Dark Knight: How I'd Do It

[Kitru]

-Basically you give them an easy to maintain no drawback version of Defiance along with it's own version of Sword Oath so they can maintain an average 20% phys mitigation, 30% magic mitigation, along with a 30% HP boost but only 20% in damage loss.

It's not actually "no-tradeoff", nor is it 30% magic mitigation. I specific said Magic *Defense* because it has a slower rate of return than flat our reduction. If it were flat mitigation, I'd leave it at 20% because that's the effective standard. The trade off between Shield Oath and Shadow Ward is that Shadow Ward is RNG based. It's not *reliable* so, while it's going to provide a similar amount over time, you cannot count on it constantly. Honestly, it would end up being *worse* than Shield Oath and roughly on par with Defiance (Defiance is reliable but weak, Shadow Ward is unreliable but comparatively strong).

-Dirty kick by far has the longest lasting effect and shortest cooldown of any Non-GCD stun in the game.

Yeah, not entire sure where I was coming from on that. I wanted to do something so that it wasn't just a Brutal Swing copy. The idea was that it would get a higher comparative uptime because it dealt no damage. It would probably be better to drop the duration to 3 seconds so that it's short duration but the payoff is in how often you can use it.

-Cripple has a ridiculously short timer, you could realistically maintain heavy and kite targets with ease all the time.

We're talking about a melee class here so kiting isn't really something that's likely to happen. Compare it to Feint, which has a 20 second duration and no CD. Also, I'm pretty sure that heavy is hit by DR so even if you *were* kiting a target, you couldn't do it indefinitely, not to mention that most of the stuff that you'd *want* to kite (like bosses) ends up being immune to it.

-If Exultant Swing is kept up Souleater's negative effect really isn't a drawback, and assuming Blood Sacrifice wasn't just poorly worded you can just pop that prior to using Souleater and reap it's benefits without any loss.

Exultant Swing is meant to cover multiple bases. It's meant to provide the needed hp cushion for relying on an RNG mechanic as a primary source of damage reduction (Parry rate/block fom Shadow Ward) as well as offsetting the cost of Souleater and Blood Sacrifice (it's been a month since I posted this, so I can't remember if it's supposed to be hp loss or max hp loss on Blood Sacrifice but I *think* it was supposed to be max hp). On top of that, because Body Pact and Soul Pact (which I think would need to have their numbers tweaked down to something like 50% instead of 100%) increase your damage taken from other sources for the duration so the higher max hp is meant to offset that as well.

-After factoring in traits all the drawbacks are really minimized to almost negligible proportions when stacked with other abilities.

The idea was to have the drawbacks significant and brought back in to reasonable levels with the traits and other abilities. Remember that the stuff that we're comparing these gain/loss abilities from are being compared to abilities with no downside like Foresight, Rampart, etc. Looking back on it, I actually like the idea of having more of the abilities operate like Body Pact and Soul Pact such that they only work on one type of incoming damage or the other so that, if you screw up and use the wrong one, you ended up making your life harder rather than easier. It would be something to play with during testing.

I also have to ask what cross classes were you considering for this job?

I'm pretty sure that I was going with MRD and GLA. MRD adds almost no real tankiness when included as an additional class because Foresight and Bloodbath are such jokes and GLA's only real contribution is Convalescence, which I would consider not including on the DRK's additional skills list. The useful options for that DRK would have would be Flash, Foresight, Bloodbath, Mercy Stroke, Provoke and Awareness (Fearsome Challenge is an equivalent to Tomahawk/Shield Lob, not Provoke), which I don't think present any problems.

That's all I really have to say about it. I'm not saying it can't work but it needs some solid fine tuning

The numbers were always intended to be kind of fuzzy. I didn't do any math to balance out anything except for Shadow Ward and just went with gut numbers for the rest of it.

when in turn it basically get's near PLD survivability, better than WAR HP, some self healing capability, good AoE capabilities

It's got similar mean mitigation to PLD but has only marginally more eHP than either the WAR or PLD while having abilities that specifically reduce eHP as part of their "schtick". The self healing capability is effectively a joke given Sanguine Sword's pitiful potency (and, yes, I fully intended it to have a potency of only 100 even when combo'd) means that it provides less than even Storm's Path does (240 potency w/ 50% heal); you'd only really get anything out of Consuming Darkness and, in any situation where you're actually fighting enough enemies for it to be worth it, it's not going to be providing a huge amount to offset the increased damage taken while also only being able to be used once every 7.5 seconds at most. The AoE capabilities are intended to be a compromise between PLD and WAR: Whirlwind>Black Sky>Consuming Darkness (i.e. the AoE rotation) wouldn't have the same costs as Overpower spam but would actually cost *something* unlike Flash spam and their total enmity potency per GCD is only 143, which is a far cry from Overpower's 240, with damage potency of 110, compared to Overpower's 120 (which can be increased with Maim and Unchained to be a *lot* higher).

better DPS than either of the two jobs and factoring in cross class possibilities will only improve their standing.

