Dark Knight Megathread

Can Dark Knight get an option to sacrifice HP for damage or some kind of utility now that Living Dead heals you to full in a 1,2,3? It would match thematically with a lot of previous iterations of the class and it'd honestly make me a very happy boy. Yes, I'm looking to kill myself 100% for dmg/buffs, cancel out my death, and continue to beat that ass.

DRK doesn't need to do more damage at present. It's better when there's a relatively tight balance, because then everyone plays the job they want to play rather than seeking out the FotM. The sacrifice mechanic is there in PvP right now, so go check that out and see if you actually enjoy that sort of thing.

From experience, players almost always respond negatively to changes in job mechanics. If you're relatively happy with DRK's design, leave it be for now. I guarantee that there are plenty of ways of making things worse, and the job rework roulette is only for the truly desperate.

I think a better question to ask yourself is how you would like to see next expansion's actions build off of the existing ones. I'd personally like to see a new empowered combo gated off of the Dark Arts proc, and perhaps a finisher to Delirium that interacts with Living Shadow in an interesting way (Omnislash/Eventide). If we're talking upgrades, I'd think of doing something with either Dark Mind or Missionary - perhaps giving DM a movement speed buff/knockback resist on top of the magic resist (Wraithform), or perhaps letting Dark Missionary absorb some of that magical damage to generate HP or MP (Runic). But I probably wouldn't touch the job this expansion unless they significantly skew tank balance for some reason.

I know for a fact that there are people that are not 'happy' with where DRK is right now. Is it better than it used to be? Gods yes, but these are mere /necessary/ steps that frankly it's insulting it took so long to add to the class, and there are still very VERY basic changes it should receive in order to be set back to zero in serviceability.

This is before even addressing that DRK right now to many players is just that: serviceable. It does its job well enough, it has a place, it hits high rankings, but gods it's like eating oatmeal by itself. It'll keep you fed, but there's no spice and hardly any flavor.

There's nothing that particularly stands out about the job, it's a middle of the road tank that can't decide what it wants to be so it's just a worse everyone at once with little cohesion. I can't stress enough how important cohesion and job feel is, because if it wasn't SAM players wouldn't be so pissed about Kaiten.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

From experience, players almost always respond negatively to changes in job mechanics.

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Lucky for them that WAR exists as an alternative, then, especially since DRK has been filtered down to its off-brand version since... ShB?

Sure DRK has a more difficult time surviving so some people may call WAR braindead by comparison, but ultimately "the same as an existing job but slightly worse to play" isn't a great selling point.

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But I probably wouldn't touch the job this expansion unless they significantly skew tank balance for some reason.

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Is anybody expecting a full rework within 6.x? Realistically?
My writeup may say it's "Post-6.1" but that's just when I wrote it, not my expectation.

Living Dead finally changed, we might see reworks to one or two other specific abilities (fingers crossed for DM), but nothing all-encompassing until 7.0 rolls around... which is the perfect time to change a weak foundation (re: MNK, SMN) rather than try to stack more on top of it.
We've had two expansions to digest their experiment with a new DRK and we're saying it's... bland, and maybe they should try something new rather than keep rolling this through the tumbler in the hopes it might sparkle.

Blood Weapon and Living Dead were much needed QoL changes. Changes that should of happened in Shadowbringers. Living Dead is now usable in all content but is still by far the worst invuln on the basis your self healing only really lasts until you get topped off. Especially when PLD doesn't need the heals, GNB can stack Aurora, Corundum Excog and Warrior has the lowest CD and can pretty much heal itself back up every Bloodwhetting window.

DRK still has a self healing issue, a mitigation issue where TBN is weaker in relation to the TBN competitors and has defensives that only fit niche fights with magic damage which is an old relic from HW. Dark Missionary still at 76 while GNB gets Heart of Light at 64? BRUH.

The only thing DRK has going for it that makes it relevant is burst damage every 2 minutes?

Only time DRK feels amazing was either in HW or right now in PvP. Salted Earth as a defensive CD is sexy. In PvE it's ass garbage.

DRK is stuck in this dilemma on whether it wants to be a Paladin or Warrior and seemingly refuses to be it's own thing. Unless it's PvP where it's this HP spending Lifestealing death machine on wheels.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Living Dead is now usable in all content but is still by far the worst invuln

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I wouldn't go that far. On paper it's Holmgang but better in every respect, except with a slightly longer cooldown and the (now significantly less threatening) doom clock; the issue is less the comparison of the invulns against one another in a vacuum, and more the holistic kits surrounding them.
The fact that DRK's only sustainability effects are a CD limited to AoE scenarios and a limited window of the invuln itself are hugely disappointing when compared to the other three tanks' myriad responses to activating their invulns, including two that synergize directly with their on-demands.

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Salted Earth as a defensive CD is sexy.

