Dark Knight Megathread

[Rosenstrauch]

The things I would like to see out of DRK, going forward...

1. Oblation is turned into a passive trait that modifies The Blackest Night, giving it 10% damage reduction for the full duration regardless of whether or not the shield breaks. Maybe also have it replace TBN's animation with Oblation's.
2. TBN loses its MP cost entirely, but also loses its Dark Arts proc and has its recast timer raised to 25 seconds.
3. Dark Arts procs are generated once every 30 seconds while Darkside is active. You can have up to two charges at a time.
-- This is literally Enochian, but unless they do away with Dark Arts entirely, it has to come from somewhere, and I'd prefer this to a button that does nothing but generate charges.

4. Living Dead's proc, Walking Dead, loses its healing requirement entirely. If this is somehow too powerful, then reduce the duration of Living Dead itself to compensate.
5. Dark Mind gets some small mitigation in addition to its magic resistance.
-- DRK used to have Dark Dance for that, iirc. Maybe they could bring back that effect and bake it into Dark Mind.
6. Dark Missionary is given at the same level as Heart of Light (64).
-- It is literally the same ability, so I don't see why this wasn't the case to begin with.

7. Blood Weapon grants five charges that are expended upon using any weaponskill or spell. The duration is raised to 30 seconds.
8. Shadowbringer replaces Edge/Flood of Shadow while you have a Dark Arts proc available, and consumes those procs in place of Edge/Flood of Shadow.
-- Note that this is technically a nerf. It's using up Dark Arts procs, which otherwise would have been used by Edge of Shadow. Assuming 2 Dark Arts procs per minute, that would mean going from 1600* every 60 seconds (Edge+Edge+Shadowbringer*) to 1200 every 60 seconds (Shadowbringer+Shadowbringer). To compensate, Shadowbringer's potency could be raised to 700 or 800.
*I've heard Edge of Shadow's potency will be lowered in Endwalker, but I'm only familiar with the current number.

9. Stalwart Soul is given at level 40, just like Mythril Tempest, Prominence, and Demon Slaughter. Traits are added at 64 and 72 that let it restore MP and generate Blood respectively.
10A. Abyssal Drain's base heal potency is raised to 800, with every additional target healing you for 200 potency.
10B: Alternatively, Abyssal Drain grants you five charges that cause your weaponskills and spells to heal you for 400 potency (ST) or 200 per target (AOE).

[currentlemon]

3. Dark Arts procs are generated once every 30 seconds while Darkside is active. You can have up to two charges at a time.
-- This is literally Enochian, but unless they do away with Dark Arts entirely, it has to come from somewhere, and I'd prefer this to a button that does nothing but generate charges.

Oh my God, this is amazing! Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Having Dark Arts tied to the Darkside timer is wonderful idea. Since the skill can only be used every 30 seconds, it alleviates the Dark Arts spam that plagued 4.0 DRK. And it also expands the use of the Darkside mechanic as well.

Seriously, why hasn't SE or anyone else here thought of this? Props to you Rosenstrauch. Oh, and your other suggestions are good too, but this Dark Arts rework is fantastic.

[Ryaduera]

Oh my God, this is amazing! Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Having Dark Arts tied to the Darkside timer is wonderful idea. Since the skill can only be used every 30 seconds, it alleviates the Dark Arts spam that plagued 4.0 DRK. And it also expands the use of the Darkside mechanic as well.

Seriously, why hasn't SE or anyone else here thought of this? Props to you Rosenstrauch. Oh, and your other suggestions are good too, but this Dark Arts rework is fantastic.

Because this wouldn't solve anything for the Darkside timer as an issue. The only way it could fall off is outright neglect, meaning tying something to 30 seconds of being under Darkside is just a 30 second cooldown with extra fluff

^ Unless the DRK were doing noticeably less AoE across the same pull sizes in the same leveling dungeon than other tanks would do at that same level... I don't see the need for Stalwart Soul so early.

You're inevitably balanced around getting your AoE-pt.2. That means, in effect, that you just have a weaker AoE-pt.1 (including its surrounding available AoE ppm via abilities) while being forced to backload each AoE cast with its requisite Part-B.

