DRK and HP sacrifice

My suggestion is simple, implement HP sacrifice to (Shadowbringer) ability, similar to PVP but we will adjust it a bit, here are the details:

1. Shadowbringer will be always available for use, but it will have a cost of (30%) of your HP.

2. We will introduce a new resource, lets call it (Shadowheart), having 3 stacks of it will nullify the HP cost of Shadowbringer, as the 3 stacks will be consumed instead of HP.

3. (Shadowheart) stacks are gained by:
A. Blood Gauge skills (Bloodspiller & Quietus): Each attack provides 1 stack.
B. Delirium Skills (Scarlet Combo attacks & impalement): Each attack provides 1 stack.
C. The activation of Delirium ability: the activation by itself will also provide 1 free use of Shadowbringers via (Shadowbringers ready).

Note: meaning at the very least, you will have access to 2 (Shadowbringer) uses during the Delirium combo.

4. Since Shadowbringer is lv.90 ability, we can introduce a prior version at a lower level, such as (Dark Passenger) which can be learned at lv.64, along with Quietus.

tell me what you think? it might be broken or stupid, but i like the idea of always having the temptation of sacrificing HP for damage.

It would probably be better for the healer to just spam heals on the dark knight instead of trying to DPS so they can weave 2 Shadowbringers every GCD.

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Originally Posted by Espon

It would probably be better for the healer to just spam heals on the dark knight instead of trying to DPS so they can weave 2 Shadowbringers every GCD.

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Depending on the content...yeah, it absolutely can happen.

It will balance out WAR and PLD, whom requires almost no healing.

It's broken under present tuning and likely to be either irrelevant or degenerative under almost any other tuning point, which would make it at least wasteful, even if not necessarily stupid.

Let's assume for a moment that a healer can put out ~25% tank HP per GCD via Cure II or equivalent. This means that any extra free HPS via healer CDs just can be converted into damage so long as the raid has a DRK. Thereafter, moreover, it means that each healer can sacrifice a GCD of offense for a GCD (effectively 351 to 450p ST or 182 to 195p AoE due to Maim and Mend) with an extra Shadowbringer (600p ST + 450p AoE), for the cost of just 600 mp per GCD. That means the healer pair of, say, AST-SCH, can easily squeeze out at least some extra 2600 raid potency per minute unless Shadowbringer were nerfed even assuming there wasn't a single bit of oGCD healing to spare before (else, higher still). And if nerfed, then where would be the oomph of DRK's level 90 ability?

And if you're adding an extra 6 Shadowbringers per minute via Delirium for free before even having any HP cost... it'd just be a spammy noodle of a skill even before balancing out the healer-based stuff.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It's broken under present tuning and likely to be either irrelevant or degenerative under almost any other tuning point, which would make it at least wasteful, even if not necessarily stupid.

Let's assume for a moment that a healer can put out ~25% tank HP per GCD via Cure II or equivalent. This means that any extra free HPS via healer CDs just can be converted into damage so long as the raid has a DRK. Thereafter, moreover, it means that each healer can sacrifice a GCD of offense for a GCD (effectively 351 to 450p ST or 182 to 195p AoE due to Maim and Mend) with an extra Shadowbringer (600p ST + 450p AoE), for the cost of just 600 mp per GCD. That means the healer pair of, say, AST-SCH, can easily squeeze out at least some extra 2600 raid potency per minute unless Shadowbringer were nerfed even assuming there wasn't a single bit of oGCD healing to spare before (else, higher still). And if nerfed, then where would be the oomph of DRK's level 90 ability?

And if you're adding an extra 6 Shadowbringers per minute via Delirium for free before even having any HP cost... it'd just be a spammy noodle of a skill even before balancing out the healer-based stuff.

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Yeah i see your point, maybe if my percentage and resources requirements were adjusted a little it will help, such as:
1. Increasing the HP sacrifice percentage to 30%
2. Increase the (ShadowHeart) stacks requirement to 3.
3. The Activation of Delirium does not provide (SH) stacks anymore, but rather gives a free Shadowbringer use via (Shadowbringer ready).

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Originally Posted by ThorinG

Yeah i see your point, maybe if my percentage and resources requirements were adjusted a little it will help, such as:
1. Increasing the HP sacrifice percentage to 30%
2. Increase the (ShadowHeart) stacks requirement to 3.
3. The Activation of Delirium does not provide (SH) stacks anymore, but rather gives a free Shadowbringer use via (Shadowbringer ready).

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It'd still be increasing the number of Shadowbringer casts from 1 free cast per minute to 2 with a max of 27 casts per minute if double-weaving them. Like... why do that to our nuke?

