Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Could just make 10% magic DR a role skill and delete ShakeItOff/DivineVeil/HeartOfLight/DMissionary

Please not even more reduction in job flavor.

We can call them all tank "raidDR"s if it gets too complicated to remember their names, but let's not strip ourselves of even more job-specific animations.

Like SCH, SE just can't buy into resource driven Jobs without gating them behind additional recasts timers. Those timers make the resource faux and redundant, just adds 'feel busy work' to the kit.

Fully agreed. Though where possible I'd rather make them real resources rather than solely crush the illusion.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

So much goes back to the blood gauge for me. Hope they rethink that gauge into something other than a glorified 2stack SwordOath.

I can agree with that... the BlackBlood gauge is boring and dull. my own idea for it was to increase the pool from 100 to 200, and make it a dual-gauge of two-100s, so that it at least looks more of interest and is some thing like the "two (blade)edges of the GreatSword", while also make the rate at which BlackBlood points are gained faster, and make more actions cost BlackBlood points, so that the Dark Knight interacts with the BlackBlood gauge more than as just a boring and dull two 50s gauge that takes either five 1-2-3 GCD combos, 5 Stalwart Souls, or a miraculously did not miss the fifth hit Blood Weapon to fill up, just for a mere two "big" attacks.

[Xenosan]

Hope you recognize i said that tongue in cheek. Heart of Light and Missionary are identical. There's only 4 tanks. So they're already halfway there. I don't see how it is hard for SE to come up with alternative raidDRs. Look at any AOE ogcd on healers for inspiration or bring back that deleted PVP skill Thrill of War

[Shurrikhan]

Hope you recognize i said that tongue in cheek.

I did not, if only because there were people who were absurdly hyped for Role Actions when they were first coming out and remain convinced that saving on a dozen spell IDs will somehow open up new avenues of content for them through development time "saved" (by going out of our way to delete prior creations).

And fair enough.

[Lyth]

Issues:
1. Pacing feels off. In Heavensward/Stormblood, tanking in Grit locked you out of Blood Weapon. It felt wrong. DRK feels permanently slow.

2. Living Dead is badly designed from the outset. Its weaknesses are even more glaring following the Holmgang rework this expansion.

3. The job just generally seems to have a weaker moveset compared to other tanks. This might be a function of it being the lowest dps output tank for the past two expansions running. But if you match up similar actions (i.e. IR vs. Delirium) they consistently seem weaker and less versatile.

The one exception is TBN, but the short recast defensives are all completely overshadowed by how easy it is to invuln swap out of any significant tank damage.

4. We use both weaponskills and spells, but skill speed only benefits weaponskills. These two stats should have been merged into a common haste stat a long time ago.

5. We previously had a lot of unique animations, many of which were removed or turned into generic actions as part of the role action system. It would be nice to have some of them back.

Solutions:
1. Darkside: While active, reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by 15%.

2.
i) Shadowform: For the next 10 seconds, any incoming damage and healing is negated. Damage and healing prevented this way is converted into a temporary shield of up to X% of max HP.
Replaces Living Dead.
or
ii) Remove heal or die penalty from Living Dead (shouldn't this should be on a tank that actually can put out massive amounts of self-healing?)
or
iii) Remove invulnerabilities altogether.

3. Offensive cooldown rework. I've made some suggestions on this elsewhere. I'd like to see DRK move back towards being a sustain focused tank.

4. Either merge skill speed/spell speed into a single haste stat, or reclassify DRK spells as weaponskills.

5. Consider implementing a glamour system for actions. Warcraft has a really good one with their glyph system. It would be great to be able to do a job specific reskin of Rampart with Shadowskin.

Thoughts on previous iterations:
Heavensward: Between Blood Weapon's speed buff and the variety of offensive oGCDs (some of which had proc-based resets), it felt very active. Animations were great (Delirium added a bit of variety, and Reprisal felt very visceral). You could do some respectable damage.
Stormblood: Dark Arts ping test.

Why play this job: I really love the aesthetic and weapon choice. The new voidsent Avatar looks really great, and DPS have far outstripped tanks and healers in terms of pure raid value and carry potential. I'm really excited to... oh wait, were we not talking about Reaper?

See you on the other side.

[Kniteroad]

Some ideas i think would be cool to see:

1. i want a combo outside of just soulstealer. Maybe bring back power slash which combos now off of siphon strike except soulstealer adds to the blood guage and power slash recharges MP in addition to the MP generated from siphon strike. I particularly like the idea of an additional combo'd MP generator as it will allow the DRK to use TBN more often, maybe even on party members. maybe even have a small blood cost for the power clash in exchange for increased potency over soulstealer to create a game where the DRK more carefully manage the blood guage and mp

2. give us scourge back.

3. modify blood weapon and delirium. put blood weapon on a 30s cooldown which gives us a haste buff + additional blood generated and delirium on a 60s cooldown which gives a dps buff and removes blood cost of bloodspiller. I like the idea of the haste buff on a short timer so we aren't waiting 60s for more interesting gameplay (less down time).

4. remove flood of shadow and change abyssal drain to cost the MP flood of shadow did. Then allow the DRK to consume the darkside buff from TBN breaks on the abyssal drain to increase the damage it does and the healing we receive. i want that DA abyssal drain feeling back without dark arts spam. We can then bring back dark passenger in some capacity as another oGCD on a timer.

5. stalwart soul needs to be available at a much earlier level.

[AC9Breaker]

Dark Knight is fine.

[Xiaoki]

Some current changes I want for DRK:
1.) Lower the level which TBN is obtained.
2.) Dark Mind: Add an additional effect of Reduces damage taken by 10%. So we can have something akin to Shelton for lower levels.
3.) Delirium: Lower the cooldown to 60s so it can be ready when blood weapon is.

Future identity changes:
1.) I want them to get more drain type abilities, like perhaps a shield that drains HP when the Enemy hits. And the iconic drain spell as their clemency (High MP cost/DPS loss).

The Blackest Night at a lower is something I've been saying for a while.

They need to use the Trait system a lot more for this, on all Jobs.

The Blackest Night at level 35 but at only 10% of your health, then use a Trait at level 70 (or earlier, like level 60) to make it 20% of your health and Dark Arts.

Stalwart Soul at level 40, Trait at level 72 to add potency, MP gain and Blood gauge.

With every expansion they have gotten rid of abilities to make room for 4 new ones, so what needs to go?

Carve and Spit is kind of useless as is. It's just a slightly better Syphon Strike that's off the GCD on a 1 minute cool down.

Do something with Salted Earth and Abyssal Drain. Get rid of one and make the other better.

[Jandor]

I like the idea of Dark Arts coming back and being used to add significant effects to abilities.

Dark Arts + Stalwart Soul leaving a field of Salted Earth for example.

[Colt47]

When I play dark knight right now the main issue is that they got an MP powered OGCD that requires resources to manage it and usually being used 4 times per minute, while also juggling all these other OGCDs, blood weapon, and delirium. It also feels rather squishy compared to other tanks and spamming Blackest Night doesn't seem to help much. It feels like it needs one less OGCD attack and one more defense skill, like a second bubble shield, to really make it function.