DRK fast paced Blood Weapon + Delirium

[ArianeEwah]

Greetings fellow Dark Knights,

after some testing and figuring out different combinations and design mechanics like mana regen stop, gauge gain etc. I've settled with 2 versions I'm actually quite satisfied with.

1st version:

Blood Weapon provides 5% haste bonus, and 5 Blood+200MP/GCD. Starting duration is 20s.
Darkness/Shadow actions increase the duration by 10s, cost remains 3k MP, but reduced potency by ~30% (e.g. 350 pot EoS).
Delirium provides 50 Blood and 3k MP. Also increases haste bonus to 10% for 10s. Recast 120s, so the 50 Blood gain can be used for Living Shadow at lvl 80, or for an additional Bloodspiller pre-80.
Because the Delirium mana bonus on Bloodspiller is lost, Bloodspiller now provides 200MP.
Darkside still active, either as a 2nd bonus from Darkness/Shadow actions or via trait, or all actions recieve a 10% potency increase.

The rotation map shows: 7 CPM on every Souleater combo skill, 5 CPM on Bloodspiller, 6 CPM on EoS. Combo CPM is closer to SB and HW. EoS' CPM is slightly higher than DarkArts in HW was, but still waaay lower than in SB. Yet Bloodspiller still keeps its relative high CPM at 5, down from 6.

2nd version:

My personal favorite. BW grants 10% haste, 200MP/GCD, but gauge bonus has been removed! Also starts at 20s duration.
Darkness/Shadow actions increase the duration by 10s, mana cost increased by 20% (to 3.6k MP), potency also reduced by 30% (e.g. 350 pot EoS). Bloodspiller + ~10% potency.
Because BW already has the 10% haste, Delirium just gives Blood and MP, for the same reasons and usage as in the 1st version.
The duration increase is necessary, as the casts per minutes have gone down. It's also more comfy than the 1st version, but can still be punishing if you mess up your mana management and got greedy by overusing EoS at some point. Not as punishing as old Darkside used to be, that's something of the past.
Darkside/10% damage buff still necessary.
Note: at first. I was against the 10% haste, as it might cause clipping problems during double-weaves. But the 10% haste proved to be more solid -and because BW is now a sustained buff- the little clipping ain't that much of a deal. Additionally, as the "mana burst" has been removed or greatly reduced, mana overcapping is improbable, and single-weaving becomes possible.

CPM on the rotation map: 8 CPM for every Souleater combo skill, 2.7 CPM for Bloodspiller, 5.3 CPM on EoS. Combo CPM is higher than it ever was -no wonder, with permanent 10% haste- Bloodspiller CPM has gone down to SB numbers, but has more impact (+10% potency), should be more enjoyable. EoS CPM is reeeaaally close to HW DarkArts CPM numbers... well, minus the Dark Passanger numbers.

I still believe there is more to do, so that DRK might get its image of an advanced tank back, through e.g. another combo (finisher *cough* -old Delirium-), a strong dot (that doesn't appear in form of a pet), and imho old Dark Arts HAS to come back. Dark Arts was probably the most unique way of buffing your damage. No other job in this game used a design for buffing GCDs in a way as DRK did. But there are enough jobs that deal damage by spaming simple damage buttons -SAM Hissatsu: Shinten; MCH Ricochet/Gauss Round; DNC Feathers- we need more unique jobs, less streamlined. (Also, less DelIRium-1-button-burst-spam.)

Old - 04-20-2020

if you followed recent DRK threads you noticed that most DRK players are not satisfied with the Shadowbringers changes, especially on Delirium, myself included.
I don't want to repeat every argument others have already given, you probably have read those anyway.

Previous DRK iterations fit this scheme of a "gotta go fast" GCD-based the most, and I want to present some suggestions to BW and Delirium how it might look like if we revert some of the changes done in 5.0.

First of all, Dark side in its current form removed.

Blood Weapon (BW) bonus halved (from 10 blood to 5, and mana gain from 600 to 300), but now it also reduces weaponskill and spell recast time by 5%.
Similar to DRG's Blood of the Dragon, BW's duration can be increased up to 30s.
Its duration is increased by 5s every time Edge of Darkness/Shadow (EoS) or Flood of Darkness/Shadow (FoS) is used.
E/FoS mana cost reduced to 2400, potencies adjusted.
(obviously, TBN mana cost also reduced to 2400)

The goal is to grant a permanent BW buff, constantly gaining blood and mana. On lower levels (pre-Delirium), it will probably be impossible to keep up BW for 60s - before applying it again, but still close to. Anyway, onto the Delirium changes.


(Nit-pick: rename it to Blood Delirium(BD), just like in every other language...)

