Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Gonna follow ItsUrBoi's example and repost my own shortlist, or what all I remember of it, since that's a ton of pages to search through by now:

Simple Sustain + Unbloat Quickfix (+ Living Shadow minor change)

• Shadowbringer, Carve and Spit, and Abyssal Drain now each cost 3000 MP. Their ST and/or AoE damage is increased by the potency of Edge/Flood to compensate.
• CnS/AD gain a second charge, on a 40s recharge time.
• Bloodweapon cooldown reduced to 40s. Remains single-charge.
• Darkside is removed as a gauge/duration-based buff, as it's just a basically non-mechanic anyways after the first Edge cast. MP generation is greatly increased in its place, with potency increases rounding out the rest of the damage otherwise missing.
  (The extent of this increase, which makes up for the bulk of that lost 10% damage amp, is far more than is necessary to simply compensate for the APM lost to ShB and CnS/AD gaining MP costs, causing us to use more oGCDs over our lulls, making them less dull.)
• CnS/AD heal for their damage dealt.
• The MP bar can now offer subtle demarcation of every 3000 MP possessed (standard spenders' cost). The Blood Gauge bar can now offer subtle demarcation of every 40 Blood possessed (likewise, the standard spenders' cost).
• Rather than having a discrete Dark Arts indicator alone, Dark Arts causes next X MP costs on anything but TBN (up to costs equal to 30% of total [3000] MP per TBN) to be nullified, as shown via a black bar portion of your MP bar (with subtle additional demarcation to show how many free casts you have). You can stack MP cost nullification, technically, to up to the full bar. In other words, Dark Arts now stacks up to 3.33 times, and you can just look at the MP gauge itself to see how much you have.
• Edge and Flood heal for a portion of damage dealt, or for their full damage dealt when made free by Dark Arts (one or the other).
• Dark Mind now reduces damage taken by 10%, and magical damage taken by a further 10%.
• Dark Mind upgrades to Oblation, therein having its cooldown reduced (to 40s) and being made castable on allies.
• Living Shadow now instead rapidly copies your weaponskills for 7 strikes, on the same targets, from nearly the same locations, for a portion of damage and full additional effects. (So, rather than a DoT, it can swap about more quickly and now contributes to your resource generation, but also depends upon banking resource in order to maximize its effect. Living Shadow will appear to slip/teleport through you to reach enemies you use weaponskills or gap-close to.)

[Zairava]

Snippy

Can't find anything I really disagree with outside of removing Darkside entirely, it should still exist in some way, shape, or form. Even if we don't think about it.

If I had to choose a method, I would again like to refer to ItsUrBoi's idea for Living Shadow.

Keeping your Living Shadow idea from the shortlist, I would like to add Darkside to it as a bonus effect via a trait that adds it on later, whether it's from the 90-100 range or earlier. It would utilize the Darkside aura from the HW job action trailer and buff the damage output from Fray when it copies your attack by 10/20%. Although, I (and most others) would prefer if it had the aura on Living Shadow baseline. It remains something we really don't think about and is rather taped on, but it still exists some fashion.

[Shurrikhan]

Can't find anything I really disagree with outside of removing Darkside entirely, it should still exist in some way, shape, or form. Even if we don't think about it.

I'm working on another set that treats it far more integrally and as a pace-setter. This is just a quick-fix rough.

But, to me at least, if something isn't thought about at all (beyond this weird superstition handed down that every fight should start with an Edge/Flood, or immediately after Unmend)... it shouldn't exist. It's just an arcane, wholly useless calculations hurdle.