Complete Rework to DRK because boredom

weee...

Scourge - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Hard Slash
Combo Potency: 220
Combo Bonus: Damage over time
Grit Combo Potency: 260
Grit Combo Bonus: Increased enmity (5x)
Potency: 40
Duration: 33s

Power Slash - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Addional Effect: Increased enmity if used while not under the effect of Dark Arts (5.5x)
Combo Action: Scourge
Combo Potency: 300
Combo Bonus: Increases Blood Gauge by 10
Grit Combo bonus: Increased enmity (additional 5x)
Dark Arts Combo Potency: 390
Dark Arts Combo Effect: Critical damage.
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Syphon Strike - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Dark Arts Potency: 240
Combo Action: Hard Slash
Combo Potency: 250
Dark Arts Combo Potency: 390
Combo Bonus: Restores MP. MP restoration increased while in Grit

Souleater - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Dark Arts Potency: 240
Combo Action: Syphon Strike
Combo Potency: 300
Dark Arts Combo Potency: 440
Combo Bonus: Increases Blood Gauge by 5
Dark Arts Combo Bonus: Restores 8% of your maximum HP
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Blood Weapon - Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by 10% and converts physical damage dealt into MP, while reducing weaponskill TP cost by 20%. Also increases Blood Gauge by 2 each time a physical attack lands.
Additional Effect: Increases damage dealt by 5%.
Duration: 20s
Recast: 60s
Cannot be used while under the effect of Blood Price.

Blood Price - Increases parry rate by 20% and restores partial MP when damage is taken.
Duration: 20s
Recast: 60s
Grit effect: MP restoration increased by 100%
Additional Effect: 50% chance the attacker will deal 5% less damage for 10 seconds after a successful parry.
Additional Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 1 immediately and another 3 over time while in battle.
Cannot be used while under the effect of Blood Weapon.

Delirium - Resets the cooldown of Blood Price and Blood weapon and consumes 50 Blood Gauge to restore 25% of maximum MP if used while not under the effect of Dark Arts.
Dark Arts Effect: Grants 50 Blood Gauge.

Darkside - Increases damage dealt by 15%. MP regeneration stops during battle and Refresh statuses granted by others have no effect.
Effect ends upon reuse.

Grit - Reduces damage taken by 20%, while reducing damage dealt by 25% and increasing enmity.
Effect ends upon reuse.
Recast: 3s

Dark Arts - Attune with the darkness within you, increasing the potency of several actions. If used while under the effect of Grit, these actions will ignore the Grit Damage penalty. Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside. Effect fades if Darkside is canceled. 10% chance that your next Blackest Night will cost no MP.
Duration: 10s

Unmend - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150.
Additional Effect: Increased enmity
Additional Effect: 20% chance that next your Dark Arts will cost no MP
Duration: 10s

Dark Passenger - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 160 to all enemies in a straight line before you.
Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside.
Dark Arts Potency: 210
Dark Arts Effect: Blind
Duration: 15s
Dark Arts Bonus: Increases critical hit rate of Unmend, Unleash, and Abyssal Drain by 60% for 6 seconds.
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Abyssal Drain - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 120 to target and all enemies nearby it and restores 4% of maximum HP.
Additional Effect: Increased enmity
Dark Arts Effect: Restores 4% of maximum HP per target hit.
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Sole Survivor - Restores 20% of maximum HP and marks target with the status Another Victim. 1% of all damage dealt to the target by self and party members is compiled and converted to MP at the end of the duration, up to a maximum of 30%.

Carve and Spit - Delivers a threefold attack with a potency of 100. Also restores MP and grants 10 Blood Gauge if used while not under the effect of Dark Arts.
Dark Arts Potency: 450
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Salted Earth - Creates a patch of salted earth, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 75 to any enemies who enter, and increasing healing received by healing magic for any party members who enter by 15%.
Duration: 21s
Recast: 50s
Additional Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 1 per target per tick.

