Yet Another DRK Suggestions Set

[Shurrikhan]

Potency and Recast Adjustments

• Dark Passenger mana cost reduced to 1800.
• Unleash potency increased to 100, up from 50. Enmity modifier reverted.
• Carve and Spit and Salted Earth cooldowns reduced to 40 seconds, down from 60 and 45 seconds respectively. Salted Earth duration decreased from 21 seconds to 15.
• Bloodspiller potency increased to 440, and its DA potency therefore to 580. (Note: As TBN now costs Blood and awards mana instead, this does not force on-CD uses of TBN.)
• Grit's bonus to Syphon Strike MP generation reduced to a 50% bonus, down from 100% (1800 total, down from 2400, at level 70).

Functional Adjustments

• Bad Blood now allows for hidden decimals, rounding values to the tenths place.
• Blood spenders now cost 40 Blood, down from 50. Blood generation has been decreased roughly in due proportion. This simply allows for a bit more banking of resource.
• Living Dead now causes all damage that would reduce the Dark Knight below 1 HP to instead generate Undeath, which absorbs incoming healing equal to that damage amount (after factoring in effects such as Convalescence and/or Infirmity). Fatal damage prevention ceases after 10 seconds, but there is no death effect for failing to consume all Undeath. Undeath is shown on the DRK's health bar as a greyed portion of the bar.
• Plunge range increased to 20 yards, up from 15.
• Carve and Spit now "makes a three-fold attack, striking for 100 potency and <6.33% base MP, or 600 at level 70>, and then half that for each strike again thereafter, for a total of 200 potency and <1200> MP. Dark Arts consumes this mana generation to instead improve each of the three strikes, for a total of 460 potency."
• Grit "does not affect the potency of Bloodspiller or Quietus".
  Quietus and Bloodspiller likewise both read "ignores the damage penalty inflicted by Grit."
• Darkside no longer prevents the acquisition of MP Restoring benefits: it simply nullifies their individual ticks until toggled off. Toggling off Darkside will allow you to again benefit from each tick. Additionally, activation MP cost reduced by 50% and the bonus percentage reduced to 12% -- with all potencies adjusted to compensate -- encouraging mid-combat swapping where potentially beneficial (in preparation for AoE, etc.).
• Blood Price reworked. It now generates MP (and Bad Blood) based on the relative potency of strikes you take (damaging or absorbed), in addition to a small, flat amount per strike. It down continuously drains MP from enemies within 10 yalms unable to attack you (e.g. CC'ed), in ticks equal to the smaller, flat per-strike amount.
• Blood Weapon has been reworked. It now generates MP (and Black Blood) based on the relative potency of strikes you make, in addition to a flat amount per strike.
• Delirium reworked. It is now a toggle which can be activated once per use of Blood Weapon or Blood Price, increasing the benefit of Blood Weapon or Blood Price by 50% while also decreasing the rate by which the duration fades by another 50%. In turn, it drains 5 Blood each second. This Blood cost increases by 10% with each second of use, compounding.
• Quietus now "Generates mana as if affected by Blood Weapon. This effect stacks with Blood Weapon." Additionally, it now strikes for 300 potency to its first target, reduced by 20% to the 2nd, 40% to the 3rd, and 50% to all additional targets. It is now affected by Dark Arts identically to any other weaponskill. (This is an overall AoE potency decrease of 5 to the base potency, but an increase of 10 potency to the DA-AoE.)
• The Blackest Night reworked. It now costs 40 20 Blood. Cooldown remains. The barrier created now "Generates mana as if affected by Blood Price. This effect stacks with Blood Price."
• Grit reworked. It now consumes half a GCD, similar to Meditation, and only half a Dark Art's mana (1200 at level 70, down from 1800). Grit now also causes 25% of your self-healing and 100% of self-overhealing to additionally generate a stacking absorption barrier. This barrier fades at a rate of 3% of maximum HP every second, and cannot exceed 20% of one's maximum HP. Barrier stacks with other barrier sources, such as Galvanize and Nocturnal Field.
• Souleater now generates healing outside of Grit as well. It also now converts the full amount of damage into healing, up from a "portion" of ~88%.

