Dark Knight rework ideas (yet another)

After giving some feedback and trying to propose a few possible improvemens to the current DRK without changing the current framework, I wanted to try to do something else. What’s follow are some ideas for a rework, trying to be mostly realistic and not creating totally new mechanics.
Of course, what’s following is clearly not something I think we’ll see at all, but I had some fun trying to do it and wanted to hear what other people would think about it.

To explain my aim, here were my guidelines while working on it:
1 – Trying to reunite designs ideas of both pre ShB and post ShB DRK.
2 – Putting DRK back to its place as the oGCD king of tanks while not going all the way to StB APM.
3 – Make us actually manage all our resources: MP, Blood and Darkside.
4 – Improve DRK defensive toolkit while keeping its uniqueness.
5 – Make DRK more distinct from other tanks.

So, here we go.

Skill merge and removal:
Flood of Darkness/Shadow, removed and merged with Edge of Shadow (à la Shoha for SAM)

Edge of Shadow: (oGCD)
Deals unaspected damage in a cone before you with a potency of 250 for the first enemy and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Additional Effect: Grants Darkside, increasing damage delt by 10%.
Duration: 30s
Extends Darkside duration by 30s to a maximum of 60s.
MP cost: 2400
Recast time: 1s

=> I merged Edge and Flood and made it weaker, with fall off damage. It will be the same with the non-upgraded version. Why keeping Edge and not Flood? Just because I prefer Edge animation. The MP cost has also been lowered by 600mp, to make more MP spenders available. Edge of Darkness, the lv 30 version, would be 140 potency, with 50% fall off damage.

New Skills:
Lv 40 Dark Arts: (oGCD)
Attune with the darkness within you, granting 3 stacks of Dark Arts, increasing the potency of several actions.
Duration: 20s
MP cost: 2400
Recast time: 5s

=> Dark Arts is back but changed.
It now grants three stacks of Dark Arts instead of being a single use, to actually make it less spammy. The 15s is to both assure you have enough time to do multiple possible enhanced skills, but not too long as to be able to do 3 Souleater combos and use the stacks on those 3 Souleater. Upgraded the duration to 20s from 15, after some more thinking on it, this is an unnecessary restriction.

The affected skills are:
- Gaining 150 potency, Carve and Spit.
- Gaining 100 potency, Souleater, Bloodspiller, Scourge, Scarlet Delirium, Comeuppance, Torcleaver and Disesteem.
- Gaining 50 potency, Stalwart Soul, Quietus and Impalement.

So, you would, as it was back in the old days, always want to have a Dark Arts stack for Carve and Spit, but outside of that, every skill has the same potency increase. Since the 3 stacks would always hit harder combined than an Edge, you would use Edge to pump damage in burst when you have DA stacks, or to upkeep Darkside during downtimes, making it actually something you would have to pay a bit of attention.
At lower level, it would only be 2 stacks, and would upgrade to 3 at lv 58, to give something to “learn” at this level.

Lv 76 Scourge: (GCD)
Delivers an attack with a potency of 480 (example, it can be changed of course)
Dark Arts Potency: 580
Additional Effect: Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time and auto-attack delay by 10%.
Duration: 21s
Blood Cost: 30
Recast time: 60s

※This weaponskill does not share a recast timer with any other actions.

=> While I decided to pay homage to this og skill, it is not at all the same skill in function. Scourge has two objectives: first, adding another Blood Spender to DRK to force us to have to manage it a tiny bit; second, adding back some speed buff that was removed after Stormblood ended. This would make us gain one GCD a minute. I decided to put a 30 blood cost to not make it too overbearing on the Blood economy. Bloodspiller and Quietus are still at 50.

Changes to MP generation and spending:

Generation
Carve and Spit: (oGCD)
Delivers a threefold attack with a potency of 400.
Dark Arts Potency: 550
Additional Effect: Restores MP
MP restoration effect: 600
Recast time: 30s

=> I lowered the recast time to 30s to spice up even more the filler downtime and to generate more MP. Like before, its Dark Arts effect is the strongest, meaning you would always want to Dark Arts CnS. Since we now have three stacks of DA per use, it’s not a forced double weave, removing this criticism from back then.

Delirium: (oGCD)
Grants 3 stacks of Delirium and 5 stacks of Blood Weapon.
Delirium Effect: Changes Bloodspiller to Scarlet Delirium and Quietus to Impalement
Duration: 15s
Blood Weapon Effect: Each stack increases Blood Gauge by 10 and restores MP upon landing weaponskills or spells
Duration: 15s
MP restoration effect: 600 per hit
Effect does not stack when hitting multiple targets with a single attack.
Recast time: 40s

=> I simply put back Blood Weapon to 5 stacks, and reduced the cooldown to 40s, the same than during StB and HW, to reduce the downtime doing only the 123 combo. The Delirium part is unchanged. Of course, the Lv 35 Blood Weapon would also get the cd reduction and the 5 stacks. With that, the MP generation would be higher than it has been since ShB, but not so much as to become overwhelming.