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I would also point out that this has to be taken with a grain of salt, given the absence of alternative defensive CDs in PVP (aside from "literally stop attacking and try to crawl back to your party before someone breaks your Guard and kills you anyway").

Any time that you make a decision to rework a job, you're effectively pressing a big reset button. It's a fairly drastic step, and jobs which do this less often (or not at all) are generally better off for it because the job has time to grow and develop. Consider a job like BLM, which has stayed relatively stable across expansions. They build off of the foundation step by step, rather than bulldozing it down every other expansion and starting from zero.

I think that if you have views on how to improve DRK's gameplay, then it's better along these lines. How do we expand on the existing gameplay to make it more fun? I would say that DRK's biggest gameplay issue is that it only really has 4 single target GCD actions and 3 AoE GCD actions. All the interesting action happens during your weaving. I think what it really needs is an enhanced combo that is resource linked in some way. You could gate it to Blood or MP, but then it would just be in competition with the existing gauge spenders. The workaround, I think, is to link it to the Dark Arts mechanic, and actually do something interesting with that gauge element.

It's hard to talk about DRK being it's 'own thing' if we're always comparing it to the other tanks. As long as you focus on asking for what they have, you'll always be an expansion behind with their hand-me-downs.

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Originally Posted by Runeslayer

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I think the SAM example is a good one. The reason why people are upset over Kaiten because they were used to it. Any time you make a drastic change to job mechanics that forces players to change their habits, you will get backlash over it. That's why you don't opt for a rework unless the job is a complete mess. I do find it interesting that you acknowledge that the job is currently 'serviceable', but you want it reset back to zero in serviceability. Why? Are we just bulldozing things for fun?

I want the job to be reworked completely despite being ok in performance the current design is using to archive that numbers it's hella awful and I don't wanna touch it even with a stick compared to other jobs the Dev team prefer to work on like that nice example of BLM, a job that is being taken care by Yoship himself bcs is his fav and his main.

DRK got hit by a huge rework in SHB and it was bad, very bad but many argued it was a strong base to build on it, now for what? Enchance unmend? 2 enchanced living shadow? Just a couple of generic oGCD that literally didn't change or improve anything? And a generic change on Delirium that has been done bcs inner release and just make his downtime even more dull? At the end of the day it doesn't matter what you ask if the dev team aren't willing to put any effort on the job gameplay like they do with BLM, PLD, WAR, DRG, Ect ect, jobs they obviously like and put effort on offering a an engaging unique gameplay.

Asking for huge changes on the job is actually more like asking them for put the same development effort and care they put on they fav jobs and stop leaving DRK in the dust as a serviceable knock-off braindead WAR with a bunch of generic oGCD and buffs that keep themselfs.

I'd rather not see a full rework of DRK. I kinda like having jobs that focus more on weaving and OGCDs rather than GCD combos. Personally, I'd like to see DRK lean more into shield tank and have more MP management.

Ppl that ask for reworks or rework the job themselfs always keep the oGCD nature of the job, they just make it cohesive and add actual mechanics you care of to the gameplay like how the job use to be, extra combos or better say GCD diversity is for kill the dull soul eater combo spam that is visually boring.

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Originally Posted by shao32

Ppl that ask for reworks or rework the job themselfs always keep the oGCD nature of the job, they just make it cohesive and add actual mechanics you care of to the gameplay like how the job use to be, extra combos or better say GCD diversity is for kill the dull soul eater combo spam that is visually boring.

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It's also because we're the only tank with a single GCD combo. PLD has Goring Blade and Royal Authority combos, GNB has Solid Barrel and Gnashing Fang combos, WAR has Storm's Path and Storm's Eye combos. DRK only has Souleater, we're just asking for a second GCD combo so we're less boring on that front when everything is down.

And I think that's something very reasonable to ask for, and could easily be expanded on without rebuilding the entire job from scratch.

I think some people just demand reworks because they worry that if DRK is not seen to have issues, then they won't have anything to talk about on the forums. It doesn't matter how well you fix the job and how content the players are, they'll still be demanding that you rework the rework.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Not really sure what another button could add to it, it already felt like a stretch to bring Darkside up to 3 buttons for the ST rotation.

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Honestly I don't have any concrete ideas, my thought is having more than one spender for a gauge is generally more interesting.

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Also an option! I won't discount it, I just wanted to make Darkside feel like an occasional but very powerful burst mechanic, rather than something you alternate into until you're using it more than your basic rotation (which is a flaw I found in my earlier attempts to rework the rotation).

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Yeah I was thinking the same with my idea, might just end up too spammy. Maybe there's a balance somewhere but finding it would require too much brainpower from me.

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That's actually why I only added the Heavy -- it's ultimately harmless. There's already enough changes to the damage reduction and personal upkeep of the job, so adding on even more from SE would be extraneous in my opinion.
Since most bosses are immune or have movement carefully controlled by tanks anyway, CC effects generally have minimal impact on EX trials and Savage raids -- only casual content like dungeons and such, where a Heavy to keep crowds in the damage zone could at least find a modicum of value.