Quietus - Delivers an attack with a potency of 170 to all nearby enemies.
Additional Effect: Restores own MP
Dark Arts Potency: 230
Blood Gauge Cost: 30
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Bloodspiller - Delivers an attack with a potency of 440.
Dark Arts Potency: 590
Blood Gauge Cost: 30
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

The Blackest Night - Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 6s
Increases Blood Gauge by 50 and reduces the recast time of Shadow Wall and Dark Mind by 12/6s respectively when full 20% (10%) is absorbed.

Dark Mind - Reduces damage taken by 15%.
Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside.
Duration: 20s
Recast: 90s
Dark Arts Effect: Increases damage reduction to 30%.
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Shadow Wall - Reduces damage taken by 30%.
Duration: 10s
Recast: 150s
Dark Arts Effect: Increases duration to 20 seconds.
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

Living Dead - Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd.
Walking Dead Duration: 5s

Some of these either need costs or cooldowns on them, because as it is, it's vague and not easy to judge.

Thus, the assumption being made here is that no listed cost means no cost, and no listed cooldown means no cooldown.

This would be nothing but a blood weapon power slash spam. You'd use Delirium to keep Blood Weapon rolling, feeding MP and Blood Gauge, and Dark Arts Power Slash almost exclusively because you put 10 Blood onto it while Souleater only has 5. The guaranteed crit on it alone means 390 is effectively 585, so while Souleater can hit higher, it will do so less. The 440 DA potency, with +220 on crit (which is an average of +22 per 10% crit) means you need to crit approximately 75% of the time to break even, before accounting for blood.

"But Siphon Slash"

By effectively removing the need to DA on every hit but Hard Slash, you reduce the amount of MP going out while effectively allowing much higher uptime on Bloodweapon.

"But clipping DoTs"

Just means the crit threshold lowers by like 15% (So you have to crit 60% of the time) to break even with Power Slash combo.

Dark Passenger is now a brainless OGCD you spam.
Dark Mind might as well be Dark Rampart.
Living Dead might as well just be Traited Holmgang.

Sole Survivor is decent.
I don't think anyone is honestly going to DA Shadow wall outside large dungeon pulls
The 30 blood cost on the weapon skills is just a plain ole ordinary buff. Not much to analyze here.

How to: unbalance

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Dark Passenger is now a brainless OGCD you spam.
Dark Mind might as well be Dark Rampart.
Living Dead might as well just be Traited Holmgang.

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Certainly beats the garbage state they are all in now for no benefit other than "different".

DP coming back to the club of every single other oGCD, i.e not so insanely situational that it has fewer button presses than Power Slash.
Dark Mind is old Sheltron. Where is Sheltron now? A situational cooldown that demands content be designed for it so that DRK doesn't suffer that gaping hole in it's CD kit that it has in regular dungeon pulls.
Living Dead has no benefit above Hallowed or Holmgang. For all intents and purposes it's a slightly shorter CD HG that demands Healer GCDs/oGCDs.

Not saying I agree with the list entirely, but they're more or less what we've been asking for DRK.

Only thing that sounds like a nice change is Soul survivor. Syphon Strike revert to HW state is a change I can welcome as well but this may result in overcapping and forced use of DP to just let go for the excess of MP.

Dark Knight gameplay
This post is not about the actual balance of numbers (potencies, durations, cool downs) and how the numbers compare to the other tanks but about dark knight game play. Here are my ideas to add to the mix of the DRK left in the dark this patch threads.

Listed are some changes(or fix) that i feel would make dark knight more enjoyable to play.
Add your thoughts about gameplay not about the balance of numbers.

(adjust the numbers for balance as needed)
Unmend: additonal effect changed from 30% for a free unleash to a free Abyssal Drain

Dark Mind: Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside. Reduce magic vulnerability by 0%. Every time a Dark Arts is consumed add 5% to reduce magic vulnerability to a max of 35%. When skill is activated percent goes back to 0%.

Souleater: add partial hp drain out of grit (less then when in grit)

Dark Passenger: lower mp cost. should blind be a part of it or changed to something else? it clashes with synergy of other drk skills

Shadow Wall: Changed to 30 second duration. 1st 10 seconds 30% dmg reduction, 2nd 10 seconds 10% dmg reduction, last 10 seconds 5% dmg reduction

Delirium: oGCD attack with original animation. costs 10 blood, 5 second recast, 80 potency, grants a small amount mp, adds 3 seconds to blood weapon and 6 seconds to blood price.

