Dark Knight Megathread

Overcapping is an issue on any job with a resource meter, so I'm not sure why anyone would present this as a unique issue on DRK. The risk of overcapping is reduced when you have a bigger capacity relative to the cost. Having dead space on your meter just locks down resources for no good reason. Your functional capacity is still the same. If the 200 MP/tick is worrying you, then get rid of it.

Edge and Flood cannot create double weaves on their own, because they have a 1s shared recast. Many jobs, including GNB, RPR, SAM, and NIN utilize this 1s recast to prevent double weaving the ability with itself. In fact, even if you took away Edge and Flood altogether, you would still have plenty of double weaves.

If you want to reduce the number of double weaves, then you need to incentivize spreading them out. On RPR, for example, all your Soul spenders generate Soul Reaver stacks. So while you could in theory double weave Blood Stalk with Gluttony, you never want to, because you override the stacks. You could do something similar by having attacks like Shadowbringer and C+S/Abyssal Drain cost MP but generate blood in return. Or you could redesign the Dark Arts system around this.

Plunge is another unnecessary culprit for weaves. Melee DPS have moved away from gap closers that are damage gated. I'm not sure why this isn't the standard now on tanks as well. You should be allowed to use your movement tool as a movement tool.

It's also worth noting that both GCD length and weaves contribute to APM. You'd actually have a slightly higher APM with a 1.5s GCD and single weaves between every GCD than you would with a 2.5s GCD and double weaves between every GCD.

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Envoyé par Lyth

Overcapping is an issue on any job with a resource meter, so I'm not sure why anyone would present this as a unique issue on DRK. The risk of overcapping is reduced when you have a bigger capacity relative to the cost. Having dead space on your meter just locks down resources for no good reason. Your functional capacity is still the same. If the 200 MP/tick is worrying you, then get rid of it.

Edge and Flood cannot create double weaves on their own, because they have a 1s shared recast. Many jobs, including GNB, RPR, SAM, and NIN utilize this 1s recast to prevent double weaving the ability with itself. In fact, even if you took away Edge and Flood altogether, you would still have plenty of double weaves.

If you want to reduce the number of double weaves, then you need to incentivize spreading them out. On RPR, for example, all your Soul spenders generate Soul Reaver stacks. So while you could in theory double weave Blood Stalk with Gluttony, you never want to, because you override the stacks. You could do something similar by having attacks like Shadowbringer and C+S/Abyssal Drain cost MP but generate blood in return. Or you could redesign the Dark Arts system around this.

Plunge is another unnecessary culprit for weaves. Melee DPS have moved away from gap closers that are damage gated. I'm not sure why this isn't the standard now on tanks as well. You should be allowed to use your movement tool as a movement tool.

It's also worth noting that both GCD length and weaves contribute to APM. You'd actually have a slightly higher APM with a 1.5s GCD and single weaves between every GCD than you would with a 2.5s GCD and double weaves between every GCD.

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Honestly overcapping is a non issue when it doesn't even matter such as the boss becomes un-targetable for a specific mechanic, or dumping resources like it was cooldown, and ESPECIALLY if players don't even know it can be an issue such as new players.

As for gap closers still be using to do damage, the "but muh APM" argument that some people love parroting. In fact a lot of the discussion involving Dark Knight is those who hate the high APM or love it but still hate how cluttered it is, and the people trying to find a middle ground are usually ignored by the people who love the high APM as they are the VERY vocal minority. A high APM doesn't always equal fun, in fact a APM could potentially cause even more balancing problems than intended, especially for tanks, with Gunbreaker and maybe Paladin being an exception to this rule. But players going armchair developer can get players so far, especially if they have ANY interest game development, and the most we, the players, can do is provide feed back that is meaningful enough to matter for players to enjoy.

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

Heavensward Dark Knight and maybe Stormblood Dark Knight if we count enmity combos for a little extra credit.

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All the tanks had an enmity combo, and you used it like once in a fight. They were removed for a reason.
These were never alternate combos that you went back and forth between, you almost always stuck to the higher damage souleater combo.

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

Again, all we need to do is look at Heavensward, which for ALL tanks, they were ALL GCD centric, Dark Knight had only had Low Blow which was VERY luck based with parry procs, Reprisal which was a parry proc, Plunge, Dark Passenger,Carve and Spit, and Salted Earth as oGCDs, Dark Arts enhanced certain GCD effects and/or potencies

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Dark Arts was an ogcd that you spammed, and you really ever powered up attacks for potency bumps, most Dark Arts effects were pretty useless, especially when considering DRK's other gimmicks like taking damage for MP with Blood Price and parry procs.
I don't think saying the job was GCD focused is very accurate, Dark Arts spam was the centralizing mechanic of DRK back then, all thats changed now is instead of Dark Arts spam to empower the next GCD, you're getting the damage immediately with an oGCD.

I'm not against turning a few into gcd actions, honestly Abyssal Drain would be better served as a GCD spell with a larger heal, or more spammable in general rather than tying it to be the AOE version of Carve and Spit like its Upheaval/Orogeny, but as a whole I think DRK should keep the ogcd spam focus.

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Envoyé par Lyth

Overcapping is an issue on any job with a resource meter, so I'm not sure why anyone would present this as a unique issue on DRK.

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I didn't. You picked MP on PLD as an example from which to insist that DRK's MP costs must be perfect tenths, fifths, quarters, or halves of their MP.

Except, again, PLD does not use MP like DRK does. PLD, however uniquely that may be, overcaps its MP for the majority of its rotation. It has nothing like Edge/Flood. In practice, MP may as well not exist on PLD, because outside of emergency uses of Clemency, it only ever spends MP under other conditions (Requiescat or Divine Might). I'm not happy about that, but it is what it is.

While yes, Holy Shock spends 1k MP while Riot Blade and Atonement generate 1k MP, you do not use Holy Shock as MP permits; it's a damage loss without Divine Might, which is only usable twice per minute without drift. During the combo that permits it, you generate 4k MP, while only spending 1k. It's not an even amount taken in for an even amount put out, unlike your earlier implications.

DRK needs 90%-92% of its MP to get every Edge it possibly can inside its burst, depending on when the MP tick would hit, leaving it with ~10% spare margin. PLD's has 60% spare margin; it only spends 40% over its Confiteor combo.

They're night and day, so I do not understand why you would try to use the MP spending of the one to support such a niche concern as whether DRK's MP costs should be perfect quarters, etc., of its max MP; such only reduces its tolerance anyways, making it that much more finnicky.

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Having dead space on your meter just locks down resources for no good reason. Your functional capacity is still the same.

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Which would you rather have as the duration of a GCD-affecting buff on a job that has no increases to Attack Speed and doesn't stack SkS? 11 seconds, or 10? They have the same number of attacks and total potency possible. The only difference is that on the latter, even 0.05 seconds of lost uptime means you lose a buffed hit, while the first takes a full second to lose any effect.

That's effectively the difference between a integer-denominator cost and what we have now, the difference between 10% safety margin, and none. If we could consume 4 charges off the bat, then rather than having 800-1000 spare MP at the end, that spare amount would make the difference of having or losing an Edge. All just to ensure that our 2-min bursts are even more packed. Why?
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For all intents and purposes, your max MP during raid buffs isn't just 10000, but also the amount you can generate and spend during the duration of those raid buffs. And the tighter you make that, the more finnicky you do. I do not want my number of Edges do a depend on an MP tick, or to fall short for even a single 600 MP overcap; that seems unnecessarily finnicky.

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Edge and Flood cannot create double weaves on their own, because they have a 1s shared recast.

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No one claimed otherwise. Yes, that'd potentially push one or the other Edges gained out of 20s raid buffs when you have both Tincture and Salted->Darkness, but again... why do you want even more Edges able to be concentrated into just a narrow span of time?

This seems like an obsessive compulsion over integer denominators first and implications/gameplay only a very distant second.

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You could do something similar by having attacks like Shadowbringer and C+S/Abyssal Drain cost MP but generate blood in return.

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I wouldn't mind this, but they'd have to generate 40 or more for that to have much effect, and then you're forcing particular timings of Bloodspiller while forcing drift around Delirium and likely removing that option (EarlyDel) for creating more weave space.

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Plunge is another unnecessary culprit for weaves. Melee DPS have moved away from gap closers that are damage gated. I'm not sure why this isn't the standard now on tanks as well. You should be allowed to use your movement tool as a movement tool.

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They haven't entirely; any target-aimed gap closers outside of Thunderclap still have damage.

Note also, though, that all Melee DPS but Reaper have higher APM than DRK despite that, all of them would have higher APM than DRK if we removed the damage from Plunge.

Yes, you can remove damage from Tank gap closers, but you'd have no higher mobility for doing so (since even some 10-16% of a GCD of uptime increased through the gap closer will outweigh their being used under raid buffs), just slightly less reward for fight knowledge and 2 less APM.

