Fix DRK Dark Passenger

The problem:
Dark Passenger is not useless, but its darn near useless.
You'd see practically no difference in performance when its taken completely off your hotbar.
(The most you could ever see from it, is its Blind effect for trash pulls, and even then, we still have DA+AD to help the healer a tad.)

DRK solely relies on larger trash pulls to keep its mitigation available, and if undergeared, or the healer is too, then you're at a high risk of wiping the group.

For bosses, we have TBN for tank busters, so we can use our normal mitigation for cleaves/filler auto attacks.

But now WAR has a base 8% aoe shield (i think 9.6% in defiance) and as long as they popped another ability before, and wait till the last second of its duration, its a 12% (+14.4%)

This is on a long CD, and acts as a mitigation in itself for the WAR.
Its not ground breaking, but with WARs already ease of use for the group, in comparison to DRK, DRK needs a slight buff.
(Holgang lining up better for TBs, generating more threat in DPS stances, not losing out on as much DPS when using a threat combo, where DRK loses out on DPS and MP for more DPS, besides blood/beast gauge, AoE mitigation, rather than MT mitigation, which is usually useless, as a group with 2 WARs can mitigate all TBs just fine w/o TBN on them, so its not really helpful. Plus the weird 6 potency loss using TBN, then when your group has no SAM or NIN, our raid groups DRK had to switch to their lesser geared WAR, to raise slashing DPS, since its a DPS increase, ease of stance dancing, and then WARs higher DPS over DRK. *breaths*)

TL;DR
My suggestion:
Dark Passenger remains the same potency, and MP cost, like you already want SE.
But now place the blind effect into the base form of Dark Passenger.

Then, when under the effect of Dark Arts, Dark Passenger now places a "-10% damage dealt" debuff on the enemies.

There will be almost no DRK who feels this ability is now useless.
Its a costly one, that is for emergencies.

Raid needs extra survivability, u sacrifice your MP on a single target, but help them survive. You gain no blood like you would on TBN.

Need a filler mitigation tool for trash mobs, because ur undergeared, and 2 groups is all u can handle?

Since this acts as a sort of mitigation CD, the CD of DP might need to be adjusted. (but its so MP costly, maybe not really, as it might get treated the same as WARs old 3.x Storms Path, as most WARs didnt use it, as it cost them DPS, except when it was absolutely needed.)

EDIT: Another point to bring up, is that everyone who is against this change, isnt against changing DP, just that these changes just arent enough, and are still making DRK too clunky, with near useless abilities. (Like plunge being slower than just sprinting, and almost useless for push backs like exdeath).

That is very similar to a suggestion that I made a few months back.

Basically I suggested to remove the cost, increase the recast to 60s, get rid of the blind effect and instead add a 5% damage dealt debuff to all enemies hit by the ability when DAed.

In lieu of the Shake It Off change, I could see the proposed 5% I gave being increased potentially.

Honestly though, I would take either one of these suggestions.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

That is very similar to a suggestion that I made a few months back.

Basically I suggested to remove the cost, increase the recast to 60s, get rid of the blind effect and instead add a 5% damage dealt debuff to all enemies hit by the ability when DAed.

In lieu of the Shake It Off change, I could see the proposed 5% I gave being increased potentially.

Honestly though, I would take either one of these suggestions.

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Yeah, a lot of us would rather the 0 cost base DP, with the option being to DA it or not.
But I know SE picked this version for a reason(s).
They dont want us using it on a boss.
So it has to be less than 140 potency, and be less than 280 potency when combined with DA. (otherwise it has a higher priority of being DA'ed, as we're already doing for blood spiller, though that wasnt their intent, and they did some poor math)
But they also want it to be the "burst" option, for less effective MP cost, like Stone2 or cure2 was in comparison to stone/cure1 used to be. (Originall Abyssal Drain was this, but they changed Unleash, so now Unleash is threat only, and abyssal is basic Dps combo, but not DPS burst.)

So in order to keep its MP cost and potency, for thier new vision (which i hate) i figured this was the best way to implement it.
plus I didnt want our raid mitigation to be a copy of WAR/PLDs, so I went with the oldschool storms path.

Side note, fix Plunge, 5 more yalms, and keep the animation lock, or cut the animation lock by over 50%. Its stupid that sprint is the better gap closer, and ex death pushes u so far back, that half way, mid animation ur too far away to plunge, but do it too soon, and u get pushed back anyways.

This idea still continues the tradition of making DRK pay a significant chunk of its DPS resource to do what the other tanks do for free. It also is redundant since a raid with 2 tanks already has a -10% damage dealt debuff per 30s with each of them having Reprisal every 60.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

They dont want us using it on a boss.

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Why?

