Dark Knight - Rework Concept

Edge/Flood of Shadow no longer cost MP. Instead, they drain the Dark Knight's HP an amount equivalent to a 200 potency heal, and replace the amount drained with a shield lasting 30s, subsequent uses increase the timer to a max of 60s. Any remaining shield is converted back into HP out of combat when the timer ends.

The Blackest Night (TBN) costs no MP, and increases the timer on shields from Edge/Flood by 30s, to a max of 60s.

Abyssal Drain & Carve and Spit each cost 3000 MP, and are on the GCD, not sharing a recast with each other. Abyssal Drain's heal is reduced to 100 potency due to the recast time. Carve and Spit applies a debuff to the target that is consumed to double the HP gain of the next Souleater combo.

I saw the title and my first thought was, if it includes a mechanic to use HP as a resource, it wouldn't work. First sentence, drain the DRK's HP. It wouldn't work.

Even if you do give the DRK a shield equivalent to the HP lost, it is meaningless. The only benefit would be if you got healed more than max effective health, but since the shield is so weak, that will rarely, if ever happen. To put it into context, how long does GNB's shield from Brutal Shell last? To put it in another contest, it is about 5% of your max HP. Since you also haven't mentioned any cooldowns, I'm assuming they will be the same, so you will be spamming Flood/Edge of Shadow every 2-3 GCDs aka, when the last shield breaks. That is incredibly spammy in it's own right.

As for TBN, all it has turned into is a button you use to allow more Edge/Flood of Shadow. It is effectively a HP buffer, so you have a bigger margin of error you can play with, so you can spam more and not care about the weak shield from Edge/Flood from running out. All you need is for the healer to heal you.

As for Abyssal Drain and Carve and Spit, the HP drain on AD is incredibly weak, even considering you can spam it 3 times in a row. As for C&S, it is essentially relegated to the 2 minute burst window, using MP just to prevent overcaping. It wouldn't help in what you envision it to do (ie. Provide a buff to help heal back the HP lost from Edge of Shadow).

There is a reason HP is not used as a job resource and that is it is incredibly hard to balance. You can balance the job around itself as much as you want, but as soon as you add an external source of healing, it throws everything out of whack. The FFXIV equivalent for older DRK's HP Drain is to use MP instead. It is all based on the DRK's kit and so it's effectiveness is based solely on how you play the job and not how well someone else can heal you.

I feel HP-as-a-resource can work, but not as part of normal play. It has to be something special. Say as an extreme - and not really serious - example, consider this version of Oblation:

- You lose 50% of your current HP.
- You gain 200% of the lost health as a shield, independent of target.

While losing 50% health feels crazy, at the same time you essentially go to 150% health if you include mitigation, which also feels crazy as a bump. And considering how much more healing there is than damage in the game right now, even 50% lost health so long as you cannot be immediately threatened (you cannot, with that shield) doesn't really account for anything. But it would not work as something that happens constantly in small bumps because only two jobs - the shield healers - cause constant low-healing on the tank and would hence automatically gain free micro-shields on their tank for no cost, while the other two healers would lose a GCD here or there for this effect and hence would probably not even engage with this. As a "burst" it works better because then you're expecting active attention either way.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I feel HP-as-a-resource can work, but not as part of normal play. It has to be something special. Say as an extreme - and not really serious - example, consider this version of Oblation:

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Until you stick it on someone else and the healers have to heal your 50% of HP, as opposed to the DPS/Healer where they have to heal, say 50% of their HP, which is much lower., and the shield probably wouldn't even break either, wasting that extra mitigation.

It would turn it into a self mitigation tool only as that is the best use for it and would relegate TBN to the one you stick on someone else. Then you have the fact that you can only have a total of 200% of your max HP as shields. That only leaves 50% for other shield based mitigations. TBN alone is an extra 25% and Eukrasian Diagnosis and Adlo is close to 25% without a crit. You start to get into the territory of it being a pain to work around.

But, to cut it short, it is basically a 50% shield, once you take away the HP reduction. Why not just have that as opposed to having to use HP, which could be necessarily restricted based on the fight?

I know this was something that was just thrown together, but even then, problems arise. The question is then, what limitations are people actually going to enjoy working around, or is it all just going to be a big hinderance that limits your enjoyment.

In my opinion a shield of any sort doesnt fit with dark knight. Now something like Dread Spikes from 11 which drains hp from target every time your hit would.

I believe your suggestion is great,

replacing HP with bigger shield is something that will bring some identity for the job,

adding to that new skill that will consume all shield to do damage and heal 50% of the shield that has been consumed.

Great thank you for your post

It's a video game, you can do whatever you want with it. So I'm certain that a system to allow DRK to spend its HP on attacks is entirely doable. Like attacks could cost both HP, and MP with MP acting like a regulator to prevent things like the player KOing themselves or a healer pumping a DRK with heals for damage. A DRK would need both resources for damage. And then DRK could get a barrier that is equal to the amount of HP spent that has no time limit with each spender attack adding to to the barrier's strength, and the barrier strength could even be displayed as a job gauge. DRK could be given an emergency button that instantly converts the barrier HP back into regular HP.

Balance issues exist now, do people look at warrior vs dark knight? If you see that as a balance Idk what balance is

Yeah I don't like shields on DRK conceptually either, but here we are. It's not a "typical" RPG (where you expect Paladins to have the big shields and Dark Knights / Shadow Knights to be about DoTs, undead pets, draining HP and stuff like that).

It would be cool if they gave DRK a damage buff for giving up it's hp. like 5%. And have the buff last like scarlet delireum? from 11. Could be integrated into it's burst window. Have them recover the HP through soul eatter doing more damage. Since it's something you have to put on, gives the player the choice in the fight script when to activate it.

They could also look into playing around with living dead as well or uncouple abysal drain from CnS give it charges to recover the health lost via a drain ( as drks do historically) to give up their hp for higher damage.

The only issue here is that it will probably rank 3 in parse and the community will be in an up roar.

I also have a problem with DRK being a "shield tank", I feel like that is more Warrior brushing off attacks.