Dark Knight Megathread

[Nivarea]

Contrary to many I’m not totally against Shb DRK’s design. While it is still my least liked iteration of the job, I still find it interesting in its own way, and playing it in TEA made me appreciate its strengths to their fullest, its most important one being its flexibility both offensively and defensively, and its burst potential. Even if I liked SB and, more particularly, HW DRK better, I can’t deny that ShB DRK is more coherent with how the game works. I miss the haste effect of Blood Weapon, but I don’t think we can add it back without changing much of DRK kit, which is NOT my aim here.

While I still appreciate the current design, it’s not without its flaws, that everyone knows and has listed:
-Blood Weapon being very tight
-Living Dead
-Having a very frontloaded burst, but then nothing to do but 1-2-3 in between
-No instant self-sustain compared to other tanks (Aurora, Nascent and Equilibrium, Clemency (even with its potency loss and rotational nightmare))
-Leveling experience is not good because of TBN coming late and Stalwart Soul being even latter

EW does nothing to alleviates those problems, which is a shame. The news skills are not uninteresting, but are a bit lacking nonetheless, especially compared to what other jobs got. While oblation is not bad, it’s not great either. It is weak if we consider it as a counterpart to other tanks short cooldowns upgrades. Salt and Darkness is watever, neither good or bad functionally and good potency wise. Shadowbringer is strong but uninspired and boring, reserved to the burst window only that is already quite crowded in oGCD.
The traits are not great either. Enhanced Unmend is laughable because of how useless it’ll be, and the traits to Living Shadow are not something we will feel a lot gameplay wise.
I do however think that the Delirium change is good, because of how flexible the stack system is and making it less spammy and more in line with burst timers. Unpopular opinion, I know.

So, what to do to answer the flaws I noted before? I believe we can adjust things and answer almost all of them without changing that much things.

Proposed improvements:
(in bold, the changes)

Stalwart Soul level acquisition lowered to 58.

=> Simple, giving DRK its second AOE combo sooner would help a lot for the leveling experience.

Blood Weapon:
Grants 5 stacks of Blood Weapon, each stack Increasing Blood Gauge by 10 and Restores MP upon landing weaponskills or spells.
Effect does not stack when hitting multiple targets.
Duration: 30s
Recast: 60s
MP restauration effect: 600

=>Self-explanatory, changing Blood weapon to a stack system is a perfect answer for the problem we face with it. I would gladly take a consolidation of Skill speed and spell speed under one stat to make the spells scale as well, but that’s another discussion.

Living Dead:
Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 50% restored, you will not get KO’d at the end of the effect. If 50% is not restored, you will be KO'd.
Additional Effect: Increases HP recovery via healing actions on self by 20%.
Walking Dead Duration: 12s

=> With those changes, I aim to keep the idea of the skill intact, but lowering its threshold. With some changes to DRK sustain that I’ll propose, I believe it’ll be possible, at least in high level gameplay, to heal LD if we prepare for it. The extended duration is to answer the buffs of Holmgang and Bolide, a buff that I would apply to PLD’s HG as well. Finally, even after reaching the healing Threshold, the DRK would not lose the invulnerability effect till the end of the buff. The Walking Dead Buff would change color when the HP requirement is needed, to signify its resolution.

Abyssal Drain:
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional Effect: Restores own HP
Cure Potency: 300
Recast: 30s

=> Straightforward, lowering its CD and augmenting its HP restoration effect would give more sustain to DRK, and give one more oGCD to press during the downtime.

Delirium:
Grants 3 stacks of Delirium, each stack allowing the execution of Quietus or Bloodspiller, restoring MP and HP when landing either weaponskill.
Duration: 10s
MP restoration effect: 200
HP restoration effect: 300

=> Simple change, more sustain.

Dark Arts Mastery: (lv 72)
Allows the accumulation of two stacks of Dark Arts.

=> This change is to encourage players to use TBN more and also make DRK even more flexible.

Enhanced The Blackest Night: (trait)
Extends the duration of The Blackest Night to 8s.
Grants Vigilante’s Will to target, gradually restoring HP over time:
Cure Potency: 400
Duration: 6s

=> This would be the trait that would replace Enhanced unmend. It’s a direct answer to other short cooldowns, insuring again more sustain to DRK and not going against the idea of wanting to make the shield to break. One more second is in line with other short CDs, and would again help with breaking it.

