Dark Knight Feedback

[Allyrion]

I'm aware of the situations in which Sole Survivor is usable. I take advantage of it whenever I can, because why not.

However, that doesn't make the ability good or particularly useful. It restores roughly 1300 MP, so not even enough for a single Dark Arts. It grants you one additional Abyssal drain every two minutes in the absolute best case scenario. The HP restore is largely inconsequential since it's not something your healers will be anticipating. If you're low enough for the healing to matter, they likely already have a heal queued up for you. It is almost always overhealing, or causes the next healing spell to be so.

Not saying my suggestion is even a great solution - these are really just throwing ideas at the wall in order to spark a discussion about potential solutions to what I feel are pretty underwhelming parts of the Dark Knight kit. I personally feel that this ability needs to provide more than what it currently does.

Do you feel that it's really useful in its current incarnation?

I do.
Why? Because it's free HP & MP in pretty much any sense.
It has no other effect and it's off the GCD. The only sacrifice is time off the GCD, which pretty much doesn't cost anything.

It doesn't need to be amazing because it makes a dramatic difference, since it's already amazing because gives those returns for free.
1300 MP return for nothing is a lot in that sense. It has a very large 25y range.

On the healing portion, like I said it could be entirely overheal. It shouldn't save your life, but it can save your healers mana.
Healers adjust for incoming heals all the time between themselves. If you're not close to topped off and you jump up 20%, good healers will adjust accordingly.
And it's easy to imagine situations where healing is tight enough that any little bit counts and 20% isn't anything to scoff at.

I wouldn't mind if the returns were better somehow.
But considering its place where you get it just because there's an add in the fight, if the returns were better they may end up limiting it in some other way.

Right now I think it has a good place.
It's useable in any of the real fights, and it has no downsides (except the animation delay).

If it were to be buffed, it should keep it's niche. Either lower CD or 25% return instead of 20%.

That's not what efficiency means, but actually looking at the values again I was wrong. They're nearly identical in terms of mana efficiency. Abyssal drain will yield more DPS since it is higher damage per cast for the same mana efficiency.

This is entirely missing the point however. They are nearly identical spells that fill exactly the same role. There's really no reason to have both.

Yes, I understand the mechanical difference and marginal usefulness in having a spell that requires a target vs. a PBAoE. I just don't think that's enough to justify a spell slot.

I can agree with that.
If AB's lifesteal was built-in, it would be justified though.
I think putting the DA effect on AB wouldn't be too OP since it's already expensive enough that you can't spam it.

Right now, they compete for the same spot while using both is pretty hard even with Blood Price because DA-AB is absurdly expensive to weave in.
If AB didn't need DA, then you could weave it in more reasonably as part of an AoE rotation and they wouldn't compete so much.