Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Because I'm running out of posts for the day and I still have multiple other topics I want to post in tonight is why, so I thought I'd save some with a simple edit.

But just to humor you, let me say this: Trying to make things unique is how the devs ended up giving DRK Living Dead. Not everything has to be unique for the sake of it. Dark Missionary is so far away from needing any sort of uniqueness over function when three quarters of the DRK kit needs that attention far more. Besides, my initial post was about the function of the skill and correcting someone, not its flair which is irrelevant.

No. Utter neglect is how you get Living Dead. There are nigh infinite other ways to go about making a unique invulnerability skill none of which necessitate that it be clunkier, more party-taxing, and weaker.

Consider a design as simple as: "Living Dead - Trait: If struck by an attack that would normally kill you, would-be fatal damage is instead delayed by 8 seconds. Damage delayed cannot exceed 1 less than your maximum health points. This effect cannot occur more often than every 5 minutes." Add a persistent visible aura over the Living Dead duration. Simpler, and more functional, but also more unique.

[Ryaduera]

No. Utter neglect is how you get Living Dead. There are nigh infinite other ways to go about making a unique invulnerability skill none of which necessitate that it be clunkier, more party-taxing, and weaker.

Consider a design as simple as: "Living Dead - Trait: If struck by an attack that would normally kill you, would-be fatal damage is instead delayed by 8 seconds. Damage delayed cannot exceed 1 less than your maximum health points. This effect cannot occur more often than every 5 minutes." Add a persistent visible aura over the Living Dead duration. Simpler, and more functional, but also more unique.

I like this, but it should still be an actively used skill to facilitate intent and proper communication with the party. I'd be pretty upset if this happened when I didn't want it to.

Square: "We can't change Living Dead because of lore to the job"

Also Square: "Astrologian will no longer have Nocturnal Sect and we re-wrote Summoner quests to better fit the Endwalker skill changes."

Yeah... Neglect is definitely a larger playing factor here.

[Shurrikhan]

I like this, but it should still be an actively used skill to facilitate intent and proper communication with the party. I'd be pretty upset if this happened when I didn't want it to.

Fair enough. My only point was that it can easily check off plenty of "uniqueness" boxes--

• trait,
• safest invuln (unless you somehow need to sacrifice yourself now to save for less than 5 min later),
• relatively low CD despite having at most the HP cost of Hyperbolide (though no immunity from debuffs for the few fights that still allow such),
• further synergy with TBN against the delayed damage
• etc.

--without needing to be any weaker or clunkier than its counterparts.

Or, to put it even more simply, that unique concepts themselves don't screw over design; only uniquely little sense or polish does.

[Ryaduera]

Fair enough. My only point was that it can easily check off plenty of "uniqueness" boxes--

• trait,
• safest invuln (unless you somehow need to sacrifice yourself now to save for less than 5 min later),
• relatively low CD despite having at most the HP cost of Hyperbolide (though no immunity from debuffs for the few fights that still allow such),
• further synergy with TBN against the delayed damage
• etc.

--without needing to be any weaker or clunkier than its counterparts.

Or, to put it even more simply, that unique concepts themselves don't screw over design; only uniquely little sense or polish does.

Ok I actually really like the concept too because it's semi-self sufficient because of the synergy with TBN. Shield based healers can also still handle the incoming damage without panicking to top the DRK off. I have no criticisms and now I want this.

[Tranquilmelody7]

I cannot be more clear here. I will say it again but use more emphasis. The problem is not Dark Missionary. The problem is the way the class uses it.

"Well the unique idea of Living Dead was a failure so everything unique square comes up with will also be a failure" is basically what you said. I guess they better stop coming out with new classes then. The Sage is a unique idea so I bet it will be bad because it's something original.

