Dark Knight Megathread

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

1. Why 5? That's a LOT of Bloodspiller spam, which would in turn require each hit to grant less effect in balance. You're increasing its attacks granted by two-thirds. Where is that otherwise extra damage coming from?
   
   
2. Does this Skill Speed buff only affect the Blood spender GCDs, or by having this affect all GCDs, are we now forced to blow 5 Bloodspillers immediately as not to waste stacks on combo skills instead of free BS casts?
   
   
3. That underlined bit, too, I have to admit... feels really odd. If anything, why not just tie some minor degree of damage absorption (shield potency per hit or based on damage) to those Delirium attacks, so you aren't so obviously trying to compensate for a concern that will only affect a portion of players? Additionally, if you just stick a mere 3 GCDs, then this 'problem' affects the DRK for no more than 6.4 consecutive seconds, which can be played around even with TBN.

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The idea for the blackblood gauge I listed above is that whenever you use either your single target combo or your AoE combo you gain blackblood. Using Blood weapon also grants a bit of blood. This blood enhances certain actions, allowing them to restore HP.

The Delirium change does not affect a small portion of players. I think its important to look at all aspects of a job when wanting for a certain ability to be original. Adding skill speed to a tank job that may have to double weave defenses is tricky and can be very problematic precisely because of this.

I think we are here not to be game designers since it is not our job and we lack the experience and knowledge, instead we can give creative ideas and feedback on the current state of things - listing potencies, intricate functionalities and ability names is kind of counter productive.

The current DRK suffers from several issues:
->Delirium is a Inner release copy, along with the blood gauge.
->Lack of anything to do in between burst windows.
->Dark Mind and Oblation share the same role now, neither being specifically good. Stick to one and make it good. ( Oblation )
->Lack of interactions between your 2 gauges ( Dark Side and Blackblood ) and 1 resource ( MP ). A good example of an interactive job would be warrior. Despite its simplicity, well maximized gauge turns into fell cleaves which reduce the CD of infuriates which grant you more gauge and stronger attacks. That is not the case here.

The real issue I think is not lack of ideas, but lack of an implementation in which this job is still a tank job.

While the above suggestion is my personal creation, I believe the ideal flow would be something like this:
Consume MP on Edge/Flood of Shadow -> Obtain Darkside -> Use actions that consumes Darkside but gives Blackblood -> Consume Blackblood for damage and sustain.

At this point I feel like making the Bloodgauge more of a secondary gauge which just adds to your survivability by adding healing to certain actions, and you don't really have to pay too much attention to it ( similar to PLD's Oath Gauge ), while making the Darkside gauge slightly more complex would solve many of these issues. Especially the healing related ones.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

This blood enhances certain actions, allowing them to restore HP.

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Okay, but... passively? Passively with proportionate bonus? Passive with bonus if over a threshold? Else, what are the means to actively consume it?

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->Delirium is a Inner release copy, along with the blood gauge.

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It's perhaps overly similar, yes, but note that it is also far more flexible. Adding little thematic differences to it like length or speed that would incidentally remove its unique affordances over Inner Release would do at least as much harm as good.

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->Lack of anything to do in between burst windows.

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Agreed.

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A good example of an interactive job would be warrior. Despite its simplicity, well maximized gauge turns into fell cleaves which reduce the CD of infuriates which grant you more gauge and stronger attacks. That is not the case here.

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Ehhhh. Now that Warrior can't overcap on Infuriate charge due to that skill having two charges, that hardly seems integral. The only "stronger attacks" it offers is those spenders themselves, so the builder in the spender and the spender is the builder.

You simply happen to get more gauge-value in the process of using gauge-value, effectively just receiving minor refunds. Infuriate is worth 50 gauge per 60s, so 5s of it is worth about 4.2 gauge. Effectively, each FC costs only ~45.8 gauge, and an IR FC costs -4.2 gauge.

There's not really any resource trade happening there, nor any interplay around bottlenecks (in trying to avoid overcapping the gauge generation through skillful use of Onslaught given one's GCDs of uptime, accounting ofc for SkS tiers, between IRs).

DRK needs a bit less oGCDs and more GCDs.
Specifically looking at the low impact oGCDs like Living Shadow ( 1 button press every 2 mins, no interactions!, and Salted Earth 2 button presses every 90 seconds ).

