Dark Knight Megathread

[DRKoftheAzure]

Alright, but how do you address the boring filler rotation for Dark Knight then, especially at the lower levels?

Also, side note; on the topic of button bloat for Dark Knight, for my idea I reduced the total number of actions from 36, including Grit, Sprint and Limit Break, to 29 actions total, and the Provoke is actually a nice suggestion for all tanks, so that would reduce it to 27 actions if we apply the provoke suggestion though you would need to make provoke AoE, or you could bring back enmity management for all tanks.

[Shurrikhan]

Also, side note; on the topic of button bloat for Dark Knight, for my idea I reduced the total number of actions from 36, including Grit, Sprint and Limit Break, to 29 actions total.

??? Are you referring to suggestions made on another threat / not within the last dozen pages? There isn't a single removal mentioned in your post. Turning oGCDs into GCDs doesn't remove buttons. It merely makes them compete with each other far worse.

if we apply the provoke suggestion though you would need to make provoke AoE, or you could bring back enmity management for all tanks.

There's no need to have an AoE Provoke. The only use for Provoke is to not need to be able to Shirk, nor, in effect, turn our tank enmity bonus off. By just having the tank stance be already activated upon joining any instance on and the MT opening with Provoke, you'd never need to have "Release [Stance]" on one's bar for mainstay content.

You don't use Provoke to replace Tank Stance; you use it to replace it needing a button.

Alright, but how do you address the boring filler rotation for Dark Knight then, especially at the lower levels?

I have no idea what qualifies as boring filler to you. To me, every tank has a boring filler rotation. And, to me, almost every job is dull before level 70ish (certainly before 60).

[Oizen]

Alright, but how do you address the boring filler rotation for Dark Knight then, especially at the lower levels?

Isn't that the issue of not having enough buttons? DRK like many jobs is a victim of SE going overboard on cutting skills and mechanics, but also feeling like they need a full 10 levels worth of skills to sell an expansion.

The game is just ass below lv 70. This isn't a DRK specific issue. Level Sync is just poorly thought out and the devs don't even consider it when balancing or even making new jobs.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Isn't that the issue of not having enough buttons? DRK like many jobs is a victim of SE going overboard on cutting skills and mechanics, but also feeling like they need a full 10 levels worth of skills to sell an expansion.

The game is just ass below lv 70. This isn't a DRK specific issue. Level Sync is just poorly thought out and the devs don't even consider it when balancing or even making new jobs.

Yeah, I know. I wish they address how badly designed level sync is.

[DRKoftheAzure]

??? Are you referring to suggestions made on another threat / not within the last dozen pages? There isn't a single removal mentioned in your post. Turning oGCDs into GCDs doesn't remove buttons. It merely makes them compete with each other far worse.

I technically added 6 buttons, including a predecessor to Shadowbringer at level 62, 7 if you want to include the summon pet rename, consolidated 4 buttons into 1 button, 3 buttons into 1 button, and yet ANOTHER 3 buttons into 1 button, both both sets of 3 being consolidated combos, for a net reduction of 7, 6 if count the renamed summon pet ability. Kept the relatively high APM as best as I could, added pity systems for a suggested Dark Arts rework, because while removing buttons might be easier to balance and to sell and expansions worth of abilities, it would probably be more effective for a rework, like the one I suggested while still introducing an expansions worth of abilities, even if it throws balance out the window for half of an expansion.

So you cannot tell me I didn't reduce button bloat with my idea, which I have a mostly final version of on the top of the previous page. VERY HARD TO MISS IT. In fact you responded to it.

There's no need to have an AoE Provoke. The only use for Provoke is to not need to be able to Shirk, nor, in effect, turn our tank enmity bonus off. By just having the tank stance be already activated upon joining any instance on and the MT opening with Provoke, you'd never need to have "Release [Stance]" on one's bar for mainstay content.

You don't use Provoke to replace Tank Stance; you use it to replace it needing a button.

You should have mentioned that the first time.

I have no idea what qualifies as boring filler to you. To me, every tank has a boring filler rotation.

Spamming 1-2-3 with the occasional 4 every 30 or so seconds and MAYBE a 1 oGCD every 30 or so seconds, especially if it's for an entire fight or dungeon run...

[Shurrikhan]

Isn't that the issue of not having enough buttons? DRK like many jobs is a victim of SE going overboard on cutting skills and mechanics, but also feeling like they need a full 10 levels worth of skills to sell an expansion.