Scarlet Delirium, Comeuppance and Torcleaver
MP restoration effect: 300

=> I boosted the MP generation from 200 to 300 to balance a bit the mana generation without adding too much MP overall after spreadsheeting the rotation. It seems negligible, but it is useful to assure a smooth MP economy.
Further testing on the spreadsheet made me realize I made a mistake which resulted in more MP generation. I'll leave this crossed as to be transparent with changed made after the initial posting of this thread. We need less MP than I thought to be close to a "looping" MP generation, so here the new change:

Disesteem:
MP restoration effect: 200.

=> This makes the rotation slightly MP positive with the about 6 to 7 spenders a minute average in mind, but close to break even.

Spending:
All MP spenders are at 2400MP.

=>The price cut to 2400 Mp is to make MP spenders more flexible and more available overall. From what I’ve mapped out, we’re around 7 MP spenders a minute with this economy.
If you want more MP spending, just lower MP spenders cost to 2000. It works, I tried spreadsheeting it, it flows quite well.

MP spenders:
Edge of Shadow/Darkness
Dark Arts
Abyssal Drain
TBN

Here are the MP spenders I haven’t presented yet:

Abyssal Drain: (GCD)
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional Effect: Restores own HP.
Cure Potency: 200 per enemy
MP Cost: 2400

=> It’s basically the StB version of Abyssal Drain, but with the heal not needing Dark Arts. Since it’s not generating resources and costing MP, it would clearly be a pure sustain skill in dungeon and its price is high enough to not be able to be spammed brainlessly, since what made DA Abyssal Drain stupidly strong in Stormblood was that it could be spammed with how ressources worked.


The Blackest Night: (oGCD)
Creates a barrier around self or target party member that absorbs damage totaling 25% of target's maximum HP.
Duration: 10s
Grants Retribution when barrier is completely absorbed.
Retribution Effect: Consume Retribution instead of MP to execute Edge of Shadow, Abyssal Drain or Dark Arts.
Cannot be cast while the barrier is active.
MP Cost: 2400
(no recast time)

=> I removed the recast time of TBN and lengthened its duration a bit, but both kept the MP requirement and added the condition of not already being under its effect. The DA stack is still here but changed in name. That makes TBN even more flexible, with news uses to cover multi-hit busters better, while keeping the risk/reward of the skill and the skill expression, even if the longer duration would make it easier to break.

And here is a change to assure that the burst window stays busy on the MP side:

Lv 80 Living Shadow: (oGCD)
Conjure a simulacrum of your darkside to fight alongside you.
Duration: 20s
Additional Effect: Grants Scorn
Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: Grants three stacks of Dark Embrace.
Dark Embrace Effect: Halves the MP requirement for Edge of Shadow, Dark Arts, Abyssal Drain and The Blackest Night.
Duration: 30s
Simulacrum Attack Potency: 390
Additional Effect: Simulacrum is able to execute Shadowbringer and Disesteem
Shadowbringer Potency: 470 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies
Disesteem Potency: 520 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies
Recast Time: 120s

=> I added Dark Embrace, to give more weight in playstyle to Esteem being present. I limited it to only three stacks, to limit the amount of MP spenders in burst. Given how the job is working, with Darkside to upkeep and Carve and Spit forcing a Dark Arts use every 30s, don’t worry, it’s about the same amount of weaves inside the 2mn burst window as it is now, maybe one more. A MP spender using the Retribution from TBN would not consume a Dark Embrace stack.

Defensive changes:
I’ve already covered TBN and Abyssal Drain, but here are the other changes made to DRK defensive kit.

Dark Mind: (oGCD)
Reduces magic vulnerability by 20% and physical vulnerability by 10%.
Duration: 10s
Recast time: 60s

=> I added the physical mitigation that everyone wanted. Given that GNB Camouflage is 20s long, I think Dark Mind can keep its 60s cooldown, even with the added physical mitigation. It's been done in patch 7.1, very good change.

Salted Earth: (oGCD)
Creates a patch of salted earth at your feet, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 50 to any enemies who enter.
Additional Effect: Gradually restores your HP while standing in the patch of salted earth.
Duration 15s
Cure Potency: 200
Recast time: 90s

=> Taking some inspiration from the PVP version of Salted Earth, like many of us thought, you now have some sustain added, making it more useful.

Lv 64 Dark Missionary: (oGCD)
Reduces magic damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10% and physical damage by self and nearby party member by 5%.
Duration: 15s
Recast Time: 90s

=> Dark Missionary has been lowered to Lv 64, while Quietus has been moved up to LV 72 for the levelling, to make it available for 70 ultimates. It also got the “addle update”, with a bit of physical mitigation. Also changed in patch 7.1, that's great for both UCOB and UWU.