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It's also worth noting that both GCD length and weaves contribute to APM. You'd actually have a slightly higher APM with a 1.5s GCD and single weaves between every GCD than you would with a 2.5s GCD and double weaves between every GCD.

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Again, I'm totally fine with the occasional 1.5s GCD or 60%-length GCD.

I feel like of the two, GNB is the job that more feels like it should get 1.5s GCDs while DRK remains the double-weave job, but I'll take whatever increased sense of speed or similar engagement I can get between bursts regardless, so long as it avoids weaves that affect each other within the same GCD (the likes of old DA-defensives, etc.).

I enjoy having busy bursts and engaging downtime, so the most "Enjoyment" I will ever have is either in our 2-minutes on DRK or when I'm playing Gunbreaker or Reaper. Between the two, I'd rather they take examples from Reaper by a far margin.

That said...We literally cannot fit any more ogcd's into our big burst windows, and we require a rework at the least if we're going to fix the issues with a) MP management being practically non-existent, b) Darkside Gauge/Timer and c) Blood Gauge.

If we're going to make any current oGCD's and turn it into a GCD, Abyssal Drain is my candidate. Give Abyssal Drain an MP cost.

While we're at it, make Shadowbringer cost Darkside, it's comically easy to keep up since it basically feels like a passive.

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Envoyé par Zairava

I enjoy having busy bursts and engaging downtime, so the most "Enjoyment" I will ever have is either in our 2-minutes on DRK or when I'm playing Gunbreaker or Reaper. Between the two, I'd rather they take examples from Reaper by a far margin.

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Agrede.

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Envoyé par Zairava

That said...We literally cannot fit any more ogcd's into our big burst windows, and we require a rework at the least if we're going to fix the issues with a) MP management being practically non-existent, b) Darkside Gauge/Timer and c) Blood Gauge.

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Also agreed.

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Envoyé par Zairava

If we're going to make any current oGCD's and turn it into a GCD, Abyssal Drain is my candidate. Give Abyssal Drain an MP cost.

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I have a lot of choices as well wanting them to be consolidated combos, and as for Abyssal Drain, if people really want APM, give it second charge on a 30 second cooldown.

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Envoyé par Zairava

While we're at it, make Shadowbringer cost Darkside, it's comically easy to keep up since it basically feels like a passive.

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We already something similar to that in Heavensward, it was called Blood of the Dragon on Dragoon, and they got rid of it.

Some other thoughts of how I would declutter some of DRK's actions. The Blackest should upgrade to Oblation, and when Oblation's barrier breaks it grants, and transforms into Abyssal Drain.

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Envoyé par mallleable

Some other thoughts of how I would declutter some of DRK's actions. The Blackest should upgrade to Oblation, and when Oblation's barrier breaks it grants, and transforms into Abyssal Drain.

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If Oblation costs MP, good luck trying to get people to use it...

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

the people who love the high APM as they are the VERY vocal minority.

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Evidence? {Do you have any?}

Imagine that communication without any perceived 'loudness' beyond the number of people posting/liking/voting one way or the other, as per a poll. Are you really so sure that those who like higher APM or what has historically been a higher-APM tank... are a minority?

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A high APM doesn't always equal fun, in fact a APM could potentially cause even more balancing problems than intended, especially for tanks, with Gunbreaker and maybe Paladin being an exception to this rule.

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While an APM does not always equal fun, generally doing things is, yes, more fun than time spent idle, so long as there is time enough at peak obligatory button-presses still to use conditional presses and the average APM isn't knuckle-wrenchingly high.

Higher APM also does not include balancing issues unless a unique degree of the job's output depends on having lower ping (which is ultimately a universal issue, but, sure, we'll count it against just the jobs most affected by that universal problem for now).

There is literally no difference, in itself, to balance between dealing a total of 1000 relative potency across a GCD, a GCD and oGCD, a GCD and 2 oGCDs, etc. Relative/effective potency is relative/effective potency.

:: Note also that fitting 2 actions (GCD animation lock + oGCD animation lock) into a 1.5s GCD is actually tighter, technically, than fitting 3 actions (GCD animation lock + 2 oGCD animation locks) into a full 2.5s GCD. I'm fine with both, honestly, but converting oGCDs into quick-GCDs doesn't actually do any favors for the limits of what all we can weave.

Finally, GNB and PLD, are not uniquely immune to the high-latency issues possible from double-weaving or high APM. They merely have fewer enticed double-weaves due to having fewer oGCDs meant to be spent under the 15s of full raid buff value (6 for PLD and 10 for GNB vs. DRK's 16).

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

While an APM does not always equal fun, generally doing things is, yes, more fun than time spent idle, so long as there is time enough at peak obligatory button-presses still to use conditional presses and the average APM isn't knuckle-wrenchingly high.

Higher APM also does not include balancing issues unless a unique degree of the job's output depends on having lower ping (which is ultimately a universal issue, but, sure, we'll count it against just the jobs most affected by that universal problem for now).

There is literally no difference, in itself, to balance between dealing a total of 1000 relative potency across a GCD, a GCD and oGCD, a GCD and 2 oGCDs, etc. Relative/effective potency is relative/effective potency.

:: Note also that fitting 2 actions (GCD animation lock + oGCD animation lock) into a 1.5s GCD is actually tighter, technically, than fitting 3 actions (GCD animation lock + 2 oGCD animation locks) into a full 2.5s GCD. I'm fine with both, honestly, but converting oGCDs into quick-GCDs doesn't actually do any favors for the limits of what all we can weave.

Finally, GNB and PLD, are not uniquely immune to the high-latency issues possible from double-weaving or high APM. They merely have fewer enticed double-weaves due to having fewer oGCDs meant to be spent under the 15s of full raid buff value (6 for PLD and 10 for GNB vs. DRK's 16).

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There is also the issue that sometimes Dark Knight is forced to have Skill Speed on their BiS gear, which can cause GCD clipping issues with the oGCD spam unless you use spells, which is yet ANOTHER reason why I would want a good chunk of oGCDs to become GCDs.

I have mostly final version of my own personal wishlist for Dark Knight rework, with an attempt made at compromising at what some other people would want. It is meant to be read and responded to in one go, and if you don't understand it the first time, take the time to read it as many times as you need to fully understand it, ESPECIALLY the Dark Arts section, and MAYBE the Darkside section as well.

(Slight rework + Quality of Life) Make Salt and Darkness into GCD spell that combos after Stalwart Soul and move it to level that Salted Earth is and it would make AoE feel slightly better, though could make Stalwart Soul and Salt and Darkness restore MP, Blood gauge, and restore HP equal to damage dealt per hit(see the Melee DPS Role Action Bloodbath for more details). Would also need to apply these affects to Unleash, Stalwart Soul, Hard Slash, Syphon Strike, and Souleater. For those who still want the lingering DoT field, Salt and Darkness can apply Salted Earth as a combo bonus.

(Major Rework + Quality of Life) Make Blood Weapon be a mini Darkside that grants 15-25% haste(would probably need to make this effect universal for all tanks in some way) which then becomes Darkside when you do the quest to unlock it, and then have Darkside upgrade into Delirium to where it generates a Dark Arts stack every 15 seconds indicated by the Darkside timer(or gauge as the devs called it) and have Delirium become Living Shadow A.K.A. True Darkside with the dark flames aura that also boosts potency by 100-300(would also need to make universal for all tanks in some way because Tank Mastery Trait is just THAT BAD), and we can keep the ways to maintain Darkside and have those apply to Blood Weapon and Living Shadow. Basically I just want to turn and maintain Darkside in and out of of combat with the haste effect of Heavensward/Stormblood Blood Weapon. For those who still want the summon pet mechanic, add a new ability called Summon Shadow and its duration and AI needs to be more like a Trust/Duty Support NPC that does Tank mechanics, give it an AoE Rescue for specific group mechanics, but CANNOT be used while at the same time as Living Shadow and should Esteem be KO'd, it grants Living Shadow automatically, or just keep as is right now which is basically a summon pet for 20+ seconds takes forever to wake up, and is not affected by Darkside bonuses.

