DRK and HP sacrifice

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Originally Posted by Carighan

There are also plenty ways to do HP sacrifice, but a bit like TouchandFeel implies, these all require underlying changes to both combat, class and encounter design paradigms. We can't have any of them while the dev team insists on this copy&paste class formula which, granted, helps due to the large amount of classes this game has to keep around and continuously add to.

That being said, I feel my favorite variant of this would ultimately be something akin to the Unholy Armor where you sacrifice X% current HP to gain <hp-lost> * Y% (>100%) as a shield with no duration.

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You'd just hit it basically on CD for free eHP (since you get back more than you spend), or a slight further boost to your max-eHP-against-next-attack/chain by hitting it just before receiving a re-top-off before said attack.

Any substance to that for the DRK itself (i.e., not just the healer) seems entirely on paper / via flavor text rather than noticeable through gameplay.

So a bit more on why this works in pvp and not in the current pve context is pretty simple:

1) The enemy damage output is so high that healer resources are focused on actually trying to nullify the opposing team's attempt at bursting an ally down. The DRK is unlikely to spend their HP on moves when they're themselves being burst to death unless they have suicidal wishes. This implies that the enemy is not just attacking the tank all the time.
2) Healers and other jobs have limited healing resources that won't likely be spent to keep the DRK topped. At best some AoE healing like macrocosmos may refill their HP at some coincidence but that's about it.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

You'd just hit it basically on CD for free eHP (since you get back more than you spend), or a slight further boost to your max-eHP-against-next-attack/chain by hitting it just before receiving a re-top-off before said attack.

Any substance to that for the DRK itself (i.e., not just the healer) seems entirely on paper / via flavor text rather than noticeable through gameplay.

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Yes, this would purely be for flavor. But it'd be how I could see such a thing work.

I mean realistically, the HP spenders will have some time gate to them (either secondary resource or cooldown) because making them gated entirely by HP alone and no timer just begs to be broken or cause absolute drama.

Doesn't need to be a long cooldown, but something reasonable like 12-20 seconds for PVE. And as pointed out by others, needs to be at least somewhat fuelable by the Dark Knight itself.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yes, this would purely be for flavor. But it'd be how I could see such a thing work.

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I don't see how that would offer even flavor, tbh. Or why the "flavor" it'd, at best case, "offer" would even be DRK-like, especially if that were the only way they spend HP. Just sounds like a convoluted ToB.

If the new healer attack from healing via 2 GCDs is a gain instead of dps neutral, then we can see this as a potential balance problem. If its not a dps gain for a healer then we can see this potentially as a possible for DRK who would get greedy and then die to auto or raidwide because they spammed it.

If they brought DRK hp sacrifice from PVP then you would have to bring back things to compensate that like Soul Survivor and shorten cooldowns on Carve and Spit and abyssal drain. There has to be a balanced way to heal that damage you are causing which is why it will be interesting to see which route they take.

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Originally Posted by Derio

If they brought DRK hp sacrifice from PVP then you would have to bring back things to compensate that like Soul Survivor and shorten cooldowns on Carve and Spit and abyssal drain. There has to be a balanced way to heal that damage you are causing which is why it will be interesting to see which route they take.

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I think it's likely they will since Mr Prime designed it. It cannot be uncapped like PvP is, but I reckon if the HP spender has a cooldown or is bound to gauge such that you can cover most or all uses with Dark Arts from TBN, and/or the self healing makes the HP spent overall neutral then, especially as OT, it should work just fine. It would also incentivize the DRK player to use TBN far more freely, rather than the current game where you are disincentivized from using TBN unless you're absolutely sure it will break and won't mess with your 2min.

New Dark Art : USE 10% HP to turn TBN to Oblation


Oblation : 35% HP barrier [10% more than TBN], Grant something that boost damage and healing over time when the barrier is broken.


There you have it. A HP sacrifice style without turning into a suicidal patient.

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Originally Posted by The_User

New Dark Art : USE 10% HP to turn TBN to Oblation


Oblation : 35% HP barrier [10% more than TBN], Grant something that boost damage and healing over time when the barrier is broken.


There you have it. A HP sacrifice style without turning into a suicidal patient.

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You haven’t even changed your eHP there.

All that amounts to is a buff to damage and healing received which you would use on CD further reducing TBN’s ability to moved around

And that is fine because the point is give Dark Knight a HP sacrifice style, it isn't focus on gain more mitigation.


But if anyone wished for : the ratio of HP>Barrier could be changed to use 10% for 20% more barrier.


