Dark Knight: 5.0x Feedback Thread

[Seku]

Uhhhh. You do realize DRK's original design had so little synergy that one of the most common complaints about it was that it basically worked against itself, yes? It would still perform quite well in magic-heavy fights, but the play style itself put a ton of people off from wanting to play it.

Dark Knight did have synergy when it first released. It put INT down up which basically kicked monk out of the raid Meta.

It was also arguably the best Main tank due to Low Blow damage procts and had some of the best Tank Buster mitigation due to the fact that most Tank busters were magic based at the time, which kicked PLD at the time out of the meta.

The only thing that was off was Dark Arts Dark Passenger + Blood price, due to the blind effect forcing mobs to miss you or if you by chance got a white mage that used Holy to stun the mobs.

The simple fix would have of course just been to do what they did with it now. Which is to allow for Blood weapon to be used in and out of Tank stance and have given it the added bonus of restoring MP per enemy hit while keeping it's same value for mp restore. It's not like Dark Knights where hurting for MP any how due to the fact that larger pulls would keep them full and thus allow for them to spam abyssal drain with Dark Arts to keep themselves up permanently, assuming no WHM with Holy.

As for how I think they should go about doing with Dark Knight this expansion though.

1. Lower the cost of the TBN to like half of a Edge / Flood of Shadow and extend the duration of the shield by like 3 seconds. This will be a small reward for people playing the class right as then you will then be in a DPS gained situation as a reward for having the shield burst and mitigating damage, and bring back some of the "Hit me and I hit you back" game play.
2. Lower the Recast time of Abyssal Drain to like 30-45 seconds.
3. Allow for the second hit on our AoE combo to restore a small amount of HP per hit.
4. Get rid of the nerf to Dark Mind, maybe up it's mitigation due to it only stopping Magic Damage. I think the same should be done with RI on warrior. Or make it so that they both just block both damage types.
5. Raise Dark Missonary's aoe magic reduction up to 20%. No reason why it should be lower than PLD's passage of arms.

I would make more suggestions about re-working some skills and bringing back old ones. Maybe putting in some actual traditional Dark Knight themed effects / abilities. But let's be honest, DRK isn't SE's dream child WAR. And before they fix DRK, their probably going to fix WAR and leave DRK in the dust....again.

[Absimiliard]

1. Lower the cost of the TBN to like half of a Edge / Flood of Shadow and extend the duration of the shield by like 3 seconds. This will be a small reward for people playing the class right as then you will then be in a DPS gained situation as a reward for having the shield burst and mitigating damage, and bring back some of the "Hit me and I hit you back" game play.
2. Lower the Recast time of Abyssal Drain to like 30-45 seconds.
3. Allow for the second hit on our AoE combo to restore a small amount of HP per hit.
4. Get rid of the nerf to Dark Mind, maybe up it's mitigation due to it only stopping Magic Damage. I think the same should be done with RI on warrior. Or make it so that they both just block both damage types.
5. Raise Dark Missonary's aoe magic reduction up to 20%. No reason why it should be lower than PLD's passage of arms.

I would make more suggestions about re-working some skills and bringing back old ones. Maybe putting in some actual traditional Dark Knight themed effects / abilities. But let's be honest, DRK isn't SE's dream child WAR. And before they fix DRK, their probably going to fix WAR and leave DRK in the dust....again.

TBN is already more than powerful enough. Gear scaling causes it to suffer a bit in non-savage content, but in savage it is working just fine. Mind you I would love it if they halved its MP cost, but the ability really is good as-is. Halving its MP cost would probably require them to nerf something else in our kit, which we really can't afford.

Abyssal Drain is a bad ability with how tank self-sustain is currently set up. A lower CD would be nice, but I don't see them doing it. Its current CD lines up with GNB's Aurora. That said, I could see them maybe making the healing aspect of it stronger. Right now AB's heal is pitiful unless you've got a ton of mobs on you, yeah? Well, maybe giving it a set potency (a bit less than clemency due to AB not costing resource/DPS) and no increased healing on larger groups instead of a shorter CD would work. Its damage component is already fine for something with zero cost and a heal attached.

Getting back a smidge more MP would probably be more beneficial in the long run than having a bootleg Brutal Shell heal attached, though I would love to have more self-healing on DRK either way. Has the worst self-sustain out of all the tanks right now, doesn't it? I'm still debating between DRK and GNB on that one

Definitely agree about Dark Mind. Or, if they're unwilling to return its mitigation to what it was before, they could lower the cooldown instead. 90 seconds is unreasonable for such a weak and circumstantial ability.

