Dark Knight Megathread

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Holmgang and Shake it off will get buffed again next expansion

Holmgang trait lv98 - Holmgang will now recover 50% of damage taken as HP upon expiration.

Shake it Off - added +20% HP recovery from Healing actions for 15s.

Living Dead - reverted to pre 6.1 state because it made DRK too powerful.

Dark Missionary - removed because it isnt a shield

[Diabolika]

Hard to understand how the dev team can find reasonable buffing all other tanks, especially WAR with all its self-sustain silliness, and not making a single meaningful adjustment to DRK. What I find ironic is that lifesteal/self-sustain abilities are more akin to DRK's core identity than WAR's, but here they decided to "invert things" for some reason. I love Yoship, but I'd appreciate if he got his head out of the sand and stopped mindlessly approving all the devs bullsh*t decisions they make while stoned.

[GoatOfWar]

Hard to understand how the dev team can find reasonable buffing all other tanks, especially WAR with all its self-sustain silliness, and not making a single meaningful adjustment to DRK. What I find ironic is that lifesteal/self-sustain abilities are more akin to DRK's core identity than WAR's, but here they decided to "invert things" for some reason. I love Yoship, but I'd appreciate if he got his head out of the sand and stopped mindlessly approving all the devs bullsh*t decisions they make while stoned.

War's core identity has become to be the best at everything i guess.

[Oizen]

Holmgang and Shake it off will get buffed again next expansion

Its funny to me that Dark Missionary and Heart of Light are the exact same skill.
But go to PLD and WAR and Shake is just Better Veil.

Really feeling the effort here.

[Shurrikhan]

What I find ironic is that lifesteal/self-sustain abilities are more akin to DRK's core identity than WAR's

DRK, across most of the franchise, has been a DPS who can burst or conserve by spending HP and... well, actually, only in certain games can they even steal it back; in the rest, just the fact that you didn't spend HP means you're conserving.

It's like SCH's Energy Drain: a unique way to prevent a particular resource from ever becoming redundant. But that has never turned it into a Blood Death Knight or the like. It's less anything like a vampiric tank than a life-spending Berserker who can, either inefficiently or per long cooldown, recoup/pad the margins for some of that loss.

That doesn't put it in a better position than Warrior, the likes of which in any iteration with cooldowns, has always had self-sustain (at greater values and with fewer conditions than what DRK has had).

Having Warrior start out as the tank with high passive eHP and significant self-sustain but nearly-zero mitigation wasn't an attempt to "invert things". It was (A) a means of polarizing the tank lineup for the time so that it and Paladin were not interchangeable, and (B) was well based in the franchise's prior iterations of Warrior.

Heck, if even before any of the jobs or classes had come out, if the plan from the start was simply to have a less timing-sensitive and more damage-dependent tank opposite a more timing-sensitive and traditional tank, then Warrior was the better fit for the prior than was DRK.

WAR is the battlefield self-sustainer. DRK's identity has been more about dynamism and flexibility. Which, despite the already inordinate amount of copy-pasta from PLD (which seemed the majority of their design limit since 2.1), we did see through DRK's Dark Arts.

Imo, they could have stuck with spending HP instead of MP* (especially since every spending option included some degree of utility, including bonus healing from buffing one's then damage-based Souleater), but the latter does allow for more flexible timing (less threat of unintentional overcapping, able still to be spent while at low HP, etc.).

* This wasn't just despite being on a tank, but because it was on a tank. On a DPS, HP-spending sees too little interaction with HP as a meaningful resource in itself, and therefore too easily devolves into solely a means for healers to spend excess oGCD heals, an obligation to maintain Regen on them, or at its most powerful, and obligation to Cure/Physick/Benefic spam.

[Derio]

WAR is easy and probably the most desired dungeon tank. Everything about warrior was improved.

DRK and GNB both have issues with their party wide mit only affecting one damage type. Hopefully in 7.0 that will be improved. We saw what they did with self sustain in the PLD rework. I am guessing they will do the same with GNB and DRK in the upcoming expansion otherwise they need to look at the damage disparity between tanks.

[Rithy255]

Holmgang trait lv98 - Holmgang will now recover 50% of damage taken as HP upon expiration.

Shake it Off - added +20% HP recovery from Healing actions for 15s.

Living Dead - reverted to pre 6.1 state because it made DRK too powerful.

Dark Missionary - removed because it isnt a shield

You forgot the change to TBN "we made it mitigate 400 barrier potency to be more in line with warriors bloodwhetting barrier instead of the 25% it was too strong compared to other tank abilities, we are also putting it on a 25 second cooldown."

[Mekhana]

I am guessing they will do the same with GNB and DRK in the upcoming expansion otherwise they need to look at the damage disparity between tanks.

History proves otherwise.

[Marxam]

War's core identity has become to be the best at everything i guess.

uhh its been that way since 2.1.

[ItsUrBoi]

Its just crazy to me how badly balanced War is compared to other tanks. The damage is now also the same or very similar, however their defensives are not the same.
Looking at general tank situations for damage you always find yourself in one of these situations:
- auto attack damage: at which warrior is arguably king with Bloodwhetting.
- one big hit: at which warrior is king again unless the hit is magical in which case DRK has a slight advantage
- several smaller hits: at which warrior is again king due to Thrill and Equilibrium and Bloodwhetting.
- you need to invuln? Warrior beacause holmgang's cooldown is the shortest and you have tools to heal yourself back to full very easily.

Just look at the amount of situations I listed and you will realize Warrior is incredibly busted, while DRK kind of lacks behind in mostly every department, I'd even say even now in terms of party mitigation you can buff shake it off to be a 21% YOUR maximum HP on each party member for any type of damage, and a heal and a regen, compared to a 10% magical for 15 seconds, which is only better for consecutive hits in a short amount of time.

What can a DRK do against boss auto attacks? Nothing, sacrifice an important cooldown like Rampart or pray TBN breaks.
What can DRK do if it lost HP from any source and the healers are busy AoE healing the party? Nothing.
What can DRK do against non magical damage that hits hard? Not a lot, you may survive sure, but Warrior does it much much better.
What can DRK do against consecutive non magical attacks? Same as above, you will probably live, but Warrior does it much much better and easier, which means less healer attentions which means more desirable.

I ain't saying every job should be Warrior level of self sustain, but maybe add new abilities that solve some of these issues while playing to a job's identity and core?
-> Salted earth can grant a regen if you step in it once, and the regen effect lingers on you, salt and darkness heals you.
-> Dark Arts could heal you

Don't copy paste Warrior design to DRK, Delirium is already messed up as it is an Inner Release copy. At least making it a combo can grant unique animations.