Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[SyzzleSpark]

double weaving, tbn/blood, our crappy mitigation

On double weaving - I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Low Blow and DP had extremely short animation locks, and Syphon didn't have a DA effect. On THAT note...

Now that I think about it... Syphon having a DA effect can be seen as the outlet of a long string of f***ing AWFUL decisions on SE's part. Let me lay that out for you:

->Delirium removed as a combo ender

-->nerfing BP/making BP Grit exclusive

--->BW and BP can no longer be combined

---->BW MP return increased to compensate (it is now 20% of a DA per proc. It used to be 13%.)

----->Darkside MP drain removed

------>BW buff with Darkside drain removal resulted in an apparently unforeseen surplus of MP.

------->DP nerfed out of ST rotations, removing yet another mana dump.

-------->Suddenly DRK is swimming in mana with not enough ways to dump it.

--------->TBN is implemented as a further dump

---------->TBN has to be given a resource conversion mechanic so as to avoid smearing our faces in the fact that we have to pay for mitigation in DPS.

----------->TBN has to be balanced such that it isn't spammed for DPS gains, making it a less frequent and consistent mana dump

------------>DRK still swimming in mana.

------------->Syphon Strike gets an utterly idiotic and needless DA effect.

When one looks at it like this, its hard to see how DRK's SB design passed QA. You can literally plot out a veritable topology of BAD decisions, which then continue to snowball into more ...BAD decision after BAD decision, each one having to band-aid over the ramifications of the one before it. Now, one could argue that I've re-ordered the chain of events here to prove a point, but any way you look at it, its hard to logically imagine a series of decisions that started with the choice to give Syphon a DA effect. That change screams "We had to do this to cover a bunch of other changes that are clearly mistakes but we're gonna roll with 'em anyway."

Phew. Excuse the tangent. Some very difficult-to-swallow food for thought, though.

On TBN, I agree that a Blood return proportionate to a percentage of the shield absorbed is a neat idea, but it seems like a more complicated solution, and one reason I'm in favor of reducing costs is to allow us an effectively larger pool of blood to stockpile, opening the door to triple or quad Bloodspillers, which would give us something vaguely resembling burst damage. You could offset this by also reducing returns (BW returns 2 blood per tick, BP 3, Souleater 5, etc.)

Not much I can add to the continued discussion of how poorly balanced our mitigation is. DD+Reprisal's removal from the job was a really stupid move, as was standardizing Mana-to-potency through all of these needlessly homogenous DA effects in such a way as to ensure spending a DA for defensive purposes is a horrible idea.