If hitting ABABAB were really that much more fun than AAAAA (and the occasional 12 strike to give the last MP boost needed for Flood, which is stronger than Mythril anyways), I could understand wanting to nerf Flood (and by counterpart, Edge) across levels 40-72 to make way for Stalwart Soul, but... is it, actually?

If you balance a job around something that makes the job feels bad, you still have a bad job, even if it is balanced. We aren't asking for a balance update, we're asking for interactive gameplay.

[Shurrikhan]

Because this wouldn't solve anything for the Darkside timer as an issue. The only way it could fall off is outright neglect, meaning tying something to 30 seconds of being under Darkside is just a 30 second cooldown with extra fluff

If you balance a job around something that makes the job feels bad, you still have a bad job, even if it is balanced. We aren't asking for a balance update, we're asking for interactive gameplay.

I don't see how ABABAB and nothing of value on which to spend what B affords is any more interactive, really, than AAAAA and a decent Flood.

At least with a decent Flood I have better AoE-downtime value, allowing me to bank for a large pull, whereas (still assuming starting from full MP) if Flood were more thoroughly afforded over uptime and nerfed accordingly, I'd have dealt less damage over the first 15 seconds or so.

You're effectively trading 3.3 charges of Flood, accelerated by a CD (Blood Weapon) for 3.3 charges of a weaker Flood that's accelerated both by a CD and, much more significantly, every other GCD. Do you want a greater amount of potency bankable and less uptime generation (which is equally greater downtime generation, relatively speaking) or less potency bankable and more uptime generation? That's all it comes down to. It isn't so cut-and-dry, DRK-got-screwed-again-in-such-an-obvious-way. The throughput is there and there's quite a bit more control and burst in DRK's model of AoE over those levels than on any other tank over those levels (save perhaps GNB's capacity for, situationally obligatory, focus-target damage).

So let's actually define what appeals to you in that interactive gameplay. Is it the uptime generation, similar to WAR's reducing the CD of Infuriate per BG spender (but in this case Flood via each SS cast, via MP)? Do we just want to see one skill being more dependent on another, or less of a skill's throughput being dependent on CDs or single-target (situationally damage)? What is the appeal of that economy?

I don't think there's just one right answer -- the appeal of this or that will have different product of the number of people it appeals to and the extent to which it appeals to them -- but if we're just copying over the other tank's models on the assumption they must be better and no more thought-out solution is worth the effort compared to slapping another's on more directly or earlier, we've already seen how that goes. Can't we at least think about this before demanding we have whatever they're having in the forms they're having it?

[Ryaduera]

I don't see how ABABAB and nothing of value on which to spend what B affords is any more interactive, really, than AAAAA and a decent Flood.

At least with a decent Flood I have better AoE-downtime value, allowing me to bank for a large pull, whereas (still assuming starting from full MP) if Flood were more thoroughly afforded over uptime and nerfed accordingly, I'd have dealt less damage over the first 15 seconds or so.

You're effectively trading 3.3 charges of Flood, accelerated by a CD (Blood Weapon) for 3.3 charges of a weaker Flood that's accelerated both by a CD and, much more significantly, every other GCD. Do you want a greater amount of potency bankable and less uptime generation (which is equally greater downtime generation, relatively speaking) or less potency bankable and more uptime generation? That's all it comes down to. It isn't so cut-and-dry, DRK-got-screwed-again-in-such-an-obvious-way. The throughput is there and there's quite a bit more control and burst in DRK's model of AoE over those levels than on any other tank over those levels (save perhaps GNB's capacity for, situationally obligatory, focus-target damage).

So let's actually define what appeals to you in that interactive gameplay. Is it the uptime generation, similar to WAR's reducing the CD of Infuriate per BG spender (but in this case Flood via each SS cast, via MP)? Do we just want to see one skill being more dependent on another, or less of a skill's throughput being dependent on CDs or single-target (situationally damage)? What is the appeal of that economy?

I don't think there's just one right answer, but if we're just copying over the other tank's models on the assumption they must be better and no more thought-out solution is worth the effort compared to slapping another's on more directly or earlier, we've already seen how that goes.

