Dark Knight Megathread

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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

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

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

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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

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

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

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

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The "This is okay, actually" portion:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GENERAL CHANGES

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

DARK KNIGHT CHANGES

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

Works in Progress:

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

Tl;dr:

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

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

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Originally Posted by Mecia

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

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

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is that simple.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is that simple.

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

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

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

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

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

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

You can do this by...

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

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

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

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

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

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