Hi There,

So I wanted to make a video addressing the DK rework while reboots are still somewhat in the works to give important feedback concerning changes as well as suggest alternative reworks or reworks of skills not being addressed by Pearl Abyss.   If you like these suggestions please help give this video attention by upvoting on here and sharing with the community particularly the Korean players/streamers as they tend to have the largest sway in what changes end up getting implemented. 

Video URL (if embed above doesn't appear):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVajvdq2Is

Video Summary:
1) Review of issues with the :
    A) Many of the awakening skills are still useless or barely useable in most situations even after the reboot.  Only 1 -2 are being properly addressed in the rework. The additional protection on Root of Catastrophe is good along with the additional "darkness spread" flow off of flow bombardment.  The new Cluster skill is also really good but created a new problem as it took away our long range PvE Pull skill / PvP probe skill.  The other useless/underpowered skills were not addressed at all (spirit blaze, flow spirit blaze, trap of vedir, soul snatch, vediant training.) or not addressed properly: 
 - Grip of grudge is slightly better for PvE with the new AOE and damage buffs but is still too short range, slow, immobile, unprotected, risky and lacks CC benefit to justify taking the risk to use the skill in PvP.

 - Touch of exploitation was addressed wrong.  Still too many animations, still a short range melee skill in a ranged kit, still locks you in place for 3 whole seconds which screams "Please grab/back attack & kill me". 
    B) Lack of protection in awakening - 2nd dusk skill still has an unreasonably long cooldown of 5 seconds (even valkyrie shield dashes are much shorter and they have 3 which travel much further distance.) and most skills in awakened are completely unprotected.  Corsair, Nova, Sorc, Musa, Maewha, Lahn and many other Assassin type classes have much more protected skills and movement in their awakening kits.
    C) Lack of useable/effective CC in Awakening - Some skills like Spirit blaze and Touch of exploitation have CC but they are illogically on the last hit of long or unprotected skills making them useless in PvP or high end grind spots.
   D) Lack of damage in PvE - Bread and butter skills like Seed of Catastrophe, Shattering Darkness, Flow Bombardment, Twilight dash and spirit legacy give good damage with dark nebula as an okay damage filler, the rest of the skills lack damage. The new Cluster of dispair and gripe of grudge somewhat address this but still arent enough and still leaves us with many useless skills in awakening

2) Review of Recent Rework Changes

3) Solutions:

Vediant Training/Basic Attack in awakening :
Problems: Incredibly slow, roots you in place (which = death for a ranged playstyle) low damage, low range.  While most basic attacks are nothing to write home about this one skill is easily the worst out of any .  It's an actual liablilty to use. 

Solution: 
Replace with old Cluster of Dispair minus it's slow effect.  The reason we need the old cluster back is because we absolutely need a good skill to pull mobs for PvE now that we don't have a long range skill we can spam repeatedly.  It's also a skill that many Awakened DKs used very regularly for both PvE and PvP.  Another thought which would be a "nice to have" thing would be shortening this skill's cooldown a bit so we can use it more often as a backward mobility skill but that might be a bit too much with the other suggested tweaks which I feel are more important.

Trap of Vedir:
Problems:  Very small narrow AOE, Trap remains up for only a split second, No real "trap" or penalty for getting hit by it other than a mild evasion strip.

Solution:
Increase the AOE of the trap to be a we cone and have the crystals stay on the ground for 2 seconds like the Wizard's magma pool.  If someone walks into the trap they get a movement and attack speed slow in addition to the evasion strip.


Grip of Grudge -
Problems: Doesn't grip a damn thing in PvP and other players are the only things I have a "grudge" on lol. 

Solution: I really like the rework changes but feel like it needs CC in PvP. Let's remove the spin effect, and change it to a quick universal vacuum that is useable in both PvE and PvP.  Lots of es have much more powerful vacuum skills this would just be a quick unprotected risky vacuum we could pull off if we were feeling confent. 

Spirit Blaze -
Problems: Completely unprotected skill,  Low range, lacks damage in PvP,  places CC on the 2nd strike of the skill which makes it useless for PvP as you get CC'd or killed before you even get to the 2nd hit as you have to be very close to use the skill. 
Solution:
Remove useless melee 1st strike combine all damge into the second strike and turn it into a radial AOE ranged skill with a float.  Add phantom swords so players can see the range of the skill.  The float will have a cooldown but the skill can be repeatedly used as a damage filler.  (remains an unprotected CC + damage skill but speed and range makes it useable in PvP or as a pull skill for PvE)

Flow Spirit Blaze:
Problems: Long windup that says "kill me", completely unprotected,  low range. 