The game is just ass below lv 70. This isn't a DRK specific issue. Level Sync is just poorly thought out and the devs don't even consider it when balancing or even making new jobs.

To that end, I'd just take roughly the full list of abilities and instead distribute them at a rate of a new gameplay-affecting new action or trait to every 2 levels starting from level 2 until level 30, then every 4 levels thereafter. I'll do a mock-up for what that'd look like in a moment until the latest expansion.

Or, to put it another way, start by actually giving the game a decent ppm and stat-based approximation for enemy HP to meet a target enemy Time-to-Kill (TTK); this would also allow us to upsync content as we wish (if paired with a flexible addition of filler actions that can be easily rethemed, quickly grabbing particular textures, emitters, particles, from skills attached to the boss's or mob's existing abilities and applying them to a template, for which we'd then just need names). From there, when an expansion is new, you get your 2 new something or others every 2 levels, but as soon as it's no longer the current expansion, that and all prior expansion's additions get shuffled down a bit, and old content is rescaled and re-filled-out according to the additions.

I technically added 6 buttons, including a predecessor to Shadowbringer at level 62, 7 if you want to include the summon pet rename, consolidated 4 buttons into 1 button, 3 buttons into 1 button, and yet ANOTHER 3 buttons into 1 button, both both sets of 3 being consolidated combos, for a net reduction of 7, 6 if count the renamed summon pet ability.

Ahh, I see now, my mistake.

I still don't see any 4-step combo or any other set of 4 buttons being consolidated into 1 (you appear to just have Unleash>Stalwart>Salt, Passenger>Flood>Shadowbringer, and Edge>Bloodspiller>Spit), but each would indeed save 2 buttons if you consolidated all of them, for a total of 6; I just read that originally as only of those combos being consolidated, which for some reason I thought was matched by Dark Passenger and Salted Earth being added as a buttons. And if you did indeed turn Living Shadow into a permanent horribly overpowered trait that would indeed be 7. My bad.

Spamming 1-2-3 with the occasional 4 every 30 or so seconds and MAYBE a 1 oGCD every 30 or so seconds, especially if it's for an entire fight or dungeon run...

I mean, I won't deny that DRK is that, GCD-wise (though I don't see much point in basing what we do only on GCDs, when GCDs are only a barely over half of DRK's button-presses), though so is every other tank. In fact, if we consider our core combos and its adjustments or occasional spender as similarly banal, there are only a few jobs that differ from that offensively.

Similarly, sure, we could completely retool DRK's and perhaps every other combo, but whereas I'm pretty certain that most DRKs wouldn't agree with you that all oGCD attacks should be purged from existence, I'm not so certain most DRK's actually want complex combos.

Here are a couple quick mock-up of possible takes on what a more complex combo system might look like, though:

Approach 1: No Skill Held Back

For this approach, you essentially just imagine what the job would be like if instead of cycling power ramps rigidly, you just had different skills of situationally-varied priorities that form highly adjustable pseudo-rotations.

Think Lost Ark or GW2 "combos" or "flows", but generally based around (de)buff durations and other synergies rather than CDs as compared to... well, skills being purely traps until you've hit the skill meant to be used directly before them with zero contextual use cases for skipping ahead...

To really make use of each button, moreover, it probably wouldn't rigidly divide actions categorically between AoE and ST. Instead, if it looks like a cleave, it cleaves. And since nearly every greatsword strike looks like it'd bisect, impale, crush, or shadow-blast multiple people per swing... they now do as they appear to.

As such, you might have every attack deal some amount of immediate damage, with further additional effects atop that, such as...

