Putting "DRK" back in DRK

[Satarn]

5.0 Dark Knight is certainly a functional job and sits at a decent position within the tank balance. Many people however, have voiced concerns with the game-play aspect of it. DRK has lost a lot of its mechanics and identity over the years, especially in its latest iteration and the current kit can best be described as rather barren, not only in comparison to previous versions, but even other jobs available.

As a player very disappointed with the current state of affairs, I’ve spend a pretty good amount of time trying to re-imagine how the job could function differently, considering what’s drawn people to it in previous expansions, while trying to avoid issues which plagued those past versions.
This thread is what I came up with.

Main goals:

- Giving DRK back its fast, high-apm play-style.
- Increasing the amount of MP available while introducing more MP-spending abilities to add more depth to the resource management.
- Reintroducing interactions between MP and Blood to strengthen kit synergy.
- Giving Darkside a meaningful upkeep mechanic that’s once again tied to MP management.
- Adding some kit-synergy to Living Shadow.
- Increasing GCD variety by introducing a second combo finisher, with its own, unique effect.

Regarding some numbers provided:
MP values are based on Stormblood iteration of DRK and scaled proportionately for Shadowbringers’ unified MP pools and therefore should all be in order.
Potencies are mostly meant to show the intended interactions between skills - mainly resource spending priorities and TBN and for this purpose they should serve adequately as presented.
I did my best to make the overall output match SHB balance, but I am by no means an experienced theory-crafter, so it’s very likely that my method was flawed and dps would need to be adjusted further. While I don’t expect anyone to bother, if somebody more suited for this job than me finds merit in my ideas and thinks it’d be fun to math it out properly in order to allow adjustments, they are most welcome to do so.
However this does not affect the skill priority – and with it game-play – which is the actual concern of the thread.

All adjustments are done with the 5.11 version of the job as base. Any effects or skills not listed are meant to remain unchanged.

MP spenders:

Edge of Darkness/Shadow – Potency reduced to 200/250. No longer interacts with Darkside.

Flood of Darkness/Shadow – Potency decreased to 130/150. No longer interacts with Darkside.
Notes: Edge and Flood are meant to function as main MP dumps used under raid buffs and to avoid overcapping. Saving MP to use CnS and LS on cd, as well as keeping up Darkside and using TBN when required, takes priority and therefore keeps amount of dumps in check without reducing APM.

Dark Arts – Ability. Cooldown: 2 seconds. Cast: Instant. Cost: 3000 MP. Range: 0y. Radius: 0y.
Effect: Increases the potency of your next Weaponskill or Spell by 100.
Additional Effect: Grants Darkside, increasing damage dealt by 5% and reducing weaponskill recast time and auto-attack delay by 10%. MP regeneration stops during battle.
Duration: 30s
Notes: Darkside upkeep skill which requires user to conserve MP in order to keep the buff going. The role is similar to HW Darkside, but active refresh makes it more intuitive than passive drain, which increases accessibility.

Carve and Spit – Added a cost of 3000 MP. Potency increased to 500. Cooldown remains 60 seconds.

Abyssal Drain – Changed from Ability to a Spell. Cooldown: 2.5 seconds. Cost: 3000 MP. Potency: 160. Additional Effect: Restores own HP, Cure Potency: 200
Notes: Allows for sacrificing some Flood casts in AoE to increase survivability, synergizes very well with using Living Dead on trash packs. Range component gives it some utility when you want to grab multiple adds from a distance.

MP/Blood generators:

Syphon Strike – MP restoration from successful combo increased to 1500MP.

Souleater – Blood Gauge restoration on successful combo reduced to 10 Blood.

Stalwart Soul – MP restoration effect removed. Blood Gauge restoration on successful combo reduced to 10 Blood. Recast now matches regular global cooldown scaling.
Notes: Effect on MP removed in order to bring back Quietus Blood-MP interaction.

Blood Weapon – Cooldown reduced to 40 seconds. Duration increased to 15 seconds.
Effect changed to: Restores 600 MP and grants 3 Blood when dealing physical damage.

MP/Blood manipulators:

Delirium – Cooldown reduced to 80 seconds. Duration no longer applies. Added cost of 50 Blood. Effect changed to: Restores 3000 MP and extends duration of Blood Weapon by 8 seconds.

Living Shadow – Cost changed to 3000 MP. Additional effect: Grants 10 Blood whenever the simulacrum executes an attack. Cooldown remains 120 seconds.
Notes: Delirium and Living Shadow serve opposing roles as skills which spend one resource for a dps gain via another.
The shadow performs 7 attacks given full uptime, which should amount to 70 Blood total. Changing LS’ Blood cost to MP, allows to cast the skill earlier in the opener, alleviating the spawn-time issue.

Quietus – Additional effect: Restores MP(600 per target hit).

The Blackest Night – Barrier value reduced to 20% of target’s HP. Breaking barrier now grants 50 Blood instead of the Dark Arts effect. Cooldown remains 15 seconds.
Notes: Slightly lower barrier value should make it easier to break on a wider variety of damage, making TBN a more versatile defensive skill and allowing for using the Blood proc for gauge and gcd manipulation. Overall a side-grade, as the skill will lose a bit of strength on tank busters in exchange for better fluff coverage.

