Dark Knight Megathread

[Xenosan]

1. Dark Mind / Dark Missionary do something other than strict Magic DR. I like the idea of them being similar, with DMissionary being an AOE weaker version of the former. But Magic only still feels bad, also due to it being shared with GNB that's no help at all. Could just make 10% magic DR a role skill and delete ShakeItOff/DivineVeil/HeartOfLight/DMissionary
2. LD
3. An ability that consumes Darkside duration as a resource, with little to no cooldown restriction save for that resource cost (like edge/flood). Would feel more complete resource kit to me than super-glued Blackblood gauge.
4. Salted Earth and/or Abyssal Drain given a mechanic, they could be the ability consuming DS duration mentioned above, or add a Stellar Detonation effect to SEarth like Astro's Earthly Star
5. I foresee delirium becoming a trait enhancement for BW, honestly

Like SCH, SE just can't buy into resource driven Jobs without gating them behind additional recasts timers. Those timers make the resource faux and redundant, just adds 'feel busy work' to the kit.

So much goes back to the blood gauge for me. Hope they rethink that gauge into something other than a glorified 2stack SwordOath.

[Shurrikhan]

Could just make 10% magic DR a role skill and delete ShakeItOff/DivineVeil/HeartOfLight/DMissionary

Please not even more reduction in job flavor.

We can call them all tank "raidDR"s if it gets too complicated to remember their names, but let's not strip ourselves of even more job-specific animations.

Like SCH, SE just can't buy into resource driven Jobs without gating them behind additional recasts timers. Those timers make the resource faux and redundant, just adds 'feel busy work' to the kit.

Fully agreed. Though where possible I'd rather make them real resources rather than solely crush the illusion.

[Xenosan]

Hope you recognize i said that tongue in cheek. Heart of Light and Missionary are identical. There's only 4 tanks. So they're already halfway there. I don't see how it is hard for SE to come up with alternative raidDRs. Look at any AOE ogcd on healers for inspiration or bring back that deleted PVP skill Thrill of War

[Shurrikhan]

Hope you recognize i said that tongue in cheek.

I did not, if only because there were people who were absurdly hyped for Role Actions when they were first coming out and remain convinced that saving on a dozen spell IDs will somehow open up new avenues of content for them through development time "saved" (by going out of our way to delete prior creations).

And fair enough.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Let me levy some further questions while we're still on the first page. I'll edit them to include others if anyone quotes this and adds a question of their own they'd like to be more (i.e., first-page) visible.

1. Assuming that spending MP or a similar resource on a defensive skill could sometimes be an rDPS gain (i.e., is worth using even in optimal play, given the right circumstances), would you want the ability to spend MP or any similar core resource defensively?
   
   
2. How reactive would you like DRK's playflow to be, and what kinds of things do you imagine it ought to react to. These can be external cues, such as from damage, healing, shields, or HoTs taken, or internal, such as procs.
   
   
3. Assuming that attacking quickly were part of DRK's identity, would you prefer that come from a baseline speed increase or, say, a bankable resource that you'd want to time precisely for stronger but limited-duration bursts of speed?
   
   
4. What thematic centers do you think DRK should be based around, insofar as Blood, Void, Dark/Shadow, Soul, or whatever else?
   
   
5. Do you want any manner of stance on DRK (any kind of stance, perhaps more like Witcher or Nioh 2 than the old Grit toggle)? If so, to what purpose?
   
   
6. What are the sort of things that you want your attention to be drawn to on DRK? For instance, in HW, much pivoted around your Blood Price, Blood Weapon, Carve and Spit, and Dark Passenger timers and your Scourge duration, alongside perhaps Dark Dance or Dark Mind if you didn't much trust your healer and thus may need to bank MP for their augmentation. What would be pivotal to or direct your attention from moment to moment on your ideal DRK? What, if anything, would you be actively trying to sync to or capitalize upon?

may as well also throw in questions about Blood Weapon, Delirium, and Living Dead, concerning the common issues felt about with them, and questioning complaints and/or suggestions for change, since those three are the actions that draw discontent to them more than any other.
while, to give a answer to this set of questions...

first.. Blood Weapon needs to be fixed, whether that be a buff, or a complete design change.

current Delirium is lousy and my thoughts on that are threefold, but all three share in common the opinion: "get rid of current Delirium". one, revert Delirium back to it the original, a third-in-combo GCD WeaponSkill, but with a new additional effect. two, revert delirium to being similar its StormBlood version, make it a ability that either restores MP or buffs actions that restore MP, to restore more MP. three, another new Delirium again, but this one should have a effect that matches the definition of the word "Delirium".

