Proposed Dark Knight Changes

[Aniya_Estlihn]

The play style would be nowhere near ninja, also nowhere did i suggest that Bloodspiller would be a fourth tier combo, it would be an alternate third tier, so the rotation would go SE combo > BS combo > BS combo > BS combo > SE combo

You know, I missed that. In your synopsis you wrote "every fourth combo" for Soul Eater usage and I, for some reason, took that to mean you wanted it as a tier-4 combo ender off of Bloodspiller, that is definitely my bad.
If that's the case, then I don't actually disagree with most of your proposed ideas, though I do have a bit of a bias towards Lyth's suggestions moreso than anyone else's. I was just an idiot who apparently couldn't read properly for over an hour.

[superluminalflower]

nah, s'ok dw, i'm p bad at phrasing things lmao

[Derio]

Yea its a big no for me with these changes.

[Emiin]

I don't often log onto the OF, but when I do it's because I see misguided posts like this one. Let's start at the beginning.

Dark Knight's current problems are that it is boring and repetitive to play

I always enjoy posts that start like this because they're completely subjective and assume that it is objective. To some, it's boring. To some, it's fluid and engaging. Completely subjective and it should not be part of any argument.

with fewer and lesser defensive options than the other two tanks, little to no self-sustain, and very little opportunity for burst or any sort of interesting or fun optimization of its damage.

Defensive options have been changed, with a focus on using The Blackest Night for filler in between. When comparing tanks and removing cross-classes, we have these options.

Dark Knight
Shadow Wall
Dark Mind
The Blackest Night

Warrior
Vengeance
Raw Intuition
Thrill of Battle
Inner Beast

Paladin
Sentinel
Bulwark
Cover
Sheltron

A Dark Knight's toolkit is enhanced and focuses on The Blackest Night, which benefits from it's incredibly short cooldown. Considering you get so many more Blackest Nights as active mitigation than the other tanks, it is considerably even, if not better, in damage intake.

Dark Mind's usefulness on only-magic damage is not inherently a good argument, as pretty much all fights are designed around magic damage except for O7S. In this argument, you can also delete Raw Intuition from O6S, and list Warrior as potentially the worst tank in O6S for mitigation purposes. Dark Knight, however, still has The Blackest Night.

Self Sustain

I have a feeling you don't know what this word means. Dark Knight's damage is the second in terms of burst potential compared to warrior, and above Paladin in terms of pooling and raid buff focus. Self-sustain means that it can do it's own thing, and not suffer much without outside assistance. This is incredibly true in the case of Dark Knight

Comparing the three tanks in a Burst Potential vacuum

Comparing Dark Knight pretending the DRK is completely ignoring all raid buffs.

It's self sustain is incredibly efficient. And again, your comment on interesting should not be included in any sort of argument.

Now to preview your suggested actions, or what I'd like to call them, Samurai renames.

Dark Arts
MP cost increased by 50%

Most of your suggested changes have a reference to the removal of Dark Arts, applying it to only Bloodspiller or Carve and Spit, which was not mentioned. In this case, we can simply rename it to Hissatsu: Kaiten, as it only affects minor parts of your toolkit.

Souleater
Remove Dark Arts effect, remove HP restoration, now gives a 10% attack speed buff that lasts 30s (so it would be used for every fourth combo, like Storm's Eye), also increases blood by 20

This is called Shifu, and the entire purpose of the Hakaze > Shifu > Kasha combo. Coincidentally, the combo also gives the Samurai 20 total Kenki (5 + 5 + 10). Interesting pattern we're seeing here. Your suggested Bloodspiller and Power Slash combos are also increasing by 20 blood gauge.

Dark Passenger
Remove Dark Arts effect, now single target, cooldown reduced to 1s, MP cost removed, potency changed to be the same as the Dark Arts bonus potency (currently 140), now costs 50 blood to use

In response to this I'm simply going to quote the description for another Samurai skill.

Hissatsu: Shinten : lvl 62 Samurai (1 second cooldown)
Delivers an attack with a potency of 300.
Kenki Gauge Cost: 25

Quietus
Remove Dark Arts effect, now an oGCD weaponskill with a cooldown of 1s, still costs 50 blood to use and regens MP per hit as before, potency nerfed to be less than Dark Passenger

Jesus, buddy. You're bad at this. Round 5 or so of Samurai abilities.

