Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[Shurrikhan]

I really feel like for the PLD rework they only really need to change all the spells into oGCDs, including Clemency. Blades however, can stay GCD, with Confiteor serving as the starting button, with each Blade after being the same button being pressed again, like the Gnashing Fang combo. This gives PLD a burst and doesn't require them to remove any buttons, just change what they do. That's assuming they want to avoid butchering the job, unlike what they did to DRK.

I'm curious how that (not sarcastic emphasis, just matching bold to bold) would solve PLD's issues (at least without inflicting potentially worse ones to sync and DoT rhythm)?

Turning all non-Blade spells into oGCDs would move PLD's near-60s loop up by 10 seconds (12.5 if you include Confiteor itself), which would then also incur conflict between GB and BoV's DoTs, no? Moreover, unless Confiteor no longer spends the Requiescat stacks (and thereby the oGCD-ified Holy Spirit), you'd need to fill Requiescat with 4 physical GCDs, despite having combos of only 3 moves and wanting, ideally, for Atonement to fall under your opening FoF. That seems like it'd introduce new annoyances worse than the current parity gap. I'd sooner just turn the tuning knob enough to (over)compensate for its hard-to-sync damage profile than introduce those new likely issues.

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I suspect that a simpler solution would simply be to push PLD more fully towards an improved/faster Requiescat opener with a stronger FoF tail. This can be done by removing DS spam, for instance, from and only from the opening Req (later cycles still use DS spam prior) and perhaps allowing FoF greater granular flexibility.

For instance, have Holy Spirit deal cumulatively increasing damage per recent cast (to a cap of 5) and Requiescat consume that to in turn deal yet more deal additional damage and empower Holy Spirit itself into a wholly decent tool on its own (gets nearly the value of the Req mod by default, with each physical potency buff also buffing Holy Spirit to keep it in parity). It thus again becomes a downtime reach tool, as it was in Stormblood pre-nerfs, so long as one can blow 5 Reqs in a row before their next Req. (May need to reduce MP inflow and cheapen Clemency's MP cost in some other way, such as by letting it proc to be a free and instant cast from Shelltron and/or Intervention.)

In this way, Requiescat becomes an empowered phase-finisher for the burst, not a phase-opener, making PLD able to move directly to Confiteor on the pull despite still including a Holy Spirit spam phase once per minute for ideal damage (to empower Requiescat) after that opener. (Can also have Confiteor, and maybe Holy Spirit, too, not axe combo progress!)

(Heck, you could even drop the lvl 80 extra weave/global and instead have Confiteor just be an upgrade to Requiescat, if that'd serve sync better.) And at level 90, for further flexibility, instead of creating a set Confiteor combo, have Confiteor turn your combo keys into empowered "Blade of" finishers (without axing current combo progress, if Conf doesn't): one for spending up to 3 stacks of Atonement (bonus potency per stack), one for building 3 stacks of Atonement, and one for applying Goring Blade to all enemies.

With that one can build Atonement, instantly Confiteor, DoT all enemies, spend all Atonement in a GCD, build it again in a GCD, pop Fight or Flight, spend Atonement stacks, Goring Blade with only the usual 1-second clip, and so on.

And that's to say nothing of small modifications that can be made to FoF for added sync and flexibility, such as by allowing it to repeat a finisher (per the later culminating theme on "Blade of" GCDs) or just applying a modest Haste bump.

...Oh, and merge SkS and SpS. Because of course.

(Obviously still a WIP. But I do sincerely expect something along these lines could work with minimal introduced problems. Not offering an alternative just to poke holes in your idea, Ryu; I simply think we can have the fun equivalent to a big rework without attaching undo GCD mismatch -- instead, merely skipping it the once per fight.)



Edit: A mockup of/from the suggested revisions above:

Holy Spirit
1.5s cast time
Costs 2000 MP

Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 300 [340|350].

Upgrades at 76 and 84.

Holy Wake
Trait (Level 68)

Casting any spell increases the potency of your next spell by 25% for 8 seconds and decreasing their cast time by 25%. This stacks up to 4 times, up to doubling your spells' potency. Requiescat consumes all stacks of Holy Wake to deal 25% additional potency per stack consumed.
Additionally, your spells no longer break your combo progress.

Essentially, the spam initiation of the Req phase is now available at any time.

Requiescat
Ability. 60s recharge time.
Costs 2000 MP.

Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 500.

[Grants Confiteor Ready]

It therefore reaches up to 1000 effective potency, which makes up for the lost 600 potency across the now-ramping HS spam (since Req was previously 400 potency).

Confiteor
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 1,000 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional Effect: Grants Blade of Faith Ready when the effect of Requiescat ends.

Available only under Confiteor Ready.
※This action cannot be assigned to a hotbar.

The "cannot be assigned" part would only be if we could stick a cooldown indicator on a nonetheless available action and is just to save buttons. Else, leave them separate so one can track Req's cooldown without having to cut short Confiteor's period of availability.