Dark Missionary is currently a slightly inferior version of GNB's Heart of Light. Their effects are the same, I grant you, but GNB gains access to theirs a full twelve levels earlier. I would love to see it made stronger, but the fact that GNB shares the exact same ability is going to interfere with convincing them to do that. Buffing one would likely necessitate buffing the other to avoid the online equivalent of a riot.

And warrior? Well, can't really argue with that one either. We'll probably end up seeing the warrior-god-of-tanks trope on full display again before too long. WAR and DRK are currently relatively well balanced; WAR has slightly stronger DPS normally, while DRK surpasses it when given the correct set of raid buffs. The one thing WAR does not currently have an answer to is TBN, and I hope they never do get something comparable.

[Shurrikhan]

1. Lower the cost of the TBN to like half of a Edge / Flood of Shadow and extend the duration of the shield by like 3 seconds. This will be a small reward for people playing the class right as then you will then be in a DPS gained situation as a reward for having the shield burst and mitigating damage, and bring back some of the "Hit me and I hit you back" game play.
2. Lower the Recast time of Abyssal Drain to like 30-45 seconds.
3. Allow for the second hit on our AoE combo to restore a small amount of HP per hit.
4. Get rid of the nerf to Dark Mind, maybe up it's mitigation due to it only stopping Magic Damage. I think the same should be done with RI on warrior. Or make it so that they both just block both damage types.
5. Raise Dark Missonary's aoe magic reduction up to 20%. No reason why it should be lower than PLD's passage of arms.

1. That would remove any risk to arguably the most powerful mitigation/sustain-over-time CD in the game outside of Nascent Flash-Chaotic Cyclone-Chaotic Cyclone-Decimate-Decimate on trash.
2. That's fine, actually.
3. Why? You just gave that over to Abyssal Drain, and Stalwart Soul is already powerful enough to make Quietus painfully situational in trash where you can make use of TBN on CD.
4. RI blocks all damage. Camouflage is the only other typal mitigation, via parry, but even it has a universal mitigation component to an average total of 15% mitigation. RI, like Shelltron, are also not equivalents to DM. Their slot equivalents are effectively Thrill of Battle on Warrior and non-existent (replaced by base block chance) on Paladin.
5. Passage of Arms is a longer CD which costs the PLD its movement, any further mitigation opportunities, and its uptime -- in many ways the most punishing CD in the game if used outside of jump phases, especially given that the buff can still be slow to apply to higher-latency party members, making it difficult to reliably weave. There is absolutely no way DRK should have something stronger than that, "anti-magic" tank or no.

[Deceptus]

1. That would remove any risk to arguably the most powerful mitigation/sustain-over-time CD in the game outside of Nascent Flash-Chaotic Cyclone-Chaotic Cyclone-Decimate-Decimate on trash.

Curious how you're putting 4 GCD's (lets be generous and say 2.35s) in a 6 second window?

[Kabooa]

Curious how you're putting 4 GCD's (lets be generous and say 2.35s) in a 6 second window?

0 latency.

-.5 for the ability activation, first gcd at 5.5, 3.0, .5

Edit: Hoooo, i mussed there.

[Shurrikhan]

Curious how you're putting 4 GCD's (lets be generous and say 2.35s) in a 6 second window?

Typo; one Decimate too many. Largely irrelevant to its relative power, though, given that it only takes at most a Chaotic Cyclone and a Decimate to outperform TBN anyways if against 5+ targets (your minimum full pull) thus being able to outburst TBN every other time and break even with it the other use per minute -- hence, TBN's lone competitor for flat miti/sustain over time.

[Seku]

1. That would remove any risk to arguably the most powerful mitigation/sustain-over-time CD in the game outside of Nascent Flash-Chaotic Cyclone-Chaotic Cyclone-Decimate-Decimate on trash.
2. That's fine, actually.
3. Why? You just gave that over to Abyssal Drain, and Stalwart Soul is already powerful enough to make Quietus painfully situational in trash where you can make use of TBN on CD.
4. RI blocks all damage. Camouflage is the only other typal mitigation, via parry, but even it has a universal mitigation component to an average total of 15% mitigation. RI, like Shelltron, are also not equivalents to DM. Their slot equivalents are effectively Thrill of Battle on Warrior and non-existent (replaced by base block chance) on Paladin.
5. Passage of Arms is a longer CD which costs the PLD its movement, any further mitigation opportunities, and its uptime -- in many ways the most punishing CD in the game if used outside of jump phases, especially given that the buff can still be slow to apply to higher-latency party members, making it difficult to reliably weave. There is absolutely no way DRK should have something stronger than that, "anti-magic" tank or no.

