Drk: worst designed class

[Chrono_Rising]

There are several oddities on dark knight when you look at it from a class design perspective.

-Mana pool tuned to be 120 mp short of holding 4 dark arts. Why?

-Darkside is 20% damage increase but stops our regeneration of mana meaning it is indirectly weaker than 20%.

-Sole Survivor gives 20% HP and Mana, but that translates to 1896 mana. Single target this is a weird value to gain back. Stance swapping cutting gauge to a weird amount that forced overcapping was enough to remove the stance swap penalty on warrior and paladin.

-Blood Weapon dps benefits are all or nothing benefits with expected values less than one. A phase transition can completely wipe out any GDC/auto gains.

-DPS benefits given while in a defensive and penalized stance.

-Dark Arts is spammy and makes weaving difficult with higher speed builds, higher speed builds are also desirable on a class which centers around resource generation.

-Speed benefits on a class with forced double weaves, placement aoe, and a 2 second cooldown on dark arts means everything must be pressed with care. A 1 second recast would make dark arts far more friendly to weave and spam.

-Physical oGCDs not lining up with dps buffs (carve and spit and plunge both generate extra mana when used in blood weapon).

-Not having access to a single target HP drain out of tank stance.

This is without other considerations like fight design, risk and reward, or, when overall dps is the same, valuing burst higher since burst will usually come out on top in fights with forced down time, not to mention that for most of this expansion dark knight was also the lowest projected sustained dps tank and only recently pulled ahead. Does more resource generation help, sure, we aren’t at the point of forcing overcapping yet, but does it fix all of the above? No.

Also keep in mind that many of the adjustments which dark knight has received have come after nearly a year of complaining, and some predate the expansion to the original release of dark knight.
-Shadow Wall cooldown reduced to match vengeance. Despite vengeance having the same damage reduction, lasting 5 seconds longer, and giving a counter attack. This took 3 years to change.

-Plunge animation lock being reduced, again took 3 years to change.

-Dark Mind not having an associated cost, half the life of the expansion to change and only after the first two savage raids and first ultimate had passed.

-Sole Survivor being useless in single target situations. 3 years to change.

-The Blackest Night being too short with its animation. 7 months to change.

-Delirium being on too long of a cooldown. 7 months to change.

-Quietus gaining a mana regen. Few weeks to change, this is the only major change which was responded to in a short amount of time but only effects mass pulling.

Contrast this with other job changes this expansion.
-Warrior's have a relatively useless skill in the 60-70 additions. Replaced with a powerful tank shield. 4 months to change.

-Warrior's rotation is punishing and not getting direct hit crits feels bad in an opener. 7 months to change into one of the strongest cooldowns in the game.

-Tank stance swapping leaves us with a strange amount of gauge. Patched out before savage on both warrior and paladin.

-Unchained costing gauge and not useable at the start of a pull. Removed before savage.


Fine, I will grant that it will take time to sort through everything and figure out what to do with dark knight. I'll accept it. But if you want to know why people are annoyed, and why people aren't playing dark knight in raids, just look at what has, and equally importantly, what has not been addressed.