Dark Knight Megathread

[Archwizard]

The follow-up is a buff that acts on your next Weaponskill (i.e. GCD). The idea here is that your next GCD automatically pulls you back to land your next hit, regardless of what it is.

No, I get that. I'm saying that even though the execution of it requires and is simultaneous with a GCD, the application of the buff itself is oGCD.

Don't get me wrong, I love the kinetic element of movement skills enough that I still default to using Displacement on my RDM, so I completely agree with you on that front -- but when I imagine jobs whose fantasy might include constantly bouncing around the battlefield, DRK is not necessarily on that list.
WAR is due to the rampages, and it has 3 charges of Onslaught and Primal Rend to pull that off. RDM and DNC are for the sake of styling on enemies, RPR and NIN are as assassins with tactical retreats, DRG is for... its entire job history and identity. Even GNB would be up for it if you justified having them pull off RWBY-style recoil bouncing (though at the risk of repeating myself, what couldn't GNB justify with its lack of definition, besides shooting actual bullets).
DRK though, like PLD, strikes me as more of a "stand your ground" type job; if it had an extra gap-closer, I should think it would be for the sake of pursuing fleeing prey (which as a practical concern is relatively uncommon for tanks to run into).

Granting of course, I wouldn't have thought of SAM as "bouncing around" either and they have a backstep, so, shrug.

An alternative way of doing this is to have the speed boost leave behind an afterimage in the place where you activate it, and you return to that position when you activate the ability a second time.

Considering that you just described Hell's Ingress/Egress/Regress, I doubt DRK's going to get that purely on the grounds of trying to keep RPR and DRK aesthetically distinct, which is already hard enough given they have similar origins in the job fantasy.

but the 'shadow' theme does give it an opportunity to give players that 'Dark Aura' that they've wanted since Heavensward.

... and on that note... I do have a somewhat unconventional source for inspiration here.

As you probably already know, Kingdom Hearts is a sister series to Final Fantasy that borrows many of FF's classical elements. One of the characters in it, Riku, takes nominal inspiration from the classical Dark Knight -- his initial weapon is named Soul Eater, several of his unique skills throughout entries include Dark Firaga (used by characters like Cecil and Zack, Frey incidentally uses Dark Fire III during your Lv50 job battle which I also interpret as a nod to this), "Sacrifice" (which is classical Souleater), "Limit Storm" (which increases damage output at low health similar to some Dark Knight skills, particularly in the Bravely series), Dark Barrier and... well, a number of other Darkness skills that don't have a pure FF analogue.

One of Riku's most infamous techniques however, is actually known as Dark Aura. Simply put, the attack causes him to rush through the target, teleport about 150-degrees around the target, and repeat multiple times in quick succession to rapidly strike his target from several angles, before ending in a helmsplitter over his opponent that creates a shockwave upon landing.
Were he represented by a DPS job in this game, I would qualify that as a Limit Break -- but if we're talking about the impact of multi-hit attacks and gap-closers, channeled attacks like Phantom Flurry/Flamethrower, potential for a level 100 skill, or even things that could be interesting to synch up with Living Shadow... well, food for thought.

I think that the reason why Living Shadow has historically been 'a glorified DoT' is to keep things relatively simple. The instant that you get into something like 'Frey performs Edge or Bloodspiller every time you do' you're bound to see complaints about resource management being too difficult, as much as some of us would enjoy it. I think the easiest solution is just to allow players to power up the ability over its two minute cooldown, and give them the power to burn it early for phase transitions.

Which I could agree with, but even then it becomes something of a Fire-and-Forget technique.

What Living Shadow is missing is an element of direct interaction. The idea of having him perform a coordinated attack is a step in the right direction, but I think there are further ways we could make Frey's presence in the room more of a case of coordinating techniques.

For instance, what if every attack you performed during his lifetime bumped up his damage output for the remainder? Right now he performs around ~8 hits of 300p damage, so you could potentially reduce the initial hits by a percentage and offset that by making the final hits stronger by the same amount with a stacking buff, to average out to the same damage over time.
Then, we have something we can play around with in terms of design -- for instance, is it just GCDs that bump him, or does that include things like Shadowbringer and Edge/Flood, so that pooling resources and coordinating CDs can push him slightly further? What about multi-hitting attacks? Would we want a burst combo that has a lower GCD for use during this time? If he gains some kind of finisher like Automaton Queen, would the accumulated damage reflect in that final swing?
Lots of little things that could push us away from WAR as the "heavy hitter" job, inspired by but not directly centered around coordinating with a technique we already have.

... Or you could just have it be a glorified version of No Mercy/Fight or Flight, though I have to imagine the %-value would be disappointing if they actually let him copy all of your techniques by potency.

The point about syncing Delirium and Living Shadow is fair. I personally would have thought that it would have been a reasonable next step, given that the two line up naturally, but there are probably many people out there who would see it as overly cumbersome.

Right now having it on Delirium feels a bit like trying to copy "Primal Rend Ready". And I'm not saying "We can't touch anything WAR has already done," just that if it's not practically necessary, we shouldn't strive for similarity.

I do still think it's possible to have a finisher like technique on Living Shadow though -- just that, similar to Confiteor or Pile Bunker, it would be more natural to have that be a skill with access bound to Living Shadow's CD rather than Delirium or another ability.
Even something as simple as saving a button by having Living Shadow transform while active into the "End Early" button.