A simple change: Increases BW duration by 10s, and grants you Dark Arts (DA) or 2400 mana. Can only be executed while under the effect of BW. Recast: 90/120s

A more "complex" change: Enter BD, holding BW duration for 10s, similar to Life of the Dragon. E/FoS have no cost, but don't increase BW duration either. During BD, you don't gain the mana bonus from BW, but blood generation and GCD recast reduction is doubled (to 10 blood, and 10%). Can only be executed while under the effect of BW. Recast:120s

With these changes BW should gain 100% uptime when played right. Even tho the mana and blood generation is reduced, through its longer duration, BW effectiveness is more than doubled. The increased GCD and E/FoS casts should make up for the lost damage from Darkside.
The reduced mana cost for TBN and E/FoS, and reduced potency also makes TBN less of a huge gamble. While at best dps-neutral, you lose effectively 550 pot ST. These changes make TBN more available, and easier to cope with a loss.
Now, why not 10% like the old BW? I believe this would just cause too much clipping. Even when your distance/connection to servers was great, old BW almost always caused GCD to clip when double-weaving. While it wasn't that of a huge problem, it still felt frustrating (like NIN clipping GCDs when using Mudra pre-5.1).

Thanks for reading.
tl;dr: Change BW + Delirium into a full uptime 5-10% Huton + (5 blood+)200 mana/GCD

[shao32]

this suggestion remember me to much to old HW drk where you whole kit work to keep darkside up, the most active you was the most easy you have it to keep everything going smoothly wich was so good. the changes of delirium are like adding a touch of SB to this wich i apreciate and the sinergy betwen buffs are well made.

i like it and most importantly will make DRK not being a dead job every time he trow all his stuff, my personal suggestion is make blood delirium have a shorter recast, long recast are painfully boring especially if you don't have anything to cover in middle and DRK have already living shadow covering the 120s window, a 60s recast would make it much more active, DRK will need something more on his interplay but its a good start.

[ArianeEwah]

Thanks for your praise

i like it and most importantly will make DRK not being a dead job every time he trow all his stuff

This was my goal here, DRK in HW never really used to "burst" like other jobs. It was unique, and worked well enough, even when their abilities were shifting. I wanted to revive this concept to replace "Unga-Bunga 2.0".

The the recast part... I'm not sure either... I agree 120s recast does indeed overlap with Living Shadow. Might be good, might be bad. Maybe 90s like current version, for an always shifting, interessting burst window. Should the recast be reduced to 60s, I would prefer it replaces BW via trait. Otherwise we just end up using both abilities in a row, which seems rather unnecessary.

Note, I just gave some effect ideas for BloodDelirium - not all should be included, or should changed to ensure an enjoyable playstyle without lacking in dps, or vice versa. Honestly, right now I can't really tell what would go well. If I got some free time on my hands, I'll try to simulate different combinations, and how they work in a rotation.

Lastly, on E/FoS "spaming" - if this gets too annoying (like DA spam in SB), the simple solution would be to increase mana cost, potency and BW duration extension respectively.

[VeolE]

After reading this got me like...

[DRKoftheAzure]

You're replacing 1 "spam this 1 button until you can't anymore" with another version, and this version you suggested is basically spamming 1 button like you were a caster DPS with the changes you proposed, which Dark Knight mains might as well be playing Black Mage at that point since all Black Mages they do is spam Fire IV until they can't anymore, and people who play tank expect to play like a melee DPS with multiple interesting gameplay gimmicks to make them not be a blue DPS, not to say that the change suggested is bad, but comes off as just replacing the Bloodspiller spam with Edge of Shadow spam...


And it doesn't really address that you're still spamming Souleater combo while waiting for other cooldowns to be ready, like many other DRK change suggestion threads...


As for removing Darkside, just make it a separate button so that the devs don't get the "bright idea" to lock Blood Weapon activation behind Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow like they did with Darkside...

[ArianeEwah]

As for removing Darkside, just make it a separate button so that the devs don't get the "bright idea" to lock Blood Weapon activation behind Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow like they did with Darkside...

In my opinion, Darkside as it is right now or was in HW/SB has lost its purpose.
Apparently, the Devs don't want the mana drain from HW. It could've been a trait in SB (or even now), as it didn't fall off when you reached 0 mana, and you lost more in turning DS off instead of keeping it on. DS was turned on before the fight, and kept active during the fight - except for downtime if it was long enough to recover more than 600 mana, or gain through Refresh/Ewer.
DS rn is so simple, you could actually increase all potencies by 10% across the board, or gain a trait at lvl 30, and it would change nothing. It's just the Devs wanting to keep the name "Darkside" for... lore or something? Just like they kept "Dark Arts", now gained from TBN for a "free E/FoS".

