Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

I think at this point most direct changes to DRK's single target mitigation are going to result in a net nerf in terms of recasts. Oblation doesn't really have a proper niche as a tank mitigation tool, though, especially when you consider that several melee dps get personal 10% mitigation on half the recast from actions that they obtain 30 levels earlier. If 'Oblation' is an offering, perhaps the effect needs to be changed to empower the next defensive/utility action to have either an alternative or more potent effect. That would give you the primary strength of Heavensward's Dark Arts system without any of its design flaws. It could even be a way of working around DRK's magic-only effects. As some examples:

Dark Mind + Oblation: 15% physical damage reduction, increases recast to 90 seconds.
Dark Missionary + Oblation: 10% physical damage reduction and increases movement speed, increases recast to 120 seconds.
TBN + Oblation: 30% HP flat damage reduction, removes MP cost, restores HP on shield break without granting Dark Arts, increases recast to 30 seconds.
Blood Weapon + Oblation: Restores HP in addition to MP and blood gauge.

Having it on set charges would force you to be selective on how you wanted to augment your cooldowns on a fight, especially since most of these are on 60+ second recasts to begin with.

[Flay_wind]

Augmenting your mitigations is good, but why increase recast time (especially TBN, which doubles the recast)? Sounds like a step forward and two steps back. You're already limited by charges as is.

[Supersnow845]

Oblation I think has a strong niche these days in criterion because you can use oblation on both DPS and TBN on the healer and you have a proxy bonus 10% raidwide mitigation which is huge since criterion’s biggest battle is having enough mitigation between 4 players (also why the shield healers dominate)

Maybe they should go towards something along the lines of receiving a reward for using oblation on another player rather than yourself, with dark mind being exclusive to DRK already TBN didn’t need an amplifier anyway over the other 3 because before their 82 traits the other 3 were so hilariously weak compared to TBN that the traits still only make TBN barely weaker

[ItsUrBoi]

A pretty interesting idea I had was why not expand on the Darkside gauge to make it so that you go in some sort of over drive mode when darkside is very high and you use a certain ability. ( ex: Living Shadow )
Or perhaps the whole bloodgauge mechanic could be similar to RDM so that you have a combo and using it requires bloodgauge for each action.
I just really wish 7.0 is not a disappointment where we get some warrior copy paste and in some cases just weak and useless traits that upgrade Living Shadow potency. If you really need to upgrade Living Shadow potency from level 90 to 100, do so in the trait that already upgrades the standard combo actions and give something more meaningful with the other traits. ( "More meaningful gaming experience" )

Somethings I'd like to see would for sure be:
- Some defensive cooldown consolidations regarding TBN , Oblation and Dark Mind.
- More sustain and HP recovery options, as the job is doing really well in high end content once people know what to do, but in progression or casual content its difficult to survive without a healer.
- Changes to Delirium and the Bloodgauge as to separate them from WAR's Beast gauge and Inner Release.
- Some more identity besides oGCD spam and big sword, perhaps more akin to HW or SB DRK?

[rawker]

If Tenacity was just a great stat, DRK could have been the tank that would have benefited to it, the most.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...]

The way I read this, Oblation will remain as an action with two charges @ 60s Recharge and the function of 10% generic damage reduction applicable to self or a target party member is replaced with essentially Dark Arts "but for defensive actions". Based on this, we now have a somewhat limited access to this modifier, making the cast of this ability the inherent cost (on top of losing out the mitigation it currently has).

Modifying your mitigation definitely adds some spice to the mix and offers a degree of versatility... at the cost of losing a different kind of versatility and a situational cost of the non-modified version of the skill being inherently mutually exclusive to the modified versions.

Why would it need additional "cost" by increasing the recast of that action? That's just awful for no good reason.

As for the individual skills, I have some words as well:

• Dark Mind: We already don't have 10% from Oblation anymore, why only 15% on physical only? This is far inferior to current Oblation + Dark Mind versatility.
• Dark Missionary: 10% physical reduction and an Expedient-like speedboost for 120s is far too situational. If this was generic damage reduction regardless of type, "maybe" but as it is, this is awful and would see very limited use.
• The Blackest Night: If we lose current oblation, make the HP shield 30% and the recast for this combo 30s, it would at MINIMUM need to cover slightly above 50% HP in shield + HP recovery to make up for the 2x standard TBN + 1x current Oblation you could use instead.
  
  Also I keep lol-ing at every attempt of making TBN a skill that can be used without MP. But the heal on shield pop (along with Dark Arts for EoS/FoS) would be cute in general. I like skills similar to AST's Exaltation and SCH's Excogitation.
• Blood Weapon: So basically turn "Infuriate with extra steps" into "Infuriate + Equilibrium with extra steps" except you can't really hold Blood Weapon unlike the mentioned skills so it's either use it or lose it for the HP bonus. For the situational cost alone the heal would need to be massive.

I'mma be real, the idea is neat but sacrificing Oblation for it along with the current stats is a hard no.

[GoatOfWar]

If Tenacity was just a great stat, DRK could have been the tank that would have benefited to it, the most.

