Dark Knight Megathread

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I figure it could be added to Salt and darkness as more of a sometimes buffer, something that would give us a bit of breathing room while giving us a reward for using it properly while not using it too often.

You'd just run into the exact same problem that every instance of tying offensive and defensive uses to the same resource/skill throughout the history of this game has created; with how much salt and darkness does in mass pulls, holding it for any amount of time is bad when it means losing multiple uses of it by the end of the dungeon. There's a reason almost every system that weaved defensive & offensive actions into the same resource got axed; in a game all about damage, defensive aspects of a skill are useless if they provide an offensive gain when used sub-optimal defensively. Even TBN, for the dps gain it grants by shuffling Edge of shadow around to burst windows, still has issues due to this design philosophy.

Blind in particular is problematic since its literal anti-synergy with TBN and the worst contender for any sort of addition to DRK's kit at this point.

As for your other point, it's a blunt answer: you can't return reducing an opponent's effectiveness as a purely DRK shtick. Homogenization of tank design means all tanks would have to get an equivalent due to their tank design philosophy of general parity.
That, and honestly as Archwizard mention, there's far too many instances of damage hits that come from non-debufable sources that skills like reprisal/addle/feint are simply harder to utilize than Shake/Veil/Missionary/HoL are due to them not requiring a target. Giving DRK targeted debuffs and the other tanks more non-target mit would just be handicapping DRK on every heavy hit that comes from a non-targetable source.

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

Because 'activation on target death' is a terrible condition when compared to 'push button, receive effect' (Clemency, Equilibirum, etc). Until it got the excog timing like buff in 4.3, it was almost entirely useless in raids, and for dungeons where everyone should be aoeing and mobs die generally around the same time as each other as a result, the self sustain wouldn't be triggering during the part of the pull where it would matter the most, only near the end where having an extra influx of HP would be mostly useless when the pull was about to be over. It was axed because it was a niche skill with a terrible activation timing and clunky to use.

Besides, giving DRK self sustain in dungeons would be ultra simplistic with absolutely no extra buttons to bloat the hotbar needed.
-Flood of Darkness/Shadow: Restore HP with a cure potency of 100-200.
-Quietus: Restore HP with a cure potency of 200-300 per target hit.

Done, ez. Gives DRK much stronger dungeon presence without buffing their already insanely strong raid kit even further. Would even give a bit of dynamicness to DRK's dungeon gameplay by making it a fun balancing act of not overcapping/getting too low on MP while using Floods strategically for sustain between TBN uses.

[baklava151]

Besides, giving DRK self sustain in dungeons would be ultra simplistic with absolutely no extra buttons to bloat the hotbar needed.
-Flood of Darkness/Shadow: Restore HP with a cure potency of 100-200.
-Quietus: Restore HP with a cure potency of 200-300 per target hit.

Done, ez. Gives DRK much stronger dungeon presence without buffing their already insanely strong raid kit even further. Would even give a bit of dynamicness to DRK's dungeon gameplay by making it a fun balancing act of not overcapping/getting too low on MP while using Floods strategically for sustain between TBN uses.

Could also rework Abyssal Drain and get the same result, no CD but costs 3K MP. I know it'd be competing with Flood but I don't think the potency loss is a huge deal when you're trying to keep yourself alive.

[Shurrikhan]

As for your other point, it's a blunt answer: you can't return reducing an opponent's effectiveness as a purely DRK shtick. Homogenization of tank design means all tanks would have to get an equivalent due to their tank design philosophy of general parity.

That's not how "general parity" works, though.

Any general form of parity doesn't care where your self-sustain comes from, be that through percentile mitigation, percentile self-healing, flat mitigation (pretty much just barriers and ToB in XIV's case), or flat healing.

You need only have enough eHP to survive each tankbuster with no less leniency in CD arrangement than the average competing tank, and sufficient sustain not to cost your raid rDPS via healer GCDs lost to healing you. Since ShB, though, the latter has become largely irrelevant, not so much because tanks were purposely homogenized left, right, and center, as simply because any slack by which for tanks fairly exchange between reasonable outputs was curtailed by the healing changes (to make healer GCD costs a matter solely of operator error in most content, and thereby stripping tanks of their previously variable means to achieve rDPS).

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All else you've said, though, obviously applied 100%. DRK's miti kit should not be dependent on target-requiring counter-attacks.

Could also rework Abyssal Drain and get the same result, no CD but costs 3K MP. I know it'd be competing with Flood but I don't think the potency loss is a huge deal when you're trying to keep yourself alive.

It would leave no use for Flood. Flood hits for 20 potency less (Darkness), and then only 10 potency more (Shadow). No reasonable tank is going to sacrifice 200 potency of healing per target a mere 20th that value in damage.

[baklava151]

It would leave no use for Flood. Flood hits for 20 potency less (Darkness), and then only 10 potency more (Shadow). No reasonable tank is going to sacrifice 200 potency of healing per target a mere 20th that value in damage.

That's mainly an issue of adjusting numbers which I don't think would be a huge deal for them if they went that route.

[Shurrikhan]

That's mainly an issue of adjusting numbers which I don't think would be a huge deal for them if they went that route.

But, again, why not just simply have a milder heal on Flood itself, while Abyssal instead adds a nuke heal per minute in AoE situations? Then you have both more burst/flexibility and your tools wouldn't drown each other out. (At least CnS and AD apply to distinct situations, unlike AD and Flood.)

At the very least, if having AD conflict with Flood, you'd want to put AoE falloff on CnS.

[baklava151]

But, again, why not just simply have a milder heal on Flood itself, while Abyssal instead adds a nuke heal per minute in AoE situations? Then you have both more burst/flexibility and your tools wouldn't drown each other out. (At least CnS and AD apply to distinct situations, unlike AD and Flood.)

At the very least, if having AD conflict with Flood, you'd want to put AoE falloff on CnS.

From an aesthetic side AD gives me more of a sense of sucking the life out of your enemies, rather than doing it passively through Quietus/Flood. Mechanically though yeah, I wouldn't disagree putting a heal on Quietus/Flood would be better and wouldn't necessarily say no to that either if they did that.

I was also thinking that it'd let them separate CnS and AD again since I always saw that as an awkward fix for alleviating our already bloated opener, but I guess in the grand scheme of things it's a non-issue.