Dark Knight Megathread

[ArianeEwah]

removing the spam* aspect of it is functionally deleting it in the context of SB DRK's gameplay loop

need proof?

Removing the spam means to change the MP system as a whole which was working well enough during HW, but not the removal of the action itself, that's my point.

I don't know what you wanna tell me with your "proof"!?? I know that Egde and Flood are essentially old DA, and the new DA (TBN proc) is mistreatment of the term. Tho, your math is off: DA cost in SB was 2.4k with 9.48k max MP pool. It's todays MP cost would lie between 2.5k-2.6k MP, thus Edge/Flood cost is roughly 20% higher than DA. (admittedly, maybe its twice its cost if you take the MP gain into account) Its potency however is even higher than 2x the old DA, even when we just look at Edge of Darkness, but more than trice the potency for Edge of Shadow.
But that's trying to compare apples with oranges, ShB DRK =/= HW/StB DRK.

WE both know that because of many aspects, the MP gain in StB and ShB differ way too much. But there is still the question: Was it really necessary to replace DA with Edge/Flood, when all they had to do was to adjust the potency and the MP cost? I think not. But I believe they made it, so it would seem they actually cared (which they didn't, they just made the job more flashy as the poster boy).

idk where you got the impression I wanted it to change
I didn't want it to change.
i'm still buttmad over it, really.

Where did I say, that YOU wanted it to change? You stated that "enough people" were "happy" with the ShB changes for them to stay, I simply brought in an example to counter that argument. If the first pro to complete UWU on DRK said it was fun to play, how and why did SE change the job in the first place?
I just believe "they HAD to be lazy" about the job. The job was a mess, but imo a more fun mess than what we have now, or what we will have very soon. And "they HAD to be lazy" because they are lacking manpower, probably even without any dude there playing tank in the first place. DPS jobs get all the attention they can get, but we tanks are nothing more than 2nd class jobs! Healers might even be 3rd class, or share the seat with us.

It was kinda excusable for ShB because they reworked much more in a shorter time period of 1 month after the last patch, leading from StB to ShB.
HOWEVER, the last patch for ShB was in July! The release of EW is in November. Whole 4(!) months, 300% MORE time to rethink and adjust literally ANYTHING, and this is the result? A freaking 2 more actions with pretty much no adjustment on any tank job?
They have no excuse for this much of a horrendous flop!

I could've though of a 3rd cartridge gauge increase, actually 90% of GNB predicted this! Most also thought of a 2 cartridges cost move. (looks good tho)
2/4 tanks now have a burst finisher move, and DRK has a semi-burst finisher move (Edge -> (new?) upgraded Flood)
They thought of finisher moves for ALL jobs, and if that's the only change to tanks, well... then even a kindergarden kid could've thought of this!
If they are acting around those mental states, we really have to question whether it's actually worth putting our money into their "work".

[KatsuraJun]

Tho, your math is off

don't forget potency creep too. I know the math doesn't exactly line up so neatly, but the general idea is the same - it increased the damage and mp cost so you'd press the button less for roughly the same result.

Was it really necessary to replace DA with Edge/Flood, when all they had to do was to adjust the potency and the MP cost?

that's kinda what I was getting into with my "proof." you are right that SB DRK =/= ShB DRK. that's my point of *why* they removed all these things. let me explain with more clearly with proper capitalization lmao

cont.

[KatsuraJun]

cont.

So what were the big additions to DRK in SB? TBN and Delirium. These things replaced some of the old timer/rotation gameplay in DRK's HW kit (keeping old delirium and scourge up) with one that was entirely focused on managing your resource bars - Blood and Mana. How did this work? Forgive me if you already know, but I need to describe it to set my point up.

-TBN: Was, and still is an incredibly powerful tool at the time. But it worked differently in SB in one critical way: the fact that it added 50 Blood, instead of adding an Edge cast, meant you wanted to use Bloodspiller to keep your Blood below 50 if you were going to shield. Of course, you still wanted to have mana so you could actually cast the thing.