Blackest Night: its seems many think a 6 second duration will help this skill

Sole Survivor: add gives blood if target did not die during duration.

Power Slash: add dark arts effect also guarantees a critical hit.

new trait at lvl 56. the level abyssal drain is earned.
Fully Unleashed: Turns Unleash into a oGCD with 50 sec cool down. When used, Unleash morphs into Scourge for 10 seconds and can be used once during that time. Scourge(old animation) is an oGCD attack that adds a DOT to target that lasts for 40 seconds. Hp is gained for dot damage dealt.

I want to be OP. Here are my really bad ideas:

The Blood Gauge: Starts off at 100% instead of 0. Our unique abilities drain the gauge (Quietus, Delirium, Bloodspiller). Every attack we deal add 3 to the gauge. Received attacks increases the gauge by 2. Darkside increases our gauge by 5 every server heartbeat.

Blood Price: Degen effect on our MP that increases our HP regen from our own healing sources by 10% (15% with DA) for 25s.
--Delirium effect: Reduce our Bloodgauge costs bo 10. 180s CD.

Blood Weapon: same as live, but make it usable in Grit to replace the current Blood Price.
--Delirium effect: same as live.

Delirium: Interacts with our abilities in various ways. Activating Delirium is now a buff that is consumed when activating an ability. Costs 40 Bloodgauge.

Living Dead: Snapshot your health at the time you pop it. If Walking Dead triggers, your health fills back up to the snapshot value, however, you suffer a bleed-like degen that cannot be removed or mitigated in any way that removes 8% of your health every second for 20 seconds. Dark Arts Effect: 3% of your HP is removed per second instead of 5%. While Living Dead is active, our body is covered by black and red abyssal energy (like a warriors wrath). While Walking Dead is active make it bright blue and purple. Visual indicators that the effect is up and if it's procced.

Dark Passenger: Twofold attack. The first hit does 180 potency damage. Right behind it is a delayed burst of dark magic that deals 360 potency damage. Same MP cost as live.
--Dark Arts effect: This attack heals you for half the damage dealt.
--Delirium effect: Dark Passenger costs 50 Bloodgauge to use instead of MP.

Grit: Remove it. Bake its effect into Darkside. Increase damage by 10% instead of 20%.

Dark Mind: 20% damage reduction. 60s CD
--Dark Arts effect: 30% damage reduction.
--Delirium effect: Nearby allies gain 10% damage reduction. Damage they mitigate with Dark Mind restores 2% of your max HP per target hit by an attack, lasts 8s.

The Blackest Night: Same as it currently is except for the Bloodgauge restoration when absorbed.
--Dark Arts effect: Double the duration. Immediately restore 50 Bloodgauge on use. Any additional Bloodgauge gained over 100 is lost.
--Delirium effect: Restores 10% of your max health. Allies gain a shield equal to 10% of your maximum HP for half the duration of The Blackest Night.

Shadow Wall: Same as it currently is.
--Dark Arts effect: spread the reduction to all nearby allies within 20 yalms for 4 seconds. This effect also lasts 4 seconds on you.

Quietus: Same as live. Adds 20 potency to the damage per target it hits. (instead of losing potency, like Flare for example, it gains potency instead) 180 base potency.
--Dark Arts effect: Increase Bloodgauge cost to 60, adds 30 potency to the damage per target.

Bloodspiller: Same as live.
--Dark Arts effect: splashes its damage to all nearby targets, dealing half the damage dealt to the first target, 10% less to the second, 20% to the third, and 30% to all remaining targets.

Sole Survivor: Any target you designate becomes another victim and the effect lasts 18s. While the effect is active, you regen 2% of your maximum HP and MP every 3 seconds. If the target dies, you immediately gain the full regen effect as well as filling your Bloodgauge up to 100%.
--Delirium effect: Target yourself in addition to your Sole Survivor.

