A Dark knight proposal moving forward. HW+newer skills

[Recon1o6]

As many a DRK player could say, the current iteration of Dark knight is better than the SB but still feels like a step down when comparing it to HW.

2 expansions in a row, DRK has been saved from being ditched in droves by an amazing capstone ability. The Blackest Night is by far one of the best abilities in the game, and summoning Fray always feels awesome even if his rng and 6 second delay on spawn leaves something to be desired.

Which leaves the question, going forward, how should SE change DRK for 6.0?


Before we begin to answer that, we must ask ourselves why DRK was loved so much in HW and so hated in SB. For the sprouts among us and any veterans who need a refresher, here is an overview of the HW DRK skills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VOJncaYam8&t=98s

To summarise:

3 combo finishers with their own uses. Soul eater, enmity power slash and delirium.
A powerful DOT for its time in addition to a weaker ground dot
2 debuff attacks. Dark passenger and original reprisal
4 Unique mitigation buffs and living dead
2 very potent mp restoratives and unique stances that were different from the other 2 tanks, in addition it had dark arts which cost 1/4 mp in order to change certain abilities.

Between SB and ShB we have lost 16 skills while only gaining 6, the majority fun stuff.
As mentioned before though we did get some good skills from these two expansions thank goodness.
So I would propose a new skills list, to take the good stuff from SB and SHB and put them with the still relevant things from HW. After all we don't have enmity combos anymore.

A total of 25 skills (2 more than current version) but that includes undoing the unneccessarily homonogized stun (why should pld get to keep theirs?) and rampart, so them aside its same number

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

I tried to emphasise the self sustain and shield aspect while reworking the old dark arts complexity as a stacked buff that the player had to sparingly use once every 30 seconds

I also aimed for a skilled player could heal their own living dead if they weaved enough with the new blood weapon, but more casual players can at least take off some pressure on the poor scholars


Let me know what you guys think

[ArianeEwah]

You've got some interessting ideas...

...but they don't fit each other or are relicts.

1st ST combo, high self heal - too strong for no-CD usage - yet too weak dps-wise to use constantly because of 2nd ST combo.
Its potencies and mana generation overshadow your 1st combo, and because your only blackblood action is Living Shadow, you would need SE combo once or twice every 2 min - that is if you don't break TBN. [Unless Bloodspiller and Quietus still cost gauge, but there is nothing mentioned.]

Your aoe combo is also too strong. No tank has aoe 'healing' in their combo (maybe WAR up from 76, but that's bonkers anyway, and you changed BW for this). Combined with TBN, and your 'new DA Unleash -> AD', you wouldn't even need a healer.

STR/INT down is a relict from ARR/HW, and it caused balancing problems. PLD was for STR mitigation, DRK for INT (all only temporary), WAR for all, the latter also had the highest dps/utility - and thus was taken into every party.
It's also hard to notice whenever a skill/mechanic is either physical or magical, so it just complicates things further. [Dark Mind is already a coinflip.]

The next problem is what you want Dark Arts to be. A dps or mitigation boosting ability? You can't have both! That was another problem from HW to SB, and was later fixed in 4.3 - when they removed DA DM, and upped DM baseline mitigation from 15% to 30% (currently 20%).
Imagine DRK using DA for CnS->BS instead of Dark Missionary, 'cause 'mah dps'.
I also think that 5% mitigation doesn't justifice the dps loss by using DA on it.

Cripple: stuns the target and deals a 100 potency attack to it and lowers target dex by 5% for 30 seconds

Dex was once used for evasion, but those days are long, long gone. It would turn out useless.

(Unmend on oGCD? What's our ranged attack GCD then?)

Last thing: TBN. You shouldn't use it to gain (blackblood/dps?). It's already bad enough when it doesn't break and you effectively lose 1 EoS/FoS. If you do a fight on low iLvl, it may provide you a dps gain - which shouldn't happen in the first place, mitigation tools should be dps-neutral at best... or always. On higher iLvl it will cause you to adjust your blood generation because it will not break in situations it used to do so.

I suggest you look further into it, combine some more actions to complete each other, and balance some things. e.g. similar to your 'DA Quietus combo' add a 'DA 4th GCD ST combo finisher', and change some with blackblood costs, so it affects more than just the Frey ability. I really like the 'change action with DA'-idea like 'CnS->BS'.
Tho, I advise you to scrap the STR/INT mitigation part unless you have some changes for the other tanks in mind?

[jetfire117]

Your aoe combo is also too strong. No tank has aoe 'healing' in their combo (maybe WAR up from 76, but that's bonkers anyway, and you changed BW for this). Combined with TBN, and your 'new DA Unleash -> AD', you wouldn't even need a healer

Nothing wrong with that, the healer would be able to dps then. But you could just lower the heal potency, a healing aoe combo for drk sounds pretty fun (goes back to HW DRK DA+Abyssal Drain fun). Making literally everything "balanced" is very boring.

[aqskerorokero]

Funny thing is during HW the same ppl that is saying right now Hw drk was best were complaining about how drk tools were against each other back then and bring drk to fights only because pld was shit.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Funny thing is during HW the same ppl that is saying right now Hw drk was best were complaining about how drk tools were against each other back then and bring drk to fights only because pld was shit.

The only 2 tools in Heavensward DRK that hurt DRK more was Sole Survivor(which they fixed in 4.3 but removed at 5.0 launch for some unknown reason) and Living Dead which still sucks *** and ****/***** outside of certain invuln strats for some ungodly reason...

