Dark Knight Megathread

[Garnix]

From a casual perspective, I just think TBN should heal, and should have synergy with oblation.
If the whole shield is not broken -> you recover HP depending of how much of your shield is remaining (so, at least when you are soloing a dungeon boss, you can heal between the "busters". Would also allow to heal a teammate before the next raid-wide if the healer is down)
If you use TBN while in Oblation -> you recover HP on top of getting the shield. That to make the level 82 ability a bit more "on par" with other tanks.

[Noctisnine]

Don't think it as they're ignoring you, balance patches have never done re-works of jobs, exception of performing so bad.

At the same time Dragonsong Ultimate is coming in 6.1, and making wild changes can really end up with problems than solving, this is all schedule planned, I assume the rework would come 6.2 if I'm being realistic. If it's 6.1, then, ok was all planned.

You should avoid speaking like that in the forums, yoship said is he not pleased the way we speak and make complains so maybe be patient and a bit more humble.

[Noctisnine]

At this point, I almost feel like the devs are fu*king with us. They announced a DPS increase for PLD coming in the next patch but are completely silent about DRK's survivability, which has the most complaints by FAR of all the tanks. I'm half expecting them to give WAR more self heals before DRK gets fixed.

Did you see yoship complaining about users being abusive with comments? Maybe you should be way more polite and humble instead of using that kind of language.

[mrchards37]

XIV Dev Team,

I may have a suggestion for how to adjust Dark Knight going forward. Please consider these suggestions as they may make ithe job enjoyed by the player base again but without wildly affecting the hierarchy of other tanks. I will justify each change beneath its description:

1) Blood Weapon lasts 30 seconds, 5 weaponskill/spell charges, and gives mp for every target hit.
-Removes the clunkiness and demand for a specific skillspeed (and/or ping) to use it. MP return per target hit gives it value in dungeons so it doesn't feel as bad to use in multitarget scenarios.

2) The Blackest Night mp cost removed, Dark Arts proc removed, recast timer extended to 20 seconds.
- Removes punishment for not maximizing the cooldown's value (something no other tank gets punished for), does not become tied to damage,
and does not become an overpowered short cooldown to the other 3 tanks comparatively as they will still have healing effects. The Dark Arts proc removal is explained next.

3) Delirium ability renamed to Dark Arts. Grants Dark Arts effect for 20 seconds.
Dark Arts effect: allows execution of Bloodspiller without Bloodgauge cost (3 charges), and grants ability to use Spinning Slash -> Delirium -> Power Slash as combo'd weaponskills 1 time. (Spinning Slash replaces Hard Slash, Delirium replaces Syphon Strike, Power Slash replaces Souleater).
- gives single target combo variety that other tanks have but DRK does not (while avoiding button bloat), and allows enough time for execution of the 3 Bloodspillers and the new 1-2-3 combo.

4) Abyssal Drain no longer shares a recast timer with Carve and Spit.
Abyssal Drain damages all targets in a 5y radius for 100 potency, and grants 8 seconds of Soul Drain: restores HP with a potency of 400 when landing weaponskills or spells.
Recast timer: 60 seconds
-Gives self sustain on a fashion similar to Holy Spirit but without being a strong as Bloodwhetting.

5) Dark Mind reduces magic damage taken by 20% and physical damage taken by 10%.
Recast timer: 90 seconds
-Allows more flexible use of the cooldown, especially in dungeons during trash packs. Would act similar to Gunbreaker's Camouflage.

6) Living Shadow: Esteem "pet" able to be resized to small and large just like Bahamut.
-Quality of life change for those who mistake it for an enemy during an encounter.

7) Living Dead: grants the effect of Walking Dead when HP reduced to 0.
Living Dead duration: 10 seconds
Walking Dead: most attacks cannot reduce your HP to less than 1.
Walking Dead Duration: 10 seconds.
Recast timer: 300 seconds.
- Removes the punishment for using an invuln ability, and gives it the Holmgang effect without being a strong as Holmgang due to recast time.

I hope this message finds you well, and thank you for all you do.

-Beat Steele (Behemoth)

[Danelo]

At this point I would be okay if the devs just turned living dead into Holmgang. Living dead, as is, needs to die one last time and forever.

[Jandor]

Some spitballing ideas:

Blood gauge becomes a duplicate of HP gauge, whenever you use an effect that restores your HP it also fills up this gauge for the same amount.

Blood weapon gets 5 stacks. Hits restores MP and HP.

