Ways to Improve the DRK

[Nova_Leon]

Hello there, I made this thread to generate ideas to assist DRK in ways to make the class better.

Problems:

Damage mitigation: Worse than PLD

Self Healing: Worse than War

Utility: Less than both classes

Dark Mind: Even when buffed with Dark Arts only lasts for 10 seconds. That is almost worthless. That especially needs to be buffed.

Suggestions:

Capitalize on an anti-caster tank class: Give the DRK more utility that weakens spells done to the DRK or to the party. Perhaps take a page from the Death Knight and give them an anti-magic field to throw on the ground. Except make it useful in this case.

Parry: Give the DRK the ability to Parry spells from casters as well. This may or may not give the DRK his own niche and role in the tanking world.

If anyone else has suggestions or comments feel free to post them. Thanks for reading!

[Seshayn]

YES! Your parry casters idea is exactly what I was thinking would be a really cool addition to their kit! Make it so Grit allows them to parry casts!
YES! increase the duration of Dark Mind! I love it.

I would only add that the self healing combo of Souleater should not be part of the Syphon Strike Combo, It should be part of the Hard Slash/Spinning Slash combo!

I agree with you, just give them like... just a little more.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Please. No more RNG.

Make them more like Shadowknights in Everquest, Lifetaps and DOTs instead of high mitigation. NO RNG.

[Janhyua]

Would be nice if they change how "carve and spit" like when it's not buffed by DA it will regen mana and maybe gain 50 TP

And maybe change Delirium Int debuff to stackable with dragon kick that would be great because right now warrior has storm path and is not cross firing any class atm and so is paladin str down is not cross firing any class atm but why does dark knight has to get the short end of the stick

[Syzygian]

I'm failing miserably to understand the complaints with DRK at level 60.

DPS: You have two 400+ potency attacks, 75 and 40 potency DoTs with a very short cooldown and joke of a TP cost, respectively, the most spammable AoE with proper MP management, an OGCD gap closer. Suffers only a 5% damage reduction while MTing.

Utility: -10% incoming damage, -10% incoming INT based damage. Former stacks with Storm's Path. Latter procs on parry but in any fight where you're MTing its up at least half the time.

Hate: DA Power Slash is ridiculous and is enough to put you in the lead on hate to the point where you don't need to maintenance it for half a dozen full combo rotations at least, leaving you free to focus on mitigation, DPS, and utility. Gap closer supplements pulling, Abyssal Drain is targeted, ranged AoE hate. Salted Earth further supplements steady hate on trash.

Mitigation: Has a Vengeance and a Rampart. Dark Dance and Dark Mind have ridiculously short recast times, and are easily stacked with Foresight/Awareness/Convalescence/Bloodbath for a decent dual-CD. Has 4 cross-classable defensive CDs where the other tanks get 2. DA Dark Mind stacked with a Shadowskin or Shadow Wall makes most magical tank busters hit you like a wet paper bag, whereas a Dark Dance+Foresight trivializes sustained auto-attack damage. With Dark Mind already have an anti-caster tank. You have a tank buster (most tank busters thus far have been magical) CD with only a 60s recast. Its OP if anything. If you DA Dark Mind + Shadow Wall an Akh Morn with Reprisal and Delirium up that's an 80% reduction in damage. I haven't tested yet but I'm pretty sure DRK could solo the first two Akh Morns without Living Dead. With that kind of magic mitigation you don't need to parry magic. Its not worthless. Its like having a magic-based mini Sentinel, without actually using your Sentinel (Shadow Wall). Dark Dance's parry rate increase sees to it that any boss that auto attacks is going to reset your Low Blow recast and proc Reprisal with moderate consistency. It is actually possible to have 1-2 defensive CDs up with near 100% uptime with a proper rotation. Has a 400 potency self heal, a targeted, ranged AoE self heal, and cross classes Bloodbath. DRK requires tanks to stack multiple CDs on occasion in exchange for having more of them and having shorter recast times. Its not like Pally where you push one button and you're set. And if you can't time a 10s duration CD to survive a tank buster (Dark Mind and Shadow Wall are obvious tank buster CDs) you need practice.

Resource management: A DA Power Slash opener leaves you free to use Syphon Strike combos, DA Soul Eaters, maintain debuffs, and Blood Price is enough even on single targets to maintain a constant MP pool if you're paying attention.

OTing: With proper use of Blood weapon you have a 400 potency attack every 7.35 seconds for 20 seconds and an additional OGCD 450 potency attack afterwards, while maintaining debuffs and MP in the 20 sec remaining on the CD at that point. Not to mention an OGCD gap closer, stun, AoE DoT, and line AoE.