With Shadowbringers, DRK might as well not even exist as it's own class/job with how poorly designed/implemented the 5.0 DRK changes are...

[Derio]

They need to fix LD.

Dark Passenger and Scourage had really cool animations and I wish they would return.

Dark Arts imo is a waste of a gauge and needs a rework.

Dark Mind needs a 10% physical mitigation added to it because it is very useless in most fights since you rarely get a magical tank buster.

Delirium is Warrior copy and paste.

I wish Delirium enabled 1 button to be a series of attacks of old DRK abilities with a special move at the end and all on oGCD.

[Jandor]

As many a DRK player could say, the current iteration of Dark knight is better than the SB but still feels like a step down when comparing it to HW.

SB DRK was better than ShB DRK.

Personally, I preferred it to the HW version too.

[Awful]

SB DRK was better than ShB DRK.

Personally, I preferred it to the HW version too.

Personally I couldn't stand DRK in SB, sure Delirium back then made you go zoom fast but it was such a pain to play, you used TBN to get that extended Blood Weapon and then DA + mash your hand against the keyboard for that 140 potency on every move. I went WAR after Deltascape because I hated DRK so much and stayed WAR till ShB where i'ved loved playing DRK but that's just personal preference.

I really wish DRK wasn't as polarizing this xpac since there's people who hate it, like it, are indifferent or want it deleted off the face of the earth but everyone's entitled to their own opinions.

[PeacefulEdge]

Personally I couldn't stand DRK in SB, sure Delirium back then made you go zoom fast but it was such a pain to play, you used TBN to get that extended Blood Weapon and then DA + mash your hand against the keyboard for that 140 potency on every move. I went WAR after Deltascape because I hated DRK so much and stayed WAR till ShB where i'ved loved playing DRK but that's just personal preference.

I really wish DRK wasn't as polarizing this xpac since there's people who hate it, like it, are indifferent or want it deleted off the face of the earth but everyone's entitled to their own opinions.

Its so funny because after watching the video of HW Drk Im seeing that HW, SB and ShB Drk are like different jobs in the span of 4 years so everyone and its brother has an opinion ( HW was peak, Sharpening some rough edges of HW the job would have been fine, HW with some SB perks is the way, SB with some HW things would be best, Sharpening some rough edges of SB the job would have been fine, SB wasnt good at all, ShB rocks, ShB performs well but i dont like this and that, Shb is a War with more ogcd and not big single hit numbers, the list could continue for a while…), so yeah you have a tornado of opinions and the devs are in the eye of the storm thinking "mmm how do i exit a tornado?".

Now about the main post here are some personal opinions:

- About the combos if they are separated and you can be jumping from one to the other without breaking the previous combo then great, me like this.

- About the Dark Arts effect of the Gcd i think as Ariane, they are too weak or useless, you could change them to something like this: Delirium Dark arts effect--> grants a buff for 10 sec that halves the mp cost of the next Tbn used.


- Talking about Tbn, i dont think Tbn--> Dark Missionary is a Good idea, imagine you use dark arts and then the boss starts casting its tb, well you press Tbn and... unleash Dark Missionary losing a dark art and getting smacked into oblivion, our indemand cd should always be usable unless we dont manage well our resources (mp). I think having Tbn and Dark Missionary separated is fine, if you want to add them flavour you can do something like: Dark Missionary, after using it and for the span of its duration the icon changes into "Obsidian Skies", this skill can only be used when under the effect of Tbn and grants a shield equal to 30% of character hp to the allies in the area while putting dark missionary into a 5 min cd.

-Blood Weapon: is broken, this + Tbn would make Healers fall asleep even when a tank buster is comming, so lower the hp gained to like 30% and up the cost to 3000 mp, even after that i think is quite broken if you are worried about living dead make it so while in LD we also gain +20% of life steal too.

-I like the CyS --> Blood Spiller thing but this is a ogcd with a 60 sec cd and Living Shadow is a 2 min cd, so there must be something that we rely to consume some blood and not cap it, could be low blow that consumes 20 blood for example.

-Finally the most important thing of all the important things ( personal vias), maybe i skipped it while reading but… where is my speed buff?

[ArianeEwah]

Nothing wrong with that, the healer would be able to dps then. But you could just lower the heal potency, a healing aoe combo for drk sounds pretty fun (goes back to HW DRK DA+Abyssal Drain fun). Making literally everything "balanced" is very boring.

You are not wrong, I also think that a aoe heal would be nice/more enjoyable. If we could get a design similar to PvP.

For everyone who does know or play PvP: GNB-Aoe combo generates a shield; Fated Circle, Holy Circle, WAR- and DRK-Aoe combo heal for damage dealt.

Tho, it has to be balanced - overwise you'll have prefered tanks in certain duties, or healers saying 'not another GNB, why don't you just play DRK, I'm not gonna heal you' and leaving instances. SE has a history of favoring healers (and warriors, hah) when it comes to tank changes, especially during SB. (A bit exaggerated, but you get the picture.)
Just saying that Abyssal Drain, 'Bloodbath-BW' and a healing aoe combo plus TBN is waaay too strong - if you don't include other tanks in your changes, at least I would mention it. e.g. give WAR the old Steel Cyclone, GNB-Fated Circle healing, PLD-Holy Circle healing, increased block strength CD etc. the list could go on.