Oblation: (oGCD)
Reduces damage taken by target party member by 10%
Duration: 10s
Additional effect: Grants Abyssal Offering.
Abyssal Offering: Restores HP every time the target suffers damage.
Cure Potency: 300 for the first hit, then 100 for all remaining hits.
Duration: 6s
Maximum Charges: 2
Recast Time: 60s

=> The last bit of sustain added, to align it with the upgrades other tanks got to their short mitigations. I tried to put some flavour on it, to make it different than other sustain effects on short mitigations, taking a bit of inspiration from old blood price, but for HP. This would make the skill really strong in dungeons packs, that’s why I limited the cure potency to only 100 outside of the first instance of damage.

Finishing words and last explanations:

With this rework, I tried to not copy other tanks as much as I could and to keep and build on what made DRK stand out from others. That’s why I kept the “magic damage specialist” aspect of the job intact while reducing its physical damage weakness. I didn’t touch numbers from older skills, but of course such a rework would necessitate a balance to all numbers. Normally, now the potencies are coherent and would work with other changes in potencies (that you can see in the doc below). It would be around a 0.3% increase from current DRK.

I tried to merge most of the things I liked about all versions of DRK, while making it coherent with the current encounter and job design. That’s why DRK is still aligned with the 2mn meta, even with the added variety to downtime. Finally, of course, this rework reflects what I like about DRK, I like pressing buttons and high APM jobs, what DRK was historically, but I know that not everyone likes the same things about the job, and that’s fine. I could add even more MP to add more weaves, that would not be a problem for me, but I think it might be for others.

Finally, this is the idea of a rework for the current expansion, Dawntrail. I can’t imagine what changes in design SE will do for 8.0 and it’s mostly something I made for fun. If it can give ideas, great. But I’m not deluded enough to imagine SE taking inspiration from this, of course.

That’s all. Thank you for taking time reading this. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts.

Edit : I added a spreadsheet with how the rotation would work lower ont the first page. Here's the link :

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nivarea

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

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Edit 2: After finalizing some details, here is the complete job actions and traits list, with all the changes in potencies :

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nivarea

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

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FINALLY a good rework. Personally I do miss the Haste effect from Bloodweapon, but I can let go of it. Everything about this is great mechanically. Of course, potencies are always up to debate, but I'm not judging on that.

A lot of changes you post here are actually a culmination of a lot of feedback that generally seemed well received, so I greatly appreciate that. And from a personal point, I love your implementation of non-standard cooldown timers (40s Bloodweapon / Delirium for example) and non-standard gauge spending (30 Blood on Scourge).

Really, well done.

Damn dude you really cooked with this one. I love this rework.

Potencies might need some fine tuning, but mechanically this is superb

Thank you, both of you, I'm glad it seems to click with other people.

I would be lying if I said that it wasn't something that took time crafting and fine tuning on the mechanical side, but given that I'm a nerd, I find doing that fun.
I have actually mapped all skills with changes in potency to make it about even as DRK is right now after simulating the rotation, but that would have necessitated to list ALL skills, which would be too long for a post on the forum I think. That's why I decided to not bother with them, since numbers are after all the easiest things to balance afterwards.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

FINALLY a good rework. Personally I do miss the Haste effect from Bloodweapon, but I can let go of it.
Really, well done.

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I decided to put the haste to Scourge to make it have a reason to exist outside of just being another Blood spender, and because even if I prefered how Blood Weapon worked back in HW and StB, the simplicity of current BW stacks works well, and makes MP not spike too much.

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A lot of changes you post here are actually a culmination of a lot of feedback that generally seemed well received, so I greatly appreciate that.

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I don't post much on FFXIV social communities, be it the forums, reddit, twitter or even discord servers like the Balance. I do however follows what people are saying. After that, it's just judging what I find good and realistic, and what I think is bad or unrealistic. It's still up to me, but it is born from all feedbacks I've read all those years.

Quote:

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And from a personal point, I love your implementation of non-standard cooldown timers (40s Bloodweapon / Delirium for example) and non-standard gauge spending (30 Blood on Scourge).

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I share the same taste for non-standard timers and spenders; that's why they're here.

Someone mail this directly to Square Enix's office and shove it in the face of the job designers, great work on this rework!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nivarea

I decided to put the haste to Scourge to make it have a reason to exist outside of just being another Blood spender, and because even if I prefered how Blood Weapon worked back in HW and StB, the simplicity of current BW stacks works well, and makes MP not spike too much.

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Imma be real with you, I completely missed that bit.

The way you implemented it is even better imo. 60s Scourge CD maybe a bit long for it though, but that's just my speed demon talking. :D

After checking some more my spreadsheet to avoid as much as I can mistakes on it (there could still be some), I'll share what the rotation would look like compared to the current rotation. Of course, this is an example, in a real situation this would probably not be the absolutely most optimal rotation, but this will give a more concrete idea as to how it would work, how it would flow.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

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Originally Posted by Nivarea

Why keeping Edge and not Flood? Just because I prefer Edge animation.

