Dark Knight Megathread

[Sazuzaki]

It'd be fine. I'm not sure it offers anything over any other recipient--Carve & Spit (let's say, 600), Bloodspiller (e.g., 300 each), etc.--but... sure?

Honestly, it's purely for gameplay. Would be far more interesting gameplay wise than C&S having a flat cure potency attached. The only thing DRK really has going for it is it's high skill ceiling for defensive play, so I feel that should be expanded on more.

Still baffles me how DRK's signature ability is holding the class back this much, while the devs do nothing to expand upon it/make it more interesting.

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, it's purely for gameplay. Would be far more interesting gameplay wise than C&S having a flat cure potency attached.

More interesting on paper, perhaps, but also that much more constrictive in practice than two charges of C&S/AD and it being attached also to C&S.

Still baffles me how DRK's signature ability is holding the class back this much, while the devs do nothing to expand upon it/make it more interesting.

Which one? Delirium, Living Dead, Edge/Flood as a pair, and Living Shadow can all equally be considered a DRK signature ability (burster, immunity, resource spender, and gimmick).

[Sazuzaki]

Which one? Delirium, Living Dead, Edge/Flood as a pair, and Living Shadow can all equally be considered a DRK signature ability (burster, immunity, resource spender, and gimmick).

I... don't think DRK is known for Delirium nor Edge/Flood. Well, it may be be infamous for Living Dead. But when someone brings up DRK, usually the first thing to come up to someone's mind is TBN. You get what I mean? TBN (and yes... Living Dead) is unique to DRK, but Flood might as well be Shinten, Delirium is Inner Release, Living Shadow is Automaton Queen. Those things aren't unique to DRK. Hell, most are just inferior versions to the other variants.

[KouYanagi]

2. Is there a viable solution to your problem? If so, write it down.

An idea that has been brewing was to have an overhaul from the Shadowbringer's identity.

So there are a few goals when brainstorming

1. Minimize oGCDs
2. Give DRK an identity other than a WAR with soot black dye
3. Attain complexity and 'Dance-with-Death' from it's original design back in HW

Combat

Delirium sucks, Bloodspiller is just Fell Cleave. So I propose a new combat flow and give DRK 'Enshroud'. 'Enshroud' for those who don't know is Reaper's Super Saiyan form, basically Delirium still but instead of spamming Bloodspiller, why not spam two different weaponskills instead. As for what weapon skills to spam, Soulstealer and bring back Power Slash. With Power Slash brought back, it will then be added back to the normal lull period of combat, Hard Slash > Syphon Strike > Power Slash/Soulstealer, one dealing more damage after you perform the other one. So during DRK's 'Enshroud', give Soulstealer and Power Slash a new coat of paint such as VFX and animations.

As for the effect during this mode, give DRK more potency and finally LIFESTEAL, but no short GCDs. At the end, maybe for DRK's capstone skill for EW, it can still be Shadowbringer but beefed up so it doesn't feel like an afterthought. (fancier VFX as usual).

Tank Role

Being a tank means that moment to moments, they need to press their don't wanna die button. Therefore by firstly reducing oGCDs, more time can be devoted to pressing said 'Oh Shit' buttons.

Next Oblation and Dark Mind are really weak compared to other tank's upgrades, so why not combine them with Blackest Night? A spammable barrier that has a 10% damage reduction everytime you use it, with the 10 % damage reduction staying even after the barrier breaks. Along with the lifesteal inclusion, DRKs can finally feel like they are dancing with death.


Thats all I'll share for now, if people are interested in what I mentioned above, we can discuss more.

[Falar]

I'm also mad about our new artifact gear having a tail piece by default.

[RyuDragnier]

Looking at it more, they really need to rework how things interact with each other on DRK.

Blood Gauge should only go up while Darkside is up.
Bloodspiller and Quietus should restore HP with a 400 cure potency upon use and reduce the Darkside timer by 15s.
Living Shadow should subtract 30s from Darkside for its use, giving you HP for each attack Esteem does.
Abyssal Drain should be an MP cost move again (meaning not connected to Carve and Spit) that costs 3000MP and heals for 400 potency per enemy hit, while not giving you Darkside.
Blood Weapon should give 3 free uses of your Blood Gauge moves without gauge or Darkside cost.
Delirium should give you 3 free uses of your MP costing moves.
TBN should not cost MP, be 25s cooldown, with a 800 potency heal on the target if the shield breaks, and 400 potency heal if it doesn't.
Dark Mind should be replaced by Oblation completely, make it 15% damage mitigation.
Shadowbringer should reduce the timer of Darkside by 30s and decrease the cooldown on Living Shadow by 15s.
Salted Earth gives you MP and Blood Gauge with each tick.

