Dark Knight 6.0: Wishlist

**Lyth** · 02-11-2021 02:20 PM

1) Increase baseline attack speed.

Darkside: While active, reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by 15%.

2) Freeform combo system which lets you mix and match two single target combos and one AoE combo.

Example:
i) Hard Slash or Unleash (AoE)
then
ii) Spinning Strike (+MP) or Syphon Strike (++Blood, -15s Darkside) or Stalwart Soul (AoE/+MP/+Blood)
then
iii) Power Slash (+Blood/+HP) or Souleater (++MP,++HP -15s Darkside) or Abyssal Drain (AoE/+MP/+Blood/+HP)

3) Address the problems with Living Dead.

i) Shadowform: For the next 10 seconds, any incoming damage and healing is negated. Damage and healing prevented this way is converted into a temporary shield of up to X% of max HP.
Replaces Living Dead.
or
ii) Remove heal or die penalty from Living Dead.
or
iii) Force invulnerabilities to share a common cooldown across both tanks.
or
iv) Remove invulnerabilities altogether.

4) Restore signature DRK abilities and their animations.

i) Shadowskin replaces Rampart.
ii) Reprisal: Reduces damage dealt by target by 10%. Procs when a stack of Dark Arts is granted. Duration 10s, Recast 60s.
Replaces Dark Missionary.

5) Offensive cooldown rework.

i) Blood Weapon: Now grants five stacks instead of operating on timer.
ii) Delirium: Trait. Whenever an ally takes damage or Dark Arts is granted, there is a chance that your next weaponskill hits twice. Effect can happen once every 30 seconds.
iii) Dark Arts: Store two stacks of Dark Arts.
iv) Living Shadow: Every time Edge/Flood is used while active, your Shadow weaves a copy of this attack between their GCDs. Using Blood abilities (Bloodspiller/Quietus) extends the timer on Living Shadow. Reduce recast to compensate for loss of previous Delirium.

6) Review levelling progression for actions.
i) Introduce TBN in single target form at early level.
ii) Reduce the level at which Stalwart Soul is gained.

7) New abilities.

i) Shadowstep: Teleport 15 yalms forward. Using this ability a second time returns you to your original position.
ii) Shadowbringer: Multi-hit combo attack (a la Omnislash). Can only be used while Living Shadow active; damage directly proportionate to remaining timer on Living Shadow. Living Shadow ends on execution.

8) Stat progression adjustments.
Skill Speed/Spell Speed: DRK uses both weaponskills and spells, but Skill Speed only benefits Weaponskills. These should be combined into a single Haste stat to avoid penalizing hybrid damage jobs like DRK.

How to implement all this:
Link to example

**FallenWings** · 02-11-2021 03:04 PM

/thumbsup

I'm personally against having a generally higher GCD speed because I enjoy the current downtime recharge phase into manic consecutive double weave action that optimal DRK enjoys. The current split of WAR and DRK being GCD/oGCD burst kings, which is fitting for their weapontypes, and PLD/GNB with their constant medium-high stream of damage and actions favours this new dichotomy.

I'm generally against anything that further limits optimal play to lower ping since MCH(and old NIN) greatly suffers from that and restricts players who do not have a datacentre in their own region.

However I can see how it'd be more interesting if DRKs constant buff was speed over damage since that favours DRKs identity in contrast to WAR and Storm's Eye and would be more willing, albeit reluctant because of the aforementioned playstyle preference, if their oGCDs were not required to be double weaved for optimal play.

===Edit:===

A thought occurred to me on how much impact Delirium and Bloodspiller has in our damage output in contrast to Edge of Shadows
Source taken from a 99 percentile log on Idol of Darkness savage.

Total Bloodspillers 600
Casts 63
Potency 37,800

Delirious Bloodspillers 600
Delirium 7
Casts 35
Potency 21,000

Natural Bloodspillers 600
Casts 28
Potency 16,800

Edge of Shadows 500
Casts 42
Potency 21,000

TLDR Delirium is making Bloodspiller overused and usurping Edge of Shadows(otherwise known as new Dark Arts) as DRK's iconic skill. The devs seem to also support the notion of intending Edge of Shadow to be DRKs power attack with the tankbuster from the DRK add in SoSex being Edge of Darkness instead of Bloodspiller.

Link to my own wishlist for DRK in another thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5501449

===Editv2===

In hindsight, Bloodspiller and Delirium Bloodspillers have less impact on DRK rotational impact due to them being a GCD(having to pay a cost in the GCDs they replace). Effectively a 300 Pot button over generic Souleater combo potency average.

Total Bloodspillers 300
Casts 63
Potency 18,900

Delirious Bloodspillers 300
Delirium 7
Casts 35
Potency 10,500

Natural Bloodspillers 300
Casts 28
Potency 8400

Edge of Shadows 500
Casts 42
Potency 21,000

It should be noted that the value of Bloodspillers compared to the Souleater is arguably less than 300 due to Delirium Bloodspillers not generating any Blood and Natural Bloodspillers not generating any MP and Blood.

