5.0 Dark Knight is certainly a functional job and sits at a decent position within the tank balance. Many people however, have voiced concerns with the game-play aspect of it. DRK has lost a lot of its mechanics and identity over the years, especially in its latest iteration and the current kit can best be described as rather barren, not only in comparison to previous versions, but even other jobs available.
As a player very disappointed with the current state of affairs, I’ve spend a pretty good amount of time trying to re-imagine how the job could function differently, considering what’s drawn people to it in previous expansions, while trying to avoid issues which plagued those past versions.
This thread is what I came up with.
Main goals:
- Giving DRK back its fast, high-apm play-style.
- Increasing the amount of MP available while introducing more MP-spending abilities to add more depth to the resource management.
- Reintroducing interactions between MP and Blood to strengthen kit synergy.
- Giving Darkside a meaningful upkeep mechanic that’s once again tied to MP management.
- Adding some kit-synergy to Living Shadow.
- Increasing GCD variety by introducing a second combo finisher, with its own, unique effect.
Regarding some numbers provided:
MP values are based on Stormblood iteration of DRK and scaled proportionately for Shadowbringers’ unified MP pools and therefore should all be in order.
Potencies are mostly meant to show the intended interactions between skills - mainly resource spending priorities and TBN and for this purpose they should serve adequately as presented.
I did my best to make the overall output match SHB balance, but I am by no means an experienced theory-crafter, so it’s very likely that my method was flawed and dps would need to be adjusted further. While I don’t expect anyone to bother, if somebody more suited for this job than me finds merit in my ideas and thinks it’d be fun to math it out properly in order to allow adjustments, they are most welcome to do so.
However this does not affect the skill priority – and with it game-play – which is the actual concern of the thread.
All adjustments are done with the 5.11 version of the job as base. Any effects or skills not listed are meant to remain unchanged.
MP spenders:
Edge of Darkness/Shadow – Potency reduced to 200/250. No longer interacts with Darkside.
Flood of Darkness/Shadow – Potency decreased to 130/150. No longer interacts with Darkside.
Notes: Edge and Flood are meant to function as main MP dumps used under raid buffs and to avoid overcapping. Saving MP to use CnS and LS on cd, as well as keeping up Darkside and using TBN when required, takes priority and therefore keeps amount of dumps in check without reducing APM.
Dark Arts – Ability. Cooldown: 2 seconds. Cast: Instant. Cost: 3000 MP. Range: 0y. Radius: 0y.
Effect: Increases the potency of your next Weaponskill or Spell by 100.
Additional Effect: Grants Darkside, increasing damage dealt by 5% and reducing weaponskill recast time and auto-attack delay by 10%. MP regeneration stops during battle.
Duration: 30s
Notes: Darkside upkeep skill which requires user to conserve MP in order to keep the buff going. The role is similar to HW Darkside, but active refresh makes it more intuitive than passive drain, which increases accessibility.
Carve and Spit – Added a cost of 3000 MP. Potency increased to 500.
Abyssal Drain – Changed from Ability to a Spell. Cooldown: 2.5 seconds. Potency: 160. Additional Effect: Restores own HP, Cure Potency: 200
Notes: Allows for sacrificing some Flood casts in AoE to increase survivability, synergizes very well with using Living Dead on trash packs. Range component gives it some utility when you want to grab multiple adds from a distance.
MP/Blood generators:
Syphon Strike – MP restoration from successful combo increased to 1500MP.
Souleater – Blood Gauge restoration on successful combo reduced to 10 Blood.
Stalwart Soul – MP restoration effect removed. Blood Gauge restoration on successful combo reduced to 10 Blood. Recast now matches regular global cooldown scaling.
Notes: Effect on MP removed in order to bring back Quietus Blood-MP interaction.
Blood Weapon – Cooldown reduced to 40 seconds. Duration increased to 15 seconds.
Effect changed to: Restores 600 MP and grants 3 Blood when dealing physical damage.
MP/Blood manipulators:
Delirium – Cooldown reduced to 80 seconds. Duration no longer applies. Added cost of 50 Blood. Effect changed to: Restores 3000 MP and extends duration of Blood Weapon by 8 seconds.
Living Shadow – Cost changed to 3000 MP. Additional effect: Grants 10 Blood whenever the simulacrum executes an attack.
Notes: Delirium and Living Shadow serve opposing roles as skills which spend one resource for a dps gain via another.
The shadow performs 7 attacks given full uptime, which should amount to 70 Blood total. Changing LS’ Blood cost to MP, allows to cast the skill earlier in the opener, alleviating the spawn-time issue.
Quietus – Additional effect: Restores MP(600 per target hit).
