Some Feedback on Dark Knight as a Defensive Support (Tank)

[Nalien]

Now that tanks have even more HP than ever, I find that even in PvE, my healers simply can not keep me alive without Benediction or a lot of cooldown usage from us both. Perhaps its time to figure out a healthier way of removing the debuff, at least in PvP where communication is more strained for solo queue and cooldowns are spent often long before some other abilities. Living Dead needs something, anything to make it stronger and worth using beyond securing a victory late in a match.

In PvP you can actually Purify Walking Dead, although that isn't too great... Just means Paladin and Warrior get the odd Purify over Dark Knight, too...

Other than that, I've always figured Living Dead, in both PvE and PvP, would benefit from acting sort of like a Dark Arts Berserk... Rather than it being "I'm about to die, pop invincibility", I'd like it more if it was 10 seconds of Dark Knight just being able to go nuts without having to worry about Dark Arts... Essentially either all the Dark Arts effects are active by default under Living Dead, or skills get new Living Dead effects... Then you've got 10 seconds of fighting back with heavy hits and HP drains, and if at the end you still drop to 1HP, you're punished with Walking Dead...

MP is my biggest issue with Dark Knight at the moment... Utility as well, but that topic has been done to death I think... Blood Weapon isn't as effective in PvP as it is in PvE, just due to how mobile fights are... Blood Price is essentially worthless unless you're on Walking Dead and being focused... Sole Survivor is... OK, I've taken to using it solely on the kits though, since nobody can heal them back up to full... Obviously you lose Blood Weapon anyway, if you need to pop Grit for whatever reason, which good luck doing late in the fight when you've perhaps going to want it, but haven't the MP to use it... We could do with some change to MP usage in PvP I think... Trade Enliven for Manadraw? Half Dark Arts cost? Heck, for PvE I wouldn't mind seeing Blood Price changed to work sort of like Shadewalker; Let me pop it on whoever is being focused and get MP back from those hits...

Honestly to make DRK a viable option in PvP they'll have to rethink the entire job. There's just too much they have in their toolkit that is nowhere near as good as WAR or PLD.

I'd say the only thing we have over Paladin and Warrior is chase potential... Shield Lob and Tomahawk aren't the greatest for spamming, while Unmend not only is, it's stronger too. Arguably it's better to hold people in place for your DPS to deal with them, but Stun resist can end that for Paladin, and a timely Purify for Warrior... Meanwhile, if you're running back to spawn after your healer fell? A good Dark Knight will finish you. Plunge and Dark Passenger are amazing for this... I'd really like to see that aspect of the Job built upon...

I'm incline to think Dark Knight is actually OK, at least when played well... My biggest issue is how rigid people are with battle strategies... Most Jobs are much better equipped than Dark Knight to really hassle healers. We can all keep DPS up to keep them busy, but Dark Knight has the one Stun, while most Jobs have two or three forms of interrupt available to them in PvP... It's always "Tank on healer" though...