Dark Knight Megathread

[bundythenoob]

SO SORRY!! I misread the quote chains! D: will be sure to get more coffee before lurking.
you guys do bring up some cool discussion points though, so thanks for the replies!

IDENTITY. Not the gameplay stuff. Because then we open a whole new can of worms.

Visual presentation and mechanical gameplay of the job fantasies felt intrinsically tied in the past than they do now. Visually, WAR swings a giant axe (gameplaywise, WAR had lower APM), while DRK uses rune magic to allow us to wield the our greatsword with ease (DRK had higher APM), with PLD being the middle ground for both.
FFXIV's rendition of DRK uses runes and sigils to empower itself, which translated gameplay-wise into skills like Blood Weapon, Blood Price, TBN, and Dark Arts.
The visual effect of Dark Arts was something that made DRK stand out from the other tanks AND created a separate gameplay style for itself. Dark Arts gave us some good old style-points along with rewarding good mana usage!

I do believe that being an "anti-magic" tank would just NOT work within the current XIV encounter design, but if DA was re-integrated (maybe it could do something like, change your next Souleater to Power Slash) , then you at least get a return to older visual identity AND mechanical gameplay, rather than the current iteration.

We'd therefore going to need a gamewide preamble to DRK-specific changes if we wanted to reuse those old designs, at which point we wouldn't be saving time anyway by looking at the past anywhere near verbatim.

I think by re-integrating Dark Arts, the devs could solve some of the issues you brought up while further developing DRKs visual identity and gameplay kit for future expacs.

increased GCD APM via Blood Weapon would help the job look visually distinct AND separate itself mechanically, since we would be returning to the consistent damage type gameplay of HW/StB, rather than the current 2 min burst with giga downtime style. This would also allow WAR to regain its own visual identity of having that 2 min berserker window, which I always thought was a cool thing that separated us.

exchanging <strike now for X potency of damage> with <amp next GCD by X potency of damage> might seem redundant on paper, but DA-empowered abilities open the door to future skill design and even the return of old animations. having TBN give free Blood skills again wouldn't be a loss if those skills could be empowered by DA to leave bleeds/debuffs to offset the lost potencies

if we allow DA to give our personal cooldowns a "Dark Price" effect, we could use the extra MP/blood to offset the DPS loss from mitigating (or even let it be a DPS GAIN with more adds like it used to be), while also opening up future defencive cooldown design. This would let us feel like we're sacrificing our HP for more power once again

Allowing Darkside to return as a way to sacrifice HP for raid buffs during downtime sounds amazing. Bring back Sole Survivor and other sigil-based effects for this sort of thing!




Re-integrating Dark Arts might seem like a challenge, but the devs were already more than halfway there, at least from my experience. I mean, SGE's Eukrasia exists, so why can't Dark Arts exist too?

[Carighan]

Oh would you want it that way, too? Like, with the extra half-GCD, so a DA Soul Eater takes 3,5s instead of 2,5s total?

Because that would lead to a unique identity, if Dark Knight were "the Eukrasia Tank". If our attacks were insanely slow much of the time, but in return have really strong effects to make up for the slow GCD when adding DA in. That'd be neat. That's more than a very marginally changed Edge of Darkness then, which the previous idea for DA seems to be, it's just a different way to use an oGCD for 140 potency, and a slightly more RSI-inducing one at that. But a genuinely slower GCD adds weight to the 2H fighting style and to our magical abilities. Could do all kinds of funky stuff with it, make it affect both GCD attacks and defensive CDs.

[Voryn]

Anything that at least makes the filler rotation more interesting in would be really welcome. In the type of raids we often get (single target and lots of uptime for Extreme and Savage) it’s just 1 2 3 but pressing Bloodspiller to not overcap on blood gauge, and Edge of Shadow twice over the course of two minutes to keep Darkside up. And then we either break a TBN to hold a charge of Dark Arts for the even minute burst window, or just press Edge once more to not waste mana. Warrior and Paladin both have more interesting filler than this despite being the “easy” tanks.

The discussion about Dark Arts (as a buff to GCDs) sounds a lot like the current situation where during the 2 minute burst window we press Edge of Shadow between most of the GCD. If it involves a potency buff it’ll probably play out this same way. Making the next GCD slower seems to me like it’ll be less fun to execute, but I say that as someone who personally enjoys pressing a lot of buttons during a burst window and also hasn’t been able to attention to animations when we’re double weaving everything.

Maybe it would be fun if we could enhance our next GCD in a way that makes it stronger or have extra effects, keeps the speed the same, but also gives them cast times or animation locks that affect our ability to move while using them. It could be another way to make the attack feel like a big and strong hit even if you’re not watching the numbers pop up on the screen, and it may be fun to figure out how many of these you can insert into your burst window when you also have to move around to resolve mechanics. It would affect our ability to weave extra mitigation for tankbusters but that can be handled by pressing longer lasting mitigations beforehand.

