My Rework of Stormblood Dark Knight

[Zeggy]

Continued - Now onto my reasoning: It feels like a lot of changes you made remove a lot of the very little amount of choice we already have, which was what got me into Dark Knight to begin with back in Heavenward. The risk/reward aspect of the game play style is what I liked to begin with. So while I agree, dark mind needs to be changed to effect all damage, the change that it's just a flat 15% with no dark arts to it makes it a little more boring to me. At least right now I think "Oh, magic ability is coming up, should I dark arts or can I take this hit right now? Do I have time to dark arts and activate it for the 30% or should I use rampart?" while the shadow skin change would be a "Oh, of course I use this now."

[Zeggy]

The same with dark passenger. Right now, I don't use it at all, unless it's a low level dungeon, so I understand the need to change it, but the change you're suggesting doesn't make it more engaging, it just makes it a "I use it every time it's up." And the trait you're adding with it for one feels too much like the warrior shake it off, and makes it way too strong, of course the numbers can be adjusted but it still becomes a "Must use every time" thing. You could argue that you want to hold onto it for when high damage might happen, but unfortunately this game runs off of "how much DPS I can do" so people would want to use it every single time it's off cooldown, unless you remove the damage from it like they did with most stuns and silences.

[Zeggy]

Then as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the Siphon strike is also a "Must have". You're gaining an excess of MP, so it doesn't become a "Should I use this instead of DA on Soul eater?" it becomes a "I should DA this every time, and the only time I don't DA soul eater is when I'm regaining MP." So it's just forcing DA on that ability every single time. Quintis ignores Grit damage reduction? Well of course I'm going to DA it every time, instead of wondering if I need to save that for DA + Abyssal drain. Until system changes are made, survivability will always be trumped by "Making the thing deader faster", because that's the ultimate survivability.

I would just want the changes to dark knight to be more about the risk/reward with more dark arts, and less about the "I have to use this".

To clarify a little more what I mean by knee jerk: Magical damage isn't viable, just make shadow skin all around. Ya, it sounds good but becomes a less engaging ability.

[TouchandFeel]

Thank you for the feedback. Below are my responses to specific parts of your responses.

I'll try to be brief about it. When I say knee jerk reaction, I don't necessarily mean "This was ideas chosen quickly". I mean "This ability isn't used often so make it overly good" or "Make a change just to have a change" without necessarily thinking about what could make the class better as a whole.

Thanks for the clarification. The usage of "knee jerk reaction" was quite confusing since it means having a sudden reaction with the connotation of the reaction being more emotionally driven and not thought out.
Believe me, I did put thought into every little bit of the proposed changes and even publicly documented some of it in the post. No change I made was for the sake of "making a change just to make a change", every change had reason and intent behind it. Honestly, I tend to be more guilty of overthinking things as opposed to underthinking.
It also might not be super obvious, but many aspects of the changes were thought out and designed to actually form levels of synergy between abilities to work together precisely to "make the class better as a whole".

It feels like a lot of changes you made remove a lot of the very little amount of choice we already have, which was what got me into Dark Knight to begin with back in Heavenward. The risk/reward aspect of the game play style is what I liked to begin with.

I personally find it odd that you say that a lot of the changes I proposed remove the choice aspect of the job along with the risk/reward factor. Many if not most of the changes I proposed speak precisely to adding more choice and risk/reward to the job. That was a major factor of adding additional effects that differ when DAing different abilities, so that there is actually a choice between what to DA as opposed to the current state we have where it pretty much just adds +140 potency and nothing else, making it pretty much a wash on what to use it on. You mention one example which I did indeed trim choice from, that being Dark Mind which the specifics of I will go into in a following response, but in most cases where I trimmed some aspect of an ability I tended to not get rid of it but shift part of the kit from one ability to another while trying to keep a close eye on the synergy between those abilities.

So while I agree, dark mind needs to be changed to effect all damage, the change that it's just a flat 15% with no dark arts to it makes it a little more boring to me. At least right now I think "Oh, magic ability is coming up, should I dark arts or can I take this hit right now? Do I have time to dark arts and activate it for the 30% or should I use rampart?" while the shadow skin change would be a "Oh, of course I use this now."

You agree that Dark Mind needs to affect all damage, which was a big part of my proposed change here so I will skip that.
One of the major reasons that I removed the DA effect from Dark Mind/Shadow Skin is because of my overarching goal of removing the double-weaving caused by DAing OGCD abilities. Since Dark Mind/Shadow Skin is a defensive cooldown and therefore an instant OGCD ability, the DA effect got nixed. So when looking solely at that one ability it looks like I removed choice and something cool from the job, however I didn't exactly remove it I more just shifted the extra defensive part to Dark Passenger. I'll go more into the Dark Passenger changes in the subsequent response.

The same with dark passenger. Right now, I don't use it at all, unless it's a low level dungeon, so I understand the need to change it, but the change you're suggesting doesn't make it more engaging, it just makes it a "I use it every time it's up." And the trait you're adding with it for one feels too much like the warrior shake it off, and makes it way too strong, of course the numbers can be adjusted but it still becomes a "Must use every time" thing. You could argue that you want to hold onto it for when high damage might happen, but unfortunately this game runs off of "how much DPS I can do" so people would want to use it every single time it's off cooldown, unless you remove the damage from it like they did with most stuns and silences.

Dark Passenger was admittedly a tougher one to settle on a set of proposed changes for since many different people want many different things from it.

My initial proposal, that was only recently changed to what is currently shown, was pretty straight forward and just had a flat cost of 2400MP (same as a DA) and did 150 potency and applied a 10% damage dealt down debuff to targets hit. This made it approximately cost to damage neutral in a single target situation, gave approximately the same extra defense as DAing Dark Mind so that you could stack them and get pretty much the same effect for the same cost and also provided the much asked for extra bit of party utility.

