My own thoughts on buffing DRK

[saber_alter]

This was originally posted to a topic that was sadly short lived. I have thought about dropping it into a more active topic, but my thoughts are extensive enough that I felt inclined to place them in their own. Constructive criticism is appreciated.


-add a small parry rate boost to to Grit (least 5%, no more than 15%)

*this would put grit on levels more on par with our others, and help reprisal, our main mitigation ability.

-reduce reprisal's CD by a minimum of five seconds, maximum of debuff duration.

*while it would be nice to have it not a proc, simply having it be more reliable as a MT would be helpful.

-split dragon kick's debuffs.

*what? this isn't a dark knight buff!?! yes, it actually is.
delirium and dragon kick are both abilities that reduce the target's int, but because dragon kick has the added blunt resistance down modifier, it immediately overrides delirium's debuff. splitting them would allow DRK to reapply the int debuff when your monk cannot.

-either boost carve and spit's unbuffed potency, or make it regen TP or MP depending on the stance you are in.

*Carve and spit, despite complaints is for the most part a pretty balanced skill. the only problem with it is that it's almost useless unless your buffing it or NEED mp. letting it regen TP out of grit would also mitigate the blood weapon SS buff. giving it a TP recover when grit is inactive would help offset blood weapon's TP draw.

-remove the evasion modifier from buffed dark dance, boost the parry rate by 10-20%
*while evasion is 100% mitigation, it isn't consistent enough to help DRK. evasion also works against both blood price and reprisal, which require us to be hit or parry to work. in trash mobs, this also sees limited use (for me at least) as blood-price is normally used during initial aggro generation to spam unleash.

-boost the enmity generated by a Abyssal drain, or let it drain more than HP when buffed.
*there is no reason to use it over unmend and unleash, which are already more mp efficient because of their costs and unmend's proc.

otherwise QoL changes. for instance tooltip rewording.

wishful thinking:
-switch our cross classes from GLD/MRD to GLD/LNC
-MRD gives us little to no use outside of mercy stroke, while lancer's keen flurry would let us mitigate more than foresight, invigorate would effectively fix our tp issues, and B4B is raw damage (honestly it probably is the only reason why we will not get a CC change outside of keen-flurry/Dark dance double-dipping.).

[Bustaperizm]

Im fine with delerium as it is. Im using it wether there is a mnk or not. Its our second highest potency combo and regens mana. If the mnk cant keep it up. Im hitting it anyway.

You call cut and spit useless unless its used for the things its the things it was intended for. If grit isnt on you have access to bloodweapon and should be boosting it.

Your last two kinda tie together. When i group pull a bunch, i unleash a couple times. Blood price shadowkin then da abyssal. Nice bit of hp back to help heal me. After as bp is about to end ill da daek dance for parry. Then da dark passenger. Blinds + parry+ dodge is a lot of mitigation. And by then blood price is down so no worries of it being wasted.

The only change i really want is a more reliable way of using reprisal. Maybe a longer proc window or treat it as a stack to be used. Right now i dont see it as our main mitigation. Shadowskin is

[Sentenza]

A few of these seem pretty needless I can behind the Dark dance changes for at least double the parry rate when boosted cause that makes more sense.

other then that, why would you want carve and spit to do more then it already does? you either get MP or do damage, anything else is pointless. also I'm not sure about anyone else but I like to spam abyssal drain when blood price is up because I like it's animation, it has fine enmity.

[saber_alter]

Im fine with delerium as it is. Im using it wether there is a mnk or not. Its our second highest potency combo and regens mana. If the mnk cant keep it up. Im hitting it anyway.

no reason to, monk needs to use dk or their losing dps. splitting the buffs would make monk and DRK synergize a little better than they do now.

You call cut and spit useless unless its used for the things its the things it was intended for. If grit isnt on you have access to bloodweapon and should be boosting it.

i personally don't find it useless. it is our most powerful move when buffed. however is it a wet noodle that only gives the same amount of MP as syphon strike when it is not. grit is something you take off situationally. it costs too much to stance dance whenever BW is off CD, and BW guzzles TP too much to abuse reliably.

