Dark Knight Megathread

[Derio]

Pretty much if you are a DRK in a dungeon you want a SGE or a SCH with you. Specifically SGE due to dedicated sustain coming from Kardia every GCD and things like Haima every other trash pull. When you get a WHM or AST if they run out of OGCD heals then good luck getting a GCD heal from them.

Honestly DRKs whole dungeon problem could be fixed if they removed AD from CS. Put AD on the GCD with 30s cooldown with 2 charges and make a low level TBN ( call it shadowskin) at lvl 40. That would greatly improve the leveling process and improve expert dungeon runs on DRK.

But devs and JP think DRK is fine as is. JP only have issues with plunge being removed but that is getting fixed in 7.01 with emnity added to the dash. So looks like we are waiting until 8.0 for sustain fixes if any.

[CKNovel]

I'm leveling Warrior and it kind of became depressing how the job became more enjoyable than Dark Knight.

With the loss MP regen, MP management is not a thing anymore and you'll rarely cap MP. That also leads to 4 oGCDs lost during opener and burst window (1 Edge, 2 Plunge, 1 Blood weapon).
The changes and merges are good but they should've been replaced with something. DRK wasn't exactly bloated with oGCDs, it was very flexible but disconnected, now it feels empty but still disconnected.

Bonus point, DRK got a bit scammed on its new 120s defensive , it restores 1200 potency worth of healing, around 43k. Warrior restores 2000 potency over 15 seconds.
GNB gets around 36k extra HP but it is much more valuable than any other sort of healing as those extra HP works like a shield that can be resplenished if necessary. Same goes for PLD, barriers are fantastic given the mitigation bloat.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Aurora's CD is 60s @ 2 charges, so 2x 1200p in 2min. Just wanted to correct that.

[Ryaduera]

Aurora's CD is 60s @ 2 charges, so 2x 1200p in 2min. Just wanted to correct that.

It's 1200 (200 per tick at 6 ticks) per Aurora charge which with 2 charges is 2400 every 60s which is 1200 every 30s so my math stands. I point out every 30s because you should use it, get the full usage, let your HP drop, then use it again, thus using it once every 30 seconds. The frequency of usage means at the 2 minute mark you can use your 4th charge. My math stands so idk what you are trying to correct here, but I hope this clarifies my statements.

Even if you drop off the last 1200 since it's a regen and doesn't happen inside the two minute window, the difference is still quite large.

[CKNovel]

It's 1200 (200 per tick at 6 ticks) per Aurora charge which with 2 charges is 2400 every 60s which is 1200 every 30s so my math stands. I point out every 30s because you should use it, get the full usage, let your HP drop, then use it again, thus using it ocne every 30 seconds. The frequency of usage means at the 2 minute mark you can use your 4th charge. My math stands so idk what you are trying to correct here, but I hope this clarifies my statements.

.... huh?
No, you start with 2 charges, you get 1 charges every minute. You can't use it every 30 seconds.
Of course the first minute you'll get 2400 potency worth of healing over 36 seconds but past that it's one use every minutes, so 1200 potency.

Heart of Corundum is also 25 seconds, not 20.

Over 2 minutes, you'll have 3 uses of Aurora (not counting the one coming back at the 2nd minute, because it hasn't ticked yet) and 4.8 uses of corundum.
That's 3600 from Auroras and 3600 from Corundums, so 7200 over 2 minutes, 8100 if you round up the corundum usage.

[Ryaduera]

.... huh?
No, you start with 2 charges, you get 1 charges every minute. You can't use it every 30 seconds.
Of course the first minute you'll get 2400 potency worth of healing over 36 seconds but past that it's one use every minutes, so 1200 potency.

Heart of Corundum is also 25 seconds, not 20.

Over 2 minutes, you'll have 3 uses of Aurora (not counting the one coming back at the 2nd minute, because it hasn't ticked yet) and 4.8 uses of corundum.
That's 3600 from Auroras and 3600 from Corundums, so 7200 over 2 minutes, 8100 if you round up the corundum usage.

Everything you said about Aurora is what I said, yes. As for the HoC error, my head was in PLD space who can HS approx every 20 seconds in ideal scenarios, my mistake there.

[DRKoftheAzure]

So I am going to point out the issues with Dark Knight that have NOT been fixed since it launched ALL THE WAY BACK IN Heavensward;

Living Dead, for lack of better phrases, SUCKED @$$ then, still SUCKED @$$ even AFTER it got "buffed" and it still SUCKS @$$ now, and and it will CONTINUE to SUCK @$$ until Living Dead works similarly to Superbolide where it drops my HP to 1 instead of 10 seconds of dead air UNLESS an attack hits that would NORMALLY kill activates the effect.




Now for the issues that were present in Stormblood and by extension Shadowbringers;

The ability pruning did NOT do Dark Knight any favors and is even more true when you attempt to do level sync content, and basically go "This jobs plays like @$$!" which is most, if not ALL, jobs when they are forced to do any level 50 dungeon via duty roulette, though when Stormblood content was relevant it wasn't AS bad as it is today, but nevertheless, it still causes balancing issue to this day.

