DRK Buff/Rework - Thoughts?

DRK rework just for fun. My goals were to increase both mitigation and damage, to create more interesting choices for Dark Arts usage with additional skill effects and to create better raid synergy with Trick Attack windows, and create an identity through party utility that differed from both PLD and WAR and favored caster party compositions.

Please let me know your thoughts and give me any feedback, I threw this together pretty quickly and haven't crunched the numbers yet.

EDIT: Just crunched the numbers, my changes account to about a 31 pps buff to DRK, I'm not sure how far behind they currently are

Syphon Strike

• Dark Arts Potency has been removed

Notes:~20 pps nerf

Blood Weapon

• Recast time has been reduced to 30s

Note: +/- 0 pps

Blood Price

• Duration has been increased to 30s
• Recast time has been increased to 60s

EDIT: I did my math wrong here, target uptime should be 35%, Duration should be set to 21s


Souleater

• The effect “Absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP” is no longer a Grit Combo Bonus and has been changed to a Darkside Combo Bonus

Dark Passenger

• The effect “Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to all enemies in a straight line before you,” has been changed to “Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 and unaspected damage over time to all enemies in a straight line before you. Damage over time potency is reduced by 20% for the second enemy, 40% for the third, 60% for the fourth, and 80% for all remaining enemies.”
• Damage over time potency: 80
• Duration: 15s
• The Dark Arts Effect “Blind” has been changed to “Lower’s targets damage dealt by 10%”
• Duration: 15s

Note: Total potency equals 500 for first enemy, 420 for second enemy, 340 for third enemy, 260 for fourth enemy, and 180 for all remaining enemies
Note: ~13 pps buff single target


Dark Mind

• The effect “Reduces magic vulnerability by 15%” has been changed to “Reduces damage taken by 10% and delivers an attack with a potency of 50 every time damage is suffered”
• The duration has been increased from 10s to 15s
• The additional effect “Increases targets magic vulnerability by 3%” has been added
• Duration: 4s
• The Dark Arts Effect “Increases magic vulnerability reduction to 30%” has been changed to “Increases damage reduction to 20%”
• The recast time has increased from 60s to 90s

Note: ~5 pps buff single target assuming 5 hits in 15s

Shadow Wall

• The effect “Reduces damage taken by 30%” has been changed to “Reduces damage taken by 30% while preventing most knockback and draw-in effects”
• The additional effect “ Nullifies the chance of suffering critical damage” has been added.

Living Dead

• The Walking Dead status effect has changed from “Most attacks will not lower your HP below 1” to “ you are impervious to most attacks and HP absorbing effects will be doubled”

Plunge

• Potency has been reduced from 200 to 100.
• Range has been increased from 15y to 20y

Note: ~3% pps nerf
Note: Animation lock reduced to match other gap closers

Sole Survivor

• The effect “ Marks target with the status Another Victim. If that target should be KO'd in battle, 20% of your maximum HP and MP will be restored” has been changed to “ Grants healing over time to self and increases magical damage dealt by self and by nearby party members by 7%”
• Cure Potency: 240
• Duration: 15s
• The additional effect “Refresh” has been added.
• Refresh Potency: 100
• Duration: 15s

Note: Total heal over time potency 1200 or ~20% of maximum HP
Note: Refresh potency equates to 1200 MP per tick, or half a dark arts per tick - totaling 50% mana or 2.5 Dark Arts in 15s
Note: ~3% pps buff

Carve and Spit

• An MP cost of 2400 has been added
• The effect “Delivers a threefold attack with a potency of 100. Also restores MP if used while not under the effect of Dark Arts” has been changed to “Delivers a threefold attack, each hit with a potency of 150.”
• Dark Arts Potency has been removed
• The Dark Arts Effect “Increases Blood Gauge by 50” has been added.

Note: ~4% pps buff

Delirium

• The Additional Effect “Extends Blood Weapon and Blood Price effects by 8s and 16s respectively” has been changed to “ Halves the cost of Blood Gauge actions and guarantees that all attacks enhanced by Dark Arts are critical and direct hits”
• Duration 14s
• The recast time has been increased from 80s to 120s

Note: Can fit about 6 GCD in a 14 second window, 5 Bloodspillers under Blood Weapon are possible + 1 Souleater, possible to get 6 Bloodspillers under Blood Weapon and Salted Earth
Note: This should work out to ~ 28 pps buff in the first case and ~30 pps buff in the second case

A knockback protection I can agree with... not sure I like it being tied into the strongest of DRK's defensive cooldowns.

