Dark Knight: 5.0x Feedback Thread

[Jeeqbit]

5.0 DRK is so much fun.

I view it that PLD is a GCD job and DRK is an oGCD job.

DRK may have a mindless 1-2-3 combo, but you are overloaded with oGCDs to press instead. There is almost no point that you don't have weaving to do, and often you will get situations where you want to double weave or even have 5 abilities to press.

It's not uncommon for Plunge to reach 2, Carve & Spit, Abyssal Drain, Blood Weapon, Living Shadow and numerous Edge of Shadows to all pop up at once and you have to prioritise and manage those around the mechanics. Thrown into the mix is using TBN in big pulls and heavy hits, using Reprisal and Dark Missionary for heavy AoEs and using tank cooldowns. All of these are Abilities with animation delays that make weaving them all at once challenging and causing you to prioritise based on the mechanics.

You still get the added variety of Delirium, Bloodspiller and Quietus. In AoE pulls Flood of Shadow is somewhat of a positional. If your targeted enemy is off to the side, it's missed all the other enemies.

Overall I'm enjoying it a lot at 80 in this faster-paced 5.0 content, plunging to both packs of mobs, plunging to bosses multiple times when they jump around that frequently, and always having different things up whether it's Living Shadow, Blood Weapon, Delirium, Abyssal Drain or Carve and Spit and its great animation.

The only problem I have had with it at all is Dark Missionary's limited range, which frequently misses ranged jobs who badly need the mitigation in new content.

[Deceptus]

From a healers perspective, Living Dead needs a healing buff modifier on it of some sort or only need to heal a portion of total damage vs all of it.

At lvl 80 DRK's can have well over 100K HP (most have 111K) and if they're in a situation where living dead is used and procs, nothing but a WHM Benediciton is going to keep them alive.

I used a Recitation (guaranteed crit) > Emergency Tactics > Adlo with a lustrate and it still wasn't enough.

I'd have to burn like 2 or 3 lustrates as well to even come close and it still wouldn't be enough.

I think someone did the math somewhere and it was like 3600 total potency worth of healing to get out 111K worth of hit points. My napkin math matches this. My 400 pot physic heal averages 12500 ish (439 ilvl). That would take 8.8 of those to top a DRK off (8.8 x 400 = 3546 total pot)

That's insane.

[Tranquilmelody7]

I don't think DRK's rework is terrible, but I'd agree it still feels quite incomplete.

My number one issue continue to be Living Dead.
It was always a badly designed skill, but it's unacceptable with how high HP has scaled.

I don't mind magic only cooldowns, but they really need to have more advantages especially given that's no distinct way of discerning magical or physical damage.
Dark Mind's nerf really feels like a slap in the face in that regard.

[Ekimmak]

I don't mind magic only cooldowns, but they really need to have more advantages especially given that's no distinct way of discerning magical or physical damage.

There used to be an easy way. If I can't parry it with Raw Intuition, it's magic. That isn't the case anymore.

Living Dead NEEDS work done on it. As someone who's been on the wrong end of both (both healing it off as a SCH and being the DRK using it), yeah. I don't want to kill the concept, but at the same time, I hate that it's such a burden to the healer to make up for me using something that other tanks don't have to worry about.

Superbolide might also need some work, but not as bad as Living Dead.

[Chrono_Rising]

I am going to assume that you mean that block rates went up by 10% last expansion. Which is an interesting fact that I was unaware of but did we also have blocking being nerfed at the start of last expansion too? Also it is a very critical assumption as your entire argument about whether or not Sheltron is able to mitigate more than TBN hinges on this fact. Why do I say this?

