Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Mostly an excuse to bring back stance dancing, I personally liked it so I tried to brainstorm a way to make it work that wasn't enmity management.

Right, but stance dancing doesn't require two abilities to swap back and forth between. It only requires one, which you can then toggle on and off (in-stance, no-stance effectively still being... two stances).

You can have more, but then there'd have to be two unrelated purposes for each stance... atop non-stance actually being of value (else... you really just again have two).

Moreover, if the only difference is increasing actual damage now vs. build damage potential for later, that stance is effectively a burst CD, but where you can far more finely manipulate when/where its duration is spent. That's not a bad thing, and would suit DRK more than a standard damage CD, certainly, but whether we include it or not depends on whether we even want to restrict our bankable damage to said damage-amp window, as Oizen has mentioned before in regard to potential Living Shadow changes.

That being said, what you said could work. In that sense, Darkside would actually be something to pay mind to so that it doesn't fall off, which is infinitely better than it's current state.

I agree that that's a good goal, yes. Presently I consider Darkside non-existent, and I despise pretense mechanics. That said, I don't think adding mechanics for the heck of it is a good idea.

Again, we just first need to consider if we want DRK to have damage amp windows and, if so, with what frequency do we want to oblige interaction with it.

At the HW MP cost, you wouldn't bother to drop Darkside except around downtime, but if it had no MP cost (and still assuming a 2-GCD ICD before you can toggle it back on), you'd be obliged potentially to toggle whenever you could get the benefit in before the server MP tick and the next couple GCDs would be low ppgcd. (And without any ICD, you'd be obliged to cheese the hell out of it around MP ticks...)

Perhaps we could knock Blood Weapon back down to a 40s cooldown? If the mp generation from BW is buffed the cooldown reduction might not be needed imo.

I'm all for desyncing Blood Weapon from Delirium regardless. I hate bundles or anything that would make multiple buttons seem to form only a single deliberate action between them.

[Zairava]

I actually don't mind banking damage for a burst window, when it feels totally effortless is where I begin having a problem with it.

As of right now, there is basically no meaningful methods of doing so, and no skill expression. (DA procs feels more like a knowledge check than skill expression since we need to know when we will get it to begin with.) We just spam 123 and we get our mana for our burst.

If Darkside were to come back to it's Heavensward form, and given that our mp generation was indeed increased, at the very least there would be different playstyles. Do you want to save your mana for your burst? Do you want to go balls to the wall and have Darkside running as long as possible?

We would be at a greater risk of overcapping on mp, so restricting your mp expenditure solely on your burst windows wouldn't be the recommended route to take. This could be potentially aimed more at making downtime between our 60s/120s/etc feel like it has more impact in our overall output.

I'm all for desyncing Blood Weapon from Delirium regardless. I hate bundles or anything that would make multiple buttons seem to form only a single deliberate action between them.

Agreed, I've seen suggestions to merge Blood Weapon with Delirium somewhere before. Though I'm more for making Delirium something else entirely or just outright removed. If my idea for Darkside were to be implemented, it could return as an MP generator I imagine...Though again, they could just make Delirium and Blood Weapon one button if that were the case.

[Shurrikhan]

One more consideration:

I mentioned before that the activation cost for Darkside is a critical consideration, but I don't think I emphasized that quite enough. It go anywhere from feeling passive (just always leave Darkside on) to feeling a ridiculously and convoluted gimmick (MP-/server-tick gaming) on the basis of MP cost and ICD.

Moreover, consider what that passive MP drain does to APM if you want/have any other way to spend MP. Is just maintaining your damage buff really any more interesting than, say, 3.33 charges of oGCD attacks (onto which you could attach whatever other interesting effects, too)? I would think not; I'd personally keep a reinvigorated Edge/Flood or Dark Arts over or atop (increasing MP gen, then, to compensate) that Darkside.

For a constantly resource-consuming stance, then, to feel like it's adding gameplay rather than acting as a constraint on the gameplay otherwise possible, you need it to be more worth toggling the stance on and off optimally than to simply increase or decrease the rate of other spenders.

I actually don't mind banking damage for a burst window, when it feels totally effortless is where I begin having a problem with it.

Same. However, I'm not quite sure whether I'd want this Darkside to affect the damage of its alternate spenders. (More on that later, perhaps.)

As of right now, there is basically no meaningful methods of doing so, and no skill expression. (DA procs feels more like a knowledge check than skill expression since we need to know when we will get it to begin with.) We just spam 123 and we get our mana for our burst.

Agreed, which means that we don't so much have MP as a mechanic as simply that Edge/Flood are further punished for downtime.

Well, and that DRK as a whole tends to be more uptime reliant outside of comps with a high degree of windowed amp from raid buffs (during which DRK's abnormally dense potency-dumping periods can recover from its slightly abnormally high amount of potency lost to downtime... in the rarity that a fight actually has downtime).

We would be at a greater risk of overcapping on mp, so restricting your mp expenditure solely on your burst windows wouldn't be the recommended route to take. This could be potentially aimed more at making downtime between our 60s/120s/etc feel like it has more impact in our overall output.

That depends entirely on the balancing point for the amp, its (re)activation cost, and whether it affects oGCD damage.

