Dark Knight Megathread

[ItsUrBoi]

I'd like to point out a few issues that no one or I have rarely seen people point out. The DRK rotation forces you to double weave for optimal damage. I don't have a problem with double weaving since I find it fun and skillful ( ping issues aside ). However:
-> In order to mitigate you have to press 3 buttons ( TBN + Oblation + Dark Mind / Shadow Wall ), I would certainly wish for 2 buttons. TBN should have Oblation within itself. The reasoning here is that if you have your burst coming up and you have to mitigate, you have to sacrifice damage to do so ( raid buffs ). GNB solves this problem well because it never forces you to double weave for 6 GCDs straight while bursting.
-> Dark Mind shouldn't be only magic damage reduction please. It can be a lot of things. 10% of each damage reduction and a heal over time, or a heal which converts some DarkSide into HP.
-> Blood weapon shouldn't be tied to duration. It should be stacks because stacks allow you more flexible usage ( ex: Opener, pop it a few seconds before combat starts )
-> TBN shouldn't be tied to damage and MP. Dark Arts could give a free use of something else ( like Dark Mind , a heal ). There's many moments when when you have to burst in your rotation and you have ~4500 mp wishing to use an Edge/Flood within raid buffs, but there's a tank buster coming.

I love how the problems pointed out here, are ignored in favor of "the job should be deleted" or "lets merge 2 cds that didn't bother most people".
On one side people want the job to be better, thats why we are posting here, but come on, instead of arguing maybe let's be a bit constructive.

[ItsUrBoi]

Another 2 suggestions I have regarding TBN, Dark Mind and Dark Arts:
- If TBN breaks, your next Edge / Flood of Shadow heals you for potency equal to damage dealt by said ability. No cost, 15 sec CD. It should also have Oblation's 10% damage reduction into it. Solves sustain in dungeons and gives DRK some sustain.
- Dark Mind converts all damage mitigated into healing for 10 seconds. So if you use Rampart and a mob hits you for 100 damage, you heal for 20 damage. Works on shields and damage reductions. 60 seconds CD. Works well with DRK being the mitigation tank.

[Shurrikhan]

I love how the problems pointed out here, are ignored in favor of "the job should be deleted" or "lets merge 2 cds that didn't bother most people".
On one side people want the job to be better, thats why we are posting here, but come on, instead of arguing maybe let's be a bit constructive.

The latter fell directly under the premise that DRK's burst phase is slightly bloated and that current Blood Weapon is a problem. If we can agree to intersecting premises on the issue, would not concrete suggestions how to address them be the next step?

Arguing, moreover, is how these things get hammered out. Some forms or flavor of argument are more efficient/productive than others, but it's not as if arguing is opposed to being constructive.

Another 2 suggestions I have regarding TBN, Dark Mind and Dark Arts:
- If TBN breaks, your next Edge / Flood of Shadow heals you for potency equal to damage dealt by said ability. No cost, 15 sec CD. It should also have Oblation's 10% damage reduction into it. Solves sustain in dungeons and gives DRK some sustain.

This seems... fine. I just have to ask again: Do we want to stick a self-heal behind a shield that may fully nullify that damage, making the Edge possibly overheal (if we need to get it out quickly for purposes of burst)? (Meanwhile, obligatory percentile mitigation makes it harder to pop TBN; if you wish to go that route, the more generally useful would be to retain TBN's eHP under barrier but have the mitigation effect extend beyond the barrier, such as by giving it a 20% HP shield and a 25 -> 15% mitigation over the first 4 and next 4 seconds, respectively.)

Keep in mind that there is a limit to our self-healing deficit. Putting a buff of X self-healing (per minute and per burst) in one place means that much less elsewhere. This is cool, but is it likely to be more fun than just, say, a heal on Bloodspiller?

My $0.02. Yeah, a DA-based self-heal is probably a bit more fun than a Bloodspiller heal, but it's that much harder to guarantee, has that much less available burst, and also would drop an opportunity to finally make Bloodspiller feel more interesting. Put simply, I suspect DA-based self-healing would be a bit better for the function itself, but faintly worse for the kit.

[ItsUrBoi]

This seems... fine. I just have to ask again: Do we want to stick a self-heal behind a shield that may fully nullify that damage, making the Edge possibly overheal (if we need to get it out quickly for purposes of burst)?
This is cool, but is it likely to be more fun than just, say, a heal on Bloodspiller?
My $0.02. Yeah, a DA-based self-heal is probably a bit more fun than a Bloodspiller heal, but it's that much harder to guarantee, has that much less available burst.

My reasoning for putting Dark Arts grant the next Edge/Flood of Shadow a heal of potency equal to damage dealt by said ability is simply because that would allow the job to work in dungeons a bit better, in raids if TBN breaks, you will probably lose a significant amount of HP - because TBN broke, ending up on >95% health after a tank buster is unlikely and then it wouldn't matter that much - sure , but nothing really would matter when you are that high on health already, and because with this you can actually use TBN on CD for sustain.

Or as I have posted before, change Dark Mind into a instant heal of some potency ( ex: 700 potency, lower than Aurora, Equilibrium, Clemency ) which consumes some Dark Side duration, and if TBN breaks you can use it for free. To facilitate this the Dark Side timer could be increased to 120 seconds, since you use x4 or x5 edges in the opener, and every 2 minutes anyway.

[Archwizard]

Works well with DRK being the mitigation tank.