-Delirium: Was a huge injection of mana. Such a big injection, actually, that you couldn't empty your MP bar faster than you could spend it even if you used Dark Arts on every single oGCD possible during its window. So ideally, you wanted to keep your MP bar low before a Delirium through Dark Arts. But it cost 50 blood, so you also wanted to keep 50 Blood.

You can see how these two abilities - the most powerful in SB DRK's arsenal - wanted the exact opposite gamestates for your Blood and MP. And what was the punishment for messing this balancing act up? Well, this ties into why Dark Arts is so "spammy" - if you didn't plan ahead before a Delirium window, you would be forced to mash Dark Arts on every oGCD window available to minimize the loss. It ran the very real risk of pushing your other oGCDs backwards, or making it difficult to cast defensives, especially with the faster GCD during Blood Weapon. It was the punishment for not playing properly. Of course, if you mashed Dark Arts too much trying to prepare for this, you'd end up at 0 mana without the ability to cast your other stuff.

Adjusting the MP and potency for less "spam" removes this penalty for messing up, because then you could easily dump your MP even in during Delirium fast enough that it's a non-issue. There becomes 0 risk to just holding enough MP to do whatever you might need it for without planning ahead, because if you even come close to the risk of capping, you can dump your entire bar with 3 Edge of Shadow casts windows easily. It would render the entire thing I described up above rather meaningless, which is why I think they pretty much deleted it all.

You stated that "enough people" were "happy" with the ShB changes for them to stay, I simply brought in an example to counter that argument.

I hate to say this - but outside of the OF, I've seen more people rejoice new DRK than revile it. That's why I say "I guess people are happy with it." Yeah, I hate it. But on Discord, Reddit, etc a lot of people are fine with it. Some even love it. I'm not gonna speculate on whether they're former WAR mains or whatever, but that's what i mean by - it is what it is. Unfortunately. All you or I can do is sit here and seethe about it, really. Up to now, I hoped they were in the minority - but we look here and DRK remains the same. So I can only assume the opposite is true, I suppose. SE is the one with the player stats, after all.

[Shin96]

I hate to say this - but outside of the OF, I've seen more people rejoice new DRK than revile it. That's why I say "I guess people are happy with it." Yeah, I hate it. But on Discord, Reddit, etc a lot of people are fine with it. Some even love it.

That's usually the hive mind mentality around these places. Say something else and you're shunned or might be confronted on something stupid like Inner Delirium. It's alright if people like the "new" DRK but it leaves you with a bitter aftertaste for what's to come in the future. All we can do is keep this thread alive with seemingly no hope for reconciliation on the developers part. Or, the more painful option; quitting the game or simply adjust.

[Beddict]

Bloodspiller spam is gone but the job still looks boring af.

Not that we know of, unless I missed something. The only thing I heard during the Live Letter is that Delirium is going down to a 60s recast. Assuming they keep it similar to Inner Release (and they probably will since the dev team doesn't give a shit about DRK), Delirium will go from being "spam five Bloodspillers" to "spam three Bloodspillers". Except WAR got that new Fellest Cleave bullshit to cap off Inner Release while DRK was given the middle finger because of course it was. Who knows, maybe Delirium was changed to not suck, but I got zero hopes and expectations based off what they presented.

[shao32]

I just gonna say it now, Rework or Delete Delirium before Endwalker, do that at least that SE just only that, it's not that hard.

[Recon1o6]

Dark knight changes: we're making it more like warrior. More spam!

ffs se.

[OdinelStarrei]

Guys, wait wait wait! Hold on! We have to go through the proper procedure before we freak out! Where's the person asking for us to wait for tooltips before making judgements!?

Really though, after I had my kneejerk reaction of disgust, I'd like to actually talk about the new skill. I don't really care about Peppered Earth, so let's talk about the other new skill we saw, that Dark Passenger looking thing.

