Feedback Dark Knight Skill Changes

Yesss! I'm all for this level of transparency and discussion.

My baby Dragon Knight isn't yet qualified to talk about it's future job promotion but i'm super excited to read about other people's experience with this class.

 

i think nightz is a good guy

 

As a new Dark Knight and with past experience in other servers, i LOVE the new Berzerk.

It basically allows to use Zerk at lvl 1 for a very noticeable damage boost with 60% HP. No more playing basic DK for the first few levels. In this regard it also leaves room to invest in other skills earlier, like power stance.

The change also heavily reduces the immediate need to wash to 30k HP.


The crusher change, while it makes sense, is actually a bit of a miss compared to the old crusher.

With the old crusher you could effectively mob with it when you're lvl 72 or 73 and you can hit 2 enemies.

Now, you need to be lvl 74 since that is the earliest you can hit 2 enemies with it.


One caveat however... expensive potions. Reindeer Milks are extremely extremely expensive to Train with and you chug them like crazy when training but still dont do a ton of damage to effectively train at 1F or Skeles. The other alternative is ginger ales, not so expensive, but still were made more expensive since they're an NLC potion? Mesos isn't easy rip.


Iron will is quickly irrelevant once you're lvl 70. Would be nice if there was a way it could scale.

Dragon blood remains totally mediocre/filler. I would either it give Str or a 20 att bonus equivalent to rage (that just makes Heroes more irrelevant)

Excited for a defense rework.

Some cool things to consider: changing the color of Zerk and crusher and fury after a certain level or other benchmark.

Perhaps a QoL buff by slightly increasing the horizontal range of warrior abilities after a certain character level. (Vertical for brandish/Fury, horizontal for crusher/blast)?

I do wish the hyper body duration not so saddingly short.

The skill description for Zerk could be improved. How, though, is something else totally.

Overall due to the Zerk change, Drk is probably in the best practical and functional state in comparison to other servers.

 

Spoiler: What's your overall view on Dark Knights?

• One of the best class, if not the best, to learn about managing hp bar, learning boss damages/animations
• Cool skills, fun mechanics
• Cleaving is one of the best concepts in the game, except isn't very useful outside of grinding.

The main argument I hear against buffing Dark Knights is that Hyper Body is too useful, if one were to make Dark Knights stronger than heroes, what would be left of Heroes. In reality though, less and less people are relying on hyper body except as an extra safety net to pad their HP.

Spoiler: What is the class lacking currently?

1. Dark Knights are classified as a "High Risk : High Reward" class, but there's not a whole lot of reward except when it comes to being a HB mule and performing similar dpm as our cleave counter part, Heroes.
2. Good potions - Currently stuck on using Ginseng Root (Recover 40% HP and MP) and Sushi (Recover 20% HP and MP). Although toggling between these two allows for optimal gameplay, it comes at a huge meso cost simply due to the fact that it also recovers MP.

Spoiler: What changes would make Dark Knights more interesting/fun to play?

• As a Dark Knight who pink beans, I really love the fact that I can keep my hp at 500 hp while still being able to survive as long as I pay attention to the boss's skill animations and predict upcoming damage. This, however, is not possible in most other content because:
  • There are too many sources of damage
  • Dark Knights must physically touch the boss/mobs to deal damage.

 

Although I don't actively play my DK, I honestly like the new zerk rework. It allows me to not sweat that I'm at like 17k HP (usual target is ~16.5k out of 30k max), because I don't have to do a difficult calculation on if the monster is about to attack me, how much HP 1 Sacrifice would drain, would a sushi/HP pot put me back to the desired 16.5k.

I think the rest of the skills on a DK are fine, I understand that the a tanky/defensive class can't be the heaviest hitter too. I just have hopeful wishing that a QOL toggle is possible, where we can decide if we don't want to receive heals from the party (cleric/bishop). Can be inside the beginner skills page and last maybe the same duration as Magic Guard?

