What we could build from 5/6.0 Dark Knight

[Kalaam]

Hi, yes yet another dark knight thread.
Now, I know we are all very nostalgic for Heavensward dark knight, I am too. This was the most fun I ever had as a tank.
But we know we can't get back to those days, some parts may, but a lot cannot (parry, dodge etc).
So, I'd like to share my 2 cents on what we could build from DRK's new identity as "the shield tank"


Right now DRK issues are, to me:
-Lack of sustain
-Useless ressources (darkside and living shadow have their own gauges, which serve no purpose)
-Cluttered opener
-Boring rotation

Now, how can we fix that ?

The lack of sustain
there is a lot of options, blood weapon, delirium, etc.. I'd be fore bringing back Sole Survivor personnaly, as it felt very thematic and different from other tank's form of healing.
Then, have Living Shadow give you the ressources you'd get for using those skills. It uses abyssal drain ? Get a heal and MP, quietus, bloodspiller, get some MP back. Carve and spit, some more MP back. Shadowbringer ? Get your darkside gauge maxed out.
Eck, make Abyssal Drain cost MP without CD again, 3k aoe drain that doesn't increase darkside, that becomes free with dark arts.

Cluttered opener ?
Remove Shadowbringer. Make it so when you have Dark Arts, Flood of Shadow turns into Shadowbringer. At level 84, get a trait to hold 2 charges of DA.
Upgrade TBN to be a multi-layer shield like Haima or Macrocosmos. 25/20/15/10/5% shield that reapplies a weaker version upon being broken, that grants a stack of Dark Art each time it break. Maybe have it refund 600Mp per remaining stack at the end of the duration. That way it's never a waste, but an investement that rewards you more when used well.

Useless ressources:
That would require more, but having some ability cost darkside instead of MP or blood. And have those skills generate one or the other, and vice versa. Communicating vessels between your 3 ressources (blood, mp and darkside)
But at least doing something with darkside now could maybe be possible ?

Boring rotation:
Having the dark arts procs be more numerous and depending on the current fight should shakes things up a bit, but Dark Knight does need some more weaponskills as normal gcds. maybe another combo that has higher damage and less sustain (pure damage but doesn't give MP and health) or something. One you could use when you're saving on MP or when living shadow is out, or during blood weapon.

Of course, all numbers are just placeholder, TBN+ could be 3 layers decreasing by 7.8643% each time for balance sake if need be.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd agree with most of these issues, except perhaps the Cluttered Opener (but, ofc, I live near the server, so take that with a grain of salt).

The biggest offender to me right now is Darkside. I haven't had that gauge visible basically since it came out, as the highlight on Edge/Flood has been all I need for Dark Arts, and it's made... zero difference. That should not be the case for a "core mechanic".

That said, I don't want to just find 'something' to use Darkside on or to swap anything from MP or Blood costs to Darkside. If it doesn't do something unique and interesting, the mechanic will have just gone from the likes of a shared resource skill so undertuned as to never be worth casting that can safely be kept off one's hotbars to an obligatory but terrible-feeling one.

There's a tremendous amount of interesting stuff one can do with a time-based bar, though. Just look at HW DRG and Geirskogul's complexity (while still far from fleshed out or well situated, it had a bit more going on just between itself and the BotD CD than everything related to Life of the Dragon does now) before that was gutted.

Imagine then, Darkside (a time-drained resource) sourcing a toggle-based Blood Weapon that could build up mostly predictable but somewhat gamble-y burn phases? Let's say Darkside no longer increases damage in and of itself. Instead, you activate Blood Weapon, increasing Attack Speed and Damage by 5% at cost to further Darkside over time and thereafter both time and your potency dealt increases both the benefits and drain rate, maxing out at +20% Damage and Attack Speed. (For now, let's say the benefits increase linearly and the increased costs, quadratically.) You'd want to start ramping it up slightly before raid buffs, but not so early as to consume all your Darkside before getting out your fully buffed Shadowbringer (which, let's say, burns Darkside for double the normal benefit, such that you want to enter its GCD with minimal Darkside remaining). Voila, you've got a much more interesting burn loop than just "use Fell Cleave Bloodspiller a bunch under Inner Release Delirium."

If that added Attack Speed would make it too compressed, then move Shadowbringers to the GCD and increase its potency by a little under average ppgcd. If still not enough, make Salt and Darkness simulcastable or have Blood Weapon not only increase drain rate but also (linearly) increase MP costs (by up to 20%), reducing the number of Edges to be woven over its phase.

