Dark Knight Megathread

[DRKoftheAzure]

I can't tell what you're going for here.

MP is already, for all intents and purposes, DRK's primary job gauge. It has the most generators and is spent from the earliest level of any gauge. As such...

• Why would it help to switch our MP-spender(-and-Darkside-generator) into a Darkside- or Blood-spender?
• Likewise, how does it help to swap the level at which we get our 3.33-charge, frequently-available AoE oGCD (Flood) with our single-charge 60s-CD AoE oGCD that interacts with no other manipulable resource (Abyssal Drain)?

If this is related at all to the suggested Edge change, again, I'm not seeing the benefit. Making Edge part of a Blood-spending combo just replaces what are currently two actions (our offensive ST MP spender and, separately, our ST Blood spender) with a single action that just takes 2 button-presses to complete.


Why would Enmity combos "have to come back," though?

What I'm trying to go for is more variety in the GCD rotation... especially in the early levels so that some players are less tempted to buy progression skip items from the mogstation but let's be real here, they're gonna do it anyway...

But Abyssal Drain would be a GCD that costs 3k MP, instead of 60 sec cooldown, when you first get it, and Flood of Darkness/Shadow would be the combo ender for that, nd yes I would make sure the AoE MP burst spender do just as much as the single target job gauge spender, and I have to say job gauge to clarify what resource should be used...

Job gauge is single target Combo that restores HP and MP, and MP Spender combo is AoE that is just as strong in single target as it is in single target(DPS neutral in single target DPS gain in AoE) that Restore HP and generates job gauge if this explaination is easier and better to understand...

Darkside needs its own re-work though...

As for the enmity combo question; people still don't how to turn on/off tank stance, don't know how Shirk works, and don't know how Provoke works... their are also fights that are designed with tank swaps that also auto-attack 2 players and still use the enmity list to determine where autos go for some reason... I am not joking...

[Shurrikhan]

What I'm trying to go for is more variety in the GCD rotation... especially in the early levels so that some players are less tempted to buy progression skip items from the mogstation but let's be real here, they're gonna do it anyway...

Stripping away oGCDs and reducing overall apm to introduce alternate GCD combos only gives you "more variety" in the GCD rotation for the brief moment before hitting [Button 2] after [Button 1] becomes automatic. And you end up with far less variety in button-presses / movement across the keyboard / joystick overall in turn.

But Abyssal Drain would be a GCD that costs 3k MP, instead of 60 sec cooldown, when you first get it, and Flood of Darkness/Shadow would be the combo ender for that, nd yes I would make sure the AoE MP burst spender do just as much as the single target job gauge spender, and I have to say job gauge to clarify what resource should be used...

You'd make Abyssal Drain deal as much damage per target as... Edge? Why then would Edge exist? (Or is the "single target job gauge spender" supposed to be... Bloodspiller? You need to specify which gauge. DRK technically has 3, MP, Blood, and Darkside.)

Job gauge is single target Combo that restores HP and MP, and MP Spender combo is AoE that is just as strong in single target as it is in single target (DPS neutral in single target DPS gain in AoE) that Restore HP and generates job gauge if this explanation is easier and better to understand.

That is much better, yes.

Still, though, you've completely removed all offensive oGCDs from the game until level 52 (Salted Earth), with only 3 in total by level 90 (it, Carve and Split, and Shadowbringer). On a job that has traditionally been the most packed with offensive oGCDs. This doesn't seem thematic, let alone cohesive.

Darkside needs its own re-work though...

Aye. I'd recommend you start there, then. Decide first whether you even want a spendable duration gauge a la HW Blood of the Dragon (which is the only way you're going to be able to leverage that gauge as more than just an oGCD-procced Surging Tempest), whether you want to replace that gauge with something completely different, or it's better off scrapped entirely.

Personally, the strongest choice seems to be to start from the assumption that Darkside is gone. In that way you avoid convolution and focus on getting the rest of the kit up to par. In the course of that, if you find something that'd make the rest click, the create it in order to advantage the rest of the kit, but it makes little sense to involve Darkside just because Dark-Tempest / Surging-Dark exists at present. The debris of half-assed systems doesn't require replacement. The space, instead, just needs to look a whole better, and that's often easier without the garbage still scattered about.

As for the enmity combo question; people still don't how to turn on/off tank stance, don't know how Shirk works, and don't know how Provoke works... their are also fights that are designed with tank swaps that also auto-attack 2 players and still use the enmity list to determine where autos go for some reason... I am not joking...

That's not a warrant for the return of enmity combos though. If anything, it would assume that that effort would be pointless and could actually detract those first three brain cells' of output from occasionally hitting their tank stance button.

[RyuDragnier]

I'd prefer if they swapped Flood and Abyssal Drain (while buffing AD's heal). AD becomes the MP spender and Flood gets attached to CnS. Because then you could attach Shadowbringer to a buff given by Delirium and make it so Flood transforms into Shadowbringer when that buff is up. Would help a bit on our sustain and make Shadowbringer feel more like a capstone skill instead of a "fire and forget" skill.

