4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[WhyAmIHere]

Sometimes I wonder if dark arts should be incorporated into darkside some how since its a requiring skill anyway and darkside is a once and done skill. Then I realize I enjoy the power boosting play style and if this ever happened it wouldn't really play any different from a warrior having to manage mp consumption unless using different skills that do different things is all that matters. Conundrum.

Blood weapon exhausts the weaving aspect of this class though but I'm guessing some people enjoy the rush it brings. There's been a few suggestions, even to make dark arts a 5 second buff just to alleviate some weaving but how would you balance being able to get 2 gcds off from a single dark arts without raising its mp cost or giving it a delay causing drks to sit on full mp. It would create other issues for things like dark mind timings or abyssal drain spam.

What about incorporating the potency boost from DA into every other offensive skill the DRK has, thereby increasing the potencies of them all, and making it so that DA instead adds additional effects to your skills? For instance a DA'd DP would be, as has been mentioned before, a damage down debuff for all enemies hit in the cone it affects; C&S I wouldn't want to touch as it's already finely tuned IMO; DA on BP would add a damage mitigation effect on you; DA on Salted Earth would siphon off HP from all enemies inside the AoE; DA on TBN would extend it's affect to all nearby party members; as has been said providing an adjustment to DM to make it all-damage protection, just for some ideas off the top of my head.

I'd also like to see some serious adjustments to the blood gauge. For starters, I'd like to throw out there the idea of making the base cost of BS 25 blood, and when DA'd it would instead cost 50 blood, and apply a DoT affect where, instead of damage, for a set amount of time your enemies would be afflicted with a debuff that gave you an amount of blood during it's duration (like, 2 blood for 15 seconds); and lastly a DA'd Quietus would stun all enemies hit by it (in the same diminishing-returns fashion of any other stun).

[Chrono_Rising]

What about incorporating the potency boost from DA into every other offensive skill the DRK has, thereby increasing the potencies of them all, and making it so that DA instead adds additional effects to your skills? For instance a DA'd DP would be, as has been mentioned before, a damage down debuff for all enemies hit in the cone it affects; C&S I wouldn't want to touch as it's already finely tuned IMO; DA on BP would add a damage mitigation effect on you; DA on Salted Earth would siphon off HP from all enemies inside the AoE; DA on TBN would extend it's affect to all nearby party members; as has been said providing an adjustment to DM to make it all-damage protection, just for some ideas off the top of my head.

I'd also like to see some serious adjustments to the blood gauge. For starters, I'd like to throw out there the idea of making the base cost of BS 25 blood, and when DA'd it would instead cost 50 blood, and apply a DoT affect where, instead of damage, for a set amount of time your enemies would be afflicted with a debuff that gave you an amount of blood during it's duration (like, 2 blood for 15 seconds); and lastly a DA'd Quietus would stun all enemies hit by it (in the same diminishing-returns fashion of any other stun).

I actually really like the idea of dark arts adding effects to skills over potency. It would give the class an enfeeblement feel. It strikes me a strange that for a class based on sucking the life out of enemies that we have so few self-sustain options, particularly on single targets.

[Mycow8me]

Thats actually probably the best way to go about it. Our dps wouldnt be solely based off how well we utilize our mp anymore though reducing some of the player skill required for high dps. Whether or not that bothers anyone is a different story. I wouldnt be bothered at all really, i'd actually enjoy a bit less weaving on dark and instead becoming more of a punishing/enfeebling tank using dark arts in this way.

[WhyAmIHere]

another idea just came to mind:

Make delirium extend the shield's duration, and/or extend it to nearby party members.
Give the damn skill more to do than just extend two stance-locked skills and give back some MP. Anything to give it more oomph.

[Eyvhokan]

Pointed this out in the other thread, but this one is probably more appropriate. Unmend costs mana. While it makes sense as it's a spell, the actual result in would be like this for a warrior: Tomahawk - ranged attack and takes 2s off your next Berserk.

As a snap suggestion, Improved Unmend should be changed to always go off and give a 480MP discount on your next Dark Arts.

[Arek]

After playing DRK and WAR on Shinryu, some more suggests :

- take off the stance switch penalty for DRK (and PLD)
No more MP cost for Grit and Darkside (and so for Sword and Shield Oath), add a little CD.

This make no sense anymore since the suppression of switch penalty on WAR.
And free spell already exists (like Shield)

- Take off the Mana gain through outside source penalty from dark side.

This makes no sense either since Darkside don't drain mana anymore so no management and the PLD is a big MP consumer too and He can receive Mana song etc.

- Upgrade The Blackest Night duration from 5 to at least 7 sec. And MP cost reduced (1200MP ?) to be sure that is a DPS gain.