Yes, we had a nerf first. This is the typical rebalancing we see every expac. We need 3300 block strength for 30% mitigation. We started the expac with 1447 and are currently at 2200, over 50 ilvls we gained 800ish block strength. 25% is hardly a stretch, for that we need 2750 block strength. Going from ilvl 430 to 450 yielded more than 100 block strength, my guess would be that tome gear will have more and the 475 will have more still. To be clear, I’m not claiming that at the end of this tier we will have 25% block mitigation; but I feel safe in saying we will have more than 20%, and we will likely reach 25% at some point during the lifespan of the expansion. Blocking effectiveness drops with lvl. It isn't readily apparent. If you equiped the ilvl 400 shield at 80 and blocked something you would see it blocking for 13%. 50 ilvls later we are blocking for 20%. The leveling range hides this because each level you gain changes how much you block for, and it decreases: so as you level you may not have noticed this as you likely got better shields over time canceling out the effect. The 1% increase your cotank was likely seeing is actually at 7% increase when compared at the same level (that level being 80), using the ilvl 400 shield from stormblood.

*** However, what could be wrong is my assumption that block strength continues to grow. If it remains constant then the argument about 21% and higher is defunct.***

It's because I do understand your point that there is such a point that Sheltron will mitigate more than TBN. However you have not understood my point, which is that this point when blocking with Sheltron becomes greater than the shield of TBN is so high that you won't realistically be able to hit that point with current numbers. If I mitigate the 25,000 with Sheltron that means that I am taking 100,000 damage which is the assumed value of my max HP in the example that we have been using. This means that even if it did mitigate more, it doesn't matter because you are still dead. Allow me to show the math behind this.

Dmg Req=(TBN shield)/(Sheltron %) =with numbers=> (100,000*0.25)/0.2=125,000
Remaining HP = (Max HP)+(Mitigation amt)-(Dmg Req) =with numbers=> 100,000+25,000-125,000=0

Your analysis is based on incoming damage being less than 125k and coming in in the form of spike damage that gives no opportunity to heal through. This is fatal without mitigation and TBN is effective in this scenario, we have no disagreement in this scenario. I am not talking about this scenario. I am talking about damage which can be taken over a period of time: as in dungeon pulls with large pulls and a healer.

I gave an example of how this can be gotten around with numbers already. I'm not repeating it. To be more clear: At this time I concede that in a one hit scenario, which is analogous to the one you are analyzing here, TBN will mitigate more than Sheltron at 20%. I have gone as far as to state this already in an earlier post. As I am becoming accustomed to in this discussion, I will remind you again that there are other resources at a tanks disposal which we are ignoring in this analysis of a 125k spike, like a healer who can heal damage over time. In instances where you take damage over a period of time your analysis is missing something. Why? You can receive a heal to bring you back up to more HP while still mitigating more damage. I can take two hits: one for for 99,999 and then one for 10k and live with only 100k hp without using mitigation. How? Get a heal between them. A single hit scenario is still not what I am talking about in trash pulls. You keep saying you get it, and then go back to a single hit scenario which is limited and ignores replenishment of HP.

Another example even though I started this by saying I wouldn’t. Lets say you take a 70k hit, get a 40k heal and then a 70k hit. Which is mitigating more 20% sheltron on 140k damage or 25k TBN? Sheltron does, and you survived with a heal between the two hits. We took more than 125 damage and lived; we just did it over time getting heals in between. This would be a single target situation; again our context is trash pulls but I want to cleanly demonstrate what I’m saying. Thought 20% mitigation will not beat a 25% shield in a situation in which we take a spike of 125k damage, in realistic situations with a healer, like dungeon trash pulls, you may be able to exceed taking 125k damage by receiving heals at some point over the 6 seconds.

Um, no I didn't propose 25%, you did. I stated that you were making the assumption of reaching 25% while not having enough evidence to back you claims. I stated that 50 ilvs of change only netted 1% and that you'd have to get to another 5% to be equal to what you were assuming. Pretty sad that I have to point that out since you literally quoted where I said this. Another thing, 25% is cleaner? Not even sure what you are trying to say with this. Being cleaner is irrelevant. Just plug the numbers into excel and then you can play with the Sheltron % to see how it will come out. I guess you must be the pot trying to call the kettle black on ignoring facts that don't support your opinion and just make assumptions that work toward your argument.

Unless I’m missing something:

Excellent point Xiaoki, I would have pointed out the same for the OP. Unless the block on Sheltron somehow gets to 25% it will never be as good as TBN.