Darkside Mastery II: (trait, lv 88)
Reduces the Mp cost of Flood of Shadow, Edge of Shadow and The Blackest Night to 2400.

=> We do like having more MP to works with, yes? Again, this would make DRK more flexible thanks to having less costly MP spenders, so more MP in a way.

Enhanced Living Shadow (lv90):
Increases the potency of attacks dealt by your simulacrum to 300.
Upgrades Flood of Shadow executed by your simulacrum to Shadowbringer, which delivers an attack to all enemies in a straight line before it with a potency of 450 for the first enemy, and 25%less for all remaining enemies.

=> The idea is simply to fuse the two Enhanced Living Shadow traits in one, to have one more space available. It’s IMO stupid to begin with that Living Shadow buffs takes two trait spaces.

Shadowbringer (weaponskill)
Deals unaspected damage to all enemies in a straight line before you with a potency of 600 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies
Additional Effect: Restores MP
Can only be executed while Living Shadow is active.
Recast time: 15s (adjusted to GCD speed)
This action does not share a recast timer with any other actions
Mp restoration Effect: 600

=> This is, I think, the biggest change. Putting it on the GCD as a weaponskill would give a tiny bit more GCD diversity, which DRK needs. The idea to make it only available under Living Shadow is to actually make Esteem more impactful to the rotation, and its timer having a real utility. It’s basically a Nastrond on the GCD. It makes the 2mn oGCD burst a bit less crowded, which is good. Finally, giving it a Mp gain is to make it more impactful than just being a random weaponskill.


It’s just some changes here and there, all of them are not necessary (I think of Darkside Mastery II, that is to answer my taste of working more with our MPs, as well as Dark Arts Mastery) and I know those would not change the feel of the job that much, which is not what many people here wants.
My idea is not to propose a full rework, as we will not see one before at least 7.0. My idea is really to see how we can improve EW DRK to answer most of the glaring flaws of the job. It’s a start, something to make this iteration a bit better, I leave rework ideas to others. I don’t think either that what I propose is perfect or anything, it might even be bad; it’s just ideas to, maybe, give (hopefully better) ideas to the dev team.

I have no definite answer to completely fix the downtime between bursts, the only solution would be to add new GCDs to spice things up, or lower some cooldown to have more things to hit oGCD. Abyssal Drain is just a start and mostly to help sustain, you can do the same with Carve and Spit for exemple. Encouraging more usages of TBN is another solution, one I tried here.
The only problem that I didn’t touch directly is the relative frailty of DRK before TBN. It’s the least urgent problem of the job IMO, and adding more self-sustain to the kit like I did would still help a lot.

Finally, of course, potencies can be changed for balance purpose.

There, that was my piece to hopefully give the dev team some feedback.

[VeolE]

Snip

Now, I mostly agree with almost everything you suggest. BUT i'm going to add a little tweaks to it imo...



Stalwart Soul level acquired at lvl 40

Reason: Every tank gets their 2nd AoE at lvl 40! Like literally. And plus, it will be good for them to start regaining MP at the early lvl


Dark Missionary level acquired at lvl 66

Reason: Hell, PLD get Divine veil at 56 GNB get Heart of Light at lvl 64 DRK get theirs at 66 and WAR gets shake it off at lvl 68.


Feels a lot better now since DRK get their 2nd AoE combo at the same lvl compared to the rest of the tanks. And able to get their raidwide CD at a reasonable level.

AND NOW FOR LVL 72 AND 76

Siphon Mastery acquired at lvl 72

Syphon Strike will gain more mana instead of 600 MP, it will be 1,200 MP it also applies to Stalwart Soul


Scourge acquired at lvl 76

It will have it's own GCD just like Sonic break.

Scourge is back baby. Delivers an attack with a potency of 250
Additional effect: Delivers damage over time. For 75
Duration: 30s
Recast time: Every 60s
(Sorry, i'm not good with potencies and such)

Oh and another thing while we at it...

Dark mind

Reduce damage taken by 15% but if it's magical, it'll be 20%

Reason: I remember they change up feint on making it do physical and magical, but +Bonus points if it's physical. So I want it to apply that logic to Dark mind as well.


