complete Dark Knight overhaul suggestion (with link)

Title. Here is the link of the document. I have it formatted as paperless with charts to make it easier to read the ability details.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

This is a complete overhaul of the job up to level 90, it functions entirely differently to how DRK does now.

It contains MP management in the form of:

• Dark Arts (2500)
• Shadowskin/The Blackest Night (2500)
• Dark Passenger/Shadowbringer (2500)

And before you go on a tangent about Stormblood DA, this DA isn't going to give you carpal tunnel. You use Dark Arts on three abilities, with one being relegated to your burst.

• Power Slash
• Stalwart Soul
• Scourge (only usable while Darkside is active, more on that shortly)

Souleater is removed and replaced with Power Slash. When you need to preserve MP you simply don't use DA with Power Slash/Stalwart Soul.

Power Slash and Stalwart Soul both grant stacks of Dark Descent. Dark Descent is used on:

• Carve and Spit (requires 2 stacks)
• Abyssal Drain (requires 2 stacks)
• Darkside (requires 1-5 stacks)

You use Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain to not overcap on Dark Descent stacks; and as stated in the document, Darkside gives you a damage buff depending on how many stacks of Dark Descent you currently hold, and uses them all upon execution.

That being said, Darkside is no longer a passive damage buff, and I boosted most of the potencies by 20% to compensate for that, which is why they are different compared to how they are as of current patch.

Furthermore, Darkside also upgrades actions. And is as follows:

• Hard Slash -> Spinning Slash
• Souleater -> Scourge
• Unleash -> Tar Pit

Recall when I stated that Scourge is one of the actions that is boosted by Dark Arts, and that I also mentioned just before that is only usable during Darkside. This is so that in single target situations, you can still use Dark Arts as an active MP spender during your burst.

In order to prevent a confliction between sacrificing defense for damage to use Dark Arts, Shadowskin/The Blackest Night now provide free usages of Dark Arts, and both cost the same amount of MP. Instead of the status for this being Dark Arts, this boon is now called Dark Dance. This solves any issues with something being a damage gain over the other and making either or irrelevant.

Blood Weapon is reverted to it's Stormblood variant. It gives a 10% haste for 15 seconds.

In order to make Darkside usable for your opener, Delirium now immediately grants the maximum amount of stacks of Dark Descent that can be held. It also extends Blood Weapon by 8s like it did in Stormblood.

The cooldowns are formatted in such a way for if they remove the 2 minute burst meta, if they do not, the cooldowns are as follows.

• Blood Weapon: 60s
• Blood Price: 30s
• Darkside: 120s
• Delirium: 60s
• Salted Earth: 90s

After some feedback on it I decided to make a Blood Gauge version as well, here is the link to it:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

The biggest changes are as follows:

• Scourge is now a GCD DoT that needs to be maintained. It is NOT linked to any combos and does not interrupt combos either.
• Bloodspiller and Quietus takes the place of Power Slash and Unleash during Darkside, respectively. Spinning Slash still replaces Hard Slash.
• Edge and Flood of Shadow are introduced at lvl 74 as Blood Gauge spenders that cost 50 Blood Gauge.
• Power Slash and Stalwart soul increase the Blood Gauge by 25 with the Dark Arts Combo Bonus
• Darkside damage buff is now 3 stages with increments of 5% for ease of access.
  • 25 Blood Gauge: 5%
  • 50 Blood Gauge: 10%
  • 75 Blood Gauge: 15%

Changes to BOTH versions:

• Blood Price is removed
• Dark Mind is now separate from Oblation again, as well as Dark Mind being introduced at lvl 48
• MP costs removed on Unleash and Stalwart Soul
• Sole Survivor, though revamped, has returned
• Several Potency Adjustments
• Dark Passenger/Shadowbringer is now on a 35s cooldown

In the Dark Descent version, Scourge no longer provides Dark Descent stacks
In the Blood Gauge version, Bloodspiller no longer increases the Blood Gauge

[Updated as of 7/17/23]

Yoo this man is cooking! Is this version of Dark Arts like reassemble/kaiten?

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Originally Posted by primarisgoazrr

Yoo this man is cooking! Is this version of Dark Arts like reassemble/kaiten?

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Similar, but it serves much more purpose than just making things stronger.

You need Dark Arts active when using Power Slash, Stalwart Soul and Scourge in order to gain stacks of Dark Descent, which you spend on Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain to not overcap, and these stacks as stated in my post increase the damage buff from Darkside upon activation, with 5 stacks (the maximum) granting the highest.

