DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[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.