Dark Knight Megathread

[The_User]

What DRK lack :

• No synergy between job action, almost everything is disjointed.

• No job evolution, DRK form lower level to max level just play the same.

• Button Bloat, there are action that divided to single target and aoe for no reason

What I would do :

• I would address the easiest problem first by merging the Edge&Flood into

Somethingbringer Ability Ogcd Attack Range 10y Radius 10y
Deals unaspected damage to all enemies in a straight line before you with a potency of ??? for the first enemy, and 60% less for all remaining enemies.

Cost ????MP Increase Blood Gauge by??

• Then I would Make Blood Weapon consume the Blood gauge

Blood Weapon Toggle Ability
Grants the effect of Blood Weapon,reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by ??% at the cost of ?? Blood Gauge upon landing weaponskill or spell. Effect fades and cannot be used without a sufficient Blood Gauge.
Recast 5s.

• Blood gauge that doesn't decrease on it own unless it get consume by landing the attack, in this way player won't be hard pressed to always play with a fast gcd speed, thus have more control over the pace.

• With Blood Weapon no longer a resource generator we would need another source of mp and another source of for our second gauge and since DRK is lacking a variety of gcd attack I would make

Abyssal Drain Weaponskill Gcd Attack Range 25y Radius 5y
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of ??? for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies.
Additionale Effect : Restore ???MP

Additional Effect : Grant ? stack of Abyss

Recast 30s. Max Charge : 2

• Bloodspiller and Quietus is uninteresting and having these 2 action seperated from each other just contributed to a problem of button bloat so I would merge them and make new action that consume Abyss stack like...

Darkpassenger Weaponskill Gcd Attack Range 10y Radius 10y
Deals unaspected damage to all enemies in a straight line before you with a potency of ??? for the first enemy, and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Cost : 1 Abyss stack.
Additional Effect : Increase Dark Gauge

• Salted Earth is another action that caused an over weaving problem and it doesn't connect to other action so I would like to make a gcd instead as well as provide a significant heal at least in dungeon. With new targeting system don't seem to have a problem with a pool aoe now so I would like to change it to be able to place it around the target instead of limit the range to around the player. Here is what I envision :

Salted Earth Weaponskill Gcd Attack Range 25y Radius 5y
Creates a patch of salted earth around the target, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 60 to any enemies who enter.

Additional Effect : Absorbs 100% of damage dealt as HP
Duration: 15s Recast 30s.

• Living Shadow pack a lot potency for no reason but wasn't able to make the player base feel like it deliver an impact because it's own subtle way to deal damage meanwhile Salt and Darkness seem like an action that serve as a finisher but due to an attack potency that failed to reach the level of the proper finisher it remain an another mediocre attack in DRK tool kit. I would like to make this a real finisher that connect with Darkpassenger by remove the Living Shadow and allocated the attack potency to other action such as Salt and Darkness

Salt and Darkness Ability Ogcd Attack Range 0y Radius 5y
All enemies standing in the corrupted patch of Salted Earth take additional unaspected damage with a potency of ??? for the first enemy, and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Maximum potency increase as Dark Gauge increase.
Consume all Dark Gauge upon execution.

• Now I think DRK action would more or less regain some synergy

------------------------------------------------------------------------



Other issue we talked a lot about DRK is the TBN and the defensive actions. DRK lose physical damage mitigation when Developer took Dark Dance and give it to GNB, result in a situation that DRK no longer have extra mitigate for a physical damage before they able to reach 2 expansions later to acquire "The Blackest Night" action. Needless to say there are a lot of fight that full of physical damage that the DRK player have to go through before reach that point in the story and we would have to suffer again should we partake in the fight that TBN action isn't available!!! thus I would like to make such a change :

• Bring back Shadowskin and make it replace Dark Mind

• Make Shadowskin upgrade to The Blackest Night when the action is available
• Make TBN 25s. recast and make don't consume MP.
• Then Make The Blackest Night gain physical mitigation effect as an upgrade at later level
• Change Oblation action into a heal that require mp cost.
• And make Obalation consume Dark Art instead of MP that the DRK received from when TBN completely absorbed an attack
• In this way player that want the significant of breaking the TBN and player who doesn't want to lose DPS when it doesn't break would be able to more or less able to compromise.
• This is what the description of these action would look like:

Shadow Skin
Reduces damage taken by 15%.
Duration 20s. Recast time 90s.




The Blackest Night
Creates a barrier around self or target party member that absorbs damage totaling 25% of target's maximum HP.
Grants Dark Arts when barrier is completely absorbed.
Dark Arts Effect: Consume Dark Arts instead of MP to execute Oblation

[[Upgrade] Additional Effect : Reduces damage taken by a party member or self by 10%.]




