4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Kabooa]

I said earlier why I don't like darkside buffs personally, but I'll say it again. People already use darkside against us. They say we have 20% all the time you're perfect, when no we are not perfect. Buff this will just make it worse.

Well, then increase weaponskill potencies by 8%.

[Chrono_Rising]

Well, then increase weaponskill potencies by 8%.

The problem with flat damage is that they will need to keep buffing us since we lack a true burst phase. Warrior is high because its personal buffs line up well with party buffs. As the expansion draws on the peaks will get higher in relation to our relatively stable output. So we will end up having to constantly beg for potency buffs.

[Aana]

I said earlier why I don't like darkside buffs personally, but I'll say it again. People already use darkside against us. They say we have 20% all the time you're perfect, when no we are not perfect. Buff this will just make it worse.

I agree just buffing darkside any more would just become comical. It has zero interaction with anything. You turn it on when you change to drk and never turn it off. The only 'gameplay' it has in SB is turning it off during long dead spaces when your brd is refreshing MP and it gives more refresh than the cost to turn it back on. Much fun. Wow.

My only problem with most delirium buffs I see proposed are 2 things:

1: Practical. Its a 2min CD. That's a lot of dead space for a 'job fixing' buff and they are mostly centered around BW excluding consideration of its second function in grit.

2: Thematic. 1 massive buff to a 2min CD. I (personally) have always considered Drk as a DOT kinda class in HW and now. Drk has never had very strong burst play. Its a constant barrage of OGCD spam (kinda like sam). Of course every job has 'burst', but Drk has always been a consistency machine. (unlike say, war). I think of Drk more like a sam in that context. The train that just gets up to speed and never stops. Putting a MASSIVE focus on an 8 second window every 2 min burst window seems un-Drk to me.

All of drks abilities just increase resources over time. Not like infuriate, zerk, IR, FC which are all designed from the ground up with stocking up resources and exploding. Drk has lots of things that SLOWLY add up. 1 blood from salted. 10 blood per combo. Little MP every combo. Offensive abilities do the same. More MP over time. That MP can only be spent in DA sized chunks every few GCDs. The entire job is designed to just be a hose shooting out DPS in a steady stream. BW just turns up the hose pressure a bit, but also comes back up faster than any other tank damage CD. Etc. Giant buffs to delirium go counter to that thought process in my mind.

[Chrono_Rising]

I agree, they cut that from us though by removing so many oGCDs without adding any. That’s paladin’s identity now. I’ve outlined in other posts what I think Dark should be, but I think it would take an expansion level event to change it.

[Aana]

I agree, they cut that from us though by removing so many oGCDs without adding any. That’s paladin’s identity now. I’ve outlined in other posts what I think Dark should be, but I think it would take an expansion level event to change it.

For better or worse, they just replaced the spam with more DA spam. Like you said. Were not getting some massive ground up rework til an expansion.

For Delirium, I think you can make it part of an overall package, but not a silver bullet on a 2 min timer for Drk.

As has been stated, I think there is some broad concensus for at least 3 points.

1.Drk could use some type of 'fluff' physical mitigation to counter Pld passive shield and the 'extra' CD on war(and lolParry stacks in defiance whenever people tank stance). What dark dance used to fill. Drk seems to be OK on busters
2.Drk is (I forget the number even though ive seen it 100 times) 5-7%ish behind the other tanks in overall DPS
3. Drk could use some type of non-power slash combo enmity boost for enmity maintenance/snap like swipe/scorn/onslaught provide.

I still like the idea of passenger becoming cost effective/neutral and giving it a large enmity mod to fill #3.

Delirium could definitely use some love to help in some of that. Damage being the obvious as an extension of what it already does, but some type of fluff mitigation wouldn't be to far fetched either. Random thought. When activated gives (some undetermined amount) of parry/armor/etc for the remaining duration of that instance of BW/BP (including the extension) in addition to a small damage buff. It would help justify the long CD, make it a piece of fixing 1/2 and not make it some big burst damage centerpiece of a DOT class. This would also help balance the skill in grit/out of grit. (its just worse to use in grit now, but with the mitigation lasting SOOO much longer due to BP instead of BW it would add some oomph to the grit version while still enhancing non-grit.)

Someone somewhere in some thread here posted an idea about deleirum giving some big -damage%, unlocking actions from grit and a buncha other stuff. Repurposing some of that idea.

[TouchandFeel]

I agree, they cut that from us though by removing so many oGCDs without adding any. That’s paladin’s identity now. I’ve outlined in other posts what I think Dark should be, but I think it would take an expansion level event to change it.

I don't think it would necessitate an "expansion level rework", they just would just need to make changes to better utilize what OGCDs DRK has and to empower more frequent usage of them.

For starters if they just fixed Dark Passenger to make it a useful ability that you want to weave into your rotations when it is available, that is one more ability that you have at your disposal. Personally I still want to just see it get it's base cost removed, a damage down debuff added to it and have either no DA effect or just one that boosts damage. This turns it into a net dps boost since it has no cost as well as gives you that fluff damage defensive that DRK needs as well as the party-wide defensive utility that the other tanks have. It also fits with the risk vs. reward idea, just keep throwing it out for the dps or hold off to save it for the defensive aspect for certain instances where you may need it.

Another thing that could be done, and an idea I have been mulling about in my brain over the past few days, is to reduce the cost of Unleashed and make it an OGCD ability. That would greatly differentiate it from Abyssal because you could weave it into your rotations for aggro maintenance without breaking your combo flow. That would potentially even help or solve the issue of DRK not having something like Circle of Scorn for more "passive" aggro generation throughout a fight.

They could reduce Carve and Spit's recast time to 45 or even 30 seconds while rebalancing DAed potency to compensate for it being available more often or potentially leaving the potency alone since DRK needs a dps boost overall.

Delerium's recast could be reduced as part of it getting a rework to make it a more worthwhile ability.

Things like this mixed with Dark Arts usage, TBN usage as well as the other OGCDs would give you a lot to weave and I don't feel would require waiting for an expansion to implement. Heck, none of the changes that I listed above are even close to the level of rework that Shake It Off got.

I feel that by taking the stance of "oh, well we will need to wait for an expansion to get the fixes we need" we are just selling ourselves short and will result in us continuing to get ignored.
These changes can be made, incrementally if need be, and without huge "back to square one" reworks if done intelligently. Sure some things need a hefty overhaul, but there are a lot of bits and pieces in the kit that could be made to shine with a bit of refinement and polish. SE has already shown how quickly they can turn around and make changes like this with WAR, so surely they are, or should be, capable of doing it for DRK.

[Chrono_Rising]

I don't think it would necessitate an "expansion level rework", they just would just need to make changes to better utilize what OGCDs DRK has and to empower more frequent usage of them.

For starters if they just fixed Dark Passenger to make it a useful ability that you want to weave into your rotations when it is available, that is one more ability that you have at your disposal. Personally I still want to just see it get it's base cost removed, a damage down debuff added to it and have either no DA effect or just one that boosts damage. This turns it into a net dps boost since it has no cost as well as gives you that fluff damage defensive that DRK needs as well as the party-wide defensive utility that the other tanks have. It also fits with the risk vs. reward idea, just keep throwing it out for the dps or hold off to save it for the defensive aspect for certain instances where you may need it.

Another thing that could be done, and an idea I have been mulling about in my brain over the past few days, is to reduce the cost of Unleashed and make it an OGCD ability. That would greatly differentiate it from Abyssal because you could weave it into your rotations for aggro maintenance without breaking your combo flow. That would potentially even help or solve the issue of DRK not having something like Circle of Scorn for more "passive" aggro generation throughout a fight.

They could reduce Carve and Spit's recast time to 45 or even 30 seconds while rebalancing DAed potency to compensate for it being available more often or potentially leaving the potency alone since DRK needs a dps boost overall.

Delerium's recast could be reduced as part of it getting a rework to make it a more worthwhile ability.

Things like this mixed with Dark Arts usage, TBN usage as well as the other OGCDs would give you a lot to weave and I don't feel would require waiting for an expansion to implement. Heck, none of the changes that I listed above are even close to the level of rework that Shake It Off got.

I feel that by taking the stance of "oh, well we will need to wait for an expansion to get the fixes we need" we are just selling ourselves short and will result in us continuing to get ignored.
These changes can be made, incrementally if need be, and without huge "back to square one" reworks if done intelligently. Sure some things need an hefty overhaul, but there are a lot of bits and pieces in the kit that could be made to shine with a bit of refinement and polish. SE has already shown how quickly they can turn around and make changes like this with WAR, so surely they are, or should be, capable of doing it for DRK.

To be clear, I think a ground up rework of what the class should be, would take a lot of time effort and care because I don't think its as simple as going back to 3.x, look how long it took to fix one skill on warrior. However, to fix the issues of dark knight being behind on many if not all metrics they could be able to do that by 4.2.

Changing potencies and timers shouldn't take long, but they seem insistent on not doing anything. But even something like dark passenger being on a 30 second cooldown would still need something like 440 potency base in order to fill the gap in pps. (440-140)/30 = 10 pps

[Kabooa]

3. Why not on Plunge? I'd say someone screaming at you through the air is a pretty threatening gesture.

[Aana]

3. Why not on Plunge? I'd say someone screaming at you through the air is a pretty threatening gesture.

It would most certainly work, I just like most skills to have some unique function. Right now plunge is a free gap closer/dps button. Passenger is a DPS skill that's a dps loss and adds a blind that literally doesn't work on bosses/raids. Plunge will be used regardless as a DPS gain and gap closer. Id like to add function to dead-ish skills before enhancing 'working' ones myself. But any OGCD ability could get an enmity buff to fill that role.

[Xenosan]

For DPS, the first task at hand is to alleviate the pernicious potency tax from Actions.

In 3.0 there was that exploit where you could double-dip in DA bonus effects from a singe Dark Arts by double-weaving DA>Ability>SE/PS/etc.

Well, the double-weaving is mandatory now. So to start, make that old bug a feature. Remove the 'consumes Dark Arts' aspect from Dark Mind, Dark Passenger, and Carve and Spit.

There is still the MP management aspect to using these skills (even if DP had a lower cost). There's still a recast timer on all them. So there's still CD + resource alignment and double weave stress to all of the them. That is enough.

Dark Arts

Attune with the darkness within you, increasing the potency of several actions...

If a GCD ability consumes Dark Arts, then Dark Arts should raise that GCD's potency. Power Slash and Abyssal Drain should have their damage increased by Dark Arts same as the other actions. Their utility effects of HP Absorb and Bonus Enmity should be genuine Added Effects gated behind Dark Arts (I would want the same for Souleater's HP absorb).

These changes won't go too far, but its a logical start. This is potential potencies that already exist in the kit, but they're getting pissed away.

The real value isn't just for these present skills either. This establishes a rule for all future Ability/Spell/Weaponskill Dark Arts Effects where there won't be a -140 potency caveat left hidden and unsaid in every DA'able Action's tooltip.