DRK suggestions and feedback

[Leuca]

Drk change suggestions
1. Blood Weapon NEEDS to give 5 stacks that we consume with weaponskills. BW's faux-10 second status should not force drk players into playing with faster skill speeds just to make sure they got full and proper use out of it and also it forces us into strange aoe rotations because also for some other reasons the aoes are still spells. Id like the aoes to no longer be spells but it wouldnt matter as much if blood weapon actually functioned properly and better if blood weapon gave consumable stacks to be way friendlier to use.
2. Abyssal drain. Least important thing in this list but it needs some help and purpose if its to stay. Exchange its cooldown for mp cost. No one uses abyssal drain unless its aoe or theyre DESPERATE for heals, so make it cost 3000 mp, with a 5 second cooldown or something. Its simply a trade off. Flood of shadow for damage, Abyssal drain for self healing. This also gives DRKs more to think about with MP than "save 3k for tbn" and helps solve living dead if even just a little. Speaking of..
3. LIVING DEAD. At the very least, let walking dead apply a like 20% buff to healing received, maybe even add a heal effect to certain DRK abilities during walking dead as well. At most completely change it to be just invuln for 10 seconds where you cant drop below 1 hp, maybe also aoply that heal effect to certain abilities here too to maintain that theme.
4. TBN IS NOT AS STRONG AS PEOPLE THINK!! It was strong before but now that the other tanks primary mitigation tools have been buffed, it is PARTICULARLY lacking in comparison for many reasons. Among these is that dark knight is the only tank that has to sacrifice damage to do its job, tanking. In a game where the core logic is damage is everything, this is very bad. My proposed change for tbn is as such:

-up TBN to 8 seconds, remove the mp requirement, make it a 25 second cooldown to match the other tanks equivalent abilities.
-add mitigation to it (maybe like 10-15%) and like bloodwhetting, HoC, and sheltron, have a status that lasts for the first 4 seconds of it that doubles that mitigation. Maybe take 5% off the shield to balance this a little bit
-when the shield breaks, grant dark arts. Dark arts effect: the next flood/edge of shadow heals for roughly double the potency that those attacks hit for, this heal applying for each enemy hit as well a la abyssal drain. If the shield does not break, apply a heal on the drk for those abilities normal potency amount or for however much of the shield is leftover, whichever you want i dont really care since this is a fail state anyway.

There is more things i could add like bring back scourge and sole survivor somehow or make the shadow interact with the DRK a bit better like at least MCH can tell its robot to finish early if a fight calls for it. Maybe even take some inspiration from how RPR uses its avatar for a dark arts-ish effect on some abilities with the shadow, maybe even bring back heavenswards dark arts idk.

If anyone wants to jump on and add suggestions or have discussion go for it. Let the devs know we want change lol

[Colt47]

There's a lot of problems with Dark Knight because doing any kind of dungeon run turns into a hectic nightmare with no clear direction on rotation.

1) Definitely agree on TBN needing to be a free cast with a cooldown. The whole idea of balancing MP usage between shield and damage can work, but not with so many OGCDs to weave. Getting Shadowbringer at 90 just made it even crazier.

2) Living dead is just a bad Tank Invuln. I don't think we need immunity to going below 1 hp on every tank and Dark Knight would probably be better off with a strait 50% damage mitigation cooldown. It's still weaker than the rest, but 60-70% damage reduction would stop just about any kind of buster unless it does infinity damage.

3) If we want to keep the MP balance between shields and Edge of Shadow, the best move might be to get rid of Blood Spiller, Quietus, and delirium as we know them. For one it has too many controls as is and It just doesn't need them. Not when you got Carve and Split, Edge of Shadow, Shadow Bringer, Salted Earth, and Plunge. Even if we didn't want to keep the mp balance gimmick I still think we could do without the weird extras.

Also, this goes without saying that there's going to be blood and gnashing of teeth all around no matter how this job gets reworked. The reason the entire community is so divisive on the job is due to the scattered design direction, so it's going to come down to the designer to make the proper choice. Don't hold onto old ideas if it's going to pigeon hole the design into some weird thing that doesn't work.

One direction would be to get rid of carve and split + Abyssal drain. Change Quietus and Blood spiller so that they steal MP and HP when used, make shadowbringer something that the job gets with a single charge earlier in the progression and probably make it evolve off of a new "carve and Split" that is the base. Remove Delirium as it's just a spam button and make the blood weapon use charges as suggested above.

Salted Earth + Salt and Darkness is a little wonky because you have to worry about positioning, but I think they are alright. I also think the 2 charge obliation can be gained earlier with 1 charge.

If that is all done properly along with changing TBN to a cooldown, the job should be a lot smoother to run.