Furthermore, Darkside uses all of your Dark Descent stacks, this prevents your burst from being overly bloated with oGCD spam since Delirium automatically grants the maximum amount of Dark Descent stacks you can currently hold.

To add to this, since Dark Arts only affects combo enders, its placement is also flexible. you can use it before or after Syphon Strike and Unleash and after the combo enders before you use the combo starter. This leaves ample room to fit in Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain usage and burst cooldowns such as Darkside and Delirium.

Dark Descent is a super cool idea, I like it a lot! I dig the theme of delving deeper into your inner darkness as you go through your skills, as well as granting more resource management to a job about resource managing. This also keeps the theme of FFXIV Dark Knight while not doing anything super risky/gimmicky like health spending.

These are the types of reworks I would like to see. They're easy to learn, but look hard to master. It works for players who play the game more casually and still allows them to deal good DPS, but gives more dedicated players room to improve.

Square really needs to up their job design.

I feel like more jobs need resource management, or at least some kind of risk vs. reward, so you are either rewarded for paying attention or punished if you mess up. But like the poster above said, this rework seems pretty easy to get your hands on but optimization would be a blast.

Whatever you're cooking with the GCD rotation, I think you need to go back into the kitchen, because this stuff is still raw...

Im at work so I can't type out all my thoughts, but some short points:

+ I like the revision of most resource systems, definitely feels more like the DRK I somewhat used to play.
+ Utilizing Shadowskin as an early game TBN is a neat idea.

? Having your AOE combo cost MP on top of having Dark Arts effects is highly questionable
? Blood Price is basically early ShB Bloodweapon and it also feels extremely samey to your version of BWeapon.
? I am not a fan of replacing one resource system for another and I am doubly not a fan of losing Bloodspiller, the OG big GCD hitter from Dark Knight
Edge and Flood aren't really animations needing to go either.

- Really dislike the Dark Mind level change to be outside of Heavensward content let alone ARR. While not as relevant for many, DMind is fairly integral for mitigation planning for those doing synced Coils and Alexander Savages. Shadowskin nowhere near enough makes up for that, especially when compared to PLD and GNB.
- Merging Oblation with Dark Mind is an extremely awful move. It massively takes away the flexibility that current Oblation offers. There are many moments you dont want Oblation's extra 10% with Dark Mind so you can hold them for different attacks.
- a much better solution is to give Dark Mind the Addle treatment, either "10% magic mit + 10% generic mit" which results in a net 19% magic mitigation OR "20% magic mit, 10% physical mit".

Please stop asking for Oblation to be merged with other skills, the flexibility is what makes it great as a separate button.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Im at work so I can't type out all my thoughts, but some short points:

+ I like the revision of most resource systems, definitely feels more like the DRK I somewhat used to play.
+ Utilizing Shadowskin as an early game TBN is a neat idea.

? Having your AOE combo cost MP on top of having Dark Arts effects is highly questionable
? Blood Price is basically early ShB Bloodweapon and it also feels extremely samey to your version of BWeapon.
? I am not a fan of replacing one resource system for another and I am doubly not a fan of losing Bloodspiller, the OG big GCD hitter from Dark Knight
Edge and Flood aren't really animations needing to go either.

- Really dislike the Dark Mind level change to be outside of Heavensward content let alone ARR. While not as relevant for many, DMind is fairly integral for mitigation planning for those doing synced Coils and Alexander Savages. Shadowskin nowhere near enough makes up for that, especially when compared to PLD and GNB.
- Merging Oblation with Dark Mind is an extremely awful move. It massively takes away the flexibility that current Oblation offers. There are many moments you dont want Oblation's extra 10% with Dark Mind so you can hold them for different attacks.
- a much better solution is to give Dark Mind the Addle treatment, either "10% magic mit + 10% generic mit" which results in a net 19% magic mitigation OR "20% magic mit, 10% physical mit".

Please stop asking for Oblation to be merged with other skills, the flexibility is what makes it great as a separate button.

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Great points overall

For shifting dark mind later, I felt like it might've been better to do so since I put Shadowskin as a low level TBN, since I didn't want our defense to be too powerful. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, so I'll probably just revert it.

I'm pretty likely to remove the mp cost on the aoe combo, my original vision for it was to have mp management at the lowest level possible, but in hindsight it doesn't matter since DRK starts at level 30, and I brought Dark Arts at lvl 35 anyway.