Honestly though, I just think it's weird that Salted Earth is just a DoT patch? I'm already struggling to think of what could be done with S&D beyond "one instance of damage". Personal taste thing.

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Maybe a draw-in like others said, but yeah it's definitely just eh as is.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Any time that you make a decision to rework a job, you're effectively pressing a big reset button.

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Is it "effectively pressing a big reset button" when the most common suggestions are to dial back changes they already made, and bring back elements the job lost to oversimplification?

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Is it "effectively pressing a big reset button" when the most common suggestions are to dial back changes they already made, and bring back elements the job lost to oversimplification?

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Considering those elements will never come back (at least in a form that's not streamlined & simplified to heck and back again) due to the fact the devs removed those elements because they want to keep systems on tanks easy and streamlined, yeah, it's basically a reset button.

Just take a look at a bunch of jobs that got reworked:

WAR - gauge management completely eradicated, suffers from auto CRT/DH problems today
DRK - Dark Arts completely streamlined into Edge/Flood
MNK - GL management completely nuked, followed by positional management nuked for new Blitz system.
SMN - Whole job got nuked, shares almost nothing with its previous iteration, many people complain job is way too simple.

and plenty of other jobs that got semi-reworked almost universally end up in a worse situation on the other end (MCH, and most recently, SAM)

Asking them for a rework to DRK is playing an extremely dangerous game of russian roulette. For all we know, they might just decide to think the reason people are calling for a rework is because people find the current job too complex, and then obliterate MP management and give Edge/Flood charges & remove MP cost and change nothing else.

Talking about potential reworks for the job is a pointless endeavor - given their extremely evident stance that they want tank kits to be simple overall (evidenced through constant watering down of all tanks and even this expansion's attempts at completely obliterating Atonement optimizations, along with the change to IR to make it impossible to mess up), pretty much 99% of people's fanfiction in this thread would be disqualified due to being even slightly complex. Far more productive conversation if you want the devs to take it even remotely seriously is as Lyth said - to talk about the current gaps of the job and what can be done to improve or add-on to the current kit come 7.0, keeping in mind the dev's intention to keep tank offensive kits simplified.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

For all we know, they might just decide to think the reason people are calling for a rework is because people find the current job too complex, and then obliterate MP management and give Edge/Flood charges & remove MP cost and change nothing else.

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Wait, that's not what those asking for TBN to have its MP cost removed were going for?

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.eA-DCQ...id=ImgDet&rs=1

That is, after all, the only difference between the two outside of the MP-less version being slightly less oGCD-dense during burst, slightly more oGCD-dense during lulls, and being slightly less punished by downtime.

:: (It's odd how often people don't think about the implications of requested changes until job-wide descriptors blow back into their field of view.)

Removing the MP cost from TBN merely makes it so that it's on par with other defensives without having to sacrifice potential damage to use it. Besides, they can always add job identity and kit synergy in other ways. They could:

A. Bring back Dark Arts in a Eukrasia form on a charge system that alters what things do, such as (if they make Oblation available at level 45) using DA on Oblation just changes it to Dark Mind, sacrificing the physical defense portion for the heavy magic defense. Or making it so using it on Unmend changes it to Abyssal Drain.

B. Make it so using Blood moves requires the Darkside buff to be up, but using a Blood move drains your Darkside buff by 15s per use, so instead of being some passive that may as well not exist, it works with your kit. Combine with removing TBN's MP cost, and our MP ends up being used to keep Darkside up instead of just used whenever possible. So a Delirium use would essentially be -45s on Darkside, so you're using 1-2 Edges in that Delirium burst to avoid losing Darkside.

C. Combine the above two.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

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Oh, we could certainly make MP matter in other ways. It's just that for the time being, TBN is the only difference between having "MP" and "3 (Accelerable) Edge/Flood charges".

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

Asking them for a rework to DRK is playing an extremely dangerous game of russian roulette. For all we know, they might just decide to think the reason people are calling for a rework is because people find the current job too complex, and then obliterate MP management and give Edge/Flood charges & remove MP cost and change nothing else.

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I was joking with someone a while back depending on how the DRG/AST changes go in 6.2, I might just start saying the job is perfect as is for that reason lol

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Talking about potential reworks for the job is a pointless endeavor - given their extremely evident stance that they want tank kits to be simple overall (evidenced through constant watering down of all tanks and even this expansion's attempts at completely obliterating Atonement optimizations, along with the change to IR to make it impossible to mess up), pretty much 99% of people's fanfiction in this thread would be disqualified due to being even slightly complex. Far more productive conversation if you want the devs to take it even remotely seriously is as Lyth said - to talk about the current gaps of the job and what can be done to improve or add-on to the current kit come 7.0, keeping in mind the dev's intention to keep tank offensive kits simplified.

