Dark Knight Megathread

[Sazuzaki]

It also somewhat fixes the issue of Darkside being a braindead buff that's permanently up all the time. It becomes more useful to use AD on cooldown, and thus Edge is just used to keep Darkside up, which makes it possible for the buff to actually fall off.

I really like the ideas in this thread discussing Darkside being a resource. Having it that way reminds me of when DRK used to have it's MP constantly draining, which felt super thematic. I wish the DRK rotation felt more like controlled chaos rather than burst oriented... Resources constantly draining, fluctuating skill speeds, it would all just feel so dynamic...

If DRK can't have health sacrificing mechanics in PvE, the next best thing is to make the rotation feel chaotic; A complete opposite of the PLD rotation.

[Rithy255]

Dark Knight has always been a weird tank for me, I love it's design I like big swords, but the job feels really messy to play for me, Some people enjoy it and that's fine.

I think my personal issues:
is the lack of a fun rotation, 1, 2, 3 90% of the time intense weaving 10% of the time, I more like a consistent rotation with some weaving in between, drks rotation feels like a mess
no "dark magic" attacks (exluding unmend and aoe?), I get Paladin does this (with its holy spells and blade spells) but i feel like dark magic would really fit dark, you don't have to copy and paste paladin lmao, but I'd like to see some sort of magic attack on drk
Defensives are good but messy, Drk has a lot of defensives TBN, Is good but i feel like its worse then the others and can be a dps loss, others short cds are free to use, I'd say the barrier is better and in cases where you stack defensives thats pretty good, but i feel like other abilites such as Blood Whetting do way more for no risk, Dark mind is good... in magic only, Oblation feels like bloat but its decent.

I don't know Dark Knights look is so cool, I really like the look just playing it feels bad for me, I'd only pick it over Warrior out of the 4 tanks because I don't find war fun while i find PLD/GNB hit the more fun rotation spot with good defensives that feel unique, I wish dark got more attention but it feels like it was just given big numbers this expansion so everyone would be happy.

[Sazuzaki]

is the lack of a fun rotation, 1, 2, 3 90% of the time intense weaving 10% of the time, I more like a consistent rotation with some weaving in between, drks rotation feels like a mess

I've never understood why they've done that. Doesn't the fun of a job come fun consistently keeping you engaged? In savage, The Blackest Night does a good job at that. But in normals, DRK feels awful. I'd much rather have my MP management directly injected in my rotation.

That's why I love PLD and GNB so much; Both are consistent in how they play by making you constantly manage your rotation. You could argue GNB has the same problem of 1-2-3, but Gnashing Fang being on a 30 second CD does the job wonders.

[Rithy255]

I've never understood why they've done that. Doesn't the fun of a job come fun consistently keeping you engaged? In savage, The Blackest Night does a good job at that. But in normals, DRK feels awful. I'd much rather have my MP management directly injected in my rotation.

That's why I love PLD and GNB so much; Both are consistent in how they play by making you constantly manage your rotation. You could argue GNB has the same problem of 1-2-3, but Gnashing Fang being on a 30 second CD does the job wonders.

Gunbreaker has a lot of GCD's with timers Outside of your 1, 2, 3 and gnashing fang combo, to be fair your going to be using that in your no mercy window, as gnashing fang is on 30 seconds it feels like I'm doing a lot more, often.
PLD's got this general flow to it, It's generally very enjoyable for me, it has that sword and shield caster feel I just really like the job in general, heck as much as you shouldn't use clemency it being good in rare situations means sometimes you shouldn't be following a standard rotation, This only seems to be useful in dugeons when the healer ded, but this happens to me a lot, I'm normally able to easily keep up the two dps.

TBN on drk is good, I think personally it's generally the weakest but that's up to others to decide (generally personal preference all do the jobs do short cds well, if this was SHB then obviously drks cd would be by far the best, but it's still very powerful), considering you also get oblation drks defensive kit is more spread out then the other tanks, which is fine imo. I don't think it's super weak or underpowered but it having a punishing style to its effect instead of rewarding the drk for a good use of TBN you get a refund, I dislike that it doesn't feel like I'm being rewarded, a good idea is giving it some sort of regen on break or something like that, a bit of self sustain on Dark Knight would be amazing (it doesn't have to be war/pld amounts) on drk like a slow overtime hp gain would make it feel more fun to tank with, some cool dark magic and some changes to its base rotation would make drk one of my most loved jobs, My frustration is more the disappointment with the "dark knight" I've always enjoyed playing edgy jobs and more traditional "protect the party", but sadly I feel like dark knight has a lot of potential to be so much better, the animations and weapons are so good.

[baklava151]

With all the TBs having bleeds this tier, I've gonna from thinking DRK will be fine back to "just a crumb of self-sustain". At least with TBN's short CD if you time it well you can use it twice during the bleed to help your healers out a bit.

