Dark Knight rework ideas (yet another)

[Nivarea]

After giving some feedback and trying to propose a few possible improvemens to the current DRK without changing the current framework, I wanted to try to do something else. What’s follow are some ideas for a rework, trying to be mostly realistic and not creating totally new mechanics.
Of course, what’s following is clearly not something I think we’ll see at all, but I had some fun trying to do it and wanted to hear what other people would think about it.

To explain my aim, here were my guidelines while working on it:
1 – Trying to reunite designs ideas of both pre ShB and post ShB DRK.
2 – Putting DRK back to its place as the oGCD king of tanks while not going all the way to StB APM.
3 – Make us actually manage all our resources: MP, Blood and Darkside.
4 – Improve DRK defensive toolkit while keeping its uniqueness.
5 – Make DRK more distinct from other tanks.

So, here we go.

Skill merge and removal:
Flood of Darkness/Shadow, removed and merged with Edge of Shadow (à la Shoha for SAM)

Edge of Shadow: (oGCD)
Deals unaspected damage in a cone before you with a potency of 250 for the first enemy and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Additional Effect: Grants Darkside, increasing damage delt by 10%.
Duration: 30s
Extends Darkside duration by 30s to a maximum of 60s.
MP cost: 2400
Recast time: 1s

=> I merged Edge and Flood and made it weaker, with fall off damage. It will be the same with the non-upgraded version. Why keeping Edge and not Flood? Just because I prefer Edge animation. The MP cost has also been lowered by 600mp, to make more MP spenders available. Edge of Darkness, the lv 30 version, would be 140 potency, with 50% fall off damage.

New Skills:
Lv 40 Dark Arts: (oGCD)
Attune with the darkness within you, granting 3 stacks of Dark Arts, increasing the potency of several actions.
Duration: 20s
MP cost: 2400
Recast time: 5s

=> Dark Arts is back but changed.
It now grants three stacks of Dark Arts instead of being a single use, to actually make it less spammy. The 15s is to both assure you have enough time to do multiple possible enhanced skills, but not too long as to be able to do 3 Souleater combos and use the stacks on those 3 Souleater. Upgraded the duration to 20s from 15, after some more thinking on it, this is an unnecessary restriction.

The affected skills are:
- Gaining 150 potency, Carve and Spit.
- Gaining 100 potency, Souleater, Bloodspiller, Scourge, Scarlet Delirium, Comeuppance, Torcleaver and Disesteem.
- Gaining 50 potency, Stalwart Soul, Quietus and Impalement.

So, you would, as it was back in the old days, always want to have a Dark Arts stack for Carve and Spit, but outside of that, every skill has the same potency increase. Since the 3 stacks would always hit harder combined than an Edge, you would use Edge to pump damage in burst when you have DA stacks, or to upkeep Darkside during downtimes, making it actually something you would have to pay a bit of attention.
At lower level, it would only be 2 stacks, and would upgrade to 3 at lv 58, to give something to “learn” at this level.

Lv 76 Scourge: (GCD)
Delivers an attack with a potency of 480 (example, it can be changed of course)
Dark Arts Potency: 580
Additional Effect: Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time and auto-attack delay by 10%.
Duration: 21s
Blood Cost: 30
Recast time: 60s

※This weaponskill does not share a recast timer with any other actions.

=> While I decided to pay homage to this og skill, it is not at all the same skill in function. Scourge has two objectives: first, adding another Blood Spender to DRK to force us to have to manage it a tiny bit; second, adding back some speed buff that was removed after Stormblood ended. This would make us gain one GCD a minute. I decided to put a 30 blood cost to not make it too overbearing on the Blood economy. Bloodspiller and Quietus are still at 50.

Changes to MP generation and spending:

Generation
Carve and Spit: (oGCD)
Delivers a threefold attack with a potency of 400.
Dark Arts Potency: 550
Additional Effect: Restores MP
MP restoration effect: 600
Recast time: 30s

=> I lowered the recast time to 30s to spice up even more the filler downtime and to generate more MP. Like before, its Dark Arts effect is the strongest, meaning you would always want to Dark Arts CnS. Since we now have three stacks of DA per use, it’s not a forced double weave, removing this criticism from back then.