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This is the only thing I disagree with, I kind of like DRK being a pseudo mageblade with with its big wave attacks. Though I understand merging them to cut down of button bloat... and Edge has a really cool animation, so I get it.

Everything else, you cooked harder than the people actually paid to design the jobs, good job.

Solid rework though instead of Edge of Shadow keep it the same but replace it with Power Slash because its a way better animation.

First, answers to both Ramiee and NegativeS about Edge of Shadow :

I had to chose and went with my preference. It can be flood, it can get the Power Slash animation, it's not a point I really care that much tbh. :p
I just think that consoliding both Edge and Flood in one button is a good thing to avoid button bloat.

Second: I will give the finalized complete job actions and traits list:

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

The potencies should be balanced around current DRK damage, a slight buff if I'm not mistaken in my calculations (it's the 10% auto-attack speed that makes it a buff, it's a slight nerf without). I also didn't try to check potencies before max level, so I don't know if it would be a buff, a nerf or about the same at other level caps.

Third and finally, here are some more ideas that I did not implement, but that can be interesting:

-Lowering Salted Earth Cooldown to 45s
=> This would help even more with the sustain with the regen upon standing in it and give more oGCDs to press, mostly outside of buffs since it’s still only aligned with the 6mn buffs.

-Upgrading the Retribution (TBN DA stacks) to make you able to store 2 or 3 of them.
=> With that, you would have even more flexibility with TBN since you would not have to be sure to spend your Retribution stack before using TBN again.

-Removing the condition “Grants Retribution (Dark Arts) when barrier is completely absorbed” from TBN and replacing it with “Grants Retribution (Dark Arts) when target is hit”.
=> It would remove completely the risk of TBN not refunding MPs. I’m not a fan of removing all the risk from TBN, but I think this would be the lesser of all evils if we really want to remove it instead of homogenizing it by giving TBN no MP cost and a 25s recast time.

-Lowering the duration of the Darkside granted by Edge of Shadow to 20s.
=> This would force a bit more management of Darkside during downtime from what I already proposed.

-I already spoke about it, but you can lower the MP spenders cost to 2000.
=> This is to have further MP spending.

-Upgrading Syphon Strike, Stalwart Soul, Blood Weapon stacks and Carve and Spit MP generation to 900.
=> That’s another possibility to increase MP generation and further uses. That’s if you want to come closer to StB MP economy, while for what I proposed for the rework, my idea was to be in a “sweet spot” between StB and ShB MP economy. It would also require the Scarlet Delirium Combo (and Disesteem) to grants 300MP instead of 200.


I tried to be “conservative” with the rework, to not go too much overboard with the Sustain, the MP economy or increasing too much the skill ceiling. That’s why I’m not proposing something like the Scarlet Delirium combo giving HP for example. While DRK can use more sustain than what it has now, I tried to find ways to make it happen in a way that others tanks don’t do and not make it overpowered.

I like it.
I hate when people try to remove the entire TBN break reward thing and I always wanted more MP spenders and more interactions from TBN break so I think this is neat.

Bumping it after 7.1 to gather some more opinions, good or bad, don't hesitate! I'm always glad to see what people think about this. :D

I've been happy with the 7.1 changes in the defensive toolkit. Dark Missionnary and Dark Mind changes have been exactly what I've proposed here, a logical change that was long due, given I mostly proposed changes that people were already sugesting on this front.

I'm less pleased with the added sustain put on Carve and Spit. While it's not a bad thing, I do think that it is mostly unconsequential given that we will absolutely not hold it for its sustain, the damage loss of drifting it would be too big. I do think puting healing elswhere would have been better (i.e. on oblation...). That change on abyssal drain is not bad, but a bit overkill. I do think that lowering its cooldown would have been far better.

That's actually what i'm proposing as an alternative of what I've put in the first post for it.

Abyssal Drain (oGCD)
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional Effect: Restores own HP.
Cure Potency: 200 per enemy
Recast Time : 30s
Maximum Charges : 2

=> This would be separated in timer from Carve and Spit (which is a stupid thing to begin with).
I'm putting it back at 200 cure potency, which was fine, but we would use it more often, even in single target situation. That's why I also lowered the damage potency. This would help sustain far more in dungeon (which is already fine) than the 7.1 change, and help a lot more in single target situation. The charges are to make it flexible and availble to be used for healing without having to drift it.
And yes, because it's not linked with Carve and Spit anymore, the MP regen effect is also gone.

All in all, 7.1 changes are a good step in the right direction, and outside of MP changes at most (and even for that I'm not holding my breath), I'm not expecting any other changes for the remaining of DT.

Also... Funny that they buffed DRK DPS when it already was the top DPS when accouning exploiting party buffs. That was not needed, but I take it since I'm going with DRK for FRU. :p

Okay, I like a lot of these ideas, except for Dark Arts. The problem Dark Arts didn't work was because, if you weren't using Dark Arts, you were losing damage. This is the same problem. It's not interactive. It's not fun. Why do you need to hit this one button to increase damage and not just roll the damage into the main attack? I've heard complaints about how Dragoon lost two uses of Nastrond but kept Lance Charge. It's not fun and interactive gameplay.



