Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Sorry to intrude, but I think it might be worth mentioning here that Death Knight originally functioned by using, generating, and converting Blood, Frost, and Unholy runes. They formed their core build-up and pace-making / rotation-building system. Much as per...
No, that was not the sort of system that I suggested. What you quoted from me below it actually directly shows that.

WOW Death Knight never used an 'entry' system. Its Runes automatically regenerated over time, basically being an array of redistributable 10s cooldowns — closer to Sage Addersgall than anything else in FFXIV. And Death Knight gameplay didn't enter Runes in a sequence to create effects, it had a large set of predefined actions that put the Runes back on cooldown in different combinations, forming a flexible timegate.

I am beginning to regret using the word "Rune", because apparently it's a trigger word for World of Warcraft associations, when I was simply referring to 'archetypical arcane fantasy symbols with linguistic and magical meaning'... not evoking one specific franchise that happened to depict a class that uses runes, any more than it's evoking Warhammer Runepriest. You can go back to my previous post and scribble out 'rune' anywhere that it appears, and replace it with 'Glyph' or 'Sigil' or 'Symbol' or 'Funny Squiggle', and the intent will be unchanged.

I only went this direction conceptually because Dark Knight literally has always been the weird "arcane" Tank, going back to HW, and it does literally light up with all kinds of bizarre linguistic-looking symbols that other Jobs do not.

I pulled "Bloodsoaked Runes" out of my ear in the span of half a second, not to imply anything literally inscribed on a blade, but because it sounded like the kind of ridiculous titling that SE uses for Dark Knight actions — like spending "Blackblood Gauge" to use "Bloodspillers".

I mentioned them being associated with the blade because, literally, in actual animations present since HW inside the actual game, the Dark Knight lights up the length of their blade with strange glowing runes symbols.



You can call it "Emotionally-Charged Calligraphy" or whatever if that somehow makes it feel more "correct" for Dark Knight — which I have to admit I find dubious as a guideline, considering that Dark Knight has always been a giant arbitrary spaghetti pile of "Oh, that sounds like it would excite a 12 year old boy" when it comes to explaining its actions and animations. (I'm not being snarky, I think there were actual interviews with Director Yoshida saying things along those lines)