Dark Knight Megathread

[Ryaduera]

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.

I'm not saying we wouldn't be fine, but I am saying the presentation of those words matters. HoC could read as follows.

Reduce damage by 15% for 8s
Reduce damage by 15% for 4s
Get healed for 900 potency at 50% hp or after expiration
Have Brutal Shell? Give Brutal Shell.

The amount of words used has little to do with how comprehensible it is. Math as an example, the Wave Equation has 18 characters, but 10x12345+1000000000000 has 22 characters but one is significantly easier to understand.

CARVE & SPIT

Like I said, I don't hate it, it's just not my cup of tea. I always feel kinda dirty when I have to use things outside of burst windows, which is why PLD opener infuriates me no matter how much I love the job.

WOE-EATER

Yes, my method does have anti-synergy with barriers, but attaching a heal to a barrier is always anti-synergy. You stopped damage, if you did it right then what exactly are you healing from in the first place? Purely excessive damage. Making it based on missing HP to a capped percentage means you can make it so it restores up to x potency based on missing HP with the full potency being rewarded on, say, your HP being at 50%. The purpose being preventing dropping to near no HP and springing up like nothing happened the instant damage goes though. HoC and Blood whetting don't even do that (single target), and those are already super strong.

LIVING SHADOW.

If that's the case then I see, and I have no further comments.

DELIRIUM

If this is the case then with the extra MP per minute some potencies would have to get lowered. In fact, with most of these changes, a lot of potencies would need to be lowered across the board.

OTHER BLOOD STUFF

You could feasibly make this DoT be DRK Confiteor; can only be used under the effects of Blood Weapon and removes the effect, which would also fix my hate for Blood Weapon since the button would do more than "Use this to get more resource, but you have to also do the thing you're already doing anyway so there's no reason for you to just not get it over time, we just needed a reason to keep the word 'weapon' in the name"

SHADOWSKIN / SUSTAIN BASED ON DAMAGE DEALT
Heck, all our offensive self-heals used to be damage-based. Bloodbath, Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone, Souleater, Abyssal Drain -- you name it.

This is true, but there is good reason this was removed and changed. We are first and foremost the people who take damage. Relying on damage dealt just makes us even more-so blue DPS that have sustain. Separating it from damage makes it feel more like a reward for using it defensively as opposed to being rewarded for doing more damage. per-target healing can go, sure, I used that as an example because of old Abyssal Drain and how it was just busted.

BLOOD FOR BLOOD

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.

With that in mind, no other comments on that particular part. I will, however, say that while that is technically true for Clemency and Cover, they still have purposes outside of poor play. I like to solo-tank the 89 Ex trial and while warrior is technically better for it because of how busted Blood Whetting really is, PLD plays pretty well in that fight because of the ranged combo. Sometimes, for the adds phase, I have to deal with incoming damage without having a defensive cooldown necessarily ready in that moment, and even in current-tier gear those adds can seriously hurt, so I will throw out a Clemency to prevent myself from dying because if both of those auto-attacks go through at the same time, that is a massive chunk of HP being ripped away from me. Cover can still be found useful in some places to make optimization and I'm sure strats will develop to use it for micro-optimizations. The problem with tying it to ally death isn't necessarily that it rewards the DRK for allies playing poorly, it is that it exclusively rewards poor gameplay. I guess what I'm trying to say is I believe all abilities should always have potential even if that potential is limited.

[RyuDragnier]

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.

Because, quite frankly, the kit is absolute shit. This job is in the worst state it has ever been, has no identity, and quite frankly, they could delete it and nothing of value would be lost, no identity lost, nothing of importance lost. They may as well homogenize temporarily before reworking it, because right now it isn't possible for this job to get any worse at all. I'd rather take a TBN that I don't feel penalized for it not breaking than the current which absolutely feels like shit when it doesn't pop just because a healer/DPS throws an extra mitigation they didn't need to throw.

[Shurrikhan]

Because, quite frankly, the kit is absolute shit.

Sure, but if StB, ShB, and now EW have proven anything, it's that you don't "fix" a kit just by cropping its skill ceiling, homogenizing it, and making it more boring. I disagree that nothing of value would be lost by homogenizing DRK, however "temporarily" (since we've seen by now that any increase in homogenization makes it that much harder to break free of) that might be.

I'd rather take a TBN that I don't feel penalized for it not breaking

This is the thing that's so weird to me. Outside of select, especially pitiful bosses, I can pop a TBN at least thrice per minute. P1 I can pop off the tail of any cast + autos. P2 I can pop off autos. P3 I can pop off autos as long as he doesn't jump away mid-duration. P4 I can pop off any instance of raid damage or even just autos so long as I use it far enough before any even that would freeze set autos. Hell, the little pitifully-hitting puppet boss in Smileton can break TBN with just autos as long as you activate it just before an auto would hit, long enough before a cast as to get autos across the full duration. It's also consumed before any other barriers. It's just not that hard to pop once you get the hang of its activation time and memorize the timings of the given fight. But I like that learning being a thing.

