Dark Knight Megathread

[SeriousPan]

No clue, Reaper got the way better deal here, I kind of wish it was DRK instead that got a "dark transformation" then again looking at scholars new skill its likely for the best...

Nothing would make me more sad than to see DRK's identity get fumbled as badly as SCH's but it's clearly on the way there.

[OdinelStarrei]

One of the biggest complaints I have about Dark Knight is the fact that the Darkside gauge, and by extension, the Living Shadow timer are essentially non-factors. This did not change in DT, which is a shame.

The thing is, I think there was an opportunity that was missed with Disesteem. Yes, I know that "2 min followup" skills in DT are...not the most liked thing. However, the way I've always seen SE promote Living Shadow is synced attacks with Esteem. You see it in the Shadowbringers and Endwalker job action trailers, because it's cool. I agree with this, there are times where if the Blood gauge syncs up just right, I'll do a double Bloodspiller with Esteem and that does proc some kind of positive feeling inside my dead heart.

What I was thinking, why not lean into that with Disesteem? Give us the Scorn buff when summoning, fine fine, but match the buff duration (20 secs) with Living Shadow's timer. Why not have the potency of the skill scale inversely with the amount of time left on the Living Shadow timer? Disesteem is the last skill that it uses, and with the ease of pre-summoning and no blood gauge cost, it can act as an effective "end point" or "cap" to the burst phase by sending off a combined attack. Like, the two of you are doing different things, you'd be doing the Scarlet Delirium combo with EoS weaved in, Esteem would be using an actual useful Abyssal Drain, and no cost gauge spenders, until you sync at the end, together as one, blah blah blah.

I'm not even saying make it a major difference. Either make it a linear scale with the buff itself, kinda like how Eventide's damage scales inversely with HP in PVP, or have Esteem give you stacks of Scorn overtime that cap out at 4 (it's Bloodspiller being the final stack) to prep your Disesteem to do the highest amount of damage. Maybe a small gain in 50 potency per attack that Esteem does before Disesteem. Therefore, it would be optimal to use Disesteem when Living Shadow is at 5 seconds or less of it's timer. With many buffs now being 15-20 seconds anyway, and pots still staying at 30 seconds, it still conforms to the current design while adding a bit of flavor.

Of course, this would be optional. You could use it anytime in Living Shadow as long as there's a target. But I would actually might look at my Living Shadow gauge if something like this was implemented.

[Derio]

My biggest gripe with DRK is the leveling process. They really need to introduce a weaker version of TBN for the early levels and have a trait that upgrades it at lvl 70.
Dark Mind is not a cooldown in most dungeon content and it really sucks to have a mitigation tool that is only used in the very high end content.

Sure there are other issues with DRK but the issues above affects most of the new player experience with DRK which was ok at launch and during SB, but seems to have been forgotten about after the reworks.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

My biggest gripe with DRK is the leveling process. They really need to introduce a weaker version of TBN for the early levels and have a trait that upgrades it at lvl 70.
Dark Mind is not a cooldown in most dungeon content and it really sucks to have a mitigation tool that is only used in the very high end content.

Sure there are other issues with DRK but the issues above affects most of the new player experience with DRK which was ok at launch and during SB, but seems to have been forgotten about after the reworks.

Highlighted the actual issue here.

Take a note from Addle, add an additional reduces physical damage taken by 10% to it. Beyond this, a slight rework to Abyssal Drain making it a 30s CD on two charges and essentially all damage stats halved (healing kept same). That should help to make DRK not too painful early levels but not overbearingly powerful.

The first change will be globally beneficial without having to butcher or rework TBN + Oblation and keeping their flexibility intact, especially in content where significant magical damage does not occur (Endwalker had many situations for this in raids and dungeons in general). The second one is simply to make Abyssal Drain usage more attractive without making the healing power broken (see Bloodwhetting on WAR) as it would still be only 400p heals per target over 1min.

Both of these would make the levelling experience more attractive without dreading dungeons below Lv70.

[Oizen]

Abyssal really should be a 30s oGCD, uncouple it from Carve and Spit, do whatever you want with the damage potency, we could handle it with the loss of plunge.

[Kaixern]

we could handle it with the loss of plunge.

Yeah, i don't think i will ever be able to handle this kind of loss.
starts to weep while thinking about Guts and Artorias

[The_User]

Why not merge dark dance with dark mind and increase parry rate instead of mimic the dps role action?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Why not merge dark dance with dark mind and increase parry rate instead of mimic the dps role action?

Two reasons:

[1] Dark Dance, even with the trait, only provided +30% parry rate, which with current 15% parry power would only net us an average 4.5% of physical mitigation over the course of only 10 seconds rather than the old 20 seconds. Not only that, slapping Dark Dance onto Dark Mind is antithetical to current equivalents like Camouflage from Gunbreaker, where the parry rate is coupled with a base mitigation that it can synergize with, not a magic mitigation that is completely at odds with.

[2] It is not reliable mitigation for physical tankbusters to increase parry rate to anything less than 100% (see Bulwark readdition), making it undesirable for this purpose as well, where a cheap alternative like using Addle's mitigation distribution would actually be reliable to use.

The absolute last suggestion I could give would be reintroducing Dark Dance, which shares a cooldown with Dark Mind and does something like 10-15% physical mitigation and the parry rate increase as well.

[The_User]

Nobody says the Parry Rate couldn't be increased to 100%

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Nobody says the Parry Rate couldn't be increased to 100%

You are right, but at that point you could also just make it 10-15% physical mitigation instead. Making it 100% Parry Rate generally performs exactly as that, but actually can be pierced with critical hits, which matters in Lv70 and below content. Similar to Block, it will also not mitigate damage-over-time effects that are applied with certain busters like Proto-Carbuncle's savage version of Toxic Crunch or Themis' darkness Upheld Overruling.

Last but not least, it would essentially remove passive parry since it is now an active effect, but with all of the downsides of block/parry where the other combination could allow for lucky extra parries on top.