Hissatsu: Kyuten : lvl 64 Samurai (1 second cooldown)
Delivers an attack with a potency of 150 to all nearby enemies.
Kenki Gauge Cost: 25

Delirium
Remove old effect, remove blood cost, now increases the potency of blood gauge actions and Dark Arts bonus potency for GCD actions by 100%, duration of 12s

Finally, something original! Or at least, almost. It's a crappy version of Berserk. In fact, it's basically Inner Release in its current form. And since you gutted most all of the class to having such minimal burst potential due to the high cost on Blood abilities and Dark Arts being nearly worthless and only being useful for Midare Setsusaiga, if you time your Delirium window incorrectly you get maybe 2 Shintens and one Kaiten.

Woops I used the wrong words for a second you had me so confused.

Blood Weapon
Remove attack speed boost, now increases blood by 10 for every weaponskill executed under its effect instead of the prior blood gain effect, still restores MP per hit

Suggesting the duration remains, you're getting only 7-8 GCDs within the window, for a total of 70-80 blood, and around 4800 mana, useful for 1 Dark Arts. You've turned this ability completely useless. I'm impressed.

Blood Price
Now increases blood by 10 for every instance of damage taken under its effect instead of the prior blood gain effect, still restores MP per instance of damage taken

Slightly original, but the issue remains that it is simply a worse version of Blood Weapon, and probably still locked to Grit. Useless.

Shadow Wall
Cooldown reduced to 120s

Living Dead
Cooldown reduced to 180s

Sole Survivor
Now additionally has a Dark Arts effect: grants a large HP regen over its duration

Grit
MP cost reduced or removed, additional oGCD action added that turns it off (the action to turn it on would still be a GCD though)

Everyone continuously forgets that The Blackest Night exists. More importantly, they fail to understand that it is meant to shore the gap between the extra one cooldown the other tanks have. Shadow Wall is fine as it is. Living Dead is fine as it is, as it serves a completely different purpose than Holmgang or Hallowed Ground, as far as damage receipt and healing requirements. As a former progression healer, I much prefer Living Dead to Holmgang, every time.

Sole Survivor's button is an issue, but not in the method you prescribe. The regen would be incredibly difficult to properly tune, to the point of it's either useless, overpowered, or minimal to the point of why bother spending your precious Dark Arts mana on it - you already get so little.

The Grit change is completely meaningless. The mana cost is fine considering how much mana a Dark Knight naturally regens. If queued properly, removing Grit is a non-issue. Stop fat-fingering.

-------

Instead of re-quoting the rest of your disaster of a summary, I'll summarize what your new decisions will *actually* do.

1. You've turned Dark Knight into a horrible Samurai with less gauge generation and lower burst potential.
2. The issues you've stated with Dark Arts are completely miniscule to non-existent with proper planning. Since you love samurai so much, I compared them in a higher end raid, with a Dark Knight barely hitting more Dark Arts than Shinten. You've reduced the actual amount of button usage in favor of a slightly faster overall GCD.
3. Both Blood Weapon and Delirium have become non-entities in your "build," if you could call it that. Blood weapon barely generates 1 "Dark Passenger" and 1 "Dark Arts" with your redesign. It's' essentially a non-cooldown, to the point of abysmal.

Every time I see one of these posts I'm inclined to ignore it, but I couldn't this time. It's just...too dumb. Too poorly thought out. Too...SAMURAI. You rebuilt Samurai. Good job I'll call Yoshi-P on the line and tell him you rebuilt Samurai but worse.

[SkyEdge1]

Good job I'll call Yoshi-P on the line and tell him you rebuilt Samurai but worse.

Gonna need a Pheonix Down after that post!

[Kabooa]

I think Dark Knight changes should focus more on the retaliatory aspect of the class, rather than just be "Warrior, but faster"

[Bec]

I think that can work if done right but most people's ideas I've seen for retaliation veer more back into the HW design, which punished you for not MTing. I think that's bad design personally and like that none of the 3 tanks really lose anything by either having the boss or not

[Kabooa]

Actually you know what.

I'm bored and love the abuse. I'm going to start my own write up for this.

[superluminalflower]

I'm not entirely sure what the problem is with DRK being similar to SAM, given that the current implementation of the blood gauge is basically a lackluster WAR beast gauge, with Delirium also being basically a non-cd, being only able to burst longer, not higher. Self sustain also does not refer to dps, but to sustaining its own HP. Additionally, the implementation of Dark Arts outlined here is literally exactly the same as it was in HW, which preceded Kaiten lmao, with the only change of being more expensive to offset the removed drain.