Looking back at Blood Price...yeah that really is samey huh...

As for the resource system, if we were to keep the Blood Gauge, I have some ideas in mind I'd like to try out as I'm revising.

I'll work on some revisions and be back later with them, it'll be a seperate doc so I can return to the original if ever needed.

I wish the DRK invul wasnt so bad, like really even after they changed it, its still trash.

Things that can happen:
#You fall down to 1 HP, you immediately use an attack > it doesn't register that you already have the buff because of server ticks > you get no healing from the first attack> you die because you cant fullheal yourself in time
#You Fall down to 1 HP > there is no enemy to attack or you get stunned > it runs out and you die
#You use it in a dungeon but the healer keeps you barely alive and it doesnt trigger > it runs out > you die because the healer fails to heal you and you never got the self heal effect

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Originally Posted by Arohk

I wish the DRK invul wasnt so bad, like really even after they changed it, its still trash.

Things that can happen:
#You fall down to 1 HP, you immediately use an attack > it doesn't register that you already have the buff because of server ticks > you get no healing from the first attack> you die because you cant fullheal yourself in time
#You Fall down to 1 HP > there is no enemy to attack or you get stunned > it runs out and you die
#You use it in a dungeon but the healer keeps you barely alive and it doesnt trigger > it runs out > you die because the healer fails to heal you and you never got the self heal effect

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I think it's so funny that GNB of all tanks got an HP spender (Superbolide)

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

? I am not a fan of replacing one resource system for another and I am doubly not a fan of losing Bloodspiller, the OG big GCD hitter from Dark Knight

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Yeah I was thinking that too. It'd be better if Darkside changed Souleater/or Power Slash to Bloodspiller. It would be a pretty dope skill to end a combo on.

I'm still currently working out what exactly I'm going to do with the Blood Gauge and how. Ended up sleeping earlier since I work nightshift.

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Originally Posted by Arohk

I wish the DRK invul wasnt so bad, like really even after they changed it, its still trash.

Things that can happen:
#You fall down to 1 HP, you immediately use an attack > it doesn't register that you already have the buff because of server ticks > you get no healing from the first attack> you die because you cant fullheal yourself in time
#You Fall down to 1 HP > there is no enemy to attack or you get stunned > it runs out and you die
#You use it in a dungeon but the healer keeps you barely alive and it doesnt trigger > it runs out > you die because the healer fails to heal you and you never got the self heal effect

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Something came to my mind while I was brainstorming what could be possibly done about blood price... If you recall some discussion on the Dark Knight Megathread a while back we discussed a Blood Price revamp that could pool HP as your taking damage and heal you for a portion based on the amount of damage you took.

What I ended up coming up with earlier was something that is far, far too powerful for just a standard CD, however, borderline if not invulnerability, so I'll just take it to 100 here.

What if Living Dead functioned like this:

Creates a barrier around self totaling to 100% of your maximum HP. If this shield is completely absorbed, you will gain the status Undead Rebirth
-Living Dead Duration: 10s
Undead Rebirth Effect: You are healed for 100% of incoming damage
-Undead Rebirth Duration: 10s
*Shadowskin/The Blackest Night has shield priority as usual to prevent confliction here

Alright I believe I've reached a result with the Blood Gauge version after some heavy thinking. Here's the link, I will also update the OP with this after posting.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

The notable changes:

• Edge and Flood of Shadow are both introduced at lvl 74 and are our Blood Gauge spenders. I did not include Edge and Flood of Shadow here. They both cost 50 Gauge.
• Scourge is now a GCD DoT we maintain, near identitical to the HW version except it has a higher base potency and longer duration.
• The Dark Arts combo bonus from Power Slash, Stalwart Soul and Bloodspiller (formerly the placement of Scourge), now increases the Blood Gauge by 25, to keep it in line with 2 combos equaling 1 use of my Dark Descent version.
• Bloodspiller now is the upgrade for Souleater and Quietus is now the upgrade for Unleash. Both while Darkside is active, of course.
• Dark Mind has been reverted back to it's original form. You get it at lvl 48 now, since Shadowskin remains as a lvl 45 unlock.
• Blood Price is removed and Sole Survivor is now back. Sole Survivor functions near identical to how it did in latter Stormblood. The only difference is it solely is HP recovery, and not HP and MP recovery.
• Salt and Darkness will now spread Scourge to all enemies inside Salted Earth

