Thread: Another DRK 6.0 Overhaul

*MAJOR EDIT: Changed around some proposals. Including eliminating Dark Arts altogether.
Yeah yeah another DRK rework post. I know it's a dead horse. To be clear, I enjoy the job! It's just bland right now. Curious to hear all of your two cents too!

* Lv.1/4/26 New Basic Combo
* Hard Slash/Spinning Slash/Power Slash (old Delirium animation)
* No longer restores MP, Blood and HP by default.
* SS and PS become Syphon Strike and Souleater later on.

* Lv. 20 Plunge (I'd like to see this early introduction of gap closers with all jobs)

* Lv.30/74 FoD/FoS
* Now costs 2000 MP
* Only extends Darkside by 20s instead of 30s per use

* Lv.35 Blood Weapon
* 40s CD
* Only affects weaponskills
* duration is replaced with granting 5 stacks of Blood Weapon.
* Gains ability to recover HP inaddition to usual MP recovery.
* Loses Blood aspect.

* Lv.38 Dread Spikes
* 120s CD Ability.
* Reduces damage taken by 30% and deals unaspected damage at 60 potency whenever you suffer physical damage

* Lv.40/74 EoD/EoS
* Now costs 2000 MP
* Only extends Darkside by 20s instead of 30s per use

* Lv. 45 Stalwart Soul
* No longer increases MP by default.
* Dark Arts Effect: Recover MP

* Lv.50 Scourge (no JQ)
* 2.5 CD Weaponskill
* Combos off of Syphon Strike
* Deals damage and inflicts 18s DoT and increases Blood by 20 with lv 66 trait.

* Lv.50 Living Dead
* Now decreases maximum HP by 20% during Walking Dead, easing heal requirement

* Lv.52 Salted Earth
* 60s CD Ability
* 75 potency every 3s for 15s
* Reduces damage of enemies in radius by 10%. (Replaces Reprisal role action. Other tanks could follow suit with similar ability modifications)

*Lv.54 Abyssal Drain
* Introduced here instead of at lv 56

* Lv.56 Carve and Spit
* Introduced sooner, instaed of lv60.

* Lv.60 TBN
* Now introduced much earlier at 60 instead of 70
* Loses Dark Arts effect
* Now costs 2000 MP
* Now restores 50 Blood upon being broken like before, but this is gained through an upgrade later on between 60 and 70.

* 62 Blood Spiller
* Now also restores HP

* 64 Quietus
* Now also restores MP (stacks!)

* Lv.68/78 Dark Missionary/Mind
* Missionary now a 60s CD and is unlocked at Lv 68
* Dark Mind becomes a 90s CD but now 30% instead of 20% magic dmg reduction and is unlocked at Lv78

Lv.70 Living Shadow
* In looking back at the lv.70 DRK quest, it only makes sense for this to be the flagship ability obtained at this level. It also finishes the trio of Blood related skills nicely.
* With a new trait at lv 80, Using Abyssal Drain, FoS/EoS, Bloodspiller/Quietus and Carve and Spit reduces Living Shadow's CD by 5s.

Unsure how to fill in other minor gaps from 70 to 80 now. Or Where to put in Delirium and how. But I have an idea for how Delirium could work:

* Lv.?? Delirium
* Now has the following effect:
Grants Delirium, increasing skill speed by 15%.
Additional Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 10 and recovers MP upon landing weaponskills.
Duration: 10s
* The skill speed increase helps to fit the five total skills in the duration.

There's a great deal more that could be introduced and redone. In wake of Endwalker we'll see what the devs ultimately come up with. It seems possible we may get something akin to SAM's Third Eye and such (The PLD uses what looks to be a block and counter in trailer), which would be a welcome reactionary element to tanking as a whole.

Regarding Powerslash using old Delirium animation; NO!


And regards to the "new combo" thing, Dark Arts will NOT work for what you suggested with main combos and only really works for a burst combo system like Gunbreaker and Red Mage have, though Spinning Slash and Power Slash can still restore MP but generate more enmity(because tank enmity is boring right now) though I will say that Hard slash should restore HP and MP while also generating enmity...


Regarding Plunge, does it do anything else to stand out from the other tanks gap closers? Is a a GCD that has unique recast timer? Is it a cone AoE once you hit the target? Is it burst AoE combo starter? Does also restore HP and MP(Yes I want all of these on Plunge)


Now regarding Flood of Darkness/Shadow; Why did you not ask to bring back Darkside button...? I would rather these 2 skills be GCD and a burst AoE combo ender... though Flood of Shadow would need to be what you suggested for Spinning Slash and Power Slash for Dark Arts(and have it restore HP and MP just for good measure)...


