Dark Arts on Dark Passenger and Abyssal Drain appears to be broken

[hallard]

From what I can tell, buffs and CDs draining MP just seems to darkside's natural drain happening to coincide with the use of these CDs. Using CDs outside of combat shows a small loss of MP roughly equal to darkside's drain, but using CDs while smacking a dummy shows nothing out of the ordinary. Looks like that "issue" is just us being paranoid.

Dark Passenger's definitely broken, though. Don't have Abyssal Drain yet, but I can believe it's busted too. I have no idea how they managed to trade one useful but not overpowered bug for one that makes multiple skills worthless.

[BlueThunder]

Please see my previous post on Darkside costs and mana regeneration during combat. I'm not talking about Out of Combat regeneration, here.

Please make some math on what I just said.

If I said Darkside consumes around 200-300 MP and in combat you say you regenerate 138MP, with the amount of MP you say you loose with Darkside on during combat, do some maths. Or wait, I'll do it for you:

138+127=265 ---> Actual MP that Darkside takes away from you every tick, but because you regen MP in combat, it will only take 127MP, because you're adding 138MP to that 265MP loss.

Maths dude, they do wonders.

[Hundred]

Natural mana regen in combat, for me at least, is 138 mp/tick.

Ive already tested here.
Go into combat with any monster with darkside up, do 2 attacks and then STOP. Just let it AA. Darkside and your mana regen will desynchronize. You'll get a darkside tick and then your mana regen will tick. This will not be enough to top you off, you'll find that darksides actual Degen is larger then your mana regen. Mana regen in combat is 2% of your maximum mana every 3 seconds.

You're confusing what you see with Darkside in Sync with your mana regen as the cost of darkside which is erroneous.
Eg. @ lvl 55. Dark side ticks for 145 mana every 3 seconds. Mana is 3747. 3747x 0.02 = 74.94. FFXIV truncuates the .94. as far as I can see
145 - 74 = 71. Well go and hit the dummy and what do we see? 71 mana being lost.

Well lets IMPROVE this testing and add PIETY. Piety increases your maximum MP so it increases how much you're regenerating as a result.
Remember that 145 darkside base? I was losing 71 a tick in combat. New mana cost is 3871. 3871 x0.02 = 77.42.
145- 77 = 68. So given this I should expect to lose 68 mana a tick now. Go into combat and...oh shit 68 being lost. How did my Darkside cost decrease? It decreased because my mana regen which is ticking at the SAME TIME, increased.

Its possible that what some of you are seeing is the Buff out of combat causing another desync between your Darkside tick and mana regen tick, though I can't confirm that. Out of combat your mana regen tick is stronger (3% every 3 seconds instead of in combats 2% every 3 seconds) then darksides tick so you'll go back to full. What I have seen is a loss of mana when a buff went on me during a dungeon run, but these spikes weren't dropping me out of usability so while confusing and presumably detrimental over the course of a long fight, players are being rather melodramatic.


Something also worth considering is why does the darkside cost desync at all in the first place.

Edit: Aww Bluethunder why you gotta steal my thunder?

[BlueThunder]

Ive already tested here.
Go into combat with any monster with darkside up, do 2 attacks and then STOP. Just let it AA. Darkside and your mana regen will desynchronize. You'll get a darkside tick and then your mana regen will tick. This will not be enough to top you off, you'll find that darksides actual Degen is larger then your mana regen. Mana regen in combat is 2% of your maximum mana ever 3 seconds. When they are in sync what happens is the Darkside cost and the mana regen happen at the *same time* however since Darkside is more expensive what you're seeing is simply a reduced cost from your natural mana regen, if you desynchronize you see the true cost of darkside.

You're confusing what you see with Darkside in Sync with your mana regen as the cost of darkside which is erroneous.

Guess I shot first, mate :P Did the maths for him in my post above yours

[Arkard]

From what I can tell, buffs and CDs draining MP just seems to darkside's natural drain happening to coincide with the use of these CDs. Using CDs outside of combat shows a small loss of MP roughly equal to darkside's drain, but using CDs while smacking a dummy shows nothing out of the ordinary. Looks like that "issue" is just us being paranoid.

