Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

One thing that Xeno is quite good at is bringing tanking topics into the broader player consciousness, and this dates back to ARR. You don't have to agree with the take or presentation style, but at least it starts a discussion.

It's important to be practical about this. The new actions released aren't all that exciting, but you're not going to get new ones. The focus of the pre-raid patches usually ends up being about numerical changes like potency and resources. I think it's a waste of time asking to be buffed to WAR/PLD's level of self-healing, in part because I think that they significantly overdid it this expansion and wouldn't be surprised if that gets toned back.

Oblation does look like it was designed originally to be part of an upgrade to TBN, much like the other Lv. 82 tank abilities. I suspect that the reason why it split off is because everyone complains endlessly about TBN not breaking causing a dps loss. Personally, I don't see this as an issue because your job as a tank is to understand damage patterns. If TBN doesn't break, you didn't need to use it there, so just learn from it and don't repeat the same mistake next pull.

I'm starting to get annoyed at these recommendations to move TBN to a 25 second recast. The recast is one of the most valuable parts of any defensive ability. Why would you give up the most useful part of the ability? And for what, to make it dummy proof? No thanks.

Even if Oblation is designed to always be paired up with the odd TBN of your choosing, it's a completely underwhelming effect, especially when you have raidwide mitigation abilities on other tanks that mitigate more. I think if this is to be a standalone offering, it either should be a bubble that provides a beneficial effect on popping, or provide some sort of accompanying single target beneficial buff (like a movement speed boost).

I think that the point about conditional damage mitigation like Dark Mind and Missionary are still valid, and yet to be addressed. Likewise, it's worth bringing up Living Dead yet again, but this has perpetually ignored by the dev team. I think the best thing that we could hope for is raid design that either just ups the amount of tankbusters significantly such that invulns are less important, or tankbusters that just flat out ignore invulns.

I do like the fact that someone at least is taking jabs at the whole 'dev team that actually plays their own game' business. Most of the interviews that I read/watched following the media tour really pushed that party line. But I don't think that this dev team is any more receptive than Blizzard is; they merely choose to express their dissent through silence rather than openly arguing with the players.

And it really doesn't matter if everyone in the office is a gamer. The problem is when most of your staff have strong feelings on their PLD/WAR/SCH/BRD/BLM jobs that they've been maining since prior to ARR. In many ways, I'd prefer to have someone dispassionately running job balance than someone who feels overly invested in it.

[Shin96]

To my knowledge, he's talking about simplifying things like the trait of Enhanced Living Shadow II. You would assume this would come automatically but no, it was introduced as a seperate trait. Why even waste space for this trait?

I'm not up to date with what Xenosys is doing/saying right now but the guy has years of experience and knowledge. If anything, you want to simplify archaich and outdated systems that have no benefit whatsoever.

[MagiusNecros]

Xeno offers something the other streamers don't have. Which is criticism. And it's because he is a Tank player. When you have Holy Sheltron, Corundum and BLOODWHETTING I think DRK has an issue with TBN.

Plus 3-4 filler garbage traits? Come the fuck on.

Dark Knight is so phoned in it isn't even funny.

It's a really sad day when Living Dead can't be bothered with but they have no problem making Holmgang better then it ever was by letting you move and do whatever you want. You can probably pop it, survive and heal yourself to full HP without a healer.

And for 10 full seconds. Bonkers.

Also. BLOODWHETTING.

[Shurrikhan]

Also. BLOODWHETTING.

Flat out needs to be redesigned. 400n ppgcd of self-healing is straight-up broken in AoE, even while being relatively pitiful in ST.

[Dracosavarian]

What mainly drives me nuts is seeing all of the youtubers who act like Dark Knight is fine. I kid you not, I just got done watching a video on the status of all of the tanks, and the video in question was basically like " Dark Knight is great to pair with a healer! It's a great tank to heal, because TBN! OBLATION!!! "

And the individual in question came off like they ran all of the tanks. Knew them. Which felt like an outright lie to me. Drove me absolutely insane. Leveling through Endwalker was PAIN as Dark Knight. All of the dungeons had me encountering problems that should not have existed. Period. So to see folks acting as though everything is perfectly fine just makes me shake my head in dismay.

I was leveling Reaper to 90 today, and in the level 87 Dungeon ( I am not going to name it because I don't wish to spoil things for others. Please folks, don't mention dungeon names or ANYTHING. Please be mindful of spoilers to others!!! Thank you! ) I kid you not, I watched the Paladin take the final boss from 70% health with another Reaper, to 0%, eventually being the last one standing. The rest of us had all died.

Warrior would be capable of doing that nowadays. Gunbreaker as well.

Dark Knight?

Dark Knight would be eating the freaking floor in short order. Souleater and Abyssal Drain would not have been enough to keep them going. And using LD is pointless without a healer to back us up. A problem the other tanks don't have, because they can use their healing abilities after using their Invuln to help recovery.