Delirium: (oGCD)
Grants 3 stacks of Delirium and 5 stacks of Blood Weapon.
Delirium Effect: Changes Bloodspiller to Scarlet Delirium and Quietus to Impalement
Duration: 15s
Blood Weapon Effect: Each stack increases Blood Gauge by 10 and restores MP upon landing weaponskills or spells
Duration: 15s
MP restoration effect: 600 per hit
Effect does not stack when hitting multiple targets with a single attack.
Recast time: 40s

=> I simply put back Blood Weapon to 5 stacks, and reduced the cooldown to 40s, the same than during StB and HW, to reduce the downtime doing only the 123 combo. The Delirium part is unchanged. Of course, the Lv 35 Blood Weapon would also get the cd reduction and the 5 stacks. With that, the MP generation would be higher than it has been since ShB, but not so much as to become overwhelming.

Scarlet Delirium, Comeuppance and Torcleaver
MP restoration effect: 300

=> I boosted the MP generation from 200 to 300 to balance a bit the mana generation without adding too much MP overall after spreadsheeting the rotation. It seems negligible, but it is useful to assure a smooth MP economy.
Further testing on the spreadsheet made me realize I made a mistake which resulted in more MP generation. I'll leave this crossed as to be transparent with changed made after the initial posting of this thread. We need less MP than I thought to be close to a "looping" MP generation, so here the new change:

Disesteem:
MP restoration effect: 200.

=> This makes the rotation slightly MP positive with the about 6 to 7 spenders a minute average in mind, but close to break even.

Spending:
All MP spenders are at 2400MP.

=>The price cut to 2400 Mp is to make MP spenders more flexible and more available overall. From what I’ve mapped out, we’re around 7 MP spenders a minute with this economy.
If you want more MP spending, just lower MP spenders cost to 2000. It works, I tried spreadsheeting it, it flows quite well.

MP spenders:
Edge of Shadow/Darkness
Dark Arts
Abyssal Drain
TBN

Here are the MP spenders I haven’t presented yet:

Abyssal Drain: (GCD)
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional Effect: Restores own HP.
Cure Potency: 200 per enemy
MP Cost: 2400

=> It’s basically the StB version of Abyssal Drain, but with the heal not needing Dark Arts. Since it’s not generating resources and costing MP, it would clearly be a pure sustain skill in dungeon and its price is high enough to not be able to be spammed brainlessly, since what made DA Abyssal Drain stupidly strong in Stormblood was that it could be spammed with how ressources worked.


The Blackest Night: (oGCD)
Creates a barrier around self or target party member that absorbs damage totaling 25% of target's maximum HP.
Duration: 10s
Grants Retribution when barrier is completely absorbed.
Retribution Effect: Consume Retribution instead of MP to execute Edge of Shadow, Abyssal Drain or Dark Arts.
Cannot be cast while the barrier is active.
MP Cost: 2400
(no recast time)

=> I removed the recast time of TBN and lengthened its duration a bit, but both kept the MP requirement and added the condition of not already being under its effect. The DA stack is still here but changed in name. That makes TBN even more flexible, with news uses to cover multi-hit busters better, while keeping the risk/reward of the skill and the skill expression, even if the longer duration would make it easier to break.

And here is a change to assure that the burst window stays busy on the MP side:

Lv 80 Living Shadow: (oGCD)
Conjure a simulacrum of your darkside to fight alongside you.
Duration: 20s
Additional Effect: Grants Scorn
Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: Grants three stacks of Dark Embrace.
Dark Embrace Effect: Halves the MP requirement for Edge of Shadow, Dark Arts, Abyssal Drain and The Blackest Night.
Duration: 30s
Simulacrum Attack Potency: 390
Additional Effect: Simulacrum is able to execute Shadowbringer and Disesteem
Shadowbringer Potency: 470 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies
Disesteem Potency: 520 for the first enemy, and 25% less for all remaining enemies
Recast Time: 120s

=> I added Dark Embrace, to give more weight in playstyle to Esteem being present. I limited it to only three stacks, to limit the amount of MP spenders in burst. Given how the job is working, with Darkside to upkeep and Carve and Spit forcing a Dark Arts use every 30s, don’t worry, it’s about the same amount of weaves inside the 2mn burst window as it is now, maybe one more. A MP spender using the Retribution from TBN would not consume a Dark Embrace stack.

Defensive changes:
I’ve already covered TBN and Abyssal Drain, but here are the other changes made to DRK defensive kit.

Dark Mind: (oGCD)
Reduces magic vulnerability by 20% and physical vulnerability by 10%.
Duration: 10s
Recast time: 60s

=> I added the physical mitigation that everyone wanted. Given that GNB Camouflage is 20s long, I think Dark Mind can keep its 60s cooldown, even with the added physical mitigation. It's been done in patch 7.1, very good change.