Living Dead / just trash the stupid thing... its awful design is not even worth a fix, improvement, or being salvaged. it should be completely re-designed, into a better form. I had my own extensive idea for a complete re-design of Living Dead that I can post, if any whom wants me to copy-and-paste it from the other thread to here.

1 / I do not agree with the mentality that the Dark Knight should focus solely on only spending its resources for DPS potential... Dark Knight is a tank,
not a Melee DPS. defensive skills should not need to have resources spent on them, just to be use-full and on par with the other Tanks, but I would like it
if the Dark Knight can some-how make basic defense skills more interesting or buff them.

2 / I imagine Dark Knight more on the internal side. actions interacting with each other, actions that change or add effects to other actions, casting barriers on self, through Dark magic or Blood magic, MP should be the main resource in use, and the BlackBlood gauge as just a side thing that you use on what ever actions cost its BlackBlood points.

3 / in my opinion, the part of Dark Knight's identity that was "speed" should lay in its design being focused on the "illusion of Speed", double weaving.
for example, since Warrior has a heavy GCD that hits for a potency of 590, then Dark Knight just needs two oGCDs and a GCD that together hit for a potency of 590... a Double Weave design that is constant and sustained, instead of a Burst like GunBreaker, can make Dark Knight seem like it is three times faster than the other three tanks, without having a 0.80 GCD.

4 / I think that Dark Knight's identity is a "a fast-attacking physical damager-Tank that uses dark magic and blood magic". pure darkness, referred to as
the abyss and the power of the abyss by Fray, and this source of power utilized through dark magic and blood magic, and also physical WeaponSkills.
...also, NOT VOID. The Void is Reaper's thing, Dark Knight does not need to be a Reaper clone... going from WAR clone to Reaper clone would not be a improvement. there is a big difference between darkness itself, and the void, created by darkness.
Dark Knight's identity is darkness itself, not the 13th shard and VoidSent.

5 / I think that to go back to the old DarkSide would be interesting. have the old DarkSide "Stance" come back, the same permanent passive buff that increases damage dealt and both turns off natural MP regen, and blocks any MP recovery from other sources, so the Dark Knight can only restore MP through actions. we could have both the old DarkSide and the current much less interesting DarkSide, even. why not both? the current DarkSide just needs to be made either more interesting or more difficult to maintain...

6 / I think that Dark Knight needs to be completely re-designed... turn Dark Knight into the 3.x Dark Knight, remastered and made into some thing similar to its original, but new, a combination of the original Dark Knight and some of the new toys that 5.x Dark Knight introduced... I will just leave it at that summary, though, as I have too many in-depth extensive ideas already written about completely re-designing Dark Knight into "my ideal Dark Knight", around a remaster of the original 3.x Dark Knight combined with a few things from 4.x SB and trash 5.x ShB versions.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

So much goes back to the blood gauge for me. Hope they rethink that gauge into something other than a glorified 2stack SwordOath.

I can agree with that... the BlackBlood gauge is boring and dull. my own idea for it was to increase the pool from 100 to 200, and make it a dual-gauge of two-100s, so that it at least looks more of interest and is some thing like the "two (blade)edges of the GreatSword", while also make the rate at which BlackBlood points are gained faster, and make more actions cost BlackBlood points, so that the Dark Knight interacts with the BlackBlood gauge more than as just a boring and dull two 50s gauge that takes either five 1-2-3 GCD combos, 5 Stalwart Souls, or a miraculously did not miss the fifth hit Blood Weapon to fill up, just for a mere two "big" attacks.

[Lyth]

Issues:
1. Pacing feels off. In Heavensward/Stormblood, tanking in Grit locked you out of Blood Weapon. It felt wrong. DRK feels permanently slow.

2. Living Dead is badly designed from the outset. Its weaknesses are even more glaring following the Holmgang rework this expansion.

