DRK QOL changes for 5.4

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Originally Posted by shao32

lore wise DRK can be whatever you want and still works but gameplay wise DRK have not sense at all mostly bcs is not the DRK we use to have and have fun in the past anymore, it's just a black WAR.

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I the big issues I have with DRK, is that the DRK job quests are very well done, give it a very clear theme of being something, Frey is such a great class teacher. It just doesn't get fleshed out, it doesn't really drive home the part your supposed to play. It sure doesn't leave you thinking " I'm a tank, that fights injustice! in Black armor instead of White!" Like Frey is not a good person, be it your inner demon or what have you.

In HW the abilities and play style really made me think Guts from Berserk. I was flipping around doing some serious swings with a trained arm, unlike the wild swings of a Warrior/Marauder. I was perfectly happy with Guts plus flavor.
Thing is "Dark energy" In HW was such a minor part of the job, and now its center stage, and it all feels like garbage. I don't want to be EMO the edge knight. I want to be a seasoned Fighter with some utility magic like Abyssal drain and the majority of our AOE.

The 'dark energy' has always been a part of the job. It's that classic fantasy 'Gish' appeal of weaving between sword and spell. The problem is that the pacing is off. The five second windups going into big hits is a WAR thing. What made Heavensward DRK so appealing was that it was an endless onslaught of bladework and dark magic.

From a thematic perspective, DRK is about punishing injustice. Again, HW did that through counterattacks (Low Blow and Reprisal resets, as well as Blood Price). More recent iterations just rely on TBN as a punishment mechanic. It needs to be a job-wide theme. When mobs hit you or a teammate that you're protecting, you hit them back harder and faster.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The 'dark energy' has always been a part of the job. It's that classic fantasy 'Gish' appeal of weaving between sword and spell. The problem is that the pacing is off. The five second windups going into big hits is a WAR thing. What made Heavensward DRK so appealing was that it was an endless onslaught of bladework and dark magic.

From a thematic perspective, DRK is about punishing injustice. Again, HW did that through counterattacks (Low Blow and Reprisal resets, as well as Blood Price). More recent iterations just rely on TBN as a punishment mechanic. It needs to be a job-wide theme. When mobs hit you or a teammate that you're protecting, you hit them back harder and faster.

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Something like Shelltron, but maybe closer to a small blood price wouldnt hurt, itd make things more proactive, and give you more of an attention span when tanking besides 4 5 4 5 4 5 4 5. 123 123 123

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Originally Posted by Valknut

I the big issues I have with DRK, is that the DRK job quests are very well done, give it a very clear theme of being something, Frey is such a great class teacher. It just doesn't get fleshed out, it doesn't really drive home the part your supposed to play. It sure doesn't leave you thinking " I'm a tank, that fights injustice! in Black armor instead of White!" Like Frey is not a good person, be it your inner demon or what have you.

In HW the abilities and play style really made me think Guts from Berserk. I was flipping around doing some serious swings with a trained arm, unlike the wild swings of a Warrior/Marauder. I was perfectly happy with Guts plus flavor.
Thing is "Dark energy" In HW was such a minor part of the job, and now its center stage, and it all feels like garbage. I don't want to be EMO the edge knight. I want to be a seasoned Fighter with some utility magic like Abyssal drain and the majority of our AOE.

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Story wise, i got no complaints. Most people are justifying the pre 50 job quests though, when beyond the one little 80 quest, as pretty much resolved. That being said, Fray/Esteem being an Egi, as opposed to just being a summoner trance mode, makes very little since to me. Sure call on your inner darkness for more power, but for gods sake dont just make it pop out like a shadow double, Give us more powerful abilities, like SMN in a trance state, preferably the phoenix trance state. Outside of that, its whatever. Its 2.0 paladin gameplay, with a 2nd hit on flash to me. Its a tank, and it tanks. As good as a tank can tank. At some point they will have to add/design DRK as a job, and not just your basic role. It has become the WHM of tanks. Its a tank, that tanks. And its really good at being a tank. And that is all 5.x DRK is, it isnt a job, its a role.

