Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[Bsrking5]

No
/10char

[RyuDragnier]

Yes, ever since they butchered it going into Stormblood, it has been needing a full rework to bring it back to its former glory. No, I don't care that they said they would be looking away from HW setups for jobs, you just need to give DRK an actual resource to manage and a few small fixes for their defensive and dungeon sustain. MP is spend and forget unless you're main tanking, Blood Gauge is pretty WAR levels of dumb.

Bring back the actual resource management, like Bloodspiller and Quietus having Darkside duration costs in addition to the gauge, make TBN cost Darkside duration instead of MP (with a proper TBN breaking giving you back the amount you spent on it), make Darkside THE resource you're managing. Hell, make Shadowbringer cost a huge chunk of Darkside duration so it's not so damned braindead and forgettable, it doesn't interact with anything in the kit atm.

Replace Flood with Abyssal Drain on the MP cost, buff the cure potency to 400, make it do as much damage as Edge with an AoE falloff while giving no Darkside.

Give Dark Mind the Addle treatment and have it reduce physical damage taken by 10% in addition to its 20% magic damage reduction.

Adjust Oblation to being learned in ARR (like level 48) so DRKs have some more defensives to make up for their lackluster defensive capabilities until level 70. The trait upgrade would give it the 2nd charge and an extra effect of a Bloodbath style buff that heals the player for the next 3-5 attacks they do.

All of those are ways they can just make DRK feel so much better.

[MsMisato]

Yes, ever since they butchered it going into Stormblood, it has been needing a full rework to bring it back to its former glory. No, I don't care that they said they would be looking away from HW setups for jobs, you just need to give DRK an actual resource to manage and a few small fixes for their defensive and dungeon sustain. MP is spend and forget unless you're main tanking, Blood Gauge is pretty WAR levels of dumb.

Bring back the actual resource management, like Bloodspiller and Quietus having Darkside duration costs in addition to the gauge, make TBN cost Darkside duration instead of MP (with a proper TBN breaking giving you back the amount you spent on it), make Darkside THE resource you're managing. Hell, make Shadowbringer cost a huge chunk of Darkside duration so it's not so damned braindead and forgettable, it doesn't interact with anything in the kit atm.

Replace Flood with Abyssal Drain on the MP cost, buff the cure potency to 400, make it do as much damage as Edge with an AoE falloff while giving no Darkside.

Give Dark Mind the Addle treatment and have it reduce physical damage taken by 10% in addition to its 20% magic damage reduction.

Adjust Oblation to being learned in ARR (like level 48) so DRKs have some more defensives to make up for their lackluster defensive capabilities until level 70. The trait upgrade would give it the 2nd charge and an extra effect of a Bloodbath style buff that heals the player for the next 3-5 attacks they do.

All of those are ways they can just make DRK feel so much better.

I didn't feel they really butchered to horrible, but going into shadowbringer warrior and drk got gutted.

[RyuDragnier]

I didn't feel they really butchered to horrible, but going into shadowbringer warrior and drk got gutted.

DRK lost a LOT between HW and SB. 2nd DPS combo, Scourge, Low Blow (which PLD and WAR didn't need), Dark Dance (got turned into Anticipation, which PLD and WAR didn't need), Reprisal (this one I'm okay with to an extent), Dark Passenger got pretty badly nerfed, and Dark Arts went from a mostly defensive type cooldown modifier to a completely offensive one that you spammed like it was going out of style.

ShB was pretty much them deciding to simplify it further by removing DA, Dark Passenger, Blood Price...and now in EW they refuse to actually do anything with it.

[Beddict]

ShB was pretty much them deciding to simplify it further by removing DA, Dark Passenger, Blood Price...and now in EW they refuse to actually do anything with it.

The devs just needs a simple base to work on for future expacs. It's a great idea and has obviously worked wonders for Healers and MCH, and SMN will totally benefit next expac.