Now, there exists a skill on another job that functions similarly to how Dark Arts should: Eukrasia on Sage. Eukrasia works great because it changes the properties of their spells. It's a really cool and core function of their job that allows for player expression. I think a better use for Dark Arts is to follow the Sage model. Make Dark Arts change Souleater into Reprisal. Make Dark Arts change the Darkside extension on Edge of Darkness/Shadow into HP drain. There could also be a Reprisal version of Stalwart Soul for AoE. I'm not saying Dark Arts shouldn't exist, but I am saying it shouldn't be what it was in Stormblood, even if you decided that it would give stacks.

Hmmm, after testing DRK for couple of raids, I think the job still need help in terms of their kit,

now DRK is tankier than even, DPS is also great.

but their kit still doesn't feel unique it is a better defense warrior and that's it.

DRK require same treatment as SMN 6.0

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

DRK require same treatment as SMN 6.0

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...DRK had that treatment with 5.0 and this is what we currently have now.
I'd much rather they spare us another simon-says or ultra simple + slow rotation style and ACTUALLY innovate. 6.0 Summoner was only good visually, but the gameplay is boring.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

[...]The problem Dark Arts didn't work was because, if you weren't using Dark Arts, you were losing damage. This is the same problem. It's not interactive. It's not fun. Why do you need to hit this one button to increase damage and not just roll the damage into the main attack?[...]

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While I do understand people not liking the design of Dark Arts, the fact is we can say it about practically every button. I mean, why have 3 buttons for a combo, or oGCDs? You could only have to push one button to do damage afterall. I'm obviously exagerating the exemple for the sake of the argument, but it's still something to be said.
What people do find fun and do not find fun differs. Some prefer straightfoward abilities, while other like to have fluff and doing more to have the same effect. I'm one of the latter group.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

Now, there exists a skill on another job that functions similarly to how Dark Arts should: Eukrasia on Sage. Eukrasia works great because it changes the properties of their spells. It's a really cool and core function of their job that allows for player expression. I think a better use for Dark Arts is to follow the Sage model.[...]

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I do understand and, in some way, share the sentiment, but the fact is... it doesn't work for Dark Knight and Tanks in general, we have the perfect exemple of this from the past actually.
Dark Arts used to be a skill modifier back in Heavensward, with some skills only gaining potency, while others were changing or adding effects. The fact is we did avoid to use Dark Arts on the skills that were only changing effects outside of absolutely needing it (and even then there were many that were still avoiding it).

Dark Arts is linked to a damage ressource, and because of how FFXIV works, people will always favour damage over utility if it's a choice between the two. That's why the devs changed Dark Arts in Stormblood the way they did.

You could advocate to remove Dark Arts from MP management, but then, you go back to MP being only a "Edge gauge", and it's the same problem of MP management not being interactive. My idea is not to just bring Dark Arts and make it replace Edge, but to make it works alongside it in order to create a choice, an optimization and, in the end, bring back a form of MP mangement with a priority system. Yes, it's not as interactive as the theoretical DA being a skill modifier, but it's still far better than the non-interactive and non-managing reality as right now.
Also, changing damaging skills into non-damaging skill could pose problems in some situation.

So, all in all, while I do agree it would be more interesting to have Dark Arts as a skill modifier, given how the game works, it would not work. People hate to lose damage, see how some cry about TBN having a fail state if not used correctly, so losing damage for utility is not something really viable in the game as it is designed right now, and I tried to do it for how the game is right now given I can't say for sure how it will evolve in the future.

You can still disagree with me and still advocating for what you propose, of course, but I do hope that you can at least understand my reasoning behind the choice I did make. :p

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

Hmmm, after testing DRK for couple of raids, I think the job still need help in terms of their kit,

now DRK is tankier than even, DPS is also great.

but their kit still doesn't feel unique it is a better defense warrior and that's it.

DRK require same treatment as SMN 6.0

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I do agree about the defensive state of the job. It is, arguably, the strongest tank on a mitigation point right now, its only real downside being its more limited sustain. I do think that the tank sustain right now is actually overpowered, but that's a whole other debate and given that the dev team will not nerf it outside of reworking the job design philosophy (what they did back in ShB), that's why I did put some more sustain, to align DRK with the current Tank design and philosophy. If I had a say in how to design Tank sustain and mitigation, I would actually nerf the sustain from other tanks to put it were DRK sustain is right now, and even then, the tanks would still be very strong on the mitigation side.

On the other hand, while I do think DRK could use a rework, the "6.0 SMN rework" already occured back in ShB, like Reinhardt saif, when the team decided to change the job to share the same base as WAR's. I do hope that if they do rework the job, they will this time focus to make it more unique. I have some hope, given what Yoshi-p shared for 8.0 that it would be the case, but I'm still cautious about that. We do know what we lose, not what we would gain.

