DRK balance

[DukeGr]

For me DRK is a very fun tank to play, but there are some things pissing me off and just don't make any sense. To start with, both the other tanks have some kind of ultimate defense skill, DRK's ultimate defense skill " Living Dead" is hard to use especially in PUG situations. 50% of the times i've used it i died cause healer didn't notice it to fully heal me. Of course you can use macros warning people etc but a lot of times even that won't help.

Next, the MP management issue, the amount of focus you need to have in order to output good dps and not to run out of mana is stupid, they could have made the whole process less annoying. A Lot of DRK's just end up not using half their skills cause they cant be arsed to MP micro manage in every pull, it gets very tiresome after some time.

I believe with some balance between those 2 factors DRK will be in a perfect place to play.

[Ashkendor]

Living Dead and Soul Survivor have no effect, so in an actually fight without voice communication you will not be able to tell your party easily what to do. Actually I would argue Warriors having stronger magical mitigation due to being able to -20% every time a big hit comes as well as their other temps, warriors also have much better on demand lifetaps.

You can't have -20% "every time a big hit comes" if they come more often than 8 GCD's (unless you're planning to burn other cooldowns for stacks) or if you're using your stacks for anything but Inner Beast. Stack management is the core concept of Warrior just like mana management is for Dark Knight. I'm not really sure what you mean by Living Dead having "no effect" though; if you mean that it has no buff icon, you're completely wrong. Both Living Dead and Walking Dead have easily recognizable icons. Sole Survivor also leaves a debuff icon on the mob that you use it on. You just need to communicate with your party more.

[azlewood]

i would like to see a lot more MP on the Drk or reduced MP cost. either one, i just feel like its a gimp melee tank, and gimp caster tank combined... one side needs a buff. hopefully caster side

[Nalien]

I have a few gripes with Dark Knight at this point;

MP management - This was fine before the last update, but now with Dark Arts on a 3 second cooldown, you can fit a few more things in (a Dark Arts Dark Passenger for example) which increase MP drain. Could do with either some stronger MP recovery, or lower Dark Arts cost at this point.

Evasion - Dark Arts Dark Dance + Dark Arts Dark Passenger is a great evasion combo. Unfortunately, Dark Knight isn't built around evasion. Blood Price requires you to take a hit, but that's fine, you can time Blood Price when Dark Dance and Dark Passenger are on cooldown. Reprisal and Low Blows, however, require a parry, not a dodge. I feel like they should also trigger from dodges, given we have such a strong evasion combo...

Blood Price - Like I said, requires you to take a hit to restore MP. You can avoid using it with the aforementioned combo, but sometimes you'll evade hits anyway... I'd quite like this to have "Reduces evasion to 0" or something similar, just so you absolutely always get the most out of it... Perhaps add some slight mitigation to it as well, to make up for the removal of evasion.

Dark Arts - Perhaps to help justify a reduced MP cost/better MP recovery, I'd quite like to see more skills given additional effects with Dark Arts... Blood Price and Blood Weapon could switch from MP recovery to HP recovery with Dark Arts. Sole Survivor could reverse its effect; If you die during its duration, the target takes damage? Slap a DoT on Unmend? Vengeance style effect on Shadow Wall? Just like Ninjutsu (which has 15 potential executions, but only 7 effects), there is a lot you could do with Dark Arts but currently aren't...

Cross Class skills - I kinda want Lancer skills instead of Marauder... Keen Flurry for obvious reasons, Feint would be nice in PvP, and if any tank was going to forgo defense in favour of attack, its Dark Knight. Invigorate is less desired these days, since they reduced TP costs, but prior to those changes I certainly wanted this... Meanwhile, all Marauder offers is Mercy Stroke (granted, this stacks nicely with Sole Survivor), Foresight which is OK, and Bloodbath, which is as fitting to Dark Knight as Blood for Blood, but we could get the same thing out of Dark Arts Blood Weapon... Need Provoke, Awareness is nice with Dark Dance, and Convalescence is great in general but really helpful for Living Dead.

On that last point though, I think cross class skills need an overhaul anyway... It's a really boring system at the moment, letting us pick from 3 classes would actually put some element of choice in which would be great, but really I don't want to use another Jobs skills... I'd rather have a series of Job quests that unlock replacement skills... So rather than having Provoke on Dark Knight, we could have something unique (perhaps something akin to a very potent reverse Shadewalker?) that could even work with Job specific mechanics. So Dark Knight could have unique versions of its cross class skills with Dark Arts effects (Dark Arts "Convalescence" could improve the MP recovery on Blood Price/Weapon and Siphon Strike, for example), Ninja could have a version of Second Wind that has different effects based on the venom being used, Scholar and Summoner could have an cross class skills that involve Aetherflow (either using it up, or granted an extra stack), and so on. Just have the quests to unlock these involve the class guild the skill originated from (so Dark Knights version of Provoke requires you to have completed the Lv30 Gladiator quest, for example).

[Lemuria]

Only one QOL feature I want to see... Darkside should NOT cancel out MP regeneration skills and abilities. Ballad and The Ewer should be useable.

[Warlyx]

blood prices should be a trait , permanent and maybe recover a bit less , or make it like WHM mp recover ...slow and steady mp recover , would help a lot even non tanking (aoe raid dmg )

the lvl 60 skill ....cool animation ...thats it...another CD to keep track of , or another button to press every X ....meh.

[Xlantaa]

the lvl 60 skill ....cool animation ...thats it...another CD to keep track of , or another button to press every X ....meh.

.___.

You know Carve and Split is 450 potency when use with Dark Arts, no? And can be use to recover MP if you're low of MP . The MP recover is a shit (should be higher) But the damage is not precisely "meh". Is one of the best DPS skills alongside Soul Eater which is 400 potency with Dark Arts.

[Derio]

Either reduce MP cost from dark arts or increase maximum MP pool.

[Quor]

If the healer is dead what use does LD have other then prolonging that wipe?

It'll still last a total of 4-14 seconds "longer" than Holmgang would.

Holmgang has the exact same problem, only instead of being reduced to 1 hp and then living for 10s before we die, we're reduced to 1 hp and then die when Holmgang wears off in another 2-4 seconds.

LD is objectively better as a tank "oh sh*t" CD, since Walking Dead lasts almost twice as long as Holmgang does. Yes, you need healer coordination, but that's rather easily solved with a macro (make it separate from hitting LD if you're worried about macro lag).

[Voltyblast]

LD is objectively better as a tank "oh sh*t" CD, since Walking Dead lasts almost twice as long as Holmgang does. Yes, you need healer coordination, but that's rather easily solved with a macro (make it separate from hitting LD if you're worried about macro lag).

If you're a WHM with Benediction ready, yes it is better. If not then you're going to struggle, especially nowadays where tanks are going full vit. Before at least they had less hp due to the strength gear they had to get, meaning less hp to recovery. But now? It's insanely high for one thing and they will "start" from 1 hp, meaning that you have to heal 20k hp (more or less) in less than 10 seconds AND while the boss is still attacking, most likely negating one of your heals if the boss can hit for more than 5k damage (and I can even name a few).

And sure, while my AST can heal 5k with benefic 2, I have to do that within 10 seconds which means I have to cast it 4 times in a row: miss one and the tank is dead at 80-90%

Sure it can be fixed with a macro, but why not fix the skill itself? Maybe increase the healing taken by 100% during Walking Dead or lower the hp required to 50% instead, because it's highly unreliable as of now. Holmgang at least doesn't kill you while at 99% of hp!