(Major rework + Quality of Life) Bring back Dark Passenger, make it GCD that costs MP, and have it combo into Flood of Darkness/Shadow, which then combos into Shadowbringer, and they all cost 3000 MP each, because the MP guzzling aspect of Dark Knight is enough to make it stand out from the other tanks, I just wish the MP spenders were GCDs, and I wish they gave Blood gauge, and restored HP equal to damage dealt per hit (see the Melee DPS Role Action Bloodbath for more details) and were DPS neutral in single target to Blood gauge spender at the start and ramps up, and you could make these share 1 button space like Gnashing Fang combo or Confiteor combo. Could also add a predecessor to Shadowbringer at level 62 with 80 less potency than Shadowbringer. Make Edge of Darkness/Shadow become a GCD weaponskill that cost 20 Blood gauge, that combos into Bloodspiller that costs 15 Blood Gauge, that combos into Carve and Spit that also cost 15 Blood gauge, and they could restore MP and restore HP equal to damage dealt(see the Melee DPS Role Action Bloodbath for more details), and you could also make these share 1 button. Make Quietus cost 15 Blood gauge and have restore MP, and boost its potency, and make Abyssal Drain a GCD that cost 3000 MP that restore Blood gauge, make both restore HP equal to damage dealt per hit(see the Melee DPS role action Bloodbath for more details) and boost its potency, and people would would try to find a use for these. Could also keep Abyssal Drain an oGCD with 2 charges on 30 second recast timer. Dark Arts button we can bring back as 60 second cooldown which grants 3 Dark Arts charges, which double the potency of all actions, ignore resources for 3 actions and if used on Dark Passenger, Flood of Darkness/Shadow, and/or Shadowbringer it converts Dark Arts into a new resource called Blood Arts which is basically triples damage dealt for Blood gauge spenders, but only in combat. The Blackest Night have the MP cost removed, but would need it's recast timer increased to 25 seconds, and if falls off 1 Dark Arts charge, if it breaks it grants 3 instead. Could also have Dark Arts reduce recast timers of MP spenders to 1.5 seconds. Additionally could also make Souleater and Salt and Darkness generate a Dark Arts stack if you have ONLY 2 stacks of Dark Arts.

(Something new) Bring back 4.3 Sole Survivor, buff it to where it increase damage dealt to enemies by 5%(or damage enemies receive to better understand it) and reduce the amount of damage that those enemies would deal to players by 10%, have it be 2 charges, and it would give Dark Knight a raid buff that's good against bosses and also good in dungeons. Not good for when bosses become non-targetable to keep it balanced. Could also have it deal damage and make the recast timer 30 seconds but the duration is 10-ish seconds.

(Quality of Life) Have Dark Mind get the Addle treatment, and it would feel less bad against physical tank busters. Also give Dark Missionary the Addle treatment on the off chance there is physical raidwide, and by extension Heart of Light since the effect is copy-pasted on Gunbreaker already.

(Slight rework + Quality of Life) Just make Living Dead just be a 20 second invuln that drops your HP to 1(you still take damage) that restores HP equal to damage dealt by 300%, and it would be a better than Holmgang, and justify the 300 second cooldown. Yes I am aware that the other tanks would complain about their invuln not being as long as Living Dead but that's the point, since we all know that the devs would give the other tanks a 20 second duration on their invuln as well..

All of this would make up for the fact that Dark Knight would no longer have a massive oGCD spam during the course of fights, and feel (and look) a lot less janky to play and would probably make Dark Knight be SO MUCH better than when it first launched in Heavensward, with a lot more opportunities to pop a defensive or utility during burst... This would also address the button bloat issue, as well as introducing older abilities to people who did not play Heavensward when it was relevant, while still introducing new abilities, for both earlier in Dark Knight leveling and the obvious new abilities the we might be getting in the next expansion, and make leveling Dark Knight from 50-60 feel less braindead to an extent, because spamming 1-2-3 for more than 10 minutes might cause some kind of brain rot...

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

I have mostly final version of my own personal wishlist for Dark Knight rework, with an attempt made at compromising at what some other people would want. It is meant to be read and responded to in one go, and if you don't understand it the first time, take the time to read it as many times as you need to fully understand it, ESPECIALLY the Dark Arts section, and MAYBE the Darkside section as well.

(Slight rework + Quality of Life) Make Salt and Darkness into GCD spell that combos after Stalwart Soul and move it to level that Salted Earth is and it would make AoE feel slightly better, though could make Stalwart Soul and Salt and Darkness restore MP, Blood gauge, and restore HP equal to damage dealt per hit(see the Melee DPS Role Action Bloodbath for more details). Would also need to apply these affects to Unleash, Stalwart Soul, Hard Slash, Syphon Strike, and Souleater.

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...Again, Stalwart Soul already restores MP and gives 20 Blood. Your MP and Blood gen from your AoE combo is already a whopping 50% faster than generation from your single target combo. If you turned S&D into a third step of your AoE combo likewise for MP and Blood, you'd either have to nerf the Blood generated by StS and S&D or it would then be double the generation of your ST combo, which then has further tuning implications, especially for sustained combat (since you'll have heavily nerfed DRK's AoE burst unless badly overtuning our AoE continuous damage).

No job is going to get a constant, passive Bloodbath at any significant percentage, or can the job's spenders hit much harder than pool noodles if you so greatly increase resource generation by having literally every GCD generate HP, MP, and Blood. That's not a "slight" rework, nor merely "quality of life". That's a massive shift away from dynamism (or, towards each GCD's time having potency more similar to any other GCD / flattening DRK's damage distribution).

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(Major Rework + Quality of Life) Make Blood Weapon be a mini Darkside that grants 15-25% haste which then becomes Darkside when you do the quest to unlock it, and then have Darkside upgrade into Delirium to where it generates a Dark Arts stack every 15 seconds indicated by the Darkside timer(or gauge as the devs called it) and have Delirium become Living Shadow A.K.A. True Darkside with the dark flames aura that also boosts potency by 100-300, and we can keep the ways to maintain Darkside and have those apply to Blood Weapon and Living Shadow

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Living Shadow can afford to hit for 350 potency per tick (~291 ppgcd) only because it's up for at most a mere sixth of the time. You cannot replace it with a constant aura that deals up to as much free potency at all times without nerfing the job's base potencies in turn (let alone atop a constant 25% Haste buff that would inflate the relative value of that added potency to ~133-400 potency per original GCD).

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You have flattened out the offensive kit into a far more mindless and muddled churn. More specifically, you have...

• chopped up almost every higher-ppgcd attack to instead be done across multiple middling GCDs,
  
  
• flattened out the distribution of resource generation almost entirely and likely inflated it to high hell,
  
  
• given almost no way to actually spend resource faster than one gains them,
  
  
• removed every oGCD attack to instead turn them into GCD combos (Salt and Darkness now reduced to a AoE combo 3rd step redundant that at best alternates Shadowbringer 3-step combo with Dark Passenger and Flood, while Carve and Spit forms a combo with Edge and Bloodspiller that at best alternates with the standard combo, reducing virtually all burst and dynamics into A-B pairs each for ST and AoE...
  
  ...which would probably be nearer to A-B-B-B trios in practice due to sheer amount of resource and cost nullifiers generated, making them identical to Warrior play except needing almost double the button count to pull off an equal extent of decision-making and having lost our actual spender burst to support that),
• generally made most GCD builders and spenders alike redundant and conflicting with one another...
  
  
• ...all to situate an unnecessarily convoluted and flattened out take on Blood (costs of 20-15-15 Blood at a time in some RDM mirror), and Dark Arts (tripling its cost nullifications, each of which matter far less now that you've made their spenders GCDs),
  
  
• ...and to generally punt balance out of your local galaxy (passive +100 to 300 potency per GCD atop a +15-25% passive Attack Speed increase, before even accounting for the excess resource) in what I wish was satire.

You're free to want what you'd want, but... I don't think I'd be alone in wanting almost none of this.

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The "This is okay, actually" portion:

• Dark Mind getting some value against physical damage.
• Living Dead just becomes a Holmgang with built-in hefty Bloodbath. (Though, no, it shouldn't become a truly 20s invuln.)

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

[*]flattened out the distribution of resource generation almost entirely and likely inflated it to high hell,

[*]given almost no way to actually spend resource faster than one gains them,

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That is the point of a resource management job. To manage resources effectively. Which is my point.

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

[*]removed every oGCD attack to instead turn them into GCD combos (Salt and Darkness now reduced to a AoE combo 3rd step redundant that at best alternates Shadowbringer 3-step combo with Dark Passenger and Flood, while Carve and Spit forms a combo with Edge and Bloodspiller that at best alternates with the standard combo, reducing virtually all burst and dynamics into A-B pairs each for ST and AoE...

...which would probably be nearer to A-B-B-B trios in practice due to sheer amount of resource and cost nullifiers generated, making them identical to Warrior play except needing almost double the button count to pull off an equal extent of decision-making and having lost our actual spender burst to support that), [*]generally made most GCD builders and spenders alike redundant and conflicting with one another...

[*]...all to situate an unnecessarily convoluted and flattened out take on Blood (costs of 20-15-15 Blood at a time in some RDM mirror), and Dark Arts (tripling its cost nullifications, each of which matter far less now that you've made their spenders GCDs),

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So you don't want a 1.5 GCD for specific actions that attempts to keep the identity of high APM tank then...? A simple yes or no question would be nice to have. You don't even need to go into detail for your reasoning.

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

The "This is okay, actually" portion:

• Dark Mind getting some value against physical damage.
• Living Dead just becomes a Holmgang with built-in hefty Bloodbath. (Though, no, it shouldn't become a truly 20s invuln.)

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So what about Dark Missionary...? I find it funny that you forgot to mention that. I also DO see Warriors complaining about not having a 20 second invuln because 10 seconds isn't enough, if given the chance, which they have had PLENTY of opportunities to do so, and it's not too late for them start that trend now.