EDIT

(Editing some of the typos)

Flood of Shadow and Flood of Darkness will now give out 10% haste effect. Instead of "increase damage by 10%"

While also keeping some aspect from 3.0 DRK identity, while mixing up with 5.0 SHB and heading on to EW.

[ArthurATDayne]

N
Dark Missionary level acquired at lvl 66

Reason: Hell, PLD get Divine veil at 56 GNB get Heart of Light at lvl 64 DRK get theirs at 66 and WAR gets shake it off at lvl 70.

I don't mean to rub salt in the wound (no DRK pun intended) but Warriors get the super nice Shake it Off 90s CD, 15s Duration, 15% Max HP Self+Party Shield at Level 68! And soon to get a 300 Potency heal extra on SIF for all affected players in Endwalker.

Dark Missionary is TRASH... 10% Reduced Magic Damage taken by self + party. At least make this Garbage Skill a 10-15% Reduced Damage Taken or even a 10% of Max HP Bubble Shield similar to Shake it Off. Going into Endwalker Dark Missionary is still the same Trash Tier Garbage Skill.

SquareEnix couldn't even be bothered to put even a 100-300 Potency heal on affected players for Dark Missionary in Endwalker to make this Trash Tier Garbage Skill more appealing.

Additional Rant on Dark Missionary: Not only is it a measly 10% but it's on MAGIC Damage only, like WOW that's double measly, truly a worthy winner of the Trash Tier Garbage Skill awards.

[VeolE]

I don't mean to rub salt in the wound (no DRK pun intended) but Warriors get the super nice Shake it Off 90s CD, 15s Duration, 15% Max HP Self+Party Shield at Level 68! And soon to get a 300 Potency heal extra on SIF for all affected players in Endwalker.

Dark Missionary is TRASH... 10% Reduced Magic Damage taken by self + party. At least make this Garbage Skill a 10-15% Reduced Damage Taken or even a 10% of Max HP Bubble Shield similar to Shake it Off. Going into Endwalker Dark Missionary is still the same Trash Tier Garbage Skill.

SquareEnix couldn't even be bothered to put even a 100-300 Potency heal on affected players for Dark Missionary in Endwalker to make this Trash Tier Garbage Skill more appealing.

I don't blame you one bit my fellow DRK brother, but honestly. I don't know what to do with Dark missionary tbh besides putting it at the reasonable level.

[ArthurATDayne]

No worries, I'm glad you did. It takes context and comparison to other Tanks' similar party/raid wide mitigation skills to better appreciate how bad it is.

And Dark Missionary is still the same going into Endwalker so the awfulness is preserved for all to see.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

snip

I hope you're joking or just have never stepped foot into difficult content. Dark Missionary & HoL are incredibly powerful in rapid heavy damage multi-AoE situations that Veil & Shake fall flat in comparatively.

E4s: Tumult spam into Voice of the Land. You can shake/veil 2-3 tumults out of 6-8, or you can shake/Veil the Voice, but not both. Contrast DM & HoL that can cover the entire tumult wave + Voice all in one. 10% on 9-10 hits >>>>>>>>>>>>>> 15% shield.
E8s: Any of the Ahk Morn -> Morn Afah AoE damage vomits throughout the fight. Same concept as Tumult/Voice. pick one, but not both. Same thing with the double knockback mirrors where shields get stripped from the first hit, but Dm/HoL can absorb both knockback mirror hits.
E12s: Literally the entire last 40s of the fight is nothing more than a continuous magical damage vomit where Veil and shake can barely take a single wave of Quietus or a Shockwave Pulsar, whereas DM/HoL can mitigate Ridiculous amounts of that damage due to their 15s durations. Proper timing lets you catch an entire wave of Quietus, a Shockwave Pulsar, and then another round of Quietus before falling off.

TEA: J-Wave burn, Double Mega Holy, Splashes into Cascade, the ultimate is filled to the brim with sections that shake/veil fall flat.