To be Revised / Watercooler Ideas

• Syphon Strike can no longer consume Dark Arts. (There should be no point at which you are generating so much mana that you cannot burn off via C&S, DP, and SE/PS/BS/QS alone.)
• Dark Dance has been returned.
• Shadowskin, Rampart, Reprisal, Low Blow, Dark Dance, and Brutal Swing have been returned to their original owners; Warrior has received something new (even if a carbon copy) to make up for the loss of Rampart.
• Shadowskin, Dark Dance, Dark Mind, Shadow Wall, Unmend, and Unleash now encapsulate a new Shadow-based Dark Knight mechanic (roughly as simple yet fluidly pervasive as Blood or Dark Arts as revised here).
• Role Skills revised to better fit each job to which they are made available, rather than barring embedded synergies with their particular toolkits: Dark Knight receives the options of Challenge, World's Enemy, Dark Instinct, Stiffle, and Passage.
• Storm's Path, Thrill of Battle, and Rage of Halone have been improved upon slightly to make up for the loss of Reprisal in ways unique to their own jobs.

Notes

• Grit idea unfinished. I suspect my ideal form of Living Dead will link closely to it. I want its design to help one to feel like they're losing or gaining more unique stuff when exiting or entering Grit.
• I want to bring back Shadowskin so I can really do something with it and Shadow Wall (and possibly DD, DM, Unmend, and Unleash). Still working these ideas out to simplify them, as to be as straightforward (though deep in execution) as the revised Dark Arts applications. Ideally, I'll be do something with the idea of Shadow, similar to Blood but without needing any sort of resource bar.
• Abyssal Drain remains the lone obstacle in "DA adds 140 potency to offensive skills, and doubles the effect of defensive skills. Always." I've gotten all the rest, although DP still has the added effect of Blinding enemies, and C&S is now more wordy.
• TBN Blood cost halved. Standard blood costs would have just produced far too much effect at a time. As I feel the cooldown is still best kept, it also doesn't need to be that high just to prevent back-to-back usage.

RATIONALE

The primary goals of these adjustments were to create seemingly more generally useful and impactful skills; increase the sense of toolkit cohesion, completion, synergy, and reactiveness; and reduce the sense of missing components and excess or unusable resources, especially during leveling.

The change to Delirium, for instance, is designed to immediately create a new and seemingly fleshed out mechanic in Blood: you can use Blood freely to extend your Blood abilities, but the more you extend them at a time, the less time overall you can extend them -- trading sustain for burst (though, of course, some of that burst refunds itself, especially under Blood Weapon). That can function as a seemingly complete mechanic, tucked into Blood Weapon and Blood Price, even before Quietus, Bloodspiller, or TBN. That is to say, even without Quietus and Bloodspiller, you should never feel like you've been given a resource that you can't even use most of the time, nor should it feel superfluous basically equitable to a mere CD as per Shelltron (especially in Sword Oath). As all Black Blood skills now benefit automatically from Blood Weapon and Blood Price (though these effects stack with the innate if you so desire), each also now synergizes particularly well with this revised Delirium, seeming to work with, rather than in competition with, its buff extension.

The change to Blood Price is one that I feel has been long in coming. The big idea here is that while Blood Price has been fairly useful for mass AoE, its use has felt unrewarding when faced with few targets, and does not scale with the relative strength of those enemies or the actual amount of damage taken while it's active, which makes the Price feel more like a flat, nominal Toll. While such would make sense for an ability that invokes the idea of a Blood Price paid to enter Hell or so forth, our identity thus far has been a bit more that of a tragic but defiant anti-hero than a mythical ferryman. As such, I wanted to really bring out the idea of becoming stronger (insofar as one's MP bank) for each strike against you while the effect is active. While actual damage dealt would be succeptible to either ridiculous values at the end of a given content range (e.g. scaling with % of base maximum HP) or pitiful values against overgeared content (% of actual maximum HP), relative potency would allow what should be the strongest strikes in each instance to award you accordingly when taking during Blood Price. The relative portion simply accounts for any buffs on the part of the attacking creature, but is considered before your own mitigation... probably. If considered after, this would face anti-synergy, but likely of a very entertaining sort, whereby one can choose to take more damage now in order to regain more health later.

<< If nothing else, read just these two paragraphs for an idea of what I'm attempting.>>

The change to Blood Weapon actually has more to do with Delirium and Bloodspiller than any parallel to Blood Price. Essentially, as of Enhanced Blackblood, perfect Delirium timing becomes of a question of "How long can I hold this for, if I start it right now?" Because of the change to Blood Weapon, it becomes important that your strongest strikes fall within Delirium, because their rewards, which in turn allow for a longer Blood Weapon or Blood Price, will be increased during that time. You're thereby fighting a mad race between your own resources. And while this may push the Dark Knight closer to the windowed gameplay of Warrior and Paladin, albeit with a bit more flexibility and a bit less obvious control than either alternate tank, this just struck me as amazingly "Dark Knight". I considered increasing this further, such as to make both the benefit and disadvantage rack up over time, but I felt that DRK would be inevitably balanced around its best performance, much like Warrior's use of Inner Release, and that this would then be frustrating to fully capitalize upon in many a fight, feeling more like punishment when unable to reach the "Triple Club" (300% Blood Weapon effect) than a reward when able to do so.

