4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Chrono_Rising]

The balance of tanks is appalling, especially given this is the expansion in which tank balance was to be given a priority. The problem is these promises were not delivered, what actually happened is one tank was buffed tremendously while the others were stripped of their utility while war had some of its utility restored.
Dark Knight is far out of balance with respect to the other two tanks and needs actual attention.

Mitigation: Boils down to two things:
1) TBN as a buff is too short. This needs to shield for at least 6 seconds and needs a mana cut of 600 mana.

2) Shadow Wall is a bad form of sentinel and and vengeance. There is no reason this should be on a 3 minute cooldown. It should either have a 2 minute cooldown or have an additional effect to justify the three minutes. Or take a middle ground and give it a 150 second recast, 15 second duration and give it the blood price effect regardless of stance. This is not a new complaint, and its time someone actually did something other than ignore this request for 2 years.

DPS: We are behind both paladin and warrior while mitigating less and bring less utility to the team, while other classes got to keep their procs for blocking, ogcds, and dots and even received entirely new buffs and powerful skills, ours were stripped and the new skills do not make up the difference of what was lost.

1) Delirium is disappointing as a buff. On a two minute cool down this should double our damage output for a short time (12 seconds) while also doubling the effects of blood price or blood weapon.

2) Dark Passenger is in a ridiculous state where most darks are taking it off their hotbars since they cannot justify the mana output for the damage and mitigation returns. Please cut the mana cost of this skill by half while not cutting the potency.

3) Our dps buffs blood weapon and blood price line up for every other party dps window. Please take 10 seconds off their cooldowns to give them better synergy with trick attack and other 1 minute buffs.

4) Bloodspiller potency should always be 140 potency above our average GCD to make TBN worthwhile. This is a no brainer.

Utility: TBN is only situationally useful at best, having one tank have a cost on a defensive utility while the other two can mitigate as much or more for free is a formula for pushing dark knight out of statics and pf. We need a party utility that actually brings something to the table.

1) Make sole survivor a party regen buff turning the parties dps into a HOT and mana refresh. This would pair well with the other tanks shields, while staying true to dark knight lore.

We see patch after patch of being ignored, or the only issues being fixed being bugs. People are already being asked to switch their mains for savage content, and the lack of attention will only make this worse. If this continues the only reasonable change to dark knight will be deleting the class since the people who main it will have switched or unsubbed, but I suppose that when that happens tanks can finally be balanced.

[Xenosan]

3) Our dps buffs blood weapon and blood price line up for every other party dps window. Please take 10 seconds off their cooldowns to give them better synergy with trick attack and other 1 minute buffs.

I hope DRK sees an adjustment like that, increasing BP/BW uptime from 36% to 50%. It's a single change with the most recursive benefits I imagine. And maybe they should consider previously DRK had 70+ % (or stacked), and they cut that in half in 4.0 when they locked BP to Grit.

Tho they may need to be reduce the recast on Delirium to pair with the increased Blood yields from a higher BP/BW uptime, so that the ratio of BS/DEL/Q doesn't go anymore askew. Bring Delirium's recast down to 90 seconds or so as well,

[Souleater13]

Dark Knight gameplay
This post is not about the actual balance of numbers (potencies, durations, cool downs) and how the numbers compare to the other tanks but about dark knight game play. Here are my ideas to add to the mix of the DRK left in the dark this patch threads.

Listed are some changes(or fix) that i feel would make dark knight more enjoyable to play.
Add your thoughts about gameplay not about the balance of numbers.

(adjust the numbers for balance as needed)
Unmend: additonal effect changed from 30% for a free unleash to a free Abyssal Drain

Dark Mind: Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside. Reduce magic vulnerability by 0%. Every time a Dark Arts is consumed add 5% to reduce magic vulnerability to a max of 35%. When skill is activated percent goes back to 0%.

Souleater: add partial hp drain out of grit (less then when in grit)

Dark Passenger: lower mp cost. should blind be a part of it or changed to something else? it clashes with synergy of other drk skills

Shadow Wall: Changed to 30 second duration. 1st 10 seconds 30% dmg reduction, 2nd 10 seconds 10% dmg reduction, last 10 seconds 5% dmg reduction

Delirium: oGCD attack with original animation. costs 10 blood, 5 second recast, 80 potency, grants a small amount mp, adds 3 seconds to blood weapon and 6 seconds to blood price.

Blackest Night: its seems many think a 6 second duration will help this skill

Sole Survivor: add gives blood if target did not die during duration.

Power Slash: add dark arts effect also guarantees a critical hit.

new trait at lvl 56. the level abyssal drain is earned.
Fully Unleashed: Turns Unleash into a oGCD with 50 sec cool down. When used, Unleash morphs into Scourge for 10 seconds and can be used once during that time. Scourge(old animation) is an oGCD attack that adds a DOT to target that lasts for 40 seconds. Hp is gained for dot damage dealt.

[SyzzleSpark]

They've been giving back a lot of things to jobs upon request that were removed in the expansion. In light of that, let me suggest...

The return of...

Dark Dance!

Dark Dance: Increases parry rate by 20% for 20s. 60s recast.
Additional effect: Every time you parry, you gain a stacking buff reducing all damage taken by 2%, up to a maximum of 10%. Duration: 20s.