Then it would make TBN a lot harder to break. So maybe give more "sacrifice" style to Dark Knight too balance it out, for example:


New Ability A : Increase Damage Taken by ??% but also Increase Healing received from all source by ??%. Duration :??s

Can I be honest about this whole 'Dark Knight needs to sacrifice HP' thing?
It kind of feels like it's forcing a square peg into a round hole, along with the communities almost constant need to copy the SNES era Jobs.
If Dark Knight wasn't a tank then sure fine, wouldn't be the worst idea even if it has some flaws (Spending to much HP before a raid wide.

But Dark Knight is a Tank, and Tanks need HP to actually do their Job. It's why DRK had MP managing mechanics instead of HP managing mechanics, because having HP spending mechanics on the Job that needs HP to do its job is gonna cause problems very easily. I guarantee you, if there was HP spending mechanics there would be 10 thousand players bringing up problems in less then an hour of implementation.

Can I be hornest about this whole Dark Knight gate keeping thing that has been going for many years? You guy don't help it get better. Infact it kept Dark Knight stale despite someone could find the idea that work.

Honestly health spending should be a thing on a dark knight. It would at least mean during walking dead you are also tackling a different axis, where during those 10 seconds you are gaining health and filling a condition for undead rebirth, you are also spending health SAFELY in order to deal more damage.

Healers always request to be doing more than glare spam, okay, then heal spam the dark knight so the dark knight can keep spending health to do more damage.

And if dark knight players think that would be too much, the alternative is give that new gameplay to warrior as warrior also comes with a lot of self-healing and mitigation. After all, if dark knights view their job kit being similar to warrior and want to be different, they need to utilize health as an expendable gauge unlike how warrior plays.

The only alternative is to give health spending for power to a new tank while dark knight stays as it is.

EDIT: As spending health as a resource is just something that a lot of games have learned is a very real and potentially powerful thing. That the only health values that really matter is a binary thing of 1 (alive) or 0 (dead). Any health above that which when spent and factoring potential incoming damage that doesn't knock you down to 0 means the player is safe. Its essentially an advanced form of gameplay and as one might guess, its something that newer players are uncomfortable with.

To give an example that can be done in-game right now, I am playing warrior, I have the geomancer phantom job equipped. I am rewarded everytime I take damage from an enemy through battle bell by getting a stack, up to 8. Each stack increases my damage dealt by 5%, up to 40%. To accelerate this process of gaining battle bell stacks, I intentionally stand in aoes that are otherwise avoidable, as I can afford to take on that risk and those vuln stacks, and so long as I don't die, I am not really punished for taking on risk, only rewarded. If I could also combine that with phantom job that is berserker at the same time, I could then enter rage for 10 seconds, and so long as I survive, all that compounded damage I took on is amplified by my existing vuln stacks, which I then use powerful blow which factors in that taken damage and that 40% damage increase from battle bell to deal a very large amount of damage in return.

That whole example is something that flips the script on what good gameplay looks like in ffxiv because normally you avoid taking on risk because there is no benefit, that you don't normally treat your health as a spendable gauge.

BIG NOPE!!!


Dark Knight got robbed by Warrior so much that We shouldn't be giving anymore to them.


Beside, this is a thread that dedicated to a new mechanic for a Dark Knight job discussion. I would be appreciated if we could refrain from drag other tank such as Warrior in unless it is necessary.

I mean it also requires Dark Knight to be seen more as they often are, like the Shadow Knight in EQ1, as a Warrior/Necro hybrid to contrast with the Paladin being a Warrior/Cleric hybrid.

Then the whole HP-sacrifice would also intuitively fit. However, FFXIV Dark Knights aren't... they're not really that, lore-wise.

Then maybe stop taking only XIV as the only lore that we can approved?

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Originally Posted by The_User

BIG NOPE!!!


Dark Knight got robbed by Warrior so much that We shouldn't be giving anymore to them.


Beside, this is a thread that dedicated to a new mechanic for a Dark Knight job discussion. I would be appreciated if we could refrain from drag other tank such as Warrior in unless it is necessary.

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Except warrior is relevant to dark knight. As okay if we make the argument about health spending and we point to pvp, both warrior and dark knight share that aspect in gameplay where they turn health into damage. With Dark Knight it is their limit break known as Eventide. With Warrior it is Orogeny.

And that also lorewise, they are not that different from each other. The long and short of it is both jobs are about the jungian concept of shadow integration, Warrior's involves the Beast aka the Id, while Dark Knight's is Fray aka the Ego. The point about shadow integration is to not suppress the shadow nor let the shadow possess the self, but instead to learn from it and harness it and to wield the darker aspects of the self with clarity and purpose. That both are about mastering battle techniques that are considered taboo by society. Like Warrior's level 30 quest is literally watching another Warrior get possessed by their own shadow, called the Beast, and level 50 is having to fight your mentor who also gets possessed by their own shadow. Warrior's HW quests is about how your original mentor still struggles with not letting their shadow possess them. That both jobs can be considered two sides of the same coin.

