Dark Knight Initial Feedback on Job Actions

Based on the trailer Dark Knight looks much more flashy and I am excited to experience some of these gameplay elements. However, there are two things that I am concerned about.

1. Removal of Dark Arts. While I hope that Dark Arts spam has be replaced, I hope the job has not taken a cast per minute hit in doing so. Dark Arts itself was not the issue, the issue was the frequency. The Dark Knight opener had nearly half of its oGCD spaces filled with dark arts. While I like the idea of Dark arts being a powerful wind up and self buff, I can also understand the desire to not spam it. But I’m certain there was a middle ground between spam and not having it. I also wonder what will become of all of the effects where could be tacked on to abilities with dark arts like the HP drain on Abyssal.

2. The Summoning of a Shadow Self. This looks cool, very cool. But I am also apprehensive about what I saw. In the trailer it appeared to stop the dark knight from taking action by about 3 seconds, which is longer than the typical GCD length. In addition, it appeared that the shadow was animation locked for a full 6 seconds of the cooldown duration of 24 seconds. If this functions in the way I think it will, I think that dark knights will likely want to boost their skill speed, but that is going to have a lot of anti-synergy with something that has that long of an animation lock. I realize it is early to give this kind of feedback, but I hope that the Shadow Self is not actually animation locked for 25% of its cooldown duration and hope that gets addressed.

Please keep Dark Knight a higher cpm class. The changes look great visually but I hope the game play will continue to be seamless and fast paced.

Below is a breakdown of the DRK part of the ability trailer that I posted in another thread.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

We currently can't tell how or even if MP will still play a role in DRK's gameplay since that was not shown in the video, but the following is what I could extrapolate.

13:22 - Grit.

13:24 - New AoE ability. Sure looks a lot like an AoE TBN.

13:26 - Plunge and then Unleash.

13:30 - New AoE attack that is a gauge builder. Provided 20 Blood in the video.

13:32 - New single target or line AoE attack (maybe a reworked Dark Passenger?) that triggers the countdown on the "helmet" part of the gauge, starting at 30 and ticking down 1 per second.

13:34 - Blood Weapon is still around and still provides Blood per hit, 10 blood per hit during the Soul Eater combo.

13:44 - New "magical burst" looking ability. It adds an additional 30s to the gauge timer. Animation/effects sort of reminds me of Power Slash (since no enmity combos anymore) so maybe it is a reworked Power Slash that has become a non-combo ability. Also if it is a reworked Power Slash, the animation actually has you slash with the sword.

13:48 - You summon your "inner shadow" to fight with you. Costs 50 Blood and starts an additional timer to display how long the shadow lasts, 25s. Based on the Blood cost, I kind of suspect this to be DRK's "burst period" ability and it could replace Delirium. No idea if the abilities the shadow uses is prescripted or if you have some control over it.

Other abilities that make an appearance while fighting with your shadow: Abyssal Drain, Quietus (still costs 50 Blood), Blood Spiller (didn't cost any Blood), Carve and Spit. Also of note is something that looks like Blood Price (14:00) but it is hard to see since it is visually blocked by the ability your shadow uses.

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The move you are seeing at 14:00 is Delirium.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I realize it is early to give this kind of feedback, but I hope that the Shadow Self is not actually animation locked for 25% of its cooldown duration and hope that gets addressed.

Please keep Dark Knight a higher cpm class. The changes look great visually but I hope the game play will continue to be seamless and fast paced.

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The "Summon lock out" is more likely them just showcasing the animation, unless you also think inner Release loses 1.5 seconds of duration on activation.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

The "Summon lock out" is more likely them just showcasing the animation, unless you also think inner Release loses 1.5 seconds of duration on activation.

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Have to actually play to know which is why I said it is early. This is not answerable atm and I hope that the personal lock out is not 3 seconds.

The Shadow Self summoning does seem to take place over 6 seconds and that is still an issue imo.

This also had precedence with TBN originally not counting the first second of activation while the shield was applied.

its almost perfect. But we need dark arts or that dark flames around our character. That red stink line has got to go.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

The move you are seeing at 14:00 is Delirium.

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I believe that you are right.
With that in mind, that makes me wonder if Delerium got reworked, which was a fairly common request, and that is why Bloodspiller wasn't using up gauge in the trailer.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

The Shadow Self summoning does seem to take place over 6 seconds and that is still an issue imo.
This also had precedence with TBN originally not counting the first second of activation while the shield was applied.

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There is indeed a discernible delay of ~5-7s from when the shadow is summoned and the counter starts ticking down to when it starts to attack. Maybe the duration is the somewhat odd length of 25s to compensate for the long animation and period of inactivity.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

There is indeed a discernible delay of ~5-7s from when the shadow is summoned and the counter starts ticking down to when it starts to attack. Maybe the duration is the somewhat odd length of 25s to compensate for the long animation and period of inactivity.

