4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Kabooa]

DPS: We are behind both paladin and warrior while mitigating less and bring less utility to the team, while other classes got to keep their procs for blocking, ogcds, and dots and even received entirely new buffs and powerful skills, ours were stripped and the new skills do not make up the difference of what was lost.

Too Long - Didn't Read
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New Combo Ender. Makes other things hit harder.
Dark Passenger gets better the more your !@#% gets kicked.
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My main disagreement with this section boils down to, as a DPS main, finding straight increases kind of boring. Numbers are nice, but weighted choices are better. I know Dark Passenger is in a bad spot, but the times I use it, I use it because it's exactly what I need in that situation, rather than something kept on cooldown like all the lackluster execution abilities. Unpopular puffin and all, but if Dark's damage is suffering (and by another extent, just the base gameplay itself), I'd rather the solution not be just putting Dark Passenger back to spam-and-eggs status.

Please note that I agree Dark could use a damage boost. The form it takes may not seem important based on an individual's perspective, but to me, at the very least, I'd prefer it be an interaction of sorts that if nothing else at least changes the baseline gameplay of 123 + OGCD.

As an example:

First, ending the monopoly Soul Eater has on blood from the weapon skills. 5 on Siphon, 5 on Soul Eater, 5 on Spinning Slash, 5 on Power Slash, 5 on Blackblade. What's Black Blade?

This mother.

Blackblade: 100 potency
Combo Action: Spinning Slash
Combo Potency: 300
Combo Effect: Increases the final potency of the next Weaponskill, Spell, or Damaging Ability used by 50%.
Uses Scourge's animation. <==== Most important part of this

A thread that I made an ass of myself in pointed out a compelling argument that the Threat Combo of Dark Knights is ultimately the most undesirable. While it might be just behind paladins by a small margin, the presence of Shelltron at least lightens that burden somewhat (As both jobs lose out on MP they will need for their DPS windows, but Shelltron mitigates this). Thus, Black Blade. A combo ender alternative off Spinning Slash.

"But why not off Siphon-"

We'd never use Soul Eater again. I don't want that.

This would provide a layer for Dark Knights to gain additional damage while also removing the monopoly on the Soul Eater combo line. In a similar vein of Warriors and their OGCD Beast management, this layer is one of timing. Delaying the use of an Ability because "Muh Black Blade" would reduce the overall gain you get from it, but doing so correctly would be a significant gain. It also would turn Blood Spiller into a lumbering beast, but again, much of this benefit would require some modicum of planning to avoid resource mismanagement.

Examples:

Bloodspiller: 400 + 200 (Power Slash). Now that Soul Eater doesn't have the sole monopoly on blood generation from weapon skills, this would be a net gain of +100 potency for utilizing Blackblade before bringing the hammer down. (70 potency for the 1200 mp, 30 potency for the combo line). This is extended further when dark arts is brought into play for 540 + 270, bringing the net gain up to +170.

Dark Passenger: 100 + 50 (Power Slash). ...Still pointless I suppose. :P. Even the Dark Arsted version at 360 only serves in a niche case. (Prepping it during a mass pull and then opening for a massive shockwave once they gather.). But I'll be coming back to this one. This is indeed one of my favorite skills, and given the flavor of Dark Knight, there's a thematic, fun, and, I feel, decent niche this can be utilized in fairly often.

Carve and Spit: 450+ 225
Salted Earth: 525+ 262

While the Dark Knight's opener likely doesn't change significantly, in my mind, this alters Dark's gameplan from "Always Soul Eater" to "This !@#%'s coming up. Do I have time to Black Blade?" It is an impactful prospect. Whether it'd fix the damage discrepancy by itself is doubtful, but it would be a damage gain when utilized and optimized. I like this. I like figuring things out and having to find the solution that changes based on how an encounter goes. Straight up unconditional efficiency and potency bonuses don't achieve that even if they're easier (and more likely) to implement and easier to balance.

Back to Dark Passenger.

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

From 100% the values at 100% to 25% at 25% and under. Dark knights live on the edge. I like this. It remains only effective against multiple targets when you're healthy, but as !@#% starts going sideways, Dark Passenger rears it's ugly head and starts coming out fast and cheap. It keeps it from being a mindless spam fest -until you get punched in the face because your plan failed-. When being mindful doesn't work, being mindless is perfectly acceptable, as contradictory as that might sound based on the preamble to all this. If you want to get -real dumb about this though and you know I do-

Living Dead: While you are The Walking Dead(tm), Dark Passenger's MP and Cooldown threshold lower to 10%.