Souleater: See the OP's suggestion.

Salted Earth: Same as live except it does not fill the Bloodgauge meter.
--Dark Arts effect: This effect becomes a PBAoE that moves with you.
--Delirium effect: Double the duration.

Not a complete rework, but here are things I'd like to see (if no mana costs range or anything is mentioned, it will be unchanged from the current)

The Blackest Night
Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member and any party members within 10y of the target that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 6s
Increases Blood Gauge by 50 when the barrier on primary target is absorbed.

Shadow Wall
Recast: 180s
Reduces damage taken by 30%.
Duration: 20s

Shadow Wall is strictly worse than all the other 'big' defensive cooldowns of the 3 tanks. With this, because it has the longest recast with smallest reduction, we give it something to differentiate it slightly.

Living Dead
Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd. While under the effect of Walking Dead, healing received is increased by 100%
Walking Dead Duration: 10s

Sole Survivor
Marks target with the status Sole Survivor. While under the effect of Sole Survivor, enemies within 10y of the target (but not the target) take 100 unaspected damage* for the duration of the effect. If the effect dealt no damage, the target takes 320 potency unaspected damage when the duration ends. Restores some MP for any enemies that were dealt damage by this ability that die before the duration ends.**
Duration: 10s

Basically a complete rework of the ability
*that is like a DOT tick or ground damage like salted earth
**equal to about half what Quietus restores

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

weee...

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First of all, LOL for the above.

Second, in seriousness. Am I to understand you replaced Spinning for Scourge? Whats your thoughts behind that? And would you not have to use the aggro combo to reapply the DOT?

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

weee...

Scourge - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Hard Slash
Combo Potency: 220
Combo Bonus: Damage over time
Grit Combo Potency: 260
Grit Combo Bonus: Increased enmity (5x)
Potency: 40
Duration: 33s

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Why not add scourage back as an oGCD which procs off TBN breaking or as an oGCD procing off of bloodspiller? Making this an enmity bonus move gives us antisynergy as OT, and I don't think we need less synergy with the other tanks.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Dark Passenger - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 160 to all enemies in a straight line before you.
Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside.
Dark Arts Potency: 210
Dark Arts Effect: Blind
Duration: 15s
Dark Arts Bonus: Increases critical hit rate of Unmend, Unleash, and Abyssal Drain by 60% for 6 seconds.
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

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This is cool but why not increase the dark knights personal crit rate by 60% on all moves so that it doesn't lose its value on single targets? I feel it nerfs itself since this would only buff our mana based aoe, after spending all of our mana on making this happen.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Salted Earth - Creates a patch of salted earth, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 75 to any enemies who enter, and increasing healing received by healing magic for any party members who enter by 15%.
Duration: 21s
Recast: 50s
Additional Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 1 per target per tick.

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I think you increased the recast time to 50 seconds from 45, but this isn't marked as a change. What do you think about a dark effects doubling the potency, or shortening the cooldown?

Omg DRK is fine your only crying because WAR got a skill change. Sometimes simple is good no need overdo things.

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Originally Posted by Dezee

Omg DRK is fine your only crying because WAR got a skill change. Sometimes simple is good no need overdo things.

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Dark knight is not fine, but unlike warrior has gotten little to no attention from the developers. We are behind in dps, mitigation, and utility. If you think that this is only because of a skill change to warrior I direct your attention to the dark consolidated feedback thread which goes back to July (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...eedback-Thread), and has links within the post to other posts going back June. Warrior's feedback was taken near instantly when they complained about their gauge and other problems, and asked to wait about shake it off to give the devs time to change it, so please don't start with this "crying" business.

While warrior got the obvious favoritism from the devs, dark knight has just been ignored, and our issues with the job just remain on the forums never even being mentioned. This is rediculous.

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Originally Posted by Dezee

Omg DRK is fine your only crying because WAR got a skill change. Sometimes simple is good no need overdo things.

