The completely REASONABLE changes to the Dark Knight job thread

[Arkenne]

Also about the tooltips.

Darkside says "MP is slowly drained" but in reality its never ticking your MP down even while in combat. All it does is kill your passive MP recovery.

[Zyph]

Also about the tooltips.

Darkside says "MP is slowly drained" but in reality its never ticking your MP down even while in combat. All it does is kill your passive MP recovery.

This is not true. If I don't keep up with Blood Price or Syphon Strike and only use the Power Slash combo I still find my MP is draining, despite not using Dark Arts or Dark Passenger. It happens even out of combat, it's just your out of combat MP recovery results in a net gain of MP, just at a slower rate.

[Stormsoul]

hm.. what if DA-Souleater stole double the amount of HP it would normally heal from us, returning it as a barrier? it would give us an analogue to inner beast/shelltron and it would give Dark Knight's signature ability that self-HP drain it usually has.

i have no clue if it'd be viable or not, i just think it'd be cool >.>

[Kaonis]

I'm pretty well in agreement with most things OP said.

Dark Dance especially needs the evasion removed, it's just another RNG that hardly procs, and with Blood Price up it makes it even worse. I never buff it because I find the buff worthless. It really needs a buff from Dark Arts to help us more consistently mitigate damage.

Carve and Spit I also agree with, as it stands it's very underwhelming. Even buffed with Dark Arts feels pathetic. I was hoping it would be something bigger, but it only did about as much as a buffed Soul Eater without the HP regen. It's not worth the loss in MP gain. They either need to buff it's DA effect or remove it altogether.

MP regen as a whole feels off as DRK. Every fight seems to be either I have more MP than I know what to do with, or I'm completely starved for MP. Half of the problem stems from not consistently getting attacked in a fight (bosses namely) or they attack slow, and since Blood Price ONLY restores MP based on attacks received not damage taken, it heavily skews the MP you can get back. I hope they either let us use Blood Weapon with Grit up (and sure, make it lose the attack speed and maybe reduced MP back to be balanced)so we can recover MP consistently, and/or make Blood Price restore MP based on damage received (before mitigation) so bosses that attack slow or inconsistently give us more than just a little MP back.

One alternate they could also do for Reprisal to make it better, is for every parry you make while it's on CD, it reduces the CD by 5 sec. Effectively letting you be able to use it quicker. But ya, as it stands it's a great skill you can't really keep up.

As DRK stands, it's a very variable tank. We're very inconsistent and offer nothing special outside an INT reduction to bosses, which half the time means nothing. The way I best describe it to my LS, DRK is the tank that presently takes the most skill to play, with only being able to at best be at the level of the other tanks. High skill with no pay off.

[ZodiacSoldier]

My Opinions of the changes you mention.

Grit - Parry Bonus, This will increase the tankiness of DRK, but it might be a little overpowered unless they nerf another aspect of DRK. DRK and PLD right now is very similar in terms of mitigation except the shield, if they gave DRK a static Parry Bonus and put them on par with Paladin, people won't use Paladins anymore since their Damage is so much lower than DRK and WAR, this is the reason why WAR didn't get a parry bonus to their tanking stance. I mean if DRK has the DPS of a WAR and Tanking ability of PLD, why use the other two right?

Reprisal - I agree that its really stupid that you can't keep the debuff up 100% of the time, but putting it on a 15 sec recast is a little too overpowered. A 210 Potency attack off global cool down every 15 seconds? I suggest they just increase the duration of the debuff to like 35 sec or put it on the global cool down (like paladins version) to make it more reasonable. Or they will have to make PLD's version off GCD and give WAR a similar off GCD counter attack.

Dark Dance - Reasonable change.

[Nanaho]

this is the reason why WAR didn't get a parry bonus to their tanking stance. .

Actually, Need to correct you here, WARs Wrath stacks now offer Parry instead of Crit since the expansion, so yes indeed, they did get a parry bonus with their tanking stance.

[Hundred]

Just remove the parry requirement from Reprisal that is all. That or let reprisal be available for use for 12 seconds once the Parry condition is met instead of the 5 seconds you have now. Reprisal is currently clunky as shit to use, and one of the least enjoyable aspects of the kit.

Rampart = Shadow skin (Same CD, potency & Duration).
Dark Dance > Bullwark (Far better cooldown)
Sentinel > Shadow Wall
PLD has better convalesence.
PLD has better awareness.
Living dead = HG for general intents & purposes.
Delirium = Rage of halone for magical, not an aggro builder but DRKS enmity combo is stronger anyways.
Dark Mind = Specific DRK advantage.
Shield block mitigation = Specific PLD advantage.
Reprisal = Specific Drk Advantage.

[Aleisterz]

Best Drk skills change suggestion post I've read by far. Fully agree with all this. Hope the Devs read it!

[Morcavious]

The main issues with DRK seem to fall into 3 main categories:

1.) Tank Busters - This is really where our problem lies. They went out of their way to give paladins their own version of Inner Beast (Sheltron) and Warriors their own version of Rampart (Raw Intuition). DRK's are missing this.

A good solution? Rework the Dark Arts effect of Dark Passenger to act as our response to frequent Tank Busters. Maybe an absorption shield equal to 20% of our max health. Or a 1200 potency absorb similar to Equilibrium or Clemency.

2.) Reprisal and Delirium - I think we can all agree that a few small tweaks should be done here. If we're asking for the moon then let's ask for a way to keep reprisal up 100% of the time (even as OT) and ask for the slashing debuff to be added into Delerium.

3.) Consistent damage reduction - I actually don't think this is an issue IF the Tank Buster issue is taken care of. Dark Dance and Souleater really do take care of this problem.

[ZodiacSoldier]

snip

1.) Tank Busters - Keep in mind the Paladin "Sheltron" blocks one attack every 30 sec, its useful to proc shield swipe but other than that not really amazing, but DRK have Dark Dance which offers amazing mitigation with only a 60 sec CD.

DRK Already has Rampart, its called Shadowskin same CD, duration, 20% reduction. And Raw Intuition is more similar to Bulwark.

2.) Reprisal and Delerium - agree that they have to make it 100% uptime for Reprisal, but i dont think they will give slashing debuff to Delerium, PLD already have it (and they need it alot more) and so does NIN. DRK are considered the "magic tanks" so have them give int debuff to share with MNK is understandable.

3.) Consistent damage reduction - Dark Dance already gives 30% Parry and 20% Dodge and you can have it up 1/3 of the time already. And Grit already gives 20% damage reduction.