Dark Knight Megathread

[Flay_wind]

One of the things i noticed, when i was looking at healers' short small mitigation they get at 86 is that pretty much any of them are better than Oblation. I.e. Aquaveil is 15% mitigation, Protraction is a mini Thrill of Battle, Exaltation is 10% mitigation with 500 pot heal on expiration. So give Oblation a small buff to be like Aquaveil or Exaltation and it would already makes things better. 10% mitigation on 60 seconds is just really really sad.
Edit: Even something like Krasis would help with Living Dead a lot.

[Undeadfire]

I always hate this logic of "it's powerful enough". Yes, it has half a percentage more damage than GNB with a far worse kit...which isn't a good look, when you can take GNB and get the better kit AND the damage.

My point is, when you add high % buffs when the job is already powerful in Savage/Ultimate content, it causes an imbalance with being strong in Dungeons again and being too strong for Savage/Ultimate. Major reviewing what to buff, and what to leave.

I'm not saying they shouldn't buff the job, I agree it needs buffs "in places" but not something that completely changes things. Extra addition Oblation buff is fine. No developers will ever buff jobs, characters, content, etc, etc, too much, a small 5-10% difference can really change things. Usually thrown testing phases.

[RyuDragnier]

My point is, when you add high % buffs when the job is already powerful in Savage/Ultimate content, it causes an imbalance with being strong in Dungeons again and being too strong for Savage/Ultimate. Major reviewing what to buff, and what to leave.

Which is why they can just shore up the self sustain issue with DRK by giving Bloodspiller and Quietus the Holy Spirit and Holy Circle treatment, give them a 400 Cure Potency every time they're used. That healing is peanuts in Savage/Ultimate due to the sheer amount of damage tanks take, but in dungeons it'd be pretty helpful sustain. Thus helping survivability in dungeons without heavily touching our effectiveness in raids.

[ItsUrBoi]

They never release re-works on a small balance patch, never did. SE aren't gonna super buff a job just to help it with Dungeons, when it's already powerful enough in Savage/Ultimate raids, you have to consider other content.

DRK sure is ok to play in Savage/Ultimate raids, but as someone who has played it in Savage and an Ultimate ( in ShB ) its literally just a "spam everything you have every 2 minutes" job. Its resources Darkside and Blackblood do not interact with its kit. You literally use so much Edge when your Darkside timer is at 50+ seconds just for dmg, but you end up refreshing the buff to 60 anyway, losing potential duration. You never drop Darkside, or run the risk of dropping it. Livingshadow is a 1 button press every 2 minutes with no interactions. Same for Shadowbringer but a 2 button press every 2 minutes. I feel like I am playing the child of a Warrior and GNB, but without the fun of Continuation from the latter, and without the aggressiveness of the former ( which also has cool defensive mechanics to play around for Shake it off ).

I believe the best way to fix it would be:
-> To change Darkside to be used or interacted with in some form. DarkArts but not spammable could solve this.
-> To change Livingshadow to either buff yourself, or have some other use entirely. To not waste work on the current version of the skill, a trait could upgrade the ability.
-> TBN is good - its a 25% shield. DRK should be the shield tank. However it needs improvement: it could cost no MP, have its CD at 20 secs, and restore 10% of max hp when broken.
-> Oblation could stay the same or grant a heal over time with 200 potency.
-> Delirium could be changed to not be an Inner Release copy but worse. Something unique, or perhaps even making it grant stacks of DarkArts to improve more actions or for it to grant a different combo.

Those things if addressed could massively improve the job, imo.

[Duskane]

I would assume everything will be getting buffed if Reaper is gonna be the base line this would include Tanks and heals.
they even mention monk when it's already powerful enough in Savage/Ultimate raids

[Archwizard]

No. If it absorbs more damage, you have to heal less damage. Period.

It's not a matter of how much damage they are taking or negating! It's about how easy it is to heal the person receiving that damage, how much time you buy for that damage to realistically be healed.

We're not arguing about a tankbuster every 10-20 sec, we're talking about the equivalent of one every second, from crowd damage.

If a character is receiving continuous damage spikes over a length of time (say, 10-12% of their health a second until mobs start dying) but can take the edge off all of them the whole time (reducing, say, 15-30% of the damage for 8 sec before moving on to the next DR), that grants time for HoT and leech effects to do their job, for oGCD charges to come off cooldown, or even for hardcasts like Pneuma to execute if need be.
And the fun thing about the 82 abilities is they not only bump up that mitigation, but add to exactly those healing effects. A healing effect given under the effects of mitigation is multiplied EHP.

If a character is receiving those same damage spikes over the same length of time but can negate 25% of health in damage outright... you've frontloaded all that value and bought a single GCD, during which the healer will probably continue attacking (and in all likelihood if TBN was the first thing you hit because it's the lowest CD, any healing you do get while it's active would be overhealing).
Meanwhile the backend of that damage will still be a giant unlubricated spike.
And while you can still stack other sources of mitigation on top of it and are still wont to alternate sources of mitigation as they become available, the fact is that you will burn through them more quickly due to the lack of barrier uptime.

