Dark Knight Megathread

[Archwizard]

If you want to see 'Dark Arts' in its original form, you would likely need something similar to MCH's PvP Analysis ability.

Ryu is right in that it would need to be free from resource costs and utility/defensive exclusive, or else the highest damage choice always wins out. The downside is that it reduces your weave space, although it could equally be implemented as a proc buff.

There is another flaw with the approach overall, however.

Analysis works because all of the skills it affects are on a short enough CD as to be basically rotational. Even in the case of the original Dark Arts, most of the skills it affected were also rotational or usable on-demand -- as was Dark Arts itself, provided you had the resources to spend on it.

If you have a CD which has the sole purpose of augmenting other CDs, particularly in a utilitarian sense to make them slightly stronger, then the second we have an issue from double-weaving the question will become "Why even have that bloat? Why not just roll the augmented effect into those CDs' base effects?"
Even on a charge system, it also creates a potential issue of CD misalignment negating the ability to use Dark Arts the way you would want, particularly if Dark Arts is usable on multiple abilities with differing CDs that you don't use in a normal alignment (such as a burst window).

Something we could rip from the original Dark Arts, however, is that most of the skills it affected either gained utilitarian effects or had them amplified: increased healing, inflict blind, bonus enmity. We could use a similar principle on a revival skill to prevent the above issue (augment on-demand combo skills and MP spenders), and provided that its effects avoid altering damage potencies and don't come out to a calculable damage gain, we maintain its use as a utilitarian skill.

Or, we go back to more of a classic Dark Arts system and make it the primary spammable MP spender so you can affect CDs at will without worrying about alignments. Still would have double-weaving and probably makes MP management way less interesting, don't recommend.

[Colt47]

I kind of want my Final Fantasy Tactics Sanguine Sword skill as a healing CD to match up with Abyssal Drain. Carve and Split restoring MP and Abyssal Drain restoring HP is just a really weird combination. That or maybe give DRK some kind of charge system that they can use for either TBN or a self heal depending on scenario. Like using Carve and Split or Abyssal Drain would give a charge.

[Shurrikhan]

I feel like Dark Arts wouldn't necessarily have to give no choice in offensive value... if the more defensive alternatives were just actually decent in practice.

Alas, that requires (A) tanks actually taking significant damage and (B) healers not doing virtually all healing for free and offensive GCD value being higher.

[Runeslayer]

On an unrelated note to kit brainstorming, I had a thought that maybe they could shift design encounters to be more role centric than the 'everyone must do DPS' we have now.

I hear often that most content in the game is piss easy and is possible to complete with little regard to your actual rotation or skill interactions. I have a very loose idea that perhaps enrages and overall health pools are eased upon, but as a result engagements are no longer about 'DPS is everyone's priority' and moreso 'lean into your role more'. Autoattacks are chunky and need consistent mitigations and heals, raidwides are scarier, etc.

Higher level content already does this, but they're also mechanically and execution intensive which would be the main differing factor from normal stuff.

What do people think about this direction, and the subsequent changes classes might theoretically go through to acclimate? Or do people like being off brand DPS with a side of role. Maybe you think the overall direction is a good idea, but have different thoughts on how to achieve it through specifics?

[baklava151]

Well for starters, they could give more opportunities to use Interject and Low Blow since they rarely get touched. Also more adds outside of dedicated add phases for the OT to deal with, or other ways for the OT to actually tank sometimes and not be just another melee DPS for most of the fight.

[ItsUrBoi]

Well for starters, they could give more opportunities to use Interject and Low Blow since they rarely get touched. Also more adds outside of dedicated add phases for the OT to deal with, or other ways for the OT to actually tank sometimes and not be just another melee DPS for most of the fight.

You just described the DSR ultinate

[Archwizard]

I feel like Dark Arts wouldn't necessarily have to give no choice in offensive value... if the more defensive alternatives were just actually decent in practice.

Alas, that requires (A) tanks actually taking significant damage and (B) healers not doing virtually all healing for free and offensive GCD value being higher.

Optimistic as that sounds, I fail to see a reality where that is not only possible but likely. We have enough historical precedent from things like Displacement, Jump, the old tank combos, any time healers or DPS choose "greed"... to foresee that the choice of "damage vs survival" is more like "default to damage until that bites you in the ass (healers adjust)", and at best creates scenarios where your "choice" is forced for you until your gear outmodes the survival option.

Within the scope of a DRK discussion, that simply ain't happening. And beyond this scope, it would require a redesign of the entire "everyone, even healers, must optimize damage" philosophy of encounter design.

[Shurrikhan]

...