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No need to overdo things? Just what is it exactly about DRK that you feel its in a nice spot? DPS, Utility and Mitigation. Just what is it about those three things that you think is DRK is FINE. Its far from fine and its far from being chosen ahead of the other two tanks, one of which you play by the looks of it. So please enlighten us, as I assume you have leveled DRK to 70 and done some form of content to give you this impression?

Lol, the replies to this thread amuse me a bit, since this really was just me being really bored and throwing stuff up on the wall to see what would stick (or stand out to SE). Desperation more than perfect ideas really. If you read through the OP carefully though, there's actually a fair few nerfs (can't DA SS anymore, higher Grit penalty, lower base % on Darkside, weaker Blood generation on BW/BP (as well as slightly lower default uptime), weaker Blood generation on DASE, to name a few) in there designed to balance out some of the bigger buffs.

Re: earlier poster in regards to recast times, if I didn't list a recast time that means I didn't change it.

Those ideas seem a tad ridiculous, especially considering DRK isn't really a bad job in any sense of the word. Though, as you said, you were just spitballing.

I'd prefer some minimal changes, Shadow Wall's Percent being raised, Sole Survivor and Living Dead being tweaked to be more useful; the latter seriously should not kill us, making Dark Passenger useful again and perhaps a very small change to The Blackest Night; preferably upping the amount of time it is on you or your target to mimic a normal defensive CD.

Edit: Replying to this:

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Originally Posted by SplittingSkies

Just what is it exactly about DRK that you feel its in a nice spot?

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I don't think they mean it is in a nice spot, but rather it's still fast and fun to play regardless of its issues; at least that's what the minimalist tone of their post seemed to imply.

I honestly think that just minor changes would do. The problem is that there are a plethora of minor "problems" with the job and it adds up.

Minor changes such as :

- Putting Dark Passenger back to its 3.X state, essentially halving its MP cost while raising its base potency to 150 and DA potency to 250
- Making Dark Mind reduce all damage instead of just magic, while raising the recast time to 90s if too powerful
- Reducing Shadow Wall's recast time and maybe giving it a little extra effect, like for example a small MP regain when hit just like Blood Price, with the same potency benefit as Vengeance's counter attack effect
- Shortening Plunge's animation-lock and increasing its range to make it on par with the other gap-closers and maybe give us the ability to double-weave it
- Remove the Grit requirement on Souleater's lifesteal, or atleast give us half the lifesteal when Gritless instead of just removing it completely

All of the above are really minor when you think about it. It's no major rework or anything, just some tweaking to some lackluster skills without altering their function.

The only "bigger" change I'd like to see would be reintroducing Scourge as a second Syphon Strike combo finisher with maybe an extra effect attached to it so that it's not a complete copy of Goring Blade (like a lifesteal on each DoT tick). This simple change on top of putting back Dark Passenger to its 3.X state could cover the DPS issues that DRK currently has if they balance the potency well. The mitigation and self-sustain issues would be covered with the Shadow Wall, Dark Mind and Gritless Souleater changes above, and the raid utility (if they need to add raid utility to the job after these changes) could easily be put on Sole Survivor. Like some debuff that could benefit the group. Nothing too overpowered, but useful stuff.

Such changes wouldn't be that hard to implement at all in a simple patch, especially when you see all the other job changes that happened between 4.0's release and 4.1. It's not expansion-level rework.

I'm really starting to believe that they just outright hate DRK. They just don't seem to care about this job at all, like they just put it in the game in HW for marketting because it looks cool as hell and it's a fan-favourite job in the whole FF franchise, but they don't really like it at all.

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Originally Posted by Aniya_Estlihn

I don't think they mean it is in a nice spot, but rather it's still fast and fun to play regardless of its issues; at least that's what the minimalist tone of their post seemed to imply.

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After looking back on that I apologise, it was more a knee jerk reaction than anything else. I would rather have some other small reasoning as to why they feel the class is fine than a sentence about avoiding it being over complicated. That is part of the reason why DRK was enjoyable back in HW, it was high risk, high reward imo and less spamming of DA.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

Snip

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Now this I would approve of, nothing major but something that would definitely point us in the right direction.

Instead of bringing back Scourge, why not find a mechanic with which DRK can increase the uptime on Salted Earth?

