Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[Chrono_Rising]

you have to keep in mind in HW MP generation in grit was lower that out of grit for no reason, what this means? means grit gameplay was slowler compared to out of grit not only bcs blood weapon, but having less MP means less DA, depend of blood price MP return in single target was clunky and inefective, so was a buff on grit on that field.

if we compared gritless on HW and now on SB i will argue we have more MP now bcs yeah we loose bloodprice out of grit but in the other hand they remove darkside MP drain, and less be honest here, blood price never cover the mana drain of darkside, we generate more MP now that before so tecnically is not really a nerf either, if will be a nerf if darkside still consume MP.

they could do it better? probably, the MP manage is more balanced in both stances? absolutely yes.

and about souleater HP drain on grit well, thats another matter, we get in to the discusion about tank stances again, you complaing about grit having all those bonus but in reality most of this bonus are to make grit gameplay fun and playable, without the bonus grit would be the most clunky, boring and disgusting tank stance ever (it is thanks to the DPS meta but that x100) so there is no sense to nerf grit gameplay to the ground or buff gritless to make grit even more less desirable to use, the problem is not the selfsustain being locked on girt, is the dps penalty.

As much as I loved HW dark, I'm not entertaining arguments of "we had this in HW, they needed to fix it now because...". Sure it is important to understand why things happened, but it is far far far more important to me that the job plays in a way that makes sense now in SB.

The net effect of what they implemented in SB makes our stances dancing even worse on Dark Knight. To enhance resource generation in one stance (in particular the wrong stance) compared to the dps stance doesn't make sense, imagine if on warrior resource generation was cut in half (5 gauge compared to 10) across all skills when switching from tank stance to dps stance. There is really no reason to do this, except that it would make defiance less punishing and give it a "faster" play style.

Maybe the solution might make grit less boring, but this points to a problem with grit play. Even with the extra mana I find grit play boring and excessively slow. I would say the most annoying thing about grit play is breaking my soul eater combo because in large pulls abyssal drain is a dps increase and siphon strike is necessary to keep my mana up. Furthermore, I have never relied on soul eater selfsustain when tanking in grit, maybe I've gotten lucky with healers, or maybe it is because large pulls favor the self heal on abyssal drain. When did I want soul eater self sustain? I wanted it when I was against a single target out of grit and being hammered with autoattacks but in that case I only have TBN for 5 seconds. I don't find grit play particularly fun, enjoyable, nor does it actually flow or feel right. I get why they did it, but that isn't a reason that it should be this way.



*** Before I get flammed by someone with "don't like don't play", I really enjoy tanking on dark knight in dps stance.

[shao32]

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i dont say we have to return to HW DRK, i just point how was there and how is now, and for me keeping the same ratio of MP generation in both stances its a good thing, the only diference in grit MP is more sustain and out of grit is more burst windows but the result is the same so i dont really see what is you problem there bcs the result is the same MP ratio in both stances, to be more precise gritless generate more MP that grit so thats make you argument more meaningless.

grit is more slowly even now thanks to the bloodweapon+delirium window, blood price dont really match blood weapon in that field, you feel grit is wrong and poorly, i complety agreed with that, but making it even more less desirable or useless dont really solve the problem unleash you want to delete grit and compensate grit bonus somehow.

[Chrono_Rising]

i dont say we have to return to HW DRK, i just point how was there and how is now, and for me keeping the same ratio of MP generation in both stances its a good thing, the only diference in grit MP is more sustain and out of grit is more burst windows but the result is the same so i dont really see what is you problem there bcs the result is the same MP ratio in both stances, to be more precise gritless generate more MP that grit so thats make you argument more meaningless.

grit is more slowly even now thanks to the bloodweapon+delirium window, blood price dont really match blood weapon in that field, you feel grit is wrong and poorly, i complety agreed with that, but making it even more less desirable or useless dont really solve the problem unleash you want to delete grit and compensate grit bonus somehow.

I think the issue is that I'm not saying how grit itself should be fixed, because the heart of this post is to not suggest fixes, just identify what needs to be fixed. Grit itself needs a rework, it is boring and clunky game play that is not rewarding. This is very noticeable on dark knight, but this is a tank stance issue in general.

The issue I am identifying is that dark knight offers dps tools when its dps is being punished by tank stance, when we want to dps our resource generation is cut because we lose our "grit bonus" but gain access to blood weapon. This feels weird and clunky like an unhappy patch to a tear in fabric, giving us tools which enhance certain skills but in the wrong context just creates a weird clashing feeling when playing the class and trying to plan out your abilities. Grit should have a way of generating resources in a balanced way compared to dps stance, but locking us out of resource generating abilities depending on stance just creates tension within the class itself.

