Dark Knight Megathread

[Ryaduera]

-snip-

My knee jerk reaction is to say a shield, but that literally is Shake it Off (I said Thrill of Battle above, oops... Was still waking up) and DRK does fine against tank busters so a fat shield would be just more of the same problem in that shields are good, but mitigation is better and DRK is fine in the shielding department, only PLD (and arguably GNB with only BS shield) lacks self shielding. Dark Missionary is fine for party wide mitigation since most raid damage is magical, though I have problems with that skill too, but that's another topic. As a skill it's fine so raid-mitigation might not be suitable either. I suppose when it comes down to it, I'd make this the heal with another effect?

15s Heal over time potency of 100 per consumed ability (so 200 max if it's just Dark Mind + Oblation, if my napkin math is right this makes it at most 1000 potency heal after full duration. If I were to add more "consumed" abilities I'd try keeping it at a 200 per tick cap unless it was underperforming.)
Reduce Damage Taken by xx% (not buffed by amount of abilities consumed)

Keeping damage reduction off of other abilities consumed increases versatility since it doesn't necessarily need to consume your other abilities, meaning you can choose strength of the ability, or duration, but you can also always do the Shake it Off thing where you use it with 1s remaining anyway, adding a small skill curve to the ability. It would also give a HoT that DRK so desperately needs without tying the HoT to TBN like people keep saying (Which would be the WORST place to place a HoT for reasons I have said before) and all without actually getting rid of the gimmick of Dark Mind that the devs are so insistent on keeping. I got The Chrysalis today and was pumped because Dark Mind is actually good there, and as much as that was a nice feeling, that comes from a bad place. You should never be excited that you actually get to use one of your abilities, but if it must stay, it should be capable of being used in a different way, in this case turning it into a HoT in all content where it is not useful. I think without doing the math most of the time 20% damage reduction would be more useful than 500 potency HoT so it would still be better used as mitigation in the situations where it is good.

EDIT: I refrained from giving a specific mitigation percent because I'm not sure how much DRK would actually need since healing and shielding does make percent mitigation more impactful, but it could be tuned a little higher if it required the consumption of at least one ability to be used at all, which could be a very real possibility for an ability like this, but might make it a little noisier with oGCD's since using it without needing a heal would be 2 oGCD's instead of 1, but at the same time not using it with Dark Mind in encounters where it makes no actual difference (which is a LOT) is a complete waste of its strength so it may never actually get used without being under the effects of at least one anyway, so it could be made into a 15/20% reduction, but I'm more trying to discuss the principle of the ability rather than the effectiveness. You must first determine how an ability works before you can balance it.