Dark Knight Megathread

[WhyAmIHere]

Honestly, Final Fantasy as a series already has a solution to the self-sustain issue for DRK.

Blood Weapon

I'm still praying for SE to add in Minus Strike. Have it drain all of your blood gauge, and have bonus potency the lower your MP is, and apply TBN as an additional effect. Give it a minute recast on a weaponskill like others are now.

[Satarn]

Besides the life-steal game-play niche wasn't originally "given to WAR", they just used to be able to cross-class Bloodbath, a lancer/melee dps ability.
So even historically it wasn't really just a "WAR thing"

This is blatantly incorrect. Bloodbath has never been a Lancer ability. Not to mention WAR could never cross-class from Lancer - the job took skills from GLD and PGL(like Mantra and Internal Release).

Bloodbath itself was originally a MRD ability, which is why 1) the original icon had a bloody axe head in it and 2) it was cross-classed frequently by the other 2 tank jobs. MRD even had a trait called Bloodshower which upgraded Bloodbath above what other jobs could get from it. It wasn't until Stormblood when the entire cross-class system got replaced with the role skills and Bloodbath was stolen from tanks for the melee dps.

Other than that, like Marxam has said, Inner Beast was originally a lifesteal weaponskill with no mitigation attached. In fact the only damage mitigation cooldown WAR had in 2.0 was the crappy defense increase(not dmg decrease) in Foresight.

Initial concept of WAR in ARR was absolutely the life-stealing, high hp tank, it just didn't work well with their content design at the time.

[Shurrikhan]

Besides the life-steal game-play niche wasn't originally "given to WAR", they just used to be able to cross-class Bloodbath, a lancer/melee dps ability.

You're thinking of Blood for Blood. Bloodbath was always a Marauder ability, for which they also gained extended duration via a Marauder trait.

Warrior, on the other hand, could not cross-class Blood for Blood, which led to Marauder being the preferred tank for much of ARR's 4-man PvP, since it could stack B4B, Raging Strikes, Internal Release, and the like while crushing undaunted into the enemy's healer or squishier dps.

Initial concept of WAR in ARR was absolutely the life-stealing, high hp tank, it just didn't work well with their content design at the time.

Which, to be fair, was merely because it was undertuned for raid content.

Foresight, for instance, multiplied Defense stat rather than offering direct mitigation, and by a pitiful percent ultimately worth only, what, less than 5% mitigation? And that was somehow treated as an equivalent to Rampart.

Vengeance, their Sentinel-like, originally offered zero damage mitigation.

Their tank stance increased HP but not sustainability since they didn't increase healing intake; that instead relied on Wrath stacks (now Beast Gauge), which even then only affected healing spells, not healing, and to less than the equivalent effective rate offered by Shield Oath (as you'd need 25% more healing to compensate for taking 25% more damage [or, not taking 20% less damage]), and was then consumed the moment Warrior healed itself via Inner Beast, which likewise wasn't affected by that healing modifier.

And even then, people were able to clear Binding Coil 1-5 with it, since at least Infirmity likewise didn't debuff Inner Beast's self-healing and Lustrate was, at the time, a %HP heal, a Infuriate double-self-heal could be powerful for Caduceus, and the added AoE damage and Bloodbath self-healing therefrom (PLD had none save Circle of Scorn at the time) was significant in T4.

[TouchandFeel]

...

...

That is correct, I was misremembering and jumbling up a number of different things in my head.

Regardless, I don't feel that it is right to just flippantly dismiss the potential for having life-steal/self-healing on Blood Weapon, something it has always classicaly had in the series, just because WAR is predominant in that niche. It's welcome to keep the life-steal crown, but that adornment shouldn't be a stranglehold choking out other tanks from getting in on that action if even to a lesser degree.

I'm not saying either of you are doing that, I've just seen far too much of that kind of mindset and sentiment over the years.

[Shurrikhan]

Regardless, I don't feel that it is right to just flippantly dismiss the potential for having life-steal/self-healing on Blood Weapon, something it has always classicaly had in the series, just because WAR is predominant in that niche. It's welcome to keep the life-steal crown, but that adornment shouldn't be a stranglehold choking out other tanks from getting in on that action if even to a lesser degree.

I don't think anyone has an issue with DRK getting some life-steal. I'd argue it'd be more thematic than TBN, even, though of course with each expansion that remains a mainstay, that's one more iteration among those of the overall series that it's the dominant theme. For XIV, it would be a bad fit to simply overtake the since-the-start life-steal and self-sustain king, Warrior, but anything short (and especially if distinct) from that shouldn't raise a stink.

The real issue is simply whether Blood Weapon is the most fun and functional place to put that lifesteal. So long as it remains a cooldown and duration- or stack-based buff (especially one that covers a sixth of all uptime), its healing will be both inflexible and weak at any particular moment.

