Taste the Abyss: Theme of the Dark Knight and its abilities.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

From the story and from their own abilities. You can see that the Dark Knight's theme is Justice and honestly.. Pain. Their inner darkness has to be fueled from something and it seems like they hurt themselves just to grow stronger and find their inner Abyss.

I am not going to try to change the entire class like I usually try to. However honestly the Dark Knight is way too much like Paladin. Nobody can deny that and they seem a bit rushed in their design. Here are some of the ideas I propose.

Yoshida: That concept of sacrificing in your HP in order to raise your attack power we’re still considering whether or not to include that sort of action in the Dark Knight skill set. Of course since it is a tank role the Dark Knight you don’t want to go out there sacrificing your HP to raise your damage! No sacrifice!

Indeed, I agree. It is silly for a Tank to kill himself for DPS. However, i've been thinking. How about killing yourself for powerful defense? For example.


Sentinel Shadow Wall
Reduces damage taken by X%.
Sacrifice X% (same amount as damage taken.) of your max life to cast.
Duration: Xs (I won't put a duration there.)
Recast: 5s (Its meant to be up when you need it always. However it costs your life to cast it. So its not something you spam!)

You have a very nice thing now. Your sacrificing your life to lower the damage of attacks you receive. You could be wasting your life. However you could also be reducing much MUCH more damage then what you took to cast it. Since the cool-down is low as well it would be great to use in emergencies when you need to deflect a big hit. It also fits the "sacrifice" theme pretty well.


Abyssal Drain
This has always bugged me, I like the ability and want to cast it a lot. However, I find the cheaper to use Unleash better for me. It hits targets regardless if i'm facing them and even though the animation is atrocious I find that it seems to raise enmity more.

The Dark Arts healing does seem cool, however for costing the Mana it does plus casting a Dark Arts just to make it heal.. it doesn't really seem worth it honestly. I could see situations for when it does but I think I just like using Unleash because its more cost efficient and if I'm doing lower level content I don't have to change my toolbars.


Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 250 to target and enemies near it.
Additional Effect: Absorbs 200% of damage dealt as HP for the first enemy, 20% less for the second, 40% less for the third, 80% less for the fourth, 60% less for the fifth, and 100% less for all remaining enemies.
Can only be used when under 50% Life.
Recast: 40s and now instant off-GCD.
STILL COSTS MANA!

This change still makes it a cool ability but now it goes more with the theme.


These two changes, I think would make the Dark Knight a lot more fun to play with their own bits of mechanics.

What's the point of a defensive CD that costs HP to put up?
If a CD that costs 30% of your HP also only blocks 30% damage during its duration, it's only advantageous when you'd be taking over your max HP worth of damage during its duration, otherwise it is a straight HP loss.
Also, this makes it a horrible CD to use against tank busters. The goal of using a CD to survive a tankbuster is to increase your effective HP to be greater than the incoming tankbuster. This CD costing HP to put up greatly reduces its eHP bonus (to practically 0, unless heals come in instantly there is no endgame tank buster you can survive at 70% hp and only 30% reduced damage. Then there's the concern of putting more strain on your healer to make your CD perform its basic functionality.)
This change would just be a straightforward nerf, and also be poor design.

It is not "Poor Design" its poor usage. You use it when you know your going to be taking a lot of damage quickly. You use it when you know your healers might be overhealing you, which you can plainly see if you look at them casting.

Its very good design actually. It just takes a very high skilled player to see it. Its worth the sacrifice in most cases.

If you just spam it, its poor design. If you use it properly, its amazing.

ITS A VERY GOOD CD TO USE AGAINST TANK BUSTERS!

Lets say you have 15k health, and you are facing a 20k tank buster. They usually have a long cast time so you see it.

You use your CDs, reduce the damage with Shadow wall, then get healed up or topped off, then reduce the damage more with your tank stance. NOW you took way less damage then you sacrificed.

Its very good if you know when and how to use it.

I don't like it but clearly a healer can top you off and you still have the cooldown up; this is the kinda stuff that won't work cause it'll cause a healer to toss a large cure and surge the LB gauge

I play a healer and I play a tank. I know for a fact if you are at full life and suddenly lose the health I would have a bigger heal planned for you already. Healers a lot of the time actually overheal you, however this reduces your out going damage, which is really good because it prevents a lot of damage you could take. Which can be double or triple or quadroople what you paid for.

*Example* Sacrifice 2500 health to possibly mitigate 10000 damage. It is a very good design. Just need to use it properly.


If you just spam the ability or CDs every time they are up. I can imagine them being bad. However you use the ability whenever you know your going to take a lot of damage or you know your going to be overhealed. Its "SKILL."

[Misha_Tameshigiri]

What's the point of a defensive CD that costs HP to put up?
If a CD that costs 30% of your HP also only blocks 30% damage during its duration, it's only advantageous when you'd be taking over your max HP worth of damage during its duration, otherwise it is a straight HP loss.
Also, this makes it a horrible CD to use against tank busters. The goal of using a CD to survive a tankbuster is to increase your effective HP to be greater than the incoming tankbuster. This CD costing HP to put up greatly reduces its eHP bonus (to practically 0, unless heals come in instantly there is no endgame tank buster you can survive at 70% hp and only 30% reduced damage. Then there's the concern of putting more strain on your healer to make your CD perform its basic functionality.)
This change would just be a straightforward nerf, and also be poor design.

[AnimaS]

I don't like it but clearly a healer can top you off and you still have the cooldown up; this is the kinda stuff that won't work cause it'll cause a healer to toss a large cure and surge the LB gauge

[FridgePanic]

Won't that just lower team DPS since the healer has to do more work?