The reason I didn't include Edge and Flood of Darkness is because there simply isn't room for them at a low level, and I don't want to introduce the Blood Gauge too early because that would mean pushing other abilities back, making the leveling experience worse.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Alright I believe I've reached a result with the Blood Gauge version after some heavy thinking. Here's the link, I will also update the OP with this after posting.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

The notable changes:

• Edge and Flood of Shadow are both introduced at lvl 74 and are our Blood Gauge spenders. I did not include Edge and Flood of Shadow here. They both cost 50 Gauge.
• Scourge is now a GCD DoT we maintain, near identitical to the HW version except it has a higher base potency and longer duration.
• The Dark Arts combo bonus from Power Slash, Stalwart Soul and Bloodspiller (formerly the placement of Scourge), now increases the Blood Gauge by 25, to keep it in line with 2 combos equaling 1 use of my Dark Descent version.
• Bloodspiller now is the upgrade for Souleater and Quietus is now the upgrade for Unleash. Both while Darkside is active, of course.
• Dark Mind has been reverted back to it's original form. You get it at lvl 48 now, since Shadowskin remains as a lvl 45 unlock.
• Blood Price is removed and Sole Survivor is now back. Sole Survivor functions near identical to how it did in latter Stormblood. The only difference is it solely is HP recovery, and not HP and MP recovery.
• Salt and Darkness will now spread Scourge to all enemies inside Salted Earth

The reason I didn't include Edge and Flood of Darkness is because there simply isn't room for them at a low level, and I don't want to introduce the Blood Gauge too early because that would mean pushing other abilities back, making the leveling experience worse.

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Overall like various of the revisions, especially the Scourge-spread, that one is sexy. However other points of criticism I'd like to forward - as before, no hard feelings, just pointing out glaring issues in the design.

• Dark Arts potency gain on Single Target is inconsistent. If you enhance Bloodspiller its +150p, if you use it on Powerslash its +90 only.
• Disregarding that Powerslash can be DA'ed, it generates +25 Blood vs Souleater generating 0 Blood. Given your spammable Blood spender is Edge of Shadow on OGCD, that means Powerslash is actually worth 360p + (360/2), so 540p vs Souleater's measly 410p. This means you'd never use Souleater combo.
• The way Dark Arts interacts with Bloodspiller means your Darkside Window is extremely combo line-up reliant. The amount of value your Bloodspiller brings is off the fucking charts. +150p per Dark Arts and the +180p for gaining half an Edge's worth of Blood means executing that skill is worth a ludicrous amount of damage. It is so strong you want to go into Darkside with Souleater Ready so you can do a 8-gcd line up and around 75 blood gauge of:
  >> DArts + BWeapon > Syphon > DSide > Spiller > Delirium + Edge > Spinning > Shadowbringer > Syphon > DArts > Spiller > Edge > Spinning > Dark Arts > Syphon > Spiller > Edge > another full DA Bloodspiller combo + 1x Edge > Scourge*
  * move Scourge anywhere in that window to adjust for the previous DoT alignment.
  ** combo is not accounting for non-aligning CDs like Carve, Drain and Salted.
  
  This is very napkin-y, but essentially you want to begin and end the entirety of Darkside with Bloodspiller. I get the novelty of Darkside, but holy cow is the gain of Bloodspiller insane on top of the damage boost, but the power feels restrictive.
• Shadowbringer/Dark Passenger at 30s means you will hold the skill rather than use it on cooldown, otherwise you will drift it out of Darkside and lose a Shadowbringer use, so anywhere from 30s to 40s makes no difference. I recommend 35s so there is some leeway for drifting, otherwise stick to 40s.
• The lack of MP recovery on Sole Survivor makes the 120s CD no longer justified given it has no reset mechanic for killing enemies either (see PvP Sole Survivor from Plunge). It is a rather lacking delayed Equilibrium - unironically would be more relevant if DRK gets Bloodbath from the melees instead at 120s CD.
• Dark Mind is fine at 60s, no need to make it 40s according to the google Doc.

I don't mind high potencies as they can always be scaled up or down, but the relative potencies between skills need to be kept in check.

As for this abomination I wish I didn't need to see again from that thread...