Darkka. Darkka. Darkka.

[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.

[Aana]

You may not be interested in the nuance of getting there, but a lot of us are, because on top of being a below-par tank across the board, for a lot of people it doesn't feel good. Delirium doesn't feel good. SE removed a lot of DRK's "nuances" in the expansion, and tried to make up for it with small combo potency boosts and a %damage increase on Darkside, which pretty much is exactly in the neighborhood of what you're suggesting, and look where we are now. That's why you're seeing people come up with these ideas. Its okay if you're not interested in the nitty-gritty details, but many of us are, because they do matter.

Every single nuance can be mathed out to exact potency gains, just as Delirium can.

For example = Delirium's net gain is the 8s on Blood Weapon, because the MP it gives you only serves as an exchange to cancel out the Blood Gauge cost. Therefore, you can simplify the entire equation of the ability and just remove the BG cost and immediate mana return. When you do that, you see Delirium for all that it actually is: a free +8s on Blood Weapon. That doesn't deserve a 2 minute cooldown. In mana+the attack speed bonus that is about an extra 300 potency per 2 minutes. Its a very weak ability disguised as a strong one.

I would just point out that sometimes the simple solution is the most effective. For example, all these delirium changes would primarily focus on increasing damage while out of grit in the occasional blood weapon window. This is not only subject to human error (popping without getting full duration, boss jumps etc), but it doesn't do jack for drk in grit. Nor does it increase enmity outside of that narrow window. After that you would need another rework for enmity. And another rework for mitigation. Then you end up reworking the whole job, risk more unintended consequences, piss off the people that like drk the way it is. Its a lot of legwork for less gain. A flat damage boost (by contrast) would increase enmity across the board, including the enmity combo. It would help in grit and out. It would help everything. It starts to address 2 of the 3 issues people have with drk (enmity, damage, not mitigation obiviously).

Playstyle is a preference. For every person you bring on board with aesthetic changes you loose some (unknown) number of people as well. Fixing (sometimes simply) the core problems just helps everyone who plays the job regardless. Saying 'I don't particularly care what form the solution takes' I simply mean my goal is to solve the problem. Not redesign drk. I'm not here to make judgments on what's 'fun' for 10m players in this game. But I can take a simple, practical approach to fix demonstrable, measureable balance discrepancies. There are people playing drk right now that would HATE the proposed gameplay changes here. Im not gonna try to referee whos 'fun' is more worthwhile. But we can bring drk to an even playing field in function and practicality.

[Chrono_Rising]

I would just point out that sometimes the simple solution is the most effective. For example, all these delirium changes would primarily focus on increasing damage while out of grit in the occasional blood weapon window. This is not only subject to human error (popping without getting full duration, boss jumps etc), but it doesn't do jack for drk in grit. Nor does it increase enmity outside of that narrow window. After that you would need another rework for enmity. And another rework for mitigation. Then you end up reworking the whole job, risk more unintended consequences, piss off the people that like drk the way it is. Its a lot of legwork for less gain. A flat damage boost (by contrast) would increase enmity across the board, including the enmity combo. It would help in grit and out. It would help everything. It starts to address 2 of the 3 issues people have with drk (enmity, damage, not mitigation obiviously).

Playstyle is a preference. For every person you bring on board with aesthetic changes you loose some (unknown) number of people as well. Fixing (sometimes simply) the core problems just helps everyone who plays the job regardless. Saying 'I don't particularly care what form the solution takes' I simply mean my goal is to solve the problem. Not redesign drk. I'm not here to make judgments on what's 'fun' for 10m players in this game. But I can take a simple, practical approach to fix demonstrable, measureable balance discrepancies. There are people playing drk right now that would HATE the proposed gameplay changes here. Im not gonna try to referee whos 'fun' is more worthwhile. But we can bring drk to an even playing field in function and practicality.

