Dark Knight 6.0: Wishlist

[SiriusSaltstice]

Decent wishlist, while I do have a handful of nitpicks if we got these I'd be content. The job would be more fun than it has been for 4 years.

I would argue it needs a bit more resource management and hp sustain. Right now the other tanks eclipse dark in healing potential.

We could have delrium 1.0, another victim and scourge returned as appropriate resource spenders. 2 debuffs and a dot.

Would Scourge just combo off like Goring Blade does?

[Recon1o6]

Would Scourge just combo off like Goring Blade does?

It could be, or it could be separate, either way works.

[Lyth]

The one issue that I have with combo based DoTs or upkeep buffs is that they push the job towards a fixed rotation, like PLD. This reduces your flexibility to make resource management decisions on the GCD. This is one of the reasons that I recommended a free-form combo system similar to MNK, in that you're not obliged to follow through with any given combo to the end.

Procs are another good way to differentiate resource management jobs from fixed rotation jobs, especially when they lead to variable resource gains. One of the nice features of Blood Price was that it did lead to slight variations in your resource totals, such that you generally weren't at the same MP/blood totals at a given point in the fight. That tends to keep things interesting.

Everyone remembers Scourge fondly for the animation, but most players struggled to maintain adequate Scourge uptime back in Heavensward. I'm not sure how well the current playerbase would fare with it.

[Nivarea]

Well, about Scourge, just returning the skill as it was during HW would not be that interesting within the kit. Yet, that doesn't mean we can't do something interesting with a non-combo GCD dot. And the idea for this already exist in the game and could bring back something Lyth talked about and that we lost too after HW : procs. Let me post an example, which require me to create two skill, one which we will call Scourge for nostalgia sake, and another one we will call Deep Cut (I was out of inspiration).

Scourge
Delivers an attack with a potency of X.
Additional Effect: Damage over time
Potency: X
Duration: 15s
Aditional effect : 50% chance to grant bloodthirst when damage over time is dealt by scourge.
Bloodthirst : Reset the recast time of Deep Cut.
This weaponskill does not share a recast timer with any other actions. (recast time, 30s, GCD)

Deep Cut :
Deliver an attack with a potency of X.
Recast time : 30s (off GCD)

It's basically how Bloodletter works on BRD under Mage's Balad. It would incentive players to maintain the dot on cooldown thanks to it having a direct effect with the procs, and it would also give us an oGCD which would be back regularly to break the current downtime of DRK rotation. And well, it's not thematically out of nowhere since we used to have procs back in HW with low blow and old reprisal. Putting the recast time of the dot on 30sec is to avoid having all the procs always on buffs windows, and not being a full uptime dot is to force downtimes even if we're lucky with procs. The only "downside" would be that damage would be more RNG based, with lower lows and higher highs depending on our luck.

If we want to further integrate those skils to the kit, we can add an effect to Deep cut, like a slight HP regen, or, depending on how it could be potencially reworked, an effect on Darkside.

Well, it's just some idea, and yeah, it would not be unique to DRK given it's also on Bard, but it would be unique among tanks, and it's not thematically off from some aspects of the historic and original playstyle of the job contrary to ShB Delirium, to take the exemple of another skill directly inspired by one already existing on another job.

[Kabooa]

Well, about Scourge, just returning the skill as it was during HW would not be that interesting within the kit. Yet, that doesn't mean we can't do something interesting with a non-combo GCD dot.

Scourge
Weaponskill
Effect: Strikes the enemy twice for 100 potency (RE: 100 x 2).
Effect: Marks the enemy with "Another Victim" for 30 seconds should it not be present. Another Victim increases the potency of your next Carve and Spit, Abyssal Drain or Scourge by 20. This increases by 20 every 3 seconds and is consumed when applied.

Carve and Spit
Ability
Recast: 60
Effect: Deals three strikes for 150 potency. (150 x 3).

I prefer something more along these lines because its A) In my control and B) Doesn't devolve into "It's lit, hit it".

We don't have enough back-ended burst abilities, and rather than just get a standalone DoT, this version of Scourge is mechanically similar, except you have to cash it out instead of fire and forget.

[DRKoftheAzure]

The one issue that I have with combo based DoTs or upkeep buffs is that they push the job towards a fixed rotation, like PLD. This reduces your flexibility to make resource management decisions on the GCD. This is one of the reasons that I recommended a free-form combo system similar to MNK, in that you're not obliged to follow through with any given combo to the end.