Also here's 2 more ideas:
->Abyssal Drain/Carve and Spit costing DarkSide. They no longer share a cooldown, and Abyssal Drain has no CD.
->Abyssal Drain is not bad in design but needs to be larger in radius so it catches more mobs, around 10y would be fine, its currently just 5y. Its healing potency could also be, higher at 300, even with the damage lowered to 100.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It's perhaps overly similar, yes, but note that it is also far more flexible. Adding little thematic differences to it like length or speed that would incidentally remove its unique affordances over Inner Release would do at least as much harm as good.

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How is it more flexible? I know on EW release any GCD would use an IR stack which wasn't true for Delirium, so WAR was locked into using Fell Cleave once they activated IR, but they fixed that in 6.1.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

How is it more flexible? I know on EW release any GCD would use an IR stack which wasn't true for Delirium, so WAR was locked into using Fell Cleave once they activated IR, but they fixed that in 6.1.

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Ahh, that's right, nevermind. A WAR somewhere must have complained (albeit rightly, in this case) and quickly got the Delirium treatment there too.
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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

->Abyssal Drain is not bad in design but needs to be larger in radius so it catches more mobs, around 10y would be fine, its currently just 5y.

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While I wouldn't be particularly opposed to a bit more range, AD can already consistently hit everything so long as you're not trying to tank from the center of a ring of mobs (which would screw over all caster and their target-centered circular AoEs).

A 5-yalm range is already the same as every circular AoE (target-centered or caster-centered) in the game. Just make sure you're aiming at the center of the pack. You need only an infinitesimally small portion of the enemies' hit-rings to overlap with that area of effect. It typically hits more than it would appear to.
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Now, personally, I prefer a strong and bankable Abyssal (i.e., two charges on 40s recast, which offers a flex cast per 2min cycle) over a [even if costly] spammable one, simply because the prior is still relatively free and needn't consume too much sustain budget on the basis of its maximum practical performance, but either path sounds like an improvement.

I also agree that we want fewer dead keys, so to speak (like the fire-and-forget 2min Living Shadow or even the twice-cast-per-90s Salted Earth -- though the latter is technically better in that regard than current Carve and Spit... let alone CnS/AD as a pairing, which at 2 buttons for a press per minute is no more efficient than Living Shadow).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Now, personally, I prefer a strong and bankable Abyssal (i.e., two charges on 40s recast, which offers a flex cast per 2min cycle) over a [even if costly] spammable one, simply because the prior is still relatively free and needn't consume too much sustain budget on the basis of its maximum practical performance, but either path sounds like an improvement.

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I agree. Charges on Abyssal Drain would be very nice. Here's another idea: When completing a combo with Stalwart soul , reduce the CD of Abyssal Drain by 5 seconds.

I'd like to further point out the issues with Dark Mind and Oblation. One works only for magic, one is very weak. Please merge take the damage reduction, or at least a part of it, from Dark Mind and put it into Oblation, and change Dark Mind to something more interesting or that functions in synergy with your defenses.

An example would be to change Dark Mind to a new ability that increases shielding, or converts darkside into healing. You have an abundance of darkside, so using it for something would be amazing!

I just want to see the lvl 100 skill return to form. Make it Dark Arts, purely for the animation. DA will just work in the same way as Infuriate but with some difference:

Dark Arts:
-60 sec recast (2 charges)
-Gains 3 stacks of DA, 15 sec duration
-DA augments abilities and weapon skills.

examples of DA augments:
-TBN costs no MP (still retains free BS when popped)
-Dark Mind increased to 30% mag
-Soul Eater changed to Power Slash (increased potency, etc)
-Siphon Strike changed to Spinning Slash (increased MP)
-Stalwart Soul restores HP

This is just an example of how DA could have worked in current game design instead of being gutted and turned into flavor text on a tool tip. It copies WAR but still is uniquely different.

However as a whole I would like to see them start to make all aoe ogcds work in the same way as Expacion on PLD does, where the first target hit is full dmg and every other mob gets less potency. ex. Upheaval upgraded to Onslaught, Edge and Flood combined, etc. It would free up button space.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

I just want to see the lvl 100 skill return to form. Make it Dark Arts, purely for the animation. DA will just work in the same way as Infuriate but with some difference:

Dark Arts:
-60 sec recast (2 charges)
-Gains 3 stacks of DA, 15 sec duration
-DA augments abilities and weapon skills.

examples of DA augments:
-TBN costs no MP (still retains free BS when popped)
-Dark Mind increased to 30% mag
-Soul Eater changed to Power Slash (increased potency, etc)
-Siphon Strike changed to Spinning Slash (increased MP)
-Stalwart Soul restores HP

This is just an example of how DA could have worked in current game design instead of being gutted and turned into flavor text on a tool tip. It copies WAR but still is uniquely different.

