Dark Knight Megathread

It kind of hurts that the simplest way to fix DRK (balancewise for survivability) is to make it even more like warrior.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Maybe they should let DRK equip Axes too

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It's a bloody shame it has become such a copy of WAR, considering it was completely unique back in HW. Now it's just...there.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

It kind of hurts that the simplest way to fix DRK (balancewise for survivability) is to make it even more like warrior.

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Sadly they'll have to for right now and then rework DRK so it is its own identity for 7.0. Because there's no way to really fix DRK at its current level short of an absolute rework.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Alright, I've got something for you then. Most of them are probably ideas, but I just want to see what paint sticks, so to speak.

Context:

• I'd like more control over at least one element of our burst period(s), but also for our burst period(s) to be more varied, whether that be by including reactive elements, having less of its tools synced strictly to every 60s, purposely offering mini-burst periods, or whatever else.
• Living Shadow NEEDS to be more interesting.
• I'd like to bring back some element of empowering one's abilities, but ideally for utility and control rather than potency.
• Obviously, Dark Mind and Living Dead need fixing.
• DRK needs to get certain of its capacities sooner.
• DRK needs more sustain*, ideally without empowering its potency-based mitigation to cheesier heights. (I use "sustain" as a larger umbrella term that seats both healing and mitigation, which can both be stat- or potency based or content-based [percentiles].)

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In order

• Yes, it's just a DoT right now, it should interact with the DRK in some way.
• Like Dark Arts used to be for some skills (Blind on Dark Passenger, Evasion on Dark Dance, etc) which I think is what people actually miss about Dark Arts, not the DPS but the decision making.
• Fixing Dark Mind and Living Dead alone would fix DRK defensive issues as far as mitigations go
• Yeah, I did leveling roulette earlier and I had Quietus, but I had no way of generating blood in AoE in the first place, nor do you get AoE MP regen until 72, it's ridiculous how long it takes for you to actually press more than 1 button in AoE
• DRK, having barrier style tanking, doesn't need much sustain. The tank with barriers should have the least, only enough to undo damage that gets through unlike Warrior, who wants to get low before suddenly hitting full HP. Too much healing with shields being its tanking style can get ridiculous very quickly.

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The following random ideas do not necessarily all belong together. Pick and choose a set from among them as you please.

A Core Thematic Trait

Blood for Blood
Upon the death of any party member or any enemy that would grant experience, regenerate 10% of your MP and HP. Additionally, your self-healing is increased by a percent equal to your missing %HP. (Damage over time effects will cause this trait to act as if you had already lost the full, normal amount of health to be lost from those effects.)

• You now get to reap mobs. That's pretty much always fun, especially in terms of "You die or I die!" gambles at the end of a pack, or FATE-grinding in general. It feels good to be able to overspend at the end of a fight and still be able to cast something within the first 20 seconds of another fight immediately thereafter. Simple as that.
• This has synergies with "stagger" mitigation (whereby damage is delayed to instead be taken over time), since your self-healing is immediately increased.
• Unskilled, or underhealed, party members can now provide blood for the blood god.
• No longer is "HP-bar Limbo" just an AST game. You are rewarded with increased sustain for shuffling to higher DTPS spans as much percentile mitigation as you can survive without. You'll scare the poop out of healers for doing so, but that's also fun in itself so long as you can, say, nail a couple meaty Bloodspiller crits to immediately bounce back a fair bit.

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I don't like this for 2 reasons. Rewarding the DRK for your allies playing poorly is unhealthy design because in high-level play with a good party it becomes a trait that just doesn't get used. Also tying the HP regen to enemies that grant exp means in dungeon pulls only the boss will reward you with HP which is superfluous. My suggestion would be to give Edge/Flood a mark on the enemy, each over-riding the other, that heal for a certain potency when either the target dies, or when "detonated" by Bloodspiller/Quietus, which would benefit the DRK for weaving a lot and using MP to heal with the AoE variant of the debuff being a weaker heal, but still valuable in a per-target scenario, and turning the Blood gauge into something with sustain while being useful in all content and not being tied to having party members perform sub-optimally. This would also make dungeon pulls Delirium windows look a lot like Blood whetting, but less frequent and more satisfying since it would be rewarding you for better play instead of "Lol I hit Primal Rend in AoE now I'm full HP".

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Selective Mitigation Types Without Needing Extra Buttons

Shadowskin (replacing Dark Mind)
Delays 30% of incoming damage to instead be dealt over 6 seconds after it would have been taken and grants the effects of Dark Mind and Dark Dance.
Dark Mind: 50% of your magical damage dealt is stored as a barrier which absorbs incoming magical damage, causing it to instead heal you.
Dark Dance: 50% of your physical damage dealt is stored as a barrier. While the barrier is active, you parry all incoming physical attacks. The mitigation provided in this way depletes this shield at the same amount.

• Obviously, I've not tuned this. It's just a basic concept. Hit Shadowskin, and blow Edges, Floods, and Shadowbringer to absorb magic damage or Bloodspillers and Carve (or Quietus in dungeons), etc., to briefly guarantee parries.
  Dark Dance has the further advantage of being all mitigation, no healing, and quantizes (still parries the full hit even if only 1 HP remains on the shield), so it really should be tuned back relative to Dark Mind.
• The whopping 30% damage-delay is because you could immediately by hit with a tick that'd hold a third of the delayed damage, making it really feel like 20-30% anyways. (Depending on the technicals of implementation, of course.)

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Tying an active mitigation to damage dealt can feel very bad in some encounters. The idea here is very cool, but in the current state of the game I worry for how it would compare, because at the end of the day this might still be one of the weaker cooldowns in practice. If this was a "per target hit" ah la Blood Whetting then that could fix it, but being on actual damage dealt can make it very feelsbad in some scenarios and encounters, IE not getting Crits, not getting Raid buffs (counts even in dungeons), Bosses requiring you to step away or going untargetable for any reason. It also helps to be able to predict the amount of damage reduction you will have. When I pop Ramparts, I know I'm reducing it by 20%, when I use Bloodwhetting I know I'm going to force a crit-heal and get full HP in a few hits, etc. This damage-based healing works on DPS classes because doing damage is the only thing they are worried about while tanks have to worry much more about what damage is coming in and what method it is being delivered.

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Some Possible Sustain "Solutions"

Bloodspiller and Quietus adjusted
Down to 40 Blood cost, allowing natural generation of Blood spenders to no longer be so badly dwarfed by what's produced by CDs (Delirium and Blood Weapon) alone.
Now also either (A) generate a leech period (e.g., Requiem - 4s - The DRK heals for 30% of damage dealt) or (B) heals for a portion of their own damage alone.

• That's the simplest solution, honestly. You add a bit more banking, granting 2 uses per 35 seconds, accelerated from 42.5 seconds, of natural generation, and let those bankables heal.
• Obviously, you could also do this through just buffing Abyssal Drain, giving Carve a heal to compete at 3 or fewer enemies, and lowering their shared CD. Or, plenty of other ways. I slightly prefer this one, though, just because, especially if using a Leech period, it makes Blood feel more integral and impactful.

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I'm a fan of making blood spenders cost 40 blood instead because it is a little awkward to go to 60 then use a spender to have 1o left. My method of removing that would have been to give DRK a DoT with a separate cooldown that grants 10 blood, something around a minute, and it would give us one more GCD to press instead of 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-4. But yes, 35 seconds is much better than 42.5 for a plethora of reasons. Aside being outright better and more DPS overall, it lines up with raid buffs better.

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A Slight Blood Spender / Delirium Adjustment
Rather than Delirium, alone, refunding the MP generation lost to using Blood spenders, Bloodspiller and Quietus themselves will refund their third or half of an ST or AoE combo's MP, respectively.

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I'm ok with Delerium regenerating MP, but if it must be removed/adjusted basing it just around MP regeneration as is isn't the worst way to do it. Not a fan, but I don't hate it, and if it came with other things ti make DRK good, I'd shrug and accept it.