It's not a Flood upgrade, since Flood was used in the same video, and more importantly, Flood is an oGCD, and this new Line AoE skill ISN'T. Check it out, timestamp is 4:15 in the trailer itself, you can compare it to the BLUE swirly underneath the character model that is used for oGCDs like the EoS right before it versus the YELLOW swirly that happens on GCDs like Hard Slash and Bloodspiller (Not Unleash/Stalwart, seems they are still spells, for some godforsaken reason.)



Something else that I think bears mentioning is that we have absolutely no idea how this skill is proc'd. And I do think it is a proc, why would you lead your job showcase with Peppered Earth, a skill most of us would've liked to see deleted, versus what seems to be a 20 yalm laser beam? Let me put on my tinfoil hat, and stay with me here.

The TBN is cast and it falls off at the proper time for a TBN if you look closely (right as he's grabbing his chest for LS), so, still 7s on the duration for TBN. The new buff on the WHM goes on at 4:08 and drops off very clearly at 4:18 so it looks to be a ten second duration. I find this interesting because of the order of the skills in the trailer.

TBN falls off, and there's an EoS, and THEN there is the new GCD skill. Then we see an Unleash, the buff falls off the WHM, there's a Stalwart Soul, an EoS, and only THEN do you see the new skill again. So we aren't looking at a skill that has a inherent CD like GF or Sonic Break, nor something that looks to be specifically combo-dependent. Why not use the GCD skill during the Salted Earth demonstration, why only when the buffs fall off? Why even put both the buffs on the players like that if they're just doomed to fall off and not actually tell us anything? Unless it is actually telling us something?

Is this tied to this new thing they are trying out for tanks this expansion?



Is there some kind of interaction? Does having a defensive action be used actually lead to the GCD skill becoming usable, ala Chelonian Gate or Blue Fog?

Despite my hatred of Delirium, I truly think the biggest problem with DRK is the lack of GCD diversity and too much Souleater spamming. I think stockpiling MP and DA procs for raidbuffs is the only interesting part of the job currently. So what if we actually started unlocking these GCDs through defensive actions, and could use them in burst windows like how we use Edge and Flood currently? If using this new action is actually a gain in single target, you could see a situation where TBN and this new skill are essentially pressed on CD, just to proc this action as much as possible. I also find it odd how there was Edge of Shadow before the new GCD both times, almost like Edge led to it, similar to a DA-GCD of previous systems, but that could 100% be a coincidence. If it's able to be charged like Ruin IV or something, we could have both GCD and oGCD builder-spender burst periods that would also be competing in GCD space with new 60 second, 3GCD Delirium.

And something like this in AoE would be huge if the potency was high enough. Quietus frankly sucks, but if you made this a solid 400 or so potency with no fall-off (equal to Souleater), that would be incredibly compelling if we finally got fights with more than a single enemy inside, and that's not even talking about the uptime potential for a GCD skill that looks to be almost Nastrond in range, would make something like Conflag Strike or a big disengage a bit more tolerable.

Food for thought, I think. I'd like to talk about this with someone, maybe it's just trying to make the best of a pretty mediocre situation, but with nothing else better to do, I think it's worth thinking about at least.

We can never go home.

[KatsuraJun]

I think GCD diversity is a red herring when it comes to DRK's issues tbh.

123 124 123 is not inherently more interesting than 123 123 123. It's why I didn't particularly mourn the loss of HW Delirium. Just my take though.

[shao32]

My feeling about the Living shadow skill aka the one that's looks like a double Flood would be a skill with a recast similar to Nastrod for DRG, you activate living shadow and have like 2-3 efective uses of that skill under his duration and thats it, if is a GCD or an oGCD is hard to say bcs they tend to space skill usage on this trailers to show the animation more than anything else.

Now if my theory is correct and it's how i think it is then it's going to be extremly underwelming to wait 2 min just to have that small amount of variety since as far as we know living shadow will still stay at the 120s mark.