Dark Knight Megathread

[Sazuzaki]

I think it's a split chance a rework will happen sooner or later. It's very obvious they don't know what they are doing with DRK, and the EW iteration didn't have enough time to develop. So I could def see it in the future, if not during 6.x

[RyuDragnier]

The thing is, due to how TBN is set up, you do NOT want to use mitigation with it, you want TBN to break, else you've wasted 3000 MP that could have gone to more damage with Edge/Flood. That's where the problem lies, IMO with TBN. What you want is to replace what TBN gives you for breaking, while also removing its effects on your DPS. Remove the MP cost on TBN, change it to 25s cooldown. TBN breaking burst heals you, TBN not breaking gives you a small heal. That changes TBN from something you want to break else it's a DPS loss, to something that you don't care whether it breaks or not, encouraging mitigation use alongside it.

[Crater]

The thing is, due to how TBN is set up, you do NOT want to use mitigation with it

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

You are not in danger of ever not having a TBN break in a dungeon double-pull, no matter what mitigation you use alongside it, in any situation other than "A WHM is spamming Holy and enemies haven't built up Stun resistance yet" or "There are two enemies left from a 7-enemy pull and they're about to die too" - situations where you don't really need any mitigation because you're taking close to zero damage.

Using TBN while Rampart is up is the equivalent of a 31.25% shield without Rampart; using TBN while Shadow Wall is up is the equivalent of a ~35.7% shield without Shadow Wall. It makes an enormous difference to your overall survivability and you should always be trying to pair TBN with standard mitigation in a situation like a dungeon pull where you know that incoming damage is high.

[Archwizard]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

Honestly, I'm speaking mostly from the experience of trying to heal DRKs. Even paired with TBN, Oblation does not nearly stand up to the buffs Sheltron/HoS/RI get at 82, and you definitely feel that difference trying to keep them up; any other tank honestly feels like they're doing half the work for you. Once TBN's down it usually feels like the DRK is hardly using any mitigation at all and they just drop like a stone, and that only gets worse on a Barrier specialist, even popping all my CDs.

If you're not on a WHM, healing a DRK feels awful.

Though with some of the DRKs I've been playing with, it's entirely plausible they weren't using any mitigation other than TBN like you're asserting. I was a bit too occupied trying to panic-barrier to keep them out of WD to double check.

[OdinelStarrei]

Honestly, I'm speaking mostly from the experience of trying to heal DRKs. Even paired with TBN, Oblation does not nearly stand up to the buffs Sheltron/HoS/RI get at 82, and you definitely feel that difference trying to keep them up; any other tank honestly feels like they're doing half the work for you. Once TBN's down it usually feels like the DRK is hardly using any mitigation at all and they just drop like a stone, and that only gets worse on a Barrier specialist, even popping all my CDs.

If you're not on a WHM, healing a DRK feels awful.

Though with some of the DRKs I've been playing with, it's entirely plausible they weren't using any mitigation other than TBN like you're asserting. I was a bit too occupied trying to panic-barrier to keep them out of WD to double check.

I can back this up as someone who does DRK in Expert fairly frequently. TBN is overrated, this is certain. But the two things it does INCREDIBLY well are the low recast timer, and how incredibly effective it is when you stack mitigation on top of it. Flat shields don't suffer from the multiplicative effects of percentage mitigations, TBN starts actually earning it's vaunted reputation under stacking. Oblation isn't strong enough to really pronounce this effect on it's own, but when you combine Rampart + Oblation + Reprisal with TBN sprinkled in between, you'll find the shields last quite a bit longer. It doesn't help that most DRKs who walking around right now throw Abyssal Drain at the first available opportunity rather than waiting until they can get maximum value vs overhealing themselves, without all the good parts of Bloodwhetting.

This is actually why I don't really understand why DRK + SGE is so vehemently bashed, since SGE's dedicated percentage based mitigation support skills mesh incredibly well with TBN and DRK's own personal mitigation. (Protraction for HP/Sacred Soil for mit also falls under this stipulation, I had no issues healing DRKs on SCH, provided they weren't idiots) I guess if the mobs don't die quick enough and both parties run out of resources it gets awful, but the pulls would have to last like a minute straight. Nevermind, I know exactly why, it's because LD is a ******** trashfire and we can't do anything about it if the SGE has already used their instants. FFS

Because it takes so much more effort to reach basic competency in big pulls, compared to 1 CD making you functionally better than invulnerable, the chasm on the surface is about as wide as the distance between Earth and the moon to a healer, PARTICULARLY if the DRK is bad, and are convinced the job is unplayable garbage versus requiring an entirely different, and frankly, unintuitive mitigation mindset for functional, but comparably worse results.

[RyuDragnier]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

Oh I have been, but I've had to heal a LOT of DRKs who do not, simply because they want their cake and to eat it too from TBN breaking. It's part of why I despise TBN having an MP cost and being connected to doing more damage, it creates VERY bad tanking habits.

[HyperiusUltima]

Oh I have been, but I've had to heal a LOT of DRKs who do not, simply because they want their cake and to eat it too from TBN breaking. It's part of why I despise TBN having an MP cost and being connected to doing more damage, it creates VERY bad tanking habits.

I agree with this. Even as a SGE who's had to manage with bad DRKs, I've had multiple instances where a DRK on a big pull simply cannot upkeep itself without causing Healer MP to plummet, even with proper CDs. Typically the only healer who can really handle DRK's mechanic properly is WHM - and that's an issue since WHM has one button to fix it all. SCH/AST/SGE have to pour multiple resources(most of the time an entire gauge if they're desperate) to be able to heal DRK during Walking Dead and prevent a wipe.

