Dark Knight Megathread

[Styrmwyda]

Thinking of trying out Dark Knight for the story, how hard is it? I heard it has a lot of buttons to keep track off and has less survivability compared to Warrior (which is my first tank to level 50)

[RyuDragnier]

Thinking of trying out Dark Knight for the story, how hard is it? I heard it has a lot of buttons to keep track off and has less survivability compared to Warrior (which is my first tank to level 50)

DRK's main survival tool, The Blackest Night, isn't obtained until level 70. I admit, it's somewhat difficult to survive prior to that. Not a problem if you're doing beast tribes mind you, and of course the job story instances are tuned to DRK, so you don't have to worry too much there.

[Lyth]

Draw-in and knockback effects on jobs were fairly common on jobs prior to Stormblood. They were removed because bosses need to be stationary to perform actions and large forced movements can cancel even uninterruptable actions.

If you want tanking to be more interesting, you just need to have tanks position bosses. On any fight where you don't do this melee is significantly more fun.

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

[ItsUrBoi]

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

Additions:
-> Scourge: [ Weapon Skill ] Deal damage with a potency of 700. 1 minute CD, reduced by SkS.
-> Sole Survivor: [ Ability ] Marks target and all nearby enemies with "Another Victim" debuff. 120 sec CD.
"Another victim" : Dealing damage to this unit will heal the DRK who applied this mark for a potency of 200 per attack. 15 second duration. Attacks hitting multiple enemies do not multiply the effect.
-> Enhanced Living Shadow III: [ Passive ] Upgrades your simulacrum to merge with you, increasing the potency of all your attacks by 350 for 20 seconds. ( insert Reaper Enshroud kind of effect but for Dark Knight )
-> Enhanced Dark Arts: [ Passive ] Dark Arts adds a healing effect to Flood or Edge of Shadow.

Changes to existing abilities:
-> Dark Mind upgrades into Oblation. Dark Mind grants 10% magical, 10% damage reduction. Oblation increases the magical damage reduction to 20%, works on 2 charges, 45 sec CD / charge.
-> Dark Missionary moved to lvl 70.
-> Bloodspiller combos into another 2 new attacks, Bloodspiller consumes 25 blood, and the 2 new attacks 25 blood each. Delirium allows the execution of this combo for free.

[Zairava]

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

• Scourge on either a 30 or 60s CD (30s preferably).
• Sole Survivor: instead of upon the enemy dying though, just make it so it gives us some hp equal to a 200/300 potency heal upon hitting them.
• Living Shadow getting a passive that makes it merge with you upon activation, increasing damage dealt by 10% or so.

As for changes to existing ones:

• Dark Mind turning into Oblation. Fusing the magical and overall damage mit, adjusting as needed.
• Remove Salt and Darkness.
• Reduce Shadowbringer to one use, remaining on a 60s cd.
• Give Bloodspiller combo actions upon using Delirium.

[Zairava]

The cure potency for Living Dead should be buffed slightly. Just enough so that a Dark Knight can heal themselves, without receiving healing from other party members, within 3 GCDs on a single target. Normally a Dark Knight heals themselves with just 4 GCDs under Living Dead. However, if their GCD is slow(such as a 2.5 GCD or near that) and Walking Dead procs right after their GCD cooldown starts, the bad timing can make it so they can only get 3 GCDs under Walking Dead. If all 3 of those GCDs don't critical hit and roll low for variance, the Dark Knight can die while near the HP restoration requirement. This is a rare case and can never happen if you just give the Dark Knight any slight amount of healing. However, I assume the last Living Dead change was to eliminate any need for healing assistance from other party members.