I sincerely doubt that it would be even remotely close to overrunning WAR or PLD damage. Consider that PLD and WAR have almost the same damage potency per GCD while in Sword Oath and while outside of Defiance respectively. PLD gets an extra ~55 potency per GCD from Sword Oath and 25 potency per GCD from Circle of Scorn and Spirits Within. The Halone combo provides 203.33 damage potency per GCD and auto-attack is 83.33 so you're getting 391.66 damage potency per GCD before you even factor in Fight or Flight, which, as a 10% increase to damage dealt, puts the PLD dp/GCD at 430.8.

The damage rotation for DRK would be Wrack>(Endless Night + Onyx Wave)>(Cruel Bite combo>Onyx Wave)x3; at 300 potency per GCD for Wrack and Onyx Wave, you'd get 242.1 dp/GCD. Add in the auto-attack and you get brought up to 325.5. Souleater has a 25% uptime and, at 50% +dam, provides 12.5% increased damage. Momentum only lasts for 6 attacks every 48 (12.5% uptime) and provides about 25% increased crit chance thanks to how it builds up. Building off of a 10% base crit chance, this would provide a 12.0% increase in damage dealt while it's active or only a .96% increase. Multiply all of that together and you get only 369.7 damage potency per GCD (321 * 1.125 * 1.0096). If anything, my iteration of Dark Knight would have *inferior* damage compared to DPS PLD and WAR. Onyx Wave could be cranked up to 400 potency and dp/GCD would only go up to 402.1. At 450, it's 418, which is finally within 5% of the PLD's 431.

Interestingly enough, after doing this math, I'm actually pretty sure that, as originally written, its *enmity* would suck compared to WAR and PLD as well. The enmity rotation would be CB>CB>ES, which provides only 400 enmity potency per GCD (splicing in Onyx Wave after each CB, which leaves you 1 Darkness after ES to activate Ebony Shield, it actually drops the enmity potency down to 343; if Onyx Wave had a 2x enmity mod, it would go up to 472.14). If you include an Ebony Shield every 30 seconds that soaks 2 attacks, you're getting an extra 8.33 potency per GCD, so, pre-multipliers, you're getting 408.33 ep/GCD (~480 w/ additional enmity OW). Tack on auto-attack and the multipliers (.8 with SW, 1.125 from Souleater, 1.01 from Momentum, 2x for tank stance) and you get 908.1 ep/GCD (1025.0 w/ additional enmity OW), compared to the ~1400 that PLD and WAR get.

There *are* some tweaks that could be done to fix these numbers. With the previously mentioned 2x multiplier on Onyx Wave, if you increase Cruel Bite's combo damage to 320, potency per GCD would go up to 428, and increase ep/GCD to 1077. Crank Onyx Wave's enmity modifier up to 3, and ep/GCD goes up to 1193.81. An interesting fix that could be applied would be to have Darkness provide a passive bonus of increased enmity from all sources while it's active; remove the Shadow Ward requirement on Darkness generation (which I think was actually a typo) and give it a 50% increased enmity generation (the combo finishers wouldn't benefit from it; to max enmity, you'd want to use Onyx Wave right before you use the combo finisher; to minimize it, such as when OT, you'd want to use it immediately) and you get 1390.8 ep/GCD.

Here's the formula for those interested:
((((150 * 1.5 + 200 * 1.5 * 3 + 320 * 5) + 450 * 3) * 2 + 150 * 1.5 + 100 * 1.5 + 260) / 14 + 8.33 * 1.5 + 83.33 * 1.5) * 1.125 * 1.01 * 0.8 * 2 = 1390.75
And broken down...
(150 * 1.5 + 200 * 1.5 * 3 + 320 * 5) = enmity generated by Cruel Bite combo; the 1.5x are the Darkness modifiers
((XXX) + 450 * 3) = enmity generated by Onyx Wave
((XXX) * 2 + 150 * 1.5 + 100 * 1.5 + 260) / 14 = enmity generated by total combo; the 2x represents how the CB combo and OW are used twice per total rotation and the 1.5x are the Darkness modifiers; the 14 is the number of GCDs consumed and provides the average enmity per GCD
((XXX) / 14 + 8.33 * 1.5 + 83.33 * 1.5) = inclusion of Ebony Shield and auto-attack; 1.5x are Darkness modifiers
(XXX) * 1.125 * 1.01 * 0.8 * 2 = end modifiers, 1.125x is Soulstealer, 1.01x is Momentum, .8x is Shadow Ward's damage debuff, 2x is Shadow Ward's enmity buff (I realize it's actually smaller than this, but that's the number I used for the enmity calcs for WAR and PLD)

All in all, the DRK as originally written needs *buffs* to make it do the proper amount of damage/enmity: increase damage on Cruel Bite to 320, increase Onyx Wave's damage to 450 and provide it with a 3x enmity modifier while in Shadow Ward, and have the Darkness buff increase all enmity generated by 50% while it's active (which provides an interesting tweak to the DRK playstyle; not using Onyx Wave would increase ep/GCD to 1433.9 but would tank damage so there is still a strong impetus to use Onyx Wave).