Dark Knight follow up thread

[DRKoftheAzure]

I believe part of that problem is we have less buttons to press but we have to use them more often. Sure it might be(doesn't feel it to me) as fast or APM as GNB, but it's also having to hit Bloodspiller 4-5 times every so often and Edge as well. GNB looks to have more to juggle/cycle through by comparison at least at a glance.

And yeah I do like juggling between my GCD combos... over spamming the same 1 GCD 5 times...

[Sancho_Nyanta]

Blood Weapon, Salted Earth, Delirium, and Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow do not count...


I'm also not counting No Mercy and Bloodfest...

Ok I'll bite, why do you not include Edge/Flood and Salted Earth on Drk but do include Bow Shock and Continuation on Gnb? Both SE and BS are oGCD Dots and both Continuation and the Shadow/Darkness skills are oGCD attacks that you will hit over the course of the fight.

Also I don't know why you'd exclude Delirium, Blood Weapon, No Mercy, and Bloodfest. If you'd said Damage based cooldown then at least I would understand why you'd exclude them as they don't directly apply damage. However based on the fact that you said "Offensive based cooldowns", I don't see how anyone could say that these skills are anything other than an Offensive based cooldowns.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Ok I'll bite, why do you not include Edge/Flood and Salted Earth on Drk but do include Bow Shock and Continuation on Gnb? Both SE and BS are oGCD Dots and both Continuation and the Shadow/Darkness skills are oGCD attacks that you will hit over the course of the fight.

Also I don't know why you'd exclude Delirium, Blood Weapon, No Mercy, and Bloodfest. If you'd said Damage based cooldown then at least I would understand why you'd exclude them as they don't directly apply damage. However based on the fact that you said "Offensive based cooldowns", I don't see how anyone could say that these skills are anything other than an Offensive based cooldowns.

Yeah, I couldn't tell you why I'm not counting Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow, as for Salted Earth it's classified as a buff rather than an actual DoT, plus it doesn't any initial damage when you use it... as for excluding Delirium(A.K.A. discount Inner Release) it's buff that lets you spam one button 5 times which is more just as boring as spamming your 1 single target combo for 90 seconds, Blood Weapon just sucks to use now, No Mercy is a decent buff but does not count as an actual attack, and Bloodfest just gives you 2 more cartridges and also does not count as an actual attack...


Also people Are going to confuse Bow Shock with Bloodspiller now, and same with Salted Earth and Souleater(or Square-Enix)... Suck to be the new people who are trying to learn the terminology...

[Sancho_Nyanta]

Yeah, I couldn't tell you why I'm not counting Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow, as for Salted Earth it's classified as a buff rather than an actual DoT, plus it doesn't any initial damage when you use it... as for excluding Delirium(A.K.A. discount Inner Release) it's buff that lets you spam one button 5 times which is more just as boring as spamming your 1 single target combo for 90 seconds, Blood Weapon just sucks to use now, No Mercy is a decent buff but does not count as an actual attack, and Bloodfest just gives you 2 more cartridges and also does not count as an actual attack...


Also people Are going to confuse Bow Shock with Bloodspiller now, and same with Salted Earth and Souleater(or Square-Enix)... Suck to be the new people who are trying to learn the terminology...

I will say that you are the first person I've ever seen referring to SE as a buff rather than a DOT, but you do you on that.

Regarding buffs in general, I mean I don't really get why you'd feel that a offensive buff doesn't equate to an offensive based CD. Additionally just because you feel that it, "sucks to use" doesn't detract from the fact that you are still gonna use it. Especially when you are hitting these "buffs" while attacking, which was my point about your original statement that GNB feels faster cuz you are hitting more offensive based cooldowns. Buffs or Offensive based cooldowns (if you are really wanting to separate the distinction for whatever reason) you are still pressing just a little less than the same number of buttons for Gnb per min as you are for Drk. To me they feel about the same speed as the 1 button every other min isn't really noticable.

