Dark Knight Megathread

**ItsUrBoi** · 05-10-2023 09:57 PM

Currently Delirium is too similar to Inner Release, and Bloodspiller to Fell Cleave.

1. What if DRK got a fallow up combo action after using a Bloodspiller in the form of a new GCD? So whenever you'd use Bloodspiller you'd have a combo GCD to use it into. Same with Quietus.

-> Bloodspiller changes to Bloodspiller II upon execution.
-> Quietus changes to Quietus II upon execution.
A new animation would be pretty cool for both. None of the fallow ups should cost blood gauge, so you can use them outside of Delirium too if you wish.

2. Carve and Spit , Abyssal Drain cooldowns lowered to 20 seconds. Both would benefit greatly if used more often, especially the latter in AoE situations.

3. Put Dark Mind to upgrade into Oblation at higher levels and save 1 hotbar slot.

4. Bring back some form of sustain or resource generation in the form of old Sole Survivor or Blood Price. A great idea I've seen is for Blood price to store up damage ,and when the effect expires or upon a 2nd activation, you are healed for a % of damage taken.

5. Move Dark Missionary to level 70. UCOB and UWU are absolutely horrible without it.

6. For new traits, Esteem can do the new combo GCD off of Bloodspiller and Salted Earth's AoE gives you a 15 second heal over time that lingers on you even if you leave the effected area. Salt and Darkness heals you for 10% of damage dealt + 500 potency.

**DRKoftheAzure** · 05-11-2023 12:39 AM

Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

Currently Delirium is too similar to Inner Release, and Bloodspiller to Fell Cleave.

1. What if DRK got a fallow up combo action after using a Bloodspiller in the form of a new GCD? So whenever you'd use Bloodspiller you'd have a combo GCD to use it into. Same with Quietus.

-> Bloodspiller changes to Bloodspiller II upon execution.
-> Quietus changes to Quietus II upon execution.
A new animation would be pretty cool for both. None of the fallow ups should cost blood gauge, so you can use them outside of Delirium too if you wish.

2. Carve and Spit , Abyssal Drain cooldowns lowered to 20 seconds. Both would benefit greatly if used more often, especially the latter in AoE situations.

3. Put Dark Mind to upgrade into Oblation at higher levels and save 1 hotbar slot.

4. Bring back some form of sustain or resource generation in the form of old Sole Survivor or Blood Price. A great idea I've seen is for Blood price to store up damage ,and when the effect expires or upon a 2nd activation, you are healed for a % of damage taken.

5. Move Dark Missionary to level 70. UCOB and UWU are absolutely horrible without it.

6. For new traits, Esteem can do the new combo GCD off of Bloodspiller and Salted Earth's AoE gives you a 15 second heal over time that lingers on you even if you leave the effected area. Salt and Darkness heals you for 10% of damage dealt + 500 potency.

I didn't forget about you when I woke up, I just needed more time to wake up... and I had to edit my previous post from last night because of how tired was then, which if you haven't seen it yet, I don't blame you because of how unhinged AND tired I was when I first typed that out...

Regarding Dark Missionary, I say have Dark Mind upgrade into Dark Missionary instead at level 50-60 because I can't think of a good level for that upgrade... would also make Dark Missionary more frequently available as a result... everything else is similar to what I was suggesting in my previous post when I went unhinged...

I try to think about what certain things would do to game balance, but then you have certain people who just do not get the first time, and only to start complaining about how overpowered these changes would be should I ever take it the the most logical extreme conclusion in the discussion, AFTER I have thrown game balance out the window...

So I don't know what those people want, so if they start questioning my suggestions after the third time, I'm just going to tell them that those suggestions aren't for them then... because I am not in the mood to explain to them after the 3rd time...

Because when someone makes a gameplay suggestion, always assume that there is a balancing reason behind it...

