Dark Knight Megathread

[Kalaam]

It kind of hurts that the simplest way to fix DRK (balancewise for survivability) is to make it even more like warrior.

[RyuDragnier]

Maybe they should let DRK equip Axes too

It's a bloody shame it has become such a copy of WAR, considering it was completely unique back in HW. Now it's just...there.

It kind of hurts that the simplest way to fix DRK (balancewise for survivability) is to make it even more like warrior.

Sadly they'll have to for right now and then rework DRK so it is its own identity for 7.0. Because there's no way to really fix DRK at its current level short of an absolute rework.

[Ryaduera]

Alright, I've got something for you then. Most of them are probably ideas, but I just want to see what paint sticks, so to speak.

Context:

• I'd like more control over at least one element of our burst period(s), but also for our burst period(s) to be more varied, whether that be by including reactive elements, having less of its tools synced strictly to every 60s, purposely offering mini-burst periods, or whatever else.
• Living Shadow NEEDS to be more interesting.
• I'd like to bring back some element of empowering one's abilities, but ideally for utility and control rather than potency.
• Obviously, Dark Mind and Living Dead need fixing.
• DRK needs to get certain of its capacities sooner.
• DRK needs more sustain*, ideally without empowering its potency-based mitigation to cheesier heights. (I use "sustain" as a larger umbrella term that seats both healing and mitigation, which can both be stat- or potency based or content-based [percentiles].)

In order

• Yes, it's just a DoT right now, it should interact with the DRK in some way.
• Like Dark Arts used to be for some skills (Blind on Dark Passenger, Evasion on Dark Dance, etc) which I think is what people actually miss about Dark Arts, not the DPS but the decision making.
• Fixing Dark Mind and Living Dead alone would fix DRK defensive issues as far as mitigations go
• Yeah, I did leveling roulette earlier and I had Quietus, but I had no way of generating blood in AoE in the first place, nor do you get AoE MP regen until 72, it's ridiculous how long it takes for you to actually press more than 1 button in AoE
• DRK, having barrier style tanking, doesn't need much sustain. The tank with barriers should have the least, only enough to undo damage that gets through unlike Warrior, who wants to get low before suddenly hitting full HP. Too much healing with shields being its tanking style can get ridiculous very quickly.

The following random ideas do not necessarily all belong together. Pick and choose a set from among them as you please.

A Core Thematic Trait

Blood for Blood
Upon the death of any party member or any enemy that would grant experience, regenerate 10% of your MP and HP. Additionally, your self-healing is increased by a percent equal to your missing %HP. (Damage over time effects will cause this trait to act as if you had already lost the full, normal amount of health to be lost from those effects.)

• You now get to reap mobs. That's pretty much always fun, especially in terms of "You die or I die!" gambles at the end of a pack, or FATE-grinding in general. It feels good to be able to overspend at the end of a fight and still be able to cast something within the first 20 seconds of another fight immediately thereafter. Simple as that.
• This has synergies with "stagger" mitigation (whereby damage is delayed to instead be taken over time), since your self-healing is immediately increased.
• Unskilled, or underhealed, party members can now provide blood for the blood god.
• No longer is "HP-bar Limbo" just an AST game. You are rewarded with increased sustain for shuffling to higher DTPS spans as much percentile mitigation as you can survive without. You'll scare the poop out of healers for doing so, but that's also fun in itself so long as you can, say, nail a couple meaty Bloodspiller crits to immediately bounce back a fair bit.

I don't like this for 2 reasons. Rewarding the DRK for your allies playing poorly is unhealthy design because in high-level play with a good party it becomes a trait that just doesn't get used. Also tying the HP regen to enemies that grant exp means in dungeon pulls only the boss will reward you with HP which is superfluous. My suggestion would be to give Edge/Flood a mark on the enemy, each over-riding the other, that heal for a certain potency when either the target dies, or when "detonated" by Bloodspiller/Quietus, which would benefit the DRK for weaving a lot and using MP to heal with the AoE variant of the debuff being a weaker heal, but still valuable in a per-target scenario, and turning the Blood gauge into something with sustain while being useful in all content and not being tied to having party members perform sub-optimally. This would also make dungeon pulls Delirium windows look a lot like Blood whetting, but less frequent and more satisfying since it would be rewarding you for better play instead of "Lol I hit Primal Rend in AoE now I'm full HP".