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Thing is I don't think there's any real glaring problems with current DRK that they would fix this expansion, maybe Oblation still being pretty underwhelming and lower self-sustain than other tanks but fixing those things won't make its gameplay any better. Going into 7.0 the big issue is still its rotation, and I don't think there's any way to improve it while keeping it simple. Not that they have to go in the complete opposite direction and make it the most complex and obtuse thing in the world that takes hours on a striking dummy to learn but I think people asking for something a bit more complex and engaging is still valid feedback. Otherwise you mind as well go tell healers they're forever stuck with a dot and nuke for their DPS kit.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

It's also because we're the only tank with a single GCD combo. PLD has Goring Blade and Royal Authority combos, GNB has Solid Barrel and Gnashing Fang combos, WAR has Storm's Path and Storm's Eye combos. DRK only has Souleater, we're just asking for a second GCD combo so we're less boring on that front when everything is down.

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I've been bouncing around the idea in my head of the second combo being used for Darkside maintenance but it would need something else to not strictly be a Storm's Path copy. Having Blood drain Darkside like you said below might be one answer though to make it more active.

The removal of delirium as a finisher and Power Slash for ennmity really stripped DRK in GCD.
Could have just kept Power Slash as the damage combo and soul eater for healing.

I think that the idea of consuming 'Darkside time' as a resource is an interesting idea in theory, but in general we've seen more and more jobs move away from maintenance mechanics with each expansion (the Blood of the Dragon buff being the most recent example). I think we're more likely to see Darkside just turn into a vestigial trait down the line. Alternatively, they could just have your Edge/Flood hits raise the timer on your next LS duration up from 0 to some cap, such that you're required to land a certain number of Edge strikes over 2 minutes to maximize its value.

The difficulty with designing gauge spenders in general is that you can really only have one on-demand gauge spender per gauge (with a single target and AoE variant). The instant that you add an additional one, whichever action is mathematically better gets used exclusively. The only way around this is to have a cooldown timer attached (i.e. LS is a more valuable use of Blood than Bloodspiller when the cooldown is up). So you can't really have a second combo that is gated by MP or Blood.

What you could do instead is to make use of the Dark Arts gauge. You can still preserve the current TBN effect as it is (i.e. TBN breaking gives you a buff that makes your next Edge/Flood free). All you would need to do is make it such that Edge/Flood grants you Dark Arts, and have Dark Arts be the consumed to perform your enhanced combo. In short, the answer on how to implement a second combo is Soul Reaver.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think that the idea of consuming 'Darkside time' as a resource is an interesting idea in theory, but in general we've seen more and more jobs move away from maintenance mechanics with each expansion (the Blood of the Dragon buff being the most recent example). I think we're more likely to see Darkside just turn into a vestigial trait down the line.

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I can see that happening. I'd rather it not and they do more with Darkside instead but it wouldn't surprise me.

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The difficulty with designing gauge spenders in general is that you can really only have one on-demand gauge spender per gauge (with a single target and AoE variant). The instant that you add an additional one, whichever action is mathematically better gets used exclusively. The only way around this is to have a cooldown timer attached (i.e. LS is a more valuable use of Blood than Bloodspiller when the cooldown is up). So you can't really have a second combo that is gated by MP or Blood.

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I think there are a few ways to tackle that other than CDs. Looking at SAM back in ShB, iirc Seigan was better than Shinten for its Kenki cost, but had to be procced off Third Eye first. On DRK I think you could have something work where you have a combo finisher that costs MP but adds to the Darkside timer, and it wouldn't conflict with Edge of Shadow assuming Edge is also changed to not give Darkside.

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What you could do instead is to make use of the Dark Arts gauge. You can still preserve the current TBN effect as it is (i.e. TBN breaking gives you a buff that makes your next Edge/Flood free). All you would need to do is make it such that Edge/Flood grants you Dark Arts, and have Dark Arts be the consumed to perform your enhanced combo. In short, the answer on how to implement a second combo is Soul Reaver.

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I could possibly get on board with this

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What you could do instead is to make use of the Dark Arts gauge. You can still preserve the current TBN effect as it is (i.e. TBN breaking gives you a buff that makes your next Edge/Flood free). All you would need to do is make it such that Edge/Flood grants you Dark Arts, and have Dark Arts be the consumed to perform your enhanced combo. In short, the answer on how to implement a second combo is Soul Reaver.

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The problem with this is that it forces the DRK to use TBN on cooldown if they want their big DPS. Perhaps instead make it so something else gives the DA instead, something on a longer timer and isn't a defensive cooldown.

Dark Art could be a buff you activate with the ability Dark Arts, that had a cost and CD (say 3K MP, 20 or 40s CD) but if you break TBN you can get the buff "for free"

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think we're more likely to see Darkside just turn into a vestigial trait down the line.

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It's vestigial already. How many of us even bother to include our Darkside timer visibly in our UI?

