Dark Knight: 5.0x Feedback Thread

[DemonicNeko]

I wouldnt mind if Dark Mind got nerfed to 15% and mitigated all types of damage and not just magic.

Honestly that would be an over all buff. With us having a hard time knowing what is a magic and physical damage. Cause the devs do not want to add a second color to the scrolling damage numbers. We have do go through combat logs and see what is what. It like how hard is it to just add orange numbers in for magic damage. After all the numbers get bigger when it crit and direct hit damage. So why not make yellow for physical and orange for magical.

[Kabooa]

Heart of Light is usable several levels earlier than Dark Missionary. This is why we generally regard Dark Missionary is being a slightly inferior clone.

I'd 100% trade fated circle's level for heart of light's.

[Absimiliard]

I'd 100% trade fated circle's level for heart of light's.

... Agreed.

[Dragonkat]

But Stormblood Dark Knight was by far the worst tank in terms of utility and could not provide any form of protection for AoE damage (outside of the universal role skill Reprisal) until the introduction of Dark Missionary, and the one utility it had, which was casting TBN on other people, was buffed in this expansion.

Also the game is balanced for savage because savage and ultimate are the only content where balance actually matters. In content below savage a lot of utility skills, such as raidwide AoE mitigators, or healing boosts like Mantra, almost never make a difference because damage is so undertuned. Content with no enrage timers can effectively be cleared without any DPS players, and is in fact perfectly safe to do with a team of 6 tanks and 2 healers, which is why you really can't balance around it.

Spoken like a true savage raider who has no respect for the rest of the games content. So nothing else matters till you get to the "real" game? Which Savage is? We shouldn't worry what happens to anyone in the first 79 levels or the MSQ? Balance doesn't matter at all? Thank god you and your ignorance aren't on the dev team that's all I can say. Given you seem to have forgotten in terms of utility DRK had...

* Dark Passenger to blind mobs for mitigation (oh my god though you had to press an extra button for DA!)

* Carve and spit where you had the =choice= for MP regen or extra damage (OMG DA SPAM!)

* Blood Price where DRK could more easily sustain MP during mass pulls to keep TBN and AD up

* Blood weapon with extra regen AND attack speed to bring more dps to the table if that floated your boat, making DRK excellent OT's since it was a non tank stance buff.

* Delirium providing extra uptime to both of the above instead of just being a warrior wannabe burst window

* Quietus providing a meaningful use in terms of sustain with mp regen per hit, unlike it's near uselessness now, and being rapidly outclassed by stalwart soul combo.

* Abyssal Drain providing mass HP regen on mass pulls, and the "utility" powers to make sure you could keep it going. Without being locked on a cooldown that makes it even more useless

* TBN giving blood instead of this new broken DA where you either lose dps, or gain one extra free hit, and just replacing one brand of DA spam with another for a DPS boost that is barely even noticeable. Unlike the old version where you had a =choice= with 50 blood to deal extra dps or gain extra mp regen. And the MP regen skills that gave a wider skill window unlike the current 123 BS spam we have now.

But DRK didn't have any utility... Ah but I forgot none of the above matters to you, because it's just progression play, and only scrubs do that, we don't need to worry about anything but savage right? *eyeroll*

[Dragonkat]

I honestly think classes should not be their focus on Savage. Good boss battles is what they should be focusing on. Tank busters spam is not good boss design. Ton of hp and a ton of damage is not a good boss design. Challenging and creative boss mechanics are good boss design. They honest focus to much on balance the classes around Savage content. I think they should focus on reworks that make the classes fun to play. Not simple 123 rotations. Which as a dark knight that what you will be hitting 90% of the time. I saw someone make a funny picture about dark knight rotation. Which I had saved it. Cause it so funny and dead accurate. It was basicly just a Darkside up? Yes no? Then a lot of Bloodspiller spamming. Which honestly outside of putting on darkside and 123 spam. We are just spamming Bloodspiller.

And spoken like someone who actually gets it. That's the other part of the mess. When your boss design basically boils down to tankbuster -> rarrrh -> dodge mechanic -> tankbuster -> ENRAGE! Against hp sponges and DPS > all with classes whose only options are MOAR DEEPS since any utility is gone. . .

I guess when every savage run looks like a nail we just have to keep hammering?

[Arsthan]

Spoken like a true savage raider who has no respect for the rest of the games content. So nothing else matters till you get to the "real" game? Which Savage is? We shouldn't worry what happens to anyone in the first 79 levels or the MSQ? Balance doesn't matter at all? Thank god you and your ignorance aren't on the dev team that's all I can say. Given you seem to have forgotten in terms of utility DRK had...

* Dark Passenger to blind mobs for mitigation (oh my god though you had to press an extra button for DA!)

* Carve and spit where you had the =choice= for MP regen or extra damage (OMG DA SPAM!)

* Blood Price where DRK could more easily sustain MP during mass pulls to keep TBN and AD up

* Blood weapon with extra regen AND attack speed to bring more dps to the table if that floated your boat, making DRK excellent OT's since it was a non tank stance buff.

* Delirium providing extra uptime to both of the above instead of just being a warrior wannabe burst window

* Quietus providing a meaningful use in terms of sustain with mp regen per hit, unlike it's near uselessness now, and being rapidly outclassed by stalwart soul combo.

* Abyssal Drain providing mass HP regen on mass pulls, and the "utility" powers to make sure you could keep it going. Without being locked on a cooldown that makes it even more useless

* TBN giving blood instead of this new broken DA where you either lose dps, or gain one extra free hit, and just replacing one brand of DA spam with another for a DPS boost that is barely even noticeable. Unlike the old version where you had a =choice= with 50 blood to deal extra dps or gain extra mp regen. And the MP regen skills that gave a wider skill window unlike the current 123 BS spam we have now.

