Dark Knight Changes

[Brightshadow]

Make dark knight great again....make it what it has originally been loved as DPS and introduce a new tank class altogether. #PLEASE!!!!!!!

Yes and increase the queue times for Dark Knights to 1 hour.

Great suggestion...

DRK is a tank, you don't like it play something else there are plenty of DPS.

[basketofseals]

Because not everybody reads the tank forums and you don't need to be a tank to have an opinion.

I mean won't that lead to a bunch of completely useless opinions? I don't play DRK. What good is my view on the class balance?

As a WHM, personally it's my favorite tank. TBN is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than passage of arms and shake it off from my PuG-pro perspective. I think DRK is perfectly fine, but is my opinion really valid?

[AngelCheese77]

All I'd like is for DRK to not be so dang squishy. As a healer, it can save me alot of mana and headache, as even those who play DRK well can get smacked down hard in some fights.

[whiskeybravo]

I mean won't that lead to a bunch of completely useless opinions? I don't play DRK. What good is my view on the class balance?

As a WHM, personally it's my favorite tank. TBN is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than passage of arms and shake it off from my PuG-pro perspective. I think DRK is perfectly fine, but is my opinion really valid?

That's kind of what I was alluding to in my comment. I don't really care one way or the other, everyone is entitled to an/their opinion, I just thought it was a bit odd. Being a tank main I wasn't even going to comment initially but eventually my resistance fell lol

[Enlial]

What's always really bugged me about drk is how shielding nullifies blood price. I pretty much stopped queuing dungeon roulette on drk because the average duty finder sch or noct ast isnt going to bother playing around it. It seems like really weird design and is inconsistent with the overall balancing of party comps (that is, maybe some jobs synergize a little better than others, but there's nothing else like how bad combining a scholar and dark knight is)

[addz3]

I mean won't that lead to a bunch of completely useless opinions? I don't play DRK. What good is my view on the class balance?

Every opinion is valid, I was hoping for more healer opinions. I have multiple classes at 70 like most players, yet I rarely go in the class specific forums. I think healers could give a lot of insight in to mechanics of LD for example. I think they also are pro mitigation damage. I also think that the comments about its increase of dps as a tank could open the job as a wider played tank. So there healer and dps comments that are valid opinions which could improve the class and make it more payable for everyone and not just existing tanks.

[addz3]

What's always really bugged me about drk is how shielding nullifies blood price. I pretty much stopped queuing dungeon roulette on drk because the average duty finder sch or noct ast isnt going to bother playing around it. It seems like really weird design and is inconsistent with the overall balancing of party comps (that is, maybe some jobs synergize a little better than others, but there's nothing else like how bad combining a scholar and dark knight is)

Excellent comment from a dps imo. I hadnt thought about this, it's really interesting. Just noting why I didn't put it on the tank forums

[whiteblade89]

What's always really bugged me about drk is how shielding nullifies blood price. I pretty much stopped queuing dungeon roulette on drk because the average duty finder sch or noct ast isnt going to bother playing around it. It seems like really weird design and is inconsistent with the overall balancing of party comps (that is, maybe some jobs synergize a little better than others, but there's nothing else like how bad combining a scholar and dark knight is)

Are you sure? Not saying you're wrong, but I've been playing drk since it was released and I never noticed this happening. Even if you take 0 damage, you should still be getting mp back because BP has a flat mp return regardless of damage taken, as long as you're actually being hit and not dodging. If anything, WHM's were my main concern, with their holy spam stun-locking everything and then "OH BLOOD PRICE IS DONE, GOOD THING THE MOBS CANT BE STUNNED ANYMORE!" and I'm sitting there bone dry on mp >.<

[Enlial]

Excellent comment from a dps imo. I hadnt thought about this, it's really interesting. Just noting why I didn't put it on the tank forums

Oh, well, I mean I wouldnt worry too much about it, most all of the posts in general could probably have gone to a subforum if the op wanted but get posted here for better coverage. And that comment could have just as easily come from a sch who hates having to not use one of the strongest heals in their toolkit (after all adlo is the reason why sch's stack crit rating) or getting annoyed seeing drks use a macro to cancel their adlo crits.