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Originally Posted by Zairava

What if Living Dead functioned like this:

Creates a barrier around self totaling to 100% of your maximum HP. If this shield is completely absorbed, you will gain the status Undead Rebirth
-Living Dead Duration: 10s
Undead Rebirth Effect: You are healed for 100% of incoming damage
-Undead Rebirth Duration: 10s
*Shadowskin/The Blackest Night has shield priority as usual to prevent confliction here

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Even compared to the old version of Living Dead, this would be so much worse. Without an actual "Cannot be dropped below 1 HP for the duration of this effect" clause it basically is no longer an invuln and basically turns DRK into a tank that gets banned from any fight that has mechanics that would be infinitely more useful to deal with by having two tanks with actual invulns.

The only way this is even remotely acceptable is if all four tanks lose their invuln, like Hallowed Ground being just -90% or -95% rather than full invuln, similar with Bolide but it also generates like half of HP spent as a shield or something.

Arohk's issue of being unable to heal themselves in time outside of AOE situations is also more of an issue of people insisting on Crit + Direct Hit builds or generally having insufficient Det/Ten. A Crit + Det DRK build can get you out of Walking Dead in 2-3 GCDs, depending if you crit or not.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

As for this abomination I wish I didn't need to see again from that thread...

Even compared to the old version of Living Dead, this would be so much worse. Without an actual "Cannot be dropped below 1 HP for the duration of this effect" clause it basically is no longer an invuln and basically turns DRK into a tank that gets banned from any fight that has mechanics that would be infinitely more useful to deal with by having two tanks with actual invulns.

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That's probably more an oversight. I'm going to assume Living Dead still keeps it's "Attacks can't reduce your HP below 1" restriction, anything else would just make it useless as an invuln.

I do however still see an issue with it, namely that it is only good on multi-hit busters depending on how Undead Rebirth's trigger functions.
From how it is described it would only activate after the single-hit buster and do basically nothing but give you a bit of healing from following auto attacks.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

snipped for length

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I appreciate the feedback on this

I thought for quite a while on how to make Souleater worth using over Power Slash, including ramping up the mp cost on DA to 3k and only providing 20 gauge, but considering how often we'd actually recover MP, I couldn't think of any other methods other than just making DA cost a ridiculous amount of mp (4-5k) and making Souleater the combo ender for mp recovery. I also thought of bumping up Souleater's potency but it would need to be pretty high to compensate. So I ended up removing Souleater and replacing it with Power Slash in this case, moving the cure potency from Souleater onto Power Slash. So instead of having a separate ender for it, you would just use Power Slash without DA when you need to recover MP. If the idea of the former (Souleater being an mp recovery combo ender) idea works better I could edit it back in as such.

Dark Mind's CD being 40s instead of 60s was actually something I missed while editing that revisement, thanks for pointing that out.

I nerfed Bloodspiller substantially. It's potency without Dark Arts is 500 and with DA is 550, it also no longer has gauge generation. Power Slash is also 400 without DA and 450 with DA. I bumped Stalwart Soul's base potency to 150, kept it at 200 with DA. This makes the potency boost from DA 50 across the board

I revised Sole Survivor, it basically functions as Blood Weapon but with HP AND MP recovery but only from a single target as the source and without the haste. It remains on a 120s CD, 15s duration, and the cooldown is now refreshed upon the enemy that has Another Victim applied being KO'd.

Dark Passenger/Shadowbringer is now on a 35s CD for the drifting leeway

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

That's probably more an oversight. I'm going to assume Living Dead still keeps it's "Attacks can't reduce your HP below 1" restriction, anything else would just make it useless as an invuln.

I do however still see an issue with it, namely that it is only good on multi-hit busters depending on how Undead Rebirth's trigger functions.
From how it is described it would only activate after the single-hit buster and do basically nothing but give you a bit of healing from following auto attacks.

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Yeah, it was an oversight.

In hindsight I regret posting the LD idea, because not only is it bad but I quite frankly would like to keep the version we have now.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

snip

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You generally got the right idea, but your relative potencies are a bit off within the kit. You may also have taken the Bloodspiller criticism a bit too far. Some other changes like Sole Survivor are solid though.

Do you mind if I give you my variant of the DRK overhaul, using the systems you provided since the start of the thread? I think I can polish this up where things feel neither overbearingly powerful nor lacking impact.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

You generally got the right idea, but your relative potencies are a bit off within the kit. You may also have taken the Bloodspiller criticism a bit too far. Some other changes like Sole Survivor are solid though.

Do you mind if I give you my variant of the DRK overhaul, using the systems you provided since the start of the thread? I think I can polish this up where things feel neither overbearingly powerful nor lacking impact.

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By all means, I'm open to it