Dark Knight: 5.0x Feedback Thread

[Shurrikhan]

What nonsense is that ? The current Darkside is more active than it ever was... In SB it was just toggle and forget. In HW it used to drain your MP but it was still pretty much toggle and forget. Not losing it was solely based on achieving a very basic level of MP management... Just like how it is now, but instead you directly and actively give the buff to yourself and extend it by using an MP-spending ability. It's much more active than both SB and HW. Is it any harder or more complex ? Compared to SB Darkside, yes it is. Compared to HW, it's pretty much the same level of complexity, which is pretty low. Is it really that important ? I don't think so. Devs didn't need to create a new gauge for it but that's not a big deal. Darkside has never been the center of DRK's gameplay.

HW Darkside allowed you to bank mana for future fights at the cost of its 12% damage bonus. This was common towards the ends of AoE pulls, when down to too few mobs for your AoEs to be worth its mana cost against so few, at which point you'd start readying for the next mass-pull by dropping Darkside and Syphon-comboing (be it into SE or Delirium). You could also drop it for any periods of pure downtime 3 or more server ticks long. Given that you ShB DRK essentially cannot drop it, it allows no such banking, and it encourages little to no downtime-awareness, I have no issues calling HW Darkside more complex or active than ShB's.

[shao32]

What nonsense is that ? The current Darkside is more active than it ever was... In SB it was just toggle and forget. In HW it used to drain your MP but it was still pretty much toggle and forget. Not losing it was solely based on achieving a very basic level of MP management... Just like how it is now, but instead you directly and actively give the buff to yourself and extend it by using an MP-spending ability. It's much more active than both SB and HW. Is it any harder or more complex ? Compared to SB Darkside, yes it is. Compared to HW, it's pretty much the same level of complexity, which is pretty low. Is it really that important ? I don't think so. Devs didn't need to create a new gauge for it but that's not a big deal. Darkside has never been the center of DRK's gameplay.

Active? After the first edge I forget about darkside exist since how redundant the mechanic has become, the difference of current darkside and a trait that boost you damage is zero since it's impossible to fade off, the large amount of time each egde/flood adds make it impossible, HW darkside was way more interactive thant this bcs you entire gameplay was around the MP generated and drain by darkside, and SB while actually becoming pretty redundant saddly still you can play with it in downtimes, in SHB it's jus a gauge number that you don't even bother to look bcs you have a surplus of darkside time, there is no planing around the timer, there is no interaction with other skills, it's just a flat 10% damage up that only a donkey will let fade off.

I will compared current darkside to HW one more closely ok?

In HW you turn it on, adds damage to all you skills and drain you MP in the process, if you run out of MP you lose it and you have to reapply the skill, simple right? The MP economy was affected by darkside, allows the execution of several skills of you set and prevent get mp from external sources, so if you lose darkside you can't execute several essential skills and lose the damage buff but you can recover MP naturally and from others.

SHB darkside, adds a 10% damage buff to everything, every edge/flood adds 30s, that's it, a generic flat damage buff that you don't bother to timing.

On both case you have to keep it but in HW Darkside interact with how you manage the job in many aspects, the second one no bcs of the surplus of edge and time make any edge/flood planing usage around darkside inexistent and the lack of any secondary effects to you skills just make it boring overall.

See the difference? In the past you have to keep attention to darkside and the effects of the skill to have a optimal management of the buff, current one no, you depend more of TA to plan you MP usage that darkside aka the gauge is pretty but useless, WAR will have more usage of a gauge like that for eye that DRK

[Sancho_Nyanta]

To be fair though they removed the ability of all jobs to get MP from external sources by removing said sources (except for potions). So really the only thing missing from the HW version of DS is the locking of certain skills, almost all of which have been removed anyway (with the arguable exception of Flood since it is basically Dark Passenger) and the continuous MP drain but really once you got use to it then you wouldn't really pay close attention to that either.

While I do admit that it isn't exactly like the HW version, you do have to agree that this version of DS is far closer to the HW version than what we've had in the past.

[shao32]

I can't consider it closer to HW, it have way less effects that the old versions, it's literally just a generic buff damage and nothing more and the mechanic is broken to a point you don't care about it, you just focus on don't overcap MP and darkside come alone without have to worry about so you literally don't care about it, I see it as a lame version of SB that you activate and don't care about it that HW you plan other stuff around the buff uptime.

Indeed the blocking MP is no longer necesary but old darkside prevent you gain MP with natural tics and this one just let you gain MP for some reason.

[Reynhart]

While I do admit that it isn't exactly like the HW version, you do have to agree that this version of DS is far closer to the HW version than what we've had in the past.

For me, the main mechanic of HW's DarkSide is "Do I have enough MP left to spend it on other skills while not letting Darkside drop ?". In that regard, since you can't spend MP on anything not Darkside related and you gain much more MP than what you need to reapply it before the timer run off, this mechanic is basically non existant, making it closer to a simple toggle in real combat.

