#BringBackHeavenswardReprisal

[Eyvhokan]

I would keep Delerium as is, except make it completely free (apart from the cooldown of course).

In fact, probably that isn't even enough seeing how weak it is. Considering similar abilities are just 'press button, get more damage' with no cost to a damage resource, I don't see why it has that 50 blood cost tacked on apart from giving the something to spend blood on when levelling during 62-63.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

First, let me start by saying that if anyone on the dev team is following this particular discussion and giving it serious consideration, you're earning a resub.

Wow. I was not expecting this level of depth and attention to detail, and I'm frankly amazed at how much of that post turned out to be pretty well balanced by-the-numbers given that it was written on 4 hours of sleep at the bored, slow end of a 12 hour night shift.

Anyway. At the risk of sounding like a kiss-ass, I truly do struggle to find any flaw with your math or arguments, and in particular, your comment about how the sum of these buffs could leave PLD dead in the water definitely caught my eye, as that is not a world I want to revisit either. (I do care about balance and not just DRK's place in it, after all)

I also went and read your post on Delirium that you linked, which I somehow missed, and my god. Like checking your bank account and finding pennies.

In light of that, let me offer some tweaks.

1. New Reprisal costs 20 BG.
2. TBN returns 25 BG instead of 50. Every other TBN is a more defined loss now, but the ones that proc Reprisal are, as seen in the OP, a substantial gain.
3. DP now also returns 15 BG. DA-DP adds 140 potency/blind but no BG (similar to how C&S/DA-C&S works with mana)
4. **Delirium** (I'll get to this in a moment. For the purposes of this edit, we'll suggest Delirium stay at a 120s recast, and grant 2400 mana while costing 25, and keeping its current effects, ensuring that it remains a reversal of TBN).
5a. Bloodspiller - > 25 BG
5b. Quietus - > 40 BG

To balance these out:
Souleater returns 10 5 Blood per use.
Blood Weapon returns 3 2 Blood per proc.
Blood Price returns 4 3 Blood per tick. 1 BG proc upon being hit unchanged.

I won't even begin to try and engage in the algebraic wizardry that Crater graced us with, but I think this would level out the BG adjustments to being simply a redistribution of potency rather than a clean buff.

As far as the oGCDs, I tried to balance DP and TBN in such a way that TBN in a vacuum (disregarding Reprisal for a moment) as a defensive ability, is a loss, whilst DP is a gain. Every use of DP would nullify the loss from a Reprisal-less TBN, plus a few extra potency on top of that.

*******

The aforementioned post regarding Delirium, frankly, inspired me. So I'm going to suggest a rework that will make Delirium exciting to use and something we actually look forward to. This is intended as a separate suggestion from many of the ones I adjusted above, although its exciting to think of them in conjunction. I do however, think that it could work with the re-introduction of the HW Reprisal, and it is designed to work with the adjustments to TBN and DP as well. Under this change however, Bloodspiller and Quietus would likely stay at 50 BG per use.

- >Darkside: put this back at 15% so we can have a DPS buff that is interesting, like...

Delirium:
Fully consumes Blood Gauge while reducing MP costs by 1% for every 2 Blood Gauge consumed, up to a maximum of 50%, for 25 seconds. Recast: 90s.
[-This rework has no direct interaction with Blood Weapon or Blood Price-]
Additional effect: Resets the recast timer of Dark Passenger and Carve and Spit.
Dark Arts Additional effect: Dark Arts enhanced weapon skills deal critical damage.

Basically, Delirium would turn you into a DA-happy, Passenger-spewing, Carve-crazed berserker for 25s. If you wanted to clip its wings a bit, you could make it so that it cannot be used under the effect of Blood Weapon or Blood Price.

Probably way too overpowered. Its entirely possible that I should go to bed.

[Chrono_Rising]

I like the idea behind delirium but I feel this is warrior territory with inner release. I think more of a dark bend would be to function like a blood weapon but with a greater effect, like doubling the mp returns from our attacks to generate more resources faster and attack with a blind fury.

[Mycow8me]

From what I can see, you won't want to use this skill until you have 100 gauge so you can spam dark arts on everything for maximum crits and you can't do that without maximum -%mp. There may be times where this skill is sitting waiting to be used with us trying to build up gauge unless blood weapon is used leading into using this skill. However we would have 1 less skill to dump a dark arts on during blood weapon (bloodspiller) because we are trying to store up blood in the first place. It could create a situation where you don't use the MP you are gaining fast enough, even more so if carve and spit/DP went on cooldown just before a blood weapon is used. I don't know if I worded what I'm trying to say as well as I could have.

