Dark Knight under review: Feedback to the Developers and Community Team

[HyperiusUltima]

The point is the skill will have both effects, but the effect Will change if you have walking dead, with s shorter recast like 90 seconds Will make the skill usefull in every situation.

Add a Magic vulnerability effect Will only make DRK mandatory, raid dps buffs never work in the hands of tanks, are the most umbalancing thing in the Game right now.

Well, one of the issues currently is that Mages are being shunned a majority of the time in favor of the whole MCH/BRD/DRG/NIN comp, so enabling magic jobs would be a way for DRK to shine in its particular niche since it’s THE Magic Tank as it was in Heavensward.

[Valdegarde]

Well, one of the issues currently is that Mages are being shunned a majority of the time in favor of the whole MCH/BRD/DRG/NIN comp, so enabling magic jobs would be a way for DRK to shine in its particular niche since it’s THE Magic Tank as it was in Heavensward.

A problem with this is that Holy Spirit exists, and Dark Knight really has no way of utilizing their own debuff since Scourge does not exist and Dark Passenger is not viable. Dark Knight is the "magic" tank at taking damage (on paper...) but not DOING magic damage. Further, if this did make a Paladin/Dark Knight duo more likely, then Ninja would be even more guaranteed with Samurai as a poor backup for slashing debuff. One could theoretically run three casters alongside Ninja, but Bard or Machinist is really valuable in most parties, and if you're taking one of them you may as well take a Dragoon...then with 3 physical attackers, why not just Monk or Machinist anyway?

I'm not against the idea, but I think it needs to be a consideration among more drastic gameplay changes. Something I'd like to see overall anyway with the current state of the game. Stormblood took steps forward and back in equal measure for many jobs.

[Pinkie_Pie]

I don't doubt that these suggestions might be incredibly unbalanced. And they could very well be a damage nerf, rather than gain, like I think it is. But I imagine a seasoned team of developers would be able to balance it much better. My main intention with these suggestions is to give Dark Knight an identity that really sets it apart from the other two tanks.

Paladins are the defenders.
Warriors are the survivors.
Dark Knights are the slayers.

Easy to balance dark knights as the semi-dps tank.

[SummerScorcher]

Perhaps they could reintroduce Low Blow for Dark Knight, amongst other skills, to synergize and emphasize on the retaliation aspect of the job.

Say they did reintroduce Scourge. Yes, I know standard 1-button dots aren't very appealing, but what if it had a relation with Low Blow? Say you had Scourge on a boss, and everytime the boss attacks or auto-attacks its target with it up, it has a chance to reset Low Blow. Kind of like parrying used to in 3.0, but usable as off-tank and it makes Scourge itself a tad more interesting. Think of it as Bard and how their dots interact with the rest of their kit. The new DRK Low Blow would look something like this:

Low Blow
Recast: 25 seconds
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Additional effect: Slow +20%
Duration: 10 seconds
Additional effect: Whenever a target with Scourge applied deals damage to its target, grants a 10% chance that the Low Blow recast timer will be reset.

It still has some CC applied to it, but not in a way that it makes enemies stun resistant, more like a nice bonus.
Scourge would be largely the same as it was in HW (with the added effect that it resets Low Blow, obviously) likely with reduced dot potency so it doesn't get super OP.


Obviously numbers can be tweaked, but alongside the aforementioned HW Reprisal comeback, IMO, this'd definitely be more interesting than flat potency buffs.

EDIT: Speaking of Reprisal... alternatively instead of using Scourge for this, Reprisal's effect could be used as well, which would make more sense. In that case I'd say the proc chance would have to be around 20% instead though, since 3.0 Reprisal has 66% uptime, in contrast to always.

[Kabooa]

Perhaps they could reintroduce Low Blow for Dark Knight, amongst other skills, to synergize and emphasize on the retaliation aspect of the job.

I'm all for more counter attacks.

Regarding Scourge, as is the case with any weaponskill, I'd rather it open up contextual possibilities rather than a singular outcome. Something like:

Scourge
Weaponskill
Effect: This weaponskill can only be used after a parry or when The Blackest Night breaks. A two fold attack, each hitting for 120. Scourge takes on the non-damaging effects of the weaponskill used immediately prior.
Dark Arts Effect: Scourge strikes one more time.

The Dark Knight is then given a few choices based on what they need and what can be achieved within their window. They can gain an influx of Blood and Life if following Souleater, an influx of MP if Syphon, or a large quantity of threat. In fact, perhaps Scourge's unique aspect in regards to this is the ability to get Souleater's Life drain - out of Grit.

For the Grit Knight, as Bloodspiller is effectively "Ignore the penalty of Grit", you could also have access to another hard hitting strike, should those stars align.

To me, this is intrinsically more interesting.

[SummerScorcher]

Scourge
Weaponskill
Effect: This weaponskill can only be used after a parry or when The Blackest Night breaks. A two fold attack, each hitting for 120. Scourge takes on the non-damaging effects of the weaponskill used immediately prior.
Dark Arts Effect: Scourge strikes one more time.

The Dark Knight is then given a few choices based on what they need and what can be achieved within their window. They can gain an influx of Blood and Life if following Souleater, an influx of MP if Syphon, or a large quantity of threat. In fact, perhaps Scourge's unique aspect in regards to this is the ability to get Souleater's Life drain - out of Grit.