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I think this will only end up looking like wasted space. Summon the clone and start the cooldown at what you would want it to be, if they want it to be 18 seconds have it summon and start the counter once active at 18 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I think this will only end up looking like wasted space. Summon the clone and start the cooldown at what you would want it to be, if they want it to be 18 seconds have it summon and start the counter once active at 18 seconds.

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I agree that if they are factoring in the animation and inactivity into the duration that it would be better to just have the counter wait and start ticking down once the shadow becomes active. As it is in the trailer it does come off like a bunch of the duration is being wasted by an animation which could be frustrating or confusing for players.

I also think they should trigger the shadow spawning as soon as you start your animation instead of waiting for you to pretty much finish your animation before the shadow spawns. If they synced them up and had both play in tandem, it would shorten the overall delay by at least a couple of seconds and imo would look better.

I also just noticed that you can faintly see the Darkside aura effect on the DRK. It seems to first appear when that first gauge timer appears, so maybe that is representative of a new and reworked Darkside that isn't a passive "always on" buff and requires active upkeep.

Additionally, the DRK uses the new gauge building AoE ability after Unleash and the WAR uses its new gauge building AoE ability after Overpower, so that could mean that those abilities combo.

Yes it's an AoE combo and every tank gets one (even melee DPS in fact). You can see and hear the combo sound and visual effect (little green/yellowish lines around your character whenever you do a combo with any job on top of a very recognizable sound effect, if you never noticed just go hit a training dummy with a random combo finisher without doing the combo and compare it to when you do it with the combo, you'll see what I'm talking about). I also think that Darkside is what we're going to have to keep up.

This is what I believe is going to happen with DRK : New MP-costing skill turns the new Darkside on, then another skill that also costs MP extends the duration of it. Maybe higher potency in order to make it better than just reapplying it with the other skill. Then maybe another MP spender to prevent overcapping. These skills would essentially be what replaces Dark Arts. Delirium seems to make blood-costing abilities free. Bloodspiller also seems to be stealing MP because we can see the MP stealing visual effect when he uses it in the video and it's not Blood Weapon because right before that he does a Souleater combo that doesn't have the MP stealing effect anymore (except on Syphon), so Blood Weapon must have ended before he did the Bloodspillers. So it's either coming from Delirium (Makes blood abilities free AND steal MP ?) or Bloodspiller just steals MP all the time.

As for the clone, I hope that it acts whenever we act (cancelling the spawning animation) and that he was just idle for all that time because they were showing off the full animation. Otherwise it will feel like a big waste of time yeah.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

As for the clone, I hope that it acts whenever we act (cancelling the spawning animation) and that he was just idle for all that time because they were showing off the full animation. Otherwise it will feel like a big waste of time yeah.

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What makes me doubt this is that your character begins taking actions at 21 seconds on the timer, and your clone is still getting up at that moment. This is also evidence, but not proof, against the idea of not animation locking, the character begins taking actions mid animation, i.e. not showcasing.

So is the shield called The Blackest Week?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

So is the shield called The Blackest Week?

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Darkest Fortnight?

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

What makes me doubt this is that your character begins taking actions at 21 seconds on the timer, and your clone is still getting up at that moment. This is also evidence, but not proof, against the idea of not animation locking, the character begins taking actions mid animation, i.e. not showcasing.

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Yes it worries me too. If it's the case they'll probably fix it in an update tho. It wouldn't be the first time something new is released in a weird state at the start of an expansion but then gets fixed in the first few patches. Remember how WAR's gauge used to be halved whenever they switched stances, turning 50 gauge into 25, then ending up having weird numbers like 12 or 47, essentially wasting a lot of gauge because everything just costs 50 or 25 at the time (With the old Inner Release). They fixed that pretty fast back in the day, so I'm confident that if the living shadow turns out to be weird it's gonna be patched.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Based on the trailer Dark Knight looks much more flashy and I am excited to experience some of these gameplay elements. However, there are two things that I am concerned about.

1. Removal of Dark Arts. While I hope that Dark Arts spam has be replaced, I hope the job has not taken a cast per minute hit in doing so. Dark Arts itself was not the issue, the issue was the frequency. The Dark Knight opener had nearly half of its oGCD spaces filled with dark arts. While I like the idea of Dark arts being a powerful wind up and self buff, I can also understand the desire to not spam it. But I’m certain there was a middle ground between spam and not having it.

2. The Summoning of a Shadow Self. This looks cool, very cool. But I am also apprehensive about what I saw. In the trailer it appeared to stop the dark knight from taking action by about 3 seconds, which is longer than the typical GCD length. In addition, it appeared that the shadow was animation locked for a full 6 seconds of the cooldown duration of 24 seconds. If this functions in the way I think it will, I think that dark knights will likely want to boost their skill speed, but that is going to have a lot of anti-synergy with something that has that long of an animation lock. I realize it is early to give this kind of feedback, but I hope that the Shadow Self is not actually animation locked for 25% of its cooldown duration and hope that gets addressed.