There's nothing wrong with DRK. It just does not play at all like the other tanks. But trust me, its awesome and honestly needs no fixes other than maybe OTing TP issues.

[Mattiux]

I'm failing miserably to understand the complaints with DRK at level 60.

Then you have to dig better the class, and the utility of the other 2 Tanks.

DPS: ...

The Dps is worse than a War in the OT spot and in a sustained fight you will run out of TP. In the MT spot you can do more Dps Than a pld may be, but with the far worse mitigation than the Pld and the lack of a skill like hallowed ground there is no reason to contend the MT spot if you have a PLD avaible. Same rason for the OT spot with a Warrior

Utility: -10% incoming damage, -10% incoming INT

Even the utily to the party is far behind the other Tanks. Reprisal is not reliable since you can't keep it up. If a switch happen, bye bye reprisal. In a fight you have still no reason to bring a DrK. The combo Pld+Drk+Monk will provide a FAR better mitigation just using their always up skill. (str down,path and dragon kick). And all of this without talking about Divine veil and Clemency from the paladin.

Hate:

Yup, the hate is fine. Even too easy.

Mitigation:

The mitigation is behind too. vegeance have shorter CD and Sentinel 10% more mitigation. Shadow Skin is on the same level of Rampart and Inner beast. with Dark mind on the same utility spot of Thrill of Battle and the Block chance you still lack of CD in the 50-60 lv range. ( Clemency, Divine Veil,Sheltron, Raw intuition, equilibrium) wich set the Drk on a spot with TWO (2!!!) less cooldown.

All of this put the Drk in a bad spot. You can do every content right now with it? yeah, sure. The other two tanks make it easier and play their job and role better in ANY situation? Again, Yes. No reason to carry a DrK in a party if you have the other 2 job avaible.

[Reynhart]

(most tank busters thus far have been magical)

Wrong.
In 2.x most of tank busters were physical.

Mountain Buster
Death Sentence
Ravensbeak
Bahamut's Claw
Critical Rip
Revelation
Flatten

[Launched]

I'm failing miserably to understand the complaints with DRK at level 60.

DPS: You have two 400+ potency attacks, 75 and 40 potency DoTs with a very short cooldown and joke of a TP cost, respectively, the most spammable AoE with proper MP management, an OGCD gap closer. Suffers only a 5% damage reduction while MTing.
Individual potencies don't matter, overall DPS does. WAR wins on that. WAR also has unlimited TP, PLD can go for 30-45s longer than DRK. DRK does 1*0.8*1.15=92% of a DRK with no Grit/Darkside. WAR does 1*0.75*1.2=90% of a WAR with no Defiance/Deliverance, but WAR also has Inner Beast and Unchained which ignore the penalty.

Utility: -10% incoming damage, -10% incoming INT based damage. Former stacks with Storm's Path. Latter procs on parry but in any fight where you're MTing its up at least half the time.
Reprisal is completely random. Delirium isn't unique, MNK has the same debuff.

Hate: DA Power Slash is ridiculous and is enough to put you in the lead on hate to the point where you don't need to maintenance it for half a dozen full combo rotations at least, leaving you free to focus on mitigation, DPS, and utility. Gap closer supplements pulling, Abyssal Drain is targeted, ranged AoE hate. Salted Earth further supplements steady hate on trash.
Enmity is literally no problem. Both PLD and WAR can hold single target and aoe enmity with no change of losing aggro, so I don't see why that would be considered an advantage of DRK.

Huge wall of mitigation text
DRK simply can't match PLD or WAR in a cooldown rotation. Even in magic heavy fights, WAR ends up with more mitigation thanks to Inner Beast and its short cooldowns. That's kinda funny considering magic tanking is meant to be DRK's gimmick.

Resource management: A DA Power Slash opener leaves you free to use Syphon Strike combos, DA Soul Eaters, maintain debuffs, and Blood Price is enough even on single targets to maintain a constant MP pool if you're paying attention.
Probably the only place you're right, but WAR/PLD don't even have to deal with that at all.

OTing: With proper use of Blood weapon you have a 400 potency attack every 7.35 seconds for 20 seconds and an additional OGCD 450 potency attack afterwards, while maintaining debuffs and MP in the 20 sec remaining on the CD at that point. Not to mention an OGCD gap closer, stun, AoE DoT, and line AoE.
And you'll be out of TP and useless at 2:15 into a fight. You don't even burst higher than WAR in that time.
.

Stuff in bold.

[Syzygian]

Stuff in bold.

1.TP never stopped WARs in 2.x WAR is also designed more as an OT and its higher DPS is part of its utility. DRK is more in-between.