[Misha_Tameshigiri]

There's a difference between requiring skilled usage and being straight up bad.
Inner Beast requires skilled usage because it is on the GCD and needs 5 wrath stacks that you could be spending on Fell Cleaves. There is minor decision making and strategizing involved in using Inner Beast.
Your suggested change is straight up bad. It functions just like the current ability, except worse.
It decreases the net benefit from the skill (CDs that cost hp... what they are intended to fucking protect) and requires more work from the healer for tank busters.
Sure, a skilled team can make your suggested change work... but that doesn't mean your suggested change is not a nerf disguised as a "design" change.

[AnimaS]

Since you edited the post instead of replying, DOWN here I go, SE will not allow DRK to come with an ability that forces the Limit Break GAUGE TO JUMP like WAR using Holmgang and benediction.

edit don't bother trying to compare it to holmgang that has a long recast.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Since you edited the post instead of replying, DOWN here I go, SE will not allow DRK to come with an ability that forces the Limit Break GAUGE TO JUMP like WAR using Holmgang and benediction.

edit don't bother trying to compare it to holmgang that has a long recast.

???

Don't understand, they are nothing like each other.

I only did that because I ran out of posts for the day.

There's a difference between requiring skilled usage and being straight up bad.
Inner Beast requires skilled usage because it is on the GCD and needs 5 wrath stacks that you could be spending on Fell Cleaves. There is minor decision making and strategizing involved in using Inner Beast.
Your suggested change is straight up bad. It functions just like the current ability, except worse.
It decreases the net benefit from the skill (CDs that cost hp... what they are intended to fucking protect) and requires more work from the healer for tank busters.
Sure, a skilled team can make your suggested change work... but that doesn't mean your suggested change is not a nerf disguised as a "design" change.

Indeed. You don't just spam it as soon as you have 5 stacks. Just like you wouldn't spam this. They both would require skill.

It does protect you. If you take 1000 health and ward off 1001 health then it protects you. Active defenses and reducing damage can be a lot more important then having a large HP pool.

What i'm suggesting is blood for armor.

I don't see how that is difficult, it can even be fun if you do it correctly. I don't see it as a nerf at all. I actually kind of see it as overpowered.


3 common situations I can name at the top of my head.

Boss is about to smack you with a big attack. You use this, and gain the protection, and are healed before the big hit happens. You reduce damage you take significantly and the autoattacks between and after are also reduced. This absorbs a ton of damage and saves you.

You pull a massive amount of critters in a dungeon, you use this before the pull and during the pull to reduce the overall damage you take massively as you trade a bit of your life for much needed defenses.

Your healer is using a big heal. Your at 75% life but you know your going to get healed for more then what you have. You use it right before the heals cast to get really nice benefits and defense and being topped off.

It has a low cool-down and no gcd as a trade-off.

[Martin_Arcainess]

Well for some parts yes DRK is like PLD with slight alterations but think about it the skills it has is a must for any tank class. It's Aggro combo is a must, it's CD is a must, post 50 it was just getting what every tank needs. Now going past even 45 that's when DRK becomes it owns then you can't compare it to WAR or PLD.

1st off, here my issue with your CD.
1. More healing required thus more MP from healers.
2. What happens if you don't have 30% HP? can't use it boom dead.
3. The More HP you have the more HP your gonna lose since it's % based. *thus even more HP for the healers to pick up on.
4. Healers just topped you off, oh wait I'll pop my HP losing CD, ok now I have 70% HP oh no I'm dead since even with this on I needed about 80% HP to live.

Now let's do the 30%, say your in A4 and your Tank has 20,000 -30% is about 6K *leaving you 14K HP* damage you're dealing to yourself and this is more stress on healers since it won't just be your taking damage but the whole party, yeah I'm sure healers would love the Tank to reduce it's HP by 30% just to reduce a attack while the rest of the party is taking damage.

For for Abyssal Drain, yeah it does cost more but it deals more damage and the range of it is quite awesome and using the DA+AD on a huge pack of mobs can easily recover 5K HP if not more. I think the spell is fine as it is.

See how SE set up the DRK is it not about sacrificing your life or soul etc, it's about the Darkness within, how you control it, they made the DRK a Magic based Tank and that's why Dark Side drains your MP, so it's not draining your life but more you. Fran teaches you how to control it and not let it take over you.


If you don't mind me asking what LV is your DRK? Just check Lodestone you haven't even unlocked it yet?

[_Pigzig]

I like my DRK I wish people would leave it alone. Well, except Darkside, that needs fixing. All those peeps wanted it to be DPS role. Leave me alooooone

[RapBreon]

There's a difference between requiring skilled usage and being straight up bad.
Inner Beast requires skilled usage because it is on the GCD and needs 5 wrath stacks that you could be spending on Fell Cleaves. There is minor decision making and strategizing involved in using Inner Beast.
Your suggested change is straight up bad. It functions just like the current ability, except worse.
It decreases the net benefit from the skill (CDs that cost hp... what they are intended to fucking protect) and requires more work from the healer for tank busters.
Sure, a skilled team can make your suggested change work... but that doesn't mean your suggested change is not a nerf disguised as a "design" change.

It really depends on its duration and CD to determine its effectiveness. A 5 second cooldown with a decent duration (as in like 5+) would actually be insanely broken seeing as healers can heal 30% of a tanks health very easily in this game (regen or eos). With that kind of set-up DRKs could roll infinite 30% dmg reduction at the cost of soaking some passive overhealing. If it's timed badly, it would be a disaster but I like abilities that punish you for being silly. If its used by a good tank + healer combo, it would turn DRKs into undisputed no. 1 mitigation tank. This has the ripple effect of shutting down the FF14 servers on account of it being underwater from all the PLDs crying in synchronized harmony.

It is bad design 100%. But for what I see as a different reason.