Dark Knight Megathread

[ItsUrBoi]

Alright, if you wanna go into technicalities, I'll happily oblige because apparently something isn't clear here.

I am not against merging Edge and Flood of Shadow, Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain, Bloodspiller and Quietus, those are great ideas - however they need to be replaced by something else that adds to the job.
We also need to give up on the boring useless traits that do nothing but "Increase Living Shadow potency to x", if its needed to add an action to be executable by Living Shadow make the increase of potency and the additional action within 1 trait and add something else that is more useful.
Delete Enhanced Unmend and replace it with just another stack of Plunge or something else, that actually makes the job better.

With Shadowbringer's rework of DRK the job just feels both incomplete and rushed warrior copy paste, unlike MNK / GNB / RPR / SGE / PLD reworks or new kits. The way you get 2 gauges is fine but only as long as there's another essential job mechanic, NIN and MNK also have 2 gauges ( a spender gauge and a speed / dmg gauge ) but they have mudras and perfect balance and forms to add more.

I thought a lot about this and here's an idea, that is really simple and would greatly help the job:
- Remove Flood of Shadow. Edge of Shadow has a new animation where it does damage around you, with fall off after the first enemy hit.
- Dark Arts now grants a free Edge of Shadow or Abyssal Drain upon complete absorption of the shield or when the shield expires. Abyssal Drain costs 3000 MP and has no cooldown. ( fixed: Dungeon or AoE sustain, TBN breaking issue )
- Dark Mind now grants 10% damage reduction with an additional 15% magical for 10 seconds. ( fixed: magic specific, useless against anything else )
- TBN upgrades into Oblation at lvl 82. Can keep 2 charges ( fixed: defensive button consolidation )

More ambitious changes:
- Quietus removed
- Bloodspiller changed to cost 25 blood, with a better animation as it should have fall off after first target ( fixed: Not so similar to Fell Cleave anymore )
- Delirium is now a GCD that is only executable after Bloodspiller. Delirium has fall off after first target as well, no cost. ( fixed: Not an Inner Release copy anymore )
- Change the bloodgauge generating abilities to generate less blood
- Replace Enhanced Unmend with a trait that makes the next Edge of Shadow or Abyssal Drain heal over time as well or an small burst heal when HP < 50% on Oblation
- Add a new utility ability similar to old Blood Price or Sole Survivor
- Living Shadow copies your GCD attacks, after executing 3 combos of Bloodspiller -> Delirium , you and Fray can do a powerful finisher together

[Zairava]

I used to be for the whole merging of Dark Mind with oblation or whatever, or putting phys and lowering the magic resistance, but I don't really see that as something that needs fixing. DRK is already plenty tanky without having every defensive in the kit be for every type of damage. Let it keep its niche.

As for TBN, I also used to be for just guaranteeing that you get the proc after the duration ends, but after thinking about it more, I don't want that either. In my eyes, the fact that there's a risk of it not popping is what makes it satisfying at all, and would lose a lot of it if you were to take that risk away, something none of the other tanks have. I find it worth keeping and would prefer just increasing TBN's duration to 8 or 10 seconds.

That said, I am for merging:

• Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain (or separating them and giving Abyssal Drain an mp cost again)
• Edge/flood
• Bloodspiller/Quietus

as for everything else

• Even in its current iteration of Blood Weapon, I would like Delirium to extend that again, add perhaps 3 charges and some seconds to the timer or so? (also add the haste back, please)
• Maybe Blood Price could return and we can place it on other people? I doubt they would give it to us word for word as back then because it would mean we lose damage when not MT (the horror is unimaginable). Basically this would mean putting it on someone else would give MP and Blood Gauge in return. As per the bullet above, I wouldn't mind Delirium effecting that as well.
• Not the biggest fan of shadowbringer in general, it could be removed outright and I would be no worse for wear. Attach an MP cost or something, Darkside being a requirement is laughable when we can maintain Darkside while in a coma.
• The ideas for Living Shadow are on a list a mile long, but I've been on record saying that I'd like some Bunshin-Enshroud hybrid where we let our Darkside take over over what we have now. Maybe upon activating it we have a special combo we can use (whether it replaces our 1-2-3 combo or otherwise) and it can have some big finisher or something. My stance hasn't changed there.
• As stated numerous times, we could tack on sustain to DA procs or Oblation, either works. What if we could store a healing ability charge when TBN breaks outside of DA procs, and use it when needed?

The mostly pointless traits explain themselves. We could really do without those for yet another expansion, or replace the ones we got in Endwalker with more interesting ones as well.