Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[Shurrikhan]

PLD needs to have it's skeleton broken to fit into the 2 minutes.
Based on current job design, and previous rework incidents on support roles in particular, that's probably not going to turn out too well for the PLDs already playing the game. We'll get more details soon, but a lot of PLD's I know are either living in fear or have already given up. Like, it hasn't worked out for almost anyone else, why would they be any different?

I realize that what we mean by "skeleton" boils down to semantics, but if meant here as sort of the fundamentals "bones" of the job --which I think we could agree are that it [A] roughly alternates between physical and magic damage-amped phases, [B] has physical combos (alternating 3-parters), [C] occasionally spams (final "combo" is Atonement spam, and pre-Conf has HS spam), [D] has a capitalizing burst attack (Conf), and [E] has a physical DoT (once 24s, now 21s, which would indicate a degree of flexibility in its identity)-- I'm not sure it'd require changing anything fundamental.

To fit the 2-minute meta without being overtuned elsewhere, PLD needs only condense its damage towards one side or the other of its burst, or the maximal damage that can be had in the bridge between either. For QoL, any revamp would also probably take the opportunity then to allow Paladin less perceived waste (aka "ugh") in dropping its rewards (e.g., a single Atonement or Holy Shock) that presently allow Paladin additional flexibility in its rotation.

Honestly, that seems like something manageable with relatively small changes that would likely even allow PLD to still be capable of its fine optimizations and flexibility (honestly kind of an 'EW special' anyways).

I'll try to theory-craft some less devastating solutions and will edit this after, but in the meantime, if anyone happens to have a summary of sync issues beyond what would be solved by merging SkS and SpS (most important for the HS spam) or mitigating the cost of stack or duration waste (allowing for faster Confs and less painful Atonement drops or wasted DoT duration), I would appreciate it.


:: Also, I love the close analysis on the DRK VFX there, Odinel!

[RyuDragnier]

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.

[Oizen]

Why would the top tank in the game need reworked? I think other tanks or jobs would be more deserving of SE's attention, some people have it all and still want more. Like melee crying over abilities when they're top DPS. How about fixing all ranged (healers included) first?

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/rankings/49

You know, there is wayyyy more to the game than your unofficial fansite high scores.

DRK's current position there is a fluke, it wasn't an intentional design decision, rather an inevitability of what happens when you cram so many unrelated damage only ogcds into one job, then come up with such inspired traits such as Enhanced Living Shadow, where your summon that spams the same ogcds you have does them at even higher potency than you do.

[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.

___________________________________

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.

[RyuDragnier]

Ahh, forgot about Requiescat. I have a feeling it and FoF are going to be merged into a single buff move that will effect all of PLD's moves, which is why I mentioned the shift to having the spells become oGCDs, it prevents conflict between deciding what to use, as you can still sword combo while slinging spells between the Royal Authority or Goring Blade combos. Keep in mind I'm not looking at actual technical data or damage, as those can be adjusted and they may change skill interactions.

[Shurrikhan]

I have a feeling it and FoF are going to be merged into a single buff move that will effect all of PLD's moves

Do you want them to be merged, though? For productive discussion, we might as well set out early on what we're okay with losing and what we aren't. I would think that A<->B flow between magic and physical phases, however each might be pulled off (e.g., be that phase-opener and spam or spam and phase-closer), is pretty iconic to PLD at this point and would be rather missed, identity-wise.


Or, to put it more vividly, if the expected result can only ever be shit-on-stale-and-wet-bread, after all, it's not particularly worth discussing the specifics of the fecal matter or the overaged bread grain, I would think? So if we're to get specific, we might as well seek out / narrow things down to decent food in the first place.

[Jeeqbit]

"Paladin rotation will change drastically"
"Paladin mains take note"
"Won't go over it now"

Yes, as a Paladin I'm living in fear. That's such an awful thing to say to Paladin mains. "Your class will change drastically. Very possibly in a really bad way. And we're not going to say how." So I might or might not have to switch job in 6.3 while I'm in the middle of raiding.

Everyone's expectations for what will change are probably wrong and here is why. They have to consider lower level gameplay. If they didn't have to consider that, it would have been changed already. Remember that the burst at lower levels is Fight or Flight, while at higher levels it's all split between Fight or Flight and Requiescat. If they buff the Fight or Flight potency, it could make the lower level potency too high. So they buffed the Requiescat phase instead because we only get access to that at higher levels.

The problem of course, is that Requiescat happens every minute, not every 2 minutes. But if Requiescat is changed to happen every 2 minutes, it takes the rotation back to Heavensward where most of the time you just do Goring Blade and Royal Authority spam most of the time, with the only difference being Atonements.

Changing the Requiescat timing could also affect the damage output at lower levels that weren't designed for a 2 minute burst, but if they buff the melee attacks to compensate then it could overpower them at even lower levels. So we should all remember just how much thought SE has to put into it that we are not.

This is why they need to rework it instead of just making a minor adjustment. For example, they could try to maintain the rotation as it is but just add an additional buff that increases damage every 2 minutes, but that still means designing the new ability, the icon, the animation and everything else. I think that this extra ability would be clunky when we are already pressing Fight or Flight or Requiescat. So it all needs a lot of thought and that is obviously what they are taking the time to do.

But without any information on what they are thinking of changing, it certainly leaves a lot of us in fear as Paladins.

[Rehayem]

What I'd like to see in DRK is more sustainability, because at the moment, it has the worst HP recovery method of all the tanks.

[Jeeqbit]

They could add a trait that makes The Blackest Night work like Panhaima. For anyone that doesn't know, that gives you a new shield after the first one is used.

[RyuDragnier]

Do you want them to be merged, though? For productive discussion, we might as well set out early on what we're okay with losing and what we aren't. I would think that A<->B flow between magic and physical phases, however each might be pulled off (e.g., be that phase-opener and spam or spam and phase-closer), is pretty iconic to PLD at this point and would be rather missed, identity-wise.

I don't, no. But I am fully aware that part of the reason PLD is having difficulties is simply because it's sustained and doesn't really have a burst window. Meaning they have to condense that sustain into burst. The easiest way to do that is to combine the two buff windows into one singular burst window. Which requires moving stuff around. Snce the spells are already instants and there's no way in hell they're gonna remove the Royal Authority combo from being the main combo, that means the spell window has to be combined with the melee window. Thus, spells will likely become oGCDs. That's my logic anyway, but since we know SE doesn't really delve into logic much with tanks (see DRK), there's no telling what we'll get.