The situation right now with Drk is depressing.

[MagiusNecros]

Flat out needs to be redesigned. 400n ppgcd of self-healing is straight-up broken in AoE, even while being relatively pitiful in ST.

It's pretty much Bloodbath. And you get it as early as Raw Intuition(lvl56 baby!). And Chaos attacks always Crit Heal. You get massive returns just by spamming overpower or any AoE move in huge packs.

It's very similar to Stormblood Steel Cyclone and Dark Knight Abyssal Drain.

And then the upgrade gives you more DR and a damage shield.

https://i.redd.it/kz02t7ecei681.png

Reaper can offtank btw in lvl 90 dungeons against trash with either a competent healer or a Warrior/PLD since their sustain kit is high.

Lvl 90 Enshroud phases with AC/BB/SW are not to be scoffed at in AoE team fights. Can probably handle the 1st or 2nd boss in dungeons for about 10 seconds or more outside of tank busters.

[Shurrikhan]

At this point, I'd happily just take:

• TBN reduced to 20% (easier to break).
• Enhanced Unmend instead gives a free-cast of Plunge (for 5-10 seconds).
• Oblation increased to 15%; duration reduced to 8 seconds and cooldown reduced to 40 seconds.
• C&S and Abyssal Drain gain a second charge. They and Bloodspiller inflict Blood Price for 5 seconds, causing targets affected to heal you for 30% of the damage you deal to them.
• Blood Weapon stacks.

Though, ideally, convert Blood Weapon into a Darkside-consuming toggle that increases Attack Speed by 10%, increasing (while more than proportionately increasing Darkside consumption) with Darkside duration consumed or generated to a maximum of 20% bonus attack speed.

It's pretty much Bloodbath.

Not, really, no. Even when Bloodbath was a Marauder skill, it was simply 25% of damage dealt, but multi-target damage isn't n times one's single-target damage, unlike the self-healing from Bloodwhetting. It could allow for one to survive without heals, but not to effectively self-Benediction every GCD in large pulls.

[Marxam]

Depth in tanks died out in ShB once enmity became a joke. Literally half of the tanks job, which was to maintain threat, was essentially erased. It's the equivalent or removing positionals from melee dps. Xeno does have some hot takes but as a 2.0 tank main myself I can see where he's coming from despite disagreeing with some things he said. The problem I see with DRK is that its a ShB tank in an EW expansion. It is the only tank that punishes you for poor performance, something that hasn't happened since SB. Both TBN and LD are antiquated by design and need an update, especially after seeing what the other tanks got. I'm also tired of TBN being a catch all defensive.

Some changes I would suggest:

1. Change TBN Dark Arts to proc another TBN instead of a free shadow spam.
This changes nothing in the gameplay loop but has a net positive. Most DRK tanks die because they don't know how to hold a minimum of 3k MP, and this is very evident in lvling dungeons. If TBN proc'd another TBN it becomes positive with every use and you no longer have to hold 3k mp. It would also help self sustain as after the first pop its basically a free shield every 15 secs. Also, pour one out for DA to any og DRK's who remember who awesome that skill was.

2. Rework TBN to the charge system
I like what they did the Oblation putting it on a charge system, despite being kinda meh overall. For reference, WHM has Aquaveil on the same recast timer but at 15% dmg mitigation. If TBN was put to 2 charges, cost no mp, increased recast timer, it would give it more utility and ability to be used back to back in large pull situations (effectively a 50% shield). They would have to remove DA but honestly its best if they just killed that entirely because it serves no purpose other than flavor text. This would also line up nicely with Oblation.

Ultimately, TBN is still a good cd but not a great cd when compared to others. At the very least I expect them to increase the duration of TBN to 8 secs instead of 7. That one change alone could have made TBN much easier to proc. However, the main problem is that TBN is not up when you need it (or you don't have the mp to use it). TBN is just another way of self sustain. I think most ppl tend to forget that if you never took damage in the first place, why do you need to heal? DRK is the only tank to have a cd that isn't an invul that you take 0 damage on hit while TBN is up. It's also one of the reasons I don't really understand the outcry for DRK to have self heals when in reality TBN just need to accessed more easily to prevent that damage in the first place.

[Ferrinus]

Question from someone who's just leveling DRK to do the role quests with: is there a reason that Delirium causes Bloodspiller to restore 200 MP per swing but Quietus to restore 500 MP per swing? It's not like Blood Weapon changes how much MP it gives you whether you're attacking one or many targets.

[Shurrikhan]

I think that's because Stalwart Soul would give 1k MP per cast and the Delirium bonuses were to give the respective ST and AoE Blood spenders the same mana per GCD as the ST and AoE combos, respectively?