[Shadowbringers] 5.0 DRK: Take five, leave five.

[Chrono_Rising]

Living Dead is a pretty solid "no dying" button, at least when compared to the utter garbage that is Holmgang, sure it has a shorter CD than Living Dead and Hallowed Ground, but you only have six seconds and it won't stop you from taking damage, leaving you at 1 HP. Even worse, you can't move while it's active, resulting in a pretty certain death even if you managed to Holmgang through the hit you intended it for.

All that said, I'm not sure why you would need it improved to a no brainer button.

Holmgang covers more tank busters, and suffers from nearly the exact same issue as Living Dead, both take damage and bring you to nearly 0 HP. The main difference is that Holmgang has a number of strategic advantages that balance out the those negatives, as well as parts of the warrior kit as a whole which supports being at 1 HP (namely being able to restore 20% - 40% of your HP on your own after the hit you intend to take without healer input and still survive after).

However, I'm also not super tied to improving living dead by removing the activation period. My thoughts were to keep it as is but give it some advantage (more flexibility in timing and a safety net in prog). It is mainly all the other stuff mentioned in that post I would want to see implemented.

[Shurrikhan]

Instant casts are what FF14 uses exclusively, even in terms of cast time spells. The moment the cast time finishes, whether the spell has a projectile animation or not, it is resolved. Shadow'ing adds a supplemental action layer and really just moves the burden of Dark Arts from prior action use to post action use.

I... said as much. The only difference is that while DA animation-locks you, because it includes the character model, Shadow-ing would not. Though, given that the "burden" of Dark Arts most often complained of is its animation lock forcing clunky double-weaves so often, not its mana cost -- and unless the animation generated literal ocular pain for you, those are the only two burdens possible -- perhaps that... does effectively remove the burden of DA.

I'm assuming they'll finally go the extra inch to improve ability queue-specificity once they compress more action sets into shared hotkeys. At present, if I hit Draw twice (I have high packet loss, so I tend to spam keys during prior animation) while in the middle of a prior cast, not only will the card be drawn but also instantly spent... on myself... because I really wanted Spire.

It has little to nothing to do with Shadow being a post-action augmentative skill (or, a capitalizing/follow-up skill), and more greatly that you can queue two separate actions with the same hotkey even while only one is shown as being mapped to that hotkey at the time you queued. Such commands should be counted as redundant and resolved on the first action until further input is made. It's a common sense adjustment that should have been made anyways. I am almost entirely certain they're forgetting (or temporary inability) to do so is why DWT and Deathflare aren't currently combined. As I've yet to see this issue in any other MMO with shared keyspace across multiple actions, I trust they can manage it, though.

(Of course, most MMOs will also allow you to maintain forward movement (W) input while using Shift-commands on other keys (e.g. a handy Shift-R) even if you do have something bound to Shift-W, without cancelling the movement only to stand there without even casting the Shift-W skill either, while the devs here seem to think that with all those buttons, surely we could use ; instead of a Shift-E, and if we really wanted to use mod keys during movement, we'd just use a controller.)

Spells in World of Warcraft fall into projectile and instant. Projectiles have a travel time, and though they cannot 'miss' beyond dice rolling, you can delay their impact by distance, to a limit. The spell creates the projectile, the projectile makes contact, the spell resolves.

I'm fully aware. However, XIV also uses specific initiation delays. Hallowed Ground is the most famous example, but all but Greased Lightning technically apply and make use of this as well. As the Shadowed component would be a separate instance of damage, simply sharing the special effects of the prior action or specifically stacking another buff atop it, a particle animation without any player animation would be fully sufficient. You make your triple-strike from Carve and Spit. At any point in the animation, you hit Carve and Spit again. Now, regardless of what your character model is doing, a flurry of shadowy swords as if held by your Shades strike out, consuming the mana you just gained in addition to the further, standard Shadow mana cost and damage bonus.

The net effect is identical. You just aren't penalized for double-weaving it at over 80 ms ping or so, since it has no animation lock, and you aren't spamming the same Dark Arts animation over and over and over. Instead, every augmentable skill, with only a couple exceptions if any, has its own Shadowed animation.

I don't think the Dark Knight needs two pulls. It's really only needed on Salted Earth.

Fair enough. I meant them partly in jest, as I felt that once what we already have is actually capitalized upon, making unique mechanics of damage taken delay, lifesteal, lifetapping, shadow, and blood, etc. -- all of which we already have the tools for now -- the job would already be incredibly solid. Also, I'd like to see the PvE and PvP toolkits merged again at some point, as I think PvE suffers for bloat and oversimplification in the parts that cannot apply to PvP, and PvP currently suffers in oversimplification of toolkits, at which point I'd imagine these would be quite strong.

Life or Death has pretty limited use. I may not be a dark knight main but I don't like the idea of outright killing myself. I think this would be better on Living Dead. It allows it to be used in solo play, and if for some reason you know you're going to die, you shadow Living Dead, buy another 5-6 seconds, and get a damage boost to boot.

The Doom tick can be Dark Danced (Living Dead-ed, though LD is now the debuff for having consumed your immunity). If you need the damage bonus more than a later immunity, by all means.

The idea is just a standard grab from prior iterations and is meant to be as meme-y as it sounds, much like Legion's original Surrender to Madness.

Whatever they do, I really, REALLY hope they DON'T make darkside a trait. Its a single button, don't even need to be on a mapped slot, and it adds even if a little bit of flavor to the class. Instead, i hope they make a cooler aura come 5.0 :P

Leave my aura alone! Q.Q

Technically, an aura could also be traited. It would just probably generate only in combat, and would likely be proportionate to your MP or gauge.