Edit: If bloodweapon stayed the same, it would actually see more use durring delerium due to recast cooldown and even more darkarts spam.

[Kabooa]

Still not something of the kind of weight that you see abilities in tank/healer CR carrying, in my opinion.

I'm going to agree there is a large consistency issue in Role abilities and how they are set up. Namely that mandatory abilities are in here but they are not granted, they are chosen.

Across every role there are simply required abilities and at that point, they might as well be granted through the job system even without adding job specific animation / flavor. No tank will skip over rampart or provoke, no healer/caster will skip over Lucid Dreaming / Swiftcast, no DPS will skip over diversion, etc.

It creates this odd dynamic because many of the role abilities simply aren't useful. I'd argue as many as half across every role. Perhaps more, but then you hit the "I guess I take these because it's not as useless as those" scenarios.

[WhyAmIHere]

...no DPS will skip over diversion, etc.

And yet I have seen so many in dungeons that just dont, and even in some FC runs i've done as DRK I've not seen diversion used by any of the DPS's. Second wind, Invigorate, and true north are what I'd say are melee DPS essentials that should just have retrofitted into each job. Same for healer Esuna/Lucid.

[whiskeybravo]

And yet I have seen so many in dungeons that just dont, and even in some FC runs i've done as DRK I've not seen diversion used by any of the DPS's. Second wind, Invigorate, and true north are what I'd say are melee DPS essentials that should just have retrofitted into each job. Same for healer Esuna/Lucid.

That's because it needs to be a dump instead of gradual reduction. I run it on SAM because I tend to create a lot of aggro, but I'll admit it's not something I really consider until I'm pulling off the tank already and by that time it's too late lol. Our static monk has worked diversion into his opener and uses on CD throughout a fight, but even using on CD doesn't seem to create that much of a difference. (I don't raid on Sam, just use it for dungeons/royal city mainly)

[Chrono_Rising]

Snip

It took me a hot second to realize the change to dark passenger, and I have to say I think this is one of the better ideas for fixing its current state, and should become a standard of the dark knight kit. oGCD abilities which cost mana, and are not dark arts, should refund their mana cost as blood. It is a simple way to give reason to press the skill without giving it a rediculous potency.

It also inspires this idea for delirium which I think is different enough from inner release, and also dark knight in nature.

Delirium:
All resource usage will result in conversion of half the resource into the opposing resource. Duration:25 seconds. recast: 120 seconds.

Delirium would act like a refund skill converting half of our cost into a source for the other resource.

Example 1: Dark Arts used: 25 blood is restored

Example 2: Bloodspiller used: 1200 mana is restored.

[Eyvhokan]

25 feels too spammy for a 25 sec duration. But the main thing I don't really feel comfortable with is that it makes it too much an easy 'burst window', while I rather the class be defined to be more of a consistent one (Crater laid out the correct paradigm about how having burst is actually utility so the tank with the highest burst should have the lowest contribution).

What it currently does it give an increase that adds to that consistency (increasing blood weapon time); the main problem is it does it really badly (and really shouldn't cost resource at all currently).

[Chrono_Rising]

25 feels too spammy for a 25 sec duration. But the main thing I don't really feel comfortable with is that it makes it too much an easy 'burst window', while I rather the class be defined to be more of a consistent one (Crater laid out the correct paradigm about how having burst is actually utility so the tank with the highest burst should have the lowest contribution).

What it currently does it give an increase that adds to that consistency (increasing blood weapon time); the main problem is it does it really badly (and really shouldn't cost resource at all currently).

I'm slightly unclear which delirium this is feedback too, I'm guessing me. I don't think this would be spammy since it would involve transforming one resource into another, nor would it provide a major burst since it is not increasing our strength or potencies. The delirium I propose essentially is a different way of slowing our resource cost and extending our lower burst for longer by channeling our resources back and forth. In this way our burst damage remains the same but is sustained for a longer period of time.

As for current delirium, even if we changed the resource cost, this will not significantly change how ridiculously far behind it is compared to the equivalents. The skill effect is its own limiting factor. To provide more potency it would need to extend blood weapon and blood price for even longer, but it already doubles the length of blood price so this cannot be made much longer without clipping into the next blood price. We have room to extend blood weapon for longer, Crater's analysis suggests that delirium would need 4 times the effect that it currently does, this means (assuming the effect is unchanged) it would need to be in effect for 32 seconds total, which clips into our next blood weapon window by 7 seconds, as fun as a straight minute and 2 seconds of blood weapon sounds, this means that for the full benefit of our buffs we would need to keep continuous uptime on the enemy for a full minute, which I think would make content design rather difficult.