Here's the current implementation of Fell Cleave - oops, i mean, Bloodspiller:

Bloodspiller
Delivers an attack with a potency of 400.
Dark Arts Potency: 540
Grit Potency: 475
Dark Arts+Grit Potency: 650
Blood Gauge Cost: 50
Dark Arts fades upon execution.

And...

Fell Cleave
Delivers an attack with a potency of 520.
Can only be executed while under the effect of Deliverance.
Beast Gauge Cost: 50

Current Quietus, also, is just a less powerful Decimate. If Dark Passenger and Quietus being made similar to Shinten and Kyuten is bad, then I'm not sure why the current implementation of Bloodspiller and Quietus aren't a problem with you, given that they are straight up the same as the abilities of another tank. Someone better tell Yoshi-P that Storm's Eye and Jinpu are currently exactly the same as well!

The only part of this that makes sense is what you said about TBN, which is prob true, i'll edit that. Only getting that tool at 70 is kinda ridiculous tho tbh.

[Emiin]

Alright we're back with round two.

I'm not entirely sure what the problem is with DRK being similar to SAM

I understand the playstyle and not being different. In fact, I regularly refer to Dark Knight as an easier Samurai playstyle as it is, and Samurai an advanced Dark knight. The issue I had with your original post is that you simply renamed Samurai abilities and gave them to Dark Knight. The co-author of your ability revamp literally stated this in the discord I share with them.

The current implementation of the blood gauge is basically a lackluster WAR beast gauge, with Delirium also being basically a non-cd

The current implementation of the gauge is an admitted steal across the board. Spending 50 gauge, 25 gauge, 10 gauge, what have you. All gauges in regards to the many classes are incredibly similar. Warrior, Dark Knight, Samurai, Ninja, Red Mage. Build gauge, spend gauge.

Delirium is also one of the more powerful cooldowns in the game, as it extends an already powerful cooldown by half of its duration. Those that believe Delirium is not strong, do not understand how powerful it actually is.

Self sustain also does not refer to dps, but to sustaining its own HP.

Noted that I misinterpreted your original statement. However, when comparing their abilities for healing, you're comparing them incorrectly. The Blackest Night can mitigate/shield a total of 80% of a Dark Knight's health in 60 seconds, Souleater in Grit can heal an incredible amount in this same timeframe. It heals in fact, double the amount that Storm's Path does. Inner Beast's healing is the same amount as Souleater, but less potency. Clemency is the only outlier in this situation, but a Paladin will run out of mana fast.

I assume you mean recovery and not self-sustain. I will agree with you that a Dark Knight cannot recover as well.

Additionally, the implementation of Dark Arts outlined here is literally exactly the same as it was in HW, which preceded Kaiten lmao, with the only change of being more expensive to offset the removed drain.

Dark Arts was changed to be more expensive, and affect other abilities, because the base mana regeneration of both Syphon Strike and Blood Weapon was enhanced. The additions of different abilities was in response to their added Mana Regeeneration. Secondly, they did not require the use of a "4th Combo" rotation, as if they were getting near capped mana, they could spend it on Souleater at will. They also had Dark Passenger as a mana dump. Which you deleted.

Shady comparison of Bloodspiller and Fell Cleave, Quietus and Decimate

Potencies are changed, interactions with Dark Arts, Mana Regeneration, and stance locks are the difference. More notably the stance locking of Fell Cleave and Decimate. They are similar in design, but different in implementation. Most notably -

If Dark Passenger and Quietus being made similar to Shinten and Kyuten is bad, then I'm not sure why the current implementation of Bloodspiller and Quietus aren't a problem with you

My issue is that you literally renamed the tooltip of the Samurai abilities, without creativity. You simply maintained the 50 blood requirement, instead of 25 Kenki.

Someone better tell Yoshi-P that Storm's Eye and Jinpu are currently exactly the same as well!

Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes, Greased Lightning, Dripping Blades, Heavy Thrust, Maim and Mend. Pick a trait, there's a copy somewhere. There are repeat instances of similar buffs, but for balance as they can be tuned independently without manipulating game code. My issue was again, that Shifu combo and your proposed Souleater are the exact same thing, down to the benefit and gauge replenishment. My overall issue with your post is that you completely reworded Samurai tooltips.