Dark Knight Megathread

[baklava151]

->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.

I had a similar idea randomly today or maybe I suggested it before already, I can't remember, but I do want that Haste. I dunno if removing Blood Weapon would necessarily be a good idea, there might not be enough MP generation to keep up.

[Zairava]

Snip

So, there's several issues I have and see with this. I'll mention what I do agree with and provide input or ideas regarding them, though.

Regarding defensives:
->TBN no longer has an MP cost. CD increased to 20 seconds, duration increased to 8 seconds. Dark Arts removed.

• Both parts of this. TBN should stay as it currently is, if they were to remove the mp cost, not only would they make it 25s and not 20s, but making it 8s instead of 7 wouldn't increase it's effectiveness since it would still be breaking in a mere couple seconds in mob pulls.
• Even if Dark Arts is a mere shadow of what it once was, outright removing it from TBN wouldn't be beneficial for the job overall. It is the only remaining cooldown that interacts with the kit that isn't just "you heal upon hitting thing(s)". It also is the sole thing that gives DRK any real skill expression.

->Dark Mind changed to granting 10% damage reduction, with a further 10% reduction against magical. 60 sec CD. At level 82, this upgrades into Oblation, increasing the magic damage reduction to 20%, grants 2 charges, each with a CD of 45 seconds.

My only comment here is that it should remain on 60s cooldown. Having it on 45s with 2 charges would make it far too powerful.

->Abyssal Drain removed. C&S has AoE falloff and gets a bigger animation.

I would like to refer to Lyth's idea for this, just modified a bit:
Abyssal Strike: Three-fold attack that deals unaspected damage to target and all nearby targets nearby it.
Additional Effect: inflicts Scourge
Scourge: Damage over time of [X potency] for 15-30s
It goes without saying that I would like an animation for Abyssal Strike that's incredibly similar to Scourge, being that it literally applies it.

New defensive:
->Sole Survivor: marks target and nearby enemies with "Another Victim" status. When surrounded by 3 or more enemies, also grants "Blood price".
"Another victim" effect: dealing damage to this unit heals the DRK who applied this mark for a potency of 250. Lasts 10 seconds.
"Blood price" effect: getting hit by any attack grants 25 MP and 1 blood. Last 10 seconds.

• It is called Sole Survivor, after all. It should remain purely between the DRK and one target.
• That another victim effect is horrifically overpowered. If every party member's attack on that mob heals the DRK you would be essentially immortal in every scenario that isn't a wipe mechanic, irregardless of the potency.
• 25mp and 1 gauge wouldn't really be all that useful outside of trash pulls. As much as I would like having Blood Price back in the form of it's own defensive, it never will because that would be tying a defensive to offensive output in the form of a damage gain, which is a damage loss whenever you aren't MT.

Regarding existing offensive attacks:
->Syphoon strike restores 1000MP and Souleater gains 15 blood.
->Darkside's damage bonus increased to 15%.
->Using Bloodspiller combos into 2 new attacks. Each attack costs 25 blood, including Bloodspiller.

• Quietus removed, Bloodspiller has a new animation or the same animation but much stronger to justify having AoE falloff damage.

• Unless we are buffing the gauge generation significantly it would be better just to make Bloodspiller cost 50 and give us access to said combo actions after bloodspiller for free.
• I'm fairly certain Bloodspiller being turned into aoe would warrant a new animation on it's own, which I am for.

->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.

• I am..at a toss on this. This could potentially work but without much higher mp generation than we do now we could potentially run out of it due to TBN needing 3k reserved. (This would be a tad more lenient if TBN got the mana cost removed, though)
• I think the gauge generation would be best if it was 5 bonus gauge generation per GCD used. You lose 5 Darkside, you gain 5 more blood gauge. not counting that incredibly high tick rate, 2 every quarter second could throw some people off and potentially cause misalignment and clipping due to the faster GCD rolling from the skill speed boost. On the topic of the SkS boost, make it a haste since your aoe GCD's are spells.

.

->Living Shadow before level 100, works the same it does now. At level 100 works as fallows: ( blood cost removed )
Merge with Fray, becoming one with your inner darkness, increasing the potency of all attacks by 150 potency for 20 seconds. 120 sec CD.
Gain a much visually stronger effect of Darkside, similar to RPR's Enshourd.

