Dark Knight Megathread

[DRKoftheAzure]

Bloodbath is a marauder skill, why not lean back into abyssal drain being useful instead as it was in in stormblood?

WAS a Marauder skill... now it's a melee DPS role action...

DRK originally was a middle ground between WAR and PLD, with both a lot of mitigation abilities like PLD, and a lot of healing potential through lifesteal like WAR. That's part of the reason why DRK still has it. IMO with as much healing potential WAR has gotten without Lifesteal abilities (Thrill of Battle, Equilibrium, Shake It Off), I feel it's the reverse...WAR should be the one losing the lifesteal, as angry man can be made too angry to die easily without it. Meanwhile ALL of DRK's healing is Lifesteal, so you wouldn't be able to change DRK's healing capabilities without completely gutting it, AGAIN.

I like the way that you think.

[fulminating]

Doesn't matter frankly, particularly given the state of tanks. Marauder/warrior have had lifesteal and hp generation since inception, so trying to steal that for dark knight doesn't really do anything but further make it a warrior clone. A solution would be putting nascent/bw back on percent of damage dealt, having abyssal drain as x potency on hit with an mp cost, as a sort of halfway house between clemency (potency) and warrior (actually doing something useful). Since we can give it an arbitrary 3000mp cost, it could either interact with tbn breaks, an interesting mp generating button - sticking something onto quietus perhaps - or just relying on regular mp generation, which is 200/tick before blood weapon. I'd rather the latter option wasn't taken because that's 3 stacks with ~45s between uses as a worst case scenario, but could be worse.

[Oizen]

DRK originally was a middle ground between WAR and PLD, with both a lot of mitigation abilities like PLD, and a lot of healing potential through lifesteal like WAR. That's part of the reason why DRK still has it. IMO with as much healing potential WAR has gotten without Lifesteal abilities (Thrill of Battle, Equilibrium, Shake It Off), I feel it's the reverse...WAR should be the one losing the lifesteal, as angry man can be made too angry to die easily without it. Meanwhile ALL of DRK's healing is Lifesteal, so you wouldn't be able to change DRK's healing capabilities without completely gutting it, AGAIN.

Kinda? Like those skills are good but its Bloodwhetting that basically reads as Hallowed Grounds with a 25s CD. Everything else is just a bonus.
And to be blunt Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash are so busted I honestly don't think any tank should have healing output, so I'm not really a fan of putting it on DRK (or any job)

But then thats starting an entirely different conversation about an entirely different job so I'll stop there.

[RyuDragnier]

Kinda? Like those skills are good but its Bloodwhetting that basically reads as Hallowed Grounds with a 25s CD. Everything else is just a bonus.
And to be blunt Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash are so busted I honestly don't think any tank should have healing output, so I'm not really a fan of putting it on DRK (or any job)

But then thats starting an entirely different conversation about an entirely different job so I'll stop there.

I'd prefer that if DRK got a lifesteal like Bloodwhetting from any buff, it'd be Oblation, since that's on a 1m cooldown and can also be given to an ally if needed, giving DRK both sustain and a bit more party utility.

Personally I feel the 25s Bloodwhetting and Nascent are busted as hell on WAR, since again it already has enough healing without that extra lifesteal. Maybe they should think about changing the healing per hit into a HP shield per hit instead (that builds up on itself and caps at a certain %), since WAR won't full heal itself but instead buy itself time for any extra damage coming (like say, DoTs after tankbusters).

[DRKoftheAzure]

I'd prefer that if DRK got a lifesteal like Bloodwhetting from any buff, it'd be Oblation, since that's on a 1m cooldown and can also be given to an ally if needed, giving DRK both sustain and a bit more party utility.

Personally I feel the 25s Bloodwhetting and Nascent are busted as hell on WAR, since again it already has enough healing without that extra lifesteal. Maybe they should think about changing the healing per hit into a HP shield per hit instead (that builds up on itself and caps at a certain %), since WAR won't full heal itself but instead buy itself time for any extra damage coming (like say, DoTs after tankbusters).

Regarding Warrior; I'm okay with them have Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash being their big burst of self sustain that they can't use it for very long or spam it like crazy. Which in way is keeping balanced... enough...