I did try to make it more unique with the imagination tho, taking inspiration from older version of DRK, but trying to change things that didn't work or were a bit flawed to make it work in the current game design. I'm not thinking that what I propose is the perfect DRK at all (I'm sure there is flaws in the design, I'm no professional game designer) or that other designs could not work or even please me, but I still think that it's alright and, for my taste, far more fun than the current DRK. o/

I think in general tanks need less defensive bloat (Such as Rampart, DM/Bulwark ect). I think the strength of things would be fine if we didn't already have so many cooldowns, also not saying everything has to go, I just don't really like having four cooldowns about self mitigating in different levels of strength I don't think its a good allocation of space all the time, I'd also like more individuality in these cooldowns.

Focus on what actually we know works rotations theirs no reason why tanks should all have very basic 1, 2, 3 "spend gauge" rotations, they are already designed to be more slow in gcd I think it's time we had actually had tanks feel different in rotations and had more interesting differences DPS wise it would make them a lot more interesting in the way that counts (instead of having a slightly different heal/mit effect lol)

These buffs might make Dark knight more strong and slightly more useful in AOE situations but they don't tackle the core issue and I think all tanks share the same core issues, that at the end of the day they have over bloated defensive kits while not really having actual fun dps kits, I really think it's time to bring back some actual rotations and combo paths to tanks, I mean even if we didn't remove any defensives I'm sure you can fit 1 or 2 skills to each tank to spice up their actual gameplay.

I do hope 8.0 will evolve tanks in a direction that's more fun. Theirs some doubts in that with current design but I guess we will see, I don't think theirs a way to fix dark knight without actually looking into some core issues of tanks in general.

Dark knight does not need a rework. They pretty much already got that with the combination of Delirium and Bloodweapon. The damage on dark knight has never been a major problem, but it got buffed anyway in 7.1. 7.1 even fixed most of what the job was lacking in the level 70 ultimates. The only ability on dark knight that needs a complete rework is The Blackest Night. Oblation needs a regen added to it. TBN is the last terrible job design gimmick for tanks that a minority of players are still clinging to for keeping the job "unique" when it is undeniably the worst tank cooldown in the game, and it's days of being so are probably numbered.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I think in general tanks need less defensive bloat (Such as Rampart, DM/Bulwark ect). [...]

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I'm not disagreeing. Tanks are very powerfu defensivelyl in XIV, that's a fact. I'm not against nerfing defensives tbh, but I don't think SE will take that direction with the game, I would be very surprised if they do. I've seen people arguing about removing Invulns for exemple, since they make mitigating fights too easy.
That would be a complete philosophy change, for sure, and would probably meant touching up many fights.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Focus on what actually we know works rotations theirs no reason why tanks should all have very basic 1, 2, 3 "spend gauge" rotations, they are already designed to be more slow in gcd I think it's time we had actually had tanks feel different in rotations and had more interesting differences DPS wise it would make them a lot more interesting in the way that counts (instead of having a slightly different heal/mit effect lol) [...]

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Hard agree here. Nothing else to say.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I do hope 8.0 will evolve tanks in a direction that's more fun. Theirs some doubts in that with current design but I guess we will see, I don't think theirs a way to fix dark knight without actually looking into some core issues of tanks in general.

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Same thing, I agree with that and have some hope, but I'm not expecting a huge change in philosophy, just more identity and maybe, but that's a very non-comital maybe, a slight bump in overall job complexity.

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Originally Posted by AnjouMaaka

Dark knight does not need a rework.

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You're right in that DRK works very well right now and that a rework is not needed if we take this approach.

On the other hand, a good amount of people, myself included, do think that the current iteration of DRK is too simple, stripped off from its historical fun points of gameplay and needs more spice to become very fun again. hence why people, want a rework, it's not a number of efficiency thing, it's a playstyle thing.

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Originally Posted by AnjouMaaka

The only ability on dark knight that needs a complete rework is The Blackest Night. Oblation needs a regen added to it. TBN is the last terrible job design gimmick for tanks that a minority of players are still clinging to for keeping the job "unique" when it is undeniably the worst tank cooldown in the game, and it's days of being so are probably numbered.

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That's a hard disagree for me. TBN is nowadays one of, if not the only thing, you actually have to pay some attention while playing DRK. Can it be improved? Sure, you can lower its penalty, you can add another effect on it. But just making it a clone of other tank short mitigation would suck, because Tanks are already too similar to each other. And contrary to Dark Mind, TBN works on all damage, even Darkness damage.

Also, people do not value the real strenght of TBN (and DRK defensive toolkit by extension) being its flexibility and availability.

