Dark Knight Megathread

[shao32]

For a little over a third one's maximum MP, since the base spell and DA each cost considerable mana. The healing, moreover, was simply its damage, not a higher and separate per-hit value.

Yes, that should come back, but DA-AD godhood would never have been truly a thing (and very temporary even then) without the likes of Blood Price and/or Blood Weapon + Quietus.

We could not manage the self-healing of even Bloodbath in AoE pulls until Stormblood (the same expansion that gave us TBN, which people have since somehow chosen to blame for our lack of sustain since despite its coexisting with our most intricate and powerful period of self-healing)..

It was pretty manageable in HW with Blood price i remember the Baelsar's wall mega pulls become really rewarding to manage due to the skill but is true SB Blood weapon + Quietus with others skills ends becoming the ultimate sinergy for keep the sustain in a very rewarding and fullfilling way, so sad even if they make AD has more uses than 1 per pull it would never be as good and fun as SB aoe gameplay of the job.

[Shurrikhan]

It was pretty manageable in HW with Blood price i remember the Baelsar's wall mega pulls become really rewarding to manage due to the skill but is true SB Blood weapon + Quietus with others skills ends becoming the ultimate sinergy for keep the sustain in a very rewarding and fullfilling way, so sad even if they make AD has more uses than 1 per pull it would never be as good and fun as SB aoe gameplay of the job.

Blood Price was all of... 10 seconds of 150 MP per hit, creating anti-synergy with DA-DD (not necessarily a terrible thing, but certainly a complicator given that DA-DD could most average out the spikiness of its RNG-based mitigation... in those same large pulls), no? At the time, DA-AD ate more than a third of our MP. To get three rapid-fire uses of it, you'd need Blood Price and to use DA for nothing else.

But yeah, I likewise miss StB AoE gameplay quite a bit.

[xAFROx]

I'ts even more funny when Abyssal drain wasn't tied to CaS when they allow streamers like Mr.happy test the new changes, they turn it like that in the last min for no aparent reason, considering how the skill is even a loss for less than 4 targets and the sustain problems in dungeons are mostly due how much they have degrated AD (originally a spameable GCD spell + Dark arts offering a controlable huge amount of self healing limited by your MP aviable) since SHB just say how much DRK is rushed and no actual design efforts has been made after his questionable rework.

God I miss old Abyssal Drain

[ItsUrBoi]

Having played DRK for several expansions, I'd like to point out the issues that I feel are the most noticeable with the job.

-> Oblation doesn't do very much. It only gives 10% damage reduction, and it has a 60 second cooldown. Dark Mind has the same cooldown, but gives 20% magic damage reduction. Why are these 2 abilities different when their goal is the same? They both act as relatively decent damage reduction on a short cooldown. Why are these 2 separate buttons? I get it that TBN and Oblation have to be a separate cooldown because then you will find breaking TBN harder, but you could just remove Dark Mind and make Oblation better.

For example: Remove Dark Mind, buff Oblation to a 15% damage reduction with a regeneration effect added, similar to PLD's Holly Sheltron. This ensures that DRK has a 3rd damage reduction spell, which you can use in dungeons to mitigate multiple hits from trash mobs, and you can still combine it with TBN if needed. Also gives DRK some much needed sustained healing.

-> The current Delirium, Darkside gauge and Bloodgauge are copy pasted from Warrior.
Using Edge/Flood of Shadow to grant Darkside doesn't lead anywhere other than keeping up a buff, which let's be honest if you aren't sleeping while playing, you will never drop. Darkside doesn't lead anywhere, it doesn't interact with anything, the same could be said about the bloodgauge. Its literally a copy pasted beast gauge. Delirium is a copy pasted Inner Release.
Why are these abilities not something unique to DRK?

I think the solution should be to not have 2 different gauges. Just have one gauge that is unique to the job. An example would be to keep the current Darkside gauge, since it already has a special UI indicator, ( purple armor ) and allow the player to accumulate a lot of Darkside - at a certain point unleashing a combination of strong attacks to drain said duration, then to repeat. Delirium could be like another combo, or a buff you get which allows you to augment certain attacks ( like old Dark Arts ).
But please, give this job something unique, besides the aesthetic.

->Currently, Living Shadow is just a DoT that you use once and forget about it. You also have got nothing to do in between your 1 minute burst windows. Adding in an actual DoT, or a second combo to make things more interesting would be amazing!
Changing Living Shadow so that it interacts with the player, or upgrades their actions, or anything where you are actually doing something while Living Shadow is up would be cool.