Selective Mitigation Types Without Needing Extra Buttons

Shadowskin (replacing Dark Mind)
Delays 30% of incoming damage to instead be dealt over 6 seconds after it would have been taken and grants the effects of Dark Mind and Dark Dance.
Dark Mind: 50% of your magical damage dealt is stored as a barrier which absorbs incoming magical damage, causing it to instead heal you.
Dark Dance: 50% of your physical damage dealt is stored as a barrier. While the barrier is active, you parry all incoming physical attacks. The mitigation provided in this way depletes this shield at the same amount.

• Obviously, I've not tuned this. It's just a basic concept. Hit Shadowskin, and blow Edges, Floods, and Shadowbringer to absorb magic damage or Bloodspillers and Carve (or Quietus in dungeons), etc., to briefly guarantee parries.
  Dark Dance has the further advantage of being all mitigation, no healing, and quantizes (still parries the full hit even if only 1 HP remains on the shield), so it really should be tuned back relative to Dark Mind.
• The whopping 30% damage-delay is because you could immediately by hit with a tick that'd hold a third of the delayed damage, making it really feel like 20-30% anyways. (Depending on the technicals of implementation, of course.)

Tying an active mitigation to damage dealt can feel very bad in some encounters. The idea here is very cool, but in the current state of the game I worry for how it would compare, because at the end of the day this might still be one of the weaker cooldowns in practice. If this was a "per target hit" ah la Blood Whetting then that could fix it, but being on actual damage dealt can make it very feelsbad in some scenarios and encounters, IE not getting Crits, not getting Raid buffs (counts even in dungeons), Bosses requiring you to step away or going untargetable for any reason. It also helps to be able to predict the amount of damage reduction you will have. When I pop Ramparts, I know I'm reducing it by 20%, when I use Bloodwhetting I know I'm going to force a crit-heal and get full HP in a few hits, etc. This damage-based healing works on DPS classes because doing damage is the only thing they are worried about while tanks have to worry much more about what damage is coming in and what method it is being delivered.

Some Possible Sustain "Solutions"

Bloodspiller and Quietus adjusted
Down to 40 Blood cost, allowing natural generation of Blood spenders to no longer be so badly dwarfed by what's produced by CDs (Delirium and Blood Weapon) alone.
Now also either (A) generate a leech period (e.g., Requiem - 4s - The DRK heals for 30% of damage dealt) or (B) heals for a portion of their own damage alone.

• That's the simplest solution, honestly. You add a bit more banking, granting 2 uses per 35 seconds, accelerated from 42.5 seconds, of natural generation, and let those bankables heal.
• Obviously, you could also do this through just buffing Abyssal Drain, giving Carve a heal to compete at 3 or fewer enemies, and lowering their shared CD. Or, plenty of other ways. I slightly prefer this one, though, just because, especially if using a Leech period, it makes Blood feel more integral and impactful.

I'm a fan of making blood spenders cost 40 blood instead because it is a little awkward to go to 60 then use a spender to have 1o left. My method of removing that would have been to give DRK a DoT with a separate cooldown that grants 10 blood, something around a minute, and it would give us one more GCD to press instead of 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-4. But yes, 35 seconds is much better than 42.5 for a plethora of reasons. Aside being outright better and more DPS overall, it lines up with raid buffs better.

A Slight Blood Spender / Delirium Adjustment
Rather than Delirium, alone, refunding the MP generation lost to using Blood spenders, Bloodspiller and Quietus themselves will refund their third or half of an ST or AoE combo's MP, respectively.

I'm ok with Delerium regenerating MP, but if it must be removed/adjusted basing it just around MP regeneration as is isn't the worst way to do it. Not a fan, but I don't hate it, and if it came with other things ti make DRK good, I'd shrug and accept it.

