Change hyperzerk to help DKs survive

This is actually a really cool suggestion. One aspect I like about it is that it helps DKs ability to live Sed significantly, increasing their utility as Sed targets in HT and making them a significantly higher priority pick in content like Auf and PB, while not being as big of a boon to sed mules since it's much more "active" than the 2 min buff time of Shads.

 

Great suggestion. An alternative suggestion I've seen floating around is a significant buff to Achilles for each of the 3 warrior classes, tuned to their specific needs. DKs are the only one of the three that play with their life on the line, so a significant buff to the DK Achilles could be warranted.

But the survive fatality with 1 hit mechanic is one that exists in a lot of other games, especially for the Berzerker types, and it'd go really well with the DK kit, I think.

Another is give DKs alchemist along with pot duration side-effect to see the NLs implode. :V

 

I think it can work!

 

The pact idea is cool! Even if this doesn't happen for DKs, I am thrilled to see concepts like this be explored cause it means we can see reworks for other classes in a direction that gives them unique playstyles.

On the idea of pacts, you could give DKs a pact with their beholder/draconic power and have it act as a vessel that has its own HP (similar to Corsair's boat) but you just redirect a percentage of the damage to your vessel, and allow the DK to also heal the vessel through certain abilities such as sacrifice, it can be reworked to have a cooldown and the DK would sacrifice HP to heal the vessel. It can be too much but I think the concept can be cool to give the class the identity of a pact made with a dragon to gain power and manage 2 HP bars, and if the vessel dies out, the effect is gone until the cooldown is over. The DK can be more vulnerable when the vessel is dead and can give skill expression to DK players to manage it to allow them to have more uptime being sturdy and do more damage, much like corsairs managing their boat by dismounting before receiving a deadly attack to preserve their boat uptime.

 

I think one of the biggest issues with the fulfillment of this fantasy is how predictable the game is. In most fights, there's an upper threshold for damage you'll be taking, and that damage usually occurs incredibly frequently, meaning you cannot drop below that threhold (outside of active zerk). There's no risk, really, it's more of "just stay above this number to deal max damage". With active zerk this instead becomes "just don't get seduced, and otherwise you're pretty much invincible" making it a pretty much useless ability in fights like Pink Bean and Auf while it functions essentially as an invulnerability mechanic everywhere else. In both scenarios, there's not really "risk" in the sense that we think of it, because the outcome of both scenarios is highly predictable.

One thing that you see in other games with successful high risk, high reward mechanics is an element of randomness or unpredictability, and it's on the player's judgement to really toe that line of how far they want to push boundaries. The sensation you get for a lot of these is a kind of desperate, "please work please work" plea where the player isn't sure exactly what the outcome will be when they make a gamble. With the exception of DK in HT preheads staying at 1 HP and only potting when damage comes out, there's very little of this that can actually be replicated with current Zerk mechanics, at least to a reliable degree in most fights.

The way I see it, if you're really trying to double down on the risk:reward, you're trying to create a mini-game of chicken, where the player is incentivized to not veer off until the absolute last possible second, and you want to create scenarios where the outcome isn't already pre-determined and there's a level of uncertainty. Current hyperzerk mechanic is the opposite of that, seeing as how you pretty much can't die as long as you're not seduced. There's no risk, there's no decision making by the player, it's just "don't use this when seduce is in play". In my opinion, OP's suggestion is a slightly more elegant version of this scenario, as it's also low risk, but at least it provides a baseline level of consistency to let players actually play the game when agency-negating mechanics are present. In a world where you're truly trying to double down on the risk:reward scenario, the Final Pact ability you mentioned is a much better fit, as it fulfills both requirements (the player wants to keep their health as low as possible without proccing Final Pact, but when it procs they're not guaranteed to live without meeting the live condition).

 

I'd said it before, and I still believe it holds true: the problem itself has been insisting on doubling down on zerk damage. The power of survivability is huge in today's meta, albeit mostly because of pb. And more damage alone wouldnt fix warrior in pb with the survival gap across classes, especially if corsair is anything to go off of.

Here's the fun fact of the day:
*Chance for statue to hit a dex-bucc (999 avoid vs 260 boss accuracy*) = 260/(0.9*999) - 1/9 = 17.8% hit rate

*Chance for statue to hit an NL (750 avoid* vs 260 boss accuracy) = 0.7*[260/(0.9*750) - 1/9] = 19.2% hit rate

Notes:
1) the Wisemen seem to have slightly lower accuracy (~250), and ariel/one of munin entries has 265 accuracy).
2) Idk NL gearing well enough, but saw pb dpm posts ranging anywhere from 700-800 avoid, likely due to pendant choices. 700 avoid NL would still have 21.1% hit rate, about as likely to get hit as guardian is to activate.