However as a whole I would like to see them start to make all aoe ogcds work in the same way as Expacion on PLD does, where the first target hit is full dmg and every other mob gets less potency. ex. Upheaval upgraded to Onslaught, Edge and Flood combined, etc. It would free up button space.

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The way that is described, depending on potency/MP gained, we would be using that in the opener to buff the last Syphon Strike/Soul Eater, and if lucky a TBN for a free Edge. Always. And then using the other charge to bank TBN and to lead into the next cycle with a Soul Eater. Really all that accomplishes is making the burst windows more hectic with trying to make sure that you get the most of your charges on 3 separate 15 second buffs. At least with BW and Delirium you can use the charges on the same attacks. This game's combat is too formulaic to mix offensive and defensive resources. Offense will always, always win that choice, as damage coming in is predictable.

If we had to go back to having Dark Arts as an actual oGCD I would rather it only enhance defensives, whether it be shielding ourselves or others. Do you want it to buff against a tank buster or help with group mitigation? Depends on what your team already used. That might actually be a choice.

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Originally Posted by Casualty

If we had to go back to having Dark Arts as an actual oGCD I would rather it only enhance defensives, whether it be shielding ourselves or others. Do you want it to buff against a tank buster or help with group mitigation? Depends on what your team already used. That might actually be a choice.

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It would be the best way to use DA at this point, as everybody will only ever choose damage for its use. Take that away (or make the change damage neutral), and you've knocked that problem out of the way.

If you want to see 'Dark Arts' in its original form, you would likely need something similar to MCH's PvP Analysis ability.

Ryu is right in that it would need to be free from resource costs and utility/defensive exclusive, or else the highest damage choice always wins out. The downside is that it reduces your weave space, although it could equally be implemented as a proc buff.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If you want to see 'Dark Arts' in its original form, you would likely need something similar to MCH's PvP Analysis ability.

Ryu is right in that it would need to be free from resource costs and utility/defensive exclusive, or else the highest damage choice always wins out. The downside is that it reduces your weave space, although it could equally be implemented as a proc buff.

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There is another flaw with the approach overall, however.

Analysis works because all of the skills it affects are on a short enough CD as to be basically rotational. Even in the case of the original Dark Arts, most of the skills it affected were also rotational or usable on-demand -- as was Dark Arts itself, provided you had the resources to spend on it.

If you have a CD which has the sole purpose of augmenting other CDs, particularly in a utilitarian sense to make them slightly stronger, then the second we have an issue from double-weaving the question will become "Why even have that bloat? Why not just roll the augmented effect into those CDs' base effects?"
Even on a charge system, it also creates a potential issue of CD misalignment negating the ability to use Dark Arts the way you would want, particularly if Dark Arts is usable on multiple abilities with differing CDs that you don't use in a normal alignment (such as a burst window).

Something we could rip from the original Dark Arts, however, is that most of the skills it affected either gained utilitarian effects or had them amplified: increased healing, inflict blind, bonus enmity. We could use a similar principle on a revival skill to prevent the above issue (augment on-demand combo skills and MP spenders), and provided that its effects avoid altering damage potencies and don't come out to a calculable damage gain, we maintain its use as a utilitarian skill.

Or, we go back to more of a classic Dark Arts system and make it the primary spammable MP spender so you can affect CDs at will without worrying about alignments. Still would have double-weaving and probably makes MP management way less interesting, don't recommend.

I kind of want my Final Fantasy Tactics Sanguine Sword skill as a healing CD to match up with Abyssal Drain. Carve and Split restoring MP and Abyssal Drain restoring HP is just a really weird combination. That or maybe give DRK some kind of charge system that they can use for either TBN or a self heal depending on scenario. Like using Carve and Split or Abyssal Drain would give a charge.

I feel like Dark Arts wouldn't necessarily have to give no choice in offensive value... if the more defensive alternatives were just actually decent in practice.

Alas, that requires (A) tanks actually taking significant damage and (B) healers not doing virtually all healing for free and offensive GCD value being higher.

