Dark Knight Megathread

[Mekhana]

Abyssal Drain definately is the way to go. I'd also like to see a Salted Earth rework. The way dungeons are so streamline right now like Call of Duty campaign maps, its uses of a regular placed dot AoE are very questionable. When it comes to any kind of boss, with so many teleporting, transitions and invulnerabilities its become a pain to remember when you should or shouldn't Salted Earth for every fight/situation. The same can be said for Living Shadow except that one has a big wind up.

[Shurrikhan]

Currently drk needs 1 more gcd and 1 less ogcd(1 stack of shadowbringer) on there burst phase.

Why a GCD? And why would you get rid of the flexibility of an extra Shadowbringer charge just to provide it (especially when you could just... make Shadowbringer that GCD, with its potency increased by DRK's appgcd)?

Salt Earth needs to be delete and replace by a new skill, because of the 90 sec cooldown and it's a long ground aoe.

...DRK is already extremely skewed by raid buffs. If anything, it needs more that would rarely sync up, so that there isn't such a large gap between its damage with vs. without raidbuffs.

Two-thirds of its damage comes from Salt and Darkness, which can be double-woven into the same GCD-gap during which it's initially placed. If the enemies move out immediately, you only lose 33.3% of the damage. If the enemies move out 3 seconds early, you only lose less than 7% of that damage. It's not a huge deal.

dark mind/obliation merge in one skill(a 60 secs cd 2 usages with 20% magic mit with 10% physical mit for 10 secs to you/teamate)

That's still a net nerf. Dark Mind + Oblation currently sum to 30% magical and 10% physical mitigation for 10 seconds per minute. While you could deemphasize the magic mitigation a bit, you'd still want to at least reduce the CD slightly in compensation to make up for the practical loss from reducing fine control.

Add % lifestyle on blood weapon

Then DRK would have basically no control over that healing, since Blood Weapon in used almost purely as soon as its CD is refreshed.

Sustain should be timeable, not just uncontrollably gained per minute. Attach it something at least partly bankable instead, like our gauge spenders (be that MP or Blood).

Abyssal Drain definately is the way to go. I'd also like to see a Salted Earth rework. The way dungeons are so streamline right now like Call of Duty campaign maps, its uses of a regular placed dot AoE are very questionable. When it comes to any kind of boss, with so many teleporting, transitions and invulnerabilities its become a pain to remember when you should or shouldn't Salted Earth for every fight/situation.

Unless you're attempting to kite the mobs for the whole length of the fight... you're going to have plentiful opportunity to use Salted Earth even in dungeons.

As for occasionally having to pick which edge of the boss's hitbox to place Salted Earth on so that it keeps ticking on them through the next mechanic... honestly, that sounds like a bonus (more fun gameplay) to me. I'd rather not have it made even more foolproof.

Heck, I'd rather just see ground-targeted AoEs made able to queue [without needing mods, that is] and to return Salted Earth to being placeable anywhere in range, perhaps with a draw-in.

[Oizen]

Abyssal Drain definately is the way to go. I'd also like to see a Salted Earth rework. The way dungeons are so streamline right now like Call of Duty campaign maps, its uses of a regular placed dot AoE are very questionable. When it comes to any kind of boss, with so many teleporting, transitions and invulnerabilities its become a pain to remember when you should or shouldn't Salted Earth for every fight/situation. The same can be said for Living Shadow except that one has a big wind up.

I haven't really expeirenced that.
This patch I think theres like, one instance where if you pull Golbez weird he'll walk out of it to the center, but just don't do that.
P9 and 11 kinda just stay in the center and never really go anywhere, p10 and p12-2 are wall bosses, leaivng p12-1 which... the only time she teleports away while the skill is up she's going untargetable all together for limitcut, so again just don't do that. Its also such an insignificant damage loss to miss a tick or two of Salted, as long as you're landing Salt and Darkness its really not going to make much of a difference.

I'd very much like to see Salted Earth stay as part of DRK's kit, and expanded to be a tank utility move much like it is in PvE. Wouldn't need all of the effects, but a damage resist+regen would be great, and if it actually had the ability to suck mobs into one spot that be amazing for dungeons.

I honestly just want DRK to cast more Magic, and I like the idea of any sustain/regen DRK having coming from offensive magic attacks, so Salted or Abyssal sound perfect for it.

[Sazuzaki]

Agreed with the keep Salted Earth but expand its usability, as most of the faults I see with it are perfectly avoidable.

What Salted Earth lacks in damage could be made up for in utility, much like PvP.

[GoatOfWar]

I haven't really expeirenced that.
This patch I think theres like, one instance where if you pull Golbez weird he'll walk out of it to the center, but just don't do that.
P9 and 11 kinda just stay in the center and never really go anywhere, p10 and p12-2 are wall bosses, leaivng p12-1 which... the only time she teleports away while the skill is up she's going untargetable all together for limitcut, so again just don't do that. Its also such an insignificant damage loss to miss a tick or two of Salted, as long as you're landing Salt and Darkness its really not going to make much of a difference.

