[5.x] Dark Knight Wishlist

[Lyth]

With Shadowbringers on the horizon, I thought that I would outline some of the main changes that I would like to see on DRK.

Resource Management
The best starting point for revising DRK is to look at the resource system.

DRK relies on establishing a balance between MP generation and expenditure. Most of the changes in DRK's gameplay between Heavensward and Stormblood come from the removal of Darkside's MP drain. This tipped the balance in favour of MP generation. Dark Arts ended up becoming a stopgap to burn off this excess MP.

I think that there should be three goals here:
1. Adjust the rate of MP generation relative to your max capacity. Either you need a slower, more steady rate of MP generation, or a bigger max capacity.
2. Introduce in more ways to burn off MP. This could be through using more off-globals that burn MP, or an alternate combo that either halts MP generation or burns off MP.
3. Create more of an interplay between blood and MP.

For the first point, I'd like to see big MP dumps replaced with more gradual effects. Instead of generating all of your MP on Syphon, you should generate a third of that on every GCD that you perform. Likewise, Sole Survivor could very easily give you the same effect over time, as opposed to dumping 20% of your max MP into your pool all at once 15 seconds later. Delirium's MP dump is another example, but I'll address Delirium later on.

I think the best place to burn off excess MP is through off-globals. If Dark Passenger offered a clear benefit in single target, that would be one place you could be spending your MP. Sole Survivor could be another place you could add a cost, if it had a DoT value as it drained HP and MP over time, as could Salted Earth. Another alternative could be to introduce in another off-global or combo action that burnt off MP, like a MP-powered alternative to Bloodspiller.

But there is another option: rethink how Dark Arts works. What if, instead of activating on the next action which could proc it, it simply lasted for the next three GCDs, boosting every action performed in-between? The caveat being, that while it was active, any effect that would generate MP generates blood instead.

At lower levels, this would just be the equivalent of turning off your MP generation to do more damage. At higher levels, it would give you a way to keep your MP in check to prevent capping, while simultaneously letting you build up blood to perform your more devastating attacks.

Stances
Stance restrictions need to go. Effects that are locked behind Grit might as well not exist. The HP drain on Souleater, and the stance locks on Blood Weapon/Blood Price are all unnecessary restrictions. If balancing Blood Price is a problem, get rid of it and make Blood Weapon universal.

But more generally, stances themselves don't make a whole lot of sense on DRK. You could remove Darkside altogether (or keep it as a trait), and just give DRK an MP system in which they generate all of their MP from GCDs while in combat. Perhaps your connection with the Abyss saps your life force, forcing you to feed off your opponents' Aether.

Defensive stances on all tanks could easily be replaced with a skill that lets you generate burst enmity for yourself.

Defensive Abilities
DRK is in a pretty good place defensively. I personally think that Dark Mind is overkill. A lot of people have talked about how inconsistent DRK is at mitigation prior to level 70. One possible solution to this is to convert the existing Dark Mind into a self-only version of the Blackest Night at level 42, and having it "evolve" into the Blackest Night at level 70.

Living Dead is a problem. The recast is fine, but it needs to be more self-reliant. The easiest solution is this: You hit 1 HP, Walking Dead procs, and for the next 10 seconds, incoming damage heals you for a fraction of the damage that you would have received. This way, it's not as good as simply ignoring the damage, but it also gives both you and your healers a bit of respite when you need it.

The instant death effect is completely unnecessary, and really shouldn't be in the game without both giving the DRK player a means to cleanse the effect on their own, as well as clear UI elements which indicate how much further self-healing is required.

In order to round off DRK's defensive kit, I think there needs to be more of a focus on lifesteal. Souleater should always steal HP. Bloodspiller should steal both HP and MP. Sole Survivor should drain HP and MP over time, with the recast resetting if you kill off your opponent before it expires. Perhaps even Salted Earth should steal a bit of HP, if you add in an MP cost for using it.

Offensive Abilities
DRK's main problem from an offensive standpoint is that Delirium is underwhelming. To the best of my knowledge, it's the only offensive buff that has a resource cost attached. But it doesn't offer anything particularly unique to offset this. It's also finicky in that you have to have Blood Weapon or Price active for it to actually do anything, otherwise it just fizzles out.

I think that the best solution is to turn Delirium into an upgraded form of Blood Weapon. I've mentioned this elsewhere as well, but speed boosts are less straightforward than power boosts. You can't just make Delirium into a faster Blood Weapon. Speed boosts place limits on your off-global weaving.

The work-around to this is multi-hit attacks. While Delirium is active, in addition to the baseline Blood Weapon effect, you could make attacks performed under Dark Arts hit a second time for a fraction of the damage. After all, if your enemy is Delirious, perhaps they're seeing double.