[Oizen]

I'd prefer if they swapped Flood and Abyssal Drain (while buffing AD's heal). AD becomes the MP spender and Flood gets attached to CnS. Because then you could attach Shadowbringer to a buff given by Delirium and make it so Flood transforms into Shadowbringer when that buff is up. Would help a bit on our sustain and make Shadowbringer feel more like a capstone skill instead of a "fire and forget" skill.

Wouldn't this make the comparisons between Delirium and Inner Release even worse though?

I'd love for Abyssal Drain to be more available, especially considering how lack luster it is as a 200 heal potency with 60s cd, but I'm not sure thats how I'd go about it.

[RyuDragnier]

Wouldn't this make the comparisons between Delirium and Inner Release even worse though?

I'd love for Abyssal Drain to be more available, especially considering how lack luster it is as a 200 heal potency with 60s cd, but I'm not sure thats how I'd go about it.

The problem is right now Shadowbringer is a glorified DPS oGCD with nothing to it. It's not tied to anything in the kit, and doesn't feel like a capstone. If we were going all in on what I'd want (which is more complex than just Delirium), it would take 30s off of Darkside duration and require 50 Blood but only usable once every 2 minutes. Bloodspiller and Quietus would remove 15s from Darkside, TBN would be removed from the MP cost (and it would only heal whether or not the shield is broken), and Dark Arts would return as a 3K MP move that boosts your next GCD attack. I'd add actual complexity to DRK to where you have to use your Blood moves for damage, but also have to keep using Edge from time to time to keep Darkside going so you CAN use Blood moves. This makes it so you can't just spam DA, and have to actually manage your MP. You know, the one thing DRK is missing, actual resource management.

[Post]

Hi. I like DRK. I've played since early ARR, and I felt DRK felt most unique in HW, not that its ShB and EW incarnations are terrible. When I play it lately, it's usually because it feels like the tank most sensibly designed to fit into the almighty 2 minute meta.

I have some random thoughts, sorry if they've been discussed already in this thread.

The Blackest Night
Ever since StB and the removal of Dark Dance/cost increase of Dark Passenger, it's been central to DRK's mitigation. It takes some practice for new players to use well because you've had 40 levels of not having it. Its level requirement should probably be dropped from 70 to like... 35. This would work well considering Flood/Edge of Darkness are also introduced at that level range. I also think that by 82, TBN should at least refund partial MP if it's not consumed entirely when the buff ends based off of how much % of the shield was damaged (like a Blood Price you could cast on anyone) as other tanks have no cost on their short-term mits.

Living Dead can finally keep you alive for more than 10 seconds without a healer. I think the HP generation should continue while you're in Undead Rebirth, though. Compare with WAR and GNB's ultimates, they can choose WHEN to restore their HP freely, and DRK is still at a disadvantage despite having a longer cooldown than WAR in any situation where you'll be taking multiple overkills. Especially for dungeons, your healer can only really benefit from the mitigation if you choose to not deal any aoe damage while under Walking Dead, as just hitting 3+ targets'll easily fill your hp early.

In EW, they finally fixed ground-targeted actions to be incredibly breezy to use. If you were unaware, in 6.0 they added:
-An option to prevent the cursor from moving beyond ground targeting range has been added.
-An option to execute actions by pressing the action button a second time has been added.
Salted Earth is now often a pain in the butt to use, cuz now I have to manually run over somewhere and drop it. Big bodied enemies pushing smaller ones away make this tougher, or the bosses that randomly jump to the center of the room.
I wish they'd revert it, or better yet, cuz I'm sure some of you still dislike em, allow the player to use either a ground targeted or not version, their choice. This could be done via a UI option or just having two separate spells with the same cooldown.

DRK had some pretty cool Weaponskill animation variety up until ShB, but they culled its rotation of 3 of them, 4 if you count Scourge. It'd just be for fluff, but why don't they semi-randomize animations? Swap Syphon Strike's animation for Spinning Slash, or Souleater for Power Slash/(old) Delirium? The only potential negative for this is when a boss jumps away after you execute an action and the difference in time between animations deal damage means one wouldn't deal its damage.

[ItsUrBoi]

Currently Delirium is too similar to Inner Release, and Bloodspiller to Fell Cleave.

1. What if DRK got a fallow up combo action after using a Bloodspiller in the form of a new GCD? So whenever you'd use Bloodspiller you'd have a combo GCD to use it into. Same with Quietus.

-> Bloodspiller changes to Bloodspiller II upon execution.
-> Quietus changes to Quietus II upon execution.
A new animation would be pretty cool for both. None of the fallow ups should cost blood gauge, so you can use them outside of Delirium too if you wish.

2. Carve and Spit , Abyssal Drain cooldowns lowered to 20 seconds. Both would benefit greatly if used more often, especially the latter in AoE situations.

