Dark Knight where is my Identiy

[Kabooa]

I think I get the concepts here well enough, but I've made the mistake of critiquing one of your ideas without having read carefully enough before, so I don't want to assume.

Could you give a little more insight into the playflow of this -- what it would actually feel like, or what the points of attention would be as you're working through its sort of rotation?

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Final nitpick: Please tell me the in-game term would not be a "pip" of Blood. I can't help but imagine a phlebotomist instead. Sorry, probably just a me thing. (Though I've little idea what else to call it... a "mote"? Idk.)

What it's called can be anything. Puddle, pool, splat, splash, bucket. Mote sounds fine.

The playflow would depend on how much 'Blood' Edge/Flood cost/generate. In my mind, '3' is about the same pace of Edges/Floods we have now. Every Edge/Flood, the Dark fills the blood gauge to maximum. While the opening would have a rather frantic Dump-Dive as it runs its cooldowns, it becomes far less frantic after the initial first 15 seconds or so, from here spacing out cooldowns within safe windows (such as when TBN is available) in order to keep its cadence.

Example: Engage -> Edge/Flood -> TBN -> GCD -> Delirium -> Edge/Flood -> GCD -> Abyssal -> Edge/Flood -> GCD -> Slow phase.

Compare this to the scenario where each Edge/Flood does but 1. The post is a little all over the place, but the Delirium change was when '1' was the only consideration.

Engage -> Edge/Flood -> GCD -> Edge/Flood -> Gcd -> Edge/Flood + TBN -> GCD -> Delirium + Edge-> GCD -> EDGEDGEDGEDGEDGEDGEDGEDGE you get the idea.

One of the unfortunate aspects of ramping mitigation is how stupid it makes shields. Consider that at maximum blood, TBN is effectively +100% EHP instead of +25%. The Healing penalty is applied in a manner to avoid abuse cases, but this doesn't apply to effects that give their benefit prior, such as shields. In this case, the interplay from Dark/Healer primarily comes in when the Dark Knight is at full HP and has yet to dump themselves, and that Blood recovery being gated primarily by cooldowns means that Dark, at a baseline, is no harder to heal than any other tank, but a Dark and Healer working in tandem can create some truly stupid scenarios. We'd have to adjust the penalty to work in a specific manner to allow this. Also consider that the following assumes Edge/Flood fills the Blood gauge with 1 mote.

Bloodcrazed - New healing effects are X% less effective.

This allows Regen-likes, Excogitation, and pre-placed Shields to all gain a rather large amount of effectiveness. Timing a long CD Blood remover around Ground Heals let you stretch HP farther, as the Bolide-like approach to HP means the HP you lose on the way to your new thresh hold is mostly inconsequential.

You go from 100 HP to 75, but the 75 is worth the same as ~93. You go from 75 to 50, but the 50 is worth ~ 83, and the 25 is worth ~ 63.

In short, an average Dark could just play around sitting at max blood and line up CDs with TBN for maximum safety, though this may end up causing other cooldown timers to drift. They are no harder to heal than any other tank, but it does open up a few tag-team avenues between tank and healer that does not currently exist.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Rubs hands together with gigabrain intent.

No more MP. Hear me out.

Using Edge/Flood now reduces maximum HP, as well as losing any HP over the excess of your new HP total. You cannot reduce your maximum hp to 0%. This is the 'blood' cost of utilizing your dark skills. The cooldown of these skills will likely also be increased, but frankly, for a hypothetical build, they can stay at 3s for all I care.

You are given this visual information with the new Blood Gauge - 3 notches indicating your current status. Each gauge of this that is filled grants you 20% mitigation, stacking additively, as well as 20% penalty on all healing received, and the -25% maximum health.

Boring Math as to why.

Let us say you have 100 HP. You Edge yourself down to 25 HP.

You have an additional 60% mitigation, meaning you effectively have 60 HP.

The Blackest Night grants you health equal to 1 Blood pip, improving your baseline EHP to 50. At 60% mitigation, you have 125 EHP.

The healing penalty keeps healing proportionate to your damage intake and curbs abuse cases with Non-TBN shields. TBN for the Dar Knight is a cornerstone defense, and it is tuned so that the Dark's EHP upon using it is equivalent at all blood pips.

How much blood each Edge/Flood generates will be based on how stupid this should get. For the sake of sanity, it should probably generate '3'.

'2' and you're constantly doing simple arithmetic. Whether that's a problem or not is up to the individual.

'1' and, well.

Utilizing Blood skills restores your maximum HP, but it does not necessarily heal you. This means in order to get moar Floods/Edges, you need to dump your blood gauge, but do so in a manner that won't end up with you dying as a result. Lets go over a few options.