The only rework I would like to see is DRK capitalize on the "charge stacks" to become the "charge tank" with Dark Arts being the new 3k mp spender. DA will be introduced at the lvl 60 cap. Imagine if Dark Arts was a 10 sec recast that augments the next applicable skill used. It has a duration of 8 secs so you can use it more proactively i.e. can be used before hard slash and skill be up to DA souleater in your combo. Next implement two charges to these skills:

-TBN (no longer costs mp, same recast timer 15 sec)
-Oblation (unchanged)
-Edge/Flood (30 sec recast)
-Plunge (unchanged)
-Dark Mind (same recast)
-Shadowbringer (unchanged)
-C&S and AD (same recast)

Finally have DA affect only a small amount of skills instead of how it was in 4.0. In the current meta, DA would only serve a similar function to Infuriate. A boost to dmg/healing. These are the skills it should only affect:

-Souleater (added effect to shorten recast of Edge/Flood shadow by 15 secs)
-Stalwart Soul (added effect of healing potency, no longer restores mp)
-TBN (effect of giving free edge/flood changed to putting a scourge dot on enemy)
-Oblation (increase duration and potency by 50%)

These are the types of changes I would like to see for DRK while finally giving it some quirk that is different from other tanks and some semblance of identity without losing too much of that ogcd spam that it seems to relish in. The idea of DA is reintroduce a concept that DRK used to have, which was utility, but instead of things like blinds or haste its much more immediate impact. Putting two charges gives DRK a level of flexibility and optimization no other tank has currently. For example in HH the DRK can DA oblation both tanks at the same time, then pop TBN back to back for more mitigation.

Wouldn't work because of the defenders of Dark Knight oGCD spam will defiantly and loudly say "No!" in the most convoluted way possible.

Citation:

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

That is the point of a resource management job. To manage resources effectively. Which is my point.

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Your suggestions make "resource management" about as vital to Blood and MP function as it presently is to Darkside. Which is my point.

Citation:

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So you don't want a 1.5 GCD for specific actions that attempts to keep the identity of high APM tank then...? A simple yes or no question would be nice to have.

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This has already been explained in detail. You need only actually read the answers to the questions you give.

But, if we're to go with false binaries alone...

-> So you don't want even a single oGCD attack regardless of implications on weave space or APM then...? A simple yes or no question would be nice to have.

Citation:

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So what about Dark Missionary...? I find it funny that you forgot to mention that.

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If what you call the "Addle treatment" is fine for the one, why wouldn't it be for the other?

Citation:

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I also DO see Warriors complaining about not having a 20 second invuln because 10 seconds isn't enough, if given the chance, which they have had PLENTY of opportunities to do so, and it's not too late for them start that trend now.

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Either you're failing to detect their sarcasm or you're listening to the very last people design should placate. Warriors are not unique in lacking a 20s invuln. Living Dead is not a 20s invuln. 20s invulns are not a trend we should start, ever, even if it isn't "too late" to do so.

________________________________________

Countersuggestions, I guess, since it may seem rude to only critique:

GENERAL CHANGES

• Client's action lock-out timers (the period after using any action for which another action cannot be used) are no longer reset by receiving a confirmation message from the server (ping no longer increases the uptime costs of each action).
• The action lock-out timer of potions has been reduced to the more standard 0.6 seconds.
• Both damage nullification (barrier HP) and periodic damage to be taken (total expected DoT damage) is now shown on Parameter, Target, Target of Target, and Party List HP bars.
• Parameter, Target, Target of Target, and Party List HP bars now change color and glow slightly while the unit to whom that health bar belongs is invulnerable.
• Tanks gain a 3D visual effect during their invulns which pulses and then rapidly shrinks over the last fifth of their duration.
• Dark Knight additionally gains a 3D misty/shadowy skull over its head while afflicted with Walking Dead.
• Rampart removed. That mitigation is instead rolled into each Tank's job-specific kit. (Extra charge and reduced CD on Bulwark, Camouflage, Dark Mind, and Thrill of Battle.)
• Tank Stances now begin on by default and Provoke further forces the target to target you and doubles your threat generated against the target for 6 seconds or until replaced by another Provoke. Tank attacks made from the enemies' rear deal 30% less Enmity and from the sides deal 15% less Enmity. This forgoes the need ever to take Tank Stance off and make Shirk even more obviously useless. Consequently, Shirk has been removed.
• Low Blow gains a second charge and now also silences. Its recast time has been reduced to 20s.
• That's 4 needless tank buttons now saved for better uses.

DARK KNIGHT CHANGES

• Edge/Flood replaced with a revised form of Dark Arts that follows up the prior action instead of buffing the next. In this way, we technically get ~16 different possible spenders [~12 attacks and ~4 defensives] with a single button instead of 2 possible spenders for 2 buttons. All carry some degree of utility, with only 3 being rotationally obligatory (Scourge after Heavy Slash per 30s, Soul-Sunder after Carve and Spit per 60s, and Salt and Darkness after Salted Earth once per 90s). This still costs 3k MP at a time.
  
  Apart from those 3 rotationally-obligatory actions, Dark Arts typically grants about 10 potency per %MP consumed (~300p per offensive Dark Arts), down from 15.3, making it less costly to spend defensively.
  
  
• Dark Dance trait added, functioning much like the existing Dark Arts but much more flexibly and serving to grant roughly a free cast each of defensive and offensive spenders per minute. It causes your MP-spending defensive actions to each nullify up to 3000 MP that would otherwise be spent on an attack while you are below 50% MP, based on the amount of damage nullified by the defensive use of MP, and each attack slightly to reduce the cost of your next defensive use of MP by 600.
  
  
• Darkside trait revised. It now instead increases Attack Speed by 10% and Movement Speed by 5% for 6 seconds per MP spender. Multiple instances may exist simultaneously, to a maximum of 4 stacks' worth of additional Speed, but do not refresh one another. Darkside gauge UI rehauled. (Yes, you can go fast now. Yes, this will mean potency changes across the board.)
• New trait added, Blood for Blood - Your healing done is increased in equal portion to your missing health. Damage to be taken over time counts as if you had already taken that damage. (Can drop lower for bigger self-heals. Synergizes well with Living Dead.)
  
  
• Delirium made more distinct from Inner Release. It instead now, for 10 seconds, freezes the timers of existing and future applications of Darkside and Blood Weapon or Blood Price while increasing your spells' and weaponskills' MP and Blood generated by 50%.
• Blood Weapon again lasts a set duration, 12 seconds, rather than for 5 hits. It therefore marks a burst window (since you want small GCDs via Darkside over that time, rather than merely a 1-off resource-generator CD (one free MP and Blood spender each).
  
  
• Shadowbringer now costs 3k MP in itself. Salt and Darkness is now a Dark Arts action, thereby costing 3k MP. This adds 3 weave spaces, reducing our maximal condensed oGCD load from 16 to 13, giving enough room for all our class defensives.
• In compensation for the added MP costs above, we generate roughly that much more MP (5600 more MP generated per minute). Carve and Spit now generates 600 MP and deals 210 potency for each of its 3 strikes (1200 more MP/min), Blood Price has been returned and can be cast on others, and the remainder is handled by Syphon Strike, Stalwart Soul, and Blood Weapon's MP per hit.
• All in all, this will move 3 casts per 2 minutes from our most overcrowded sections to our more barren sections. We remain bursty, especially with Darkside creating mini-burst windows, but it's less concentrated into just our 2-minute windows.
  
  
• [Less important] Quietus and Abyssal Drain swap places, since Quietus (a sending off of one's spirit) and Carve and Spit both have a more soul-carving/splitting/scattering element and Abyssal Drain and Bloodspiller both have a, well, bloodier aspect.
• [Less important] Certain actions now have the Deathblow additional effect, causing them to deal up to triple damage if they would thereby finish off a target (if target HP is ≤ twice the attack's damage, they die instantly).
• Blood costs reduced to 40.
  
  
• Blood Price readded with some further defensive and situational offensive implications. Oblation (revised) is now a Dark Arts extension of Blood Price. TBD: Blood Weapon and Blood Price cannot exist simultaneously and will steal each others' duration if used atop one another.
• Shadowskin returned, though with new functionality (excels against small hits via flat damage reduction) and the ability to be placed on others after a level 56 trait. The Blackest Night is now a Dark Arts extension of Shadowskin.
• Dark Mind now also reduces physical damage taken by 10%. Dark Arts: Mind Break - instead decreases nearby enemies' magical damage dealt by 20% and all further damage by 30% of your Defense. (Uses the old Tar Pit animation.) [TBD]
  
  
• Living Shadow, Blood Weapon, and Blood Price can be much more flexibly timed, functioning more alike to a stance than mere rigid CDs, draining X seconds of charge skill for every second active. They must be at least 40% charged to be used and cannot be toggled off until having lasted for at least 40% of their maximum duration. They're therefore flexible, but not easily cheesed.
• Living Shadow no longer costs Blood. Maximum charge time increased to 180 seconds. Maximum duration reduced to 18 seconds (drains 9 seconds charge per second of use). Potency increased. If toggled off, Living Shadow will end after its next attack.
  WIP. This is largely just basic future-proofing for doing other cool things with Living Shadow by level 100.

