Dark Knight Megathread

[RyuDragnier]

Perhaps, but I couldn't really think of anything else to do with it

Really depends. You could give Dark Mind the Addle/Feint treatment and have it give a 10% physical mitigation as well, so it's useful in all damage. You could also just replace it completely with Oblation (since it feels like an early game mitigation, not late game) and pump up the mitigation from 10% to 15% to compensate.

[Kalaam]

I've said it before, I'll say it again. I want Esteem's sword. If I can't get the rood inverse, that'll just have to do.

You can have it, it's the level 60 DRK weapon. Go to the Forgotten Knight and buy it from one of the bartenders.

[baklava151]

Is there a particular reason Sole Survivor got axed? Seems like it could come in handy during trash pulls and help with sustain

[Crater]

Sole Survivor was a very cool skill for flavour, but it was never really very useful. In a raid setting, it tended to heal you at the exact moment that you were no longer in urgent need of healing, and in a dungeon setting, the throughput was just too low to make much difference (the current version of Abyssal Drain is considerably stronger, for instance). It was a cool idea and I'll usually go to the mat for a cool idea, but it really was an example of skill that just kind of existed to eat up a hotkey slot.

The most notable historical thing about Sole Survivor was that we were twice presented with misleading Sole Survivor tooltips that made it sound cooler than it was: On Heavensward launch, the tooltip was written as though SS were a buff you placed on a party member that would heal you if they died, rather than an enemy, and at some point prior to Stormblood launching, we got the PvP rather than PvE version of the tooltip, which had a Trick Attack style 10% Vuln Up effect tagged on.

[Marxam]

Sole Survivor fell into the same niche as Mercy Stroke for WAR. Technically useful but only under extreme conditions. It was even harder for WAR when you consider how dmg order is calculated but to those that mastered it, it was a free cure 2. Ironic how these extremely niche skills got removed but scathe on BLM is still there. Really makes you think...

[Kabooa]

Sole Survivor fell into the same niche as Mercy Stroke for WAR. Technically useful but only under extreme conditions. It was even harder for WAR when you consider how dmg order is calculated but to those that mastered it, it was a free cure 2. Ironic how these extremely niche skills got removed but scathe on BLM is still there. Really makes you think...

That maybe those "lul it's YoshiP's main class" people need to pass that good stuff they huff.

[Shurrikhan]

Sole Survivor fell into the same niche as Mercy Stroke for WAR. Technically useful but only under extreme conditions. It was even harder for WAR when you consider how dmg order is calculated but to those that mastered it, it was a free cure 2. Ironic how these extremely niche skills got removed but scathe on BLM is still there. Really makes you think...

Tbf, Scathe is the only mobility option BLM has that requires neither a proc nor a 60s CD or 30+ seconds' worth of resource (the latter also requiring level 80+).

This would be to say that need a mobile CD more than 5 times per minute, or more than just 3 per minute when accounting for holding Xeno for optimal moments, is as niche as a 2-minute CD that rewards a Cure II of healing... if any only if you somehow manage to outgame your allies around server lag so that your mere 200p attack lands the finishing blow.

It's not. It's really not.

Fire IV and Blizzard IV are mutually exclusive. Flare and Freeze are mutually exclusive. Between the Lines can only ever be used during Ley Lines' cooldown. Despite those 3 far better candidates for pruning, BLM still doesn't have especially high button counts. So, what the heck are we complaining about Scathe for above and beyond the actual button bloat?

If we were to discuss reintroducing Sole Survivor, we would probably need to address its trigger method, much like how we've seen manual triggers added for Lilybell or MCH's burst cooldowns.

Even then, though, would we necessarily want to put sustain towards a skill that just was fundamentally "get about a TBN's worth of healing, upon <target-related trigger>, per <long CD>"?

DRK has plenty of room for more self-healing, if we don't want to push that towards some other means of sustain. But, of all the ways of doing that, SS has never seemed a particularly attractive construct.

[Archwizard]

That maybe those "lul it's YoshiP's main class" people need to pass that good stuff they huff.

Oh, I think they're more reasonable than you give them credit for. You assume that "It's YoshiP's main class" is supposed to be a blanket justification for the job to be easymode, like redditors were saying unironically when BLM got over-buffed for PVP.

If anything, it means it's the job they keep the closest eye on while measuring its challenge-to-power ratio to YoshiP's personal tastes, because he probably doesn't want to play a "press one button to win" job since he actually enjoys playing his own game on his own time rather than treating it as some obligation (like some developers I can think of).

Though I do get the feeling he doesn't go into dungeons thinking about "what tools have I not used recently," since they've been much more careful about adding onto BLM in recent expansions to avoid needing to trim tools, and it took them until EW to revamp Fire 2/Blizz 2.

But, this isn't a BLM thread.

Sole Survivor was a very cool skill for flavour, but it was never really very useful. In a raid setting, it tended to heal you at the exact moment that you were no longer in urgent need of healing, and in a dungeon setting, the throughput was just too low to make much difference (the current version of Abyssal Drain is considerably stronger, for instance).

I think the issue with SS is how its healing condition was meant to be triggered.

It had a fixed duration before which it could give its effect. Generally speaking, "when a target dies" is not a reliable trigger method outside of trash pulls; unlike Death's Design or Exaltation it didn't have a benefit until it triggered; even if you could use it on an ally, you probably shouldn't bank on them dying; and if a boss died before the effect was over, you probably didn't need the healing anymore. Otherwise, it was a 15 sec wait where you couldn't force the effect in the event you were desperate for healing, sort of an antithesis to Living Dead where it at least activated as-needed.

If we were to discuss reintroducing Sole Survivor, we would probably need to address its trigger method, much like how we've seen manual triggers added for Lilybell or MCH's burst cooldowns.
For a DRK I'd find some type of Excogitation-type trigger to be fitting (being the job who historically gets more powerful as health gets lower) while reducing any "on kill" effect to a consolation for using the CD, but that's probably just me.

[baklava151]

I just saw it was 120 seconds too, which seems pretty damn long for what it did. Feel like 60 seconds could have been fine but from what I heard DRK was a monster in trash pulls anyways so probably didn't matter that much

[Archwizard]

Even then, though, would we necessarily want to put sustain towards a skill that just was fundamentally "get about a TBN's worth of healing, upon <target-related trigger>, per <long CD>"?

DRK has plenty of room for more self-healing, if we don't want to push that towards some other means of sustain. But, of all the ways of doing that, SS has never seemed a particularly attractive construct.

I did say "if we were", and that's largely just because it's the ongoing topic. I'm not pushing it forward this moment.
As Crater said, it was a neat concept that could be worth exploring for some type of skill (with some heavy QoL tweaks to make it desirable rather than just "conceptually neat") and I've even tried to do writeups with a variation on it for flavor, but I also agree that there are plenty of practical and fitting alternatives for introducing sustainability to DRK that don't involve it at all.

Like just focusing on existing or introducing new vampiric spells/attacks.