Dark Knight Megathread

I want my sea anemone attack back :(

Since it did work back then, I would see no reason why to not...
Dark Knight could have the Abyssal Drain action made back into a GCD AoE with no self-heal, and again have the Dark Arts bonus of a self-heal, that is a actual worth it self-heal, rather than the weak Cure Potency: 200 of the in all ways inferior current Abyssal Drain.

As for the AoE combo, it could be set up with Unleash as the 1, while Abyssal Drain and Stalwart Soul would be the two 2s, that the Dark Knight can choose which to combo off of Unleash.
The idea would be that Unleash is the base, while Stalwart Soul is lower-damage with MP restore and BlackBlood gain, and Abyssal Drain is the higher pure-damage, but there would be the option of to use Dark Arts, to add a strong HP restore to Abyssal Drain... I would prefer it, but I doubt that, the devs would convert Abbysal Drain back to the absorb-damage-as-HP effect, though.. so I think that the self-heal would be some thing like Cure Potency: 300 or 400, and still per-target, not single target.

On that note, for the sake of "Balance", the slight higher potency of Abyssal Drain, would be equal to the potency of a Quietus from three Stalwart Soul,
so that the combo options are a choice, rather than the Dark Knight "need to" use which ever 2 of the AoE combo would be "better".

How to improve the Dark Knight player experience and veteran morale:

1. Stop taking things away from it.
2. Give some of the things that were taken away from it back.
3. Don't take those things away again.
4. Expand on the resultant framework.

Scourge, old Delirium giving the pretense of a meaningful combo game and making the rotation not feel like 2.X Paladin, the Blood Price and self-healing tricks making Dark Knights hilariously effective at taking out trash while incidentally really jiving with the aesthetic of the job as the Warrior of Light indulging in unhinged and self-destructive behavior. Living Dead's a trash cooldown but it's thematically on-point with the job being about the Warrior of Light being completely done with acting responsible for anything up to and including their own well-being.

Put that back into the job. Notice the playstyle that re-emerges. Now take that foundation, because it's a pretty unique foundation compared to the other tanks on offer, and build a madhouse on it.

Dark Knight is about us coming unwound and fraying at the edges, crumbling under the burden of expectations which have only gotten even heavier over time. Shadowbringers is the closest we've come to losing in a very long time. It's about time we reclaimed some of that traumatized, despair-tinged, almost nihilistic fervor.

That means having more substance to the job than a single three-step combo sequence and some stuff to weave in with it. It means that it should, in fact, at times feel like you're winging things and flying by the seat of your pants even after the egg-heads have calculated the mathematically perfect rotation for striking dummies.

I fell in love with Dark Knight on launch because it felt like there was some moment-to-moment decision making to do after I had spent fifty levels and hundreds of quests building up to Rage of Halone until I was falling asleep in Snowcloak from the noise. I took a hiatus and came back to Shadowbringers, and I don't like that the damn cancer infected the job I broke Nidhogg's face with.

Because it's not Dark Knight anymore. It's something that killed Dark Knight and is wearing its skin like a poorly-fitted, grotesque suit; like the alien from the old Men in Black movie.

Make me have to think again when I'm holding aggro, for God's sake.

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Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai

-snip-

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So turn the AoE rotation into something like the single-target one used to be; consistent damage with MP gain, then putting that MP into bigger damage with self-healing. I can see it working.

Being a Dark Knight is having a mix of a savior complex and a death wish.
Just like Batman.
Except the "non-killing" part.

I aggree that DRK feeling more...frantic? chaotic? Would be good. Maybe having a combo system closer to the Monk's could work ?

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Being a Dark Knight is having a mix of a savior complex and a death wish.

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for me, what made me first play Dark Knight, and was proven wrong later, is that I thought Dark Knight would be the escape, the means to get away from the nameless/voiceless no-real-identity PosterBoard hero WoL BS. to me, to be a Dark Knight was just to be a rebel, to turn against the BS light supremacy Eorzean mentality, and to stop being a pawn of the light.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

I aggree that DRK feeling more...frantic? chaotic? Would be good. Maybe having a combo system closer to the Monk's could work?

