Dark Knight Megathread

[LioJen]

Just make DRK's potency increase inversely with their HP.

[Oizen]

In terms of short term changes for the job, I really hope that 6.2 brings a buff or change to Oblation.
The more I'm playing high end content on this job, the more and more I'm neglecting that skill entirely.

I've never seen its 10% mitigation be the difference maker in saving someone, and if I'm mitigating for myself, its almost always TBN + Shadow Wall, Rampart or Dark Mind.

I think the only time I've actively used it this tier is during the 2nd phase of P3S, and even that is entirely because I have it and its there, its not making my job any more comfortable.

[Archwizard]

In terms of short term changes for the job, I really hope that 6.2 brings a buff or change to Oblation.
The more I'm playing high end content on this job, the more and more I'm neglecting that skill entirely.

Yeah, agree. Considering how negligible it is, I expect that by 7.01 it'll either be significantly buffed, reworked, or replaced completely.
Although, "significant buff" is a relative term considering how small it is in the first place.

Granting, I feel the same way about LD -- something about its current state just reads to me as a holdover to get us to the next major patch cycle. In Oblation's case though, the job is already in need of some trimming, and as a decidedly unpopular and relatively inconsequential tool, I think it's near the top of the list to at least get rolled into another skill (probably either TBN or Dark Mind) if not chopped.

[Lyth]

@Archwizard: Movement is fundamental to tanks and melee, and any action that facilitates uptime is worth its weight in gold. DRK was the very first tank to ever have access to a gap closer, and it has historically been a very fast, agile job in this game. I find it strange to deliberately make the job slow and ponderous simply because a couple of games like Monster Hunter and Dark Souls have painted greatswords as clumsy, unwieldly weapons, especially when the series' legacy around the weapon has been the very opposite.

Having an ability that returns you to a preset point is not a 'unique' characteristic. If you take a game like Overwatch, were roughly a quarter to half of the ability budget is dedicated to movement alone, there are a couple of characters with this type of 'escape' move, yet they don't feel similar in the slightest.

I think that you can push the skill ceiling of a job significantly higher through the interaction of movement abilities with fight mechanics than you can with the target dummy rotation itself. There's always room for more.

The move that you've shown is aesthetically very similar to the Advent Children Omnislash scene that I referenced. It's kind of hard to do something cinematic like that given the standard GCD length, though. Perhaps having a channeled move is the solution?

@Shurrikan: No. You'd just consume a Dark Arts stack every time that you wanted to move through a higher potency combo, and gain Dark Arts stacks from your Edge/Flood/Shadowbringer uses. The only real advantage over the Bloodspiller approach is that it forces you to be a little smarter about how you time your oGCDs. In retrospect, I think I'd prefer to see them build on the Blood system instead.

[Shurrikhan]

@Shurrikan: No. You'd just consume a Dark Arts stack every time that you wanted to move through a higher potency combo, and gain Dark Arts stacks from your Edge/Flood/Shadowbringer uses.

Right, but is that per combo step or per combo activation, and what is the imagined maximum number of stacks one could hold?

Since there are "stacks" involved, I would assume at least two, but would 2 stacks amount to some 6 GCDs, or 2 GCDs? Because those would provide very different gameplay impressions. That's all I'm asking.

The only real advantage over the Bloodspiller approach is that it forces you to be a little smarter about how you time your oGCDs. In retrospect, I think I'd prefer to see them build on the Blood system instead.

Is "them" the devs or these new Dark Arts stacks? And what is "the Bloodspiller approach" against which this is being compared? The "(every) Bloodspiller combos into Torcleaver" one?

[Lyth]

I think that it would need to be one stack per GCD step, not per combo. Otherwise you would probably overcap during your opener unless the gauge capacity was very large, especially if Shadowbringer gives two stacks.

'Them' refers to the devs. It would be nice if the Blood system offered more than it does presently, so if I had a choice between seeing a combo system built around Blood vs. one built around the Dark Arts gauge element, it's probably better to expand on the former.

[Lyth]

I'm partial to flat damage shields myself, so I would actually have a lot more fun with Oblation if was a bubble. I don't think the damage reduction mechanic that I described works with that concept, though, unless the shield triggers at the end of the duration all at once like a 'defensive Wildfire' of sorts. You could very easily do it with %DR mitigation, though.

I was thinking of the description from the DRK quest series:
'As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realized it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted...'

[baklava151]

I'm partial to flat damage shields myself, so I would actually have a lot more fun with Oblation if was a bubble. I don't think the damage reduction mechanic that I described works with that concept, though, unless the shield triggers at the end of the duration all at once like a 'defensive Wildfire' of sorts. You could very easily do it with %DR mitigation, though.

I was thinking of the description from the DRK quest series:
'As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realized it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted...'

Yeah I wasn't sure if it would be better to have the shield build up with each hit or have it come all at once at the end. It'd be interesting though since it would take some fight knowledge to use effectively.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm partial to flat damage shields myself, so I would actually have a lot more fun with Oblation if was a bubble. I don't think the damage reduction mechanic that I described works with that concept, though, unless the shield triggers at the end of the duration all at once like a 'defensive Wildfire' of sorts. You could very easily do it with %DR mitigation, though.

I was thinking of the description from the DRK quest series:
'As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realized it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted...'

The best choice would seem to most come down to what kind of timing you want to incentivize for thematic reasons, no?

For instance, back in Stormblood there was a decently common suggestion that Shelltron, which until ShB could take only a single hit, instead offer a small %HP barrier during which all attacks (including the one that would break it) would be automatically blocked. It dealt with what they saw as the main issue of StB Shelltron --that its use versus tankbusters could be prevented by an unfortunately synced auto-attack-- but would still keep it far more precise and bursty than the more lenient and basic change it would later receive in ShB (a simple duration). It also offered a small element of optimization: you'd want to snapshot the block onto as much effect as possible, meaning you'd ideally want the barrier to be nearly broken before a tankbuster.

Your latter design seems to have the same optimization despite a near-opposite theme: You'd want to take as much damage, hits, or attempted attacks (as not to have anti-synergy with evasion buffs) as possible, building up the eventual barrier before the tankbuster. It'd be less responsive but, I'd imagine, would have a higher ceiling.

From that, the simple question forms: Does that procedure and its implicit theme ("armored in blood" / "bring me nearer death, and I will only become all the more unkillable") fit DRK (more so than other jobs)?

[TrustyPeacemaker]

One of my main complaints other than the increased difficulty to wall to wall in dungeons is I feel that the blood gauge skills don't do enough. I'm not even talking damage. They just feel one and done, they don't lead to anything, buff anything, heal me or give MP. They just feel bland. Lets also unsplit Carve and Drain OR add healing to carve, since abyssal got MP gain. Dark just feels not fully complete. Especially with how the other tanks got treated