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An Actually Maybe Fun Living Shadow

Living Shadow
Ability - 90s recast time
Conjure a simulacrum of your darkside to fight alongside you, duplicating your attacks for 50% effect. While the Living Shadow is active, your damage is reduced by 25%.
Reactivating Living Shadow during its duration will cause it to hold its position and will divert the attention of enemies attack you to your Living Shadow's position instead. However, you will still take this damage as normal. Use the skill again to toggle this effect off.
Duration: 15s
Blood Gauge Cost: 50 (or 40, with the suggested Blood spender changes below)

• This is still a 12.5% net damage increase, atop what all is provided by 50% increased active HP, MP, and Blood generation.
• Until commanded to hold position, this acts more like Bunshin than an Automaton Queen, moving whenever you move, in the same way that you move -- just lagging about a meter behind (except as necessary to reach the enemy).
• You are now in full control of what your Living Shadow does. It also spawns in far more quickly, at your position, and fades out far more quickly.
• You can use the skill reactivation to hold mobs in place as you move to grab things. Honestly, it'll probably rarely be all that useful, but hey, it's an obvious use of the button.
• Yes, the 90s cooldown is intended, mostly to offer multiple degrees of burst over time.

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If I'm understanding this right, this can actually cause you to take more damage overall. When pulling trash I dance around the AoE markers on the regular, the shadow sounds like it will sit there and eat them. If a burst window in a raid came with dodging certain mechanics that have RNG in them the trait would be near useless (think Paradegma in Ex trial 1). That aside, some functionality with actually commanding the shadow is good, but you have to be very careful with ghosting abilities. Scholars know that pain and I'd rather stay away from that. Adding some agency would be ideal, but I personally don't know why we can't just "equip" our shadow and augment our attacks like that. Not equipping it could be a DPS gain in AoE but equipping it could be DPS gain in single target, idk, something like that. But if not that, having actual control wouldn't be a bad idea.

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A Complementary Mirror to TBN

Blood Price
Ability - 40s CD.
Causes each hit taken to generate 2% MP and a stack of Blood and Steel.
Duration: 10 seconds.
Blood and Steel: Damage taken is reduced by a flat amount equal to 2% of your HP, stacking up to 10 times. Effect ends when Blood Price ends.
Cannot be used simultaneously with Blood Weapon.

• This effect accumulates with, but is not refreshed by, each additional hit. (It is strongest just before duration's end.)
• Here, I'm offering sort of a mirror to TBN's purely stat-based defense, in a manner reminiscent of FFXIII's Steelguard and WotLK-era Unbreakable Armor. It still obviously benefits noticeably from stats, but in a way that disproportionately affects frequent and otherwise overwhelming hits, which tend to be found in the same situations as TBN's weakness, higher total damage.
• The more hits you take, the less you take from each hit (flat damage reduction), to the point of laughing off chip damage, some likely outright turned to 0, by the end of its duration. It also synergizes well with the DoT damage DRK can choose to take by delaying damage.
• Like Blood Weapon, below, it gets stronger over time. That seems a decent note to have for flavor, even if shallow in itself.

Oblation (now an upgrade of Blood Price)
Ability - 2 charges. 40s recharge.
For 10 seconds, grants self Blood and Steel and self or target party member the effect of Blood Price.
Upon reactivation, triggers Woe-eater.
Blood Price: Causes each hit taken to generate 2% MP and a stack of Blood and Steel.
Blood and Steel: Damage taken is reduced by a flat amount equal to 2% of your HP, stacking up to 10 times. Effect ends when Blood Price ends.
Woe-eater: Heal self or target party member for 20% of their damage taken over the last 4 seconds.[LIST]Oblation could be a decently natural fit for that earlier Blood Price, simply allowing it to be usable on allies and to have a further degree of timing flexibility, if we wished.

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I like this with just 3 comments. While all damage reductions are stat based, this isn't as stat based as you might think. Remember, content does more damage as our ilvl increases, so it's only stronger in content where your ilvl is already enough you might not even need it. Woe-Eater has the same issue as I said before, basing sustain off of damage taken/received is really difficult to balance and to calculate. Perhaps right here instead of being based on damage received, base it off of missing or total hp to a cap percentage? That way you at least have the "this is good but it will never heal more than x" to calculate in your planning. Lastly, 50% uptime seems a little steep for something like this. I'd aim more at 33% uptime if possible.

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Making Blood Weapon Mildly More Interesting

Blood Weapon
Ability - 40s CD.
Increases Blood Gauge by 10 and restores MP upon landing weaponskills or spells. Each attack landed additionally decreases your auto-attack and weaponskill recast delay by 8%.
This ability's duration and recast will not progress until your next successful weaponskill.
Duration: 12s

• As long one doesn't clip, this is guaranteed (largely by the second line in the description, which removes the loss of duration otherwise caused by the animation ICD, to get out 6 hits, ending with a 1.6s GCD. Variable, ramped-up speed can be fun.
• Alternatively, we can have Blood Weapon unlock Blood variants of various weaponskills, giving us a sexy "red combo" that we'll simply want to enter at such a time as to maximize ppgcd bonuses over the duration. That idea has already been given earlier in the thread, though, and I don't to be the one pushing ideas that others have thought out more thoroughly than I have. I will just note that you can find that interesting idea earlier in this thread.

Blood Weapon v2
Ability - 40s CD
Increases Blood Gauge by 10 and restores MP upon landing weaponskills or spells. Additionally, decreases your auto-attack and weaponskill recast delay by 12%.
This ability's duration and recast will not progress until your next successful weaponskill.
Duration: 12 seconds.

• Haste is fun. Not all CDs always lining up is also more fun than, well, there only being two gradations of action (burst-of-any-sort and lull-of-any-sort). The 12s duration also gives a true second spare at a 2.5s GCD.

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Here's a hot take. I just straight up hate Blood Weapon. It's an OGCD that is used in a way to give a fixed amount of MP (Everyone tries to fit the same GCD's into the window) and if turned into a stack format would still just be an oGCD that gave us a fixed amount of MP. The only way I will ever like Blood Weapon is if something else in the kit also interacts with it. As it stands it is a "press to get x MP over 10s" button and making it a stack function would be exactly the same. What I mean by this is if you removed Blood Weapon entirely and replaced it with a skill that read "Regenerate 3000 MP over 10 seconds" it would just functionally be Blood Weapon. That's why using Blood Weapon to actually augment your attacks is a good idea, but turning it up to a 1.6s gcd may be a little much and will face complaints from those with latency issues, like we see in MCH right now. I don't have much else to say about this, though. Haste being fun is an opinion, and one that I do not share, but cannot deny those who enjoy it really do enjoy it. Personally, (And I mean purely in my opinion) I'd prefer to see Blood Weapon give stacks that unlock an ability not normally available. Blood Weapon is just boring and outright sucks in every way and I'd rather it be replaced with something new entirely. Unpopular opinion, I know.

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Minor TBN Adjustments

The Blackest Night
Ability - 12s recast
Creates a barrier around target that absorbs damage totaling 25% of target's maximum HP.
Duration: 7s
The MP cost of your next Edge of Shadow or Flood of Shadow is reduced proportionately to half the barrier consumed or removed entirely if the barrier is fully consumed.

• The idea here is that MP remains a bottleneck enough to prevent more than 4 casts of TBN per minute. Given that, TBN is made slightly more flexible.
• Just a thought I hadn't seen brought up yet. See also Archwizard's ideas a few pages back as to tack-on effects that'd be decently fitting, potent, and interesting.

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I've said it a few times, the better way to make TBN rely on your MP is to just make it cost Darkside time. You always have Darkside and sitting on 3000 MP just to have TBN available feels just bad. Functionally if you make it cost Darkside time it is essentially the same here it counts, but instead of pre-emptively saving MP, you are post-emptively emptying your Darkside, which I would much prefer over adjusting it around MP consumption at all. And, if it doesn't break, it wouldn't necessarily be a DPS loss in the same way. Currently, using TBN and not breaking it means you spent 3k MP on losing DPS and were better off not using it at all. If you used TBN and it pulled from Darkside and it didn't break, the only thing you are out is Darkside time meaning your DPS is the same as if you hadn't used it, meaning proper TBN usage is rewarded with direct DPS increase, meaning your Defense is no longer tied to your offensive resource, but rather you get extra offense for the sue of your defensive resources.