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Half in page 2 and half in page 3 of this thread, there was a chat between me and Shurrikhan about a theoretical open combo system...
If you have a idea of your own, feel free to share it.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

DRK feeling more...frantic? chaotic? Would be good.

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This, imo. So long as it still has some opportunities for good, decently complex setup and payoff (ideally, to the extent worthy of a villainous chuckle, or at least a good, dark smirk from behind one's helm).

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Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai

theoretical open combo system....

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Shoot, I remember now that I completely forgot to get back to you with a sample. Got about a third of the way through one based on the spitball frame from before, but quickly noticed it better fit Samurai, and haven't had a chance to complete a revamp. Well, that and I forgot.

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Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai

for me, what made me first play Dark Knight, and was proven wrong later, is that I thought Dark Knight would be the escape, the means to get away from the nameless/voiceless no-real-identity PosterBoard hero WoL BS. to me, to be a Dark Knight was just to be a rebel, to turn against the BS light supremacy Eorzean mentality, and to stop being a pawn of the light.


Half in page 2 and half in page 3 of this thread, there was a chat between me and Shurrikhan about a theoretical open combo system...
If you have a idea of your own, feel free to share it.

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Oh no, I'm not knowledgeable enough for that.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Shoot, I remember now that I completely forgot to get back to you with a sample. Got about a third of the way through one based on the spitball frame from before, but quickly noticed it better fit Samurai, and haven't had a chance to complete a revamp. Well, that and I forgot.

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Better fits Samurai, hmn... /think
I did think about it on my own, left to my own thoughts, though... I came up with a idea based off of how combos function in PvP, with the combo being one action that changes itself, instead of three actions that are a combination, and then Kalaam's comment about Monk combos, made me re-think the idea a little, to make a bit more sense, although with still to use the 4-button A-B-C-D layout, to set up the action combos.

the concept is four actions that change themselves, based on what action was last used, to change into the next action on their own, in order to use eight different WeaponSkills across the four actions. My only reservation, before I claim that this concept functions, is: Does the design of how the actions combo also eliminate the repeats that would end the combo early(such as AA, ABB, etc.), and force that a full combo be gone through?, or is it possible to repeat a previous action and end the combo early?

I can think of how to make both ways function, but I am not certain which one to go with, lest I just create two concept, for both ways...

Wouldn't "transforming buttons" be more subject to server ping ? Has to be a reason why linear 1-2-3 combos haven't been turned into this overall. (I guess because updating them depending on your level and the abilities you've unlocked so far is a pain?)
Though this would free up so much space for more abilities.

My issue is that it seems we're getting punished for having so much in Heavensward. The damage, the AoE damage, the wall to wall pulls in dungeons thanks to Blood Price, Dark Arts Dark Passenger, Dark Arts Dark Dance, etc.

In Stormblood we lost Dark Dance, Reprisal (that did damage and had procs), Low Blow (that did damage and had procs), and many other things to the new "role abilities" and lost blood price and our Delirium finisher and Scourge. Basically a large portion of our identity was removed in Stormblood.

Shadowbringers brought some improvements but overall we are still a shell of what we once were. Maybe new players will never notice or think its great but I played in 3.xx and remember when the class was truly special.

It was so fun in HW I had no issues grinding endless dungeons for multiple Relic Weapons and playing from 3.2ish until the next expansion launched. In comparison I've been subbed less than half of the time the life cycle of SB and ShB.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Wouldn't "transforming buttons" be more subject to server ping ? Has to be a reason why linear 1-2-3 combos haven't been turned into this overall. (I guess because updating them depending on your level and the abilities you've unlocked so far is a pain?)
Though this would free up so much space for more abilities.

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It works just fine in PvP, and would make a lot of people whine less about "button bloat", if also used for PvE, so I have no idea why the Dev Team never went with it, unless there is some sort of technical issue that makes the Dev Team not go with it... it would also be a partial assist to, and to deal with, the complaint about actions in my signature...

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Originally Posted by Falar

Shadowbringers brought some improvements but overall we are still a shell of what we once were.