TBN having MP cost is a cop out to try and keep DRK back in how it felt in HW, where you had to balance MP and properly manage it. Take that out, and DRK basically turns into Edge of Darkness spam once you hit 6000 MP for a burst window. It doesn't use MP literally anywhere else except offensives otherwise, and considering it also has the lowest amount of active defensives to throw(unless the damage is Magical) it hurts DRK's capability by a lot pre-70 and also in current content. DRK just needs a facelift and they need to redesign it. From Google Translating some stuff on the JP Forums, they've been talking about DRK's TBN and whether it ranges up properly to HoC/HS/BW in terms of active mitigation.

[Sazuzaki]

From Google Translating some stuff on the JP Forums, they've been talking about DRK's TBN and whether it ranges up properly to HoC/HS/BW in terms of active mitigation.

I google translated some stuff too, a lot also want the return of old Dark Arts. JP is pretty similar to us.

[TouchandFeel]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

Just quoting this as reference to what I am generally talking to and not a direct response to the quoted bit itself.

I honestly think that DRK for the most part feels bad defensively because the incoming damage pattern is very "spikey", at least from my experience leveling DRK via dungeon runs and doing wall to wall pulls.
While TBN+other mitigation is up, you of course take no damage for up to 7 seconds, then suddenly you are taking all the damage virtually unmitigated and your HP starts to drop very quickly. With the other short defensives, like Holy Sheltron and Heart of Corundum, the main mitigation portion lasts approximately the same duration at 8s, as long as TBN is popping close to the max 7s, but the extra heal aspect of both those abilities that extend beyond that and the fact that you are still taking some damage during the main mitigation period results in a smoother incoming damage pattern.
Now why does "smooth" vs "spikey" matter and how could it make DRK defensively feel worse in large dungeon pulls where there is prolonged high incoming damage?
Simple, the more the damage taken is concentrated into shorter periods of time, the less time that the healer has to react and counter the damage. This inherently feels more frantic and stressful. For the tank it feels more stressful because they are seeing their HP drop and fluctuate more quickly once TBN has broken and many tanks freak out a bit when they see their HP drop below 50%, especially if they are running with people they don't know in a duty roulette run. So even if in both situations the amount of damage mitigated is approximately the same, the smoother incoming damage pattern will always feel better and be more comfortable to react to. Additionally, the more a person is put under stress and is forced to react quickly, the more likely they are to make a mistake which in this case would be messing up healing and ending up with a dead tank and a potential wipe.
So while the objective potential is the same, one discernibly feels worse for many people and is more prone to mistakes.

Me personally, I still really like TBN and still find it probably the most fun defensive ability in the game because it requires a bit more thought to it than the other short defensive. Before I use TBN I always have to consider how best to leverage my other defensives with or around it to get the best results for the situation and I love that. I even like that I can screw it up burning too much MP and then not having one available when I need it or mistiming it and the shield not breaking, although I do still think that the duration should be increased a bit to 10s to provide a slightly more generous cushion to not screw it up.
I would hate to have TBN changed to just another 25s short defensive that you pretty much fire off when available with little to no thought, talk about boring.

However, despite liking TBN and not wanting it to change, I do feel overall changes to DRKs' defensive capabilities should happen, just that the changes should happen elsewhere.

Preferably I want to see Oblation better utilized to do interesting and fun things by giving it conditional effects depending on what other defensive abilities it is paired with.
I had previously suggested having Oblation pop TBNs' shield, giving a Dark Arts when that happens, and then throwing up another potentially slightly stronger shield in addition to the base % mitigation basically turning the combo of TBN and then Oblation into a sort of "Super TBN". I mean the Oblation animation basically looks like that already. This same idea could be extended to pairing Oblation with other defensive abilities and providing additional defensive only effects. For example, pair it with Dark Mind and it gives the bonus additional effect of some physical damage mitigation (10%?), making Dark Mind more flexible at the cost of a use of Oblation.
It would also be awesome if the recast was shorter, like 45s, so that this kind of strategic layered approach to defenses could be leveraged more frequently.

Asides from that adding a bit of additional self-sustain somewhere is all DRK would really need. I would prefer this to be integrated somehow into Blood Weapon for thematic and homage purposes, but I am not overly picky on the subject of where to do it.

P.S. Man, a lot of these back and forths in the DRK threads have gotten antagonistic in the way people are speaking to each other, moreso than usual.

[Weetzlo]

TBN will get better as HP values continue to rise, but right now with HP values where they are on an item level 577 DRK, TBN is worth roughly 1500 heal potency of shield. Holy Sheltron offers 1000 potency coupled with % based mitigation, Bloodwhetting offers 1600 just in single target situations, also with % based mitigation, and Corundum offers 900 potency again offering % based mitigation. "But Weeztlo," I hear you typing "you can just stack oblation with it." which is true, but 10% would still be the weakest mit of all of them and the other tanks' are baked in so they get it every single 25 seconds. TBN is good, not great. I think the first step would be just delete the mana cost. Then using it properly is rewarded instead of simply not punished. Yes, parsers will 100% deliberately take avoidable blows to squeeze even more DPS out of it but they do that already to greed melee uptime, doesn't mean the rest of the community has to suffer as a result.