Why do we need to replace it completly? Replacing the cd with something fun and creative that may burst less while increasing significantly sustained dps by increasing downtime mana regen or something else could result in the same perf
Printable View
I've asked this question elsewhere, but can anyone come up with a burst cooldown that is completely novel? I'm looking for something that you can't draw an analogy to any previously designed ability in the game.
There are various aesthetic variations that you can come up, but in pretty much every case someone can come along and say "Oh, that's just Fight or Flight," or "Oh, that's just a big DoT."
That's the catch, it doesn't necessarily need to be a completely novel skill. It just needs to open something a little bit different.
I've suggested elsewhere that Blood skills should have a combo bonus, and that we had Scourge back as a Blood-dot.
For example :At normal times, you'd use those skills on their own since there's no way to gain 150 Blood. But during Delirium, you would do this massive three step combo that would be otherwise impossible. And with 100 Blood prior, you would even be able to do the full combo twice.
- Quietus : Potency 200
- Bloodspiller : Potency 600, combo effect from quietus : potency 850
- Scourge ; Potency 900 over 60s, combo effect from bloodspiller : apply its full damage instantly
I like it.
Drk has always been my favorite tanking class. I like this iteration of DRK best.
I didn't think Edge/Flood of Shadows would be as interesting as I've found them to be.
My only suggestions would be to drop the cooldown time for Abyssal Drain.
Also, Change living shadow so that it did the same skills you did as opposed to its own routine.
In my post which was deleted about delirium I suggested a skill which decreases the time between each GCD and autoattack by 10% for every weaponskill you land and lasts for something like 24 seconds. I don't think any job in the game does anything like that right now.
After about 5 attacks this would make us hit the GCD floor of 1 GCD per 1.5 seconds.
P.S. Having gotten dark knight to 80 and doing some testing with pen and paper... has anyone noticed that dark side seems to have no effect on our living shadow?
A combo gated by resources that can only be performed at certain time intervals? That sounds suspiciously like Gnashing Fang to me.
But let's be real. Anything that gives you a potency boost is actually Fight or Flight. Anything that gives you resources is Infuriate. Anything that removes or reduces resource costs is Inner Release.
Riddle of Wind.
The problem with speed buffs is that there's an upper limit mechanically to how fast you can go before you start running into issues with clipping.
After a certain point, the only way to get "faster" is to have your character execute multiple attacks per button press, but that's functionally just Fight or Flight under a special animation.
How do you have a living manifestation of your Darkside without having Darkside? You're right, though, I've tried it out and it seems to be the case.
It is weird. I've tried multiple variations but see no difference. I am getting close to writing a consolidated feedback thread. I think the dark knight community does need to come to some consus on what we would like to see fixed. My short list:
1. Living Shadow has no interaction with our personal buffs. Apply darkside to the living manifestation of our darkside.
2. Outside of our opener we seem to be a bit slow. I would like to suggest reducing the cooldown on blood weapon to 30 seconds to give an extra button press as well as increase mana and blood generation.
3. Buff mana generation on delirium from bloodspiller specifically, and add blood generation to make up for soul eater getting pushed out of the combo.
My feeling on this is that move reworks take time, but changing cooldown times and effects does not seem to have the same problem.
1) It's likely that it is spawned as a separate entity and so is not associated with any buffs applied to the player character. If so, to then have our Darkside work on it, they would have to program a state check on ability activation to see if we have the Darkside buff and if yes, apply a buff like it to the shadow and if no do nothing. Likely pretty simple to script, but I am not familiar with their toolset, however that would require an additional query which could affect server load, likely not by much though but is still something that may be deemed not optimal. It may be better if you wanted the extra damage that Darkside on the shadow would provide for the devs to just boost the base potency of its attacks by 10% as if it had Darkside. Then again, maybe the devs want the specific potencies for it for balancing purposes and that is what they set it to.
As for raid buffs/debuffs, I would assume that any debuffs that are placed on the enemy, like Trick Attack, that the damage done by the Shadow would be affected by that since such debuffs effect incoming damage and are pretty independent of the source of that damage. Buffs that are placed onto party members, like Battle Voice, I am not so sure about. If such a buff was used before the shadow was summoned, I would expect it not to affect the shadow, even if it was on the DRK, for the same reasons as why the shadow doesn't get Darkside. No idea if the buff would apply to the shadow if the buff was applied after the shadow was out though since I don't know how it would be regarded in the system for even being able to have such effects affect it. I kind of suspect that it wouldn't be affected.
