Improving Dark Knight: A Wishlist of Adjustments

[Crater]

If I had a wishlist for 'quick fixes' that don't make up a complete DRK overhaul:

1. Allow Dark Knight to store up to four charges of Dark Arts. TBN's advantage in terms of pure power is gone now - and that's okay - so its main remaining advantage is its lower cooldown. But DRK is punished for taking advantage of that, because you lose the ability to put all your Edge of Shadow casts under raid buffs. If DRK were free to use TBN in any circumstance where it will break (which it would be if it could bank multiple Dark Arts charges), it would easily have parity with the buffed versions of the other tanks' skills, without being overpowered or underpowered.

2. Dark Mind should be DRK's equivalent to Passage of Arms: Utterly useless in fights that don't cater to it, but absolutely hands-down the best skill for the job in fights that do. Currently, it's not quite good enough for that. The duration and magic mitigation should be increased: Either 30% for a 15s duration, or 25% for a 20s duration (obviously retaining the 60s cooldown).

3. Oblation needs a small bump, in basically any direction: Either increase its mitigation to 15%, increase its duration to 15s, or reduce it's cooldown to 30s (only one of these is necessary). Better yet would be to create some sort of interaction between TBN and Oblation, but these are quick fixes, not overhauls.

4. Living Dead should have its cooldown reduced to 240s, and Holmgang should switch places with it and be given a cooldown of 300s. Keep the healing requirement, but compensate for that drawback by giving it a clear advantage over other invulns. "Lowest cooldown" is the best advantage an invuln could have, and that should be paired with the one that has the greatest drawback.

5. Make Blood Weapon upgrade into Delirium by trait at level 68, and increase Delirium's MP regeneration from 200 to 1200 (500 to 1500 for Quietus), and add 20 Blood generation for each Bloodspiller/Quietus under Delirium. This one pains me to write, because I think Blood Weapon should be a part of Dark Knight (and Delirium should not) - but if Blood Weapon doesn't have the 10% haste, doesn't have ~37.5% uptime, and doesn't proc on all physical attacks including oGCDs, then it's not Blood Weapon. As it is, there's absolutely no reason for Blood Weapon and Delirium to be separate skills.

6. Greatly shorten the time between activating Living Shadow, and the skill beginning to deal damage - ideally, the first hit would happen the instant that the button is pressed, but if that somehow isn't possible then it should still take less than a GCD. Esteem's spawn animation just isn't cool enough to justify anything about this, and 6.0 classes are trending toward earlier and earlier raid buff activations, meaning that the 3 GCD + 6 seconds minimum activation time on this skill is becoming more and more of a problem.

In general, I don't believe in removing drawbacks, disadvantages, and limitations from skills - instead, those drawbacks, disadvantages, and limitations should come with proportional advantages and benefits that make them good enough to warrant having downsides. I also think that Dark Knight needs a full, complete overhaul in the future, to bring it more in line with the playstyle it had in Heavensward - but in the meantime, it has relatively few problems with efficacy, and shouldn't be overly homogenized with the other tanks. I quite like that it still has skills with quirks and limitations; it just needs a little help to make the class feel like learning to live with those quirks is actually rewarding.

[Shurrikhan]

If I had a wishlist for 'quick fixes' that don't make up a complete DRK overhaul:

1. Allow Dark Knight to store up to four charges of Dark Arts. TBN's advantage in terms of pure power is gone now - and that's okay - so its main remaining advantage is its lower cooldown. But DRK is punished for taking advantage of that, because you lose the ability to put all your Edge of Shadow casts under raid buffs. If DRK were free to use TBN in any circumstance where it will break (which it would be if it could bank multiple Dark Arts charges), it would easily have parity with the buffed versions of the other tanks' skills, without being overpowered or underpowered.

I still don't get this one. That we can save the result of TBN breaking for the next raid window still bottlenecks us far more significantly by whether those circumstances would actually break TBN. Moreover, that ppm advantage in full party play, around which the game is balanced, from every TBN's afforded Flood then being able to used in raid windows (for up to a total of, what? 9 Edges per Trick Attack?) would only cost you potency elsewhere on the balancing rebound unless you could convince the devs that DRKs deserve a (more significant) lead in rDPS.

Do we really want even more of our casts and potency output to be constrained to raid windows?

My own 'quick fix' wishlist:

1. Blood Weapon removed; the 3k MP per minute is made up for elsewhere, in a more choiceful and less finnicky manner. Potency from the lost 50 Blood per minute is likewise made up for elsewhere. (See below.)
   