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mnh... ShB wrought more bad things and issues, than improvements, in my opinion, but there was some bare few improvements... Best case scenario,
6.0 Dark Knight is redesigned into a new version that is half 5.x Dark Knight, and half a remastered 3.x Dark Knight, but do not get hopes up for that,
I would advise.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Wouldn't "transforming buttons" be more subject to server ping ? Has to be a reason why linear 1-2-3 combos haven't been turned into this overall. (I guess because updating them depending on your level and the abilities you've unlocked so far is a pain?)
Though this would free up so much space for more abilities.

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Not really, no.

Each animation has a 0.6s animation lock, and each GCD skill can query the server up to 0.5 seconds in advance, meaning it can effectively ignore up to 250 ms of ping (though with some further possible loss based on server packeting and specific additional lag from your ISP). The problems we most often face are simply because oGCDs after the first per gap, apparently, cannot be queued, which then causes uptime costs equal to twice one's ping at that moment (and again worsened by other small factors).

The "transforming buttons", however, would transform at the moment the prior skill is actuated, as soon as the client receives confirmation of an upcoming successful attempt. That wouldn't add any additional hoops; it'd just be part of the same confirmation process we're used to.

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Originally Posted by Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai

Better fits Samurai, hmn... /think

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That was simply because the random example from before had to do with building and spending the consumable portions of certain buffs generated within a given button path. Call said buffs "Seals" or "Sen" and, well, the similarities become pretty clear, even if SAM at the moment uses only 3 rather than 4. DRK felt like it could be pretty close to that, but I wanted a bit more of a momentum and proc component.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Not really, no.

Each animation has a 0.6s animation lock, and each GCD skill can query the server up to 0.5 seconds in advance, meaning it can effectively ignore up to 250 ms of ping (though with some further possible loss based on server packeting and specific additional lag from your ISP). The problems we most often face are simply because oGCDs after the first per gap, apparently, cannot be queued, which then causes uptime costs equal to twice one's ping at that moment (and again worsened by other small factors).

The "transforming buttons", however, would transform at the moment the prior skill is actuated, as soon as the client receives confirmation of an upcoming successful attempt. That wouldn't add any additional hoops; it'd just be part of the same confirmation process we're used to.


That was simply because the random example from before had to do with building and spending the consumable portions of certain buffs generated within a given button path. Call said buffs "Seals" or "Sen" and, well, the similarities become pretty clear, even if SAM at the moment uses only 3 rather than 4. DRK felt like it could be pretty close to that, but I wanted a bit more of a momentum and proc component.

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So I read... I think that I get what you mean? We will find out the hard way, I suppose, when either of us post a example...
While, to be honest, I did attempt.. at this moment, to on-the-spot map the whole format of my idea in my head, with the use of a mental picture, but then I did realize that my bad memory will not allow me to do that, as I thought that I had it, until the moment when I did notice the confusion in my thoughts, and that I had just a part of it... So, although my intent had been for this comment to be the example that I was to think out, I realize now that I will have to instead write it all down first, so that I have it all correct, before I share the concept in here...
But, your response did give me the last piece of my puzzle, so now I just need to write down all of the things and think it all through...

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Originally Posted by Falar

In Stormblood we lost Dark Dance, Reprisal (that did damage and had procs), Low Blow (that did damage and had procs), and many other things to the new "role abilities" and lost blood price and our Delirium finisher and Scourge. Basically a large portion of our identity was removed in Stormblood.

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Blood price was removed on SHB not SB, in SB the skill still existed as a grit only, SHB just focused on remove the rest of our identity.

I remember when I read about that... HeavensWard Blood Price was just MP gain on being hit, while StormBlood BloodPrice was Grit active required, still MP gain on being hit, but had the additional effect of Blackblood gauge points gain, on being hit, while I could not discern if the 4 BlackBlood gauge points over time part, meant either 4 points every three seconds, as a tick, or 4 points total over the entire duration...

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Originally Posted by Falar

Shadowbringers brought some improvements but overall we are still a shell of what we once were. Maybe new players will never notice or think its great but I played in 3.xx and remember when the class was truly special.

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Shadowbringers made Dark Knight worse. I can't see how anyone could claim it made single target combat better, and it 100% made AoE more boring.