I'd just like to see more meaningful short-term objectives in general. Perhaps if an attack isn't sufficiently mitigated, an enemy might get a bit more bloodlusty, and further go ham on its targets. Could have a brief phase where a boss briefly channels a shield (while attacking, not necessarily a mechanic-less phase) and said the shield destroyed to stop it from continuing to be generated, or perhaps they build up a stacking HoT, increasing in duration and potency, until having taken a certain amount of damage. Could have bleeds that deal damage that increases with time and with one's % missing health when the tick hits that are cleansed by being healed above 80% hp (or to full). Give shield or HP-margin-dependent mechanics, like more %HP-based phase shifts or something similar to the Knight mechs in T4 (pacifiable with enough physical damage to break their shields, while magic damage could instead bypass the shield completely but took longer to really shut down its damage). Give us more add phases and "soft" but significant DPS checks in the fight itself, rather than only from the fight as a whole (enrage).

Within the scope of a DRK discussion, that simply ain't happening. And beyond this scope, it would require a redesign of the entire "everyone, even healers, must optimize damage" philosophy of encounter design.

That seems to rely on the idea that people will take the rDPS-inferior choice so long as it means more raw personal damage. Now, I can tentatively agree that such is the case within certain bounds (certainly not damage-utility, which we overvalued across HW and Stormblood, to the detriment of rDPS when jobs like BLM just did that damn much more). But, people taking the time to actually think about the rDPS implications of spending, say, 154 relative potency (140*1.1) of their own potency to save a healer 403 relative potency from a Glare III (310 * 1.3, due to traits) does not demand a change in encounter design philosophy.

There is no getting around that philosophy, nor any reason to do so. ALL optimization is a matter of as quickly getting to the final objective (the fight clear) as quickly as possible, because that's literally all it could ever be. Bottlenecks can add interest, but the actual, final win condition remains the same, with strategies at most trading a bit swifter completion for a greater chance of not wiping (i.e., adjusting for what is most relevant to a given party in "average clear time").

The only constraints that'd be relevant to DA having viable defensive spending options are that (A) defensive spenders be tuned to be actually superior for rDPS in practice, rather than merely relying on player superstition or novelty to see use, and that (B) players be a bit better at judging rDPS value instead of hurr durring an extra 80p at the cost of two healer GCDs, etc. That's it. I'm not asking for a design philosophy change.

Granted, I do think the game would be far better if tanks had less passive mitigation and only tankbusters were tuned down to match (such that tanks, on average, take 25% [1/(1-.2)] more white damage over time). But that's not a grand paradigm shift. That's just giving healers at least a little something more to do.


Tl;dr:
Choices need to be rDPS-competitive. This is more difficult but not impossible for situational choices or the effects that tend to compose them. Bonus percentile mitigation (which scales only off of content, not gear, and is thus degraded over time relative to both need and alternate spender value), for instance, needs to pick a balancing point high enough that it can still see use when one is overgeared for the content but need not be tuned against gear so high than one has no gear value left to get from said content. These choices work better when there are others that allow them to further flex and borrow from other throughputs across one's kit, but such is not wholly necessary, either. The existence of situational choices does not demand a change in game or encounter design philosophy; it requires only that players can think beyond their own kit to more accurately determine when those choices would be rDPS-positive.

[RyuDragnier]

On an unrelated note to kit brainstorming, I had a thought that maybe they could shift design encounters to be more role centric than the 'everyone must do DPS' we have now.

I hear often that most content in the game is piss easy and is possible to complete with little regard to your actual rotation or skill interactions. I have a very loose idea that perhaps enrages and overall health pools are eased upon, but as a result engagements are no longer about 'DPS is everyone's priority' and moreso 'lean into your role more'. Autoattacks are chunky and need consistent mitigations and heals, raidwides are scarier, etc.

Higher level content already does this, but they're also mechanically and execution intensive which would be the main differing factor from normal stuff.

What do people think about this direction, and the subsequent changes classes might theoretically go through to acclimate? Or do people like being off brand DPS with a side of role. Maybe you think the overall direction is a good idea, but have different thoughts on how to achieve it through specifics?

You just described 2.x and 3.x era. That's exactly how it worked back then, and was removed because it was, and I quote, "Too hard." Which is ironic because that's when SCH and DRK were at the top of their game.

[Shurrikhan]

You just described 2.x and 3.x era. That's exactly how it worked back then, and was removed because it was, and I quote, "Too hard." Which is ironic because that's when SCH and DRK were at the top of their game.

Gordias Savage and Thordan Ex on release aside, when was HW popularly described as "too hard"?

It was sometimes described as clunky, and shit like acquiring Wheeling Thrust being a nerf to one's kit (because you could then no longer pre-position for positionals after FT/CT) or seemingly physical attacks going through Shelltron because they were actually magical (despite being literal spear-throws), etc., were described variously as "rough" and "annoying." But, "too hard"?