Dark Knight Megathread

[TouchandFeel]

The more that I mull over the current DRK kit and try to identify the sources of its game-play pain points, the more I keep coming back to Blood Weapon and not for the reason that most would think of.

It's not the fact that it is duration based and not stacks, which it absolutely should be, but instead it's the fact that it is an ability that is meant to be a primary focal point of our rotation yet actually does little to nothing to change our rotation when it is used.
If you look at the other tanks, they for the most part have something that occurs roughly every 30s that noticeably alters what they are doing and what buttons they are pressing for their rotation. PLD switches between physical and magical rotations as they swap between Fight or Flight and Requiescat. GNB has Gnashing Fang to deviate from their standard weaponskill combo.

DRK doesn't get this with Blood Weapon though because, even though DRK has two rotation defining 60s abilities with Delirium and Blood Weapon, Blood Weapon doesn't change what you do with your rotation while you are using it, you just continue with the same weaponskill-combo rotation that you normally do. Because Blood Weapon doesn't really change the buttons you are pressing much at all, it results in you repeating the same combo rotation with no deviations for longer periods than other tanks, which lends credence to and potentially pinpoints the primary source behind the common complaint for DRK "being stuck just doing a 1-2-3 combo most of the time". Without Blood Weapon actively changing your rotation upon use, you really only have Delirium and that is only every 60s which is a long time.

If Blood Weapon were to actively change your rotation by doing something like enabling the use of some other abilities that consume its stacks and provide the resources instead of sticking to your basic weapon-skill combo, this could help create that necessary rotation deviation that would help players not feel like they are just pressing 1-2-3 ad nauseum.

Here's a quick off-the-cuff example to illustrate what I am talking about.
If when Blood Weapon is used it changes Unleashed into a separate AoE weaponskill that does X potency to the first target and 50% less to the remaining (to balance between single target and AoE) and consumes 1 stack of Blood Weapon while providing some amount of Blood and MP per stack consumed, and then Stalwart is changed into a different AoE weaponskill that does Y potency to the first target and 50% less to the remaining (you get the idea) and restores some resources just like the altered Unleashed but consumes all remaining stacks of Blood Weapon and provides some other bonus (like say some-self healing) that scales upwards per stack of Blood Weapon consumed. Yes I know this is similar to Req and Confiteor, it's just an example and the specifics don't have to be exactly what I laid out.
The point is that something like this where Blood Weapon directly changes the buttons you are pressing and the actions that you are taking, it will make the 60s basic rotation for DRK less monotonous.

This of course doesn't need to be the only potential change to improve DRKs' rotation and game-play, nor does it need to be the only aspect of change that Blood Weapon could or should get. However, I feel that it is something important to keep in mind when thinking about what the problems are that are contributing to the aspects of DRKs' game-play that players are finding to not be enjoyable.

[WhyAmIHere]

-snip-

I mean, I largely get what you're saying here, but I gotta wonder how you feel about infuriate, and how all that changes for WAR is... Fell Cleaves. Fundamentally your argument could be shaped to apply to WAR as well, so I don't know how potent a point this is, but...
I get what you're saying here.

[TouchandFeel]

Fundamentally your argument could be shaped to apply to WAR as well, so I don't know how potent a point this is

Just because an issue on one job may exist on another, it doesn't somehow then become invalid.

WAR too suffers from roughly the same problem but to a slightly lesser degree since you get an immediate return on Infuriate, resulting in an adjustment in what actions you are taking that feels more tangible.

However, yes, the same argument could and should be applied to WAR as well since the job is considered "brain-dead easy" and suffers from much of the same rotational doldrums that DRK does, but seeing how this is a DRK thread I tried to keep the topic focused on DRK.