[baklava151]

Shooting out my idea for 7.0 DRK, mainly from things I cobbled together from this thread

• Shadowbringer costs some amount of Darkside rather than being 2 charges of a 60 sec CD
  
  Just in DRK's opener you generate 2 minutes and 30 seconds of Darkside (at worse 2 mins if you use TBN and it doesn't break). That's such a huge excess that as long as you're using Edge of Shadow regularly you can ignore the Darkside timer entirely. Having Shadowbringer cost some amount of Darkside would make it something to actually pay attention to. A 30 seconds cost would probably be the safest, 20 could be too spammy and I even considered 40 but that could be too punishing

• Blood Weapon CD lowered to 40 seconds, CnS lowered to 30 seconds
  
  Breaks up downtime some by having these come up more often, also means you're not too far away from MP recovery if you get overzealous with your Shadowbringer usage

• The big Delirium change
  
  Every time you use Edge/Flood of Shadow, you gain a stack of Edgy Lightning. For every stack your GCD gets lowered a certain amount. Once you gain four stacks, you can spend them all to use Delirium, which lowers your GCD to 1.5 seconds for X amount of time. In addition you get a 5% damage buff and gain 10 Blood for every weaponskill landed.
  
  Pros:
  Delirium now has some build-up to it, I don't like that right now you just wait 60 seconds and suddenly your character can do their strongest attack 3 times in a row. Instead with this you can feel your DRK building and accelerating until you hit full stacks and go nuts
  
  No longer an IR copy and leans into DRK using speed rather than hard hits to deal damage
  
  Cons:
  If you're in the middle of your Delirium burst and need to mitigate, it'll be a pain to weave all your mits in, especially for those with high ping. The safer option might be to have Delirium still lower your GCD but not all the way to 1.5 seconds to give some leeway. At the very least you can be flexible with when you use Delirium, so its possible to sidestep the issue with some fight knowledge.
  
  The Delirium burst needs to be strong enough to be worth spending your stacks of Edgy Lightning for, otherwise it'd be optimal to just sit on full stacks and never use them. The Blood gain and 5% damage boost are there to discourage that but I don't know if that'd be enough
  
  Introduces a fourth resource on top of Blood, MP and Darkside, which is probably too much to juggle
  
  I'm pretty back and forth on whether the pros outweigh cons here but there might be some adjusting that could be done to shore up the idea.

• Miscellaneous
  
  Abyssal Drain made a GCD that costs mana
  Salted Earth given a DR effect for anyone standing in it, Salt and Darkness deleted, maybe CD lowered to 60 secs
  idk Scourge

[ItsUrBoi]

I think that addressing the issues such as Delirium being an Inner Release copy, not having anything to do while not bursting and the general lack of interaction between your 2 gauges could be solved by making one flow into the other or by just removing the blood gauge ( since it is somewhat a WAR's thing ) and making the Darkside gauge slightly more complex.

For example:
->Darkside:
Using Edge/Flood gives Darkside, consuming MP. Using certain actions costs Darkside.
->Blackblood:
Using certain actions with blackblood adds HP recovery effects to them. Bloodspiller/Quietus grant a small heal for each enemy hit, Edge/Flood grant a regen per enemy hit. You gain blackblood whenever you deal damage to enemies with any action, some actions grating a bit more ( ex: Souleater ). The point is to allow Blackblood to enhance actions with an added healing effect to them. The souleater combo could generate as little as 10 gauge, with blood weapon granting 5 blood per action. Enhancing any actions would cost like 10 or 15 blood. The cap could be 100.
->Delirium:
Grants the user 5 stacks of Delirium granting 15% skill speed and a separate buff granting 15% damage reduction. The reason for the 15% damage reduction is because of the added skill speed, double weaving may prove difficult so you have some defense given by default.
->Abyssal Drain can be spammed and costs Bloodgauge to execute, dealing the same amount of damage and healing as it does now ( perhaps with slightly more radius, so it hits all the mobs )
->Certain actions cost Darkside. Living Shadow costs darkside now, allowing for even earlier summoning for raid buffs. Bloodspiller / quietus cost Darkside too.
->During downtime between your burst windows, you have another combo ending with Scourge instead of Souleater, which puts a DoT on target you have to keep up.