Of course, that still leaves the time between burn phases. Personally, I'd love to have a mini-burst phase or to intentionally desync DRK from the per-minutes, with some degree of flexibility, such as by having slower-building gauge components play a part. What would have been most interesting to me back in the day, when Souleater's heal (HW) and Syphon Strike's bonus MP (StB) were limited to Grit, if Grit just wasn't so wasteful to ever recast, would have been to make sure to keep up Scourge outside of Grit and time departure from Grit to damage spikes (Blood spenders, DA-AD, etc.) while maxing out Syphons and Souleaters under Grit between them. That particular concept obviously can't play out now that tank stances have been removed, but a similar interplay between "I want these actions under this state and to align this other state to these CDs (be they hard or soft [gauges, DoTs])" could still apply in some way... Hmm.

Other random fun stuff:

• Dark Passenger (a dynamic oGCD, the effect of which varies based on the prior GCD). Not sure yet what to tie it to, but who doesn't like having access to effectively 7+ more skills via a single, highly fluid button?
• The aforementioned Blood Weapon design instead fits Delirium and Blood Weapon instead alters our GCDs, turning Hard->Syphon->Eater into, say, Scourge->Coil (old Delirium animation)->Power Slash?
• Living Shadow now duplicates your attacks (say, at 25% effect).
• Give us plenty of access to self-sustain, but don't make its loops too easy. Think StB BW-Quietus->DA-AD, rather than just buffing the current AD and reducing it and C&S's recast time (and likely giving them another charge). The latter works, and would be a decent interim change, but something a bit more playful would be more ideal.

[Jakulo]

The idea of activating darkside is very interesting. It can be a gauge that you build up by using edge/flood and you can activate delirium(replace it with the old darkside animation or just rename it to darkside) once you reach a certain amount. It begins the countdown on darkside for a maximum of 30s and you get a buff to everything from changing certain gcds or added effects on abilities. Edge/flood can extend the duration of darkside up to the maximum if it wasn't when activated and you start building it up again for the next 30s. Living shadow can only be used when darkside is active and it's duration would be dependent on the duration of darkside and maybe having it mirror just our ogcds for a flat potency.

This would require adjustments to our mp as we won't be generating any darkside during our burst phase and spending too much mp during it would mean delaying the next. We would need to be able to generate enough mp in 30s to fill darkside and say it takes 2-3 edge/flood to do so. We can reduce the mp cost to 2000 and drastically reducing the potency so we can realistically generate enough and be less punishing if we save some mp during buff windows. Now spending too much mp would actually be something we keep in mind besides not having tbn. Maybe bloodspiller/quietus can help build up darkside or mp.

[Shurrikhan]

Small note:

While I like the quick resolution times of Edge and Flood, I've increasingly come to hate their shleep and shlurp sounds, respectively. Why were the simultaneously ghostly and industrial sounds of Dark Passenger or the like replaced with SFX so... diarrhetic?

And that funky purple color. Just, why? I get that we had some really cool 'Voidsent Red' and some equally cool 'Shadow-mana Blue' and they're both worth capitalizing upon but combining their hues together into fuchsia does not combine what worked in their aesthetics.

[Kalaam]

Honestly I dunno about the purple either. It only really became a thing in Shadowbringer, before we had black/blue and black/red depending on the skills. With some hues of purple mixed it.

[Kalaam]

Since they like builder/spender so much, yeah. Having to build darkside but not overcap it would be thematic too.

[Jakulo]

The sfx for edge of darkness works far better than the upgrade. It actually sounds like swinging a heavy blade and a more red color scheme in its effect then purple.

[Atamis]

I think DRK should become THEE sustain tank as they have historically used life as a resource.
Blood weapon should restore HP while active

I understand SE doesn't want to have a tank (or a dps probably) using health as a resource like previous versions (insert derogatory comments here), so in the spirit of the class restoring health should be the reward with blood for the bloodlil... guage being second.

[Kalaam]

The sfx for edge of darkness works far better than the upgrade. It actually sounds like swinging a heavy blade and a more red color scheme in its effect then purple.

Tbh I also feel like the VFX and SFX of dark knight really feel..weird. VFX either too slim (base combo) or too big (edge of shadow imo) and you feel more like a dark mage and a dark knight.
Sound effects really have no weight to it, especially compared to older ones. Feels like attacking with wind.

[battleshadow66]

Could give Souleater a buff that lets up get 200-250 pot heal off weaponskills/spells. Or something like that. Not as strong but for more uptime kind of thing.