Fixing Dark Knight, Properly

[SyzzleSpark]

I strongly agree with 90% of this.

My only disagreement, and this is really more personal preference than anything, are the changes to Delirium and Sole Survivor, turning them into party DPS buffs. I know that mathematically these aren't likely to provide a huge advantage, but the community seems conditioned to believe that raid dps> personal dps even in (admittedly rare) cases where the latter is numerically and measurably greater than the former. I also think its a bit strange lore-wise to turn DRK into essentially the 3.x NIN of tanks (I say 3.x NIN because 4.x NIN, from what I've seen is a bit overpowered from a personal DPS standpoint).

Instead of those party buffs I'd rather see proportionate boosts to our personal DPS. For example you say that the new Delirium would be offset by costing the DRK up to 2 uses of Bloodspiller... Why not simply boost Bloodspiller's potency? Perhaps a %-boost based on the blood remaining/stockpiled when it is used (i.e. Bloodspiller deals x% more damage equal to [total Blood Gauge upon use-50]. So if you have 90 Blood Gauge and use Bloodspiller, its potency is boosted by 40%. 60, 10%, etc. Or perhaps that may be too convoluted, and it should simply see a flat buff to raise our PPGCD proportionately. Maybe even just buff Darkside by another 5% or something. Or we could even do what you mentioned in another thread (I think it was you) where we just cut Blood costs, or allow DRK to stockpile more than 100 Blood. Just my two cents.

Everything else you said sounds 100% brilliant. +1

[Crater]

(snip)

I thought for a long time about putting a Bloodspiller buff in there, but ultimately decided against it.

One reason is because Bloodspiller is just tied into too many other skills. Every single combo skill's relative worth is affected by anything you do to Bloodspiller, and (via TBN) so is every use of your MP. Giving Bloodspiller a big potency buff means having to be really conservative with anything you do to TBN, which I felt was the more necessary change, and you'd have to go back and re-evaluate all the combo weaponskills, too.

Another reason is that I don't want DRK to fall into the trap of being overly reliant on a single skill as their primary damage source. 3.x PLD got hit by this really hard, where every time SE tried to raise their DPS, they'd just buff the hell out of Goring Blade, until it had a higher potency than entire 3-hit combos. In 4.x, PLD is still kind of in the same boat, except now it's split between Goring Blade and Holy Spirit. And of course Warrior is hilariously dependent on Fell Cleave.

But the most important one probably is my own personal preference, and it's kind of become a thematic element of Dark Knight gameplay to me. And that is that, ever since DRK was added to the game it's been, by a wide margin, the most reliant of all the tanks on the rest of your party. In Heavensward, for a DRK to play properly, you needed a Warrior to pull, a Ninja to keep applying Shadewalker (and to go with you to apply Slashing debuff if the tanks ever split targets), the rest of the party to use their enmity tools, etc, just to maintain aggro, since you didn't have a high-DPS combo like Butcher's Block, an enmity tool attached to your DPS filler combo like Savage Blade into Royal Authority, no enmity multiplier on Shield Swipe and Circle of Scorn, etc. DRK's (non-AoE) self-heals are almost nonexistent compared to WAR having Equilibrium or PLD having Clemency, and Living Dead puts much of the onus on the healers to clear Walking Dead for you. In Stormblood this is all, if anything, even more pronounced: DRK is a team player class, and relies on the rest of the party to help it be effective, in ways that the other tanks really don't.

Fixing DRK's DPS by giving them team-oriented damage boosts is, to me, just completing that circle, and letting DRK really give something back to the rest of the team in exchange for the help that they receive. (You'll notice that the proposed revamp to Sole Survivor's healing component is also along those lines - the heal you receive at the end of it rises as your team deals more damage, so you help them, and they help you.)


I wouldn't say no to a Bloodspiller buff on top of this stuff, but I would rather see that be an "and" than an "or".

(Incidentally, yeah, it was me who suggested that DRK should have the effective size of its MP/Blood pool increased, and I still kind of like that idea, but I feel like these changes would address some of the same issues that changing the gauges/costs would, in a way that would also solve some of the more pressing issues that I feel DRK is facing right now. So I guess that's also an "and, not or" kind of thing that I wouldn't say no to.)