To enhance resource generation in one stance (in particular the wrong stance) compared to the dps stance doesn't make sense, imagine if on warrior resource generation was cut in half (5 gauge compared to 10) across all skills when switching from tank stance to dps stance. There is really no reason to do this, except that it would make defiance less punishing and give it a "faster" play style.

Imagining this type of game play in a different context and it makes no sense. No warrior would look at this and say, "what a great deal", they would say "where is the rest of my gauge in deliverance".

[SyzzleSpark]

Imagining this type of game play in a different context and it makes no sense. No warrior would look at this and say, "what a great deal", they would say "where is the rest of my gauge in deliverance".

Pretty much. There really shouldn't be DPS perks to a stance that nerfs your DPS by 20%.

[shao32]

Imagining this type of game play in a different context and it makes no sense. No warrior would look at this and say, "what a great deal", they would say "where is the rest of my gauge in deliverance".

i dont deny that but otherwise will be imposible play with grit, i mean compared to other tanks they dont generate/use less resources on tank stance, idk why DRK have to have this diference more when MP is not only dps but mitigation too, adding a bonus on gritless can end in a surpluss we cant manage without wasting resources and nerf it in grit hurt grit dps and mitigation, specially dps bcs all mp will be save for TBN, granted at high levels we play without grit but i dont think a change like that can be made without a proper grit rework, other whise grit will me more punishing for no reason.

[Chrono_Rising]

Please tell me if I miss something, but essentially blood weapon's entire function is to compress our 40 seconds of grit siphon strike into 15 seconds of no grit mana and generate blood.

In 40 seconds in grit I can siphon strike 5 times: in grit this equates to a bonus 6000 mana generated over a 40 second interval. We also are moving our GCD .8 GCDs (1.8 but blood weapon also moves us up 1 gcd during this interval) every 40 seconds, meaning that we will being getting an unaccounted for 6th siphon strike every 80 to 120 seconds due to GCD migration.

Blood Weapon: increases my autoattack speed and GCD by 10%, my BIS for dark has me at 2.38 GCD. I expect from blood weapon 480(15/2.7+15/(.9*2.38))= 6028 mana and about 37 blood.

Blood weapon is just returning the mana we would have generated if we stayed in grit for the 40 second cooldown. Though this is an advantage during bursts (remember we line up for every other one) but this means most of the damage gain is actually coming from not having a grit penalty and the blood generated.

In particular this means that we actually gain more mana in grit with the use of blood price than we do out of grit with blood weapon. So switching off grit actually does lower our mana resource pool as compared to our tank stance.

[Chrono_Rising]

i dont deny that but otherwise will be imposible play with grit, i mean compared to other tanks they dont generate/use less resources on tank stance, idk why DRK have to have this diference more when MP is not only dps but mitigation too, adding a bonus on gritless can end in a surpluss we cant manage without wasting resources and nerf it in grit hurt grit dps and mitigation, specially dps bcs all mp will be save for TBN, granted at high levels we play without grit but i dont think a change like that can be made without a proper grit rework, other whise grit will me more punishing for no reason.

Agreed they should not further hurt grit, but they should unify our resource generation, grit needs it but dps stance should see us get as much or more.

[Crater]

I think there's some merit to the idea of giving your tank stance some perks that work to mitigate the damage penalty.

The last time I really enjoyed playing Warrior was in 2.x, and that was largely because way back then, Defiance was actually a really good tank stance: Wrath stacks had a 2% Crit rate bonus each instead of the useless Parry bonus, Unchained had no non-Defiance equivalent, and Inner Beast was actually your strongest attack in either stance. With all that stuff added together, the actual DPS disparity between Defiance and non-Defiance was relatively small; closer to a 15% overall penalty even though Defiance reduced your damage by 25% at the time.

