Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Hello animation of Blood Weapon (and to my knowledge, Blood Weapon only). Allow me to introduce you to RPR's Soulsow:

Shall we suggest RPR get similar runes?

I mean, that job, too, is kind of basic af offensively, so I can't say I'd mind that.

But... let's flesh out ideas for the DRK side first?

[Lyth]

I see no problem in borrowing ideas from jobs in other roles. That being said, the main reason why SAM's particular combo system has meaning is because it also has positionals thrown in there. Otherwise you might as well just have a single longer combo that you truncate at various points with a finisher.

[Shurrikhan]

Tangential, but...

I see no problem in borrowing ideas from jobs in other roles. That being said, the main reason why SAM's particular combo system has meaning is because it also has positionals thrown in there. Otherwise you might as well just have a single longer combo that you truncate at various points with a finisher.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense.

DRG has multiple distinct positionals in the same combo, with no way to choose this or that positional only based on the combo. Having distinct positionals does not require a combo each, nor does a combo need to include only one positional each.

Moreover, SAM can't merely choose to swap from Kasha to Gekko in that moment (outside of Meikyo). Unlike NIN's, SAM's combos diverge at their second step and do not therefore offer a moment-of positional choice.



No, though SAM's reasons for SAM's ST combos being split have been reduced or even removed over time, they have had had nothing to do with their having different positionals (note again that DRG ends each combo with back-to-back different positionals) and everything to do timing towards capstone skills (Hagakure and then Tsubame) and optimizing Meikyo uses that start at partially filled Sen or will consume less than 3 Sen.

That those combos could even be confused now for having been primarily based on primarily on positionals just points out the butchery the job has gone through this expansion.

[Lyth]

SAM's lucky charms are only a slight deviation from the standard maintenance combo approach. I think that the main nuance of the system comes from identifying and understanding the timing around certain positional sequences in relation to specific mechanics (which you're right, does require a degree of anticipation and fight knowledge). If you take that away (which you would, if the system were implemented on a tank), it would feel just like a set of maintenance combos on a 1:1:1 ratio that you occasionally truncate early.

[Shurrikhan]

SAM's lucky charms are only a slight deviation from the standard maintenance combo approach. I think that the main nuance of the system comes from identifying and understanding the timing around certain positional sequences in relation to specific mechanics (which you're right, does require a degree of anticipation and fight knowledge). If you take that away (which you would, if the system were implemented on a tank), it would feel just like a set of maintenance combos on a 1:1:1 ratio that you occasionally truncate early.

I still have to disagree that such is a main nuance, let alone the main one; True North is a thing, there is no longer any risk of buff falloff for putting a certain combo forward for positioning anyways, and the actual need to pre-plan positionals are relatively few and far between these days.

But yes, so long as you don't also include any frequent and engaging reason to vary and/or truncate the flow of combos (as already, unfortunately, largely true of Endwalker SAM), swapping a 1-2-3 single-combo spam merely for an almost equally rigid ABC three-combo cycle wouldn't feel like enough of an improvement to warrant its additional button cost.

That said, we certainly can give frequent and engaging reason(s) to vary and/or truncate the flow of those three combos. SAM hasn't done any exceptional job of that (especially since SkS-heavy Stormblood SAMs), and that element of its gameplay has been crippled over Endwalker (even more so with the potency shuffles from 6.1), but they had already shown that it can, at least, be done.

[Eorzean_username]

If you take that away (which you would, if the system were implemented on a tank), it would feel just like a set of maintenance combos on a 1:1:1 ratio that you occasionally truncate early.

It's true, but then I intentionally kept the structure — to use a Shurrikhan term — 'basic AF', because... well... exactly as you said, it's a Tank. I figured that any kind of Tank concept would be dead from the word 'go' if it became much more complex than Gunbreaker Cartridges / Gnashing Fang.

My perspective may not be accurate, but my impression is that Tanks are the dumping ground for rotations that are basically skeletonized versions of actual Melee DPS rotations, in order to (hypothetically) allow bandwidth for Tank obligations.

If you want to campaign for more complex ideas I definitely won't complain, but I just figured it was an unrealistic approach to start with.

A further question though, albeit it based off the first spitball idea on the three glyphs:

Good questions. And I understand what you were saying about the framework now.

I guess I was thinking that the primary motivation was just to expand GCD space, and not to rebuild Dark Knight from the ground up. And so, it was okay to have a relatively basic system that was just 'dressed up' with a code mechanic, because I assumed you'd still be keeping track of OGCDs, MP, etc.

I think that the depth you'd want to add to each Glyph-generating combo would probably vary depending on how much you scaled back (or didn't) the other aspects that Dark Knight would still be keeping track of.