The Blackest Night is probably the area I might invite the most flak for, namely because it does not attempt to make it rotationally viable in the majority of situations, and runs perilously close to Shelltron. Except, whereas Shelltron holds only scant synergy with the rest of the Paladin toolkit -- Shield Swipe if not already readied and only if off cooldown -- this should feel integral and familiar. Quietus always benefits as if from Blood Weapon. This now always benefits as if from Blood Price. Blood extends and empowers Blood skills via Delirium. Bloodspiller skillfully capitalizes on that by allowing for the strongest possible resource growth during that time, allowing you to gamble in early Delirium uses to allow for quicker Bloodspiller generations to sustain Delirium to get more Bloodspillers, etc. And now, since absorbs do not affect relative potency received/absorbed, and therefore do not affect Blood Price returns, you can use The Blackest Night to safely deal with a strong hit without losing out on MP, allowing you to periodically cheese the defensive edginess-ultimatum. The Blackest Night always gives a basically fixed amount of mana, as long as it's fully consumed, since it lasts twice as long but generates roughly half as much under 50% mitigation, etc, but what it does for everything else can be wonderfully fluid. All this amounts to more of the same each time, but I honestly believe it will stack up well -- intuitively, yet deeply.
NOTE: TBN may only be able to absorb a capped amount of damage, but -- just as Blood Price itself will not care what portion is absorbed and what portion passes through -- its innate Blood Price-like component will include all of the damage used against it, including the portion of the strike which broke TBN that was in excess of the absorb.

The changes to Grit and Souleater, on the other hand, I have little context or broad designs to encapsulate: I simply felt they were a long time in coming as is. I wanted some way by which Grit could stand out from Shield Oath, and having already advocated reduced penalties for any and all stance-dancing among tanks, this seemed like a fair way to give that to Dark Knight, providing a bit more identity to Grit through the ability to self-barrier (atop TBN, which it of course also improves upon as per any other percentile mitigation), and essentially paying back its self-healing costs due to its damage reductions. I will probably come back to this bit at a later time, working in something to do with Blood and maximum HP in place of these self-healing barrier, but I feel like this is a decent direction by which to improve upon Grit. Additionally, while Grit's allowing a free Dark Arts for every Souleater combo, by doubling Syphon's returns from half to a full DA each use, felt excessive to me, the increased frequency of Carve and Split and the increased power of Blood Price should make up for this, just in a more... bursty manner.

As for the more miscellaneous adjustments, I chose to reduce Dark Passenger's MP cost rather than increase its potency simply because I really like the idea of having as many skills as possible having that universal, no-fuss 140-potency bonus effect. I've therefore simply reduced Dark Passenger's cost to be proportionate to its effect. It can now be woven in during overflow at only 4.8% reduced MP efficiency in ST.

Lastly, I chose to patch what remaining potency-per-second improvements I desired for the job together via Carve and Spit and Salted Earth largely because I very much liked the idea of these consistent 40s cooldowns, and primarily because I wanted a bit more open or burst MP generation / throughput available to the job. The change to the Carve and Spit tooltip is just another way to say, "Dark Arts adds 140 potency to offensive abilities, and doubles the effect of defensive abilities. Always. (Except for that pesky Abyssal Drain.)" ...I'm still debating whether I want it to actually strike three times, thereby benefiting triply from Blood Weapon, which it would now sync with perfectly. Probably won't, especially since there are no present instances of multi-strike skills, and since that would really lock down its timing.

Edits:
- March 3. Living Dead slightly revised.
- June 30. Trimmed the adjustments that were already covered in the 4.3 DRK buffs.

[Shurrikhan]

Reserved for responses to responses? If any, eventually, maybe?

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I actually have a feeling that they wanted Living dead to work the way you described but Hp's were unable to enter negative values due to coding and it working in a different way with some kind of stoneskin value that has to be healed through or something along those lines was even more cumbersome so they went the route they did. It would be nice though if they could make it work this way.