This is your quote yeah? Can you quote me saying 25% blocking cutoff from before this? In response to this quote I showed at 25% it is already beating TBN in certain damage ranges. If it is beat TBN in a range from 100k and above what does that say about 24%? It isn’t an on/off switch. Run the numbers .24 mitigation on a 120k hit is 28.8k mitigated. At 110 its 26.4k. You’ll find for a block mitigation of 24% the cutoff is above 104k damage. There is a different cutoff for 23%, and 22% and 21% in which sheltron is better and we live. The window does get smaller with less blocking mitigation, but it still exists. Again from the start of this post I have provided reason to believe that we will be going up to block mitigation as high or higher than 25%.

Hate to break it to you but this isn't an assumption that I was making. Your examples are worded differently and are not analogous to your original statement. Here is the difference.

Saying I make less money than someone doesn't mean I'm poor. vs Saying I am poorer doesn't mean I'm poor.

Both phrases are very similar but the first one indicates only that you are making less money but the second one indicates that the subject posses the qualities of being poor. So by saying that Drk was "squishier" vs "takes more damage" you did, in fact, imply that Drk had the qualities of being squishy. English is tricky that way.

Words often have two meanings. Take poorer for example.

2. worse than is usual, expected, or desirable; of a low or inferior standard or quality.

I would be using the second definition. This definition does not imply the quality of being poor, rather it points to worse than expected. Once again, you aren’t considering all the possibilities and instead of clarifying meanings where ambiguous, you made assumptions. This is what I mean that this is not an implication of the statement but an assumption of the reader.

I don't recall saying whether or not soul eater's healing capacity compared to Clemency's. My exact statement was that they were both options that go towards survivability. They do in fact both provide healing and so regardless of the quantity of healing done, they can contribute to how long you can survive. That said I also stated that you shouldn't be using either one under normal circumstances. If you are in a trash pull and Rampart has the time to come off CD then your DPS really needed to step up their game. Can't say that I've ever had pulls take that long. Heck I've had cases where I've had to do a smaller pull just because things haven't come off of CD fast enough for how fast things are dying so I just let TBN carry me through a small pull and let them reset.

You say that they are both options with no analysis which states how unhelpful soul eater is in a large pull. So I’ll do it here. The main issue is still that Soul eater is no comparison to clemency. A 5k heal will save you from 1 extra auto and take in the neighborhood of 5 seconds to 7.5 seconds to build up to go from aoe to ST rotation, and Clemency will save you from several autos while taking half the time. In fact if you factor in being able to clemency for the same 3 GCDs you would see that clemency would heal you for 50k to 75k while soul eater nets you 5k. They are an order of magnitude apart in survivability which is not readily apparent from what you wrote. And again, I use pf for dungeons they aren’t my dps I have no control in this situation and I cannot know this will be the case until the first pull.

This is the scenario that YOU created: 7 seconds of duration, 10 enemies, 50k per 3 seconds, and Sheltron/Hos mitigating for the full 7 seconds.

Going outside of that means that you are throwing other variables into the equation. If we were to take this scenario with pretty much any tank, you would need a minimum of 2 CDs, both of which would have to have a minimum of 20% mitigation to survive more than 7 seconds and this is assuming that you have BOTH up for the FULL 7 seconds. So how many CDs do you really think that you'd have to survive this? If you were pulling and taking this amount of dmg then you wouldn't make it to the end where you just need to hang on for a few sec. I could show you the math if you REALLY want it. I would say that I have addressed all the points you've tried to raise. So just who is REALLY drawing bad conclusions based on surface examples with admittedly little context?

Still you, I’ve done this pull already. Yes, there are additional variables; there always are, most pulls work with the mitigation we’ve got, but not every pull works the same. Are there healers in these examples? Of course there are; if there are no healers and we are taking that much damage TBN, nor any other mitigation is saving us. I’ve healed tanks taking many adds with no mitigation. It was terrible; I still did it. Heals are powerful; mitigation helps close the gap between pure panic healing and comfortable healing and it doesn’t take as much as you are making it out to be. It is just unfortunate that it happens, it exists, and it is counter to your point and you want to make it out like it is not real or possible and cast some shade on what I’m saying with this “you are adding in additional variables”. The additional variables exist, they are part of the scenario I just haven’t tied them down to a specific case because I took it to be self evident that it could be done. I get it, it isn’t self evident so I put forward a imagine you can live through this example find some parameters that work for it. I later put out some examples of how it could work.