Not really, if nothing can kill you in one hit then healing becomes a lot more valuable than stacking any further mitigation.

[Brixy]

All tanks got massive mitigation upgrades to their primary mit buttons at lv.82 except for DRK.
- Warrior got Bloodwhetting and let's be honest, Raw Intuition was already bonkers and didn't need the extra -dt and a shield on top. Pair that with Equilibrium, Thrill of Battle, AND Shake it off and you will never die. Ever.
- Gunbreaker got Heart of Corundum: -30%/-15% for 4/8 seconds and a decent heal on top of it. Pair that with Aurora for some passive healing ticks.
- Paladin got Holy Sheltron: -30%/15% for 4/8 seconds topped off with a regen over time. All sorts of heals added everywhere at 84 that no longer require a dps loss like Clemency would.
- Dark Knight got a button bloat -10 dt. Not a single heal in sight, other than Abyssal Drain. Doesn't quite seem fair does it lol.

Replace Oblation with a job trait for TBN that applies Dread Spikes when it breaks at Lv.82. Dread Spikes applies a buff where each hit you receive grants a stack and heals after 5 seconds depending on how many stacks you built up. Some form of healing for dungeons would be nice and this is a way to give them a unique heal while sticking to their job aesthetic. It would be a nice callback to FFXI's DRK also!

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

All tanks got massive mitigation upgrades to their primary mit buttons at lv.82 except for DRK.
- Warrior got Bloodwhetting and let's be honest, Raw Intuition was already bonkers and didn't need the extra -dt and a shield on top. Pair that with Equilibrium, Thrill of Battle, AND Shake it off and you will never die. Ever.
- Gunbreaker got Heart of Corundum: -30%/-15% for 4/8 seconds and a decent heal on top of it. Pair that with Aurora for some passive healing ticks.
- Paladin got Holy Sheltron: -30%/15% for 4/8 seconds topped off with a regen over time. All sorts of heals added everywhere at 84 that no longer require a dps loss like Clemency would.
- Dark Knight got a button bloat -10 dt. Not a single heal in sight, other than Abyssal Drain. Doesn't quite seem fair does it lol.

Replace Oblation with a job trait for TBN that applies Dread Spikes when it breaks at Lv.82. Dread Spikes applies a buff where each hit you receive grants a stack and heals after 5 seconds depending on how many stacks you built up. Some form of healing for dungeons would be nice and this is a way to give them a unique heal while sticking to their job aesthetic. It would be a nice callback to FFXI's DRK also!

Keep Oblation as is, add heal potency upon expiration. For more active HP recovery, broken TBN grants dark arts, which makes the next Edge of Shadow or Flood of Shadow trigger a heal (can do 100-150 potency per target on Flood of Shadow, otherwise make it and Edge of Shadow 400-500 heal potency).

Really, what is it with the suggestions to un-exist Oblation just because DRK is the only tank that received a new CD instead of upgrading TBN? The way I see it it is their equivalent of Equilibrium and Aurora and simply needs a bit more... stuff, not removal or folding it into a patchwork-affixed TBN.

[ItsUrBoi]

Handing out effective 29% magic mitigation to a target is ridiculous and would never fly. It would most likely turn into 10% phys and 20% magical or 10% generic and 10% magical (net 19%). I want that for Dark Mind, not for Oblation-Mind.

You told me of examples of DSR but PLD can do exactly just that. Use Rampart and with 100 gauge use Holly Sheltron for himself and Intervention for an ally. Intervention is literally a 10% + 10% ( Rampart's trait ) + 10% for 4 seconds + a heal over time. So a 20% magic mitigation with an additional 10% all round mitigation would never fly?

Adding a heal over time won't make Oblation interesting it will just be copy paste of the other tank's heal over time effects.
At the same time DRK has already a lot of buttons and if you wish for more, they got to reduce them. So either merge stuff together or simply get the HW / SB treatment - "Removed".
I suggested 2 options:
1. Merge Dark Mind with Oblation and leave TBN as it is
2. Merge TBN with Oblation and rework Dark Mind. If going down this route, Dark Arts has to be changed as well as TBN will be harder to break completely.

The job needs more recovery tools ( HP recovery ), similar to what it had in Stormblood I guess, since back then you had TBN and apparently there wasn't this refusal for DRK to have HP recovery tools ( ex: Abyssal Drain spam, Sole Survivor ).

DRK can be great going into Dawntrail if only it'd get more attention unlike it received in Endwalker to be a bit more rounded in its kit than just oGCD spam during the 2 mins. I bet it would have been the least played tank if its 2 min burst wouldn't align so well with raid buffs and the burst meta.
- More frequent attacks and more resource interaction between Darkside and Bloodgauge
- Changes to Bloodgauge, Delirium and Darkside to not be a copy paste Beastgauge, Inner Release and Surging Tempest. Yes its nice to be able to play all jobs, but what about the people that really like DRK? They want to play DRK, not WAR.
- More cohesive mitigation ( HP recovery too ) and job identity instead of oGCD spam during 2 mins, and even the oGCD spam is fine really, if it was more interactive and meaningful.