2) I personally would prefer to not have Blood Weapon reduced to 30s and would instead prefer that the other oGCDs like CnS and AD have their recasts reduced to 30s to provide those other buttons to press more frequently. The reason that I am not really a fan of BW on a 30s timer is because it would then overlap with Delerium every time Delerium is up as opposed to every other time. When they overlap things get a bit "cluttery" with so much resource gain all crammed into such a short period and results in potential double-weaving to be able to dump MP fast enough while still fitting in your other oGCDs in the 10s window. Also the extra Blood generation then jutting right up into a period of free Blood usage means those extra Bloodspillers will have to be used outside the 10s you are aiming for since that time is already consumed by Delirium. It also makes the already maligned (by some) spamming of Bloodspiller even worse since every time you use Delirium you will be likely to be spamming BS 6-7 times instead of just 5 because of the extra Blood from BW. While this does already happen some, I don't think I would want to promote more of it.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad idea and I would take it over no changes, I just think that shortened recasts for other oGCDs would provide pretty much the same desired affect of more frequent ability usage without the potential complications.
3) How much of a buff are we talking about? I think it is pretty close to fine as is, but I would definitely support it being 600MP gained per BS for a clean 3000MP at the end. If there were anywhere I felt needed a buff to MP gain, it would be CnS, or just keeping it the same generation per use with a shorter recast. As for Blood generation under Delirium ... it's not something that I feel is really necessary as I never really feel to starved for Blood, but I wouldn't turn away an extra spiller either, so a bit of a "take it or leave it" for me. If there was Blood generation from Delirium, I would say probably 10 per hit for 50 total at the end, so a free extra spiller.
The big three that I see repeated most often are ...
1) Delirium is too similar to Inner Release. The solutions and how much change is really needed seems to be where opinions diverge the most.
2) More APM / more frequent oGCDs to weave. This has less variants in opinions on how to solve, most just calling for reduced recast times on the various oGCD abilities. Probably one of the easier requests for the devs to address.
3) A bit better MP generation. How much and where this should be isn't really agreed upon, but should be easy for the devs to change if they decide it is warranted.
Then after that the other more common complaints/change requests I know of ...
1) TBN is too hard to break. The consensus to fix this one seems to be just increasing the duration by 2s, like the last time this problem popped up.
2) The Abyssal Drain heal is okay in large packs but terrible in single target and needs to be better balanced between the two. Pretty much only seen two solutions presented for this one, just making it a straight 1200 pot cure that is unaffected by the # of enemies and the one that I made where it kept its current aspects but had a DoT and HoT (that is independent of enemy #s) rolled into it to change it up and push it in the direction of being better in single target while still being better at packs.
3) Salted Earth is way too weak now. Mainly just two opinions I have seen, buff it or get rid of it and make up for its loss somewhere else.
Given I had major reservations from the job action trailer up until launch, I've found myself pleasantly surprised with DRK operates now. TBN -> Edge feels very satisfying to pull off, and it reminds me of the kind of interaction between HW Dark Dance and Low Blow, only with the setup and the payoff being far more noticable. It's very well done, and I hope that in future iterations the devs will build upon the concept of retributive damage.
I agree with your premise, OP, but a few things I do not.
Delirium is kinda... brainless, if I was totally honest. It's not wholly unwelcome to me, as I caught myself enjoying the Bloodspiller spam a little, but while I wouldn't call it awful design, I would call it uninspired, considering how many ways they could have took it. That, and the mana generation doesn't quite seem befitting of a 90s cooldown skill, to me at least.
Bloodspiller is an improvement: I like the fact that I don't have to reserve mana to use in tangent with blood. It is streamlined and dumbed down, but considering that's the theme of ShB, I'll take it. Quietus feels underwhelming by comparison, however.
Salted Earth was nerfed and I'm still struggling to understand why. I can understand the removal of the blood gain, as it'd leave you with odd numbers in your blood gauge, but the cooldown up, damage and duration down seem a little overbearing to me. As you said, it's like it's there to be removed later
I'd also like to see Blood Weapon rolled back to the way it was, but that's just personal preference.
I copied the part about what could be done about Delirium. Honestly, I don't even think this is the best idea one could come up with. While I get your point that most thing one could come up with would already have a counter part within another job, this thinking is super one dimensional for game design (talking about general game design) overall - and I do not think even for one second that the devs at SE would think that way; they undoubtedly have tons of crazy ideas that would make it interesting, fun or/and unique while keeping the burst aspect of it. There can be tons of possibilies what you could do with an ability for bursting which doesn't go down the route of IR. Mage's Ballad would be a great example if you ask me. One just needs a good idea and the freedom+determination to make it a reality. Once implemented, all that needs to be done is balancing numbers, nothing more (I don't want to sound like I'm down playing balancing, that can be kinda rough on its own).
