Dark Knight Changes - Suggestion.

[AmiableApkallu]

Healers want a 1-2-3 combo and gripe about not getting one every expansion now.

In the great Wikipedia tradition: [citation needed].

A fair number of healers want more interesting ways of dealing damage without being locked into rigid damage combos. A rigid 1-2-3 is just as boring as 1-1-1.

[AnjouMaaka]

In the great Wikipedia tradition: [citation needed].

A fair number of healers want more interesting ways of dealing damage without being locked into rigid damage combos. A rigid 1-2-3 is just as boring as 1-1-1.

And again, the content they want this for is dungeons. If they want to press more buttons, then there is content in the game for that. But they don't want to because they are hypocrites and want content not designed for that to be brought up to the content that is balance wise, with no regard for how the game actually works, nor what would be healthy for the game moving forward.

[Supersnow845]

And again, the content they want this for is dungeons. If they want to press more buttons, then there is content in the game for that. But they don't want to because they are hypocrites and want content not designed for that to be brought up to the content that is balance wise, with no regard for how the game actually works, nor what would be healthy for the game moving forward.

I spend 85% of my GCD’s in savage pressing broil. If anything my most diverse button press (even with a WAR) is in dungeons because at least I have broil and AOW

[Carighan]

But both thoughts are seriously brain damaged takes that come from having never touched savage raids. Do the content the job balance is based on, and you will get to use everything that is not situational buttons.

Heh. Oh how the deranged maneuver themselves into dead ends when they get triggered. Heh.

Well, I knew you were just trolling before that post, if we're being honest. Didn't need you to so openly admit you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. But thanks for finally admitting it, I suppose.

[Valence]

Healers want a 1-2-3 combo and gripe about not getting one every expansion now.

Sorry to chime in but where have healers asked for such a thing? Like, actually asked consistently, not some random voice you read once in your life?
Casters have been pretty allergic to combo proposals for their jobs as far as I've been able to tell, be them DPS or healers. The consistent ideas I keep seeing cropping up on the healer side have been procs (rng or not rng) of various kinds and dot management.

There is a reason people are dissatisfied with base combos that don't even branch. They bring too little (if even) to the gameplay of their classes. You who seem to be eager to quote the bald man, he was among the ones saying combos could be condensed into pvp combos to make room for more interesting tools.

[Carighan]

There is a reason people are dissatisfied with base combos that don't even branch. They bring too little (if even) to the gameplay of their classes. You who seem to be eager to quote the bald man, he was among the ones saying combos could be condensed into pvp combos to make room for more interesting tools.

Exactly this. And make no mistake: They might just as well remove the excess skills, making us just spam the same boring skill instead. But plenty people like the animations and all, so using PvP style combos is a usable compromise: Folds skills into less buttons when there is 0 braincells involved anyways, and makes space for actually interesting stuff. Of course a full rework would be better, but I don't see that happen.

On the prospect of "healer 1-2-3 combos", yeah it came up a few times before, but more like the Paladin thing: A way to have more fancy animations. Mechanically, nothing changes. It'd also allow the devs to cycle the animations of the various spell levels for people who prefer one over the other: At least we see all of them (damage would always be the top one of course). So really, it's more of a visual ask than any mechanical change.

[StrifeBlade]

Christ I hate and love Living Dead. Its great when it works but when you dont heal yourself enough and the debuff kills you its so ass - due to a bad GCD roll timing in relation to when you actually die and proc the heal effect PLUS the delay of pressing GCD damage button -> animation -> actual damage being registered (therefore getting the heal.

Wouldnt mind a regen on Oblation, its kinda useless ngl. No to Dark Mind being all around except maybe Addle treatment.

[TouchandFeel]

It's been said many times, but attaching Oblation to TBN is a bad idea. It trades automation for effectiveness.

If you get that extra 10% damage reduction on top of TBN's shield, it can prevent it from breaking when you aren't quite taking enough damage but may still want to use it, reducing the number of situations where TBN would be viable to use and forcing you to just not use it at all and ignore your primary defensive ability. It also then removes the flexibility of using it in situations where you want some mitigation but don't want to use TBN for whatever reason; to save MP, not taking enough damage to break TBN, etc.

