Dark Knight Megathread

[ArthurATDayne]

I guess any duration window that doesn't have at least twice as much time in lenience as it has actual use (as per 30 seconds to use 10 seconds' worth of attacks) is just sheer masochism. Who'duhthoughtit?

Well, if Blood Weapon ever does go 30s Duration 5 Stacks like PLD's Requiescat is with their 30s Duration 5 Stacks, you can still burn through those stacks in 10 seconds or less for bragging rights while some of us can decide to take longer than 10 seconds.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, if Blood Weapon ever does go 30s Duration 5 Stacks like PLD's Requiescat is with their 30s Duration 5 Stacks, you can still burn through those stacks in 10 seconds or less for bragging rights while some of us can decide to take longer than 10 seconds.

I feel like you're putting the means before the objective here. Blood Weapon isn't there, ultimately, to generate MP; you could have generated those effects passively or by any other means. It's there for its gameplay ramifications. (Yes, shockingly, kits have predominantly existed for their gameplay, as much as changes towards homogeneity and the "may as well" have muddied that.)

The whole point of having a durationed CD is to create that moment of tension, a moment of "rush", or at the least an opportunity cost for using it at an inopportune time. If nothing at all about your gameplay would change from the skill's presence (except in that you might need to first assign an auto-clicker to its button)... why is it there?

If Blood Weapon itself is something you do not want to actually deal with in any way -- something you specifically wish not to have any gameplay effects -- why not just reduce the MP cost of Edge/Flood such that you can get off one more cast per minute, or slap the 3k extra MP restoration (or a Dark Arts proc) onto Carve and Spit, etc.? You clearly don't actually want it to be a thing, to have any impact, so why have it take up button-space?

[Lyth]

I don't think that having skill speed thresholds are a bad thing, as long as it's a target that everyone can reasonably reach after accounting for variations in latency. The main issues with Blood Weapon are in its execution/buff application delay and the fact that your GCD is always slower in AoE due to Skill Speed/Spell Speed being separately scaling haste stats despite all the gish jobs that are out there.

[Mekhana]

Blood Weapon is the same ancient issue the devs play on a zero latency LAN test server and they forgot to adjust the skill like so many other things in the DRK kit.

[Crater]

This feels like continually shouting into the void but I still don't know why people are asking for stacks on Blood Weapon instead of asking for Blood Weapon to actually have a buff effect again. It doesn't do anything to warrant being a timer-based buff or a stack-based buff.

It doesn't enable the use of otherwise-unavailable skills.
It doesn't eliminate the cost of certain skills while under its effect.
It doesn't change the effect of any skills by forcing a critical hit or guaranteeing a proc, or any other mechanical change.
It doesn't interact with any non-GCD skills used under its duration.
It doesn't buff damage, or attack speed, or crit/DH rate.

Putting stacks on it just changes it from an incoherent, stupidly-designed skill that shouldn't exist and is slightly inconvenient, to an incoherent, stupidly-designed skill that shouldn't exist. If that's the bar people are setting for themselves then there's no wonder this job keeps going downhill with every update.

[Shin96]

If that's the bar people are setting for themselves then there's no wonder this job keeps going downhill with every update.

Not like people have been asking for simple fixes to Living Dead for example. They're just retardedly stubborn on this job to the detriment of anyone who enjoys it.

I personally would enjoy it if Blood Weapon gave us Haste back, enhancing the gameplay by attaching speed to our GCD's.

I could also make the same case for Dark Arts. Samurai uses Hissatsu: Kaiten to increase the potency on Weaponskills by 50%. I don't see what's difficult by giving back Dark Arts albeit easier or simpler with additional properties. It leads me to believe the developers have decided tanks are supposed to be casual while DPS takes on the mantle of difficulty. Thus Reaper. It's easy to see why they disregard feedback on DRK.

[Crater]

[...]

It's a fair point that SE seems to be stubborn and inattentive to DRK issues in general, but I still can't really follow the logic of asking for Blood Weapon to be a slightly more convenient version of a bad skill that shouldn't exist in its current form in the first place.

It's like if Living Dead were a skill you cast on a healer that gave them 2500 MP and an instant-cast Raise if you died... And instead of people asking for it to be turned into an invuln, they started asking for it to give the healer 3500 MP so they could raise you and heal you. It just doesn't make sense to me to make that kind of compromise with something that is clearly a design error. If SE isn't going to fix it despite the feedback, then they were never going to fix it anyway, but if they do actually listen to feedback for once, you might as well be asking for a good skill instead of a bad skill.

[Undeadfire]

While I understand reworking Dark Knight, it is also a dangerous game to play reworks.

I always suggested Walking Dead should have at least a healing received increase 20-30% counteracting it's extreme drawback, Ast/Sch/Sge have to exert OGCDs keeping them alive. Each tank has their own invulnerable drawbacks while Warrior does not, specially EW Warrior.

TBN is the main focus issue when you suggest the reworks, this ability today is very powerful cheesing survival easy on demand short cooldown. I'm not the guy for a solution, but it feels very much like a Warrior clone with more buttons.

[Comrade_uri]

Posting to show support as something needs to be done and what they put up in the media tour was… well bit early for aprils fools isn’t it?

[Ignimortis]

I just want this thread to keep going. A lot of people, including me, have posted what they want from DRK. I am, in general, against the direction the game takes with tanks and healers (making them more and more simple and homogenized), but DRK was hit hardest by this on the tank side, IMO.

I'll be hopping on RPR to test it out in a week, but I still hope DRK receives a cohesive dedicated rework that would distance it from the "just dump all of your resources in the buff window and 1-2-3 the rest of the time" design philosophy SE seems to have adopted for many classes. I know SE can balance DPS numbers very well even without making everything work the same way, they did it in HW and SB (and ShB for DPS), so I don't really see the reason to do it.