Dark Knight Megathread

[RyuDragnier]

As much as I would like to have Abyssal Drain back to being spammable, unless they make it some sort of replacement or upgrade to Flood of Shadow, or in a rework of DRK in itself, I don't see them bringing it back.

Tbh I do think AD and FoS should swap positions. FoS becomes the move attached to CnS, AD becomes the spammable MP move. Though I'd buff AD's damage to the equivalent of EoS with a falloff for every other target hit, and have it heal for 400 potency per use with no Darkside gain, so we have both a good sustain move and something that encourages us to still use Edge. If I had my way, TBN's cost would be Darkside timer (giving it back when it's broken successfully), and Souleater would actually heal for the exact amount of damage it deals (since at endgame you lose more than that in a single auto).

[ItsUrBoi]

Abyssal Drain at the moment could be changed to just give a higher cure potency per target and its CD could be lowered to 30 seconds for dungeon sustain, while damage should be removed.
A good change would be perhaps to make it so instead of healing for a potency it could be replaced with something like this:

- Sole survivor 60 secs CD.
Marks all nearby enemies with "Another victim" for 10 seconds. Another victim effect: Damage dealt to target heals for half the attack potency. ( ex: Edge of Shadow will heal you for 230 heal potency ).

This would surely solve many issues with DRK's sustain in dungeons, making it at least be able to get all of its HP back properly per mob pack. It'd also solve issues in single target situations where you cannot under any circumstance recover HP till now.

[Luizgazen]

Personally I don't understand the hate for Living Shadow, it is a "fancy DoT" sure, but it at least looks cool, has lore connections to the job, and on a technical level, it is meant to not be an extra status effect on the boss, since this game has a relatively low hard cap on how many of those an actor can be affected by at once.

On Sole Survivor, I don't think it would work with how the game evolved since it got axed, it worked when AoE combos cost far more TP than ST ones so people had to single target as well in large pulls, making it so some enemies would fall faster than others giving a good sustain during battle... now everyone just goes AoE all the time so the mobs all die around the same time, making it so Sole Survivor would just give a large burst of healing when the fight is over already.

To me the awnser to our sustain dilemma is already in the game... just give PVE the PVP Salted Earth, remove the pull effect and the DR since it would be to good with those too... This would also solve a few of the more critical flaws of DRK.

First it would obvioulsy give us some much needed sustain, albeit one with at least some skill ceiling to use since you would need to actually stay on top of it to get the full effect of the heals.

Second it would give some reasons for our most useless skill to exist, making it an integral part of our defensive kit.

Third it would also give us some identity to the job here there is none to be found currently... making us the "immobile" tank, who must first pre-plan his positioning so we don't need to move during Salted Earth, just like BLM don't want to move away from their Ley Lines, since we are after all the "magic tanks".

[ForsakenRoe]

I've gotten as far as the upgraded Carve and Spit proccing something called Bathed in Blood, however I'm not entirely sure what it would do since I haven't got that far.

'Next Bloodspiller (or Quietus) strikes 3 times' or something i guess, a bit boring maybe but i'll take 'boring' over 'haha doubleweave another ogcd with Salt and Darkness'

[ItsUrBoi]

Seeing PLD's rework I have faith DRK can have nice things too, so I will try to express those nice things here as far as my opinion of having played the job goes.

Current bloodgauge is a copy of Warrior's. I'd like to see something like this to make it different:
-> Gaining blood works the same it does now. With 75 you can do a 3 ability combo ( each attack costing 25 blood ) which starts with Bloodspiller. ( similar to RDM ) Bloodspiller would need to be changed to AoE and have a fall off. Quietus can be removed as it doesn't seem to be that flashy, maybe add 2 new abilities which are beautiful and flashy but for DRK, like PLD got its Blade of Faith combo. Or older abilities like Scourge, getting the PLD Goring Blade treatment.
-> Using Delirium grants 3 stacks allowing the execution of Bloodgauge actions without cost. So you can do this combo twice if you wanted during burst. One time from your gained blood, and one time from Delirium.

DRK's healing is lacking both in on demand (ex: Equilibrium) and rotationally (ex: PLD's Confiteur Combo, GNB's Aurora)
-> Remove the MP cost from TBN, add 5 seconds to its CD, but Dark Arts makes the next Edge / Flood heal you for potency equal to damage dealt. You use Edge of Shadow when you are about to maximize on MP normally, so this would help a bit, and you use it in dungeons a lot. This would solve the rotational healing issue. Alternatively, Dark Arts can just grant a flat potency heal when using the next Edge or Flood if specific values are desired for rotational healing.
-> Sole Survivor can come back under a form like this maybe:
"Marks targeted enemy and all nearby enemies with Abyssal Drain status.
Abyssal Drain: Attacks dealt to this target will heal the DRK who applied this mark over time."

