4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[SyzzleSpark]

(Power Slash)

What does this part mean? Don't you mean Black Blade? It combos off Spinning Slash right?

Black Blade

So this is a neat idea, here's my problem with it. Or my concern, rather, I guess would be a better way to phrase it:

I'm too lazy to math it out, but I can tell just from the numbers you posted here that, considering C&S and Salted Earth and Bloodspiller alone create multiple times per minute wherein you would want to utilize this new combo chain (C&S per 60s, SaE per 45, Bloodspiller on average about every 15-20s), you create a situation wherein you never DA anything on the Souleater chain, or even really use it that much. Probably 2-3 times per minute, just enough to keep your mana stable.

You'd DA every C&S and every Bloodspiller, and your MP would trend down as you abuse the boosts from the Black Blade combo, and by the time you needed to switch to SE combo, the lack of MP from the Black Blade chain combined with DAing everything else would mean Souleater would basically become the new Delirium combo, and Syphon/SE may as well not even have DA boosts.

Either this, or you wind up in a situation where you're not actually gaining or losing enough MP, and so your mana is just kind of remaining static; the idea of having your mana stay static on DRK is mind-boggling, and kinda unravels the playstyle of the job, imo. My point I guess is that while yes, it provides options and diversifies gameplay, and removes Souleater's strangehold on our rotation, it also directly competes with Souleater instead of complementing it, and provides poor synergy.

Here's an adustment I would make:

Blackblade: 100 potency
Combo Action: Hard Slash
Combo Potency: 320
Combo Effect: Increases the final potency of the next Weaponskill or Spell used by 50%.

Removing Spinning Slash from the equation accomplishes several things:
1. Removes an enmity modifier from our DPS rotation. We know, historically, that having these is a pain in the ass, especially for your co-tank.
2. Causes Black Blade to not require 2 GCDs just to get to, taking up undue space in our combo rotation and taking time away from the possibility to regenerate MP from Syphon, or dump MP on Syphon/SE.
3. The slight combo potency increase serves to keep the potency per GCD in line with what it would be had you used Souleater instead.
3a. ->an alternative to this, you could lower the potency to 250 and allow it to return MP equal to Syphon Strike. You wouldn't abuse this as it would result in lowered PPGCD from using Hard Slash every other GCD, but it would definitely even things out and help things synergize better.

The change to the combo effect does the following:
1. You would only use this on GCDs, and not on oGCDs. This means you would pretty much only use it when Bloodspiller is ready, or perhaps while AoEing (giving you 180 potency ADs and 210/315 potency Quietus)
2. This means that you would still use it at least 2-3 times per minute, but not all the time. In single target, you'd dump mana on the Souleater combo, and dump blood in the Black Blade combo. During times where you're gaining a lot of both, like during Blood Weapon, you might run into problems wherein you need to dump both rapidly and might not have time to move though both chains before capping on one or the other but...
3. It gives you a fantastic reason to buff DP as it gives you an extra mana dump not-named Dark Arts!

On that note, another DRK change I would like to see implemented that has nothing to do with your post is to give us an oGCD Blood dump of some kind on a low cooldown. Come to think of it it is relevant to your post. Any time you want to use Bloodspiller, you'd want to prep it with Black Blade, meaning you'd delay dumping that resource. Mana is very easy to dump on demand with this new combo rotation, but Blood, not so much, especially if we're allowing combo GCDs other than Souleater to generate Blood. Something to think about I suppose.

Dark Passenger
Potency: 100
Dark Arts Potency: 240
Dark Arts Effect: Blinds targets for 15 seconds.
Dark Passgener's cooldown and MP cost are lowered based on your current health. <= The addition

My issue with this is it gives you incentive to keep your HP low. I'd rather see something like... maybe give a popped TBN a 30-50% chance to reset the cooldown of DP (keeping in theme with your suggestion, getting extra uses out of DP when you get hit really hard), and either buff its potency to 200 or buff it to 150 and reduce its MP cost. And remove its DA effect. The DA effect on DP is just... idk. I'm just tired of it. Its an overcomplication of the ability and its use for minimal/situational payoff. It feels ham-handed and shoe-horned, and in the current rotation its also pretty much another forced double-weave, particularly in AoE where literally every GCD you use is DA-able.