Dark Knight Megathread

[Terhix]

The sad thing is, I've seen people over the years suggest changes to the Dark Knight that actually make it feel like a Dark Knight, but instead the devs are adamant on keeping it the way it is. Hell, I'll even throw my hat in the ring and say that Dark Knight should be centered around using your own HP to empower your attacks while draining enemies of theirs.

I don't think it's realistic to expect that to happen in any way that's not entirely cosmetic. If at any point it becomes possible for DRK to trade healer resources for extra DPS it is guaranteed that will become the way to optimal way to play the game ("given opportunity players will optimize fun out of the game"). In such a case either spending extra healing resources on DRK would have to make it the best DPS tank by far, which would be degenerate gameplay, or not spending extra healing resources on DRK would make it the worst DPS tank by far, which also would be degenerate gameplay. You can get away with it in single player games where you control the entire party and your party composition as a whole is effectively your "build", but an MMO where you get paired with strangers according to party roles is an entirely different animal.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think it's realistic to expect that to happen in any way that's not entirely cosmetic. If at any point it becomes possible for DRK to trade healer resources for extra DPS it is guaranteed that will become the way to optimal way to play the game ("given opportunity players will optimize fun out of the game"). In such a case either spending extra healing resources on DRK would have to make it the best DPS tank by far, which would be degenerate gameplay, or not spending extra healing resources on DRK would make it the worst DPS tank by far, which also would be degenerate gameplay. You can get away with it in single player games where you control the entire party and your party composition as a whole is effectively your "build", but an MMO where you get paired with strangers according to party roles is an entirely different animal.

It'd be a hell of a constraint around which to balance, but there is a knife's edge of space into which you can offer HP-spending as a situationally useful utility without it seeing constant drain on high-potency-per-GCD heals (Regen, Aspected Benefic, etc.).

Essentially, it's purpose then would simply be to offer increased burst before complete downtime (nothing to attack and otherwise nothing to heal) and to reduce the punishment of would-be overhealing, which would be still a neat enough feature without being overly intrusive.