Thread: Improving Existing 6.0 DRK (without scrapping the kit!)

I know, another DRK thread, but these thoughts were too long to post in the Megathread.

As a fan of DRK and indeed a fan of the current iteration of DRK, I wasn't impressed with the additions and lack of changes we got from the previews.

I've proposed a few changes earlier in this forum but I want to take some time to outline some lightweight tweaks to what I'd like to see in a rework.

I don't like reworks that casually toss out existing abilities or demand old abilities to return. Introducing new abilities is a hefty time investment the devs are unlikely to consider. Instead I think DRK is close to feeling really impactful and fun, but it needs to be given some actual decision making and a higher skill ceiling than what we currently have.

Goal of these suggestions: to create more synergy between skills. No reinventing the wheel or introducing new abilities — instead use the current EW abilities as a basis and respect the current direction of the class.

• Reward skilled play with The Blackest Night with gains via Blood gauge, raising the skill ceiling of the class and providing the option to convert MP into Blood
• Make Blood use more synergistic by building up to Shadowbringers as an exciting capstone.
• Grant more small healing tools and utility to oGCDs
• Fix Living Dead!

Changes to Blood gauge

The Blackest Night
Increased to 8s duration (from 7s)
Cooldown increased to 20s duration (from 15s)

Dark Arts lv80 trait
Gain 10 Blood on spending Dark Arts

Logic: Reward skilled use of TBN by providing a Blood gain on DA, therefore making it slightly DPS positive. This is also aided by extending the duration to 8s to match other tank short cooldowns, but also increasing the cooldown by 20s.

The cooldown increase on TBN is important to balance it and free some power up for the rest of the kit, but it is still a short cooldown available 3 times a minute, and still powerful. Through skilled use, the DRK can convert MP into Blood, but missing one or two isn't going to ruin their DPS overall.


Abyssal Drain
2 charges (lv80-90 trait)
Potency reduced to 100 (down from 150).
Additional effect (lv70-80): Breaks your active TBN effect, healing TBN's target for 100 potency (up to 600 potency based on %remaining shield value) and granting you Dark Arts (10 blood per minute, 20 blood over 2 minutes)

Logic: QoL. One of the more serious changes but I feel makes a big difference to address a common complaint about TBN. Allows TBN to be manually broken for a dps gain and a heal (should be inferior to the amount of damage absorbed normally). Granting 2 charges makes using this skill more flexible, allowing the DRK to pick the best time to break their shield during low damage periods and guarantee a gain in Blood.



Blood Weapon
Recast changed to 40s (creates 1.5 windows over 1 minute instead of 1 per minute)
Duration changed to 10.9s
Grants 5% reduction in attack/spell speed
Grants 5 Blood on use, and 5 Blood per weaponskill used.
Reduced Blood gain to 5 per hit (total 30 per use, 90 over 2 minutes)
Reduced Mana regen to 400 per hit (total 2000 per use, 6000 over 2 minutes - same as current and easier to hit with the haste buff)

Logic: Tweaking this skill to be on a 40s cooldown doesn't change its utility, but it grants the DRK some cadence in the flow of battle, changing up the battle slightly as you hit mini burst windows and taking focus away from strict 60s windows.

Blood Gain is slightly lower at 90 every 120 seconds, but this helps balance changes to Blood Gain from Dark Arts.

This COULD be changed to a stack system, but I like having burst windows to work within and keeping it more distinct from Delirium and Shadowbringer (below) is important too. It's personal preference, but we don't want the class to be primarily about managing short term stacks.


Shadowbringer
Weaponskill, 30s cooldown (changed from Ability with 2 charges on a 60s cooldown)
Costs 4 Stacks of 'Blood Price' to execute
Grants Dark Arts on execution (10 blood per minute, 20 blood over 2 minutes)
Can only be executed when under the effect of Blood Price and Darkside

Enhanced Blood trait lv90
Allows the accumulation of Blood Price, gained upon spending 50 Blood Gauge while under the effect of Darkside. Can hold up to 5 stacks. Expires upon loss of Darkside.

Living Shadow
Grants 'Riding Home' (30s), allowing the execution of Shadowbringer without consuming resources.

Logic: Some bigger changes here. I wanted to make these skills more interesting and more of a reward to work up towards, a capstone to celebrate lv90 instead of a lazy ogcd and fancy DoT that we currently have.

Turned Shadowbringer into a Weaponskill to balance out the increase in damage overall the free Dark Arts grants over time. Living Shadow is made more satisfying by immediately letting you activate ShB, acting as a pseudo combo skill while also adding to your stacks of Blood Price.

Blood Price stacks build as you spend Blood - 50 Blood per stack. It's tied to the Darkside to make upkeep of this more crucial. Living Shadow deliberately double-dips, granting 1 stack of Blood Price and the Riding Home effect which grants a free Shadowbringer. 200 Blood will give you one use of Shadowbringer.

Delirium, notably, does not build Blood Price. This is to avoid similarities with Inner Release/Primal Rend, and to ensure Shadowbringer can only be used roughly once per minute through Blood Price stacks. Delirium is purely a burst skill.

Riding Home doesn't actually need to be the name for the effect but it'd be fun, right?


Other ability changes

Salted Earth
Gain a 10% increased healing from healing actions when standing in the Salted Earth effect.
Alternatively: 200 potency heal over time when standing in the Salted Earth effect.

Logic: QoL and flavour. Some additional healing for DRK's kit, and gives Salted Earth some more function beyond a stationary DoT. Healing buff is balanced by the 90s cooldown and the need to remain stationary, limiting mobility.

