Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[Oizen]

What I'd like to see in DRK is more sustainability, because at the moment, it has the worst HP recovery method of all the tanks.

I'd just like to see Abyssal Drain restored to what it used to be.
Its not the AOE version of Carve and Spit and SE was stupid for trying to make it that, and honestly I've been finding DRK to be an absolute nightmare to play in lv 60-70 content due to how much its lacking all the defensive tools its lost from that area. There are lv 60 dungeons where DRK honestly cannot do anything except pull a single pack at a time, it feels awful.

If SE ever decides to address this issue (they wont) I hope they focus on lv60 or lower skills and not add traits to Oblation or TBN.
Focus on thngs like Abyssal Drain or even Dark Mind honestly, or god forbid return some of its missing tools that it used to have to get through this content.

[Midareyukki]

I'd just like to see Abyssal Drain restored to what it used to be.
Its not the AOE version of Carve and Spit and SE was stupid for trying to make it that, and honestly I've been finding DRK to be an absolute nightmare to play in lv 60-70 content due to how much its lacking all the defensive tools its lost from that area. There are lv 60 dungeons where DRK honestly cannot do anything except pull a single pack at a time, it feels awful.

If SE ever decides to address this issue (they wont) I hope they focus on lv60 or lower skills and not add traits to Oblation or TBN.
Focus on thngs like Abyssal Drain or even Dark Mind honestly, or god forbid return some of its missing tools that it used to have to get through this content.

This, along with the stuff they've recently said about healers, sounds like they just don't play their content at all. And if true, Yoshida had no business talking crap about WoW.

Because one thing is going into BLM and clearly seeing the same resources and mechanics being used on the AoE rotation. Another thing is looking at C&S, looking at Abyssal Drain, and going "ah yes, two OGCDs, lump 'em up".
And what I think is funny is how WAR at lv 60 works fine. PLD at lv 60 works as intended. DRK at lv 60 is missing half its kit, and TBN won't show up for another 10 levels. At that time, PLD can already proc blocks and WAR's already slurping on HP. Abyssal Drain? That's just a one-off button, you need to wait until the pack is almost dead to use it again. It's like they don't play their older content, which characters invariably have to go through in order to get to current, relevant endgame content.
Same for TBN. We saw all the tanks get their 15s skill be upgraded, but DRK just had Oblation instead. WAR basically healing itself to full? That's fine. A 25% shield off your max HP? No, we can't have that get any added effect, it's too powerful. And then they wonder why people had them rework Living Dead.

And that's not even opening the can of worms that's Enhanced Unmend. I get why it's a thing, I don't get why it has to be a trait at lv 84. It's a trait for Enhanced Plunge at best. Not to mention PLD has a whole ranged phase and WAR has better mobility. The only one who arguably would have it worse than DRK is GNB because their Rough Divide isn't cut down by Lightning Shot... but I'd be hard-pressed to call Enhanced Unmend any more useful than holding one charge of Plunge/Rough Divide.

But hey. At least Living Dead's doing better. That counts as sustainability, right?

[Avatre]

The only change I would love to see - but likely never to happen - is reverting Quietus to how it was(gives MP every enemy it hits), giving us back Dark Arts, reverting Salted Earth to filling the gauge, and removing the cool down from Abyssal Drain. Was on par, if not better than in some situations, with WAR self sustain in big pulls.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd just like to see Abyssal Drain restored to what it used to be.
Its not the AOE version of Carve and Spit and SE was stupid for trying to make it that

Why, though? Its old form didn't heal except during DA; its primary function was to trade enmity for higher damage. Why would that have survived the removing of enmity combos/AoEs?

Given its having lost its original function, it ends up arbitrary as to whether Abyssal Drain ought to be weaker but spammable (redundant with Unleash, Flood, or Soul) or stronger but on a CD. Personally, just like I wouldn't want to see CnS weaker but spammable, I like that the (to me) most visually impressive pre-90 AoE is also on a CD and thereby allowed to be more powerful.

I just want to see it a bit more frequent and flexible, with that budget siphoned from the combos (2 charges, 40s CD).

That said, 100% agreed on where we should focus improvements for the leveling experience.