===Editv3===
because I couldn't leave it alone

Value of MP and Blood

Soul Eater combo generates 600mp. 600mp is 1/5th of Edge of Shadow making it effectively 100 Potency. (500/5)

Soul Eater being a 3 step combo, 200mp per GCD, 33.33 potency. (100/3)

Therefore the average potency value of a DRK gcd/Soul Eater combo GCD is 333.33. Making Natural Blood Spillers worth 267.77 over Soul Eater.

The Soul Eater combo generates 20 Blood gauge. 20 Blood is 2/5th of a Bloodspiller(Valued at 267.77), making 20 Blood worth 107.108. (267.77*0.4)

Soul Eater combo being 3 step, the value is further divided up into 35.7026 per GCD. (107.108/3)

True value of Bloodspiller is 232.0674 compared to the average potency of Souleater GCD that it replaces.

Delirious Bloodspillers 265.3974
Delirium 7
Casts 35
Potency 9,288.909

Natural Bloodspillers 232.0674
Casts 28
Potency 6497.8872

Total Bloodspillers
Casts 63
Potency 15786.7962

Edge of Shadows 500
Casts 42
Potency 21,000

I feel less dissatisfied about Bloodspiller and Delirium, but still demand Delirium be reworked to something that empowers our main resource/spender.

**Lyth** · 02-12-2021 02:43 PM

Increasing the speed of your GCD eventually comes at the expense of double weaving. Heavensward had much higher APM numbers on DRK than Stormblood, despite having less forced double weaves. That just comes out of having a fast average GCD with lots of flexible oGCDs that you could slot in wherever you liked. The problem with Stormblood's Dark Arts system was that you were obligated to get both DA and another oGCD off in the space of a single GCD, while Heavensward gave you the option. Forced double weaves really only benefit people living next to their servers, and have little to do with the actual 'speed' of the job. I think this is one of the differences in terms of why Heavensward DRK was so universally liked.

**Zayatani** · 02-12-2021 09:36 PM

Been an interesting read here so far, hard agree on tweaking Living Dead and introducing Stalwart earlier.

Personally, I'd like moving more focus to resource management via resource shifting and spenders that are more restricted by cooldowns that check your management at regular intervals (Such as old C&S requiring one Dark Arts per activation). We saw some of this with TBN and Delirium moving Blood -> MP and vice versa, it was hardly the best implementation I personally found it interesting. We have several skills which do not interact with our kit in any meaningful way, and can be retooled or pruned in favour of something more interactive.

Right now, resource management amounts to adjusting MP to the teams burst windows, and keeping 50 blood up for LS every 2 minutes while not overcapping either. This isn't exactly rocket science, and honestly not any more managing than what most jobs are doing with their resources.

I would like to see asymmetric abilities that move Resources from one pool to another. OP had a very interesting idea of having the Souleater combo burn Darkside for more damage and improved resource generation. I think this is a pretty great idea because it forces Edge to be less spammy as to not overcap Darkside. I think having only SE burn DS and split the combo after Syphon Strike would probably more hotbar economic and thematic, and also restricts the ability to dump Darkside quickly.

I could also see something like Abyssal Drain being returned as a standalone spell without any combo requirement, as a tool to shift MP to prevent overcapping to Blood. The theory being that it is less efficient MP to Damage ratio than Edge, but more damage than the average GCD, so it can be used to regulate large influxes of MP.

Speaking of which, I would like the rate of resource generation to be increased. This can be done by increasing the duration of Blood Weapon, higher baseline MP gains on our normal combo, and by reworking Delirium into something worthwhile. It could return to it's 4.X functionality, or the 4.1 Inner Release cost halving, or make it the Dark Arts spender granting one TBN or Edges worth of MP over X seconds (In the process we could let Dark Arts procs happen as a % chance on Auto Attacks, C&S grant a guaranteed stack for the opener, and 3 stacks max), or something entirely new. The key objective here would be to spread out our resource gains more over a minute so as to encourage active management of our resources, and potentially give it some randomness so as to make the management a little bit more reactive, as a more modern take on HW procs.

As for Blood, I would like to see new skills interacting with it. Having it be build up and spend on either Bloodspiller or Living Shadow (Speaking of which, the dude should probably be a bit more interactive too) is functional, but not quite as interesting or interactive as I'd like. Time to return Scourge as a Blood Spender?

**Lyth** · 02-13-2021 02:55 PM

We've put out the idea of juggling MP and Blood through abilities that cost one while generating the other back in Stormblood as well. You even could make resource management slightly more interesting by having some of our stand alone cooldowns (Carve and Spit, Salted Earth) do this. While I would find that fun and intuitive, I don't think SE would go for it, given their track record of wanting to 'simplify' jobs.