It's because you go in with mana full and then go 1-2-1-2-1-2- then run out of mana with no way to regenerate it in the pulls outside of Blood Weapon that you can't do every AoE situation (and even if you do, unleash is not effected by skill speed), switching to just 1- -1- -1- until you maybe have MP. It's not about effectiveness, most people agree DRK is effective in all content because the balance team is on point. The job feels like an absolute slog to play and the progression takes ages to get anything that would be called necessary to its playstyle, and then after it finally gets the necessities for it's functionality, it then gets nothing after that except for more noise. If you design a job around something that feels bad, you have a bad design. Part of the reason that the Unleash and Flood playstyle is bad is because of the big picture. Were this an independent issue, I doubt many would care since AoE situations in the endgame don't even really matter that much.

Even 3.0 lacked a combo to AoE with... but we did have 2 on global options with good mana regeneration.

[Shurrikhan]

If you design a job around something that feels bad, you have a bad design.

I'm not disagreeing with that.

I just don't feel that "I can sustain periodic Flood casts, so my Flood is now mostly just a rotational element" is necessarily any more interesting or fun a design than "I can't sustain my Flood casts -- they instead act largely like CDs -- so it's doubly important we burn everything here and now."

I've got 2 DRKs at 80, another at 62, and all but one tank each leveled to 80 across both main characters, and the last 8 levels of DRK are just nearly noticeable enough a change for me to call the pre-Stalwart gameplay stifled or even comparatively bad (relative to any other tank at that level) -- certainly not to the point that I'd want yet another shared tank mechanic slapped atop DRK with so little thought.

[Ryaduera]

I'm not disagreeing with that.

I just don't feel that "I can sustain periodic Flood casts, so my Flood is now mostly just a rotational element" is necessarily any more interesting or fun a design than "I can't sustain my Flood casts -- they instead act largely like CDs -- so it's doubly important we burn everything here and now."

I've got 2 DRKs at 80, another at 62, and all but one tank each leveled to 80 across both main characters, and the last 8 levels of DRK are just nearly noticeable enough a change for me to call the pre-Stalwart gameplay stifled or even comparatively bad (relative to any other tank at that level) -- certainly not to the point that I'd want yet another shared tank mechanic slapped atop DRK with so little thought.

I see what you're saying, but homogenizing tanks is not what we're asking for. It is impressively bad design to require a resource in order to play optimally without also providing a way to gain that resource back, to the point that it is better design to give a resource that you have nothing to do with. Remember 3.0 PLD and Riot Blade giving MP? That was bad design because you got MP with nothing to do with it, but the complaints on PLD wasn't even the mana. Their mana regeneration was tied to their single target DPS combo while their mana consumption was tied to Flash for leveling, which was their AoE utility. The problem wasn't mana, the problem was the design of the job.

Removing flood and get Stalwart early is just putting a bandaid on a wound that clearly needs stitches. The gameplay at its core needs changing, not the progression. If you have a resource that must be used to generate another resources, there should be a way to loop these resources, especially in a game that uses a rotation based design philosophy. Most tank gauges are fine because they are buildups for something big, but Darkside is just a joke of an excuse to halt progression entirely in favor of saying "But flood does early DPS." You don't even get the Blood Gauge, another resource that should be managed, until level 62 because they use the Darkside timer as an excuse to not add another resource, but you aren't even trying to manage Darkside as a resource, you overcap on it repeatedly on accident because you might as well just use it off cooldown.

Since we're sharing credentials as if it means anything, I'm a mod author for a handful of games, most of which have classes. If FFXIV were not an MMO, DRK would be the only class I'd write a mod for that rebuilt the class from its bare bones. Every other job (that I have played) is fine and most I wouldn't even touch, usually this games design is excellent. Dark Knight is just fundamentally flawed right down to its bare bones, I would absolutely gut this job if this was a game I could mod. There needs to be better implementation of Darkside and a layer of mechanical execution that actually rewards the player in a meaningful way. DPS increase is meaningful, but you take away all depth when overcapping feels more like a necessity than a mistake. As it stands right now, dumping all of your MP in literally every situation and overcapping on Darkside is not a mistake, but a necessity. That's the same gameplay flaw twice in a single mechanic, and I can't express enough how abysmal that design philosophy actually is.

tl;dr: The jobs entire design is based around a system that has no reward for proper execution, if you want braindead gameplay, it would be better to stop hiding it and just make it braindead on a surface level as well, which is also still bad design, just better. Please, square... Give us a decision to make and make resource management actually matter.