Give DRK a magic vulnerability debuff

[Claire_Pendragon]

If it was on DP, and made it an AoE, then obviously u would follow up with Abyssal Drain for 4mans/adds.
Otherwise its for a caster comp, and PLD for your other tank. (it would be a DPS increase if its raises their damage enough during a good burst phase.)

[Rufalus]

Changed my mind from what I posted 4 months ago. Should work on dissolving synergy cliques rather than trying to fix it by making more of them. The idea that some jobs work best with certain other jobs is a major force in undermining job balancing efforts. It shouldn't be obvious which combination is the most effective like how we have piercing buddies and slashing buddies. Ideally you don't want mch to feel gimped by the absence of a drg and be free to swap that drg for a blm or sam or any combination of jobs without hindering the performance of other players.

You can remove dmg type resistance debuffs and balance around that, pursuing an ideal where there is effectively only 1 type of dmg coming from player side so you aren't thinking about synergy pairings, only what jobs you enjoy playing. It will still be advantageous to have a mixture of support dps and raw dps, just a little bit more free-form in no longer requiring certain jobs for a percentage increase to certain others.

[SoulSkyheart]

Ya, this idea has been floating around in some place or another but, first I ever hear about enchanted/enhanced attacks to some of their skills which I like the idea of. Can replace Warrior in raids for PLD’s Holy Spirit burst rather than their boss weaponskills and autos.

Give Ninja or Samurai to a party and that will make DRK and PLD Meta as both do both types of damage and that’s the where I see the problem erupting.

Since Holy Spirit is basically the fell cleave burst combo of PLD, buffing a burst combo will make them crazy good. Especially for DRK since DRK is sustain DPS than burst DPS. Again, still like the suggestion but hard to balance.

[Seraphor]

That sounds oversimplified to me.
With no differentiation between even physical and magical attacks, then you only get one possible debuff, a flat damage vulnerability debuff that a job either has or does not have.
That would create a clear 2 class system.
You can bet that these won't stack either, that would be op, so they would likely all be the same amount (10%?) And it would be a case of any jobs that have this debuff cycling through, coordinating with each other's cooldowns in order to maintain this constant 10% damage increase.

[Seraphor]

Also, to prevent it being too convenient, I can see them restricting this debuff to just ninja, bard, machinist and maybe summoner and/or monk?
Which would just maintain the current state of affairs with these jobs being favoured over others.

[Shurrikhan]

Ya, this idea has been floating around in some place or another but, first I ever hear about enchanted/enhanced attacks to some of their skills which I like the idea of. Can replace Warrior in raids for PLD’s Holy Spirit burst rather than their boss weaponskills and autos.

Give Ninja or Samurai to a party and that will make DRK and PLD Meta as both do both types of damage and that’s the where I see the problem erupting.

Since Holy Spirit is basically the fell cleave burst combo of PLD, buffing a burst combo will make them crazy good. Especially for DRK since DRK is sustain DPS than burst DPS. Again, still like the suggestion but hard to balance.

Dealing both types of damage and therefore requiring two types of debuffs has zero advantage over dealing just one type of damage under one debuff, though. You're sacrificing DPS for something unnecessary, that you could have simply taken universally useful raid buffs in place of, such as through a caster-less WAR/(current) DRK party.

DRK itself scarcely deals any magic damage in single-target combat; it's literally just the opening Unmend and any Salted Earth. Meanwhile, magic damage abilities among physical DPS have decreased basically from very few to solely Ninjutsu.

[Mycow8me]

Honestly Rufalus has it right, It would be neat if every class had more independent dps and less reliance on buffs or debuffs similar to slashing. In that regard you would be less worried about who comes as what, your groups synergy, and people can play what they want. I don't see a revert to this kind of setup this far into it though but it is possible if SE wanted to try and balancing would be less cumbersome.

There are other ways to give drk its own playstyle or uniqueness. I really like the rush bloodweapon brings, honestly thats about the only thing that is really drawing me to the class other than its aesthetics. Darkside needs to serve more of a purpose though and personally, the name of the skill implies it should be that unique thing about dark knights (lots of possibilities from HP draining attacks, Blood regen with neat animation, some kind of endark similar to ffxi, or even drain spikes). It is currently a cool animation and a once and done skill, disappointing in its current form.

[SoulSkyheart]

snip

You need to reread the OP’s and my post again. They suggested that attacks such as Bloodspiller would be turned to an enchanted/enhanced (idk what’s it written as) attack. Meaning it will do magic damage.

This is similar to RDM’s melee combo when mana requirements are fulfilled. Their melee combos will do more damage since it’s enchanted, meaning it’s still doing magic damage. Same goes for DRK, as some of suggested changes will boost their DPS when under a magic vuln down debuff.

As for PLD, it will benefit from this debuff as well because, other than flat damage buffs, PLD does not benefit from slashing, blunt or or piercing debuffs in their HS window.

[Shurrikhan]

You need to reread the OP’s and my post again. They suggested that attacks such as Bloodspiller would be turned to an enchanted/enhanced (idk what’s it written as) attack. Meaning it will do magic damage.

This is similar to RDM’s melee combo when mana requirements are fulfilled. Their melee combos will do more damage since it’s enchanted, meaning it’s still doing magic damage. Same goes for DRK, as some of suggested changes will boost their DPS when under a magic vuln down debuff.

As for PLD, it will benefit from this debuff as well because, other than flat damage buffs, PLD does not benefit from slashing, blunt or or piercing debuffs in their HS window.

I've not said that PLD will not benefit; I specifically said that Warrior and the current DRK would not. I have, however, said that it makes little sense to add a schismatic raid debuff; moreover, arbitrarily changing the nature of core abilities just to fit an already unnecessary addition (one which leaves core toolkit QoL issues and contridiction untouched in order to further disadvantage either any and all physical or any and all magical damage-dealing through mutually exclusive specialization) makes even less sense.

We're stuck with at least 2 hybrid sources of physical damage regardless; as such, a magic debuff will always be worth less than a general debuff of the same nominal power. And due to the state of various classes, it will also be worth less than a physical debuff of the same nominal power.

So why this? Why, of all the various buffs you could apply, would you take one that further schisms party composition?

[Seraphor]

It wouldn't further schism party composition, because it's already skewed towards physical anyway.

Replacing all debuffs with a flat damage buff would just create a two tier system of jobs that have it and jobs that don't, and would make it just as redundant as protect. Essential to have up all the time. If you can't put it up you're worthless as utility. You'd still need a meta of BRD, MCH and NIN in order to have that debuff up at all times.
Boring.

There's nothing wrong with damage types and job synergies. Those synergies just need to be more balanced. Someone needs a magic debuff, and that should be a lesser favoured class.
It's that simple.