I fail to see how drk improved when it was turned into marauder. The only good additions to drk were second step of aoe combo and edge of shadow as an mp spender. We've had nothing else new and unique. Even summon fray is lackluster. Cool for the first time, but useless without rng and enemies not moving.

only two things were along the lines of "Improvement", from my perspective, back at 5.0 release... The Blackest Night, great barrier after it was buffed.. but I hate the mockery of Dark Arts that it has, and the BlackBlood gauge...has potential in my opinion, to be made more of interest and worth it being to consider it as good.
Stalwart Soul was less a improvement, and more just a fix, a filler of the no Dark Passenger or GCD Abyssal Drain hole, in my perspective... while as for Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow, I quite do not like those two much, between the spam and being the replacement of old Dark Arts, which makes it about as bad as SB Dark Arts spam, so I do not see it as a improvement...
although, like the BlackBlood gauge, I have some ideas on how to change them.

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Originally Posted by Erit

How to improve the Dark Knight player experience and veteran morale:

1. Stop taking things away from it.
2. Give some of the things that were taken away from it back.
3. Don't take those things away again.

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And here are some people complaining about ability bloat:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ut-more-skills.


SE is now in a difficult situation. Taking away some ability is wrong. But when they keep them, then it is also not right.


Cheers

The idea of "transforming" buttons for combos would help with that then.
I mean "continuation" litteraly saves 3 slots on the GNB's hotbar.

Dark Knight shares their amount of actions with other tanks roughly estimated, yet in my opinion feels infinitely worse.

The amount of actions doesn't necessarily imply that a job is more fun to play, it's more about how complex your toolkit is as well as how interactivity works. If all you do is spam 1-2-3 however, it goes without saying that it's excrutiating in repitition. They have removed the underlying framework of what made Dark Knight a fun job to play. I attribute this mostly due to Delirium as well as Dark Arts in 5.0 and the 1-2-3 combo.

As for button bloat, I personally never had that problem. I play on a PC therefore it might be different for console players. I can see it working to some extend, though I fear there's a limit to how much consolidation is possible. Not every job could profit from this concept.

We are the only class I know of with a single combo now too.

Sync'd content is just the worst, it reminds me of in HW when you played PLD and had to sync down to 50 and it was so brain dead.

What I expect out of drk this coming expansion: nothing that fixes the job and since the drk edgy dps Reaper is coming the job numbers will plummet then we might get the chance to have the dev time we deserve to make drk feel good. In the meantime it's more gnb time after all I barely played drk in the last year and a half because it's too clunky.

That is my plan, I lament... If there is no improvement to Dark Knight in 6.0, I will abandon Dark Knight completely, and Reaper looks like a good replacement.
The best case scenario reaction, to this no-improvement worst case scenario, in my opinion.. would be for the Dark Knight community to treat 6.0 Dark Knight like 5.0 Monk, until Dark Knight is given a rework that solves some problems, like what 5.4 did for Monk... No improvement in 6.0?, and I will say that it is riot time.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

And here are some people complaining about ability bloat:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ut-more-skills.


SE is now in a difficult situation. Taking away some ability is wrong. But when they keep them, then it is also not right.


Cheers

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You solve button bloat with more elegant design, not by taking a hacksaw to mechanics. Complaints about "button bloat" are complaints about complexity addressed imprecisely, which could be resolved through simple UI redesign that other studios have already hit upon. People who are, in fact, complaining about jobs being more involving to play are almost assuredly trolling.

... Or Scholar mains, but that's a distinction without difference. (I jest, of course.)

I don't remember if I posted it before so... Imma say it again(?) just in case.
One subtle different between DRK and WAR, in the way they use their weapon, is their skill level with it. How easily they wield them.
Warrior, from what I saw of its animations while playing it a bit, controls the weight of their massive axe almost perfectly, their attacks often have little over-commitment. The strike is just enough to hit the target and get back in position. They have the raw strength to use such a heavy weapon.
Dark Knights do not. Yes they are strong enough to use their swords, but they are getting carried with their strikes. In both benchmarks featuring DRK, we see how they let the momentum of their swords lead into large arcing strikes (in HW and ShB benchmarks) and it also shows in their attack animations. It's, of course, reminescent of Guts wielding the dragonslayer, but it also leads into the theme I personnaly felt when playing a dark knight before: an erratic, surprisingly fast greatsword wielder. Their attacks over-commit, are wide and leave them open, but they can be surprisingly fast when they get frenzied on their inner darkness, which lets them tank off the hits they take from their wide openings. It's not the same kind of taking hits the warrior would take, bracing for impacts and facetanking it, the Dark Knight wouldn't even take a defensive stance and just keep attacking while magic makes them survive.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Dark Knight wouldn't even take a defensive stance and just keep attacking while magic makes them survive.