On the topic of spells, I want to see a change to the Skill Speed/Spell Speed system such that these two are merged. It's strange that hybrid physical/magical jobs like PLD and DRK only gain benefits on the one action type and not the other. There really needs to be a single 'Haste' stat that combines the two.

One issue that I have with increasing the rate of resource generation: it forces you to dedicate more time to spending it to avoid overcapping. Out of the past three expansions, Stormblood had the highest rate of resource generation with a disproportionally small resource pool, so you essentially had to weave Dark Arts between every GCD just to avoid losing dps. Heavensward was much nicer in that with Darkside's MP drain, you weren't so compelled to use it between every GCD. Maybe use Dark Arts here. Between the next two GCDs use Low Blow. Then throw in Dark Dance to proc a later Reprisal. It lead to more varied ability usage.

I'm fine with increasing the rate of resource generation, but I think you have to proportionally increase the total resource pool with it.

**Zayatani** · 02-14-2021 07:30 AM

I appreciate the response, and definitely agree that SkS and SpS should be merged into Haste! I too have my doubts that SE would ever increase the complexity of a job, especially given their track record (I'm not even convinced we'll get a Delirium rework), as you point out. But this was my "wish-list" of the type of things I'd like to see, drawing from the elements that I enjoyed the most in the previous expansions (That'd be; focus on reactive resource management and interspaced ability usage instead of a cluttered burst to maintain a high APM). But I probably explained that poorly in my original post, would hardly be the first time that happened, so I hope you'll bear with me as I try to elaborate;

The goal of the increased resource generation was to increase the time spent managing it, as opposed to 5.x DRK which effectively has two self-managing resources. However, I intended for there to be more tools to manage and shift said resources, and more resources (LS, DS, 3 stacks of DA) to help "absorb" the pressure that would come from higher resource generation, and it could also help cut down on the double weaving done during our burst windows. These resource managing skills could be interspaced in the rotation similar to how you describe the HW's rotation, but instead of just being buttons you want to press when they light up they'd have actual weight and impact on your gameplan, and if there was a small amount of randomness to it I'd like to think we'd be close to the HW proc feel.

**DRKoftheAzure** · 02-14-2021 11:27 AM

I'll keep my wishlist short and simple because the long version takes while to get into... I just want the Heavensward version of DRK, enmity combos included, with a lot more focus on GCD burst combos that use Dark Arts procs that can only be generated through a 50/50 chance on generating(up to five) every time you use GCD or max out Dark Arts as a seperate 60-90 second cooldown button, and see mitigation be more passive in the form of lifesteal, and shorter cooldowns on the active mitigation skills to match the relatively short duration, and Plunge become a cone AoE gap closer GCD to give it some more flavor(because MAGICK). Though I just want DRK to be even more fun to play by the time I hit level 50 with it since it starts at level 30 and need to be fun to play at the start of level 30.

If on the off chance anyone who sees this post have seen my more recent posts on DRK(considering the last actual post was probably a month ago give or take) then you probably have seen what I want for GCD combos and GCD burst combos. Though I think Forum moderators may have stealth deleted those posts...

EDIT: here's a link for the long version https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...K-6.0-Overhaul I was literally the first one to respond to this particular thread.

**Jirah** · 02-14-2021 12:12 PM

i like these ideas, DRK is in a bit of a pickle and comes off as inorganic and lacking and it would be the funniest thing if it got more love in EW than in SHB

**Azbel** · 02-15-2021 01:47 AM

Thinking about it deeper I had what i find is a cool idea for a meaningful Darkside wich would be unique and fit the the DRK. using Dark Art with Edge of shadow (or the aoe variant) you would gain a buff called Darkside wich would drain your blood bar (the longer you maintain it the faster it would drain) and make you gain faster attacks so you could upkeep your buff until you couldn't making all your attacks gain a blood gauge generation . When it would fall you would get a debuff called Consumed by Anger (or hatred you get the idea) wich wouldn't allow you to use that "Form" again till it fell off. It would serve as a nice burst and and It would be unique. I will be 100% honest and i kinda thought that what the game that shall not be named did with one of their class was clever and this could be ff14 variation of it. Also Living dead i would replace with something along the line of for the next 5 second all the dmg done to you becomes healing or a full heal to self for like 4000-5000 mp , i dont know just a thought.

**Recon1o6** · 02-15-2021 07:26 PM

Decent wishlist, while I do have a handful of nitpicks if we got these I'd be content. The job would be more fun than it has been for 4 years.

I would argue it needs a bit more resource management and hp sustain. Right now the other tanks eclipse dark in healing potential.

We could have delrium 1.0, another victim and scourge returned as appropriate resource spenders. 2 debuffs and a dot.

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