3. The job just generally seems to have a weaker moveset compared to other tanks. This might be a function of it being the lowest dps output tank for the past two expansions running. But if you match up similar actions (i.e. IR vs. Delirium) they consistently seem weaker and less versatile.

The one exception is TBN, but the short recast defensives are all completely overshadowed by how easy it is to invuln swap out of any significant tank damage.

4. We use both weaponskills and spells, but skill speed only benefits weaponskills. These two stats should have been merged into a common haste stat a long time ago.

5. We previously had a lot of unique animations, many of which were removed or turned into generic actions as part of the role action system. It would be nice to have some of them back.

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

2.
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 (shouldn't this should be on a tank that actually can put out massive amounts of self-healing?)
or
iii) Remove invulnerabilities altogether.

3. Offensive cooldown rework. I've made some suggestions on this elsewhere. I'd like to see DRK move back towards being a sustain focused tank.

4. Either merge skill speed/spell speed into a single haste stat, or reclassify DRK spells as weaponskills.

5. Consider implementing a glamour system for actions. Warcraft has a really good one with their glyph system. It would be great to be able to do a job specific reskin of Rampart with Shadowskin.

Thoughts on previous iterations:
Heavensward: Between Blood Weapon's speed buff and the variety of offensive oGCDs (some of which had proc-based resets), it felt very active. Animations were great (Delirium added a bit of variety, and Reprisal felt very visceral). You could do some respectable damage.
Stormblood: Dark Arts ping test.

Why play this job: I really love the aesthetic and weapon choice. The new voidsent Avatar looks really great, and DPS have far outstripped tanks and healers in terms of pure raid value and carry potential. I'm really excited to... oh wait, were we not talking about Reaper?

See you on the other side.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Stormblood: Dark Arts ping test.

Why play this job: I really love the aesthetic and weapon choice. The new voidsent Avatar looks really great, and DPS have far outstripped tanks and healers in terms of pure raid value and carry potential. I'm really excited to... oh wait, were we not talking about Reaper?

See you on the other side.

StormBlood, Dark Arts ping test / L M F A O
about Reaper / so many of us Dark Knights are likely going to abandon Dark Knight for Reaper...

Let me levy some further questions while we're still on the first page. I'll edit them to include others if anyone quotes this and adds a question of their own they'd like to be more (i.e., first-page) visible.

that aside, over to a serious post... I thought of another good general question to add to the list. also add a question concerning GCD weaponSkill combos, asking about what Dark Knights feel about our current 1-2-3 combo(I know that a ton of us hate it), and ideas or suggestions for improvement.

here is my own thoughts, and please.. no one shoot me with the "bloat" bullet over this one. X'D
two different 1-2-3 combos, each combo has two 3s to end it, and no repeats, so this encompasses 8 different WeaponSkills... one combo is pure damage, the other combo is additional effects attached, and the second 3 of the pure damage combo is the exception. / the two 1-2-3 combos would be as followed:

pure damage / Hard Slash - Spinning Slash - Power Slash or Low Slash
additional effects attached / Heavy Slash - Scourge Slash - Delirium Slash or Reprisal Slash
and there is in fact a valid story behind why Syphon Strike and SoulEater are not there... I changed those two into oGCD, a "weave combo" that is a "weave rotation".

any way... for a little elaboration, Spinning Slash and Power Slash should be obvious what they are, Low Slash is the old before-role-actions "Low Blow", remastered and with a new additional effect, Heavy Slash I came up with myself, Scourge Slash is the old Scourge.. I just put it in a combo, and it still applies its DoT, Delirium Slash is the original Delirium, but with a new additional effect, and Reprisal Slash is the old before-role-actions "Reprisal", remastered and also with a new additional effect.

[Shurrikhan]

here is my own thoughts, and please.. no one shoot me with the "bloat" bullet over this one.

Offers a bulletproof vest in the form of:

You have button A and button B with crossable dynamic combos that conclude on their 3rd GCD. This gives you a total of 8 decisions (AAA, AAB, ABA, ABB, BAA, BAB, BBA, BBB), as per your earlier number of weaponskills, but only requires 2 buttons.

_______________________________

Alternatively, consider a open combo system.

