Dark Knight Megathread

[Mekhana]

I think PVP has the right idea. Salted Earth should heal overtime instead.

[ItsUrBoi]

I think PVP has the right idea. Salted Earth should heal overtime instead.

That would still make a 90 second CD ability your only source of healing which you'd always get as soon as its off CD due to the DPS aspect. Instead Edge or Flood should heal, or even Bloodspiller as you use them more frequently and can choose a bit when to delay or not to delay. As for TBN breaking, perhaps Dark Arts can be a defensive aspect too, such as allowing you to heal urself via those mentioned abilities?

[Shurrikhan]

That would still make a 90 second CD ability your only source of healing which you'd always get as soon as its off CD due to the DPS aspect. Instead Edge or Flood should heal, or even Bloodspiller as you use them more frequently and can choose a bit when to delay or not to delay. As for TBN breaking, perhaps Dark Arts can be a defensive aspect too, such as allowing you to heal urself via those mentioned abilities?

This. If we're trying to maximize agency/reward for skillful use, it'd make the most sense that our sustain should go to whatever can be banked the most.

That makes Edge and Flood the best choices for damage->healing or healing on cast, by a huge margin.

Bloodspiller, if reduced to 40 Blood cost, would at least be close, but would still mean necessarily bundling that healing into Delirium (rather than just having a minor potency loss if moving Edge/Flood out of our 20s raid buffs for later healing), which effectively means less control, which then means more of that min-maxing falls to our healers (to just not heal us before Delirium) rather than predominantly onto us, while also skipping over that otherwise great indicator we'd give our healer as to our self-sustain potential in the given moment -- our MP.

[Zairava]

That would still make a 90 second CD ability your only source of healing which you'd always get as soon as its off CD due to the DPS aspect. Instead Edge or Flood should heal, or even Bloodspiller as you use them more frequently and can choose a bit when to delay or not to delay. As for TBN breaking, perhaps Dark Arts can be a defensive aspect too, such as allowing you to heal urself via those mentioned abilities?

Healing within our kit using DA is probably one of the better options out there that isn't just bringing back Sole Survivor by far.

Using this, we should be able to bank 2 DA stacks, given that it still is a damage neutral if they don't nerf the potency due to higher sustain. The fact that tbn now procs horrifically fast in dungeons especially, I find, warrants having a second DA stack.

If they wouldn't do this because of people malding from dps loss (not that it doesn't happen now if TBN doesn't pop), they could instead reduce the potency of the base skill itself, and give that lost potency in the DA proc, that way you would ideally want to proc it whenever you can for an increase in dps output, and we can maintain having a higher skill expression plus we would feel more rewarded for knowing the fights.

I'm not entirely sure how to make this work if we're putting this on Salted Earth as well. Maybe if TBN pops, it gives Salt and Darkness a bonus effect and it heals us for 100p per mob or so.

DA would no longer feel boring to use, and would only strengthen the good brain juices that flow when you hear TBN pop.

[Shurrikhan]

...

I mean... I guess, but DA isn't really a thing in itself. It's just a way by which TBN limits its casts per minute to less absurd levels of total mitigation.

More importantly, if you anything you add atop that just makes all the more of DRK's performance depend on how many TBNs can be popped per average minute, which is negatively impacted by increasing Vitality in a way that... well... nothing else in this game is.

That's not some crippling flaw, but... it does kind of kill any hype I'd have for it (though admittedly that's in part because I already find TBN plenty satisfying compared to any other on-demand save for perhaps Shadowbringers Nascent Flash).

If there were at least a difference in animation so that it'd better make sense that "Edge/Flood" (which really has two forms) only heals under certain conditions, I'd be cooler with this, but otherwise I'd rather keep it simple via a higher max count of banked MP value (via DA) and any Edge/Flood self-healing. Give a bit to Carve and Spit (2 charges, 40s CD, still shared with Abyssal as to have more control over ST vs. AoE) and to Salt and Darkness (not Salted Earth, as that's use-on-CD), and boom, there's significant event-based truly bursty stuff to schedule mitigation around as not to overcap on HP while also having plenty of flexibility in banking.

[Zairava]

I mean... I guess, but DA isn't really a thing in itself. It's just a way by which TBN limits its casts per minute to less absurd levels of total mitigation.

More importantly, if you anything you add atop that just makes all the more of DRK's performance depend on how many TBNs can be popped per average minute, which is negatively impacted by increasing Vitality in a way that... well... nothing else in this game is.