[Jeeqbit]

I'd just like to see Abyssal Drain restored to what it used to be.
Its not the AOE version of Carve and Spit and SE was stupid for trying to make it that

Carve and Spit always had the problem that it was pointless in most aoe situations. Sure, if you needed the burst of MP it was useful and maybe in Shadowbringers that could contribute to part of a Flood of Shadow, but it wasn't really worth it, especially when trash would die quickly most of the time. It was worth saving for the real enemy, the boss, that you were about to fight.

Meanwhile, Abyssal Drain was pretty useless on a single target. The potency per second wasn't good on a single target and nor was the heal. It made a lot of sense for them to do this, but I admit I found it annoying to get used to and didn't even notice at first until it felt like they were both weaving together too easily.

I've been finding DRK to be an absolute nightmare to play in lv 60-70 content due to how much its lacking all the defensive tools its lost from that area.

I haven't, because they still have the standard tools that all tanks have there, such as Shadow Wall, Rampart, Reprisal, Arm's Length and Low Blow. It's even better now that their invuln is useful. One thing that I find helps is to use raid food, because the vitality doesn't sync properly and the health boost helps, so that might make me bias.

It's not like Paladin has it much better. They just have a Sheltron and random blocks, with no self heals at all unless they use Clemency. Even if DRK has it worse below level 70, PLD actually has it worse at level 70 because their abilities do not compete with The Blackest Night.

[RyuDragnier]

Carve and Spit always had the problem that it was pointless in most aoe situations. Sure, if you needed the burst of MP it was useful and maybe in Shadowbringers that could contribute to part of a Flood of Shadow, but it wasn't really worth it, especially when trash would die quickly most of the time. It was worth saving for the real enemy, the boss, that you were about to fight.

Meanwhile, Abyssal Drain was pretty useless on a single target. The potency per second wasn't good on a single target and nor was the heal. It made a lot of sense for them to do this, but I admit I found it annoying to get used to and didn't even notice at first until it felt like they were both weaving together too easily.

CnS has always been on a cooldown, AD never had one until ShB, it only used the MP as its cooldown. AD really needs to be buffed in the Cure Potency department, 200 per hit is an absolute joke, 400 cure potency per hit would fine.

[Midareyukki]

Carve and Spit always had the problem that it was pointless in most aoe situations. Sure, if you needed the burst of MP it was useful and maybe in Shadowbringers that could contribute to part of a Flood of Shadow, but it wasn't really worth it, especially when trash would die quickly most of the time. It was worth saving for the real enemy, the boss, that you were about to fight.

Meanwhile, Abyssal Drain was pretty useless on a single target. The potency per second wasn't good on a single target and nor was the heal. It made a lot of sense for them to do this, but I admit I found it annoying to get used to and didn't even notice at first until it felt like they were both weaving together too easily.

I haven't, because they still have the standard tools that all tanks have there, such as Shadow Wall, Rampart, Reprisal, Arm's Length and Low Blow. It's even better now that their invuln is useful. One thing that I find helps is to use raid food, because the vitality doesn't sync properly and the health boost helps, so that might make me bias.

It's not like Paladin has it much better. They just have a Sheltron and random blocks, with no self heals at all unless they use Clemency. Even if DRK has it worse below level 70, PLD actually has it worse at level 70 because their abilities do not compete with The Blackest Night.

I don't really get this argument though. By the same logic, so too is Xenoglossy useless on single target past Foul. There simply are skills meant to be used in AoE than they are in single target. That was never a problem.

The real problem is believing C&S and AD are the same skill. They're not. And if the devs think they are, then they need to play DRK more.

Because C&S was a high-damage cooldown. AD was an AoE sustain GCD. If anything, Shadowbringer has a lot more incommon with C&S than AD ever did.

It's fine for skills to not be useful in certain locations. You'd never use Fuga in single target, would you? Yet it's there. And guess what, it does the exact same as Hakaze. What they did was like looking at BRD's kit and assuming the equivalent of Rain of Death in Single Target was somehow Empyreal Arrow.

The effects don't match. AD was the go-to for sustainability in mob packs. TBN was a shield, but AD let you heal back up a bit. Now every tank has a form of sustainability on top of defences and shields, yet DRK's one and only skill for it is on a 1 minute cooldown. A 1 minute cooldown conflated with a skill that doesn't give any sustainability, only shares the MP recovery aspect.