And those are just the capstone fights and ultimate of SHB. I could go into huge depth about the usefulness of DM/HoL in pretty much every savage fight and DRs if you wanted. DM/HoL don't need extra effects slapped onto them, they're already insanely strong in current fight design. Also pro-tip: Pretty much every source of raidwide damage is magic. Dm/HoL rarely have issues being magic damage only. They'd be crazy OP if they were physical as well, since it'd make them effectively a 15s reprisal and make them super OP during mass pulls in dungeons compared to Shake.

Veil/Shake & DM/HoL both have situations where they blow each other out of the water. Single, extremely heavy hits like Morn Afah in UCoB/Primal ults in UwU/Serene Grace in TEA? Shields win. Extremely rapid, multi-hit aoe raidwides or damage vomits? HoL/DM crush Shake/Veil into the dirt. not even the extra cure potency will help them that much in EW, only making them a bit better in situations where they fall flat. Comparing them to each other is pointless when their strengths are completely opposite one another and whether HoL/DM or shake/veil is better is literally down to fight design.

The problem with Dark Missionary is that it already exists 2 more times as of EW. RDM gets it and GNB has it.

You mean once more, since GNB already has it currently.

But why is that any sort of issue? 10% magic damage over 15s is a strong ability, hence why it didn't get changed. RDM getting it doesn't devalue the fact DM/HoL are still crazy strong against certain fight designs that shields fall flat in. All 3 ranged have 10% damage reduction over 15s and that doesn't devalue DM/HoL either. If anything, it values bringing DRK, GNB & RDM to fights where massive aoe burns are happening.

why even need it on a tank if you have a RDM? Pair it with tank shielding and have the RDM pop it and the DRK will sit there twiddling his thumbs because stacking defensive cooldowns is inefficient.

You realize DM/HoL will still be 9% even if a RDM pops it first, right? 9% on tons of hits >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> any % shield.
The RDM won't just be popping it. If the damage is high enough like in Tumult -> voice or Ahk Morn -> Morn afah scenarios, guess what? Both of them will be popping it. or better yet, you ration them out like in Wrym's lament 2 when Shiva does ahk morn -Morn afah 3x back to back, or daisy chain them so the next one starts rolling when the previous one falls off in something like E12s's terminal relativity burn. You could have RDM cover one set, DRk cover another, GNb cover the 3rd.

Just because the same skill is present on multiple jobs doesn't devalue its power. Not -everything- has to be unique when it's already incredibly strong. The devs trying to make things unique is how we got Living Dead.

[Ryaduera]

You mean once more, since GNB already has it currently.

But why is that any sort of issue? 10% magic damage over 15s is a strong ability, hence why it didn't get changed. RDM getting it doesn't devalue the fact DM/HoL are still crazy strong against certain fight designs that shields fall flat in. All 3 ranged have 10% damage reduction over 15s and that doesn't devalue DM/HoL either. If anything, it values bringing DRK, GNB & RDM to fights where massive aoe burns are happening.



You realize DM/HoL will still be 9% even if a RDM pops it first, right? 9% on tons of hits >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> any % shield.
The RDM won't just be popping it. If the damage is high enough like in Tumult -> voice or Ahk Morn -> Morn afah scenarios, guess what? Both of them will be popping it. or better yet, you ration them out like in Wrym's lament 2 when Shiva does ahk morn -Morn afah 3x back to back. You could have RDM cover one set, DRk cover another, GNb cover the 3rd.

Just because the same skill is present on multiple jobs doesn't devalue its power.

This is bait, right? This HAS to be bait, right? It's like you ignored EVERYTHING I said and then started spewing something totally random based on a handful of experiences and conveniently ignored my explanation, and you even quoted and edited it into your old post as if you have no idea how a forum works. I don't even owe this level of trolling an explanation. But I'll dumb it down for you.

The problem isn't that Dark Passenger is bad. It is that it is not unique and it is redundant. THat doesn't devalue power, it devalues the class that is weaker or less enjoyable when they have the exact same feature, which is DRK and that is the problem.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

This is bait, right? This HAS to be bait, right? It's like you ignored EVERYTHING I said and then started spewing something totally random based on a handful of experiences and conveniently ignored my explanation, and you even quoted and edited it into your old post as if you have no idea how a forum works. I don't even owe this level of trolling an explanation. But I'll dumb it down for you.

