What's going to be the strength of Dark Knights now?

[Bdyer]

Now all that being said paladin doing gb- ra-ra-gb-ra-ra-gb-hs combo will be:
60 sec scale
7457.5(basic weapon skill combos)
2580 (Holy Spirit)
600 spirits within
300 requicast
= 457 + 109 (auto attack) + 54 ( sword oath)
=620 pot/gcd

If a dark knight can throw in blackest knight on cooldown to get in another bloodsplitter then he can get to 540 and then charge each bloodsplitter with Da he can get to 580. That's a total of 5.5 DA's per 30 seconds . It can be done but will take a lot of resource management

I will note that all these calculations are for single target only. At 3+ mobs a drk blows a paladin out of the water dps wise

[Hierro]

A good question for dps calculations.... while doing Holy Spirit since that is a spell... does it remove or delay auto attacks?

I can't say I've ever smacked an enemy with an auto attack and then cast a spell with less than gcd and then count my number of auto attacks .

Also I don't think the war or drk numbers counted in auto attacks

I think you can auto attack, considering the cast is only 2 seconds, while recast is 2.5. theorectically, you could fit in something during that half a second.

[BlackironTarkus]

DRK is difficult to do base calcs on because if you spend 2400 mp on TBN to gain a bloodspiller you have lost approx 140 potency from otherwise spending it on a Dark Arts.
Bloodspiller is 380 base, so you gain an attack that hits for essentially 240 after balancing it out.

So your combo goes from
Hard (150) -> Syphon (250) -> DA SoulEater (420) at 273 average with 2400 mp spent to:
Hard (150) -> Syphon (250) -> SoulEater (280) -> TBN (380) at 265 average with 2400 mp spent.

Additionally this pushes your combo out by 1 skill.

If you spent 4800 mp you can do:
Hard 150 + Syphon (390) + Souleater (420) at an average of 320
(TBN +50 blood) Hard 150 + Syphon (250) + Souleater (280) + Bloodspiller (520) at an average of 300.

Bloodspiller is a straight up DPS loss if you have MP to spend.

Now where it gets interesting is when you don't have MP to spend.

Assuming you have 100 Blood saved up and you've hit a window where you can't spend MP on dark arts, the question now becomes does it improve.
Hard/Syphon/SE is worth 1200 mp from the vids, or 400 mp each, requiring two syphons to gain a dark arts.
Hard->Syphon->SE->Hard->Syphon = +140 potency
If you add bloodspiller into that the average goes down to 300mp each.
Hard->Syphon->SE->Bloodspiller->Hard-> Syphon = +140 potency.

Spending no mana, the combos work out to:
150+250+280 = 226.6/gcd
150+250+280+380 = 265/gcd

So you gain 38.4 average, but lower the average MP you gain, so you have to add that.

150+250+280+(70) = 250/gcd
150+250+280+380+(70) = 282.5

Or an increase of 32.5.

But you can't spend any MP explicitly for getting bloodspillers, or you lose 140.

[Reynhart]

Bloodspiller is a straight up DPS loss unless I'm missing something.

You are, because of this :

Additionally this pushes your combo out by 1 skill.

It doesn't matter that you "pushes" your combo. The potency of basic Bloodspiller (380) is higher than the average potency of your SoulEater combo even with two Dark Arts (150+390+420)/3 = 320, and that's even before considering that Bloodspiller ignores Grit's penalty. In the end, it's always a DPS gain.

and also because of this :

Hard (150) -> Syphon (250) -> DA SoulEater (420) at 273 average with 2400 mp spent to:
Hard (150) -> Syphon (250) -> SoulEater (280) -> TBN (380) at 265 average with 2400 mp spent.

In your first example, you use 3GCD, in your second, you use 4. So, you first example should be HS -> Syphon -> DA-SoulEater -> HS at 242 average potency.

Is The Blackest Night a DPS loss with its mana cost ? Maybe. But not having the Blood Gauge to use Bloodspiller sure is a DPS loss, so TBN help compensate for that.
And the primary use of Blackest Night is to mitigates big hits, which is still supposed to be your biggest concern over DPS.

[BlackironTarkus]

If you completely ignore bloodspiller your average is 150+250+280/3 = 226 with no dark arts.
If you add bloodspiller in where you can your average for that combo set is 150+250+280+380 = 265.

If you spent 2400 mp to get that bloodspiller however, bloodspiller is only worth 240, as spending 2400 mp on dark arts would have added 140 to another ability, becoming:
150+250+280+240 where you added it, instead of
150+250+420 if you didn't.

Over 5 combos (15 GCDS) you can dark arts them all.
Using the MP on DA gets you an average of 273.

If you include 2 uses of blood spiller (15 gcds = approx 30s, for TBN CD)
This goes to:
[150+250+280+380]+[150+250+420]+[150+250+420]+[150+250+420]+[150+380]
[1060]+[820]+[820]+[820]+[530]/15 = 270 average.

At the end of the day bloodspiller just.. isn't very good. It's minimal return, the further you go into a rotation the worse it just seems, and spending MP on it explicitly is outright out of the question unless someone needs that shield.