Or if this can be something in the Legends.ini, maybe we can set an actual numerical value to what we can be healed up to?

 

Fishy

 

Let's get the inevitable memes out of the way first:

I think the big problem with the Dragon Knight class is that the dragon theme just isn't there. While their priest friends are literally capable of summoning dragons, dk gets a couple attacks named after a dragon (fury, roar, blood), without summoning a dragon. They cannot even ride a dragon until 200, when they've traded in their dragon mantle for a shiny, dark coat.

On a serious note, I was against the popular "tiered zerk" solution and still am currently, because dk needs defense more than death. What I believe they need is:

-Better survival mechanisms. I don't care how much damage they have if they can't survive a run without being a liability to the party. Some of this will be player skill, but currently the bar is too high to expect even "veteran" dks from using their features. My preferred path of choice would be longer iframe duration after being hit. If the time between getting hit down to critical hp and needing to heal is increased, then the dk is still in just as much "danger" as before, but provides the player more time to dish out heavy zerked hits and calculate how much to heal and which potion to use. This makes the game reactable for players who would normally just die too quickly or be unable to zerk at all. It also helps alleviate potion costs on a typically expensive class. Perhaps either a passive effect or an active ability by trading all avoid (and maybe even bishop healing) to guarantee the player has full control over their HP bar.

-Better cleave/single target separation. I still believe there's too much similarity between hero and dk outputs. Dk has hb, while hero has rage and shout and crash. Even with panic update (which I believe risks whiffing far too much on non-stationary targets to be worthwhile), there is still minimal separation between cleave and single target options for these classes, dk especially. On that note, I would propose that Crusher becomes a main single target attack, and fury becomes a prime cleaving attack. Of course, being unable to quickly swap weapons makes mixing these skills from different weapons impossible, so that would be updated too. Make crusher hit 1, maybe 2, targets, and make fury do more damage. Both skills should use the slash/stab matching the weapon, not the skill type. Visual oddities of spear fury doing stab damage aside, this would allow single target skills and cleaving skills applications to be distinguished and balanceable, without forcing dks to use multiple weapon types. Of course this effect can be emulated by just raising the damage of the mismatched weapon:skill pairs, but that might fool players into thinking one inherently better. Added benefits here are that fury has better reach to enable options, and dk would become a 6-cleave, while hero is mostly capped as a 3-cleave (and infrequently 6 if coma were any good). Personally, I think dk should be king of warrior cleave with passable single target when combined with HB (and enough survivability to actually make use of each in any situation). The drawback? There arent enough 6 cleave situations to truly take advantage of the option, so damage would have to be tuned for the 2-4 target options, potentially getting out of hand in full 6-cleave. (Damage decay perhaps?)

Tl;dr DK needs survivability first and foremost. Then it really needs a way to separate its single target from its cleave potential. Once those are met, then we can talk numbers.

 

A defense rework would make low hp zerking more plausible

 

It's true that HB is far too powerful to justify any use for DKs outside of that, that's why I exclusively use my DK for HB and echo. He stopped disappointing me when I figured out how to correctly use him.

 

• What's your overall view on Dark Knights?

Great class for early and mid game, but one of the worst for end game. I think its a great class for someone new to the server to start with, but a very bad choice for a long term player to main.

• What is the class lacking currently?

Single target damage in high stress scenario (pink bean / auf heben) that can be achieved by the average player.

• How could Dark Knights be improved?

The best way to improve dark knight is to make it so that the average player can zerk at 100% damage / uptime in all scenarios - so this means that either zerk scaling needs to be front loaded or DKs need better defensive tools to enable 100% zerk uptime and damage.

Let the top skilled DKs get rewarded with 105 to 110% zerk damage, but make it so the average player can zerk at 80-90% in pb / auf.

• What changes would make Dark Knights more interesting/fun to play?

I am a fan of the reworked zerk curve, however i think its scaling can just be adjusted to be more friendly to the average player.

 

I have a 15x Dark Knight and a 14x Hero, so I feel compelled to drop my 2cents.