Of all the areas that Dark Knight currently needs assistance with, this bothers me the most aesthetically. Dark Passenger is the most iconic Dark Knight attack in Final Fantasy (aside from maybe Night Sword).

Most of our actions are taken up with the twirly draw-a-line-in-the-sand Blackest Night, the awkward Climhazzard looking leap of Souleater, or of course the oh so spammable Dark Arts. Dark Passenger used to be a quintessential darkness attack that would add that essential element to keep Dark Knight from just being a flippy blade spinner. Not being able to use it in area or boss situations does more damage to Dark Knight being Dark Knight than just the lack of an extra off GCD.

Sorry, Cecil...
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20110510002442

Make Dark Passenger do raidwide 600 pot damage just because. Or make using it give some sort of debuff on enemies or buff the DRK. Because right now it doesn't get used.

DRK depends on oGCD usage to compensate for a lack of direct damage multipliers like FoF/zerk. The addition of IR/Req has widened this gap. We cannot afford to be giving up oGCDs the way we have been, going into this expansion.

I do not understand why we need to differentiate between Dark Passenger in single target and AoE. Circle of Scorn is a universal dps gain. You are not penalized for using it in single target (at 250 potency/mob every 25 seconds - which is more damage than even the old DADP, on a shorter recast, ). In SB, any time that you add a DA requirement to an oGCD, you are forcing it to be a double weave. You no longer have the luxury of prepping DA early in your combo and then consuming it later on. Nearly every GCD action consumes DA.

You want DP to have a cost? Fine. Build it into the skill itself. You want the player to spend one DA worth of MP? Make it cost 2400 MP. You want them to spend two DA worth? Make it cost 4800. Just make the damage actually reflect the cost. We need more ways to quickly burn off MP, especially in the opener.

Dark Passenger: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200 to all enemies in a straight line before you. Increases Blood Gauge by 20. Cost: 2400 MP.
Carve and Spit: Delivers a threefold attack with a potency of 100. Increases MP by 2400. (Stormblood Trait: Potency increased to 450. Cost: 20 blood).

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

This idea still continues the tradition of making DRK pay a significant chunk of its DPS resource to do what the other tanks do for free. It also is redundant since a raid with 2 tanks already has a -10% damage dealt debuff per 30s with each of them having Reprisal every 60.



Why?

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which would make WAR having an AoE shield redundant, and having rampart, when u have shadow wall/vengeance etc.

Its about having the extra option, where other tanks have it.

I agree it needs even more work than this, for many reasons, but its more redundant as is, this change is less redundant.
As for why, the next part about passengers DPS loss in the next part here.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I do not understand why we need to differentiate between Dark Passenger in single target and AoE. Circle of Scorn is a universal dps gain. You are not penalized for using it in single target (at 250 potency/mob every 25 seconds - which is more damage than even the old DADP, on a shorter recast)

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(Correct me if im misunderstanding your statement.)DA on your single target attacks gives +140 potency or higher. So the MP cost of 4800 = 140 potency. DP is 4800 mp cost for 100 potency, which is a DPS loss.
DA+DP is 250 potency, which looks like a +150 potency increase, that seems worth while, but you're spending 4800x2 mp, which should be 140x2, which is 280 potency. so again, its a DPS loss. Only if you're messing up, would you ever need to dump MP into passenger, in order to not cap MP with syphon/delirium.

The next bit you say makes me wonder if you were for changes to DP, but again, I may be misunderstanding you.

What if Passenger didn't consume the DA? Make that a feature of BS/Q as well.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

The next bit you say makes me wonder if you were for changes to DP, but again, I may be misunderstanding you.

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Lyth is referring to your (and many others') excusing of SE's treatment of DP as "they don't want us using it on the boss" ("they don't want us using it in ST, only AoE") by saying that many other jobs have abilities, like PLD's circle of scorn, that are a DPS gain regardless of the situation, and on top of that, are also free (and in CoS's case, have a shorter recast and DoT attached). Come to think of it CoS is pretty much better than DP in every possible way.

DP being 150 potency for half a DA and thus 300 potency per DA back in HW caused literally zero issues. There was a priority. C&S>DP>DASE. Now people are saying that adding DP back into that priority by making it more potent than DA would somehow mess things up or foil SE's master god-design. I just don't see it. This is why we don't ever get buffs when we need them. PLD and WAR asked for buffs, they didn't sit around saying "well golly-gee, I sure would like a buff or two, but I think maybe what SE is trying to say here is this/that/the-other so maybe we should just deal with it."

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Lyth is referring to your (and many others') excusing of SE's treatment of DP as "they don't want us using it on the boss" ("they don't want us using it in ST, only AoE") by saying that many other jobs have abilities, like PLD's circle of scorn, that are a DPS gain regardless of the situation, and on top of that, are also free (and in CoS's case, have a shorter recast and DoT attached). Come to think of it CoS is pretty much better than DP in every possible way.