1. As stated by someone else earlier, there can be other draw backs placed with it, or re-arranged into something more balanced. As is though The blackest Night is DPS neutral and if you don't break the shield, you lose out. I'd rather see a bigger reward attached to it, such as a DPS gain. Because just about anything else that they could (or rather be willing to) apply would be seen as bad.
3. Because Abyssal drain is attached to a CD and Dark Knight has no drain abilities that really stick out. I suppose you could also apply it to Qutis, that would be cool too.
4. Did not know that (that's what I get for not playing Warrior right away). This only further's my argument though that Dark Mind should be a bit stronger or block both damage types.
5. That all sounds like a knee-jerk reaction. I'd have personally mention the range and how cumbersome it can be to use as a main tank. But in either case, I still believe Dark Missonary should be 15-20% party mitigation for aoe damage due to the fact it's magic only, simply due to the fact that unlike Passage of arms, you don't have a knee-jerk reaction. You have to learn what the aoe is and in any type of raid damage where you are facing physical damage, it becomes useless. Point being that if something is niche, that ability in said niche should be powerful.

[Ultimatecalibur]

1. As stated by someone else earlier, there can be other draw backs placed with it, or re-arranged into something more balanced. As is though The blackest Night is DPS neutral and if you don't break the shield, you lose out. I'd rather see a bigger reward attached to it, such as a DPS gain. Because just about anything else that they could (or rather be willing to) apply would be seen as bad.

DpS gains are bad as it would more than likely force Dark Knights into the MT position. This goes against why most of the counter attack actions were removed.

5. That all sounds like a knee-jerk reaction. I'd have personally mention the range and how cumbersome it can be to use as a main tank. But in either case, I still believe Dark Missonary should be 15-20% party mitigation for aoe damage due to the fact it's magic only, simply due to the fact that unlike Passage of arms, you don't have a knee-jerk reaction. You have to learn what the aoe is and in any type of raid damage where you are facing physical damage, it becomes useless. Point being that if something is niche, that ability in said niche should be powerful.

I'm pretty certain that there are no non-Shadow non-Magic damage raidwides. While Dark Missionary might look inferior in a vacuum, in practice Dark Missionary and Heart of Light are equal save for cases where HoL is used to protect the MT from physical attacks.

[Reynhart]

DpS gains are bad as it would more than likely force Dark Knights into the MT position. This goes against why most of the counter attack actions were removed.

Just put TBN on the other tank.

[Arsthan]

DpS gains are bad as it would more than likely force Dark Knights into the MT position. This goes against why most of the counter attack actions were removed.

I don't quite see as to why it would force DRKs into MTing? Sure, it is slightly easier to use it without a target so you as the DRK get it, but that's far from a reason why it would make him a better MT. You can still use it as the OT, even if it's slightly more annoying to target the MT with it, but like... that definitely is not a good reason when you can macro it (I'm not completely advocating to macro it, you still have way more control over it when you just do it manually). And targeting someone manually is more about getting used to it, nothing hard there.

In fact, a DPS gain on TBN would turn TBN into an actual mechanic for DRK, rather than a defensive CD. Currently, you have little reason to use it outside of tank busters, but if you give it a DPS gain, you suddenly want to pop as many TBNs in a fight as you possibly can. This would result in bigger gap between good and bad players, which is exactly the opposite of what SE tries to achieve. However; I do think that a gap between players is important for the game. People who plan to stick with the game would want to get better and better at a job they play, but when there's little room for improvement, it mostly becomes "Why bother? If I'm playing mostly perfectly whithout any practice, is there really a need to try harder when there's no actual reward other than bragging rights?".

As to what would be considered a DPS gain, the plain and easy way is to make EoS a direct crit under DA. Personally, I think that'd be boring. I'd much rather see something like a DoT, an attack speed buff or keeping the current DA effect while giving back some MP to increase the usage of EoS throughout the fight. While we're at it, please keep it 3k MP, lowering the MP would be a DPS increase too, but you also lower the risk of the skill.