[bundythenoob]

I wasn't exactly saying that I would want this "new Dark Arts" to mimic SGE's GCD-based Eukrasia, but you guys do bring up a good point about how it would make DRK mechanically different.

what I WOULD like to see is:
a return to the older style of DA-empowered abilities (actually change the attack and its effects, not just potency buffs)
more mana-blood interplay like in the past (give the "Salted" skills some much needed blood generation! StB Delirium was a cool concept too)
more Sole Survivor/Shadow Vigil sigil-type effects for our defencive party buffs (delayed-activation magic could open many possibilities for both ability design and smart cooldown usage)

things like that could bring some visual flair and help separate us mechanically from the other tanks.

cool ideas though!

[Oizen]

Oh would you want it that way, too? Like, with the extra half-GCD, so a DA Soul Eater takes 3,5s instead of 2,5s total?

Because that would lead to a unique identity, if Dark Knight were "the Eukrasia Tank". If our attacks were insanely slow much of the time, but in return have really strong effects to make up for the slow GCD when adding DA in. That'd be neat. That's more than a very marginally changed Edge of Darkness then, which the previous idea for DA seems to be, it's just a different way to use an oGCD for 140 potency, and a slightly more RSI-inducing one at that. But a genuinely slower GCD adds weight to the 2H fighting style and to our magical abilities. Could do all kinds of funky stuff with it, make it affect both GCD attacks and defensive CDs.

I've always wondered why they didn't play with unique attack speeds more, and this goes for more than just DRK. They do it for melee, why not do it for Tanks and Phys Range too?
It would also open up the possibility of returning effects like the Haste on Blood Weapon (or delirium now I guess).

It would also open up the possibility of making things like allowing a job to Triple Weave without clipping.

[ThorinG]

I wholeheartedly agree with returning DA to DRK rotation, and making it change attacks to different ones will give us more variety than the current (123 until the next burst), they can use any of the old cool attacks from HW or SB which were criminally removed from DRK.

I think also another issue is that most of DRK abilities are always on CD outside of burst and we can only use them in Burst to play optimally, it will be interesting if these attacks change from (60/120 sec. CD) into (require X resource which we build up during rotation), here are some examples:

1. Living Shadow: requires 2 stacks of (Shadow Hearts), and we are granted 1 stack with each activation of (Delirium), and for allignment with the 2 min bursts we are given 1 stack at the start of the encounter
Note: I think it will fit also visually, as in (Delirium) we conjure an orb of Darkness that we put in ourselves, and on (Living Shadow) we take some of the Dark energy from us.

2. ShadowBringer: requires 2 Stacks of (Dark matter), and we are granted 1 stack with each execution of (Blood spiller, Quietus, each of the Delirium combo actions).
Note: we'll have more usability over all.

Other suggestions:

. Separate (Carve and Spit) from (Abyssal Drain), make it on a 30 Sec CD that only restores MP.

And for the single target healing:

. Re-introduce (Sole survivor), on a 60 Sec. CD that is shared with (Abyssal Drain), and make it heal from single traget with a heal potency of 500.

[Carighan]

Separate (Carve and Spit) from (Abyssal Drain), make it on a 30 Sec CD that only restores MP.

I mean if we want DA re-introduced, shouldn't they just be one button, with DA activating the other one?

Like, Abyssal Drain is standard: AoE, damage, HP drain a lot from the primary target, then less for each extra target hit.

Use it with DA, single target, three individual attacks that together deal as much damage as Abyssal, each refunds a big chunk of mana so you end up with significantly more than just getting DA refunded.

[mallleable]

I feel like PVP DRK brought back Dark Arts kind of or at least the concept of oGCD global buffs/changes a GCD. In PVP, whenever you use Shadowbringer, it turns your Souleater combo GCDs into, and cycles through the Torcleaver combo. So what could be done is like whenever you use Edge/Flood of Shadow, it does the same thing, and grants you access to a Torcleaver GCD. And then when you use Shadowbringer, you get access to all three steps at once. Delirium could also be changed to give you three free Edge/Flood of Shadows.

[Shurrikhan]

I wholeheartedly agree with returning DA to DRK rotation, and making it change attacks to different ones will give us more variety than the current (123 until the next burst), they can use any of the old cool attacks from HW or SB which were criminally removed from DRK.

I think also another issue is that most of DRK abilities are always on CD outside of burst and we can only use them in Burst to play optimally, it will be interesting if these attacks change from (60/120 sec. CD) into (require X resource which we build up during rotation), here are some examples:

The only differences between (A) an ability as a CD and (B) building resources to allow for that ability...

