Dark Knight (Marauder -> DPS)

[Duelle]

OP bases their DRK design too much on the mechanics used by WAR. That's not a path I'd recomend taking because Wrath was designed to work in tandem with Defiance.

On a personal level I'd like to see DRK take up a big sword again like in ages past. XI's iteraction with scythe felt too awkward. MRD's base animations don't really allow for it unless OP intends the job to use a G-axe like MRD and WAR do.

lv 30 Dark Blade: Reduces Enmity generated by your abilities by 75%. Increases damage dealt by 40%. Replaces your axe with a greatsword. (RIFT uses the weapon replacement with Harbinger.)

As Kitru said, you'd need to create animations and models for every axe in the game. I don't think thats a good road to take. And I agree that if you wanted a DPS job to branch off a tank class all you'd need to do is set the job crystal to remove the Increased Enmity tags on abilities that have them.

lv 35 Creeping Shadows: Delivers an attack with a potency of 120 on up to 5 targets. Additional effect: DoT effect for 35 potency, lasts 30 seconds. Tp cost of 80

Up the TP cost, remove the DoT. This should be semi-spammable when AoE is called for like Doom Spike.

No idea what the rest would be

From a really old suggestion I made for DRK:

30 Dark Slash: Sacrifice HP to attack your opponent with a heavy slash, dealing physical damage and additional dark damage.
35 Umbral Symbiosis: Lowers target's Attack and Magic Attack by 3% and increases your Attack and Magic Attack by 3%. Costs 200 MP.
40 Night Slash: Drains TP from up to three targets in front of you. 400 MP cost. 20 second cooldown.
45 Asphyxiate: Interrupts spell-casting. 20-yalm range. 90 second cooldown.
50 Last Resort: Your next three weapon skills consume HP in addition to their normal costs for additional darkness damage.

[Leiron]

75% is a bit of overkill. The high enmity mods on the attacks increase the ratio of damage to enmity from 1:1 to 1:2.63. A 75% decrease in enmity generation would cause the class to generate 2/3rds of the enmity per point of damage as other DPS classes. To reach parity, you'd want to reduce enmity by 60%.

Fair enough, I don't know the exact enmity modifiers, so as long as it matches other DPS classes I do not mind.

Of course, the devs have already stated that they could just have the class change from MAR to DRK remove all of the high enmity tags and completely avoid the need for an enmity reduction stance completely. The 40% increase to damage I'm not entirely sure about, especially if you're adding more efficient attacks as part of the job. While it's true that a MAR in DPS gear won't match a real DPS, I'm not entirely sure what the exact comparative discrepancy is; based upon my gut, 40% seems kind of high though. It would probably also serve the class well to tie the damage increase to some other mechanic, like scoring a critical hit applying a stacking DoT that makes up the difference or dealing damage to a target suffering from your Fracture is outright increased, rather than just making it an outright passive increase of that size.

The main reason for the large increase is because other classes have mechanics to modify their DPS by a larger armount.
BLM alone uses an 80% modifier through AF3 for fire spells.
Marauder's just don't have the same DPS capability and need something similar.

Changing the axe to a greatsword requires a decent bit of work, since it requires the art team to create two models for every axe they make. It's not an *insurmountable* issue (especially since implementing it would be the same amount of work for them as just creating an entirely new class that uses greatswords), but it's still a concern, especially since it doesn't actually impact gameplay.

No, you do not need two models for every axe that is made.
Not at all actually.

http://cdn.riftgame.com/rift/storm/s...oncept1_lg.jpg

In RIFT, when a Harbinger applies a weapon buff, it uses a single model for ALL the different weapons in the game.
Sword and totem? Disappears and its replaced with the Scythe.
2H staff? Disappears and its replaced with the same Scythe.

You activate the stance, you get the greatsword in hand regardless of the model
1 model for everything, easy, simple, and not much work.

That's an insanely strong AoE. Fracture costs the same TP and is single target but only provides 300 potency over the (same) full duration. This one is AoE and deals *470*. That outclasses every other DoT in the game by a massive margin *and all of the DoTs we're comparing it to are single target*.