An Actually Maybe Fun Living Shadow

Living Shadow
Ability - 90s recast time
Conjure a simulacrum of your darkside to fight alongside you, duplicating your attacks for 50% effect. While the Living Shadow is active, your damage is reduced by 25%.
Reactivating Living Shadow during its duration will cause it to hold its position and will divert the attention of enemies attack you to your Living Shadow's position instead. However, you will still take this damage as normal. Use the skill again to toggle this effect off.
Duration: 15s
Blood Gauge Cost: 50 (or 40, with the suggested Blood spender changes below)

• This is still a 12.5% net damage increase, atop what all is provided by 50% increased active HP, MP, and Blood generation.
• Until commanded to hold position, this acts more like Bunshin than an Automaton Queen, moving whenever you move, in the same way that you move -- just lagging about a meter behind (except as necessary to reach the enemy).
• You are now in full control of what your Living Shadow does. It also spawns in far more quickly, at your position, and fades out far more quickly.
• You can use the skill reactivation to hold mobs in place as you move to grab things. Honestly, it'll probably rarely be all that useful, but hey, it's an obvious use of the button.
• Yes, the 90s cooldown is intended, mostly to offer multiple degrees of burst over time.

If I'm understanding this right, this can actually cause you to take more damage overall. When pulling trash I dance around the AoE markers on the regular, the shadow sounds like it will sit there and eat them. If a burst window in a raid came with dodging certain mechanics that have RNG in them the trait would be near useless (think Paradegma in Ex trial 1). That aside, some functionality with actually commanding the shadow is good, but you have to be very careful with ghosting abilities. Scholars know that pain and I'd rather stay away from that. Adding some agency would be ideal, but I personally don't know why we can't just "equip" our shadow and augment our attacks like that. Not equipping it could be a DPS gain in AoE but equipping it could be DPS gain in single target, idk, something like that. But if not that, having actual control wouldn't be a bad idea.

A Complementary Mirror to TBN

Blood Price
Ability - 40s CD.
Causes each hit taken to generate 2% MP and a stack of Blood and Steel.
Duration: 10 seconds.
Blood and Steel: Damage taken is reduced by a flat amount equal to 2% of your HP, stacking up to 10 times. Effect ends when Blood Price ends.
Cannot be used simultaneously with Blood Weapon.

• This effect accumulates with, but is not refreshed by, each additional hit. (It is strongest just before duration's end.)
• Here, I'm offering sort of a mirror to TBN's purely stat-based defense, in a manner reminiscent of FFXIII's Steelguard and WotLK-era Unbreakable Armor. It still obviously benefits noticeably from stats, but in a way that disproportionately affects frequent and otherwise overwhelming hits, which tend to be found in the same situations as TBN's weakness, higher total damage.
• The more hits you take, the less you take from each hit (flat damage reduction), to the point of laughing off chip damage, some likely outright turned to 0, by the end of its duration. It also synergizes well with the DoT damage DRK can choose to take by delaying damage.
• Like Blood Weapon, below, it gets stronger over time. That seems a decent note to have for flavor, even if shallow in itself.

Oblation (now an upgrade of Blood Price)
Ability - 2 charges. 40s recharge.
For 10 seconds, grants self Blood and Steel and self or target party member the effect of Blood Price.
Upon reactivation, triggers Woe-eater.
Blood Price: Causes each hit taken to generate 2% MP and a stack of Blood and Steel.
Blood and Steel: Damage taken is reduced by a flat amount equal to 2% of your HP, stacking up to 10 times. Effect ends when Blood Price ends.
Woe-eater: Heal self or target party member for 20% of their damage taken over the last 4 seconds.[LIST]Oblation could be a decently natural fit for that earlier Blood Price, simply allowing it to be usable on allies and to have a further degree of timing flexibility, if we wished.

I like this with just 3 comments. While all damage reductions are stat based, this isn't as stat based as you might think. Remember, content does more damage as our ilvl increases, so it's only stronger in content where your ilvl is already enough you might not even need it. Woe-Eater has the same issue as I said before, basing sustain off of damage taken/received is really difficult to balance and to calculate. Perhaps right here instead of being based on damage received, base it off of missing or total hp to a cap percentage? That way you at least have the "this is good but it will never heal more than x" to calculate in your planning. Lastly, 50% uptime seems a little steep for something like this. I'd aim more at 33% uptime if possible.