... And again, DRK doesn't exactly have a lot of useful mitigation skills to go around in the first place, looking directly at Oblation/Dark Mind/Living Dead.

The issue isn't "TBN is bad, uniquely and individually." The issue is "TBN is insufficient to hold up the weight of everything DRK is giving up to have it."

[Shurrikhan]

If a character is receiving those same damage spikes over the same length of time but can negate 25% of health in damage outright... you've frontloaded all that value and bought a single GCD

It's literally just a matter of GCDs saved. If you save a GCD at the start, that is not somehow different than saving a GCD across 8 seconds' duration. It's still A GCD of healing.

(and in all likelihood if TBN was the first thing you hit because it's the lowest CD, any healing you do get while it's active would be overhealing).

Why would anyone open a trash-pull in this game with healing? You had the whole pre-pull to shield and HoT.

Meanwhile the backend of that damage will still be a giant unlubricated spike.

Tanks could literally go without touching their short-CD miti whatsoever and that would still be irrelevant even in full pulls.

The issue isn't "TBN is bad, uniquely and individually." The issue is "TBN is insufficient to hold up the weight of everything DRK is giving up to have it."

Until such time as Yoshi come up and says "We won't change Dark Mind, Living Dead, or Oblation because TBN," this narrative is literally not sane.

If a given element is constant even as various other elements change, the constant, unchanging element is not going to explain those changes. It's like you've taken three different iterations of a given play in the same theater and decided to blame the last, lackluster performance... on the dimensions of the room. It's unchanged. It's not going to explain away changes.

We had TBN back when we were invincible in AoE by way of DA-AD. We had TBN back when we also had, on average, the highest single-target mitigation in raids. We had TBN back when DRK had head and shoulders more dungeon mitigation than PLD or GNB. If it coexists alongside those strengths, it cannot be the reason for those relative strengths not existing now.

TBN is not new to this expansion. Oblation is. If you are going to compare the power levels of expansion additions from PLD, WAR, and GNB, then compare them against what DRK gained this expansion. That new defensive capacity, by the way, is Oblation -- not TBN.

And the fun thing about the 82 abilities is they not only bump up that mitigation, but add to exactly those healing effects. A healing effect given under the effects of mitigation is multiplied EHP.

And let's be clear here: mitigation adds to existing eHP only for the duration of that mitigation. Unlike an actual healing buff, every bit of eHP it "adds" is removed at the end of that duration. If you want to make the claim that mitigation, effectively, increases healing received then you must also make the claim that mitigation decreases effective healing you had received the moment its duration ends.

More precise would be to say that HP consumed over the duration of mitigation is worth more damage. For if it was not consumed over that duration, it will have already lost any predictive eHP bonus. Their frames of reference are different. HP is not limited to that 8-second duration unless generated and consumed within that 8-second duration.

And, again, Oblation is DRK's lv82 ability, mirroring Catharsis and Clarity, Resolve and Benediction, and Stem the Flow and Stem the Tide, not TBN.

[Absurdity]

True, but wouldn't replacing it by a parry buff be a copy a shieldtron ?

It would actually be worse, parry doesn't work on magical attacks. And I wouldn't add any mitigation back to tanks that relies on you not eating a critical hit, sure it's fine in raids but dungeon trash can still crit you... which btw still completely ignores Shelltron.

[Archwizard]

It would actually be worse, parry doesn't work on magical attacks.

Seems like combining a parry buff with Dark Mind would at least resolve that particular issue, at least if they want to retain the "slightly better against magic damage" element. Sort of like a personal Addle.

[Archwizard]

Until such time as Yoshi come up and says "We won't change Dark Mind, Living Dead, or Oblation because TBN," this narrative is literally not sane.

I wasn't saying those abilities specifically are being held down by TBN, but that DRK's kit is leaning heavily on TBN as a catch-all. Those abilities just happen to be clear weak points in the kit.

But alright, if the "They won't change X skill because of TBN" narrative is insane to you, I hope we never hear "We didn't need Y because TBN" in this thread again.

And, again, Oblation is DRK's lv82 ability, mirroring Catharsis and Clarity, Resolve and Benediction, and Stem the Flow and Stem the Tide, not TBN.

Yes, but that isn't all the other tanks got this expansion, now is it?

DRK got Oblation. Period. The rest is a bunch of unnecessary damage effects like reduced CD on Plunge or extra damage on Salted Earth.
I won't touch what happened to C&S/AD because at the end of the day, if you booted C&S off the bar completely that element of your survivability is unchanged.

In addition to the changes to their 25s CDs, we get to see things like PLD getting a heal on both of its main magic GCDs and Divine Veil (plus massive mana returns and reduced spell costs), GNB getting an extra charge on Aurora and 2 more sec on Bolide, and WAR getting a massive HoT on already the second-strongest healing effect in the game -- AND a heal on Shake It Off, increased Holmgang uptime and a rework to NF that made it even better before 82.

Hard not to wonder "Hmm, now why didn't DRK get anything that measured up to those?" Because nobody will argue Oblation is anywhere near as good as even the second charge on Aurora.
And remember, until Yoshi-P says, the narrative that it has anything to do with TBN being just that good is "literally not sane."