Yes, in a vaccum, TBN is "weaker" than current other Tanks short cooldown. In situation, you would need to have an absurd amount of damage and only be using short cooldown for it and no other mit to actually really see a difference. The only fights the game can throw such amount of damage are basically Ultimates and... oh, surprise, DRK was, before PLD gained Bulwark after 6.3, the only Tank able to tank without any exterior help the abolute highest hitting damage ability of the game compared to our max HP, being Soul Teather in DSR without using its invuln. WAR, pre-6.3 PLD and GNB couldn't, they all needed help from the healers or a DRK with its second charge of Oblation.
Also, TBN being a shield make it scale really well with other mitigations, so it ends up as powerfull as other short tank mitigation.

The only way I would agree to have TBN lose it's fail state would be if the job was really reworked and had other mecanics to pay attention.
It's fine, it's strong enough to do the job efficiently and its fail state is just a way to alert you that, if you weren't even taking 25% of your HP as damage in 7s, why would you actually need to use mitigation anyway?

Doesn't matter how flexible and available something is if it has a 50% chance of hindering your gameplay or performance. The ability is cool in name only. Half the time you have no way of guessing if something will break TBN. It should just be a shield with maybe a small excog effect applied if the shield breaks, but at 25% of max HP, it's worthless, even as a shield. Scholar shields more than that by just casting Adlo, and that is before buffing it with Fey Illumination, Dissipation and Protraction. I often get more value out of Oblation than I ever see out of TBN. If not for it's value in the level 70 ultimates, TBN probably would have already been reworked. You think I don't value it's strength? No I have far more understanding of how it works and when to use it, and I still see it unexplainably fail to break sometimes. Either someone unknowingly adds in their own mit at the last second, or damage variance actually rolls low enough for it to not break by single/double digit numbers, in which case, oops, guess you were just that unlucky. Sometimes I'm waiting for enough MP and it's so close to when I need it that latency sometimes says "no, you didn't have TBN up in time." That really only happens in 70 ultimates where I'm using TBN way more often than in savage, but it's still a major flaw in the design of TBN. It may be unique, but it is definitely not good, regardless of how you look at it. The in a vacuum argument is completely irrelevant when there are plenty of examples outside of that which show the ability to be even worse than it is in a vacuum.

TL:DR
This isn't 2016. Heavensward dark knight is never coming back. Homogenization is the name of the game. If you aren't used to it by now, you are probably playing the wrong game. Oblation needs a regen. The Blackest Night needs to be overhauled.

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Originally Posted by AnjouMaaka

TL:DR
This isn't 2016. Heavensward dark knight is never coming back. Homogenization is the name of the game. If you aren't used to it by now, you are probably playing the wrong game. Oblation needs a regen. The Blackest Night needs to be overhauled.

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This argument assumes that we want Heavensward dark knight, I do not want heavensward job designs but I also want more "complexity" in the game, telling people they are playing the wrong game because they are giving back feedback about how to improve or make a job more fun isn't a healthy mindset to have, as these sorts of arguments of "don't like it don't play it!" misses the point that if someone is leaving back feedback about a job they likely are very passionate about the game already.

I'm personally not fully against making TBN more Standard (I also think Oblation should grant the target a small life steal effect, just per hit like HS instead of per enemy like BW because that makes dungeons boring for me), but if your going to remove TBN's interaction dark knight needs something to stand out from other tanks, its rotation is already warrior without a combo path it doesn't need to have more took away without anything of substance being added into the job.

Making everything bare bones and simple for the sake of it with nothing of substance to actually make the Job feel better is why Jobs are feeling so empty in the first place, skills like old goring blade on PLD didn't work with current design but that's no reason to take away PLD's combo path and make it a 60s burst button for example. If we're going to ask for changes to jobs which makes them more forgiving at least give them more to do in return.

You might accept Homogenization as it is, but theirs a reason why people are vocal and starting to get annoyed, because frankly it's gone too far and the gameplay hasn't evolved since Shadowbringers I do not want to go back to Heavensward but that isn't a reason why job design should stagnate at Shadowbringers.

There is too little point of falure in this game,

To many restrictions will cause a homonization

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

This argument assumes that we want Heavensward dark knight, I do not want heavensward job designs but I also want more "complexity" in the game, telling people they are playing the wrong game because they are giving back feedback about how to improve or make a job more fun isn't a healthy mindset to have, as these sorts of arguments of "don't like it don't play it!" misses the point that if someone is leaving back feedback about a job they likely are very passionate about the game already.

I'm personally not fully against making TBN more Standard (I also think Oblation should grant the target a small life steal effect, just per hit like HS instead of per enemy like BW because that makes dungeons boring for me), but if your going to remove TBN's interaction dark knight needs something to stand out from other tanks, its rotation is already warrior without a combo path it doesn't need to have more took away without anything of substance being added into the job.

Making everything bare bones and simple for the sake of it with nothing of substance to actually make the Job feel better is why Jobs are feeling so empty in the first place, skills like old goring blade on PLD didn't work with current design but that's no reason to take away PLD's combo path and make it a 60s burst button for example. If we're going to ask for changes to jobs which makes them more forgiving at least give them more to do in return.