**Post** · 05-11-2023 01:50 AM

I started typing about how DRK doesn't need Dark Missionary at 70 because it didn't have it then, and the first group brought a DRK, and then I realized that Convalesence, Awareness, Whatever they turned Dark Dance into, Palisade and Eye for an Eye are all gone. I guess Shadow Wall is a shorter cooldown, now, and Feint/Addle have some crossover. Anyways, the jobs are unbalanced at lower levels, but what else is new. When DRK landed, it was the only tank and nigh on the only job that could AoE indefinitely in dungeons below level 40 because of TP limiting PhysRanged and WAR. It was considerably faster than the other tanks, and was really the first time big pulling was easy and efficient to do sub like... Darkhold, cuz that's when all jobs had some AoE finally.

It'd be nice if it got some more distance from WAR with its dps rotation, though, because with ShB's changes to mitigation among all tanks being wholly separated from their resources (other than TBN, but that's neutral if properly used), that's all they have to functionally differentiate themselves nowadays. I don't really care about visuals too much, so they don't really feel different just from looks alone.

I suppose this is more of a general tank statement than a DRK specific one, but the effective removal of enmity as a mechanic from the game wasn't replaced with anything. Parties don't need to manage enmity, tanks hardly even need to position bosses anymore... almost all tanks have to go on for gameplay is their rotation, outside of moonlighting as a healer by mitigating/healing a player that might otherwise die. Seeing as the last two aren't exactly new (PLD has been able to do the latter since 2.0), or even distinct from each other anymore, it'd be nice to maybe see some variety return with other aspects of the job design if they can't make each tank's damage rotation feel distinct. This is harder to do with the advent of our almighty 2 min meta, may PLD's bizarre legacy rotation forever rest in peace.

**Oizen** · 05-11-2023 02:27 AM

I really don't get how you're going to upgrade a 20% Self Magic mit into a teamwide 10% Magic Mit.

All it would do is leave DRK without an extra mitigation, merging it into Oblation makes more sense, but then having a skill that does 20% Magic Mit and 10% All mitigation is pretty confusing, unlsess we're looking to nerf that too.

**DRKoftheAzure** · 05-11-2023 08:05 AM

Originally Posted by Oizen

I really don't get how you're going to upgrade a 20% Self Magic mit into a teamwide 10% Magic Mit.

All it would do is leave DRK without an extra mitigation, merging it into Oblation makes more sense, but then having a skill that does 20% Magic Mit and 10% All mitigation is pretty confusing, unlsess we're looking to nerf that too.

Oh shoot! I just realized I not only reduced the recast of Dark Missionary by also buffed it's effectiveness AND possibly it's duration when I suggested upgrading Dark Mind INTO Dark Missionary. So glad you brought that up because I thought Dark Mind and Dark Missionary had the same mitigation %.

**Shurrikhan** · 05-11-2023 08:46 AM

Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Oh shoot! I just realized I not only reduced the recast of Dark Missionary by also buffed it's effectiveness AND possibly it's duration when I suggested upgrading Dark Mind INTO Dark Missionary. So glad you brought that up because I thought Dark Mind and Dark Missionary had the same mitigation %.

I still don't think Dark Mind upgrading into Dark Missionary is a good idea. They have frequently different use cases.

Why not just do the far simpler thing in having Dark Mind give 10% miti + 10% additional magic miti, and then Oblation grants it a second charge and lets it be used on anyone?

Or turning Oblation into upgrade of, additional effect on, or combo-ability following The Blackest Night? Or just leaving it as is apart from perhaps reducing its recast time to 40s, even?

Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

You know, for AMP for your parser logs thing.

APM is not a "parser logs thing". It's the number of button-presses per minute (typically, including Traits and consistent effects but not including SkS/SpS, when given as a job metric). As in, the only thing other than GCD Speed that makes a job feel faster, which has been pretty essential to DRK identity.

And just for good measure; Living Dead now drops your HP to 1 but you cannot go below 1 HP and whenever you deal damage you heal yourself with a cure potency is 1200 and the duration is 20 seconds with no change to the recast timer...

I don't think there's any chance of DRK getting a 20-second immunity, which could honestly then be worth having the DRK stop attacking just to keep it from doing its health pool's worth of healing too soon (which would otherwise reduce that invuln duration). And yes, so long as one has access to burst healing, one would want to delay meeting that healing requirement as long as they can without losing too much uptime, since preventing the death to Doom also ends the immunity and self-healing.

Nerfing the self-heal from 1500 to 1200, moreover, isn't going to make up for having twice the time in which to get oneself back up, especially since the majority of that could easily be external.

