One more consideration:

I mentioned before that the activation cost for Darkside is a critical consideration, but I don't think I emphasized that quite enough. It go anywhere from feeling passive (just always leave Darkside on) to feeling a ridiculously and convoluted gimmick (MP-/server-tick gaming) on the basis of MP cost and ICD.

Moreover, consider what that passive MP drain does to APM if you want/have any other way to spend MP. Is just maintaining your damage buff really any more interesting than, say, 3.33 charges of oGCD attacks (onto which you could attach whatever other interesting effects, too)? I would think not; I'd personally keep a reinvigorated Edge/Flood or Dark Arts over or atop (increasing MP gen, then, to compensate) that Darkside.

For a constantly resource-consuming stance, then, to feel like it's adding gameplay rather than acting as a constraint on the gameplay otherwise possible, you need it to be more worth toggling the stance on and off optimally than to simply increase or decrease the rate of other spenders.



Quote Originally Posted by Zairava View Post
I actually don't mind banking damage for a burst window, when it feels totally effortless is where I begin having a problem with it.
Same. However, I'm not quite sure whether I'd want this Darkside to affect the damage of its alternate spenders. (More on that later, perhaps.)

As of right now, there is basically no meaningful methods of doing so, and no skill expression. (DA procs feels more like a knowledge check than skill expression since we need to know when we will get it to begin with.) We just spam 123 and we get our mana for our burst.
Agreed, which means that we don't so much have MP as a mechanic as simply that Edge/Flood are further punished for downtime.

Well, and that DRK as a whole tends to be more uptime reliant outside of comps with a high degree of windowed amp from raid buffs (during which DRK's abnormally dense potency-dumping periods can recover from its slightly abnormally high amount of potency lost to downtime... in the rarity that a fight actually has downtime).

We would be at a greater risk of overcapping on mp, so restricting your mp expenditure solely on your burst windows wouldn't be the recommended route to take. This could be potentially aimed more at making downtime between our 60s/120s/etc feel like it has more impact in our overall output.
That depends entirely on the balancing point for the amp, its (re)activation cost, and whether it affects oGCD damage.

Let's start with three small tweaks: We'll start with no activation cost on Darkside, but give Darkside an ICD of 2 GCDs (5s, Haste-scaled). Finally, we'll have MP now instead ticks for 20% less (rounded to the nearest 50), but ticks per player GCD, in order to remove any MP tick-exploiting gimmicks (and reduce some of the penalty for taking Haste/SkS/SpS).

So, you've got at least 2 GCDs under Darkside, with subsequently two ticks of expenditure (a 2-GCD Kaiten, so to speak, that may or may not also affect Ability damage over its time up).

Now, let's assume for a moment that Darkside increases only GCD damage. What average ppgcd is required to use over Darkside alternate spenders?

If even Hard Slash + Syphon Strike's 215 appgcd is enough, then you'd never drop Darkside. If even Syphon + Souleater's 300 appgcd is not enough, then you'd only ever use Darkside when you have at least a Syphon and Bloodspiller readied (with Souleater+Bloodspiller having a even higher bonus to MP efficiency from Darkside and Bloodspiller+Bloodspiller having the highest efficiency).

(In that last case, btw, you'd want to flip it on for Souleater, buffing Souleater and Bloodspiller, then drop Darkside again for the next 2-8 GCDs until the combo string will again have at least one Bloodspiller, then repeat. It has stance-dancing... but on a very dull, quickly-obvious loop.)

Okay, now let's assume the opposite: Darkside can also buff oGCDs.

Well now the balancing point must be an even higher appgcd because you have to add in the oGCD potency atop whatever GCDs occur over that time period. But... you still don't want to waste that bonus potency on low ppgcd weaponskills, so really you're just constraining oGCD damage to high-ppgcd-weaponskill GCDs, because you need to constrain those oGCDs to Darkside's amp windows... and Darkside is naturally going to constrain itself to your weaponskills' damage dynamics.

So we've then got something more complex... but not necessarily much more engaging, because you can just on-combo (Souleater + Bloodspiller, and maybe another 3 GCDs+BS_if_available thereafter) and off-combo (2 + 3n GCDs of rest after Bloodspiller). Hmm...

Feels like it should be able to be improved beyond this, but that core constraint also seems difficult to avoid...