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Originally Posted by Espon

It would probably be better for the healer to just spam heals on the dark knight instead of trying to DPS so they can weave 2 Shadowbringers every GCD.

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Please don't tempt me with a good time (healers actually healing).

Don't forget DPS like Summoner, Dancer and Reaper all have party heals on a low cooldown and Monk and Pictomancer also have heals every 2 minutes, not to mention the heals generated by the other tanks. It just isn't wise to have a skill that uses HP as a resource, even if you can negate the HP cost via some other means.

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Originally Posted by ThorinG

My suggestion is simple, implement HP sacrifice to (Shadowbringer) ability, similar to PVP but we will adjust it a bit, here are the details:

1. Shadowbringer will be always available for use, but it will have a cost of (30%) of your HP.

2. We will introduce a new resource, lets call it (Shadowheart), having 3 stacks of it will nullify the HP cost of Shadowbringer, as the 3 stacks will be consumed instead of HP.

3. (Shadowheart) stacks are gained by:
A. Blood Gauge skills (Bloodspiller & Quietus): Each attack provides 1 stack.
B. Delirium Skills (Scarlet Combo attacks & impalement): Each attack provides 1 stack.
C. The activation of Delirium ability: the activation by itself will also provide 1 free use of Shadowbringers via (Shadowbringers ready).

Note: meaning at the very least, you will have access to 2 (Shadowbringer) uses during the Delirium combo.

4. Since Shadowbringer is lv.90 ability, we can introduce a prior version at a lower level, such as (Dark Passenger) which can be learned at lv.64, along with Quietus.

tell me what you think? it might be broken or stupid, but i like the idea of always having the temptation of sacrificing HP for damage.

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Even if the idea is interessing, the fact is in the current context of FFXIV, it cannot be set at all without causing huge issues.
1. If the DRK need to sacrifice HP for being competitive in DPS against other tank, why choose one who will only add pressure to healers (revelent in current hard content)
2. If the HP sacrifice allow the DRK to surpass other tank DPS by a meaningful portion, DRK will became the goto tank and healer will have to adjust to crazy DRK.

By considering this, I don't think the healer role would love theses concerns. But more than my opinions, changes to class and game show the devs don't want to go in this direction.

The reason this works in pvp is because of the resource scarcity available and the model where it isn't sustainable to keep eating burst damage for long before a tank has to retreat, reset aggro and pop an elixir. Another reason is also that healers also have limited healing tools to various degrees and will quickly run out of Cure 2 or whatever to give you, while the bulk of the healing also comes from self recuperates.

A pve system based on such premises would allow DRK to function like this, but as it stands currently, pve isn't built nor designed like this. This is also probably why HW DRK went for a MP based approach, and that's probably where lies your best bet.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It'd still be increasing the number of Shadowbringer casts from 1 free cast per minute to 2 with a max of 27 casts per minute if double-weaving them. Like... why do that to our nuke?

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As someone who has seen Fell Cleave turn from "the really cool big burst damage skill" into "it might as well be another filler GCD" I share the sentiment.

Giving you more of "the cool thing" might sounds good on paper, which is probably also what CBU3 thought.
But in reality giving you more of "the cool thing" for free or very little cost makes it not cool anymore. Some abilities feel good exactly because they are rare/require heavy investment.

Yeah no this doesn't work in PVE. Griefing your healers by design just makes no sense with how current ff14 works, even with larger changes I really doubt we could ever this work with how the game fundamentally works.

I don't even get why this is a commonly suggested thing other then because Dark knight spends HP in some other ff14 games.

Fyi I'm all for job diversity and making Dark knight more fun in particular I just genuinely don't really see this happening nor do I want a tank who spends HP because either it becomes a insane DPS tank that becomes better then any other tank or a tank that requires so much healing resource to be on par with other tanks, which either way just sucks lol.

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Originally Posted by ThorinG

My suggestion is simple, implement HP sacrifice to (Shadowbringer) ability, similar to PVP but we will adjust it a bit, here are the details:

1. Shadowbringer will be always available for use, but it will have a cost of (30%) of your HP.

2. We will introduce a new resource, lets call it (Shadowheart), having 3 stacks of it will nullify the HP cost of Shadowbringer, as the 3 stacks will be consumed instead of HP.

3. (Shadowheart) stacks are gained by:
A. Blood Gauge skills (Bloodspiller & Quietus): Each attack provides 1 stack.
B. Delirium Skills (Scarlet Combo attacks & impalement): Each attack provides 1 stack.
C. The activation of Delirium ability: the activation by itself will also provide 1 free use of Shadowbringers via (Shadowbringers ready).

