Dark Knight: 5.0x Feedback Thread

[Ryulaido]

I would say , add old skills back like his DoT Scourge that would be a big help for more dps at least (and also cooler animations compared to the current animations cause this skill looked real good) and also it would be cool to bring skill animations back like the old 2 spin slice animated delirium which was an level 50 alternative combo finisher or power slash. bring back those 2 skills as an Ogcd skill that you can use with like 250-300 potency.

[Xiaoki]

I haven't leveled DRK to 80 yet since I don't have Shadowbringers (only have it to 70). Plus, it's my first tank I've fully leveled up, but here are my thoughts.

• Have TBN cost no MP. GNB has a similar shield called Heart of Stone that costs no MP, so why can't TBN be the same? Buff the skill by having it cost no MP, have a recast time of 25 seconds, and increase the duration to 9s so it gives more time for the shield to break.

TBN is far better defensive tool than HoS, that's why it costs resources.

If you have 100,000 health then TBN would absorb 25,000 damage.

HoS on the other hand only reduces damage taken by 15%. So, for HoS to mitigate the same 25,000 damage you have to take 166,700 total damage which you definitely wouldn't live through.

Making TBN similar to HoS would be a massive nerf to it's mitigation and a massive nerf to it's cooldown and somehow you think it would be better just because it no longer costs MP?

[Sancho_Nyanta]

Excellent point Xiaoki, I would have pointed out the same for the OP. Unless the block on Sheltron somehow gets to 25% it will never be as good as TBN. Using the same example as Xiaoki, you'd have to take 125,000 dmg in 6 seconds for Sheltron to mitigate as much as TBN with 100,000 hp. The problem? Is that even if you did mitigate that much then you'd be dead anyway since it would deal your full hp worth of dmg. I don't even think that there is a way to deal that much dmg in that short of a window without killing us. Bar none, TBN is the most powerful single target mitigation that any tank has access to for the duration that is available. The problem with it just boils down to either giving it 2 more sec to more reliably pop it or grant us more MP generation to recover from it not popping.

Regarding the OP's comment on how squishy Drk is vs trash. Drk and Pld have access to the same tools for dealing with trash except for 2 things; Sheltron vs TBN and Clemency vs Abyssal Drain/Soul Eater heals. The thing is tho you really shouldn't have to use Clemency so that shouldn't really matter and as talked about above, TBN>Sheltron. If you are feeling squishy as a Drk then I could only guess that it is because you aren't using your CDs properly.

I don't have War up enough for Flash but with what I have done with it, War feels squishy AF right now. I do have Pld up enough to know I felt squishy until I got the extra 3 seconds on Sheltron. Even with that I still feel more squishy than on Drk.

[Chrono_Rising]

Excellent point Xiaoki, I would have pointed out the same for the OP. Unless the block on Sheltron somehow gets to 25% it will never be as good as TBN. Using the same example as Xiaoki, you'd have to take 125,000 dmg in 6 seconds for Sheltron to mitigate as much as TBN with 100,000 hp. The problem? Is that even if you did mitigate that much then you'd be dead anyway since it would deal your full hp worth of dmg. I don't even think that there is a way to deal that much dmg in that short of a window without killing us. Bar none, TBN is the most powerful single target mitigation that any tank has access to for the duration that is available. The problem with it just boils down to either giving it 2 more sec to more reliably pop it or grant us more MP generation to recover from it not popping.

As noted in the original post sheltron becomes stronger as we gain more block strength. I think we are up to 20% at 450. So its just a matter of time till we get to 25% and higher, as patch after patch paladin will gain more and more mitigation. Regarding your math: If I have 100k HP and use TBN I will mitigate 25k damage with not variation, this makes it strong for anything hitting below your HP when compared to 25% mitigation; this breaks down when you start mitigating hits above your HP. If I take 120k damage TBN mitigates 25K I survive with 5k hp; if I use sheltron at the hypothetical 25% I mitigate 30k Damage and survive with 10k hp. If you play with the numbers you'll find that any attack over your HP will have more mitigated by sheltron at 25% than TBN.

Lets combine, at the same 100k HP lets say I need two cooldowns to live through a 150K attack. TBN + Shadow wall will mitigate 70k together, meaning we will survive with 20k.