Salted Earth: (oGCD)
Creates a patch of salted earth at your feet, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 50 to any enemies who enter.
Additional Effect: Gradually restores your HP while standing in the patch of salted earth.
Duration 15s
Cure Potency: 200
Recast time: 90s

=> Taking some inspiration from the PVP version of Salted Earth, like many of us thought, you now have some sustain added, making it more useful.

Lv 64 Dark Missionary: (oGCD)
Reduces magic damage taken by self and nearby party members by 10% and physical damage by self and nearby party member by 5%.
Duration: 15s
Recast Time: 90s

=> Dark Missionary has been lowered to Lv 64, while Quietus has been moved up to LV 72 for the levelling, to make it available for 70 ultimates. It also got the “addle update”, with a bit of physical mitigation. Also changed in patch 7.1, that's great for both UCOB and UWU.

Oblation: (oGCD)
Reduces damage taken by target party member by 10%
Duration: 10s
Additional effect: Grants Abyssal Offering.
Abyssal Offering: Restores HP every time the target suffers damage.
Cure Potency: 300 for the first hit, then 100 for all remaining hits.
Duration: 6s
Maximum Charges: 2
Recast Time: 60s

=> The last bit of sustain added, to align it with the upgrades other tanks got to their short mitigations. I tried to put some flavour on it, to make it different than other sustain effects on short mitigations, taking a bit of inspiration from old blood price, but for HP. This would make the skill really strong in dungeons packs, that’s why I limited the cure potency to only 100 outside of the first instance of damage.

Finishing words and last explanations:

With this rework, I tried to not copy other tanks as much as I could and to keep and build on what made DRK stand out from others. That’s why I kept the “magic damage specialist” aspect of the job intact while reducing its physical damage weakness. I didn’t touch numbers from older skills, but of course such a rework would necessitate a balance to all numbers. Normally, now the potencies are coherent and would work with other changes in potencies (that you can see in the doc below). It would be around a 0.3% increase from current DRK.

I tried to merge most of the things I liked about all versions of DRK, while making it coherent with the current encounter and job design. That’s why DRK is still aligned with the 2mn meta, even with the added variety to downtime. Finally, of course, this rework reflects what I like about DRK, I like pressing buttons and high APM jobs, what DRK was historically, but I know that not everyone likes the same things about the job, and that’s fine. I could add even more MP to add more weaves, that would not be a problem for me, but I think it might be for others.

Finally, this is the idea of a rework for the current expansion, Dawntrail. I can’t imagine what changes in design SE will do for 8.0 and it’s mostly something I made for fun. If it can give ideas, great. But I’m not deluded enough to imagine SE taking inspiration from this, of course.

That’s all. Thank you for taking time reading this. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts.

Edit : I added a spreadsheet with how the rotation would work lower ont the first page. Here's the link :

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Edit 2: After finalizing some details, here is the complete job actions and traits list, with all the changes in potencies :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

FINALLY a good rework. Personally I do miss the Haste effect from Bloodweapon, but I can let go of it. Everything about this is great mechanically. Of course, potencies are always up to debate, but I'm not judging on that.

A lot of changes you post here are actually a culmination of a lot of feedback that generally seemed well received, so I greatly appreciate that. And from a personal point, I love your implementation of non-standard cooldown timers (40s Bloodweapon / Delirium for example) and non-standard gauge spending (30 Blood on Scourge).

Really, well done.

[Zairava]

Damn dude you really cooked with this one. I love this rework.

Potencies might need some fine tuning, but mechanically this is superb

[Nivarea]

Thank you, both of you, I'm glad it seems to click with other people.

I would be lying if I said that it wasn't something that took time crafting and fine tuning on the mechanical side, but given that I'm a nerd, I find doing that fun.
I have actually mapped all skills with changes in potency to make it about even as DRK is right now after simulating the rotation, but that would have necessitated to list ALL skills, which would be too long for a post on the forum I think. That's why I decided to not bother with them, since numbers are after all the easiest things to balance afterwards.

FINALLY a good rework. Personally I do miss the Haste effect from Bloodweapon, but I can let go of it.
Really, well done.

I decided to put the haste to Scourge to make it have a reason to exist outside of just being another Blood spender, and because even if I prefered how Blood Weapon worked back in HW and StB, the simplicity of current BW stacks works well, and makes MP not spike too much.