Can we finally just be honest with ourselves about current DRK, whose biggest gimmick is upkeeping a damage buff at the cost of an extremely heavy, but very managable MP(second resource) cost.
For that gimmick to exist, its damage has to be better. Hands down. If SE cant figure out Living Dead, or give it to a tank that can actually handle the drawbacks, among other problems DRK face, the biggest factor(keeping a damage buff up) should at least be aknowledged by the job itself. SE doesnt want to do that? Then design DRK to be more than a shell of a role. period. I mean what good is the illusion of a damage buff that has to be kept up, if it keeps you dead last in comparison to the other jobs in the role that do not have to maintain a dps buff, let alone have more to offer in any situation than DRK beyond its Stoneskin ability, which again...2.0 PLD *cough cough*

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

Can we finally just be honest with ourselves about current DRK, whose biggest gimmick is upkeeping a damage buff at the cost of an extremely heavy, but very managable MP(second resource) cost.
For that gimmick to exist, its damage has to be better. Hands down. If SE cant figure out Living Dead, or give it to a tank that can actually handle the drawbacks, among other problems DRK face, the biggest factor(keeping a damage buff up) should at least be aknowledged by the job itself. SE doesnt want to do that? Then design DRK to be more than a shell of a role. period. I mean what good is the illusion of a damage buff that has to be kept up, if it keeps you dead last in comparison to the other jobs in the role that do not have to maintain a dps buff, let alone have more to offer in any situation than DRK beyond its Stoneskin ability, which again...2.0 PLD *cough cough*

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Dark Knight beats Warrior in every fight of the current tier, and there is no reason to believe this shall change without a fight heavily catering to warrior (extremely low up time to make IR windows much more impactful).

And even comparing it to Gunbreaker, it's behind by maybe a couple hundred.

Dark Knight does not have a power problem.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Dark Knight beats Warrior in every fight of the current tier, and there is no reason to believe this shall change without a fight heavily catering to warrior (extremely low up time to make IR windows much more impactful).

And even comparing it to Gunbreaker, it's behind by maybe a couple hundred.

Dark Knight does not have a power problem.

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Well thats about all my complaints. TBF it seems like its just a gameplay issue. It is very dull.

I think that Living Shadow would be better received if player actions had more of an effect on it, like Bunshin does. I'm hoping that this is the start of something that gets expanded on in the future.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Dark Knight beats Warrior in every fight of the current tier, and there is no reason to believe this shall change without a fight heavily catering to warrior (extremely low up time to make IR windows much more impactful).

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That's only true if you cherry pick the very top results, which are always majorly skewed. DRK is at the bottom of most centiles. I would have figured that this would be obvious from the bar charts.

It baffles me how the most beautiful deep and complex tank become 4 years later more simple than a stone tank without any flavour, darkside and living shadow could have been better received if they actualy do something gameplay wise instead of being just there for the sake of being there, the gauge means they should being important for us, the problem is they aren't and that's poor.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think the key things that people seem interested in are:
1) Increase baseline attack speed to be on par with HW/SB era Blood Weapon.
2) Second combo.
3) More oGCD usage/APM.
4) Replace Living Dead with something that isn't obviously garbage in comparison to Holmgang.

None of these are difficult to fix.

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Yeah pretty much thats the basic of the basics request i saw since the begining of the expansion, if we put Delirium delete/rework there would be better but depending of wich option they pick it can be more complex to fix or not.

The thing is at the end they should put some real effort on make DRK gameplay something more while respecting his original gameplay and not give us what they give us and make us keep this "thing" the entire expansion.

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

Well thats about all my complaints. TBF it seems like its just a gameplay issue. It is very dull.

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because it was made dull.

SE is stuck between a rock and a hard place, but there's hope that 5.0 can serve as a base for DRK to become more fleshed out and made realized as its own identity.
First thing that'd need to happen is the expansion-tradition of redesigning Delirium.

We can only hope

This is neither here nor there but... I will say that there's something about the Bloodspiller spam that just doesn't do it for me. Maybe it's the animation? There isn't a whole lot of hit stop in this game. Whenever characters attack, they are, for the most part, just kinda waving their weapons in front of the enemy (Paladin comes to mind)... That said, Warrior's Fell Cleave animation is legitimately satisfying. Why? There's that split second in the swing where your character seemingly struggles to complete it. It's a short moment, but the fact that your swing is "interrupted" right before you tear through the target makes for a visceral animation in a game that is otherwise full of floaty animations.

Bloodspiller, though? You swing your sword around and then slam it on the ground, actually lifting yourself up while you do it... Yet for some reason this doesn't really convey what should be a viscerally-satisfying animation. Maybe it's the random-ass "darkness beam" that pops up alongside it?

Either way, I'm just tired of "now you can spam X or Y skill at no cost!" design. It's boring to me. I think Lyth summarized it pretty well up there. Reason I loved HW's version of DRK is that it was an endless onslaught of bladework and dark magic, but it felt like there was variety to it? Idk. I'm sorry. I realize that I'm not explaining myself very well but yeah, I am... not very happy with the current iteration of DRK.