Again, you haven’t considered all the variables that go into doing a pull, my example doesn’t have an obvious conclusion in a vacuum. I gave this example without a full context, my intention is that we live through it so we need to fill in some gaps: What is my current HP? What did we do before? What state is the mob in? Full HP or nearly Dead? Is it half dead and a DPs brought more to me because that seems to be a thing right now? What kind of mitigation do I have? What about self-sustain? I did give a detail free example, you decided it was impossible: I provided contexts in which this can work. I would love to see the math on how in that pull with a fresh asylum, fresh regen and full lilies cannot push out strong heals for a few seconds to bridge the gap between my death and 40k damage per 3 seconds over 7 seconds when mobs are nearly dead; because I’m pretty sure with just a cure 2 spam I can heal through that. Can even take some support away from that example (like no asylum) and live comfortably watching my hp fall slightly. So feel free, lets see your math proving this is impossible to live through in all possible contexts.

Well someone has watched Xeno's latest video. He is wrong and so are you about the risk vs reward. The risk is having lowered your DPS and the reward is being able to produce a shield as big as TBN without causing any significant disruption of your DPS output. I have proven with the above math that within the same time frame the % mitigation can't beat what TBN is doing without getting greater %. The only other way would be to have greater time but if we do this then we aren't really comparing apples to apples anymore now are we?

I've literally been saying this since Stormblood. And no that isn’t what you proved. To demonstrate my point here is a post of mine from 2017.

Core Design Issue 1: Risk Reward
Dark Knight is an active and resource intensive tank, which necessarily incorporates risk/reward into its design. We turn resources into potency and mitigation, and in general we attempt to move towards mitigating what is necessary, pushing potency as we become more comfortable over time. This is engaging and I personally enjoy such min maxing and risk taking.

However, the reward for our risk taking is often too low, after optimizing we come up shorter than both Paladin and Warrior in both damage and mitigation. The risk reward ratio is out of balance with too much risk with little to no reward leading to less enjoyment of the class overall. I feel, fundamentally, that I am a detriment to my party because I am on the class I enjoy. Paladin and warrior can do my job, and they can do it better.

Once again, wrong conclusion. First time I heard that Xeno did a tank analysis was from another post here today. Haven’t watched it. Ok your main point seems to be that it isn’t risk versus reward. So when I prog on dark knight and have only enough mp for one cast of TBN and see the boss casting and pop tbn, to find out it is a 10k aoe that doesn’t pop it, then after tbn wears off I get one shot to a tank buster and have lost both dps and died I would call that a risk. When I gear up and have a new HP and defense and things which use to pop TBN no longer pop it so that my 500 potency worth of mana is just gone that will be another example. When I don’t pop TBN and healers plans have to change because they were expecting me to mitigate some of the damage, that is another type of risk. When I learn to play every turn perfectly yes, the risk is gone. Till then the risk exists.

[Xan_Kriegor]

I have been playing ShB DRK since its launch and now I have both DRK and PLD lv 80. I did a lot of dungeons, farmed Titania and Inno EX and did some runs of Normal Eden mostly in DRK and using PF.

Gameplay:

I confess I am enjoying ShB more than while SB, which is not a big surprise. The job is fairly simple as the OP said but I do enjoy to optimize some little things in each fight depending on which jobs are present in my party.
People often say that the job is now slow and boring which I disagree. I think our CPM is not bad at all. Usually, I am first or second of my party regarding CPM in fights doing something like 35 or 36 casts per minute. From what I've seen, GNB is the only tanker that can match our CPM right now.