Procs are another good way to differentiate resource management jobs from fixed rotation jobs, especially when they lead to variable resource gains. One of the nice features of Blood Price was that it did lead to slight variations in your resource totals, such that you generally weren't at the same MP/blood totals at a given point in the fight. That tends to keep things interesting.

Everyone remembers Scourge fondly for the animation, but most players struggled to maintain adequate Scourge uptime back in Heavensward. I'm not sure how well the current playerbase would fare with it.

I think the devs should move away from VERY LONG phase transitions as THOSE seem to be playing a key part in the gutting of toolkits from Stormblood onward, along with just being tossed into a boss room without even fight some trash mobs in 1 or 2 hallways or even a door boss and calling just the boss with maybe an add phase a raid, which are exactly what trials are so just call the raids as trials if it's just the boss with maybe an add phase and less forced downtime with content in general...

And might as well address healers for the healers that might see this; less focus on oGCD healing and more focus on GCD DPS and healing, can have oGCD healing but not too much but if oGCD healing has DPS as well then that might be a good way to balance healers outside of popping an oGCD to keep tank alive long enough to not care about their HP...

And before I forget, no more Eureka themed actions if we can't use them outside of Eureka/Bozja...

[Lyth]

I like those Scourge ideas. I also like the idea of Carve and Spit being three strikes instead of one. While more of an aesthetic change, I'd much prefer to see DRK be about lots of numbers (i.e. 99x combo) instead of slowly winding up for one big damage swing. There's nothing wrong with encouraging players to hit buttons as they light up, especially if you're playing on a faster GCD.

I don't think that phase transitions have to detract from DoTs or abilities like Living Shadow. The solution is to give players the option to burn the remainder of the cooldown for on-demand damage when you need to. That was the idea behind my proposed new finisher ability. Either let Living Shadow run its course and use Shadowbringer at the end to maximize your total damage, or burn it sooner for some burst and to cut your losses before a phase transition happens.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I was talking more about fixed rotations instead of DoTs when it came to phase transitions and of course for DRK specifically Darkside upkeep and how having 10% Damage Up being locked behind a damage dealing oGCD isn't as effective as Heavensward or Stormblood Darkside, especially if Darkside isn't going to do anything else and is just another generic damage up skill as a result, because DRK mostly lives and dies by it's Darkside in previous expansions which was part of the skill gap in those expansions, but since it's now mostly a generic damage up skill their is no real point in having it exist in the first place let alone having UI element dedicated to it that's more screen bloat than anything...

[SpiralMask]

isnt frey just scourge but visually updated? it's got roughly the same duration due to the hard animation lock beign summoned/unsummoned eating the timer, it's just been buffed in potency in exchange for being tied to meter

as for @OP: my personal wish for DRK is that it gets a pass in 6.0 to help better differentiate it from WAR, as the 5.0 overhaul basically reduced it to WAR +4 OGCDs -2 defensive cooldowns (complete with their own copy of "infuriate", "inner release", and so on). every class should be remarkable in it's own right and unique enough that one cant really draw so direct a comparison. it deserves better.

[Recon1o6]

isnt frey just scourge but visually updated? it's got roughly the same duration due to the hard animation lock beign summoned/unsummoned eating the timer, it's just been buffed in potency in exchange for being tied to meter

as for @OP: my personal wish for DRK is that it gets a pass in 6.0 to help better differentiate it from WAR, as the 5.0 overhaul basically reduced it to WAR +4 OGCDs -2 defensive cooldowns (complete with their own copy of "infuriate", "inner release", and so on). every class should be remarkable in it's own right and unique enough that one cant really draw so direct a comparison. it deserves better.

nowhere near the same

scourge is a dot you can apply whenever, access as soon as you picked up the job and was pretty strong for its time

Fray does whatever s/he likes though usually starting with an abyssal drain followed by a plunge. Of the moves available to fray, 3 of them are actually stronger than your own (quietus, abyssal drain and plunge)
Fray also has issues with a faulty timer and bosses when they move out of melee radius. Scourge had nothing wrong with it

Fray's moves also change somewhat depending on what you're fighting, but there's no guarentees. I've had fray do quietus 3 times against a boss