Dark Knight Megathread

[Anhra]

What risk & reward? You have setup a theoretical that fights not only against itself, but also fights against an entire other role. You think a DRK would even be staying <50% for longer than a GCD or two for this to matter in any capacity? Especially in raids when the moment you hit <50% you're basically getting tetra/Essential/Lustrate thrown at you? It's not a risk & reward, it's literally a repeat of the issues plaguing Living Dead, where the ability is literally out of your control. And just like Living Dead, such an ability on a tank is just going to cause arguments, issues, etc from DRKs who want to max their damage and healers who are keeping them healthy. It's clunky, it fights against itself, it fights against an entire role, and it fights against the intention of a tank to mitigate damage by rewarding you not mitigating damage to enter <50% faster and longer.

But really, it's irrelevant anyway. There's literally no way in a thousand years they'd implement an ability like that. The most they've ever done with tying stuff to HP is various 'potency decreases as HP goes down.' attacks, one of which had that effect stripped from it in SHB (Upheaval). the 'decreases' potency bit even shows the devs understand how ludicrous it is for a tank to get any sort of reward from being in a state that's opposite what they're supposed to be.

If Disgussions are irrelevant and you fear arguments on any side, maybe you should reconsider visiting these Forums.

My idea is by no means flawless, i merely wish to make this a point of Disgussion to push things into a direction where Jobs only benefit from it, even if it means making one more difficult than the other, so instead of only shooting down ideas, try to provide one as well since you clearly seem to be dissatisfied with the current DRK as well.

Personally, i think my Idea, aside from maybe a few Potency adjustments that would be required, would work IF Living Dead gets a proper Rework, like for example, having only to be healed over 25-50% HP and during the duration of Walking Dead, the DRK would get a Lifesteal effect (or something else that allows the Job to heal up properly) that lasts just as long, so that you can get out of that State by yourself, maybe even at the cost of not being able to recieve Healing from other Sources other than your own.

[Bhearil]

If Disgussions are irrelevant and you fear arguments on any side, maybe you should reconsider visiting these Forums.

My idea is by no means flawless, i merely wish to make this a point of Disgussion to push things into a direction where Jobs only benefit from it, even if it means making one more difficult than the other, so instead of only shooting down ideas, try to provide one as well since you clearly seem to be dissatisfied with the current DRK as well.

Personally, i think my Idea, aside from maybe a few Potency adjustments that would be required, would work IF Living Dead gets a proper Rework, like for example, having only to be healed over 25-50% HP and during the duration of Walking Dead, the DRK would get a Lifesteal effect (or something else that allows the Job to heal up properly) that lasts just as long, so that you can get out of that State by yourself, maybe even at the cost of not being able to recieve Healing from other Sources other than your own.

Theres the difference between suggestions and dreams. Saying that would be a great idea that Warrior would be able to shoot 800 potency fireballs from their arse during Inner Release (they are "releasing" after all from inside) window doesnt make the idea less ridiculous.

Theres no way that for a tank would be justified for them to get low to get damage bonus, a different thing would be that Tank self shielding/lifesteal becomes stronger when its at low HP.

Heck the idea would be horrible even on a dps job because either they become broken op or outright garbage because they would need to be low to not fall behind the rest of the dps, that dont have that issue, making the healers wanting to hire a hitman on them.


A reasonable sugestion is asking for example to let Monk to have a skin to hide their weapon, but to ask them to change the job so they dont use weapons since they are unarmed combat masters opens a huge can of worms if you have a job with something as crazy as not needing main weapon

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

If Disgussions are irrelevant and you fear arguments on any side, maybe you should reconsider visiting these Forums.

My idea is by no means flawless, i merely wish to make this a point of Disgussion to push things into a direction where Jobs only benefit from it, even if it means making one more difficult than the other, so instead of only shooting down ideas, try to provide one as well since you clearly seem to be dissatisfied with the current DRK as well.

Personally, i think my Idea, aside from maybe a few Potency adjustments that would be required, would work IF Living Dead gets a proper Rework, like for example, having only to be healed over 25-50% HP and during the duration of Walking Dead, the DRK would get a Lifesteal effect (or something else that allows the Job to heal up properly) that lasts just as long, so that you can get out of that State by yourself, maybe even at the cost of not being able to recieve Healing from other Sources other than your own.

Since when did I mention i was dissatisfied with current DRK? Current DRK is a good foundation atm, streamlining a lot of the clunkier systems of older DRK and I'm extremely looking forward to the new Dark Wave attack they have to see how it builds on the foundation. My only personal gripe with current DRK is Living Dead, something that is pretty much universal and I don't need to pitch a new idea for that. Literally copy-paste any of the other immunities and its fixed, DRK doesn't need some crazy flair with their immunity, it just needs a simple controllable function. I don't fear arguments, but there's a clear distinction between ideas that are clearly in line with the dev's history of design and make sense, and ideas that not go against what the devs have been doing for literally 4 expansions now, but also fight against the ideology of the role itself, fight against another role and fight against development history of homogenization. It's a public forum; you should be ready to have any idea you post scrutinized.

It's the nature of these discussions anyway; we can discuss all we like, but there's a reason the devs only listen to extremely broad statements, the average player has no experience in actual game design and balance in a professional environment when they create ideas. Let alone the devs even entertaining something that goes highly against their design philosophy of homogenizing the tanks and making them very casual and easy to pick up and play.