Something like: every Dark Arts has a 30% chance to extend SE's duration by 9 seconds, or something where you reduce it's recast instead. It would also mean more passive Blood generation, since SE is one of the few abilities that grants Blood.

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

Instead of bringing back Scourge, why not find a mechanic with which DRK can increase the uptime on Salted Earth?

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Because we want Scourge's animation back

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

Because we want Scourge's animation back

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I loved the "whoooom whooom" lightsaber soundfx for it.

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Originally Posted by Zegreiart

Grit: Remove it. Bake its effect into Darkside. Increase damage by 10% instead of 20%.

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Wanted to point out, the additional 20% from DS, and the removal of 20% from grit equates a 4% loss in damage dealt.
so making it +10% is actually making it +14%

On a side note, I always felt WAR should have been the straight up -x% tank, focused on dmg% tanking.

Then defiance and other max HP increases should have been given to DRK, instead of dmg% taken. (with minor exceptions)

by doing this, you are now left with a few other styles of tanking

**Caster/Healer tank, who relies on self healing.
**RNG tank (like evasion tank) who has a shorter Holmgang like ability, to handle TBs reliably, but only works for a single attack, and wears off. (RNG is for trash mobs and auto attacks. Ends up feeling similar to current DRKs lack of mitigation and TBN for TBs)
**hybrid, a little bit of it all, sort of what PLD is, and should be.

Also feel DRK should have had something similar to how monk works in WoW, where they lower dmg taken by 30% for 10s. There is no CD for this ability, the moment u pop it, u can pop it again.
The reason for this, is that there is a cost to using this ability. You gain a debuff, which states for 5mins the ability no longer mitigates dmg the next time u trigger it, but instead, the next time you use this ability, you take 30% of your max HP in damage.
You can use another ability to make it stack with the prior debuff, changing it to -60% of your max hp, but allows you to use the CDs mitigation again. (This is where the real CD is, 2mins)
You can repeat this to a max of 5 charges. as 4 charges is enough to kill you, but with enough shields, maybe you'll survive.

Pop living dead, and then you can pop your CD and remove all stacks, refreshing the CDs usage.

Also, i'd like an ability to remove the stacks directly, though i havnt thought that far into it.

(and yes, Dark Side should have been -1% hp drain, and Grit should have let all auto attacks heal a small amount of the dmg dealt)

WAR should also have focused solely on using actions that always target the opponent, like inner beast maim, storms path, storms eye, and holmgang, which requiring hitting the opponent to gain a positive effect.

Oh yeah, with current DRK, DP should have the blind backed in, with DA giving all enemies hit with a -5% dmg dealt debuff, to counter WARs new party shield, but not surpass TBNs possibility of being used for single target.

EDIT:
Some minor things Id want to mention about;

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

- Putting Dark Passenger back to its 3.X state, essentially halving its MP cost while raising its base potency to 150 and DA potency to 250

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You only need to change mp cost, or change potency, doing both is unnessisary. DA is 140 potency, so DP being 150 potency is already a DPS increase in every situation. Lowering the MP cost too is a bit much. (I think it shoul dbe an MP cost reduction, so we're using DP ffor the blind, more than the DPS, since we lack filler mitigation atm)

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

- Making Dark Mind reduce all damage instead of just magic, while raising the recast time to 90s if too powerful

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Id make its 20% magic by default, and then DA adds an additional -10% of all dmg sources, going to -30% magic, and -10% physical. then we stack it with reprisal, and its a rampart when when we must have one.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

- Reducing Shadow Wall's recast time and maybe giving it a little extra effect, like for example a small MP regain when hit just like Blood Price, with the same potency benefit as Vengeance's counter attack effect

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personally rather it extend by 5 seconds, to fill in gaps of mitigation, instead of the refresh effect. the reduction in time i have no issue with either.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

- Shortening Plunge's animation-lock and increasing its range to make it on par with the other gap-closers and maybe give us the ability to double-weave it