Yeah, it's pretty idealistic. That said, it's also a nerf compared to the current version if one is able to take damage greater than the required % of maximum HP to remove the Doom state, so that's yet another reason not to go with what I've suggested. >.>

Mostly I was just looking for something that somehow felt more indomitably "DRK"-ish. I was actually even playing around with the idea of your maximum HP depleting over the duration, but you gain health from damage taken until ending Living Dead with a second button press, and a few other similar variations, similar to early Abandon's Borrowed Time mechanic from DotA. Nothing's really managed to shout out DRKness to me yet, though.

For the most part indifferent to the rest really, TBN for 50 blood cost in the way you described dont sit well with me though. Maybe if it was 20 blood or something but half a resource is rough on upkeep and being able to use it when you need/want to.

That sounds reasonable. Alternatively, if all gains were a little less, and all abilities cost just 40 Blood, so that you had a slightly larger bank of abilities, then do you think it would work, as long as the shield were big enough?

I'm mostly just looking for clean portions: better whole than half, better half than two-fifths, so to speak.

Or heck, maybe one could click-and-hold channel the skill for up to 2 seconds to consume anywhere from half a standard ability cost to a whole standard ability cost for proportionate mitigation? (I seriously think we're going to need that control mechanic at some point...)

you probably could just change darkside into a trait if your allowing refresh effects. We could also have it so dark mind becomes a party wide magic defense buff when dark arted. giving reprisal and anticipation a DRK specific trait would be decent for utility as well.

To clarify, it's not allowing refresh effects so much as it is banking them so that they're ready if you should desire to turn Darkside off while those effects are still present. They still do not generate mana while Darkside is active.

See the Water Cooler section for Reprisal and Anticipation (DD) changes; my ideas there are not quite ready for the main text.

I bet HP value cant go below 0 is because SE use an unsigned integer to store hp.

WoW and Rift both did the same, iirc, but simply added a graphic (a negative sign) atop a stored damage value (which temporarily replaced the HP value), so it would seem you could emulate the effect even without being capable of non-positive numbers.

[Mycow8me]

I actually have a feeling that they wanted Living dead to work the way you described but Hp's were unable to enter negative values due to coding and it working in a different way with some kind of stoneskin value that has to be healed through or something along those lines was even more cumbersome so they went the route they did. It would be nice though if they could make it work this way.

For the most part indifferent to the rest really, TBN for 50 blood cost in the way you described dont sit well with me though. Maybe if it was 20 blood or something but half a resource is rough on upkeep and being able to use it when you need/want to.

[saber_alter]

you probably could just change darkside into a trait if your allowing refresh effects. We could also have it so dark mind becomes a party wide magic defense buff when dark arted. giving reprisal and anticipation a DRK specific trait would be decent for utility as well.


Frankly my real issue with dark knight is the limiting methods on how blackblood is accumulated, it's otherwise underutilized toolkit, and delirium in general. blackest night does not need a rework. increasing the duration timer by a minimum of two seconds would be a fair enough balance change, and four would be an ideal to put it in line with other effective defensive abilities.

[garret_hawke]

I actually have a feeling that they wanted Living dead to work the way you described but Hp's were unable to enter negative values due to coding and it working in a different way with some kind of stoneskin value that has to be healed through or something along those lines was even more cumbersome so they went the route they did. It would be nice though if they could make it work this way.

For the most part indifferent to the rest really, TBN for 50 blood cost in the way you described dont sit well with me though. Maybe if it was 20 blood or something but half a resource is rough on upkeep and being able to use it when you need/want to.

I bet HP value cant go below 0 is because SE use an unsigned integer to store hp.

[Shurrikhan]

Since the only thing of note in the suggestions has apparently been whether or not HP is a signed or unsigned integer, I have done the unthinkable: I've made the spitball Living Dead suggestion from requiring a signed integer to merely an unsigned integer. Plot twist.

Feel free to poke the obvious holes in that design, as well.

(Inb4 someone points out that the game has no precedent of slowing duration fade rates, as per the suggested Delirium effect.)

[Sylvain]

I'd really like to be able to spend my blood in a defensive manner I have to say.

[Sylvain]

I bet HP value cant go below 0 is because SE use an unsigned integer to store hp.

Would it be that hard to change?

[garret_hawke]

Would it be that hard to change?

short answer IDK never saw the source code, could be simple AF or a nighmare

[Shurrikhan]

Bumping because it's DRK thread night, judging by the 4 on the New Posts front page.