[SummerScorcher]

I really like this idea! It kind of gives you the old reprisal back while not being a party-wide buff. I would also really like to see the dark arts/evasion thing back on this as well if it were to return (and combine it with reducing DP's MP cost) or even a whole new DA effect

[Chrono_Rising]

They've been giving back a lot of things to jobs upon request that were removed in the expansion. In light of that, let me suggest...

The return of...

Dark Dance!

Dark Dance: Increases parry rate by 20% for 20s. 60s recast.
Additional effect: Every time you parry, you gain a stacking buff reducing all damage taken by 2%, up to a maximum of 10%. Duration: 20s.

This is a really nice idea!

[Aana]

Question though. Drks mitigation on paper is behind Pld/War. But when you take drk into an actual fight and play it it works out. Mostly out of tank stance (war looses out on IB the best CD in the game) in fights with magical tank busters erywhere (making dark mind REALLY friggin good in practice) it fairs rather well. Is it really a balance problem when it only exists in theory? (Specifically regarding mitigation).

In a vacuum it looks bad, but when you put it into current, real situations the mitigation issues get significantly washed out. I don't know if it was intentional or not but SE has balanced the mitigation aspect with the situation instead of true tank balance. But the question is, does it matter what it is on paper when in practice it works out?

To use an analogy, its like starcraft balance. Zerg crushes terrans on flat, open ground. Terrans win in narrow passageways and chokes. Often the solution to 'imbalance' in that matchup was to change the map pool you play on to better balance open vs closed areas than change the race. FFXIV has given us a buncha spaced out magical tank busters for drk to nom nom on and the meta says play out of tank stance which neuters the bulwark of defence (War) significantly. Do we really need to overhaul drks mitigation based on paper when its performing fine (regarding mitigation. I'm not touching the other stuff).

[Chrono_Rising]

Question though. Drks mitigation on paper is behind Pld/War. But when you take drk into an actual fight and play it it works out. Mostly out of tank stance (war looses out on IB the best CD in the game) in fights with magical tank busters erywhere (making dark mind REALLY friggin good in practice) it fairs rather well. Is it really a balance problem when it only exists in theory? (Specifically regarding mitigation).

In a vacuum it looks bad, but when you put it into current, real situations the mitigation issues get significantly washed out. I don't know if it was intentional or not but SE has balanced the mitigation aspect with the situation instead of true tank balance. But the question is, does it matter what it is on paper when in practice it works out?

To use an analogy, its like starcraft balance. Zerg crushes terrans on flat, open ground. Terrans win in narrow passageways and chokes. Often the solution to 'imbalance' in that matchup was to change the map pool you play on to better balance open vs closed areas than change the race. FFXIV has given us a buncha spaced out magical tank busters for drk to nom nom on and the meta says play out of tank stance which neuters the bulwark of defence (War) significantly. Do we really need to overhaul drks mitigation based on paper when its performing fine (regarding mitigation. I'm not touching the other stuff).

IMO this is not an in theory difference in mitigation, and certainly isn't in the case of paladin vs. dark in mitigation. However, for the warrior question I would need a significant amount of time to collect enough of a sample to show it statistically. Part of the problem is that we still have this pervasive idea of warrior being only an OT which makes collecting a large random sample difficult and in groups who actually swap to maximize mitigation we need to compare boss uptime as well. I don't think there is a website which collects mitigation statistics saddly.

However, you claim that the two are equal (or at least differences are washed out) in practice, have you collected the data already and are willing to share it publicly?

Arguing from experience (inherently flawed I admit), healers generally seem to have less of an issue healing warrior through fluff damage and tank busters, the fluff is primarily physical which warrior has more mitigation there compared to dark knight. We will also need to see how the warrior shielding will be used to impact their mitigation as well. Tank busters are usually big one hits, which dark deals with well, but the majority of the damage of a fight is the time between tank busters, which is usually physical and so dark is at a disadvantage there. Maximizing healers time dpsing is roughly equivalent to minimizing the fluff damage, and dark has less tools to do this than the others.

The real disadvantage comes from turns like v3s where the damage is primarily physical including the tank busters. Dark can make it through, but pld and war are definitely at an advantage. How popular physical turns will be in the future we have no idea. Alexander became increasingly physical damage towards the end.

[MagiusNecros]

Make TBN a recastable ability with no CD and I won't ever complain about mitigation issues ever. Self healing and damagewise though I can just laugh right now. Because right now there is really no incentive to stay a DRK outside of edgy aesthetics.

[SplittingSkies]

Make TBN a recastable ability with no CD and I won't ever complain about mitigation issues ever. Self healing and damagewise though I can just laugh right now. Because right now there is really no incentive to stay a DRK outside of edgy aesthetics.

Edgy Aesthetics and the fact that we shine in dungeons sadly, with careful management of cooldowns and mana you can TBN more than a couple of times in a pull. Nullifying damage from mobs for a short time while getting procs for blood, using quietus and DAAD (If you have enough mana spare for DA.)

I don't think anyone is saying that DRK can't clear content, its just why bring a DRK when the other two can do everything the class can but better and with little cost to their resources.