Bloodspiller/Quietus - Now that Blood is no longer a fill-gauge, these weaponskills instead cost 1 of blood. The exact dynamic of these skills can vary widely, but they'd always be available, but at reduced potency. These are your last choice in managing Blood. Probably turn these into buff granters.

Abyssal Drain - Remains an OGCD with a cooldown. Removes all Blood, dealing AoE potency scaling up for each pip removed, and healing for damage dealt.

TBN - Cooldown increased as it no longer has an MP cost. TBN, upon breaking, removes 1 Blood and heals for 25% of your actual maximum HP.

Blood Weapon - Costs 1 Blood, has a recast. Grants your weaponskills %Lifesteal.

Delirium - Removes all blood, has a recast. Shortens the recast of Edge/Flood of shadow.

Living Dead - Locks your blood gauge as well as abilities that utilize it for 8 seconds. Nullifies most attacks, removing 1 blood for each attack nullified. Ends at 0 Blood, after 8 seconds, or upon pressing Living Dead again (with a short internal CD to prevent misfires).

The effective goal, obviously, being more Edges / Floods, and avoiding utilizing GCDs to do so, and avoiding doing it in a such a manner that you end up paste, while also taking advantage of huge TBN effectively being a 100% Max HP shield, and taking advantage of timed healing skills like Earthly Star, Excog, group AoEs, etc to an extent that other tanks don't.

I am... for the more part, not certain that I comprehend the concept, yet... but I am of interest. I already have first and third-type Blood Magic ideas, but I had no self-sacrifice second-type Blood Magic ideas, so I do want to read where you are going with this, half out of curiosity, and half on the chance that you give me a mind-blow inspiration for a new IQ160 idea.

[Absurdity]

I doubt people are gonna bring out pitchforks for this. Really anything is welcome to shake up the stale formula of

1. A basic 1-2-3 combo that generates some kind of job resource
2. The same 20%, 30%, invuln, party mitigation, short duration/cooldown mitigation with no further interaction besides pressing a button
3. Phase where you spend all your job resource for slightly more damage
4. Stand there and get hit in the face while cycling through points 1-3

Will it ever happen? Unlikely considering the effort required to redesign all tanks, which will be necessary to not have one tank end up strictly superior or inferior to all others, and the potential imbalance this redesign would bring.
For your idea to work we can't leave the other tanks in their current state, because then you just end up with another case where DRK has to spend resources for mitigation that the other tanks don't have to spend anything on.

[Shurrikhan]

For your idea to work we can't leave the other tanks in their current state, because then you just end up with another case where DRK has to spend resources for mitigation that the other tanks don't have to spend anything on.

Correct, though that's not to say that anything and everything has to be barred behind those two resources (as compared to the resource being, say, a way to "rush" their cooldowns or press the skill again during its effect in order to spend towards a secondary effect at no further button-cost).

If I were to detail it all out completely, that would of course be in the context of similar ground-up reworks to achieve the most depth, enjoyable flow, and distinction for each job that I can manage at minimum convolution (here being negative or "bloat"-like mirror to the more positively-spun "depth").

[Vatom]

[B]
Using Edge/Flood now reduces maximum HP, as well as losing any HP over the excess of your new HP total. You cannot reduce your maximum hp to 0%. This is the 'blood' cost of utilizing your dark skills. The cooldown of these skills will likely also be increased, but frankly, for a hypothetical build, they can stay at 3s for all I care. Also would the restore Max hp only on edge/flood or when you use blood magic? Also tankbusters would that be a problem?

Like the concept I might need more elaboration on how this would all fit together but I also get the idea. Im still wondering if this fits more on War then Drk. Also think this has a high skill curve but not too high might just need some adjusting, though I can see this stopping the Edge/flood spam due to losing Max Hp

5, about the "Blood Sigil" / hohohohoh! now we are going more deep into my head-canon, fair warning. "The Blood Sigil" is a few different things...
a third resource, a resource OverFlow storage, a "passive" resource that buffs actions, and also a "spent" resource that can spent on various actions
and spent in a few different ways...

Pretty cool Im digging it make me think of DMC. Is this a whole new gauge system or flow with blood?
I do wish for them to bring back the passive buffs for tanks could be awesome if they did also dont know why they took it out in the first place even if some were based off of the stance dance. I think this would sound cooler knowing the full kit but I wont ask for all that seems like it would be alot to type.
Might I ask is this 4 sigils or 2? Im a bit confused on that part also do you expend them passively or with a button or ability?