And, again, had they played any iteration of DRK, they'd know that Abyssal Drain was something you'd do fairly often in AoE pulls. Carve and Spit was something you pressed on cooldown. Not the same thing by a long shot.

[Shurrikhan]

And, again, had they played any iteration of DRK, they'd know that Abyssal Drain was something you'd do fairly often in AoE pulls. Carve and Spit was something you pressed on cooldown. Not the same thing by a long shot.

True, but what else was something "you'd do fairly often in AoE pulls" (and would have no redeeming quality opposite Abyssal Drain after the removal of enmity-high skills)? Unleash. That, not C&S, was the primary reason for it shifting gears.

Similarly, they intended to make a matched VFX AoE mirror to their new DA-direct attack (Edge of Darkness/Shadow) against which a no-CD oGCD Abyssal Drain would be redundant (and leave no real redeeming feature for Flood).

Retaining its pre-squish potency (i.e., buffing it slightly) and making the self-heal automatic and free (instead of at MP cost), then, seems pretty logical.

That move wasn't a matter of forgetting what Abyssal Drain was previously supposed to do. It was simply that they prioritized their new way of packaging Dark Arts over it and thus pushed it towards a more powerful CD position instead. AD, a GCD AoE with optional MP spending for self-healing was no longer possible to differentiate from Unleash, a GCD AoE with enmity mods (no longer a thing), nor was there room for AD as a weaker no-CD MP spender, since that'd be redundant with Flood.

Thereafter, they listened to the earlier complaints of a 150-potency attack not feeling like it was worth its weave-space in the opener and put it on a shared CD with CnS as an attempt at QoL.

No one was "believing that [StB or HW] C&S and AD are the same skill." But, due to additions elsewhere and the change t oDA, they were since both made into simply AoE and ST variants on "damage+" {MP or HP} skills on CDs.

If that healing weren't best rotated in early in an AoE pull (i.e., where it'd have been used for damage anyways) and DRK had additional use for MP outside of the phases you'd want to dump MP in anyways, then they would have been significantly distinct. But that's not the case.

(Even then, however, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be placed on a shared cooldown; sharing that recast time allows each of the two to be individually stronger (and therefore the DRK to have a higher ceiling each on AoE and ST, using the appropriate option instead of having to muddle in hybrid purposes). CD-sharing isn't inherently bad, especially given that DRK has more than enough means to regain the missing 1 APM however they'd wish if that were an apparent issue.)
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I don't really get this argument though. By the same logic, so too is Xenoglossy useless on single target past Foul. There simply are skills meant to be used in AoE than they are in single target. That was never a problem.

That one just comes down to subjective preference. Those who are fine with spending buttons just on checking whether the enemy/enemies is/are singular or plural and hitting the correct A|B option accordingly will like those purely ST|AoE action pairs. Those who don't, won't.

Most BLMs I've spoken to were not fans of Xenoglossy once Foul likewise became instant cast, since it relegated Xeno to solely a mechanic of "Is the enemy count greater than 1?" See also the many SAM threads on why Senei as a separate action was bloat and Guren should have just retained its former damage and fall-off (current Senei damage on first target, current Guren damage on all thereafter).

Prior to its giving MP, (ShB / CD-based) Abyssal Drain at least had more distinction from CnS than did those actions above. But, I could also understand if some wouldn't mind seeing either CnS or AD consolidated into the other with falloff, or to axe either among Drain or Flood entirely to consolidate those two's features -- in rejection of either old iconic VFX (AD) or the devs' preferred VFX pair (Edge+Flood).

You'd never use Fuga in single target, would you? Yet it's there.

But there's also a difference between having one ST|AoE mirror, especially where there are at least some distinct advantages to the latter (see Sonic Thrust for uptime on Neo Exdeath, Fuga-Oka/Mangetsu on adds that'd die from DoTs anyways while running back to the boss's reentry position for the higher rate of Sen and Kenki generation -- or, to push Sen sync ahead by 1 GCD -- etc.) and applying it to nearly every offensive action. Take Shadowbringer Bard, for instance. Did we really need an AoE and ST variant each of our GCD spam, or DoT capitalizing attack, our River of Blood charges, etc.?