Blood Price suggestion make no sense with how you worded it(unless you edited as I'm typing this to where it says something that actually makes sense)...


Blood Weapon suggestion is where I have a problem... just bring back the Haste effect and have it effect ALL Damage dealt instead of one or 2 types of damage sources, and make it restore HP equal to the the amount of damage dealt, and bump duration to 20 seconds.


Dread Spikes; you could buff the potency to 200 and most people still use it as a DPS increase which I believe is what you were going for... I could be wrong though...


Dark Arts button coming back yes, having it go back to Heavensward(as much as I love and miss Heavensward Dark Knight) Stormblood Dark Arts is a bad idea because people will complain about Dark Arts spam once people complain about Dark Arts not being available more frequently... just have more Dark Arts stacks that are used for boosting the power of burst combos, while also ignoring MP and/or Blood Gauge costs(which both would still be used for burst combos but are a backup resource that don't boost potency or add other effects), and have additional effects based as an added bonus. Chance of generating Dark Arts when using damage dealing skills range would range from 20% to 50% with Crits being guaranteed, and number of max Dark Arts stacks would start at 5 but changes to 10 max at higher levels with Dark Arts button basically giving you max stacks.


Syphon Strike and Souleater both need to restore both HP AND MP, but doesn't have the increase enmity effect that Spinning Slash and Power Slash would have.


Stalwart Soul, no on the Dark Arts effect as I have explained earlier, yes on moving it to early levels, but need to talk about Unleash; THERE NEEDS TO BE A GCD BUTTON THAT GOES IN BETWEEN THESE 2 GCDS TO MAKE A FULL COMBO(we can bring back the PVP skill Tar Pit for this)!


Scouge, I'm okay bringing it back but as a middle stage combo button, and bring back Delirium weaponskill as the combo ender to Scourge(no idea what the effects for Delirium would be though).


I don't think we can fix Living Dead without COMPLETELY RE-WORKING IT FROM THE GROUND UP.


Salted Earth I'm okay with DoT potency buff suggestion... but it needs to have initial damage before the DoT is applied, and would need to be a target AoE like Abyssal Drain, and 2 DoT effects if another button was used fore combo effect(the second DoT would be the puddle buff and the combo bonus) and bring back the PVP skill Carnal Chill and have it use Unmend casting animation.


Abyssal Drain, combo bonus from Salted Earth would be better over Dark Arts.


Carve and Spit I'm okay with being a combo ender for burst combo that's basically Souleater but on steroids(ESPECIALLY WITH Dark Arts) but combo starter would be on a 30 unique GCD second cooldown(can use Edge of Darkness/Shadow as the combo starter and it can can restore HP and MP).


Shadow Wall suggestion is... okay, but no Dark Arts effect please and have it do something else besides be a weaker The Blackest Night with no additional effect... though having The Blackest Night be like how it was in Stormblood works... but again, No Dark Arts effect please...


Bloodspiller should be the the burst single target combo middle button, and it restores MP as well as HP(and remover that like 1 second of windup/startup animation it has).


Make Quietus restore HP and be middle button for AoE burst combo and I will be happy.


Dark Mind/Missionary... Just have them be 75% boost evasion for 6 secs with Dark Mind being Dark Knight only and Dark Missionary be AoE buff version...


And lastly I would rather just delete Living Shadow as that is more bloat than actual skill... Just like Living Dead...


And most importantly, I would prefer most of the combo stuff be available as you hitting level 50(since Dark Knight starts at level 30) so that gameplay doesn't feel or look too boring...

Yeah the character limit doesn't help in me being able to elaborate on some things lol.

I couldn't come up with anything for Plunge, just wanted to see it and other gap closers as a whole earlier in the leveling experience and in lower lvl dungeons.

The Blood Price cooldown just makes it so when you have a mob hitting you you're not getting an absurd amount of Blood. You're basically getting 50 every 15s or so. My only hesitancy with doing something like it is how that resource economy would work as MT vs OT. But the flavor is there I guess? Maybe that shines a bit of light on what you were trying to ask of. Othewise it's like Blackblood which unlocks Blood Gauge use as a whole, BW being a small Blood spender to restore extra MP. I wanted to see complementary utility between the two resources (using a little Blood to get MP and in TBN's case using MP to get Blood)

Scourge (I wanted to say this is where the true Power Slash animation would be) comes later at 50 as a way for DRK to have an in between Blood spender and have a DoT weaponskill without it being a cut and past of something like Circle of Scorn or interfering with combos. You can weave it in like a combo! It's just not limited as an alternate combo finisher only.