[Derio]

Yea this savage tier you really have to time the TBNs to get it to cover the initial hit and then the end of the bleed DOT. However the lack of self sustain for DRK really shows this tier. I am wondering are they going to increase WAR and PLD damage since the recent onslaught of complaints and job exclusion. Sometimes I wonder what DRK would be like if bloodspiller and quietus had a small cure potency tied to them.

[Sazuzaki]

Yea this savage tier you really have to time the TBNs to get it to cover the initial hit and then the end of the bleed DOT. However the lack of self sustain for DRK really shows this tier. I am wondering are they going to increase WAR and PLD damage since the recent onslaught of complaints and job exclusion. Sometimes I wonder what DRK would be like if bloodspiller and quietus had a small cure potency tied to them.

They could give Souleater raw lifesteal. Crit Souleater = like 15k HP restored which would be pretty cool, but could make DRK's 1-2-3 too good LOL.

I'm more on board with disconnecting CnS and Abyssal Drain, and giving Abyssal Drain a HoT effect. Or, y'know, put a regen on Salted Earth if you're standing in the puddle.

[RyuDragnier]

They could give Souleater raw lifesteal. Crit Souleater = like 15k HP restored which would be pretty cool, but could make DRK's 1-2-3 too good LOL.

I'm more on board with disconnecting CnS and Abyssal Drain, and giving Abyssal Drain a HoT effect. Or, y'know, put a regen on Salted Earth if you're standing in the puddle.

Even just added the 400 Cure Potency on Bloodspiller/Quietus would do a lot to alleviate the issue. Hell, a lifesteal on hit effect added to Oblation alone would do a lot to help DRK and give it more flavor, since you essentially could give allies the ability to lifesteal.

[OdinelStarrei]

With all the TBs having bleeds this tier, I've gonna from thinking DRK will be fine back to "just a crumb of self-sustain". At least with TBN's short CD if you time it well you can use it twice during the bleed to help your healers out a bit.

Honest question, why would you think this?

Transparency here, I only got to P8S in Week 1, no clearing the tier or anything, but I haven't felt this comfortable defensively on DRK since like, Sigmascape. We can literally TBN two times, per buster. That's 50% flat HP that can be allocated to either tank spots, or 25% to both tanks, (initial hit + last three ticks of bleed), and that's without taking into consideration the actual mitigation value of kitchensinking. I got tanks literally invulning O7S Condensed Aero, and I'm just like lmao, because I got 4 CDs I can comfortably waste on it and take marginal DoT damage afterwards and negate an entire tick of the bleed. So instead of focusing on the other tank, pre and post buster, just put the Kardia/Exaltation/Aquaveil/literally anything SCH-related on me instead, and just remove the other tanks DoT from the equation entirely. Because I can use it so much more often, I see it as superior to the 25s CDs in these instances, I don't need the self heals, some kind of short CD mitigation (DM/Obl/TBN) is always up, every TBN breaks in two autos, I'm guessing even at BiS because these autos chunk me for over 19K, MINIMUM on P5S. And if I actually get consistent HoCs/Nascents on top? WEW. I don't feel like I'm in danger because I'm playing DRK specifically, I feel like I'm in danger because the damage intake is high and I can't trivialize the tankbusters the same way I've been for the last few years, but I have very strong answers to these situations that puts me in control. You buff Souleater healing and give Oblation a regen combined with co-tank/dedicated healer support? I dunno man. Still want it on a 40 sec CD though.

If anything, you should be thinking PLDs are the ones getting reamed this time, because not only is their damage atrocious because of underlying game design problems, the blocks just don't work on the DoTs! Which is ridiculous, because the DoT damage is HIGHER than the buster damage, and contributes way more to what mandates the tank healing, and is usually followed up by another damage instance (autos/raidwides) that end up killing tanks. Looking directly at you, P6S. 20% on a bleed is about as good as an entire TBN in terms of overall damage mitigated that PLD just doesn't get for whatever reason. Real cool Hallowing the shared buster, only to immediately explode because the bleed wasn't mitigated with Sheltron, you literally have one less cooldown than other tanks, (two, if we count situations like bleeding Dark Missionary/Heart of Light from Syngery into the Dark IVs for double value) and the follow up raidwide only had party mitigations. Is anyone else getting flashbacks to Alexander right now? When you have busters with raw damage values that easily exceed 100K, and follow up bleeds that total to over 150K, even on the first two fights, I'm absolutely gonna bring the job that has a lot of shareable, low-cooldown "useless" abilities to snapshot those busters, and reduce their total output for a consistent HP profile in progression, compared to HP number go up right now(not saying those abilities are bad, they are good, just that again, like Gordias/Midas, it feels a lot like this tier was specifically designed for DRK mitigations to slap). I wholeheartedly accept those bleeds.

Healers can heal if they have to, don't worry I'll make up the aDPS you MAY lose while we progress.

[Bhearil]

Still you cant say that DRK is on good state because the savage fights seems custom tailored to their mitigation skills unless they are planning to do that on every fight onwards