• Trait - Pull of the Abyss - Your damage dealt to afflicts your victims and enemy damage nullified your attackers with Pull of the Abyss, which sources later attacks.
• Trait - Darkside - Your MP spent generates an equal amount of Darkside, shown on your MP bar as a darkened portion of MP, which can be spent by certain abilities.
• Scourge - Inflicts damage over time to the primary target. Semi-circular AoE.
• Syphon - Steals 400 MP immediately and a further 800 MP over 12 seconds. Semi-circular AoE.
• Unleash - Consumes a portion of Darkside to cause your attacks to deal additional flat potency to each enemy afflicted.
• Crush (animation of Power Slash) - Consumes a portion of Darkside to suppress a target and to a lesser extent enemies near it. Short linear/rectangular AoE.
• Souleater - Generates 15 Blood and heals for 300 potency. Consumes a portion of Pull of the Abyss to deal up to double effect.
• Unmend - Reduces the recast time of Plunge by 15 seconds. Now a "bulb" AoE (area of effect combines a linear attack towards the enemy with a radial attack around the enemy; can still only hit once).
• Stalwart Soul - Consumes Darkside and Pull of the Abyss to generate a barrier on self.
• Bloodspiller - Consumes Black Blood to deal heavy damage and inflict Bloodshed on the primary target, causing them to heal their attacks by a flat amount; effect doubled on attacks that normally generate healing. Additional Effect: Deathblow - Bloodspiller deals up to 250% damage if doing so would finish off its target. If it does so, nearby allies are healed for the damage dealt and you for thrice that damage dealt.
• Quietus - Inflicts Deliverance, which causes its victims to give the Dark Knight HP and MP upon death, increased by any remaining Pull of the Abyss. Additional Effect: Deathblow - Quietus deals up to 250% damage if doing so would finish off its target. If it does so, all nearby enemies are afflicted with the Pull of the Abyss the target would have had (including from Quietus).

Approach 2: Dynamic Combos

The goal of the next approach is that however many buttons you have is, generally, the number of choices you'd have that'd at least be very frequently conditionally competitive, in every GCD.

That said, it doesn't exactly want to spend 8+ buttons to that effect and may wish to actually have far more actions available to it than just its number of buttons, even if they're not all accessible in each GCD.

For instance, just for now, that we restrict ourselves to 4 buttons, one for Steel, one for Soul, one for Shadow, and one for Blood:

• You can open with any of those, and you finish by using that same button again. Simple, right?
  
  That means, though you can use anywhere from 2 to 5 GCDs per string (AA/BB/CC/DD being the shortest, and something like ABCDA or BACDB being the longest).
  
  Each opener would convey some benefit (via duration or resource similar to Sen into Iaijutsu) to the finisher (the use of an already used button). As such, you'd have technically, what... 24 combo options. And yet that took only 4 buttons.
  
  
• Or move that to a 3rd stage, again with 4 buttons. Whatever you use a third time ends the combo string. That'd allow for some stupidly long 'combo' strings (AABBCCDDA), but this is just food for thought.
  
  
• Or just have each combo be 3 steps long, and the prior 1-2 buttons, respectively, determines what finishers are possible / what they'd do. Simple but effective.
  
  
• Or the same as the one above, but with 4 steps.
  
  
• Etc., etc.

The point is just that you can get a far greater number of actions than buttons for a small degree of constraint. And the only big limitation is that total number of meaningful choices should depend more on synergies rather than actual separate conditional skills (A->B->C = unique skill combination #11, etc.) in order not to have too many names to memorize or animations to be developed.

[DRKoftheAzure]

To that end, I'd just take roughly the full list of abilities and instead distribute them at a rate of a new gameplay-affecting new action or trait to every 2 levels starting from level 2 until level 30, then every 4 levels thereafter. I'll do a mock-up for what that'd look like in a moment until the latest expansion.

Or, to put it another way, start by actually giving the game a decent ppm and stat-based approximation for enemy HP to meet a target enemy Time-to-Kill (TTK); this would also allow us to upsync content as we wish (if paired with a flexible addition of filler actions that can be easily rethemed, quickly grabbing particular textures, emitters, particles, from skills attached to the boss's or mob's existing abilities and applying them to a template, for which we'd then just need names). From there, when an expansion is new, you get your 2 new something or others every 2 levels, but as soon as it's no longer the current expansion, that and all prior expansion's additions get shuffled down a bit, and old content is rescaled and re-fieshed-out according to the additions.

Basically a level/stat squish like with how World of Warcraft did it, if I'm understanding this correctly. The alternative would be to make level sync just not affect what abilities have at that level, which would be easier on the devs, but level/stat squish is inevitable if the devs plan to go past level 100... Also, I'm gonna go out on limb here and assume that ppm means Potency Per Minute. But other than that, yeah I have to agree on that.

snip

I didn't want get rid of a lot of Dark Knight oGCDs either, but I didn't want oGCD spam for a bloated opener, with almost nothing to do in between the next burst window, and the 1.5 GCD combos/actions were the next best thing. Although I never played Lost Ark or GW2, both approaches you provided could work in theory, the problem would be if FF14 could actually handle it either one of those, and you would need to design 2 whole new jobs specifically for each approach, 1 job for each, as the testing ground. But either approach for Dark Knight I would not be completely against if the filler rotation is at least engaging enough for a lot of people to not complain about it.

