Dark Knight Megathread

[Conando]

Yeah Oblation is a nothing skill that was added obviously because Dark Mind is so situational. Just roll them into each other.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

...I can't believe I have to say this, genuinely cannot.

Oblation is a multi purpose low CD tool to flexibly add an additional layer of 10% mitigation, on either yourself or an ally, regardless of role and independent of TBN. Mind you in higher level content (Savage+) we even use Reprisal for buster mitigation, which is also 10% and it hella matters.

Dark Mind is a single purpose self mitigation tool with a critical flaw that comes to light when there is no source of magical damage outside of raidwide attacks. It is the "unique CD" of DRK and is the type equivalent to Bulwark, Thrill of Battle and Camouflage (unique cooldowns wiith niches).

Oblation's role is not solely making up for Dark Mind having this critical weakness vs all of these cooldowns. It should NOT be merged with or folded into Dark Mind; Dark Mind needs to be adjusted in solitude without touching what makes DRK's Oblation so flexible to hand out.

If you think Oblation is weak, be my guest and suggest buffs for it but I assure you every version of "just merge it with..." is objectively worse and reduces diversity.

[Kabooa]

Oblation's role is not solely making up for Dark Mind having this critical weakness vs all of these cooldowns. It should NOT be merged with or folded into Dark Mind; Dark Mind needs to be adjusted in solitude without touching what makes DRK's Oblation so flexible to hand out.

You know what'd be crazy.

Putting the Excog from the SWall upgrade onto Dark Mind instead.

Just running random dungeons, the one thing that keeps coming up is that while the Excog effect is sufficiently strong, sometimes I don't want it on my 40%. It makes moving into living dead unnecessarily annoying to have chunky heal to keep it from proccing, but putting it onto Dark Mind would give it far greater purpose while still making it a great magic cooldown.

But of course then there'd be some specific, niche, magic buster in the future where we'd instead want the effect not on this cooldown but on another. Ain't no winning with Dark Knight, that's the one truth.

[Conando]

They have to do something about the self sustain in some way at least. The upgraded to Shadow Wall doesn't cut it when you can only use it every 2 minutes while Gunbreaker has a 900 Potency heal on 20s.

[Kabooa]

They have to do something about the self sustain in some way at least. The upgraded to Shadow Wall doesn't cut it when you can only use it every 2 minutes while Gunbreaker has a 900 Potency heal on 20s.

If anything the other tanks need their self sustain brought down to Dark Knight levels.

[ZUZ]

give dark knight good self-sustain on par with the other tanks and at the same time put body checks like enumerations in normal dungeons. and increase boss autos as well. that way the tank's fun does not hinder other roles.

[Shurrikhan]

You know what'd be crazy.

Putting the Excog from the SWall upgrade onto Dark Mind instead.

Just running random dungeons, the one thing that keeps coming up is that while the Excog effect is sufficiently strong, sometimes I don't want it on my 40%. It makes moving into living dead unnecessarily annoying to have chunky heal to keep it from proccing, but putting it onto Dark Mind would give it far greater purpose while still making it a great magic cooldown.

But of course then there'd be some specific, niche, magic buster in the future where we'd instead want the effect not on this cooldown but on another. Ain't no winning with Dark Knight, that's the one truth.

I'd just rather not have any of our sustain budget go towards an Excog effect, period, tbh. I cannot imagine a duller means of healing than an Excog, especially if gets tied to something you'd be punished for pre-popping.

[CKNovel]

If you think Oblation is weak, be my guest and suggest buffs for it but I assure you every version of "just merge it with..." is objectively worse and reduces diversity.

Oblation is strong enough that a buff would make it broken but not enough to have a significant impact.
Oblation's problem is that those 10% for 10s gets buried under tons of mitigation and its efficiency gets reduced to 6%

It's great alone, thought. But its weaknesses pulls Oblation down.

One suggestion I have is that Oblation's calculation should always reduce 10% regardless of other mitigation or its duration being heavily extended to cover auto attack after a buster or very long buster (looking at EX1 for example).

[Ryaduera]

...I can't believe I have to say this, genuinely cannot.

Oblation is a multi purpose low CD tool to flexibly add an additional layer of 10% mitigation, on either yourself or an ally, regardless of role and independent of TBN. Mind you in higher level content (Savage+) we even use Reprisal for buster mitigation, which is also 10% and it hella matters.

Dark Mind is a single purpose self mitigation tool with a critical flaw that comes to light when there is no source of magical damage outside of raidwide attacks. It is the "unique CD" of DRK and is the type equivalent to Bulwark, Thrill of Battle and Camouflage (unique cooldowns wiith niches).

Oblation's role is not solely making up for Dark Mind having this critical weakness vs all of these cooldowns. It should NOT be merged with or folded into Dark Mind; Dark Mind needs to be adjusted in solitude without touching what makes DRK's Oblation so flexible to hand out.

If you think Oblation is weak, be my guest and suggest buffs for it but I assure you every version of "just merge it with..." is objectively worse and reduces diversity.

It's not that Oblation is weak, it's that Oblation does not even begin to make up for the weakness of TBN. It seems like Oblation was the devs answer to HoC, HS, and BW but for DRK and honestly it doesn't even begin to compare to how bad the combination (Yes, combination) of using TBN with Oblation actually is when compared to the other tanks cooldowns, especially this expansion. The math has already been done. Those numbers are based on early EW content but the concept remains the same. Especially this part.

You can see the way the math works out the more damage a tank takes the weaker TBN is by comparison.

And in this expansion, we are taking more damage. Especially in trash pulls (Is it just me or are tank busters weaker?) where DRK can run out of mits if the DPS don't burst them fast enough. Suddenly the 10s uptime of Dark Mind looks more necessary, but it does literally nothing in trash pulls. The fact that people can still sit there and defend TBN and Oblation tells me none of them have actually done the math to see how miserably the skill fails next to the other tanks abilities. It has 2 more seconds than other tank abilities but with 5 seconds (on average, since it is on a charge system) longer cooldown. Either use it back to back and wait 60 seconds or use it between cooldowns (as I think is intended) and be upset you're still taking more damage than them.

It's an uptime difference of less than 1 second leaning in the other tanks favor (Exception maybe PLD since they use gauge on it, but PLD Shield is passive damage reduction other tanks don't have anyway) while they also provide around 4 times the defensive value of raw damage reduction (Math on damage reduction not considering healing and/or shielding such as the heals from the other tank cooldowns or pairing it with TBN, which should be comparable anyway).

Oblation isn't bad, but it also isn't nearly enough. Oblation falls flat as the DRKs answer to other tanks shared cooldowns even when paired with TBN and yet Dark Mind still sees incredibly little usage outside niche scenarios. At least one of them needs to be brought in line.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

That's a fair asessment. Personally the two changes I'd propose may be stale copies of Addle (for Dark Mind as a buff) and Exaltation (a timed 400 cure potency on expiration of Oblation).

I don't think we need this muchnmore power in general, just a consistency change for Dark Mind and a touch of spice for Oblation.

Also I am not going to disregard the math, but while TBN obviously becomes weaker the more damage is taken (since its just +25% eHP and not mitigation), isn't TBN also a cooldown, like Thrill of Battle, that greatly increases eHP% when stacked with normal mitigation? This and the frequency of access is what I thought makes it strong, even in face of the Lv82 tank upgrades.