I understand where you are coming from, but I also feel like darkside is already used as a blunt force weapon against us. "You have a constant x% always active and cannot lose it unless you die". If we continue to increase DS I feel it becomes more and more of an excuse to tell us that we don't need anything. For example, TBN is a powerful shield on dark knight, but for a months it was pointed to as the answer to any mitigation or dps problem dark knight had when brought up in any context, despite the fact that people put time and effort into explaining why is wasn't "Free DPS", "Free Utility", and all the other misconceptions about how it functioned.

[Aana]

I understand where you are coming from, but I also feel like darkside is already used as a blunt force weapon against us. "You have a constant x% always active and cannot lose it unless you die". If we continue to increase DS I feel it becomes more and more of an excuse to tell us that we don't need anything. For example, TBN is a powerful shield on dark knight, but for a months it was pointed to as the answer to any mitigation or dps problem dark knight had when brought up in any context, despite the fact that people put time and effort into explaining why is wasn't "Free DPS", "Free Utility", and all the other misconceptions about how it functioned.

Oh I understand that. At some point buffing poisons, darkside, flat 'on' damage buffs gets a little crazy. "Darkside increases damage by 50%".....

I just prefer more targeted buffs that directly address the issue instead of the kind of roundabout ones. It could be darkside, it could be the Drg treatment (Every skill+10 potency lulz). Is TBN to weak? Instead of a complex 10 step plan with tiered effects and growing costs per use, just make the shield stronger, or the duration longer. Reduce the CD. Reduce the cost. Increase the reward. There are much less obtuse ways to fix things that wont confuse players. Play with the numbers before we redesign a job.

Maybe darkside isn't the answer to this one (it was just an example), but there are relatively simple ways to fix the problems drk has that avoid a rework.

Fundamental job reworks are exceptionally rare. The last one we got was 2.1 war, and that was only because there was a grand canyon chasm of difference between pld/war at that time. Things are 'close' now. We aren't going to get fundamental job reworks when the jobs are this close. Redesigns are only realistically used when jobs are beyond help or an expansion. We aren't getting an entire drk rework. We can, and will, get minor tweaks.

[Xenosan]

I see two aspects for throughput. 1) DRK MP intake 2) their 'MP->DPS' function. #1 could be buffed, but #2 needs to be fixed.

The MP->DPS function is jacked, +50 from DA-Q, or +100 from DP, Enmity only from DA-PS, 19% MP cost of turning on Grit.. There is fraudulent use of MP and varying (or nonexistent) returns from it, even exclusive to Dark Arts added effects there's a lack of consistency outside SS>SE>BS.

They should clean that up. What would it do to remove all +Potency Dark Arts effects from Weaponskills and Spells, and put the potency increase into Dark Arts itself.

Dark Arts:
*Adds 140 potency to (most of) the next Weaponskill or Spell used.
*Area of Effect Weaponskill/Spells potency increased by 140 for the first target, 125 for the second, 110 for the third, 100 for the fourth, 80 for the remaining.

Abyssal Drain's HP absorb and Power Slash's Enmity modifier are made bonus, extra utility atop the +potency. DRK shouldn't lose that +140 potency. That's an antiquated 3.x mechanic - hardly made sense then either. DA Quietus sees the same +DPS via a DA as a DA AD or a friggin DA Unleashed. No more inconsistent DPS modifier bologna; a 2,400 MP cost Dark Arts yields +140 potency, universally, for any DA consuming GCD action.

DRK abilities, {DM, DP, CS}, change so they do not consume Dark Arts. This gives them value of being 'free' DAs whenever they are available (as long as they are weaved corrrectly). Even DP, as bad as it is, would become a +200 potency a minute skill in single target with this change (but it still needs base cost removed).

So first just clean up the MP->DPS function. After all, nothing above is a buff, it's just putting an even ceiling on DA's DPS output.

If DPS is a problem, and increasing MP-intake isn't the first and obvious solution: that implies something is wrong. Since that's like ..the theme. If Burst is absent, and providing burst MP-intake isn't the obvious solution, again something is not working properly.

This isn't even considering all of DRKs other shortcomings. this one aspect, the kit-defining one imo, I hope is given some TLC and eventually greater depth. I don't see how Dark Arts and Dark Arts associated skills can remain the way they are for another level cap bump.

But by all means SE, just increase Darkside to +30% damage dealt

[Kabooa]

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

Derp. Originally while writing the post it was for Power Slash, but half way through it, I felt it trivialized threat too much. Thought I got all the references to it removed.

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.