Oblation
Restore target HP. Cure Potency 1200. Cost : ????mp

• With this there would be at least an evolution/upgrade and synergy in defensive actions of DRK

[Zairava]

big snippery

We can almost all agree that there's no real synergy in the kit, however...

1) The issue isn't button bloat, it's an oGCD bloat during our big bursts..all the while there is zero interaction within the kit outside of DA granting a free flood/edge. However, if they do absolutely nothing there WILL be button bloat come next expansion.

I do believe there could be actions combined and given a new animation for said ability, though.

merging Edge/Flood gives us even less abilities that use mana and still doesn't solve the issue of oGCD bloat into one single window. I'd like to keep a single-target and aoe variant, but if they combine them...a conal aoe, please.

2a) I don't believe your Blood Weapon suggestion would actually work well in practice, but I can see what you're going for.

As for Abyssal Drain granting mp, unless it gives us 1.5k per charge (or they massively buff our mp generation), it will NOT be more useful than just having Blood Weapon give us both mp and blood gauge. Furthermore, they would have to skyrocket our blood gauge generation to make up for it. I would rather Blood Weapon just gives the haste it gave when using it before 5.0.

It would be cool to see them merge Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain into something we use every 60s though. Some heavy-hitting ability with a 3000mp cost.

MP expenditure could be thus:

• Shadowbringer on a one-charge system
• Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain merge suggestion as stated above
• Edge/Flood
• The Blackest Night

2b) Bloodspiller and Quietus are only uninteresting because we spam it so much.

You mention Salted Earth being a root cause of causing an overweaving issue along with Salt and Darkness feeling like it's meant to be a finisher, but falling flat because of potency, which is not the case.

• Your idea for Salted Earth doesn't change anything because it doesn't solve the issue of the boss moving outside of the puddle. Salted Earth should have some other interaction and stay. That, or just bring Scourge back as a GCD, replacing Salted Earth and Salt and Darkness and make it an aoe DoT we use every 30s that costs 20 Blood gauge. It would kill not two, not three, but FOUR birds in one stone.
  1. oGCD bloat reduction
  2. Blood Gauge having more meaningful usage since we would need to ensure we have 20 gauge for an important ability
  3. Adds a GCD for a much needed change of pace
  4. even if slight, more interesting downtime
• Salt and Darkness is a mediocre ability with a mediocre animation that only serves as yet another oGCD that feels slapped on to DRK's kit, which DOES cause an over-weaving issue. Nothing about it feels like a finisher.
• Bloodspiller feels much more like it should be a finisher given it's animation, we just got bored of it because of how often we use it. If they're gonna give us any aoe finisher combo, make something of Bloodspiller and either remove Quietus or use it in some form during the combo.
• I criticize Living Shadow a lot now for reasons beaten to death, but to safe..It is just a press and forget overglorified DoT, and I still hold that opinion. However...between LS and S&D, Living Shadow at least holds some identity lorewise.

3) DRK is fantastic defensively, it doesn't need another physical damage mit because of TBN.

• I get why people are suggesting Oblation merging with Dark Mind, it's to reduce button bloat, but it makes far more sense to merge it as an evolution for TBN, as I've stated numerous times. Oblation already feels like it's meant to weaved with TBN. The HP gains we get from power creep has far more to do with TBN not popping than a mere 10% mit does. You even suggested to give TBN more mitigation later on. Dark Mind is incredibly powerful where applicable, and DRK has been known for being the most magic defensive tank, and that's some semblance of whatever identity is left I'd like to keep.
• Bringing Shadowskin back as a low level TBN IS, however, a good change I've suggested as well. The upgrade path should be Shadowskin->The Blackest Night->Oblation.
• It doesn't make sense to make oblation a 1,200 potency heal, the animation itself implies it's a dark barrier protecting you. Moving the mp to that isn't something they would do either, because it would be 3k that could've been used on edge/flood.
• To give DRK some sustain to help it where needed, again, just revamp Blood Price into something that pools damage taken up to a certain heal potency and when it reaches that potency, it heals you for that amount. It would also heal you for whatever WAS pooled at the end of the duration if that condition was not met.

edit: After re-reading a few times, I thought of an issue some people may find with a suggestion i listed above, particularly Scourge returning as a 30s Dot costing 20 gauge. Which may bring up the question of "But we need 50 gauge for Living Shadow in our opener"

Some solutions would be:

• Make it free to use (the least interesting, but simple, option)
• Make Blood Weapon immediately grant 50 blood gauge on top of it already generating gauge
• Make Delirium immediately give 50 Blood Gauge on top of granting the hypothetical Bloodspiller combo for free