   
2. C&S later generates 1800 MP per cast and 600 cure potency and Abyssal Drain 600 MP and 200 cure potency per enemy hit. (I.e., they each heal for 200 potency and generate 600 MP 'per hit' and C&S hits thrice, as per its animation.) C&S and AD later traited to two charges, 30 second recast. The C&S changes precisely makes up for the 3k MP per minute of Blood Weapon. Note that we still have an increase in potency from the extra C&S cast per minute, however.
   
   
3. Living Shadow now summons in very quickly and, after summoning, duplicates your offensive actions for 50% effect but reduces your damage by 25% while doing so. (This is still a net 12.5% damage increase and a 50% increase in MP, HP, and gauge generated through your actions over the duration. You have more agency in nearly every way and no longer feels merely like a glorified DoT, but instead more of a super-buffed mode.) Duration halved to compensate.
   
   
4. Living Dead can no longer be ended early, nor does it require that the DRK be healed. However, damage taken after Living Dead has been triggered that would otherwise kill the DRK (i.e., its would-be 'overkill damage') will absorb incoming healing.
   
   
5. Darkside, DRK's non-mechanic (so long as we don't allow for incredible degrees of DA-banking just to try to redeem it), removed and its gauge-bloat trimmed. Dark Arts procs are now just indicated on your status bar and by highlighting your MP bar (and, as before, by highlighting Edge and Flood). Potencies adjusted to compensate.

[Crater]

Do we really want even more of our casts and potency output to be constrained to raid windows?

In an ideal world, no, I'd much prefer the opposite (as my post history can attest to), but I think trying to change that here would fall under "changing the playstyle", and here I'm specifically trying to avoid any suggestions that would do that.

The focus of the suggestion is to allow DRK players to freely make use of TBN's lower cooldown, without requiring any further changes be made to their offensive balance or playstyle. Despite whatever misgivings any of us might have about how fun Dark Knight is to play (in my opinion: Not at all), it would be dishonest to say that its offensive kit is suffering from any sort of efficacy problem. Basically "if it ain't broke, I'll go out of my way not to fix it".

Edit: Whoops, sometimes shortening the quote causes me to forget stuff I should have replied to:

Moreover, that ppm advantage in full party play, around which the game is balanced, from every TBN's afforded Flood then being able to used in raid windows (for up to a total of, what? 9 Edges per Trick Attack?) would only cost you potency elsewhere on the balancing rebound unless you could convince the devs that DRKs deserve a (more significant) lead in rDPS.

I thought about this initially, but then realized that it wouldn't be a concern. DRK is pretty hard-locked to almost exactly 12k MP per minute, which means that you're never going to be able to average more than 4 Edges per minute. And the minimum number of Edges you can use per minute is 2, because if you don't extend Darkside by at least 60 seconds, you're going to lose far more damage to Darkside dropping than you could ever gain by cramming more than 6 Edges into a single window. So, the absolute hardest you could tilt would be the 2/6 rotation that some speedrunners are already currently using. This change would basically solidify that as the 'standard' way to play the class, and would eliminate some of the really horrifying jank that's currently required to be able to make use of it.

[Shurrikhan]

The focus of the suggestion is to allow DRK players to freely make use of TBN's lower cooldown, without requiring any further changes be made to their offensive balance or playstyle. Despite whatever misgivings any of us might have about how fun Dark Knight is to play (in my opinion: Not at all), it would be dishonest to say that its offensive kit is suffering from any sort of efficacy problem. Basically "if it ain't broke, I'll go out of my way not to fix it".

I guess I just still don't see the gameplay appeal. Generally, if I've got this cool shield that seemingly affords me (in our case, refunds enough for) a counterattack, I want to use that counterattack soon enough after the shield that the two still feel related. I don't want to, in a DRG/RDM/BRD/MNK party, save up a minute's worth of them only to unload all of their rewards, seemingly unrelatedly, in the next 2-minute window.

[Crater]

I guess I just still don't see the gameplay appeal. Generally, if I've got this cool shield that seemingly affords me (in our case, refunds enough for) a counterattack, I want to use that counterattack soon enough after the shield that the two still feel related. I don't want to, in a DRG/RDM/BRD/MNK party, save up a minute's worth of them only to unload all of their rewards, seemingly unrelatedly, in the next 2-minute window.

I completely agree, but if the goal is to leave DRK free to make use of TBN as often as possible without negatively impacting DPS - and a secondary requirement is to avoid TBN becoming an outright DPS gain that could incentivize taking unnecessary damage and making life harder for healers - then the only two options are to 1) Allow every single banked counterattack charge to be used under raid buffs, as you would if you only used a single TBN, or 2) Forcibly limit the number of Edges that can be used in a raid buff window, so that any further uses of Edge can be used at any time without changing overall performance.