Making Blood Weapon Mildly More Interesting

Blood Weapon
Ability - 40s CD.
Increases Blood Gauge by 10 and restores MP upon landing weaponskills or spells. Each attack landed additionally decreases your auto-attack and weaponskill recast delay by 8%.
This ability's duration and recast will not progress until your next successful weaponskill.
Duration: 12s

• As long one doesn't clip, this is guaranteed (largely by the second line in the description, which removes the loss of duration otherwise caused by the animation ICD, to get out 6 hits, ending with a 1.6s GCD. Variable, ramped-up speed can be fun.
• Alternatively, we can have Blood Weapon unlock Blood variants of various weaponskills, giving us a sexy "red combo" that we'll simply want to enter at such a time as to maximize ppgcd bonuses over the duration. That idea has already been given earlier in the thread, though, and I don't to be the one pushing ideas that others have thought out more thoroughly than I have. I will just note that you can find that interesting idea earlier in this thread.

Blood Weapon v2
Ability - 40s CD
Increases Blood Gauge by 10 and restores MP upon landing weaponskills or spells. Additionally, decreases your auto-attack and weaponskill recast delay by 12%.
This ability's duration and recast will not progress until your next successful weaponskill.
Duration: 12 seconds.

• Haste is fun. Not all CDs always lining up is also more fun than, well, there only being two gradations of action (burst-of-any-sort and lull-of-any-sort). The 12s duration also gives a true second spare at a 2.5s GCD.

Here's a hot take. I just straight up hate Blood Weapon. It's an OGCD that is used in a way to give a fixed amount of MP (Everyone tries to fit the same GCD's into the window) and if turned into a stack format would still just be an oGCD that gave us a fixed amount of MP. The only way I will ever like Blood Weapon is if something else in the kit also interacts with it. As it stands it is a "press to get x MP over 10s" button and making it a stack function would be exactly the same. What I mean by this is if you removed Blood Weapon entirely and replaced it with a skill that read "Regenerate 3000 MP over 10 seconds" it would just functionally be Blood Weapon. That's why using Blood Weapon to actually augment your attacks is a good idea, but turning it up to a 1.6s gcd may be a little much and will face complaints from those with latency issues, like we see in MCH right now. I don't have much else to say about this, though. Haste being fun is an opinion, and one that I do not share, but cannot deny those who enjoy it really do enjoy it. Personally, (And I mean purely in my opinion) I'd prefer to see Blood Weapon give stacks that unlock an ability not normally available. Blood Weapon is just boring and outright sucks in every way and I'd rather it be replaced with something new entirely. Unpopular opinion, I know.

Minor TBN Adjustments

The Blackest Night
Ability - 12s recast
Creates a barrier around target that absorbs damage totaling 25% of target's maximum HP.
Duration: 7s
The MP cost of your next Edge of Shadow or Flood of Shadow is reduced proportionately to half the barrier consumed or removed entirely if the barrier is fully consumed.

• The idea here is that MP remains a bottleneck enough to prevent more than 4 casts of TBN per minute. Given that, TBN is made slightly more flexible.
• Just a thought I hadn't seen brought up yet. See also Archwizard's ideas a few pages back as to tack-on effects that'd be decently fitting, potent, and interesting.

I've said it a few times, the better way to make TBN rely on your MP is to just make it cost Darkside time. You always have Darkside and sitting on 3000 MP just to have TBN available feels just bad. Functionally if you make it cost Darkside time it is essentially the same here it counts, but instead of pre-emptively saving MP, you are post-emptively emptying your Darkside, which I would much prefer over adjusting it around MP consumption at all. And, if it doesn't break, it wouldn't necessarily be a DPS loss in the same way. Currently, using TBN and not breaking it means you spent 3k MP on losing DPS and were better off not using it at all. If you used TBN and it pulled from Darkside and it didn't break, the only thing you are out is Darkside time meaning your DPS is the same as if you hadn't used it, meaning proper TBN usage is rewarded with direct DPS increase, meaning your Defense is no longer tied to your offensive resource, but rather you get extra offense for the sue of your defensive resources.

Some Further Intentional Desync (at least from the 60s bursts)

Carve and Spit
Ability - 40s recast
Delivers a threefold attack with a potency of 510.
Additional Effect: Restores MP
Shares a recast timer with Abyssal Drain.

• That's it. Just a recast timer change. You'll still get it on your 2-minutes, but there's a bit more to track and hit between those full raid buffs.

I don't think I like intentional desyncing, but if it was intentional then I'll refrain from commenting on it. It just feels like shooting yourself in the foot purely to make running harder.