On an unrelated note to kit brainstorming, I had a thought that maybe they could shift design encounters to be more role centric than the 'everyone must do DPS' we have now.

I hear often that most content in the game is piss easy and is possible to complete with little regard to your actual rotation or skill interactions. I have a very loose idea that perhaps enrages and overall health pools are eased upon, but as a result engagements are no longer about 'DPS is everyone's priority' and moreso 'lean into your role more'. Autoattacks are chunky and need consistent mitigations and heals, raidwides are scarier, etc.

Higher level content already does this, but they're also mechanically and execution intensive which would be the main differing factor from normal stuff.

What do people think about this direction, and the subsequent changes classes might theoretically go through to acclimate? Or do people like being off brand DPS with a side of role. Maybe you think the overall direction is a good idea, but have different thoughts on how to achieve it through specifics?

Well for starters, they could give more opportunities to use Interject and Low Blow since they rarely get touched. Also more adds outside of dedicated add phases for the OT to deal with, or other ways for the OT to actually tank sometimes and not be just another melee DPS for most of the fight.

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Originally Posted by baklava151

Well for starters, they could give more opportunities to use Interject and Low Blow since they rarely get touched. Also more adds outside of dedicated add phases for the OT to deal with, or other ways for the OT to actually tank sometimes and not be just another melee DPS for most of the fight.

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You just described the DSR ultinate

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I feel like Dark Arts wouldn't necessarily have to give no choice in offensive value... if the more defensive alternatives were just actually decent in practice.

Alas, that requires (A) tanks actually taking significant damage and (B) healers not doing virtually all healing for free and offensive GCD value being higher.

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Optimistic as that sounds, I fail to see a reality where that is not only possible but likely. We have enough historical precedent from things like Displacement, Jump, the old tank combos, any time healers or DPS choose "greed"... to foresee that the choice of "damage vs survival" is more like "default to damage until that bites you in the ass (healers adjust)", and at best creates scenarios where your "choice" is forced for you until your gear outmodes the survival option.

Within the scope of a DRK discussion, that simply ain't happening. And beyond this scope, it would require a redesign of the entire "everyone, even healers, must optimize damage" philosophy of encounter design.

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Originally Posted by Runeslayer

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I'd just like to see more meaningful short-term objectives in general. Perhaps if an attack isn't sufficiently mitigated, an enemy might get a bit more bloodlusty, and further go ham on its targets. Could have a brief phase where a boss briefly channels a shield (while attacking, not necessarily a mechanic-less phase) and said the shield destroyed to stop it from continuing to be generated, or perhaps they build up a stacking HoT, increasing in duration and potency, until having taken a certain amount of damage. Could have bleeds that deal damage that increases with time and with one's % missing health when the tick hits that are cleansed by being healed above 80% hp (or to full). Give shield or HP-margin-dependent mechanics, like more %HP-based phase shifts or something similar to the Knight mechs in T4 (pacifiable with enough physical damage to break their shields, while magic damage could instead bypass the shield completely but took longer to really shut down its damage). Give us more add phases and "soft" but significant DPS checks in the fight itself, rather than only from the fight as a whole (enrage).

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Originally Posted by Archwizard

Within the scope of a DRK discussion, that simply ain't happening. And beyond this scope, it would require a redesign of the entire "everyone, even healers, must optimize damage" philosophy of encounter design.

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That seems to rely on the idea that people will take the rDPS-inferior choice so long as it means more raw personal damage. Now, I can tentatively agree that such is the case within certain bounds (certainly not damage-utility, which we overvalued across HW and Stormblood, to the detriment of rDPS when jobs like BLM just did that damn much more). But, people taking the time to actually think about the rDPS implications of spending, say, 154 relative potency (140*1.1) of their own potency to save a healer 403 relative potency from a Glare III (310 * 1.3, due to traits) does not demand a change in encounter design philosophy.

There is no getting around that philosophy, nor any reason to do so. ALL optimization is a matter of as quickly getting to the final objective (the fight clear) as quickly as possible, because that's literally all it could ever be. Bottlenecks can add interest, but the actual, final win condition remains the same, with strategies at most trading a bit swifter completion for a greater chance of not wiping (i.e., adjusting for what is most relevant to a given party in "average clear time").

