4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Ekimmak]

list of dark knight changes that i want to happen
1.get rid of sharing the cooldown mechanic of inner release and unchained and inner release cooldowns should be 60 seconds
2.increase fell cleave potency to 1200 but increase the gauge consumption to 100
3.increase inner beast potency to 900 but increase the gauge consumption to 100
4.increase the potency of butcher block, storm eye and storm path to 300
5.bloodbath need to make a return
6.onslaught should not cost gauge to use

This is a thread for DRK, not WAR. And I disagree on everything except the shared cooldown on IR and Unchained.

[Lyth]

With the new Ultimate trial on the horizon, it's hard not to worry about DRK's issues with physical mitigation. Death Sentence is a physical tankbuster every 30 seconds. Ravensbeak and Bahamut's Claw are both physical, with the latter being a multihit tankbuster. Flatten is physical as well.

Fights that are heavily physical are not a new thing. In A7S, for example, PLD was vastly preferred outside of tightly tuned speedruns. DRK's lack of physical mitigation and the healer attention required on Living Dead made DRK into a liability. And this was at a time when we offered relatively more dps and had an arguably better physical mitigation defense kit. If people are shying away from running DRK despite magic heavy fights, then what are the chances that they're going to run it on a heavily physical fight?

The idea of niches was mentioned earlier. HW's model of a physical tank and a magic tank competing for scraps off of WAR's table doesn't really apply any more. DRK's weakness against physical damage isn't really balanced against anything. It's just a liability.

I think the main problem with tank balance is in the design philosophy itself. Because PLD and WAR have been around for so long, they've effectively staked their claim into a lot of different mechanics. In other games, you might have one tank which focuses on lifesteal, another which uses self-heals, and another who shrugs off damage. One tank might reflect damage, while another might choose to shield through it. In this game, we have self-healing vampiric bubble warriors who can gracefully parry all incoming attacks with their greataxes while reflecting back incoming damage. The only reason why all of this is in WAR's bag of tricks is because the job got there first. But when you have so many tank concepts grandfathered into a single job, it doesn't really leave much room for other tank jobs to, well, exist.

If you want FFXIV to be more than a two tank game, you have to re-examine PLD and WAR and decide which of their job concepts thematically ought to actually belong to them, and which should not. It's baffling that concepts like "the best defensive tank" and "the best offensive tank" can exist when there are more than two tanks in the game. If we're going to allow tank "niches" to exist, they have to be a lot narrower.

[Aana]

list of dark knight changes that i want to happen
1.get rid of sharing the cooldown mechanic of inner release and unchained and inner release cooldowns should be 60 seconds
2.increase fell cleave potency to 1200 but increase the gauge consumption to 100
3.increase inner beast potency to 900 but increase the gauge consumption to 100
4.increase the potency of butcher block, storm eye and storm path to 300
5.bloodbath need to make a return
6.onslaught should not cost gauge to use

Wrong thread. Stupidly OP even in the right thread. No Thx.

[Eyvhokan]

Delirium, I think, is actually pretty effective albeit kind of a boring ability.

I'd be happy with any/all of your suggestions regardless.

[Chrono_Rising]

I don't have my notes with me at the moment, but I believe delirium works out to be about 240 potency every 120 seconds when used with blood weapon, thats 2 potency a second. Basically we trade 50 blood for 2400 mana and 8 seconds more of blood weapon. This just doesn’t feel awesome to use being on a 2 minute timer, compare this to something like inner release, or paladin’s two buff rotation and you can see how lacking this ability is.

[SplittingSkies]

I don't have my notes with me at the moment, but I believe delirium works out to be about 240 potency every 120 seconds when used with blood weapon, thats 2 potency a second. Basically we trade 50 blood for 240 mana and 8 seconds more of blood weapon.

So. Lets just get this right.