As for me I only came back to stormblood recently and havent managed to get more than a few jobs leveled (I do have drk at 70 and geared, but not pld or war), but Ive been playing since launch, aside from a break around SB release, and have at various times mained all three tanks.

There was a huge post on reddit a few weeks back on the state of dark knight. One point that was made, that I agree with, is that dark arts has become to spammy (due to syphon strike restoring MP). Also someone crunched a bunch of numbers from fflogs and found that darks who use blackest night on cooldown actually boost raidwide dps, at the expense of their own, and because of that most do not. Something like that, if true, and a majority of people are "doing it wrong", its probably bad design due to being so un-intuitive.

[Aster_E]

I don't mind some mp management on Drk, but it's a bit of a mess, IMO, even with known rotations for it. I mean, Dark Arts is so wonderful for so many abilities, but costs so much; one exception being when it's conjoined with Syphon Strike. See, then the increase to the MP regeneration JUST covers the Dark Arts, making the DA usage pointless for that case.

As such, I would personally love to see Dark Arts come down in price a little without anything else being impacted. I doubt this will happen, but a 10% reduction to DA cost might be nice especially for single targets. Alternatively, they can increase the cost by 50% and allow DA to be useful for two abilities within a 4s window instead of 2s. That would mean needing more MP off the bat to even use DA, but the gains could potentially be greater; which means figuring out how to re-balance that MP gain; maybe boosting the gain from BP or BS just enough during those few seconds that DA is also in effect? I don't know. That might be over-complicating things a bit.

Grit coming off GCD sounds oh so tempting, but I have lived with it in the past and can live with it again in the future. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me if SE changed this for no good reason, and rotations needing to be relearned a little as a result because other abilities are somehow impacted for "balance."

I miss Scourge. Many of us do. They should bring it back. Someone suggested the idea of them making it part of a third combo? I would much approve of this. Knowing SE? They'll choose instead to double the damage, and halve the time, of Salted Earth. I mean, this could be nice in boss fights where the target moves around a lot, with or without constant phase changes, or in trash pulls where mobs die fairly quickly and leave behind a bubble for half or more of its up-time, but the change seems to me to be as unnecessary as it is likely to happen.

I'd like to see Shadow Wall either last three seconds longer or have a shorter CD timer by 15-20 seconds, with the defense boost remaining constant. Emphasis on liking to see this happen, not that I think it will. There have been times when I wished I either hand the extra one to three seconds of defense, or that I could hit the CD sooner, either one. I don't expect both, let alone one, to happen.

Delirium can be nice if those extra seconds to BS and BP could easily recover 50 blood gauge points, but that's so situational, and not really so reliable. Sometimes, maybe more often than it should happen for some of us, that blood gauge usage hinders our ability to do things such as Bloodspiller. Why? The gauge charges so slow. As a Pld, my gauge charges faster than I need it, more often than not. As a War, I rock the hell out of its gauge because it fills and spills so nice like cups of mead in your stereotypical Viking halls. The Drk gauge? It often feels like crawling through molasses in the middle of a war zone when every second counts, even with those blessed times that Blackest Night pays off, or even BP/BS. So, really, the biggest fix to consider here is adding to that gauge just enough that the job feels more fluid. I want to be a harbinger of death in the fight I'm in, not the harbinger of BEING dead even at full health.

So what do I suggest with that? BS gains are actually better than it seems like I just said. BP could keep its gains for the gauge, but I would like to see more MP gain from it--not too much of one, mind you--starting from level 61. Give Syphon Strike a bit more mileage. Bring back Scourge as a third combo that not only applies a dot to the single target but also either: 1) raises the blood gauge one time per combo usage, or 2) provides a small, reasonable buff to the Drk so that using the Syphon+Souleater combo on the same target increases the blood gauge a little faster. Combine this with my suggestion for reducing the DA cost a little and I would be more than happy to main Drk again once I'm done with the Pld SB tanking achievements.

Or, you know, we'll see what 4.3 brings. I'm hoping for good things, but don't exactly have the highest faith in SE. I want to enjoy Drk again, but I just can't right now...