Dark Knight Megathread

[Archwizard]

I think a second combo finisher would vastly improve the downtime, I haven't put any thought into this so I'm sure there's glaring flaws in it, but something like replace Syphon Strike with Spinning Slash, and then bring back old Delirium or something as a finisher that gives MP, while keeping Souleater as the higher damage HP restoring finisher.
I am aware that it'd be likely people would just spam the fuck out of the MP combo to get more Edges for more damage or whatever, but I'm sure they could fuck around with potencies to make the MP finisher low enough that it's not worth spamming it over Souleater- although you'd still need to get Blood from Souleater so maybe that's not really a concern.

My intention is that you'd have to actually be careful with your MP spending and plan ahead with what combo you're going to do. MP finisher would probably need to restore more than 600mp though, since it's not the 2nd action in your only combo like Syphon Strike is rn.

Unfortunately you're being a bit too simplistic with your reasoning for a second combo finisher. Both of the examples you provide when pitted against each other (Souleater vs Delirium/whatever) are instantaneous sources of damage with calculable potency values per GCD; players will use whichever combo mathematically gives them the most value to perform right now, and with both being flat potency per GCD with no other restrictions, one of the two combos will fall to the wayside entirely.

Compare other jobs' branching combos:
WAR's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR extends the duration of a damage buff that facilitates the former.
PLD's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR applies a DoT to the target that's more potent overall than the former.
In both of these cases, there is an element of necessity enforced by time: to use the latter combo more than strictly necessary to maintain their status effects is a damage loss compared to using the other combo finisher, but failure to maintain those status effects in favor of spamming the alternative combo is also a loss of damage.

Now, you don't have to have a status effect involved, but the important thing is the "higher value" finisher has a restriction keeping you from using it all the time.
If you stretch these definitions to their logical ends, you can also see this with GNB: it would prefer to use Double Down or Gnashing Fang over Burst Edge, but can't due to cooldown restrictions.

... None of which apply to what you've suggested, as yet.

I know that Archwizard said that the devs don't like DoTs, but that's essentially what Salted Earth is anyway, as well as Living Shadow. They're just more annoying to use than regular DoTs.

My understanding is that it's more of a combination of
- the devs believe players find upkeep timers tedious or confusing to maintain (especially on enemies, in the event of target swapping)
- bosses can only hold a limited number of status effects (both negative and positive) at a time, which makes DoTs eat resources

So on the one hand, a constant upkeep like Death's Design also falls under both of these despite not strictly being a damage-over-time effect, while Living Shadow and Salted Earth wouldn't since they're external sources of damage that don't have any upkeep (just fire and forget on a cooldown), despite applying periodic damage.
And in the former case, I'm guessing it's no coincidence that NIN and SMN lost their DoTs in the same expansion RPR and SGE were introduced.

[Nosaji_]

Compare other jobs' branching combos:
WAR's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR extends the duration of a damage buff that facilitates the former.
PLD's branching combo either gives instant damage and resources, OR applies a DoT to the target that's more potent overall than the former.
In both of these cases, there is an element of necessity enforced by time: to use the latter combo more than strictly necessary to maintain their status effects is a damage loss compared to using the other combo finisher, but failure to maintain those status effects in favor of spamming the alternative combo is also a loss of damage

If DRK was to have the 600mp on Syphon Strike taken away and moved to an alternate finisher, it would be made necessary to do that finisher to regain MP in order to maintain Darkside and also use your main mitigation tool, I'd say that's enough incentive to use it. I did say that it'd need to have lower potency since, with Warrior at least, the actual damage loss from using Storm's Eye over Path is that you get less gauge, they both do the same amount of damage. But MP isn't used for Bloodspiller, which does do higher damage than Edge, but not by a lot.

Honestly I think Edge being a 1 second recast and having such a high potency compared to Bloodspiller is kinda dumb considering it gives DRK's 10% buff and doesn't have the downside that Storm's Eye does. It's also not exactly engaging just spamming it during bursts or to avoid overcapping, it feels quite bloaty to me. Warrior is meant to spend gauge rather than use Storm's Eye over Path to avoid overcapping, while DRK has to... spend their gauge to avoid overcapping, but in the process, refresh their buff :/

So yeah, Edge being what it is seems to be root of the problem that should be addressed, rather than just slapping on a second finisher.

As I said, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it, just trying to think of a rough idea of how they could liven up the time between bursts a bit. I think the best alternative would be something like Scourge from your mockup, DRK could probably do without a constant upkeep effect- but I'd be surprised if they did something like that

Although if they did remove the MP cost from TBN then all of that stuff about an MP finisher would be complete garbage- but I wouldn't complain >.>

[Shurrikhan]

If DRK was to have the 600mp on Syphon Strike taken away and moved to an alternate finisher, it would be made necessary to do that finisher to regain MP in order to maintain Darkside and also use your main mitigation tool, I'd say that's enough incentive to use it. I did say that it'd need to have lower potency since, with Warrior at least, the actual damage loss from using Storm's Eye over Path is that you get less gauge, they both do the same amount of damage. But MP isn't used for Bloodspiller, which does do higher damage than Edge, but not by a lot.

I agree, for the most part. Just don't forget that Bloodspiller will have to be more than an Edge's worth of damage more than combos' average ppgcd.

In practice, we'd essentially...