Dark Passenger's definitely broken, though. Don't have Abyssal Drain yet, but I can believe it's busted too. I have no idea how they managed to trade one useful but not overpowered bug for one that makes multiple skills worthless.

It's not, though.

Go to a dummy, get in combat, wait for Darkside to tick then immediately use Shadowskin or any other manaless buff. You will lose MP twice. The second loss hits you even harder, because you don't have your natural MP regen to help offset the cost.

You can wait for it to tick again after that, then right click your buff to remove it. Again, you'll lose mana twice.

This would be fine if the skill's description, instead of being 'MP is slowly drained', were changed to 'Dude, name a thing that happens to you. You lose MP for that.'

[Valonir]

If I said Darkside consumes around 200-300 MP and in combat you say you regenerate 138MP, with the amount of MP you say you loose with Darkside on during combat, do some maths. Or wait, I'll do it for you:

138+127=265 ---> Actual MP that Darkside takes away from you every tick, but because you regen MP in combat, it will only take 127MP, because you're adding 138MP to that 265MP loss.

Maths dude, they do wonders.

Please explain how you're figuring it consumes 200-300 MP. And just because 'oh 138+127 = 265 that's the mana cost because I said so' doesn't make it true, you can't actually tell because.. it doesn't show up in the combat log that you're regenerating mana.
Did you datamine this information, or do you just like throwing out maths for no reason?
It could very well shut off mana regen (which is more likely, considering it also is not affected by outside sources of mana regeneration) and just cost the flat 127 MP/tick.

[Valonir]

Long post is long.

The Desync you're seeing is whenever you use an ability, a buff, or whenever you're debuffed/have a regen effect on you it's attempting to subtract another Darkside tick and, again, the uptick you're seeing is the server correcting for the lost mana.
There's an entire post in the bug forums about this.

[Hundred]

Valonir I just tested this again.
Go get yourself a Restat now, go against any mob or dummy. Use darkside and attack, record how much mana you're losing while activating your abilities for a moment. You can do this at any level. Now stop using abilities, and just auto attack in a moment you will see your mana go down and then slightly increase. Note how large the decreases are when this desync effect is happening. Contrast this decrease amount with your natural regen and you'll see the sum is the EXACT same as what you normally see as the dark side tick.
Now that you have restated, put all your points in Piety.
Even without the Desync if you look you'll suddenly see "Hey Darkside isn't costing me as much" This is because your natural regen is now a higher amount.

It is straight out visible that Darksides degen tick will change with Piety, the only reason its doing this is because your 2% every 3 second regen is now 2% of a higher number. They don't shut off your mana regen.

[BlueThunder]

Please explain how you're figuring it consumes 200-300 MP. And just because 'oh 138+127 = 265 that's the mana cost because I said so' doesn't make it true, you can't actually tell because.. it doesn't show up in the combat log that you're regenerating mana.
Did you datamine this information, or do you just like throwing out maths for no reason?
It could very well shut off mana regen (which is more likely, considering it also is not affected by outside sources of mana regeneration) and just cost the flat 127 MP/tick.

1) Combat log doesn't show the passive HP/MP/TP regeneration.
2)One doesn't need to datamine to see things this blatantly obvious, and you are blind to the situation. Again if it BLOCKS MP regeneration like you claim, WHY DO YOU GET MP BACK OUT OF COMBAT?

Hundred already did a post below mine where he explained you how he saw it.

[Valonir]

1) Combat log doesn't show the passive HP/MP/TP regeneration.
2)One doesn't need to datamine to see things this blatantly obvious, and you are blind to the situation. Again if it BLOCKS MP regeneration like you claim, WHY DO YOU GET MP BACK OUT OF COMBAT?

Hundred already did a post below mine where he explained you how he saw it.

Obviously a straight week of grinding with little to no sleep has completely distorted my common sense and reasoning. At least I have the huevos to admit when I'm wrong and say you were both right.

Thread's derailed, though (which I had my hand in doing), and it doesn't change the fact that the desync is annoying and Dark Arts empowered Dark Passenger/Abyssal Drain is still broken as hell.