This makes the Bloodgauge unique and not a WAR copy, just enhancing actions to heal you, solving your sustain problems for single target and multi target ( Abyssal Drain )
Your Darkside gauge allows you to use stronger attacks, consuming it, but you got to keep it >0 to keep the 10% damage buff.
Your rotation does not effectively change.

[baklava151]

->Blackblood:
Using certain actions with blackblood adds HP recovery effects to them. Bloodspiller/Quietus grant a small heal for each enemy hit, Edge/Flood grant a regen per enemy hit. You gain blackblood whenever you deal damage to enemies with any action, some actions grating a bit more ( ex: Souleater ). The point is to allow Blackblood to enhance actions with an added healing effect to them. The souleater combo could generate as little as 10 gauge, with blood weapon granting 5 blood per action. Enhancing any actions would cost like 10 or 15 blood. The cap could be 100.

That would also be a cool way to go, making current Blood abilities cost Darkside instead and using Blood for healing. My only issue would be that if Abyssal Drain also costs Blood, people would prefer spamming that for extra damage on single target rather than adding an extra heal onto Bloodspiller/Quietus. Plus if Quietus is already give you heals during mob pulls, I don't think you'd necessarily need to be able to spam AD, in which case I think keeping it on a 60 second CD would be fine.

->Delirium:
Grants the user 5 stacks of Delirium granting 15% skill speed and a separate buff granting 15% damage reduction. The reason for the 15% damage reduction is because of the added skill speed, double weaving may prove difficult so you have some defense given by default.

The damage reduction would actually be a great idea for that.

[Shurrikhan]

->Delirium:
Grants the user 5 stacks of Delirium granting 15% skill speed and a separate buff granting 15% damage reduction. The reason for the 15% damage reduction is because of the added skill speed, double weaving may prove difficult so you have some defense given by default.

1. Why 5? That's a LOT of Bloodspiller spam, which would in turn require each hit to grant less effect in balance. You're increasing its attacks granted by two-thirds. Where is that otherwise extra damage coming from?
   
   
2. Does this Skill Speed buff only affect the Blood spender GCDs, or by having this affect all GCDs, are we now forced to blow 5 Bloodspillers immediately as not to waste stacks on combo skills instead of free BS casts?
   
   
3. That underlined bit, too, I have to admit... feels really odd. If anything, why not just tie some minor degree of damage absorption (shield potency per hit or based on damage) to those Delirium attacks, so you aren't so obviously trying to compensate for a concern that will only affect a portion of players? Additionally, if you just stick a mere 3 GCDs, then this 'problem' affects the DRK for no more than 6.4 consecutive seconds, which can be played around even with TBN.

->Blackblood:
Using certain actions with blackblood adds HP recovery effects to them. Bloodspiller/Quietus grant a small heal for each enemy hit, Edge/Flood grant a regen per enemy hit.

? Edge/Flood aren't Blackblood skills, though. ?

You gain blackblood whenever you deal damage to enemies with any action, some actions grating a bit more ( ex: Souleater ). The point is to allow Blackblood to enhance actions with an added healing effect to them. The souleater combo could generate as little as 10 gauge, with blood weapon granting 5 blood per action. Enhancing any actions would cost like 10 or 15 blood. The cap could be 100.

The minimum value gauges grant outside of RDM is 5. If the Souleater combo grants 10, then there must be at least one action therein that grants none.

I still don't get how this "enhancement" is supposed to work. What's the activator, if not the Blackblood skills (Quietus and Bloodspiller) themselves, or just Abyssal Drain (mentioned later)? Else, is this bonus passive?

->Abyssal Drain can be spammed and costs Bloodgauge to execute, dealing the same amount of damage and healing as it does now ( perhaps with slightly more radius, so it hits all the mobs )

Doesn't that just turn Blood gauge from an A|B spender (admittedly lackluster)... into Abyssal Gauge charges (which also means that you start combat with no access to Abyssal and cannot recharge it over downtime, both of which would hurt DRK sustain in dungeons)?

This makes the Bloodgauge unique and not a WAR copy, just enhancing actions to heal you, solving your sustain problems for single target and multi target ( Abyssal Drain )

To a degree, possibly, but turning a 'free' sustain CD (outside of a shared timer) into something you need uptime to slowly (10 per souleater combo) build towards is also a sustain nerf in turn. If there's a passive benefit to Blackblood, moreover, you'd never want to spend all of it, or --if it's proportionate to one's gauge-- spend it at all if that passive benefit outweighs AD's measly 200cp per target.



