Dark Knight: 5.0x Feedback Thread

[Chrono_Rising]

Dark Knight in 5.0 is flashy but there are a number of improvements that I think need to be made still. I will start this with some brief points about the playstyle, and then move on to looking at how Dark Knight is stacking up in Mitigation, Utility, Self Healing, and DPs. Nascent Flash is something of a powerful ability, so while I will generally try to keep things in their specific sections, nascent flash will be all over the place. In general, I consider shields to be mitigation and not self healing.

Playstyle
Dark Knight is fairly simple. There are some issues which are apparent and could stand for some quality of life touches.

Blood Weapon - This being a 10 second ability I was expecting it to have similar timing to other 10 second abilities like Inner Release or Delirium. The timing is more punishing than these skills. For reference, Inner release and Delirium generally fades 10.7 seconds after use, based on timing I believe blood weapon is wearing off 9.95 to 10 seconds after use. While this is a minor difference in timing it does pose an issue to those with low skill speed builds, requiring them to at times meld skill speed in order to be able to hit all 5 GCDs underblood weapon. Not hitting that 5th GCD is equivalent to around a 150 potency per minute loss. There are two ways I could see this being alleviated: returning the haste effect, thereby making the timing of the skill less cumbersome, or having its duration be similar to other 10 second skills like Inner Release and Delirium.

Speed - Outside of Dark Knights opener the job plays very slow. It would be nice to see more uses of oGCD skills. Either shortening oGCD skills to 30 seconds would help making things feel faster and more fluid or increasing resource generation: specifically mana to raise the frequency of Edge of shadow slightly. After my opener, the job feels like it runs slows down quickly.


Mitigation
Dark Knight feels slightly more squishy than other tanks in trash pulls. I believe this is because though TBN is on a 15 second cooldown we only have two other mitigation skills which are generally useful against large mob damage. While TBN feels great in single target, it feels like it is just buying time at times. Single target TBN feels great to use on tank busters, and auto attaacks + raidwide aoes, but doesn’t do much for fluff mitigation. While I believe all content will be clearable by all tanks, I do think Dark Knight is in a spot of feeling physically weak.

This appears to be comparable to the state paladin appears to be in, though paladin is also bringing many more utilities and damage to the party compared to dark knight more on that later. I can also imagine at the higher levels of block strength sheltron will overtake damage mitigation in terms of TBN, I believe this is already at 20% mitigation at ilvl 450. Not to mention in dungeon pulls Hallowed is a great option.

Warrior appears to be in a similar state but worse for early leveling (71-76), but once you have Nascent Flash the self heals I can generate over the three GCDs blow TBN out of the water. In large pulls I can easily restore 60 to 70k per GCD (you can fit 3 moves into a single Nascent Flash). This is enough to Holmgang => hit 1=> Nascent Flash => 100% HP. I mention this here and not in the self-healing because this is incredibly powerful and in trash pulls I believe should be favored over using Raw Intuition.

Gunbreaker has 4 mitigations, and I feel rather tanky in most dungeon pulls. I do understand how Camouflage parry aspect is underwhelming, but when 6 to 8 things are hitting you this 10% damage reduction paired with higher parry change seems to do the trick well enough. Paired with Superbolide (though I do need to warn healers), I have little problem being healed to full HP during the 8 seconds of invulnerability.


Utility/cotank support
Right now Dark Knight appears to be giving the least amount of utility and support to its cotank and party, or is at the least competing with warrior for this underwhelming title. Dark Missionary as magic mitigation is less than shield mitigation in all cases.

TBN and Nascent flash both have uses, both are good but neither are out of this world stellar, either shield someone for 25% of their hp with TBN or restore in the neighborhood of 20k HP with Nascent Flash, these appear to be two flavors of the same thing the main difference being in timing (before/after damage is done).

In comparison Gunbreaker can share its regen (which in terms of total hp restored is more than the damage mitigated by TBN), being able to grant a smaller shield to your cotank or party member, as well as having the same magic damage mitigation. In general it appears Gunbreaker provides more support to you as a cotank.

I’m not sure I need to point out how paladin shines in the area of utility but: Passage of arms, divine veil, cover, intervention, and clemency are all strong abilities (though clemency is situational it is helpful in learning and recovering).

Self Healing
No tank is amazing here. Paladin probably does this best with Clemency spam, followed by Warrior with Path, Thrill of battle, and Equilibrium, and Nascent flash if you're using double Infuriates once a minute. Gunbreaker and Dark Knight are pulling up the rear here, Auroa works out to be a 1200 potency heal along with its slightly more spammable Brutal Shell restoring HP and shielding (150 potency heal). While Dark Knight has Abyssal Drain which single target is 200 potency along with Soul Eater being a 300 potency heal. I am considering shields as mitigation, as it is damage prevention which does not restore HP.

DPS
Right now in the raid scene Dark Knight appears to be the lowest in terms of damage output. Our tank order here appears to be Gunbreaker, Paladin, Warrior, Dark Knight. Though our opening burst appears to be powerful we need to wait 6 minutes to see that burst again. One of our burst windows (delirium) is not much more powerful than paladin’s normal combo without fight or flight. The difference in dps is small, but I have a feeling it will become larger as people learn how to play their classes more effectively.

Summary
Across the areas of mitigation, utility/cotank support, self healing, and dps Dark Knight once again appears to be in either 3rd or 4rth place in many key areas of tanking. This is a state similar to the one we were in through stormblood, not so lacking we couldn't clear content, but also not shining in any particular area and often being behind the other tanks. I hope we see some adjustments before savage.

What do you think about Dark Knight? What would you like to see adjusted?