Dark Knight Megathread

[Kalaam]

A theory doesn't prove anything. It suggests an explanation that must then be proven.
Ever heard of Halon's razor ? "Never attribute to malice what that which is adequately explained by stupidity/incompetence"

It is much more likely that the devs just don't know what to do with dark knight, or didn't have time to work on it, than for them to purposefully sabotage their own work to piss off someone who isn't even working with them anymore.

"Oh boy, my last colleague was a pain for (insert unknown reason), now that they have left I will make sure that the part of our group project they worked on becomes terrible !"

Here is another theory, that explains all:
The devs' dogs ate their homework with the dark knight updates in it, and they had to redo something from scratch in the last minute because they have terrible memory and couldn't remember what they did before.

It explains it all ! You don't believe me ? Prove me it's wrong then. Prove me that they didn't lose the actual EW Dark knight updates and forgot all about their competence and skills until the last minute.

[Shin96]

It explains it all ! You don't believe me ? Prove me it's wrong then. Prove me that they didn't lose the actual EW Dark knight updates and forgot all about their competence and skills until the last minute.

Living Dead still sucks.

No self-sustain options.

Enhanced Unmend.

Enhanced Living Shadow.

DRK still shares Delirium with IR.

Salted Earth.. uh, yeah.

Remove iconic animations.

No charges to Bloodweapon.

Lastly, they received a tremendous amount of decent feedback in case they were unable to incorporate better ideas. What more evidence do you need? Paladin literally has a 3-set combo which looks fancy. DRK received the most lazy amount of effort you could possibly deliever. If all of this is not enough to convince you then keep believing. I have been a very loyal player regarding DRK. I reserve my judgement for future improvements but I wouldn't be so sure it will ever happen. At least not in a meaningful way.

[Kalaam]

You are making massive leaps.
"Drk is in a terrible state"
Ok.
"It is the devs deliberatly sabotaging their own game"

Or, it could be:
Devs focused on other jobs needing a lot of work (posterboy, SMN rework, Monk, the new jobs) and left DRK aside 'cause it had a fancy rework last expansion. Quality aside.
They might also just have no idea what to do with it, consider that a rework is necessary but don't have time for it, so just leave it as is for now. Yes it sucks.

You just want it to be "sabotage" because this gives you a nice black and white version of the story. The devs are evil, you are a victim. Yaddi Yaddi Yadda.

We all aggree that DRK is in a terrible state and needs a lot of work, but you litteraly do not bring anything interresting to the conversation with your conspiracies. Bring actual proof, like messages from devs from in-house chats about how they hate X guy. Or you know, actual proof that they hate DRK.
You're just drawing conclusions out of your butt because you're unhappy and want to make sense of the situation in a neat and tiddy way.

[Shin96]

You are making massive leaps.
"Drk is in a terrible state"
Ok.
"It is the devs deliberatly sabotaging their own game"

Or, it could be:
Devs focused on other jobs needing a lot of work (posterboy, SMN rework, Monk, the new jobs) and left DRK aside 'cause it had a fancy rework last expansion. Quality aside.
They might also just have no idea what to do with it, consider that a rework is necessary but don't have time for it, so just leave it as is for now. Yes it sucks.

You just want it to be "sabotage" because this gives you a nice black and white version of the story. The devs are evil, you are a victim. Yaddi Yaddi Yadda.

We all aggree that DRK is in a terrible state and needs a lot of work, but you litteraly do not bring anything interresting to the conversation with your conspiracies. Bring actual proof, like messages from devs from in-house chats about how they hate X guy. Or you know, actual proof that they hate DRK.
You're just drawing conclusions out of your butt because you're unhappy and want to make sense of the situation in a neat and tiddy way.

No one said I was the victim and no one said they are evil. You are quite literally turning this debate into a black and white issue.

They don't care. They are absolutely sabotaging this job by intentionally ignoring massive flaws we put out there for years.

We'll see. I suppose we have another 2 years to go to show wether or not this is deliberate incompetence or just simply them hating this job and putting it on the low priority list.

[Shurrikhan]

...

Careful there; any logic is inherently arrogant and shrill.


On the broader topic, I'd love to see...

• Some self-sustain.
• A slightly more impactful Oblation.
• A Living Dead fix.
• A more interesting Living Shadow.
• Further general polish (no bloat, no dead mechanics).
• Pipedream/Long Shot: Darkside as an actual mechanic

Spitball means of getting most of the way there:

• Bloodspiller and Carve and Spit now heal for 300 potency and Quietus for 100 potency per enemy hit. (Because we have some flexibility in how we time Delirium (even in NIN-comps, but especially in NIN-less/2-minute comps), this should allow at least as much control as the likes of Equilibrium.)
• Oblation changed from 10 seconds of 10% mitigation to 8 seconds of 15% mitigation. (This is a slight buff both on-paper and, further, in practice.)
• Living Dead no longer has a Doom effect. Walking Dead now simply prevents your HP from falling below zero and increases your self-healing by a percentage equal to twice your missing %HP. Triggering Walking Dead also heals you over 9 seconds for an amount equal to the would-be overkill damage. (Otherwise put, it's now a more self-sufficient Holmgang, rather than the directly worst of the invulns despite not having the shortest CD among them.)
• Living Shadow now summons in far more quickly and thereafter duplicates each of your actions at 25% effect. Rather than a 250 GCD DoT, you instead get a 25% increase to your damage dealt and Blood, self-healing, and active MP generation over its duration, which has been adjusted to compensate. (This should feel more integral and rewarding, a large step up from the current fire-and-forget version.)
• Darkside removed (bloat-gauge gone, Dark Arts procs moved to Status Bar); potencies adjusted to compensate. Blood Weapon wrapped into Delirium, which now generates a further 600 MP and 20 Blood per strike. All Bloodspillers now generate 200 MP (ST combo MP/GCD) and all Quietus casts generate 300 MP (AoE combo MP/GCD). Blood Weapon and Delirium together therefore totals to 2400 MP and 60 Blood, in place of 3600 MP and 50 Blood.
• Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain gain a second charge and their CD is reduced to 45 seconds.
• DRK gets a trait that duplicates Skill Speed to Spell Speed.

