Dark Knigh needs some changes

[Ramiee]

BUT at the risk of making it too homogenous with paladin, I wondered if it might not better be suited to being a third move in their AOE rotation? It may need adjustments to work, but giving dark knight a self heal on every third move of their AOE combo would help with self sustain and bring it more in line with the other three tanks for dungeon runs.

No that's pointless, just turn it into a spell or keep it as an ability with no CD but does little damage and is mainly there to heal you in AoE. Tanks shouldn't have 30 second sacrificeless heals every heal below a 90 second CD should make you lose out on damage.

[wereotter]

No that's pointless, just turn it into a spell or keep it as an ability with no CD but does little damage and is mainly there to heal you in AoE. Tanks shouldn't have 30 second sacrificeless heals every heal below a 90 second CD should make you lose out on damage.

I take your point, but as a reminder, Holy Circle is exactly this. Heals the paladin and is the third move in their AOE combo, and I already said the skill may need to be adjusted (which includes potency changes)

Not to mention that Souleater, Brutal Shell, and Storm's Path on single target also are all third combo moves that heal the tank when they use them, and Paladin has Holy Spirit as a potential fourth move in their combo that does the same.

[Zairava]

I take your point, but as a reminder, Holy Circle is exactly this. Heals the paladin and is the third move in their AOE combo, and I already said the skill may need to be adjusted (which includes potency changes)

I don't see how merely reverting Abyssal Drain back to a spell makes it the exact same as Holy Circle...They would be functioning entirely different.

[Erit]

Just bring back the good old Pre SHB DRK

Step one: stop taking things away from Dark Knight.
Step two: give some of the things that have been taken away from it back.
Step three: don't take those things away again.
Step four: reinforce the gameplay loop that emerges.

I have a pet conspiracy theory that whoever has been in charge of designing the job for the last few expansions has deeply personal issues with either the job itself or someone who plays it, because sheer incompetence is not sufficient excuse with a trend this consistent; even a stopped clock is right twice per day, and even a total fool would have gotten something or other correct with the design across three expansions—or four, depending on who you ask. Why this has been allowed to continue escapes my conception, but this has gotten beyond the point of being merely silly and instead outright disconcerting.

"Butbutbut DPS and pick rates and clear speeds" to which I bid the Ninja mains be silent. It's a tank. It's not supposed to be a glass cannon, it's supposed to be a tank. Warrior manages both tankiness and damage, and Gunbreaker is very clearly supposed to be your speedy meat-mincer option while still being more defensively competent. This is clearly a solvable problem—in fact, it was a problem that had previously been solved and simply needed refinement of the solution, until Shadowbringers decided it was necessary to fix what wasn't broken and break was wasn't fixed.

[revan08566]

Also to your other point, I don't think decoupling them would be TOO difficult considering when the job launched, the two were separate skills, they were only combined into sharing a cooldown later.

I agree, I just don't know what dependencies may be there. If it was separate before, it shouldn't be too bad... Right???

To all of the other points. A can of worms has been eternally opened. They would either need to nerf the other three tanks, or bring drk up to their level. As much as I like tbn, it's still not up to the level of the others. You can mistakenly use all your mp and just not have it, but still not really gain any DPS.. there's a defensive benefit for having one in the tank, but you have to really make it count. Hoc and bloddewhetting are just basically always available with no drawbacks.

If they can come up with something unique, that would be great, but unique and bad is still bad. I'd rather it look similar to the others and be good. Making AD the 25s ability and keeping tbn would be different enough (you're dealing damage) and the defense buff portion is just tbn and oblation. You could cast them separately if you want, which is something GNB and war can't do. ( I suck at pld, can't really comment there )

Shadow vigil is just annoying.. I like the heal, but it is no comparison to hoc. GNB gets 4 900 potency heals for free in the same time span the DRK gets a single 1200.

Making AD a third aoe is just boring imo. I'd rather them just make a new ability.
Also - just makes the darkside 10% buff. It's stupid when you get a res and have to regain all that mana when WAR just has to hit a single 1-2-3 and they're back on track with next to zero defensive lots.

It's utterly ridiculous

[Ramiee]

I take your point, but as a reminder, Holy Circle is exactly this. Heals the paladin and is the third move in their AOE combo, and I already said the skill may need to be adjusted (which includes potency changes)

Not really holy circle is a damage loss if you use it as a spell, it's designed to be a combo action while abyssal drain as a spell would be designed for sustain. It's also just really really boring, having active planning self sustain would actually make DRK unique and fun. At most I would say you can use a delirium action to make it an instant cast.

[Claire_Pendragon]

holy circle is a damage loss if you use it as a spell

I think this is why i personally like the idea of abyssal drain being both a separate spell and have combo action.
Need to spam it for surival and not for DPS? need more DPS?
Id actually make it DPS neutral in the combo, so it serves no real purpose other than for the increased healing from being apart of a combo. (But technically a DPS loss due to costing MP)
So if spammed, its effective healing would be at 70%. if used after unleash, its combos to 80% efficiency. and only after Stalwart Soul would it be at its current 100% effectiveness. (If combos after unleash, it wont combo after the following Stalwart Soul)
so you ideally use it based on how desperately u need the heal, and how effective you want to be with the MP. (Could also alter MP consumption instead of healing potency)
EDIT: (to even go further with this, Id almost wanna have it possibly combo off quietus or blood spiller, with 2 different effects, and even a 0MP cost. It wouldnt require the rest of the combo either, so u can use it in delirium, and have increased dmg (not enough to replace quietus/bloodspiller)

[Wolf_Necros]

A solid heal would be nice but I guess that's probably asking for too much.

[Stizzle]

Lazy fix -
Reduce all mp costs by 1/2
Decouple Abyssal Drain from Carve & Split
Assign 5 devs to play the role at different levels so maybe we can actually get some balancing here.

As Yoshi-P so eloquently put it in an interview some years back "Do these developers even play their own game?"
My thoughts exactly Yoshi-P... my thoughts exactly!

[Diabolika]

Step one: stop taking things away from Dark Knight.
Step two: give some of the things that have been taken away from it back.
Step three: don't take those things away again.
Step four: reinforce the gameplay loop that emerges.

I have a pet conspiracy theory that whoever has been in charge of designing the job for the last few expansions has deeply personal issues with either the job itself or someone who plays it, because sheer incompetence is not sufficient excuse with a trend this consistent; even a stopped clock is right twice per day, and even a total fool would have gotten something or other correct with the design across three expansions—or four, depending on who you ask. Why this has been allowed to continue escapes my conception, but this has gotten beyond the point of being merely silly and instead outright disconcerting.

"Butbutbut DPS and pick rates and clear speeds" to which I bid the Ninja mains be silent. It's a tank. It's not supposed to be a glass cannon, it's supposed to be a tank. Warrior manages both tankiness and damage, and Gunbreaker is very clearly supposed to be your speedy meat-mincer option while still being more defensively competent. This is clearly a solvable problem—in fact, it was a problem that had previously been solved and simply needed refinement of the solution, until Shadowbringers decided it was necessary to fix what wasn't broken and break was wasn't fixed.

At this point I'm starting to think that whoever is responsible for DRK must be religious and thinks DRK is "satanic", "evil" or something, so they've been actively screwing up the job as much as they can get away with for the last years lol (And DRK having high dps in EW was an accident)