DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[Freyyy]

IDK if paying a DA for that is something that I would do. I'd rather have the vanilla version work on all damage types, and keep the +15% increase from DA (for both).

If DM gets a rework like the ones we've been talking about, I'd actually like to see its duration increased. Its power could be dialed back to compensate. Example:

Dark Mind
Recast: 60s
Reduces damage taken by 10% for 20s
DA effect: increases damage reduction to 25%.

That would be much better yeah.

Even if it becomes 30% magical mitigation vanilla, I don't see why we'd have to pay extra MP just because a fight is designed with physical damage. This is just arbitrary. It would still not be balanced at all and would still make DRK's overall performance dependant on the encounter design, since we'd have to sacrifice multiple DAs for DM in physical fights, whereas in magical fights we'd just freely use it. Having it like Syzzle just said would be much better and would actually fix most of the mitigation issues that DRK has, while making it just as useful in every encounter, whatever the damage type is. We don't really lack an extra big short-duration 30% tank-buster CD (10% would be enough), we lack a longer duration, weaker CD that is able to soften consistent auto-attack damage like other tanks can, and like Dark Dance did pre-4.0.

If they did that on top of fixing Shadow Wall which is still weaker than both Sentinel and Vengeance for no reason, DRK mitigation would be right on point.

[WhyAmIHere]

probably a silly question, and maybe even a worse suggestion, but amongst all the desired changes that've been brought up.

What about making DP a 3rd combo path (with potency adjustments) and maybe keeping it's blind effect for a DA amplification, or adding in something else for it to do.

[SyzzleSpark]

probably a silly question, and maybe even a worse suggestion, but amongst all the desired changes that've been brought up.

What about making DP a 3rd combo path (with potency adjustments) and maybe keeping it's blind effect for a DA amplification, or adding in something else for it to do.

Neat idea, but probably not something they're gonna do, which chaps my ass because of things they did to re-arrange other jobs' combos in 4.x (savage blade, dancing edge/shadow fang, etc.)

Like with what they did with DE/SF I find it unfathomable that they didn't simply buff Scourge's base hit to 280 potency and put it where the old Delirium was. And DP is practically Shake It Off-levels of bad (not wholly useless on the same level, but it may as well be with how ludicrously expensive it is)...

And honestly, with us being the current lowest tank DPS, its not like making any of these changes would make our DPS overpowered. They have plenty of headroom to do things like this.

[Valdegarde]

Something I noticed today after reaching level 70 on Paladin and taking it to the Susano Extreme dummy was a discrepancy in the HP values. I'm item level 317 on Dark Knight, as a fresh Paladin I made it with 313 and did almost equal damage.. What interested me after doing them back to back was that the Paladin dummy seemed to have a little more HP, as if the developers expected Dark Knight would do less.

This may seem like common knowledge that Dark Knight does the least damage out of the three tanks, but the fact that it seems explicitly intended is a bit of a downer. Having brought this up to friends of mine, they say this was to compensate for The Blackest Night overall gains that one wouldn't be receiving on a dummy.

It's my understanding that The Blackest Night, if used on cooldown and always activated, is a very small gain in Grit (which one wouldn't have used on a dummy) and very close to even or even a loss outside of Grit, due to pushing back Syphon Strike and Souleater. I'd like to know the exact math on that at some point, but that's my understanding of the dynamic.

This taken into account, I also know that Paladin has a basically free 150 potency attack in Shield Swipe that also wouldn't be taken into consideration on a dummy. So my question is, would any gain from The Blackest Night be comparable to the gain a Paladin would receive for guaranteed Shield Swiping? I know the math in this game a little less than I'd like, but what it sounds like to me is that the loss of Shield Swipe is a much bigger handicap than the loss of Blackest Night in a striking dummy situation, meaning the increased HP on a Paladin dummy implies even moreso that Paladins were intended to be doing more damage.

If this is all true so far, then my feedback is of course, vehement disappointment. 3rd place in many areas, including DPS, seems to be intended by the developers at this point for Dark Knight. I too have my own personal feelings about the uselessness of Dark Passenger and Blood Price, the overuse of Dark Arts, relative mitigation scarcity, the strange MP -> Blood -> Potency ratio which feels like pushing vegetables around on a plate, etc.
However, if the developers themselves have Dark Knight on this seemingly intended back burner, that needs to be addressed first of all, I believe.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

Oh no, you're totally correct. The SSS dummies for DRK have less HP than the others. In fact the only job for whom dummies have less HP is AST.

TBN is a gain in Grit, but then you're in Grit. Its a loss out of Grit, or possibly you can break even. The math has been done many different ways but any time you use TBN for Bloodspiller you must subtract a DA's worth of potency (because you used TBN) from that Bloodspiller against your PPGCD, and also factor in Syphon's MP gain (~70 potency) and Souleater's Blood gain (roughly 8.4 potency considering BS is on the GCD) into that PPGCD, to see that TBN is usually a tiny DPS loss. It can be a gain but the results of optimizing it can't be seen without the aid of a fucking nanoscope, which is why a lot of the somewhat more hardcore DRK playerbase are very annoyed with the job right now.

Shield Swipe is a FREE 150 potency which makes even natural Bloodspillers, which are a roughly 40 potency gain against your PPGCD look like peanuts, and versus TBN Bloodspillers, its no contest.

While nothing is so bad that DRK cannot do content, we're also in an extremely magic-focused raid tier (again) and were the tables turned, DRK would be in the toilet. As Lythia pointed out in the Blood Price thread, 4.x DRK in a fight like A7S would be a potato, only squishier. The only fight in this raid tier that is overtly physical is O3S, and by virtue of the nature of the TB in that fight, Awareness acts as roughly 35% mitigation, which is the only saving grace for DRK there as well.