Please keep Dark Knight a higher cpm class. The changes look great visually but I hope the game play will continue to be seamless and fast paced.

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So much this. I will really miss dark arts

Eh just go play Gunbreaker when SB2 launches...

Delirium functions like a inner release now if you look at the trailer. At the end he had no blood and used 2 blood spiller

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

So is the shield called The Blackest Week?

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I think the shield whas called in leaks Dark Missonary

I also am not hearing any mp jingle when our character uses Quietus. I wonder if this effect was not repurposed for anything.

I made a similar post about MCH robot and the intro lock. It's harder to perceive with Inner Shadow though because it's not just doing basic attacks. May stance is that if it's initial attack equals the damage output it would do during the intro lock, that is a win win.

There better be a way to access HP drain on abyssal drain, or else we'll have lost an important interaction for dungeon game play.

When it comes to the shadow summon and MCH's robot, each of them has a five second delay from time of summon to it attacking. I suppose we could look at it like this time is already baked in to account for the duration of DPS increase. And yes, I know players ultimately want all 23s/20s from those buddies they'll be bringing xD. DRK and MCH net duration is 18s/15s respectively. They could have just made it those durations and not have them start ticking down until the add attacks. I dunno. I think what I'm getting at though is the duration of this DPS increase is pretty significant depending on if it is actually doubled, if not more.

This is actually something that could be addressed and fixed prior to ShB coming out. All it would probably take is someone inside there making decisions to see the same thing we did and ask, "Why is five seconds coming off of that timer before it even does anything?"

"Losing" duration of a new timer doesn't really bother me. I mean, did anyone feel cheated when they learned that DoTs tick once every 3 seconds? That's just how the game works. If summoning a buddy has a few seconds of a wind-up, that's just something we'll have to get used to.

What really matters is that the shadow clone needs to be a copy of the player character and not boring old Fray who no one cares about.

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Originally Posted by Zwynfalk

"Losing" duration of a new timer doesn't really bother me. I mean, did anyone feel cheated when they learned that DoTs tick once every 3 seconds? That's just how the game works. If summoning a buddy has a few seconds of a wind-up, that's just something we'll have to get used to.

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Dots, no. I expected dots to be based on server ticks which is 3 seconds.

Perception of a skill is important. Right now the clone seems 33% stronger than it is, because 25% of it is unusable during animation. We aren't sure how it will play, or what the clone will do, but if it is copying our GCDs and oGCDs it is important to know when the clone is actually active, the job gauge will be indicating that it is time to use the clone when in fact it is not time yet, this type of confusion is exactly counter to what the job gauge is meant to do, which is to tell you when your resources are usable, when grit is active, and whatever this new resource is. 6 seconds of inactive time displayed on the gauge and tooltip is needlessly confusing.

Long story short. If it is meant to be a 18 second thing, make the duration 18 seconds that starts when the clone is active and I accept the animation lock. If we are balanced around 24 seconds of clone, then please don't lock me out of the first 6 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Zwynfalk

What really matters is that the shadow clone needs to be a copy of the player character and not boring old Fray who no one cares about.

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I agree, but I don't think we have enough information about what it does in actual game play. I'm not sure what the clone does, based on the job trailer it seemed to do its own things, but then it synched up with us when delirium was used, so I held on to this point for the 29th when we get more information about how it plays.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Long story short. If it is meant to be a 18 second thing, make the duration 18 seconds that starts when the clone is active and I accept the animation lock. If we are balanced around 24 seconds of clone, then please don't lock me out of the first 6 seconds.

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If they're balancing around a 24 second timer with a 6 second wind-up, then they know that and they're balancing an 18 second timer that snapshots 6 seconds earlier.

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Originally Posted by Zwynfalk

If they're balancing around a 24 second timer with a 6 second wind-up, then they know that and they're balancing an 18 second timer that snapshots 6 seconds earlier.

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All the more reason display an 18 second duration that matches the active time, and is also signaled by the job gauge as I said earlier in the post.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

There better be a way to access HP drain on abyssal drain, or else we'll have lost an important interaction for dungeon game play.

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Could always just be baked into the skill itself, or even tied to happening while Blood Weapon is activated.

Personally I wonder if we still have Blood Price. Blood Weapon is overall better but if Blood Price is still in that means we might be able to use both at once!

Do you think Fray would stay out if you die? because if it did that be awesome and give Drk something no other tank can do if a mistake happens.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Do you think Fray would stay out if you die?

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Probably not. But, it could be a fun thing that if Walking Dead expires while Fray is here, it removes Fray instead of killing us :p