Other skills:

Dark Mind – Magic vulnerability reduction increased to 30%. Cooldown remains 60 seconds.
Notes: 10% mitigation added to make up for slightly reducing TBN’s effectiveness on tank busters.

Living Dead – Walking Dead effect changed to: Renders you impervious to most attacks and increases HP recovery via healing actions on self by 20%. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd. Cooldown remains 300 seconds.
Notes: Healing buff reduces the amount of healing required and true invulnerability allows to start gradual recovery as soon as WD procs, while also making it clear how much more HP is needed. This makes ability way less painful to deal with, without compromising its identity or removing drawbacks entirely.

Salted Earth – Effect changed to: Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 and creates a patch of salted earth, dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 50 to any enemies who enter. Only one Salted Earth effect can be maintained at the time. Duration increased to 30 seconds. Cooldown remains 90 seconds.

Scourge – Weaponskill. Cooldown: 2.5 seconds. Cast: Instant. Cost: none. Range: 3y. Radius: 0y.
Effect: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Syphon Strike.
Combo Potency: 400
Combo bonus: Extends duration of Salted Earth by 30 seconds to a maximum of 40 seconds.
Notes: Initial potency added to Salted Earth is meant to encourage still using it on cd and therefore considering boss’ movement during placement, rather than holding it purely for repositioning(although it should still be possible to delay cast slightly to adjust for big jumps when necessary). Extra 10 seconds on maximum duration allows for early refresh without losing ticks to make upkeep more forgiving, since you can’t just reapply the dropped effect while Salted Earth is on cooldown.

Salted Earth itself is a rather interesting skill in how it interacts with positioning and I think the concept of field effects could be expanded upon further. A full-time upkeep dot field could potentially open up new mechanics in the future, like skills proccing from dot ticks or a cooldown which could make Salted Earth temporarily provide some sort of utility for the group.

Unleash – Recast now matches regular global cooldown scaling.

Traits:

Enhanced Blackblood – Effect changed to: Allows for Blood Gauge accumulation when dealing physical damage while under the effect of Blood Weapon.

Darkside Mastery – Trait name changed to Shadow Mastery.
Notes: Really just to be consistent with Edge and Flood no longer affecting Darkside.

[shao32]

i was a bit confused at first mostly bcs i was to re-read the small notes to see why for expample i don't just spam CnS until i re read the "Any effects or skills not listed are meant to remain unchanged", will be nice to add a "have recast" to make it more faster to understand ^^

outside of that i will just say this is just a wonderfull piece of work, keep mostly the SB gameplay without the DA spam problem, the aoe rotation is restored wich i just love it and makes darkside, living shadow, delirium and blood weapon don't being independt mechanics that make you feel the job is disconected by his own skills.

the last thing i dont have clear is abyssal drain and his note, now being a spell again how you will determinate using the aoe combo (unleash-stalwart) would be better that spaming abyssal drain? the point will be building resources with you main combo/ quietus and when you have enough use abyssal drain spam with floods until repeat?

having TBN bringing back blood again will make quietus being up more often will adds to much MP recovering making the aoe combo being on risk of not being used to much, i will recomend quietus bringing a great amount of MP per use of the skill instead of per hit to have more uses of unleash combo.
the flood part on the note confuse me a bit too, idk what you wanna mean there but meaby i missed something.

anyway i love it good work ^^

[Satarn]

i was a bit confused at first mostly bcs i was to re-read the small notes to see why for expample i don't just spam CnS until i re read the "Any effects or skills not listed are meant to remain unchanged", will be nice to add a "have recast" to make it more faster to understand ^^

outside of that i will just say this is just a wonderfull piece of work, keep mostly the SB gameplay without the DA spam problem, the aoe rotation is restored wich i just love it and makes darkside, living shadow, delirium and blood weapon don't being independt mechanics that make you feel the job is disconected by his own skills.

the last thing i dont have clear is abyssal drain and his note, now being a spell again how you will determinate using the aoe combo (unleash-stalwart) would be better that spaming abyssal drain? the point will be building resources with you main combo/ quietus and when you have enough use abyssal drain spam with floods until repeat?

having TBN bringing back blood again will make quietus being up more often will adds to much MP recovering making the aoe combo being on risk of not being used to much, i will recomend quietus bringing a great amount of MP per use of the skill instead of per hit to have more uses of unleash combo.
the flood part on the note confuse me a bit too, idk what you wanna mean there but meaby i missed something.

anyway i love it good work ^^

Seems part of Abyssal Drain must've gotten cut sometime between converting this from a .doc into a forum post, haha. It was meant to cost same amount of MP as spender abilities, therefore eating a Flood use(hence the part in notes and putting it in "MP spenders" section). Thanks for catching that! Gonna fix it quick and check if there's anything else missing.