TL;DR: I don't think DK needs to be a "high risk high reward" attacker. I don't see an equilibrium in Mushroom game where the risk:reward can be simultaneously good and consistent enough while not completely overshadowing Hero.

What ML does have room for is a supportive tank that doesn't require as much funding as other characters, levels relatively quickly, and has fun interactive abilities capable of keeping your party alive. Nobody worries that Bishop Boss DPM is terrible, but the nostalgia behind DK being a crazy Berserker leaves most players disappointed with how the class actually plays out

Spoiler: What's your overall view on Dark Knights?

Dark Knight is good at leveling fast and being passable in all content - this makes it IMO the best class as a first character in ML because you get to experience everything, and quickly. DK can wash really easily, can solo play, group play, leech alts, grind, cleave, and boss - Mages cannot claim the same and to me this flexibility is DK's niche. You gain access to powerful non-primary 4th job abilities like Stance, Achilles, and Maple Warrior much earlier than other attackers. You get your bossing ability 3rd job, and you don't have an awkward period of scaling in between lvl.12x-13x like other attackers. You're highly desirable for parties even if you're poor and washing, not to mention all your abilities look really cool and flashy. If ML were a game like League of Legends or DoTA or Pokemon where the player expects to work with a roster of characters with different strengths and weaknesses at different locations and times in the game, I think general consensus would be that DK is obviously OP because you can scale up quickly and remain relevant forever even with poor items.

However, I think for the vast majority of players, MapleLegends is not that kind of game - it takes hundreds if not thousands of hours to raise a character. Eventually as a DK you're always in a mental state of "am I okay with continuing my mediocre character or do I bite the bullet and remake another attacker?" - and this mediocrity is Dark Knight's major flaw. Their damage scaling is meh, their running costs are high, their durability is meh, mobility is meh, cleave is meh, single target is flat out bad, HB won't keep unwashed players alive, fully washed players don't need HB at all, and their usability is meh. A jack of all trades is certainly powerful, but DK needs to be good at something by late game that players can aspire to.

Spoiler: How could Dark Knights be Improved?

• DK needs more pot efficiency by late game. When the bottleneck of progression becomes mesos, burning ~1.5-2x the costs of Hero on all content does not spark joy
• Right now, DK's job is to not die and cast HB - any damage you put out is just the cherry on top. Especially with this patch's Berserk change, you get a good chunk of your Berserk damage even at ~70% hp, so I have very little motivation to consciously use Berserk - its just a random amount of free damage depending on the last time my pet decided to pop a Honster. The DPM gap between try-hard Berserker vs AFK Berserker is less than the gap between a try-hard Berserker and an equivalent Hero. I personally don't think this is a negative, but if the goal is high-risk high-reward gameplay then I would say DK is missing the mark because you really want to minimize risk most of the time. I don't have any solutions for this problem, I recognize it's a really hard thing to balance because Hero is also a 3-target melee cleaver. But again, nostalgia aside, I would argue that DK doesn't need to do damage to be good - there is already a niche in ML for a defensive support off-tank.
• I really think DK needs to be able to keep unwashed players alive at bosses and reduce their pot burn on area maps. Add whatever mechanics need to be added to make this fun and interactive, but DK sacrifices so much power compared to Hero to have supportive abilities - yet HB right now is not adequate. If we're open to exploring some outlandish concepts, I think something like dropping a Defensive Bubble where players can lay prone to avoid all damage (and give up all their DPM) would be an awesome mechanic that could replace any of DKs many many useless spells. Maybe this bubble recharges based on the DK's damage output so you're actually getting very good risk:reward on Berserk without destroying Hero's whole career?

Spoiler: What changes would make Dark Knights more interesting/fun to play?

