complete Dark Knight overhaul suggestion (with link)

[Zairava]

Title. Here is the link of the document. I have it formatted as paperless with charts to make it easier to read the ability details.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

This is a complete overhaul of the job up to level 90, it functions entirely differently to how DRK does now.

It contains MP management in the form of:

• Dark Arts (2500)
• Shadowskin/The Blackest Night (2500)
• Dark Passenger/Shadowbringer (2500)

And before you go on a tangent about Stormblood DA, this DA isn't going to give you carpal tunnel. You use Dark Arts on three abilities, with one being relegated to your burst.

• Power Slash
• Stalwart Soul
• Scourge (only usable while Darkside is active, more on that shortly)

Souleater is removed and replaced with Power Slash. When you need to preserve MP you simply don't use DA with Power Slash/Stalwart Soul.

Power Slash and Stalwart Soul both grant stacks of Dark Descent. Dark Descent is used on:

• Carve and Spit (requires 2 stacks)
• Abyssal Drain (requires 2 stacks)
• Darkside (requires 1-5 stacks)

You use Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain to not overcap on Dark Descent stacks; and as stated in the document, Darkside gives you a damage buff depending on how many stacks of Dark Descent you currently hold, and uses them all upon execution.

That being said, Darkside is no longer a passive damage buff, and I boosted most of the potencies by 20% to compensate for that, which is why they are different compared to how they are as of current patch.

Furthermore, Darkside also upgrades actions. And is as follows:

• Hard Slash -> Spinning Slash
• Souleater -> Scourge
• Unleash -> Tar Pit

Recall when I stated that Scourge is one of the actions that is boosted by Dark Arts, and that I also mentioned just before that is only usable during Darkside. This is so that in single target situations, you can still use Dark Arts as an active MP spender during your burst.

In order to prevent a confliction between sacrificing defense for damage to use Dark Arts, Shadowskin/The Blackest Night now provide free usages of Dark Arts, and both cost the same amount of MP. Instead of the status for this being Dark Arts, this boon is now called Dark Dance. This solves any issues with something being a damage gain over the other and making either or irrelevant.

Blood Weapon is reverted to it's Stormblood variant. It gives a 10% haste for 15 seconds.

In order to make Darkside usable for your opener, Delirium now immediately grants the maximum amount of stacks of Dark Descent that can be held. It also extends Blood Weapon by 8s like it did in Stormblood.

The cooldowns are formatted in such a way for if they remove the 2 minute burst meta, if they do not, the cooldowns are as follows.

• Blood Weapon: 60s
• Blood Price: 30s
• Darkside: 120s
• Delirium: 60s
• Salted Earth: 90s

After some feedback on it I decided to make a Blood Gauge version as well, here is the link to it:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

The biggest changes are as follows:

• Scourge is now a GCD DoT that needs to be maintained. It is NOT linked to any combos and does not interrupt combos either.
• Bloodspiller and Quietus takes the place of Power Slash and Unleash during Darkside, respectively. Spinning Slash still replaces Hard Slash.
• Edge and Flood of Shadow are introduced at lvl 74 as Blood Gauge spenders that cost 50 Blood Gauge.
• Power Slash and Stalwart soul increase the Blood Gauge by 25 with the Dark Arts Combo Bonus
• Darkside damage buff is now 3 stages with increments of 5% for ease of access.
  • 25 Blood Gauge: 5%
  • 50 Blood Gauge: 10%
  • 75 Blood Gauge: 15%

Changes to BOTH versions:

• Blood Price is removed
• Dark Mind is now separate from Oblation again, as well as Dark Mind being introduced at lvl 48
• MP costs removed on Unleash and Stalwart Soul
• Sole Survivor, though revamped, has returned
• Several Potency Adjustments
• Dark Passenger/Shadowbringer is now on a 35s cooldown

In the Dark Descent version, Scourge no longer provides Dark Descent stacks
In the Blood Gauge version, Bloodspiller no longer increases the Blood Gauge

[Updated as of 7/17/23]

[primarisgoazrr]

Yoo this man is cooking! Is this version of Dark Arts like reassemble/kaiten?

[Zairava]

Yoo this man is cooking! Is this version of Dark Arts like reassemble/kaiten?

Similar, but it serves much more purpose than just making things stronger.

You need Dark Arts active when using Power Slash, Stalwart Soul and Scourge in order to gain stacks of Dark Descent, which you spend on Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain to not overcap, and these stacks as stated in my post increase the damage buff from Darkside upon activation, with 5 stacks (the maximum) granting the highest.

Furthermore, Darkside uses all of your Dark Descent stacks, this prevents your burst from being overly bloated with oGCD spam since Delirium automatically grants the maximum amount of Dark Descent stacks you can currently hold.

To add to this, since Dark Arts only affects combo enders, its placement is also flexible. you can use it before or after Syphon Strike and Unleash and after the combo enders before you use the combo starter. This leaves ample room to fit in Carve and Spit/Abyssal Drain usage and burst cooldowns such as Darkside and Delirium.

[Sazuzaki]

Dark Descent is a super cool idea, I like it a lot! I dig the theme of delving deeper into your inner darkness as you go through your skills, as well as granting more resource management to a job about resource managing. This also keeps the theme of FFXIV Dark Knight while not doing anything super risky/gimmicky like health spending.