The Blackest Night – Barrier value reduced to 20% of target’s HP. Breaking barrier now grants 50 Blood instead of the Dark Arts effect.
Notes: Slightly lower barrier value should make it easier to break on a wider variety of damage, making TBN a more versatile defensive skill and allowing for using the Blood proc for gauge and gcd manipulation. Overall a side-grade, as the skill will lose a bit of strength on tank busters in exchange for better fluff coverage.
Other skills:
Dark Mind – Magic vulnerability reduction increased to 30%.
Notes: 10% mitigation added to make up for slightly reducing TBN’s effectiveness on tank busters.
Living Dead – Walking Dead effect changed to: Renders you impervious to most attacks and increases HP recovery via healing actions on self by 20%. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd.
Notes: Healing buff reduces the amount of healing required and true invulnerability allows to start gradual recovery as soon as WD procs, while also making it clear how much more HP is needed. This makes ability way less painful to deal with, without compromising its identity or removing drawbacks entirely.
Salted Earth – Effect changed to: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 and creates a patch of salted earth, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 50 to any enemies who enter. Only one Salted Earth effect can be maintained at the time. Duration increased to 30 seconds.
Scourge – Weaponskill. Cooldown: 2.5 seconds. Cast: Instant. Cost: none. Range: 3y. Radius: 0y.
Effect: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Syphon Strike.
Combo Potency: 400
Combo bonus: Extends duration of Salted Earth by 30 seconds to a maximum of 40 seconds.
Notes: Initial potency added to Salted Earth is meant to encourage still using it on cd and therefore considering boss’ movement during placement, rather than holding it purely for repositioning(although it should still be possible to delay cast slightly to adjust for big jumps when necessary). Extra 10 seconds on maximum duration allows for early refresh without losing ticks to make upkeep more forgiving, since you can’t just reapply the dropped effect while Salted Earth is on cooldown.
Salted Earth itself is a rather interesting skill in how it interacts with positioning and I think the concept of field effects could be expanded upon further. A full-time upkeep dot field could potentially open up new mechanics in the future, like skills proccing from dot ticks or a cooldown which could make Salted Earth temporarily provide some sort of utility for the group.
Unleash – Recast now matches regular global cooldown scaling.
Traits:
Enhanced Blackblood – Effect changed to: Allows for Blood Gauge accumulation when dealing physical damage while under the effect of Blood Weapon.
Darkside Mastery – Trait name changed to Shadow Mastery.
Notes: Really just to be consistent with Edge and Flood no longer affecting Darkside.
Continue reading...
As a player very disappointed with the current state of affairs, I’ve spend a pretty good amount of time trying to re-imagine how the job could function differently, considering what’s drawn people to it in previous expansions, while trying to avoid issues which plagued those past versions.
This thread is what I came up with.
Main goals:
- Giving DRK back its fast, high-apm play-style.
- Increasing the amount of MP available while introducing more MP-spending abilities to add more depth to the resource management.
- Reintroducing interactions between MP and Blood to strengthen kit synergy.
- Giving Darkside a meaningful upkeep mechanic that’s once again tied to MP management.
- Adding some kit-synergy to Living Shadow.
- Increasing GCD variety by introducing a second combo finisher, with its own, unique effect.
Regarding some numbers provided:
MP values are based on Stormblood iteration of DRK and scaled proportionately for Shadowbringers’ unified MP pools and therefore should all be in order.
Potencies are mostly meant to show the intended interactions between skills - mainly resource spending priorities and TBN and for this purpose they should serve adequately as presented.
I did my best to make the overall output match SHB balance, but I am by no means an experienced theory-crafter, so it’s very likely that my method was flawed and dps would need to be adjusted further. While I don’t expect anyone to bother, if somebody more suited for this job than me finds merit in my ideas and thinks it’d be fun to math it out properly in order to allow adjustments, they are most welcome to do so.
However this does not affect the skill priority – and with it game-play – which is the actual concern of the thread.
All adjustments are done with the 5.11 version of the job as base. Any effects or skills not listed are meant to remain unchanged.
MP spenders:
Edge of Darkness/Shadow – Potency reduced to 200/250. No longer interacts with Darkside.
Flood of Darkness/Shadow – Potency decreased to 130/150. No longer interacts with Darkside.
Notes: Edge and Flood are meant to function as main MP dumps used under raid buffs and to avoid overcapping. Saving MP to use CnS and LS on cd, as well as keeping up Darkside and using TBN when required, takes priority and therefore keeps amount of dumps in check without reducing APM.
Dark Arts – Ability. Cooldown: 2 seconds. Cast: Instant. Cost: 3000 MP. Range: 0y. Radius: 0y.
Effect: Increases the potency of your next Weaponskill or Spell by 100.
