Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

->TBN no longer has an MP cost. CD increased to 20 seconds, duration increased to 8 seconds. Dark Arts removed.

Unless you were facing really (s)low damage but without a healer (and none of the other sustain increases), isn't this just a nerf? It's a flat barrier, so the duration quickly becomes redundant/excessive, and Dark Arts previously gave back its MP cost anyways. In the end, you've simply increased its cooldown by a third and called it a day.

At level 82, this upgrades into Oblation, increasing the magic damage reduction to 20%, grants 2 charges, each with a CD of 45 seconds.

Given the portion of tankbusters that are magical, a total of 30% magic mitigation on a short CD seems excessive. Just the charges and/or CD reduction alone would likely be fine, especially if you allow multiple instances of Oblation to be applied to the same target simultaneously at lower effect (similar to the old stacking of DM and Oblation, both).

->Sole Survivor: marks target and nearby enemies with "Another Victim" status. When surrounded by 3 or more enemies, also grants "Blood price".

The benefits of Blood Price will scale pretty linearly with target count (* their average attack speed) anyways, so I'd just guarantee Blood Price. That said, do we really want to deal with such granular values of Blood?

->Syphoon strike restores 1000MP and Souleater gains 15 blood.
->Using Bloodspiller combos into 2 new attacks. Each attack costs 25 blood, including Bloodspiller.

Then it will effectively take 15 GCDs to prepare a single GCD action that is not your spam-combo, twice what it takes now. Yes, the Blood spenders will take up a slightly higher portion of GCDs now, but the ramp up will be significantly worse. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Especially if this is to be a fixed combo.

Quietus removed, Bloodspiller has a new animation or the same animation but much stronger to justify having AoE falloff damage.

Sure, I guess? Animation-wise, that's easy enough. It emits a broadening column of darkness at the end, anyways.

->Delirium works as fallows:
When landing a GCD consumes 5 seconds of Darkside. If Darkside is not active the effect is canceled and put on 10 sec CD.
If the effect is active gain 15% SkS and accelerates the rate at which the Bloodgauge fills, increasing it by 2 every quarter second.
Toggle this on or off freely.

I worry this could end up being worth holding damn near infinitely just to spam Syphon Strike with, unless the MP gen on Blood spender skills (formerly on Delirium) gets made baseline... I'll need to map out the potencies in a bit, but what rotational implications, if any, were you hoping this would have?

->Blood Weapon removed.

That'd make the longer time until using any Blood spenders an even harder pill to swallow, ngl.

[Zairava]

Unless you were facing really (s)low damage but without a healer (and none of the other sustain increases), isn't this just a nerf? It's a flat barrier, so the duration quickly becomes redundant/excessive, and Dark Arts previously gave back its MP cost anyways. In the end, you've simply increased its cooldown by a third and called it a day.

It would technically be a nerf, yeah. We already hold 3k for tbn to begin with regardless of where we are in the rotation, so essentially it would be increasing the cooldown and removing the sole kit interaction in the form of a damage neutral for..what exactly?

Then it will effectively take 15 GCDs to prepare a single GCD action that is not your spam-combo, twice what it takes now. Yes, the Blood spenders will take up a slightly higher portion of GCDs now, but the ramp up will be significantly worse. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Especially if this is to be a fixed combo.

This is something I noticed near immediately. It sounds decent on paper but the build up would ultimately feel worse. Which is why I suggested just being able to use it all upon using Bloodspiller at 50 gauge. and even then, It would quickly lose flavor at how often we would have it, which is why I would opt it to be only usable during Delirium anyways...given it's implemented.

I worry this could end up being worth holding damn near infinitely just to spam Syphon Strike with, unless the MP gen on Blood spender skills (formerly on Delirium) gets made baseline... I'll need to map out the potencies in a bit, but what rotational implications, if any, were you hoping this would have?

Because it would be worth keeping up permanently and would render souleater an overall damage loss. Why would anyone go for the full combo when they go for that edge of shadow in 6 GCD's, when using the entire combo for all would take 8-9 GCD's to get that 3k?

I thought about this particular point a bit and it more or less would just be a "dps stance" but instead of it being Darkside it would be Delirium. Which if that is the case, I would bring back Darkside as an actual togglable ability when it drained mp for actual resource management and make Bloodspiller/Quietus and Delirium be more about regenerating your mp, and go back to when Delirium gave a flat amount of mp back on a 60s cooldown. (as a spitball, Bloodspiller and Quietus, or the aoe version of it as suggested by ItsUrBoi, could give 1,500mp back per use. Delirium gives 3k)

(This would likely mandate some other mp generation and cost adjustments other than what I just listed above, but that could be solved in a number of ways.)

That'd make the longer time until using any Blood spenders an even harder pill to swallow, ngl.

I don't see a reason in any scenario to remove Blood Weapon unless they just nuke it's effectiveness or relevance into obscurity, honestly.

[ItsUrBoi]

I don't see a reason in any scenario to remove Blood Weapon unless they just nuke it's effectiveness or relevance into obscurity, honestly.

The only thing Blood Weapon does right now is it makes sure you get exactly 3000 MP and 50 blood every minute within exactly 5 GCDs at a certain moment. Its use mainly is also to help you get Living Shadow out early in the opener. Both of these purposes could be moved into Delirium ( the blood generation ), or put into your Souleater combo path in order to allow you to get the same amount of MP over 1 minute, you will not get the same amount of MP in a short time span in your 1 and 2 minute windows, BUT I think we already have enough oGCDs right?

[Shurrikhan]

The only thing Blood Weapon does right now is it makes sure you get exactly 3000 MP and 50 blood every minute within exactly 5 GCDs at a certain moment. Its use mainly is also to help you get Living Shadow out early in the opener. Both of these purposes could be moved into Delirium ( the blood generation )

I'd suggest including that into your mock-up and then reexamining it briefly, as that will be a necessary component to making the Blood spenders not feel painfully sluggish.

We talk often about "potencies can be adjusted later," but when potencies (per uptime) or resource generation (indirectly still potencies per uptime) form breakpoints in what you actually do, they're vital to imagining out that gameplay. This is one of those times. If you don't want to math anything out just yet, at least state the intended timings, breakpoints, and/or playflow.