On a side note, maybe it would be cool to add the orb absorbsion effect of our current Souleater to the old Scourge animation and make that the new Souleater animation!

As for DA affecting Weaponskills I guess I just wanted it to have more options to use it on without bloating the hotbar with a whole new combo. I like most of what we have now where we have one main combo and maybe a way or two to branch it off, going crazy with a whole additional combo it is a GNB thing imo. Maybe limiting the MP and HP/Blood recovery to DA was me trying to compensate for the additional Blood recovery with the Blood Price trait

Shadow Wall seems basic because it is. It comes in 10 levels early as a rough version of TBN to get people acquainted and then becomes the real deal at lvl 70 with an upgrade to TBN. The Dark Arts effect on TBN just makes it so it becomes a 3000 MP Darkside extender like people currently use it for anyway when following up with FoS/EoS. But now you have to choose according to the situation. Tank buster incoming? DA into TBN to extend Darkside, open for a burst? DA into FoS to deal extra damage and extend Darkside.

As for combos being flushed out by lvl 50 in general, I agree! Not sure how making Bloodspiller amd Quietus middle combos would work or if it would but it's an interesting idea

As for Living Shadow and Living Dead, I tried! lol.

Hope that sheds some light on why I did some things, you have some interesting ideas of your own which I encourage!

A good first attempt though and you at least had some ideas give from your personal experience.

My main fear is that others will complain about how DRK should be just as boring to play as Stormblood/Shadowbringers Warrior or A Realm Reborn Paladin at level 50 or until the game decides you get more than 1 single target and 1 AoE combo or how Dark Knight shouldn't have basically Bloodbath baked right into almost every skill because that's the thing Warriors are known for(even though lifesteal effects DO NOT fit Warrior identity at all but still).

And regards to your response to my response on Blood Price; basically have Blood Price be like it was in Stormblood without MP refresh...? Not a big fan of Blood Price minus the MP refresh, but Stormblood Blood Price did give Dark Knight the identity of resource management tank, ESPECIALLY with big pulls.

Scourge animation works well for middle stage combo animation, and Scourge should at least a cure potency, but like 100 cure potency.

And my big gripe with Souleater animation is that it lost a lot of its luster once it become the ONLY combo for single target... hence why I think(and feel) that Dark Knight needs at least 1 more GCD combo.

As for Gunbreaker burst combo argument; Gunbreaker has a oGCD burst combo in it's GCD burst combo, while also leaning heavily on dodge tanking and charge stacks for all cooldowns, and buff Gnunbreaker Aurora skill with instant 1200 cure potency to go with the regen effect... pretty sure that would be enough to seperate it from Dark Knight GCD heavy burst combos.

Side note; I also see Dark Passenger as a GCD with a unique recast timer that gives an additional avoid% effect for 6-7 seconds.

Darkside as a whole seems to work better as basically Blood of the Dragon but a much longer duration but has a recast timer of 25 seconds.

As for Quietus and Bloodspiller working as middle combos for burst, see Esteem skill rotation next time activate it on a training dummy...

And speaking of Living Shadow... I have never liked Living Shadow since it was introduced the job action teaser trailer and it felt forced into the job toolkit just because they needed to test how many people actually like Demi-Bahamut idea on other jobs(though Demi-Bahamut idea is a whole other argument on it's own because it looks like wasted potential)...

Living Dead... Yeah I think it would be better for it to work like a Hallowed Ground for 10 seconds should the effect of Living Dead just fall off as a decent band-aid fix, and a lot of the lifesteal is mostly to be a band-aid fix for Walking Dead... but then I realized you could have Walking Dead into a Hallowed Ground effect once you are healed to 100% for 10 seconds... Yes I know sounds like a lot of work, but you cannot deny how fun that sounds to do at least once... and yes regardless of whether or not you get Walking Dead status, you are at least ensured the 10 seconds of invincibility.

There's a lot of things I like in this post. The extreme tldr is that if I were to wake up tomorrow and DRK turned into this I would be far happier than I am now with the job. To go into a bit more detail, I'll run down your list and give my two cents or opinions, and who knows, maybe a dev will trip and fall into this thread by accident one day and get some ideas.