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Alternatively, they could just have your Edge/Flood hits raise the timer on your next LS duration up from 0 to some cap, such that you're required to land a certain number of Edge strikes over 2 minutes to maximize its value.

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I'm all for added flexibility, but that'd require that this stands in place of LS's full-length, rigid cooldown.

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In short, the answer on how to implement a second combo is Soul Reaver.

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I'm not necessarily a fan of just swapping over to a carbon copied mechanic of a different job.

Yes, there's scarcely any way to handle a second combo that hasn't been done before (CDed spender, DoT, self-buff, or unlocked via 2-charge spender), but what makes Reaper particularly apt save for just being the other "edgy" one?

Let's not assume that copying a different job would necessarily produce a better DRK, or even that difference from the existing or its earlier precedents necessarily produces improvement. What specifically do we want from this second combo producible by bankable oGCD spenders? Why is it the best idea ("the answer"), rather than just... a possible option?

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The problem with this is that it forces the DRK to use TBN on cooldown if they want their big DPS. Perhaps instead make it so something else gives the DA instead, something on a longer timer and isn't a defensive cooldown.

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This, though, should not be an issue. We shouldn't be using TBN where it won't break, and any break gives Edge. The penalty for failure, then, is slightly increased (not that we couldn't also compensate for that somewhat, especially as warranted by the deepened penalty), but proper performance would still cost one nothing so long as we just let the resulting free Edge/Flood buff (call it "Black Blade" or whatnot) stack or give it some further bonus for being spent earlier (such that we wouldn't want to stack it anyways).

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

The problem with this is that it forces the DRK to use TBN on cooldown if they want their big DPS. Perhaps instead make it so something else gives the DA instead, something on a longer timer and isn't a defensive cooldown.

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The Dark Arts gauge isn't actually necessary. It's just there is to preserve the mechanic terminology for historic reasons. You could just as easily have TBN grant a free Edge/Flood without calling it Dark Arts and creating a gauge for it.

What I'm suggesting is that we leave the TBN proc as it is, except without calling it Dark Arts. Instead, have Edge or Flood generate one stack of Dark Arts on use (regardless of whether its a free cast or not), and have Shadowbringers generate two stacks. Each step of your enhanced combo consumes a Dark Arts stack, in exchange for being higher potency and a bit of HP/MP/blood depending on the step.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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There are only so many ways that you can implement combo systems. The most common system by far is to have a maintenance buff/debuff, and both of those approaches exist on WAR/PLD respectively, as well as on NIN/DRG. I also think that if you want to introduce a combo this late in job progression it needs to be fairly hard hitting so that it feels like an improvement. I think RPR's take on the system is an incredibly good match because it effectively combos off your oGCD creating a really nice flow, and because it fits DRK's overall resource management theme while actually making use of thee Dark Arts gauge. It doesn't really matter if we've seen something similar on another role before, as there's a ton of back and forth idea sharing between tanks and melee anyways.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think that the idea of consuming 'Darkside time' as a resource is an interesting idea in theory, but in general we've seen more and more jobs move away from maintenance mechanics with each expansion (the Blood of the Dragon buff being the most recent example).

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They're generally streamlined (BotD or Enochian) or replaced (Greased Lighting -> Nadi gauge), yes, but rarely removed wholesale without substitution. If they remove the "Darkside Time" element from DRK, it would likely be to make room for some new element, and both Living Shadow and Blood Gauge come extremely late in the leveling process to be considered sufficient for such purposes on their own, especially compared to every other tank getting some gauge or resource management between 30-35.

We just got over a period where it was awful to play DRK for about 40-odd levels. No active mitigation, no AoE combo, no healing till the late-50s...

They could theoretically reduce the level of Blood Gauge to that range, but combining that with the removal of Darkside would just exacerbate the "DRK = diet WAR" discussion.

That being said, DRK is also the only tank to use MP as a resource at such a low level, so it could be reasonable to consider our 30-ish gauge to be the MP bar, which would still mean room for some active element from MP management which Darkside attempts to facilitate -- beyond oGCDs for oGCDs' sake.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

The removal of delirium as a finisher and Power Slash for ennmity really stripped DRK in GCD.
Could have just kept Power Slash as the damage combo and soul eater for healing.

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Except that a choice between damage vs healing will always lead to the tank leaning on damage and expecting the healer to pick up the healing. Just look at PLD with Clemency.

While the ideas that are shared are interesting in their own right, down the line they'll become a pain in the ass, wither its gauge management, stocking dark arts, or having to juggle buffs.

The biggest issue with current DRK aside from its lack of sustain, is its good moves being on a long ass CD. We don't get to use them until every 1 min or 1 min 30s and we are tied to a 2 min burst of oGCD fuckery. Where as GNB has a burst every 30s and a full burst every 1 min. PLD has a rotation that is straight forward and both their Physical and Magic phases are at least woven to be a complement of each other as they wait their physical or magical CD to come back up, while being in either phase. WAR is pretty much on a 1 min burst and has different combo paths. Meanwhile DRK, our CD are all over the place, we have 60s CD, a 90s one and 120s CD and a move that costs 3000mp that might not even line up with burst windows depending on how were spending that MP. They also sometimes don't even line up properly while the other tanks don't have this issue.

