Dark Knight Megathread

[Oizen]

If its going to keep the design that it is it really should just refund a full charge of shadowstride, but honestly what fight is going to require 3+ gap close moments in a 30s window

[Terhix]

Reading forums I feel like I'm being gaslit into believing DRK is somehow way worse than it actually is.

The only thing I'm missing on DRK is some way to mitigate or recover from autos in 8man content. You can use TBN for that, but you pretty much have to memorize at which point what boss does how many autos to know when to do it optimally, most of the time it's not worth the effort and I just pump MP into Edge instead. Something as basic as some regen on Oblation would be more than sufficient I reckon. Doing extremes now or savage last expansion I never felt like other tanks are particularly better or worse at tanking than DRK. I have yet to see a tank buster in this game where I'd have issues where other tanks don't. The only outlier when it comes to actual tank mechanics is WAR solely due to Holmgang being on shorter cooldown than other immunes, but that's another topic altogether.

I'd personally hate it if TBN was changed to be more like other tanks short CDs where it doesn't interact with your dps rotation at all. TBN is fun, it feels good to use, and the shorter cooldown comes in handy (stuff like Mountain of Fire you can TBN 2/3 busters). TBN is also the only thing that's mechanically interesting on DRK, everything else is just pressing buttons on cooldown. You can literally remove blood gauge and darkside trackers from your UI and still play near optimally. Let's not make tanks even more homogeneous than they already are?

I don't particularly care about dungeons, I can do W2W pulls on expert just fine, but if we really care about it you could easily make DRK competitive by giving Abyssal Drain a shorter cooldown. If that makes a problem with Carve and Spit just delete CnS altogether and give Drain a bit more damage and healing, and MP regen on the first target hit and call it a day.

[Chajii]

I don't particularly care about dungeons, I can do W2W pulls on expert just fine, but if we really care about it you could easily make DRK competitive by giving Abyssal Drain a shorter cooldown. If that makes a problem with Carve and Spit just delete CnS altogether and give Drain a bit more damage and healing, and MP regen on the first target hit and call it a day.

While I don't really have any difficulty in doing wall-to-wall pulls in dungeons, I think having Abyssal Drain being separated from CnS like before ShB(?) and having Abyssal Drain has a shorter cooldown or changing back to a spell (I don't mind if it costs MP if it recovers enough HP to compensate 1 less TBN), and give CnS an AoE falloff for the MP regen and buttons to press since we now don't need to press our gap closers for damage, we should have the slot to weave.

[Kaixern]

and give CnS an AoE falloff for the MP regen and buttons to press since we now don't need to press our gap closers for damage, we should have the slot to weave.

(Juste please SE, if ever you give use an OAE effect on Carve and Split, make it a circle or a cone, not a line attack, we have enough of those for a lifetime)

[CKNovel]

While I don't really have any difficulty in doing wall-to-wall pulls in dungeons, I think having Abyssal Drain being separated from CnS like before ShB(?) and having Abyssal Drain has a shorter cooldown or changing back to a spell (I don't mind if it costs MP if it recovers enough HP to compensate 1 less TBN), and give CnS an AoE falloff for the MP regen and buttons to press since we now don't need to press our gap closers for damage, we should have the slot to weave.

Yeah, I think there was no reason changing Abyssal Drain into an ability with CD. It could be back to a spell and consume 3000 MP, you'd use Flood of Darkness to get Dark side and then spam Abyssal Drain whenever it's ready.
Another addition I'd like is the restoration of Blood Price, sharing a CD with Delirium.

Usually I don't like shared cooldown but in my opinion it's one that truly makes sense.

[Oizen]

Reading forums I feel like I'm being gaslit into believing DRK is somehow way worse than it actually is.

Thats true, and a lot of the complaints come from people who only play the game casually and don't step foot into high end content.
The job is functional, and even when Square Enix ignores its current issues, I doubt its going to be so bad its going to be barred from high end content. But I do view the job as a downgrade from its Endwalker variation. TBN feels very unavailable to me currently if I'm actually trying for damage, and I miss being able to use it more freely on allies to defend them. I think the upgrade to Shadowed vigil covers this weakness in terms of self mitigation so far, but DRK is the only tank that had downgrades before upgrades making it feel kinda lame.

The job also has fuck-all to do if its not bursting, and that burst is not nearly as rewarding as it was in Endwalker.

If I were to try to fix DT Dark Knight's issues with the least amount of changes, I would do something along the lines of:
-Blood Weapon: MP upped from 600 to 800 per stack
This would up the totals to from 1800/2400 to 2400/3000 being Blood Weapon/delirium

-Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain to 30s CD, two charges. Carve gets a 400 cure potency
This would double the MP generation given from these two skills, making up the rest of the lost MP, and also give DRK a very much needed 30s oGCD to give it something to use that isnt in the 2m window, but can still be pooled into that window.
Also carve getting a cure potency would make it feel more like the single target version of Abyssal. I'm honestly still not sold on them being stapled together, but if its going to be this way at least commit to it fully.

It would also make Abyssal drain far more available for dungeons, which is long overdue honestly.

[Derio]

AD should just cost 3k mana and extend dark arts effect. Then you could cast TBN in a dungeon and once it pops you can cast AD for essentially a free heal with slight loss in dps to account for the healing factor.

In terms of the blood weapon problem you could probably compensate this better by just increasing the amount of mp that siphon strike gives which would help overall.

[Chajii]

TBN → Abyssal Drain → TBN → ... sounds awesome too!

For the Blood Weapon problem, they could easily fix it by making each stack restores 1000 MP instead of 600 to make up the loss (600MP x5 = 1000MP x3).

[EmsaVadenn]

JUST Putting Abyssal Drain's cooldown to 30 seconds and deleting the shared cooldown with C&S, its enough.
ty.

[Gorondu]

You dark knights are so used to low mitigation, that you are happy with anything, lol. Sad to see. Feel sorry for drk mains.