Let's give this system 4 buttons. There are a lot more skills available than just 4, but you'll never need more than 4 buttons to perform them. (Alternatively, we could call these buttons "Paths", with "AA", for instance, referring to two consecutive button presses in Path A, and "AB" referring to a press of button A before a press of button B. Etc., etc.)

Now, let's fill them out with some characteristics. To keep this sample especially simple, I'll just follow three rules from which the rest falls into place:

1. Every path gives a consumable buff.
2. You cannot stack multiple of the same buff.
3. All consumable buffs are consumed together for their combined effect.

Path A gives buff A'. Path B gives buff B'. Path C gives buff C'. Path D gives buff D'. You cannot hold multiple of buff A', buff B', buff C', or buff D'. You can hold up to A', B', C', and D' simultaneously, but any skill that consumes any of those will consume all of them. Simple enough?

(Consuming all together is not a weakness, in this case; their combined effect is given at least nearly in full (i.e., is balanced as to maximize combo choices.)

Now, because you can't stack multiple of the same buff, we're going to take the button-efficient option in using the space of otherwise wasted possibilities.

Pressing A gives A', and I can't stack A' twice, so AA will consume A'. Similarly, BB consumes B', CC consumes C', and DD consumes D'. Easy enough.

But, that still leaves all my other options. Until I hit any button (A, B, C, or D) twice, I can continue my combo. If I've already hit A and B, I can conclude with ABA, ABB, or continue a GCD further to ABCA, ABCB, or ABCC, or continue even to a fifth GCD for ABCDA, ABCDB, ABCDC, ABCDD. Same for any other first two GCDs.

Whether, as a player, I'd want to stack them all together of course depends on what those consumptions do or how they interact and the efficiency of consuming them together. All this is just an empty frame; I'd still need to fill it with my 4 buffs of choice so that it works the way I want it to.

Moreover, I could choose to make order matter or avoid that layer of complexity, per my choosing. If the buffs only prime the finishers, then all that matters (as with Ninja's Ninjutsu) is the combination, not the permutation. If the buffs are themselves impactful or dynamic, then the permutations may meaningfully differ.

Again, that's just one of many possible frames.

You might, for instance, instead have one Path have no finisher of its own, and instead ramp indefinitely (with some alternate means of constraint included). That may well suit momentum-centric or flurry-style skills. Or, it could have an eventual limit, be that at a threshold to its buff effect (say, having generated 30% additional Attack Speed) or just after n consecutive presses, or n presses before having hit any finisher, or n presses before having fully consumed its buff.

There's tons you can with do with this.

The point is, though, that you can form up to some 120 different decisions... off 4 buttons. No, you would not want to actually have 120 meaningful decisions available to make, even assuming over-optimistically that their gradations wouldn't all just blur across each other, but the framework for such is very much possible.

Here, the above sample allows for 64 decisions in 4 buttons, if the buffs were themselves impactful instead of merely primers. In effect, this still would mean only the complexity of about 24 decisions, outside of the highest levels of min-maxing.

Just a bit of the playflow layout. I only snipped the very top, but imagine the same for the AD branch and the equivalents across B, C, and D.

[Kniteroad]

Some ideas i think would be cool to see:

1. i want a combo outside of just soulstealer. Maybe bring back power slash which combos now off of siphon strike except soulstealer adds to the blood guage and power slash recharges MP in addition to the MP generated from siphon strike. I particularly like the idea of an additional combo'd MP generator as it will allow the DRK to use TBN more often, maybe even on party members. maybe even have a small blood cost for the power clash in exchange for increased potency over soulstealer to create a game where the DRK more carefully manage the blood guage and mp

2. give us scourge back.

3. modify blood weapon and delirium. put blood weapon on a 30s cooldown which gives us a haste buff + additional blood generated and delirium on a 60s cooldown which gives a dps buff and removes blood cost of bloodspiller. I like the idea of the haste buff on a short timer so we aren't waiting 60s for more interesting gameplay (less down time).

4. remove flood of shadow and change abyssal drain to cost the MP flood of shadow did. Then allow the DRK to consume the darkside buff from TBN breaks on the abyssal drain to increase the damage it does and the healing we receive. i want that DA abyssal drain feeling back without dark arts spam. We can then bring back dark passenger in some capacity as another oGCD on a timer.

5. stalwart soul needs to be available at a much earlier level.