DP being 150 potency for half a DA and thus 300 potency per DA back in HW caused literally zero issues. There was a priority. C&S>DP>DASE. Now people are saying that adding DP back into that priority by making it more potent than DA would somehow mess things up or foil SE's master god-design. I just don't see it. This is why we don't ever get buffs when we need them. PLD and WAR asked for buffs, they didn't sit around saying "well golly-gee, I sure would like a buff or two, but I think maybe what SE is trying to say here is this/that/the-other so maybe we should just deal with it."

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Of course it would mess up SE's perfect design. If they were to make dark passenger a good source of damage people might want to use it, and by extension might want to bring dark knight into a raid or dungeon.

In the past dark passenger + dark dance was a good mitigation tool against trash mobs. But now dark passenger the MP cost and potency nerf, the skill is not even worth putting on most people's hotbar.

They said they wanted to get rid of skill bloat. But if you look at WAR and PLD compared to DRK, those jobs have way more abilities than DRK and have alot more tools at their disposal.

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Originally Posted by Derio

In the past dark passenger + dark dance was a good mitigation tool against trash mobs. But now dark passenger the MP cost and potency nerf, the skill is not even worth putting on most people's hotbar.

They said they wanted to get rid of skill bloat. But if you look at WAR and PLD compared to DRK, those jobs have way more abilities than DRK and have alot more tools at their disposal.

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And less of them become useless against single target. On single targets, DRK will loss access to using essentially 5 skills (dark passenger, abyssal, unleash, quietus, and soul survivor) where as warrior and paladin both only lose 2 skills (lumping the abilities warrior swaps out when they switch stance).

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

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I'm making two points. First, DP needs to be viable in single target. We're running a sizeable dps deficit, and we need everything we can get.

Second, DP doesn't need a DA effect. Merge everything together. Using DA on oGCDs is incredibly clunky because they become forced double weaves. If you want blind or whatever it is you want to add, just build it into the base MP cost.

At the moment, I'd rather see them keep DA effects to GCD actions unless the devs greatly shorten the animation delay on DA. The clipping can get pretty rough under BW, especially during the opener.

I cant remember the last time i used dark passenger....

Guys! Guys, please, did you all seem to forget? Nerfing DP was necessary for SE's master god design BECAUSE the skill itself caused a gap between those elitists pigs and the poor casuals who only have time for a duty roulette. Keeping it on cooldown was far too hard. It's been far easier to just spam more dark arts as necessary instead :)

Dark Passenger in its current state is a lot like DRK in the tank meta. Both need to be fixed. :I

Agree with buffing dark passenger, the exorbitant mp cost makes it not worth using and I could never think of a point where the mp could be better spent elsewhere. I took it off my bars and never noticed a difference in performance at all.

Drk as a whole definitely needs some buffs and changes across the board but SE needs to decide what they want it to be. I feel as though they wanted it be a pseudo damage/defense hybrid move for trash. But AD is still superior for the mp cost. Remove the mp cost, put at like 200+ potency minimum and add a better DA effect.

What if they just increased the cooldown and took away its MP cost

I've made an edit to the original post, to clarifiy that while not everyone likes the proposed changes, they are all in agreement it needs changed. (Something SE might overlook, when seeing our discussion.)

I was pretty disappointed last patch, still pretty disappointed this patch. I think ultimately, regardless of it's functionality, it's massive mana cost is ridiculous for what it offers. There's no fun in siphoning over half your mana bar for one ability.

They could just buff the living balls out of the skill and give it some obscene, like 900-1000 potency when DA'ed. I could see myself blowing half my mana for that. /sarcasmbutnotreally

I definitely want to see a change to dark passenger, but I disagree with your idea Claire as I think this suggestion highlights a problem we already have with dark knight. To mitigate effectively we must give up dps, and when we are already behind in dps I don't think we can spare any.

This is an example of imbalance by design (as opposed to imbalanced tuning), two tanks mitigate party damage and personal damage for free, while another tank must take a dps hit to achieve the same result but lowers its lower damage even further. Having to blow half my mana for a party utility will just highlight this further. I agree with Syzzle, if I'm going to blow half my mana on 1 skill I want it to hurt.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

They could just buff the living balls out of the skill and give it some obscene, like 900-1000 potency when DA'ed. I could see myself blowing half my mana for that. /sarcasmbutnotreally

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I would like that since that would go the way of the classic DRK making big resource sacrifice for big damage. Instead of this wet noodle shit. You can use Abyssal Drain to cover more area and do more damage at a much cheaper cost. Um ok.

Another vote in agreement that it was a real shame DRK didn’t get any love and that they have allowed Dark Passenger to continue to be useless. C’mon SE, this is an obvious fix.