Sheltron+Sentinel will mitigate 47.5% of the damage mitigating 71.25k together, more than Shadow Wall TBN combo.

Lets up the damge 20k and take a 170k buster: TBN shadow wall mitigate a total of 51k+25k=76k. We survive with 4k hp left over.

Sheltron+Sentinel at 25% mitigates 80.75k. We survive with 10.75k.

This says nothing of mitigation for directly before and after the buster, which can chip away at the TBN preemptively, and leaves you with less mitigation and less hp after the fact which is a dangerous combo since you still have nearly 50% mitigation running on paladin in this example for follow up damage and a more than double hp pools. At the end of the last expac we were at 30% block, I can only imagine this is where we are headed now but time will tell there.

Yes, TBN has advantages. Yes, TBN also has weaknesses. As for gunbreaker: Camo is an always available fourth mitigation, it is only 10% but combined with heart of stone is a nearly 25% mitigation (1.5% short). I did not do the math but you can prove that fixed mitigation will always have a tipping point where % based mitigation will surpass what the fixed mitigation will mitigate. The question as you mentioned is will you live taking that damage, often the answer is no, and for below 20% mitigation in a single hit situation you are correct, the tipping point is above what we can survive without adding more mitigation. However, 20% is also the end of this limit, at more than 20% mitigation you get into a zone where you can both live and mitigate more, and the higher the percentage the lower this goes. At 30% sheltron will mitigate more than TBN as long as we take damage which is above 83% of our HP.

Regarding the OP's comment on how squishy Drk is vs trash. Drk and Pld have access to the same tools for dealing with trash except for 2 things; Sheltron vs TBN and Clemency vs Abyssal Drain/Soul Eater heals.

First, I am not saying dark is squishy to trash, I said it feels squishier than other tanks.

Dark Knight feels slightly more squishy than other tanks in trash pulls.

I'm all for having honest conversation, but if we are just going to misrepresent what people are saying then I doubt there is much to be gained.

Second you omitted Hallowed Ground, which is amazing when going into pulls and not having much mitigation. Its not up every pull, but does give a nice little breather and is usually ready again after each boss.

Soul eater is a 5k hp every three GCD's, I'm not sure who is single targetting in wall trash pulls, but I feel like aoe would burn things down faster thereby mitigating more damage than using soul eater as a self heal when it restores less damage than we are being hit for by a single enemy.

And then we have sheltron versus TBN versus a spammable clemency to buy time if you are in an emergency which can be further boosted by requiscat. Living is more important than damage.

TBN is far better defensive tool than HoS, that's why it costs resources.

If you have 100,000 health then TBN would absorb 25,000 damage.

HoS on the other hand only reduces damage taken by 15%. So, for HoS to mitigate the same 25,000 damage you have to take 166,700 total damage which you definitely wouldn't live through.

Making TBN similar to HoS would be a massive nerf to it's mitigation and a massive nerf to it's cooldown and somehow you think it would be better just because it no longer costs MP?

While I agree in a single hit situation TBN > Sheltron in the context of trash pulls having mitigation for a full 7 second duration has given healers more leeway in keeping up than mitigating 25k. If I'm wall pulling 10 things hitting me for 5k each I'm taking 50k every 3 seconds TBN breaks instantly and I need more mitigation otherwise I'm taking the hits raw. HoS doesn't have a damage cap where it breaks, I continue to mitigate through the full 7 seconds while the healer does damage control.

[Awful]

While I am enjoying DRK I do know it has issues placing it lower on the tank pole my only issues are:

-Living Dead: Make it 50% of your HP instead of 100% that's 120k healing resources going into this void of a tank CD
-Dark Mind: Nerf unjustified either make it 30% or change it to something like Raw Intuition/Heart of Stone since DRKs get nothing CD wise till TBN for 25 levels
-MP gains: In PvP they're 1000, in PvE it's 600 why? Why can't it be 1000 in PvE too?
-TBN: I like and hate this ability, I like how strong it is but I hate the resources attached to it for a low pay off, and if it doesn't break it costs you 500 potency, tank DPS shouldn't be tied to resources/ its DPS.

Other than that I enjoy ShB DRK better than SB DRK by a mile that's just personal preference though, I've done all the EXs and Eden as a DRK so this is my feedback concerning it.

