4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Chrono_Rising]

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.

This still pales in comparison to the big damage cooldowns of the other tanks.

[Aana]

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.

This still pales in comparison to the big damage cooldowns of the other tanks.

This is why we shouldn't just vacuum compare skills. Your Just listing out IR vs Delirium! FoF vs blood weapon! FIGHT! Sure inner release is stronger than delirium. Sure pld has 2 rotating buffs, but pld doesn't have darkside. War doesn't have the avg potency of drk. Handpicking skills to 1v1 each other doesn't show the whole picture. But what matters is the output. Example: Heres numbers from Shin on FFLogs yesterday (picked it cuz its new and shiny):

Rank% War Pld Drk
90% 3139 3056 2917
50% 2605 2473 2321
10% 2032 1914 1877


These are the kinds of numbers you should be 1v1ing to compare. Complete package numbers. Yes drk is at the bottom. But its only ~5% behind the awesome power of pld. ~10% behind lolWar. 5% is not very much ground to make up to get back into the mix. But theres no point in comparing FoF to blood weapon or delirium to IR.

What drk needs is an overall damage buff, not imitate specific job mechanics like "Delirium shouldn't cost gauge because war's IR doesn't cost gauge!" The jobs specific mechanics like gauges perform entirely different functions. Plds dont even use their gauge for damage, Wars damage is centered on FCs through gauge. Drk gauge is neither of those things. IR being 'free' is not a reason to make delirium free. Apples. Oranges.

Drk needs a raw damage buff, not copying the exact job specific mechanics of War or pld.

Buff delirium, or potencies or whatever because the overall damage is low. Don't buff because "IR is stronger than delirium". The latter makes no sense plucking it out of context like that.

[SplittingSkies]

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.

Apologies, I've been reading and following so many DRK threads that I think my brain has turned to mush. A nap is in order.

[Chrono_Rising]

This is why we shouldn't just vacuum compare skills. Your Just listing out IR vs Delirium! FoF vs blood weapon! FIGHT! Sure inner release is stronger than delirium. Sure pld has 2 rotating buffs, but pld doesn't have darkside. War doesn't have the avg potency of drk. Handpicking skills to 1v1 each other doesn't show the whole picture. But what matters is the output. Example: Heres numbers from Shin on FFLogs yesterday (picked it cuz its new and shiny):

Rank% War Pld Drk
90% 3139 3056 2917
50% 2605 2473 2321
10% 2032 1914 1877


These are the kinds of numbers you should be 1v1ing to compare. Complete package numbers. Yes drk is at the bottom. But its only ~5% behind the awesome power of pld. ~10% behind lolWar. 5% is not very much ground to make up to get back into the mix. But theres no point in comparing FoF to blood weapon or delirium to IR.

What drk needs is an overall damage buff, not imitate specific job mechanics like "Delirium shouldn't cost gauge because war's IR doesn't cost gauge!" The jobs specific mechanics like gauges perform entirely different functions. Plds dont even use their gauge for damage, Wars damage is centered on FCs through gauge. Drk gauge is neither of those things. IR being 'free' is not a reason to make delirium free. Apples. Oranges.

Drk needs a raw damage buff, not copying the exact job specific mechanics of drk or pld.

Thanks for the numbers Aana. This is why I suggested a double damage buff in delirium, for those 8 seconds we would buff our overall damage by about 6.67% which would smack us in the middle of pld and warrior, going to the full duration of 23 seconds might be a bit much, but I can dream. Doubling the resource generation for those should put us more at warrior levels, but given our lack of party wide mitigation I feel justified in wanting to at least deal damage.

[Chrono_Rising]

Apologies, I've reading and following so many DRK threads I think my brain has turned to mush. A nap is in order.

Been there, all good.

[SplittingSkies]

...

While I agree with what you posted, just to point out I made a fatal mistake mixing up one thread with another.