Basically, if everyone from the party is attacking the DRK gets healed. Works in dungeons and in raids.

DRK has too many mitigation buttons that try to accomplish the same thing: Dark Mind and Oblation. No other tank has to weave 4 defensives to accomplish what others can with 2. ( 30% + TBN + Oblation + Dark Mind vs 30% + Heart of Corondum )
-> Merge them into the same ability. Oblation could grant 20% magic damage reduction with a further 10% against all damage types. The CD can be kept the same, or lowered to 45 seconds per charge.

Living Shadow is a fire and forget ability which acts similarly to a DoT.
-> Instead it can give you stacks of "Enhanced Darkside", increasing your damage by a further 20% on top of Darkside's passive 10%. These stacks can be displayed next to the Fray red icon instead of the duration, or along with the duration. You can get a cool visual effect like Fray is enveloping your character.

[Derio]

Honestly at this point with the amount of self healing that Warrior and PLD have it makes no sense that DRK shouldnt be way ahead in damage. Gunbreaker heart of corundum is still really good and in many cases better than TBN.

7.0 we can expect some changes to DRK but it needs to be between 1-90. Not just all new skills adding in self healing.

Living shadow should be more involved. Even if its down to where it copies your OGCD's when out instead of being completely random would be better or giving it a salted earth interaction that we can use once its summoned.

Oblation needs to be updated and do more. DRK has so much mitigation and little to no self sustain. You already have the tools in PVP.

Oblation- 10% mitigation and 10% of health restored once the effect ends.
Salted Earth- heals the DRK while standing in it.
Enhanced unmend needs to change to enhanced Bloodspiller + to where when you use Bloodspiller it applies sole survivor to the target.
Abyssal Drain- Remove it or separate it from CS and make it deal 0 damage but increase the healing received from the first target and have falloff for the remaining targets and put on a charge system.

[Zairava]

'Next Bloodspiller (or Quietus) strikes 3 times' or something i guess, a bit boring maybe but i'll take 'boring' over 'haha doubleweave another ogcd with Salt and Darkness'

Yeah, the last thing DRK needs is another underwhelming ogcd (especially considering we have so many past animations we would vastly prefer if it would just be another salt and darkness)

Something that comes to mind is that Bathed in Blood would give us access to a free use of either an upgraded version of Bloodspiller (whether it's just buffing its potency and tacking on a 200p heal, or otherwise) and an amplified free use of abyssal drain outside of Delirium (this is going off my earlier concept of upgraded gcds through Delirium or DA on a 60/120s cooldown), using one or the other of course.

If using just C&S would be awkward because single target in aoe, Blood Weapon could also give a new, upgraded version of salted earth. Upon using this, it would still grant Bathed in Blood, which would still grant upgraded and free bloodspiller, and use of abyssal drain outside of Delirium/DA.

This sounds great and all, but I'm gonna take ItsUrBoi's response because something he mentions comes into play here:

Current bloodgauge is a copy of Warrior's. I'd like to see something like this to make it different:
-> Gaining blood works the same it does now. With 75 you can do a 3 ability combo ( each attack costing 25 blood ) which starts with Bloodspiller. ( similar to RDM ) Bloodspiller would need to be changed to AoE and have a fall off. Quietus can be removed as it doesn't seem to be that flashy, maybe add 2 new abilities which are beautiful and flashy but for DRK, like PLD got its Blade of Faith combo. Or older abilities like Scourge, getting the PLD Goring Blade treatment.
-> Using Delirium grants 3 stacks allowing the execution of Bloodgauge actions without cost. So you can do this combo twice if you wanted during burst. One time from your gained blood, and one time from Delirium.

Quietus, with these changes i have listed plus this, would more or less pointless outside of mp generation, which it doesn't even have baseline now. Quietus could be used for the aoe after bloodspiller, or could be used as the first aoe before bloodspiller, and the third aoe up for speculation.

Snip

In general, I don't have the energy to why PLD's rework is a disappointment outside of sheltron and bulwark returning. What they did to it isn't surprising at all.

Anyway. Scourge coming back in any fashion is fine by me, it feels good to use whether or not it turns into yet another 30/60s CD.

I don't have much of an opinion on the mana cost on TBN at this point, I never minded it that much but if it's hindering the design of the job the cost is best removed and placed elsewhere. DA giving us an on demand heal when DA procs would be nice, I don't see this as likely happening, though.

Sole survivor coming back at all would be nice. if it was our form of lifesteal outside of abyssal drain it would be wonderful. I believe it should be based on us hitting the enemy rather than everyone in the party though. Want to keep the Sole survivor shtick, y'know?

I'm for merging oblation and dark mind. It would help the lower-level experience tremendously.