Dark Arts is back. Costs 3000MP. Can hold 3 charges. Bloodspiller and Quietus use a DA charge instead of blood. Delirium gives you 3 stacks for free.

Bloodspiller and Quietus restore HP. Grant 30s of Darkside.

Flood removed. Edge is now AoE. Standard 2 charge oGCD. Upgrades to Shadowbringer.

Dark Mind becomes current Oblation, Oblations becomes an upgrade to Dark Mind. 20% DR. Doesn't stack.

TBN uses 25% of your blood gauge.

Blood Price is back, when you are hit, HP equal to 50% of the damage inflicted goes into your blood gauge.

New skill: Exsanguinate. Swaps your Blood and HP bars. Or if the potential for abusing it for back to back to back to back blackest nights proves to easy to abuse/too potent when abused, then I guess it could just dump your blood gauge into your HP bar.

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Blood is essentially purely defensive, with MP functioning as your DPS job gauge.

Some rough maths gets me a figure of roughly 3 or 4 souleaters to restore 25% of your HP, our about 30 to 37.5s to gain a TBN.

That's a bit slow by default, but under this system you've also got bloodspiller, blood weapon and blood price helping build up that pool. Blood weapon alone should give you a third of your HP bar back every 60s, assuming you're not tanking you'd get about 3 TBN's a minute.

Exsanguinate just seems like a neat idea.
Blood pricing during a big pull then using all those hits to refill your HP bar
Could also be used to fix yourself up after a big tank buster, or to stop your invuln from killing you.

Now that I do some crappy napkin math, this might be a little bit too much self sustain. Numbers would have to be tweaked.

The main idea is that as you attack you "steal" your enemies life force and use it to keep yourself and your allies going, the more frenzied your attacks (dark arts, delirium, bloodspiller) the more you take and the more you can survive. It's not the using your HP to power attacks of older Dark Knights, but I like to think it would have a similar "feel" to it.

Maybe.

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I know it would still be a fairly simple job, but I tried to keep the ideas in realms of the theoretically possible given the design outlook from Shadowbringers onwards.

[Xrison]

I stopped playing DRK for a little bit in order to get the other three tank jobs up to the same level so that I have options for current dungeons. I recently went back to DRK and I have to say, the overall playstyle feels very clunky. Nothing seems to "flow" if that makes sense. Also, after leveling WAR up, I can see why some people say DRK is just a poor imitation of it. Some of our skills are just watered down versions of the same abilities WAR has.

[Vatom]

Living Dead can stay but it needs to have a way of lessening the stress on both the DRK and any healer that they're partnered with. I'm sure there's a number of ways to fix this; Have our blood gauge affect our HP when going into it, massive Lifesteal, boosted incoming heals, something. I believe there's a couple ways you can make this to be easier but also more interesting. Heck they could just bake in more Healing/Life steal into the kit as a whole to help out.

OR. We just make "ShadowDouble - Make all instances of damage miss. 10s duration", make it have a shadow/Fray double take the hits instead, and just roll only.

Funny I had drop this same idea back im ShB but not many cared for it lol oh the days fly.
No its not bad other then its death or heal me and those terms dont work for Drk at all

Though I did have a new concept for LD

It feel along the lines like nullify haft the damage and the other haft becomes a dot that last for 15s that can be mit by TBN
The other one was the mass shield that pop up when you enter walking dead and percentage base will sap your MP to return health equal to the shield
but the shield will diminish based off of the amount of heals you receive lowering the cost of MP at the end
like a uber beni that you that cost all your MP but your current HP reduces the amount of Mp taken to give that heal me aspect in a less dire situation

[Claire_Pendragon]

another:
Living Dead change
While Living Dead is active, healing received is increased. (idc by what amount, even 5% make it worth using)
When Walking Dead activates, the DRK receives "Weakness". Only removed if healed by 100% of their max HP before Walking Dead wears off.
Its pretty much the same thing, but would feel more like a reraise, with the possibility of removing the weakness, AND if benediction goes off quick enough, you still keep the "unable to die" factor.

(also same recast as holmgang. idc what u think)
(lastly, this isnt how id actually want it to function. this is more of a "the devs are being stubborn, so maybe this would meet them in the middle")

[Derio]

Just make living dead capture all damage received, your health cannot go past 1 while active. Upon effect end heal for all damage received while living dead was active. I know thats taking a slight copy from AST ability but its different from other tank invulns.

Devs already said living dead is fine so dont hold your breath for changes.

People are excluding PLD from savages so that will be addressed before any DRK changes anyway.