[Shurrikhan]

Also, the "reaping" aspect of Blood for Blood is both
A) Stepping on the toes of RPR (I know DRK had it first with Sole Survivor, but it was dropped years ago and admittedly doesn't really fit the job's own aesthetic anyway -- more Death Knight than Dark Knight).
B) What we call a "ribbon": there for flavor, but kinda pointless in encounters such as most trials and 8-man raids, unless you're banking on your allies dying for small heals.
... plus as you have listed, our self-healing is limited to 3 attacks and maybe Woe-eater.

Oh, I don't disagree that it would be a "ribbon", but that is also exactly what I was going for. It'd feel damn good in FATEs, in much the same manner as Reaper's gauge refills or Monk being able to burn down an enemy, instantly restore Chakra stacks in a second by having dropped combat, and burst right into another. But, at the same time, it wouldn't be noticeable in raids except in that it'd grant some tiny degree of clutch potential already seen on WAR and especially PLD. As such, it could leave healing from Blood spenders and Woe-eater rather strong (and/or, as mentioned beneath that section, attach a heal to C&S).

Ribbons are, imo, damn good ways to design in flavor. Take Assassinate on Rogue, for instance -- at least, if its animation lock were removed, since that's apparently the most difficult thing to deal with since butter knives. Adding flavor that fits Ninja in dungeons, such as Assassinate's CD being refreshed if the enemy dies within 5 seconds of being hit by it, costs nothing. It's not going to suddenly cost Raiton or Ranryu or Aeolian Edge potency or what have you, nor would it cost a button, but it would fit NIN's archetype of wanting that enemy dead now. (Yes, before that gets tangentially reamed, I realize there is no such thing as focus damage in XIV dungeons at present.)

As you've said, the healing would be limited to Blood spenders (either via starting a brief leech window, as per ShB Nascent on self, or via cure potency or damage -> healing [previously the norm] on self), Abyssal Drain (and maybe also C&S, still on a shared CD), Souleater, and Woe-eater, but that's far from insignificant. The Blood spenders alone could easily at least triple our current healing per minute. And again, none of that would be lost to Blood for Blood any more than Reaper's raid damage is nerfed on account of getting 10 bonus gauge per kill -- i.e., not at all.

As for the rest of your suggestions... I understand that you're trying to come up with unique and creative tools, but you have to remember that sometimes things need to be simplified for the sake of the players, and existing systems like barriers, life drain and flat percentage mitigation effects already can cover things like Blood & Steel or Shadowskin while being more palatable to/recognizable by most players.

I think we'd generally be okay so long as we keep it within the bounds already seen by Endwalker skills? Heart of Corundum, for instance, has a 170-word description with 11 different sections. Even this seemingly complex Shadowskin is merely 93 words and only 4 sections. Of course, I'm not totally sold on that design, but if, say, a Stagger mechanic were coded in, DRK probably wouldn't be the only job to see a skill with that effect.

Meanwhile, this Dark Dance's shield, for instance, is just the suggested fix to Heavensward's/Stormblood's Shelltron that I'd hear most often back in the day, before it was turned into a fixed duration and individual block values were nerfed to compensate.

CARVE & SPIT

I don't think I like intentional desyncing, but if it was intentional then I'll refrain from commenting on it. It just feels like shooting yourself in the foot purely to make running harder.

In this particular case, you can kind of think of it as only a vague NIN nerf. (Sorry, NIN; hopefully that'll be made up with more substantial potency buffs later.) At a 40s CD, you're still syncing with 120s periods. You just have twice as many between-burst uses of Blood Weapon, Carve and Spit, and the like.

WOE-EATER

basing sustain off of damage taken/received is really difficult to balance and to calculate. Perhaps right here instead of being based on damage received, base it off of missing or total hp to a cap percentage?

I'm curious why you would say this. That is already what every form of percentile mitigation does, is it not? This has no more, and no less, diminishing returns than any form of mitigation would. It's merely healing instead, meaning that it doesn't increase max eHP (against a single attack).

The reason I based it off damage received, rather than %HP reduced, is that the latter would have huge anti-synergy with barriers.