In other words the skill pales in comparison to WARs Zerk/IR and PLDs FoF/Req; On one hand, WAR gets a 30% AP increase every minute and 50% off sale with their skills that cost BG every two minutes, ignoring zerk, in the beginning they were charged with using IR now its free and yet some are still trying to push their luck where that and Unchained don't share the same CD. And on the other hand, we have PLD with their 25% damage increase and 20% magic damage/healing increase BOTH available every minute. The similarity between all of those four skills is that none of them cost their BG to execute, yet ours does, yet ours is on a 2 minute CD, yet ours just gives us a DA in return and extends BP/BW with no significant difference as we rely upon the damage buffs that everyone else in the party gives, to even make a difference (I realise that I might be repeating what others have been saying but I'm doing this for emphasis)


I still think they could of done a lot more with it and the CD duration isn't properly justified in my opinion for it to EVEN be two minutes. I would take the OP's suggestion of a 10% direct hit buff for yourself and everyone in the party, at least having something like that would justify the two minute CD to a degree. I don't even know what in math is the damage increase with even gaining an extra 8 seconds and to buy an extra DA with 50 blood, but popping a CD of 120 seconds which costs us 50 blood to use should give a lot more than an 8 second extension on BW. We aren't dungeon tanks, we were worth more than that before they decided to take away the skills we had that had some form of synergy to them.

[Aana]

I don't have my notes with me at the moment, but I believe delirium works out to be about 240 potency every 120 seconds when used with blood weapon, thats 2 potency a second. Basically we trade 50 blood for 2400 mana and 8 seconds more of blood weapon. This just doesn’t feel awesome to use being on a 2 minute timer, compare this to something like inner release, or paladin’s two buff rotation and you can see how lacking this ability is.

To be fair, the 240 just accounts for the blood/MP. You also get the 10% direct potency boost to your AAs/GCDs from the raw speed. I forget the exact number but it was an additional 140ish or so iirc. But that might be wrong/out of date with the potency changes. somewhere between 350-400 potency. Better than 240 but still pretty low for a 2min CD.

[Eyvhokan]

I don't have my notes with me at the moment, but I believe delirium works out to be about 240 potency every 120 seconds when used with blood weapon, thats 2 potency a second. Basically we trade 50 blood for 2400 mana and 8 seconds more of blood weapon. This just doesn’t feel awesome to use being on a 2 minute timer, compare this to something like inner release, or paladin’s two buff rotation and you can see how lacking this ability is.

If it's that ineffective, I would probably do something like reduce the cooldown to 80s (every other BW basically), and blood cost to 20. Rather than a big effect every window, more frequent small effects.

In addition, I would make Blood Price let you ignore the some of (or all of!) the Grit penalty, so it is nice to use if you want Grit up, and in effect making Delirium more attractive if you're in Grit.

[Chrono_Rising]

So. Lets just get this right.

In other words the skill pales in comparison to WARs Zerk/IR and PLDs FoF/Req; On one hand, WAR gets a 30% AP increase every minute and 50% off sale with their skills that cost BG every two minutes, ignoring zerk, in the beginning they were charged with using IR now its free and yet some are still trying to push their luck where that and Unchained don't share the same CD. And on the other hand, we have PLD with their 25% damage increase and 20% magic damage/healing increase BOTH available every minute. The similarity between all of those four skills is that none of them cost their BG to execute, yet ours does, yet ours is on a 2 minute CD, yet ours just gives us a DA in return and extends BP/BW with no significant difference as we rely upon the damage buffs that everyone else in the party gives, to even make a difference (I realise that I might be repeating what others have been saying but I'm doing this for emphasis)


I still think they could of done a lot more with it and the CD duration isn't properly justified in my opinion for it to EVEN be two minutes. I would take the OP's suggestion of a 10% direct hit buff for yourself and everyone in the party, at least having something like that would justify the two minute CD to a degree. I don't even know what in math is the damage increase with even gaining an extra 8 seconds and to buy an extra DA with 50 blood, but popping a CD of 120 seconds which costs us 50 blood to use should give a lot more than an 8 second extension on BW. We aren't dungeon tanks, we were worth more than that before they decided to take away the skills we had that had some form of synergy to them.

I think you are responding in the wrong thread. The op in this thread is me, and I suggested a double damage buff with double resource generation for the duration of blood weapon or price when we use delirium. The direct hit buff is in the "Fixing Dark Knight, Properly" thread by Crater.

[Chrono_Rising]

To be fair, the 240 just accounts for the blood/MP. You also get the 10% direct potency boost to your AAs/GCDs from the raw speed. I forget the exact number but it was an additional 140ish or so iirc. But that might be wrong/out of date with the potency changes. somewhere between 350-400 potency. Better than 240 but still pretty low for a 2min CD.

We only get 1 extra auto attack every other delirium. In general skill speed math is difficult and really fight dependent. Sometimes it is there, sometimes it isn't.