The problem isn't that Dark Passenger is bad. It is that it is not unique and it is redundant. THat doesn't devalue power, it devalues the class that is weaker or less enjoyable when they have the exact same feature, which is DRK and that is the problem.

Because I'm running out of posts for the day and I still have multiple other topics I want to post in tonight is why, so I thought I'd save some with a simple edit.

But just to humor you, let me say this: Trying to make things unique is how the devs ended up giving DRK Living Dead. Not everything has to be unique for the sake of it. Dark Missionary is so far away from needing any sort of uniqueness over function when three quarters of the DRK kit needs that attention far more. Besides, my initial post was about the function of the skill and correcting someone, not its flair which is irrelevant.

[Ryaduera]

Because I'm running out of posts for the day and I still have multiple other topics I want to post in tonight is why, so I thought I'd save some with a simple edit.

But just to humor you, let me say this: Trying to make things unique is how the devs ended up giving DRK Living Dead. Not everything has to be unique for the sake of it. Dark Missionary is so far away from needing any sort of uniqueness over function when three quarters of the DRK kit needs that attention far more. Besides, my initial post was about the function of the skill and correcting someone, not its flair which is irrelevant.

I cannot be more clear here. I will say it again but use more emphasis. The problem is not Dark Missionary. The problem is the way the class uses it.

"Well the unique idea of Living Dead was a failure so everything unique square comes up with will also be a failure" is basically what you said. I guess they better stop coming out with new classes then. The Sage is a unique idea so I bet it will be bad because it's something original.

So how does Dark Missionary lose effectiveness on DRK? Easy. Anything that reduces damage taken devalues TBN because DRK wants TBN to break to get Darkside. If the shield does not break that is a DPS loss. So here's an idea. The DRK gets instead a party-wide mitigation tool that redirects 30% of the DRK's HP from the party, distributed equally among all affected party members, to the DRK. An AoE cover, but less effective. This is roughly 3.75% (30 divided by 7) of the DRK's max HP as a "shield" to the party. You're still reducing raid damage and if you put TBN on yourself for this, it synergizes well as it will probably break the shield. Adjust the cooldown accordingly. (Numbers also adjustable, I am not a balance expert)

Do you see what I mean now? Dark Missionary is less useful on DRK than it is on GNB. The likely reason the party mitigation skill doesn't reduce damage by more like the other tanks is because you still want to break TBN and anything that reduces damage taken takes away from that. Instead, it would be better if the abilities were coherent. Not even unique, but were valued to the same degree as the other tanks synergizing abilities. My very own idea isn't unique, it's just a worse AoE cover, but even though it's worse, it's better for the DRK because of how it would function with their other abilities. And you can run GNB + DRK and stack them and it's better than double stacking the same mitigation tool. Yeah, 1% fall off isn't much and 9% is still a lot, but now you've reduced raid damage and made the hp value of TBN increase as well. Stacking the same effect isn't bad, yes, but it doesn't work with the DRK kit as well as it works with the GNB kit. The problem is not the usefulness of the skill, the problem is the cohesion of the kit. One class uses it better than the other.

NOTE: This is not a good fix, but this would be better than what we have for DM... It would be better to make TBN not be a dps loss for not breaking it, but as the job stands right now, this would be better.

[Shurrikhan]

Because I'm running out of posts for the day and I still have multiple other topics I want to post in tonight is why, so I thought I'd save some with a simple edit.

But just to humor you, let me say this: Trying to make things unique is how the devs ended up giving DRK Living Dead. Not everything has to be unique for the sake of it. Dark Missionary is so far away from needing any sort of uniqueness over function when three quarters of the DRK kit needs that attention far more. Besides, my initial post was about the function of the skill and correcting someone, not its flair which is irrelevant.

No. Utter neglect is how you get Living Dead. There are nigh infinite other ways to go about making a unique invulnerability skill none of which necessitate that it be clunkier, more party-taxing, and weaker.

Consider a design as simple as: "Living Dead - Trait: If struck by an attack that would normally kill you, would-be fatal damage is instead delayed by 8 seconds. Damage delayed cannot exceed 1 less than your maximum health points. This effect cannot occur more often than every 5 minutes." Add a persistent visible aura over the Living Dead duration. Simpler, and more functional, but also more unique.