Way to fix how fucking boring DRK's 123 combo feels is to lower its offensive CD's so were not trying to stay awake spamming 123. They should lean into DRK's oGCD buttons more and allow use to use our cool abilities more often. Allow DRK to use Shadowbringer every 30s and lower its damage to compensate for us being able to use it more often, maybe even lower it to 1 stock.

Likewise move Salted Earth CD to 60s, same with Living Shadow. Our most defining trait currently is being able to summon a shadow that fights with us, is on a 2min CD, making it feel boring and is only there to help us remember that we have a 2min burst window. We only get 18 sec of actual use out of it, so let us use it more often.

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Originally Posted by Keagian

They should lean into DRK's oGCD buttons more and allow use to use our cool abilities more often. Allow DRK to use Shadowbringer every 30s and lower its damage to compensate for us being able to use it more often, maybe even lower it to 1 stock.

Likewise move Salted Earth CD to 60s, same with Living Shadow. Our most defining trait currently is being able to summon a shadow that fights with us, is on a 2min CD, making it feel boring and is only there to help us remember that we have a 2min burst window. We only get 18 sec of actual use out of it, so let us use it more often.

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I agree that DRK's OGCDs are completely backloaded and need to be spread out a bit more to make it more interesting, I don't think moving more things into the 1 minute window is the answer.
You'd just go from an awful 2 min burst to every delirium being miserable.

Salted Earth is 2 OGCDs, Living Shadow is 1 (although you use that before bloodspillers), Shadowbringer being 30 seconds would mean you have to use it there too- Add that to the two Plunges, CnS and Edge spam, you go from not being able to mitigate at 2 min burst to not being able to mitigate for like, 12~15 seconds of every minute- that's like... a quarter of the fight? that you can't do your job during. (I'm not very clever so correct me if I'm wrong)

They definitely need to do something with OGCDs though, I still don't like Salted Earth and I think they should just give it's puddle to Abyssal Drain and then put a DoT on CnS that does the same damage as you'd get from the full duration of the puddle. I know that Archwizard said that the devs don't like DoTs, but that's essentially what Salted Earth is anyway, as well as Living Shadow. They're just more annoying to use than regular DoTs.

I'd also say that if anything they need to make Shadowbringer LESS frequent and more impactful, it absolutely doesn't feel like a capstone ability as it is now- compare it to Primal Rend, Blade of Valor. They're both something different, Rend is an AoE gap closer. Valor is a full ranged combo, although Paladin already had a lot of ranged stuff and I haven't actually played it so I can't say a lot.

Oblation is oblation, 10% DR is not bad but it's not... good, either. I think merging it with Dark Mind might be the wrong answer but getting rid of it and buffing TBN somehow is probably a good idea.

I think a second combo finisher would vastly improve the downtime, I haven't put any thought into this so I'm sure there's glaring flaws in it, but something like replace Syphon Strike with Spinning Slash, and then bring back old Delirium or something as a finisher that gives MP, while keeping Souleater as the higher damage HP restoring finisher.
I am aware that it'd be likely people would just spam the fuck out of the MP combo to get more Edges for more damage or whatever, but I'm sure they could fuck around with potencies to make the MP finisher low enough that it's not worth spamming it over Souleater- although you'd still need to get Blood from Souleater so maybe that's not really a concern.

My intention is that you'd have to actually be careful with your MP spending and plan ahead with what combo you're going to do. MP finisher would probably need to restore more than 600mp though, since it's not the 2nd action in your only combo like Syphon Strike is rn.

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Originally Posted by Nosaji_

I think a second combo finisher would vastly improve the downtime, I haven't put any thought into this so I'm sure there's glaring flaws in it, but something like replace Syphon Strike with Spinning Slash, and then bring back old Delirium or something as a finisher that gives MP, while keeping Souleater as the higher damage HP restoring finisher.
I am aware that it'd be likely people would just spam the fuck out of the MP combo to get more Edges for more damage or whatever, but I'm sure they could fuck around with potencies to make the MP finisher low enough that it's not worth spamming it over Souleater- although you'd still need to get Blood from Souleater so maybe that's not really a concern.

My intention is that you'd have to actually be careful with your MP spending and plan ahead with what combo you're going to do. MP finisher would probably need to restore more than 600mp though, since it's not the 2nd action in your only combo like Syphon Strike is rn.

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Unfortunately you're being a bit too simplistic with your reasoning for a second combo finisher. Both of the examples you provide when pitted against each other (Souleater vs Delirium/whatever) are instantaneous sources of damage with calculable potency values per GCD; players will use whichever combo mathematically gives them the most value to perform right now, and with both being flat potency per GCD with no other restrictions, one of the two combos will fall to the wayside entirely.