The main reason I'd guess they made Delirium into what it is now is the reception of WAR 4.2. It was actually pretty well accepted overall, though obviously not everyone accepted the changes and thought WAR is way too easy/boring now. They just went with the safe route of what they knew already works... well kinda anyway. I probably did mention that it was lazy from SE to just copy it with minor adjustments (the MP you get is sure as hell very minor) somewhere, just like everyone else; and I'd like to retract that statement. Purely because as I once said somewhere, we don't work at SE so we don't know how decisions are made aside that Yoshi-P approves changes. It's rather questionable if the devs actually have the necessary freedom to change skills into something radically different that isn't seen in the game somewhere else. There's also the thing about how their engine would handle the code. Just too many variables to account for in this matter.
The one opinion that people have stands, though. If one wants to play something like WAR, you just play WAR. What exactly is the point of a slightly tweaked WAR that uses MP for oGCDs here and there? I certainly have never thought to myself something in the lines of "Oh, XXXX job is so extremely similar to YYYY job". Anyone can correct me on this one if you had such a thought though.
As a side note; I'd love to see some changes in regards of MP cost/MP gain. SE could just do it the easy way and lower the cost for EoS/TBN while increasing the MP gain - obviously that would lead to more actions per minute with EoS which I'd totally love, however that would also mean lowering the potency to make up for the more frequent use. The Dark side timer should be also tweaked if this happens. Mostly minor number changes that would make the job more active while keeping what ShB is right now. Best of both worlds, I guess.
Having Delirium unlock a special combo is effectively the same as Gnashing Fang. Which, in turn, is the same as most potency boosting cooldowns.
There's not a problem with Delirium being functionally similar to Inner Release, any more than there's a problem with Living Shadow being functionally similar to a DoT. It's not that it lacks complexity. It's the fact that people are identifying it as being a specifically "WAR themed" action, despite the fact that the two windows don't really function the same.
I don't actually think that the issue is Delirium at all, though. The issue is with Bloodspiller and Quietus. From a purely flavour perspective, they could probably stand to do something a little more interesting, be it stealing a small amount of HP and/or a small amount of MP at baseline, which could then be enhanced through Delirium. But I'd like to see what the actual numbers end up being before suggesting something that's a potency boost.
I think you have to be extremely careful with changes to MP generation, though. If you make resource generation too easy, you take the decision making out of the job.
As an example, you can't burn off the extra blood generated by BW under Delirium. So you have to be careful when those two windows show up together. Likewise, you can't generate blood under Delirium, so you need to prepare an adequate amount of blood in advance if Living Shadow is coming off cooldown at the same time. This is what makes it fundamentally different from something like Inner Release, in which everything is free.
Dude I love these changes, but even I can admit as of right now delirium and quietus are not fine. These skills need to have other effects or something. Also not all of our oGCDs need to be on a minute cooldown. Quietus needs to regain mana on more than one enemy on hit, only 600mp for one enemy hit in a pack is hilarious bad and stupid.
The point wasn't the unlocked combo, that would be just a different animation or just flavor if you will, maybe some other effects added to it too. The point was that it could be more of entering a frenzied state where you attack faster, but it drains blood over time for example - slightly similar to what Darkside did with your MP. You can make it so you cannot aquire blood in this state or whatever. It was just somethin I pulled out of my butt on the spot and sure as hell wasn't meant to be taken as a serious change. Just a proof of concept. Not to mention that DRK has never been a burst oriented job - they could have just went with the sustain theme it had going for it since the beginning and balance DRK around that. There was no need for a burst phase in the first place, they just could some potency to the job on some skills to balance it out compared to Burst jobs like WAR.
Delirium is just boring to use and BS has a part in the reason too. The sound effect and animation just don't go well with being spammed. Hitting multiple Fell Cleaves feels good (for the ones that like WAR anyway) because the animation is awesome, feels impactful as hell and the sound effect is perfect. It hitting hard is even more of a bonus. I like BS, but I'd definitely prefer it being used the way it was in SB. The usage of them felt great whenever you had enough blood and one could look forward to hitting with it. In a way, the feeling reminds me of hitting with Fell Cleave in 3.0. BS just shouldn't be spammed, it kind of kills the beauty of the skills, for me anyway. Opinions might differ.