[Shurrikhan]

Basically a level/stat squish like with how World of Warcraft did it, if I'm understanding this correctly. The alternative would be to make level sync just not affect what abilities have at that level, which would be easier on the devs, but level/stat squish is inevitable if the devs plan to go past level 100... Also, I'm gonna go out on limb here and assume that ppm means Potency Per Minute. But other than that, yeah I have to agree on that.

Not quite. It's just an shuffling of what levels skills are acquired at.

Let's start with ARR. Let's say it gives 20 additions (new actions or gameplay-affecting or otherwise significant traits) over its 50 levels. You'd put the first 15 of those at 1-29 (every 2 levels), and the remaining 5 over 30-50 (every 5 levels). You get the gameplay earlier.

HW then adds at least 5 additions, granted every 2 levels.

That's fine while it's new, but once it's old, you just add it to the lv30+ pile and distribute it more evenly. So rather than getting 5 skills over 30-50 (per 5 levels) and 5 skills over 51-60 (per 2 levels), you'd get a new skill every 3 levels, with 2 of the HW skills being made available earlier (as early as level 45).

Once Shadowbringers comes out, the additions from Stormblood are likewise more evenly distributed. Instead of an addition per 3 levels 30-60 and per 2 levels 61-70, you average an addition per 2.67 levels, with some slight adjustments to fit a new consistent rhythm (32, 35, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47, 50, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70).

Etc., etc. That'd be what you call a roll-in model that would keep each expansion relatively fleshed out but wouldn't overly delay kit depth in the longer term.

And of course, what I want in general doesn't need to be anything so elaborate as that, so long as the kit is pretty solid by level 50, rather than needing to hit 60 or 70 to feel fleshed out.

I didn't want get rid of a lot of Dark Knight oGCDs either, but I didn't want oGCD spam for a bloated opener, with almost nothing to do in between the next burst window, and the 1.5 GCD combos/actions were the next best thing.

Again, though, the opener only needs about 2 more weave spaces. Those 2 weave spaces are all that stand between "enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss" and "not enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss." 3 if we really wanted to be comfortable.

Now, if you turn our opener into 1.5s GCDs, though, we go from having 16 weave spaces between the nine 2.5s GCDs skills we can fit within those 20s to just 14 weave spaces between those fourteen 1.5s GCDs skills that one can fit within those 20 seconds. You actually make it worse.

This is because each GCD of 2.4s or greater room for 4 actions (including the weaponskill) at very low ping, while a 1.5s GCD has room only for 2 actions, despite taking up a 60% GCD. (Yes, players at very low ping or using a plugin to undo the netcode's self-sabotage can weave 3 oGCDs per GCD, but even they will clip trying to weave a second oGCD into a 1.5s GCD.) The 1.5s GCD, atop making Skill Speed worthless, leaves more than you cannot use (.3s, up from .1s).

But either approach for Dark Knight I would not be completely against if the filler rotation is at least engaging enough for a lot of people to not complain about it.

Those models both covered almost solely the "filler" weaponskills, yes.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Not quite. It's just an shuffling of what levels skills are acquired at.

Let's start with ARR. Let's say it gives 20 additions (new actions or gameplay-affecting or otherwise significant traits) over its 50 levels. You'd put the first 15 of those at 1-29 (every 2 levels), and the remaining 5 over 30-50 (every 5 levels). You get the gameplay earlier.

HW then adds at least 5 additions, granted every 2 levels.

That's fine while it's new, but once it's old, you just add it to the lv30+ pile and distribute it more evenly. So rather than getting 5 skills over 30-50 (per 5 levels) and 5 skills over 51-60 (per 2 levels), you'd get a new skill every 3 levels, with 2 of the HW skills being made available earlier (as early as level 45).

Once Shadowbringers comes out, the additions from Stormblood are likewise more evenly distributed. Instead of an addition per 3 levels 30-60 and per 2 levels 61-70, you average an addition per 2.67 levels, with some slight adjustments to fit a new consistent rhythm (32, 35, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47, 50, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70).