Compare other jobs' branching combos:
WAR's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR extends the duration of a damage buff that facilitates the former.
PLD's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR applies a DoT to the target that's more potent overall than the former.
In both of these cases, there is an element of necessity enforced by time: to use the latter combo more than strictly necessary to maintain their status effects is a damage loss compared to using the other combo finisher, but failure to maintain those status effects in favor of spamming the alternative combo is also a loss of damage.

Now, you don't have to have a status effect involved, but the important thing is the "higher value" finisher has a restriction keeping you from using it all the time.
If you stretch these definitions to their logical ends, you can also see this with GNB: it would prefer to use Double Down or Gnashing Fang over Burst Edge, but can't due to cooldown restrictions.

... None of which apply to what you've suggested, as yet.

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I know that Archwizard said that the devs don't like DoTs, but that's essentially what Salted Earth is anyway, as well as Living Shadow. They're just more annoying to use than regular DoTs.

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My understanding is that it's more of a combination of
- the devs believe players find upkeep timers tedious or confusing to maintain (especially on enemies, in the event of target swapping)
- bosses can only hold a limited number of status effects (both negative and positive) at a time, which makes DoTs eat resources

So on the one hand, a constant upkeep like Death's Design also falls under both of these despite not strictly being a damage-over-time effect, while Living Shadow and Salted Earth wouldn't since they're external sources of damage that don't have any upkeep (just fire and forget on a cooldown), despite applying periodic damage.
And in the former case, I'm guessing it's no coincidence that NIN and SMN lost their DoTs in the same expansion RPR and SGE were introduced.

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Compare other jobs' branching combos:
WAR's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR extends the duration of a damage buff that facilitates the former.
PLD's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR applies a DoT to the target that's more potent overall than the former.
In both of these cases, there is an element of necessity enforced by time: to use the latter combo more than strictly necessary to maintain their status effects is a damage loss compared to using the other combo finisher, but failure to maintain those status effects in favor of spamming the alternative combo is also a loss of damage

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If DRK was to have the 600mp on Syphon Strike taken away and moved to an alternate finisher, it would be made necessary to do that finisher to regain MP in order to maintain Darkside and also use your main mitigation tool, I'd say that's enough incentive to use it. I did say that it'd need to have lower potency since, with Warrior at least, the actual damage loss from using Storm's Eye over Path is that you get less gauge, they both do the same amount of damage. But MP isn't used for Bloodspiller, which does do higher damage than Edge, but not by a lot.

Honestly I think Edge being a 1 second recast and having such a high potency compared to Bloodspiller is kinda dumb considering it gives DRK's 10% buff and doesn't have the downside that Storm's Eye does. It's also not exactly engaging just spamming it during bursts or to avoid overcapping, it feels quite bloaty to me. Warrior is meant to spend gauge rather than use Storm's Eye over Path to avoid overcapping, while DRK has to... spend their gauge to avoid overcapping, but in the process, refresh their buff :/

So yeah, Edge being what it is seems to be root of the problem that should be addressed, rather than just slapping on a second finisher.

As I said, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it, just trying to think of a rough idea of how they could liven up the time between bursts a bit. I think the best alternative would be something like Scourge from your mockup, DRK could probably do without a constant upkeep effect- but I'd be surprised if they did something like that :(

Although if they did remove the MP cost from TBN then all of that stuff about an MP finisher would be complete garbage- but I wouldn't complain >.>

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Originally Posted by Nosaji_

If DRK was to have the 600mp on Syphon Strike taken away and moved to an alternate finisher, it would be made necessary to do that finisher to regain MP in order to maintain Darkside and also use your main mitigation tool, I'd say that's enough incentive to use it. I did say that it'd need to have lower potency since, with Warrior at least, the actual damage loss from using Storm's Eye over Path is that you get less gauge, they both do the same amount of damage. But MP isn't used for Bloodspiller, which does do higher damage than Edge, but not by a lot.

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I agree, for the most part. Just don't forget that Bloodspiller will have to be more than an Edge's worth of damage more than combos' average ppgcd.

In practice, we'd essentially...

• involve the second combo through Surging Tempest (but with an extra step),
  
  
• receive a bit more penalty from unbroken TBNs (though, such is pretty easily avoided anyways, so that's no huge factor), and
  
  
• need to siphon some potency from Edges to Bloodspillers and/or to reduce Bloodspiller/Quietus's relative Blood costs.

Is that an improvement? Yeah, sure. Having Darkside actually be a mechanic, even a copied one, is better than a non-mechanic.

A significant improvement? Honestly, no idea. It would depend on how you define "significant"?

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Originally Posted by Nosaji_

If DRK was to have the 600mp on Syphon Strike taken away and moved to an alternate finisher, it would be made necessary to do that finisher to regain MP in order to maintain Darkside and also use your main mitigation tool, I'd say that's enough incentive to use it.