[TouchandFeel]

I have already posted, with some updates, my specific thoughts and feedback on the DRK rework so far in the thread that I created (thread here) so I won't repost all of that here. I do go over a lot of what was brought up here in that thread.

I will speak to the points that you and others have made though as best I can, so not directed at anyone in particular and more in the general.

Blood Weapon
I agree that Blood Weapon and the points that you pointed to are an issue and need to be resolved. Luckily this issue is not only being brought up here on the English forums but others as well, so hopefully the extra visibility will get it the attention it deserves. The easiest solution would be to add a second or two to it's duration.
I've actually been meaning to update my feedback on my thread to include this.

Speed
I speak to this exact issue in my thread, equating it to the long recast times of the oGCDs and the dearth of resources and oGCDs to use after the Delirium burst period.

So yes, some of the oGCDs, like Carve n' Spit and Abyssal Drain, need to have their recasts reduced to 30s.
Also yes, the MP generation should also be increased but only where the pain is which is after Delirium and the best way to do that is to increase the MP generation from Blood Spiller and Quietus during Delirium so that it isn't just making up for it's GCDs replacing your combo but to be actually MP positive to help soften the blow of dumping your MP during the Delirium burst. I cover the exacts of my ideas for this in my thread.

Additionally I don't think that the idea of giving the haste effect back to Blood Weapon that some people are expressing would do much of anything for the feel of speed. Really the haste effect is more of a placebo in regards to actual speed since you are only shaving off tenths of a second from your GCDs, requiring at least 3 combo cycles before you can fit in an extra GCD. That would be maybe 1 extra GCD per BW use, every 60s, but would require BW to have it's duration extended to ~15s which would then require it's resource gain to be rebalanced. As for the "feel" of it and why I call it akin to a placebo is that you are still doing the same cycling of GCDs that you normally do, just at an almost imperceptibly increased pace. The fact that nothing you do changes and the rate of doing it is increased in such small increments that it barely registers in your brain, the feeling of speed seems to come more from you telling yourself that you are going faster instead of actually going discernibly faster.

As I have already expressed, providing more frequent oGCD use is a much better and more easily felt way to provide a sense of speed by directly providing more frequent action use instead of spread out snippets that eventually add up to maybe being able to use another ability, not to mention that oGCDs inherently feel faster when used since they can be woven between GCDs instead of being a part of and displacing GCDs.

Mitigation
I feel that DRK's mitigation is mostly good, with a lot of its issues stemming from the issue of TBN and it breaking. If TBN were to be easier to consistently break, it would be much more frequently used and for both fluff and busters instead of being held solely for specific things. Enabling the more frequent use of such a powerful shield will greatly assist in lessening the hurt of having fewer general use defensive abilities.

However, while I feel fixing TBN is the crux of improving DRK's mitigation, I also agree to a point regarding the sentiment that Dark Mind is perhaps too niche due to it being magic damage only. I think that it would be a good idea to give Dark Mind the Camouflage treatment and split the damage mitigation on it to being 10% straight damage reduction and reducing magic vulnerability by 15%. This would be a slight buff of 3.5% against magic damage which I feel, along with its shorter recast, is balanced out by having half the duration compared to Camouflage.

In regards to the argument of making TBN not have an MP cost, an argument that I have seen sprout up after Xenosys Vex's 5.0 tank feedback video came out, I highly, greatly and vehemently disagree. Look, Xeno makes some good points in his feedback but don't take everything he says and particularly his solutions as gospel. He's good at alluding to general potential issues that can feel bad, but can and has definitely missed the mark on what the exacts and solutions are for some issues, which is fine he is only human but seriously people need to not rely on him or other high-profile personalities to provide them their opinions.
Anyways, sorry tangent.