[shao32]

Seems part of Abyssal Drain must've gotten cut sometime between converting this from a .doc into a forum post, haha. It was meant to cost same amount of MP as spender abilities, therefore eating a Flood use(hence the part in notes and putting it in "MP spenders" section). Thanks for catching that! Gonna fix it quick and check if there's anything else missing.

nice perfect, now the only fail i see is flood is 150 while abyssal is 160 + heals, meaby you need to look at that ^^

edit: forgeth about it i just remember flood is oGCD and abyssal will be a GCD.

[Satarn]

nice perfect, now the only fail i see is flood is 150 while abyssal is 160 + heals, meaby you need to look at that ^^

Flood remains ogcd like right now however, while Abyssal has been changed into an instant cast spell(so gcd). Most dps-optimal way is to use the resource-free aoe combo and spend excess MP on Flood, but Abyssal exists as an option to spend your gcd and MP on some healing. Basically the intention is that you use it when necessary for survival and potentially if you've got tons of extra MP from BW-Quietus on exceptionally large pulls, allowing to combine AD with Flood. Otherwise better to keep comboing and weaving in Flood.

[Nedkel]

I could see DRK doing 1/2 of the astrologian dps with those changes.

You are effectively decreasing DRK dps by around 37%.

[Satarn]

I could see DRK doing 1/2 of the astrologian dps with those changes.

Well, looks like yours is already doing about that, so I suppose it makes no difference. : )

You are effectively decreasing DRK dps by around 37%.

As mentioned, the potencies are mostly meant as a representation. That said, I would be most grateful if you provided theory crafting and simulations behind your conclusion, so that we can make adjustments based on them!

[John_Milter]

Well, looks like yours is already doing about that, so I suppose it makes no difference. : )



As mentioned, the potencies are mostly meant as a representation. That said, I would be most grateful if you provided theory crafting and simulations behind your conclusion, so that we can make adjustments based on them!

dang ur second response to a post is roast idk how u expect to get people to agree with that attitude

[Nedkel]

Well, looks like yours is already doing about that, so I suppose it makes no difference. : )



As mentioned, the potencies are mostly meant as a representation. That said, I would be most grateful if you provided theory crafting and simulations behind your conclusion, so that we can make adjustments based on them!

You decreased blood gain rate by around 60-65% this is first.
Second, delirium in current form is gone.
Third, oGCD strength has been nuked with nerf and got over 50% nerf in that department, abyssal and cas gone (equivalent of 4% total dps)
Fourth, you took away 5% bonus damage from buff

Now get a look on a competitive DRK logs and see what are the biggest contributing skills for his DPS, its basically flood of darkness and bloodspiller that got nerfed to the ground with your changes, add CAS and abyssal drain changes, sprinkle it with 5% dmg buff lose and you have easily 35% dps lower, gg wp DRK is unplayable.

[Satarn]

You decreased blood gain rate by around 60-65% this is first.
Second, delirium in current form is gone.

The Blood isn't actually reduced - keep in mind that BW would have a much higher uptime and procs from all physical damage, not just gcds - including autos as well as Plunges and CnS whenever they line up. This, together with Blood gained from Living Shadow should result in about the same number of natural Bloodspillers.

You are right however on how changing Delirium would reduce the amount of Bloodspillers, which without increasing potency results in a loss of total BS potency per minute. This missing potency is being covered by Salted Earth basically becoming a 100% uptime dot, resulting in a lot of extra damage per minute, as well as some added potencies(namely, Salted Earth placement and CnS buff).

Third, oGCD strength has been nuked with nerf and got over 50% nerf in that department abyssal and cas gone (equivalent of 4% total dps)

Edge/Flood potency had to be reduced in order to account for higher amount of casts per minute, resulting from quicker MP regeneration. It's the same as how NIN's Bhavacakra and Hellfrog Medium were "nerfed" last patch, along with their resource costs being halved and NIN sure as hell isn't doing less dps than before.

Carve and Spit is not gone - in fact it's buffed by 50 potency - it's just gained an MP cost to add depth to DRK's MP economy. EoS potency is reduced to match the amount of casts with CnS - and LS - costs taken into account already, so nothing's lost there.

I did kind of forget about ogcd Abyssal though, but this could be easily compensated by splitting that potency into slight buffs to CnS, Salted Earth placement or even Living Shadow hits.

Fourth, you took away 5% bonus damage from buff

The 5% removed from Darkside is due to adding the 10% attack speed component. Increasing DRKs gcds per minute would not only benefit flat potency from said gcds, but also quicker generation of both Blood and MP. That said, Darkside damage bonus as well as tick potency on Salted Earth, are two numbers that would be the easiest to adjust in order to increase/reduce total dps, due to their full uptime nature and I'm fully expecting this to be necessary if any of this was to be implemented.

TL: DR: There's a lot of moving parts at play which have to be taken into account while analyzing any individual change and a synergistic design is more than the sum of it's parts.

[edit] Slap 90 extra potency onto CnS, 20 on Dark Arts and 20 on each hit of Living Shadow - there's your 200 pot/min Abyssal Drain, easy. Alternatively, if we're really lazy could just boost Salted Earth Tick by 10, but I'd rather not make dropping it too punishing.