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Some Further Intentional Desync (at least from the 60s bursts)

Carve and Spit
Ability - 40s recast
Delivers a threefold attack with a potency of 510.
Additional Effect: Restores MP
Shares a recast timer with Abyssal Drain.

• That's it. Just a recast timer change. You'll still get it on your 2-minutes, but there's a bit more to track and hit between those full raid buffs.

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I don't think I like intentional desyncing, but if it was intentional then I'll refrain from commenting on it. It just feels like shooting yourself in the foot purely to make running harder.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Also, the "reaping" aspect of Blood for Blood is both
A) Stepping on the toes of RPR (I know DRK had it first with Sole Survivor, but it was dropped years ago and admittedly doesn't really fit the job's own aesthetic anyway -- more Death Knight than Dark Knight).
B) What we call a "ribbon": there for flavor, but kinda pointless in encounters such as most trials and 8-man raids, unless you're banking on your allies dying for small heals.
... plus as you have listed, our self-healing is limited to 3 attacks and maybe Woe-eater.

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Oh, I don't disagree that it would be a "ribbon", but that is also exactly what I was going for. It'd feel damn good in FATEs, in much the same manner as Reaper's gauge refills or Monk being able to burn down an enemy, instantly restore Chakra stacks in a second by having dropped combat, and burst right into another. But, at the same time, it wouldn't be noticeable in raids except in that it'd grant some tiny degree of clutch potential already seen on WAR and especially PLD. As such, it could leave healing from Blood spenders and Woe-eater rather strong (and/or, as mentioned beneath that section, attach a heal to C&S).

Ribbons are, imo, damn good ways to design in flavor. Take Assassinate on Rogue, for instance -- at least, if its animation lock were removed, since that's apparently the most difficult thing to deal with since butter knives. Adding flavor that fits Ninja in dungeons, such as Assassinate's CD being refreshed if the enemy dies within 5 seconds of being hit by it, costs nothing. It's not going to suddenly cost Raiton or Ranryu or Aeolian Edge potency or what have you, nor would it cost a button, but it would fit NIN's archetype of wanting that enemy dead now. (Yes, before that gets tangentially reamed, I realize there is no such thing as focus damage in XIV dungeons at present.)

As you've said, the healing would be limited to Blood spenders (either via starting a brief leech window, as per ShB Nascent on self, or via cure potency or damage -> healing [previously the norm] on self), Abyssal Drain (and maybe also C&S, still on a shared CD), Souleater, and Woe-eater, but that's far from insignificant. The Blood spenders alone could easily at least triple our current healing per minute. And again, none of that would be lost to Blood for Blood any more than Reaper's raid damage is nerfed on account of getting 10 bonus gauge per kill -- i.e., not at all.

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As for the rest of your suggestions... I understand that you're trying to come up with unique and creative tools, but you have to remember that sometimes things need to be simplified for the sake of the players, and existing systems like barriers, life drain and flat percentage mitigation effects already can cover things like Blood & Steel or Shadowskin while being more palatable to/recognizable by most players.

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I think we'd generally be okay so long as we keep it within the bounds already seen by Endwalker skills? Heart of Corundum, for instance, has a 170-word description with 11 different sections. Even this seemingly complex Shadowskin is merely 93 words and only 4 sections. Of course, I'm not totally sold on that design, but if, say, a Stagger mechanic were coded in, DRK probably wouldn't be the only job to see a skill with that effect.

Meanwhile, this Dark Dance's shield, for instance, is just the suggested fix to Heavensward's/Stormblood's Shelltron that I'd hear most often back in the day, before it was turned into a fixed duration and individual block values were nerfed to compensate.

CARVE & SPIT

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Originally Posted by Ryaduera

I don't think I like intentional desyncing, but if it was intentional then I'll refrain from commenting on it. It just feels like shooting yourself in the foot purely to make running harder.

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In this particular case, you can kind of think of it as only a vague NIN nerf. (Sorry, NIN; hopefully that'll be made up with more substantial potency buffs later.) At a 40s CD, you're still syncing with 120s periods. You just have twice as many between-burst uses of Blood Weapon, Carve and Spit, and the like.

WOE-EATER

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basing sustain off of damage taken/received is really difficult to balance and to calculate. Perhaps right here instead of being based on damage received, base it off of missing or total hp to a cap percentage?

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I'm curious why you would say this. That is already what every form of percentile mitigation does, is it not? This has no more, and no less, diminishing returns than any form of mitigation would. It's merely healing instead, meaning that it doesn't increase max eHP (against a single attack).

The reason I based it off damage received, rather than %HP reduced, is that the latter would have huge anti-synergy with barriers.

LIVING SHADOW

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If I'm understanding this right, this can actually cause you to take more damage overall. When pulling trash I dance around the AoE markers on the regular, the shadow sounds like it will sit there and eat them. If a burst window in a raid came with dodging certain mechanics that have RNG in them the trait would be near useless (think Paradegma in Ex trial 1). That aside, some functionality with actually commanding the shadow is good, but you have to be very careful with ghosting abilities. Scholars know that pain and I'd rather stay away from that. Adding some agency would be ideal, but I personally don't know why we can't just "equip" our shadow and augment our attacks like that. Not equipping it could be a DPS gain in AoE but equipping it could be DPS gain in single target, idk, something like that. But if not that, having actual control wouldn't be a bad idea.

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Your confusion here is entirely my fault; I tried too hard to be concise. The Living Shadow does not take damage in and of itself. It simply allows enemies attacking you to attack you through your Living Shadow instead. As such, you could actually reactivate the skill and your Living Shadow in an AoE to hold the boss in place for melee positionals while you dodge out of AoEs. It's more a tool for controlling space while taking less damage; it offers no additional vulnernabilities.

As for "equipping" our Shadow, that... feels like what Darkside perhaps should have been all along. Build Shadow gauge or w/e, then activate Darkside to pump over raid buffs, and split our Shadow off for utility if we like. I'd totally dig it. I just haven't figured out how to remaster the gauge well just yet.

BLOOD WEAPON

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Here's a hot take. I just straight up hate Blood Weapon. It's an OGCD that is used in a way to give a fixed amount of MP (Everyone tries to fit the same GCD's into the window) and if turned into a stack format would still just be an oGCD that gave us a fixed amount of MP. The only way I will ever like Blood Weapon is if something else in the kit also interacts with it. As it stands it is a "press to get x MP over 10s" button and making it a stack function would be exactly the same.

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I think that's more... tepid. I'm not at all satisfied by these Blood Weapon suggestions here; they don't even make it worth the button to me yet. But, I do like the idea of having at least a couple 40s CDs as to make that a tier to itself (still syncs with 120s, but isn't as crowded as 30s CDs, etc.), and I would like for (A) a good version of Blood Weapon eventually, so I don't want to make precedent for its complete removal and (B) some sort of speed modifier. I like variable speed. It should be bankable, though, imo.

...I've mentioned before potentially using Darkside as a Blood Weapon alternative (their animations back in the day, even, were quite alike), such that it drains Darkside over time in an ever-accelerating fashion. The more Darkside you spend or generate, the faster it drains and the larger a buff you get, with the goal being to have it run out just after a Shadowbringer. Fair bit of gambling involved. I'm still trying to fix that idea up before presenting it here, though.

DELIRIUM

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I'm ok with Delerium regenerating MP, but if it must be removed/adjusted basing it just around MP regeneration as is isn't the worst way to do it. Not a fan, but I don't hate it, and if it came with other things ti make DRK good, I'd shrug and accept it.

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To clarify, the change here is just increase MP per minute in that Bloodspiller and Quietus would now always generate MP. That is no longer an effect tacked onto Delirium, but instead part of those skills themselves. However, Quietus's MP gen will have been corrected to the current MP per GCD, instead of still being based on Shadowbringer's (when Stalwart Soul have 1000 MP, up from the current 600 MP). As such, Bloodspiller would always give 200 MP and Quietus would always give 300 MP.


