Dark Knight Megathread

I made this observation in another thread, but it seems like tanks can be placed into two categories in terms of rotational mechanics: knights, and berserkers. PLD, and GNB are knights which focus on using multiple combos, and WAR, and DRK are berserkers which focus on spamming heavy hitting attacks. So I feel like a way to get the warrior stink off DRK while maintaining berserker-like gameplay would be to give it a second combo to build towards like it's a knight -- it is a dark knight after all. Perhaps DRK's gcd rotation could resemble a knight's, and its ogcd rotation could resemble a berserkers.

Another thing that I feel needs to happen to make DRK feel a little more special -- and really lean into the themes of self-sacrifice is to figure out how to allow it to safely spend its own HP on attacks instead of MP in pve duties.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Another thing that I feel needs to happen to make DRK feel a little more special -- and really lean into the themes of self-sacrifice is to figure out how to allow it to safely spend its own HP on attacks instead of MP in pve duties.

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This can be done, but it'd have to follow certain constraints... most of which would provide the same affordance but less flexibly than just using MP (with all MP spenders offering at least some indirect means of sustain via a revised Dark Arts, etc.).

Thematically, I want it. Functionally, I'm not sure I want to deal with the gimmicking required.

Yes, of any job, HP spending actually makes the most sense as a potentially compelling mechanic on a tank, as that's the only role in which we both have pretty good control over our HP and for whom HP-spending wouldn't just be an awkward/convoluted indirect MP spending option (maintain Regen on self and occasionally Cure or Cure II self to throw out more HP-spending nukes). But it's still a can of worms. Doable, but not simply.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

I made this observation in another thread, but it seems like tanks can be placed into two categories in terms of rotational mechanics: knights, and berserkers. PLD, and GNB are knights which focus on using multiple combos, and WAR, and DRK are berserkers which focus on spamming heavy hitting attacks. So I feel like a way to get the warrior stink off DRK while maintaining berserker-like gameplay would be to give it a second combo to build towards like it's a knight -- it is a dark knight after all. Perhaps DRK's gcd rotation could resemble a knight's, and its ogcd rotation could resemble a berserkers.

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That's what I was trying to convey but unfortunately some people don't like that idea, and just want more damaging oGCDs for the sake of having more damaging oGCDs, send conflicting and mixed messages about what they want for Dark Knight which makes it seem like MULTIPLE PEOPLE are sharing 1 account, such as wanting the opener to be less cluttered and the only way to realistically to do that is convert a good chunk of oGCDs into GCDs and adding a haste effect of 20 - 25%, and I at least make an attempt to be consistent, and Dark Knight was clearly NEVER designed to be and oGCD spam job, just look at Carve and Spit with it's long animation that you never get to see because you got to keep that GCD rolling and it actually is enough to break my immersion.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Another thing that I feel needs to happen to make DRK feel a little more special -- and really lean into the themes of self-sacrifice is to figure out how to allow it to safely spend its own HP on attacks instead of MP in pve duties.

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This is another one of those I never see happening anytime soon, not unless you give Dark Knight Bloodbath effects like there is no tomorrow, which is really the only realistic way of going about that, though it would at least fix the Dark Knight squishy-ness to some degree...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

such as wanting the opener to be less cluttered and the only way to realistically to do that is convert a good chunk of oGCDs into GCDs and adding a haste effect of 20 - 25%

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All it takes to make the opener less cluttered is to take some of those oGCDs from there... and put them somewhere else.

Which can be done with as little as just adding an MP cost to Shadowbringer and increasing Shadowbringer's potency by Edge's in compensation, thereby reducing the number of attacks that have to be fit inside the 2-minute burst by 2, which then allows space enough for defensives. Done.

It does not require turning most of DRK's oGCDs into GCDs.

Off the top of my head, I think a way to allow DRK to spend its own HP on attacks would be that any attack that costs HP also grants barrier HP equal to the amount of normal HP spent with there being hard caps to the amount of HP you can spend, and barrier HP you can gain. And perhaps additional self-sustain tools can be accessed if the barrier HP gets broken. However it does not solve the problem of a healer pumping a DRK with heals, and letting them go ham, but is a direction that can be taken.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

such as wanting the opener to be less cluttered and the only way to realistically to do that is convert a good chunk of oGCDs into GCDs and adding a haste effect of 20 - 25%, and I at least make an attempt to be consistent, and Dark Knight was clearly NEVER designed to be and oGCD spam job, just look at Carve and Spit with it's long animation that you never get to see because you got to keep that GCD rolling and it actually is enough to break my immersion.

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It really doesn't, though. Shift the oGCD's somewhere else (such as making our burst downtime not mind-numbingly boring) and adding an MP cost to Shadowbringer as Shurrikhan stated would already be more than sufficient.

Speaking of what would help our burst downtime, though..