... is it? I figure PLD or GNB has a better shot at that position than DRK; hell, WAR had the best shot with old RI. I mean yeah, DRK has extremely weak self-healing at the time being, but right now it feels like it burns through its mitigation tools faster than other tanks in dungeons -- between its on-demand breaking after a fixed amount of damage, Dark Mind/Missionary being useless a majority of the time, Oblation being so weak it needs to be stacked with other skills to have a palpable value...

The only elements of DRK's kit that would make me think of it as the "mitigation tank" are that you need to press more buttons to accomplish the same effect other jobs can do with just one, and that it only has a 200p/target safety heal.

My reasoning for putting Dark Arts grant the next Edge/Flood of Shadow a heal of potency equal to damage dealt by said ability is simply because that would allow the job to work in dungeons a bit better, in raids if TBN breaks, you will probably lose a significant amount of HP - because TBN broke, ending up on >95% health after a tank buster is unlikely and then it wouldn't matter that much - sure , but nothing really would matter when you are that high on health already, and because with this you can actually use TBN on CD for sustain.

Admittedly, this would actually be an elegant way to cover healing with TBN (to bring it up to par with the upgrades to other tanking on-demands) without making it overpowered. Just bank a heal before your next use.

Though I also feel that, at this juncture, we should avoid setting our expectations too high. 6.1's changes are unannounced but the devs probably know exactly how they plan to proceed from here, so we're spit-balling for each other here. We can't provide feedback for something we don't know about, after all.

[Marxam]

Probably the easiest "fix" they can do to address the self heals of DRK, is to put a heal on Delirium for each BS/Quietus used. However imo, they just need to fix TBN to be more accessible and not tied to your dps. A change I would do is:

-TBN put to 2 charges (25 sec recast)
-Cost no MP
-Duration increased to 10 seconds (still 25% HP shield)
-If TBN breaks recast of TBN is shortened by 5 seconds

With this change, TBN becomes easier to use, rewards you with more TBN's for using it, pairs well with the 2 charges of oblation, increased utility and not tied to your DPS. Since TBN is up more often that means you will most likely be taking less damage resulting in reduced need for self heal actions but giving Delirium a heal for using BS/Quietus would help as well. Though they need to address how antiquated TBN is and how unrewarding it feels to use it.

Living Dead on the other hand...

[ItsUrBoi]

Probably the easiest "fix" they can do to address the self heals of DRK, is to put a heal on Delirium for each BS/Quietus used. However imo, they just need to fix TBN to be more accessible and not tied to your dps. A change I would do is:

-TBN put to 2 charges (25 sec recast)
-Cost no MP
-Duration increased to 10 seconds (still 25% HP shield)
-If TBN breaks recast of TBN is shortened by 5 seconds

Living Dead on the other hand...

The problem is that even if its not tied to your damage resource, there still are problems. Imagine you are doing your burst properly and you need to mitigate a tank buster in Savage. You will have to press 3 or even 4 additional buttons ( 2 double weaves ), where in the burst do you put them to not miss out on damage? You don't that's the problem, all other tanks are not forced to double weave for 6 gcds straight, and at worst they have to weave 1 damage off gcd like GNB.
Besides this doesn't solve DRK lacking any self heals, any amount of shielding will never outright mean you can have 0 healing in your kit. There will be moments when you will run out of shields and you will need healing. I am not saying you should have GNB,PLD or WAR level of healing, but some is needed on a tank, as some is needed for example on a melee DPS.
Also the reason why it wouldn't be good for them to put healing on delirium or on Bloodspiller is because that will always happen at a fixed moment during the fight. It works as somewhat rotational healing you get per minute. That's why it was put on PLD Holly Spirit - PLD had no healing on its Goring Blade combo or on its Royal Authority combo. DRK has that, but it doesn't have Clemency, Aurora or Equilibrium. That's what it needs.

I agree with TBN not being tied to damage, but its CD shouldn't really be reduced it one breaks ( it'd become very overpowered at 10 seconds ), and while having 2 stacks is interesting, I'd rather have Oblation's damage reduction within it.

[Marxam]

Double weaving is job design problem and not a cd design problem. You have a job that needs to feel "busy" but only has one rotation so you give it tons of ogcds to fluff it up. It's one of the reasons why DRK is terribly designed. Imo no tank should be double weaving because you want to encourage using defensive cds in between gcds. A lot of DRK's ogcds are just there for damage and nothing more.

My suggestion for Delirium heals is more for dungeon pulls than savage content. WAR's BW is strong in dungeons but in savage the heals at best can negate 2-3 autos if it crits (which is roughly the same as TBN). A bloodspiller heals aren't that much in savage and its essentially the same as AD being tied to a 1 min cd. It's more of an equalizer for casual players who do dungeons and use quietus.

TBN being 10 sec duration is not op because the recast timer is 25 secs and in most cases that shield pops in the first 5 secs. Making the duration longer just increases the odds of it actually breaking and ensuring you get that proc. TBN is a shield and not compared to flat mitigation like rampart or shadow wall. Once that shield is gone you have 0 mitigation and shields by their design are only meant for high burst damage. Just because the duration is 10 seconds doesn't mean you have 10 secs of 0 damage and most times TBN is only up for < 5 secs currently.

TBN procing Oblation imo is like enhanced unmend. Technically a positive effect but so worthless its not even worth mentioning. TBN procing more TBN is much better because a free 25% HP shield is always good to have. No one is gonna complain for having more shields and the idea is you want to pair TBN with other cds. TBN + SW/DM/Oblation is generally what you would want and it matches the current DRK design. I still think TBN is a good skill but in comparison to the others it falls short by its antiquated design. TBN should feel good to use but atm I just feel relieved when it procs and annoyed when it doesn't. The other tanks don't have this issue.