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THIS, right here. There is no reason to use plunge instead of just running up to the enemy, other than for its dps increase. its range is too awful, and the animation lock takes just as long as it would to walk up to the enemy. it also doesnt trigger far enough away. if it were further by even as small as 5 yalms, then it would be an actual gap closer. (though it should be 25 yalms)

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

- Remove the Grit requirement on Souleater's lifesteal, or atleast give us half the lifesteal when Gritless instead of just removing it completely

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Thats technically a life steal for only 36% less. It would have to be lowered by more than half, to actually get a life steal thats 50% of a grit soul eater.
Since DS is adding a 24% dmg increase, that would add to how much it heals for.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

You only need to change mp cost, or change potency, doing both is unnessisary. DA is 140 potency, so DP being 150 potency is already a DPS increase in every situation. Lowering the MP cost too is a bit much.

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But that's exactly how DP was in 3.X and it wasn't an overpowered ability by any means. It used to cost half a DA while dealing 150 potency and 250 DAed. Which made it second priority in MP usage without DA in single targets (after C&S) and with DA on 2 targets or more. In SB they both DOUBLED the cost AND nerfed the potency to the ground for no reason. The skill was perfectly fine.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Id make its 20% magic by default, and then DA adds an additional -10% of all dmg sources, going to -30% magic, and -10% physical. then we stack it with reprisal, and its a rampart when when we must have one.

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The problem with this option is that we'd still be at a significant disadvantage in physical fights since we'd have to waste an extra DA for DM to be effective, and for 10% mitigation I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't use it at all in optimal play (for the same reasons that we don't use Grit), leaving us just as squishy as we currently are in heavily physical fights compared to the other tanks. It wouldn't fix the issue. Since PLD can block magic now, there's no reason to keep DM a magic mitigation CD. PLD doesn't have to sacrifice DPS for Sheltron or Bulwark to block magic. Why should we have to sacrifice DPS for DM to mitigate physical damage ?

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

But that's exactly how DP was in 3.X and it wasn't an overpowered ability by any means. It used to cost half a DA while dealing 150 potency and 250 DAed. Which made it second priority in MP usage without DA in single targets (after C&S) and with DA on 2 targets or more. In SB they both DOUBLED the cost AND nerfed the potency to the ground for no reason. The skill was perfectly fine.



The problem with this option is that we'd still be at a significant disadvantage in physical fights since we'd have to waste an extra DA for DM to be effective, and for 10% mitigation I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't use it at all in optimal play (for the same reasons that we don't use Grit), leaving us just as squishy as we currently are in heavily physical fights compared to the other tanks. It wouldn't fix the issue. Since PLD can block magic now, there's no reason to keep DM a magic mitigation CD. PLD doesn't have to sacrifice DPS for Sheltron or Bulwark to block magic. Why should we have to sacrifice DPS for DM to mitigate physical damage ?

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I already know thats how it was in 3.x, im saying, with the current style, we technically only need one of those, not both. (im fine with both btw)

As for dark mind, we alrdy used DA on it for the magic tank busters, or at least i did back in A12S.
And I had to use foresight, mixed with reprisal, to survive physical tank busters in 3.x when living dead/shadow wall/skin were down.

So it would just be a more costly foresight.

But the reason for this, is because we alrdy have TBN for TBs, so if you're really out of CDs, pop grit like a ghetto inner beast, then turn it off.

But this -10% dmg would be best used for trash mobs, as a filler mitigation tool. For bosses, stack it with reprisal, and it then acts as a pseudo rampart.

Over all, we dont NEED this, just so much as an emergency option.

Of course, this is asking for scraps, instead of asking for a whole new meal.
(Im inclined to think SE wont give us anything too crazy, so im looking for small patches instead.)

I also think it should never go full mitigation, as i personally liek the flavor of it being more magical. But it could then just be 10% magic, and then +20% to both, etc.
But either way, i think the DA version needs an extra 5-10 second duration, as its BS that it doesnt last very long, considering how useless it is anyways, no reason it should be short.

Since PLD can block magic now, why can't we have a passive that allows us to parry magic?

Then tag on a '100% chance to parry next hit' onto something, maybe DA Dark Mind so it can be used against physicals.