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"Local hero literally too crazy to understand he's dead."

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

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It really only looks this way because WAR spends so much time in their 'ready' posture waiting for their next turn, in order to be historically accurate with Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle System TM.

DRK is furious swarm of dancing blades. You thought there was an open- but oooh, Edge of Darkness to the neck. WAR is turn based combat. DRK is pure artistry.

I wish that they had kept in Low Blow in as a DRK exclusive. It really highlights the flippant disregard for combat 'rules'. Yeah right, there's an opening. Allow me to show it to you.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It really only looks this way because WAR spends so much time in their 'ready' posture waiting for their next turn, in order to be historically accurate with Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle System TM.

DRK is furious swarm of dancing blades. You thought there was an open- but oooh, Edge of Darkness to the neck. WAR is turn based combat. DRK is pure artistry.

I wish that they had kept in Low Blow in as a DRK exclusive. It really highlights the flippant disregard for combat 'rules'. Yeah right, there's an opening. Allow me to show it to you.

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I hadn't thought of that for WAR but that's a good catch too.
And yeah, I liked Low Blow being a quick attack you could sneak between GCD when it was up, especially after a parry.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I wish that they had kept in Low Blow in as a DRK exclusive. It really highlights the flippant disregard for combat 'rules'. Yeah right, there's an opening. Allow me to show it to you.

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When they removed DRK's unique play around Low Blow by turning it into a Role Action, I felt like they'd 'killed off' Frey for a second time. It hurt. That skill just presented DRK's initial theme so perfectly.

Personally I am actually quite fond of only having one single-target combo since it currently solves all the basic resource generation DRK needs. What I get though is the general lack of GCD diversity compared to other tanks, but an equivalent to Storm's Eye or Goring Blade as a comboed finisher isn't the solution.

Probably already suggested, but additional non-combobreaking GCD spenders like consuming Darkside time for a high damage DOT (Scourge) or other buff / debuff management sound like something to break the mold, maybe a Haste effect to make up for the loss of pre-SHB BW haste? Currently Darkside is basically brainless to maintain, so turning it into a resource sounds interesting.

Bloodspenders could maybe also use something to spice it up, not sure what though.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Personally I am actually quite fond of only having one single-target combo since it currently solves all the basic resource generation DRK needs.

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On the flip-side, though, any need which can be fully met through a non-choice (such as a single combo) provides nothing that a stronger auto-attack wouldn't already have done. It merely increases the punishment for (effective) downtime, just as AAs would.

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What I get though is the general lack of GCD diversity compared to other tanks, but an equivalent to Storm's Eye or Goring Blade as a comboed finisher isn't the solution.

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I agree, but only because those combos are similarly non-choices in 99% of content. In single target, Goring Blade, Storm's Eye, and Gnashing Fang are really just... cooldowns. Gnashing Fang is a ~30-second CD, Storm's Eye a (now two-charge) ~30-second CD, and Goring Blade a ~21-second CD. When that cooldown has readied, they will always out-prioritize the filler combo. There are no competing decisions, only buff- or bar-watching. DRK deserves better. Tbf, they perhaps all do.

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Probably already suggested, but additional non-combobreaking GCD spenders like consuming Darkside time for a high damage DOT (Scourge) or other buff / debuff management sound like something to break the mold, maybe a Haste effect to make up for the loss of pre-SHB BW haste? Currently Darkside is basically brainless to maintain, so turning it into a resource sounds interesting.

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Agreed.

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Bloodspenders could maybe also use something to spice it up, not sure what though.

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Just note the same constraints to depth we find everywhere else. If A is always better than B, then B is bloat. If A is always better than B but on a cooldown that makes it unavailable at least half the time, B still gets to exist, but that relationship would be at best half-assed and unoriginal.

That's fine so long as A is itself interesting. But that requires more than, say, Living Shadow's 2400-potency oGCD spender on a 2-minute cooldown "but ooh! look! it's a DoT!"