The only constraints that'd be relevant to DA having viable defensive spending options are that (A) defensive spenders be tuned to be actually superior for rDPS in practice, rather than merely relying on player superstition or novelty to see use, and that (B) players be a bit better at judging rDPS value instead of hurr durring an extra 80p at the cost of two healer GCDs, etc. That's it. I'm not asking for a design philosophy change.

Granted, I do think the game would be far better if tanks had less passive mitigation and only tankbusters were tuned down to match (such that tanks, on average, take 25% [1/(1-.2)] more white damage over time). But that's not a grand paradigm shift. That's just giving healers at least a little something more to do.


Tl;dr:
Choices need to be rDPS-competitive. This is more difficult but not impossible for situational choices or the effects that tend to compose them. Bonus percentile mitigation (which scales only off of content, not gear, and is thus degraded over time relative to both need and alternate spender value), for instance, needs to pick a balancing point high enough that it can still see use when one is overgeared for the content but need not be tuned against gear so high than one has no gear value left to get from said content. These choices work better when there are others that allow them to further flex and borrow from other throughputs across one's kit, but such is not wholly necessary, either. The existence of situational choices does not demand a change in game or encounter design philosophy; it requires only that players can think beyond their own kit to more accurately determine when those choices would be rDPS-positive.

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Originally Posted by Runeslayer

On an unrelated note to kit brainstorming, I had a thought that maybe they could shift design encounters to be more role centric than the 'everyone must do DPS' we have now.

I hear often that most content in the game is piss easy and is possible to complete with little regard to your actual rotation or skill interactions. I have a very loose idea that perhaps enrages and overall health pools are eased upon, but as a result engagements are no longer about 'DPS is everyone's priority' and moreso 'lean into your role more'. Autoattacks are chunky and need consistent mitigations and heals, raidwides are scarier, etc.

Higher level content already does this, but they're also mechanically and execution intensive which would be the main differing factor from normal stuff.

What do people think about this direction, and the subsequent changes classes might theoretically go through to acclimate? Or do people like being off brand DPS with a side of role. Maybe you think the overall direction is a good idea, but have different thoughts on how to achieve it through specifics?

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You just described 2.x and 3.x era. That's exactly how it worked back then, and was removed because it was, and I quote, "Too hard." Which is ironic because that's when SCH and DRK were at the top of their game.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

You just described 2.x and 3.x era. That's exactly how it worked back then, and was removed because it was, and I quote, "Too hard." Which is ironic because that's when SCH and DRK were at the top of their game.

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Gordias Savage and Thordan Ex on release aside, when was HW popularly described as "too hard"?

It was sometimes described as clunky, and shit like acquiring Wheeling Thrust being a nerf to one's kit (because you could then no longer pre-position for positionals after FT/CT) or seemingly physical attacks going through Shelltron because they were actually magical (despite being literal spear-throws), etc., were described variously as "rough" and "annoying." But, "too hard"?

Here's a nice little bit of data about WF clear times on the first three expansions of the game - info is in the top voted post. I think Midas was the last tier to get any significant mechanic nerfs due to difficulty, and Creator roughly set the standard for most later Savage content.

I think tanks tend to struggle more with positioning mechanics than they do with mitigation. You can see this in the later fights of the most recent tier as well. Alongside their proposed graphical updates, I wish that they could work on updating how this game handles mob movement and animation locks. I think that if mobs could auto-attack and cleave while continuously moving like they do in Warcraft, it would allow for smoother positioning and open up the doors for more elaborate tank challenges. The problem is that every mob action is executed as a 'cast' in the combat log, which results in stutter-step movement.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think that if mobs could auto-attack and cleave while continuously moving like they do in Warcraft, it would allow for smoother positioning and open up the doors for more elaborate tank challenges. The problem is that every mob action is executed as a 'cast' in the combat log, which results in stutter-step movement.

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This would be HUGE. Not just in terms of making the play experience more enjoyable (smoother, more intuitive, and offering more agency), but in opening up new possibilities within encounters if that ball and chain were mitigated through revision/rework.

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Originally Posted by ItsUrBoi

You just described the DSR ultinate

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Man I'd love to try it but I'm not ready to spend that much time progging.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think tanks tend to struggle more with positioning mechanics than they do with mitigation. You can see this in the later fights of the most recent tier as well. Alongside their proposed graphical updates, I wish that they could work on updating how this game handles mob movement and animation locks. I think that if mobs could auto-attack and cleave while continuously moving like they do in Warcraft, it would allow for smoother positioning and open up the doors for more elaborate tank challenges. The problem is that every mob action is executed as a 'cast' in the combat log, which results in stutter-step movement.