LIVING SHADOW

If I'm understanding this right, this can actually cause you to take more damage overall. When pulling trash I dance around the AoE markers on the regular, the shadow sounds like it will sit there and eat them. If a burst window in a raid came with dodging certain mechanics that have RNG in them the trait would be near useless (think Paradegma in Ex trial 1). That aside, some functionality with actually commanding the shadow is good, but you have to be very careful with ghosting abilities. Scholars know that pain and I'd rather stay away from that. Adding some agency would be ideal, but I personally don't know why we can't just "equip" our shadow and augment our attacks like that. Not equipping it could be a DPS gain in AoE but equipping it could be DPS gain in single target, idk, something like that. But if not that, having actual control wouldn't be a bad idea.

Your confusion here is entirely my fault; I tried too hard to be concise. The Living Shadow does not take damage in and of itself. It simply allows enemies attacking you to attack you through your Living Shadow instead. As such, you could actually reactivate the skill and your Living Shadow in an AoE to hold the boss in place for melee positionals while you dodge out of AoEs. It's more a tool for controlling space while taking less damage; it offers no additional vulnernabilities.

As for "equipping" our Shadow, that... feels like what Darkside perhaps should have been all along. Build Shadow gauge or w/e, then activate Darkside to pump over raid buffs, and split our Shadow off for utility if we like. I'd totally dig it. I just haven't figured out how to remaster the gauge well just yet.

BLOOD WEAPON

Here's a hot take. I just straight up hate Blood Weapon. It's an OGCD that is used in a way to give a fixed amount of MP (Everyone tries to fit the same GCD's into the window) and if turned into a stack format would still just be an oGCD that gave us a fixed amount of MP. The only way I will ever like Blood Weapon is if something else in the kit also interacts with it. As it stands it is a "press to get x MP over 10s" button and making it a stack function would be exactly the same.

I think that's more... tepid. I'm not at all satisfied by these Blood Weapon suggestions here; they don't even make it worth the button to me yet. But, I do like the idea of having at least a couple 40s CDs as to make that a tier to itself (still syncs with 120s, but isn't as crowded as 30s CDs, etc.), and I would like for (A) a good version of Blood Weapon eventually, so I don't want to make precedent for its complete removal and (B) some sort of speed modifier. I like variable speed. It should be bankable, though, imo.

...I've mentioned before potentially using Darkside as a Blood Weapon alternative (their animations back in the day, even, were quite alike), such that it drains Darkside over time in an ever-accelerating fashion. The more Darkside you spend or generate, the faster it drains and the larger a buff you get, with the goal being to have it run out just after a Shadowbringer. Fair bit of gambling involved. I'm still trying to fix that idea up before presenting it here, though.

DELIRIUM

I'm ok with Delerium regenerating MP, but if it must be removed/adjusted basing it just around MP regeneration as is isn't the worst way to do it. Not a fan, but I don't hate it, and if it came with other things ti make DRK good, I'd shrug and accept it.

To clarify, the change here is just increase MP per minute in that Bloodspiller and Quietus would now always generate MP. That is no longer an effect tacked onto Delirium, but instead part of those skills themselves. However, Quietus's MP gen will have been corrected to the current MP per GCD, instead of still being based on Shadowbringer's (when Stalwart Soul have 1000 MP, up from the current 600 MP). As such, Bloodspiller would always give 200 MP and Quietus would always give 300 MP.


OTHER BLOOD STUFF

I'm a fan of making blood spenders cost 40 blood instead because it is a little awkward to go to 60 then use a spender to have 1o left. My method of removing that would have been to give DRK a DoT with a separate cooldown that grants 10 blood, something around a minute, and it would give us one more GCD to press instead of 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-4. But yes, 35 seconds is much better than 42.5 for a plethora of reasons. Aside being outright better and more DPS overall, it lines up with raid buffs better.

I mean, you had me at something that sounds at least vaguely like Scourge. I just took this solution for the added banking potential. (Well, that and because with the Blood gen, any DoT would have to deal... not very much damage, as not to be spammed. Though I do love when DoTs have a good degree of immediate value in order to reduce the costs of early reapplication....)


SHADOWSKIN / SUSTAIN BASED ON DAMAGE DEALT

Tying an active mitigation to damage dealt can feel very bad in some encounters. The idea here is very cool, but in the current state of the game I worry for how it would compare, because at the end of the day this might still be one of the weaker cooldowns in practice. If this was a "per target hit" ah la Blood Whetting then that could fix it, but being on actual damage dealt can make it very feelsbad in some scenarios and encounters

Such definitely has" feelbad" potential, but it also has that much more "feelgood" potential, too. Here, we've tied it to a skill that offers very high max eHP increase (or, mitigation) for its cooldown, though at precisely that cost to actual HP later along. (I.e., it's max eHP increase that, apart from preventing death, doesn't increase sustain.) As such, the active mitigation here is no more time-sensitive than, say, the healing provided by Nascent/Bloodwhetting.