Thing is though, if we had any form of consistent viable single-target sustain, this wouldn't be as big an issue

Sole Survivor: instead of upon the enemy dying though, just make it so it gives us some hp equal to a 200/300 potency heal upon hitting them.

and since i forgot to mention it, ideally this would be on either a 12s duration or 5 stack system

[Shurrikhan]

Thing is though, if we had any form of consistent viable single-target sustain, this wouldn't be as big an issue

and since i forgot to mention it, ideally this would be on either a 12s duration or 5 stack system

Sorry to intrude, but couldn't we do this just by having Abyssal Drain (also) apply a duration (say, 12s) of Leech effect (the debuffer heals for a % of their damage dealt)? Once applied, it wouldn't matter if that's ST or AoE damage, and the gap in our damage dealt in ST vs. AoE is far smaller than the gap currently possessed between our 'burst' AoE sustain and our 'burst' (if we can at all call it that) ST sustain.

Having a shorter-but-burstier Bloodbath on demand, especially if on two charges each on a 40s CD, could be a huge and versatile boon to sustain.

[Zairava]

Sorry to intrude, but couldn't we do this just by having Abyssal Drain (also) apply a duration (say, 12s) of Leech effect (the debuffer heals for a % of their damage dealt)? Once applied, it wouldn't matter if that's ST or AoE damage, and the gap in our damage dealt in ST vs. AoE is far smaller than the gap currently possessed between our 'burst' AoE sustain and our 'burst' (if we can at all call it that) ST sustain.

That is an option, yeah, and considering it would keep us with another button slot, probably the preferred one.

Assuming this means it is separated from Carve and Spit, having read something about this in the past...couldn't we also tack salted earth as an added effect to Abyssal Drain to prevent the already overbloated burst? (this is assuming they double down even further and don't reduce the OGCD chaos during our opener and 2-m bursts)

This is to say that upon activating Abyssal Drain, it would form the bubble around the mob it hits directly.

[Vallerie]

With us being past the midpoint of this expansion, has anyone given any thought to what the next three DRK actions should be into level 100?

If we assume there are no significant changes to overall combat system, what I would like is

Additions -
Return of Sole Survivor - I like the idea of keeping old heal/MP restore on kill, but changing the persistent effect from heal at the end of the duration, to some sort of over time effect. Whether that's heal on hit, or simply heal over time as long as the debuff is active.
Some sort of additional spender for blood - probably on CD (30s?), cost 25 Blood?
Low level variant of TBN

Changes -
Salted Earth with 45s CD, Salt and Darkness restores 600 MP and 25 Blood < traited at 90+
Merge Oblation into TBN at 82, increase TBN duration to 10 or 12s, TBN gets Oblation VFX/SFX
CnS becomes a GCD with 60s CD, restores 1500 MP and 25 Blood < resources restore is a trait
Abyssal Drain gets 510 single target potency with 60% AoE falloff, 600-800 cure potency on first target and 200 for any targets beyond it
For the sake of limiting number of active buttons, Bloodspiller and Quietus become one button with AoE falloff and new animation
Obviously potencies are rebalanced as necessary.

Net effect should be no additional oGCDs in 2min windows, but the monotony of the downtime should be broken up by the new blood spender, Salted Earth, and extra resources from S&D and CnS.

Mind, this is coming from the perspective of someone who mostly enjoys the current gameplay, just thinking downtime could use extra oompf

[fulminating]

Additions:
GCD attack, uses blood but has a long cooldown - essentially upheaval from before it was cooldown only, but on the gcd so it's not yet more carpal tunnel
Something that consumes darkside
Something to generate 15 or 25 blood so it doesn't feel like it's a gauge that goes to 10.

Other changes:
Removal of living shadow
Removal of stalwart soul, abyssal drain being given a sensible cooldown and mp cost. Aoe now revolves around mp generation to fuel abyssal drain's sustain.

What I expect:
Living shadow potency buff
Yet another oGCD to fit under burst
Enhanced plunge reducing the cooldown on provoke by 5s
A brand new duration based buff that makes all spells free for the duration requiring weird sps melds to make the most of.

Honestly anything to make it feel more coherent and less like it's throwing the kitchen sink every other minute and comatose the rest of the time.