People are decrying "homogenization" yet are asking for exactly that here, removing the cost and increasing the recast to 25s so it is just like the others. I dislike this idea because it removes part of the game-play foundation of resource management for DRK. DRK's resource management is made up of basically three parts; not overcapping, predicting how fast you will be gaining them and in the case of MP trying to avoid dipping too low so that you have enough for TBN just in case. Remove the MP cost and you remove one of the main parts of resource management on DRK, simplifying MP management to just spam 'em if you got 'em game-play with Edge/Flood. We've already basically got that with Blood management, we don't need that for MP as well. The issue isn't that TBN has an initial cost, it's that it's far too easy to not recoup that cost because the shield doesn't break. Fix that and the cost is no longer a cost but basically pre-paying for your Edge/Flood with the bonus of a shield, which actually has a strategic use because you can plan paying for your TBN early to precache an Edge for burst, build your MP back up and then be able to fit even more Edges into your burst since you have a free one stored away.
So I feel this whole idea of "TBN should not cost MP" and "defensive abilities shouldn't be tied to or connected to offensive abilities" is only really valid when it is an either/or situation, like it was in the past where you had to pay in dps to improve your defense (DA+DM). If it equals out and your defensive capabilities enable your offensive capabilities, that is fine and arguably better than fine because it provides an element of game-play to work around.

Then there is of course Living Dead. It needs to change. This has been repeated ad naseum for a long time and I go into it in my thread, don't feel like repeating myself for the babillionth time.

Utility/Support
I agree that maybe DRK got the short end of the stick in regards to support, however I feel that it is not that far off.

True, Aurora can basically heal around what a TBN could shield for but Aurora is only available every 60s while a DRK will be able to use TBN 2-3 times as frequently. If you take into account Heart of Stone, which is weaker than TBN, and they approximately equal out it's just GNB has two abilities as opposed to a singular very strong one. The main issue here is again, not wanting or being able to use TBN as frequently as you should due to the problem of it not breaking as easily as it should.

As for the raid utility, yeah this is where it feels a bit off. While the magic damage only issue is somewhat lessened by the fact that most raid-wide damage is magic, that is dependent on the devs consistently making raid-wide damage in encounters be magic which is not always the case. If they were to make sure all raid-wides are magic damage, then really it would be virtually no different than making Dark Missionary, and to be fair Heart of Light, affect all damage and not just magic in most situations you would use these abilities. That just seems like the more sensible solution at this point and less potential work or consideration going forward when making content.

Self-healing
I too see none of the tanks as being particularly stellar at self-healing outside of Req+Clemency spam and Nascent Flash in large packs, but both of those are pretty situational and in the case of Clemency also have a cost in the loss of dps.
I feel that DRK's biggest issue with self-healing is that it is too spread out and consistent since it is tied mostly to the Soul Eater combo, the heals from which are small enough and spread out enough that they never really save any additional casts from the healers. On the other hand, more concentrated/bursty healing like on the other tanks can potentially be more beneficial to the healer since they can be used strategically to lessen the healing when and where it is really needed. I basically think that some of the weight of self-healing for DRK needs to be removed from Soul Eater by reducing its cure potency a little and then improving the heal from Abyssal Drain by making it more effective for single-target. I go over the specifics in my thread.

DPS
Agreed. The tanks are very close in dps but they can still be made closer. I would really prefer if the devs didn't just do the expected +10 potency to Soul Eater type adjustments that they normally do and instead make those adjustments to the oGCDs that are gated by recast (not Edge/Flood). I feel that oGCD usage is much easier to track and therefore balance around than specific GCD usage and upping the potency of oGCDs helps them feel more impactful when used, as opposed to tweaks to combo potency that sort of just blends into the background.
Some of the proposed changes that I made would provide an overall small dps bump to DRK that could potentially put it right where it should be.

[Sancho_Nyanta]

snip

You seem to be making a very big assumptions about whether or not blocking strength will get to 25% especially considering that they purposely nerfed it this expansion. Based on what my pld co-tank was telling me after he got to 80 and what I'm seeing at 76, we went up 1% from 19% to 20% at ilv 400 to 450. Sheltron will still need another 5% just equal TBN. Further more you don't appear to be considering that TBN scales with our HP. How much did our HP raise during thos 50 ilvs?

Looking at your math, you are going ahead and applying your, assumption that Sheltron will be at 25 %. The fact of the matter is that we don't have enough evidence to say that this will happen in this expansion much less at all. Until that happens tho you'd have to take lethal levels of dmg to equal TBN's mitigation.

Regarding combining CDs, I'll be honest, I don't actually know how TBN reacts with other % based mitigation like Rampart. Is TBN's mitigation applied first and then the remaining damage is reduced by the % or is the overall damage reduced and then TBN reduces that. Depending on this, using the 125k dmg @ 100k hp example you'd either be reducing the dmg by 55k or 62.5k.