Solution: Remove windup on skill, Give it frontal guard, increase range.

Touch of Exploitation -
Problems: Even the reworked skill takes 3 full seconds to use and you're locked in place asking to be grabbed or attacked from behind and it's still a low AOE melee skill in a ranged playstyle kit.  It would be different if this was a long range skill but it's animation is just way too long and immobile for a melee skill to be used in PvP.   (Also if we want to do melee we'll swap to mainhand which has much faster high damage + protected CC melee skills - Awakening should all be ranged skills).

Solution: 1st remove the extraneous mdle explosions and split all damage of the skill between the 1st and last strike so it's a quick up strike and down strike that are medium range skills.  The new version of the skill would require a cooldown.

Touch of Exploitation 1st Strike:  causes crystal shards to explode up from the ground in a frontal cone which floats the target (unguarded)


Touch of Exploitation 2nd and LAST Strike: Brings a giant phantom sword down on the target at range with down attack and down smash (Has Frontal Guard)


Soul Snatch Suggested AOE rework:
Problems: Current skill locks you in place for 1.5 seconds, you're completely vulnerable, and has low AOE.   

Solution:  Give it super armor OR significantly speed it up by 1.6 times it's current speed and increase it's AOE  so that it's a 360 degree attack in the same AOE as Wheel of Fortune. 

Updated Mockup with Phantom swords instead of blades that look like sea horses:

Dusk:
Problems: Currently Dusk's cooldowns are way too long which creates huge gaps in protection (one of them is a 5 second cooldown).  I realize this was nerfed because the original system was too overpowered but I feel the current system makes us WAY too vulnerable. 

Solution: I feel we should copy Lahn's "Phantom Dance" protection system which is iframe > SA on cooldown but with a heavier stamina cost so as to auto-regulate spamming it too much.   This gives us the protection we need without being over powered. 

Shattering Darkness - Also just throwing this out there as this would be a "nice to have" not a "need to have" thing, but Shattering darkness would be an eal skill to put Guard Guage reduction on seeing as we don't have a skill that has that effect in awakening.  And what more fitting thing for it to shatter than a block?

Seed of Catastrophe - Another "nice to have" ask here but could we change the PvP damage from -62% to -52% ?  It just doesn't seem to hit very hard in PvP. 
Flow: Root of Catastrophe- Could we change the PvP damage from -73% to -61%?  Again this is supposed to be one of our highest damage skills but it just doesn't seem to hit very hard in PvP. 

Updated the Video to reflect the changes to Flow Bombardment. 

Soul Snatch suggestion reminds me of Vergil's Spiral Swords from DMC. Would be pretty cool.

Funny you should say that, another recommendation I was thinking of making was swapping out the little blades that look like sea horses for actual phantom blades:

Really like the suggestions! Lot of potential and seems to be fair and ballanced to other classes, too.

@Skullmonkey You managed to concentrate nearly every thinkable idea I could imagine. I pray your ideas will be red so they may come true so we can experience them in the near future on the live servers, too.

I hope so too... seems like a lot of people have given up hope on PA doing anything. 

This ^^^ PA...  THIS is how you do a Rework.  If You guys did this I'd actually Play DK again. 

Well said.

Hopefully the Dev's will realize the DK's in Kr that are all over 720 nuking people do not reflect the majority of the DK community, and so the DK should be balanced around the majority...not the minority.  Maybe I'd consider playing the class again lol.

While I'm not sure implementing everything in that video would be a good idea as it would probably make the class a bit overpowered but I REEALLY like the new skill ideas.  Especially for Touch of Exploitation, Spirit Blaze (love the idea of it being kind of like a short range version of Archer's Full Bloom) and Trap of Vedir and I def agree it would be fine to put a vacuum on gripe.  They're locked in place when they do that anyway so it opens up opportunities for counter CCs or grabs. 

I'd definitely come back to the game if they put those in. 

As for the soul snatch idea I don't know if that really does much for that skill the way it's depicted in the video but that second image with the swords looked pretty sick... I'm with the other guy they should make that skill like Vergil's  spinning swords skill in DMC.  Now THAT would be AWESOME!  They spin around you for a few seconds damaging and stiffening anyone that runs into you and then shoot out in all directions. admittedly that might be OP but if you left it unprotected and kept the damage low it might work.   That or just do the last part and fire out the swords in all directions for a quick stiffen. 

Anyway I hope PA takes notes on this one.