Note: meaning at the very least, you will have access to 2 (Shadowbringer) uses during the Delirium combo.

4. Since Shadowbringer is lv.90 ability, we can introduce a prior version at a lower level, such as (Dark Passenger) which can be learned at lv.64, along with Quietus.

tell me what you think? it might be broken or stupid, but i like the idea of always having the temptation of sacrificing HP for damage.

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I really appreciate everyones feedback, yes, i realise now that (HP sacrifice) as a resource system does not fit in FF14.

But what do you think about the stacks system for Shadowbringer (i.e. ShadowHearts)? Where ShB will be available for use upon accumulating (2 - 3) stacks.

Do you think it'll be interesting? Or do you prefer the current "cooldown based" ability?

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Originally Posted by ThorinG

But what do you think about the stacks system for Shadowbringer (i.e. ShadowHearts)? Where ShB will be available for use upon accumulating (2 - 3) stacks.

Do you think it'll be interesting? Or do you prefer the current "cooldown based" ability?

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The stack system (Shadowhearts) would just be, in effect, a cooldown with a single charge and less flexibility. I see nothing beneficial about it, only negatives.

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I really appreciate everyones feedback, yes, i realise now that (HP sacrifice) as a resource system does not fit in FF14.

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Tbf, the matter is a bit more complicated than this.

HP sacrifice actually does make sense on a tank, because a tank should best know when they'll have HP to spare; the problem is what the HP is spent on and what its tuning balance is.

If the HP is sacrificed for %DR thereafter, for instance, it's just a way to smooth damage intake and avoid overcapping HP from HoTs, etc.

If it's sacrificed for damage, though, it just becomes a party wide spender for excess healer MP if generally optimal. If generally a net-loss, though, it avoids that potential point of "degeneracy" while still at least be usable situationally to clinch a kill or DPS check before having the healers make up the cost when time is less valuable or for extra damage before forced downtime where it has no relative uptime cost.

So right now it's not so much a matter of inherent incompatibility as just... lack of interesting DPS checks (beyond Enrage) in most content, in much the same sense that there'd be little use case for a returned HW style Ruin III as an excess MP spender, and tuning, in that we don't necessarily want to oblige taking a DRK for every piece of content where there might be excess healing (let alone open the floodgates to AoE sustain comps likewise being obliged across DPS and co-tank).

One compromise model that could potentially work better is what pvp WAR does with Onslaught and Upheaval. It does consume HP to use, but those are on a recast delay and cannot be spent at will.

2 healers spamming heals on 6 dark knights spamming shadowbringers xD

I'm in favor of DRK spending HP on attacks, but the biggest problem that would need to be solved would healers pumping a DRK with heals, and sending its damage to the moon. I feel like they could make certain attacks cost both HP, and MP with MP acting as a limiter so a DRK could be healed, but they would still have to recover their MP on their own.

I mean, that's essentially why they went with MP in the first place, though. Since all MP expenditure outside of ranged and AoE attacks themselves originally granted sustain, however indirectly (such as by amplifying the damage of a life steal skill), MP acted like a versatile form of overhealth for DRK, able to be used for increased RNG-dependent but high-average percentile mitigation, reliable anti-magic mitigation, AoE life steal, damage amplification and amplified life steal, or kiting potential (not that we've had the ability to Heavy anything meaningful in forever).

By having Blood Weapon provide MP instead of HP, you could build a useful reserve on CD instead of using the skill only when you were missing HP that could be restored specifically via a slow GCD-by-GCD heal.

I understand why you want this, in games without a dedicated tank, or FF11 where DRK was a DPS, it had hp sacrifice skills for more damage, but that isn't the world we live in now. DRK is a tank, and there are very few circumstances where dropping your hp voluntarily doesn't just cause problems for everybody else in the instance. Healers have to panic, your DPS will get autos when you drop dead, your co-tank, if it's a duty that has one, might already have a job to do and now has two.

You have to face reality, this is just not an option. There is only one tank ability that lets you voluntarily sacrifice your hp and it's a 10 second invulnerability, so the downside isn't there. If I'm in a savage fight or an EX trial and my DRK just dropped 30% of their hp to do a 500 potency attack and then died...well I am sure anybody who can think clearly can see the problem there.

Even DPS can't do this garbage anymore, or anything similar. DRG used to have blood for blood where lance charge is, the same icon too, and it would make them take 25% more damage. This isn't a single player game, or turn based, so these things do not make sense in this context. They were removed and that is a good thing.