The reason I went for 25% lifesteal for all of Dark Knight exclusive cooldowns, was because of tankbusters that force you to kitchen sink everything, and big pulls in dungeons where you might need 2+ cooldowns, making the lifesteal a bit more balanced...

Though after thinking about it long enough I think that The Blackest Night should grant Shadowskin as a buff which would have 20% damage reduction buff as well as the 25% lifesteal, regardless if The Blackest Night breaks or falls off.

[ItsUrBoi]

To be honest, I would wish to see Dark Arts become a more central part of the job's kit: right now, you only make use of it when breaking TBN, and the more you do that, the less MP you have to spend during raid buffs.

What if Dark Arts made the next Edge / Flood of Shadow heal you for the same potency as damage dealt?
What if they made the free EoS/FoS have 15% increased potency also?

Many people go on about it having to be dps neutral, but why exactly? I have done all the ultimates except TOP, and several savage floors and cannot really imagine a situation in which you'd take a damage down to get one free Dark Arts. In casual content, why would you really care about a tank having 4-5 vulnerability stacks? That content barely hits hard, you have a load of defensive CDs and granted you wipe once the DRK should know his limit.
That content also does not really require any damage optimization, if anything its completable with you mostly messing up your rotation.

[Shurrikhan]

To be honest, I would wish to see Dark Arts become a more central part of the job's kit: right now, you only make use of it when breaking TBN, and the more you do that, the less MP you have to spend during raid buffs.

Is TBN's CD-halving-mechanic (relative to a standard 25s) even worth calling Dark Arts in a more historically- or possibility-minded thread? "Dark Arts" by any meaningful label is the next-action-augmenting ability, not just a means of adding some further optimization to TBN's timing.

Feels like we should just call this something separate for clarity?

What if Dark Arts made the next Edge / Flood of Shadow heal you for the same potency as damage dealt?
What if they made the free EoS/FoS have 15% increased potency also?

Then you'd have increased each TBN's value by a further 506 cure potency and 76 offensive potency, forcing it to be used as near as possible to per-CD for purposes other than actual mitigation.

Many people go on about it having to be dps neutral, but why exactly?

Because you otherwise just end up taking sustain/damage you could have had in a more interesting/effective manner pigeon-holed behind popping TBN on CD. You're already getting more mitigation (not more sustain [non-wasted healing + damage nullified], but yes, more mitigation) against most rates of damage per minute than other on-demands. It doesn't need to be made less bankable/nuanced just to have other, let alone damage-increasing, effects sprout out of it.

[ItsUrBoi]

Is TBN's CD-halving-mechanic (relative to a standard 25s) even worth calling Dark Arts in a more historically- or possibility-minded thread? "Dark Arts" by any meaningful label is the next-action-augmenting ability, not just a means of adding some further optimization to TBN's timing.

Feels like we should just call this something separate for clarity?


Then you'd have increased each TBN's value by a further 506 cure potency and 76 offensive potency, forcing it to be used as near as possible to per-CD for purposes other than actual mitigation.


Because you otherwise just end up taking sustain/damage you could have had in a more interesting/effective manner pigeon-holed behind popping TBN on CD. You're already getting more mitigation (not more sustain [non-wasted healing + damage nullified], but yes, more mitigation) against most rates of damage per minute than other on-demands. It doesn't need to be made less bankable/nuanced just to have other, let alone damage-increasing, effects sprout out of it.

I don't exactly see what you mean, and from what I understood I don't exactly agree. The damage you take in almost every fight I can think of is a combination of very high burst ( Ex: any tankbuster ) or sustained damage ( Ex: Auto attacks ), but regardless of the category you can always predict when that damage is going to happen. The job has no healing in its kit specifically because of TBN being a short CD shield, but using it too often results in a dps loss due to a lack of MP in the upcoming burst window. How would you use TBN for purposes other than actual mitigation? Every scenario you are literally mitigating something yourself or helping someone else do it - and if you end up in a scenario where you got a tank buster coming but you used it before to absorb damage from let's say an auto attack, your still in a decent spot because you'd be at lower HP had you not used it.