I'd very much like to see Salted Earth stay as part of DRK's kit, and expanded to be a tank utility move much like it is in PvE. Wouldn't need all of the effects, but a damage resist+regen would be great, and if it actually had the ability to suck mobs into one spot that be amazing for dungeons.

I honestly just want DRK to cast more Magic, and I like the idea of any sustain/regen DRK having coming from offensive magic attacks, so Salted or Abyssal sound perfect for it.

Salted earth should follow the player around like an Aura, keeping the damage over time and providing some Aoe healing and/or mit inside the circle until you pop salt and darkness to drop it.
That way you are rewarded for good positioning and delaying your burst hit as much as possible, which will vary inbetween uses as it will eventually line up with the burst window again.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'd rebalance Salted to make it be like, 5s CD, 30s duration, so you can easily reposition it, it has 100% uptime, it's potency is rebalanced to account for it being 100% uptime, and then we have gameplay centered around 'stand in Salted for some kind of bonus'. Maybe it gives mitigation, maybe it allows certain skills to have additional healing effects, maybe it makes Carve and Spit/Bloodspiller cleave and hit all enemies in a cone in front of you while you're in it, or upgrade Souleater into Power Slash and it becomes a Line AOE, IDK, if anything I'm surprised it didn't get axed going into EW considering it has been made more and more irrelevant in terms of CD, damage, duration etc over time, Salt and Darkness is not remotely interesting to me and it's just a lifesupport update to try and claim 'Salted Earth is still relevant'.

[Oizen]

Tank leylines.

[Marxam]

Salted earth should follow the player around like an Aura, keeping the damage over time and providing some Aoe healing and/or mit inside the circle until you pop salt and darkness to drop it.
That way you are rewarded for good positioning and delaying your burst hit as much as possible, which will vary inbetween uses as it will eventually line up with the burst window again.

The irony is that the PvP version does just that, with the exception of the aura effect. You have a regen while in the circle while also acting as mitigation. The only thing that annoyed me was that at the start of EW they implemented a QoL where target aoe's can be limited to its max range regardless of how far you put your cursor so the change that players were apparently complaining about in ShB was already fixed at a fundamental level, yet they decided that salted is now point blank. It proves that maybe the systems design team doesn't really communicate with the job design team or at the very least forego any sense of utility in favor of just ease of use.

However I will continue to state that healing for DRK is redundant when they have very strong shields like TBN and imo they need more "shield-like" cds similar to how WAR has multiple healing cds. You don't need a heal when you take 0 dmg.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rebalance Salted to make it be like, 5s CD, 30s duration, so you can easily reposition it, it has 100% uptime, it's potency is rebalanced to account for it being 100% uptime, and then we have gameplay centered around 'stand in Salted for some kind of bonus'.

Protection Paladin PTSD.

I would quit DRK over that. Not even kidding.

I'm all for making Salted Earth a bit more interesting, but I absolutely do not want all other matters of DRK's responsiveness pigeonholed behind, first, placing unholy ground constantly.

[ForsakenRoe]

Protection Paladin PTSD.

I would quit DRK over that. Not even kidding.

I'm all for making Salted Earth a bit more interesting, but I absolutely do not want all other matters of DRK's responsiveness pigeonholed behind, first, placing unholy ground constantly.

Was thinking more along the lines of Blood DK, I can see why you'd say that but if the CD on 'moving the AOE' is short enough, and the duration long enough, you shouldn't have to 'constantly' place it. Like in a dungeon, you wouldn't keep placing the AOE until you get to the 'wall' where you're settling to kill all the mobs, and then you place the AOE, and just stand in it for 30s before replacing it (dodging orange ouch as needed). 5sec is not 'you need to replace the AOE this often', it's to replace how Blood has a 'trait' that sometimes resets the CD on Death and Decay when you Autoattack, allowing them to get 100% uptime (but gated by RNG). This way it'd at least be consistent, and if nothing else, it'd differentiate the class's gameplay from WAR a bit more

Or if it's really such a crushing issue, SE can increase the radius of the bubble, I hear they like doing that recently. I wouldn't, I'd just say 'lmao the CD is 5 seconds if you need to move elsewhere for whatever reason, place a new one it costs you nothing'

edit: a thought: replacing a DOT every 30s should come fairly naturally to any longtime DRK player. After all, Scourge was a 30s duration DOT

Tank leylines.

That you can reposition to anywhere on the arena, every 5sec if needed. And balanced around 100% uptime, meaning the second-to-second effect is very low and missing one tick of damage (3sec cos it's a ground DOT effect) from not refreshing it would likely cost you like... 20 potency. But yes, other than that, completely identical to leylines.

If anything, I'd argue that it's current form is tank leylines, just that it's the enemy that has to stay in it. After all, if you place leylines and the enemy immediately places a poo puddle under them, you want to wall it. If you place Salted and the boss immediately jumps to another part of the arena for a mechanic (ie Hesperos Pinax for example), you can't get Salt and Darkness off and you want to wall it. You could say 'know the fight better' and that's true to an extent, but to say a '100% uptime' version is 'tank leylines' is just a gross oversimplification, and also just inaccurate as an assertion