Blood price 50% uptime is too much. Reduce to 20 seconds or increase CD to 80.
Dark passenger damage scaling is way too severe. Use the same as other AoE. 10-20-30-40 and cap at 50% for all remaining.N
No way all that makes it through. Lose the magic vulnerability debuff to target and it's more realistic or drop counter down to 25.
Living dead OP without CD increase. Or make it still can't fall below 1 and health absorb triplied.
Sole survivor OP as hell. Lose the refresh and drop the regen to 150.
Delirium so you just want them to give us berserk and inner release? Not gonna happen man. You are just trying to make DRK into warrior and just as OP

We don't need to be OP we just need to have something to make us worth having. Yeah these would be amazing but we would be de facto #1 which just causes more problems.

I think I'd be more on-board with the Syphon Strike, Souleater, Living Dead, and possibly Plunge changes if it also nixed Plunge's ridiculous animation lock. I have no idea how Shoulder Tackle and Onslaught continue to be quick as hell and 20 yalms while Plunge is so clunky.
I think it'd be cool for Carve and Spit to really be a "threefold" attack like Dream Within a Dream, as it would give more blood and MP under blood weapon. A small little buff consideration.
But the rest to me either feels too similar to Warrior, a bit too powerful, or both.

Knockback protection...I'm not sure why something like that couldn't be tied to Awareness or something instead of Paladin getting it for free.

I think all our problems could be solved with 1 change.
Make sole survivor inflict "5% increase in damage taken" and "5% increased vulnerability to critical strike" for 15 seconds
and MAYBE add Heals attackers for 5% of damage dealt. Maybe make it apply only if DA'd

I would still also like to see
Dark Mind: Heal for 5% of all damage dealt. Dark Mind increases to 10%
This would give the CD use against melee enemies and fill the defense deficit we currently have.
These two changes could reverse the entire situation.

I just still can't understand how SE could miss the mark so badly with 4.2 Everyone knows DRK is broken but the changes they made did nothing to address the issue of our lack of utility or defensive weakness. It didn't even address our low dps as it is less than a 1% buff..........I mean do they even care the players are so unhappy?

Shadow Nail: Ability, 150 second cooldown.

Place a shadow nail at your location for 10 seconds and tether to it. You are immune to most knockback and draw-in effects. Moving more than 10 yalms from the nail ends the buff early and refreshes the cooldown on Plunge.

Was thinking about this last night: Dark Mind should be a 30 sec buff with 90 sec CD. I believe that would make it a legit CD for magic bosses. Even I'd seriously consider switching to it for those boss types. Maybe just re-tune the % a bit, not sure, 30% for 30 sec would be strong but also have to figure in the DA cost.. I think 30% for 30 sec would be a good cost/benefit, but if it's too strong maybe drop it to like 10% / 20% instead of 15/30

dont keep dark mind DA cost, is a complety dps lost and dark mind+TBN its a lot better

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Originally Posted by shao32

dark mind+TBN its a lot better

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Well, because it's only a 10-sec buff mainly so you're really only using for one attack (tank busters).. As I mentioned, I think it the trick is making the cost/benefit worth it. It's clearly not at 10 sec, but at 30 sec it becomes a lot more worthy of consideration IMO because it's covering a lot more incoming damage (from magic bosses). Just a thought, doesn't "fix" DRK by itself but does give it more of the designated magic-tank feel. And if you just want to use it for a single tankbuster with TBN instead of DA it's basically the same as before, just lasts longer. Simple change that should be seriously considered if they aren't going to change it to all-purpose damage reduction. Dark Mind undoubtedly needs to be better, one way or the other.

Crave and Spit having a bloody cost is not what we need and is just as crazy as suggesting Dark Arts TBN.
No one is going to blow 4,800 MP on damage or a party shield, its just not cost effective.

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Originally Posted by Aniya_Estlihn

Crave and Spit having a bloody cost is not what we need and is just as crazy as suggesting Dark Arts TBN.
No one is going to blow 4,800 MP on damage or a party shield, its just not cost effective.

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Reread the Carve and Spit change. It deals the current Dark Arts damage with the cost built in to prevent double weaving.