However, if my post seemed to be pointing in the direction of "If warrior can get this for free, we should be able to get this for free too." Then let me take a step back and start again with where I was getting at, again I don't understand the math as much as everyone else here so any assistance on that would be welcomed and appreciated. Number crunching isn't really my strong suit. I was more treading along the lines of: "Delirium should do more than just give us a DA and extend either BW/BP for a two minute cooldown." personally for me using this ability feels... lacking... I understand that yes, now that you have mentioned it, we aren't far behind but I was merely engaging in a discussion about what in DRKs kit needs the most help. And for the length of this CD I feel this needs help as well, of course I'm welcome to be stood corrected.

[Aana]

I'm all for a drk damage buff of ~5% or so just to bring it to the same level as pld/war. I'm personally more interested in the end result than the nuance of getting there. If SE said tomorrow: Darkside getting a 7% buff (rougly 6% net damage boost) that would be fine. Its not flashy. It doesn't change gameplay, but it would make drk do similar damage to war/pld. I don't think damage needs to be buffed to be more 'Drk-ish' by shuffling around blood/gauge/delirium etc. I feel those are just more convoluted and have more opportunity to be screwed up via performance. But that's my personal opinion.

Drk needs damage. Id rather they just buff darkside/potencies and be done with it. Its easy to measure to get the exact boost intended with no unintended consequences. (it would also be a little boost to enmity generation with overall damage and boosting enmity combo by proxy while something narrow like delirium buff wouldn't as much) I realize many don't agree with my rather bland approach. But we do agree on needing damage buffs.

And to an earlier point: Yes wars are being greedy stupid people. I don't get the obsession with dropping IR to a 1 min CD. Might as well just delete the skill and bake gauge reduction into zerk at that point. Wars already do top damage. They sure as hell don't need a giant damage buff for no dicernable reason besides "I WANNA CLEAAAAVVVVEE".

[Daniel_Fury]

The problem I see is that DRK is behind because we have no "proper" burst window. Any down time in an encounter hits DRK harder than any other tank and this is because we are a job in which our dps is flat lined. It's complete sustained damage with very little burst.

The 2 ways to fix this would be:
- Give us a damage boost burst window. I.E 10% increased damage on BW. 30s CD 15s duration.
Or
- Buff our sustained DPS to destroy the other tanks DPS. When downtime kicks in it should even it out.

However, I feel the latter will cause complaints from the other tanks.

EDIT: Maybe if we could regen our mp to full during downtime this could fix it. Possibly, a MP refresh ability exclusive to ourselves that cancels upon dealing any damage.

[SyzzleSpark]

I'm personally more interested in the end result than the nuance of getting there.

You may not be interested in the nuance of getting there, but a lot of us are, because on top of being a below-par tank across the board, for a lot of people it doesn't feel good. Delirium doesn't feel good. SE removed a lot of DRK's "nuances" in the expansion, and tried to make up for it with small combo potency boosts and a %damage increase on Darkside, which pretty much is exactly in the neighborhood of what you're suggesting, and look where we are now. That's why you're seeing people come up with these ideas. Its okay if you're not interested in the nitty-gritty details, but many of us are, because they do matter.

Every single nuance can be mathed out to exact potency gains, just as Delirium can.

For example = Delirium's net gain is the 8s on Blood Weapon, because the MP it gives you only serves as an exchange to cancel out the Blood Gauge cost. Therefore, you can simplify the entire equation of the ability and just remove the BG cost and immediate mana return. When you do that, you see Delirium for all that it actually is: a free +8s on Blood Weapon. That doesn't deserve a 2 minute cooldown. In mana+the attack speed bonus that is about an extra 300 potency per 2 minutes. Its a very weak ability disguised as a strong one.

[Rhais]

You may not be interested in the nuance of getting there, but a lot of us are, because on top of being a below-par tank across the board, for a lot of people it doesn't feel good.

Yeah, I probably would have kept it as my main if it was in the same position as it is now, but still fun to play. However just increasing potency or Darkside buff for more damage will not make me pick DRK back up, the SB redesign was a complete failure, and tank balance is only a part of the problem.