Etc., etc. That'd be what you call a roll-in model that would keep each expansion relatively fleshed out but wouldn't overly delay kit depth in the longer term.

And of course, what I want in general doesn't need to be anything so elaborate as that, so long as the kit is pretty solid by level 50, rather than needing to hit 60 or 70 to feel fleshed out.

Okay, but if you had to have a band-aid fix for level sync until this system got properly implemented, would you make it so that level sync let you keep all of the abilities and traits you have unlocked before syncing down? For example a Dark Knight that is level 82, would it keep all abilities they have learned at that if they were synced down to, let's say, Sastasha?

Again, though, the opener only needs about 2 more weave spaces. Those 2 weave spaces are all that stand between "enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss" and "not enough room to do my mitigation/taunts/job without damage loss." 3 if we really wanted to be comfortable.

Now, if you turn our opener into 1.5s GCDs, though, we go from having 16 weave spaces between the nine 2.5s GCDs skills we can fit within those 20s to just 14 weave spaces between those fourteen 1.5s GCDs skills that one can fit within those 20 seconds. You actually make it worse.

This is because each GCD of 2.4s or greater room for 4 actions (including the weaponskill) at very low ping, while a 1.5s GCD has room only for 2 actions, despite taking up a 60% GCD. (Yes, players at very low ping or using a plugin to undo the netcode's self-sabotage can weave 3 oGCDs per GCD, but even they will clip trying to weave a second oGCD into a 1.5s GCD.) The 1.5s GCD, atop making Skill Speed worthless, leaves more than you cannot use (.3s, up from .1s).

For the pre-pull opener, at least for my idea of the rework I gave, outside of maintenance buffs like Grit and my Darkside rework idea, it would start with Unmend, Dark Arts, Sole Survivor, the 1.5 GCD combo, with at least 1 Plunges in between each GCD, Blood gauge combo powered up by Blood Arts, with the second Sole Survivor before just as the first one falls off in between this combo, MP Spender combo, with both Abyssal Drains if they are oGCDs, Blood gauge combo since you should have in theory have about over 50 blood gauge at this point, with Souleater combo with the occasional blood combo and Dark Arts combo as filler, which should be enough time to pop defensive cooldowns as needed like Dark Missionary/Reprisal for raidwides, or TBN + whatever else for tankbusters, though for TBN if it happens during blood arts burst and it breaks and break, you go back to Dark Arts burst, though I am aware that overcapping might be an issue here especially at the 15 second mark for one of the pity systems for Dark Arts generation, since I don't know when a tank buster USUALLY goes off in boss fights, though for dungeons this MIGHT NOT be a problem, since it is casual content. I'm still trying to figure out how to iron out the kinks in the pity system for Dark Arts, hence why I also suggested Abyssal Drain also be a Dark Arts spender that grants blood arts if Dark Arts overcapping was going to be an issues since Blood Arts over capping might also be an issue as well. which is where Quietus comes in. Just a rough idea of what the opener would look like, so obviously some optimization would be needed.

Those models both covered almost solely the "filler" weaponskills, yes.

That was my main concern so I'm glad that is indeed the case.

[Shurrikhan]

Okay, but if you had to have a band-aid fix for level sync until this system got properly implemented, would you make it so that level sync let you keep all of the abilities and traits you have unlocked before syncing down? For example a Dark Knight that is level 82, would it keep all abilities they have learned at that if they were synced down to, let's say, Sastasha?

Probably not, honestly. The Limited Leveling Roulette option already removed any chance of getting saddled with a low-level dungeon without that being a function of you doing what the roulette was intended to do (help support queues).

While I wouldn't personally mind the option to work harder for the same throughput (me doing perfect Optimal Drift rotations and demanding perfectly paced pulls from my tank while the actual level 18 just goes 123 12(4)3 123 123 for roughly equal output), it just doesn't seem particularly necessary to muddle new players' experiences in that way, nor would you be able to meet the limits of new sustain (be they healing or mitigation) actions and traits particularly well through scaling alone; you'd also want those outright new attacks, which might not be something you could attach dynamically rather than as a different preset version of the instance.

No, I suspect that tech would be used more for the ability to basically make "Unreal" content on demand, and perhaps have an actual Dungeon Roulette (all the player-favorite dungeons, with some degree of rotation, scaled up to your party's average ilvl for commensurately greater rewards) and Expert Dungeon Roulette (the same, but tuned and filled out more challengingly).