On another note, while I do feel that Delirium's current form was a lazy and uninspired choice, I can't help but comment how all 4 tanks have a point or 2 where they are just spamming the same button 5+ times per min due to a buff or some skill letting them do so. Holy Spirit, Fell Cleave, and even Atonement and Continuation fits this. I actually think that you're having to hit these even more per minute than HS/FC. Yet it seems only Drk is really drawing people's ire about doing so.

[Amon-ster]

I wonder if people who "miss Dark Arts spam" realize that you can use Edge of Shadow as an MP spender to do more damage, rather than exclusively using it to refresh your Darkside gauge. You can literally use it like you did Stormblood Dark Arts, except now it does 500 potency instead of 150

[Arsthan]

I wonder if people who "miss Dark Arts spam" realize that you can use Edge of Shadow as an MP spender to do more damage, rather than exclusively using it to refresh your Darkside gauge. You can literally use it like you did Stormblood Dark Arts, except now it does 500 potency instead of 150

You do realize that it is definitely not the case when you want to max out the damage potential for DRK, right? (Basically playing optimally) You can't play DRK like that if you don't want to be considered a "bad DRK".

Not to mention; Dark Arts costed 2400 MP while you got 1200 MP from Syphon Strike in 4.X. Meaning you'd get another Dark Arts every second SE combo - and I'm not even including Delirium and Blood Weapon, good use of those would always reward you with more Dark Arts to press. Point being, you used it a lot more to break up the monotony of using only the SE combo.

While yes, EoS is he replacement for Dark Arts in a way, because it has such a potency, you have to use it in buff windows to increase your DPS instead of spamming it whenever and that's all there is to that. They also changed the MP cost from 2400 MP to 3000 MP while lowering the MP gain on literally everything. Syphon Strike gives now 600 MP... Granted, you get MP CnS now, also 600 on a 60s CD and the natural MP regen but that sure as hell is nowhere near enough to not only seeing SE combo for quite some time, even IF you spammed EoS.

One would think that because our max MP increased, that'd be the reason why EoS is 3000 MP now but that's obviously not the case. In SB, you had an MP cap of 9480 MP, so you could do 3 DAs back to back, leaving you with another 120 MP needed for another one. in ShB, you're at 10k MP cap and EoS can be casted 3 times as well, but you're at 1k MP after doing so, neglecting the natural MP gain.

To sum it up, they decreased the rate of our new "DA" by increasing the potency and lowering the MP gain making the job much slower than before. Not to mention that BW and Delirium in ShB are both terrible compared what they used to be. Old BW was just superior in every possible way there is.

[Amon-ster]

Did you really get a lot more to break up the monotony of using SE combo, though? Dark Arts didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit harder. Blood Weapon didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit faster. Delirium, for all its underwhelming qualities, at least let's you not Souleater spam. Abyssal Drain now has use outside of trash pulls. Plunge has 2 charges so that's another button you oGCD to press. Can't forget about Living Shadow, which is a sexy move.

What I mean by "you can spam EoS" is that you CAN. You dont want to, just like you didnt want to press Dark Arts at literally every moment you could. Naturally it's not as easy to EoS as it was to Dark Arts for the simple fact that it's way stronger.

[jetfire117]

Did you really get a lot more to break up the monotony of using SE combo, though? Dark Arts didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit harder. Blood Weapon didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit faster. Delirium, for all its underwhelming qualities, at least let's you not Souleater spam. Abyssal Drain now has use outside of trash pulls. Plunge has 2 charges so that's another button you oGCD to press. Can't forget about Living Shadow, which is a sexy move.

What I mean by "you can spam EoS" is that you CAN. You dont want to, just like you didnt want to press Dark Arts at literally every moment you could. Naturally it's not as easy to EoS as it was to Dark Arts for the simple fact that it's way stronger.

Ironically I wish I could spam our two new moves a bit more, not as much as SB dark arts, but just a BIT more because they're really cool lol. It would also be awesome if every EoS cast resets the CD on living shadow, I just want to use the skill more.