In addition removing good changes for bad changes until later deciding that those bad changes need to be less bad, or in extreme cases ACTUALLY GOOD changes, or in the absolute WORST case making change that makes Dark Knight go from bad to WORST has ALSO not been doing Dark Knight any favors. Most of Shadowbringers Dark Knight is a prime example of this, but Endwalker Dark Knight is ALSO guilty of this as well, and Dawntrail Dark Knight continues this trend, for the worst...

In Heavensward MOST of Dark Knight's issues were made to make Dark Knight less bad if not made Dark Knight better, after launch, same with Stormblood, especially when Sole Survivor was a button almost never got used until it got buffed to have an Excog effect where, all of a sudden, the ability's usage spiked, which should have been the sign that devs were onto something good, but Shadowbringers Dark Knight design seems to be have been made by someone who absolutely HATES Dark Knight, and is only getting paid to get the job done, rather than to care about making it better, for 3 EXPANSIONS IN A ROW!




And now for the issues with Shadowbringers Dark Knight;

The Blackest Night no longer generates 50 Blood Gauge when it breaks but instead grants Dark Arts when it breaks which is then can be used for Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow... the problem is that you CANNOT generate Dark Arts OUTSIDE of The Blackest Night...

Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow are now used to maintain Darkside... the problem is that I CANNOT turn Darkside on OUTSIDE of battle OR downtime...

Living Shadow being a series of actions that it can execute, but more often than not feels like waste of spot on my hotbar, and no amount of forcing actions behind it is going to change my opinion on Living Shadow, especially if I have no way of maintaining it and it's only purpose is "do more damage than the player" which is poor AND lazy game design...

Abyssal Drain being a 60 oGCD, which hurt Dark Knight more than it should have.

Blood Weapon being a worse Berserk only needed to be buffed to where it restores MP when you use magic attacks while still buffing your attack speed BECAUSE of spells ESPECIALLY in AoE.

Delirium being a worse Inner Release, as a opposed to leaving it alone, is where the Warrior comparisons really started...

Making Dark Knight be weak against Physical damage even AFTER you get The Blackest Night




And ever since Endwalker it feels like the devs are only adding things onto Dark Knight is because of a checklist that they have to complete before the launch of the next expansion, nothing more... such as;

Locking the cooldown of Abyss Drain with Carve and Spit also hurt it more than it helped, Salt and Darkness might as replace Salted Earth at this point, so long as the keep the 20 second cooldown.

And their level 90 ability with the Darkside restriction felt tacked on because they couldn't think of an actual downside and they gave after that...

Oblation because Dark Knight sucks against Physical damage but because you get it so late it that doesn't even matter because you already made the swap to another tank before Endwalker launched. And I'm being generous with how early/late players made the switch...



And then there is change for the sake of change like;

Removing Plunge which LIVING SHADOW ALSO USES BY THE WAY for an ability NO ONE EVEN WANTS TO USE BECAUSE IT DOES NO DAMAGE AND YOU CAN'T EVEN USE IT ON OTHER PARTY MEMBERS AND IT'S TOO SLOW!



But in Dawtrail we at least got;

A new GCD combo that's locked behind Delirium even though I would rather it cost Blood gauge instead... and a new AoE GCD... that might as well be a combo action for Queitus... a new line AoE that is locked behind Living Shadow... and I would rather it be part of line AoE burst combo that costs 3k MP that was 15 second cooldown and finally do away with Living Shadow so the devs can finally make a tank whose entire gimmick is Summoner but as a tank and not a Limited Job... Oh and half of the 4.3 Sole Survivor effect on our Shadow Wall replacement... which I would rather have Shadow Wall grant a buff the makes the 40% damage reduction available for 30 seconds, which can also be said for a LOT of replacement abilities...

[Awful]

I can't bring myself to level DRK anymore I tried and I got to the 97 dungeon with a friend and I could feel how boring it is to play and how terrible the MP generation is, the scarlet Delirium moves feel so underwhelming when WAR gets a new animation for Nascent (A previous expansion ability no less) that's a FREAKING CHAINSAW SLAM they made the new animation so good, where's the weight and power in DRKs animations? It's truly amazing how little thought it takes to play DRK and it feels just so bad from mobs not noticing you with the new dash, how my MP just is bottomed out, when you don't have a gauge OR Delirium you just have old ass Blood Weapon and they just give MP for that extra crappy Edge/Flood.

We've truly hit DRK rock bottom this expansion, I mean I know we've been slowly getting everything taken from our job since SB but holy kupo nuts how much more are they gonna take away at this point?

[Derio]

Hopefully they buff PLD to be right under GNB so I can go play that instead.

