Dark Knight Megathread

[Agner]

Why I think DRK doesn't feel as good as the other tanks:

Heavy agreement on almost all accounts here. DRK feels like it works it's way up to almost... what, nothing?

I can't legitimately propose any worthwhile changes on DRK. I'm not a game dev, I'm not a person who adjusts balance, but I like to have fun on my jobs.

As such, I generally don't make long posts on job adjustment, but maybe people would see this and come up with much better ideas based off of it: I wish they would attempt to turn DRK's glaring faults into something actually fun and interactive. Why not?

For example: We overcap the absolute hell out of Darkside, so why not turn that into an actual mechanic? Maybe it could start off as a more basic buff (i.e. Lyth's speed buff suggestion) and turns into a damage buff upon "overcap" to signify our mastery of the Darkside as we fight. As for MP generation or Living Shadow or general blood gauge, I'm not sure what I could really suggest there.

Maybe Delirium could let you change into another slower phase with said Darkside overcap (which also gives us our black flames, jesus square I'm begging you by now) that has a different GCD combo replacing Souleater, using something like adjusted Edge of Shadow animations (i.e. an altered Scourge or Reprisal, or even the same animation but flipped) for in-between along the lines of the GNB suggestion. I mean, shit—they could literally just adjust old animations to feel crunchier/heavier and people would probably love it. The return of old animations is something a LOT of people have been asking for. This could obviously be a bit wonky with role actions, but I digress. I'm trying to offer a suggestion that doesn't completely screw over the team into making excessive amounts of new animations, while also making the job feel like it wasn't totally Frankenstein's monster'd together.

Maybe we could return the 4.3 edition of Sole Survivor as a fix to Living Dead, even. You get the chance to use it to remove yourself out of Walking Dead state or you screw yourself into depending on your healers based on how you time it during a fight. Would it suck to have to weave more on this job? Maybe, but it'd still feel less awful than having to deal with Living Dead as it currently exists.

With all of that said, all of this might not work with the current systems SE has in place. I am no game dev. At least it might give some significance to us actually having a gauge/timer for our Darkside.

If you want a tl;dr: Give us a reason to overcap Darkside. Make it seem like we were lousy greatsword wielders at first who mastered the craft using more precise, magic-infused blows. Give us an "out" to Living Dead's penalty that feels good to use and adds more to the job with 4.3's Sole Survivor adjustment. Make that different by allowing us to recover some of our HP after the cooldown ends, potentially making it have the same 10 second timing as other invulns relevant/different. I'm not sure what to say regarding bloodgauge, living shadow, and MP usage. Maybe incorporate that into the revised Delirium?

[Ryaduera]

If you want a tl;dr: Give us a reason to overcap Darkside. Make it seem like we were lousy greatsword wielders at first who mastered the craft using more precise, magic-infused blows. Give us an "out" to Living Dead's penalty that feels good to use and adds more to the job with 4.3's Sole Survivor adjustment. Make that different by allowing us to recover some of our HP after the cooldown ends, potentially making it have the same 10 second timing as other invulns relevant/different. I'm not sure what to say regarding bloodgauge, living shadow, and MP usage. Maybe incorporate that into the revised Delirium?

To be honest, giving a different mana consuming OGCD with higher damage than Edge of Darknes that doesn't stack Darkside wouldn't be bad either. DRK in my opinion only really needs to have to have a decision to make instead of the prerequisite being "x is available? Use it" which is the heart of the problem.

[Agner]

To be honest, giving a different mana consuming OGCD with higher damage than Edge of Darknes that doesn't stack Darkside wouldn't be bad either. DRK in my opinion only really needs to have to have a decision to make instead of the prerequisite being "x is available? Use it" which is the heart of the problem.

Hey, maybe we could let TBN make that one available for free with good timing. ;')

[shao32]

Darkside and MP economy with the related skills need to be reconsidered in order to have something that actually works to a gameplay level, nothing hard so I have Desing I exposed in other threads months ago:

- Flood of shadow: cost 2000 pm, potency x, increase Darkside time by 30s to a maximum of 60s, hits multiple targets.
- Edge of shadow: cost 2000 pm, potency x (superior to flood) single target don't generate Darkside time.
- Abyssal drain: cost 2000 pm, potency x (superior to flood) hit multiple targets, heal x potency don't generate Darkside time.
- The blackest night: cost 2000 pm , shield of x% of your HP, when breaks grant dark arts (basically the same).

MP generation increased overall result on a interplay where the player have to constantly manage his MP and Darkside by keeping a balance in the middle of your MP bar and using your skills according of what you need, you would use flood to generate Darkside time and keep it up and when you don't need it you will use Edge on single target for maximum damage output and Abyssal drain on AOE situations for the same, this would make Darkside gauge usefull, restore resource management identity on DRK and with the actual design of TBN and dark arts you will be able to sustitute any of the other 3 any time by the shield and get a refund for break the shield with dark arts and keep rolling, rewarding gameplay.

I know this change is never going to happen but if it happen + a rework of Delirium like idk enchanced Bloodspiller and quietus to generate moar MP would make the job remain relative simple but deep and feel cohesive in parts that right now aren't contributing to his identity, no more WAR rip-off, pipe dream but is the best I could think without adding new skills. In the end DRK need something, anything that don't run on automatic.