[Shurrikhan]

Theres no way that for a tank would be justified for them to get low to get damage bonus

And yet we've seen exactly that kind of traits and accordant play in tanking situations far more frenetic than those of XIV, including even WoW's high-end Mythic+.

Yes, increased self-healing and self-shielding were often likewise increased, and certain healers in turn had increased healing to low health targets (be that by linear scalar with missing %HP or as a buff procced by healing a low HP target), so such traits were rarely the sole reason to play around low %HP--but with enough of the given trait stacked into one's build, it was still reason enough to do so.

It's not far-fetched; it's already been done and, frankly, done well, elsewhere.

The issue is merely to have a kit that allows you to actually play into that HP margining.

Let's say you have your Blood for Blood trait, from which your %throughput is increased by a portion of your missing %HP. If you want to deemphasize risky play somewhat, you need only cap those gains at 20% HP (80% missing HP), and if you don't want tiny amounts to seemingly play into it, you can do the same to the upper cap.

Add to that, say, a lower-iCD, passive variant of Living Dead by which you're temporarily able to go into negative HP when struck with fatal damage. Unlike its more homogenized counterparts, there'd be no actual immunity, but it'd still increase effective eHP and, more importantly, would allow more frequent safety in exploiting Blood for Blood.

And that's just the simplest idea by which you could support it. There's plenty more that could be done if you wanted to make a tank's HP bar actually interesting for a change.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Theres the difference between suggestions and dreams. Saying that would be a great idea that Warrior would be able to shoot 800 potency fireballs from their arse during Inner Release (they are "releasing" after all from inside) window doesnt make the idea less ridiculous.

gestures to Dorgono in the Lv60 Solo Duty... Mnh, except that we have already seen a Warrior that throws around balls of fire...


Any way, here is a thought, to address the current argument... What if the Dark Knight gains from low HP, but does not necessarily need to remain low HP? It could be done as some thing like the Dark Knight gains some thing, could be a passive buff, a temporary effect, resource gain, a damage boost, a trigger to some thing else, that activates at a low HP %, but does not require that the Dark Knight remain at low HP, instead to be a effect with a independent duration...

I have my own extensive concept of blood magic for Dark Knight thought out, but let us start simple and stay on topic... instead of to shoot down Anhra's idea with heavy artillery, let us instead think of a way how it could work, even if that means to alter the function of the idea, while to still keep the spirit of the idea, such as with my above suggestion...

[Shurrikhan]

To be fair, all it'd take to have something that benefits from low HP without DRK feeling compelled to remain at that low HP level would be for that "something" to not break combos and be relatively bankable, similar to Bloodspiller.

[ForteNightshade]

As a Tank in general, you have by the norm, 3 Buttons that serve to reduce incoming damage, as well as a "i cant die now - button". If Living Dead gets a proper Rework on this, i see no issues with the idea i mentioned. The Point of a Playstyle like this is to reward People knowing when to take a risk, and when you should not. And keep in mind that a DRK wont stay ever for long in that state of being low HP, since both Healers, as well as the boosted HP recovery from Soul Eater, will bring him eventually back to +50% HP. And if that trait proves to be too Overpowered regardless, Numbers can still be adjusted on the matter at hand.

This idea is absolutely ludicrous, and would cause nothing but problems outside of a static environment. DRK players will intentionally get hit and refuse to use CDs because they actively want to be below 50%. Likewise, your damage is not entirely dependent on another job. This literally makes the job unplayable in PF because random healers aren't going to let you sit at 50% or lower. Therefore, you'll always be weaker than the other tanks. There is reward in this playstyle because you can't control it. You're at the mercy of your healers. If they're not comfortable leaving you at low HP, then no damage buff for you. And if you try to force it, they'll heal you back up.

Everything about a system like this just screams griefing, both from the party and the DRK itself. It'd be an absolute mess.

[Bhearil]

Even if the damage buff remains after leaving the HP threshold is gonna be a nightmare to balance: Either the tank is too strong compared with the others or their HP needs to ping pong constantly (relying on healers and specific encounters to boot)to keep the damage bonus up and remain comparable with the other tanks which means bigger effort for the same reward

[Anhra]

Even if the damage buff remains after leaving the HP threshold is gonna be a nightmare to balance: Either the tank is too strong compared with the others or their HP needs to ping pong constantly (relying on healers and specific encounters to boot)to keep the damage bonus up and remain comparable with the other tanks which means bigger effort for the same reward

That's why i thought that adding a increased GCD on the basic Rotation would balance this out, since the DRK HAS to use it in order to get some of his lost HP back, hence the name "Last Resort". Maybe the entire Effect could also be only for the Basic Rotation (maybe even the AoE one as well) just to further keep it in check.

What would you guys think on the idea if it were that way?

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

That's why i thought that adding a increased GCD on the basic Rotation would balance this out, since the DRK HAS to use it in order to get some of his lost HP back, hence the name "Last Resort". Maybe the entire Effect could also be only for the Basic Rotation (maybe even the AoE one as well) just to further keep it in check.

What would you guys think on the idea if it were that way?

As I had post before, I would only be fine with a GCD extension, if the Dark Knight can take advantage of it, with double-weave as a constant.
It would feel too slow, on the other scale, while on the oGCD weave side, Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow spam and the occasional CD, is not good enough to solve what would be my problem with it.

That said.. it would be a bad idea to use actions like Blood Weapon, while this theoretical GCD extension effect is active, unless actions like that, of which only trigger by GCD Spells and WeaponSkills, would instead also trigger from abilities, which are almost always oGCD, and oGCD Spells and WeaponSkills.