Now, TBN cost is the same than a Dark Arts, This is wrong and the gain is not clear.
For the duration, on Shinryu with ilvl338, it takes 2 Auto-attack to break the shield... And that is 3 sec between his Auto-attack so it needs to be perfectly timed. Annoying.

- Make TBN to be able to protect all party members with a Dark Arts.
Might be a 8% DRK Max HP shield since it will be 2400+1200 (with reduced cost), I think it's expansive enough to be on par with the CD of Divine Veil and the additionnal effect of Shake it off.

- Reduce de CD of Blood Weapon with each Blood Spiller.
Kinda like the Warcry Traits.

- Massive upgrade for the HP drain of Abyssal Drain and/or MP reduce cost.
3600MP to use it and the effect is... 1/3 of a Steel cyclone ! This is not balanced.

- Boost the Effect of Delirium on Blood Weapon.
+8 sec instead of +16 sec like Blood Price ? Our Off-tank stance lose a lot of the tool box compared to Main Tank.

- Syphon strike should give the same MP quantities (1 Dark Arts) either on Grit or not.

- Upgrade Carve and Spit with and without Dark Arts.

Honestly, after playing both WAR and DRK, Warrior can do so many things easily, coming back from bad situation. He is so versatile on usage, without penalty and big reward with a near perfect for the DPS or for Mitigate...
This can be a bit disgusting for many DRK who are not rewarded to make choice and sacrifice for there MP management. Chose to protect (with longer CD or less useful than other tanks) OR help on the party DPS OR protect 1 and only 1 Party member.

The Ultimate is out tomorrow and I'm very curious to see the number of DRK who will go and I'm sure there will be a lot less than WAR and PLD.

[Tint]

- Take off the Mana gain through outside source penalty from dark side.

This makes no sense either since Darkside don't drain mana anymore so no management and the PLD is a big MP consumer too and He can receive Mana song etc.

i would go a step further and say: remove dark side or rework it completely. it made sense in 3.0, with the mana drain, but since 4.0 there is no trade off anymore to have it active, except the mana gain penalty through outside resscources, wich isn't even a big deal since DRK has so many tools to get mana. dark side has no real purpose anymore: you activate it once and then you can remove it from your hotbar.

[Kabooa]

Pointed this out in the other thread, but this one is probably more appropriate. Unmend costs mana. While it makes sense as it's a spell, the actual result in would be like this for a warrior: Tomahawk - ranged attack and takes 2s off your next Berserk.

As a snap suggestion, Improved Unmend should be changed to always go off and give a 480MP discount on your next Dark Arts.

This is more an issue with TP being meaningless. PVP kind of addresses that by making TP a resource you have to actively consider, but I'm not certain how many people are going to appreciate having to worry about.

[MauvaisOeil]

I'm not a big fond of making Delirium the multitask ability that solves everything but remains a 2min long cooldown.

While Bloodspiller and Quietus are and should be the offensive way of consuming blood generated, Delirium could be a way to consume them defensively. I know the point of having to sacrifice DPS for something else is a quite underlooked, but looking at the animation, I suggest Delirium to be a no cooldown ability to consume blood into health, like Clemency can be a GCD&MP consumed for healing self or others, Delirium would be an answer to the lack of sustain.

It is far to be a solution, as anything but DPS won't be considered by most, but the weak SoulEater or the hard cost of Abyssal Drain are far from "sustain" or even adding the ability to change the game somehow.

Maybe we just lack abilities to unlock different choices, I just feel Delirium should restore Health somehow. But I wish that consuming blood would allways restore HP nonetheless. That way any blood based skill would restore 10%+ of max HP on trigger. Something like 0.02% max HP per blood spent. Even if we only have a static cost of 50.

[Crater]

Just since we're on the topic of Delirium, I got a little bored earlier and did a bit of comparison between the new offensive buffs that each tank got:

From Stormblood to Heavensward, each tank got an additional offensive buff skill; WAR got Inner Release, PLD got Requiescat, DRK got Delirium. Let's look at the overall effectiveness of each, in terms of how much potency they add over time.

Requiescat, over two minutes:

770 potency from Requiescat itself (two uses at 350 potency each, slashing debuff multiplies by 1.1x)
800 potency from the Requiescat buff (buffs Holy Spirit from 400 to 480 potency, five uses per Requiescat, two Requiescats)
===
1570 total potency.

Inner Release, over two minutes:

Gives an effective 180 extra BG (100 when IR is used, 50 from Infuriate, 30 is generated from a Storm's Path combo during IR/Berserk), all of which is consumed during IR/Berserk.