Let's start with three small tweaks: We'll start with no activation cost on Darkside, but give Darkside an ICD of 2 GCDs (5s, Haste-scaled). Finally, we'll have MP now instead ticks for 20% less (rounded to the nearest 50), but ticks per player GCD, in order to remove any MP tick-exploiting gimmicks (and reduce some of the penalty for taking Haste/SkS/SpS).

So, you've got at least 2 GCDs under Darkside, with subsequently two ticks of expenditure (a 2-GCD Kaiten, so to speak, that may or may not also affect Ability damage over its time up).

Now, let's assume for a moment that Darkside increases only GCD damage. What average ppgcd is required to use over Darkside alternate spenders?

If even Hard Slash + Syphon Strike's 215 appgcd is enough, then you'd never drop Darkside. If even Syphon + Souleater's 300 appgcd is not enough, then you'd only ever use Darkside when you have at least a Syphon and Bloodspiller readied (with Souleater+Bloodspiller having a even higher bonus to MP efficiency from Darkside and Bloodspiller+Bloodspiller having the highest efficiency).

(In that last case, btw, you'd want to flip it on for Souleater, buffing Souleater and Bloodspiller, then drop Darkside again for the next 2-8 GCDs until the combo string will again have at least one Bloodspiller, then repeat. It has stance-dancing... but on a very dull, quickly-obvious loop.)

Okay, now let's assume the opposite: Darkside can also buff oGCDs.

Well now the balancing point must be an even higher appgcd because you have to add in the oGCD potency atop whatever GCDs occur over that time period. But... you still don't want to waste that bonus potency on low ppgcd weaponskills, so really you're just constraining oGCD damage to high-ppgcd-weaponskill GCDs, because you need to constrain those oGCDs to Darkside's amp windows... and Darkside is naturally going to constrain itself to your weaponskills' damage dynamics.

So we've then got something more complex... but not necessarily much more engaging, because you can just on-combo (Souleater + Bloodspiller, and maybe another 3 GCDs+BS_if_available thereafter) and off-combo (2 + 3n GCDs of rest after Bloodspiller). Hmm...

Feels like it should be able to be improved beyond this, but that core constraint also seems difficult to avoid...

[Zairava]

One more consideration:

I mentioned before that the activation cost for Darkside is a critical consideration, but I don't think I emphasized that quite enough. It go anywhere from feeling passive (just always leave Darkside on) to feeling a ridiculously and convoluted gimmick (MP-/server-tick gaming) on the basis of MP cost and ICD.

Moreover, consider what that passive MP drain does to APM if you want/have any other way to spend MP. Is just maintaining your damage buff really any more interesting than, say, 3.33 charges of oGCD attacks (onto which you could attach whatever other interesting effects, too)? I would think not; I'd personally keep a reinvigorated Edge/Flood or Dark Arts over or atop (increasing MP gen, then, to compensate) that Darkside.

For a constantly resource-consuming stance, then, to feel like it's adding gameplay rather than acting as a constraint on the gameplay otherwise possible, you need it to be more worth toggling the stance on and off optimally than to simply increase or decrease the rate of other spenders.

I feel like it would be better overall to make it something we just turn on rather than try and fight the server. With that being said...I would personally like a revised Dark Arts on top of Darkside. To bring up one of your other points:

Let's start with three small tweaks: We'll start with no activation cost on Darkside, but give Darkside an ICD of 2 GCDs (5s, Haste-scaled). Finally, we'll have MP now instead ticks for 20% less (rounded to the nearest 50), but ticks per player GCD, in order to remove any MP tick-exploiting gimmicks (and reduce some of the penalty for taking Haste/SkS/SpS).

So, you've got at least 2 GCDs under Darkside, with subsequently two ticks of expenditure (a 2-GCD Kaiten, so to speak, that may or may not also affect Ability damage over its time up).

Using this model of Darkside being free to turn on and draining 20% per tick instead of trying to revive stance dancing, this still leaves room for another spender. This could perhaps be the revised Dark arts. If we were to make Darkside only boost GCD's we could make Dark Arts enhance these GCD's further (and henceforth making it more worth using mana on said GCD's via Dark Arts while Darkside is active).

With that concept out there..I'm not sure I want Darkside to buff oGCD's if it were to come back as an actual ability. We could do so much more if we don't try to constrain the job around them even further.

[Oizen]

I actually don't mind banking damage for a burst window, when it feels totally effortless is where I begin having a problem with it.

As of right now, there is basically no meaningful methods of doing so, and no skill expression. (DA procs feels more like a knowledge check than skill expression since we need to know when we will get it to begin with.) We just spam 123 and we get our mana for our burst.

This is less of a DRK exclusive problem and an issue the game has run into with its love for 2minute burst windows.
A lot of jobs have honestly fallen into the trapping of feeling like they exist solely to pool resources to spend it all under raid buffs, and some of the jobs that can't conform to this feel like they break their legs in order to meet it anyway.

[Zairava]

This is less of a DRK exclusive problem and an issue the game has run into with its love for 2minute burst windows.
A lot of jobs have honestly fallen into the trapping of feeling like they exist solely to pool resources to spend it all under raid buffs, and some of the jobs that can't conform to this feel like they break their legs in order to meet it anyway.

Yeah, and it's something I hope they remedy in 7.0. Not that I expect them to at this point...but we can dream, I suppose.