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Pretty cool Im digging it make me think of DMC. Is this a whole new gauge system or flow with blood?
I do wish for them to bring back the passive buffs for tanks could be awesome if they did also dont know why they took it out in the first place even if some were based off of the stance dance. I think this would sound cooler knowing the full kit but I wont ask for all that seems like it would be alot to type.
Might I ask is this 4 sigils or 2? Im a bit confused on that part also do you expend them passively or with a button or ability?

in theory... XD I could type out my entire pet project in here, but yeh... that is a lot to type. =w=; all of those notes is enough words and a high enough character count to hit a post-limit of 3000 characters 8 or 9 times, with how extensive it all is. I go into 4 different systems.. Dark Knight's 4 resources, how they function, and how they interact with each other, as well as all of the exact details of more than three dozen actions, split between WeaponSkills, Spellls, and abilities...
my Dark Knight head-canon is more meant for a hard-core RGP with in-class diversity, rather than a game like what FFXIV is at current, a mere glorified action game with almost no RPG elements at all, no in-class diversity, far too simple for my tastes, and absolute trash combat systems. the combat mechanics are good and fights are fun, but the combat systems are trash... that is why I call my ideas for Dark Knight "head-canon", I heavily re-designed Dark Knight with little consideration to FFXIV's current design and limits.


1, whole new gauge system or flow with blood? / As I stated in the original post, it is a third resource that interacts with the other two, the MP bar and BlackBlood gauge. I do not remove or replace any thing that the Dark Knight already has, I just reworked what already exists or remastered what was deleted, and added in my own new things.

2, passive buffs / my head-canon of Dark Knight has a few of them, one being the return of the old DarkSide, the permanent passive self-buff that is turned on like Tank Stance, with the passive effects of increasing damage dealt by 20%, disables natural MP regen, and negates MP restoration from any other source, to make it so that the Dark Knight can only restore MP through actions that restore MP; while I added more MP restoration sources to Dark Knight, through old actions and some of my own added-in new actions.

3, about the Blood Sigil / hmn, how to elaborate... think of the BlackBlood gauge and the helmet that tracks DarkSide duration. The Blood Sigil can be seen sort of like "behind" them, one part of the Blood Sigil is a literal Sigil visible on either edge-side of the BlackBlood gauge's "Sword", while the other part of the Blood Sigil is a literal Sigil drawn on the "behind-side", sitting beside to the right, of the helmet that tracks DarkSide.

initially, the Blood Sigil is grey(ed)-out, it looks like a absent silhouette. once you go through either of your 1-2-3 GCD combos, the Blood Sigil comes from the weave rotation between the GCD rotation. I should mention that I altered Syphon Strike and SoulEater into oGCDs to be weaved...
any way, in other words... the combo is either:
Hard Slash(GCD) - weave Syphon Strike(oGCD) - Spinning Slash(GCD) - weave SoulEater(oGCD) - Power Slash(GCD) or Low Slash(GCD, the old before-role-actions "Low Blow," new additional effect).
Heavy Slash(GCD) - weave Syphon Strike(oGCD) - Scourge Slash(the original Scourge GCD and its DoT, but moved into a 1-2-3 combo) - weave SoulEater(oGCD) - Delirium Slash(the original Delirium, still GCD but with a new effect) or Reprisal Slash(GCD, the old before-role-actions "reprisal", new additional effect).

Syphon Strike and SoulEater on activation grant one half of the Blood Sigil... if you weave Syphon Strike but not SoulEater, or weave SoulEater but not Syphon Strike, you get only one half the Blood Sigil, so only one half of it will gain colour, while the other half remains grey(ed)-out. this is the "Scrawled" form, where you have only one half of the resource, and can not use the not-yet-complete Blood Sigil, as it needs both halves to be active.
you have to weave in both Syphon Strike and SoulEater, not mess up your weave rotation, or go through the weave rotation twice to gain the other half, before both sides of the Blood Sigil will then be in colour, and this is the "Formed" form, the Blood Sigil is now active and the resource is ready... while like this, any actions with a "Additional effect" that is "Blood Sigil, formed: (the additional effect)", will have those additional effects activate, which includes BloodSpiller and Quietus changing from GCD to oGCD.
this is why I referred to the Blood Sigil as a "passive" resource, it already has effects on some actions, just for being ready.

