Dark Knight Megathread

[Oizen]

..Why? So you would rather have a boring over-glorified DoT that has 0 interaction with the rest of the kit instead of something that actually creates kit cohesion?

Because a plus damage buff a plus damage bufskill is inherently the least interesting, most boring thing you can give a job.
I agree Living Shadow isn't much, but it has more flavor and niche uses than making DRK hit three self buffs every 2 minutes. Didn't mean to imply that BW or Delrium were damage buffs, just hitting 3 self buffs every burst window seems monotonous. And no pointing out that its a DoT doesn't make me hate it, I don't even hate Salted Earth. DoTs are fine to me, and have some useful application in underappreciated content in this game.
Meanwhile the "kit cohesion" you're talking about is literally, press button to do more damage for 20 seconds, bet you it would even have a 2 minute cooldown and line up perfectly with buff windows. Which in my honest opinion has been the bane of job design for all of Endwalker, but thats another discussion.

It also wouldn't make much sense from a balance perspective. The reason WAR and DRK don't have +20% damage skills like PLD and GNB is because they have +10% damage buffs with 100% uptime.

I also am just generally not a fan of people who are in favor of more homogenization, especially for tanks. People cry about DRK having so many removed skills, yet when it comes to talking about its balance they want to remove more skills and give it skills that already exist on other tanks? Thats what got us here in the first place.

Expand whats already there rather than cutting more away to make the job even more inline with the others.

[Zairava]

I also am just generally not a fan of people who are in favor of more homogenization, especially for tanks. People cry about DRK having so many removed skills, yet when it comes to talking about its balance they want to remove more skills and give it skills that already exist on other tanks? Thats what got us here in the first place.

Expand whats already there rather than cutting more away to make the job even more inline with the others.

That's why I also am for giving us actions that can only be accessed through Living Shadow being active

[Shurrikhan]

I also am just generally not a fan of people who are in favor of more homogenization, especially for tanks.

But, Living Shadow being [to DRK] a sole partial-uptime damage buff (that therefore has inherent, if modest, interaction with the rest of DRK's kit) on a flexible CD is already less homogeneous than it being a DoT on a flexible CD. Even if you allow for variable consumption and thereby duration on the DoT, that's already been done.

A flexibly timed damage buff via gauge spending would be something unique to the game, possibly allowing DRK its own damage-windows that would rotate non-rigidly around the 2-minute raid buffs cycle; even a flexibly-duration DoT, though, is just MCH Turret/Queen (i.e., a DoT with a minimum cost and, at best, a separate maximum cost). It's been done.

And at present, that "unique" Living Shadow DoT... is just Sonic Break on a longer CD. That's not somehow better than a flexibly timable damage amp window. At least the latter has inherent kit interaction.

[Oizen]

But, Living Shadow being a sole partial-uptime damage buff (that therefore has inherent, if modest, interaction with the rest of DRK's kit) on a flexible CD is already less homogeneous than it being a DoT on a flexible CD. The first is something unique to the game; the latter is just MCH Turret/Queen.

Fight or Flight and No mercy already exist. Having a tank with a summon is more unique than +damage%.

But I mean while we're at it I honestly think that Delirium should give the 3 Bloodspiller we get guaranteed Crit/DHs and also give us knockback immunity, as well as immunity to some statuses. I think that be really unique.

[fulminating]

Dropping dark mind to 39ish so you can use it on the sprites in stone vigil.

[fulminating]

Since living shadow is a pet without a pet, they could just make it a fully fledged one. Give it egi assault I/II, enkindle and have it mimic the DRK's mitigations to help it live through raidwides etc. It'd need to be on a separate GCD because of how busy it'd be otherwise, but it's not like there's any other pet jobs anymore.

[Zairava]

Since living shadow is a pet without a pet, they could just make it a fully fledged one. Give it egi assault I/II, enkindle and have it mimic the DRK's mitigations to help it live through raidwides etc. It'd need to be on a separate GCD because of how busy it'd be otherwise, but it's not like there's any other pet jobs anymore.