Compare that to the likes of Bloodspiller, which represents less than 12% of your uptime, can be banked, and has more pivotal moments of burst (a 1 min CD to be spent over a mere 3 GCDs, down from BW's 5). Or, consider what could be done with, say, a 30s two-charge C&S/AD where C&S has a flat 600 cure potency. Like Delirium and its indirect healing in the first example, we'd still want to fit that into raid buffs, but their minimum duration is 15 seconds, allowing for that much banking for moments worth healing (i.e., not already covered by AoE heals) to meet with a mere two, far burstier oGCDs, whereas BW, again, has no bankability.

[Zedrin]

Hey ya'll, first time posting on the forums. Figured I'd check out here since I heard this was the best way to try and get devs to notice feedback.

I wanted to pitch a little idea for Living Dead as a rework that I think would preserve the spirit of it while making it less clunky.

My idea: When you activate it, you briefly become immune to all damage for the usual duration. After a certain time period, all the damage you took during that time period, up to a cap (maybe 2-3x your total health?), will be dealt to you as an over-time effect in the form of a debuff. This would spread out the damage, but wouldn't kill you immediately. So, it would still force healers to heal you back up quickly, as before, but there would be a lot more lenience on this. It wouldn't insta-kill you for not getting up to max health, and potentially could work with The Blackest Night too.

[WhyAmIHere]

RE: Living Dead

I dont know why they don't just make LD function like super/holm. Reduce HP to 1, for 10s your HP cannot be reduced lower than 1. No death penalty, and it wouldn't be a mirror copy of either other invuln/immunity skill. Plus it'd still fit in with one aspect of DRK's flavour: paying [HP] (or in this case for 14 as a tank, resource) to use [action].

RE: Sustain

Seems simple enough, as I can think of two options.
A) Add a life steal additional effect to Salted Earth / Salt and Darkness.
B) Reintroduce an AoE version of Sole Survivor. 35s recast, 15s duration, enemies marked restore a portion of damage dealt as HP.

I know, I know, "not another 'what I want from DRK'" idea. I'd just want to keep voicing my dissatisfaction with how the dev team did DRK this expansion. I've already sworn off even leveling it until it's addressed by the dev team, but man seeing my favorite tank being left by the wayside, and the sheer enjoyment I'm having with RPR and making comparisons with RPR and a sentiment of "wow I wish DRK was like this!" is getting grating.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

RE: Living Dead

I dont know why they don't just make LD function like super/holm. Reduce HP to 1, for 10s your HP cannot be reduced lower than 1. No death penalty, and it wouldn't be a mirror copy of either other invuln/immunity skill. Plus it'd still fit in with one aspect of DRK's flavour: paying [HP] (or in this case for 14 as a tank, resource) to use [action].

RE: Sustain

Seems simple enough, as I can think of two options.
A) Add a life steal additional effect to Salted Earth / Salt and Darkness.
B) Reintroduce an AoE version of Sole Survivor. 35s recast, 15s duration, enemies marked restore a portion of damage dealt as HP.

I know, I know, "not another 'what I want from DRK'" idea. I'd just want to keep voicing my dissatisfaction with how the dev team did DRK this expansion. I've already sworn off even leveling it until it's addressed by the dev team, but man seeing my favorite tank being left by the wayside, and the sheer enjoyment I'm having with RPR and making comparisons with RPR and a sentiment of "wow I wish DRK was like this!" is getting grating.

Totally agree, LD is a joke, it's the one skill in the game I have to have a macro for because I HAVE to let the healer know I'm using it or I'm boned.

It's why I quit DNK and just play paladin only when I'm forced to tank for roulete bonuses if healing isn't up.

[Flay_wind]

LD is trash. So, doing 1st EX. My co-tank is dead somehow. There's a tankbuster. I take the hit, pop LD, co-tank is rezzed and Provokes. Everything should be fine. But i am at 95% instead of 100% and just die.
Tbh, there are so many things that could be done about Living Dead and yet nothing got changed. Like add bonus healing received while under Walking Dead status, reduce needed healing to 50-70%, extend the duration of Walking Dead grace healing period to 15 seconds, but leave "can't be recuded below 1 hp" the same 10 seconds, or here's a novel idea: make it so it does not kill you in the first place.

[SakuraHadoken]

LD is trash. So, doing 1st EX. My co-tank is dead somehow. There's a tankbuster. I take the hit, pop LD, co-tank is rezzed and Provokes. Everything should be fine. But i am at 95% instead of 100% and just die.
Tbh, there are so many things that could be done about Living Dead and yet nothing got changed. Like add bonus healing received while under Walking Dead status, reduce needed healing to 50-70%, extend the duration of Walking Dead grace healing period to 15 seconds, but leave "can't be recuded below 1 hp" the same 10 seconds, or here's a novel idea: make it so it does not kill you in the first place.

I agree with that it would make so much more since to have something like this on the skill if they don't want to change the whole skill itself. I want to at least be able to have more control over the situation so I don't die by the walking dead debuff if enough healing isn't done within the timeframe. Or something as simple as having something in our kit that makes Souleater's healing potency higher since from what we have seen so far they're scared to give Drk more ways to heal itself. I hope I'm wrong but anyways it would just be such amazing quality of life if they really don't want to touch Living dead.