Also, unpopular opinion but I loved Delirium in SB. Might have not been really that OP, but it felt good to extend BW for the extra MP and most Blood used on Delirium recovered through the use of the longer BW. It was plain, but effective - it was unique and could have been just buffed instead of reworking it. That said, if they buffed it, they obviously would bring back the old BW.
As for the MP thing... I just don't see the decision making in DRK right now. You start with 2 EoS for the Darkside timer, keep enough MP for TBN. Then you gather enough MP so you can use EoS within TA windows along with Delirium while not overcapping on MP, which if you do then I don't know what to tell you. I just don't see it... I like the idea of keeping up Dark Side, but it's way too easy to keep it up without even trying.
Funny enough the Dark arts spam of 4.0 required more braincells to maximize its efficiency than the entire 5.0 DRK skillset combined.
5.0 DKR PlaYing gUIde~~
1 - souleater combo
2 - hit your 60 seconds cooldown ogcds the moment they are up
3 - Inner release 5x buttspiller
5.0 dKr OpTiOnAL ~~
1 - save 3k mana for tbn
2 - hope tbn actually breaks
3 - Pop living shadow and count how many seconds it takes for it to actually start doing something
4 - build 4.5k skillspeed DRK and remember all the good times you used to have
I [Dark Arts] didn't [Dark Arts] enjoy [Dark Arts] the [Dark Arts] Dark Arts [Dark Arts] spam... but I share a similar sentiment as some of the comments up there regarding Delirium: it feels uninspired.
I have long since stopped caring about WOWWEEE ZOWEEE! YOU CAN DO [X] ABILITY [#] OF TIMES IN A ROW!! type of abilities.
Except that each step of Gnashing Fang is useless outside of the combo. And let's be real, Gnashing Fang is anything but gated by the ressource, since you'll have more than enough cartridge anytime its cooldown comes up.
Like I said, the skill doesn't need to be new, the mechanic of the job does. No job has skills that are both in and out of a combo.
Spamming [Edge Of Shadow] darsikde [Edge of Shadow] skills [Edge of Shadow] is not that much different. The only difference is the MP cost, so they could simply have made Dark Arts cost more MP/add more potency and voilĂ ! Spamming problem solved !
There is a lot of ignorance in this thread about the new Delirium.
The focus of DRK is oGCD optimization under buffs while juggling mp to prevent cap and thirst. Because of this and the loss of aggro combos which were avoided in optimal play, DRK has only one combo to use.
However, just spamming Souleater feels tedious and here is the geniality of Delirium: At single target, it gives you Blackblood halt and mana generation break so you can weave your other oGCDs better without worrying about capping your resources. At multi-target, it gives you a mana generation boost for extra Floods of Shadow while still providing Blackblood halt.
Why is Blackblood halt important? First, because you don't want to cap. Second, you want to preemptively build Blood for Living Shadow, halting gives you a window to dump your oGCDs without worries while still monitoring your Blood with no DPS loss.
The only way you can overcap on 5.0 DRK is if you play your skills one by one by going Menu -> actions -> job -> "action"
Saying Dark arts or resource management justifies this hellishly boring and handholding design is beyond anything ill ever be able to understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule
Also your second argument, is completely biased. You can't use your own feelings to define a norm.
I like DRK the way it is now. Please don't change too much.
but maybe additional def CDs? :3
Random thoughts concerning drk skills since I'm bored at work on a night shift.
Delirium - For the next 15 seconds, any skill that uses blood refunds a portion of mana. Any skill that uses mana refunds a portion of blood. All blood/mana gains from combo skills are doubled.
The refund % from blood to mana and vice versa can be used as a tuning knob to control the damage output of the cooldown, same with the duration. The idea is to preserve some of the gameplay of the aoe style that drk had in SB, converting blood to mp and back again. You'd still keep using your main 123 combo to help fuel your meters, but would be using your BS/Edges at a very increased rate because each would help partially fill the other. At least this way you're still dealing with resource management, and you're not stuck spamming a single attack.
Living Shadow - The last 3 abilities used by the DRK (not including def% increases) will be copied by your shadow. 1 min cooldown, 50 blood. 3k mana. (maybe no mana)
The resource cost might be a little extensive, but having an ability that mimics your last three can bring a lot of decision making into the class, plus it feels like our final ability should eat up both of our resources. In an aoe pack? Save up some resource so you can flood twice and quietus, then pop the shadow to double up that aoe damage. Getting hit really hard? AD/SE/TBN and pop it for an extra burst of healing and shielding.