Darkside basically starts out as 3.x Blood Price

Is this... on a CD? If you're gaining 200 MP from every hit against you, your GCD Abyssal Drain that you've given ridiculous potency to let it be used in single-target becomes stupidly overpowered in AoE by simple fact that it so often be afforded.

Goal is to have some overlap with some other jobs in terms of DPS while keeping the core DPS of what we currently have the same...

Why do we need more overlap with other jobs than just our already (GCDs->oGCD spam) WAR-like DPS loop?

Delirium restores 6000 MP on a 30 second cooldown.

I don't mind this, but neither does that seem very new or... Delirium-like? We'll have traded Dark Release for Darkishoten. It gives us a bit more MP management, but will further devalue what our rotation MP generation is actually doing...

And bring back Dark Arts button to give 2 stacks of Dark Arts to be used for MP burst combo on a 30 second cooldown, and have The Blackest Night give 1 Dark Arts stack when it falls off and 2 for when it breaks.

If you're not going to change the functionality of DA from being just TBN's means of refunding itself, there's no need for another button. Just allow it to stack further and have it use DA instead of normal MP only if under 6k MP (i.e., too little to afford another TBN after).

duration caps at 30 seconds and is basically the button you press to refresh the buff timer in between you combos since, again, you really care about APM THAT MUCH...

Liking for the job that has always been the most fast-paced to remain fast-paced is not a desire to take on bloat just to offer 2 more apm than otherwise, especially given that simply buffing the availability of any other action would already likewise increase apm... That'd already have been done via DP's readdition, ShB's CD reduction, and the change to Delirium.

I'm not sure why you'd be spiteful about that. This is also the first time you've even mentioned making Darkside a button, instead of a buff duration, in the first place...

Level 70 is where Darkside becomes Living Shadow where the potency of all abilities go up by 200, which the Living Shadow Mastery potency caps out at 500

We are NOT getting a 500-potency increase to all abilities in place of current Living Shadow. Current Living Shadow is under 2.5k potency. In its duration, one use 12-13 offensive Abilities [oGCDs] (SE, DP, CnS, ShBx2, Edgex4 naturally + 3 from Delirium, with possibly another edge if fitting 4 Syphons into the 20 seconds). At 500 each, that's 6000-6500 potency.

**primarisgoazrr** · 05-11-2023 10:20 AM

Yo friends! I was thinking about what changes make DRK somewhat more unique. I think my main 2 points would be to dump Delirium, because it’s too similar to inner release, and to go all in on shields, a “shield tank” if you will. With that in mind I would make the following changes:

1: With Delirium dumped, Bloodspiller would become the 4th part of you single target combo and Quietus the 3rd part of your AOE.

2: Blood Weapon will give you a shield(10% of HP) upon landing weaponskill/spell, and a damage buff(3%) for each weaponskill/spell used (think requiescat)

3: Dark Mind will be changed to reduce all damage taken by 15%, and have an additional effect: restore MP (3000 over the span of 10 seconds)

4: Carve and Spit will give you a 200 potency shield in addition to restoring MP, and Abyssal Drain will be its AOE upgrade (think Spirits Within to Expiacion)

5: Salted Earth will have a small regen for those standing it (similar to pvp). When you use Salt and Darkness whoever is standing in the bubble will receive heal (250/300 potency maybe)

6: Flood of Darkness/Flood of Shadow will become a 2 stack oGCD, with no MP requirement and on a 60s cooldown. This ability will upgrade into Shadowbringer and extend Darkside by 10 seconds

7: Edge of Darkness/Edge of Shadow would become a line AOE (Weaker because AOE, 200/250 potency maybe)

8: The Blackest Night upon shield breaking on you or the target party member will be granted Oblation, and Dark Arts will double the potency of next Edge of Shadow

9: Dark Missionary will changed to reduce all damage for self and party by 10%

10: Living Shadow will take 5000 MP, since Blood gauge will be gone with Delirium

This is my big wishlist lol, I think with some balancing it would be pretty fun and unique let me know what you all think. Thank you for reading!

**DRKoftheAzure** · 05-12-2023 01:54 AM