[Ryaduera]

Darkside and MP economy with the related skills need to be reconsidered in order to have something that actually works to a gameplay level, nothing hard so I have Desing I exposed in other threads months ago:

Not that I don't like this idea, I do actually, I just don't think this part is necessarily true. Someone smarter than myself did the math and in a 10 minute fight, assuming every TBN breaks and gives you Edge of Shadow and you use it at every available moment, you have 12 minutes worth of Darkside that's overcapped and therefor wasted. Mind you when I say overcapped I mean it's only counting what you didn't use. So if you have 45 seconds on Darkside and use your MP to get more, it's only counting the 15 seconds you wasted. Darkside has more wasted time than it does uptime. In conclusion, you have way more MP generation than you need already. In the context of current DRK, wasted Darkside means spent MP, and MP is something we only barely have to manage anyway since we have 3 sources. Delirium, blood weapon, and Syphon Strike. 4 if you use Ethers.

That being said, lowering MP costs across the board would allow you to use these hypothetical spells more frequently and since it's calculated use of the spells, it doesn't feel noisy but rather intelligently.

[Ryaduera]

The current buff uptime surplus would be irrelevant to any system that would finally have the means to minimize such, however, as per Shao's recommendation.

I don't think it'd be remotely sufficient as a direction for Darkside (despite, sadly, being an improvement over the current), but at least it wouldn't carry over that particular flaw.

It's just a strange concept in general that we have to dedicate a resource to generate another resource, but MP is not used for anything else and the timer on the resource it generates is a whole minute, which in an encounter, is an extremely long time and doesn't have any active uses. It's just a resource that you will still have even if you don't bother trying to manage it and just want to DPS, but then doesn't reward you for managing it well but punishes you if you somehow manage to let it expire... It's very unsatisfying design.

I'd rather see something consume Darkside time rather than contesting for your MP personally.

[Shurrikhan]

...

The current buff uptime surplus would be irrelevant to any system that would finally have the means to minimize such, however, as per Shao's recommendation.

I don't think it'd be remotely sufficient as a direction for Darkside (despite, sadly, being an improvement over the current), but at least it wouldn't carry over that particular flaw.

[shao32]

Not that I don't like this idea, I do actually, I just don't think this part is necessarily true. Someone smarter than myself did the math and in a 10 minute fight, assuming every TBN breaks and gives you Edge of Shadow and you use it at every available moment, you have 12 minutes worth of Darkside that's overcapped and therefor wasted. Mind you when I say overcapped I mean it's only counting what you didn't use. So if you have 45 seconds on Darkside and use your MP to get more, it's only counting the 15 seconds you wasted. Darkside has more wasted time than it does uptime. In conclusion, you have way more MP generation than you need already. In the context of current DRK, wasted Darkside means spent MP, and MP is something we only barely have to manage anyway since we have 3 sources. Delirium, blood weapon, and Syphon Strike. 4 if you use Ethers.

That being said, lowering MP costs across the board would allow you to use these hypothetical spells more frequently and since it's calculated use of the spells, it doesn't feel noisy but rather intelligently.

My apologies maybe I didn't expose my Desing properly, by increasing the MP generation and by result increasing the amount of Flood-Edge-AD uses is to spread the MP consumption across the entire rotation and not having it over confinated in the compacted burst window we have now, resulting on giving DRK a more interesting interplay Wich consist on exclusive to soul eater combo spam and a ocasional Bloodspiller right now between his burst, the burst can rely on the rest of the skills of his kit on the 60s mark instead.
So the point is end with the massive amount of overcaped Darkside time by adding the choice of spend your resources on more damage spells that don't generate Darkside time but offer more potency per use, and when your Darkside time is below 30s you can use Flood to add more, no more surplus.

[Ryaduera]

snip.

Oh! This makes sense now, yeah. It would fix the resource issue in that case and make the burst window feel more like a flow rather than a bucket we dump it all in.

For me, however, this wouldn't fix the issue with only having 4 globals to use in an entire encounter. PLD/WAR rotation uses 6 on globals, GNB gets 7, and DRK gets 4. 3 of which are spammed while the other is ALSO "use bloodspiller when you have blood gauge" until a burst window opens. It doesn't feel very good. The 1-2-3 combo works for GNB because each rotation gives 1 cartridge which can be fired immediately. It takes 3 rotations for DRK to even consider using bloodspiller. This is why I'd like something on global that consumes Darkside time.

[RyuDragnier]

Oh! This makes sense now, yeah. It would fix the resource issue in that case and make the burst window feel more like a flow rather than a bucket we dump it all in.

For me, however, this wouldn't fix the issue with only having 4 globals to use in an entire encounter. PLD/WAR rotation uses 6 on globals, GNB gets 7, and DRK gets 4. 3 of which are spammed while the other is ALSO "use bloodspiller when you have blood gauge" until a burst window opens. It doesn't feel very good. The 1-2-3 combo works for GNB because each rotation gives 1 cartridge which can be fired immediately. It takes 3 rotations for DRK to even consider using bloodspiller. This is why I'd like something on global that consumes Darkside time.

Having something on global would also helps DRK get a rhythm, and add a bit more thought process to MP use. You'll still want to keep some MP for a TBN if you know a tankbuster is coming up, but you're not just going to spam Edge/Flood whenever possible like now, you're likely going to do 2 GCD timer drops and then use Edge/Flood so you don't overcap the timer. It's a well thought out solution to the braindead "dump everything" MP usage we have now. Especially if that GCD move is learned rather early on, perhaps level 58? It would get players into the habit early on of controlling their MP usage, as well as be a nod to the level 58 job quest.