Yes, by comparison Archer's get two DoTs that hit for around 200+ each, and they both have the ability to trigger Bloodletter which is off the GCD.
Marauder is infamous for not having non-GCD abilities besides mercy stroke.
This would help compensate given they are ruled by the GCD more heavily

As Kitru said, you'd need to create animations and models for every axe in the game. I don't think thats a good road to take. And I agree that if you wanted a DPS job to branch off a tank class all you'd need to do is set the job crystal to remove the Increased Enmity tags on abilities that have them.
Up the TP cost, remove the DoT. This should be semi-spammable when AoE is called for like Doom Spike.
From a really old suggestion I made for DRK:

As I corrected Kitru earlier, no, you do not need to.
Activating the stance will replace whatever axe you have with the dark knight sword model.
The only work becomes changing the animation, which in the worst case scenario you can use the already existing animations in the game which is what is done in RIFT.
None of the scythe/Axe/GS animations are different, they all exist in the game already.

I am not sure I agree with the self sacrifice mechanic because many attacks can reduce your health by half already.
You'd have a strict requirement, and due to the HP sacrifice you'd be squishier than other DPS.

[aswedishtiger]

When I read facepalm, I /facepalmed

[Duelle]

As I corrected Kitru earlier, no, you do not need to.
Activating the stance will replace whatever axe you have with the dark knight sword model.
The only work becomes changing the animation, which in the worst case scenario you can use the already existing animations in the game which is what is done in RIFT.

Except that Rift and WoW have blanket animations for their two-handed weapons, whereas each animation and combat stance in FFXIV was tailored around that weapon. With the way MRD and WAR hold their weapon, you can't just replace that axe with a great sword. One hand is near the end of the grip of the weapon and the other is near the head of the axe with both feet spread apart, the way an axe should be held to maintain your balance.

To add a GSword you'd need to replace not only the combat stance but also all swing animations and foot positioning. How much you'd need to change depends on what stance you're going to use. You could cut and paste GLA's stance and tweak it, but that wouldn't look convincing. If you went with something like Siegfried's stance from SCIV, they might as well make a new class because then you'd need a lot of new animations.

I am not sure I agree with the self sacrifice mechanic because many attacks can reduce your health by half already.
You'd have a strict requirement, and due to the HP sacrifice you'd be squishier than other DPS.

The self-sacrifice thing is one of those staples of DRK that you can't really get rid of. FFII's DRK was a knight with some black magic, but the job didn't come into its own until Cecil came in and started cutting himself to deal damage. I'll admit that my suggestion was made WAY before the 1.0 servers shut down, before I knew they were trimming down GLA's sword skill repertoire as well as increasing the importance of stuff like Blood for Blood. You can't even make it heavily based on drains because WAR's tanking model is currently defined by self-heals. DRK is in an odd spot if you were to go with tradition. Now if they decide to reimagine the job the way they've done with Summoner and Scholar we might be on to something.

[Sinaloa]

When I read facepalm, I /facepalmed

And I bet you were missing words thus silenced and your aggro versus other stupid ideas was reduced.

[Leiron]

@Duelle: What if you replaced it with a Scythe? The grip would not need to be altered greatly if at all.

[Gamemako]

@Duelle: What if you replaced it with a Scythe? The grip would not need to be altered greatly if at all.

Imagine the animation of Skull Sunder with a scythe. Would be more than a little strange, not to mention that the scythe would need to be pretty short.

[MartaDemireux]

Imagine the animation of Skull Sunder with a scythe. Would be more than a little strange, not to mention that the scythe would need to be pretty short.

There are ways around that. Look at GLA using Straight Shot. It's not like it shoots arrows out of its sword haha.

[MithrasInvictus]

I would love to see some absorb spells for DRK if, or when, the job is implemented. I loved those! Especially considering that STR is both the mitigation and the damage stat, stealing STR for a few seconds before popping a weapon skill would be pretty great!

[Gamemako]

There are ways around that. Look at GLA using Straight Shot. It's not like it shoots arrows out of its sword haha.

That was the point, however -- you'd have to redo the animations, which is just as much work as creating a new class that isn't beholden to a previous class design.