OTHER BLOOD STUFF

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I'm a fan of making blood spenders cost 40 blood instead because it is a little awkward to go to 60 then use a spender to have 1o left. My method of removing that would have been to give DRK a DoT with a separate cooldown that grants 10 blood, something around a minute, and it would give us one more GCD to press instead of 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-4. But yes, 35 seconds is much better than 42.5 for a plethora of reasons. Aside being outright better and more DPS overall, it lines up with raid buffs better.

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I mean, you had me at something that sounds at least vaguely like Scourge. I just took this solution for the added banking potential. (Well, that and because with the Blood gen, any DoT would have to deal... not very much damage, as not to be spammed. Though I do love when DoTs have a good degree of immediate value in order to reduce the costs of early reapplication....)


SHADOWSKIN / SUSTAIN BASED ON DAMAGE DEALT

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Tying an active mitigation to damage dealt can feel very bad in some encounters. The idea here is very cool, but in the current state of the game I worry for how it would compare, because at the end of the day this might still be one of the weaker cooldowns in practice. If this was a "per target hit" ah la Blood Whetting then that could fix it, but being on actual damage dealt can make it very feelsbad in some scenarios and encounters

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Such definitely has" feelbad" potential, but it also has that much more "feelgood" potential, too. Here, we've tied it to a skill that offers very high max eHP increase (or, mitigation) for its cooldown, though at precisely that cost to actual HP later along. (I.e., it's max eHP increase that, apart from preventing death, doesn't increase sustain.) As such, the active mitigation here is no more time-sensitive than, say, the healing provided by Nascent/Bloodwhetting.

Admittedly, part of my reason for bringing this up is because I think tank design in general needs to go back to being more open to banking damage for survival purposes, rather than being so strictly Blue DPS with wholly separate auxiliary buttons (our independent sustain). More than just those skills added atop a DPS kit should, imo, be integral to (or at least involved in) our survival.

That said, I am absolutely not a fan of AoE sustain scaling as if it were ST-throughput-times-target-count. Bloodwhetting's current system just seems bizarrely strange and capable of almost single-handedly devaluing any sort of would-be difficult brief-and-bursty add fights. It is, imo, now procedurally broken precisely because it now heals per hit rather than scaling with damage dealt. Perhaps that could be curtailed in such a way that'd allow one to sacrifice a bit of damage in favor of sustain in two-target scenarios, and obviously I find such options fun, but the most reasonable way to deal with it now is just to revert its procedure. Heck, all our offensive self-heals used to be damage-based. Bloodbath, Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone, Souleater, Abyssal Drain -- you name it.


BLOOD FOR BLOOD

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I don't like this for 2 reasons. Rewarding the DRK for your allies playing poorly is unhealthy design because in high-level play with a good party it becomes a trait that just doesn't get used. Also tying the HP regen to enemies that grant exp means in dungeon pulls only the boss will reward you with HP which is superfluous.

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Ahh, shoot, I totally brain-farted in regard to exp being removed from dungeon mobs. Yes, I will go and correct that via edit now. Per normal XIV tooltip convention, I won't even bother saying that it's restricted to mobs within 10 levels of you, but, well, it'll be restricted to mobs within 10 levels.

I don't mind that DRK is hereby rewarded for poor teammate performance. We could say the exact same thing about Clemency and Cover; they are non-mechanics until something goes wrong. Here, DRK points, laughs, and gets stronger rather than saving them, but that's fine, imo.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

All could be fixed with unlinking ad and c&s and making ad a GCD w/cost. Won’t make it op in raids either... I’m not sure what the hold up is with this change.

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that's what unleash/stalwart were change for.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'm curious why you would say this. That is already what every form of percentile mitigation does, is it not? This has no more, and no less, diminishing returns than any form of mitigation would. It's merely healing instead, meaning that it doesn't increase max eHP (against a single attack).

The reason I based it off damage received, rather than %HP reduced, is that the latter would have huge anti-synergy with barriers.

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It may not be the same thing as he might be thinking, but healing based on damage received has the potential to be so insanely broken (Read: Macrocosmos in P3s) or literally useless compared to current Oblation (Read: any single mechanic that sets your HP to low values, bypassing damage, like Charybdis -> double attack in O4s). P3s has already shown healing based on damage taken has incredible cheese potential. And with how cheesy TBN can be with ignoring damage downs, the last thing DRK needs is another shred of cheese.

If DRK is to get any self sustain to match Aurora/Equil, I'd rather it be like them and useful in 100% of situations, not tied to external factors which cause its effect to wildly vary in use. Not everything needs to have the wheel reinvented.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

It may not be the same thing as he might be thinking, but healing based on damage received has the potential to be so insanely broken (Read: Macrocosmos in P3s)

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For people who doesn't understand what he means.

P3S does a mechanic called Death Toll + Life Agonies. Requires the Sunbirds to strike you to remove debuff (By dying like Neo-Ex Death), the debuff leaves a hefty Healing down debuff calculating around 50%, and Macrocosmos is % based than potency which means it ignores the debuff fully restoring everyone's HP in an instant. Whm/Sge/Sch have to AOE heal spam just to get everyone up. Life Agonies is a ultra raid wide AOE.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

If DRK is to get any self sustain to match Aurora/Equil, I'd rather it be like them and useful in 100% of situations, not tied to external factors which cause its effect to wildly vary in use.

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Feels like the thing you could add to Salt and Darkness to give it that little bit of pizazz. A 500 self heal + 250 for every additional target hit. Even on 8 targets, that's still only about 10% more healing than Equilibrium gives on a +30 second cooldown.

Doesn't impact savage / single bosses much as the damage outweighs the healing, but gives another 'cooldown' for the Dark Knight in every other slice of content. Maybe they can even use Living Dead in dungeons and fates.

But if we're talking wish lists, I'd rather see each tank receive a central theme for defense, and then build their cooldowns around that. It really isn't that hard to keep them numerically equal, so long as we don't do anything stupid like target scaling flat healing, as a random example of course.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

It may not be the same thing as he might be thinking, but healing based on damage received has the potential to be so insanely broken (Read: Macrocosmos in P3s) or literally useless compared to current Oblation (Read: any single mechanic that sets your HP to low values, bypassing damage, like Charybdis -> double attack in O4s). P3s has already shown healing based on damage taken has incredible cheese potential. And with how cheesy TBN can be with ignoring damage downs, the last thing DRK needs is another shred of cheese.

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Again, unless the mitigation would prevent a death, there's no difference in sustain produced between mitigation and healing. Though, when there is such a danger, mitigation is the better of the two. As such, even at best, Woe-eater is still inferior to a 4s 20% mitigation effect. But, we treat even 4s of 35% mitigation on a 25s CD (with attached healing and a further 4s of mitigation) as far from broken. This is mere 4s of 20%, but without even a max eHP increase, on a 40s CD.

At no point, though, is a 20% sustain benefit for/from 4 seconds (on a 40s CD) going to be "useless" compared to 10% for 10 seconds (on a 60s CD). The latter could, if the damage were somehow perfectly constant, provide a quarter more, but it'd also take a third longer to charge.

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If DRK is to get any self sustain to match Aurora/Equil, I'd rather it be like them and useful in 100% of situations, not tied to external factors which cause its effect to wildly vary in use. Not everything needs to have the wheel reinvented.

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I feel like things are getting compared oddly here. The answer to Aurora/Equil would in this case be heals from Bloodspiller, Quietus, and, say, Salt and Darkness -- bankable, dependable, purely stat-based. Oblation here simply acts like any other 4s window of increased sustain as provided via any other lv82 trait. It's very specifically not reinventing the wheel. It just also isn't giving excessive max eHP increases.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

For people who doesn't understand what he means.

P3S does a mechanic called Death Toll + Life Agonies. Requires the Sunbirds to strike you to remove debuff (By dying like Neo-Ex Death), the debuff leaves a hefty Healing down debuff calculating around 50%, and Macrocosmos is % based than potency which means it ignores the debuff fully restoring everyone's HP in an instant. Whm/Sge/Sch have to AOE heal spam just to get everyone up. Life Agonies is a ultra raid wide AOE.

