Dark Knight and Gunbreaker feedback

Hello! First time poster, I would like to provide some feedback on the jobs mentioned in the title.

Dark Knight

The 7.1 changes to Dark Mind and Dark Missionary were great, however in 7.0 the stacks of Blood Weapon were reduced to 3 to match the new combo that Delirium gave you. This means that Dark Knight's burst windows were made a lot more boring as now you aren't hitting Edge of Shadow as much anymore. Additionally, while the change of removing Plunge and replacing it with a non-damaging ability was good, it did also mean that DRK lost more buttons to press in and out of burst. A change to have Blood Weapon give 5 stacks again, OR have the stacks give more MP back would be appreciated, and a buff to the amount of MP you get from your basic combo so that your rotation outside of burst windows would make the job more engaging to play.

Gunbreaker

I think every change that Gunbreaker has received in Dawntrail so far has been purely positive, However No Mercy's (NM) timer combined with the amount of GCDs that Gunbreaker puts in its burst means that fitting everything in your NM window is incredibly tight without building skill speed on your gearset. Given that Dark Knight and Warrior both have buttons that simply buff their next GCDs on a stack system, I think Gunbreaker should function the same way instead of having a timer.

Yeah it'd be cool if they did something with the burst, although I ain't sure just "spam more DPS oGCDs" would make it feel more exciting personally. I miss pet-jobs even though they're a lost cause in MMORPGs of course, wish at least during burst we got to manually control our shade and do unique-animation combo attacks with it or something. Cool stuff. Ah dunno.

And with GNB I just want Double Down to be 1/2 cartridges optional, can be used with 1, deals more damage with 2. Or rename it to Single Down I suppose.

I honestly think that GNB just has one too many GCDs for a burst window.
Maybe turn Sonic Break into an oGCD or something cause that seems to be the one that got shoved to the tail end of No Mercy

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yeah it'd be cool if they did something with the burst, although I ain't sure just "spam more DPS oGCDs" would make it feel more exciting personally. I miss pet-jobs even though they're a lost cause in MMORPGs of course, wish at least during burst we got to manually control our shade and do unique-animation combo attacks with it or something. Cool stuff. Ah dunno.

And with GNB I just want Double Down to be 1/2 cartridges optional, can be used with 1, deals more damage with 2. Or rename it to Single Down I suppose.

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I would also want them to do more but I'm asking within the bounds of a mid-expansion buff (after all Blood Weapon was changed to a stack system in 6.1 or 6.2). And while it's simple, spamming OGCDs can be pretty fun, especially when the animation is as nice as Edge of Shadow's

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Originally Posted by andromeda_kha

I think every change that Gunbreaker has received in Dawntrail so far has been purely positive, However No Mercy's (NM) timer combined with the amount of GCDs that Gunbreaker puts in its burst means that fitting everything in your NM window is incredibly tight without building skill speed on your gearset. Given that Dark Knight and Warrior both have buttons that simply buff their next GCDs on a stack system, I think Gunbreaker should function the same way instead of having a timer.

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Hard disagree. I play GNB specifically because it's not like WAR/DRK which are both incredibly boring. Homogenizing the tanks even more than they already are is the opposite of what the game should be doing.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

Hard disagree. I play GNB specifically because it's not like WAR/DRK which are both incredibly boring. Homogenizing the tanks even more than they already are is the opposite of what the game should be doing.

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But making No Mercy a stack system wouldn't change how you play at all, it would just make the current No Mercy buff more consistent and feel better.

They need to fix the bug where Double Down never crits.

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Originally Posted by andromeda_kha

But making No Mercy a stack system wouldn't change how you play at all, it would just make the current No Mercy buff more consistent and feel better.

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You could argue it would, but ensuring that it always affects X number of skills. Now usually this should not be a problem as in the optimal case this makes 0 difference, this just gives leeway for lag/skill/whatever.

Which is fine. In particular in an MMORPG. Optimizing for top-damage is just the same hard/easy as before, but optimizing for lower levels of damage target becomes easier and more consistent, therefor allowing more players more access to more parts of the game.

I would argue that overall the job is far too easy to play either way, but that's independent of such a change.

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Originally Posted by andromeda_kha

But making No Mercy a stack system wouldn't change how you play at all, it would just make the current No Mercy buff more consistent and feel better.

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If you have problems with consistency during No Mercy then you should practice more. If you don't like how the burst feels you have other tanks to choose from.

Im gonna be real with the "let's make every buff a stack action" - it completely trivialized skillspeed as a stat as a requirement or even a build option. Sorry for sounding like a massive boomer, but those stacks just ruined a lot of things for the sake of "quality of life". Running Warrior at 2.36-2.48s recast (at your preference) to hit 3/5 Fell Cleaves under Inner Release, trying to hit 5 GCDs with good timing under Bloodweapon (or even more with Stormblood Bloodweapon), etc.