But, yes, I'm guessing there's something we could do. It's just probably better to have an idea that's interesting in and of itself that may happen to be better off, for potency budget or bankability or whatever other concern, on the Blood Gauge, rather than adding another Blood spender just for the sake of variety in Blood spending. We already have 3, and since the loss of the Blood Weapon -> Quietus interaction, they've all been similarly dull in concept.

DRK doesn't need a second combo. Combos lock you into a fixed rotation. Additional combos are always some variant of base combo/DoT upkeep/buff upkeep/debuff upkeep, which you end up just cycling through in some fixed ratio. Does this metronome-style gameplay challenge your conscious decision-making in any way? Not after about a week.

The Blood system presently is superfluous. It would be fun as part of a system in which you trade-off MP between blood to generate more and more resources, but that wouldn't be intuitive to just pick up and play.

I really like what's being proposed for Reaper. From the sounds of it you can enter your burst window on demand, but it powers up based off of how much you charge it up first. This type of 'resource-gated' burst interests me more than our current 'time-gated' burst windows.

You could do something similar, like this:
1) Get rid of blood. Using Edge/Flood or mitigating with TBN increases your Darkside.
2) Darkside buffs your damage and haste while active by some fixed value.
3) At 50 Darkside, Bloodspiller and Quietus become unlocked as fourth combo actions, to generate even more MP and do even more damage.
4) Use Living Shadow at any point to execute some burst damage depending on how much gauge you've accumulated. Your meter resets after use.
5) You can use a finisher to terminate Living Shadow early and regain some MP and Darkside to start building again.
6) At 100 Darkside, Frey tires of this charade and shows up regardless of what you have to say on the matter.

I think that the problem at present is that every job in the game, regardless of whether it's a fixed rotation or resource-management focused, tends to play out like clockwork. I really just want to see something that just has too many slight variations to spreadsheet out and requires on your gameplay sense to succeed.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I agree, but only because those combos are similarly non-choices in 99% of content. In single target, Goring Blade, Storm's Eye, and Gnashing Fang are really just... cooldowns. Gnashing Fang is a ~30-second CD, Storm's Eye a (now two-charge) ~30-second CD, and Goring Blade a ~21-second CD. When that cooldown has readied, they will always out-prioritize the filler combo. There are no competing decisions, only buff- or bar-watching. DRK deserves better. Tbf, they perhaps all do.

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I think it's a mistake to dismiss those things as "just" buff or bar watching. Historically, the bulk of the depth and fun in FFXIV's combat system has come from each class having a number of internal 'maintenance' mechanics and timers, and half of the game's actual gameplay has been working out how to be efficient and effective in the upkeep of all those maintenance mechanics (the other half is encounter design). The dissatisfaction with the playstyle of classes like DRK, any of the healers, and some of the DPS in the current expansion comes mostly from SE's attempts, over the course of the last two expansions, to remove/trivialize as many of those maintenance mechanics as possible - and I don't think those classes are ever really going to improve unless players can convince SE to re-add maintenance to the game on a class-by-class basis.

It's easy to say that it's simple, and a non-choice, and therefore not interesting, to have a resource consumer that is the most effective use of that resource but is on a cooldown, or a combo finisher that you only use when it's time to refresh its effect. But the Heavensward incarnation of Dark Knight was largely a matter of being presented with a series of such "non-choices":

- Use Scourge every 30 seconds, in between combos
- Maintain enough MP to use Dark Arts on Carve and Spit every 60 seconds
- Maintain enough MP to use Dark Passenger on cooldown
- Maintain enough MP that the Darkside drain won't take you to 0 MP before your next MP regeneration
- Use Salted Earth, Low Blow, Reprisal, and Plunge as they become available (except in the case of a fight-specific instance where you are better off saving Plunge or Reprisal)
- Maintain Delirium, and/or keep MP low enough that you won't overcap if you don't DASE

It didn't have any "competitive choices" (and in fact I don't know if there are or have been any cases in FFXIV where any class did, in any expansion - I'm not sure what that would even look like in the XIV combat engine), but it was still not only generally regarded as a fun and engaging class to play (even on fights that were not, themselves, especially interesting), but was actually fairly difficult, to the point where a "good" DRK was the exception rather than the rule - despite the fact that so much of playing it correctly came down to keeping track of a series of individually-uninteresting 'non-choices'.