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So here you run into two new issues:

1. How many GCDs are you spending generating the Darkside buff? Because those are GCDs necessarily being taken away from Blood Gauge.
2. Is the decision-making here esoteric to the point casual players need to look up a guide to understand how to play the job at a basic level, or may end up suffering choice paralysis when faced with a branching combo?

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

1. How many GCDs are you spending generating the Darkside buff? Because those are GCDs necessarily being taken away from Blood Gauge.

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Though this compensatory step is absolutely necessary, it seems decently easy to deal with.

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2. Is the decision-making here esoteric to the point casual players need to look up a guide to understand how to play the job at a basic level, or may end up suffering choice paralysis when faced with a branching combo?

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That seems unlikely. If Edge maintains buff and MP gen allows for Edges enough to maintain said buff, that seems little to offer little more choice paralysis than WAR's Surging Tempest.

In MP, you'd have both a maintenance [Darkside] and banking consideration [banked Edges], while Blood offers both a strict marginal/milestone consideration [Living Shadow] and a subtler banking consideration alike to Edge-banking [Bloodspiller casts].

I still can't say as of yet whether that would be a significant improvement, but it does seem pretty straightforward.

Forcing players to choose between MP and Blood not a good idea. You can determine a potency value per point of MP and Blood. Whichever combo has the higher net potency value will be used preferentially, outside of specific cooldown recasts.

If you're complaining about DRK being too much like WAR, shoehorning in a Lv. 100 Storm's Eye combo into the job is probably not the answer for a second combo.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think the SAM example is a good one. The reason why people are upset over Kaiten because they were used to it. Any time you make a drastic change to job mechanics that forces players to change their habits, you will get backlash over it. That's why you don't opt for a rework unless the job is a complete mess. I do find it interesting that you acknowledge that the job is currently 'serviceable', but you want it reset back to zero in serviceability. Why? Are we just bulldozing things for fun?

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That's downplaying very legitimate concerns over the skills removal if you think 'it's because they were used to it' is the prime reason people are upset, but this is not a SAM thread so I'll save that for the SAM community to debate you on.
You misunderstand what I mean when I say reset back to zero on serviceability. There are things about DRK that frankly shouldnt exist in the state that they are-- previously it was blood weapon not being on stacks or LD being the worst invuln in the game for a myriad of reasons, and now there remain some kinks like your AoEs being spells, dark mind being far too niche for a damage type you can't even know is hitting you unless you do either extensive testing or use some kind of tool, dark missionary being obtained far later than heart of light whilst it has no additional effect to justify that.

Fixing all of these kinks would 'reset the class back to zero' in serviceability, in that there's nothing 'wrong' with it's kit and it can move forward with design additions and changes. It's like a brick that has been left with some dirt on it: you'll want to clean off the dirt and overgrowth that would be potentially detrimental to a structure before you use it to build a functional wall.

Alternatively to Darkside being something you need to maintain, I like the idea of Darkside being something that opens up a burst window. Like in Archwizard's rework, you spend 50 gauge and can use Scourge to increase damage on a target for 12 seconds and follow up with two stronger attacks, and it seems like in HW Darkside wasn't something you could keep 100% uptime on (I'm wrong). Then the question is what options does the player have to fill the burst window, but might be an interesting direction to take it. It could essentially be a more flexible FoF/No Mercy

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Originally Posted by baklava151

Alternatively to Darkside being something you need to maintain, I like the idea of Darkside being something that opens up a burst window. Like in Archwizard's rework, you spend 50 gauge and can use Scourge to increase damage on a target for 12 seconds and follow up with two stronger attacks, and it seems like in HW Darkside wasn't something you could keep 100% uptime on (correct me if I'm wrong). Then the question is what options does the player have to fill the burst window, but might be an interesting direction to take it. It could essentially be a more flexible FoF/No Mercy

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In HW Darkside uptime was 100%, the whole thing consume MP but you generate more that the skill consume so you always balanced your MP bar around the middle to have enough MP for Dark arts + carve and spit and Dark passenger when they got aviable, the rest of the time you keep the balance and expend the MP on Dark arts + soul eater combo, so yeah the point was keep it up all the time, reaching 0 make the debuff turn off but you could re activate it pretty fast and of course you avoid overcap MP so you truly manage the whole thing but wasn't hard to do either.

EDIT: the only moment you deactivated Darkside was when the boss wasn't targetable so you could regenerate some MP naturally (the skill prevent this when activated before).

It wasn't hard to do, but it was still something to pay attention to. Making sure your MP wasn't too high to not waste any but not too low that you wouldn't lose your stance and the access to defensive skills it granted you was a satisfying mechanic.
Yes it was easy once you figured it out, but then you had the satisfaction of "I've got it know, I understand my class" and being able to take some risks by spending more MP etc.