Edit: I also miss 3.0's version of Darkside. I LIKED having to maintain my MP up.

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Originally Posted by Hazama999

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I think MMOs don't really allow for much in the way of hit stop. FFXIV has a longer GCD than most in order to allow for elaborate animations, but weaving often tends to cut that short.

Even if Bloodspiller was animated with a punchy hit stop in the same vein as the aesthetically similar Braver (FF7 Remake version), the tail end of the animation would likely get clipped by Carve and Spit or Edge. It works on WAR because most of the action happens on the GCD, so there's time for that sort of wind-up.

I don't think there's a good alternative to button spam on burst windows. You could go the GNB route and assign six unique keybinds that only ever get used during burst, but if hotbar real estate is presumably at a premium, I'd rather see those go towards abilities that get used more frequently. I think the best compromise would be to have Blood abilities generate MP and vice versa, but that would just be a fancy way of doing the same thing. I personally wish that Delirium had gone the Bunshin route as I had originally suggested back in Stormblood, but I think that's unlikely.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

First thing that'd need to happen is the expansion-tradition of redesigning Delirium.

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LMAO you're not wrong

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Originally Posted by Hazama999

Bloodspiller, though? You swing your sword around and then slam it on the ground, actually lifting yourself up while you do it... Yet for some reason this doesn't really convey what should be a viscerally-satisfying animation. Maybe it's the random-ass "darkness beam" that pops up alongside it?

Either way, I'm just tired of "now you can spam X or Y skill at no cost!" design. It's boring to me. I think Lyth summarized it pretty well up there. Reason I loved HW's version of DRK is that it was an endless onslaught of bladework and dark magic, but it felt like there was variety to it? Idk. I'm sorry. I realize that I'm not explaining myself very well but yeah, I am... not very happy with the current iteration of DRK.

Edit: I also miss 3.0's version of Darkside. I LIKED having to maintain my MP up.

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I actually get what you're saying. I havent been able to figure it out myself. The animation is rather quick but also can cut into you being able to spam it, sometimes. Its flashy and should be cool, but it feels exctremely unsatisfying. Of course...this is even more when you have someone on WAR do Fell cleaves next to you. and compare the numbers. Either way, its just not as satisfying. Sounds flat or like something that should be a SAM sound effect, and just..either too flashy or too long. I did think just making it Braver would be nicer, but spamming it 5 times would probably ruin that as well.

Hello friends. I've gotten myself a fully augmented Haste set, and the more I play with it, the more I realize how much a higher GCD recast timer fixes a few QoL issues by merely existing. I think most of us will agree that the most infuriating thing about playing DRK right now (not designing DRK) is Blood Weapon. Yes, Delirium is pretty lazy, and slower mana economy etc etc. But those are arguably intended, if uninspired, portions of the kit. At a basic, everyday-usage level, Blood Weapon is a frustrating skill that frequently loses 5th hits with when forced to briefly disengage or at low amounts of skill speed, prioritizes the second weave position in a double weave even more heavily than delirium does, and of course needs max Blood for the quicker Bloodspillers/Quietuses to get all five hits in AoE situations. A sub 10 second duration will do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0_QZ3ug3jo (That's my house in the background!)

Sure is a shame bundy unsubbed because I'd totally ask them to edit that video into the OP under BW changes, that's exactly why it's like this, minus client side application versus server side verification nonsense.

Having full haste drops my weaponskill recast down to 2.18, and the spell recast down to 2.25. This is very comfortable, because this gives more flexibility during your weaves. It's now possible to use both Delirium and Blood Weapon in the first weave slot and still get all five hits pretty easily, regardless of the GCD action. Haste also serves as a small direct DRK damage buff due to slightly increased resource gain. (1 extra GCD every 11 or so GCDs.) I don't think this is AS fast as we used to be, the APM certainly isn't there without chugging auto-ethers and solemn clarity like I posted before, but if you'll excuse the feelycraft, it does feel a bit better to actually play without having the massive disadvantages running SkS DRK does in relevant content. I think of all the tanks, the DRK playstyle benefits more from GCD speed increases via Haste than anyone else, even GNB with GF cooldown reductions. I realize this flies in the face of the commonly suggested Bunshin treatment, but more food for thought. Man, I really hope that one day I can stop complaining about this skill/job in general!