[Ryaduera]

So out of curiosity I decided to do the math on how much GNB and PLD can out mitigate damage compared to DRK. I'm ignoring Ramparts, Reprisal, Arm's Length, and parry rates, also ignoring the passive block rate from PLD, for the sake of keeping the math simple. I've been using a 2 minute window, so let's keep using that. Here's how I am doing the math.

Every cumulative second of mit added together for how many seconds of total uptime the mit has within the 2 minute window I have been using. In this case if we end up at a number being a decimal (like 7.5) we are rounding down. Then divide it by every second in a 2 minute window (Divided by 120) to determine the average damage reduction, this should be a decent indicator of how much less damage the other tanks take in comparison, but I'm not 100% convinced this math will be actually accurate. since I am not calculating overlapped mits with diminishing returns I'm also not entirely sure how accurate it will be for actual damage reductions, but it should be a solid indicator of damage reduction differences between the tanks. I am leaving out Warrior because it's power comes from self healing and is the outlier for tanks whereas I feel GNB and PLD sustain and reductions are pretty solid standards. Also obviously pulls don't last 2 full minutes, but pulls this expansion have been beefier and have room for 2 minute burst windows in them, so the logic should apply even if the math doesn't.

For PLD if you consider you can HS once every 21s roughly, we're going to call it once every 25s since, like I said, it's only "roughly" every 21s and we want consistency here. 120/25 is 4.8 casts of HS, which is split between 4 seconds of 27.75% damage reduction (Remember, since it's 2 buffs it has diminishing returns on itself) and 4 more seconds of 15%. That's 4x4 each, so 16 and 16. Bulwark lasts 10 seconds and while it isn't a flat damage reduction, it's essentially 20% reduction for 10s on a 90s cooldown, so you can use it twice in a 2 minute window. So to sum it up: ((16*27.75)+(16*15)+(20*20))/120=9.03% Reduction

GNB is basically the same math but instead we change the 20% reduction on Bulwark for 10% reduction on Camouflage and raise its uptime (Ignoring Parry rate as we ignore PLD Passive block): ((16*27.75)+(16*15)+(40*10))/120=9.036% Reduction

DRK we will start with full charges of Oblation, meaning we can get 3 off in a 2 minute window, but outside of that that's the only thing we have for personal and unique mits. Then we do the math again for magic damage, knowing full well magic damage is so rare and you almost never would use Dark Mind off cooldown to any effect. First, physical damage. Since it's just 3 Oblation charges at 30 seconds of 10% reduction, this is easy: (10*30)/120=2.5% reduction.

Include Dark Mind, you can get 2 off since it has a 60 second cooldown. Still easy math here: ((10*30)+(20*20))/120=5.833%

Honestly this surprised me. I thought DRK would pull through in magic damage reduction with Dark Mind in a 2 minute window, but it looks like being the "Magic Damage Tank" isn't even actually happening when the math is said and done. Keep in mind, the actual disparity should be even larger after considering PLD Block and the Camouflage parry rate, but I don't really want to add the math for those steps. As I said, though, it would only increase that gap. In longer durations, DRK should catch up in magic damage reduction eventually because Dark Mind cooldown is 30s less than Bulwark and Camouflage, but honestly 2 minutes is already far too long to be holding a pull. I think technically DRK pulls a bigger average in a 1 minute window for magic damage as well, but I'm unsure because longer durations will start to show the weakness of Oblations longer cooldown. In pulls you are taking mixed damage at best so you're probably somewhere between the 2 averages, anyway, so I'm not convinced that the Dark Mind cooldown can even help it catch up. In fact, I'm quite convinced it can't when you consider the far superior cooldown of the even better cooldowns the other tanks get at level 82.

For clarity's sake, this math is basically saying that if over the course of 2 minutes 1,000,000 damage is applied to the tanks (Just using an easy to quantify number) in equal amounts of damage over each second (8,333 damage per second) the PLD reduces it by 83,666, GNB reduces it by 90,300 damage, and DRK reduces it by 25,000, or 58,333 if it's magical. This is without standard tank mits like the standard 40%, 20%, 10%, and 20% slow from Arm's Length that is basically 20% reduction as well, as those are standards and this math is intended to show the difference between tanks unique cooldowns.

So yeah pretty sure Oblation just isn't enough and TBN isn't as efficient as it looks at a glance when you consider the total HP Shielded is about equal to the total HP a PLD can restore within the same 2 minute window. In a scenario with constant incoming damage, healing is harder to calculate actual efficiency since overhealing is health not used that shielding doesn't suffer from, but at this difference does that even matter? I also calculated the healing without crits because that complicates the math a lot. I think we have 15% crit rates now without melds and about 150% crit potency and I'm not about to do that part of the math.

These numbers show that DRK isn't even succeeding at the thing it was meant to succeed at. Oblation just isn't enough.

EDIT: Just did Expert as PLD and realized blocking is not 20% reduction, it's 16%, so to adjust the number, ((16×27.75)+(16×15)+(16×20))/120 =8.36% or reducing 83,666 from 1,000,000 damage over 2 minutes.