I don't really get your rant. I never said, I want to suggest another combo, but change BW and Delirium design because I detest DRK Unga-Bunga. Just like WAR, DRK ends up even using more BloodSpiller than E/FoS. So, if anything gets spamed rn, it's BS. Even DA used to get spamed more often than that. (ratio DA 7: SE combo 5: BS 2)

[DRKoftheAzure]

In my opinion, Darkside as it is right now or was in HW/SB has lost its purpose.
Apparently, the Devs don't want the mana drain from HW. It could've been a trait in SB (or even now), as it didn't fall off when you reached 0 mana, and you lost more in turning DS off instead of keeping it on. DS was turned on before the fight, and kept active during the fight - except for downtime if it was long enough to recover more than 600 mana, or gain through Refresh/Ewer.
DS rn is so simple, you could actually increase all potencies by 10% across the board, or gain a trait at lvl 30, and it would change nothing. It's just the Devs wanting to keep the name "Darkside" for... lore or something? Just like they kept "Dark Arts", now gained from TBN for a "free E/FoS".

Fair enough. Especially with the last 2 sentences.

I don't really get your rant.

This is reduntant because of what you say next.

I never said, I want to suggest another combo, but change BW and Delirium design because I detest DRK Unga-Bunga. Just like WAR, DRK ends up even using more BloodSpiller than E/FoS. So, if anything gets spamed rn, it's BS.

It's still spamming 1 other button but way more frequently, and actually makes it less interesting

Even DA used to get spamed more often than that. (ratio DA 7: SE combo 5: BS 2)

In Stormblood; Yes it did get spammed more often because of Syphon Strike, which only added more damage and no other additional effect. Which was only better used on Bloodspiller(especially if you TBN was successfully proced), Souleater while in tank stance for extra healing,(which is whole other rant in of itself because of certain Bloodbath not baked into DRK toolkit in Stormblood but that's the short version) and Power Slash when not in tank stance(which was generally the result of DPS not using aggro dumps but Diversion was still pretty bad, because it would have worked better as a toggle instead of a cooldown but it was still better to use Dark Arts on Power Slash was better than Dark Arts on Syphon Strike) and in Dungeons Dark Arts Spam was worse due to Abyssal Drain spam, because Unleash did basically no damage in Stormblood(which they eventually fixed with Quietus and making Sole Survivor go off once it feel off albeit weaker than if the target was killed before it fell off but still good before going for the "dumbing down the class" approach in this expansion).

In Heavensward; Dark Arts Spam was only really bad in Dungeons and could be alleviated with Dark Arts+Dark Passenger and Dark Art+Dark Dance for basically 15 seconds of dodging most attacks(and Sole Survivor was more bloat than help during this time frame), but the devs doubled down on Dark Arts spam in Stormblood with Syphon Strike and removal of Dark Dance.

[ArianeEwah]

snip

Hm, okay, I gotcha now. And yes, I agree that my suggestions would lead to ~10 CPM of E/FoS if you wanna keep BW up. That would end up just as the same amount of DA like in SB. I would increase the duration extension to 10s, and lower the mana gain even further, so that (without BD) it would round up at ~4 CPM. With BD - depending on its recast time - E/FoS should end up with ~7 CPM - which again should be close-to equal with HardSlash/SythonStrike/SoulEater CPM. I'll have to look into it, and change the mana gain in the OP accordingly, once I've done that. It may be necessary to increase BW max duration, too.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Hm, okay, I gotcha now. And yes, I agree that my suggestions would lead to ~10 CPM of E/FoS if you wanna keep BW up. That would end up just as the same amount of DA like in SB. I would increase the duration extension to 10s, and lower the mana gain even further, so that (without BD) it would round up at ~4 CPM. With BD - depending on its recast time - E/FoS should end up with ~7 CPM - which again should be close-to equal with HardSlash/SythonStrike/SoulEater CPM. I'll have to look into it, and change the mana gain in the OP accordingly, once I've done that. It may be necessary to increase BW max duration, too.

Did you also factor in enrage timers? Because lowering resource gain will always be a bad idea for enrage timers and people will need to rely on higher ilvl gear to clear or wait for "The Echo" buff to be available which is leading to balancing issues for early, mid, late, and end game encounters and pruning of abilities/removing job identity to begin(RANT: something I didn't consider until after reading some complaining about it because of Thornemarch having some kind of glitch/bug with the add phase in the general discussion thread but "The Echo" buff seems to play a big part in overall balancing issues that the devs just don't address because they don't want to admit they are wrong but this is my "conspiracy theory mode" ranting about balance changes with "The Echo" buff)

As for the CPM; I would make it so that Edge of Shadow, Bloodspiller, and Carve and Spit are up at least every 30 seconds, but this is more into combo action territory and you said you didn't want more combos for DRK, but I think adding more combos to DRK kit might be the only way to give it some sense of identity again, albeit focusing burst damage combos with Dark Arts adding and additional effect to certain parts of the different burst damage combos.

[Hierro]

Delirium + BW in SB:



Delirium + BW in ShB: