Dark Knight Megathread

[Briarthorn]

I do wonder what we could do with blackblood. I feel like if we went to astros or dragoons with "You'll be like X with some of your other stuff", They'd get pretty nervous. But after 3 expansion i wonder if that ships sailed.

I do also wonder if reducing damage with debuffs could be something DRK could get again.
Reprisal used to be part of our counter attack

We used to be able to blind enemies ,which i think might be useful currently as not working on bosses would give us an edge on multiple little foes like in dungeons, but not raids where we seems to be doing fine.

[Archwizard]

I do also wonder if reducing damage with debuffs could be something DRK could get again.
Reprisal used to be part of our counter attack

There are logistical concerns with this.

For starters, debuffs like Reprisal would be considered part of raidwide mitigation... but as we've seen with Reprisal, many bosses are untargettable (or otherwise immune) for their biggest hits, making raidwide buffs more reliable in a choice between the two.

Blind could be extremely useful for dungeon encounters, but bear in mind that as with Holy stuns, crowd controlling effects are subject to diminishing returns, particularly if they have a relatively low initial duration to compound this more quickly... and conversely, that our barrier is presently a net negative if enemies can't break it because they couldn't land a hit on us.

[Briarthorn]

For starters, debuffs like Reprisal would be considered part of raidwide mitigation... but as we've seen with Reprisal, many bosses are untargettable (or otherwise immune) for their biggest hits, making raidwide buffs more reliable in a choice between the two.

Fair.

Blind could be extremely useful for dungeon encounters, but bear in mind that as with Holy stuns, crowd controlling effects are subject to diminishing returns, particularly if they have a relatively low initial duration to compound this more quickly... and conversely, that our barrier is presently a net negative if enemies can't break it because they couldn't land a hit on us.

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.

Overall DRK reducing an opponents effectiveness themselves is something i'd like to see returned, the how of course is the issue.

[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.

[RyuDragnier]

They could always bring back Sole Survivor as a self-heal option. Make it a 1-minute oGCD with 1000 cure potency on yourself without any strings attached to it.

[Kalaam]

It'd be better to make it interresting. Maybe ennemies afflicted deal less damage to you or every hit on them gives you a 200 potency shield, and when the effect expire or the enemy dies under the effect you get a heal/MP refill (like 1000potency heal/1500MP) or something. It'd give some nice survivability in dungeons and for bosses it's a neat but (I assume) not OP addition. TBN would apply over the small shields anyway.