Darkside should give actual Haste over a damage buff, don't @ me. What I would give to get information on the future.

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Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

Having full haste drops my weaponskill recast down to 2.18, and the spell recast down to 2.25. This is very comfortable, because this gives more flexibility during your weaves. It's now possible to use both Delirium and Blood Weapon in the first weave slot and still get all five hits pretty easily, regardless of the GCD action. Haste also serves as a small direct DRK damage buff due to slightly increased resource gain. (1 extra GCD every 11 or so GCDs.) I don't think this is AS fast as we used to be, the APM certainly isn't there without chugging auto-ethers and solemn clarity like I posted before, but if you'll excuse the feelycraft, it does feel a bit better to actually play without having the massive disadvantages running SkS DRK does in relevant content. I think of all the tanks, the DRK playstyle benefits more from GCD speed increases via Haste than anyone else, even GNB with GF cooldown reductions. I realize this flies in the face of the commonly suggested Bunshin treatment, but more food for thought. Man, I really hope that one day I can stop complaining about this skill/job in general!

Darkside should give actual Haste over a damage buff, don't @ me. What I would give to get information on the future.

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Is this with/without sks being used and does it even stack in bozja? I meld a ton of sks to get that extra hit in under delirium, and -sometimes- can activate a hit and nearly get to half animation then it just decides to not finish with the hit due to server tick issues or ping or something. The spell speed issue with the aoe clipping is just a personal nuisance of mine really, but i agree in DRK case having a general speed increase(or as was mentioned before maybe in another post about truncating sks/sps into the same skill would definitely fix that issue.

There is always going to be a trade-off between a shorter GCD and double weaving. You can't determine this objectively because it will always depend on how close you live to the server. The only way to guarantee a five hit Blood Weapon/Delirium for everyone is to have them apply for five consecutive hits (i.e. Bunshin).

That being said, having DRK be the 'faster GCD' tank feels good.

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

I actually get what you're saying. I havent been able to figure it out myself. The animation is rather quick but also can cut into you being able to spam it, sometimes. Its flashy and should be cool, but it feels exctremely unsatisfying. Of course...this is even more when you have someone on WAR do Fell cleaves next to you. and compare the numbers. Either way, its just not as satisfying. Sounds flat or like something that should be a SAM sound effect, and just..either too flashy or too long. I did think just making it Braver would be nicer, but spamming it 5 times would probably ruin that as well.

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My honest opinion for part of this is due to not only that, but Fell Cleave's damage hits with the animation, whereas Bloodspiller's damage (and part of the hitting sound effect) happens as the animation is still winding up, then the actual attack crashes down. I don't know if I'd call it a subtle difference, but it's definitely been a bothersome thing to me personally for some time—and I dunno the actual logistics on changing that sort of thing. I remember talking about this before but it was probably on discord and not forums.

I feel like we've gotten to a point where all of the skills look good in a vacuum, but watching them work in conjunction with each other it sometimes looks like a visually inconsistent mess. It just sort of feels like the character is flailing in the weirdest directions possible. There are fighting styles that could be described like that kind of loosely and would look cool, but it'd have to look more... intentional, I guess. My main point is that it just feels animated very randomly.

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Originally Posted by Agner

My honest opinion for part of this is due to not only that, but Fell Cleave's damage hits with the animation, whereas Bloodspiller's damage (and part of the hitting sound effect) happens as the animation is still winding up, then the actual attack crashes down. I don't know if I'd call it a subtle difference, but it's definitely been a bothersome thing to me personally for some time—and I dunno the actual logistics on changing that sort of thing. I remember talking about this before but it was probably on discord and not forums.

I feel like we've gotten to a point where all of the skills look good in a vacuum, but watching them work in conjunction with each other it sometimes looks like a visually inconsistent mess. It just sort of feels like the character is flailing in the weirdest directions possible. There are fighting styles that could be described like that kind of loosely and would look cool, but it'd have to look more... intentional, I guess. My main point is that it just feels animated very randomly.

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THIS exactly this, the damage just pops out at contact with the button press, but then the animation lock appears, as noticed. Dunno why or what makes the difference with FC, but that is certainly one of them for sure. Recently hit 80 on PLD, and Atonement makes me just wonder about Blood Spiller entirely. 550 pot plus 400mp regain with 3 stacks/uses immediately after 1 full combo, vs 600 potency for 50 blood(3 consecutive soul eater combo's without BW) Know the general argument is to not compare the tanks to what they have/dont have but its kind of hard to ignore things that differ esp for tanks that both rely on MP for their damage. IDK I feel like that wouldve been nicer for those filler gaps than what we have atm after blowing all cd or something similar.