I've stated my agreement with this in the past. However, I still think it should be on a 3-5 stack system. 20s may be too long and therefore too powerful, and there is, as ever, the issue of missing a gcd.

->Blood Weapon removed.

No. Why? Syphon strike being upped to 1k mp restore wouldn't be enough to warrant this, and we still would need this for gauge generation regardless.

[ItsUrBoi]

• It is called Sole Survivor, after all. It should remain purely between the DRK and one target.
• That another victim effect is horrifically overpowered. If every party member's attack on that mob heals the DRK you would be essentially immortal in every scenario that isn't a wipe mechanic, irregardless of the potency.
• 25mp and 1 gauge wouldn't really be all that useful outside of trash pulls. As much as I would like having Blood Price back in the form of it's own defensive, it never will because that would be tying a defensive to offensive output in the form of a damage gain, which is a damage loss whenever you aren't MT.

I mentioned when the DRK attacks the marked target it heals the DRK who applied the mark.

[Zairava]

I mentioned when the DRK attacks the marked target it heals the DRK who applied the mark.

Ah, I misinterpreted it then. I was reading it as all attacks from anyone in the party, not just the user, my bad

[ItsUrBoi]

My main point is just to address these issues:

-> Darkside doesn't do anything other than grant you 10% damage, and you keep using x4 - x5 Edge/Flood of Shadows, which seems kind of incomplete in terms of design, as perhaps you are supposed to do more with the Darkside timer?
-> Bloodgauge is literally copy paste Warrior. 50 blood for Fell Cleave, but DRK's version. That's not very unique at all.
-> Delirium is the same as Inner Release. Let's make it different, maybe a combo or a unique buff helping blood / MP generation? Or something else entirely unique to DRK!
-> Living Shadow while certainly unique, is just a damage over time that has several gameplay issues:
1. It has a 5 second spawn animation, what if you need that damage instantly?
2. It starts with the weaker attacks and gets stronger as times goes along.

I am all for uniqueness but its C&S and Bloodspiller fall out of 15 second raid buffs, I don't have any control to help how much damage I want to do and its literally just a fire and forget. That's supposed to be my powerful and amazing 2 min button? Not very fun.

As far as defensive abilities go my only issue with the job are the lack of self sustain ( not even comparable to PLD or GNB ) and Dark Mind and Oblation existing at the same time on a job with so many oGCDs. Just merge the last 2, I don't think anyone would mind.

[Shurrikhan]

->TBN no longer has an MP cost. CD increased to 20 seconds, duration increased to 8 seconds. Dark Arts removed.

Unless you were facing really (s)low damage but without a healer (and none of the other sustain increases), isn't this just a nerf? It's a flat barrier, so the duration quickly becomes redundant/excessive, and Dark Arts previously gave back its MP cost anyways. In the end, you've simply increased its cooldown by a third and called it a day.

At level 82, this upgrades into Oblation, increasing the magic damage reduction to 20%, grants 2 charges, each with a CD of 45 seconds.

Given the portion of tankbusters that are magical, a total of 30% magic mitigation on a short CD seems excessive. Just the charges and/or CD reduction alone would likely be fine, especially if you allow multiple instances of Oblation to be applied to the same target simultaneously at lower effect (similar to the old stacking of DM and Oblation, both).

->Sole Survivor: marks target and nearby enemies with "Another Victim" status. When surrounded by 3 or more enemies, also grants "Blood price".

The benefits of Blood Price will scale pretty linearly with target count (* their average attack speed) anyways, so I'd just guarantee Blood Price. That said, do we really want to deal with such granular values of Blood?

->Syphoon strike restores 1000MP and Souleater gains 15 blood.
->Using Bloodspiller combos into 2 new attacks. Each attack costs 25 blood, including Bloodspiller.

Then it will effectively take 15 GCDs to prepare a single GCD action that is not your spam-combo, twice what it takes now. Yes, the Blood spenders will take up a slightly higher portion of GCDs now, but the ramp up will be significantly worse. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Especially if this is to be a fixed combo.

Quietus removed, Bloodspiller has a new animation or the same animation but much stronger to justify having AoE falloff damage.

Sure, I guess? Animation-wise, that's easy enough. It emits a broadening column of darkness at the end, anyways.