I also agree with your conclusion that DRK definitely feels as though it is on the backburner. They took threads from our 1-60 kit and unraveled them, and made our 60-70 kit while nuking the existing 3.x job. These problems were largely overshadowed by WAR's stance issues at the start of the expansion, which have since been not just mitigated but altogether reversed. Their stances are now completely costless and Unchained/IR now cost you nothing to use as well. So I would argue now that DRK isn't even the easiest tank to play (WAR is, now, hands down). Why they saw fit to put us on the bottom in all these areas, I can't say, especially given that we were never really overpowered in the first place. But they really did eviscerate pretty much everything about the job. Our DPS is lower (as you've pointed out), our mitigation is weaker (Shadow Wall/DM/LD are pale imitations of their co-tank's counterparts), and our utility is all but gone (TBN is not utility).

I don't think any of us want DRK to be the best tank hands down across all categories, but it'd be nice to be the best at 1 thing, or at least good at a couple of things.

All this being said, the DRK playerbase is noticeably smaller and quieter than that of the other two tanks, which isn't doing us any favors right now.

[Freyyy]

All this being said, the DRK playerbase is noticeably smaller and quieter than that of the other two tanks, which isn't doing us any favors right now.

Yet our consolidated feedback thread is 24 pages, PLD is 6 pages, and WAR only 4. I really hope SE will hear us on the way to 4.1.

[Jandor]

Ok, some changes I'd make .

Blood Price:
Delivers an attack with a potency of 30 every time you suffer damage.
Damage dealt by this attack is converted into MP.
Would still generate blood.
MP regen from it would probably still be rather lackluster but free damage is always nice, and it fits thematically.

Dark Mind:
10% damage reduction for 20s, 60s cooldown.
Dark Arts effect: Grants HP regen for the duration (roughly on par with WHM regen.)
10% DR with 33% uptime seems pretty nice, DRK could do with a decent self heal as well. Not sure it's worth losing a 30% magic damage CD for though. Maybe 15 or 20% with 90s cooldown?

Shadow Wall:
CD changed from 180s to 120s.
Would just be nice, especially when compared to Sentinel and Vengeance.

Sole Survivor:
Marks target with status ‘Another Victim’
A portion of damage dealt to the target is converted into HP & MP (everyone.)
If that target should be KO'd in battle, 20% of maximum HP and MP will be restored (DRK only.)
Gives DRK some light utility, cheaper DPS for casters and healers, plus a pseudo party heal provided in a way that's suitably *dark*.

Bloodspiller:
Scrap all the "Grit Potency: 475, Dark Arts+Grit Potency: 650" stuff. Why complicate matters, just give it a nice high potency, a nicer higher DA potency, and have it ignore grits penalty.
The weird tooltip just bugs me...

[DRKoftheAzure]

Yet our consolidated feedback thread is 24 pages, PLD is 6 pages, and WAR only 4. I really hope SE will hear us on the way to 4.1.

More like the true DRK player base is so small that the "other DRK" don't care because they don't main DRK.... Seriously I see more healer and tanks who main a caster DPS job over melee job or even tank... Balance is that bad for tanks right now...

[Duelle]

Bloodspiller:
Scrap all the "Grit Potency: 475, Dark Arts+Grit Potency: 650" stuff. Why complicate matters, just give it a nice high potency, a nicer higher DA potency, and have it ignore grits penalty.
The weird tooltip just bugs me...

Probably because it's a way to say "use this in Grit" without locking the ability behind it. Kind of like how Holy Spirit generates 20 gauge when in Shield Oath.

If we're looking to simplify things, I'd remove the Dark Arts requirement and just make it 540 potency outside of Grit and 650 in Grit. That would remove some of the decision-making from using it since you'd pretty much use it whenever you have 50 blood gauge without MP being a factor at all, though.

[Lyth]

Bloodspiller doesn't quite ignore the Grit penalty. When you factor in Darkside, it does 480 potency out of Grit and 475 potency in Grit. Similarly, DA brings the potency values up to 648 potency out of Grit (net gain of 168) and 650 potency in Grit (net gain of 175). In short, you lose 5 potency for using the baseline ability in Grit and gain 2 potency for using DA Bloodspiller in Grit. You also gain 35 potency every time you apply DA to it in Grit. The reason for this weirdness is because they buffed the Bloodspiller potency by 20 while leaving the Grit potency unchanged.

The main problem with Bloodspiller buffs are that they end up devaluing Delirium, which is already a fairly punishing ability to begin with. If you mess it up, it's only a 3 potency gain over Bloodspiller, and if you execute it correctly and have a full uninterrupted 23 seconds of BW uptime, it is a 261 potency gain over Bloodspiller, every two minutes. If you increase the baseline potency of Bloodspiller to include the DA cost, Delirium is going to be a 93 potency gain every two minutes if you execute it perfectly (and a dps loss most of the rest of the time).

My personal preference is to see Bloodspiller gain a DA proc specifically when TBN breaks to make TBN a fixed dps gain, and perhaps have something like a Siphon Strike MP gain effect on Bloodspiller to setup Blood > MP > Blood combos like you can in AoE. However, in doing so, you still run into the same problem with Delirium because MP is potency.

More than Bloodspiller, the crux of the problem is Delirium, Blood Weapon, Blood Price, and their interactions with Grit (and its associated MP cost). That's the main place where DRK gets punished from a dps perspective.