You may want to review the thresholds by which to incentivize this or that use of the kit and make sure it's neither bogging itself down nor simply turning a more intuitive gauge into a less intuitive one (essentially Darkside just being Blood, but more raid-sync-limiting and punishing of downtime) with another being spent just to show charges of a single skill (a la Shinten gauge, but for AD).

[ItsUrBoi]

1. Why 5? That's a LOT of Bloodspiller spam, which would in turn require each hit to grant less effect in balance. You're increasing its attacks granted by two-thirds. Where is that otherwise extra damage coming from?
   
   
2. Does this Skill Speed buff only affect the Blood spender GCDs, or by having this affect all GCDs, are we now forced to blow 5 Bloodspillers immediately as not to waste stacks on combo skills instead of free BS casts?
   
   
3. That underlined bit, too, I have to admit... feels really odd. If anything, why not just tie some minor degree of damage absorption (shield potency per hit or based on damage) to those Delirium attacks, so you aren't so obviously trying to compensate for a concern that will only affect a portion of players? Additionally, if you just stick a mere 3 GCDs, then this 'problem' affects the DRK for no more than 6.4 consecutive seconds, which can be played around even with TBN.

The idea for the blackblood gauge I listed above is that whenever you use either your single target combo or your AoE combo you gain blackblood. Using Blood weapon also grants a bit of blood. This blood enhances certain actions, allowing them to restore HP.

The Delirium change does not affect a small portion of players. I think its important to look at all aspects of a job when wanting for a certain ability to be original. Adding skill speed to a tank job that may have to double weave defenses is tricky and can be very problematic precisely because of this.

I think we are here not to be game designers since it is not our job and we lack the experience and knowledge, instead we can give creative ideas and feedback on the current state of things - listing potencies, intricate functionalities and ability names is kind of counter productive.

The current DRK suffers from several issues:
->Delirium is a Inner release copy, along with the blood gauge.
->Lack of anything to do in between burst windows.
->Dark Mind and Oblation share the same role now, neither being specifically good. Stick to one and make it good. ( Oblation )
->Lack of interactions between your 2 gauges ( Dark Side and Blackblood ) and 1 resource ( MP ). A good example of an interactive job would be warrior. Despite its simplicity, well maximized gauge turns into fell cleaves which reduce the CD of infuriates which grant you more gauge and stronger attacks. That is not the case here.

The real issue I think is not lack of ideas, but lack of an implementation in which this job is still a tank job.

While the above suggestion is my personal creation, I believe the ideal flow would be something like this:
Consume MP on Edge/Flood of Shadow -> Obtain Darkside -> Use actions that consumes Darkside but gives Blackblood -> Consume Blackblood for damage and sustain.

At this point I feel like making the Bloodgauge more of a secondary gauge which just adds to your survivability by adding healing to certain actions, and you don't really have to pay too much attention to it ( similar to PLD's Oath Gauge ), while making the Darkside gauge slightly more complex would solve many of these issues. Especially the healing related ones.

[Shurrikhan]

This blood enhances certain actions, allowing them to restore HP.

Okay, but... passively? Passively with proportionate bonus? Passive with bonus if over a threshold? Else, what are the means to actively consume it?

->Delirium is a Inner release copy, along with the blood gauge.

It's perhaps overly similar, yes, but note that it is also far more flexible. Adding little thematic differences to it like length or speed that would incidentally remove its unique affordances over Inner Release would do at least as much harm as good.

->Lack of anything to do in between burst windows.

Agreed.

A good example of an interactive job would be warrior. Despite its simplicity, well maximized gauge turns into fell cleaves which reduce the CD of infuriates which grant you more gauge and stronger attacks. That is not the case here.

Ehhhh. Now that Warrior can't overcap on Infuriate charge due to that skill having two charges, that hardly seems integral. The only "stronger attacks" it offers is those spenders themselves, so the builder in the spender and the spender is the builder.

You simply happen to get more gauge-value in the process of using gauge-value, effectively just receiving minor refunds. Infuriate is worth 50 gauge per 60s, so 5s of it is worth about 4.2 gauge. Effectively, each FC costs only ~45.8 gauge, and an IR FC costs -4.2 gauge.

There's not really any resource trade happening there, nor any interplay around bottlenecks (in trying to avoid overcapping the gauge generation through skillful use of Onslaught given one's GCDs of uptime, accounting ofc for SkS tiers, between IRs).