[Midareyukki]

snip

I agree. But here's the thing, and I think it's a lot simpler than that o:

They condensed C&S with Abyssal Drain bc as you said, we didn't do other skills all that often. No, not even Dark Passenger, quit lying, we only ever used that once a blue moon >w>;;

But as I said, they're not the same. They are only similar in one aspect, they give MP. They weren't even both OGCDs, bc Abyssal Drain wasn't.

The answer was simple. Just make an equivalent. They made it for every other job (Shoha II, Ikishoten, Foul...). Why not for DRK? Especially now that we have Shadowbringer. Like, they could have just taken advantage of old discarded animations and reworked them into new stuff.
But no, they decided to do this, which ended up gimping DRK's sustainability.

The rest about Foul and Xenoglossy, that's a problem with BLM itself and should be addressed, sure... but for what's worth, for this conversation, it's important to note that they did make skills for stuff similar to our single-target combo but for AoE. So it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

What we got tho isn't it.

[Shurrikhan]

No, not even Dark Passenger, quit lying, we only ever used that once a blue moon >w>;;

Figurative language and semantics and such but... Dark Passenger was only a 30s CD, and was your most efficient use of MP after DA-C&S. Compared against the likes of Shadowbringer or C&S, you used it pretty often.

But as I said, they're not the same. They are only similar in one aspect, they give MP. They weren't even both OGCDs, bc Abyssal Drain wasn't.

It didn't give MP until after it stopped being a GCD (and not for a long while even then).

Again, Abyssal Drain could not remain a GCD without killing Unleash.
Abyssal Drain could not remain at at-will AoE spender without killing Flood, which the ShB DRK dev(s) was/were apparently very attached to.

The only choice remaining was for AD to be on CD, whether as a GCD or an oGCD. Since it includes healing, they went with the more responsive option, an oGCD.

That's it. There was no confusion about what purpose it was primarily supposed to serve. Abyssal Drain itself did not heal. Dark Arts did. Most times you hit that skill was not for healing, but simply because AD dealt a third more damage than Unleash.

The closest parity in its situational niche would have been to...

• Axe Flood and replace it directly with Abyssal Drain,
• Axe Stalwart Soul, buff Unleash slightly in compensation (perhaps giving it half a Syphon of MP generation), and replace Soul with Abyssal Drain as an MP spender (not great, since it's still indirectly redundant with Flood, and would alternate target-centered AoEs with self-centered AoEs), or
• Axe Quietus and replace it with Abyssal Drain.

But each of those would require DRK losing something more, whereas turning AD into a burst heal on a CD did not.

The answer was simple. Just make an equivalent. They made it for every other job (Shoha II, Ikishoten, Foul...). Why not for DRK? Especially now that we have Shadowbringer. Like, they could have just taken advantage of old discarded animations and reworked them into new stuff.
But no, they decided to do this, which ended up gimping DRK's sustainability.

The rest about Foul and Xenoglossy, that's a problem with BLM itself and should be addressed, sure... but for what's worth, for this conversation, it's important to note that they did make skills for stuff similar to our single-target combo but for AoE. So it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

I'm not actually sure what you intend to mean by "an equivalent". If combos are in the picture, we have an ST self-heal combo in Souleater. Else, if we wanted to equivalently allow MP spending to provide eHP as before, then the most direction would be to thus empower Edge and Flood while probably just axing AD outright.

Sure, we have old animations, but we still need them to have non-redundant purposes. Remember, that shift also gave us 3 new attack animations (Edge, Flood, Living Shadow) that also need their places, too.

Could the StB -> ShL shift have been handled far better? Absolutely. But I honestly think that if they just gave us a second charge on CnS/AD to offer it further flexibility in its self-healing and maybe buffed AD's just a bit, current Abyssal Drain would be totally fine.

Ideally, I'd keep AD on a shared CD but give CnS and AD each additional means of effect(iveness) that allow both to situationally be used in their opposite categories (AD in ST, CnS in AoE), with 2 charges on a 40s recharge (still syncs with 60 and 120s; 2 uses within full bursts, 1 totally flexible use between). But I imagine that'd be among the least impactful of what all changes I'd want.