And if Dark Knight really wants to differentiate itself in PVE content, it needs mechanics that Warrior doesn't have, that is why argue for it so that it can feel more different in terms of its general gameplay loop.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

Except warrior is relevant to dark knight. As okay if we make the argument about health spending and we point to pvp, both warrior and dark knight share that aspect in gameplay where they turn health into damage. With Dark Knight it is their limit break known as Eventide. With Warrior it is Orogeny.

And that also lorewise, they are not that different from each other. The long and short of it is both jobs are about the jungian concept of shadow integration, Warrior's involves the Beast aka the Id, while Dark Knight's is Fray aka the Ego. The point about shadow integration is to not suppress the shadow nor let the shadow possess the self, but instead to learn from it and harness it and to wield the darker aspects of the self with clarity and purpose. That both are about mastering battle techniques that are considered taboo by society. Like Warrior's level 30 quest is literally watching another Warrior get possessed by their own shadow, called the Beast, and level 50 is having to fight your mentor who also gets possessed by their own shadow. Warrior's HW quests is about how your original mentor still struggles with not letting their shadow possess them. That both jobs can be considered two sides of the same coin.

And if Dark Knight really wants to differentiate itself in PVE content, it needs mechanics that Warrior doesn't have, that is why argue for it so that it can feel more different in terms of its general gameplay loop.

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PVP is not really based on Job Lore. Stop trying to rob Dark Knight.

Beside, between these 2, Dark Knight is the first who got Sacrifice HP for something or gain damage when lose HP since FFXI. HP Drain and Sacrifice HP for damage since FF Tactics War of Lions. Meanwhile Warrior only get to have what belong to Dark Knight after Yoshi team failed with ARR Warrior job design and don't know what to do with it in HW.


The fact that WAR got HP>damage mechanic isn't because it is faithful to the lore.

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Originally Posted by The_User

The fact that WAR got HP>damage mechanic isn't because it is faithful to the lore.

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Yeah but it feels cooler and fitting for a Warrior to be so reckless they hurt even themselves! /bulb

I know, I know. DRKs need cool stuff, too. Not just the goopy awesome animations. It's a bit tricky, since they aren't Shadow Knights here.

We don't need to be Shadow Knight when we got the lore and job history that we suffered to gain power.

Problem is HP sacrifice is not a FFXIV DRK staple. Using MP is. HP sacrifice was only recently implemented in PVP with the revamp but even still with that implementation DRK was given plenty of tools to self sustain to mitigate that hp sacrifice. How do you do that in a PVE setting, as a tank without completely overhauling DRK's self sustain kit without making it WAR 2.0 in terms of self healing and balance that at all levels of play? I think devs are going to dig more into the MP usage and if they go into HP sacrifice it will be very limited in how often you can use the HP sacrifice( ex. unable to use HP sacrifice move while under 50% HP).

That is why I said "Then maybe stop taking only XIV as the only lore that we can approved?"


If you're only taking from a few expansion and a few job quest from XIV it wouldn't be enough.


If we're able to sacrifice HP to create stronger TBN [and maybe a tool that make us take more damage but also increase healing received] it could work.

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Originally Posted by The_User

If we're able to sacrifice HP to create stronger TBN [and maybe a tool that make us take more damage but also increase healing received] it could work.

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That's strictly inferior to not doing that, though. I mean it could still work, but it'd be an intentional downside of the new Unholy Shield TBN, basically.

Gotta have negative to balance out with positive.


Darksides theme is Power for a price after all.


While [Dark Art/Darksides] sacrifice HP for stronger TBN make it harder to break, we can make it last longer and Dark Knight could use another tool that make them take more damage but receive more heal as well to fix that. More over if TBN is stronger then we might just not use some cooldown to let it break and the More Damage, More Heal tool can be used whenever there is no serious damage coming to get the heal benefit. It is a risk/reward style that we can manage.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

That's strictly inferior to not doing that, though. I mean it could still work, but it'd be an intentional downside of the new Unholy Shield TBN, basically.

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It would require a more comprehensive tank rework, since you can't have only one of them with intentional tradeoffs.

If all tanks got intentional tradeoffs wouldn't that make it less unique?

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Originally Posted by The_User

If all tanks got intentional tradeoffs wouldn't that make it less unique?

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Technically yes, but the fact is that you can't have one tank with tradeoffs while the others don't, that would just make one tank objectively worse than the others.
Since every tank needs to, at a baseline, be able to deal with every tank mechanic. You would then have 3 tanks that can just do it for free and one that either can't, or it also can and then the tradeoff is never actually worth doing.

