Dark Knight Megathread

[Guts-BSM]

i'm gonna say this every once in a while, we need selfheals. idc how as long as we can heal ourselves. i'm not gonna shut up until they give us some d**n heals.

[Mitracia]

i've decided to put away the greatsword for this expansion for a couple of reasons:

1) The button bloat is insane. Whenever I start a pull I feel like there are 100 things I should be pressing and the sad part is that none of them feel satisfying. Sometimes I can't wrap my mind around what should be prioritized in big dungeon pulls.
2) The self sustain is painfully bad. I miss when I could spam dark arts and abyssal drain. Now, I don't like spamming dark arts, but at least I could mitigate a ton of damage.
3) The theme of dark knight feels lost. I love living shadow, but the rest feels like a mix between a dark caster and actual greatsword skills.
4) I think that mp management should be gone or be less punishing when it comes to TBN. I can't wrap my mind around why it costs mp when the other tanks' similar tankbuster skill doesn't cost anything and it's almost equally as good.

Sorry for the rant. I love the theme and aesthetic of DRK, but after tasting warrior leveling I can't go back anymore :/ .

[Oizen]

i'm gonna say this every once in a while, we need selfheals. idc how as long as we can heal ourselves. i'm not gonna shut up until they give us some d**n heals.

Unironically use the new HP potions they added for the new deep dungeon.

Shits pretty good

[nguyentri11]

since they fixed living dead i haven't once died to it

A rare case never happening to 1 person doesn't mean it never happens.

https://clips.twitch.tv/AgileDrabSno...LwmdLcYYp3Ix9K
^ SPOILER for The Omega Protocol(Ultimate) phase 4.

That clip shows the rare scenario I've described where they only got 3 GCDs under the effect of Walking Dead despite always rolling their GCDs.

[nguyentri11]

Of course the other alternative to make sure it never happens, besides receiving a small heal from another party member, is to hold your GCD until Walking Dead procs. But I doubt SE intends for you to play around it like that.

[Marxam]

i'm gonna say this every once in a while, we need selfheals. idc how as long as we can heal ourselves. i'm not gonna shut up until they give us some d**n heals.

Why would you need heals when you could ask for more shields? If TBN was on a 10 sec recast instead it would be broken by most regards, even with the mp cost. Fact of the matter is that TBN functions under the concept that if you took 0 dmg, why do you need a heal? DRK also heals every combo rotation via souleater so to say that DRK has no access to heals is not true. Of course this is all speaking at savage, which your job is tuned to. Anything below that is not regarded, hence the fact that WAR is still great in dungeons ever since 2.0.

They had 10 years to fix how busted WAR can be in dungeons when it comes to self sustain but you know what, they only doubled down on it with nascent flash which can heal you and a party member. The only reason why they kept it is because in savage content it is comparable to DRK in most situations and neither is op. If they really wanted to fix the self sustain in dungeons for DRK they could have replaced Enhanced Unmend to Enhanced Stalwart Soul and instead of reducing plunge recast by 5 secs, it reduces the recast of AD/C&S. Problem fixed. It would work out even better now because there is rarely, if ever, a situation in savage where you want to use unmend because of uptime strats and the insanely large hitboxes.

I expect them to actually add 2 charges to TBN at some point in the future.

[Zairava]

Why would you need heals when you could ask for more shields?.

Because, even if in far fewer cases than before, you can still die during living dead in single target situations by yourself. It was the same reason why people wanted stacks on blood weapon: You can miss that last GCD. Shields are not helping you remove that debuff in single-target, more healing is.

Healing through LD in mob packs is not an issue because you literally remove that debuff instantly in aoe.

You aren't using Souleater because it has passive sustain, you're using it because it's in your 1-2-3, that one Souleater you use during Living Dead isn't going to save you from dying if you miss that last GCD. That's why even having just one CD via any method that gives us self-healing would be of massive benefit. Because shields are effective hp, not healing. Dark Knight is by far the most defensive tank once it hits 70, which isn't much up for debate. It's just behind on some minor sustain it needs to be completely self-sufficient.

I don't even mind how DRK feels now when it comes to survivability, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't lacking in sustain. It doesn't even need to be anything huge.