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I'm aware, but this seems to fall more under the question of "Should we allow cheese? And to what degree?" SE could easily have Macrocosmos, too, check for healing debuffs before applying its effect, just as they could with any damage->healing effect. I don't think we ought to remove whole slews of possible abilities on the assumption that there might one day be a fight in which they present a unique advantage and SE will never adjust those skills' interactions even if they make a particular job a lock-in for the given fight.
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Originally Posted by Kabooa

But if we're talking wish lists, I'd rather see each tank receive a central theme for defense, and then build their cooldowns around that. It really isn't that hard to keep them numerically equal, so long as we don't do anything stupid like target scaling flat healing, as a random example of course.

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Same. Though, is it awful that I really want to build PLD around Cover as a broader, more integral mechanic? Not exclusively, but at least in part....
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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Thinking on it, they should probably remove TBN from the MP cost and remove its free Edge/Flood. Instead, make it so TBN has an HoT on it, and shattering it burst heals you for the remaining potency. This changes the move into something you don't care whether it pops or not, you're getting healed by it the same regardless.

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Why would we want to remove even more gameplay considerations / skill ceiling elements from DRK, though? Even the other on-demands wouldn't be nearly so lenient in optimizing them. And that's before accounting for any overheal issues or wasted capacity in using it externally.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'm aware, but this seems to fall more under the question of "Should we allow cheese? And to what degree?" SE could easily have Macrocosmos, too, check for healing debuffs before applying its effect, just as they could with any damage->healing effect.

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Healer LB is the usual response sadly without Ast.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I think we'd generally be okay so long as we keep it within the bounds already seen by Endwalker skills? Heart of Corundum, for instance, has a 170-word description with 11 different sections. Even this seemingly complex Shadowskin is merely 93 words and only 4 sections. Of course, I'm not totally sold on that design, but if, say, a Stagger mechanic were coded in, DRK probably wouldn't be the only job to see a skill with that effect.

Meanwhile, this Dark Dance's shield, for instance, is just the suggested fix to Heavensward's/Stormblood's Shelltron that I'd hear most often back in the day, before it was turned into a fixed duration and individual block values were nerfed to compensate.

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I'm not saying we wouldn't be fine, but I am saying the presentation of those words matters. HoC could read as follows.

Reduce damage by 15% for 8s
Reduce damage by 15% for 4s
Get healed for 900 potency at 50% hp or after expiration
Have Brutal Shell? Give Brutal Shell.

The amount of words used has little to do with how comprehensible it is. Math as an example, the Wave Equation has 18 characters, but 10x12345+1000000000000 has 22 characters but one is significantly easier to understand.

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CARVE & SPIT

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Like I said, I don't hate it, it's just not my cup of tea. I always feel kinda dirty when I have to use things outside of burst windows, which is why PLD opener infuriates me no matter how much I love the job.

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WOE-EATER

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Yes, my method does have anti-synergy with barriers, but attaching a heal to a barrier is always anti-synergy. You stopped damage, if you did it right then what exactly are you healing from in the first place? Purely excessive damage. Making it based on missing HP to a capped percentage means you can make it so it restores up to x potency based on missing HP with the full potency being rewarded on, say, your HP being at 50%. The purpose being preventing dropping to near no HP and springing up like nothing happened the instant damage goes though. HoC and Blood whetting don't even do that (single target), and those are already super strong.

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LIVING SHADOW.

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If that's the case then I see, and I have no further comments.

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DELIRIUM

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If this is the case then with the extra MP per minute some potencies would have to get lowered. In fact, with most of these changes, a lot of potencies would need to be lowered across the board.

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OTHER BLOOD STUFF

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You could feasibly make this DoT be DRK Confiteor; can only be used under the effects of Blood Weapon and removes the effect, which would also fix my hate for Blood Weapon since the button would do more than "Use this to get more resource, but you have to also do the thing you're already doing anyway so there's no reason for you to just not get it over time, we just needed a reason to keep the word 'weapon' in the name"

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SHADOWSKIN / SUSTAIN BASED ON DAMAGE DEALT
Heck, all our offensive self-heals used to be damage-based. Bloodbath, Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone, Souleater, Abyssal Drain -- you name it.

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This is true, but there is good reason this was removed and changed. We are first and foremost the people who take damage. Relying on damage dealt just makes us even more-so blue DPS that have sustain. Separating it from damage makes it feel more like a reward for using it defensively as opposed to being rewarded for doing more damage. per-target healing can go, sure, I used that as an example because of old Abyssal Drain and how it was just busted.

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BLOOD FOR BLOOD

I don't mind that DRK is hereby rewarded for poor teammate performance. We could say the exact same thing about Clemency and Cover; they are non-mechanics until something goes wrong. Here, DRK points, laughs, and gets stronger rather than saving them, but that's fine, imo.

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With that in mind, no other comments on that particular part. I will, however, say that while that is technically true for Clemency and Cover, they still have purposes outside of poor play. I like to solo-tank the 89 Ex trial and while warrior is technically better for it because of how busted Blood Whetting really is, PLD plays pretty well in that fight because of the ranged combo. Sometimes, for the adds phase, I have to deal with incoming damage without having a defensive cooldown necessarily ready in that moment, and even in current-tier gear those adds can seriously hurt, so I will throw out a Clemency to prevent myself from dying because if both of those auto-attacks go through at the same time, that is a massive chunk of HP being ripped away from me. Cover can still be found useful in some places to make optimization and I'm sure strats will develop to use it for micro-optimizations. The problem with tying it to ally death isn't necessarily that it rewards the DRK for allies playing poorly, it is that it exclusively rewards poor gameplay. I guess what I'm trying to say is I believe all abilities should always have potential even if that potential is limited.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Why would we want to remove even more gameplay considerations / skill ceiling elements from DRK, though? Even the other on-demands wouldn't be nearly so lenient in optimizing them. And that's before accounting for any overheal issues or wasted capacity in using it externally.

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Because, quite frankly, the kit is absolute shit. This job is in the worst state it has ever been, has no identity, and quite frankly, they could delete it and nothing of value would be lost, no identity lost, nothing of importance lost. They may as well homogenize temporarily before reworking it, because right now it isn't possible for this job to get any worse at all. I'd rather take a TBN that I don't feel penalized for it not breaking than the current which absolutely feels like shit when it doesn't pop just because a healer/DPS throws an extra mitigation they didn't need to throw.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Because, quite frankly, the kit is absolute shit.

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Sure, but if StB, ShB, and now EW have proven anything, it's that you don't "fix" a kit just by cropping its skill ceiling, homogenizing it, and making it more boring. I disagree that nothing of value would be lost by homogenizing DRK, however "temporarily" (since we've seen by now that any increase in homogenization makes it that much harder to break free of) that might be.

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I'd rather take a TBN that I don't feel penalized for it not breaking

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This is the thing that's so weird to me. Outside of select, especially pitiful bosses, I can pop a TBN at least thrice per minute. P1 I can pop off the tail of any cast + autos. P2 I can pop off autos. P3 I can pop off autos as long as he doesn't jump away mid-duration. P4 I can pop off any instance of raid damage or even just autos so long as I use it far enough before any even that would freeze set autos. Hell, the little pitifully-hitting puppet boss in Smileton can break TBN with just autos as long as you activate it just before an auto would hit, long enough before a cast as to get autos across the full duration. It's also consumed before any other barriers. It's just not that hard to pop once you get the hang of its activation time and memorize the timings of the given fight. But I like that learning being a thing.

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Originally Posted by Ryaduera

The amount of words used has little to do with how comprehensible it is. Math as an example, the Wave Equation has 18 characters, but 10x12345+1000000000000 has 22 characters but one is significantly easier to understand.

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Ahh, I see. That's fair. I'm pretty sure I can word these better than the current half-a-minute's spitball wording given on most of these, though. Or, put more simply, I think any confusion would have more to do with my poor presentation than any of these particular effects. "Stagger" (damage delayed to be taken over time), contextual heals (based on damage taken), hardening (damage being reduced by a flat amount, usually based on the affected's stats such as Defense), etc., are all mechanics that were very rapidly and easily understood in other MMOs. Given better wording, I think they'd be fine here, too.