[Sarcatica]

If we take 15GCDs as an example, we can either fit 5 SE combo OR 4 SE combo+3 Bloodspiller. You are spending 7200mana on 3 Bloodspiller.

5x SE combo: 680pot x 5= 3400pot + 420pot (3x DA for 7200mana)= 3820pot. You sit at 50 Blood Gauge.

4x SE combo + 3x Bloodspiller= 680pot x 4 + 380pot x 3 = 3860pot. You sit at 40 Blood Gauge.

Albeit small, Bloodspiller is a potency gain. We are yet to factor in Bloodweapon and Blood Price activation. Additional DAs is a flat potency up, which means that Bloodspiller should be used instead of DA-ing SE or Syphon.

We also need to consider that using Bloodspiller delays mana generation by 1 step each, which means that it might actually be a case where it's a tradeoff whether to do burst OR to sustain mana for more DAs later on. We also have no idea how much mana we will have because Darkside no longer drains mana while we also have Blood Price gated in Grit now. So we are at this stage where free Blood Gauge tentatively is used for Bloodspiller, Blackest Night usage helps compensate for the loss of mana through 1 Bloodspiller. Delirium is a potential one as well if we actually get back 2400mana for 1 DA activation but we shall see.

Edit: I was curious about the total potency on a longer rotation. I compare 3 rotations for 33 GCDs which fits the generation of 2 free Bloodspiller from 10 SE combo. New Souleater gramts 10 Blood Gauge iirc.

1st rotation: 10x SE combo with 2x Bloodspiller (free) + 1x Bloodspiller (Blackest Night, 2400mana)

680pot x 10 + 380pot x 3 = 7940pot

2nd rotation: 11x SE combo no Bloodspiller with 1x DA (2400mana)

680pot x 11 + 140pot = 7620pot

1st rotation does 320pot more than 2nd. What if we don't use

3rd rotation: 10x SE combo with 2x Bloodspiller (free), 1x Hard Slash (last GCD in 33 GCDs) and 1x DA (2400mana)

680pot x 10 + 380pot x 2 + 150pot + 140pot = 7950pot

You gain a net of 10pot for not using Blackest Night for Bloodspiller each time which in the larger scheme is just a minor DPS loss if you have to use Blackest Night.

Roughly compare it to the current DRK rotation with 33 GCDs:

Scourge x2 (500pot x2) + SE/Delirium combo x10 (avg 670pot x 10) + Hard Slash x1 (last GCD, 150pot) + Low Blow x2 (100pot x2) + DA x1 (to balance out as a 'fair' comparison, 140pot) : 8190pot.

Comparison: 7950pot VS 8190pot. The new value has yet to add the 5% from Darkside, whereas old value misses the RNG proc from Low Blow and Reprisal, also missing the data of how much mana generation from the extra Blood Price for additional DAs. Overall somewhat at the same power (tbc). The biggest difference between old and new is potentially the amount of DAs that you can get.

The big thing atm is how PLD is going to perform in a real fight situation. DRK is not under a tight timer whereas PLD needs the most uptime to keep channeling damage, PLD loses the most DPS in fights with downtime due to the double 60sec CDs that you need to keep using. WAR is somewhat on the mid side for this. As it stands I would say either bringing PLD or DRK will/might be determined by how the fights interact with players.

[BlackironTarkus]

I would just like bloodspiller to feel good to press instead of being a minor dps increase simply to dump the blood we're accumulating. At this point it's literally a replacement for Scourge maintenance. Instead of spending a global on scourge, we're spending it on bloodspillers which are weaker but happen more frequently.

If they put bloodspiller OFF the global with no cooldown, just the high blood cost it has, that would be ****ing awesome, and we're sorely lacking ogcd usage now that they removed low blows and reprisals from our rotations.

[Daniel_Fury]

One soul eater combo is HS150 + SS220+ SE280= 650.

Over 6 gcds, 2* soul eater combo = 1300 potency.
For arguments sake, add 6 DA uses= 6 * 140= 840.
Add them together and you get 2140 potency.

Now let's not forget you generated another DA from the 2 syphon strikes in the 2 soul eater combos so add another 140.

The total over 6 gcds and 7 DA'S is 2280 potency (if you somehow used 7 DAs).

Now if you used 6 blackest nights (same mp cost) and 6 blood spiller (6 gcds) you get 6*380 potency.

This totals 2280 potency.

I can't see where the dps loss is.

They actually break even.

3*BN+BS at 3GCDS = 1140 potency.

1*Souleater combo= 650 potency. 3 dark arts at 140 potency each = 420. Total is 1070 potency.

This looks like blood spiller is a dps gain but you only generate half a dark arts in 1 soul eater combo. The dps will break even over 6, 12, 18 GCD etc.

[Alphras]

I think you can auto attack, considering the cast is only 2 seconds, while recast is 2.5. theorectically, you could fit in something during that half a second.

Afaik the auto attack timer stops while casting, so you would loose about one auto attack for each cast (a bit more actually).

Correct me if I am wrong about the timer.

[Sarcatica]

One soul eater combo is HS150 + SS220+ SE280= 650.

Syphon Strike is 250pot.