1. The latter starts on cooldown, meaning its ppm gets increasingly hard to balance the shorter the fight is, and
2. If the means of generation depends on uptime, any downtime can desync the CD.

There is no reason to arbitrarily make it so that DRK uniquely can't have access to its full kit, unlike any/every other tank and 95+% of every DPS kit, just to pretend that a given frequency won't be burst-synced just because that frequency is no longer stated in the tooltip.

If you want additional freedom in timing, you give a second charge and have it cool a greater number of times per 120 seconds (short of seeing a full recharge within a burst period -- e.g., 15 seconds).

If you give 2 charges on a 40s recharge, you get 39.9 seconds of flexibility per 120s between 40 and 80 seconds of its most recent in-burst use.
On a 30s recharge, 59.9 seconds between 30 and 90.
Etc., etc.

To be more precise:

1. Living Shadow: requires 2 stacks of (Shadow Hearts), and we are granted 1 stack with each activation of (Delirium), and for allignment with the 2 min bursts we are given 1 stack at the start of the encounter
Note: I think it will fit also visually, as in (Delirium) we conjure an orb of Darkness that we put in ourselves, and on (Living Shadow) we take some of the Dark energy from us.

This changes nothing, except in that we now MUST use Delirium before Living Shadow, reducing available nuance in rare situations.

2. ShadowBringer: requires 2 Stacks of (Dark matter), and we are granted 1 stack with each execution of (Blood spiller, Quietus, each of the Delirium combo actions).
Note: we'll have more usability over all.

This, too, is mostly just a dungeon nerf for a faint increase in overall frequency that you could have better accomplished with a 40s recharge time.

Other suggestions:

. Separate (Carve and Spit) from (Abyssal Drain), make it on a 30 Sec CD that only restores MP.

And for the single target healing:

. Re-introduce (Sole survivor), on a 60 Sec. CD that is shared with (Abyssal Drain), and make it heal from single traget with a heal potency of 500.

This is needless button-bloat, especially since Abyssal Drain already hits for 500p per target atop its 240 potency of damage. Even if you buffed this and/or nerfed Abyssal, it'd still be even more clearly button bloat than CnS vs. Abyssal Drain is right now.

I mean if we want DA re-introduced, shouldn't they just be one button, with DA activating the other one?

Depending on how you choose to use AD/CnS.

The whole idea of original DA was that, except once per minute via CnS (the highest potency-per-MP gain) everything at least indirectly granted sustain. Defensives obviously did so as well, but the only GCDs on which DA could be spent also healed for damage dealt (in Drain's case, only with DA up), and DA added a Blind to Dark Passenger. So, apart from just the basic drain of Darkside, MP ultimately became your highly bankable means of sustain and/or AoE damage.

If we were to emulate that here, then AD would likely separate but remain basically as is (keeping the burst heal baseline and therefore immediate), with DA then causing you to heal from a portion of your damage dealt to the targets struck for X seconds (something more banked for, premeditated, and therefore less in need of immediacy), while CnS would probably grant MP baseline but convert the would-be MP generation, too, into additional potency if DA'ed (making it your greatest net-expense in MP for your greatest net-gain, especially before indirect opportunity cost, in potency).

CnS becomes a cleaving nuke, while AD becomes a sustain tool. Separate CDs or cross-empowering with two shared charges.

Meanwhile, you might have DA-Souleater for additional self-healing from the additional damage dealt, DA-Syphon to bank MP before a burst (next Syphon or Stalwart gains back the DA's cost) or to empower a barrier (adds the bonus potency's worth to an existing barrier, spending DA only if a barrier is present), and DA-Heavy Slash to inflict a bleed (see Scourge). Possibly each with an adjusted name and animation while augmented.

Or, if you want to retain the ability to prepop DA, have only Souleater and Stalwart consume it, but perhaps give us a second step-2 combo step (perhaps a modest Blood generator opposite our MP generator in Syphon) that can also be DAed, so that we can always avoid spending DA on weaponskills for up to 3 GCDs after popping.

[Voryn]

I think also another issue is that most of DRK abilities are always on CD outside of burst and we can only use them in Burst to play optimally, it will be interesting if these attacks change from (60/120 sec. CD) into (require X resource which we build up during rotation)

This issue is a big reason I’ve gotten bored of DRK and started playing something else instead. The only effort to make the rotation work is “don’t forget to use abilities on cooldown.” Nothing has requirements that need to be thought about, other than needing Darkside to use Shadowbringer but that’s very very very easy to manage in most raids.

Then if the idea of the rotation is so simple, and so much of it is 1 2 3 without further thought, then what is there to feel satisfied about? Only the 2 minute bursts window, especially if having to move for mechanics or also press mitigation around that time, but that’s just 20 seconds of enjoyment followed by 100 seconds of boredom if the encounter isn’t really hard.