Definitely an interesting concept, however, unless I'm misreading something it would be a waste to use Dark Arts on it, as you'd be trading 140 potency for 120 extra potency. There's also the (minor) issue that the animation for Scourge only hits 2 times, and though that could be changed, you don't often see new animations for skills mid-expansion. Again your idea is pretty sweet, but it would be less straightforward to implement than just bringing back skills that already exist, with a couple of effects tweaked.

[EhvaTaco]

My own summary of what DRK suffers from right now and what can be improved:

• Souleater should always heal
• Sole Survivor isn't satisfying and/or not useful enough for anything but a quick and small heal in dungeons ; In addition to what it does now, make it grant the player Black Blood each time the target is hit (100 Black Blood if target dies)
• Remove the mana costs for Darkside and Grit
• Delirium isn't satisfying to use ; make it an oGCD that generates Black Blood or extends the duration of Blood Weapon and Blood Price
• Changes to Low Block removed a fun skill for DRKs ; Remove Low Blow as a role skill (revert all Stormblood changes) as PLDs already have a stun on demand and WARs had Overhead Swing

Now to Dark Arts... It's actually not that hard to fix so I propose two changes

• Increase Dark Arts cooldown and turn it into a super charge for one skill
• Increase Dark Arts cooldown and make it empower multiple skills

[Killsion]

I pretty much agree with the OP on everything. The primary sores I see are Shadow Wall, Sole Survivor, Dark Passenger, and a personal desire to return to a proc-based retaliatory ability, like Reprisal and Low Blow used to be. Blood Price, and Delirium also could use a looking at, and a removal of the MP cost of Grit.

I frankly don't care about the Dark Arts spam. It seems like a pretty minor complaint in all honesty, as it's an issue of personal subjectivity, and some will forever like it, and some simply won't. There's no "winning" to be had here, so it seems pretty moot to complain about such things. However, a return to said retaliatory abilities may well carry a decrease in Dark Arts spam as frequently activating such oGCDs may help make it seem less spammy.

Shadow Wall as mentioned either needs a cd reduction, or some manner of additional effect, either a thorns type effect like Vengeance has, or some manner of HP absorption. The possibilities are pretty much endless, but anything is better than nothing here, and much needed.

Sole Survivor I personally really like the idea of giving it a weakened version of its pvp effect, though it will require some significant balancing to get it so DRK won't instantly become the new meta overnight. Regardless of what happens, an additional effect of a CD reset upon kill would be very nice. Could try to balance this out by giving it a very long CD so it'll be up in a pinch for aoe groups, but will go through its full duration in single-target. Alternatively, giving it some manner of hp drain would be a very nice alternative and much easier to balance for. Either way, as is Sole Survivor as an ability is largely forgettable in aoe, and utterly useless in single-target.

Dark Passenger needs a mp reduction. Badly. Just cut the mp cost down significantly so it isn't always a net loss. Or remove the Dark Arts effect, and just make it always have a blind effect. This way the blind could have some manner of use at least for mitigation, and not cost half your mp bar.

Regarding Low Blow and Reprisal, it seems pretty unlikely the devs will remove these from role actions, or create entirely new abilities, but as mentioned I think this return to proc-based retaliatory oGCD abilities would go a long way towards making DRK feel better in combat.

Blood Price is fine on paper, but its flaw is that by making it so that it only gives MP per hit, it makes it completely useless in singlet-target. Turning it into damage based mp regen, would help alleviate this significantly as it would become usable in high damage single-target situations, and remain very useful in aoe situations. As is, Blood Price has no real use in single-target but to take up an oGCD if you're bored while tanking.

Delirium suffers a similar issue with Blood Price. It isn't really very useful. It extends the length of Blood Weapon which is nice, but the MP gain is not worth using up the blood for if you're in a single-target tanking situation. How to change it, I honestly don't know, and I can live with it as is, but it's something that could use a closer look at.

Removing the mp cost from Grit, Darkside, and removing them from the GCD would frankly be really nice, and greatly appease the stance dancers. Personally, I'm fine with just maybe removing Grits mp cost as it seems the most egregious.

Lastly, I'd like to see more done with Quietus. I honestly like the idea of simply leaving it as is, but reducing the cost to 25, as it'd give DRK just a bit more to their aoe, but this is mostly wishful thinking.

[InfiniDragon]

Don't do 25 Blood for Quietus though; that will create the half step problem WAR used to have, though not as bad because of Blood Weapon giving blood on all attacks. Make it 20 or 30 (whichever the dev team finds more fair) instead so that you don't run into Blood Weapon having to make up the 5 (since Souleater always does an even 10 without BW).

[Xenosan]

However, a return to said retaliatory abilities may well carry a decrease in Dark Arts spam as frequently activating such oGCDs may help make it seem less spammy.

It will force DRK to determine, 'do I overcap on MP this GCD or do I whiff on the oGCD-Proc? Which would be less DPS loss?' Which already is a consideration that is driving DRKs no-fun component.

The Dark Arts is an ability that has animation lock / response time that is not in-step with it's frequency of use. Dark Arts should be as fast an animation and input-buffer sensitive as a Ten/Chi/Jin. That is more what I see as the spam complaint. The skill wasn't tweaked to match it's higher frquency use for 4.0, and should be.

All they did to it was reduce the cooldown, and that took arm twisting.