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

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To me I feel like if we're to compare (much like you said, we won't get into "I want what [x] tank has!", but just for this sake) the burst spam abilities for DRK/WAR/PLD (BS, FC, HS), I'd rank them like WAR > DRK => PLD. Sound design does a lot for me and I just feel like Bloodspiller has always been a bit on the middling side of things in that regard. If you were to compare a move like BS to how our good ol' Power Slash sounded in terms of sound effect, I'd honestly put Power Slash over it, which is a bit of a problem to me. Sure, we didn't use it all that much, but achieving use of it was much faster than it ever was for BS.

I had made a joke about Bloodspiller being "dark arts plunge" back when the Stormblood job actions trailer was shown (and then they actually put in dark arts plunge, eventually... lol.), and I still say this somewhat jokingly, but maybe it would be beneficial to swap the animation to something with less buildup and more pure smackdown? Similar to plunge, except you obviously flip different/smack down much harder. Hey, if we want to go further and add uniqueness to it, maybe we could even have it act as a gap closer. Admittedly, that might be a little excessive with 2 plunge stacks in place, though. That said, Bloodspiller and Plunge do feel like two abilities in the DRK toolkit that weave together very well—like you've gone berserk and you're just completely slamming down on your opponent at this point with all of your might, weight, and magic.

Having said all of this, I still want Delirium completely out of the game, or as WhyAmIHere said, yet another expansion-tradition of redesigning the ability completely. Inner Release as it is, is fine on WAR to me, Requiescat is fine on PLD for working a little differently (MP requirement, finisher move is an entirely different blast of magic), but for DRK it's just excessively weird with no unique factor of its own past a measly 200 MP per hit. To reference another post (Lyth's), I'd prefer we have specific buttons for burst that don't just come down to copying GNB's continuation. I'm fine with Bloodspiller's existence as a gauge spender, but not in this way. If they want us to use it continuously, they should add something to it that makes us look forward to actually using it.

The other thing that irks me about Delirium is just the namesake. Back in HW as an int-reducing combo finisher it made a degree of sense, but in my field of study I think of it more like agitation/restlessness, hallucinations, slowed/heavier movement, that sort of thing. If anything, that sounds like a buff we should put up as a prerequisite for summoning Living Shadow and turning delusions into a reality through dark arts than it does "I'm gonna become an actual acrobat and pull off a million front flips", though maybe they took the "agitation" part a little too much into account.

/characterlimit

You're always going to draw comparisons between similarly designed abilities, especially when one very clearly has something extra that the others don't, for no real reason except to be better. It's that 'Vengeance' design.

I've always wanted Delirium to work more along the lines of 'seeing double', with your hits producing some sort of multistrike effect (or possibly having some interaction with Living Shadow along these lines).

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Originally Posted by Agner

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Having said all of this, I still want Delirium completely out of the game, or as WhyAmIHere said, yet another expansion-tradition of redesigning the ability completely.

The other thing that irks me about Delirium is just the namesake. Back in HW as an int-reducing combo finisher it made a degree of sense, but in my field of study I think of it more like agitation/restlessness, hallucinations, slowed/heavier movement, that sort of thing. If anything, that sounds like a buff we should put up as a prerequisite for summoning Living Shadow and turning delusions into a reality through dark arts than it does "I'm gonna become an actual acrobat and pull off a million front flips", though maybe they took the "agitation" part a little too much into account.

/characterlimit

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Can't agree more, I feel like delirium is just the cursed ability that gets changed entirely every expansion myself lol. And I agree I dont mind bloodspiller in small doses, but spamming it is increadibly terrible visually and audibly, wish there was a finisher for the burst at the least.
I agree delirium makes more sense as the ability that could summon fray while living shadow could be changed to be as enkindle, or a big nuke in that phase.

Edit: I dont mind blood weapon existing, but its hardly that great when comparing it to the speed increase it had. I keep thinking about atonement, how it sort of works, and i almost wonder if giving a stack of Dark Arts after a couple successful Soul Eater combo's, while decoupling it from the TBN pop would ruin DRK game play or not.Comparing the damage of Atonement to BS might be the simple way of looking at it, but to me it actually feels closer to a stack of DA - Free damage with mp gain, vs free damage proc that prevents massive mp use. Might be super unpopular, but it would let you use TBN more often without worrying about it getting popped. Problem I guess could be that MP management would be even easier.