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Related to that, autos could be more consistent generally. I like using Dark Mind in P4S when I'm MT to take a bit of pressure off healers when the boss is just doing autos, but it's hard finding a good spot to pop it without the boss starting a long cast and making it a waste. Same issue with using TBN, it'd be great during autos but you have to be damn sure the boss will be hitting you for a bit so you don't waste it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The problem is that every mob action is executed as a 'cast' in the combat log, which results in stutter-step movement.

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Instant- and auto-attacks absolutely should be made more fluid with movement, both for mobs and for players (instant spells, for instance, currently forcibly turn your character to face the target, overwriting your movement input). I'm not sure what kind of back-end improvements need to be made to facilitate this though, as it could be a flaw of the current engine.

Although at the very least the "casts" in the combat log allow the opportunity to plan out the types of mitigation you use, particularly for a skill like Dark Mind.

It probably is a limitation in the current game engine, which is one of the reasons why I'm interested to know if they have any plans to improve on the existing game engine for the long term, now that we're ten years out. They pulled off a much more technically difficult feat in rebuilding ARR while 1.x was still running.

If there is a technical/financial limitation that definitively prevents this, then there is an alternative that might improve things. All you need to do is to create an untargetable, invulnerable mob that executes actions on behalf of the boss, from outside the arena. Casts still happen, but the boss no longer needs to pause movement to execute them because another mob is performing them in their stead.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If there is a technical/financial limitation that definitively prevents this, then there is an alternative that might improve things. All you need to do is to create an untargetable, invulnerable mob that executes actions on behalf of the boss, from outside the arena. Casts still happen, but the boss no longer needs to pause movement to execute them because another mob is performing them in their stead.

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There's a decent chance the "casts" are themselves the animations, though. If so, that smoothness of movement could only be achieved by leaving said boss without any animations whatsoever.

I certainly hope that's not the case, but it seems to fit what we're seeing. If there's an animation, there's a pause to natural movement. And actual movement skills, both mob and player, not only replace preexisting movement (hence gap-closers cancelling knockbacks) but also prevent any natural movement input over their animation's duration.

I have never actually gotten to experience the Living Dead changes, because every time I pop LD thinking I'm going to die? The healer will suddenly spam everything, and bam I survive.
Or sometimes I survive just long enough for the LD buff to fade, and then splat.
I won't say the "Cure on weaponskill" bit isn't powerful. It seems like it should be. But I'm still seeing a problem with the ability compared to the other Tank cooldowns.
Maybe that's just me tho.

that heal effect is bonkers as long as you are attacking you will clense LD and unleash just a full bene in packs.

mitigation still awkward but just gotta kitchen sink.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If there is a technical/financial limitation that definitively prevents this, then there is an alternative that might improve things. All you need to do is to create an untargetable, invulnerable mob that executes actions on behalf of the boss, from outside the arena. Casts still happen, but the boss no longer needs to pause movement to execute them because another mob is performing them in their stead.

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Which is a solution that already exists for any number of AoEs and special mechanics for fights.

But when it comes to things like simulating auto-attacks on behalf of the boss... I have concerns about how this would impact encounter design, since it could make things like distance from the boss essentially irrelevant for, say, kiting them out of hazardous terrain. And yes, you could just refine the AI further to mitigate this, but after a certain point it becomes easier to address the core issue rather than work around it sequentially.

As far as I can tell, your physical distance from a mob only matters for initiating auto-attacks and not executing them. If you're far enough from an attacking mob, the auto-attack won't be initiated until it gets into range. However, once you see the mob pause to 'cast' the auto, it doesn't matter how far away you are, because the attack is already snapshotted to you.

The same is true for tankbusters as well. If you move away from the mob, it will wait to catch up to you, pause to start casting, and then the attack lands regardless of how far away you get in the interim. I think that an auto is just a unique case of a 'cast' that has '0' cast time, but still takes a non-zero amount of time to cast because of execution issues.

The responsiveness of a mob depends on how far away you can move before it also starts moving to close the distance. In Warcraft, that distance is really small, so it feels really responsive (you also were able to force a mob to backstep by entering into its hitbox). In FFXIV that distance is a lot bigger. That's why FFXIV's mobs feel a lot less 'maneuverable' to drive around the arena.