A lot of changes you post here are actually a culmination of a lot of feedback that generally seemed well received, so I greatly appreciate that.

I don't post much on FFXIV social communities, be it the forums, reddit, twitter or even discord servers like the Balance. I do however follows what people are saying. After that, it's just judging what I find good and realistic, and what I think is bad or unrealistic. It's still up to me, but it is born from all feedbacks I've read all those years.

And from a personal point, I love your implementation of non-standard cooldown timers (40s Bloodweapon / Delirium for example) and non-standard gauge spending (30 Blood on Scourge).

I share the same taste for non-standard timers and spenders; that's why they're here.

[AlucaDragonheart]

Someone mail this directly to Square Enix's office and shove it in the face of the job designers, great work on this rework!

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I decided to put the haste to Scourge to make it have a reason to exist outside of just being another Blood spender, and because even if I prefered how Blood Weapon worked back in HW and StB, the simplicity of current BW stacks works well, and makes MP not spike too much.

Imma be real with you, I completely missed that bit.

The way you implemented it is even better imo. 60s Scourge CD maybe a bit long for it though, but that's just my speed demon talking.

[Nivarea]

After checking some more my spreadsheet to avoid as much as I can mistakes on it (there could still be some), I'll share what the rotation would look like compared to the current rotation. Of course, this is an example, in a real situation this would probably not be the absolutely most optimal rotation, but this will give a more concrete idea as to how it would work, how it would flow.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

[NegativeS]

Why keeping Edge and not Flood? Just because I prefer Edge animation.

This is the only thing I disagree with, I kind of like DRK being a pseudo mageblade with with its big wave attacks. Though I understand merging them to cut down of button bloat... and Edge has a really cool animation, so I get it.

Everything else, you cooked harder than the people actually paid to design the jobs, good job.

[Ramiee]

Solid rework though instead of Edge of Shadow keep it the same but replace it with Power Slash because its a way better animation.

[Nivarea]

First, answers to both Ramiee and NegativeS about Edge of Shadow :

I had to chose and went with my preference. It can be flood, it can get the Power Slash animation, it's not a point I really care that much tbh.
I just think that consoliding both Edge and Flood in one button is a good thing to avoid button bloat.

Second: I will give the finalized complete job actions and traits list:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

The potencies should be balanced around current DRK damage, a slight buff if I'm not mistaken in my calculations (it's the 10% auto-attack speed that makes it a buff, it's a slight nerf without). I also didn't try to check potencies before max level, so I don't know if it would be a buff, a nerf or about the same at other level caps.

Third and finally, here are some more ideas that I did not implement, but that can be interesting:

-Lowering Salted Earth Cooldown to 45s
=> This would help even more with the sustain with the regen upon standing in it and give more oGCDs to press, mostly outside of buffs since it’s still only aligned with the 6mn buffs.

-Upgrading the Retribution (TBN DA stacks) to make you able to store 2 or 3 of them.
=> With that, you would have even more flexibility with TBN since you would not have to be sure to spend your Retribution stack before using TBN again.

-Removing the condition “Grants Retribution (Dark Arts) when barrier is completely absorbed” from TBN and replacing it with “Grants Retribution (Dark Arts) when target is hit”.
=> It would remove completely the risk of TBN not refunding MPs. I’m not a fan of removing all the risk from TBN, but I think this would be the lesser of all evils if we really want to remove it instead of homogenizing it by giving TBN no MP cost and a 25s recast time.

-Lowering the duration of the Darkside granted by Edge of Shadow to 20s.
=> This would force a bit more management of Darkside during downtime from what I already proposed.

-I already spoke about it, but you can lower the MP spenders cost to 2000.
=> This is to have further MP spending.

-Upgrading Syphon Strike, Stalwart Soul, Blood Weapon stacks and Carve and Spit MP generation to 900.
=> That’s another possibility to increase MP generation and further uses. That’s if you want to come closer to StB MP economy, while for what I proposed for the rework, my idea was to be in a “sweet spot” between StB and ShB MP economy. It would also require the Scarlet Delirium Combo (and Disesteem) to grants 300MP instead of 200.


I tried to be “conservative” with the rework, to not go too much overboard with the Sustain, the MP economy or increasing too much the skill ceiling. That’s why I’m not proposing something like the Scarlet Delirium combo giving HP for example. While DRK can use more sustain than what it has now, I tried to find ways to make it happen in a way that others tanks don’t do and not make it overpowered.