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The amount of words used has little to do with how comprehensible it is. Math as an example, the Wave Equation has 18 characters, but 10x12345+1000000000000 has 22 characters but one is significantly easier to understand.

Ahh, I see. That's fair. I'm pretty sure I can word these better than the current half-a-minute's spitball wording given on most of these, though. Or, put more simply, I think any confusion would have more to do with my poor presentation than any of these particular effects. "Stagger" (damage delayed to be taken over time), contextual heals (based on damage taken), hardening (damage being reduced by a flat amount, usually based on the affected's stats such as Defense), etc., are all mechanics that were very rapidly and easily understood in other MMOs. Given better wording, I think they'd be fine here, too.

Yes, my method does have anti-synergy with barriers, but attaching a heal to a barrier is always anti-synergy. You stopped damage, if you did it right then what exactly are you healing from in the first place? Purely excessive damage. Making it based on missing HP to a capped percentage means you can make it so it restores up to x potency based on missing HP with the full potency being rewarded on, say, your HP being at 50%. The purpose being preventing dropping to near no HP and springing up like nothing happened the instant damage goes though. HoC and Blood whetting don't even do that (single target), and those are already super strong.

Let's put this into a simple scenario. You have 80k HP and a 20k barrier (TBN, Galvanize or EuD, whatever you prefer). If you then get hit for 40k, that brings you down to 60k. Most MMOs' technical language would still refer to that as 40k damage, but if they go out of their way to instead specify "HP lost", then you'd only be looking at 20k. As such, any barrier prior to damage taken would produce 20% less net sustain than would a simple heal, which doesn't seem terribly fair (especially if/when the barrier itself already produces less sustain per GCD unless it crits; CritLo and CritEuD are both... kind of ridiculous in their effective potency).

It's kind of like when an effect goes out of its way to make something already terrible, like SkS, even worse. You just can't help but wonder, "But why?" True, barriers aren't bad --horribly designed for PuG situations, in that allied barriers are uniquely able to replace stronger barriers, but certainly far from weak on the whole-- but I see no reason to design in a "ha, screw you in particular" mechanic just on the basis that "well, you didn't absolutely need a barrier just then anyways, so that's on you," or the like.

Now, the leniency offered by a cap (since you can tune the floor up to compensate for the cropped ceiling) would be fine. I just don't really think it's necessary, and it would add some further complexity. I'm fine with a slightly lower floor and higher ceiling; such already applies to every bit of percentile mitigation in the game and there is almost zero chance in practice of DRK living or dying by that subtle difference in output floor.

If this is the case then with the extra MP per minute some potencies would have to get lowered. In fact, with most of these changes, a lot of potencies would need to be lowered across the board.

Absolutely. There's no way all this wouldn't require overall kit tuning. I'm just leaning slightly towards not proportionately nerfing Blood spenders in particular to make up for their added MP gen and frequency; instead, they'd be a bit more prominent feature in the kit.

This is true, but there is good reason this was removed and changed. We are first and foremost the people who take damage.

I have to heartily disagree with this. It's not so much about capacity -- that you are doing damage -- as how you are using it / what you are doing with it.

If a greater portion of my kit is now significant to my survival, I feel that much more like someone whose kit is built around rewarding skill with survival, rather than one whose kit simply tacks that on as an auxiliary factor. Right now, tanks mostly feel like the latter. We're DPS first and foremost in large part because our capacities are so cut in dry. This half of our kit is long-term throughput; this half of our kit is meant simply not to prevent the first's being bottlenecked (by our death) and to increase healer damage. I'd rather the whole thing, or nearer to, feel vital to our survival so that we can feel like we were designed, first and foremost, to be those who take damage, not just "those who deal damage and also, via auxiliary outputs, have a sharper effect on Green DPS damage over time than do raid buffs."

I will, however, say that while that is technically true for Clemency and Cover, they still have purposes outside of poor play. I like to solo-tank the 89 Ex trial and while warrior is technically better for it because of how busted Blood Whetting really is, PLD plays pretty well in that fight because of the ranged combo. Sometimes, for the adds phase, I have to deal with incoming damage without having a defensive cooldown necessarily ready in that moment, and even in current-tier gear those adds can seriously hurt, so I will throw out a Clemency to prevent myself from dying because if both of those auto-attacks go through at the same time, that is a massive chunk of HP being ripped away from me. Cover can still be found useful in some places to make optimization and I'm sure strats will develop to use it for micro-optimizations. The problem with tying it to ally death isn't necessarily that it rewards the DRK for allies playing poorly, it is that it exclusively rewards poor gameplay. I guess what I'm trying to say is I believe all abilities should always have potential even if that potential is limited.