3. Put Dark Mind to upgrade into Oblation at higher levels and save 1 hotbar slot.

4. Bring back some form of sustain or resource generation in the form of old Sole Survivor or Blood Price. A great idea I've seen is for Blood price to store up damage ,and when the effect expires or upon a 2nd activation, you are healed for a % of damage taken.

5. Move Dark Missionary to level 70. UCOB and UWU are absolutely horrible without it.

6. For new traits, Esteem can do the new combo GCD off of Bloodspiller and Salted Earth's AoE gives you a 15 second heal over time that lingers on you even if you leave the effected area. Salt and Darkness heals you for 10% of damage dealt + 500 potency.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Currently Delirium is too similar to Inner Release, and Bloodspiller to Fell Cleave.

1. What if DRK got a fallow up combo action after using a Bloodspiller in the form of a new GCD? So whenever you'd use Bloodspiller you'd have a combo GCD to use it into. Same with Quietus.

-> Bloodspiller changes to Bloodspiller II upon execution.
-> Quietus changes to Quietus II upon execution.
A new animation would be pretty cool for both. None of the fallow ups should cost blood gauge, so you can use them outside of Delirium too if you wish.

2. Carve and Spit , Abyssal Drain cooldowns lowered to 20 seconds. Both would benefit greatly if used more often, especially the latter in AoE situations.

3. Put Dark Mind to upgrade into Oblation at higher levels and save 1 hotbar slot.

4. Bring back some form of sustain or resource generation in the form of old Sole Survivor or Blood Price. A great idea I've seen is for Blood price to store up damage ,and when the effect expires or upon a 2nd activation, you are healed for a % of damage taken.

5. Move Dark Missionary to level 70. UCOB and UWU are absolutely horrible without it.

6. For new traits, Esteem can do the new combo GCD off of Bloodspiller and Salted Earth's AoE gives you a 15 second heal over time that lingers on you even if you leave the effected area. Salt and Darkness heals you for 10% of damage dealt + 500 potency.

I didn't forget about you when I woke up, I just needed more time to wake up... and I had to edit my previous post from last night because of how tired was then, which if you haven't seen it yet, I don't blame you because of how unhinged AND tired I was when I first typed that out...


Regarding Dark Missionary, I say have Dark Mind upgrade into Dark Missionary instead at level 50-60 because I can't think of a good level for that upgrade... would also make Dark Missionary more frequently available as a result... everything else is similar to what I was suggesting in my previous post when I went unhinged...


I try to think about what certain things would do to game balance, but then you have certain people who just do not get the first time, and only to start complaining about how overpowered these changes would be should I ever take it the the most logical extreme conclusion in the discussion, AFTER I have thrown game balance out the window...


So I don't know what those people want, so if they start questioning my suggestions after the third time, I'm just going to tell them that those suggestions aren't for them then... because I am not in the mood to explain to them after the 3rd time...


Because when someone makes a gameplay suggestion, always assume that there is a balancing reason behind it...

[Post]

I started typing about how DRK doesn't need Dark Missionary at 70 because it didn't have it then, and the first group brought a DRK, and then I realized that Convalesence, Awareness, Whatever they turned Dark Dance into, Palisade and Eye for an Eye are all gone. I guess Shadow Wall is a shorter cooldown, now, and Feint/Addle have some crossover. Anyways, the jobs are unbalanced at lower levels, but what else is new. When DRK landed, it was the only tank and nigh on the only job that could AoE indefinitely in dungeons below level 40 because of TP limiting PhysRanged and WAR. It was considerably faster than the other tanks, and was really the first time big pulling was easy and efficient to do sub like... Darkhold, cuz that's when all jobs had some AoE finally.

It'd be nice if it got some more distance from WAR with its dps rotation, though, because with ShB's changes to mitigation among all tanks being wholly separated from their resources (other than TBN, but that's neutral if properly used), that's all they have to functionally differentiate themselves nowadays. I don't really care about visuals too much, so they don't really feel different just from looks alone.

I suppose this is more of a general tank statement than a DRK specific one, but the effective removal of enmity as a mechanic from the game wasn't replaced with anything. Parties don't need to manage enmity, tanks hardly even need to position bosses anymore... almost all tanks have to go on for gameplay is their rotation, outside of moonlighting as a healer by mitigating/healing a player that might otherwise die. Seeing as the last two aren't exactly new (PLD has been able to do the latter since 2.0), or even distinct from each other anymore, it'd be nice to maybe see some variety return with other aspects of the job design if they can't make each tank's damage rotation feel distinct. This is harder to do with the advent of our almighty 2 min meta, may PLD's bizarre legacy rotation forever rest in peace.

[Oizen]

I really don't get how you're going to upgrade a 20% Self Magic mit into a teamwide 10% Magic Mit.

All it would do is leave DRK without an extra mitigation, merging it into Oblation makes more sense, but then having a skill that does 20% Magic Mit and 10% All mitigation is pretty confusing, unlsess we're looking to nerf that too.