The DA version awards 50 Blackblood, so essentially you're exchanging a DA for a Blood Gauge skill.

This actually keeps my Delirium changes in check by forcing it to be used with either half a Blood gauge or a full Blood gauge with half MP.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

snip

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the thing is dark mind +TBN cover the same amount of mitigationt if no more (idk the actual numbers) without losing dps, at the contrary DA dark mind is a dps loss for a 15% extra and if you want to add TBN on it means you have to fit 3 cds in a tb cast with a insane cost of 4800 of mp if you have it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shao32

the thing is dark mind +TBN cover the same amount of mitigationt if no more (idk the actual numbers) without losing dps, at the contrary DA dark mind is a dps loss for a 15% extra and if you want to add TBN on it means you have to fit 3 cds in a tb cast with a insane cost of 4800 of mp if you have it.

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Perhaps I'm not being clear. I mean make the base duration 30 sec regardless of DA or no DA. Unless we are compromising on potency in light of a longer duration, it's the exact same effect - just a longer duration (that's bad?). If the cooldown is longer by 30 sec (60 vs 90) then it does effect things compared to higher DM+TBN frequency, but it'd technically be double the uptime as current DM, and on a magic specific boss it'd be a hell of a nice fluff damage CD (compared to mainly using solo for TBs).

Let's just look at some example math

AA incoming 9.5k each for 30 sec
(10 autos?)

95000 incoming damage
-15% (8075 per hit) 80,750 -- 14,250 mitigated
-30% (6650 per hit) 66,500 -- 28,500 mitigated

I don't think I need to math out an obviously inferior 10 sec DM.. Additionally, if you used it during a window where there is already a magic TB occurring, you could likely get away with not even using TBN the same way a War might only use Vengeance. So, it'd likely end up being a DPS increase since you might not necessarily have to use TBN as much

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

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is still a waste, DRK have enough magic mitigation without buffing with DA, sure extend the duration will be nice but dont solve the problem that extra 15% is not worthy the dps you loose on it.

to work perfectly dark mind have to have a flat 30% magic mitigation without dark arts or somehow recover the potency lost for use it and a 15% phisical mitigation to solve DRK phisical mitigation problems regarless how much duration you want to add it.

technically DRK have souleater selfheal to dealt with fluff damage with is really nice, but the lower value of grit like shield make us dont have that resource bcs reasons.

we are the lowest in dps, sacrifice even more dps on mitigation how we dont really need it cant be a thing, for fluff damage they need to fix the damm tank stances once for all.

I guess if you're only focus is DPS then cost/benefit doesn't apply very well because it will always be a negative. Setting aside the possibility that even if DRK had the highest DPS right now, it'd probably be frustrating a lot of healers because they'd still have the weakest mitigation kit and worst utility.

Just my opinion, but Dark Arts is an avenue for SE to explore that self-buffing style of tank. It's a neat and unique concept, being able to buff your attacks or buff your defense at the cost of a particular resource. I am not in disagreement with your sentiment about recovering the potential damage potency loss, at minimum it should be a balanced cost (I think cost favoring defense would be more in-line with SE's intentions)* but there has to be some cost/benefit applied for the style to remain interesting. The "I only want to buff my attacks" shtick is already taken by samurai, and how's that working out for them? Lol.

* - by favoring defense I mean allowing it to buff by a borderline absurd amount compared to offensive buff effect to give an actual incentive to use defense over offense. I'm not implying a offensive nerf, more like make the defensive buffs OP af.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I guess if you're only focus is DPS then cost/benefit doesn't apply very well because it will always be a negative.

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This is ultimately the problem with any sort of change to a Tank's kit. Any sort of improved utility or defensive capability is, in the general idea of balancing, required to take a hit on damage dealt, but that's anathema to the current way the game "Plays". Having nothing but hard enrage fights ensures endurance strategies are never an option.

Speaking as a sub-optimal tank though, I'll take a 5% DPS hit for a 10-15% mitigation gain.

Holy shit most of these ideas are really, REALLY good. I didn't do the math so some stuff might be too op, but your ideas are really great. Especially Dark passenger as a dot and dark mind and sole survivor as some kind of utility are amazing ideas dude good job. This would really give dark knight back a proper identity.

Then again it's just sad that a dude on a forum has better ideas for a class than the developers...