But DRK didn't have any utility... Ah but I forgot none of the above matters to you, because it's just progression play, and only scrubs do that, we don't need to worry about anything but savage right? *eyeroll*

While the leveling process could get some tweaks, the answer is still no - balance does not matter one bit while leveling up. Balance comes into play when it's truly required; and that is in Savage and Ultimate on the current max level. Hell, even current balance under max level is very iffy, some jobs are far better than others depending on when they get their core skills. Heck, you don't even need a proper balance for EX trials and still can clear without issues as long as everyone doesn't just press 111111 until the end of the fight.

What I don't get on the statements "why is balance not done around dungeons/trials instead?" is that balancing affects all content, not just Savage - but you'll never see something like peope kicking you from groups for being a NIN on trials or dungeons, literally no one cares about what job you have as long as you clear with a reasonable time and no wiping to mechanics. You could be kicked for getting carried by the rest of the group but that is hardly a balance issue.

Basicly, this is far from a "respect other content" and more like "it doesn't matter, you'll clear either way." Other content to savage and ultimate exists and everyone does it - be it trials, dungeons, leveling, crafting or whatever else. But what is there to balance when everything works just fine? For example, you don't need raid buffs for dungeons or trials.

As for the "utility" you mentioned in your post:

1) Dark Passanger's blind ate up 50% MP, you could have used that MP for DA+AD instead. Mobs in dungeons in general rarely missed even with the blind. Also it didn't affect bosses. It was mostly like an evasion buff for the tank. That is not utility.
2) CnS is not utility either; you'd want to DA it whenever you could or use it without if you absolutely needed MP for large dungeon pulls - you'd never use it for the MP on bosses though. You had Blood weapon and Syphon Strike for that.
3) A personal buff rather than utility.
4) BW is not utility, it's a personal buff. It also didn't make DRK an excellent OT, as you'd use the tank stance only at the start of the fight to get the initial aggro and turn it off right away. Tank stance was a learning tool and the person playing was the one to decide if it was time to tank without it or not. Not that it mattered if you stayed in tank stance for everything that wasn't savage or large trash pulls.
5) I miss old Delirium, I agree with you on that. However, it is not utility either. It was a... mix between additional resources and extention of your personal buff.6) Not utility, but again, I agree with this statement. I have no clue as to why they removed the MP gain from it. It certainly wouldn't be broken with Stalward soul.
7) Neither is this utility. It was your aoe rotation. And it was freaking awesome and fun.
8) TBN itself actually is utility, and by that I mean the shield. It could be used on anyone in the group in case of emergency. Also, technically the new TBN is better than the old one. Old TBN was a very small DPS loss, but it felt better to use as you could convert MP to blood, making it more about resource management. But you didn't really have a choice on what to use though, Delirum on CD while BW is up, if not then Bloodspiller.

So yeah, DRK didn't have utility outside of TBN, which on itself was kinda... meh as utility, but it existed. You seem to misunderstand what utility means; it's party wide stuff - be it party wide damage increase, crit rate, direct hit, mitigation, shields etc. And that kind of utility doesn't mean much outside of savage anyway as I've stated earlier. But it certainly helps if you have utility in any content, especially if used correctly. Just imagine having a full party of raid wide buffs for crafting, you'd never fail at HQ ever again! (That is a joke if it wasn't clear)

[Deceptus]

I for one would love to see the devs take a different look at things. and for gods sake stop balancing the game around the end. They seem to have forgotten about those other 79 levels.

Also note, all the changes they did made the lower levels suuuuck.

[Rosenstrauch]

Being a capricious sort, I bit the bullet and started leveling Dark Knight. I stand by my earlier statement: Dark Knight below levels 70/72 is agonizingly dull, and so far (76) nothing I've gained has made it any better. But in particular, I have to say something about the current implementation of Delirium. The amount of MP gained from Bloodspiller during Delirium is absurdly low, and the amount gained by Quietus, while not much better, is at least decent. But the values in particular, 200 and 500, make me wonder if perhaps their properties were flipped during development.

Or, more specifically, that Bloodspiller might actually being restoring 200 MP per target hit, while Quietus restores a flat 500 MP... not because of some weird idea of how these should be balanced, but that due to a coding error Quietus's effect was attached to Bloodspiller and vice versa.

But given how hard Dark Knight's MP restoration dropped between Stormblood (12.5%-25% depending on Grit) and Shadowbringers (2%, 5%, 6%...), and how the MP costs for Dark Knights spells went up (25% to 30%), maybe they just think Dark Knight needed to struggle with a resource they didn't used to struggle with. Or they're afraid of repeating the Dark Arts spam of Stormblood (even though that's exactly what Edge of Shadow amounts to).

[Kabooa]

But in particular, I have to say something about the current implementation of Delirium. The amount of MP gained from Bloodspiller during Delirium is absurdly low.

It's to pre-emptively get rid of any blood / MP generation vs Delirium Bloodspiller.

Syphon is 600mp, or 200mp / GCD average.

Bloodspiller gives 200mp / GCD. In other words, it's 600 potency for free. Not 600 - the MP opportunity cost.

[Ultimatecalibur]

It's to pre-emptively get rid of any blood / MP generation vs Delirium Bloodspiller.

Syphon is 600mp, or 200mp / GCD average.

Bloodspiller gives 200mp / GCD. In other words, it's 600 potency for free. Not 600 - the MP opportunity cost.

Yeah the MP gains of Bloodspiller and Quietus during Delirium are intended to make the Delirium bursts MP neutral compared to the normal rotations.