* Lv. 20 Plunge (I'd like to see this with all jobs)
God yes please, and don't make it so DRK gets their second plunge as late as 78 lmao

edge/flood changes
I really like the idea of them costing 1k less mana, being an uneven number seems so silly when we're capped at 10k

Blood weapon changes
I like this a fair bit

* Lv.38 Dread Spikes
A retaliate would be really neat

* Lv. 40 Dark Arts
Unironically okay with DA coming back but get rid of the god awful noise it used to make.

AoE changes
Stalwart soul should always grant mp by default, and I think dark passenger should come back as the third skill in the drk aoe rotation

Lv.50 Scourge (no JQ)
Yes pls

Lv.50 Living Dead
Rather than reducing our hp by 20%, it should increase healing we receive by 20-50% while also giving DRK decently strong life steal for the duration of the buff.

* Lv.52 Salted Earth
Yes pls. Salted earth is so boring right now. Giving it blood and higher potency would be a godsend.

*Lv.54 Abyssal Drain
I'd rather give it two charges and at least half the CD it has now, otherwise it's competing with flood of shadow for aoe damage.

* Lv.56 Carve and Spit
Needs a lower cooldown, or something I toyed with, it having three charges for each of it's "tri-fold" swings kind of like the continuation mechanic on gunbreaker

* Lv.60 Shadow Wall
Actually okay with this, as amazing as TBN is, it's really boring a not too proactive to use. I like that this lets me use it for weaker smaller hits when no buster is coming.

* 62 Blood Spiller & Quietus
Rolled these into one opinion. I'd like for blood as a mechanic to be a charge rather than a resource like mp. I personally like the idea of the DRK being able to build his blood up and as he does the potency for the abilities that use it increases letting you rip a full 100 meter bloodspiller to deal the damage of what five would normally do. It would feel far less "warrior but worse" and more thematic to dark knight's origin of taking damage to deal it back out harder.

* Lv.68/78 Dark Missionary/Mind
Sure, we're supposed to be the magic tank.

* Lv.80 Living Shadow
I really like the idea of it doing more than just being a glorified dot disguised as a pet.

I'm not claiming any of my ideas to be exceptionally good, just spitballing what sounds fun. If anything I just hope the dev team reads these and finds that people want change. Bloodspillers animation is objectively trash tho

edit: wanted to say 3k character limit sucks

Originally Posted by SuSpence26

Yeah yeah another DRK rework post. I know it's a dead horse. To be clear, I enjoy the job! It's just bland right now. Curious to hear all of your two cents too!

* Lv.1/4/26 New Basic Combo
* Hard Slash/Spinning Slash/Power Slash (old Delirium animation)
* No longer restores MP, Blood and HP by default.
* SS and PS become Syphon Strike and Souleater during Dark Arts respectively

This change is odd, and I know it's supposed to evoke the feeling of Stormblood DRK (I guess?) but this would be an entirely new mechanic or aesthetic for DRK that does not already exist. This was Machinist territory before they straight up changed that, and I doubt they're going to add it back in. Also, an attack being named 'power slash' but having the old, somewhat slow strike of Delirium would be kinda odd.

The fact that these combos don't give you MP by default is also a problem. I predict that when you die, or dump all your MP, you're going to be at the mercy of Blood Weapon to get it back.

* Lv.35 Blood Weapon
* 40s CD
* Only affects weaponskills
* Costs 20 Blood Gauge
* duration is replaced with granting 5 stacks of Blood Weapon.
* Gains ability to increase Blood by 10 with trait at Lv. 66

Just make it Sks Blood Weapon dawg. Especially if it's going to cost me 2/5 of a Bloodspiller to use, there should be some sort of airy-fairy DPS gain to be had. At level 66 in this concept it's a net gain of only 30 Blood (and some MP, which you desperately need).

It does not help that since this has an initial cost, when you die you're peckered. You need to make it a full gcd combo to get blood weapon to get stacks that will eventually get you enough MP you desperately need in order to get your buffs back up and defensive CDs back online. Especially if you expect people are going to wanna use DA-TBN for some reason.

* Lv.38 Dread Spikes
* 120s CD Ability
* Reduces damage taken by 30% and deals unaspected damage at 60 potency whenever you suffer physical damage

While I personally like counter-hit mechanics, and liked the WAR version, I think this is unnecessary. While I know people crow about tank homogeneity, giving one job an old version of another job's ability is again, odd.