• involve the second combo through Surging Tempest (but with an extra step),
  
  
• receive a bit more penalty from unbroken TBNs (though, such is pretty easily avoided anyways, so that's no huge factor), and
  
  
• need to siphon some potency from Edges to Bloodspillers and/or to reduce Bloodspiller/Quietus's relative Blood costs.

Is that an improvement? Yeah, sure. Having Darkside actually be a mechanic, even a copied one, is better than a non-mechanic.

A significant improvement? Honestly, no idea. It would depend on how you define "significant"?

[Archwizard]

If DRK was to have the 600mp on Syphon Strike taken away and moved to an alternate finisher, it would be made necessary to do that finisher to regain MP in order to maintain Darkside and also use your main mitigation tool, I'd say that's enough incentive to use it.

So here you run into two new issues:

1. How many GCDs are you spending generating the Darkside buff? Because those are GCDs necessarily being taken away from Blood Gauge.
2. Is the decision-making here esoteric to the point casual players need to look up a guide to understand how to play the job at a basic level, or may end up suffering choice paralysis when faced with a branching combo?

[Shurrikhan]

1. How many GCDs are you spending generating the Darkside buff? Because those are GCDs necessarily being taken away from Blood Gauge.

Though this compensatory step is absolutely necessary, it seems decently easy to deal with.

2. Is the decision-making here esoteric to the point casual players need to look up a guide to understand how to play the job at a basic level, or may end up suffering choice paralysis when faced with a branching combo?

That seems unlikely. If Edge maintains buff and MP gen allows for Edges enough to maintain said buff, that seems little to offer little more choice paralysis than WAR's Surging Tempest.

In MP, you'd have both a maintenance [Darkside] and banking consideration [banked Edges], while Blood offers both a strict marginal/milestone consideration [Living Shadow] and a subtler banking consideration alike to Edge-banking [Bloodspiller casts].

I still can't say as of yet whether that would be a significant improvement, but it does seem pretty straightforward.

[Lyth]

Forcing players to choose between MP and Blood not a good idea. You can determine a potency value per point of MP and Blood. Whichever combo has the higher net potency value will be used preferentially, outside of specific cooldown recasts.

If you're complaining about DRK being too much like WAR, shoehorning in a Lv. 100 Storm's Eye combo into the job is probably not the answer for a second combo.

[Runeslayer]

I think the SAM example is a good one. The reason why people are upset over Kaiten because they were used to it. Any time you make a drastic change to job mechanics that forces players to change their habits, you will get backlash over it. That's why you don't opt for a rework unless the job is a complete mess. I do find it interesting that you acknowledge that the job is currently 'serviceable', but you want it reset back to zero in serviceability. Why? Are we just bulldozing things for fun?

That's downplaying very legitimate concerns over the skills removal if you think 'it's because they were used to it' is the prime reason people are upset, but this is not a SAM thread so I'll save that for the SAM community to debate you on.
You misunderstand what I mean when I say reset back to zero on serviceability. There are things about DRK that frankly shouldnt exist in the state that they are-- previously it was blood weapon not being on stacks or LD being the worst invuln in the game for a myriad of reasons, and now there remain some kinks like your AoEs being spells, dark mind being far too niche for a damage type you can't even know is hitting you unless you do either extensive testing or use some kind of tool, dark missionary being obtained far later than heart of light whilst it has no additional effect to justify that.

Fixing all of these kinks would 'reset the class back to zero' in serviceability, in that there's nothing 'wrong' with it's kit and it can move forward with design additions and changes. It's like a brick that has been left with some dirt on it: you'll want to clean off the dirt and overgrowth that would be potentially detrimental to a structure before you use it to build a functional wall.

[baklava151]

Alternatively to Darkside being something you need to maintain, I like the idea of Darkside being something that opens up a burst window. Like in Archwizard's rework, you spend 50 gauge and can use Scourge to increase damage on a target for 12 seconds and follow up with two stronger attacks, and it seems like in HW Darkside wasn't something you could keep 100% uptime on (I'm wrong). Then the question is what options does the player have to fill the burst window, but might be an interesting direction to take it. It could essentially be a more flexible FoF/No Mercy

[shao32]

Alternatively to Darkside being something you need to maintain, I like the idea of Darkside being something that opens up a burst window. Like in Archwizard's rework, you spend 50 gauge and can use Scourge to increase damage on a target for 12 seconds and follow up with two stronger attacks, and it seems like in HW Darkside wasn't something you could keep 100% uptime on (correct me if I'm wrong). Then the question is what options does the player have to fill the burst window, but might be an interesting direction to take it. It could essentially be a more flexible FoF/No Mercy

In HW Darkside uptime was 100%, the whole thing consume MP but you generate more that the skill consume so you always balanced your MP bar around the middle to have enough MP for Dark arts + carve and spit and Dark passenger when they got aviable, the rest of the time you keep the balance and expend the MP on Dark arts + soul eater combo, so yeah the point was keep it up all the time, reaching 0 make the debuff turn off but you could re activate it pretty fast and of course you avoid overcap MP so you truly manage the whole thing but wasn't hard to do either.

EDIT: the only moment you deactivated Darkside was when the boss wasn't targetable so you could regenerate some MP naturally (the skill prevent this when activated before).

[Kalaam]

It wasn't hard to do, but it was still something to pay attention to. Making sure your MP wasn't too high to not waste any but not too low that you wouldn't lose your stance and the access to defensive skills it granted you was a satisfying mechanic.
Yes it was easy once you figured it out, but then you had the satisfaction of "I've got it know, I understand my class" and being able to take some risks by spending more MP etc.