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Yes, my method does have anti-synergy with barriers, but attaching a heal to a barrier is always anti-synergy. You stopped damage, if you did it right then what exactly are you healing from in the first place? Purely excessive damage. Making it based on missing HP to a capped percentage means you can make it so it restores up to x potency based on missing HP with the full potency being rewarded on, say, your HP being at 50%. The purpose being preventing dropping to near no HP and springing up like nothing happened the instant damage goes though. HoC and Blood whetting don't even do that (single target), and those are already super strong.

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Let's put this into a simple scenario. You have 80k HP and a 20k barrier (TBN, Galvanize or EuD, whatever you prefer). If you then get hit for 40k, that brings you down to 60k. Most MMOs' technical language would still refer to that as 40k damage, but if they go out of their way to instead specify "HP lost", then you'd only be looking at 20k. As such, any barrier prior to damage taken would produce 20% less net sustain than would a simple heal, which doesn't seem terribly fair (especially if/when the barrier itself already produces less sustain per GCD unless it crits; CritLo and CritEuD are both... kind of ridiculous in their effective potency).

It's kind of like when an effect goes out of its way to make something already terrible, like SkS, even worse. You just can't help but wonder, "But why?" True, barriers aren't bad --horribly designed for PuG situations, in that allied barriers are uniquely able to replace stronger barriers, but certainly far from weak on the whole-- but I see no reason to design in a "ha, screw you in particular" mechanic just on the basis that "well, you didn't absolutely need a barrier just then anyways, so that's on you," or the like.

Now, the leniency offered by a cap (since you can tune the floor up to compensate for the cropped ceiling) would be fine. I just don't really think it's necessary, and it would add some further complexity. I'm fine with a slightly lower floor and higher ceiling; such already applies to every bit of percentile mitigation in the game and there is almost zero chance in practice of DRK living or dying by that subtle difference in output floor.

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If this is the case then with the extra MP per minute some potencies would have to get lowered. In fact, with most of these changes, a lot of potencies would need to be lowered across the board.

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Absolutely. There's no way all this wouldn't require overall kit tuning. I'm just leaning slightly towards not proportionately nerfing Blood spenders in particular to make up for their added MP gen and frequency; instead, they'd be a bit more prominent feature in the kit.

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This is true, but there is good reason this was removed and changed. We are first and foremost the people who take damage.

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I have to heartily disagree with this. It's not so much about capacity -- that you are doing damage -- as how you are using it / what you are doing with it.

If a greater portion of my kit is now significant to my survival, I feel that much more like someone whose kit is built around rewarding skill with survival, rather than one whose kit simply tacks that on as an auxiliary factor. Right now, tanks mostly feel like the latter. We're DPS first and foremost in large part because our capacities are so cut in dry. This half of our kit is long-term throughput; this half of our kit is meant simply not to prevent the first's being bottlenecked (by our death) and to increase healer damage. I'd rather the whole thing, or nearer to, feel vital to our survival so that we can feel like we were designed, first and foremost, to be those who take damage, not just "those who deal damage and also, via auxiliary outputs, have a sharper effect on Green DPS damage over time than do raid buffs."

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I will, however, say that while that is technically true for Clemency and Cover, they still have purposes outside of poor play. I like to solo-tank the 89 Ex trial and while warrior is technically better for it because of how busted Blood Whetting really is, PLD plays pretty well in that fight because of the ranged combo. Sometimes, for the adds phase, I have to deal with incoming damage without having a defensive cooldown necessarily ready in that moment, and even in current-tier gear those adds can seriously hurt, so I will throw out a Clemency to prevent myself from dying because if both of those auto-attacks go through at the same time, that is a massive chunk of HP being ripped away from me. Cover can still be found useful in some places to make optimization and I'm sure strats will develop to use it for micro-optimizations. The problem with tying it to ally death isn't necessarily that it rewards the DRK for allies playing poorly, it is that it exclusively rewards poor gameplay. I guess what I'm trying to say is I believe all abilities should always have potential even if that potential is limited.

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True, but while I don't think that DRK can step on RPR's toes through on-kill resources, I do think giving DRK any more significant saving tools than are already given (pretty significant already, imo) via TBN and Oblation would push out PLD a bit, and I've always loved PLD's owning that niche. So that's why I decided to stop there. It's just a simple feel-good trait that gets a bit of Dark Avenger flavor when things go south while reducing DRK's healing floor slightly in favor of a faintly more than proportionate increase to its healing ceiling in such a way as, again, taps into the that Dark Avenger vibe when things get bad.
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Oh, here's the quick LD fix, btw, that I somehow forgot to include in my original post:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The Obligatory Living Dead Fix

Living Dead
Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, you are healed to 50% health and status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
Healing received is nullified up to an amount equal to 50% of your HP. While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1.
Walking Dead Duration: 10s

• Not a huge fan of it so far, but it covers the basic needs.

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If they make DRK even more like warrior on following patches for balance, but address it and say that it'll get reworked more thoroughly later I'd be fine with it. As long as we know what the devs are going for i'd be fine

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This is the thing that's so weird to me. Outside of select, especially pitiful bosses, I can pop a TBN at least thrice per minute. P1 I can pop off the tail of any cast + autos. P2 I can pop off autos. P3 I can pop off autos as long as he doesn't jump away mid-duration. P4 I can pop off any instance of raid damage or even just autos so long as I use it far enough before any even that would freeze set autos. Hell, the little pitifully-hitting puppet boss in Smileton can break TBN with just autos as long as you activate it just before an auto would hit, long enough before a cast as to get autos across the full duration. It's also consumed before any other barriers. It's just not that hard to pop once you get the hang of its activation time and memorize the timings of the given fight. But I like that learning being a thing.

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Dungeons are where this is a problem. And before you pull the "SE doesn't balance around dungeons" nonsense, reminder that Abyssal Drain got nerfed HARD in ShB just because it was too powerful in dungeons in SB.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

And before you pull the "SE doesn't balance around dungeons" nonsense

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I've never made that claim, unless you take as such my pointing out the obvious absurdity that is EW Nascent / Bloodwhetting in AoE.
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But again, none of that requires that what little remains unique to DRK be torn out wholesale in favor of more Warrior copy-pasta.

Simply bring back GCD Abyssal Drain at 3000 MP. Or give a complimentary defensive skill opposite to TBN, something which performs better against more constant and higher total damage than does TBN, instead of the pitiful excuse that is Oblation (or Dark Mind, for that matter). Or give Bloodspiller and Quietus cure potency or damage -> healing. Or reduce Abyssal and C&S's shared CD and give each (increased) healing potency.

None of its sustain issues require that its skill ceiling be reduced or the kit further homogenized.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I've never made that claim, unless you take as such my pointing out the obvious absurdity that is EW Nascent / Bloodwhetting in AoE.
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But again, none of that requires that what little remains unique to DRK be torn out wholesale in favor of more Warrior copy-pasta.

Simply bring back GCD Abyssal Drain at 3000 MP. Or give a complimentary defensive skill opposite to TBN, something which performs better against more constant and higher total damage than does TBN, instead of the pitiful excuse that is Oblation (or Dark Mind, for that matter). Or give Bloodspiller and Quietus cure potency or damage -> healing. Or reduce Abyssal and C&S's shared CD and give each (increased) healing potency.

None of its sustain issues require that its skill ceiling be reduced or the kit further homogenized.

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I'm also looking at DRK as a whole. The devs clearly don't know what they want this job to be, and at this point we may as well expect homogenization, as they'd rather have a weaker warrior rather than a unique tank. As you can tell, I'm incredibly frustrated at this point, and may be reaching my limit on this nonsense with the devs treating DRK like crap. It may objectively be the worst job in the game right now.

Magic defense is much too situational in this game for it to really matter. Very, very few enemies use magic attacks. Why not just give us flat damage reduction?

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

Magic defense is much too situational in this game for it to really matter. Very, very few enemies use magic attacks. Why not just give us flat damage reduction?