Admittedly, part of my reason for bringing this up is because I think tank design in general needs to go back to being more open to banking damage for survival purposes, rather than being so strictly Blue DPS with wholly separate auxiliary buttons (our independent sustain). More than just those skills added atop a DPS kit should, imo, be integral to (or at least involved in) our survival.

That said, I am absolutely not a fan of AoE sustain scaling as if it were ST-throughput-times-target-count. Bloodwhetting's current system just seems bizarrely strange and capable of almost single-handedly devaluing any sort of would-be difficult brief-and-bursty add fights. It is, imo, now procedurally broken precisely because it now heals per hit rather than scaling with damage dealt. Perhaps that could be curtailed in such a way that'd allow one to sacrifice a bit of damage in favor of sustain in two-target scenarios, and obviously I find such options fun, but the most reasonable way to deal with it now is just to revert its procedure. Heck, all our offensive self-heals used to be damage-based. Bloodbath, Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone, Souleater, Abyssal Drain -- you name it.


BLOOD FOR BLOOD

I don't like this for 2 reasons. Rewarding the DRK for your allies playing poorly is unhealthy design because in high-level play with a good party it becomes a trait that just doesn't get used. Also tying the HP regen to enemies that grant exp means in dungeon pulls only the boss will reward you with HP which is superfluous.

Ahh, shoot, I totally brain-farted in regard to exp being removed from dungeon mobs. Yes, I will go and correct that via edit now. Per normal XIV tooltip convention, I won't even bother saying that it's restricted to mobs within 10 levels of you, but, well, it'll be restricted to mobs within 10 levels.

I don't mind that DRK is hereby rewarded for poor teammate performance. We could say the exact same thing about Clemency and Cover; they are non-mechanics until something goes wrong. Here, DRK points, laughs, and gets stronger rather than saving them, but that's fine, imo.

[WhyAmIHere]

All could be fixed with unlinking ad and c&s and making ad a GCD w/cost. Won’t make it op in raids either... I’m not sure what the hold up is with this change.

that's what unleash/stalwart were change for.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I'm curious why you would say this. That is already what every form of percentile mitigation does, is it not? This has no more, and no less, diminishing returns than any form of mitigation would. It's merely healing instead, meaning that it doesn't increase max eHP (against a single attack).

The reason I based it off damage received, rather than %HP reduced, is that the latter would have huge anti-synergy with barriers.

It may not be the same thing as he might be thinking, but healing based on damage received has the potential to be so insanely broken (Read: Macrocosmos in P3s) or literally useless compared to current Oblation (Read: any single mechanic that sets your HP to low values, bypassing damage, like Charybdis -> double attack in O4s). P3s has already shown healing based on damage taken has incredible cheese potential. And with how cheesy TBN can be with ignoring damage downs, the last thing DRK needs is another shred of cheese.

If DRK is to get any self sustain to match Aurora/Equil, I'd rather it be like them and useful in 100% of situations, not tied to external factors which cause its effect to wildly vary in use. Not everything needs to have the wheel reinvented.

[Undeadfire]

It may not be the same thing as he might be thinking, but healing based on damage received has the potential to be so insanely broken (Read: Macrocosmos in P3s)

For people who doesn't understand what he means.

P3S does a mechanic called Death Toll + Life Agonies. Requires the Sunbirds to strike you to remove debuff (By dying like Neo-Ex Death), the debuff leaves a hefty Healing down debuff calculating around 50%, and Macrocosmos is % based than potency which means it ignores the debuff fully restoring everyone's HP in an instant. Whm/Sge/Sch have to AOE heal spam just to get everyone up. Life Agonies is a ultra raid wide AOE.

[Kabooa]

If DRK is to get any self sustain to match Aurora/Equil, I'd rather it be like them and useful in 100% of situations, not tied to external factors which cause its effect to wildly vary in use.