I recently switched to WAR and GNB for savage and ultimate content and its so much better than DRK in the term of how you approach damage you take:
-> DRK's Dark Mind is either god like as a cooldown or completely useless in any given fight, no middle ground really.
-> The lack of healing ( healing is a type of mitigation ) is incredibly bad in scenarios where you take successive hits. A Warrior can use equilibrium to heal himself in a 3 part tank buster after the first or 2nd hit, a DRK cannot.
-> TBN's shield is only really good for 1 big attack as a damage reduction cooldown would be better against successive hits.
-> Solo content is miserable on the job due to this lack of healing. Group content is heavily reliant on competent healers, and that's good - however every other tank can make up for a healer's slight mistake by using a 60sec CD.
-> The point that DRK is good against one big magical attack is true, but so are other jobs that can increase their maximum HP buffer ( Ex: WAR )

I have been playing this job for a long time and my biggest problems with it functionally are that:
-> Bloodspiller does not heal you at all. You can do around x3 to x5 of them and get no healing.
-> I cannot heal myself at all. On a tank that's really bad, especially when every other tank can do it, people get used to that and forget DRK is sort of handicapped. Should it have healing to the degree of WAR? No. It should be somewhere lower than GNB, or around that in my opinion.
-> Dark Mind is the cooldown of extremes, in certain fights its really good, in others you do not use it. How about something like 10% damage reduction with an additional effect of another 10% only magical damage reduction?
-> Oblation is very underwhelming. What if instead it gave you 5 stacks of Oblation, each stack healing you for 200 potency when hit? Or each stack is a small shield similar to SGE's Haima?
-> Abyssal Drain could be used more often in dungeons, for example every 20 seconds?
-> You barely use Dark Arts. Ideally you should use it once every 2 minutes to store 1 extra EoS for it to be used within raid buffs.

From a feeling standpoint:
-> Delirium is very similar to Inner Release
-> Blood gauge to the Beast Gauge
-> Living Shadow is boring.

[Oizen]

TBN not breaking already feels pretty shit, wrapping even more damage/effects into it would honestly just make it too high-roll for my taste.

I've said it a few times, but if I were to change skills for healing, I'd pick something like Abyssal Drain, Salted Earth, or even Oblation/Dark Mind.

DRK doesn't need to be more TBN-centric

[Shurrikhan]

I don't exactly see what you mean, and from what I understood I don't exactly agree. The damage you take in almost every fight I can think of is a combination of very high burst ( Ex: any tankbuster ) or sustained damage ( Ex: Auto attacks ), but regardless of the category you can always predict when that damage is going to happen.

Yes, but you can have an AA that hits almost 2 seconds after TBN is still applied somehow ignore TBN's barrier (seeming to somehow snapshot against your actual HP instead of TBN).

Given how finely nearly-per-CD uses of TBN may break or fail to break, it just sounds unnecessarily annoying to stick more effects (especially ones that will have drained your damage ceiling elsewhere to attach to TBN instead) onto TBN breaking.

TBN's breaking or not breaking is already plenty engaging, imo. But if you make maximizing its frequency part of your offense as well, it make actually feel less so for having become muddled.


Personally, I'd be plenty happy just to see most TBN often fully immunize debuffs that'd otherwise require a decent bit of healing over time (e.g., about as much as the original TB), as aided by finely adjustable percentile mitigation atop it, leaving DRK lowish in sustain but king of damage-nullification. Not necessarily ideal, but satisfying nonetheless.


To be clear, though, I don't much care whether DRK be "the barrier tank", "the vampiric tank", "the evasion tank" or whatever else. I feel like WAR has a better vantage point for healing for a %of damage dealt, per its live by the blade, die by the blade, all-in theme, and GNB probably a slightly better purchase on evasion if it had to be restricted to just one tank, but it doesn't ultimately matter to me so long as DRK has a high output ceiling, a flexible/granular mitigation suite, and feels decently versatile and cunning without being quite convoluted.


For my part, the places I'd most like to go to see DRK's sustain expanded are just Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit, and maybe Bloodspiller/Quietus in some different way.

Granted, I'd really like to scrap Rampart and siphon its miti into each job's unique kits and diversify their 30-percents so that each kit can better leverage what's unique to them, but... small steps for now, I guess...