Works in Progress:

• Obvious potency change requirements are obvious.
• May avoid using DA on defensives, instead keeping the higher button count of non-combo-ed defensive actions.
• May remove defensive spenders' refund mechanism and instead rely only on the opposite (attacks increasingly making defensives free).
• Still need the specifics of each DA action.
• Need to ensure that there's enough counterplay to Darkside to not make it overly burn-then-bored.
• Still figuring out what exactly I want to do with Blood Price and Dark Mind.
• Not sure what cool Living Shadow things to save for 100 vs. give earlier.
• May keep TBN separate, and just allow one to sacrifice the remaining barrier for some effect (without refund mechanism), or make it just a direct upgrade to Shadowskin that uniquely shortens its CD with damage nullified.

Tl;dr:

• Moved 3 oGCDs casts from the 2-minute burst window to the space between 2-minute burst windows, making the barren parts less dull and the crowded parts less claustrophobic. This was done via attaching MP costs to Salt and Darkness and Shadowbringer and increasing MP generation in compensation.
• Changed us from having 2 MP spenders that require 2 discrete buttons to ~16 MP spenders that require just 1 discrete button via a Continuation-like version of Dark Arts.
• Replaced Darkside with a short but potent 10% Attack Speed boost after spending MP, allowing us to reach some enjoyably hectic speeds. This will reduce DRK to single-weaving at 3+ stacks, however, and caps at 4 stacks (1.5s GCD), but space has been made for that and defensive Dark Arts uses don't need to be especially responsive.
• Shadowskin returned as an on-demand mitigation tool. Blood Price returned as a resource+mitigation tool. DRK effectively gets 4 extra --though competing or at-offensive-cost-- defensive actions without needing a single extra button for them (just hit that same button again to spend 3k MP for a related follow-up effect to Shadowskin, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind, or Blood Price).

Yeah i like the oGCD spam because at least im under the illusion im doing something more involved, unlike the other 3.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Mecia

Yeah i like the oGCD spam because at least im under the illusion im doing something more involved, unlike the other 3.

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I'm not even under the illusion of doing something after the oGCD spam, and during the spam I feel like I'm doing too much.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

snip

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So what is YOUR suggestion for handling the button bloat caused by the many oGCDs Dark Knight has then? Because I have not seen compelling argument to keep the bloat in the slightest, and every argument that is against what I have suggested that I have seen does not even address the button bloat. Because everyone else is more worried about adding more traits that do not fix the overall issues with Dark Knight as of right now, than actually fixing the issues with Dark Knight, and that is bloated opener, a boring filler rotation and with Dawntrail, even more button bloat that causes the already bloated opener more bloated, and everyone else would seem to be perfectly fine with it until people drop it because the oGCD spam causes clipping issues with the GCD, and everyone would want the GCDs that currently exist into oGCDs Dark Knight because they want the highest APM imaginable and think High APM is also Dark Knight's identity.

Citation:

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

So what is YOUR suggestion for handling the button bloat caused by the many oGCDs Dark Knight has then?
<snip>
even more button bloat that causes the already bloated opener more bloated, and everyone else would seem to be perfectly fine with it until people drop it because the oGCD spam causes clipping issues with the GCD

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There is little consensus that DRK is particularly button-bloated. It is the fewest buttons among the tanks. And "solving" that is as simple as in some way wrapping the effective total damage nullification Oblation into either TBN or Dark Mind (changed to be castable on others, perhaps by upgrading to that new "Oblation" form).

Or, as in the post directly above, by trimming the bloat from the Tank Role Actions. We do not need have Rampart siphon power away from our own native tools; we could instead just have a 2nd charge and a lower recast time on our core 60-90s defensives. We do not need separate buttons for Low Blow and Interject. We do not need Shirk. We would not even need our various names for "Tank Stance" if we merely buffed Provoke.



It's also not what makes our opener bloated. Salt and Darkness is not a different button from Salted Earth. The second cast of Shadowbringer is not a different cast from the first. Those 4 edges are not separate buttons. That's a matter of density/timing of casts. On which note...

For the... fifth(?) time now.

You take casts from where the density of casts is too much... and instead put it anywhere the density of casts is too little.

Attaching a MP cost to Shadowbringer and increasing MP generation by 3k MP/min already gives our 2-minute burst back 2 weave spaces. And it gives us 2 more Edges between each of our 2-minute bursts instead of us half-forgetting it exists during those lulls.

Attaching a MP cost to Salt and Darkness and increasing our MP generation by 2k/min gives our opener back 3 weave spaces. And it gives us 1.33 more Edges between each of our 2-minute bursts instead of us half-forgetting it exists during those lulls.

Attaching a MP cost to Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain and increasing MP generation by 3k MP/min already gives our 2-minute burst back a weave space. And it gives us another Edge between each of our 2-minute bursts instead of us half-forgetting it exists during those lulls.

These each makes zero change to the job's APM. That APM is merely moved from where "There's too much!" to where "There's not enough!"

It is that simple.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

For the... fifth(?) time now.

You take casts from where the density of casts is too much... and instead put it anywhere the density of casts is too little.

Attaching a MP cost to Shadowbringer and increasing MP generation by 3k MP/min already gives our 2-minute burst back 2 weave spaces. And it gives us 2 more Edges between each of our 2-minute bursts instead of us half-forgetting it exists during those lulls.

Attaching a MP cost to Salt and Darkness and increasing our MP generation by 2k/min gives our opener back 3 weave spaces. And it gives us 1.33 more Edges between each of our 2-minute bursts instead of us half-forgetting it exists during those lulls.

Attaching a MP cost to Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain and increasing MP generation by 3k MP/min already gives our 2-minute burst back a weave space. And it gives us another Edge between each of our 2-minute bursts instead of us half-forgetting it exists during those lulls.

These each makes zero change to the job's APM. That APM is merely moved from where "There's too much!" to where "There's not enough!"

It is that simple.

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That was not what I was asking, I was asking about the button bloat, not the bloated opener. All you did was answer a question I didn't even ask.

Citation:

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

That was not what I was asking, I was asking about the button bloat, not the bloated opener. All you did was answer a question I didn't even ask.

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Because I answered it already in my first post replying to your suggestions?

Step 1: Trim 4 unnecessary button from the Tank Role Actions.

PLD has more buttons than DRK (36 keys). GNB's button count is only 2.8% less than DRK's. Any complaint that can be had of DRK's "button bloat" can be had of every tank (or, at least every non-Warrior Tank).

You can do this by...

• Buffing Provoke to also force the enemy to target you for 5s or until replaced by another Provoke and permanently increase your Enmity generated against the target until replaced by another Provoke. This forgoes any need whatsoever for Shirk and Tank Stance. 2 buttons saved.
  
  
• Replacing Rampart with job-specific kit value. Add a further charge to Camouflage, Dark Mind, and Thrill of Battle and reduce their recast times. Slightly adjust other defensive CDs if necessary to retain similar damage nullification over time. (Dark Mind would be generalized to include physical damage either way.) 3 buttons saved.
  
  
• Consolidating Interject and Low Blow. Keep one or the other, or even replace them with a new name and animation. Whatever. Give it 2 charges and a 20s CD. 4 buttons saved.

Step 2: [Not even remotely necessary] Consolidate 1-2 buttons worth of actions from DRK's own kit.

At this point, you're already down to from 36 to 32 keys, but in the interest of future-proofing(?), I guess we could do any among the following (though I'd advice just 1 at most):

• Turn Oblation into an upgrade to Dark Mind that combines the damage-nullification value over time of both. E.g., 2 charges, 40s recharge, 10s duration, 30% Magic Mitigation and 15% Physical Mitigation.
  
  
• Perhaps merge Edge and Flood into a single Dark Arts that'd be therefore dynamic with whatever skill you want to cast next (or, if changed into a follow-up skill), the one cast before. Or, just merge them outright, such that Edge creates a long, narrow cone beyond the slice, or Flood deals greater damage to its primary target.
  
  
• Perhaps merge Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit into a single attack (e.g., a Carve and Spit that additionally does 200p damage to all other enemies in a wide cone and heals you for total damage dealt, or an Abyssal Drain that deals 510p to the primary target and 200p to all others and heals you for total damage dealt).

Again, though, I don't think the latter half is even necessary.

In my countersuggestions on the previous page, I technically removed 8 buttons (Shirk, Interject, Rampart, and any need for Grit; The Blackest Night, Oblation, Flood, and Edge), but also added 2 back (Dark Arts and Blood Price) for a net reduction of 6 buttons, putting DRK at 30. 32 and below is already totally fine, though.

Alright, but how do you address the boring filler rotation for Dark Knight then, especially at the lower levels?

