The Rework DRK Deserves

[Dtrip19]

Another day, another DRK rework post... Warning. This will be long.

Goals of the rework The main goal of this rework is to strongly establish the identity that DRK was always meant to have: resource management. Having a job's abilities tied to resources rather than cooldowns gives players flexibility in how they play the job and how they respond to different situations. Anyone can press the damaging buttons as soon as they come off cooldown, but if every button you can press has a resource cost attached to it, pressing every button you see at will won't end well for you, so you'll have to think ahead. Cooldowns are much easier to use but they come at the cost of forcing downtime whereas a smart player using a resource management class can do what they whenever they want if they have planned ahead properly, and that is the essence of what has made DRK fun in previous iterations. This is the problem that causes 5.0 DRK to feel so sluggish and unsatisfying, every powerful action DRK has off the GCD has a recast time of at least 60 seconds excluding TBN and Darkside abilities. Simply reducing the cooldowns will do nothing to fix this, as the potencies will simply be adjusted to compensate and then you will just have to press buttons more often for the same effect.

Core Rework Philosophy The main themes/rules I'll be sticking to for this rework are as follows:
1) No long-cooldown abilities should cost resources. As previously discussed, cooldowns and resource costs achieve the same goal: limiting the usage of certain abilities. Having to wait for a cooldown only to spend resources on it when it's finally up feels terrible and is ultimately pointless.
2) No actions (with only one exception) should require you to use another action to receive it's full effect. This rule is a bit wordy, so my best example of what i'm talking about is how blood weapon and delirium worked in 4.x. You had to use blood weapon, then use delirium to extend it, then use dark arts twice to burn off the extra mp you just generated with delirium, on top of the mp you're getting from the initial usage of blood weapon. That is simply terrible design to have to press four oGCD buttons in a row to achieve such an effect, and so that's what I'll avoid.

Actions Removed/Added

Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow are the first to go. Simply put, actions such as these that convert mp directly into potency cannot exist on a job that is meant to budget it's resources to achieve the effects it needs to do it's job. Since DRK is a tank, that happens to be mitigation and healing. Nobody would ever choose to use a healing or mitigation ability if it caused them to lose 500 potency every time they did it unless the ability translated into damage later as well such as how TBN currently works. However, not every ability can work like TBN does, so edge and flood must go to open up space for DRK's kit.

[Dtrip19]

Never fear, for Dark Arts is here (again) to fill up the mp dump gap that edge/flood left. Dark Arts was a case of a fantastic concept that was implemented poorly, and deemed bad design when it was actually quite genius. This time around, a couple measures will be taken to ensure that the new version of Dark Arts doesn't go out of control like it did in 4.x. The first is to simply reduce DRK's mp generation overall. Previously, DRK's mp restoring effects restored mp in increments of 1/2 or 1/5 the mp needed for one Dark Arts. Perhaps you can see the problem that those amounts don't line up nicely, which caused your mp to not quite line up with your mp costs nicely. To fix this issue while also tuning down the mp generation, all mp restoring effects will now generate 1/3 or 1/6 of the mp needed for one Dark Arts, which is now 1000 and 500. The second measure is to remove Dark Arts effects from all abilities not on the GCD. This should be self-explanatory. This resulted in forced double weaving too often with Dark Arts and Carve and Spit, and also breaks the second rule of "no buttons should make you press other buttons to get their effect" with the one exception being Dark Arts affecting abilities on the GCD.

Spinning Slash and Power Slash are back, more on those later

Mechanical Changes
Darkside now increases damage dealt by 10% and reduces spell/weaponskill recast times and auto attack delay by 10%
Blood Guage now fills up to a maximum of 120

Action Changes

Syphon Strike now has a potency of 280 and restores 1000 mp on hit

Soul Eater now has a potency of 380 and generates 10 blood on hit. Dark Arts potency: 500, Dark Arts effect: restores hp equal to damage dealt (cure potency 500 might be effectively the same?)