Feels like the thing you could add to Salt and Darkness to give it that little bit of pizazz. A 500 self heal + 250 for every additional target hit. Even on 8 targets, that's still only about 10% more healing than Equilibrium gives on a +30 second cooldown.

Doesn't impact savage / single bosses much as the damage outweighs the healing, but gives another 'cooldown' for the Dark Knight in every other slice of content. Maybe they can even use Living Dead in dungeons and fates.

But if we're talking wish lists, I'd rather see each tank receive a central theme for defense, and then build their cooldowns around that. It really isn't that hard to keep them numerically equal, so long as we don't do anything stupid like target scaling flat healing, as a random example of course.

[Shurrikhan]

It may not be the same thing as he might be thinking, but healing based on damage received has the potential to be so insanely broken (Read: Macrocosmos in P3s) or literally useless compared to current Oblation (Read: any single mechanic that sets your HP to low values, bypassing damage, like Charybdis -> double attack in O4s). P3s has already shown healing based on damage taken has incredible cheese potential. And with how cheesy TBN can be with ignoring damage downs, the last thing DRK needs is another shred of cheese.

Again, unless the mitigation would prevent a death, there's no difference in sustain produced between mitigation and healing. Though, when there is such a danger, mitigation is the better of the two. As such, even at best, Woe-eater is still inferior to a 4s 20% mitigation effect. But, we treat even 4s of 35% mitigation on a 25s CD (with attached healing and a further 4s of mitigation) as far from broken. This is mere 4s of 20%, but without even a max eHP increase, on a 40s CD.

At no point, though, is a 20% sustain benefit for/from 4 seconds (on a 40s CD) going to be "useless" compared to 10% for 10 seconds (on a 60s CD). The latter could, if the damage were somehow perfectly constant, provide a quarter more, but it'd also take a third longer to charge.

If DRK is to get any self sustain to match Aurora/Equil, I'd rather it be like them and useful in 100% of situations, not tied to external factors which cause its effect to wildly vary in use. Not everything needs to have the wheel reinvented.

I feel like things are getting compared oddly here. The answer to Aurora/Equil would in this case be heals from Bloodspiller, Quietus, and, say, Salt and Darkness -- bankable, dependable, purely stat-based. Oblation here simply acts like any other 4s window of increased sustain as provided via any other lv82 trait. It's very specifically not reinventing the wheel. It just also isn't giving excessive max eHP increases.

For people who doesn't understand what he means.

P3S does a mechanic called Death Toll + Life Agonies. Requires the Sunbirds to strike you to remove debuff (By dying like Neo-Ex Death), the debuff leaves a hefty Healing down debuff calculating around 50%, and Macrocosmos is % based than potency which means it ignores the debuff fully restoring everyone's HP in an instant. Whm/Sge/Sch have to AOE heal spam just to get everyone up. Life Agonies is a ultra raid wide AOE.

I'm aware, but this seems to fall more under the question of "Should we allow cheese? And to what degree?" SE could easily have Macrocosmos, too, check for healing debuffs before applying its effect, just as they could with any damage->healing effect. I don't think we ought to remove whole slews of possible abilities on the assumption that there might one day be a fight in which they present a unique advantage and SE will never adjust those skills' interactions even if they make a particular job a lock-in for the given fight.
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But if we're talking wish lists, I'd rather see each tank receive a central theme for defense, and then build their cooldowns around that. It really isn't that hard to keep them numerically equal, so long as we don't do anything stupid like target scaling flat healing, as a random example of course.

Same. Though, is it awful that I really want to build PLD around Cover as a broader, more integral mechanic? Not exclusively, but at least in part....
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Thinking on it, they should probably remove TBN from the MP cost and remove its free Edge/Flood. Instead, make it so TBN has an HoT on it, and shattering it burst heals you for the remaining potency. This changes the move into something you don't care whether it pops or not, you're getting healed by it the same regardless.

Why would we want to remove even more gameplay considerations / skill ceiling elements from DRK, though? Even the other on-demands wouldn't be nearly so lenient in optimizing them. And that's before accounting for any overheal issues or wasted capacity in using it externally.

[Undeadfire]

I'm aware, but this seems to fall more under the question of "Should we allow cheese? And to what degree?" SE could easily have Macrocosmos, too, check for healing debuffs before applying its effect, just as they could with any damage->healing effect.

Healer LB is the usual response sadly without Ast.