Also, side note; on the topic of button bloat for Dark Knight, for my idea I reduced the total number of actions from 36, including Grit, Sprint and Limit Break, to 29 actions total, and the Provoke is actually a nice suggestion for all tanks, so that would reduce it to 27 actions if we apply the provoke suggestion though you would need to make provoke AoE, or you could bring back enmity management for all tanks.

Citation:

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

Also, side note; on the topic of button bloat for Dark Knight, for my idea I reduced the total number of actions from 36, including Grit, Sprint and Limit Break, to 29 actions total.

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??? Are you referring to suggestions made on another threat / not within the last dozen pages? There isn't a single removal mentioned in your post. Turning oGCDs into GCDs doesn't remove buttons. It merely makes them compete with each other far worse.

Citation:

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if we apply the provoke suggestion though you would need to make provoke AoE, or you could bring back enmity management for all tanks.

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There's no need to have an AoE Provoke. The only use for Provoke is to not need to be able to Shirk, nor, in effect, turn our tank enmity bonus off. By just having the tank stance be already activated upon joining any instance on and the MT opening with Provoke, you'd never need to have "Release [Stance]" on one's bar for mainstay content.

You don't use Provoke to replace Tank Stance; you use it to replace it needing a button.

Citation:

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Alright, but how do you address the boring filler rotation for Dark Knight then, especially at the lower levels?

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I have no idea what qualifies as boring filler to you. To me, every tank has a boring filler rotation. And, to me, almost every job is dull before level 70ish (certainly before 60).

Citation:

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

Alright, but how do you address the boring filler rotation for Dark Knight then, especially at the lower levels?

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Isn't that the issue of not having enough buttons? DRK like many jobs is a victim of SE going overboard on cutting skills and mechanics, but also feeling like they need a full 10 levels worth of skills to sell an expansion.

The game is just ass below lv 70. This isn't a DRK specific issue. Level Sync is just poorly thought out and the devs don't even consider it when balancing or even making new jobs.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Oizen

Isn't that the issue of not having enough buttons? DRK like many jobs is a victim of SE going overboard on cutting skills and mechanics, but also feeling like they need a full 10 levels worth of skills to sell an expansion.

The game is just ass below lv 70. This isn't a DRK specific issue. Level Sync is just poorly thought out and the devs don't even consider it when balancing or even making new jobs.

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Yeah, I know. I wish they address how badly designed level sync is.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

??? Are you referring to suggestions made on another threat / not within the last dozen pages? There isn't a single removal mentioned in your post. Turning oGCDs into GCDs doesn't remove buttons. It merely makes them compete with each other far worse.

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I technically added 6 buttons, including a predecessor to Shadowbringer at level 62, 7 if you want to include the summon pet rename, consolidated 4 buttons into 1 button, 3 buttons into 1 button, and yet ANOTHER 3 buttons into 1 button, both both sets of 3 being consolidated combos, for a net reduction of 7, 6 if count the renamed summon pet ability. Kept the relatively high APM as best as I could, added pity systems for a suggested Dark Arts rework, because while removing buttons might be easier to balance and to sell and expansions worth of abilities, it would probably be more effective for a rework, like the one I suggested while still introducing an expansions worth of abilities, even if it throws balance out the window for half of an expansion.

So you cannot tell me I didn't reduce button bloat with my idea, which I have a mostly final version of on the top of the previous page. VERY HARD TO MISS IT. In fact you responded to it.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

There's no need to have an AoE Provoke. The only use for Provoke is to not need to be able to Shirk, nor, in effect, turn our tank enmity bonus off. By just having the tank stance be already activated upon joining any instance on and the MT opening with Provoke, you'd never need to have "Release [Stance]" on one's bar for mainstay content.

You don't use Provoke to replace Tank Stance; you use it to replace it needing a button.

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You should have mentioned that the first time.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

I have no idea what qualifies as boring filler to you. To me, every tank has a boring filler rotation.

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Spamming 1-2-3 with the occasional 4 every 30 or so seconds and MAYBE a 1 oGCD every 30 or so seconds, especially if it's for an entire fight or dungeon run...

Citation:

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Envoyé par Oizen

Isn't that the issue of not having enough buttons? DRK like many jobs is a victim of SE going overboard on cutting skills and mechanics, but also feeling like they need a full 10 levels worth of skills to sell an expansion.

The game is just ass below lv 70. This isn't a DRK specific issue. Level Sync is just poorly thought out and the devs don't even consider it when balancing or even making new jobs.

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To that end, I'd just take roughly the full list of abilities and instead distribute them at a rate of a new gameplay-affecting new action or trait to every 2 levels starting from level 2 until level 30, then every 4 levels thereafter. I'll do a mock-up for what that'd look like in a moment until the latest expansion.

Or, to put it another way, start by actually giving the game a decent ppm and stat-based approximation for enemy HP to meet a target enemy Time-to-Kill (TTK); this would also allow us to upsync content as we wish (if paired with a flexible addition of filler actions that can be easily rethemed, quickly grabbing particular textures, emitters, particles, from skills attached to the boss's or mob's existing abilities and applying them to a template, for which we'd then just need names). From there, when an expansion is new, you get your 2 new something or others every 2 levels, but as soon as it's no longer the current expansion, that and all prior expansion's additions get shuffled down a bit, and old content is rescaled and re-filled-out according to the additions.

Citation:

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

I technically added 6 buttons, including a predecessor to Shadowbringer at level 62, 7 if you want to include the summon pet rename, consolidated 4 buttons into 1 button, 3 buttons into 1 button, and yet ANOTHER 3 buttons into 1 button, both both sets of 3 being consolidated combos, for a net reduction of 7, 6 if count the renamed summon pet ability.

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Ahh, I see now, my mistake.

I still don't see any 4-step combo or any other set of 4 buttons being consolidated into 1 (you appear to just have Unleash>Stalwart>Salt, Passenger>Flood>Shadowbringer, and Edge>Bloodspiller>Spit), but each would indeed save 2 buttons if you consolidated all of them, for a total of 6; I just read that originally as only of those combos being consolidated, which for some reason I thought was matched by Dark Passenger and Salted Earth being added as a buttons. And if you did indeed turn Living Shadow into a permanent horribly overpowered trait that would indeed be 7. My bad.

Citation:

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

Spamming 1-2-3 with the occasional 4 every 30 or so seconds and MAYBE a 1 oGCD every 30 or so seconds, especially if it's for an entire fight or dungeon run...

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I mean, I won't deny that DRK is that, GCD-wise (though I don't see much point in basing what we do only on GCDs, when GCDs are only a barely over half of DRK's button-presses), though so is every other tank. In fact, if we consider our core combos and its adjustments or occasional spender as similarly banal, there are only a few jobs that differ from that offensively.

Similarly, sure, we could completely retool DRK's and perhaps every other combo, but whereas I'm pretty certain that most DRKs wouldn't agree with you that all oGCD attacks should be purged from existence, I'm not so certain most DRK's actually want complex combos.

Here are a couple quick mock-up of possible takes on what a more complex combo system might look like, though:

Approach 1: No Skill Held Back

For this approach, you essentially just imagine what the job would be like if instead of cycling power ramps rigidly, you just had different skills of situationally-varied priorities that form highly adjustable pseudo-rotations.

Think Lost Ark or GW2 "combos" or "flows", but generally based around (de)buff durations and other synergies rather than CDs as compared to... well, skills being purely traps until you've hit the skill meant to be used directly before them with zero contextual use cases for skipping ahead...

To really make use of each button, moreover, it probably wouldn't rigidly divide actions categorically between AoE and ST. Instead, if it looks like a cleave, it cleaves. And since nearly every greatsword strike looks like it'd bisect, impale, crush, or shadow-blast multiple people per swing... they now do as they appear to.

As such, you might have every attack deal some amount of immediate damage, with further additional effects atop that, such as...

• Trait - Pull of the Abyss - Your damage dealt to afflicts your victims and enemy damage nullified your attackers with Pull of the Abyss, which sources later attacks.
• Trait - Darkside - Your MP spent generates an equal amount of Darkside, shown on your MP bar as a darkened portion of MP, which can be spent by certain abilities.
• Scourge - Inflicts damage over time to the primary target. Semi-circular AoE.
• Syphon - Steals 400 MP immediately and a further 800 MP over 12 seconds. Semi-circular AoE.
• Unleash - Consumes a portion of Darkside to cause your attacks to deal additional flat potency to each enemy afflicted.
• Crush (animation of Power Slash) - Consumes a portion of Darkside to suppress a target and to a lesser extent enemies near it. Short linear/rectangular AoE.
• Souleater - Generates 15 Blood and heals for 300 potency. Consumes a portion of Pull of the Abyss to deal up to double effect.
• Unmend - Reduces the recast time of Plunge by 15 seconds. Now a "bulb" AoE (area of effect combines a linear attack towards the enemy with a radial attack around the enemy; can still only hit once).
• Stalwart Soul - Consumes Darkside and Pull of the Abyss to generate a barrier on self.
• Bloodspiller - Consumes Black Blood to deal heavy damage and inflict Bloodshed on the primary target, causing them to heal their attacks by a flat amount; effect doubled on attacks that normally generate healing. Additional Effect: Deathblow - Bloodspiller deals up to 250% damage if doing so would finish off its target. If it does so, nearby allies are healed for the damage dealt and you for thrice that damage dealt.
• Quietus - Inflicts Deliverance, which causes its victims to give the Dark Knight HP and MP upon death, increased by any remaining Pull of the Abyss. Additional Effect: Deathblow - Quietus deals up to 250% damage if doing so would finish off its target. If it does so, all nearby enemies are afflicted with the Pull of the Abyss the target would have had (including from Quietus).