The problem is going to be balance. Make DRK deal to much damage and players will want to prio DRK tanks for content, make it too weak and this will just make lesser skilled healers dislike healing them.

it can be balanced if we have a smarter way to design encounters

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

it can be balanced if we have a smarter way to design encounters

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Yeah but that loops back to the age-old problem of how to balance healers and such: Smarter encounter design.

How am I gonna make healer dislike DRK if the sacrifice HP version of TBN is like 60s recast on top of having a self heal that pop when the shield break?


Let's say I use 10% or 5% of my HP to give TBN 2 fold of what I sacrificed and I got a heal when it break to cover the hp or even heal more than the hp that I spend, why would a healer need to heal me at all?



Beside the dps increase could just be at the level that it make DRK deal within 5% more dps than the other tanks.

There really is no reason to have WAR or other tank dip in this style unless you really really want it too.

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Originally Posted by The_User

Let's say I use 10% or 5% of my HP to give TBN 2 fold of what I sacrificed and I got a heal when it break to cover the hp or even heal more than the hp that I spend, why would a healer need to heal me at all?

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If you use the "redesigned" TBN on yourself as far as I understand it there would be no particular reason, but arguably the mechanic would not be a "sacrifice". Your eHP would either stay the same with a 1:1 "HP to shield" conversion, or increase with a higher multiplier.

If you use TBN on someone else it would be different: then you would be "sacrificing" your own HP to increase someone else's eHP.

At what point do you have to look back and say, you know what, if I have to keep adding effects to not make a redesign not suck, maybe, the initial idea just doesn't work.

Even if we just look at TBN taking HP and giving an equivalent shield, that is still a downgrade as you gain no extra effective HP. In fact, the HP you have sacrificed is not less effective just due to the fact it has a duration, and is therefore temporary, as opposed to your regular HP that doesn't decay. The only thing that can be said is, if you get healed, you do get more eHP, but now you are relying on a healer or the ability to self heal to take advantage.

When you dig into it, in the case of mitigation, using HP as a resource is counter productive. You need that HP to help you survive, so, in order to counteract that, you need to make the mitigation stronger. You then have to content with the missing HP itself, if you get healed before the attack, you are just making the defensive that much stronger, maybe to the point it just gets too strong for its intended use. This is before we even talk about where that extra healing is coming from and the impacts that will potentially have.

If we were to look at past games, DRK wasn't really a tanking job. Yes, it was sturdier, but that was because you needed the extra tankiness because you were sacrificing HP. If you were less tanky, you would likely die.

If we translate this into FFXIV, DRK is a tank, it doesn't need the extra tankiness to survive because it is sacrificing HP, it needs it because it is being smacked in the face. This is then why, rather than sacrificing HP, you sacrifice MP.

The reason effects such as these work in other games is because the context is different. For example a Blood DK tank in WoW has strong, quite regular and partially controllable, lifedrain and self-healing. It can viably support mechanics that would cost HP because it has the tools to work around the HP loss (honestly no clue whether it still works this way, last I played was Cataclysm!). Meanwhile a Frost DK tank naturally cannot do this, it still has some lifedrain, but not enough and not enough control over it to make it meaningfully useful.

If you look at Warrior bloodwhetting, it combines both the self-shield and the healing, so it kinda already has the net result of the sacrifice HP -> gain shield -> heal HP back up chain baked into a single skill. Cutting out the extra steps in the middle and for a good reason:
Context matters. FFXIV is not a game of slow TTKs where self-healing and self-inflicted HP loss are viable as a chain of skills. We die too fast and the lives of players exist in too binary a state.

How do other MMOs that do this deal with the party healer conundrum behind?

Thrill of battle already got that trick and no one have to spend their healing resource on war. It is too earlier to be afraid that this will be overpowered.


Assuming I use 5% of my HP and make TBN barrier increase from 25>35% but somehow healer just heal me and cover the HP I spend that mean I only get 10% barrier increased compared to using TBN alone, if no one heal me it is just 5%. this make it so that the effect from STBN barrier is ranging from 30-35% make it on par or a bit weaker than other mitigations.

This is no way overpowered especially when you can just replace oblation and make it unable to stack with TBN.


Beside, No point worry about the HP that transfer to barrier having a duration and can decay because it will be depleted by tank buster in a few second anyway whether it is not used and stay in HP pool or get transfer to a temporary barrier bar.


There is always a way to adjust or balance and make it work.

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Originally Posted by Valence

How do other MMOs that do this deal with the party healer conundrum behind?

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What does the healer's behind have to do with this?

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Originally Posted by Carighan

What does the healer's behind have to do with this?

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Everything. If any job consumes its own HP as a resource, and its HP is healable, this directly concerns the healer.

That's a stretch when the said HP consume action only use small portion of the HP and can provide healing to cover it later while it can only happen around every 60s.