Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[Shurrikhan]

Core Issue 1: Lackluster Toolkit Cohesion

Relative to Heavensward DRK or even the current WAR, many parts of the DRK toolkit feel slightly disjointed; very few of the tools seem to have a fluid presence across its gameflow. While 3.x DRK suffered from what might be called anti-synergy (which could still be considered a worthy trade-off so long as the sum of power across the toolkit would otherwise be overpowered, which many have argued to be the case when simultaneously taking magic and physical damage), Dark Arts at least had a broad presence, such that mana spent for offense meant reduced mana spendable on defense; this concept now sees more branches in Quietus and Bloodspiller, but these options feel largely redundant compared to the Dark Dance synergy lost, causing Dark Mind (our only surviving defensive DA-spender unless you count Abyssal Drain) to feel more tacky and punishing than it feels a integration of some unique and pervasive DRK mechanic.

To put it another way, DRK feels like one of the classes that has the greatest potential for enjoyable depth, even if limited to relatively few keys, and yet very little of that potential has been tapped into.


Core Issue 2: Especially high dependence on double-weave.

Though less an issue than in 3.x due to Bloodspiller and Quietus remaining on the global cooldown, and Delirium best being used on the global after BW (unless you would lose an AA over the duration by delaying to the latter half of the oGCD gap), the way DA's control has been implemented leaves it a frequent cause of necessary double-weaving, and now that the rate of DA has increased (outside of BP usage) that part has only gotten worse. Moreover, the need to enhance skills means that one is often potentially forced to delay an oGCD (DP or DM, generally) by a half-gap, and the game's netcode combined with the loss of oGCD queues on any desync can put DRK in a bind second only to NIN when a DA-consuming oGCD is followed by a DA-consuming GCD, which now account for all but two weaponskills.


Core Issue 3: Miscellaneous Instances of Relative Undertuning or Reduced Functionality

TBN sees relatively rare use, and is far from free. Its breadth of usability also faces anti-synergy with defensive tools. To a degree, this seems like it could add some desireable complexity to the job, but in actuality, it makes TBN a relatively poor choice on which to spend mana in a few too many situations. I don't know if it needs to see an adjustment to functionality or simple retuning, but it feels faintly off right now.

Similarly, DM is painfully costly to make more evenly powerful relative to the closest analogs in WAR and PLD's toolkits (which are far from clear even then).

Shadow Wall, worse still, stands as simply an inferior version of Sentinel or Vengeance. If it's being paid for via DM, then I have to ask what's covering its cost in physical mitigation and why DM is as expensive as it is, and if not... why? Why does it have the worst each of refresh speed and mitigation percentile, relative to its WAR/PLD counterparts?

[SyzzleSpark]

Though less an issue than in 3.x due to Bloodspiller and Quietus remaining on the global cooldown, and Delirium best being used on the global after BW (unless you would lose an AA over the duration by delaying to the latter half of the oGCD gap), the way DA's control has been implemented leaves it a frequent cause of necessary double-weaving, and now that the rate of DA has increased (outside of BP usage) that part has only gotten worse. Moreover, the need to enhance skills means that one is often potentially forced to delay an oGCD (DP or DM, generally) by a half-gap, and the game's netcode combined with the loss of oGCD queues on any desync can put DRK in a bind second only to NIN when a DA-consuming oGCD is followed by a DA-consuming GCD, which now account for all but two weaponskills.

It breaks my heart, it really does. In HW double weaving was FUN. You felt fast and furious, hacking, slashing, spewing dark energy and kicking shit in the face. Those moments when all your oGCDs would come off recast at the same time and you could dump all of them like a ton of bricks. Brings a tear to me eye. Now its a bloody chore. Out with the pewpew and in with the QQ.

TBN sees relatively rare use, and is far from free. Its breadth of usability also faces anti-synergy with defensive tools. To a degree, this seems like it could add some desireable complexity to the job, but in actuality, it makes TBN a relatively poor choice on which to spend mana in a few too many situations. I don't know if it needs to see an adjustment to functionality or simple retuning, but it feels faintly off right now.