Joking aside, the devs are going to continue to refuse doing anything with DRK, as well as the other aforementioned Jobs. Simplification is the name of the game, and Yoshi-P even said in the Endwalker Media Tour that they're not going to make Jobs have complex playstyles. To quote from Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXVI Digest (9/30/2021):

We understand that some of you would prefer jobs to be designed around more complex playstyles, similar to how they were in Heavensward, but that’s not what we’re going for. When both the jobs and content are challenging, it can become harder to play. We’ll maintain the current direction we’ve taken since 5.x, which seems to be the most accessible for the majority of players in the long run.

Complexity is dead, long live simplification until the servers go down for good. DRK needs and deserves a rework after SE butchered it, but I wouldn't trust the devs because they'll find some way to make it even worse.

[Shurrikhan]

I think if I were to retool DRK any around the existing model, I'd want to focus on five points:

1. More palpable, frequent, and varied mini-burst phases. Ideally with granular timing available, some elements of gamble, and/or polyrhythm.
   
   
2. Higher APM floor over lulls. (This would likely involve increasing MP generation somewhat, forcing more out-of-burst MP spenders... which could then thereby have additional effects appended without feeling too muddied by lost bonus potency when used for said additional effects instead of solely for damage).
   
   
3. Indirect throughput value to MP spending. (Think defensive components, ramping future attacks, etc.)
   
   
4. Deepening a unique gimmick, such as pacing variance (e.g., via a pace-ramping Blood Weapon), or the throughput ceiling of TBN (while keeping it still balanced around mediocre usage), etc.
   
   
5. Shoring up shortfalls in overall sustain (here meaning the sum of damage nullified [in excess of what would have been naturally regenerated before the next threat] and self-healing done [likewise only up to a point that would naturally regenerate before the next threat and obviously excluding what would typically be overhealing giving a --lack of-- control over its timing]).

That said, I do not think attaching Darkside costs to other among DRK's skills will make a lick of difference to DRK's apparent depth, only to its annoyingness. It'd be a resource-into-resource mechanic that's easy to master yet unintuitive and clunky to track and therefore execute upon. All floor, no ceiling, and poorly designed all around.

I'd much sooner see Darkside applicators source mechanical involvement directly, rather than simply making one set of skills dependent on two resources and thus fettering GCD attacks to oGCDs and generally reducing rotational freedom or responsiveness. For instance, imagine if each time you add duration to Darkside, you also ramped it up, increasing modifiers on both Damage (perhaps also dynamically upon certain DoT damage sources) and Haste while also quadratically increasing the drain rate of its duration so that one is forced to occasionally drop it (ideally at the very end of a burst). Think Legion Voidform for any WoW players out there. That would then allow for granular-duration burst phases and a fair degree of gamble while also offering consistent pacing variance and a much more palpable impact from resources.

[Jeeqbit]

Higher APM floor over lulls. (This would likely involve increasing MP generation somewhat, forcing more out-of-burst MP spenders

Technically, this could be achieved by stacking Skill Speed, which not only increases the frequency of the GCD, but has the side effect of increasing how much MP and HP you regenerate through a fight because of the increased amount of Syphon Strikes and Souleaters, which increases the amount of Edges and Bloodspillers you get. People are just unwilling to do this because it's not a BiS stat.

But it would be nice to be able to get haste without having to stack it.

I think what darkknight suffers from is that he should be a tank who leeches life from his enemies basically but the healing potency the job has on the attacks is really really low or well almost as much as other tanks (except paladin ofc) which makes it kinda strange. They could easily fix that by putting some selfheals on some of the attacks.

The problem is that Warrior also has the lifesteal identity, which started with Storm's Path and Bloodbath and evolved into what we know now as Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash. In order to differentiate Dark Knight from a Warrior, they seem to have gone in the direction of MP and absorbing damage into a shield. They could swap their identities, but ultimately I think they should try to keep them unique.

they are just not as fun to play as like warrior who is basically an immortal aoe god who can clear the dungeon basically without your help.

There is content that a Dark Knight can do this in, just less of the time and other tanks are capable of it as well, especially Paladin. Tanks have always been able to do this sort of thing in dungeons. It's not new like people seem to believe lately.