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15% preferably, since that keeps its power.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

If they make DRK even more like warrior on following patches for balance, but address it and say that it'll get reworked more thoroughly later I'd be fine with it. As long as we know what the devs are going for i'd be fine

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At that point why not just delete the job and let warrior use swords as well as axes? What is the point of multiple jobs when they all play the same?

I highly doubt the changes would be reversed were this to happen as well.

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Originally Posted by Rhais

At that point why not just delete the job and let warrior use swords as well as axes? What is the point of multiple jobs when they all play the same?

I highly doubt the changes would be reversed were this to happen as well.

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They've already turned DRK into WAR lite. At this point DRK needs a massive rework, but since they don't like doing those mid expansion, we're going to need something to shore up its glaring weaknesses temporarily.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

They've already turned DRK into WAR lite. At this point DRK needs a massive rework, but since they don't like doing those mid expansion, we're going to need something to shore up its glaring weaknesses temporarily.

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It's glaring weakness is uninspired warrior-lite mechanics and lacking any unique compelling gameplay. How will further solidifying that help the job?

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Originally Posted by Rhais

It's glaring weakness is uninspired warrior-lite mechanics and lacking any unique compelling gameplay. How will further solidifying that help the job?

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What Ryu means is "glaring weaknesses" that cripple its performance, not appeal or playstyle; those would have to be addressed with a complete rework, which won't happen mid-expansion.

In the meantime the most we can expect is bandaids and very light reworking of specific mechanics that prove ineffective, such as LD, Dark Mind, LD, Oblation, the lack of any sustainability for trash pulls, and LD.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

What Ryu means is "glaring weaknesses" that cripple its performance, not appeal or playstyle; those would have to be addressed with a complete rework.

In the meantime the most we can expect is bandaids and very light reworking of specific mechanics that prove ineffective, such as LD, Dark Mind, LD, Oblation, the lack of any sustainability for trash pulls, and LD.

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Sure, but that doesn't require us to copy Warrior.

By just generalizing our 60s defensive, giving a small bit of added flexibility to, say, C&S/AD, and just having the EW additions give some actual effect on DRK's sustain [Oblation actually having an impact and Salt and Darkness giving some actual healing in the vein of Divine Magic Mastery II and Enhance Equilibrium], we can patch all major holes without further turning DRK into a WAR-clone.

Straightforward changes, with no need for more WAR-lite:

1. Dark Mind now reduces damage taken by 15% and magic damage by a further 10%. (Why 15|25% instead of 10|20% physical|magic mitigation? Because magic damage is far less common and DM has lower uptime than Camo anyways.)
   
   
2. Oblation now does 10% mitigation for 8 seconds, with a further 10% mitigation for the first 4 seconds. (20% for 4, 10% for 4 more.) Recast time reduced to 40 seconds.
   
   
3. Salt and Darkness now also heals for damage dealt (500 for the first, 250 for all subsequent targets).
   
   
4. Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain cooldowns reduced to 40 seconds and given a second charge (put 2 into each raid 120s raid window; 1 between), with free ppm kept as before. For instance, have them each cost 3000 MP instead of granting 600 MP; to match C&S's 510 ppm, C&S would then have to deal 800 potency (340 free potency per cast, down 2/3s of 510). Abyssal Drain, which already needed a slight buff regardless, could deal 270p (keeping its current power would place it at 260; this buff simply lets it faintly push ahead at 3 targets) and heal for damage dealt (->270n potency). Additionally, let C&S heal for half its damage dealt (->400 potency).

   EDIT: Per Archwizard's reminder -- Yes, C&S and AD would benefit from Dark Arts.

   With the two above changes alone, without borrowing from others' designs, DRK would already heal for ~933 additional potency per minute in ST and drastically more in AoE.
   
   
5. Living Dead revised just slightly. There's a decent bit of coding doubtless involved, but Living Dead is certainly by now owed at least that much effort.

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Living Dead
Ability - 300s recast
Grants the effect of Living Dead, preventing most attacks from decreasing your HP below 1 and causing you to heal for 50% of your damage dealt. The first time Living Dead prevents your death, its duration is refreshed but you will be inflicted with Borrowed Time.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
Borrowed Time: Generates a barrier equal to 100% of your HP which absorbs incoming healing. Incoming healing reduces this barrier by the amount it would have healed. This effect fades after 20 seconds.

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• As before, not getting enough healing will leave you vulnerable; but, it can no longer outright kill you. The added overall healing requirement (needing to heal for almost 200% of the DRK's HP to top it back off) is mostly made up for by the life-steal. Barriers can still be attached to the DRK even when the initial healing does not get through to the DRK's HP.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Sure, but that doesn't require us to copy Warrior.

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Never said it did, and I absolutely agree that it shouldn't.

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Living Dead revised just slightly. There's a decent bit of coding doubtless involved, but Living Dead is certainly by now owed at least that much effort.

Living Dead
Ability - 300s recast
Grants the effect of Living Dead, preventing most attacks from decreasing your HP below 1 and causing you to heal for 50% of your damage dealt. The first time Living Dead prevents your death, its duration is refreshed but you will be inflicted with Borrowed Time.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
Borrowed Time: Generates a barrier equal to 100% of your HP which absorbs incoming healing. Incoming healing reduces this barrier by the amount it would have healed. This effect fades after 20 seconds.

• As before, not getting enough healing will leave you vulnerable; but, it can no longer outright kill you. The added overall healing requirement (needing to heal for almost 200% of the DRK's HP to top it back off) is mostly made up for by the life-steal. Barriers can still be attached to the DRK even when the initial healing does not get through to the DRK's HP.

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This is probably the most effective way to revise LD to have the same approximate limitations, without massively penalizing healers who Bene too early or who cannot overcome the tank's HP limit in time.
My only gripe is that Borrowed Time should probably be limited to 10 sec, since if any of it remains after 10 sec the tank is stuck at 1 HP anyway with no immunity.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

This is probably the most effective way to revise LD to have the same approximate limitations, without massively penalizing healers who Bene too early or who cannot overcome the tank's HP limit in time.
My only gripe is that Borrowed Time should probably be limited to 10 sec, since if any of it remains after 10 sec the tank is stuck at 1 HP anyway with no immunity.

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That would remove most of the reason to even deal with the mechanic, though, wouldn't it? Especially in situations where damage would only be hitting one of the tanks at a time and raid damage isn't timed just perfectly to finish the DRK off (though, that would make for an interesting PLD synergy via Cover, at least).


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(Sorry; ran out of daily posts.)

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Even if the barrier lasted the full 10 sec, you would be guaranteed to come out of the immunity period with only 1 HP, unlike even WAR and GNB's immunes where you can at least heal partway during that period.

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Yes, which allows for breaking that barrier to be worthwhile, instead of just tagging out and outlasting it or using TBN+Oblation (20% mitigation for the first 4 seconds in this example, pushing you to an effective eHP of 31% health for that moment) to eat a further auto as necessary. If DRK itself didn't hold that capacity as to nullify that risk for a few seconds, I'd agree. But it does, and so for healing that barrier not just to be a trap, it must outlast the death-preventing effect. At that point, the more it exceeds LD's duration, the less normalized it will be to cheese the barrier, which will ultimately make LD more costly than it would otherwise, yes, but also less likely to go horribly awry and lead to the DRK's death. If it came down to it, I would rather reduce the barrier to 50% HP or have it instead fade over 30 seconds (so that it's down to at most 67% left, naturally, by the end of LD) than make useless any incomplete progress towards depleting it.

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Nothing about the way you've reworked LD itself works to alleviate the burden it has on healers, only mildly reduce the penalty for having spent all of your resources and CDs before LD was popped.
Otherwise it relies on the DRK having... not spent all of its resources and CDs before using LD as a last resort like most tank immunes.

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Such was the point, no? To not fundamentally change the ability outside of causing it to no longer damn near guarantee the DRK's death?

