Dark Knight Megathread

[Archwizard]

would this include both AoEs and the likes of Shadowbringer, Edge, and Flood? (Admittedly, I need to double-check that they are magic damage, but they sure look like it.)

Yup! I originally wrote only 30% on it since Bloodwhetting has a 32% uptime, but after consideration, the limitation to magic damage means that fewer abilities would be affected, and Bloodwhetting (as of this writing) provides significantly more potent healing per hit anyway (even with Blood Spikes' bonus to this effect).
I fully expect Bloodwhetting to get nerfed (ideally it would be completely reworked but I don't expect that any time soon), but even if its healing returns were halved, the fixed potency per-hit in bursts would still be on-par with the scaled but evergreen healing as I've written it; after all, Stalwart Soul is only 140p damage per hit (before damage boosts).

Though I did also consider just having Stalwart Soul convert to Abyssal Drain during Darkside. Boost its healing output while giving the option to use it at range, return to old form for AD, separate it from C&S (after a fashion) and free up another button.

but would also put all nearly self-healing onto MP, with Blood playing no part, which just seems a little anti-thematic.

Actually... the use of the name "Blood Weapon" is a throwback to older FF games, where the Blood Weapon category usually provided similar life-draining effects. With Darkside shifting onto its own CD instead of being reliant on MP skills, Blood Weapon allows MP skills to retain an important place in the kit besides just damage.

If anything, it's anti-thematic that Blood Weapon already is MP focused instead of HP focused.

I considered the possibility of making Blood Gauge skills provide healing through this, but upon consideration, the option of having them be more powerful attacks with the drawback of not providing any personal survival benefit (a la GNB's cartridge combo) is fairly enticing for encouraging a risk-reward gameplay -- especially if they already exist to give a significant boon to MP through Delirium, allowing them to benefit the loop anyway (just in a protracted fashion).

With regards to Delirium itself, given all of the calls to have the existing Blood Weapon ability shift onto a similar Stack system despite having the same cooldown... I figured it would be most efficient to kill two birds with one stone and just combine the two. Free up a button.

It would also make Blackest Night nigh pointless in AoE, depending on MP restore per hit received during Dread Spikes (which would then amount to Flood damage, which then amounts to healing).

1) While this is intentional on my part, I should mention... TBN is already nigh pointless in AoE, given that it's destroyed almost instantly and then provides no benefit for the remainder of its duration. That's like half the point of calls for a rework to DRK's sustainability; TBN is treated like an all-rounder so it does double duty and is a block to further adjustments to DRK's sustainability, and you can't really adjust TBN directly without dampening some fundamental aspect of the benefits it's meant to provide. Adding the Spikes ability is meant to sidestep this issue.
Granting, the method in which Dread/Blood Spikes restores MP is still up in the air. I was hoping to phrase it in a way where the MP restored is based on the percentage of your health you would have lost, while also not being dependent on HP damage so you can continue to make use of barrier effects from other sources as a substitution. After some research I eventually just settled on Blood Price's phrasing as a callback, though I admit I'm ignorant of the metric by which Blood Price actually gave MP.

2) I did what I could to clarify it using the phrasing of similar abilities, but the intent of what I wrote is for TBN to take a role more like Intervention or (current) Nascent Flash: it's usable only on an ally, though you continue to reap the benefits of Dark Arts as a consolation for not receiving the MP. The summation of my spitballing is for a shift onto gaming the peaks and valleys of self-healing in lieu of the consistency of mitigation and regular barriers, and retaining TBN as a personal CD would have disrupted such a design.

The latter would also likely make Blood Spikes redundant unless urgently needing immediate burst healing and entering its duration with full MP.

Which is why Blood Spikes is an upgrade to Dread Spikes (a la Raw Intuition->Bloodwhetting, Sheltron->Holy Sheltron, Heart of Stone->Heart of Corundum), rather than just a contribution to bloat.

(For clarity, this also means trimming Oblation for the button slot. I doubt anybody would be sad to see that though.)

[Shurrikhan]

While this is intentional on my part, I should mention... TBN is already nigh pointless in AoE.

Wait, wait, wait. TBN is pretty great in AoE unless the DTPS is extremely high (like, beyond that of Expert Roulette unless you stripped off half your armor and hit no other miti, or "would kill in 5 seconds" levels of damage taken per second). It takes a ton of incoming damage over 8 seconds for Shelltron, let alone Heart of Corundum, to produce more mitigation+healing than TBN. It doesn't matter that TBN provides no benefit for the rest of the duration if, over what duration it had, it already put out more value than most competing on-demand CDs.