Also, if Carve and Split was actually broken down into a three-fold attack, seeing it hit six times would be pretty awesome.

One more point here: Stormblood's focus on knockback mechanics has shown that Plunge just isn't up to the task. Either we need some form of knockback prevention to preserve our Plunge usages, or Plunge should reset on the player receiving a knockback effect.

Future Directions
I've touched on this elsewhere as well.

As far as new actions are concerned, the main thing that I would like to see is something that builds off of Delirium, as a sort of multi-hit finishing move that you can throw out at the end of your burst window. The most obvious choice would be Cecil's aptly named Shadowbringer (although something akin to Omnislash would do in a pinch).

The idea being, if you're using Dark Arts under Delirium to land additional attacks, you should have a move at the end of the window that gives you an extra hit for every enhanced attack you landed with Delirium active.

Other possible ideas? Celes' Runic Blade could fill in as a means of providing raidwide mitigation on DRK. Dread Spikes is an FFXI DRK ability that could be brought back as well, in keeping with the lifesteal theme. An additional combo action or standalone GCD that burnt off excess MP might be a possibility as well.

As far as removing actions is concerned, there are a couple of abilities that could be overwritten at higher levels. I've mentioned about how you could have Dark Mind be replaced by the Blackest Night in the defensives section. Unleash could similarly be overwritten by Abyssal Drain. Blood Weapon could be overwritten by Delirium. You could easily free up one more spot if you turned Darkside into a trait, and another if you got rid of Grit altogether.

Aesthetics
One of the most common requests on DRK has been for a proper Darkside effect. The main restriction until now was the fact that Darkside is always on. If you traited Darkside or got rid of it, you could easily attach a flashier effect to either Delirium or something else.

Either way, with the amount of times that we've been teased in game with better auras (be it in the Dark Knight quest cutscenes, Hildebrand quests, and most recently, the in Shadowbringers' game trailer), it's high time we got a proper darkness effect.

One more point as it relates to relic weapons. Final Fantasy has a very large number of famous weapons. The vast majority of them, unsurprisingly, are either swords or greatswords. But for some reason, we're still yet to get a truly iconic named greatsword as a relic weapon. ARR gave away some of the most famous greatswords to other jobs, in the form of Ragnarok, Apocalypse, and so on. Since then, for some reason, most of the names have been based on FFXI weapons, which don't have nearly the same widespread appeal.

I would love to have Save the Queen as a greatsword. And not as a weird, pseudo-cutlass with irregular spikes. A nice, oversized, clean greatsword. Like what you see in the trailer.

Either way, we'll see what's in store in about a month or so.

[Melichoir]

Not sure why you would get rid of DM by combining it with TBN. DM+TBN is amazing with dealing with mag tank busters, and allows you to focus SW+TBN on Phys Tank busters, and ramp on anything else like autos or misc aoes.

If you were to combine the two how would TBN then work? Would you need to increase its CD, which would impact using it with SW? Or would you just buff TBN all together, making it paired with SW to be exceptionally powerful mitigation? Or would you jsut shorten SWs CD?

[MagiusNecros]

I really just want to use Blood on more things and for Blood skills to be oGCD.

[shao32]

the only thing i don't want to is unleash becoming abyssal drain, unleash is to handy for pulling i don't like the idea of having only AD to properly set mass pullings. meaby if unleash upgrade to AD under dark arts or something then yeah so we still have it, a circle aoe around you character is way better that a circle aoe generated to the target that can be less effective depending of the size of the target.

[MagiusNecros]

the only thing i don't want to is unleash becoming abyssal drain, unleash is to handy for pulling i don't like the idea of having only AD to properly set mass pullings. meaby if unleash upgrade to AD under dark arts or something then yeah so we still have it, a circle aoe around you character is way better that a circle aoe generated to the target that can be less effective depending of the size of the target.

I liked Abyssal more in Heavensward with DADP + DADD combo. Lots of evasion and reliable sustain. That got nerfed hard, DD removed and basically gave our AoE sustain to Warrior.

[Lyth]

[...]

To clarify: I think that tanks, as a whole, should have a smaller pool of defensive cooldowns than they do presently. I'm just focusing on Dark Mind because this is primarily a thread about DRK's design, rather than a thread about overall tank balance. More broadly, I'd like to see Dark Mind, Raw Intuition, Thrill of Battle, and Bulwark removed, the 30% DR cooldowns standardised across the board (i.e. Vengeance, Shadow Wall, and Sentinel brought into line with each other), and invulns set at 5+ minute recasts at a minimum.