I don't see them ever giving them 2 charges of TBN purely because of how powerful it would make it. It is good, but outshined by the other tanks cooldowns they received in endwalker, but would VASTLY outperform them if it had two stacks. Especially with how high our HP is going to end up next expansion, it would be essentially ShB TBN but even more cracked. Also no, having some minor sustain isn't necessarily going to make DRK immortal, TBN prevents incoming damage, but healing does not. If it were such an issue, they could just shift some mit around. (putting oblation on one use instead of 2 stacks, for example).

As a sidenote: When you mention TBN getting two stacks, I feel like that was the original plan for lvl 82, but they decided to make oblation instead, which is mostly paired with tbn anyway.

[Shurrikhan]

Because, even if in far fewer cases than before, you can still die during living dead in single target situations by yourself. It was the same reason why people wanted stacks on blood weapon: You can miss that last GCD. Shields are not helping you remove that debuff in single-target, more healing is.

A quick question, though:

If the whole point of all these changes to Living Dead is to make it nigh impossible not to self-cleanse... why make it need to be cleansed at all? No other invulns lose their immunity early due to healing. No other invulns cost players their life from a lack of healing before that duration has even completed.

The free self-heal atop the initial death-prevention is nice, for sure, but it seems an incidental and convoluted feature to compensate for an issue we seem to want rid of regardless.

[Zairava]

A quick question, though:

If the whole point of all these changes to Living Dead is to make it nigh impossible not to self-cleanse... why make it need to be cleansed at all? No other invulns lose their immunity early due to healing. No other invulns cost players their life from a lack of healing before that duration has even completed.

The free self-heal atop the initial death-prevention is nice, for sure, but it seems an incidental and convoluted feature to compensate for an issue we seem to want rid of regardless.

In hindsight I may have come across that it's the primary reason I want the sustain but it isn't, apologies for wording it poorly there.

The point is to help Dark Knight have more sustain in general, having it would just make handling Living Dead even easier.

I have stated in the past that I don't mind LD having that consequence in general, but so long as it exists people will inevitably complain about it. It took them 7 years just to give us what they did for Living Dead. Breaking it down, it would just be better if the death penalty got axed, because there really is no solution for it except for making it impossible not to cleanse, if they want to keep things streamlined.

The ideal scenario would just be to remove the death penalty but then it essentially becomes holmgang with cracked Bloodwhetting baked in so...what could we give to it to make it a bit different? We could just keep the activation upon "death" as the most simple solution. It more or less functions the same, it just mandates you actually would have died for the effect to activate.

I imagine they would likely nerf the HP restoration to anywhere from 200-300 potency per weaponskill or spell as well.

[ItsUrBoi]

I will rewrite some stuff I thought on for a while again hopefully more people see it, or the right people see it and think about it.

Regarding defensives:
->TBN no longer has an MP cost. CD increased to 20 seconds, duration increased to 8 seconds. Dark Arts removed.
->Dark Mind changed to granting 10% damage reduction, with a further 10% reduction against magical. 60 sec CD. At level 82, this upgrades into Oblation, increasing the magic damage reduction to 20%, grants 2 charges, each with a CD of 45 seconds.
->Abyssal Drain removed. C&S has AoE falloff and gets a bigger animation.

New defensive:
->Sole Survivor: marks target and nearby enemies with "Another Victim" status. When surrounded by 3 or more enemies, also grants "Blood price".
"Another victim" effect: dealing damage to this unit heals the DRK who applied this mark for a potency of 250. Lasts 10 seconds.
"Blood price" effect: getting hit by any attack grants 25 MP and 1 blood. Last 10 seconds.

Regarding existing offensive attacks:
->Syphoon strike restores 1000MP and Souleater gains 15 blood.
->Darkside's damage bonus increased to 15%.
->Using Bloodspiller combos into 2 new attacks. Each attack costs 25 blood, including Bloodspiller.
Quietus removed, Bloodspiller has a new animation or the same animation but much stronger to justify having AoE falloff damage.
->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.
->Living Shadow before level 100, works the same it does now. At level 100 works as fallows: ( blood cost removed )
Merge with Fray, becoming one with your inner darkness, increasing the potency of all attacks by 150 potency for 20 seconds. 120 sec CD.
Gain a much visually stronger effect of Darkside, similar to RPR's Enshourd.
->Blood Weapon removed.