Dark Knight Megathread

[TouchandFeel]

snip

While I may agree with some of Lyth's posts and points, they definitely don't fully represent me and my opinions.
We don't need just one person acting as the gatekeeper to the tank forums or for DRK. Feedback and discussions would be easier to follow and less likely to be ignored if people would be less "rage-posty" and slower to try and shout others down that don't fall in line with their own ultra specific ideas and desires.

[Marxam]

I've always thought that decent "fix" to living dead is to keep how it is now BUT, if you don't heal for 100% of your HP you go back to 1 regardless of how much HP you were healed prior. It won't kill you outright but puts you in danger of dying. I think it would be pretty cool synergy if Living Shadow could eat the penalty for you and simply put it back on cd. Maybe make it proc a huge burst if Living Shadow dies from Living Dead's effect. It would be a cool lore tech option for when LD's duration expires and won't kill you in the process if you aren't healed.

[Dingodrole]

I've always thought that decent "fix" to living dead is to keep how it is now BUT, if you don't heal for 100% of your HP you go back to 1 regardless of how much HP you were healed prior. It won't kill you outright but puts you in danger of dying. I think it would be pretty cool synergy if Living Shadow could eat the penalty for you and simply put it back on cd. Maybe make it proc a huge burst if Living Shadow dies from Living Dead's effect. It would be a cool lore tech option for when LD's duration expires and won't kill you in the process if you aren't healed.

Then healers wouldn't heal you for the duration of Walking Dead, because the ressource sink would still be unworthy. And if your idea is to basically put the HP back at 1 ( with some sort of couple seconds of extra invuln to not instant die from an auto-attack ), then it becomes even more " stressfull ", since healers will still have to throw you panic heal at the last second.

[currentlemon]

I want to play a part in this conversation. DRK was my main in ShB and seeing the Job in Endwalker makes me want to quit it for PLD. However, I still want DRK to succeed and it deserves much better than it does heading into Endwalker.

SE, I know you are reading this. Please consider my post as feedback.

I made a post on the Tank thread a while back about the return of Dark Arts and how SE can implement it. I know a lot of people complained about the Dark Arts spam in 4.0, but it is possible to reimplement the skill without spamming it like in StB. Simply add a charge to it like Plunge.

I revised my suggestion a bit from my original post, but here is a summary of my thread.

• Dark Arts is earned at level 42.

• To prevent spam, the skill will have a 15 sec cooldown like TBN (won't be shared).

• As you level DRK, Dark Arts will receive 3 charges at max level. 4 if possible.

• It would share the same MP cost as Flood/Edge of Shadow.

• Because the real Dark Arts is back, the trait for a free Flood/Edge of Shadow will be removed from TBN.

• For a broken TBN, DRK will instead gain a 15% mitigation bonus and earn some blood gauge.

I'll have more later in another post, so please bear with me.

[RatCopter]

Thinking on it, it'd probably be better if I did level DRK to 90, if nothing else but to confirm my gut feeling on what the problems with the job are going to be. Hell, I've already started writing up a pre-emptive "why is DRK underwhelming" word doc just to organise my thoughts, for all that's worth.

One thing I figured out was that my problem with Shadowbringer is that 1) I want to earn the use of it, and 2) not see it just get eaten up and lost in the mess of animations that is our burst window.

[currentlemon]

Okay, so here is a more elaborate post on the return of DRK's Dark Arts. In my opinion, Dark Arts should be the shining beacon of DRK's skills, not Delirium. I know you are reading this SE, so here is my suggestion.

• Dark Arts will be earned at Level 42.
• The skill will have a 15 second cooldown with 3 or 4 charges at max level to prevent spam.
• The skill should enhance only a handful of skills, but not too many like StB.

These enhanced skills are based off of Sage's own ability (Cardia I believe), though Sage technically took it from DRK in the first place.

Upon the activation of Dark Arts, the following skills will change:

• Soul Eater becomes the dot skill Scourge
• Dark Mind receives a 20% mitigation bonus for Physical Attacks
• Carve and Split does 3 hits now. Each hit does the same number of potency.
• Shadow Wall mitigation bonus is now 40% with a duration of 20 seconds
• (New) Power Slash, which is a returning combo finisher, becomes the old 3.0 Delirium skill, just renamed.

With Dark Arts coming back, TBN no longer has it has a trait when the shield is broken.

• DRK will instead receive a trait called Dark Rune
• Dark Rune increases DRK's mitigation by 15% and earn a small bit blood gauge.

There. My suggestion for the return of the real Dark Arts. I haven't really thought of how the traits are spread out yet. Maybe for another post.

[Tribezer0]

Putting my suggestion here from another thread cause I realize this was the correct one…

My biggest issue with most of what I read in this thread is that all these tweaks seem to be bandaids on a toolkit that already doesn’t work with itself and lacks the Dark Knight identity play style.

I think the biggest changes they need are skills that work with each other, rather than just feeling like random skills tossed onto one job.

With that said I’ll make one suggestion to help make Living Dead less dependent on other players.