Because fights and incoming damage are designed with available cooldowns in mind, having ready access to powerful mitigation tools tends to devalue the weaker defensive cooldowns in your set. Conversely, if 30% DR cooldowns and invulns are relatively rare, resource-based mitigation moves like TBN and Sheltron become much more powerful, even on their own.

Dark Mind also makes DRK's defensive kit lopsided. It's better to be consistently good at mitigating damage than it is to be fantastic in some fights and mediocre in others.

My proposed suggestion was also about addressing a different complaint about DRK, namely the lack of access to defensive cooldowns prior to TBN at level 70. Basically, my suggestion is this: get rid of Dark Mind, give the player a self-target only version of TBN at level 42, and then let them upgrade it to the full version (i.e. can target a party member as well) at level 70.

There's a slight lore issue to this as well. You can't simply reduce the level at which the player gains TBN because there's a very important scene in the level 70 DRK job quest which not only references the ability, but tells you the significance of using it. So what I'm saying is basically this:

Dark Mind (Level 42): Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 7s

The Blackest Night (Level 70): Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 7s
Increases Blood Gauge by 50 when full 20% (10%) is absorbed.

Trait: "In your darkest hour": (Level 70): Upgrades Dark Mind to The Blackest Night.

As with other similar upgrade traits (i.e. Berserk and Inner Release), you lose access to the original ability once you gain the upgraded form.

Level 70 DRK story reference:

"In your darkest hour, in the blackest night… think of me… and I will be with you. Always.
For where else could I go? Who else could I love but you?”

[shao32]

I liked Abyssal more in Heavensward with DADP + DADD combo. Lots of evasion and reliable sustain. That got nerfed hard, DD removed and basically gave our AoE sustain to Warrior.

well let's be fair, the blood price returns makes AD have infinite mana for self healing, it was kinda OP like WAR and bloodbath, but i really miss the old DADP + DADD combo was a nice way to handle mass pulling if they are a lot like the baelsar walls pulls but i doubt it will come back saddly.

still dosen't change that unleash is way better for pulling and place all you targets without worry they push each other, AD effectivenes its pretty limited in you target position and size, you will have to pull dragon size monsters one by one bcs AD barely surppas the size of the monster so i think we still need both exceppt they make AD size scales with you target size but i doubt it, if we are gonna loose aoes we have more chance to lose salted earth or dark passenger instead, mostly salted earth i belive but how knows.

[Xenosan]

..

I agree regarding Unleashed.

The spell has a proc mechanic already. Developers should add value to that component to make the Spell worth while post pull.

If the Enhanced Unleash proc could possibly trigger from any spell (sans Grit), and the Enhanced spell (in addition to being cost-free) also delivered a threefold attack (50potency * 3 = 150) where the second and third hit do not have enmity modifiers - that for me feels ideal.

Now if they changed Enhanced Unleash 's animation to distinguish it from vanilla Unleash, and that new animation being that of the old PVP Tar Pit - that would be even awesome'er.

[Melichoir]

To clarify: I think that tanks, as a whole, should have a smaller pool of defensive cooldowns than they do presently. I'm just focusing on Dark Mind because this is primarily a thread about DRK's design, rather than a thread about overall tank balance. More broadly, I'd like to see Dark Mind, Raw Intuition, Thrill of Battle, and Bulwark removed, the 30% DR cooldowns standardised across the board (i.e. Vengeance, Shadow Wall, and Sentinel brought into line with each other), and invulns set at 5+ minute recasts at a minimum.

Because fights and incoming damage are designed with available cooldowns in mind, having ready access to powerful mitigation tools tends to devalue the weaker defensive cooldowns in your set. Conversely, if 30% DR cooldowns and invulns are relatively rare, resource-based mitigation moves like TBN and Sheltron become much more powerful, even on their own.

Im actually happy with how the CDs are currently. They add flexibility to each tank, giving them some level of difference from other tanks. I dont want War, PLD, and DRK to be so similar that it ultimately doesnt matter which one you play.

Im also fine with weaker mitigation cooldowns being used the way they are. It should be part of a player's kit to manage how to use cooldowns to minimize the amount of damage taken to the greatest extent. Using Rampart for enemy boss Autos during certain phases were healing may be needed elsewhere is a perfectly fine use of the skill. It's fine that Rampart isnt used as frequently for tank busters as other skills. Rampart has uses elsewhere and is still valuable. Much like all the defensive skills. What I want to avoid is making it so that what tank you pick is meaningless beyond a few superficial differences. Currently, you can get through any savage fight with some combination of the 3 tanks. But how you set up your tank composition meant dealing with encounter mechanics differently. That, to me, is fine and brings interest to the roll. I fear that if you were to make it all homogenized, that would no longer be the case. If you wanted to trim CDs, the best place to trim them is from teh bottom, not top. So this is taking care of skills like Anticipation, Awareness, convalescence. They have their place too in mitigation, but theyre much more non-necessities due to the fact you typically cant mitigate effectively against busters with them.

