Dark Knight and Gunbreaker feedback

[andromeda_kha]

Hello! First time poster, I would like to provide some feedback on the jobs mentioned in the title.

Dark Knight

The 7.1 changes to Dark Mind and Dark Missionary were great, however in 7.0 the stacks of Blood Weapon were reduced to 3 to match the new combo that Delirium gave you. This means that Dark Knight's burst windows were made a lot more boring as now you aren't hitting Edge of Shadow as much anymore. Additionally, while the change of removing Plunge and replacing it with a non-damaging ability was good, it did also mean that DRK lost more buttons to press in and out of burst. A change to have Blood Weapon give 5 stacks again, OR have the stacks give more MP back would be appreciated, and a buff to the amount of MP you get from your basic combo so that your rotation outside of burst windows would make the job more engaging to play.

Gunbreaker

I think every change that Gunbreaker has received in Dawntrail so far has been purely positive, However No Mercy's (NM) timer combined with the amount of GCDs that Gunbreaker puts in its burst means that fitting everything in your NM window is incredibly tight without building skill speed on your gearset. Given that Dark Knight and Warrior both have buttons that simply buff their next GCDs on a stack system, I think Gunbreaker should function the same way instead of having a timer.

[Carighan]

Yeah it'd be cool if they did something with the burst, although I ain't sure just "spam more DPS oGCDs" would make it feel more exciting personally. I miss pet-jobs even though they're a lost cause in MMORPGs of course, wish at least during burst we got to manually control our shade and do unique-animation combo attacks with it or something. Cool stuff. Ah dunno.

And with GNB I just want Double Down to be 1/2 cartridges optional, can be used with 1, deals more damage with 2. Or rename it to Single Down I suppose.

[Oizen]

I honestly think that GNB just has one too many GCDs for a burst window.
Maybe turn Sonic Break into an oGCD or something cause that seems to be the one that got shoved to the tail end of No Mercy

[andromeda_kha]

Yeah it'd be cool if they did something with the burst, although I ain't sure just "spam more DPS oGCDs" would make it feel more exciting personally. I miss pet-jobs even though they're a lost cause in MMORPGs of course, wish at least during burst we got to manually control our shade and do unique-animation combo attacks with it or something. Cool stuff. Ah dunno.

And with GNB I just want Double Down to be 1/2 cartridges optional, can be used with 1, deals more damage with 2. Or rename it to Single Down I suppose.

I would also want them to do more but I'm asking within the bounds of a mid-expansion buff (after all Blood Weapon was changed to a stack system in 6.1 or 6.2). And while it's simple, spamming OGCDs can be pretty fun, especially when the animation is as nice as Edge of Shadow's

[CidHeiral]

I think every change that Gunbreaker has received in Dawntrail so far has been purely positive, However No Mercy's (NM) timer combined with the amount of GCDs that Gunbreaker puts in its burst means that fitting everything in your NM window is incredibly tight without building skill speed on your gearset. Given that Dark Knight and Warrior both have buttons that simply buff their next GCDs on a stack system, I think Gunbreaker should function the same way instead of having a timer.

Hard disagree. I play GNB specifically because it's not like WAR/DRK which are both incredibly boring. Homogenizing the tanks even more than they already are is the opposite of what the game should be doing.

[andromeda_kha]

Hard disagree. I play GNB specifically because it's not like WAR/DRK which are both incredibly boring. Homogenizing the tanks even more than they already are is the opposite of what the game should be doing.

But making No Mercy a stack system wouldn't change how you play at all, it would just make the current No Mercy buff more consistent and feel better.

[mallleable]

They need to fix the bug where Double Down never crits.

[Carighan]

But making No Mercy a stack system wouldn't change how you play at all, it would just make the current No Mercy buff more consistent and feel better.

You could argue it would, but ensuring that it always affects X number of skills. Now usually this should not be a problem as in the optimal case this makes 0 difference, this just gives leeway for lag/skill/whatever.

Which is fine. In particular in an MMORPG. Optimizing for top-damage is just the same hard/easy as before, but optimizing for lower levels of damage target becomes easier and more consistent, therefor allowing more players more access to more parts of the game.

I would argue that overall the job is far too easy to play either way, but that's independent of such a change.

[CidHeiral]

But making No Mercy a stack system wouldn't change how you play at all, it would just make the current No Mercy buff more consistent and feel better.

If you have problems with consistency during No Mercy then you should practice more. If you don't like how the burst feels you have other tanks to choose from.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Im gonna be real with the "let's make every buff a stack action" - it completely trivialized skillspeed as a stat as a requirement or even a build option. Sorry for sounding like a massive boomer, but those stacks just ruined a lot of things for the sake of "quality of life". Running Warrior at 2.36-2.48s recast (at your preference) to hit 3/5 Fell Cleaves under Inner Release, trying to hit 5 GCDs with good timing under Bloodweapon (or even more with Stormblood Bloodweapon), etc.

It's bad enough that skillspeed is weak enough as a stat that 8-GCD 2.50s recast is preferred for PLD + GNB, so please kindly, let's just "stop" with the "make XYZ buff just a bunch of stacks so I have zero chance to ever miss critical timing by weaving my CDs correctly". It's boring and I'd rather have it like PvP where you actually have critical timings IN SECONDS to hit better damage (which is what the game USED to be like in PvE)