So how does Dark Missionary lose effectiveness on DRK? Easy. Anything that reduces damage taken devalues TBN because DRK wants TBN to break to get Darkside. If the shield does not break that is a DPS loss. So here's an idea. The DRK gets instead a party-wide mitigation tool that redirects 30% of the DRK's HP from the party, distributed equally among all affected party members, to the DRK. An AoE cover, but less effective. This is roughly 3.75% (30 divided by 7) of the DRK's max HP as a "shield" to the party. You're still reducing raid damage and if you put TBN on yourself for this, it synergizes well as it will probably break the shield. Adjust the cooldown accordingly. (Numbers also adjustable, I am not a balance expert)

Do you see what I mean now? Dark Missionary is less useful on DRK than it is on GNB. The likely reason the party mitigation skill doesn't reduce damage by more like the other tanks is because you still want to break TBN and anything that reduces damage taken takes away from that. Instead, it would be better if the abilities were coherent. Not even unique, but were valued to the same degree as the other tanks synergizing abilities. My very own idea isn't unique, it's just a worse AoE cover, but even though it's worse, it's better for the DRK because of how it would function with their other abilities. And you can run GNB + DRK and stack them and it's better than double stacking the same mitigation tool. Yeah, 1% fall off isn't much and 9% is still a lot, but now you've reduced raid damage and made the hp value of TBN increase as well. Stacking the same effect isn't bad, yes, but it doesn't work with the DRK kit as well as it works with the GNB kit. The problem is not the usefulness of the skill, the problem is the cohesion of the kit. One class uses it better than the other.

NOTE: This is not a good fix, but this would be better than what we have for DM... It would be better to make TBN not be a dps loss for not breaking it, but as the job stands right now, this would be better.

Heart of Light is also superior to Dark Missionary because it is learned 12 levels earlier.
DRK isn't even allowed it's AOE combo finisher until 72.

Thank goodness for Enhanced Unmend at least

[Kaixern]

Consider a design as simple as: "Living Dead - Trait: If struck by an attack that would normally kill you, would-be fatal damage is instead delayed by 8 seconds. Damage delayed cannot exceed 1 less than your maximum health points. This effect cannot occur more often than every 5 minutes." Add a persistent visible aura over the Living Dead duration. Simpler, and more functional, but also more unique.

If i remember correctly, the blood death knight in World of Warcraft possess a talent called purgatory that does exactly this (been a long time since i played the game, might be wrong)
(But the more ironic and tragic situation that i realise when i watch those two is that this optional talent synergise more with the death knight because compared to the dark knight, this one is one of the tanks with the biggest self heal capability)
And just in case, because i know it's something often said when those kind of example are shown, no i don't want this game to just copy WoW and no i won't "go back there".
It's just in order to show that even tough this game (WoW) is going downhill at the speed of light (for a good reason), even them have been able to construct a better synergy with their own "living dead", so it shouldn't be impossible to the devs we have (of course, the main reason no behing their capability but their motivation to change it)

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I cannot be more clear here. I will say it again but use more emphasis. The problem is not Dark Missionary. The problem is the way the class uses it.

[...]

So how does Dark Missionary lose effectiveness on DRK? Easy. Anything that reduces damage taken devalues TBN because DRK wants TBN to break to get Darkside. If the shield does not break that is a DPS loss. So here's an idea. The DRK gets instead a party-wide mitigation tool that redirects 30% of the DRK's HP from the party, distributed equally among all affected party members, to the DRK. An AoE cover, but less effective. This is roughly 3.75% (30 divided by 7) of the DRK's max HP as a "shield" to the party. You're still reducing raid damage and if you put TBN on yourself for this, it synergizes well as it will probably break the shield. Adjust the cooldown accordingly. (Numbers also adjustable, I am not a balance expert)

I'm sorry, but in what <kupo> world does Dark Missionary devalue TBN when it invreases the effective HP it provides? If you use TBN and it didn't break, that is you overmitigating damage that didn't need mitigation, leave alone the fact that there is like a handful of situations where using DMiss and TBN on self make sense to use in the first place.

If TBN didn't break, 95% chance it was overkill to begin with and Souleater heals along with passive HP regen would likely keep you alive.

I get if you say DMiss isnt unique, but to say it devalues TBN is just not right man. Additional mitigation doesn't devalue TBN, but poor usage of TBN does.