I'm a firm believer that more buttons =/= more fun to play. There is beauty in simplicity, I don't need mechanical difficulty to feel like I'm engaged in 2D mushroom game. I love how simple DK is, most of the time you only need to cast Stance + Booster then spam your 1 attack. I really wish Hero's combo was a passive like Berserk, it's a great design that's underutilized in MS

So, with that context:

• Spear Crusher's hitbox could be bigger. Hero can slap anything on the same continent, DK is like threading a needle in comparison.
• I think it would be fantastic if you could equip Spear/Polearm at the same time, and your character would just whip out the right one for the skill you cast.
  
• HB can probably afford to last longer, I have to do a lot of laps in Zak to HB everyone - it just adds to the meme that DK is a mule.
• As I mentioned in the previous section, DK should be able to keep party members alive. Cool concepts can be explored even if it's like "party members can duck behind the DK to dodge map-wide magic damage"
• Add toggle for heal from Bishop

 

DK was unchanged in the most recent patch. Nothing is different. DK still ded class.
DK is still underpowered while using the most skill to play and costing the most effort in potions.

 

I'll also add having their end game weapon (Sky Ski) locked behind gachapon and their grinding weapon (Purple Surfboard) locked behind a once a year raffle random chance event is not making the class any more accessible to play for newer players to the server.

Not to mention the extremely inflated prices on Timeless Spear (because it matches Sky Ski's speed).

What I'm trying to say is that even if someone wanted to make a new DK the options are limited compared to classes that have more accessible weaponry (that can be found via monster drop or crafted like Dragon weapons). Slow spears are fine (I used to use one for a long time).. but eventually they will opt to switch to a faster weapon for QoL/more damage over time.

 

NOTE: I'd like to also take the time to point out that none of what is/happened/is happening with the current state of DK has anything to do with ML nor the fault of Staff.

It's gMS fault for having DK a ded class to begin with. I appreciate the efforts the Balance Team put towards trying to make ML the best game it can be.

I play DK because I enjoy it but I also see it's downfalls compared to ez mode NL

 

My opinion in general is that there's still not much reason (outside of having fun, which I guess for most is more than enough) to main a DK in end-game.

I guess the way I see it is that right now nostalgia-like thoughts are hindering DK from becoming a useful class anywhere. You have a server with people being able to wash their characters to the point where they don't require HB. Even in some cases where you might require it, new mechanisms such as constant dispel make it unreliable to depend on HB (Aufheben).

What happens then? Other classes have much lower survivability risks. This generates an unbalanced status quo for all classes. The way I view it, ranged classes enjoyed the benefit of superior damage because they had the cost of survivability (less HP). However, now they're able to surpass this obstacle simply by washing.

Where does that leave cleaves in general (and especially DKs)? In the gutters. Tanking classes like warriors no longer hold exclusivity for one of the most important arguments you could foresee to justify their weaker damage. If no one has difficulty surviving, why are we bringing the weaker guys (warriors)?

The nostalgia argument of wanting DKs to suffer to be able to output decent damage is now put in a more stressful spot when you add these arguments above. The most recent changes, although cool looking on paper, just provides less of a reason for a DK to even play his character. For 10% (or whatever is the update) additional damage I now find myself being even more vulnerable for the whole run. One could say: well but they're stronger. Yeah, but still weaker than everybody else in general terms.

What I would like? For this server to finally recognize that it's not nostalgic. Given the circumstances that the server was developed, most players were able to wash their classes to the point where survivability is not an issue in ML. You can even see that by adding even more bosses that deal damage above the usual standards of what every character would be able to achieve by lvl 200 without washing.

What does this mean? Well, let's move on from punishing DK by having to deal with zerking to achieve better damage. Although I can't say I know much of the reasons GMS had to remove zerking, I could see how my arguments could provide a reason to remove it.

Well then, what distinguishes DKs from other cleaves then if it's not zerking? I'd say the balance team needs to address this question in an all-encompassing way. You would have to redefine the image of each class or at least make their differences more salient (e.g. make Hero the class that provides more attack while DK the one that provides more HP, but in a substantial way for heroes in this case).

