Dark Knight Megathread

[Zairava]

Mostly agreed, but, I have to wonder... are there really even "sides" there, per se?

Is it a matter of "Native Damage Buff Window Good"? If there's a side for that, the only camp opposite it I'd represent for instance, is just that a native damage buff window isn't necessarily good.

I guess what I mean is, I like buff windows, but not when all the damage is packed into that one single burst window, because some of that damage could be more spread to make the job leagues more interesting to play continuously. Which I suppose is a common sentiment with the whole 2-minute meta debacle.

Though it's more how it's actually designed, is why I can still go back and play Reaper and enjoy it. The downtime is infinitely more enjoyable for me than most jobs in the game. The abilities are all satisfying to press, even the main combo, and there's more than just the 1-2-3 to use thanks to Soul Slice and Soul Scythe.

I could go either way at this point. Either MP could remains just a DarkShinten gauge where you make sure not to overspend for fear of delaying a necessary Senei/TBN, or maybe it could go back to cutting every defensive in two such that you have soft and full uses available to each while making sure not to overspend for fear of losing out on the efficiency of DA-CnS. Neither's perfect; neither is altogether bad. I faintly prefer the latter, but only if it's decently balanced, because I'm tired of pretense of depth essentially just widening performance gaps through otherwise short-lived gaps over unintuitive understandings (e.g., that most of X options are actually awful).

I don't think that would give us "meaningful MP management" even then. In the end, meaningful MP management will essentially be just a matter of rewarding factor-dense understanding of a given fight in a particular situation (with the latter becoming decreasingly relevant as one's party increasingly optimizes / gits gud).

It's a matter of being rewarded for putting the best bets forward / putting your mana where your returns will be highest. That requires those bets being complex ones, which in turn requires there being a lot going on contextually.

That's the issue, though. unless they bring back Dark Arts as an actual ability that amplifies both offensives and defensives, MP will remain one side or the other, and the only way I see them doing this is if Dark Arts is toggleable like Eukrasia without a mana cost, since that would mean putting mp somewhere else that isn't damage. Which begs the question...how would that actually be able to be accomplished if DA were to be on a mana cost? They would obviously look for a way to refund such mp usage, but would that, then, remove any meaning behind it in the first place?

Something that comes to mind...is that Bloodspiller and Quietus could be used to regenerate such mp, and blood weapon could be smacked down to a 40s cooldown like it used to be. Using Dark Arts could give us..idk, 10-20 gauge per use?


On an entirely different thought, could our Blood Gauge and mp usage fuel our Darkside?

What I mean is, and this is basically ripped from reaper, we get a second meter, and it's our Darkside. When this meter fills, we get to use Living Shadow. This would obviously mean that it merges with us, empowers us, that whole bit we've discussed many times over. How often this would happen is up for debate (though I expect it would be either a 60s, 90s, or 120s thing). This would mean that the Blood Gauge has more importance than just being a beast gauge in disguise. Though, this does make it more of a Soul/Shroud gauge copy... I would sooner bring back DA as it was the core of DRK, but it's unclear what they would do with it that isn't just over-glorifying the tbn proc.