[ItsUrBoi]

I get why people are suggesting Oblation merging with Dark Mind, it's to reduce button bloat, but it makes far more sense to merge it as an evolution for TBN, as I've stated numerous times. Oblation already feels like it's meant to weaved with TBN. The HP gains we get from power creep has far more to do with TBN not popping than a mere 10% mit does. You even suggested to give TBN more mitigation later on. Dark Mind is incredibly powerful where applicable, and DRK has been known for being the

If you merge TBN with Oblation you are just making it harder to gain Dark Arts. That's the reason the developers decided to make it a separate button to begin with. Merging it with Dark Mind doesn't mean you are making DRK be no longer the "Magic defensive tank" but you are perhaps helping it in level 70 content where you don't really see the bonus of that?

If anything:
-> Either make Delirium a combo like PLD's Requiescat combo / GNB's Gnashing fang combo OR make it an entirely new thing that is NOT Inner Release but for DRK nor a combo - something unique. ( ex: Converts Darkside into Blood, prevents gaining Darkside but you gain Blood ). Inner Release on Warrior is somewhat cool because of the Fell Cleave critical hit being its identity and the really cool visual effects. DRK has none of these.

->Move C&S and AD to be GCDs with a short cooldown ( 20 seconds ) Their cooldown being tied is alright since you'd wanna use either depending on the situation.

->Add some form of sustain. It can be either a new ability that heals you instantly consuming Darkside or "Enhanced Dark Arts" which would make the free Edge/Flood of Shadow heal you.

->Merge the defensive cooldowns. Either upgrade TBN into Oblation or Dark Mind and Oblation together. For the first part a decent work around would be to change TBN to be "a barrier equal to a heal of 1200 potency"

->Living Shadow change to be No Mercy but cooler visual effects please?

[Zairava]

If you merge TBN with Oblation you are just making it harder to gain Dark Arts. That's the reason the developers decided to make it a separate button to begin with. Merging it with Dark Mind doesn't mean you are making DRK be no longer the "Magic defensive tank" but you are perhaps helping it in level 70 content where you don't really see the bonus of that?

If anything:
-> Either make Delirium a combo like PLD's Requiescat combo / GNB's Gnashing fang combo OR make it an entirely new thing that is NOT Inner Release but for DRK nor a combo - something unique. ( ex: Converts Darkside into Blood, prevents gaining Darkside but you gain Blood ). Inner Release on Warrior is somewhat cool because of the Fell Cleave critical hit being its identity and the really cool visual effects. DRK has none of these.

->Move C&S and AD to be GCDs with a short cooldown ( 20 seconds ) Their cooldown being tied is alright since you'd wanna use either depending on the situation.

->Add some form of sustain. It can be either a new ability that heals you instantly consuming Darkside or "Enhanced Dark Arts" which would make the free Edge/Flood of Shadow heal you.

->Merge the defensive cooldowns. Either upgrade TBN into Oblation or Dark Mind and Oblation together. For the first part a decent work around would be to change TBN to be "a barrier equal to a heal of 1200 potency"

->Living Shadow change to be No Mercy but cooler visual effects please?

At any rate, merging Oblation with either Dark Mind or TBN would prevent button bloat in the future, so whichever one they go for is going to be a net positive either way.

The only thing I'll comment on here is that you see the bonus of Dark Mind as early as the chrysalis because its tankbusters are magic damage.

You handled the Delirium, Living Shadow, and merging of defensive cooldowns, nothing needs to be said on my part for those. The rest I'm just going to put my combine with my input for an updated list of suggestions for the dev team.

Either perform ItsUrBoi's suggestion for Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain, or merge them into a strong aoe on the GCD with a 30s or 60s cooldown to further prevent button bloat issues for the future.

Again, referencing the post above mine, add some form of minor sustain. Let Edge/Flood heal you with Dark Arts or revamp Blood Price to for percentage based healing based on the damage you took, or allow it to pool damage you take until it hits a certain threshold and then it heals you for that amount.
Do something with salted earth, Salt and Darkness was an attempt but feels more like a wasted opportunity since it feels like just another oGCD we need to press.
Another GCD for us to spend gauge on a cooldown, whether that's placed into the Delirium combo abilities as we have suggested or otherwise.
Have some interaction with the darkside timer in itself or just make Darkside a passive. (a couple Delirium changes we suggested a few times would remedy this)

[Oizen]

->Living Shadow change to be No Mercy but cooler visual effects please?