It's bad enough that skillspeed is weak enough as a stat that 8-GCD 2.50s recast is preferred for PLD + GNB, so please kindly, let's just "stop" with the "make XYZ buff just a bunch of stacks so I have zero chance to ever miss critical timing by weaving my CDs correctly". It's boring and I'd rather have it like PvP where you actually have critical timings IN SECONDS to hit better damage (which is what the game USED to be like in PvE)

I'd argue skill speed ruined itself from being such a terrible stat conceptually, without any job being taken into account yet. It's pointless and really ought to be removed. Like I said above the burst would still be suboptimal if you mis-time things anyways, so there's no need to "double-punish" by not having it be stack-based, especially becasue skill speed as a stat and tight-GCD-count bursts inherently punish people not sitting in viewing distance of the data center. That is, there's an element of "you win, you lose" that is entirely based on physical location, not player skill.

The biggest affront is Superbolide not setting to 1HP any more, anyways. Completely made the skill pointless to even have any HP loss in the first place. And ruined the thematics of it, too. Bleh.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

The biggest affront is Superbolide not setting to 1HP any more, anyways. Completely made the skill pointless to even have any HP loss in the first place. And ruined the thematics of it, too. Bleh.

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I miss giving healers a heart attack or doing dumbshit like pressing it then right clicking the invuln to just instant die.

Tin foil hat theory: a reason why Superbolide was changed is because Living Dead is going to get reworked again, and it's gonna be the tank invuln that puts you at 1 HP.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

The biggest affront is Superbolide not setting to 1HP any more, anyways. Completely made the skill pointless to even have any HP loss in the first place. And ruined the thematics of it, too. Bleh.

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It just makes paladins invul strictly worse.. I mean it was already worst in the game due to its long cooldown, but making GNB's practically no downside feels kind of odd.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

It just makes paladins invul strictly worse.. I mean it was already worst in the game due to its long cooldown, but making GNB's practically no downside feels kind of odd.

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If I had to guess they did it because they balance around usage rates.

In 7.05 PLD and WAR were eclipsing DRK and GNB in usage rates, so 7.1 they went in and did some bare-minimum balancing trying to remove pain points from each job.
DRK had its Magic mits generalized, gained the ability to mit in lv 70 content, and got a massive buff to its sustain with 500 cure potency on Abyssal/Carve

GNB has less obvious pain points, single down is basically all they had, so I'm guessing they landed on Superbolide for the other one just to fill out the patchnotes.
It might as well just be Hallowed Ground + considering it can perfectly trigger Heart of Corrundum too.

7.2 is very likely going to have a focus on WAR and GNB seeing as the top tanks in FRU were DRK and PLD.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

If I had to guess they did it because they balance around usage rates.

In 7.05 PLD and WAR were eclipsing DRK and GNB in usage rates, so 7.1 they went in and did some bare-minimum balancing trying to remove pain points from each job.
DRK had its Magic mits generalized, gained the ability to mit in lv 70 content, and got a massive buff to its sustain with 500 cure potency on Abyssal/Carve

GNB has less obvious pain points, single down is basically all they had, so I'm guessing they landed on Superbolide for the other one just to fill out the patchnotes.
It might as well just be Hallowed Ground + considering it can perfectly trigger Heart of Corrundum too.

7.2 is very likely going to have a focus on WAR and GNB seeing as the top tanks in FRU were DRK and PLD.

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Oh yay warrior buffs... so great. Honestly Warrior 100% makes the most sense for buffs, but I'm bias against it at this point.

I think Paladin Mostly did well because there was a section where paladin can cleave (correct me if I'm wrong i have not done the fight) Paladins Aoe/cleave damage is really good, Paladin outside of Fru is still a good pick but Gunbreaker will likely be the better pick for next savage tier without any sort of changes in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I miss giving healers a heart attack or doing dumbshit like pressing it then right clicking the invuln to just instant die.

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Macro:
/ac Superbolide
/statusoff Superbolide
/p A TEST OF YOUR REFLEXES!

I agree with op that DRK was more fun it had more ogcds to press and that it feels less fun now, but I also feel the same way about GNB because of not having Rough Divide any more, and also our 2 minute burst now has Lionheart instead of up to three uses of Burst Strike + Hypervelocity. I like pressing buttons. That’s what got me to start playing these jobs (I started raiding in Endwalker, so don’t know the old DRK).