I think I know the reason behind why this critical movement distance is set so large. It comes down to 'casts'. You've probably seen this yourself, but if your character is moved a sufficient distance while casting a spell due to a movement effect (knockback/draw-in/etc.), it interrupts your cast.

In ARR, you could interrupt mob abilities this way as well, including abilities that you weren't actually supposed to. The Wavetooth Sagahin in Leviathan Ex uses an uninterruptable Dreadwash as a roomwide fear. It was likely intended as a mini-enrage, which is why you couldn't interrupt it. However, any action that displaced the mob (classically getting your WAR to Holmgang and jump away, pulling the mob with them) cancelled the cast. I suspect this was the reason behind the 'Spin' glitch back in ARR/Heavensward as well, given that a mob that is constantly being moved is unable to initiate a cast. I think that's the primary reason why all player knockback/draw-in effects were removed in PvE over the course of Stormblood.

I think that the reason why mobs are coded to be relatively 'movement-insensitive' is because they probably found that movement jitter from the player was preventing casts. I personally don't mind if a mob autos me from across an arena. It's not really immersion breaking, and you're really not supposed to be able to 'kite' a raid boss by outdistancing them. What I do want to see are mobs that move the instant that I do.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

that heal effect is bonkers as long as you are attacking you will clense LD and unleash just a full bene in packs.

mitigation still awkward but just gotta kitchen sink.

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Pretty sure you talk about DSR in general there. Fight is
Just pure kitchen sink every big hit and invuln the rest and the some times tank swap.

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Originally Posted by Simple_Barghest

I have never actually gotten to experience the Living Dead changes, because every time I pop LD thinking I'm going to die? The healer will suddenly spam everything, and bam I survive.
Or sometimes I survive just long enough for the LD buff to fade, and then splat.
I won't say the "Cure on weaponskill" bit isn't powerful. It seems like it should be. But I'm still seeing a problem with the ability compared to the other Tank cooldowns.
Maybe that's just me tho.

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It's pretty nice for mob pulls, you can just tell the healer to ignore you for a bit and and when it activates you can cleanse it in one hit. My one small complaint is that the self-heal goes away when you go into Undead Rebirth but not a huge deal honestly.

It's also been fine in raids so far, the only situation I can imagine it being an issue is if you proc it and the boss jumps or becomes untargetable

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If you want to see 'Dark Arts' in its original form, you would likely need something similar to MCH's PvP Analysis ability.

Ryu is right in that it would need to be free from resource costs and utility/defensive exclusive, or else the highest damage choice always wins out. The downside is that it reduces your weave space, although it could equally be implemented as a proc buff.

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WAR has already proven the DA could have worked in the 5.0+ rework. I've stated several times that DA could work like Infuriate where it changes your gcds and you perform a different animation but rather DA just gives you 3 stacks which you can use on either gcds or a limited set of ogcds. It's basically automatic and no need to double weave since its already active and ready to use and simulates what DA used to do.

Personally I'm hoping they would just fuse oblations effect to TBN and change TBN to 2 charges on a 20-25 sec recast with no MP cost. The oblation effect will still stay the entire 10 sec duration regardless if TBN popped and keep MP usage strictly to just dps. That would then let them remove DA from TBN's flavor text to reintroduce it as something else in 7.0. Imo TBN should not cost anything as shields a single shield is not necessarily "good" enough when compared to the other short tank job cds, which do more than just give a shield in some cases by providing heals and mitigation. If they really think TBN is as strong as it is, then either lower it a bit, in favor of ease-of-use. It's the only cd among the tanks that has a downside after 6.1.

Nascent Chaos isn't a great example. It's just an offensive potency buff with no real thought involved, and Fell Cleave still feels like the better animation after all these years.

The closest thing that we have to Heavensward's Dark Arts is SGE's Eukrasia. The reason why it works is because it doesn't cost resources, is usable on demand, and purely acts as a toggle between sets of non-competing abilities.

Removing the MP cost from TBN and increasing its recast is a hard nope from me. Xeno has his moments, but you really have to be able to filter out his good takes from his bad ones. I think you're much better off just individually buffing Oblation into a more useful ability. They shouldn't touch TBN.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

It's the only cd among the tanks that has a downside after 6.1.

