Half-baked Thoughts of a Filthy Casual DRK

[Fluffernuff]

I think we can all agree that DRK has a bit of an identity crisis. It can't be helped, after all. Our SE overlords can't seem to decide what they want from us, either.

"You get MP for getting hit!" They give our oGCD AoE a blind.

"You want to parry for more skills!" Our parry buff gives us evasion.

"You're a tank and should be able to cheat death once every 5 minutes!" They give our "Ult" an instant-death penalty only the healer can prevent. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. YER DED, SON!

On top of it all, our main "gimmick", careful MP management and preparation, is often seen as clunky, cumbersome, or too high of a skill floor.
They are in no way to be taken as actual suggestions, or anything I demand from our SE overlords... just thoughts I've had to... "modify" the job in a way that we're not so... confused. Bring some discussion for others with similar silly thoughts. No wild and crazy skills to add in 4.0. No crazy mechanic overhauls or the like. Nothing to be seriously considered as a de-facto change or anything. Just some things going through the head of some nobody on a lazy Monday.

So with the introduction out of the way, I present to you: Half-baked Thoughts of a Filthy Casual DRK.

Elephant in the room: Living Dead. You suck. You actively kill us. Your SOLE benefit relies COMPLETELY on the HEALER. You have almost twice the cooldown of Holmgang which does the darn near the same effect. To top it all off, you don't even DO anything unless we ACTUALLY die within 0 seconds.
At least Holmgang can be used to ignore pushback mechanics and pulls. At least hallowed ground actually... well.. makes you immune to damage. These are immediate effects. My idea for Living Dead would be something akin to:

"Grant Immunity to stun, sleep, bind, knockback, and draw-in effects. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will be changed to Walking Dead.
Living Dead duration: 10s
Walking Dead: While under the effects of Walking Dead become incapacitated and unable to act and reduce Healing received from magical sources by 100%, however, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. Instead, damage received in this state will instead heal you for an equal amount.
Walking Dead duration: 10s"
While the "fetter-ward" effect I feel is a bit much, I still dislike the idea of my "ultimate" skill doing nothing unless I die. How dare I have a half decent healer.

Other than Living Dead, everything else would be simple changes. I suppose Dark Passenger would be the next weird one to change.

For Dark Passenger, all I'd want is for it is some synergy with myself. my first thought would be simply exchange the Blind effect from Dark Arts to "Increased Emnity". It would be a very costly emnity skill, but it would turn it into a 250 AoE emnity potency skill on a 30 second cooldown. something similar to say... Steel cyclone maybe.
The only other idea i could think of that would make sense would give it Storm's Path damage debuff, but that seems a bit much to me...

Dark Dance would be extremely simple. Give it the same treatment of another skill we already get: Dark Mind.
We get the 30% parry effect, dark arts doubles it. give us 60% parry for 20 seconds. it does ALOT for us and we don't have a "Sheltron" for parry. So give us MOAR!

The last thing I thought about was Carve and Spit. I know! One of our better skills! and with a dual purpose! This one I actually don't mind leaving alone either! But I was thinking... why not make it more accessible? It would certainly help our MP generation. Then again, it might become way too powerful. My only thought would be to make it a 30s Cooldown, but drop the Dark Arts potency down to say... 300?

Again... nothing to take TOO seriously. I'm just a filthy casual. Food for thought maybe? Anyone else with some poorly thought out ideas for what we already have?

[Xenosan]

I've got a crackpot theory on why Living Dead is the way it is, if you'll indulge me.

I think the original plan for Living Dead was simply that for 10 seconds DRKs HP pool can go into negative numbers. If their HP is at a negative value when LD wears off, they die.

If Living Dead is on, a 5000 HP DRK hit for 6000 DMG would have -1,000 HP. They need to pull themselves 'out of red' before LD expires. Pulling out of red is a much better visual cue than the current system based on VIT-based HP max imo.

But seeing how SE couldn't get TP bars in the party list without removing the STR/VIT/DEX/INT/MND/PIE bonuses, my guess is they couldn't get negative values into the party list either without reverse-engineering the UI. Which they won't do for the sake of a single Skill.

So they changed LD into to this Living VS Walking Buff system.

Goes without saying, I think that negative value method is the far more logical method for how that skill should operate. It's so logical in fact, that I'm betting that was actually the original design of the skill, they just couldn't get it implemented due to technical restrictions.

#inb4Warriors
I want some TLC for Holmgang, too.

[Metalwrath]

I have to kick Darks on a nearly daily basis in dungeons.
As someone who mains all tanks i find the way most people play dark Knight just offending in general as a tank.All most of them do is cast unleash and tank hate combo and then afk rest of fight.

[JackFross]

I think those are pretty good ideas, all things considered. A few points, though:

1. DRK DPS is where it should be. Turning a 450 potency every 60s into 300 potency every 30s is a massive gain in overall dps - and a massive increase in mana drain. No bueno - leave CaS alone. ;_;

2. The LD change of being zambie implies incoming damage = heals sounds cool in theory, but in practice it would be hella overpowered. Like, yeah, LD is the only skill to REQUIRE outside resources to survive (sort of - Holmgang still needs something, but not Bene/Lustrate spam). I feel like the skill should have just been a completely different animal than what it is - not even close to what they made it, I just can't for the life of me think of what that other skill could be.

[Mahono]

I agree with most of the ideas except CaS.

CaS shouldn't be touched unless they want to increase DRK dps.

But honestly, am I the only that thinks DRK need a silence ability?

[Ekimmak]

There's a bit of a danger with changing how Dark Dance works, and that's in Low Blow.

It has a 30% chance of coming off cooldown with every parry, and I assume is why we didn't get an equivalent of Raw Intuition or Sheltron.

I mean, if we used Raw Intuition and pop Awareness just before a stream of melee hits, that's a guarantee on Low Blow's proc. Even something similar to Sheltron would pull up the uptime we get on Low Blow, and a nerf would be needed somewhere.

[Grux]

DRKs identity or more accurately 'synergy' has been brought up consistently over on this forum.

We have counter-intuitive toolkit as a tank:
1) Self synergy - BP + DD? DD + LB? DD + Reprisal?
2) Raid synergy - We offer very little synergy to the raid group aside from %chance to proc reprisal upon parry (refer back to (1) and INT down.

It's more of a QoL I'm asking, and to address the issues above.

Living Dead - Could be redesigned to 'reverse damage into healing.

It's not like DRK is in a really bad spot, it's just not up to par with the PLD and WAR in terms of toolkit and utility when we're OT.
As MT, I think we're fine.

Don't touch CnS -except that the attacks could be split into 3 strikes for us to recover MP better with BW. Synergy, anyone? {Yes, please}

[AI_wass]

I'd actually rather not see DADD/DADP's evasion/blind changed up. It's incredibly satisfying to pull a huge pack and throw those out at the end of Blood Price to see strings of dodges float up.

[Aurius]

Darks skills lack the synergy many strive for because many of the skills seem counter intuitive. This is false however. Da Dp is not supposed to be used while blood price is up. We have a 25 second window in between blood prices and this is where Da Dp should weave in. DA DD is great for large trash groups, but also not with BP. Living dead is amazing in the raid scene, it gives (in our static) at least 15 seconds of cleric stance time with only a benediction needed. However, in 4 man living dead is almost useless, lol.

[MrsFluffyButt]

I have to kick Darks on a nearly daily basis in dungeons.
As someone who mains all tanks i find the way most people play dark Knight just offending in general as a tank.All most of them do is cast unleash and tank hate combo and then afk rest of fight.

Reading your lodestone page made me lol @ this comment. Back on subject.