The reason I changed to the current proposal was due to taking in a lot of the various feedback in different threads regarding what they wanted from Dark Passenger, such as it being a big nasty AoE attack more akin to the series classic Darkness ability and that it just shouldn't have a cost period because it was already on a recast timer, etc, etc. So I tried to think of a way to try to roll in more of the differing aspects that people wanted and ended up with what I proposed. Want to do more damage, okay but you are going to pay for it, not in HP like the classic ability but in the next closest thing which is your defensive cooldowns. That's pretty risk/reward if you are the Main Tank and if your are the Off Tank well now you have something to use those cooldowns on and you get to do an extra big attack every now and then. Keep in mind that even if you burned every possible cooldown to boost DP, you would still be doing only 240 potency which is only 120 more potency over the base and exactly between what a single Steel Cyclone and Decimate do. You would also only be able to do that every 2 minutes or every other one which isn't really a lot, especially considering what WAR is now capable of with their IR AoE spam. As for the defensive aspect, you would top out at 15% which isn't a whole lot and is a pretty close approximation to SiO. Also, it retains approximately the same cost to defense boost as DAing Dark Mind by using a TBN and then consuming it. With good timing you can even use a TBN, wait a few seconds hoping it doesn't break, consume it to boost Dark Passenger and time it so that towards the end of the duration of the Dark Passenger debuff your TBN comes off cooldown and you use it again, essentially being approximately the same defensively as stacking a DAed DM and TBN but with the trade off of it requiring more skill and better timing for a nice chunk of damage, but hey people did say they like risk/reward game-play for DRK.

In regard to it being a "use it every time" ability, I highly prefer that over an ability that I never use. With it being on a 60s recast timer, I personally feel that it being something that you may want to use every time is perfectly fine, especially since DRK has very little that they can just use that doesn't have an upfront cost attached to it which is something that many people have brought up as something they dislike about DRK. As for the issue of just using it for dps versus taking advantage of the defensive aspect, well that is where the skill in timing of abilities comes in as well as the whole risk/reward factor.

However I am fine with either version and people are free to provide feedback on which one they like more. Both are a huge step up from what we currently have.

As for it being similar to WAR's SiO, I know. I said that the way SiO functions was an inspiration behind the changes in my blurb accompanying the proposed change to the ability. I felt that there were enough nuanced differences such as needing a target that is in range, the offensive aspect as well as the differences in the two job's defensive kits would result in them looking very similar on paper but feeling very different in actual use.

Then as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the Siphon strike is also a "Must have". You're gaining an excess of MP, so it doesn't become a "Should I use this instead of DA on Soul eater?" it becomes a "I should DA this every time, and the only time I don't DA soul eater is when I'm regaining MP." So it's just forcing DA on that ability every single time.

Syphon Strike already restores a DA worth of MP, making it already a gain used normally or breaking even if DAed. The additional MP that I proposed restoring with a DAed Syphon is only a gain of 800MP or 1/3 of a DA, which would mean that you would only get an extra DA every 3 combos or approximately every 21-22 seconds which honestly isn't a lot. At most you could use the extra MP to fuel a TBN to then have it break and then use that Blood to use a Bloodspiller, but that does get into the muddy water of the TBN to Bloodspiller cost to damage debate which I'm not going to get into.

Basically it boils down to comparing +800MP vs. +10 Blood, which also converts to DPS like MP, and a stronger self-heal. Those seem fairly close to me in regards to value, although I could see the Blood boost getting bumped up to +15 additional Blood as opposed to +10 for a total of +25 Blood for a DAed Soul Eater versus +20.
Anyways, I wouldn't say that DAing Syphon is in any ways "mandatory" and it really seems like it would more depend on what you feel you need more of MP or Blood/HP.

Quintis ignores Grit damage reduction? Well of course I'm going to DA it every time, instead of wondering if I need to save that for DA + Abyssal drain. Until system changes are made, survivability will always be trumped by "Making the thing deader faster", because that's the ultimate survivability.

I made Quietus ignore the Grit damage reduction because the WAR gauge abilities ignore Defiance's damage reduction and since somewhat of a precedent was set for such on DRK with Bloodspiller, it only seemed sensible and fair to extend that to Quietus as well.
Since I added the same amount of potency boost to DA Abyssal Drain as Quietus, the only damage difference between DAing one over the other is approximately 20% of 70 per target or 14 potency per target. In a really big pull that will add up to a decent amount of extra damage overall but really won't speed things up much and in that same type of a scenario the heal provided by a boosted Abyssal hitting all those targets would be nothing to scoff at. On top of that Quietus is also gated by the Blood cost which as we know creates the setup we currently have with spamming Abyssal and using TBN on cooldown to get 50 Blood to use Quietus to regen MP to then continue spamming Abyssal until TBN is available again, so it's not like your going to be spamming DA Quietus as opposed to Abyssal. If you want to DA Quietus as opposed to Abyssal on a big pull and get a little more damage out of it, we are talking like the potency of 1 DA (140 pot) when dealing with 10 enemies, as opposed to getting a hefty self-heal I see no problem in that nor doing it the other way around. Again risk versus reward.

Besides, I don't see how what we currently have is in any way better, in fact it is actually worse in the damage disparity when comparing DA Abyssal to DA Quietus. Right now with Abyssal getting no potency boost the difference is 50 potency per target instead of 14, so according to the reasoning behind Quietus becoming "mandatory" it would seem that it already is and much more so.

[aqskerorokero]

dark knight's identity is to suffer, it is suffering now, so there is nothing wrong with current drk.

[TouchandFeel]

dark knight's identity is to suffer, it is suffering now, so there is nothing wrong with current drk.

Thank you for that valuable input.