I’m opposed to the idea of No Mercy being a stack system as well. Part of the fun of GNB is paying attention to make sure the burst window works. I liked how in 7.0 we could adjust where we used Sonic Break in the odd minute No Mercy. Right after pressing No Mercy we could use either Sonic Break or Solid Barrel to make sure we have exactly three carts before it’s time to do Double Down and Gnashing Fang. But that doesn’t need to be done any more, now that Double Down only costs one cart, the odd minute burst works regardless of whether we have two or three carts. The odd minute No Mercy window in 7.1 isn’t as fun to me as it was in 7.0, but I admittedly say this as someone who hasn’t done FRU yet so I don’t personally know how GNB feels in there.

The changes to Sonic Break and then to Double Down have me thinking that there’s sometimes a problem situation, and if it’s seen as something that needs to be “fixed,” it’s more fun to be given a solution we can use if we pay attention, rather than changing the job to remove the situation entirely. GNB will inherently have “problems” with its carts when a raid does not give us full melee uptime, and having to deal with these makes the job more interesting to me. If I didn’t want to do this I’d play PLD, just like how if I didn’t want to press that many ogcds I’d play WAR instead of DRK.

In theory a stack system where No Mercy buffs the next eight or nine gcds could be functionally similar (and depending on how it works out, be a thing that makes it flexible so we can solve problems rather than outright removing problems), but I think it’s not a good change because I feel it will make the job less fun. If it’s eight stacks then the people who like faster gcd speeds will get an option they enjoy just removed from the game. If it’s nine stacks then the people who use default gcd speed (like me) get a “dumbed down” job. This also takes away the small reward we get from pressing No Mercy, Burst Strike, and Hypervelocity at specific moments to sneak in another Hypervelocity under the No Mercy buff. That’s only a minor thing, but I enjoy having it.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Oh yay warrior buffs... so great. Honestly Warrior 100% makes the most sense for buffs, but I'm bias against it at this point.

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WAR sucking the first half of the expansion and getting buffed every single patch afterwards turning it into an OP monster is just tradition at this point.
That said, I don't think it'll ever get a high pick rate in Ultimates. Its lack of damage reduction ends up being a huge hindrance, while its over-investment on Regen does not scale upward to high end content all that well. That and the Devs seem to design the game around Holmgang Cheese now.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

WAR sucking the first half of the expansion and getting buffed every single patch afterwards turning it into an OP monster is just tradition at this point.
That said, I don't think it'll ever get a high pick rate in Ultimates. Its lack of damage reduction ends up being a huge hindrance, while its over-investment on Regen does not scale upward to high end content all that well. That and the Devs seem to design the game around Holmgang Cheese now.

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I feel as if tanks are in the right spot right now outside of ultimate which again Paladin does well because of AOE damage, pretty sure its slightly behind GNB/DRK for most forms of content which I think is healthy, warrior being lowest I'm fine with as I just really am against it's current design

Warrior is in a spot where buffing its mit or damage would make it way too strong, while sustain tools are a weaker upside in higher end content having warrior on the same mitigation playing field as other tanks would make it too good from invul alone and the sustain would be a nice bonus, in that form of content.

I'm not going to be surprised when it gets buffed in 7.2 but at the same time I really do not like it when warrior is the most strongest tank just due to how it's designed, I really doubt they will rework Warrior which is the thing, In fact they doubled down on it being a sustain monster with adding a regen to its 40%...

Oh well in general I hope 8.0 makes tanks more interesting I doubt that though as Tanks and Healers are more of a afterthought compared to DPS with design.

Still dying when Living Dead is up.
Very good job design.

Turning No Mercy into a stack system? Oh hell no.
Look at what it did to Warrior in Endwalker, decoupling Onslaught and Upheaval completely from your damage buff, giving you everything you need for free and with so much leeway that it becomes almost impossible to fuck up, turning the already basic gameplay into completely mindless spam.

Because you can bet that the No Mercy stacks will only apply to GCDs, and while they're at it they'll probably just make it give you free Gnashing as well, completely invalidating any resource management during your filler phase and turning it into another "Press big sparkly cooldown to spam away"-job.

All changes made to Gunbreaker in Dawntrail are already moving in that direction, reduction in resource cost, free 3000 potency just for pressing a single button every 2 minutes, basically just free damage guaranteed for your burst because god forbid someone might mess up their rotation and can't get that cheap dopamine hit during party buffs.

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Originally Posted by ShiyuuHQ

Still dying when Living Dead is up.
Very good job design.

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Shouldn't happen unless:

1.) Extreme spike in latency, my condolences if that is the case
2.) You mistimed it and edged the activation a bit too much
3.) You tried to invuln something that ignores invulns

Living Dead is fine.

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Originally Posted by ShiyuuHQ

Still dying when Living Dead is up.
Very good job design.

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Yeah some attacks pierce invulnerabilities. It's the same for the other tanks.