If you went all-in on yet another Job redesign, you could make the combos more detailed and give them more purposes, but as the discussion noted earlier, that gets really tricky when players are wily enough to just perform PPGCD calculations the moment they see tooltips drop.

I was leaning in for more of a Samurai Lite approach, where yeah, the primary motivating factor to swap combos was just to fill up the corresponding 'stickers'. That is definitely not the only valid approach, though, it just becomes more complex to keep the design under control as you add more and more competing and interacting effects and goals (for example, "Ah, I need MP but I already have that Gylph... this system is frustrating...!").

As far as the combo bloat, that's why I had everything branch only at the 3rd step, so that the net button change was +2 (two extra finishers) and +1 (the 'execution' button). I figured that GCD increases tend to be easier to swallow than OGCD increases since it doesn't challenge weave space, but if it felt too excessive, some less-exciting actions could become burnt offerings to free up bind space. Or, you could scrap the 'Samurai' approach, and switch to the Dancer 'combo conversion' approach, but that doesn't increase GCD space as effectively, if that's a goal.

Most of your other comments and ideas are good/interesting, I just don't have an immediate clever response of my own yet.

Spitball: I'd especially like the idea of building up buffs that sort of represent some (pre-DRK-pilled or what have you) belief or value held before sacrificing it for a highly changed non-removable buff (or debuff-as-net-benefit for more obvious symbolic identity). The timing should feel crucial and the risk-reward element significant.

This especially is pretty cool, and also nicely captures the general theming / concept of the Job. I feel like this is a pretty nice design point to launch from when considering adding to Dark Knight's overall structure or rotational goals.

[Lyth]

...

When you break it down, SAM's Iaijutsu still follows the maintenance/damage format. So if you take away the positional elements, the Lucky Charm gauge itself becomes a bit superfluous.

You effectively have a single extended combo that you just truncate early with a finisher to apply a maintenance effect. Which you certainly can do. If you use 'Dark Arts Rune No Jutsu' after two steps, let's say your finisher is called 'Goring' and applies a DoT. If you do it after five steps, let's say that the finisher is called 'Atonement' and hits hard. I mean, sure, you've increased the baseline GCD count, but I'm not a big fan of that sort of system to begin with.

Gnashing Fang is interesting in its own rights, but I see that more as a finisher sequence in the same vein as Enshroud, especially with the buttons merged down. Likewise, Burst Strike is a functional analogue to Bloodspiller except more frequent. Now you could always have Bloodspiller initiate a combo, which would change up the Delirium window as well. Although it would probably have to be a two step combo to fit safely into the current window length, and the MP gain on Delirium would likely double to offset what you lose from missed Syphons.

[Shurrikhan]

I was leaning in for more of a Samurai Lite approach, where yeah, the primary motivating factor to swap combos was just to fill up the corresponding 'stickers'. That is definitely not the only valid approach, though, it just becomes more complex to keep the design under control as you add more and more competing and interacting effects and goals (for example, "Ah, I need MP but I already have that Gylph... this system is frustrating...!").

My concern there is that --though admittedly DPS may have higher standards for their kits-- Samurai itself switching to a Samurai-lite has already cost many a Stormblood/Shadowbringer SAM mains I know the enjoyment of their job.

There's a pretty high investment threshold for those systems to reach a cohesive and compelling value. To provide the bones of such a system and little to none of the flesh or macrorotational implications would seem rather bloated.

That's not to say we shouldn't do anything like this, but if attempt such a system, we ought to go all in and be willing to tweak the surrounding systems for cohesion.

:: And again, even Endwalker SAM is already pretty well a SAM-lite, so if we're we to look at a past or present examples, it should probably be Stormblood's or Shadowbringer's SAM -- i.e., back when no one could possibly mistake the Sen gauge for being just a product of ordering one's positionals (especially given that SAM has 3 different ways to deal with that without reordering combos).

When you break it down, SAM's Iaijutsu still follows the maintenance/damage format. So if you take away the positional elements, the Lucky Charm gauge itself becomes a bit superfluous.

Again, this feels like an oversimplification that purposely ignores all the other ways Sen was handled prior to Endwalker. And, again, swapping between whether to use Gekko or Kasha next was among the least typical of 4 different ways to deal with incoming lost opportunities for positioning. Keep in mind that Iaijutsu itself has no positional and can be woven in at any time up until the next finisher. Those 2 GCDs of flex could already deal with incoming brief boss spins, and anything else was pretty well absorbable by Yukikaze, True North, or even Yaten-Enpi-Gyoten (especially when it's been potency-neutral).