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This is and always has been a strong argument for why they should keep the MP cost, and an incredibly weak argument for why they should remove it.

There are three out of four tanks that do not have any risk:reward associated with their short-cooldown mitigation skills. If you don't like risk:reward in your class design, there are multiple tanks that are already doing exactly what you want out of tank class design.
For those players who do like that aspect of risk:reward, Dark Knight is the only tank in the game that offers it as part of their kit.

What possible justification can you have for saying "I think it's fair to take away the one tank that is enjoyable to people who disagree with me so that they don't have any tanks that they find fun, in the service of making every tank do what I want it to, instead of the wholly unacceptable-to-me situation where every tank but one is designed to cater to my tastes"?

There isn't much reward though, having a risk is neat and it was very enjoyable in ShB. But if the only reward is "you do about as well as others tanks, if not worse" then... it's not satisfying.

There's plenty of reward, both offensively and defensively. Dark Knight is almost universally either the sturdiest tank, or in a dead heat with one other tank for sturdiest, and that is almost always a result of the lower cooldown on TBN and Dark Mind - two skills that people are constantly crying about and trying to nerf in service of removing the risk:reward for "ease-of-use".

This is at the same time that Dark Knight is sitting comfortably ahead of every other tank in terms of offensive output in full-uptime striking dummy situations like Savage (and far ahead of every other tank in downtime-heavy, burst-oriented fights like P2 and P5 of DSR). Which is largely a result of how much potency they can put out in 120s burst windows, which is largely a result of their deeper resource pool, which is largely a result of things like TBN's Dark Arts proc effectively extending their MP pool to 13000.


I honestly don't know how you could say that Dark Knight doesn't get rewarded for the 'risk' in its kit, unless you formed your opinion during the Media Tour tooltip doomfest and then didn't bother to update your assessment once the expansion started to play out. The class shows extremely high performance within its role across the board, despite the fact that you still see people saying that they find it weak, or squishy, or whatever. That is pretty much exactly what you want to see if you want there to be a tank with risk/reward built into its kit.

And it's largely being achieved through a defensive toolkit that doesn't feel like a carbon-copy of another tank, hasn't been reduced to a boring, homogenized "25s cooldown, no cost/risk/downside" set of skills, and that rewards fight and system knowledge on a deeper level than the other tanks. These are things that should be protected and preserved for their own sake, even if they didn't carry a corresponding advantage, because nobody should want every tank to be that similar to one another. Again, there are three out of four tanks who do basically function in the same way that people are prescribing for Dark Knight. It's childish and selfish to say "So Dark Knight should also have the exact same set of things that they do and do not have to worry about, because I want all the tanks to play the way that I want them to, instead of just most of the tanks."

It's far from a perfect class and there are plenty of ways to improve it, but if the phrase "no other tank has to _______" enters into your reasoning, then that should automatically become an argument in favor of preserving uniqueness, not washing it away.

GNB does better dps that DRK right now so he is not comfortable sitting ahead and in the JP are demanding damage buffs for WAR and PLD so DRK can potentially become completely irrelevant of that happens.

DRK mitigates the same way every other tank do, TBN + Rampart/Shadow wall as a standard TB mitigation, they don't take advantage of the short recast due not having TB under 25s and due lack of sinergy and lack of vision DRK is the only tank that suffers if the encounter don't have magic damage presented wich is the case of dungeons where DRK is severely underperforming compared to the rest of the roster and the job is no more sturdy than the rest on savage, WAR is hella more effective defensively wise that DRK and GNB is way more versatile at the same time he mitigates as much as the job, DRK holds right now purely by his DPS numbers and nothing else, if they didn't have that it would be SB again but with a worse and a a more nonsensical set of skills.

I'm pretty much against homogenization and I like risk skills that require at least 1 brain cell to use but design it well, DRK is not well designed and that's why they have a lot of skills that feel underwhelming to fill the gap like obliation.

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Originally Posted by Crater

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I have to agree with this.

Players love to blame the development team for 'homogenizing jobs', but they virtually never highlight the individual posts and threads from community members responsible for those changes. I don't think that we can even begin to talk about 'skill expression' on jobs if players can't handle basic resource management tasks or correctly anticipate incoming damage patterns. I don't care if DRK is uniquely 'challenging' in this regard, so long as it has dps and mitigation parity. This is the best expansion that we've had since Heavensward.