As for the state of cleave, I could agree with that iPippy is saying. One idea I've always talked about with my friends (but I don't know if it's possible to code or apply it) is to make it so that the damage cleave classes output is distributed depending on how many targets they hit. For example (take the numbers simply as an example, those would be defined by adequate balancing discussions vis a vis damages done by other classes): Single target does 200% damage, 2-mob target does 100% to each, 3-mob target does 66.6% to each.

Anyways sorry for the format of this post, just speaking what came to mind.

 

Just want to point out that this variable damage is possible as it is the mechanic used for heal

Long live MrPresident

 

For berserk, is it possible to make it become an active skill that you use instead of it being passive?

When you use it, it'll buff you according to the HP you have missing when you used it, and it will last for like 20-30 seconds. That buff will increase your damage similar to how it works now (maybe a bit stronger if you are very gutsy and daring), but will also increase the damage you take. The more damage it gives you, the more damage you take as well. So it is risky and you might have to be careful with it for certain bosses if you don't want to get one shot, but at least once you buffed yourself you can stay at max hp by being healed or using pots for the whole duration until you need to buff yourself again. If you want very high damage, you might want to be near death before using it.

While for most situations I can see drk using this buff in a relatively safe way for bossing, especially for harder hitting bosses. But for bosses that hit less, drk could really shine and become a true hard hitting glass cannon, surpassing most jobs at the risk of dying VERY easily. I'd make berserk be stronger than it can be right now if used at like 5% or 10% hp to reward risky play.

Maybe this idea can be tweaked to make more sense or for it to work, but it's something I thought about, and I believe it's fun active gameplay.

 

its a good 1st character to make, as compared to Pally, Hero, Shad. Cheap funding.
If you do make it to 175, you will be highly desired in PB because there ain't many new DrKs reaching 175. Great mule to bring into PB due to lvl 175 cap.

 

Just to clarify, speaking as a DK player and not as part of staff:

What's your overall view on Dark Knights?

• It's a pretty good first-class to make and is very useful to mule for those who aren't as washed as what is becoming more standard (basically 19k+). It's great for cwk and I think it's honestly not too bad at HT / PB (statues). Empirically DKs have shown that they can carry their weight in HT or for PB statues, but they definitely leave a lot to be desired when it comes to PB body. At NT I consider them to be fairly mediocre but they're fine to bring. Honestly even though I consider Dark Knights to be a decent first-class to make, I would strongly recommend new players to make buccaneers instead if they insisted on starting with an attacker.

What is the class lacking currently?

• There's definitely a lot of stigma surrounding the class, and I don't think a lot of people are aware of what DKs are even capable of. Of course, they're not going to be as good as their single-target counterparts at dealing single-target damage and most content in the game is single-target oriented. That being said, I do think they're doing respectable damage at HT and PB statues (body phase is definitely miserable) and the utility HB brings is often understated. While HB's utility will continue to dwindle as the server ages, it will probably be at least somewhat necessary for a few people in the future (and it keeps older unwashed characters more viable, I suppose.) It's difficult to say that DKs should strictly just receive a massive single-target DPM improvement since they still are providing large utility in HB.

How could Dark Knights be improved?

• I think the scaling zerk was honestly a really big QOL improvement; I don't have to be nearly as strict about staying below 16.5k so I don't feel like a complete griefer if I'm slightly above the old zerk threshold. I also can risk pushing the limits and zerk at low HP to deal more damage (which is what I typically do at PB or HT). That being said, it's definitely up for debate whether that was enough of a change for Dark Knights to be viewed more positively by the general community. I think adding more defensive capabilities would be nice for DKs other than the change that allowed them to zerk at higher HP such as increased invulnerability/iframes.

What changes would make Dark Knights more interesting/fun to play?

• I already consider DKs to be fun to play, but it's definitely disheartening to put in far more effort than other classes while dealing less damage. I'd say this is most prominent at PB and Auf. A "skillful" way of managing invulnerability akin to buccaneers might make DKs more interesting/viable in terms of enabling them to zerk more safely.