[OdinelStarrei]

Technically, this could be achieved by stacking Skill Speed, which not only increases the frequency of the GCD, but has the side effect of increasing how much MP and HP you regenerate through a fight because of the increased amount of Syphon Strikes and Souleaters, which increases the amount of Edges and Bloodspillers you get. People are just unwilling to do this because it's not a BiS stat.

But it would be nice to be able to get haste without having to stack it.

See, and this is the stupidest part, you're TECHNICALLY correct, but you're PRACTICALLY wrong, because the increased amount of Syphons+Bloodspillers you'd be gaining with an increased GCD are disproportionally wasted because of current DRK MP economies. Even at the fastest possible post rework DRK speeds (specifcally, max Haste Bozja gear), it can drop your GCDs down to 2.10~ if I recall, but it still doesn't effectively matter because at our slow set, 2.5GCD BiS (25 GCDs per minute), compared to a theoretical 2.10 set (note, which is not possible even with max SkS gear and melds), would only give you around 28 GCDs per minute, adding in one extra combo, for simplicities sake.

You can then extrapolate that over the encounter, take the amount of combos you'd need to generate an extra Edge of Shadow which should take around 5 minutes for a single extra, weaker Edge of Shadow that'll probably have it's value lessened by a drastically inferior critical hit stat (being that it is rate+damage), and no direct hit. Also note that this is a bit inaccuruate, because an extra Bloodspiller is gained every 3 minutes, that combo string is delayed. Additionally, with Bloodspiller again having the same innate attribute being relatively high potency, in my opinion, there's less overall value since Bloodspillers are not only gained via basic rotation competence, but also just given freely every minute, it brings quality of each individual Bloodspiller down by forcing SkS.

I would meld SkS, because I find it more fun, but it's the overwhelming superiority of Critical Hit and Direct Hit, particularly in high burst damage, raid buff synchronized compositions AKA DRK's primary offensive niche that necessitate it. It's not just that it's not a BiS stat, SkS is a borderline useless stat outside of comfort/minimum thresholds, kinda like Accuracy, that is mitigated even further by the recent BW change, because it takes too much away from DRK's potential burst ceiling. To not abuse it is tantamount to griefing. I don't like this. Increasing a 12K MP per minute MP economy to a 12.6K to 13K MP per minute economy just isn't effective, and you can attribute some of that to passive MP regeneration as well, lessening the impact.

AND that's without getting into the Dark Knight classic, where Skill Speed doesn't work on Unmend, Unleash, or Stalwart Soul, gives you a dead stat for your ranged ability that Enhanced Unmend doesn't make up for, and 2/3rds of your GCD AoE rotation.

Believe me, if I could run a 1.98 GCD again (Thanks Haste BW/Eureka!), I would.

[Jeeqbit]

Even at the fastest possible post rework DRK speeds (specifcally, max Haste Bozja gear), it can drop your GCDs down to 2.10~ if I recall

That's about right. You could manage a GCD of around 2.11 with Skill Speed at level 80, but that's with end-of-expansion stat growth, food and using gear with the highest Skill Speed even if it's a lower item level (or scaling it down from 90 now that Endwalker exists). I personally couldn't enjoy DRK without stacking it in Shadowbringers. Over a long period of time, not stacking it just made me want to switch to something else, which I did anyway because Paladin was on the poster.

that'll probably have it's value lessened by a drastically inferior critical hit stat (being that it is rate+damage), and no direct hit.

Skill Speed effectively increases crit rate but not crit strength, by increasing the number of GCDs and their associated chance to crit. You can still stack crit along with it too. You just lose out on the benefit from Determination and Direct Hit in exchange for the potency gains of extra GCDs, dot and auto potency, and entirely lose out with aoe and Unmend.

And as you said the raid buff windows that promote the need for multiplicative stats and expect a rotation to be perfectly aligned into a 2 minute window make this sort of choice even more penalizing.

But since this did increase my enjoyment of Dark Knight, maybe adding a haste mechanic would improve it. I haven't played it much in EW, so I'm not sure whether I like or dislike the new flow of the rotation. At first I didn't like it, but I think I just can't be certain how I feel about it unless I play it regularly again.

[BaconBits]

I wouldn't trust SEto rework a paper bag at this point.