I think that at one point SE did try to consciously evoke some of that idea with Stormblood DRK. Blood Price being locked behind Grit makes it 'free' when you switch into it (and I think that most of DRK's 4.0 design work was done with the idea that Blood Price wouldn't be nerfed into oblivion), the Grit bonus to Syphon's MP recovery raises your effective average potency per weaponskill significantly, and (before they completely lost the plot and stopped trying) the initial version of Bloodspiller dealing the same damage in or out of Grit gave you access to your most powerful attack with no potency loss. Unfortunately, Blood Price got turned into useless garbage, Bloodspiller was given a Grit damage penalty because they couldn't be bothered to update the skill properly, and the Syphon Strike bonus is not enough to carry that concept all on its own. In addition to that, DRK arguably had the least penalized (albeit, yes, still very heavily penalized) stance swapping on Stormblood's launch, but even that little shred of dignity got blown up in the rush to make Warrior overpowered again.

Having said all that, though, I think the idea of giving damage perks to tank stances is a bit of an outdated notion. It was fun to play with in 2.x, because we all played the game a lot more cautiously back then, and tanking typically was actually done in tank stance, but that's been largely abandoned outside of early/blind progression or for players who aren't overly concerned with performance in the first place (and the game is better for it). "Having a good tank stance" these days is an incredibly fringe benefit, with about as much practical use as "having an AoE enmity skill that can be used at range", and shouldn't really be used to inform overall class design or class balance.

[Chrono_Rising]

No doubt there is merit, warrior has it right. Updated too fast lol. Agreed completely, I absolutely agree that there probably was this concept as described but you are right the connecting plot strings were severed and I don’t think tying them together is the correct solution.

[Reynhart]

Is this really true?
DRK in grit loses blood weapon, which is quite high uptime (about 37% if used on cooldown), and contributes not only in skill speed, but adds MP and blood generation (basically 'adding' time to the Dark Arts 'berserk') as well, so losing this is quite a big double dip. Because this is on for such a large amount of time, I would consider losing this a pretty big loss.

Blood Weapon has indeed 37% uptime. Considering it gives à 10% haste buff when up, it provides, on average 3.7% haste. If you reduce the delay to 96.3% (100-3.7), you increase the DPS by 100/96.3 = 3%
So, by having Grit, your base loss is 23% damage (80%/103%) = 77%. From some testing, I found that you can use at best one more Dark Arts during a Blood Weapon window than a Blood Price window unless you use Delirium (which increase the gap up to three...damn that Blood Price nerf). So, you'd gain around 700 potency (5*140) over the course of 2 minutes, so around +15 pot/GCD. I'm not even sure it makes up for BloodSpiller's "increased potency" in Grit by comparison, to really change that 23%

For PLD, by having Shield Oath, you lose 15% of your damage instantly, plus the effect of Sword Oath wich is basically 50 potency every 2.24 seconds. AFAIK, the best rotation on PLD is GB-RA-RA-HS*5-GB-RA-RA (repeat), this rotation build up your total potency to 8250 (1070 for each GB, 760 for each RA, and 200 for HP Spam). The best part of this rotation is that it's basically a 1 minute rotation to line with Requiescat. So during this rotation, you can use 1 Requiescat for 350 pot, 3 Spirits Within for 600 potency (at best) and 4 Shield Swipe for 600 pot (at best), increasing your potency to 9800. On top of that, you can add Circle Of Scorn and its 250 potency every 25s, basically adding another 600 potency every minute, for a grand total of 10400 base potency. When applying ShOath, you remove 15%, ending at 8840. When applying SwOath, you add 1339 potency to your total (50/2.24*60), ending at 11739. So, between the two, you're losing at least 25% of damage.

As for WAR, it's much simpler. Having Defiance up already reduces your damage by 20% (Corrected) while Deliverance increase them by 5%, so your base loss is around 24% (Corrected). And any Beast ability linked with Defiance is a DPS loss when compared to the corresponding Deliverance ability, even if it ignores the damage penalty. The only tricky skill is Onslaught, I haven't really tested if the increased HP makes up for the damage penalty.

Keep in mind that these calculations consider 100% Tank stance vs 100% DPS stance, and I'm fairly aware that they don't apply as they are in real content, when you take into account the mechanics. And, again, I don't claim that DRK deals more damage. If you have one job at 3000 that loses 25% damage and the other at 2800 losing 23%, the first one is still higher.

The primary point to make with regards to your posts is that they are muddying the discussion by diverting attention away from the matter at hand with ephemeral discrepancies in perceived performance based on varying uses of individual skills, or stance usage, across percentiles that statistically are inconsequential in the scope of job balance as a whole, and which can be measured regardless of statistical subsets with the data that we actually DO have.

Frankly, I really dont think DRK is "the matter at hand". The whole content design that enforce people to drop as much mitigation as possible is what makes tank balance a mess.