Dark Knight Megathread

[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.

[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.

[Archwizard]

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.

Agreed, and it's already not an ideal solution.

I suppose a superior alternative would be to go the full 9 yards and make Bloodspiller a 3-step combo, provided you adjust Delirium to compensate for it now being 3 GCDs instead of just one.
It's easier to divide by 3, can be fit into current GCD alignments with adjustments to base skill speed, and as long as the overall combo recovers at least as much MP as Syphon Strike, Shurri's concerns are entirely addressed.
It's a solution I'm slightly less thrilled about though since just having it all be one button is just copying Gnashing Fang, albeit more often and something you can pool.