Dark Knight Megathread

[ItsUrBoi]

I think they should remove one of the DRK's gauges and focus on expanding heavily on the remaining one.
For example:

"Darkside":
- Remove Bloodgauge or heavily simplify it ( look at "Bloodgauge" )
- Increase upper capacity of Darkside to 90 seconds, Darkside does not decay over time passively
- When above 0 , Darkside gives 10% more damage, with an additional 10% skill / spell speed when above 60
- Delirium grants a special 3 part combo that can only be used when Darkside is above 60, each attack consumes Darkside gauge by 6
- Bloodspiller also consumes Darkside gauge by 6 , but does less damage than Delirium combo
- Remove Living Shadow, make the frequency of the Delirium combo 40, so you have to manage your Darkside so you are always above 60 but don't over cap too much as you can use that for combos or Bloodspiller

"Blackblood":
- Mostly every action grants you blackblood
- It doesn't do anything on its own, augments defensive abilities with healing effects
- Up to 100 points in gauge, using a defensive action consumes 50 points
- When used on TBN - grants a 10% heal after barrier breaks
- When used on Oblation - grants a 200 potency regen for 12 seconds
- When used on Abyssal Drain - grants a 600 potency heal per enemy hit and increases the radius of the "explosion" by 50%
- When used on Dark Missionary - grants a heal of 50 potency over 21 seconds to everyone hit

Its not hard to achieve as you anyway do about x3 -> x5 Edge of Shadows and you cannot go under the 60 point mark unless you do the Delirium combo or Bloodspiller / Quietus

[Colt47]

It's got too many OGCD options to fire off in the first few rounds with the way it is designed right now that is for sure. There's some kind of breaking point on having just the right number of cooldowns and too many cooldowns, and it gets hit somewhere between 70 and 90.

Just went back to playing DRK at 90 and holy crap is my brain stressing out trying to deal with having all of these up at once...

Oblation, Abyssal Drain, Blood Weapon, Delirium, Salted Earth, Carve and Split, Edge of Shadow, and plunge on top of the main combo. And with all of that going on you're trying to also balance out the defense cooldowns because this job even with the changes feels like it leans a crap ton on a shield that lasts 7 seconds. This sounds like a long time until you realize this games GCD system is 2 seconds and sometimes monsters just decide to chill out doing some aoe move that costs most of the time. Or just have this brain fart during pulls where they stand there until the server realizes "Oh yeah this should probably be chasing the tank now".

Still feels like the coolest tank to play, but this job definitely is hard to just pickup again if someone takes a break. Most of the other ones have a chain and stuff kind of slots in along the chain. This one is like "roll face on keyboard" 1-2-3 1-2-3 "do some minor stuff" 1-2-3 1-2-3 "do something minor" 1-2-3 "roll face on keyboard".

And when someone is in the rolling face on keyboard phase, they have no way to react or use defense cooldowns because all the OGCD slots are stuffed with dps stuff. So it isn't even the same set of stuff all the time depending on the situation. Even DPS generally fall back into the same pattern if they get resurrected, just the timing goes a little off on a main combo. With DRK because of all the OGCDs it just warps into different things, so someone constantly has to keep their eye on the hot bars just to make sure they can make sure they hit the right OGCD attack on the priority list.

[GoatOfWar]

It's got too many OGCD options to fire off in the first few rounds with the way it is designed right now that is for sure. There's some kind of breaking point on having just the right number of cooldowns and too many cooldowns, and it gets hit somewhere between 70 and 90.

Just went back to playing DRK at 90 and holy crap is my brain stressing out trying to deal with having all of these up at once...

Oblation, Abyssal Drain, Blood Weapon, Delirium, Salted Earth, Carve and Split, Edge of Shadow, and plunge on top of the main combo. And with all of that going on you're trying to also balance out the defense cooldowns because this job even with the changes feels like it leans a crap ton on a shield that lasts 7 seconds. This sounds like a long time until you realize this games GCD system is 2 seconds and sometimes monsters just decide to chill out doing some aoe move that costs most of the time. Or just have this brain fart during pulls where they stand there until the server realizes "Oh yeah this should probably be chasing the tank now".

Still feels like the coolest tank to play, but this job definitely is hard to just pickup again if someone takes a break. Most of the other ones have a chain and stuff kind of slots in along the chain. This one is like "roll face on keyboard" 1-2-3 1-2-3 "do some minor stuff" 1-2-3 1-2-3 "do something minor" 1-2-3 "roll face on keyboard".

And when someone is in the rolling face on keyboard phase, they have no way to react or use defense cooldowns because all the OGCD slots are stuffed with dps stuff. So it isn't even the same set of stuff all the time depending on the situation. Even DPS generally fall back into the same pattern if they get resurrected, just the timing goes a little off on a main combo. With DRK because of all the OGCDs it just warps into different things, so someone constantly has to keep their eye on the hot bars just to make sure they can make sure they hit the right OGCD attack on the priority list.

You're supposed to plan your mitigations, not react. That's a Warrior thing.

[Colt47]

You're supposed to plan your mitigations, not react. That's a Warrior thing.

Planning works in the more controlled environments like savage and doesn't work in less controlled environments that show up in regular content. Tanks have to have a mix to support both environments to really function well.

Also as a warrior main, it isn't a job that only reacts: It basically can do what the DRK can do but also has the ability to react effectively when the person hasn't memorized an encounter. That's why it handles so well and why so many people favor warrior, paladin, and gunbreaker over DRK. There's a lot of opinion on what DRK should do in terms of balancing what it has, but there isn't much to debate on the lack of its ability to self heal in response to unknown threats. That and someone would be rather hard pressed to argue that it is somehow beneficial it lacks that capability outside of a few loose skills, one of which has the same cooldown as carve and split and the other being it's invuln.