If I had free reign to redesign the class you know I'd much prefer option 2 - but it would require a relatively substantial redesign and rebalance, which is a little beyond the scope of what I would include in a 'quick fix' list.

[Shurrikhan]

if the goal is to leave DRK free to make use of TBN as often as possible without negatively impacting DPS - and a secondary requirement is to avoid TBN becoming an outright DPS gain that could incentivize taking unnecessary damage and making life harder for healers - then the only two options are to 1) Allow every single banked counterattack charge to be used under raid buffs, as you would if you only used a single TBN, or 2) Forcibly limit the number of Edges that can be used in a raid buff window, so that any further uses of Edge can be used at any time without changing overall performance.

There's a far simpler solution, though: Tune DRK to be rDPS-competitive even if, on average, only a single TBN's refund per minute can be used under raid buffs, and just accept the incredibly faint cost otherwise, since the 25% HP saved per use in TBN-breaking conditions is still likely to exceed the rDPS value of the typically 5% to 12.5% (typically, 23 to ~48 bonus potency, when averaging the effects of 120s raid buffs) bonus Edge value of using the refund under raid buffs.

Except, that's... already probably the case. 23 to 48 potency lost for some 15k+ healing spared? That's a good deal regardless.

[Crater]

There's a far simpler solution, though: Tune DRK to be rDPS-competitive even if, on average, only a single TBN's refund per minute can be used under raid buffs, and just accept the incredibly faint cost otherwise, since the 25% HP saved per use in TBN-breaking conditions is still likely to exceed the rDPS value of the typically 5% to 12.5% (typically, 23 to ~48 bonus potency, when averaging the effects of 120s raid buffs) bonus Edge value of using the refund under raid buffs.

Except, that's... already probably the case. 23 to 48 potency lost for some 15k+ healing spared? That's a good deal regardless.

Well your rDPS already doesn't care in the slightest where you use your Edges, because the DPS granted by raid buffs is attributed to other people in your party anyway. But in terms of total party DPS, there's really almost no margin that would make it "okay" in the eyes of most players not to absolutely maximize your contribution. Top-end play in this game is about crawling over a mile of broken glass and selling your grandmother to get an extra 20 potency inside your 120s raid buff windows, players at all points on the skill spectrum are going to have the same biases as the people who are actually pushing performance, and the only way to really change that would be to go back to HW-style class design where classes are so difficult and robust that being a 95th percentile player still doesn't mean that you're actually playing your class without making some sort of simple execution error, which SE has told us point-blank is not even on the table in their eyes.

While it's simple in concept to just say "Just stop caring about min-maxing the last 0.5%", actually getting players to do it is a considerably tougher task than making minor alterations to class design that eliminate contradictions between a tank or healer's tanking or healing capability and their DPS optimization.

[Shurrikhan]

Well your rDPS already doesn't care in the slightest where you use your Edges, because the DPS granted by raid buffs is attributed to other people in your party anyway.

Sorry, I guess I should have said your party's dps (or, the original meaning of "raid DPS (rDPS)"), since whoever's giving you those buffs gets higher rDPS as a result of your presence and good use.

While it's simple in concept to just say "Just stop caring about min-maxing the last 0.5%

Is ~30 potency per minute even half a percent, though? And if a new opportunity "to min-max (a further) 0.5%" would leave you (or any party comp who makes use of you to milk their bonus damage) overtuned anyways, what then? And again, if it's going to be a party DPS increase to break TBN either way, optimization would favor breaking it over only using it once before each raid window.

[DustyBlue]

We already generate enough Darkside to supply a second theoretical DRK indefinitely.
I'd rather have Shadowbringer be a non-CD GCD that costs 15 seconds of Darkside to use, for example, and maybe had a pot 600 cure on it, or a, say, 1k MP restore.

Using Darkside timer has a consumable resource is actually a brilliant idea... We have so much of it so easily, might as well add some more proactive management of it. And classic FFs had dark knight consume HP for a big AoE attack (Darkness or in FFXIV's case Flood of Shadow), doing HP sacrifice on a tank in an MMO is obviously not the wisest idea, but sacrificing timer and attempting to lower the number without it counting down to 0 and losing it completely, that does provide an equivalent sort of feeling to the classic sacrifice mechanic of dark knight.

Alternatively, refreshing Darkside can add a few extra seconds to Living Shadow, to an upper limit of 60 seconds maybe. And a defensive use of blood gauge would be nice. It's weird how paladin is the only tank that uses its tank gauge for tanking.