TBN2: Upgrade to normal TBN that either gives the user a small heal or a HOT when the shield breaks. This will put the skill on par with the new tank abilities and will also allow it to be paired with Living Dead to help take the strain off healers.

The rest of the toolkit will still need a rework to create synergy between skills but at least this would be a start.

[Robuel]

Hello, long time Drk dabbler here. While there are other versions of the job I have enjoyed, I wanted to make a post about the simplest and most realistic updates to the job I could see for EW based after the media tour information.

The new abilities in a vacuum, I think are parallel too and just as exciting as the other tanks new abilities. I believe alot of the pain points for drk players, stems from older parts of their toolbox, that seem unpolished in comparison to the other tanks newly rounded out kits.

Two Changes for Drk in addition to EW updates:

-Have Dark arts stack to two-

Currently the strengths of The Blackest Night, are its short cooldown+effectiveness and its ability to "stock-pile mana" for burst windows. But, these two work against each other. For Drks looking to do high end damage, this means TBN effectively has a 1 minute cooldown. Having two stacks would allow more freedom in TBN usage, more comparable to other tanks updated 25 second cooldowns. It also doubles as a QOL increase, that would be enjoyed in more casual use.

-Update living dead to not kill the Drk-

Boiling down Living dead into its core concepts, its a large Flavorful Cooldown that can be used to cheat death, and requires non-negligible coordination with a healer to have the resources from both the drk and healer go un-wasted. Infact it has a bit of a double negative, not only can bad coordination end the buff early, but failure leads to death, wasting the CD itself and any additional abilities used by the healer. I'm here to argue that it only needs one of these downsides to keep acceptable balance and flavor. In fact i think the removal of the buff from healing is enough and the death aspect can be dropped completely. Possibly doubling down on the healing removing the triggered portion of the buff. For example making any single target healing remove the status. This would keep the core of the ability, cheating death and healer coordination, but with a lesser penalty, of the ability just being less effective. As far as flavor, the perceived lore seems to be, we go double dead and need to be healed up too escape death, the new perceived lore would be we enter some kind of walking dead status that prevents us from completely dying, and 10 seconds or any healing type magic knocks us out of said state.

Anyway, i know these changes wont address some people concerns, but i think they would go far as small changes to keep drk in line with the other tanks defensive abilities. Basically promoting usage of our "super cooldown" and short cooldown. While currently they are disincentivized at worst, limiting at best.

Also if you like these changes, plz talk about them or respond, thanks

[shao32]

Darkside and MP economy with the related skills need to be reconsidered in order to have something that actually works to a gameplay level, nothing hard so I have Desing I exposed in other threads months ago:

- Flood of shadow: cost 2000 pm, potency x, increase Darkside time by 30s to a maximum of 60s, hits multiple targets.
- Edge of shadow: cost 2000 pm, potency x (superior to flood) single target don't generate Darkside time.
- Abyssal drain: cost 2000 pm, potency x (superior to flood) hit multiple targets, heal x potency don't generate Darkside time.
- The blackest night: cost 2000 pm , shield of x% of your HP, when breaks grant dark arts (basically the same).

MP generation increased overall result on a interplay where the player have to constantly manage his MP and Darkside by keeping a balance in the middle of your MP bar and using your skills according of what you need, you would use flood to generate Darkside time and keep it up and when you don't need it you will use Edge on single target for maximum damage output and Abyssal drain on AOE situations for the same, this would make Darkside gauge usefull, restore resource management identity on DRK and with the actual design of TBN and dark arts you will be able to sustitute any of the other 3 any time by the shield and get a refund for break the shield with dark arts and keep rolling, rewarding gameplay.

I know this change is never going to happen but if it happen + a rework of Delirium like idk enchanced Bloodspiller and quietus to generate moar MP would make the job remain relative simple but deep and feel cohesive in parts that right now aren't contributing to his identity, no more WAR rip-off, pipe dream but is the best I could think without adding new skills. In the end DRK need something, anything that don't run on automatic.

[Ryaduera]

Darkside and MP economy with the related skills need to be reconsidered in order to have something that actually works to a gameplay level, nothing hard so I have Desing I exposed in other threads months ago:

Not that I don't like this idea, I do actually, I just don't think this part is necessarily true. Someone smarter than myself did the math and in a 10 minute fight, assuming every TBN breaks and gives you Edge of Shadow and you use it at every available moment, you have 12 minutes worth of Darkside that's overcapped and therefor wasted. Mind you when I say overcapped I mean it's only counting what you didn't use. So if you have 45 seconds on Darkside and use your MP to get more, it's only counting the 15 seconds you wasted. Darkside has more wasted time than it does uptime. In conclusion, you have way more MP generation than you need already. In the context of current DRK, wasted Darkside means spent MP, and MP is something we only barely have to manage anyway since we have 3 sources. Delirium, blood weapon, and Syphon Strike. 4 if you use Ethers.

That being said, lowering MP costs across the board would allow you to use these hypothetical spells more frequently and since it's calculated use of the spells, it doesn't feel noisy but rather intelligently.