark Knight is simply not your class and you should just stay with Warrior, as it seems you enjoy it a lot more. A final note: Try to add reasons why you think changes are required. Not just say "This is what I think should change.", list everything, and say "my word is gospel, follow it."

I don't mind using Dark Arts if it enhanced the skill to a significant affect. Like using it in Combos and Carve and Spit for a huge effect. However, having it on almost every single skill and with the way the game is designed, and the way the skill is designed is just not good/or fun. I could change a bit to be honest but meh. I will probably just stick and play Warrior until the class gets looked at or change and continue to just not use Dark Arts on 75% of the skills.

Dark Arts just eats too much Mana to be good or used for everything. If its Mana Cost was cut by 50% and we were able to use Blood Weapon I would feel much differently about all this, but it stands that currently: Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians.

Until then I will play the "real" stance dancing class. Warrior. =3

Honestly though. If Dark Knight was a DPS class I would not have as much as a problem because I wouldn't have Grit. However until they do some major QoL changes I see DRK going lower and lower then War/PLD.

No other class in the game has so many "penalties" tied to its skills, its actually to me; horribly designed and not fun, especially for a game like this where there is a delay AFTER using a skill regardless if its on GCD or off. Every skill has a 0.52 second GCD.


That is why I am asking for a bunch of QoL improvements. Am I lazy: YES! I am, I am lazy. I hate the fact that the skills will do LITERALLY nothing if you use them at a wrong moment. Especially since your a Tank, the class that has to pay attention to a lot more then the hot bar unlike a DPS class. A Dark Knight has to be 50-100% more skilled then both a Paladin AND Warrior due to everything they have to do.

If Dark Arts was just a buff that enhanced you and did not go away after using a skill I would feel like this all would be quite different. However the fact remains that we have all these penalties.. but.. we are .. worse? Then both the classes? Its silly. Stupid.

Paladin has no gimmick. It also pulls numbers closer to Dark Knight and has way more utility. If Paladin ever gets an AOE I will consider DRK a dead class. However, Dark wins at spamming dungeons and clearing them faster then anyone else due to their AOE.



I mean, why even play a class that has so much gimmick, penalties, and 'skilled' I will use that term in unison with 'freaking annoying' mechanics when another is quite similar to it, has way more utility in a group and does not do much less damage either!

Dark Knight
Grit+Darkside = 0.92

Paladin
Shield Oath = 0.85
Fight or Flight+Shield Oath = 1.13
Over time with Shield Oath+FoF=0.9435

So, even with Darkside now Paladin has more base damage in their Tank Stances. Which is quite a significant difference over long periods especially when you cater in the fact that FoF is activated, so you can use it when you need it, and keep it on cooldown when boss has defensive mechanics. So whilst on a Training Dummy Dark Knight may do more, in real fights because your damage buff is on cooldown and you use it when you need it Paladin can probably do more in that period. Paladin skills also do what they do; they have no penalties or anything attached to them.


And honestly? These could all just be 'my' problems and 'my' nitpicks because i'm just not that good and 99% of the Dark Knights on the forums never have any issue doing any of this and I need to learn to play better. However, in looking at the numbers ... I feel like some things could use some adjusting