1 BG is roughly equal to 5 potency:

- Onslaught is 20 BG for 100 potency, straight up.
- Fell Cleave is worth 297.7 potency over to the average WAR combo GCD potency of 203.3 (150 + 190 + 270 = 610, divided by 3), and costs 50 BG, when the average WAR combo GCD produces roughly 9 BG (One SE combo and two SP combos is 80 BG in 9 GCDs or ~8.88; one SE combo and three SP combos is 110 BG in 12 GCDs or ~9.17), for a net cost of roughly 59 BG. (297.7pot / 59 BG = ~5.04 potency/BG)

All of the 'effective BG' produced by IR is consumed under Berserk, with a 1.3x multiplier.

And so, Inner Release is worth 180 * 5 * 1.3 = 1170 potency.

Warrior also maintains Storm's Eye for a 20% damage bonus, and gets an additional 5% damage bonus from Deliverance. In addition, all of this is multiplied by the 10% bonus from the slashing debuff.

1170 * 1.2 * 1.05 * 1.1 = ~1621 potency.


Let's stop here for a moment.

1621 potency every two minutes, compared to 1570 total potency every two minutes. Considering that Inner Release and Requiescat function completely differently and have very different effects, it's pretty amazing that they end up adding nearly identical amounts of damage, isn't it?

It's almost as though these skills were designed together, and were intentionally designed and tuned to be comparable in overall power.



Which brings us to... Delirium, over two minutes:

The first thing Delirium does is exchange 50 Blood for 2400 MP. This is an inversion of the tradeoff you get from TBN, which (as has been discussed to death), is almost just a break-even skill, and over time TBN will, on average, result in an overall loss of about 4.4 potency per use.

- Effect #1: Delirium adds about 4.4 potency directly on use, from the Blood-to-MP exchange.

The second thing it does is extend Blood Weapon by 8 seconds. This effectively gives you three extra GCDs in BW, and three extra auto-attacks in BW. You gain 480 MP for each of those hits: At a standardized exchange rate of 2400 MP for 140 Potency through Dark Arts, 480 MP can be considered equivalent to 28 potency.
You also get 3 Blood from each of those hits, so we need to figure out how much potency 1 point of Blood is worth:

The average GCD of a Souleater combo gives you 233.3 base potency ((150 + 250 + 300)/3), 23.3 potency worth of MP (70 potency of MP, divided by 3), and 3.33 Blood (10 Blood from Souleater, divided by 3).
Bloodspiller gives you 400 potency, at a cost of 50 Blood.

400pot - (~256.6pot) = 53.33 Blood => 143.3pot = 53.33 Blood => 1 Blood = ~2.69 potency.

- Effect #2: Delirium adds 168 potency worth of MP, and about 48 potency worth of Blood.

The third thing that Delirium (well, Blood Weapon) does is boosts your attack speed by 10%. Since it extends BW to three extra GCDs and three extra auto-attacks, we can consider that to be a gain of 30% of a GCD, and 30% of an auto-attack (although realistically this will vary by the fight/phase length and uptime).

Average GCD is ~265.6 potency (using the MP and Blood potency values from earlier), average auto-attack is (roughly) 110 potency.

- Effect #3: Delirium adds ~79.7 potency from the increase in GCD speed from extending BW, and 33 potency from the increase in auto-attack speed from the same.

Total: 4.4 + 168 + 48 + 79.7 + 33 = 333.1 potency. Multiply that by 1.2x from Darkside, and 1.1x from the Slashing debuff: 301.1 * 1.2 * 1.1 = ~439.7 potency


Let's just put those all side-by-side for a moment:

- Requiescat: 1570 potency every 120 seconds
- Inner Release: 1621 potency every 120 seconds
- Delirium: 439.7 potency every 120 seconds

In other words, Delirium is one fourth as strong as the corresponding offensive buff skills that WAR and PLD got in Stormblood, even though the WAR and PLD skills are so closely comparable that you'd have to be an idiot not to see that they were intentionally designed that way. If the cooldown on Delirium were lowered to 40 seconds, and you could buff every single Blood Weapon with Delirium, it would still only be 75% as the equivalent PLD and WAR skills - and that's before you take into account that 2/3rds of those Delirium uses would fall outside of raid buff windows.

Is this a case where "you have to look at the whole kit, not just compare one skill to another!"? No, it is not: A) DRK is worse than the other tanks at everything, so exactly which part of "the whole kit" is supposed to make up for this deficiency? And B) If you "look at the whole kit", then Shake it Off was perfectly fine as a near-useless personal Esuna, and never needed a change - and yet it was buffed into an extremely powerful skill, solely because "It's a new Stormblood skill, it should be powerful!"



Delirium needs to be literally four times as strong as it is right now.