[Ryaduera]

I'm sorry, but in what <kupo> world does Dark Missionary devalue TBN when it invreases the effective HP it provides? If you use TBN and it didn't break, that is you overmitigating damage that didn't need mitigation, leave alone the fact that there is like a handful of situations where using DMiss and TBN on self make sense to use in the first place.

If TBN didn't break, 95% chance it was overkill to begin with and Souleater heals along with passive HP regen would likely keep you alive.

I get if you say DMiss isnt unique, but to say it devalues TBN is just not right man. Additional mitigation doesn't devalue TBN, but poor usage of TBN does.

The point is not how you're using TBN, the point is the lack in synergy and the redundancy of giving a class (not just tanks) a skill that already exists in the game. It does increase the effectiveness of the hp provided yes but it very specifically does not synergize with the rest of the kit. Your skills and features should feed into eachother in ways that feel intuitive and rewarding. The kit is disjointed. DM is an example of this messy leftovers-bin that is Dark Knight. An equally as good skill could take its place that feeds into the skills and abilities the DRK already has as opposed to having things just because they need to learn some kind of party wide mitigation, so just give them that so they have something without thinking about how it works as a kit.

Nobody is saying these skills are bad together, we are saying they are not cohesive and feel disjointed. There is a clear difference. The information you provided is why DRK as a tank should synergize with a party, but does not make the DRK feel good as a whole. WAR gets self heals and can increase the potency of those heals with Thrill. PLD gets a healing spell and the ability to provide a shield when healed as well as covering damage on an ally. GNB gets the smallest utility for mitigation but the off globals are timed to line up with No Mercy, solidifying it as the damage tank. These kits flow together and feed into themselves. They make sense. DRK is just kind of a mixed bag. If you compare how DRK values DM is not equal to how the other tanks value everything they have in their kits.

DRK is balanced. It can clear all content. Everything it does is technically good, otherwise it wouldn't be played at all. The problem is not the balance of the class but the overall feeling of the job and how it plays in comparison to the other tanks. It just doesn't feel good. If the goal isto accomplish something, the rest of the kit should reflect that goal.

[Axxion]

Have you even bothered to read any of the feedback folks have been giving in this thread? Why come in here saying you *know* why everyone's complaining... only to be pretty far off the mark?
Yes DRK is simple and easy to learn. That is both not a problem, and the problem. In simplifying DRK throughout the expansions, so much of it's kit has been stripped away to the point where it's near indistinguishable from WAR in terms of core gameplay loop.

Sure, some folks wanna bring back HW DRK; and sure, some folks might even want SB DRK back. The problem is that DRK is in this limbo of an identity crisis, and every expansion is more of a letdown than the last. People want to play a job that's identity isn't "WAR but it has TBN." People want to have fun playing a job, and to see in EW that it gets nothing in terms of a skill upgrade is insulting to those that were hoping to see it be given it's own identity. Hell, even WAR gets a finisher to Inner Release in EW. PLD's are getting a whole-ass new combo out of Requiescat. GNB's getting a 3rd cartridge and a 2 cartridge spender. WAR and GNB's invulns are being extended to 10s duration.

DRK is getting Enhanced Unmend and Salt and Peppered Earth.

There's an obvious disparity and lack of work put in to DRK in EW compared to the other tanks, despite the entirety of ShB there being numerous complaints about it in these forums. The EN forum's complaints have gone unheard and unacknowledged as evidenced by YoshiP not even being aware that there've been complaints about Blood Weapon's duration (along with Hyperdrive as far as high-ping issues go).

"Well if you don't like it just play a different job!"
People've done that. People will do that. People have already stated, here and JP, that EW DRK is a letdown and that the devs should look in to ways to improve it. 'Just play something else' is also an incredulously rude tone to take, as you yourself said that there're folks that play it for the cool factor being a DRK provides that, until EW and Reaper's reveal, were unmatched elsewhere.

I care not for your dismissive approach here.

also this is the same person that believed that all healers was going to get the white mage treatment.

[Axxion]

At this point i really need to them to look at drk and figure out what they are going to do with it. It really lost it uniqueness and it not that friendly towards new healers/under geared healers, living dead. I cant tell you how many times that i died when i planed it out and the healer healed me to soon.