True, but while I don't think that DRK can step on RPR's toes through on-kill resources, I do think giving DRK any more significant saving tools than are already given (pretty significant already, imo) via TBN and Oblation would push out PLD a bit, and I've always loved PLD's owning that niche. So that's why I decided to stop there. It's just a simple feel-good trait that gets a bit of Dark Avenger flavor when things go south while reducing DRK's healing floor slightly in favor of a faintly more than proportionate increase to its healing ceiling in such a way as, again, taps into the that Dark Avenger vibe when things get bad.
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Oh, here's the quick LD fix, btw, that I somehow forgot to include in my original post:

The Obligatory Living Dead Fix

Living Dead
Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, you are healed to 50% health and status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
Healing received is nullified up to an amount equal to 50% of your HP. While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1.
Walking Dead Duration: 10s

• Not a huge fan of it so far, but it covers the basic needs.

[Kalaam]

If they make DRK even more like warrior on following patches for balance, but address it and say that it'll get reworked more thoroughly later I'd be fine with it. As long as we know what the devs are going for i'd be fine

[RyuDragnier]

This is the thing that's so weird to me. Outside of select, especially pitiful bosses, I can pop a TBN at least thrice per minute. P1 I can pop off the tail of any cast + autos. P2 I can pop off autos. P3 I can pop off autos as long as he doesn't jump away mid-duration. P4 I can pop off any instance of raid damage or even just autos so long as I use it far enough before any even that would freeze set autos. Hell, the little pitifully-hitting puppet boss in Smileton can break TBN with just autos as long as you activate it just before an auto would hit, long enough before a cast as to get autos across the full duration. It's also consumed before any other barriers. It's just not that hard to pop once you get the hang of its activation time and memorize the timings of the given fight. But I like that learning being a thing.

Dungeons are where this is a problem. And before you pull the "SE doesn't balance around dungeons" nonsense, reminder that Abyssal Drain got nerfed HARD in ShB just because it was too powerful in dungeons in SB.

[Shurrikhan]

And before you pull the "SE doesn't balance around dungeons" nonsense

I've never made that claim, unless you take as such my pointing out the obvious absurdity that is EW Nascent / Bloodwhetting in AoE.
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But again, none of that requires that what little remains unique to DRK be torn out wholesale in favor of more Warrior copy-pasta.

Simply bring back GCD Abyssal Drain at 3000 MP. Or give a complimentary defensive skill opposite to TBN, something which performs better against more constant and higher total damage than does TBN, instead of the pitiful excuse that is Oblation (or Dark Mind, for that matter). Or give Bloodspiller and Quietus cure potency or damage -> healing. Or reduce Abyssal and C&S's shared CD and give each (increased) healing potency.

None of its sustain issues require that its skill ceiling be reduced or the kit further homogenized.

[RyuDragnier]

I've never made that claim, unless you take as such my pointing out the obvious absurdity that is EW Nascent / Bloodwhetting in AoE.
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But again, none of that requires that what little remains unique to DRK be torn out wholesale in favor of more Warrior copy-pasta.

Simply bring back GCD Abyssal Drain at 3000 MP. Or give a complimentary defensive skill opposite to TBN, something which performs better against more constant and higher total damage than does TBN, instead of the pitiful excuse that is Oblation (or Dark Mind, for that matter). Or give Bloodspiller and Quietus cure potency or damage -> healing. Or reduce Abyssal and C&S's shared CD and give each (increased) healing potency.

None of its sustain issues require that its skill ceiling be reduced or the kit further homogenized.

I'm also looking at DRK as a whole. The devs clearly don't know what they want this job to be, and at this point we may as well expect homogenization, as they'd rather have a weaker warrior rather than a unique tank. As you can tell, I'm incredibly frustrated at this point, and may be reaching my limit on this nonsense with the devs treating DRK like crap. It may objectively be the worst job in the game right now.

[YukikoKurosawa]

Magic defense is much too situational in this game for it to really matter. Very, very few enemies use magic attacks. Why not just give us flat damage reduction?

[RyuDragnier]

Magic defense is much too situational in this game for it to really matter. Very, very few enemies use magic attacks. Why not just give us flat damage reduction?

15% preferably, since that keeps its power.

[Rhais]

If they make DRK even more like warrior on following patches for balance, but address it and say that it'll get reworked more thoroughly later I'd be fine with it. As long as we know what the devs are going for i'd be fine

At that point why not just delete the job and let warrior use swords as well as axes? What is the point of multiple jobs when they all play the same?

I highly doubt the changes would be reversed were this to happen as well.