I'd rather have Living shadow as it is now then turning it into a boring 3rd buff skill, on top of Blood Weapon and Delirium, that solely says "do more damage"

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather have Living shadow as it is now then turning it into a boring 3rd buff skill, on top of Blood Weapon and Delirium, that solely says "do more damage"

Why, though? A DoT, unless specifically given some connecting additional effect that influences the use of another ability or requiring sync into a +%damage CD, doesn't have any interaction. A damage multiplier, on the other hand, inherently advantages syncing (to) it in order to increase the (bonus) potency dealt over that duration. It's... inherently more than any single source of potency.

With Living Shadow a simple oGCD attack, DoT or otherwise, it's one among several. Were Living Shadow a damage window, it'd be DRK's first -- hardly redundant. Neither is unique nor ideal, but the latter is still generally better than the first, I would think, especially if flexible in its timing to better allow for sync and if the typical time to cool would desync from others so that you have a with- and without alternating rhythm.

(No, Blood Weapon and Delirium are not "damage buffs", at least by any typical definition -- i.e., unless you'd also call Bloodspiller or Shadowbringer a damage buff. They're free-casts / resource CDs.)

[Lyth]

...

Worth noting that all of the other short recast upgrades also have a healing effect attached (Catharsis of Corundum/Knight's Benediction/Bloodwhetting's lifesteal). Oblation is just a flat 10% DR cooldown without any healing attached, and you can't even apply it to every TBN if you wanted to.

Not that this is at all hard to work around. Just follow Catharsis of Corundum's design.

The Blackest Night: Creates a barrier around self or target party member totally 25% of target's maximum HP. Duration 7 seconds. Grants Dark Arts when barrier is completely absorbed.
Additional Effect: Grants Oblation to target.
Oblation Effect: Heals X% of damage absorbed by The Blackest Night. When The Blackest Night expires (i.e. due to either damage or the buff duration), grants target a barrier totaling Y% of target's maximum HP.

Now you have parity and you can keep the playstyle.

[Shurrikhan]

What DRK lack :

• No synergy between job action, almost everything is disjointed.

Okay, but what exactly do you mean by "synergy" here and what implementation of that "synergy" would be a net improvement?

If you mean one ability buffing another, the vast majority of the time that "synergy" is just a euphemism for either...

• "bundling" or "codependence" if there is only a singular buffer, such that A only sees use through buffing B or B can only be buffed by A, or
• "ramp-up" if the buffers apply broadly, such as having to open combat with a damage buff.

Those involve trade-offs, even though their negatives may be reducible. In the first case, for instance, you may have a flexible spender if the singular buffer or its shared resource costs can nonetheless affect multiple skills in different ways (as per Dark Arts), but that then means your base skills are weaker. That leaves you with a further issue to hammer out -- responsiveness.

(Luckily, that's easily done by flipping the DA-like effect from a buff to a dynamic follow-up skill, especially if it's done without a player-animation and therefore "animation-lock" [the period after each player action for which not further player actions can be executed, equal to 0.5s + roundtrip ping].)

That said, there are other ways of looking at synergies beyond what is obvious simply from tooltips. Much like in a card game where you need to manage certain functions, fill certain needs at/by certain times, etc., skills can be complementary or supplementary to each other without needing to specifically include among their "Additional Effects" some reference to another skill or apply broad buffs to all.

Heck, whether a broad buff even applies a synergy or not is contextual; if a Haste buff doesn't actually provide enough value to make a rotational difference (or especially, one with disproportionate impact), it's harder to call that a real "synergy".

While that contextual synergy is, of course, not going to feature as obviously in a game where "burst" is largely no different from "sustain" except in how much they depend on multiplicative returns via stacked raid buffs (ultimately, from composition), but it's worth considering.

Touch of Death and Fracture weren't useful to Monk just because they were DoTs, nor was Yaten-Enpi useful to Samurai just because it was a ranged attack. The first pair were useful because they were non-positional and in part because their tuning wasn't that high, allowing them to be held at little cost in order to sync rotations or even guarantee a full-powered hit against a boss that would turn wildly during that GCD. Yaten-Enpi, in turn, could compensate for a single GCD of overclock where one would otherwise only be able to move a minimum of two GCDs.

A DRK set up in such a way as to appreciate the difference between, or appreciate both among, synergies that are on-paper (one skill's "Additional Effect" referencing another) and in-practice (context allowing a skill to have varied uses that draw a disproportionately improved effect from other parts of the kit even despite zero mention of those synergies in tooltips) would be, I'd imagine, a far more involved job than simply one with an extra mechanic added atop everything and embedded into each tooltip.

That's not an either-or, mind you. I'm a fan of bringing back a revised Dark Arts, not replacing that direction with this, and the one would likely help the other. But I feel we should be looking at more ambitious ends than just on-paper synergies.