2. Random, but frequent. When MTing I rarely have to wait more than a few seconds after its recast time is up before it procs. The fact that MNK overwrites Delirium means we can end our combos with 400 potency instead of 280 whilst self healing. I'm okay with that, I'll bet any group would be too. Having a MNK keeping DK up actually boosts my DPS and simplifies my rotation. =]

3. The advantage isn't that the other tanks can't do anything, I never once argued that the other tanks were lacking in anything. DRK has higher potency non-aggro combos and the trivialization of aggro in your opener as an MT DRK frees you up to focus on that and thus MP, debuffs, and damage.

4. No. Dark Dance = Bulwark. Bulwark is 60% supplemented by a good shield. Great. It also has triple the recast time and 3/4 of the duration. For mild, sustained mitigation against fluff physical damage the closest WAR equivalent is Foresight, which is cross-classable. Draw here if you ask me. Shadowskin = Inner Beast = Rampart. Inner Beast's uptime relative to its duration is the almost the same same percentage (6s out of every 15-20 vs. 20s out of every 90) WAR wins here though. Shadow Wall = Vengeance = Sentinel. PLD edge here. Dark Mind = ??? This is basically an extra 30% mitigation you can stack on top of Shadowskin or Shadow Wall for any magic-based tank buster that the other tanks completely lack, or just pop on CD for fights where ALL the damage is magic, like A4 (someone also corrected me on magical tank busters. Yoshi did say though that there was going to be a leaning towards more magic-based damage in upcoming content). I guess you could equate this to Raw Intuition or Sheltron? Sheltron blocks only one attack and Raw Intuition has a longer CD. Dark Mind will be up for more tank busters, DRK has the edge here. The new self heals for WAR/PLD are big but they are gated by recast time/huge MP cost versus DRK's smaller Souleater heals that are pretty much constant. Pretty equal here. Thrill of Battle is unique to WAR but doesn't really do anything by itself without input from the healers or supplemented with Convalescence which again, is cross-classable. None of the other CDs WAR and PLD get are really game changers cause squeenix gave them all to DRK via cross class and thus they can be stacked with its CDs, etc. I'd say the tanks are pretty well balanced for mitigation.

PLD------------WAR------------DRK
Rampart - Inner Beast - Shadowskin
Sentinel - Vengeance - Shadow Wall
Bulwark - Thrill of Battle - Dark Dance
Sheltron - Raw Intuition - Dark Mind
Clemency - Equilibrium - Souleater
Convalescence - Convalescence - Convalescence
Bloodbath - Bloodbath - Bloodbath
Awareness - Awareness - Awareness
Foresight - Foresight - Foresight

5. A job being more difficult or complex to play in no way affects its efficiency in a raid when in the hands of a good player so yeah. WARs stack management I'd argue is somewhat equivalent to this but I guess not anymore with Deliverance/Abandon.

6. You'll be out of TP and useless 2:15 into hitting a dummy or fighting a punching bag like T8 or T12, of which there no such fights in current 3.0 content. There's currently not a relevant encounter where a DRK is allowed 100% uptime on a boss, OTing, where the boss does not engage in some mechanic that makes it untargetable/out of range/etc. Burst also depends on a number of factors. You'd have to have a DRK and WAR both out of tank stance with neither of them shouldering the responsibility of their respective debuffs (a NIN keeping DE up and MNK keeping DK up) to free them both up to use their highest potency combos. If either of them has to put up and maintain a debuff due to party composition that affects DPS for both of them, and of course, have identical gear. If you've got a side-by-side parse of those circumstances I'd love to see it. Also I've not discovered an unanimously agreed upon OT DRK opener but if you've got one, enlighten me.

I just really love the job and don't feel gimped at all while playing it, and I leveled and raided with both tanks in 2.x so I'm perplexed by the droves of people crying for buffs. I didn't enjoy being shoehorned into the OT slot as WAR and got bored with the simplicity of PLD. Party composition really shouldn't be an issue that people dwell upon if your group is skilled. Happy's group dropped t13 with a DRG and SMN before their respective buffs/fixes and no MNK. I've yet to be turned away from a raid group or PF because people were like eh, no reason to bring a DRK. I doubt people have the job min-maxed to the point where we can make judgements.

EDIT: Oh wait, checked your lodestone. DRK lvl 40. That's okay bud. Level it more, you'll learn to love it.

[Reynhart]

Shadowskin = Inner Beast = Rampart. Inner Beast's uptime relative to its duration is the almost the same same percentage (6s out of every 15-20 vs. 20s out of every 90) WAR wins here though.

WAR wins because "relative mitigation" is irrelevant. You want to mitigate every big hits, and Inner Beast's "cooldown" means that you'll have it ready everytime.