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm not suggesting a traited global speed increase on DRK. What I'm actually doing is turning Delirium into a modified version of Enshroud on DRK. If you add a second action (in this case, Torcleaver) that directly combos off of Bloodspiller and reduce both GCDs to 1.5s, then you're essentially turning Delirium into a 6 GCD burst. Every two blood GCDs you gain a free Edge/Flood that you weave into the mix.

As much as I liked Blood Weapon's speed boost, I've actually grown to love having a few dedicated 1.5s GCDs so much more. It just feels good.

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I can get behind this as well, especially since as you mentioned in your prior post that Bloodspiller and Torcleaver keep the short GCD even outside of Delirium. Plus, more gauge generation which means more MP generation from gauge actions means more active burst downtime.

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I don't mind Living Shadow conceptually, but the design concept feels a bit clunky because of the summoning lag. It probably would have been better off going the Bunshin route

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I'm of the same mind. I remember really being excited for it initially when we seen it in the job action trailer for Shadowbringers but the execution really falls flat. I'd personally prefer something akin to Bunshin myself.

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I do like the idea of interplay between MP and blood. I've been advocating for blood moves to generate MP and vice versa since Stormblood. MP is a slightly awkward system, however, and I feel that jobs are better off if they just use a unique dual resource system. It becomes a bit more complex to design around MP because you also have to account for passive ticks that continue during downtime periods, which ends up with generation either being too fast (Stormblood) or too slow (post-Shadowbringers). I think blood is a more predictable system, though, so building from blood to MP probably makes more sense than making it a recursive loop.

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It always felt weird to me that they didn't, especially since Quietus had MP generation [per mob] added to it sometime in Stormblood. They simply could have given Quietus/Bloodspiller baseline MP generation. I'd say we could possibly get the Blood Gauge sooner to make it more central imo.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Off the top of my head, I think a way to allow DRK to spend its own HP on attacks would be that any attack that costs HP also grants barrier HP equal to the amount of normal HP spent with there being hard caps to the amount of HP you can spend, and barrier HP you can gain. And perhaps additional self-sustain tools can be accessed if the barrier HP gets broken. However it does not solve the problem of a healer pumping a DRK with heals, and letting them go ham, but is a direction that can be taken.

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As I stated before, the only way HP spending abilities can even work is if you would need to Bloodbath effects like there was no tomorrow, as seen in FFXI Dark Knight.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

All it takes to make the opener less cluttered is to take some of those oGCDs from there... and put them somewhere else.

Which can be done with as little as just adding an MP cost to Shadowbringer and increasing Shadowbringer's potency by Edge's in compensation, thereby reducing the number of attacks that have to be fit inside the 2-minute burst by 2, which then allows space enough for defensives. Done.

It does not require turning most of DRK's oGCDs into GCDs.

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At this point you might as well just say that Stormblood Dark Arts spam was only underwhelming because the damage you dealt from it was not meaningful enough, and I already hate oGCD spam on a job that looks it's having trouble swing a huge sword or axe around, and I would rather have haste effect of 20% or 25%, and I would rather Dark Knight play more like Reaper than whatever job Dark Knight is trying to emulate in its current state. And I would go play Reaper but DPS ques atrocious for duty roulette, so I have to go on either Paladin or Gunbreaker, and Paladin does what Dark Knight is trying to do but so much better.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

At this point you might as well just say that Stormblood Dark Arts spam was only underwhelming because the damage you dealt from it was not meaningful enough

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No, our opener feeling crowded or not is just a matter of whether one even has time to hit any utility or defensive actions across that period and how low a ping is required to get one's burst actions out within raid buffs.

That's not a matter of tuning. That's a matter of concentration of obligatory casts.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

any attack that costs HP also grants barrier HP equal to the amount of normal HP spent with there being hard caps to the amount of HP you can spend, and barrier HP you can gain.

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The latter would just amount, in effect, to a softer-yet-more-awkward internal cooldown on your HP spenders.

If you want HP spending, you not only need some degree/manner of limitations on the rate of that exchange (as not to just be the barrel of a Death Star as healers pump Burst-Damage Juice [HP] into you as you spend GCD after GCD, leading to an external or internal balance issue whereby either you're OP with focused heal-slaves or UP without them or your HP spenders are rDPS-irrelevant anyways) and likely some compensatory manner of further personal sustain (be that healing or mitigation) so that you can actually make use of these tools even without the aforementioned heal-slaves.

Most likely, reasonable balance will fall into the ballpark of HP spending being useful in (A) low damage intake scenarios and timings in order to prevent waste of oGCD heals or, effectively, bank resources for later incoming damage peaks through the additional effects of those HP spenders, essentially making DRK HP especially not zingy, and (B) as a burst just before healable downtime, such as by finishing off an enemy or spicing a boss before it jumps away so the healers can have more to usefully fill their downtime with.