That's not some crippling flaw, but... it does kind of kill any hype I'd have for it (though admittedly that's in part because I already find TBN plenty satisfying compared to any other on-demand save for perhaps Shadowbringers Nascent Flash).

Fair enough. It's more of a personal preference to me, anyway. I like the idea of getting offensive options from mitigation, it just doesn't work well in practice because of chasing higher dps with it, which leads to one thing or another.

If there were at least a difference in animation so that it'd better make sense that "Edge/Flood" (which really has two forms) only heals under certain conditions, I'd be cooler with this, but otherwise I'd rather keep it simple via a higher max count of banked MP value (via DA) and any Edge/Flood self-healing. Give a bit to Carve and Spit (2 charges, 40s CD, still shared with Abyssal as to have more control over ST vs. AoE) and to Salt and Darkness (not Salted Earth, as that's use-on-CD), and boom, there's significant event-based truly bursty stuff to schedule mitigation around as not to overcap on HP while also having plenty of flexibility in banking.

I think I would prefer a newer animation with the DA proc regardless if we took my route of dps net gain. Say without the proc it remains as edge/flood but with proc it changes to the other action/animation with DA.

I have stated my agreement with it in the past, and I still stand by Carve and Spit/AD being put on a 30/40s cooldown with two stacks. I think I personally would take another combo action after Salt and Darkness, whether or not just one or both of them were to be given some small sustain. all of this and moreso if they give them some interaction with DA procs or elsewhere (likely Blood Weapon, if I had to guess)
This is still also taking into account they actually tone down the ogcd bloat in the burst to begin with. Which as we stated before would be at least partially solved by Shadowbringer being put on one charge on a 60s cooldown with a mana cost.

[Shurrikhan]

Fair enough. It's more of a personal preference to me, anyway. I like the idea of getting offensive options from mitigation, it just doesn't work well in practice because of chasing higher dps with it, which leads to one thing or another..

I like it too, but... as you said. I'd still wouldn't mind giving it a shot; I'm just not optimistic... in anything like the present context.

I think I would prefer a newer animation with the DA proc regardless if we took my route of dps net gain.

I'm all for animation variance. Would like.

This is still also taking into account they actually tone down the ogcd bloat in the burst to begin with. Which as we stated before would be at least partially solved by Shadowbringer being put on one charge on a 60s cooldown with a mana cost.

That's luckily really easy to do. And in addition to slapping an MP cost on Shadowbringer and increasing its potency accordingly, you could also do the same for Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain. Compared to now, you get the same potency under burst, but slightly lower total and, especially, burst apm.

Or, do that and then also tone all those oGCD potencies down just hair, enough to restore the lost APM via further Edge/Flood casts per 2 minutes [5 casts per 2 minutes with a 40s CnS/AD], increase MP generation per 2 minutes accordingly, and voila -- you'll have the same overall apm, same rDPS, and (nearly) identical aDPS, but less of the apm will fall within those bloated burst periods.

[Zairava]

That's luckily really easy to do. And in addition to slapping an MP cost on Shadowbringer and increasing its potency accordingly, you could also do the same for Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain. Compared to now, you get the same potency under burst, but slightly lower total and, especially, burst apm.

Or, do that and then also tone all those oGCD potencies down just hair, enough to restore the lost APM via further Edge/Flood casts per 2 minutes [5 casts per 2 minutes with a 40s CnS/AD], increase MP generation per 2 minutes accordingly, and voila -- you'll have the same overall apm, same rDPS, and (nearly) identical aDPS, but less of the apm will fall within those bloated burst periods.

Honestly, increasing the mp generation has been something on my mind since 5.0 launch. As of right now, to me, if we had increased mp generation even in the current expansion, it would warrant having to use mp on edge/flood more often, at least once or twice in downtime between bursts, which would tremendously help make said downtime be less of a snoozefest, especially with said C&S/AD changes.

[Guts-BSM]

That would still make a 90 second CD ability your only source of healing which you'd always get as soon as its off CD due to the DPS aspect. Instead Edge or Flood should heal, or even Bloodspiller as you use them more frequently and can choose a bit when to delay or not to delay. As for TBN breaking, perhaps Dark Arts can be a defensive aspect too, such as allowing you to heal urself via those mentioned abilities?

this idea is too good to be true or to actually see squeenix implement it that's why i didn't even think about it