[Absimiliard]

For me, the main mechanic of HW's DarkSide is "Do I have enough MP left to spend it on other skills while not letting Darkside drop ?". In that regard, since you can't spend MP on anything not Darkside related and you gain much more MP than what you need to reapply it before the timer run off, this mechanic is basically non existant, making it closer to a simple toggle in real combat.

I think what you meant to say is, "Do I have enough MP to press dark arts while I repeat my souleater combo for the billionth time and still keep darkside up?"

[shao32]

I think what you meant to say is, "Do I have enough MP to press dark arts while I repeat my souleater combo for the billionth time and still keep darkside up?"

on HW you use dark passenger too on top of dark arts since it was a dps gain single target those days, apart of you still have delirium combo while having lower rate of use that DA+Souleater, HW DRK have superior MP usage, GCD and oGCD diversity by far.

[Shurrikhan]

I think what you meant to say is, "Do I have enough MP to press dark arts while I repeat my souleater combo for the billionth time and still keep darkside up?"

You do realize that during HW Souleater combo was a dps loss unless affected by Dark Arts, right? There was no Souleater combo on constant repeat. You had Delirium as your mainstay damage combo, and still had to actually weave in enmity at that time, with the enmity modifier on DA-PS (6x * 5.5x *2x with Grit) being massive enough to make it situationally viable through later base PSs skipped or not needing to enter tank stance during a DPS-check against a single add.

[Mystic_Scholar]

Controversial take incoming, I'll take the angry mob with open arms. 5.0 DRK is extremely functionally similar to 4.x DRK and I actually like 5.0 DRK because I liked 4.x DRK.

For single target you're still spamming the same combo as before, not having our enmity combo doesn't really change the class at all. Dark side was never too involved either, it literally always boiled down to: "Excess mana? Press it! Low mana? Don't press it!" Edge/flood of shadow essentially accomplish the same thing using the same method. Excess mana, press it, low mana, don't press it. The only thing that's gone is the pretense of a "choice" that isn't really there.

For AOE in stormblood you would use salted earth/blood weapon to gain blood to spend on quietus to get mana to spend on abyssal drain to literally never die even when pulling an entire dungeon's worth of mobs. Although it was really satisfying to pull off, I can easily see why this had to be changed as healers typically had nothing to do while you were pulling off this wombo combo. Fundamentally though the playstyle of AOE remains the same, just minus the health drain. You put down salted earth, you spam quietus whenever you can, and spam your other AOE ability when you can't spam quietus. Fundamentally it's really the same. You don't really need mana from quietus anymore because your AOE no longer requires mana, but you still want to spam it because it's more DPS. Again, accomplishing the same thing as before but with less meaningless fluff. Minus the health drain of course. The only change I would suggest here has been said a million times but DRK really needs a mana gain AOE move BEFORE level 74 for the use of flood of shadow/darkness.

I've seen some people complain about carve and spit no longer being an "interesting choice" but it never really was an interesting choice. You either chose mana or damage, that's it. In every single situation there was one particular thing you should be doing with it and if you don't do that one specific thing it was a loss. It was always extremely obvious which one you should pick.

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[Mystic_Scholar]

Overall I think most people are missing the actual change that is affecting how dark knight feels the most, and that is removing mana cost from most of it's kit. Before, if you ran out of mana and adds spawned or something else got pulled, you couldn't do much to gain threat (if provoke/ultimatum didn't work for the situation of course). This meant you were constantly hording a small pile of mana in case of emergencies, this concept only became more prominent when you unlocked TBN. Now, at level 80, DRK is essentially the same, if you don't horde your mana efficiently you won't have enough for TBN when you really need it and in turn will take a bunch of unnecessary damage. Even though you don't have to worry about conserving mana for pulling adds, the punishment for not conserving it well at 80 is actually more harsh than it was before, with TBN being buffed and the soruce of most of our mitigation. If you mess up TBN you are completely screwed. THAT is where the interesting part of DRK comes in, learning the fights well enough to know exactly when TBN will pop and pulling it off perfectly among the barrage of oGCDs you have to manage. At 80 DRK feels fine, it could use some tweaks, maybe a few more oGCDs to add to the pile, maybe a dot, but overall is pretty fine as is to play. The problem more so comes before level 70, since before TBN you have absolutely no reason to horde mana, and thus just use it whenever you have it until you're empty, which makes for a very boring play style. DRK IS TBN now with all of the changes. Every single mechanic of DRK revolves around that one skill. Which makes it feel so terrible when you don't have it. It feels hollow. I saw someone suggest in this thread giving a much weaker version of TBN at a very low level (something before 10 preferably) that only blocked maybe five percent of your HP and get passives as you level up that increase the damage absorption of the shield. This seems like a great idea to me since the entire class seems based around TBN now. It really feels like they should get it from the start. That is my main suggestion to SE, if we could only get one change for DRK, I'd certainly want it to be that.

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