You might accept Homogenization as it is, but theirs a reason why people are vocal and starting to get annoyed, because frankly it's gone too far and the gameplay hasn't evolved since Shadowbringers I do not want to go back to Heavensward but that isn't a reason why job design should stagnate at Shadowbringers.

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Stormblood DRK were the days - less complex and convoluted than Heavensward, kept the nice parts like Haste and action buffing around with good uptime on both. It honestly could have just been tuned a bit to make MP cost on Dark Arts higher (along with potency, so it is less spammy) and we would've had a decent DRK design. The removal of making MP spenders + Blood spenders interact with each other is also absolutely criminal.

Alas, we got WAR for dummies casting magical Hissatsu: Shinten in between with none of the decisionmaking except for "don't spend all your MP if you need a TBN shield in the next 15s in a frame that breaks it in 7s".

I just want "something" man.

As always I feel the first thing that needs to be nailed down is the desired job identity. And I don't mean the visual identity, "Broody with a giant sword and goopey particle effects", but the overall class fantasy that it is supposed to evoke from a mechanical perspective.

For example, we all know Warriors are the tanks that heal themselves and others. What are Dark Knights? Or rather, what should dark knights be?

Like I said before, I'd retool things as I don't like the current fantasy of Warriors, but if I had my way it'd be:

* Paladins: Support Tank
* Warrior: Absorb/Ignore Tank
* Gunbreaker: Ranged Tank
* Dark Knight: DoT/Drain Tank

So I'd give the constant (it's not bursty like it is for Warriors right now) self-healing to Dark Knights if I had to retool the fantasies behind the job, a result of moving the job to be strongly about DoTs and draining aether from their targets. But that's just my personal take, and it's also so wildly different from what they are right now that it's entirely unrealistic, Warriors would be the drain tank if anything, since they already mostly fit that.

Anyhow, I feel that without SQEX first formalizing what each tank is supposed to be, discussing what they are to do (as in, their abilities and gameplay) is a bit pointless.

While adding 2 new GCDs does help with the lackluster and boring GCD rotation, I don't think it will be enough...

Bringing back Dark Passenger as GCD combo starter that is followed up by Flood of Shadow which would then be followed up by Shadowbringer with step being Disesteem, with each step costing 1000-2000 MP and each step also heals you for 400 cure potency. We can also make Paladin's MP spending actions heal the whole party so that way they get something in terms of utility.

Moving Scarlet Delirium combo to level 62 and having Bloodspiller grant a buff that makes it so you can use Scarlet Delirium combo on execution will help Dark Knight leveling a LOT. Same with moving Impalement to level 64 and have Quietus grant a buff that lets you use Impalement. Because it takes FOREVER to get a new GCD AFTER getting Quietus.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

While adding 2 new GCDs does help with the lackluster and boring GCD rotation, I don't think it will be enough...

Bringing back Dark Passenger as GCD combo starter that is followed up by Flood of Shadow which would then be followed up by Shadowbringer with step being Disesteem, with each step costing 1000-2000 MP and each step also heals you for 400 cure potency. We can also make Paladin's MP spending actions heal the whole party so that way they get something in terms of utility.

Moving Scarlet Delirium combo to level 62 and having Bloodspiller grant a buff that makes it so you can use Scarlet Delirium combo on execution will help Dark Knight leveling a LOT. Same with moving Impalement to level 64 and have Quietus grant a buff that lets you use Impalement. Because it takes FOREVER to get a new GCD AFTER getting Quietus.

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At which level do you want Dark Passenger to be introduced?

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Originally Posted by The_User

At which level do you want Dark Passenger to be introduced?

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Same level that Flood of Darkness currently sits at, and I am also okay with having a button that lets me maintain Darkside during downtime and outside of combat as QoL change, and same with having Dark Arts a button to generate Dark Arts stacks, during downtime and outside of combat at level 30, while keeping the core idea of Dark Arts being used to bypass MP cost.

As for Edge of Darkness/Shadow since it currently does the same thing as Flood of Darkness/Shadow but for single target, I would rework it to a single target MP spender burst combo, similar to my Dark Passenger idea, but have it combo into Bloodspiller(since my current suggestion for Bloodspiller is a temporary change for GCD rotation), then have Carve and Spit be the combo finisher. Same 1000-2000 MP cost, no shared recast timers, MAYBE have Dark Passenger combo and Edge of Shadow combos have 15-30 second recast timers, and have these combos generate Blood Gauge.

I would also have Scarlet Delirium combo cost a minimum of 25(50 max if my proposed idea doesn't work out) Blood Gauge at level 62, and since Quietus would combo into Impalment at level 62, it would also cost the same as Scarlet Delirium combo, with the same proposed cost that also have 15-30 second recast timer that ISN'T shared, and have these combos restore HP and MP(same HP cure potency as the MP spenders).

Abyssal Drain would go back onto the GCD and grants Plunge Ready, and make Plunge a target AoE GCD, no cost, just basic GCD timers...

My goal is try and give Dark Knight SOME skill expression with resource management of some kind.