If you make it so that the 10% damage reduction triggers after the TBN shield, you are again greatly limiting its potential by making it not able to stack with the TBN shield to help maximize the effectiveness of the shield, instead forcing it into just soaking things like auto attacks.

The fact that they are separate abilities and can be used by themselves or together is actually Oblation's greatest attribute as it provides the flexibility to allow the player use them according to the need at the time to maximize their effectiveness.

Oblation and the way it's designed was an attempt to provide a multi-faceted solution to a few situations for DRK.
The first is that players had been complaining for years that they didn't have an additional low percentage % mitigation to offset the fact that Dark Mind wasn't very useable in dungeons.
The second was that DRK needed something to boost their short recast defensive similar to the upgrades that the other tanks got at lvl. 82.
However, while solving those issues they couldn't do anything to complicate or disrupt the ability for the TBN shield to break since that situation and the potential DPS loss has also been a point of argument for DRK since TBN was introduced. So, they made them separate as it was the best way to provide what they needed to without creating further complications for TBN.

So, to reiterate, keeping TBN and Oblation separate is best for the abilities and DRK with how TBN currently works.

If anything needs to change with Oblation, it needs its recast reduced to 30s to better match the frequency of availability of the upgraded portion of the other tank short recast defensives. Since their abilities are available around every 25s and the additional upgrades are baked into those abilities, having Oblation which is supposed to be the pseudo equivalent on DRK have a 30s recast seems fair to me.
From there it can be decided whether it would be also necessary to roll a little bit of healing or regen onto Oblation or TBN, but that 60s recast on Oblation instead of a 30s recast is the biggest problem with the ability.

As for combining Abyssal Drain and Salted Earth and getting rid of Abyssal Drain, I'd much prefer if they did it the other way around and just got rid of Salted Earth instead and added more to Abyssal Drain.
Salted Earth just feels kind of janky now with how much the devs have tried to smooth out the game-play and abilities and with how much auto-repositioning and scripted movement a lot of bosses do. Having a stationary AoE DoT that you place on the ground doesn't feel that great at this point.
What I would prefer is decouple Abyssal Drain from Carve and Spit, have Abyssal place a DoT on the enemies it hits and then it turns into another ability similar to Salt and Darkness that does burst damage to all the enemies that have that DoT affect on them. Basically just taking what Salted Earth + Salt and Darkness would do, but baking them into Abyssal Drain. You could also alternatively just have the DoT added to the enemies have high enough damage to compensate for not having an additional Salt and Darkness effect or potentially make the Salt and Darkness like effect instead effect all enemies within a certain radius from the primary target of Abyssal Drain. However those are sort of minor details in the grand scheme of things.

[CKNovel]

TBN is a form of mitigation, it's just not a plain reduction of damage.
TBN strength is that unlike other mitigations it's not affected by the diminitive return of damage reduction.

By itself, it's a joke of a mitigation but combined with the many other mitigations it becomes great.
Ironically, Oblation is the opposite, good by itself but terrible when burried under all other mitigations.

I don't think Oblation needs a regen, but its second charge absolutely doesn't justify its weak effect, it could need either a rework or a side effect such as:
-Everytime you take damage under Oblation, its duration and effect is increased
-Oblation's reduction is calculated outside of other mitigations.
-Oblation applies a small shield that refreshes itself every time it's destroyed, similar to Haima but without limitation.

I'd rather have the DRK remains as the tank with least sustain but the strongest damage reduction capabilities.

[noumen0nn]

I will be ok with TBN being buffed + ditching its mana cost, or oblation being removed/combined, if and when DRK's whole kit is reworked to be more engaging. As it stands, being able to solo-carry mitigation checks by using TBN and oblation on the healers and caster is pretty much the only thing DRK has as a unique gameplay element. We are obviously not getting a full rework until at least 8.0, but I could see a timeline where they "listen to feedback" and combine the two skills into a single, generic 25-second cooldown with no MP interaction, somewhere in the 7.x patches, thus making the most boring iteration of the job even worse.