The problem is our downtime while we are usually pooling MP to our next buff window. I have seen people asking for more filler oGCDs to fill that void, but I dislike this solution because adding more filler oGCDs will only add more double weaves to our burst windows and it will not solve our downtime problem. In my opinion, skills like Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain can be adjusted to have 30 seconds of recast time. This should be enough to solve this problem.

Skills that need rework:

As OP and others have already stated in this thread, Blood Weapon is not a well designed skill at moment. Personally, I do not think we need the haste buff back. This can be solved by adjusting its duration to be something more like Delirium or next to a 11 seconds duration.

Living Dead situation seems to have become worse in ShB. I have heard from healers that now it is more difficult than ever to heal up to 100% a DRK without a WHM. It is definetely the worst invuln skill and a rework should be done. I really liked the idea I have heard in this Forum to turn walking dead into a dispellable debuff that DRK can take it off when desired. Of course, the duration could be adjusted to 8 seconds or something like that.

The Blackest Night is a really powerful skill against TBs and trash mobs in dungeons and I really enjoy its concept of rewarding its good usage. I know it is DPS neutral when it pops. However, it means DPS Neutral + mitigation when popped, so it is a reward. I am actually fine with the 7 seconds duration. I really don't like the delay this skill sometimes have to be taken into account. I am not sure if it is a server tick related issue or another reason. When it does not pop for me it is because the first hit I intended to mitigate was not taken into account due to this delay. The addition of two seconds duration may turn it easier to pop but I do not think it will solve the problem. In my opinion it will just make bad usages of TBN less harmful to our DPS, which is a concept I do not like.

Salted Earth is just bad right now. I will not miss it if SE just removes this skill in next patch. Its spot could be used for a more interesting and useful skill.

Mitigation and utility:

I think DRK is a really solid tank against TBs and it really shines against magical hits. I also enjoy the DRK performance on trash mob pulls in dungeons since you can TBN spam safely since it will always break. All the fights I have done until now I have never felt short on mitigations (this is before savage content ofc). However I do realize that DRK has some weaknesses:

DRK is weak against fluff damage. Since TBN is too difficult to break just for Boss fluffs it is not a really useful tool against this. I can see DRK having a bad time in E3 Savage for example. Also Abyssal Drain self heal is too weak for single target, meaning that we rely only on Soul Eater to self heal which will not solve DRK problem with fluff damage.

DRK utility is not great. Dark Missionary is worse than other party defensive utilities and besides that we just have TBN. TBN is great, the problem is that it is our main self mitigation too. For Akh Morns or tank busters that hit both tanks simultaneously we do not have anything to help. Also, the delay and the punishment for a TBN that did not pop may prevent DRK to use it more often in other party members as a utility tool. All of these issues colaborate to place DRK in a bad spot against other tanks regarding utility.

DPS:

From what we could assess from fflogs until now it is fair to say that the DPS of all tanks are pretty close. The maximum difference I have seen was something like 500 DPS while comparing GNB and DRK in a 50 percentile chart. However, DRK are the lowest DPS in almost every fight, barely losing to WAR and PLD in some events but clearly losing to GNB. Definetely DPS is something that the ShB DRK does not shine.

Personally, I think the Tank DPS in general is too low right now. Maybe it is just because it is too early in the expansion. In my opinion the Tank DPS is too far from the Damage Dealers DPS. I really enjoyed that in SB I could outdps a damage dealer if he messed up while I was doing a purple parse. Now, often when a DD does a gray parse and I am having a purple one I will do less damage than him. This is something really personal, but I do feel less relevant as job when all I do is to hit the Boss and even if I am doing the best I can I still get outdpsed by someone who ate a lot of mechanics and even died.

Summary:

In short, I do agree with most of the topics from the OP. I do not agree that DRK feels squishier than other tanks though. I think that right now DRK is really strong against trash mob in dungeons and solo tank busters, especially when Dark Mind is useful. However, DRK is weak against fluff damage, has the worst invulnerability skill, its party utility is bad, and has the lowest dps right now.

A common definition of tank state right now is that: DRK is the tankiest tanker, PLD has the best utility, GNB the best damage and WAR is in the middle. I think this is close to the reality, however the "tankiest" aspect is a concept broader than the other ones. As I said in this post, despite DRK having some powerful strengths, it also has some important weakness in the tank department while being just worse than other tanks in the utility and DPS aspects.