next comes spending the Blood Sigil as a "active" resource... there are a pair of actions, "Inscribe Blood Sigil" and "awaken Blood Sigil". when you use the "Inscribe Blood Sigil" action, the Blood Sigil changes.. the player can see the Blood Sigil, now in colour rather than grey(ed)-out, since it was made active in "formed" form.. become animate, the player can visibly see the runes that make up the sigil shifting and moving, while a 30 second duration-timer appears, as the Blood Sigil has changed to "Inscribed" form.
for the next 30 seconds, all WeaponSkills, GCD or oGCD, and abilities, with a Additional effect that is "Blood Sigil, Inscribed: (the additional effect)",
will activate that additional effect.

then we have the "awaken Blood Sigil" action, similar function... when you use "awaken Blood Sigil", the Blood Sigil changes.. the player can see the Blood Sigil, now in colour rather than grey(ed)-out, since it was made active in "formed" form.. become animate, the player can visibly see the Blood Sigil begin to glow and pulse, while a 30 second duration-timer appears, as the Blood Sigil has changed to its "Awakened" form.
for the next 30 seconds, all spells, GCD or oGCD, and abilities, with a Additional effect that is "Blood Sigil, Awakened: (the additional effect)", will activate that additional effect.

last, the "released" form. this one is mostly passive... back down at the helmet, that part of the Blood Sigil also has numbers beside it, tracking how much MP points and/or BlackBlood points have been "Absorbed" by the Blood Sigil, if you have caused resource OverFlow on accident, at some point. when you use the "release Blood Sigil" action, the numbers beside the Blood Sigil go down as much as they can, as those MP points and BlackBlood Points are shifted over into your MP bar and BlackBlood gauge.

[Vatom]

1, whole new gauge system or flow with blood? / As I stated in the original post, it is a third resource that interacts with the other two, the MP bar and BlackBlood gauge. I do not remove or replace any thing that the Dark Knight already has, I just reworked what already exists or remastered what was deleted, and added in my own new things.

Ok I understand now more or less an addition system that is more passive till filled. Not a bad idea definitely something i would love to see but as for SE doing it... yeah not making fun of you just my faith in SE doing something so unique and in the direction we wish for is a little bit low. Interesting on making some of the old move into oGCDs I wonder how that would look any idea on if they would be the same animation or something more edgy?

Personally I wish for hard slash to be removed I'm not a fan of the animation, I just don't like the fact that it looks like I cant carry the sword. Yeah I know its suppose to be heavy but so is WARs axe and we swing that like its a bat.

Also will reprisal do damage or is it just a buff/debuff

So to get back on track what is the first thing you think we need to change to Drk?

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Ok I understand now more or less an addition system that is more passive till filled. Not a bad idea definitely something I would love to see but as for SE doing it... yeah not making fun of you just my faith in SE doing something so unique and in the direction we wish for is a little bit low.

nawh, I agree. there is no way that Squeenix would allow the dev team to do what players want. Squeenix only cares about money and would never allow the devs to do a thing that would not make them a schitt-ton of money. And since the idea is mine by all rights, Squeenix would have to have my permission to use my idea, and pay me, so that I can not sue them for copy-right infringement.

Interesting on making some of the old move into oGCDs I wonder how that would look any idea on if they would be the same animation or something more edgy?

same old animations. I simply remastered the old WeaponSkills, to bring them back. Low Slash and Reprisal Slash would have new animations, different from the Low Blow and Reprisal role actions, though. I was thinking about giving them new animations, to make them look like GreatSword swings and fit with the other WeaponSkills.

Also will reprisal do damage or is it just a buff/debuff

the new Reprisal Slash deals damage like all of the other WeaponSkills. The only difference is that Hard Slash, Heavy Slash, Spinning Slash, and Power Slash are just higher damage, while Low Slash, Reprisal Slash, Scourge Slash, and Delirium Slash are lower damage but all have additional effects.

So to get back on track what is the first thing you think we need to change to Drk?

Like, Seriously? I have a entire list... "TLDR", though.. give back to Dark Knight its own identity.
change Dark Knight into original 3.x Dark Knight remastered, combined with the bare few 5.x things that are worth keeping around.
Some of my basic thoughts on Dark Knight is to fix Blood Weapon, trash and redesign Living Dead, trash current Delirium for either a old Delirium version or some new thing, expand our GCD combo options, give Dark Knight one or two more more constant-weave oGCDs, to lessen the ugly-ness of Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow spam, do some thing about Living Shadow being just a mere glorified DoT, Dark Knight's BlackBlood gauge is just Warrior's Beast gauge; so change that as well, making it more interactive and more often used, BloodSpiller will never be Fell Cleave, so the devs need to stop with that, remove almost all "burst" from Dark Knight and return the Dark Knight to sustained DPS, undo "WAR clone" as much as possible, and of course...
give back to Dark Knight its own identity.