Approach 2: Dynamic Combos

The goal of the next approach is that however many buttons you have is, generally, the number of choices you'd have that'd at least be very frequently conditionally competitive, in every GCD.

That said, it doesn't exactly want to spend 8+ buttons to that effect and may wish to actually have far more actions available to it than just its number of buttons, even if they're not all accessible in each GCD.

For instance, just for now, that we restrict ourselves to 4 buttons, one for Steel, one for Soul, one for Shadow, and one for Blood:

• You can open with any of those, and you finish by using that same button again. Simple, right?
  
  That means, though you can use anywhere from 2 to 5 GCDs per string (AA/BB/CC/DD being the shortest, and something like ABCDA or BACDB being the longest).
  
  Each opener would convey some benefit (via duration or resource similar to Sen into Iaijutsu) to the finisher (the use of an already used button). As such, you'd have technically, what... 24 combo options. And yet that took only 4 buttons.
  
  
• Or move that to a 3rd stage, again with 4 buttons. Whatever you use a third time ends the combo string. That'd allow for some stupidly long 'combo' strings (AABBCCDDA), but this is just food for thought.
  
  
• Or just have each combo be 3 steps long, and the prior 1-2 buttons, respectively, determines what finishers are possible / what they'd do. Simple but effective.
  
  
• Or the same as the one above, but with 4 steps.
  
  
• Etc., etc.

The point is just that you can get a far greater number of actions than buttons for a small degree of constraint. And the only big limitation is that total number of meaningful choices should depend more on synergies rather than actual separate conditional skills (A->B->C = unique skill combination #11, etc.) in order not to have too many names to memorize or animations to be developed.

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

To that end, I'd just take roughly the full list of abilities and instead distribute them at a rate of a new gameplay-affecting new action or trait to every 2 levels starting from level 2 until level 30, then every 4 levels thereafter. I'll do a mock-up for what that'd look like in a moment until the latest expansion.

Or, to put it another way, start by actually giving the game a decent ppm and stat-based approximation for enemy HP to meet a target enemy Time-to-Kill (TTK); this would also allow us to upsync content as we wish (if paired with a flexible addition of filler actions that can be easily rethemed, quickly grabbing particular textures, emitters, particles, from skills attached to the boss's or mob's existing abilities and applying them to a template, for which we'd then just need names). From there, when an expansion is new, you get your 2 new something or others every 2 levels, but as soon as it's no longer the current expansion, that and all prior expansion's additions get shuffled down a bit, and old content is rescaled and re-fieshed-out according to the additions.

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Basically a level/stat squish like with how World of Warcraft did it, if I'm understanding this correctly. The alternative would be to make level sync just not affect what abilities have at that level, which would be easier on the devs, but level/stat squish is inevitable if the devs plan to go past level 100... Also, I'm gonna go out on limb here and assume that ppm means Potency Per Minute. But other than that, yeah I have to agree on that.

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

snip

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I didn't want get rid of a lot of Dark Knight oGCDs either, but I didn't want oGCD spam for a bloated opener, with almost nothing to do in between the next burst window, and the 1.5 GCD combos/actions were the next best thing. Although I never played Lost Ark or GW2, both approaches you provided could work in theory, the problem would be if FF14 could actually handle it either one of those, and you would need to design 2 whole new jobs specifically for each approach, 1 job for each, as the testing ground. But either approach for Dark Knight I would not be completely against if the filler rotation is at least engaging enough for a lot of people to not complain about it.

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

Basically a level/stat squish like with how World of Warcraft did it, if I'm understanding this correctly. The alternative would be to make level sync just not affect what abilities have at that level, which would be easier on the devs, but level/stat squish is inevitable if the devs plan to go past level 100... Also, I'm gonna go out on limb here and assume that ppm means Potency Per Minute. But other than that, yeah I have to agree on that.

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Not quite. It's just an shuffling of what levels skills are acquired at.

Let's start with ARR. Let's say it gives 20 additions (new actions or gameplay-affecting or otherwise significant traits) over its 50 levels. You'd put the first 15 of those at 1-29 (every 2 levels), and the remaining 5 over 30-50 (every 5 levels). You get the gameplay earlier.

HW then adds at least 5 additions, granted every 2 levels.

That's fine while it's new, but once it's old, you just add it to the lv30+ pile and distribute it more evenly. So rather than getting 5 skills over 30-50 (per 5 levels) and 5 skills over 51-60 (per 2 levels), you'd get a new skill every 3 levels, with 2 of the HW skills being made available earlier (as early as level 45).

Once Shadowbringers comes out, the additions from Stormblood are likewise more evenly distributed. Instead of an addition per 3 levels 30-60 and per 2 levels 61-70, you average an addition per 2.67 levels, with some slight adjustments to fit a new consistent rhythm (32, 35, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47, 50, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70).

Etc., etc. That'd be what you call a roll-in model that would keep each expansion relatively fleshed out but wouldn't overly delay kit depth in the longer term.

And of course, what I want in general doesn't need to be anything so elaborate as that, so long as the kit is pretty solid by level 50, rather than needing to hit 60 or 70 to feel fleshed out.

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

I didn't want get rid of a lot of Dark Knight oGCDs either, but I didn't want oGCD spam for a bloated opener, with almost nothing to do in between the next burst window, and the 1.5 GCD combos/actions were the next best thing.

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Again, though, the opener only needs about 2 more weave spaces. Those 2 weave spaces are all that stand between "enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss" and "not enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss." 3 if we really wanted to be comfortable.

Now, if you turn our opener into 1.5s GCDs, though, we go from having 16 weave spaces between the nine 2.5s GCDs skills we can fit within those 20s to just 14 weave spaces between those fourteen 1.5s GCDs skills that one can fit within those 20 seconds. You actually make it worse.

This is because each GCD of 2.4s or greater room for 4 actions (including the weaponskill) at very low ping, while a 1.5s GCD has room only for 2 actions, despite taking up a 60% GCD. (Yes, players at very low ping or using a plugin to undo the netcode's self-sabotage can weave 3 oGCDs per GCD, but even they will clip trying to weave a second oGCD into a 1.5s GCD.) The 1.5s GCD, atop making Skill Speed worthless, leaves more than you cannot use (.3s, up from .1s).

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

But either approach for Dark Knight I would not be completely against if the filler rotation is at least engaging enough for a lot of people to not complain about it.

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Those models both covered almost solely the "filler" weaponskills, yes.

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

Not quite. It's just an shuffling of what levels skills are acquired at.

Let's start with ARR. Let's say it gives 20 additions (new actions or gameplay-affecting or otherwise significant traits) over its 50 levels. You'd put the first 15 of those at 1-29 (every 2 levels), and the remaining 5 over 30-50 (every 5 levels). You get the gameplay earlier.

HW then adds at least 5 additions, granted every 2 levels.

That's fine while it's new, but once it's old, you just add it to the lv30+ pile and distribute it more evenly. So rather than getting 5 skills over 30-50 (per 5 levels) and 5 skills over 51-60 (per 2 levels), you'd get a new skill every 3 levels, with 2 of the HW skills being made available earlier (as early as level 45).

Once Shadowbringers comes out, the additions from Stormblood are likewise more evenly distributed. Instead of an addition per 3 levels 30-60 and per 2 levels 61-70, you average an addition per 2.67 levels, with some slight adjustments to fit a new consistent rhythm (32, 35, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47, 50, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70).

Etc., etc. That'd be what you call a roll-in model that would keep each expansion relatively fleshed out but wouldn't overly delay kit depth in the longer term.

And of course, what I want in general doesn't need to be anything so elaborate as that, so long as the kit is pretty solid by level 50, rather than needing to hit 60 or 70 to feel fleshed out.

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Okay, but if you had to have a band-aid fix for level sync until this system got properly implemented, would you make it so that level sync let you keep all of the abilities and traits you have unlocked before syncing down? For example a Dark Knight that is level 82, would it keep all abilities they have learned at that if they were synced down to, let's say, Sastasha?

Citation:

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

Again, though, the opener only needs about 2 more weave spaces. Those 2 weave spaces are all that stand between "enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss" and "not enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss." 3 if we really wanted to be comfortable.