Interesting take on it...though I can't exactly say I would like if it DRK suddenly got shifted into a pet job, nor can I see them actually doing it due to their distaste for that type of job. If they were going to give the egi-assaults and enkindle and that, I would rather they just give us Shadowbringers Summoner back.

[ItsUrBoi]

I think they should make the job more engaging by going away from copied Warrior design. Warrior is well designed because all the skills don't just "do damage" and that's it, they interact even if in little ways such as increasing your Shake it off strength, reducing your Infuriate cooldown or by maximizing your Surging Tempest damage buff so you do as many Storm Paths as possible.

The easiest changes they could do to improve on the current state of DRK would probably be:

• Make Delirium grant a special combo. PLD has 4 actions, GNB has 3, DRK could get a 5 action long combo. Or if DRK has no budget since Stormblood since Shadowbringers made it a Warrior copy and Endwalker memed it a bit too, then just give it 2 new actions going off of Bloodspiller.
  
  Move Dark Missionary anywhere below level 70 please. Why does GNB have it but DRK doesn't in UCOB/UWU?
  
  Change Dark Mind to grant 10% damage reduction. It upgrades to Oblation at level 82 granting another 20% magic damage reduction. It really hurts having to triple weave TBN, Dark Mind, Oblation and all the offensive oGCDs.
  
  Move Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain to the GCD, with a cooldown of 20 seconds. The first fixes the fact that you have nothing to do on the job between burst windows, and the second fixes your dungeon sustain as you can use the button more often.
  
  Add a healing skill. Examples can be to add "Blood price" which lasts for 10 seconds and stores up a portion of the damage you take. At the end of the duration heals you for stored amount, or upon activating the ability again.
  
  Get rid of Quietus. Bloodspiller combo can have AoE fall off.

[ItsUrBoi]

A decent idea ( or so I think) for Living Shadow would be if it were a GCD, and the spawning animation is severely speed up so that he spawns and is ready to attack within 2.35 seconds or roughly so. Then he'd just copy all the GCDs and off GCDs you do for a reduced potency. In the Shadowbringers media tour everyone was really happy to see Frey seemingly copying your actions and it looked cool. It would also make more sense for the red job gauge with seconds counting down. It would also add a bit more depth to the job as you now need to get as many GCDs and off GCDs in that duration as possible.

This would also allow the developers to remove the trait that makes sure Esteem uses Shadowbringer instead of Flood of Shadow. Its a bad trait, if he copied all your abilities / actions then there'd be no need for that and it could be replaced with something actually usefull.

The trait that increases his damage, makes sense if the need for different dps values from lvl 80 to lvl 90 content changes.

Living Shadow being a GCD allows for a speed up animation so that Esteem is up and ready to copy your actions before your next GCD is ready. He could only copy GCDs to make sure you do not use an off GCD immediately in the GCD after Living Shadow and miss Esteem copying it as he is still spawning.

[Asetoni]

I don't really like this idea of making Living Shadow a damage buff (through a straight +X% or by having it mimic your moves), because it wouldn't really change anything at all about how the class is played now. You already hold resources and dump everything at the 2 minute burst anyway, and Living Shadow is already the first button you wanna press there because of the spawn time. Like this could be added to the game today and the rotation would stay exactly the same. Literally all it would do is shackle DRK to the 2 min burst if the game ever moves away from the 2 min meta in future expansions (cope, I know, but let me believe).

And honestly one of the cool things about ShB/EW DRK is the flexibility in its damage. You ideally put stuff in burst, but if there's a phase you need to end or a mob you need to kill (in ultimates or criterion savage), you can dump your resources early much easier than any of the other tanks. Ofc you could still do this even if Living Shadow was a damage buff, but it'd be more punishing to do so.

I do like the resource generation idea more, but that would also need to be done in a way that doesn't just ultimately result in an additional Edge/Bloodspiller in burst.