Might be a little bit too strong including TBN in it, but I like the idea of your shadow being able to come out and throw out attacks you want it to, according to the situation at hand, and it takes some forethought of which resources you wanna use/spend to really maximize it.
I like this.
To build on it, I'd suggest that under Delirium, Bloodspiller/Quietus each generate 1600 MP, and Edge/Flood each generate 30 Blood.
The idea here is that going into Delerium with full MP and Blood will allow you to sustain an extended Bloodspiller/Edge of Shadow combo, basically for every 2 you use, you get another one back.
It's slightly fewer Bloodspillers that you can spam, but it's more Edge's you can weave, and I think that would be a much more fun burst phase.
It would also encourage you to save resource, rather than spending everything on cooldown as it is atm.
Personally I think AD should just become a blood spender, that would put delirium in between Requiescat and IR. Im not convinced - at all - that BS spam is anywhere near the burst output of IR FC/Nasty Cleave spam in the same window, so I feel like it should offer one utility as well as damage that would also bring back some of the old spirit of DRK dungeon play and aoe identity. Next up - we need to address "Esteem" first of all, where is his enkindle? Dont look at me like that, you know what I mean. The only thing missing from Esteems mechanics is a Darkside Trance mechanic for summoning him. It was even so important they decided to give you a timer on the DS gauge, so either we should be able to upkeep with DA procs, or have another skill that interactively helps with our "beloved burst window" sp many care about . Idont care if it blows his total potency for one big attack or we just keep him around for a longer time period.
Aside from its spammy nature I wouldn't really compare the role of Delirium to IR. Its way less impactful, but at the same time it isn't the end all be all of our dps. Didn't brush up on the WAR changes yet, but wasn't IR previously a ridiculously large portion of their DPS?
Considering the potency of all our skills, yes, spamming Bloodspiller will not skyrocket our DPS.
Which begs the question of why give DRK a burst window at all if it's not that burst-y ? They could have kept DRK as a tank with good sustained DPS and make Delirium something else than a burst skill.
Fair, and I wouldn't mind it being something a bit more unique, but overall it could be worse, and I'm fine if it stays as is. I think of it as our less interesting version of the GNB trigger combo on a longer cooldown... and less buttons.... and now I'm sad.
EDIT: Actually now that I think about it the only thing that saves it for me is that it breaks up the monotone 1-2-3 spam even if just for a few seconds. That being said if they change it I would probably go mad in an endless cycle of Bloodspiller combos.
5.0 DRK feels like the foundation that 4.0 should have been, where 5.0 evolved more from.
In other words, DRK feels like it's an expansion behind. It's a good base, sure... if this were 4.0. in 5.0 this shouldn't be a good base it should feel complete.
(1) I understand how pets work. I just find it humorous that our manifestation of the darkside does not have a darkside buff, despite being able to receive every party buff under the sun.
(2) I don't think it is supper important what is buffed but we need some cooldowns to come back in the 30 second time frame in order to make the job feel less boring. And being dark knight is the lowest dps tank for the second expansion in a row, though not by a huge margin, this could also provide some buff.
(3) How much of a buff? I was thinking it would be nice if during Delirium bloodspiller and quietus both gave 500 or 600 mana instead of giving two different amounts, (200 for bloodspiller and 500 for quietus). Also having this generate some blood would alieviate another potential issue, that being that you need to save mana going into your second delirium or else you may not have enough blood to summon your living shadow. If you delay anything by any amount you end up pushing your second summoning of the shadow decoupling it from raid buffs at 2 minutes.
so its dmg is still increased by other buffs, just not darkside.Good to know, its probably an oversight or - from what i gather, ds was probably meant to have some other effect on it, that timer on the DSgauge really bothers me, I feel like it wasnt just put there because. Given that DRK is still under damage wise, probably wouldnt have been an issue to keep it out longer
How I would fix DRK (Kind of. It'd still have problems.)
Change Delirium entirely. Make it in some way generate blood gauge, or influence blood gauge growth, but just not what it does now...jesus.
Make TBN give blood gauge when broken again, instead of the garbo it gives now. Now it's either the loss or the same potency it would have been if you used a different ability...
I'd remove the stupid pointless 10% damage buff maintainance entirely, and buff the damage on your MP spenders but this would change too much, so I'll leave this as optional.
Then, this is what brings it all together. Make your Blood spending Weapon Skills and abilities restore MP by default, Buffing the amount when used together with Blood weapon. Imagine if instead of just being a glorified DoT, your shadow boi also replenished you MP when he landed hits.
Everything else can mostly stay the same and it'd feel a hell of a lot better.