Summing this all up, I do like this direction DRK has taken but I really wish DRK get some tweaks for Savage content.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Changes I would like to see;


-Power Slash combo returns as the new Darkside maintenance combo and generates the same amount of resources as Souleater combo(Spinning Slash would give a 30% parry rate increase buff)


-Shadowskin returns as a level 4 ability but it's basically a weaker The Blackest Night but it upgrades into The Blackest Night at level 70 and the abilities generate 50 Blood Gauge when shield breaks


-Blood Weapon duration lasts for 20 seconds, grants 20% haste, increases Darkside damage up to 20% while Blood Weapon is active, and all weaponskills and spells restore HP on hit and gives a buff with a name that is defensive equivalent of Blood Weapon


-Either Stalwart Soul is moved to level 40 or is deleted to bring back Dark Passenger and have Unleash -> Dark Passenger(can keep Flood of Darkness but it still consumes MP and still upgrades into Flood of Shadow which changes resource cost into consumes blood gauge)


-Prefered change to Living Dead/Walking Dead instant heal but hit with weakness status after Walking Dead wears off if not healed to a certain %(will fully heal after reaching a certain % and will nit cause weakness status)


-Salted Earth no longer a ground targeting AoE and is basically Bow Shock but darker


-Blood gauge combos; A.K.A. Abyssal Drain -> Quietus -> Flood of Shadow and Edge of Shadow(yes Edge of Darkness will still consume MP until you get Carve and Spit combo where Edge of Darkness upgrades into Edge of Shadow which like Flood Shadow will consume blood gauge) ->Bloodspiller -> Carve and Spit(potency would need to be increased to 700)


-Delirium lasts 20 seconds, and lets you use blood gauge combos for free and consumes a Dark Arts charge instead of going on cooldown


-The Blackest Night gives 2 Dark Arts charges when shield breaks at level 74


-Dark Mind/Missionary reduce all damage instead of just magic damage


-Just delete Living Shadow and bring back Scourge and put Scourge on same recast as Sonic Break and has the same potencies as Sonic Break


But these change will probably take until the next expansion to happen... or you know 3 expansions... or never...

[InfiniDragon]

I really enjoy ShB DRK getting a lot of time in with it. There's a few things that still need tweaks though.

- Damage needs to be a bit higher, to fully equalize with the other tanks.
- Make Abyssal 30 seconds with two charges. Even if they have to modify its damage to do so (don't lower the heals).
- TBN needs to be 9-10 seconds due to the increased shield. DON'T mess with the shield, it's great.
- Dark Mind needs some sort of a physical buff added to it (even if it's less than the magic buff) or restore it to 30%. DRK isn't strong to magic as they claim to want them, so either make Dark Mind also help physical or truly make it strong against magic.
- Living Dead still needs work. If they insist on keeping the design for flavor, then increase healing done during LD like new Thrill, or allow all attacks the DRK does to self heal for a reasonable amount during it so they can help with the burden.
- Blood Weapon needs a slight increase in the timer or animation tweak to allow consistency in getting all the hits, like Delirium.

[Danelo]

DRK needs to have its self sustain reworked. Might be in the minority but it also needs to have TBN reworked - lower the cost, lengthen the timer (TBN is dps neutral at best right now and allows for no depth/player skill). Increase mp generation. Extend BW. Dark mind up to 30% or all damage at its current level. And damage needs to be buffed. LD... I don't dislike the gameplay for DRK, necessarily, but it's 4th string in multiple catagories. Don't take it from me, check out fflogs.

[ReiMakoto]

DRK main since HW, and raided with it all through SB.

The thing thats absolutely killing new DRK for me is the mana regen/costs. after burning through mana at the 1 min mark its literally just soul eater with occasional blood spiller until manas back. Not to mention the fact the new Delrium feels like ass, I'd be fully on board with making delrium act like whms thin air, with no mana cost on abilities for 10 seconds.