Salt and Darkness
Additional Effect: Immediately ends Salted Earth, dealing remaining damage to enemies in the area of effect. Automatically triggers when Salted Earth ends.

Logic: Useful when the boss is about to leave or to maximize DPS in a raid window, but also removes the defensive effect of the Salted Earth above.

Oblation
At the end of the duration, the target regains health equal to 15% of the damage they received.

Logic: While it's a useful defensive skill, it's uninspiring compared to the other tanks shiny new skills, so I'm taking inspiration from AST's Macrocosmos here with this change.

Adding a touch more healing to DRK's kit and rewarding skillful use of the 10s duration, much like skillful use of TBN is rewarded with these changes. In most cases, the 15% healing isn't going to have a huge impact, as its own effect of 10% damage reduction lowers the effective healing. The % healed could be as high as 20 to 25% but I wanted to propose something moderate.

The 60s cooldown on Oblation and increase to TBN's cooldown justifies this buff, and now it can be used in combination with TBN to ensure a larger heal in big pulls or tankbusters... or in anticipation of Living Dead to immediately regain a significant chunk of your health.


Unleash
Restores 200 MP
Stalwart Soul
Restores 400 MP, (down from 600 MP)
Optional: Learned earlier between lv60-70, Blood Gain as a trait at lv72.

Logic: Quality of life changes. Early DRK aoe is boring, let them use Flood more often by spreading the MP gain across the combo. 3x Unleash = 1 Syphon Strike combo.


Living Dead
Duration: 10s When taking fatal damage under Living Dead, your status changes to Walking Dead and you gain 4 stacks of Beyond Death

Walking Dead effect: (Duration 10s) While under Walking Dead, you cannot be brought below 1 HP by most attacks and gain 10% increased healing from healing actions.

When you are healed for 25% of your HP, you lose 1 stack of Beyond Death. When Walking Dead's effect ends, you take damage equal to 25% of your HP for every remaining stack of Beyond Death.

Logic: This skill sorely needs changes, and this change grants a number of benefits both functional and thematic, maintaining the class identity.

• We retain the thematic effect of a self destructive last stand ability
• Shields are as valuable as healing because they can absorb the damage at the end
• The DRK can use TBN to absorb one stack, ensuring they can survive if they are at least healed to 50% of their HP
• The DRK and Healers can gauge how close they are to preventing damage, as the stacks in the DRK's status will begin to drop off.

The invun style here is not a full invulnerability for the duration (ie, it's like Holmgang, not Hallowed Ground) to balance out the shorter cooldown on this skill.


Blood Generation - Rough Math
Current:
Blood generation on Blood Weapon - 60s is 50, 2 minutes is 100
160 per minute from Souleater combo; 320 every 2 minutes

420 total every 2 minutes

Proposed changes to Blood generation with Dark Arts trait:

Blood Weapon: 30 per use, 90 over 2 minutes
Dark Arts free procs (AD): 10 per minute, 20 over 2 minutes
The Blackest Night: Up to 20 per minute (fight dependent, relies on TBN shield breaking, excludes guaranteed procs from Abyssal Drain use). Up to 40 over 2 minutes.
Shadowbringers: Up to 30 over 2 minutes
160 per minute from Souleater combo; 320 every 2 minutes

Total Blood generation - 140 to 180 per 2 minutes through abilities - essentially 1 extra Bloodspiller cast with optimal TBN use

460 to 500 total every 2 minutes. Even if you never use TBN, you'll still get 1 Shadowbringer (via Blood Price) per minute.


I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this, particularily on the Dark Arts changes. Ultimately, I wanted to intoduce more opportunities for skilled play and decisionmaking. With this change, TBN is DPS positive, but it amounts to just 1 to 2 additional Bloodspillers every 2 minutes which I'd argue is fairly moderate.

The invun style here is not a full invulnerability for the duration (ie, it's like Holmgang, not Hallowed Ground) to balance out the shorter cooldown on this skill.

Holmgang is a shorter cooldown and better in every way.

I don't see why everyone is overthinking Dark Knight Fixes its very simple.

1.) Remove the Mana Cost from TBN and make it take 20 seconds off Dark Side for each use. This would make Dark Side actually a resource that you have to monitor/be aware of or you lose DPS/Shields and it doesnt directly interfere with your Offensive Resource

2.) Make Unleash Combo abilities actual Weapon Skills and not spells so they are affected by Skill Speed, as they are currently hard locked at 2.5 speed

3.)Make Blood Gauge Abilities Heal you on use via leech in similar fashion to Paladin Magic Combo.

4.) Make Blood Gauge Abilities reduce the cooldown of Shadowbringer so you can actually use 2 in the same burst window outside your initial opener.

5.) Make Oblation provide a lifesteal effect similar to bloodbath for the duration.

And just like that. Dark Knight is completely fixed

It wouldn't be a complete fix, the core gameplay would still feel similar to warrior.

Originally Posted by Zordrage

As a DRK all i want is more Self sustain... i feel like paper this expansion compared to all the other tanks that are borderline almost soloing Trash and Bosses while healers go to sleep lol

If DRK had a way to contribute to healing up Walking Dead in a meaningful way I'm sure frustration with the job would be significantly less than it is now.



This video from Xenosys Vex sums up how DRK's feel when we have to press Living Dead - https://youtu.be/wyIIqCn3CUg?t=531


First thing I said to my healer friend when i rerolled Gunbreaker was - "Man it feels good to have a REAL invuln"

I wouldn't be against DRK having very high sustain like the other tanks only when under the effect of living/walking dead. It's flavorfull, it's powerful enough that's fine.
Other tanks shouldn't have that much sustain all the time though, this is absurd.