Having just one or two such mechanics per class is incredibly uninteresting. Having 6-8, as most classes did in 3.x, is really all it takes to give a class depth and complexity.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

DRK doesn't need a second combo. Combos lock you into a fixed rotation. Additional combos are always some variant of base combo/DoT upkeep/buff upkeep/debuff upkeep, which you end up just cycling through in some fixed ratio. Does this metronome-style gameplay challenge your conscious decision-making in any way? Not after about a week.

The Blood system presently is superfluous. It would be fun as part of a system in which you trade-off MP between blood to generate more and more resources, but that wouldn't be intuitive to just pick up and play.

I really like what's being proposed for Reaper. From the sounds of it you can enter your burst window on demand, but it powers up based off of how much you charge it up first. This type of 'resource-gated' burst interests me more than our current 'time-gated' burst windows.

You could do something similar, like this:
1) Get rid of blood. Using Edge/Flood or mitigating with TBN increases your Darkside.
2) Darkside buffs your damage and haste while active by some fixed value.
3) At 50 Darkside, Bloodspiller and Quietus become unlocked as fourth combo actions, to generate even more MP and do even more damage.
4) Use Living Shadow at any point to execute some burst damage depending on how much gauge you've accumulated. Your meter resets after use.
5) You can use a finisher to terminate Living Shadow early and regain some MP and Darkside to start building again.
6) At 100 Darkside, Frey tires of this charade and shows up regardless of what you have to say on the matter.

I think that the problem at present is that every job in the game, regardless of whether it's a fixed rotation or resource-management focused, tends to play out like clockwork. I really just want to see something that just has too many slight variations to spreadsheet out and requires on your gameplay sense to succeed.

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I like the idea of trying to keep Darkside up but being careful not to get overwhelmed by darkness.
That was the whole point of the first quest after all.

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Originally Posted by Crater

I think it's a mistake to dismiss those things as "just" buff or bar watching. Historically, the bulk of the depth and fun in FFXIV's combat system has come from each class having a number of internal 'maintenance' mechanics and timers, and half of the game's actual gameplay has been working out how to be efficient and effective in the upkeep of all those maintenance mechanics (the other half is encounter design).

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Right, but the complexity of that comes from working multiple around each other. If you have ONLY options A and B, there's no competing decision. There's a critical mass before which the investment has very, very little pay-off. That's not to say that we shouldn't try, only that, as you've just concluded for yourself, it takes several things interacting across a shared decision space -- connected noticeably regardless of whether that be directly or indirectly.

Honestly, I still don't think 3.x DRK hit that critical mass, either, though maybe not do to having too few things in play, alone. Rather, it brings up further conditions -- most notably, alignment and polish: What do those shared decision spaces really mean to accomplish, how worthwhile are those goals, and do they really accomplish those things? When those aren't down solid, seemingly separate bulletpoints like "Maintain enough MP to... <A, B, or C>", for instance, all just feel like a single and very basic gameplay fixture.

3.x DRK got damn close to being great, and was certainly had more going on than the other tanks of the time, imo, but it had plenty of room to improve, from tuning DA to actually be worthwhile or making it more than just a mechanic that appeared to make DRK's defensive CDs less responsive (since they were inferior to other tanks' unless preceded by DA), to Delirium being more than just an Intelligence Down debuff and minute damage bonus, etc., etc.

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and in fact I don't know if there are or have been any cases in FFXIV where any class did, in any expansion

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PLD presently and in 4.x, SAM at any iteration (though now just between ad hoc and per-minute rotations, rather than in sen order), BLM in 3.x, 3.x DRG, NIN in 2.x and 3.x at certain SkS thresholds, MNK in any expansion until ShB, MCH in 4.x, SMN in 4.x.... Each had notable points of potential departure available in their rotation (or in BotD-usage, in DRG's case, though SkS thresholds allowed for double-Full rotations in 2.x), by which to take a short-term loss for long-term gain based on upcoming conditions.