You said that Drk is squishier, which implies that it is squishy at all is my point. My comment was that it was the only tank, at least to me that didn't feel squishy at all.

Regarding HG, I guess I did forget about one easy pull every 7 min.

I included Soul Eater for the same reason that I included Clemency. It is a thing that goes towards survivability that you shouldn't be using under normal circumstances. If you are having to use it then either the healer is bad, the dps are slow, or you didn't rotate your CDs properly.

Looking at your rather silly example to Xiaoki, I just checked your work. Sheltron isn't going to save you in your scenario either. Why? With your example we are still at 100k max hp, based on the TBN number you used. If we are taking 50k every 3 seconds then Sheltron is only stopping 10k every 3 seconds meaning that you are taking 40k unmitigated every 3 seconds. This means your party has 6 seconds to DRASTICALLY reduce the amount of dmg that you are taking or even with Sheltron mitigating more dmg you won't live through 120k of dmg in 9 seconds.

I don't always do math, but when I do, I always check my work.
Stay mathematical my friends.

[TouchandFeel]

Regarding combining CDs, I'll be honest, I don't actually know how TBN reacts with other % based mitigation like Rampart. Is TBN's mitigation applied first and then the remaining damage is reduced by the % or is the overall damage reduced and then TBN reduces that. Depending on this, using the 125k dmg @ 100k hp example you'd either be reducing the dmg by 55k or 62.5k.

In my experience %based mitigation abilities are applied before damage to shields are, basically making shields like extra chunks of HP that the tank has temporarily. So in instances where you stack % mitigation with a shield, the value of the shield doesn't decrease as opposed to stacking % mitigation abilities where it does.

For example:
A DRK with 100k HP is about to take a 100k hit and puts up TBN and Rampart. The 100k hit is then reduced to 80k by Rampart, TBN takes 25k of that hit, leaving the tank taking 55k damage.

[Jeeqbit]

5.0 DRK is so much fun.

I view it that PLD is a GCD job and DRK is an oGCD job.

DRK may have a mindless 1-2-3 combo, but you are overloaded with oGCDs to press instead. There is almost no point that you don't have weaving to do, and often you will get situations where you want to double weave or even have 5 abilities to press.

It's not uncommon for Plunge to reach 2, Carve & Spit, Abyssal Drain, Blood Weapon, Living Shadow and numerous Edge of Shadows to all pop up at once and you have to prioritise and manage those around the mechanics. Thrown into the mix is using TBN in big pulls and heavy hits, using Reprisal and Dark Missionary for heavy AoEs and using tank cooldowns. All of these are Abilities with animation delays that make weaving them all at once challenging and causing you to prioritise based on the mechanics.

You still get the added variety of Delirium, Bloodspiller and Quietus. In AoE pulls Flood of Shadow is somewhat of a positional. If your targeted enemy is off to the side, it's missed all the other enemies.

Overall I'm enjoying it a lot at 80 in this faster-paced 5.0 content, plunging to both packs of mobs, plunging to bosses multiple times when they jump around that frequently, and always having different things up whether it's Living Shadow, Blood Weapon, Delirium, Abyssal Drain or Carve and Spit and its great animation.

The only problem I have had with it at all is Dark Missionary's limited range, which frequently misses ranged jobs who badly need the mitigation in new content.

[Chrono_Rising]

You seem to be making a very big assumptions about whether or not blocking strength will get to 25% especially considering that they purposely nerfed it this expansion. Based on what my pld co-tank was telling me after he got to 80 and what I'm seeing at 76, we went up 1% from 19% to 20% at ilv 400 to 450. Sheltron will still need another 5% just equal TBN. Further more you don't appear to be considering that TBN scales with our HP. How much did our HP raise during thos 50 ilvs?

We also went up 10% last expansion, yes it is an assumption but not a critical one as I stated later: even at 21% you can find such points at which Sheltron begins breaking away from TBN.

Looking at your math, you are going ahead and applying your, assumption that Sheltron will be at 25 %. The fact of the matter is that we don't have enough evidence to say that this will happen in this expansion much less at all. Until that happens tho you'd have to take lethal levels of dmg to equal TBN's mitigation.