The amount to be healed is now clearly marked and failure leaves the DRK vulnerable, not dead; that's all. It's still a resource hog (though it certainly benefits from DRK's being able to heal for half its damage dealt over that period) because I'd not intended to change that in a minimal adjustment.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

That would remove most of the reason to even deal with the mechanic, though, would it? Especially in situations where damage would only be hitting one of the tanks at a time and raid damage isn't timed just perfectly to finish the DRK off (though, that would make for an interesting PLD synergy via Cover, at least).

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That would be the absolute ideal scenario though, relying both on luck and perfect timing.

As you have it written now, you have exactly the same pressure in place for healers -- heal 100% of the tank's HP in under 10 sec, or highly risk them dying the second the timer runs out; the extra 10 sec is theoretical. The key difference is the use of "highly risk" there, substituting for "guarantee" with existing LD, but functionally they would be the same for something like a dungeon pull with only one healer to help you.
Even if the barrier lasted the full 10 sec due to insufficient healing, you would be guaranteed to come out of the immunity period with only 1 HP (and even if you manage to crack the barrier in the last couple seconds before the immunity ends, the DRK's HP is still cripplingly low), unlike even WAR and GNB's immunes where you can at least heal partway during that period and are likely to come out of it with something. Having that period extend even past the point LD provides a benefit is overkill.

Nothing about the way you've reworked LD itself works to alleviate the burden it has on healers, only mildly reduce the penalty for having spent all of your resources and CDs before LD was popped.
Otherwise it relies on the DRK having... not spent all of its resources and CDs before using LD as a last resort like most tank immunes, without an on-demand that can shore up its main flaws.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Such was the point, no? To not fundamentally change the ability outside of causing it to no longer damn near guarantee the DRK's death?

The amount to be healed is now clearly marked and failure leaves the DRK vulnerable, not dead; that's all. It's still a resource hog (though it certainly benefits from DRK's being able to heal for half its damage dealt over that period) because I'd not intended to change that in a minimal adjustment.

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I guess so, through the lens of bare minimalism. I'm just thinking of the times I've seen Walking Dead activate in dungeons and just resigned myself to the DRK's death, and imagining if it'd have the same result. I can't help but wonder if this solution would feel worse to use as someone without Bene; even with the revision, I wouldn't get the consolation that if I'd somehow succeeded as SGE or some other, the DRK would have some HP in the tank, since all of the HP it absorbed is just... gone.

Still, fingers crossed that any update to LD doesn't occur in a vacuum. More sustain for the DRK would mean lower odds of (and marginally less pain from) seeing LD at all, right?

I suppose it just creates a greater appreciation for how terrible LD feels as a tank immune, being the most oppressive to the healers (not least because of how its design may or may not impact DRK's lackluster self-healing). Even with adjustments to address its most glaring concerns to the letter, we can still spot blistering flaws that make it continue to stand out as the worst ability in its class, as the only one built with an actual penalty.
Bonus points for how WAR and GNB's on-demand tools synergize with their own immune skills, especially after 82.

Long and short of what I'm saying is, personally, trying to work around what we have is not the solution I would favor if the alternative was going back to the drawing board with LD entirely... and I'm sure I'm far from alone in that.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

I'm also looking at DRK as a whole. The devs clearly don't know what they want this job to be, and at this point we may as well expect homogenization, as they'd rather have a weaker warrior rather than a unique tank. As you can tell, I'm incredibly frustrated at this point, and may be reaching my limit on this nonsense with the devs treating DRK like crap. It may objectively be the worst job in the game right now.

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Well, that's not entirely true. They've had some really great ideas for DRK in the past. So great in fact they felt they were wasted on DRK.

Dev clearly want Drk to be the high DPS tank, and that inherently comes with issues.

They can't boost our DPS anymore, because for progression you "might" take a Warrior MT, but you will certainly take Drk OT while you are learning mechs, then immediately swap them out for 2 Drks to increase clear speed. If we went even higher in DPS this would be worse.
At the same time they cannot increase our mitigation too much as the same issue occurs, our DPS outstrips all other tanks by so much that you just wouldn't take any other tank.

Functionally we aren't broken, we're just not fun, it sucks to play. Yeah living dead is terrible to the point of broken but it's always sucked that's nothing new.
Yes white damage is higher against us than any of the other tanks but If you execute your rotation properly you should be able to balance your defensive cooldowns to mitigate damage in-between TBN presses. Outside of that use our higher DPS to clear the pack faster, if you kill 3 seconds faster that's 3 seconds worth of damage you didn't take. Unless the healer just refuses to heal you wont die just pulling in dungeons, but then at that point any tank other than current warrior dies too. Bosses are easy as anything, their white damage is ignorable and we have the best boss mit in the game, even if it is boring.

There is no point in dev patching us. The only thing we can ask for, is a rework, make us fun to play again. Currently there's nothing broken we are working as intended

Also bring back power slash it was the coolest animation we had and I'm still pissed it was taken away.

Power Slash loops in itself pretty well too, it would be a great spammable. Better than bloodspiller imo

At this point I am hoping they say something in the live letter regarding DRK but at the same time expect nothing.

So, what are the chances that we see even minor improvements in 6.1?

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Originally Posted by Xrison

So, what are the chances that we see even minor improvements in 6.1?

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Considering how much they've ignored us over the years...I'd say 5%.

It's time for another Q+A session where highly upvoted Dark Knight questions about Living Dead go deliberately ignored. Be sure to cast some support behind Odin's post if you haven't already, along with any other relevant ones that you see.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Long and short of what I'm saying is, personally, trying to work around what we have is not the solution I would favor if the alternative was going back to the drawing board with LD entirely... and I'm sure I'm far from alone in that.

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That's fair. I gave that idea earlier in direct response to the idea that things would have to be hugely/fundamentally reworked (perhaps towards homogeneity) --and thereby delayed until much later-- in order to shore up DRK's weaknesses. The LD design given was my way of showing that we wouldn't need to, say, drop any sort of punishment from LD entirely (making it merely Holmgang-with-a-pre-pop-period) or the like to deal with its biggest problem. (Nor would any of the other capacity issues need huge reworks, and thereby long delays, nor homogeneity, to be corrected.)

Personally, I'd like for LD to still have an element of fighting against time, but if it were to thereby be objectively weaker than Holmgang (in terms of resources required or effective duration -- whatever may cause that weakness), then it ought also to have a shorter CD than Holmgang. (Personally, I thought Holmgang fit a much better and more interesting balance when it was only 6 seconds long.)

Dark knight has a lot of different issues that all sort of add up to one big one with it. One off the top of my head is juggling too many balls with the resources, the other is having a very loose rotation that just gets more and more complicated as one levels up. That's probably why it can out damage the other tanks by such a large margin: How can anyone fine tune something that has such a loose rotation? Tone a potency down and the priorities just change on what skills get used.

Another one is that part of it's identity was supposed to be draining life from others, but it has literally two skills that do it and the warrior is just laughing as he does it better while also boosting his own defense. My guess is that part of the identity got split between MP restoration and HP restoration, and in the current state of dark knight MP usage feels like something that was a shoe in from the old dark knight.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Dark knight has a lot of different issues that all sort of add up to one big one with it. One off the top of my head is juggling too many balls with the resources, the other is having a very loose rotation that just gets more and more complicated as one levels up. That's probably why it can out damage the other tanks by such a large margin: How can anyone fine tune something that has such a loose rotation? Tone a potency down and the priorities just change on what skills get used.

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It's not complicated at all, Drk burst window is insane enough near on par with melee DPS, 2 mins burst is really strong this tier.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...960&height=294

A list of all the DRK related question of the first 66 pages of the thread, feel free to upvote all of them to increase the chances of being notice ppl, if i miss someone just say the page where it is and i will add it too.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5832007

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5831723

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5831509

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5831345

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5831336

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5831219

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5831151

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5831078

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5830733

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5830704

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5830562

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5832069

Honestly I dont even think you need to follow that rotation to a T, just put two ogcds between gcd, open with blood weapon and get out Living Shadow as soon as possible.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Honestly I dont even think you need to follow that rotation to a T, just put two ogcds between gcd, open with blood weapon and get out Living Shadow as soon as possible.

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The whole point saving after Living Shadow is for raid buffs, raid buffs start 3-4 GCDs in.