They were able to jury rig some solutions in with the invuln including self healing so that it isn't simply suicide without a benediction or something at the ready. Also 3-hit combo actually providing healing at the final blow helped a bit.

[Oizen]

It's got too many OGCD options to fire off in the first few rounds with the way it is designed right now that is for sure. There's some kind of breaking point on having just the right number of cooldowns and too many cooldowns, and it gets hit somewhere between 70 and 90.

Dark Knight should definitely retain its ogcd focus, its been a staple of the job since it came out.
People bitch and moan all the time that DRK is too similar to WAR, well chopping down its ogcd focus seems incredibly conter-intuitive to making it unique seeing as spamable Edge of Shadow and its critical mass of damage only ogcds is its identity.
Its a busy job, and its the hardest tank to optimize. That is not a bad thing, if you want to play a tank that has fewer buttons to press, WAR and PLD exist just for that.

If you want a tank with just as many buttons to press, but a more rigid and thought out rotation, play Gunbreaker.

It is okay to not like Dark Knight. But please don't ask them to change it to be even more like other tanks because you don't like doing what the job has done since its inception.

[Absurdity]

Dark Knight should definitely retain its ogcd focus, its been a staple of the job since it came out.
People bitch and moan all the time that DRK is too similar to WAR, well chopping down its ogcd focus seems incredibly conter-intuitive to making it unique seeing as spamable Edge of Shadow and its critical mass of damage only ogcds is its identity.
Its a busy job, and its the hardest tank to optimize. That is not a bad thing, if you want to play a tank that has fewer buttons to press, WAR and PLD exist just for that.

If you want a tank with just as many buttons to press, but a more rigid and thought out rotation, play Gunbreaker.

It is okay to not like Dark Knight. But please don't ask them to change it to be even more like other tanks because you don't like doing what the job has done since its inception.

It's not really the number of oGCDs that are the issue, it's how they're utilized. You have no real odd minute bursts anymore, yes technically you still burst every minute but that's just because you don't want to waste cooldowns that are ready.

Best example is Shadowbringer, it has a 60 second cooldown but do you use it every 60 seconds? No, because it has 2 charges so of course you bank both for the actual burst every 2 minutes.
Every oGCD is essentially funneled into the party buff window which creates a complete spamfest when it happens but when it isn't happening you're just going through utterly bland filler.

[Mayhemmer]

I'd prefer if DRK retained it's high APM, in the event the devs continue to refuse to give tanks interesting mechanics to work with. It's the only of the four I actually enjoy playing purely because it's high APM keeps me from passing out at my keyboard. That is to say, though, it's high APM doesn't make it interesting to me. In fact, I don't find DRK very interesting at all, but that's an issue I have with every tank currently. PLD feels half-baked (probably on purpose), WAR puts me to sleep, and GNB... well, I don't know what GNB does, as I can't stand playing it.

I could probably stand to have some of it's burst trimmed off, but unless it actually gets some meat to work with mechanically, I'd prefer DRK stayed busy during burst.

[Colt47]

I'd prefer if DRK retained it's high APM, in the event the devs continue to refuse to give tanks interesting mechanics to work with. It's the only of the four I actually enjoy playing purely because it's high APM keeps me from passing out at my keyboard. That is to say, though, it's high APM doesn't make it interesting to me. In fact, I don't find DRK very interesting at all, but that's an issue I have with every tank currently. PLD feels half-baked (probably on purpose), WAR puts me to sleep, and GNB... well, I don't know what GNB does, as I can't stand playing it.

I could probably stand to have some of it's burst trimmed off, but unless it actually gets some meat to work with mechanically, I'd prefer DRK stayed busy during burst.

It's not a matter of it being busy as much as not having a clear execution path without having to go to icy veins or some other website to tell you what it is. That and since it is busy the person has to watch their hot bar more than the fight until they have put a rather significant number of hours into it. Machinist can sort of fall into this category, but they are still a lot easier to work around than the DRK since they only got DPS cooldowns and the automata is sort of a fire and forget thing. RPR and WAR take way less hours to master and get good at.

[Mayhemmer]

It's not a matter of it being busy as much as not having a clear execution path without having to go to icy veins or some other website to tell you what it is. That and since it is busy the person has to watch their hot bar more than the fight until they have put a rather significant number of hours into it. Machinist can sort of fall into this category, but they are still a lot easier to work around than the DRK since they only got DPS cooldowns and the automata is sort of a fire and forget thing. RPR and WAR take way less hours to master and get good at.

I see all of this as a positive.

[Colt47]

I see all of this as a positive.

It just depends on which angle someone is coming from on it. In the old days where people weren't feeling pressed into being optimized killing machines in video games for the sake of getting purposefully thrown together grindfests completed, and having to fight end-game encounters literally built to take extreme numbers of hours to clear, it was generally kind of welcomed to have different options. That and comparing notes with friends was a lot more fun back then.

The issue is the kind of game they are building toward right now is a game where the developers have the highest amount of control as possible on the outcome, meaning they got to balance everyone the same. So the only thing that happens with something that is harder to master due to having a ton of abilities is that it gets weaker than the other options per ability, or they let it have an obvious edge over the other options and it becomes a necessity in every group that someone has to become a guru at. AST is basically living this cycle right now as a neglected job that requires a lot more effort to do the same thing a whm can, so it's getting the rework button. DRK is going to be on the chopping block at some point but they have to get through dragoon first because that one is literally backed into a corner.