All of these would change DRK to a tank that has to strike a balance between using Blood Gauge for big damage and sustain, and maintaining Darkside so they can keep up their self-damage buff while paying those same costs.

[VicariousXIV]

Just gonna make a list of my ideas;

- Add a cure potency to CS so it can be used for healing like Drain is, feels so weird that they both restore the exact same amount of MP but only the AoE version has any healing on it.

- Add a regen to Dark Mind, so it's not a worthless defensive in at least half of the game.

- Add a cure to Blood Gauge abilities, would be thematic and would make Delirium more useful then just "IR lite," hell, if it scales per enemy hit like Bloodwhetting then this would solve a ton of problems.

- Make BW either charges or a trait. Putting BW on a charge system, either 5 charges on 60 secs or maybe 3 charges on 30 secs, would certainly be a MASSIVE upgrade to it's annoying state now, but why not just remove the MP gain on Syphon and make BW a trait so all spells and skills grant MP? Doesn't even have to be 600 MP per use either, lower it to 400 MP or something, but a more steady flow of MP would simply make the class feel so much better. Then give Syphon like 10 Blood Gauge to make up for the loss of that on BW use, which would also slightly help sustain with my previous idea.

- If the above is followed and BW becomes a trait, maybe add a couple extra charges (w/ duration ofc) to Delirium, since there would be no more "BW phases" in rotation, and would give it something over IR cause right now it's just a worse ability, especially since WAR also gets Rend off of IR.

- Give Stalwart at lvl 70 or earlier..... cause... come the fuck on already....

- Remove the downsides on LD. I think the ability needs a full rework but that ain't happening. With all the other tank invulns now being 10 secs without any sort of drawbacks (aside from GNB shooting themselves lol), LD should be standardized as well. Keep the first part as is, the actual Living Dead part, but when going into Walking Dead just make it a 10 secs of "can't be reduced past 1 HP" like WAR or even "impervious to most attacks" like GNB. Does that remove some of the uniqueness? Ofc! But why does that matter? Every other invuln is being "standardized" except LD, and this change would honestly just make the ability comparable, the fact that the DRK can't even control whether it lives or dies is the problem, so without any sort of rework to the ability just removing the dependency entirely would be enough.

- Finally, give DRK a trait early on that makes it's SKS count towards it's spells. Having max GCD on it's AoE and Unmend just feels shitty, not a huge problem, mainly if BW is also made a trait or given charges since that's where a lot of the issues arise, but for thematic reasons I do think keeping them as spells is preferable to most, and this trait would simply allow this to stay while not needlessly nerfing the DRK AoE.

- Bonus, Enhanced Unmend is as worthless as everyone with common sense thought it would be. Maybe remove it for the previous "SKS=SPS" trait idea, idk, but this trait will forever go unnoticed in gameplay anyways.

[Oizen]

- Finally, give DRK a trait early on that makes it's SKS count towards it's spells. Having max GCD on it's AoE and Unmend just feels shitty, not a huge problem, mainly if BW is also made a trait or given charges since that's where a lot of the issues arise, but for thematic reasons I do think keeping them as spells is preferable to most, and this trait would simply allow this to stay while not needlessly nerfing the DRK AoE.

No need for skill bloat like this when they could easily just make those into weapon skills, no one would care if they weren't spells.

[Shurrikhan]

No need for skill bloat like this when they could easily just make those into weapon skills, no one would care if they weren't spells.

Keep in mind the context, though. Clemency and Holy Shock have the exact same issue, but there's no way those are going to be passed off as weaponskills. In which case, either Skill Speed and Spell Speed ought to simply be consolidated into Speed or a trait for DRK and PLD, visible or otherwise, is still the most direct solution. Keep in mind no two jobs need have the same number of actions, traits, nor total of the two. It's completely fine for DRK and PLD to have an extra trait to cover that. And so long as PLD needs it, there's no need to rebrand DRK's hand-summoned energy blasts from weaponskills to spells.

[VicariousXIV]

No need for skill bloat like this when they could easily just make those into weapon skills, no one would care if they weren't spells.

I wouldn't consider this "skill bloat" though.

For one it would be a passive, and two like I suggested "Enhanced Unmend" could be replaced if having another passive was just too much lol