Or, more realistically...

• Oblation gets a regen.
• Blood Weapon gets +1 second of duration or swaps to 5 stacks.
• DRK spells reclassified to weaponskills.
• Living Dead loses Doom state, but gains no advantages to make it worth its extended cooldown relative to Holmgang.

But even that would honestly be a notable boon.

[Danelo]

“ Or, more realistically...
Oblation gets a regen.
Blood Weapon gets +1 second of duration or swaps to 5 stacks.
DRK spells reclassified to weaponskills.
Living Dead loses Doom state, but gains no advantages to make it worth its extended cooldown relative to Holmgang.
But even that would honestly be a notable boon.”

Some have said it would be too powerful to up oblation to 15-20% dr with a regen so I propose it replace dark mind entirely. It may be an unpopular opinion but dark mind needs to die a gruesome death. It’s a relic from a time when sqex was supposed to have learned it’s lesson with pld only being able to block physical damage.

It was decent because of it strength when it was 30% magic resistance in hw. But it was ridiculous when it was nerfed in sb for no reason; and then there was dadm…. Damage specific mitigations are crap in concept. Their dr values have to be incredibly powerful to be viable and often leave the kit with a hole bcs devs view it as just another defense cd when they are niche at best and don’t add depth. In reality it is just another button to press since most players rarely can point to a time that it saved them from certain death.

[Shurrikhan]

Some have said it would be too powerful to up oblation to 15-20% dr with a regen so I propose it replace dark mind entirely. It may be an unpopular opinion but dark mind needs to die a gruesome death. It’s a relic from a time when sqex was supposed to have learned it’s lesson with pld only being able to block physical damage.

It was decent because of it strength when it was 30% magic resistance in hw. But it was ridiculous when it was nerfed in sb for no reason; and then there was dadm…. Damage specific mitigations are crap in concept. Their dr values have to be incredibly powerful to be viable and often leave the kit with a hole bcs devs view it as just another defense cd when they are niche at best and don’t add depth. In reality it is just another button to press since most players rarely can point to a time that it saved them from certain death.

Honestly, I wouldn't hate Dark Mind if it was again paired alongside Dark Dance (increased parry and dodge chance), with a shared recast between them. I'd consider it a bit bloated, but not terrible. I'd also not mind it turning into just a general damage CD or getting the Camouflage treatment.

However, I doubt you will ever see it empower Oblation, since TBN is already both the equivalent of, say, Heart of Stone/Corundum, Shelltron OR Intervention, or Bloodwhetting OR Nascent Flash, with Oblation then acting as TBN's lv82 trait. Dark Mind holds roughly the same place as Camouflage (mostly physical), Thrill of Battle (either), and Paladin's block (which now also blocks magic). None of those can be cast on allies.

Just remove TBN already and redesign DRK in another way, i wouldn't mind losing this skill to get a full coherent kit again

This, too, I wouldn't mind, but what do we replace it with? TBN is at least more interesting than any other extant defensive (just due to its lower cooldown being constrained by opportunities to actually break it). Any spitballs?

[Kaixern]

Can we go back to speaking about the permanent issues of Dark Knight we know of? instead of this thing concerning the devs (which is "unknown" so to speak)

We know the problem about living dead and it's lack of visual effect, either in the battle field or the HUD (without even talking about the mechanics of the ability itself)
The problems with the animations of the class gettiing more and more dull and weightless (shadowbringer being flood of shadow 2.0 and a majority of attacks feeling like wet paper)
The complete and utter lack of synergy, class identity, uniqueness, making it feel like all the spells of the dark knight at the moment have no correlation with each other at all except for their visual effect and their color pattern.
And also the fact that, despite those flaws (and many, many, mant others),
there is still this weird idea that the class is fine because "it does damage" in endwalker, or during shadowbringer the excuse of "well at least it got blackest night so it's good enough", and the worst offender of all "who cares about class identity, it's viable"

I'm not an Expert when it comes to dark knight (far from it) but i love this class since i played it at heavensward, and i just think there are more problems to speak about that some hypothetical grudge from the dev team (whenever it's true or not)
(As usual i may speak nonsense so , sorry in advance)

[Derio]

They worked on so many other Jobs this expansion though. SMN rework, addition of Sage and Reaper, Monk semi rework, BRD changes, and of course PLD changes.

They simply ran out of time for DRK.

But the problem is the rework DRK got last expansion was already bad.

Last expansion they did not fix BW, LD, TBN, Dark Mind or self sustain.

3.0 DRK was very good. However they made decision to move away from this complex playstyle. However DRK still has the most complex abilites. Most complex invuln. Dark Mind is a very situational cooldown to where the game does not tell you which attacks are magical vs physical without add ons. BW still requires skill speed to meet the optimization requirements. TBN is tied to damage. It has been proven that souleater and AD are not enough for sustain.

DRK has so many issues but that is the problem. It has so many issues that it cant be fixed in a simple hotfix or .5 patch.

[Sacrilegion]

Ran out of time? Lol like they did for 3 expansions now? Oh warrior wants a buff, here you go. Scholars need nerfed, here fuck you. Rework potencies for some dps classes, sure why not. DRK has been ignored and given the shaft for 3 expansions, keep fucking it over. They have a personal vendetta against DRK or they put the lazy ass who gets drunk every night and probably lied on their resume in charge.