These are the types of reworks I would like to see. They're easy to learn, but look hard to master. It works for players who play the game more casually and still allows them to deal good DPS, but gives more dedicated players room to improve.

Square really needs to up their job design.

[Samosa]

I feel like more jobs need resource management, or at least some kind of risk vs. reward, so you are either rewarded for paying attention or punished if you mess up. But like the poster above said, this rework seems pretty easy to get your hands on but optimization would be a blast.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Whatever you're cooking with the GCD rotation, I think you need to go back into the kitchen, because this stuff is still raw...

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Im at work so I can't type out all my thoughts, but some short points:

+ I like the revision of most resource systems, definitely feels more like the DRK I somewhat used to play.
+ Utilizing Shadowskin as an early game TBN is a neat idea.

? Having your AOE combo cost MP on top of having Dark Arts effects is highly questionable
? Blood Price is basically early ShB Bloodweapon and it also feels extremely samey to your version of BWeapon.
? I am not a fan of replacing one resource system for another and I am doubly not a fan of losing Bloodspiller, the OG big GCD hitter from Dark Knight
Edge and Flood aren't really animations needing to go either.

- Really dislike the Dark Mind level change to be outside of Heavensward content let alone ARR. While not as relevant for many, DMind is fairly integral for mitigation planning for those doing synced Coils and Alexander Savages. Shadowskin nowhere near enough makes up for that, especially when compared to PLD and GNB.
- Merging Oblation with Dark Mind is an extremely awful move. It massively takes away the flexibility that current Oblation offers. There are many moments you dont want Oblation's extra 10% with Dark Mind so you can hold them for different attacks.
- a much better solution is to give Dark Mind the Addle treatment, either "10% magic mit + 10% generic mit" which results in a net 19% magic mitigation OR "20% magic mit, 10% physical mit".

Please stop asking for Oblation to be merged with other skills, the flexibility is what makes it great as a separate button.

[Zairava]

Im at work so I can't type out all my thoughts, but some short points:

+ I like the revision of most resource systems, definitely feels more like the DRK I somewhat used to play.
+ Utilizing Shadowskin as an early game TBN is a neat idea.

? Having your AOE combo cost MP on top of having Dark Arts effects is highly questionable
? Blood Price is basically early ShB Bloodweapon and it also feels extremely samey to your version of BWeapon.
? I am not a fan of replacing one resource system for another and I am doubly not a fan of losing Bloodspiller, the OG big GCD hitter from Dark Knight
Edge and Flood aren't really animations needing to go either.

- Really dislike the Dark Mind level change to be outside of Heavensward content let alone ARR. While not as relevant for many, DMind is fairly integral for mitigation planning for those doing synced Coils and Alexander Savages. Shadowskin nowhere near enough makes up for that, especially when compared to PLD and GNB.
- Merging Oblation with Dark Mind is an extremely awful move. It massively takes away the flexibility that current Oblation offers. There are many moments you dont want Oblation's extra 10% with Dark Mind so you can hold them for different attacks.
- a much better solution is to give Dark Mind the Addle treatment, either "10% magic mit + 10% generic mit" which results in a net 19% magic mitigation OR "20% magic mit, 10% physical mit".

Please stop asking for Oblation to be merged with other skills, the flexibility is what makes it great as a separate button.

Great points overall

For shifting dark mind later, I felt like it might've been better to do so since I put Shadowskin as a low level TBN, since I didn't want our defense to be too powerful. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, so I'll probably just revert it.

I'm pretty likely to remove the mp cost on the aoe combo, my original vision for it was to have mp management at the lowest level possible, but in hindsight it doesn't matter since DRK starts at level 30, and I brought Dark Arts at lvl 35 anyway.

Looking back at Blood Price...yeah that really is samey huh...

As for the resource system, if we were to keep the Blood Gauge, I have some ideas in mind I'd like to try out as I'm revising.

I'll work on some revisions and be back later with them, it'll be a seperate doc so I can return to the original if ever needed.

[Arohk]

I wish the DRK invul wasnt so bad, like really even after they changed it, its still trash.

Things that can happen:
#You fall down to 1 HP, you immediately use an attack > it doesn't register that you already have the buff because of server ticks > you get no healing from the first attack> you die because you cant fullheal yourself in time
#You Fall down to 1 HP > there is no enemy to attack or you get stunned > it runs out and you die
#You use it in a dungeon but the healer keeps you barely alive and it doesnt trigger > it runs out > you die because the healer fails to heal you and you never got the self heal effect

[Sazuzaki]

I wish the DRK invul wasnt so bad, like really even after they changed it, its still trash.

Things that can happen:
#You fall down to 1 HP, you immediately use an attack > it doesn't register that you already have the buff because of server ticks > you get no healing from the first attack> you die because you cant fullheal yourself in time
#You Fall down to 1 HP > there is no enemy to attack or you get stunned > it runs out and you die
#You use it in a dungeon but the healer keeps you barely alive and it doesnt trigger > it runs out > you die because the healer fails to heal you and you never got the self heal effect

I think it's so funny that GNB of all tanks got an HP spender (Superbolide)