I did consider this, and decided that was fine. After the initial burst window, the variable cooldowns on abilities and the predictable influx of Bloodspillers would still leave room to Soul Eater combo for MP restore (while being a greater return on potency, as a Blackblade with nothing to use it on is a net loss of 25 potency since it'd get used on Hard Slash). Thus, during the Blood Weapon windows, that would be where most of your MP surplus would occur and where most of your excess Dark Arts get utilized. It might 'feel' wrong this far into the expansion where we've been Dark Artsing everything that isn't nailed down, and I readily admit it heavily shifts the paradigm Dark Knight has settled in.

Ideally though, this would be accompanied with some boosts to Dark Knight's tanking MP recovery. The goal is to keep Dark Art excess around while curtailing keyboard keys breaking and having to remap Dark Arts to a new one.

I don't disagree with a two step combo for it, but I do disagree with giving it MP restore even at the cost of potency. A two-step combo is generally done for a specific purpose which is why most potencies tend to be lower than final 3 step averages, so it being around 230-260 without an MP restore would be fine, especially as it increases access to the Wombo and reducing the GCD tax.

[SyzzleSpark]

I would just point out that sometimes the simple solution is the most effective.

Oh, believe me, I tend to agree. You sound like me 4 months ago. I made more than my fair share of simple suggestions inside posts that required no character limit edits before WAR got a free AoE mini-TBN. And before half of WAR's gauge costs were removed, they were even simpler.

The farther we fall behind the more involved the suggestions get, and the more effort put into making them.

At this point any feedback/suggestions help, so long as they are well-thought out. You can find instances in my post history of telling other people to "keep it simple" earlier in the patch cycle. Not anymore though, and for good reason.

[Llus]

Suggestion #1: Buff Shadow Wall.

Possibility #2 (My preferred one): Decrease Shadow Wall's recast timer by a bit. If it's going to be weaker then Sentinel, it should have a shorter recast timer.

Suggestion #4: Add a Dark Arts trait to "The Blackest Night"
"Dark Arts Effect: "The Blackest Night" shields everyone in your party within a certain range, totaling 10% of everyone's maximum HP. Gain 5 points of Blood Gauge for each shield broken." (I considered 10 points of blood gauge per shield broken, but in an 8 man party, that sounds kinda OP to me...)

DA+TBN with a +5 break would be great, but they also need to guarantee that when you use TBN it gets broken because as of now, AST shields, SCH shields, PLD shields & WAR shields could overwrite that TBN and prevent the +5 per(+40 party wide would be great) (and currently the +50 solo target)

I think the +5 per for a +40 party wide is a fair trade off for an excellent raid utility and that change itself would easily put DRK back into the raid meta before the next tier comes out and won't just be PLD+WAR or GTFO

Shadow wall timer reaaaally sux compared. TBH Sentinel's mitigation is kinda stupid, nothing hits that hard that you need a 40% but let's not try to "fix" pld...
Compare SW to Vengeance same mitigation, hell of a different CD SW +30%, 10s, 180s; Vengeance +30%, 15s, 120s +damage reflect ... yea that's fair

[TouchandFeel]

Oh, believe me, I tend to agree. You sound like me 4 months ago. I made more than my fair share of simple suggestions inside posts that required no character limit edits before WAR got a free AoE mini-TBN. And before half of WAR's gauge costs were removed, they were even simpler.

The farther we fall behind the more involved the suggestions get, and the more effort put into making them.

At this point any feedback/suggestions help, so long as they are well-thought out. You can find instances in my post history of telling other people to "keep it simple" earlier in the patch cycle. Not anymore though, and for good reason.

I would also say that the farther that DRK falls behind and the longer it gets ignored, the harder it is to gloss over the different questionable parts of the the 4.0 job redesign that have been churning about in the back of many players' minds.

As for the simplicity vs. complexity argument; complex things are really, when broken down, just made of simple things designed to fit together to create a greater whole.
Gears, cogs and springs are fairly simple when looked at individually, but when put together in just the right way they make a clock.
So I would say that neither simplicity for the sake of simplicity or being complex just to be complex is really the answer, it's the harmonization of the two that should be strived for.
Simple bits and pieces that when brought together form a well designed greater whole. Design smaller, "simple" changes that synergize and work in tandem with each other. Suddenly that "small" and "simple" change means a whole lot more when looking at the greater picture.