You proposed 25% I accepted. 21, 22, 23, 24% also have examples of similar math, 25% just happens to be cleaner. I also pointed this out in my reply to you. Are you intentionally ignoring facts that don't support your opinion?

Regarding combining CDs, I'll be honest, I don't actually know how TBN reacts with other % based mitigation like Rampart. Is TBN's mitigation applied first and then the remaining damage is reduced by the % or is the overall damage reduced and then TBN reduces that. Depending on this, using the 125k dmg @ 100k hp example you'd either be reducing the dmg by 55k or 62.5k.

Which points to why you are missing another point that I made: buster and follow up damage can now both be caught by a single use of sheltron. UwU Titan provides a nice clean example in which you take a 12k auto, 40k cleave, and 120k buster in the span of a few seconds. I we imagine such mechanics at level 80 you can see where this goes. You must be healed between these hits; at 100k TBN mitigates 25k Sheltron on its own will now mitigate 34.4k at 20%. Hard hitting tank buster +follow up damage in which you need to be healed gives the potential for a 20% mitigation over a duration to outweigh a single shield even if it as as strong at 25% of max HP. UwU Ifrit if you choose to mitigate through the buster Sheltron will now catch both busters, not just one though most people just invuln through this.

You said that Drk is squishier, which implies that it is squishy at all is my point. My comment was that it was the only tank, at least to me that didn't feel squishy at all.

This is not an implication it is an assumption the reader is making. Saying I make less money than someone doesn't mean I'm poor. Saying I make more money than someone else doesn't make me rich. I drew a relative experience to how I am experiencing other tanks, which you need to know in order to make your implication.

Regarding HG, I guess I did forget about one easy pull every 7 min.

I included Soul Eater for the same reason that I included Clemency. It is a thing that goes towards survivability that you shouldn't be using under normal circumstances.

First off, our context it a trash pull; where many enemies are hitting you. You aren't really claiming that Soul Eater is keeping you alive in anything that remotely resembles clemency are you? A 3 GCD wind up to a 5k heal compared to 1 GCD 25k heal.

If you are having to use it then either the healer is bad, the dps are slow, or you didn't rotate your CDs properly.

I have had pulls take so long my original rampart has come back. I use pf for dungeons. Yes, at times I have to clemency myself to live because nothing else is up. And then I adjust my pull size.

Looking at your rather silly example to Xiaoki, I just checked your work. Sheltron isn't going to save you in your scenario either. Why? With your example we are still at 100k max hp, based on the TBN number you used. If we are taking 50k every 3 seconds then Sheltron is only stopping 10k every 3 seconds meaning that you are taking 40k unmitigated every 3 seconds. This means your party has 6 seconds to DRASTICALLY reduce the amount of dmg that you are taking or even with Sheltron mitigating more dmg you won't live through 120k of dmg in 9 seconds.

Or I have time to pop additional cooldowns? For example my Camo on gnb, Nascent flash on warrior, clemency myself on pld, pop rampart, and oh yeah be healed; use self heals all while my first mitigation is still active. What if I am doing this at the end of my pull where things will start dying and I just need to hang on for a few more seconds. Seems like I can do this.

I don't always do math, but when I do, I always check my work.
Stay mathematical my friends.

You've barely addressed the points raised against you; you failed to consider common tanking mechanics; and drew bad conclusions based on surface examples with admittedly little context.

Once again I am not saying that TBN has absolutely no use: it is still extremely strong; and has better uses than other tanks in multiple examples. But it isn't always the best option: and since we lack a back up in physical damage heavy areas I am specifically pointing this out because our other mitigation Dark Mind is not helping us here. If you find yourself in a critical situation when encountering physical damage where rampart and shadow wall are down: TBN will not buy you alot of time; it is ok for it not to be an answer to everything: but we lack an answer because dark mind is magic only damage. Thrill is always useful, Camo always useful, Clemency useful when needed.

If I wanted to rip into TBN I would talk about the fact that it is stil risk without reward as it was in Stormblood and continues to be in in shadowbringers. It does have drawbacks: It is risk without reward, it isn'tas strong as % mitigation over a duration for sustained high damage in the form of things like Ahk morn where 20% mitigation will get you more (which an example of where Dark mind is powerful but now imagine a physical version like in a7s); and is bad against fluff damage which we still lack a sufficent answer to unless you can time it with high precision.