Unleash Identical except it now costs 1000 mp

[Dtrip19]

Spinning Slash potency is 300

Power Slash potency is 400. Dark Arts potency: 550, Dark Arts effect: Darkside for 30 seconds. Gives you something to spend your mp on at least once every 30s. Potency increase from Dark Arts is also higher than on Soul Eater to make the combo more efficient mp wise while off tanking

Blood Weapon Now restores 500 mp and 3 blood for each time you deal physical damage to an enemy (functions identically in this regard as in 4.x). Recast time reduced to 30 seconds, duration increased to 15s

Salted Earth Potency remains 60, Duration: 21 seconds, Recast: 60 seconds. Generates 1 blood each time is deals damage to an enemy. Very important for this ability to hit 7 times and generate 1 blood each time. This allows the ability to generate 50 blood on it's own in pulls against 8 or more enemies, while also generating 7 against a single enemy which is most likely to leave you at a nice 10 with all the other effects giving 3 blood each.

Abyssal drain is back on the GCD (where it belongs) and reads: Deals damage with a potency of 300 evenly divided between the target and all nearby enemies. Potency cannot go below 150 for any enemy. Dark Arts potency: 500, Dark Arts effect: restores hp equal to damage dealt (cannot use cure potencies on this ability). Mp cost: 1000. The wording on this ability makes it so that it is usable against one enemy for 500 potency in damage and healing for 4000 total mp with the Dark Arts, while scaling up due to the minimum potency against large groups. It's use in single target fights will still be relatively niche unless burst healing is needed, but in that case it's fantastic for the job.

Carve and Spit Delivers a three-fold attack to the target. The potency and effects of this ability match those of the most recently used weaponskill. Recast: 60 seconds.
This can be used directly after and weaponskill replicate it's damage and effects, but is most useful when used to replicate a Dark Arts Power Slash when you're low on Darkside Time, a Dark arts Souleater for even more healing, or a bloodspiller for even more potency (600). Also can be used during blood weapon to restore 500 mp and blood

[Dtrip19]

Bloodspiller remains at 600 potency. Dark Arts effect: Damage over time, potency 30, duration 30 seconds. 300 potency worth of damage for 3000 mp on top of the 50 blood cost. very high exchange rate on potency in comparison to the other abilities but it's over time so it must be maintained. Basically the new scourge.

Quietus bumped down to 200 potency. Additional effect: restores (500) mp per enemy hit. Having no Dark Arts effect on this one at all is pretty important actually, so you can store up a dark arts before using it to refill your mp fully against large pulls

Delirium Probably my favorite change of the rework. Simply gives two stacks of Dark Arts at the cost of 50 blood. (Dark arts can be stacked up to 5 although you'd never want to do that, all abilities consume one stack of Dark Arts rather than fading the effect like in 4.x.) Recast time reduced to 2 seconds. Since it's now on par for power level with bloodspiller and quietus, it can be used whenever you want, giving DRK's full freedom to generate extra effective mp even in single target fights if they don't want to use bloodspiller without the fuss of the 4.x delirium.

The Blackest Night Now gives 50 blood when it pops rather than the "Dark Arts" proc which will now be removed. This is why it's important for Delirium to give stacks of Dark Arts rather than just restoring mp or else you can go on an infinite loop of spending mp on TBN for blood and spending the blood on more mp

Stalwart Soul potency reduced to 150, still generates 20 blood, but now restores 500 mp for each enemy it hits, just like quietus. Dark Arts potency: 250, Dark Arts effect: Darkside for 30 seconds. very important to have darkside on this one so you don't have to do a full power slash combo on every trash pull to get the skill/spell speed

[Dtrip19]

Dark Missionary Refreshes TBN effects on the target, extends their duration to 15 seconds, then spreads that effect to all nearby party members. Recast reduced to 60s. Recast time reduction justified by the resource cost of the initial TBN. the mitigation this skill provides now is just better in every way, it's wonderful.