Monk was an especially good example of this. Until 4.0, Monk could, at lower effective potency loss than would be thereby gained, adjust its rotation for upcoming positionals, atop having, at certain SkS thresholds, three different possible rotational strings. It had tremendous available nuance. (Then they adjusted Demolish's timer despite the loss of ToD/Fracture, added enough %Attack Speed via GL4 to force what was previously an actual decision in double-True rotations and make Demo-drop rotations obsolete, and even added True North and the later version of Riddle of Earth because "Why actually have mechanics when you can just spend half a kit half-assing them and the other half undoing them?")

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

I like the idea of trying to keep Darkside up but being careful not to get overwhelmed by darkness.
That was the whole point of the first quest after all.

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But as we've seen, the team is more than willing to forego gamelore for gameplay. DRK used to be all about that. Now it's gameplay is just "go ham lol who cares."

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Originally Posted by Crater

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Both you and Shurrikhan are addressing different issues.

You're right in pointing out that maintenance actions like DoTs and buffs can be interesting. They do become more challenging when you have to juggle multiple maintenance effects. The main reason why we don't see this so much is because it tends to be intimidating for newer players to MMOs, and the playerbase as a whole tends to struggle with them.

One of the most obnoxious parts of playing DRK in Heavensward was losing dps to problems with Storm's Eye uptime on your co-tank. And as much as everyone claims to loves Scourge, it wasn't unusual to see even relatively decent players with sub-80% uptime on it, even after accounting for boss jumps and downtime. It gets even worse when you start looking at a maintenance effect that's on the second or third step of a combo.

It's not a difficult challenge, however. It's a bit like learning to play a drumkit. At first, it may feel like you're trying to do way too many different things at once, but eventually you find a pattern in how each stick and pedal syncs up and unsyncs. After the fifth pull, you idly notice that Scourge always gets refreshed midcast during the second Sacrament, and so on. Solving the puzzle is fun, but eventually you figure the pattern out and can do it sleep-deprived and semiconscious. There's no on the fly decision-making or replayability, and I think that this is what Shurrikhan is hinting at.

There are ways to to change this up. Small Butterfly-effect variations in resource generation mean that you might be at different thresholds each fight. Perhaps Blood Price catches an extra auto here, or an extra Low Blow reset during a Blood Weapon window gives you a bit more MP there. These little things can add up over time such that the fight doesn't always play out exactly the same way. Every. Single. Time.

I think that FFXIV has strict rotational jobs down pat. It works out really well for PLD and GNB. But they're trying too hard to forcibly turn resource-management jobs into strict rotational jobs. Blood Weapon no longer procs off of a multitude of physical oGCDs or player autos. You get one tick each GCD. You can predict what your MP totals will be at different points in a fight. It completely defeats the very point of this sort of job design.

I think it would be really fun to have a few really well designed maintenance effect focused jobs like you've described. It would be nice to have a few jobs with elaborate combo systems and 40+ step rotations, with completely predictable Crit/DH effects for those spreadsheet players out there. Here is my solution to the math problem. Give me my percentile.

But what I really want to see most of all is a job or two with real resource management and on the fly decision-making, with variable resource gains and procs. Something intuitive, but with enough random variations that the spreadsheets just can't handle it. It's the only way that you can get away with completely scripted fight design and still keep players engaged. But try to fix that too.

I consider DRK need a second combo, but not any tipical second combo we are use to, it's need his HW second combo system, the one that make you choose use souleater when you have DA for it and Delirium when not, was a fun mechanic and never feel rigid bcs you could play with it depending of the amount of resources you have, it was the best combo system of the game it's a shame they just delete the whole thing.

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Originally Posted by shao32

I consider DRK need a second combo, but not any tipical second combo we are use to, it's need his HW second combo system, the one that make you choose use souleater when you have DA for it and Delirium when not, was a fun mechanic and never feel rigid bcs you could play with it depending of the amount of resources you have, it was the best combo system of the game it's a shame they just delete the whole thing.

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yea the combos were perfect, in my opinion. But as of now, what would another combo do? Like Reinhardt said above, our (boring at this point) soul eater combo gives us what we need. So it's kinda hard to think of another combo they could give us since aggro doesn't exist anymore. At this point, I'm just hoping they change delirium to literally anything else.