Additional Effect: Grants Darkside, increasing damage dealt by 5% and reducing weaponskill recast time and auto-attack delay by 10%. MP regeneration stops during battle.
Duration: 30s
Notes: Darkside upkeep skill which requires user to conserve MP in order to keep the buff going. The role is similar to HW Darkside, but active refresh makes it more intuitive than passive drain, which increases accessibility.
Carve and Spit – Added a cost of 3000 MP. Potency increased to 500.
Abyssal Drain – Changed from Ability to a Spell. Cooldown: 2.5 seconds. Potency: 160. Additional Effect: Restores own HP, Cure Potency: 200
Notes: Allows for sacrificing some Flood casts in AoE to increase survivability, synergizes very well with using Living Dead on trash packs. Range component gives it some utility when you want to grab multiple adds from a distance.
MP/Blood generators:
Syphon Strike – MP restoration from successful combo increased to 1500MP.
Souleater – Blood Gauge restoration on successful combo reduced to 10 Blood.
Stalwart Soul – MP restoration effect removed. Blood Gauge restoration on successful combo reduced to 10 Blood. Recast now matches regular global cooldown scaling.
Notes: Effect on MP removed in order to bring back Quietus Blood-MP interaction.
Blood Weapon – Cooldown reduced to 40 seconds. Duration increased to 15 seconds.
Effect changed to: Restores 600 MP and grants 3 Blood when dealing physical damage.
MP/Blood manipulators:
Delirium – Cooldown reduced to 80 seconds. Duration no longer applies. Added cost of 50 Blood. Effect changed to: Restores 3000 MP and extends duration of Blood Weapon by 8 seconds.
Living Shadow – Cost changed to 3000 MP. Additional effect: Grants 10 Blood whenever the simulacrum executes an attack.
Notes: Delirium and Living Shadow serve opposing roles as skills which spend one resource for a dps gain via another.
The shadow performs 7 attacks given full uptime, which should amount to 70 Blood total. Changing LS’ Blood cost to MP, allows to cast the skill earlier in the opener, alleviating the spawn-time issue.
Quietus – Additional effect: Restores MP(600 per target hit).
The Blackest Night – Barrier value reduced to 20% of target’s HP. Breaking barrier now grants 50 Blood instead of the Dark Arts effect.
Notes: Slightly lower barrier value should make it easier to break on a wider variety of damage, making TBN a more versatile defensive skill and allowing for using the Blood proc for gauge and gcd manipulation. Overall a side-grade, as the skill will lose a bit of strength on tank busters in exchange for better fluff coverage.
Other skills:
Dark Mind – Magic vulnerability reduction increased to 30%.
Notes: 10% mitigation added to make up for slightly reducing TBN’s effectiveness on tank busters.
Living Dead – Walking Dead effect changed to: Renders you impervious to most attacks and increases HP recovery via healing actions on self by 20%. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd.
Notes: Healing buff reduces the amount of healing required and true invulnerability allows to start gradual recovery as soon as WD procs, while also making it clear how much more HP is needed. This makes ability way less painful to deal with, without compromising its identity or removing drawbacks entirely.
Salted Earth – Effect changed to: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 and creates a patch of salted earth, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 50 to any enemies who enter. Only one Salted Earth effect can be maintained at the time. Duration increased to 30 seconds.
Scourge – Weaponskill. Cooldown: 2.5 seconds. Cast: Instant. Cost: none. Range: 3y. Radius: 0y.
Effect: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Syphon Strike.
Combo Potency: 400
Combo bonus: Extends duration of Salted Earth by 30 seconds to a maximum of 40 seconds.
Notes: Initial potency added to Salted Earth is meant to encourage still using it on cd and therefore considering boss’ movement during placement, rather than holding it purely for repositioning(although it should still be possible to delay cast slightly to adjust for big jumps when necessary). Extra 10 seconds on maximum duration allows for early refresh without losing ticks to make upkeep more forgiving, since you can’t just reapply the dropped effect while Salted Earth is on cooldown.
Salted Earth itself is a rather interesting skill in how it interacts with positioning and I think the concept of field effects could be expanded upon further. A full-time upkeep dot field could potentially open up new mechanics in the future, like skills proccing from dot ticks or a cooldown which could make Salted Earth temporarily provide some sort of utility for the group.
Unleash – Recast now matches regular global cooldown scaling.
Traits:
Enhanced Blackblood – Effect changed to: Allows for Blood Gauge accumulation when dealing physical damage while under the effect of Blood Weapon.
Darkside Mastery – Trait name changed to Shadow Mastery.
Notes: Really just to be consistent with Edge and Flood no longer affecting Darkside.
Continue reading...