[ADVSS]

Ironically I wish I could spam our two new moves a bit more, not as much as SB dark arts, but just a BIT more because they're really cool lol. It would also be awesome if every EoS cast resets the CD on living shadow, I just want to use the skill more.

would be cool, 2 min is an awful long time for a 50 blood spender, but eh.

Did you really get a lot more to break up the monotony of using SE combo, though? Dark Arts didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit harder. Blood Weapon didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit faster. Delirium, for all its underwhelming qualities, at least let's you not Souleater spam. Abyssal Drain now has use outside of trash pulls. Plunge has 2 charges so that's another button you oGCD to press. Can't forget about Living Shadow, which is a sexy move.

What I mean by "you can spam EoS" is that you CAN. You dont want to, just like you didnt want to press Dark Arts at literally every moment you could. Naturally it's not as easy to EoS as it was to Dark Arts for the simple fact that it's way stronger.

Thats the thing you "can" spam EoS, but then you;ll shoot yourself in the foot sooner or later. Its "safer" in multipack pulls, if BW is available, with flood. Single Target game for DRK just not so great(There, I guess thats the identity they have for DRK-the "dungeon tank") Personally though, DS being as it is, just costs too much, Technically if you look at WAR, or any other DPS with a maintanable damage buff, theres dont cost anything at all. Couldve been a branched combo finisher.

[Arsthan]

Did you really get a lot more to break up the monotony of using SE combo, though? Dark Arts didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit harder. Blood Weapon didn't do that, it just made SE combo hit faster. Delirium, for all its underwhelming qualities, at least let's you not Souleater spam. Abyssal Drain now has use outside of trash pulls. Plunge has 2 charges so that's another button you oGCD to press. Can't forget about Living Shadow, which is a sexy move.

What I mean by "you can spam EoS" is that you CAN. You dont want to, just like you didnt want to press Dark Arts at literally every moment you could. Naturally it's not as easy to EoS as it was to Dark Arts for the simple fact that it's way stronger.

For most people it did break up the monotony. A lot of people liked SB DRK, the people that didn't aren't mostly even tank mains. This might be a little off topic, but it really makes me mad that DRK was changed for the sake of the people who didn't like SB DRK. They now like ShB DRK, however for how long. Most will leave DRK soon enough because it's not a DPS in the end of the day. Then only the few people that play tanks all the time and like ShB DRK will be left to play him. There is certainly nothing wrong with liking ShB DRK, but it is incredibly disheartening for the people who religiously played DRK since HW and now just can't like what it is today.

Back to the topic though; yes, DA definitely broke up using SE, but mostly because you always had something to press in between your GCDs. BW just helped with that even more. DRK wen from something around 46 actions per minute to 35 or so. That kinda gives you a good idea why people dislike DRK for the most part - it's so unbelievably slow compared to what it used to be. That has to do with reworked BW, delirium, the MP costs and the MP generation. EoS is cool and all and I sure wouldn't mind it so much if I could use it a lot more. That's why increasing the MP generation and reducing the MP cost for EoS to 25% MP would be great. Would be also neat if they brought back the old BW, the speed was one awesome thing, but the fact that it proc'ed on basic attacks and oGCDs was way way better feeling than it is now. BW and delirium very tight and they don't feel rewarding. It's not like you feel different when you use them, spamming one skill during burst is already WAR's theme anyway.

On the matter of SB delirium, just how was it underwhelming? It gave you an insane amout of MP and some blood via BW. If used correctly, it was a DPS gain while having a longer BW felt great speed wise. And yet I'm hearing that people didn't even have it on their hotbar because they thought it was useless? That tells me that most people didn't even know how DRK worked.

Same goes for LD, for all its faults, not putting it on your hotbar just seems plain stupid to me. Mind you, these things aren't adressed to you personally, but in general. Unless you're one of those offenders.

tl;dr: DRK feels slow and you really only SE to press most of the time with nothing to weave in between.