To say despite that that the only difference between having a generated and spent Rune system or the like and a single long combo is just positionals, then, seems... very odd. Did you not play SAM in Stormblood or Shadowbringers?

:: If we're to limit ourselves to concrete examples for the moment, shouldn't we at least look at the one that hasn't been butchered? What your saying doesn't much hold water for any other iteration of that system.

Gnashing Fang is interesting in its own rights, but I see that more as a finisher sequence in the same vein as Enshroud, especially with the buttons merged down.

I'm a little confused by this, though.

It's less flexible than Goring Blade, has fewer use cases than Goring Blade, and varies combo use less than Goring Blade, is not remotely so bankable as Enshroud, isn't built up a secondary resource unlike Enshroud, and is used as an opener rather than a finisher. What makes it particularly interesting, let alone like Enshroud?

Now you could always have Bloodspiller initiate a combo, which would change up the Delirium window as well. Although it would probably have to be a two step combo to fit safely into the current window length, and the MP gain on Delirium would likely double to offset what you lose from missed Syphons.

The MP gain on Delirium is per attack anyways, each granting the average MP/gcd of our combo, so we shouldn't need to double its MP gains. However, is this to say that Delirium should then essentially grant 6 GCDs (3 sets of BS+1)? Is each of those post-Bloodspiller steps to be free?

My first concern in adding a second step to Bloodspiller would be our Blood generation over time. At present we generate ~170 Blood per minute (160 natural, +50 from BW, -20 from 3 GCDs spent on Delirium, -20 from 3 GCDs naturally spent on Bloodspiller, increasing to 4 every 2.5 minutes). If we turn each Bloodspiller into a two-step combo, then we nearly double its uptime costs. Though that would in turn delay a natural Bloodspiller to 3 in 5 1-minute cycles, that'd still mean losing 20-40 Blood per minute.

As 20 Blood will not be neatly divisible by 3, moreover, you wouldn't be able to just give it the Delirium treatment of (combo resource/GCD granted per gcd of this post-Bloodspiller step) to even things out.

[Archwizard]

Now you could always have Bloodspiller initiate a combo, which would change up the Delirium window as well.

My first concern in adding a second step to Bloodspiller would be our Blood generation over time.

Hmm. In theory you could sidestep this by having the second combo step instead be an oGCD -- something like "Bloodspiller causes your next Edge of Darkness to change to a more powerful ability" similar to Continuation, and the same for Quietus with Flood.
Plus you can dip into the "Darkside management" discussion by having them compete for MP over time, the more powerful versions not giving Darkside at all. And with it consuming MP, it would jam a crowbar into the discussion of just copying Continuation outright.

Of course the main complications from that are how it would fundamentally change the relationship to MP, particularly in burst. Delirium gives 3 Bloodspillers in a row and refunds 600MP, so a 9000MP cost for a Delirum window would more than negate its MP restoration benefit. You could sidestep this by having Delirium temporarily negate the MP cost of such a skill though, I suppose, and perhaps have the upgraded skill have a lower MP cost overall (say 1000-1500MP)?

How that affects Dark Arts being entirely up to taste.

(All the same, it would put us back at Square 1 for adjusting our downtime between bursts, and make weaving even trickier during burst.)

[Lyth]

...

You could attach a follow-up oGCD to Bloodspiller instead of creating a Bloodspiller 'combo', but I think what prompted this particular discussion over combos was how few unique GCDs DRK has. I think if you want to set up an oGCD combo sequence, it would be better to have a couple of unique GCDs that you can cycle through after every Edge/Flood.

...

I'm sure that you can come up with some more convoluted Dark Lucky Charms if you tried. But if you're just cycling through ABC combos in sequence to collect those Dark Lucky Charms, then it's bound to play out similarly to PLD's Boring Blade setup. I thought we wanted to avoid copying over yet another Lv 50 maintenance combo at Lv 100?

Enshroud is just the natural evolution of Gnashing Fang. It absolutely is a thousand times better, but I think that the reason why it's so slick is because they had the previous expansion to test out the original concept. But you do have to give credit to GNB's design, as it's a really interesting idea and a step above the original IR approach to burst.

The 600 MP gain on Delirium is really just offsets the loss of the single Syphon from the standard combo it replaces. If you double the length of Delirium to Bloodspiller/Torcleaver/Bloodspiller/Torcleaver/Bloodspiller/Torcleaver by adding a combo step, that's six GCDs and two Syphons that you have to replace, unless you give Delirium a GCD reduction effect as well.

Adding a combo step to Bloodspiller not only reduces our Blood generation, it also reduces our MP generation as well. As potentially could any GCDs that we could add.