
Originally Posted by
Kabooa
To be quite frank, I don't see many of your changes making Dark Knight feel better. I see it being less active, which is not a bad thing, but with little given to make it compelling. If you're removing 'activity' from a class, then something has to be added back in.
Activity level and engagement aren't the same thing. This is part of translating class fantasy to mechanical input. The Black Mage doesn't require much activity / input itself, however, the engagement stems from keeping mind of timers, incoming mechanics, and working around them. The APM of Black Mage is among the lowest, but the attention it utilizes is quite active itself.
Compare this to, say, Samurai who have significantly higher APM but their 'engagement' is on resource management and cheating the GCD to maintain as much uptime, especially if Melee uptime is removed. You're not planning as much around what happens for the Samurai, you're primarily just concerned about keeping in melee range as much as possible.
It doesn't matter if the boss does a zig zag aoe pattern followed by out/in and then two steps back. Odds are you can cheat all of it with one simple backstep and charge, where a black mage must work around every step. The considerations given to the same mechanic are vastly different, and that plays into the feel of the Job.
So with this in mind you are removing "activity" (Dark Arts) but not giving anything back.
Grit being toggled on fully and requiring Blood Weapon to nullify the penalties means it's just maintaining blood weapon as much as you can. If at any point in this kit that Blood Weapon cannot be maintained full time, Grit goes back to never being used, especially since threat generation got removed. This in turn makes the Delirium change kind of meaningless. Blood Weapon is going to be prioritized no matter what. It pretty much has to be, so Delirium will always be the first choice of use, even (and perhaps especially) with the Blood price attached to it for early use.
Thus from a GCD standpoint Dark Knight has received nothing to compensate for the removal of Dark Arts. The considerations haven't changed. You prioritize Delirium and excess blood gets spent on Bloodspiller, which is pretty much exactly what happens now.
The Addle effect is a no go. The primary reason potential full time reduction abilities got removed in Stormblood is because they were simply always factored into boss damage anyways. Having them meant you were fighting the encounter as designed, not having them meant you were in for a bad time.
The actual action changes themselves feel mostly unwarranted and in the wrong direction. Like why did you change Abyssal drain in every way into Unleash, instead of just making Unleash part of the AoE combo?
Why do Dark Passenger and Carve and Spit share a cooldown despite not competing with each other in their use, and on top of that, -why make Carve and Spit better-. Dark Passenger is already considered a waste of time by most.
Why have Delirium if it's just Blood Weapon?
Why curtail MP generation effects to make resources more compelling to manage, but then also remove the primary use of said resource (Dark Arts) by changing it into a tick that's just going to be covered by Siphon Strike.
Why is Quietus removed instead of being part of the AoE combo?
Why does unleash still exist if Abyssal Drain is just a combo version of it?
These action changes seem contradictory with each other for intent and purpose and execution.
You honestly could have just focused on making Dark Passenger be a super cool ability and skipped the rest of this.