Also, if you do hemoginize, and focus more attention on skills like Sheltron or TBN, you have less flexibility in your kit to deal with mechanics, not more. And simplifying how we use CDs means the jobs focus just shifts more and more into being a defacto DPS, and none of the tank kits have that much depth in that department. So all this would most likely do is make playing tanks even more boring, and not even give us the satisfaction of doing high numbers.

Dark Mind also makes DRK's defensive kit lopsided. It's better to be consistently good at mitigating damage than it is to be fantastic in some fights and mediocre in others.

It's fine if a DRK (or any tank) cant always be the best at mitigating a mechanic. That is where you have to get creative with your co tank to deal with the mechanic. Again, it's not like you didnt have another CD in your kit to deal with Phys busters, and learning to manage your CDs so you have the right CD for the right buster is a good thing I think. That's part of learning how to be a good tank. Your job is to keep aggro and not die. That means using your kit (along with your cotank) to manage the boss and not over tax your healers. I think DRKs kit, in this regard, is perfectly fine. It offers a few things the other kits dont, which changes the dynamics of how you deal with a boss.

My proposed suggestion was also about addressing a different complaint about DRK, namely the lack of access to defensive cooldowns prior to TBN at level 70. Basically, my suggestion is this: get rid of Dark Mind, give the player a self-target only version of TBN at level 42, and then let them upgrade it to the full version (i.e. can target a party member as well) at level 70.

Lack of cooldowns pre-70? I love TBN, dont get me wrong. It's amazing, but DRKs arent without CDs. We have...Ramp, Anticipation, Reprisal, Convalescence, Awareness, SW, Grit (if you really are worried about that incoming damage). All these skills are available to you once you hit 48. Before then, you shouldnt be struggling so hard with Cooldowns. We also have some small bit of self sustain with with our DPS combination as well. At 45, your DP gains a blind effect with DA, which is also useful in helping with mitigation on non resistant targets. I dont quite see how you think DRK doesnt have all that many cooldowns. If youre burning up everything to stay alive while in grit, you might want to consider what your healer is doing, or if the fight is dragging on to long.

There's a slight lore issue to this as well. You can't simply reduce the level at which the player gains TBN because there's a very important scene in the level 70 DRK job quest which not only references the ability, but tells you the significance of using it. So what I'm saying is basically this:

Dark Mind (Level 42): Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 7s

The Blackest Night (Level 70): Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 7s
Increases Blood Gauge by 50 when full 20% (10%) is absorbed.

Trait: "In your darkest hour": (Level 70): Upgrades Dark Mind to The Blackest Night.

As with other similar upgrade traits (i.e. Berserk and Inner Release), you lose access to the original ability once you gain the upgraded form.

Level 70 DRK story reference:

"In your darkest hour, in the blackest night… think of me… and I will be with you. Always.
For where else could I go? Who else could I love but you?”

I mean yeah, this would work but youre just giving a lvl 42 person another 20% cooldown, more or less, at the expense of having a pretty substantial magical tank buster cool down with additional easily applied mitigation of TBN at 70. Meaning, under these changes, we would have less mitigation, and less mitigation choice. Now if you want to deal with a buster, you got SW+TBN....and thats it. You can do Ramp + TBN, but now youre not mitigating other attacks (AoEs, autos, misc damage). Youre increasing the burden on healers in this case. I dunno, this really seems like a short term gain for an overall loss in tanking proficiency for DRK.

[shao32]

I agree regarding Unleashed.

The spell has a proc mechanic already. Developers should add value to that component to make the Spell worth while post pull.

If the Enhanced Unleash proc could possibly trigger from any spell (sans Grit), and the Enhanced spell (in addition to being cost-free) also delivered a threefold attack (50potency * 3 = 150) where the second and third hit do not have enmity modifiers - that for me feels ideal.

Now if they changed Enhanced Unleash 's animation to distinguish it from vanilla Unleash, and that new animation being that of the old PVP Tar Pit - that would be even awesome'er.

you know what i will do to make unleash feels better? its makes Quietus a direct upgrade of unleash so every time you have 50 blood unleash become quietus, both are circle aoes around you character so they are perfect for that and we don't loose anything and will be like we are using a better unleash instead of feel we have unleash taking dust when TBN+Quietus+AD storm comes.

the actual proc of unleash is kinda handy when you use unmend and have luck so more MP for AD but idk, its feel a bit underwhelming and they can get rid of it or just keep it and make Quietus gain a bit more of mp with my sugestion? idk its pretty easy forgeth about it actually.