[Shurrikhan]

Living Dead is a pretty solid "no dying" button, at least when compared to the utter garbage that is Holmgang, sure it has a shorter CD than Living Dead and Hallowed Ground, but you only have six seconds and it won't stop you from taking damage, leaving you at 1 HP. Even worse, you can't move while it's active, resulting in a pretty certain death even if you managed to Holmgang through the hit you intended it for.

All that said, I'm not sure why you would need it improved to a no brainer button.

Holmgang does just as good a job of preventing fatal damage when it matters most when well timed. Let's say you pop each 2 seconds before taking would-be fatal damage. True, Living Dead will now last 10 seconds, having only just swapped from LD to WD, while Holmgang will only have 4 left. However, that added duration has no mitigation either, and comes at the cost of requiring 100% of the DRK's HP in healing to prevent a guaranteed death at the end of 10 seconds. If that healing is given too early, moreover, the immunity buff instantly ends with it.

Note: a single Benediction cannot prevent this death; it will always be 1 HP short. It will require that the DRK enter WD with a HoT rolling or another GCD of healing (and at least 1 further damage taken). If the enemies should die while WD is up, with no DoTs attached, and all healing was postponed for optimization, the DRK's death is guaranteed.

[ShinShimon]

Remove:
Dark Arts - make it into a trait that gives us 2 DA procs per combo finisher; DA Siphon + Souleater give a net gain to MP, using DA with other abilities would lead to an MP deficit
Darkside - bake into the class, duh
Spinning Slash - make Power Slash combo out of Siphon Strike
Unleash - replace with AD
Blood Price - merge with Blood Weapon or Delirium, or just give us another way to replace blood

Add:
More lifesteal abilities, or effects on existing abilities
Something that eats HP to deal a lot of damage
Something that eats HP to protect others
A better version of LD

[DemonicNeko]

I will not lie. With the Dark Knight quest always talking about the abyss. How pain and suffering gives us power. To me the class quest have always made dark knight sound like they are supposed to take damage. Then channel that damage into power and unless death on their enemies. It would be cool to see something like turning the blood bar into a suffer mechanic. Where the higher the number is. The more damage we do. The less damage we take. Yet the less healing we get. Using powerful spenders of dark magic damage type. Stuff like Blood price and Blood blade would heal us while boosting the suffering bar. The mp BP and BB gives is so low. It not really worth it. Having it instead giving us a decent heal while making us this tank of death would be a better use.

Living Dead I would feel could be changed to Shadow embrace. Makes 4 shadows copies of you. Each one having like 75% of your total health. When you take damage. The damage is split between you and the 4 shadow. When the effect ends. The shadows will do the remaining hp they have as damage. They can also have that heals to you will also be split between you and the 4 clones.

[shao32]

I refuse to lose unleash for abyssal drain if AD is not change to be more effective in pulls against large sized adds.

I will easily see darkside become a trait and lose salted heart, blood price and delirium again.

I will want a living dead rework, bring back shadow skin, reprisal back to us and the rest I leave it to the devs

[Xenosan]

I don't think Dark Knight's real estate is nearly taken up yet to the point that we'd have to sacrifice useful abilities. Nor does it especially need much new. I think it just needs to make far better use of what it has.

I agree DRK isn't squeezed yet.

---------------------------------

But there is underperformance in some Actions. Blood Price needs to be changed. 2.5% per hit is just too stupid to be left in the skill table. They doubled in-Grit Siphon Strike return to compensate. Does that fix the problem? Yes. Does it make it less stupid? No.

Just change BP to 7.5%+ MP refresh per server tick. Revert in-Grit Siphon Strike MP restore to 12.5%. Building off that, remove the stance lock of BP and BW so DRK can use both, but constrain them by preventing them from being stacked. The result would be DRK alternating between BW and BP like Bards alternate their songs (which imo is the best gauge-widget job mechanic created in 4.0). Consistent MP return, engaging/valued actions, and less convulated predicates.

For ability pruning, C&S and Dark Passenger could probably be merged. Delete C&S, and super-duper buff DP to compensate (like no MP-cost, 12.5% mp restore, 400potency vs first enemy 10% less vs second enemy ..etc, and have its DA'able added Potency be greater than 140 so that DPassenger is always a DArts priority, even in single target [ala C&S]).

[Chrono_Rising]

Note: a single Benediction cannot prevent this death; it will always be 1 HP short. It will require that the DRK enter WD with a HoT rolling or another GCD of healing (and at least 1 further damage taken). If the enemies should die while WD is up, with no DoTs attached, and all healing was postponed for optimization, the DRK's death is guaranteed.

I don't think this is still true, I believe Benediction was patched to heal for your HP to get around this.

[Agner]

I refuse to lose unleash for abyssal drain if AD is not change to be more effective in pulls against large sized adds.

This can't be emphasized enough; the way AD works on large mobs currently is absolutely abysmal. In situations involving large mobs, Unleash just wins out in establishing emnity by not being clumsy as hell.

Maybe they could increase the range of the explosion on it by quite a bit if people really want it to replace Unleash that badly.

[Kabooa]

This can't be emphasized enough; the way AD works on large mobs currently is absolutely abysmal. In situations involving large mobs, Unleash just wins out in establishing emnity by not being clumsy as hell.

Maybe they could increase the range of the explosion on it by quite a bit if people really want it to replace Unleash that badly.

Just make it 5y from the hitbox edge instead of the center.