And even then, because it's guaranteed to break, it will still greatly outperform anything but Bloodwhetting over time because it has only ~3/5s the cooldown of its competitors. In dungeon runs, I typically have higher mitigation+healing on DRK than on any other tank save for Warrior.

I was hoping to phrase it in a way where the MP restored is based on the percentage of your health you would have lost

Heh. This was also a suggestion back in HW for Blood Price, to increase its single-target value beyond the pittance it'd give from its flat MP restore per hit taken. As you've doubtless guessed from my comments on Bloodwhetting, I'm all for better scaling procedures. This sounds cool. And I would take that over a return to the flat MP gen on hit received (which was utterly useless against single, slow-hitting targets but potentially stupidly overpowered against the likes of large Brayflox HM pulls where enemies would rapidly 4x strike in flurries).

I did what I could to clarify it using the phrasing of similar abilities, but the intent of what I wrote is for TBN to take a role more like Intervention or (current) Nascent Flash: it's usable only on an ally, though you continue to reap the benefits of Dark Arts as a consolation for not receiving the MP.

That makes sense, I suppose. I can't say I'm a fan, though, just because it's taking the meatier, more interesting ability and shelving into OT situations alone. (Granted, I also wanted Shelltron and Intervention to be consolidated into a throwback to Aegis Boon, and was glad to see Heart of Stone not get the same button waste.) Just for context, my preference would probably be somewhere along the lines of TBN being a bit less finnicky, Blood Price upgrading into Dread Spikes, and TBN doubling the effect of either while up (such that you'd want to fortify it, so long as that wouldn't be stepping too heavily on the toes of PLD, who, way back in the day, had interactions that'd cause one to want to stack/fortify their effects).

Which is why Blood Spikes is an upgrade to Dread Spikes (a la Raw Intuition->Bloodwhetting, Sheltron->Holy Sheltron, Heart of Stone->Heart of Corundum), rather than just a contribution to bloat.

Whoops. My bad.

...Is it just me, though, or does Dread Spikes sound like the less basic / more intimidating, between the two? (Much like the present upgrades from Darkness to Shadow being kinda... weird.)

TBN is just a overglorified single target Shield on low CD and high MP cost. And TBN is not a excuse for DRK to be as bas as it is currently from a design perspective.

It's a pretty huge shield (if used on a tank) on an kind of absurdly low CD for its role and at variable MP cost (3k or 0). It's also not what has crushed DRK's gameplay. It has never had any impact on Dark Arts, its addition did not require the removal of our old combos or Scourge, and removing it wouldn't give anything back, nor would regaining old features of enjoyable complexity require TBN's removal. You may as well say that Atonement put a gauge cost on Cover or that Nascent Chaos removed Warrior's higher passive HP. That something popped up after something else was removed (and for TBN, that was only the removal of Scourge and Delirium combo) does not mean it was responsible for, nor given as an excuse for, those removals.

[Archwizard]

That makes sense, I suppose. I can't say I'm a fan, though, just because it's taking the meatier, more interesting ability and shelving into OT situations alone. (Granted, I also wanted Shelltron and Intervention to be consolidated into a throwback to Aegis Boon, and was glad to see Heart of Stone not get the same button waste.)

Agree to disagree here. I'm all for the idea of a tank having the options of a personal mitigation effect that's more attuned to their own specific needs and playstyle (like increasing life leech and MP return), and an off-tank effect that's more general use given playstyles that might not want those same effects -- a Paladin can raise his shield in his own defense, but can't exactly hand it off to someone else. A Warrior can shrug off pain, but maybe doesn't want to help someone else do that who is empowered by it, like DRK.
There are plenty of ways to make them both equally interesting and viable, and if anything this dodges DRK being reduced to tossing a bland mitigation skill on an ally.

Plus, it's a bit of an aesthetic thing on my part. As I said before, I see DRK as a tank whose use of barrier magic would extend more to the defense of an allied charge for lack of any other means to defend them... since for his own purposes, he has no qualms about using foul magic to sustain himself on the literal blood of his enemies while dishing out immediate and brutal justice upon the wicked.

Think Sidurgu. Takes sadistic joy in smashing in corrupt Temple Knight faces while arguing it's for the betterment of the common folk, tons of mileage to be had out of Drain magic. Probably would not want to subject Rielle to healing through vampirism though since that would offend her sensibilities; just gonna put her in a bubble.

TL;DR: TBN ain't edgy enough.