You mean Living Shadow being us embracing our Darkside entirely more or less? I'm for it. A cooler aura than the Darkside we ended up with would be fantastic to have. The skill might need to be renamed, but it would be better.

With what we have said, I believe we are getting further into what could be something that works.

• Delirium/DA grants GCD combos via upgraded 1-2-3 + aoe or we take properties from both IR and req, where it still gives us 3 stacks to use on free gauge actions, but it grants a free combo rather than just using bloodspiller 3 times. Which would be Quietus -> [aoe]Bloodspiller -> [aoe]???, and otherwise costs 75 gauge to complete. Currently we dump 50 gauge on bloodspiller which takes 3 Souleaters (20 gauge each without BW), so the filler [gcd] combo would need to generate at least 25 gauge baseline instead of 20 each use.
• Shadowbringer is lowered to one charge on a mana cost to reduce ogcd bloat during burst
• Bringing Scourge back in some form, seriously. Can't simp for it enough, it was one of the best animations in the game still to this day. Depending on which route is taken of the two listed, it would likely be best as either a 30s cd (or a DoT), or used in the gauge combo as an aoe, or as an upgraded part of the 1-2-3 through delirium.
• Blood Weapon functions the same mostly, except it also grants a new, upgraded version of Carve and Spit and salted earth. (Remember, Bathed in Blood is an idea roughly for 8.0, but it could be squashed into 7.0 if they really wanted to). Gauge generation would likely need to be adjusted with gauge now having its own combo if they went that route.
• Reminder that Carve and Spit would be on a 30s cooldown given earlier ideas, so you would still be using it on cooldown, but now at least it's something more.
• If Delirium went the route of free gauge combo, Bathed in Blood would instead just give you a 30-50 potency boost and [400-500]mp regen per action on your gauge combo for 15 seconds. Or just make it 6 stacks for 30 if the timing would be too strict.
• merging Dark Mind and Oblation
• Sole Survivor returns, acts as a lifesteal when you hit the enemy. 200 or 300 potency when you hit them or something.
• Living Shadow is revamped and is a flat damage buff of 10/20% with, say, 3 or 6 stacks. stays on a 120 second cooldown.

As a side note I'm later realizing, if LS is to remain on the gauge, the gauge combo cost would either need to be reduced, the gauge generation would need to buffed tremendously during BW so you can get 2 gauge combos in your opener, or LS has its gauge cost removed. Not entirely sure what route would be best here.
I shouldn't need to say this, but for those who need it, yes, this is taking into account any and all possible potency adjustments needed for the job to not be completely cracked

[Zairava]

Honestly at this point with the amount of self healing that Warrior and PLD have it makes no sense that DRK shouldnt be way ahead in damage. Gunbreaker heart of corundum is still really good and in many cases better than TBN.

7.0 we can expect some changes to DRK but it needs to be between 1-90. Not just all new skills adding in self healing.

Living shadow should be more involved. Even if its down to where it copies your OGCD's when out instead of being completely random would be better or giving it a salted earth interaction that we can use once its summoned.

Oblation needs to be updated and do more. DRK has so much mitigation and little to no self sustain. You already have the tools in PVP.

Oblation- 10% mitigation and 10% of health restored once the effect ends.
Salted Earth- heals the DRK while standing in it.
Enhanced unmend needs to change to enhanced Bloodspiller + to where when you use Bloodspiller it applies sole survivor to the target.
Abyssal Drain- Remove it or separate it from CS and make it deal 0 damage but increase the healing received from the first target and have falloff for the remaining targets and put on a charge system.

Some added functionality to salted earth would be nice, whether it's the heal or a passive defense boost. My needlessly complicated out in the future concepts aside, this is a simpler solution.

I'd prefer if we kept both dark mind and oblation somehow, but we are starting to teeter on the edge of being button bloated in general, and if we're to make room for future abilities, them being merged is a likely path to take.

I honestly don't see them ever doing that abyssal drain change purely out of the fact it would be doing no damage at all. It would be more likely that they just make it more like a single use equilibrium if they took that route. The only difference being it would require a target.

I would accept plunge's rendition from pvp into pve any day. I wish I could say I could see them doing that with plunge, but they would probably just make unmend apply sole survivor itself instead

Living Shadow itself does need more, while I don't think what I just listed above entirely solves that issue, something with salted earth like you said might work. Like giving an action that replaces LS when used to use inside of salted earth. the cooldown for salted would need to be adjusted if they keep the 2-minute burst though, as LS is currently on a 2m cd.

[Oizen]

The devs bringing back Bulwark for PLD makes me hope we see Sole Survivor or something come back some day.

[Guts-BSM]

gain sheild as hp when TBN pops additonal to dark arts gain