Now, if you turn our opener into 1.5s GCDs, though, we go from having 16 weave spaces between the nine 2.5s GCDs skills we can fit within those 20s to just 14 weave spaces between those fourteen 1.5s GCDs skills that one can fit within those 20 seconds. You actually make it worse.

This is because each GCD of 2.4s or greater room for 4 actions (including the weaponskill) at very low ping, while a 1.5s GCD has room only for 2 actions, despite taking up a 60% GCD. (Yes, players at very low ping or using a plugin to undo the netcode's self-sabotage can weave 3 oGCDs per GCD, but even they will clip trying to weave a second oGCD into a 1.5s GCD.) The 1.5s GCD, atop making Skill Speed worthless, leaves more than you cannot use (.3s, up from .1s).

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For the pre-pull opener, at least for my idea of the rework I gave, outside of maintenance buffs like Grit and my Darkside rework idea, it would start with Unmend, Dark Arts, Sole Survivor, the 1.5 GCD combo, with at least 1 Plunges in between each GCD, Blood gauge combo powered up by Blood Arts, with the second Sole Survivor before just as the first one falls off in between this combo, MP Spender combo, with both Abyssal Drains if they are oGCDs, Blood gauge combo since you should have in theory have about over 50 blood gauge at this point, with Souleater combo with the occasional blood combo and Dark Arts combo as filler, which should be enough time to pop defensive cooldowns as needed like Dark Missionary/Reprisal for raidwides, or TBN + whatever else for tankbusters, though for TBN if it happens during blood arts burst and it breaks and break, you go back to Dark Arts burst, though I am aware that overcapping might be an issue here especially at the 15 second mark for one of the pity systems for Dark Arts generation, since I don't know when a tank buster USUALLY goes off in boss fights, though for dungeons this MIGHT NOT be a problem, since it is casual content. I'm still trying to figure out how to iron out the kinks in the pity system for Dark Arts, hence why I also suggested Abyssal Drain also be a Dark Arts spender that grants blood arts if Dark Arts overcapping was going to be an issues since Blood Arts over capping might also be an issue as well. which is where Quietus comes in. Just a rough idea of what the opener would look like, so obviously some optimization would be needed.

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

Those models both covered almost solely the "filler" weaponskills, yes.

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That was my main concern so I'm glad that is indeed the case.

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Envoyé par DRKoftheAzure

Okay, but if you had to have a band-aid fix for level sync until this system got properly implemented, would you make it so that level sync let you keep all of the abilities and traits you have unlocked before syncing down? For example a Dark Knight that is level 82, would it keep all abilities they have learned at that if they were synced down to, let's say, Sastasha?

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Probably not, honestly. The Limited Leveling Roulette option already removed any chance of getting saddled with a low-level dungeon without that being a function of you doing what the roulette was intended to do (help support queues).

While I wouldn't personally mind the option to work harder for the same throughput (me doing perfect Optimal Drift rotations and demanding perfectly paced pulls from my tank while the actual level 18 just goes 123 12(4)3 123 123 for roughly equal output), it just doesn't seem particularly necessary to muddle new players' experiences in that way, nor would you be able to meet the limits of new sustain (be they healing or mitigation) actions and traits particularly well through scaling alone; you'd also want those outright new attacks, which might not be something you could attach dynamically rather than as a different preset version of the instance.

No, I suspect that tech would be used more for the ability to basically make "Unreal" content on demand, and perhaps have an actual Dungeon Roulette (all the player-favorite dungeons, with some degree of rotation, scaled up to your party's average ilvl for commensurately greater rewards) and Expert Dungeon Roulette (the same, but tuned and filled out more challengingly).

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

Probably not, honestly. The Limited Leveling Roulette option already removed any chance of getting saddled with a low-level dungeon without that being a function of you doing what the roulette was intended to do (help support queues).

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Limited leveling roulette is glitched, and doesn't work as intended. Just putting that out there.

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

While I wouldn't personally mind the option to work harder for the same throughput (me doing perfect Optimal Drift rotations and demanding perfectly paced pulls from my tank while the actual level 18 just goes 123 12(4)3 123 123 for roughly equal output), it just doesn't seem particularly necessary to muddle new players' experiences in that way, nor would you be able to meet the limits of new sustain (be they healing or mitigation) actions and traits particularly well through scaling alone; you'd also want those outright new attacks, which might not be something you could attach dynamically rather than as a different preset version of the instance.

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To be fair, new players would probably be excited to see how fully fleshed out a toolkit for a specific job they would have been getting and would want to get that job and it's toolkit as soon as possible. Though this could have the unintended consequence of promoting level skips...

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Envoyé par Shurrikhan

No, I suspect that tech would be used more for the ability to basically make "Unreal" content on demand, and perhaps have an actual Dungeon Roulette (all the player-favorite dungeons, with some degree of rotation, scaled up to your party's average ilvl for commensurately greater rewards) and Expert Dungeon Roulette (the same, but tuned and filled out more challengingly).

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If only Unreal content was permanent.

Hi!
In 7.0 please do major changes to this job, it was left unloved after Stormblood and its rework in Shadowbringers while okay, didn't build into too much in Endwalker. While I hope this was deliberate as to not put the job in a spot where it can't be better, here are some ideas:

- Delirium to grant a combo with DRK specific thematic attacks. Spamming the same attack over and over again is Warrior's identity.
- Consolidation of defenses such as merging Dark Mind and Oblation together
- Using Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain more often, frequency is low
- Living Shadow is a 2 minute button that doesn't do very much, maybe change it to copy abilities that you do or have it execute a cool finisher with you, after it did it rotation of attacks? Or just change it to be a damage buff similar to RPR's Enshroud.
- Defensive tools that can heal yourself for single player content or raid situations where you need instant recovery of HP.
- Maybe a phase where you gain skill / spell speed? No other tank has that.

Citation:

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Envoyé par ItsUrBoi

Hi!
In 7.0 please do major changes to this job, it was left unloved after Stormblood and its rework in Shadowbringers while okay, didn't build into too much in Endwalker. While I hope this was deliberate as to not put the job in a spot where it can't be better, here are some ideas:

- Delirium to grant a combo with DRK specific thematic attacks. Spamming the same attack over and over again is Warrior's identity.
- Consolidation of defenses such as merging Dark Mind and Oblation together
- Using Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain more often, frequency is low
- Living Shadow is a 2 minute button that doesn't do very much, maybe change it to copy abilities that you do or have it execute a cool finisher with you, after it did it rotation of attacks? Or just change it to be a damage buff similar to RPR's Enshroud.
- Defensive tools that can heal yourself for single player content or raid situations where you need instant recovery of HP.
- Maybe a phase where you gain skill / spell speed? No other tank has that.

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No amount of reworks can fix the issue that Dark knight has; A streamer who mains Warrior and can not cope with the idea of another tank doing something slightly better.
This is just a cycle every expansion. Dark knight does unique thing>streamer gets mad his tank can not do unique thing> all tanks can do it now.. ''Oh Dark knight has no identity and needs a rework'' Repeat.

Leaked 7.0 Dark Knight:
lv 92: Enhanced Oblation
Oblation now has a 3rd charge

lv 94: Enhanced Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain
Both now have a 2nd charge

lv 96: Unnamed DRK damage only ogcd # 7 with a 60s cd

lv 98: Enhanced Living Shadow III
Increases Potency of Living Shadow skills

lv100: Dark Rend
GCD that can only be cast under Delirium once per Delirium activation
lv100: Enhanced Living Shadow IV
Living Shadow can execute Dark Rend

Job changes of existing skills:
Salted Earth now has a 60s cd
Dark Mind now has a 90s cd
Shadowbringer now has Guaranteed Crit/DH

please look forward to it

Citation:

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Envoyé par Oizen

Leaked 7.0 Dark Knight:
lv 92: Enhanced Oblation
Oblation now has a 3rd charge

lv 94: Enhanced Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain
Both now have a 2nd charge

lv 96: Unnamed DRK damage only ogcd # 7 with a 60s cd

lv 98: Enhanced Living Shadow III
Increases Potency of Living Shadow skills

lv100: Dark Rend
GCD that can only be cast under Delirium once per Delirium activation
lv100: Enhanced Living Shadow IV
Living Shadow can execute Dark Rend

Job changes of existing skills:
Salted Earth now has a 60s cd
Dark Mind now has a 90s cd
Shadowbringer now has Guaranteed Crit/DH

please look forward to it

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Xenosys Vex Will have a field day explaining why Warrior needs 3 stacks of thrill because of Dark knight having 3 stacks of oblation.

Citation:

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Envoyé par Oizen

Leaked 7.0 Dark Knight:
please look forward to it

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You forgot Enhanced Living Shadow V.
Recast of Living Shadow is reduced to 110 seconds.

I sure love getting LS trait upgrades that amount to basically nothing being added to the job. Its 100% going to happen once again, probably stealing a spot from something more meaningful.

Enhanced Plunge II: 5% chance to reduce Carve&Spit/Abyssal Drain CD by 5 seconds