Your last two kinda tie together.

by the time blood price falls off i have no reason to use DA+DD. not enough targets are alive to consider it useful, and again when main tanking the buffed version finds the lack of use because you want to keep reprisal up. And against magical attacks it is even less useful because the MP is better used for Dark mind. abyssal isn't useful because to get the 2k heals you are probably receiving you burn almost half of your MP.

The only change i really want is a more reliable way of using reprisal.

it has a 30 second CD for a 10% damage dealt and lasts for 20 seconds. shadowskin on the other hand is 20%, last the same amount of time and has a minute and a half CD. outside of grit, it is our main mitigation when against something that we can actually use it on.

A few of these seem pretty needless I can behind the Dark dance changes for at least double the parry rate when boosted cause that makes more sense.

dark knight only needs minor tweaks and a few utility changes to be more on par with the other tanks.

other then that, why would you want carve and spit to do more then it already does? you either get MP or do damage, anything else is pointless.

Blood weapon.

blood weapon as you know, comes with the added 'bonus' of increased skill speed. abusing the skill however will run us out of tp within two to three minutes. because of this dark knight suffers from TP problems worse than the other two tanks. paladin can use Clemency and Stone skin to regen tp for a few GCDs and help their party, warriors have equilibrium. dark knights are just forced to sit and spam unmend/unleash procs, nuking their DPS. adding a tp refresh to C&S when used unbuffed outside of grit would help a lot.

also I'm not sure about anyone else but I like to spam abyssal drain when blood price is up because I like it's animation, it has fine enmity.

i do too, it just lacks purpose outside of looks.

[Bustaperizm]

You say mnk needs to use dk or its loosing dps. Im saying the same about drk. SE combo is weaker than DE without DA (dps loss). It maynot be perfect synergy, but it allows for the mnk to deal with an add and the drk still keep int debuff up.

As for soul eater. People keep saying it does the same mp as syphon strike as if that's a negative. The same as syphon strike...off gcd..that doesnt need to be comboed. Use it everytime i can da or not.

Reprisals numbers look great. You must be able to keep that up all the time right? But in actual practice that isnt the case. We simply dont parry enough. Or in actual pratice you get the parry and boss immunity mechanic happens. Wasting the proc or the buff. Grit and shadowkin are our main mit because you can RELIABLY keep those up more so than reprisal and not limited to single target. Dont get me wrong though. Hit reprisal everytime you can.

[Sigmakan]

One change I'd like to see is to remove the trait from Low Blow and instead apply it to reprisal. As it is now, you are encouraged to just spam Low Blow because there is a 30% chance on your next parry that it'll reset Low Blow's cooldown. However, this seems a bit odd for an ability that causes a status effect with diminishing returns. Admittedly, most meaningful bosses are immune to stun.

Also, something needs to be done about TP. With blood weapon I run out of TP in 2:15. Without blood weapon I still run out of TP in 3:00. If the Dev's team response to this is: "well you're supposed to weave in unleash/unmend" I am going to flip a table. TP management on DRK is completely broken.

[Xenosan]

Nerfing an aspect of MNK that they've had forever, that sets their utility kit apart from other DPS - just to give the new kid on the block (DRK)'s utility more relevance seems.. somewhat.. delirious..

I heard WanderMin and GausBar aren't working quite so well as intended - better nerf BLM/SMN to compensate.

Seriously, DEL is better as it is than removing it from MNK. Let's leave the nerf batting to SE.. kind of a selfish proposal

[Mook_Mook]

i dont really think drk needs to much. THe problem is SE didnt have the balls to go all out with DA or any of the new job gimmicks. DA should be attached to more abilities. Salted earth should have one, delerium should have one. they need to add this to make the class more diverse right now DA is just on c and s, soul eater and dark mind for the most part. Abyssal drain is redundant with unleashed so that ability just needs an over haul.they are an mp based tank with limited options on what to actually use there mp on. Give me more choices and make mp management a thing other than me just upping my dps as a tank.