* Lv. 40 Dark Arts
* No longer a buff tied to TBN
* 5s CD Spell
* 1000 MP
* Grants the effect of Dark Arts, upgrades some weaponskills and enhances most spells.
* Fades upon execution of applicable skills

* Lv.40 Syphon Strike
* Dark Arts upgrade to Spinning Slash
* Restores 3000 MP (2000 MP gain)

Spending MP to get MP is awkward.

* Lv. 45 Stalwart Soul
* No longer increases MP by default.
* Dark Arts Effect: Recover MP

Ditto.

* Lv.50 Scourge (no JQ)
* 2.5 CD Weaponskill
* Costs 20 Blood Gauge
* Deals damage and inflicts 18s DoT

This can probably be designed to be the same as the Gunbreaker skill. Also I'm not sure why there's a blood requirement? Or it's an 18s DoT? Assuming it's optimal to maintain uptime, that has to be used every seven GCDs (well, Eight). That's pretty short for a DoT, and it could easily be a longer duration so that you have more blood to dump into bloodspillers.

* Lv.50 Living Dead
* Now decreases maximum HP by 20% during Walking Dead, easing heal requirement

Increase healing potency instead.

*Lv.54 Abyssal Drain
* 2.55s CD Spell
* 2000 MP
* Same dmg and heal as now
* Dark Arts Effect: Increase healing potency to 400

Why is the GCD longer than a natural GCD?

* Lv.56 Carve and Spit
* Now a Weaponskill that doesn't share other CDs

Why?

* Lv.60 Shadow Wall
* 15s CD Spell
* 2000 MP
* 20% damage barrier for 6s
* Dark Arts Effect: 25% damage barrier for 7s
* Becomes TBN at Lv.70 with the Shadow Wall Mastery trait

That's one ridiculously expensive dark arts effect. People didn't like DA-DM in HW if they could avoid it, and that was for a substantially larger % gain.

* Lv.68/78 Dark Missionary/Mind
* Missionary 60s CD
* Mind 90s CD but 30% magic defense

??? I'm rife with confusion. Is Dark Missionary getting a 30s CD reduction as a raid-wide mitigation tool? Is Dark Mind an upgrade for it? A Side-grade? Is it Stormblood Dark mind? Because these are grouped together like they share some sort of similar function, but there's no way that's your intention.

Lv.70 TBN
* 15s CD Spell
* 2000 MP
* 25% damage barrier for 7s
* Increase Blood Gauge by 50 if barrier is broken
* Dark Arts Effect: Extends Darkside by 30s (60s max) if broken

DA effect seems prohibitively expensive. A DA nets you at least 140p if used on its own, and FoS extends the effect of Darkside anyways. Why DATBN when you can just use regular TBN and DA a Syphon Strike and use FoS. Sure, DATBN saves you from using FoS, but you're using your MP for damage anyways?

Say you need to re-up Darkside. If I DATBN I refresh it, and have 1k mana left over, which I can use with another DA to deal some additional damage. If I don't DATBN, I have the entire 2k to spend, and I can FoS to deal damage (Maybe even AoE damage!) and re-up all the same. If FoS has the same value as a DA, then I've used the same amount of MP and done the same amount of damage single-target. If it's 300p to 140p, then it's more than twice as good.

* Lv.80 Living Shadow
* Now also ups Darkside's dmg increase to 20% for duration
* potency and duration adjusted for removal of EoD/EoS

Adding a 24s 20% damage buff to DRK (kinda) on a 2 minute CD? Eh, why not lol.

I feel like I know why you're going the direction you're going with this re-design, I just think the grab-bag is a bit too deep here. There's a combination of retrieving old mechanics, adjusting (or just re-implementing) them, as well as taking some ideas from other jobs. I think what this would inevitably feel like is Stormblood DRK without BW (the GCD reduction I mean). You'd be awash in MP, burning it on FoS and DA-SS, struggling to burn it all when Blood Weapon came up if you had to weave while making rough love to the FoS button. It's certainly different then how it works now (in a way), but it would definitely be reminiscent of SB.

If that's what you want, that's perfectly fine. I had few deep-seated issues with SB DRK aside from the fact that LD was on a silly-long CD (and still is) for what it does.

Originally Posted by SuSpence26

TBN's idea of "turning pain into blood" actually blends with that very nicely too.

Why not re-work Grit into a oGCD spell(not ability) that converts the effects of "increases damage received" effects into "reduces damage received" effects. That works too.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...t-6.0-Wishlist since people are trying to start a new thread and I want to try to keep this relevant while connecting the two threads somehow...