I personally am a huge advocate of indirectly adjusting TBN by reducing Blood Gauge costs. Bloodspiller/Quietus/Delirium are great and all, but none of them pack the punch to warrant a whopping 50% of any resource. Bloodspiller isn't like Fell Cleave, its not a massive gain over the nominal PPGCD, and there are no buff windows native to the job to fit it in, so there's really very little reason why it needs to cost 50 gauge. If it was less, TBN would feel better to use by proxy, I feel.

Shadow Wall, worse still, stands as simply an inferior version of Sentinel or Vengeance. If it's being paid for via DM, then I have to ask what's covering its cost in physical mitigation and why DM is as expensive as it is, and if not... why? Why does it have the worst each of refresh speed and mitigation percentile, relative to its WAR/PLD counterparts?

I can really only furiously nod my head in agreement. Who thought it was a good idea for DRK to have only 2, ...TWO... T-W-O.... native cooldowns, that will mitigate physical damage, the overall most common form of incoming damage in the game by a landslide? Whoever it was, they need a bloody vacation. The CR options DRK is literally required to bring to close this wound are an almost insultingly obvious band-aid.

[Shurrikhan]

It breaks my heart, it really does. In HW double weaving was FUN. You felt fast and furious, hacking, slashing, spewing dark energy and kicking shit in the face. Those moments when all your oGCDs would come off recast at the same time and you could dump all of them like a ton of bricks. Brings a tear to me eye. Now its a bloody chore. Out with the pewpew and in with the QQ.

This was one of the things that most surprised me going into 4.x. In 3.x, I had Low Blow proc after Low Blow proc to time in with usually on-cooldown Dark Passenger, meaning that I was double-weaving considerably more often (except during Grit Syphon + extended BP in mass AoE), and yet somehow it just felt a bit more satisfying, more... DRK, compared to what I'm hitting in 4.x. Maybe it was the "in your face" nature of Low Blow, or that our (imo) signature ability (DP) could still be used in single-target, idk, but it felt strangely divorced from what I was used to even when I'm forced into Grit and am getting massive returns from Delirium - Blood Price such that DA is filling up my oGCD almost as much with its DA spam. Our maybe it was just that I could more easily avoid spending my DA on a weaponskill, so I only really had to worry about DP coming off CD before my augmented skill to-be.

I've often considered how the DA might feel a little less clunky. For instance, if it was instead a trait that allowed any of the skills it would normally augment a secondary effect at mana-cost by making a temporary form of the skill or spell oGCD or of the ability available on cooldown, such that you could DA a Souleater to eat souls for a brief damage buff, DA after an AD for the self healing, DA after a DD/DM for spike enhanced usage of an already powerful ability, after a PS to activate, separately, that second shadow blast portion of the skill... That said, that would only fix the issue of feeling like your DA is being eaten up in unintended ways, much like NIN mudras during net desyncs, but that issue can be mostly passed over with practice alone. Double-weaving requires instead that simply DA, Plunge, and certain other oGCDs just have shorter animation locks.

I personally am a huge advocate of indirectly adjusting TBN by reducing Blood Gauge costs. Bloodspiller/Quietus/Delirium are great and all, but none of them pack the punch to warrant a whopping 50% of any resource. Bloodspiller isn't like Fell Cleave, its not a massive gain over the nominal PPGCD, and there are no buff windows native to the job to fit it in, so there's really very little reason why it needs to cost 50 gauge. If it was less, TBN would feel better to use by proxy, I feel.

I don't actually mind that one TBN = 1 Blood skill, or that we can only hold exactly two of any of our Blood skill. It's simple and clean while still giving (in the later case) definitive urgency to avoid overcapping in combination with TBN, and while that wouldn't normally mean much to me, I just don't see Bloodspiller's giving, say, 125% of a Blood skill instead (giving 50 while each costs 4) would make a significant difference. Heck, there's probably a way for TBN to feel perfectly fine and function viably even if it gave no Blood, or even came at the cost of Blood instead of mana (though I do actually like the exchange of resources to whatever degree can make Blood=Mana=HP, so that would sadden me). That much is all in the tuning.

That being said, I don't see why TBN's Blood gains needs to be all or nothing so long as its tuned to a point where its use, even if restoring the 50 Blood, is situational. At that point it might as well generate resource continuously as it's consumed, or at the end of duration based on the portion consumed (no loss of urgency or need for pre-spending).

I can really only furiously nod my head in agreement. Who thought it was a good idea for DRK to have only 2, ...TWO... T-W-O.... native cooldowns, that will mitigate physical damage, the overall most common form of incoming damage in the game by a landslide? Whoever it was, they need a bloody vacation. The CR options DRK is literally required to bring to close this wound are an almost insultingly obvious band-aid.

I think my main issue is less that we have fewer physical cooldowns as it is with having an anti-magic CD at all. No one else has that, so it can only serve to either niche us, balancing us around being overpowered in content with magic tankbusters or just viable in such content and/or leaving us underpowered elsewhere. Why provide a typal CD that no one else has, and with no counterbalance (such as DD, if on a shared recast time) at that?

[SyzzleSpark]

double weaving, tbn/blood, our crappy mitigation

On double weaving - I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Low Blow and DP had extremely short animation locks, and Syphon didn't have a DA effect. On THAT note...

Now that I think about it... Syphon having a DA effect can be seen as the outlet of a long string of f***ing AWFUL decisions on SE's part. Let me lay that out for you:

->Delirium removed as a combo ender

-->nerfing BP/making BP Grit exclusive

--->BW and BP can no longer be combined

---->BW MP return increased to compensate (it is now 20% of a DA per proc. It used to be 13%.)

----->Darkside MP drain removed

------>BW buff with Darkside drain removal resulted in an apparently unforeseen surplus of MP.

------->DP nerfed out of ST rotations, removing yet another mana dump.

-------->Suddenly DRK is swimming in mana with not enough ways to dump it.

--------->TBN is implemented as a further dump

---------->TBN has to be given a resource conversion mechanic so as to avoid smearing our faces in the fact that we have to pay for mitigation in DPS.

----------->TBN has to be balanced such that it isn't spammed for DPS gains, making it a less frequent and consistent mana dump

------------>DRK still swimming in mana.

------------->Syphon Strike gets an utterly idiotic and needless DA effect.

When one looks at it like this, its hard to see how DRK's SB design passed QA. You can literally plot out a veritable topology of BAD decisions, which then continue to snowball into more ...BAD decision after BAD decision, each one having to band-aid over the ramifications of the one before it. Now, one could argue that I've re-ordered the chain of events here to prove a point, but any way you look at it, its hard to logically imagine a series of decisions that started with the choice to give Syphon a DA effect. That change screams "We had to do this to cover a bunch of other changes that are clearly mistakes but we're gonna roll with 'em anyway."

Phew. Excuse the tangent. Some very difficult-to-swallow food for thought, though.

On TBN, I agree that a Blood return proportionate to a percentage of the shield absorbed is a neat idea, but it seems like a more complicated solution, and one reason I'm in favor of reducing costs is to allow us an effectively larger pool of blood to stockpile, opening the door to triple or quad Bloodspillers, which would give us something vaguely resembling burst damage. You could offset this by also reducing returns (BW returns 2 blood per tick, BP 3, Souleater 5, etc.)

Not much I can add to the continued discussion of how poorly balanced our mitigation is. DD+Reprisal's removal from the job was a really stupid move, as was standardizing Mana-to-potency through all of these needlessly homogenous DA effects in such a way as to ensure spending a DA for defensive purposes is a horrible idea.

[Airget]

Blood Gauge should have a main tank/offtank ability, instead it has a weak 120 second recast ability, weak in the context of how long it takes to use again when compared to PLD's options and an offensive ability.

PLD actually get a Main tank/offtank ability, one that guarantees a shield block on top of restoring their MP every 5 seconds and another that grants a 10%-15% dmg reduction on target for 6 seconds every 10 seconds. The extra 5% coming if Rampart/Sentinel are active at the time.

Bloodspillers only gimmick is based around what abilities you have active at the time to increase it's potency. instead it should work similar to WAR's Inner Beast but rather than be a dmg mitigation it applies a "Dmg dealt by target" decrease for 6 seconds. It would magically change that ability from pure offensive to a main/off tank ability.

[Chrono_Rising]

This is a delayed response because I had surprise sleep last night.

I see the dark arts of siphon strike less as a mana dump and more of an expansion of our self buffing. Warrior‘s buff was cut but they now have oGCD toys to play with as well as a buff to enhance their resource spending, paladin’s gained a second buff on top of their already existing buff which also saw a cooldown reduction. To keep up we need to be able to actively buff ourselves more often. My issue with this is that even with dumping my mana after my first two blood weapons my mana tends to dry up significantly, even keeping it there and buffing myself to the max I don’t hit paladin level dps. I think this points to an issue with the tuning of our resource gain.

[Valdegarde]

The situations where I'm capped on MP and need to Dark Arts a Syphon Strike to not overflow is vastly outweighed by the maddening frustration I get when I plan to Dark Arts something in a GCD or two to not overlap a million off GCDs, and either run shy of MP by like....20, forcing me to Syphon Strike and consume the Dark Arts, or otherwise wasting a weaving opportunity (dark arts + TBN -> syphon strike -> any other cooldown + dark mind/carve & spit/abyssal drain SHIT). You can think of many scenarios.

Syphon Strike being so stupid awkward with Dark Arts and MP either in or out of Grit is the reason I use ethers about 10x more than I did in Heavensward!

I have...many strong negative feelings about dark arts Syphon Strike. It still boggles my mind why that couldn't have been a spot to utilize Dark Passenger if MP needed a dump. Any benefit its design serves now is, like Syzzle Spark said, some strange band-aid after other bad decisions were approved.

Edit: Sorry, this is easily one of the top 3 issues for me personally that contributes to Dark Knight's playstyle feeling clunky and awkward at times. I think everyone's got a couple of those things regarding Dark Knight right now.

[TouchandFeel]

I would say that being able to DA Syphon Strike is actually good conceptually but terrible in it's current implementation.

Pros:
It allows you to burn MP for boosted DPS fast which gives a greater ability and control to do burst damage.
It provides another weaponskill/gcd ability to use DA on.

Cons:
It messes with the ability to pre-prep a DA to use with another OGCD ability like Carve and Spit, often forcing ogcd double-weaves. It provides no discernible positive difference to make it worth DAing instead of Soul Eater which has a higher potency and therefore could give greater gains if it lands a direct hit or crit as well as the bump to hp drain.

Potential Solutions:
The issue with double-weaving needs to get resolved and personally I feel that should be done by removing DA effects from OGCD abilities, possibly by just making the MP cost and additional effects and potency baseline, and bolstering/adding/improving DA effects for the GCD abilities.
Syphon also needs to gain a bit more from DAing it. The HP drain from Soul Eater is based on damage done and so it increases with the DA potency increase. Syphon is a flat MP gain and does not currently receive any benefit for being DAed. I feel this should change and that a DAed Syphon should give back a bit more MP than a regular, giving it a better MP to DPS ratio that a DAed SE. I also feel that a DAed Soul Eater should give a bit more Blood than a regular one. This then plays into the choices of boosting and managing different resources. Want more MP? DA Syphon. Want more Blood and some HP back? DA Soul Eater.

[Valdegarde]

I still feel the 10 second duration of Dark Arts now is woefully underutilized for combo-weaving planning now compared to Heavensward. Unless as a pre-pull, I can't remember a time where I'm even allowed to hold Dark Arts for more than 2-3 seconds to use on something. Hard Slash is pretty much the only GCD you can hold a Dark Arts around, wasting planning potential of Dark Arts usage. I would vastly prefer Dark Arts being taken from Syphon Strike to apply to more meaningful things. Hell, even if you just completely took it away now with no replacement, I'd at least legitimately use dark arts + Dark Mind more! Perhaps that may speak to issues on Dark Mind's end, but Dark Arts roadblocks on every single GCD is not how I feel Dark Knight's MP usage should be regulated.

[Mycow8me]

Well one possible solution is to give dark arts a stack up to 3? For example you use Dark arts and you get 10 seconds to use it... If you use dark arts again you got 2 stacks of dark arts and you get the timer reset to 10 seconds, if you used a souleater it will go down to 1 dark arts and timer reset to 10 seconds again. This would allow some MP dump in the case of overflow without a need for siphon strike to have a dark arts potency. It would help doubleweaving tremendously, it might even solve bloodweapons speed bonus clipping if you use the OGCDs correctly in this manner with darkarts requiring no change to blood weapon at all... Would need to actually test it though cause I cannot visualize how well it would play out in the middle of a rotation.