Living Shadow is getting a huge change, and it would have to be accompanied by a new trait as well which I'll describe first, called Darkside Mastery. The trait would give you one stack of "surging Darkside" whenever you maintain Darkside for 30 seconds, maxing out at 4 stacks. Think of it like a polyglot stack in a way. Living Shadow Would say: Consumes 3 stacks of "surging Darkside" to deal damage with a potency of 450 to all nearby enemies. Additional effect: Increases damage dealt and reduces damage received by 20%. Duration: 18s The idea is based off the DRK in the shadowbringers trailer exploding in purple glory to one-shot innocence, so the animation should match. This ability would replace Dark Mind at level 80 as well. It's interesting to note how the cooldown/resource works on this skill. Since "Surging Darkside" can stack 4 times, but Living Shadow only costs 3, it can be used every 90 seconds, but you can potentially hold off on using it for up to 149 seconds before you generate a fifth stack of "surging Darkside" and begin to lose damage by not using the explosion and damage buff. Additionally, if you hold off for those 149 seconds to use it, you only have to wait 31 seconds before you can use it again, so if done well you can make use of this abilities damage buff while minimizing the amount of time you spend being vulnerable while it's on "cooldown" due to not having access to it's mitigation as well.

[Dtrip19]

Final Thoughts There's a lot that I love about this rework. Mainly it's because it brings back the 4.x aoe rotation of bloodweapon, quietus, TBN, and abyssal drain to restore massive mp and health back to back, while also expanding on it thanks to stalwart soul. The Stalwart Soul combo is great for when you're low on resources and/or blood weapon is down, which will inevitably happen if your party is a little low on dps against large pulls. As for the single target rotation, you now have two buffs to maintain that cost mp and healing that can be done only by spending mp (none of the hp regen effects are free, for a reason), so a fair amount of decision-making must be done to maximize dps while also meeting the minimum healing/mitigation requirements. On top of that, the new delirium, which I love for it's 2 second recast time, allows you to convert blood you get from TBN into even more effective mp thanks to it giving two stacks of dark arts, so using your mitigation well expands the abilities of DRK's in single target fights greatly. I calculated how much mp a DRK will generate per minute using some rough numbers and it came out to around 24000 mp, enough for 8 uses of 3000 cost abilities. For optimal dps, 4 of those will be used every minute to maintain Darkside and Bloodspiller's dot, leaving the other 4 to be used how you see fit either on healing, mitigation, or more damage. I'd love to hear your feedback on this rework assuming you read all the way through, I've pored over it myself quite a few times and I'm having a hard time finding any design flaws in it.

[Jukebox12]

Nerf^^ not a buff

[Kabooa]

I don't think Dark Knight needs a full on rework again. Right now it simply needs a bit more resource generation, especially in AoE. living Shadow needs an additional component.

I personally would want Darkside's duration from Flood and Edge reduced so it isn't so easy to maintain, but that takes a bit more than I'm willing to write right now. Having a Polyglot ramping Darkside effect though, that could be interesting.

[Cosaint]

Considering that DRK went from the least played tank to the most played, I'd say posts like this are a waste of time

[Awful]

It doesn't need a rework again it needs a few tweaks and that's about it, more MP from Siphon (in PvP it gives 1000 all they gotta do is make it 1000 in PvE for example), Dark Mind needs to be like RI/Heart of Stone, they nerfed it from 30>20% because it's magic only and very situational and bad, Living Dead needs to be from 100% HP > 50% HP since you're wasting essentially 120k HP on 1 CD in healing resources, and make TBN available at 60 and Delirium at 70.

If those changes were to happen it'd put DRK in a better place but as it stands even though I main DRK I know it has issues and it could be in a better spot but your rework sounds like it'll be awkwardly resourced as well as awkward to me so it's a pass unfortunately.