->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.

I worry this could end up being worth holding damn near infinitely just to spam Syphon Strike with, unless the MP gen on Blood spender skills (formerly on Delirium) gets made baseline... I'll need to map out the potencies in a bit, but what rotational implications, if any, were you hoping this would have?

->Blood Weapon removed.

That'd make the longer time until using any Blood spenders an even harder pill to swallow, ngl.

[Zairava]

Unless you were facing really (s)low damage but without a healer (and none of the other sustain increases), isn't this just a nerf? It's a flat barrier, so the duration quickly becomes redundant/excessive, and Dark Arts previously gave back its MP cost anyways. In the end, you've simply increased its cooldown by a third and called it a day.

It would technically be a nerf, yeah. We already hold 3k for tbn to begin with regardless of where we are in the rotation, so essentially it would be increasing the cooldown and removing the sole kit interaction in the form of a damage neutral for..what exactly?

Then it will effectively take 15 GCDs to prepare a single GCD action that is not your spam-combo, twice what it takes now. Yes, the Blood spenders will take up a slightly higher portion of GCDs now, but the ramp up will be significantly worse. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Especially if this is to be a fixed combo.

This is something I noticed near immediately. It sounds decent on paper but the build up would ultimately feel worse. Which is why I suggested just being able to use it all upon using Bloodspiller at 50 gauge. and even then, It would quickly lose flavor at how often we would have it, which is why I would opt it to be only usable during Delirium anyways...given it's implemented.

I worry this could end up being worth holding damn near infinitely just to spam Syphon Strike with, unless the MP gen on Blood spender skills (formerly on Delirium) gets made baseline... I'll need to map out the potencies in a bit, but what rotational implications, if any, were you hoping this would have?

Because it would be worth keeping up permanently and would render souleater an overall damage loss. Why would anyone go for the full combo when they go for that edge of shadow in 6 GCD's, when using the entire combo for all would take 8-9 GCD's to get that 3k?

I thought about this particular point a bit and it more or less would just be a "dps stance" but instead of it being Darkside it would be Delirium. Which if that is the case, I would bring back Darkside as an actual togglable ability when it drained mp for actual resource management and make Bloodspiller/Quietus and Delirium be more about regenerating your mp, and go back to when Delirium gave a flat amount of mp back on a 60s cooldown. (as a spitball, Bloodspiller and Quietus, or the aoe version of it as suggested by ItsUrBoi, could give 1,500mp back per use. Delirium gives 3k)

(This would likely mandate some other mp generation and cost adjustments other than what I just listed above, but that could be solved in a number of ways.)

That'd make the longer time until using any Blood spenders an even harder pill to swallow, ngl.

I don't see a reason in any scenario to remove Blood Weapon unless they just nuke it's effectiveness or relevance into obscurity, honestly.

[ItsUrBoi]

I don't see a reason in any scenario to remove Blood Weapon unless they just nuke it's effectiveness or relevance into obscurity, honestly.

The only thing Blood Weapon does right now is it makes sure you get exactly 3000 MP and 50 blood every minute within exactly 5 GCDs at a certain moment. Its use mainly is also to help you get Living Shadow out early in the opener. Both of these purposes could be moved into Delirium ( the blood generation ), or put into your Souleater combo path in order to allow you to get the same amount of MP over 1 minute, you will not get the same amount of MP in a short time span in your 1 and 2 minute windows, BUT I think we already have enough oGCDs right?

[Shurrikhan]

The only thing Blood Weapon does right now is it makes sure you get exactly 3000 MP and 50 blood every minute within exactly 5 GCDs at a certain moment. Its use mainly is also to help you get Living Shadow out early in the opener. Both of these purposes could be moved into Delirium ( the blood generation )

I'd suggest including that into your mock-up and then reexamining it briefly, as that will be a necessary component to making the Blood spenders not feel painfully sluggish.

We talk often about "potencies can be adjusted later," but when potencies (per uptime) or resource generation (indirectly still potencies per uptime) form breakpoints in what you actually do, they're vital to imagining out that gameplay. This is one of those times. If you don't want to math anything out just yet, at least state the intended timings, breakpoints, and/or playflow.

[Mekhana]

My optimism about job design is gone but if we get something a little more to do between the 1min/2mins and more sustain I'd be happy.