Why do I divert yet another thread to thieves? Because DPM aside, this is what tanking means in this game, and puts on full display the MASSIVE disparity among classes. I didn't even mention shadower's extra +10% shifter (lowering hitrate by another ~2-3%) and effectively doubled health pool.

But warriors get survival tools too, right? Well, about that...

Hero/pally specific:
* 20% reduced boss touch damage (Not physical damage, touch damage)
* 20% guardian, only if you take the devil's bargain and go 1h. Which brings their magic attack dodge rate up to.... 20%.

Dk specific:
* 40% element resist (actually nice against bird spam i hear)
* 5% hp/4 sec regen when dragon's blood is active/not on cooldown
* active zerk's "make everything a 2 hit kill" when active/not on cooldown

All warriors:
* 15% damage reduction
* a free trial for hp washing lite (don't even THINK about actually investing the amounts of NX other classes are allowed to for extra survivability).
* 90% stance. Just kidding, stance is qol, not survivability. Just dodging does everything stance does anyways.

Even if the dragon balls were assembled and these perks were all combined into one mega-warrior, I doubt it'd be enough to compete with the real tanks.

Of course, by balance changes, its obvious we haven't been looking to "make warriors tanks again", or even just making the invincible classes mortal again (NL, Shad, or even bucc in remotely favorable conditions). Instead we say we want to make dk do even more damage in favorable, probably dummy conditions (the sair effect), but leave them little better than dogwater in the endgame content where they are likely to be most depended on to survive for hb. If that had any chance of working, we'd have seen a higher sair population among the playerbase/runners.

Tl;dr continuing to buff warrior damage (especially dk) is simply patching the symptoms of warrior issues instead of the cause. It will still leave them unplayed and/or dead in the corner in favor of dex-buccs with dpm (thieves). Even with better survival rates, warriors won't be topping the dpm charts of pb anytime soon, but even currently experienced warriors can carry their weight.

 

Dark sight to regain shifter cooldown :V

 

The current DrK would be a really interesting style in modern where there's a lot more focus on mechanical intensity than there is "sit and hold button, hope you don't get sed"

The core issue is just that really until anything after Von Leon that's kinda the mechanical intensity you dealt with. So while there is something really cool about the ability to "sacrifice defense for damage" it's just less impactful imo when the mechanical intensity just isn't there in this version of the game to make the skill expression it allows for shine.

TL;Dr game is very ugga dugga, so higher skill ceilings naturally aren't going to be popular as you can't *truly* make use of it.

 

I love the idea of invincible, but i think it might be better approached as a skill that needs charging instead of having a pact, for example after 100 attacks you will gain the ability to activate hyperzerk for 15 seconds, during this time you get bonus stats and cant die, i think it can make this skill very interesting while actually helping to add some more dmg to the dk class

 

1) Can we change 3rd Job skill Sacrifice into an active buff? Upon cast, dk gains ignore enemy defence IED buff for 30 seconds with 60 second cooldown (50% uptime).
1.5) or can we change Sacrifice into a passive skill that functions similarly to old zerk. When the character is below 50% HP, all attacks will have the IED as applied effect.

2) Can we also buff Zerk: keep the damage as we have it now, but when the character is below 1% HP, the damage Lines will always land a Crit. (Synergizes with active berserk’s 1/1). If possible, the crit damage can be stacked with SE buff.

3)This is for all 3 warrior class.. can we please buff Stance proc chance at max level to 100%?

4)I like the idea with Beholder serving as free resurrection for dark knight. Perhaps if you die, you can activate Beholder to instantly ress you (the amount of hp you are ress’d with can be dependent on beholder’s level- similar to how bsp ress works now). However, activating the beholder ress will put all the beholder effects (mastery boost, hex, aura) onto a cooldown period (30 minutes at max level) where you can’t benefit from any of those skills until cooldown is off. (Using TL can reset the cooldown).

5) just some QOL, but while berserk is active, can we make drk immune to stun for the duration of the buff? When stunned, we lose out about 1/3 of the active buff uptime. Secondly, while berserk is active, can we re-cast it a second time to cancel the active effect? (Shortcut to right clicking the buff). This could be a player skill issue, but there were times where I intended to cancel active zerk but unintentionally right clicked another buff instead because the zerk icon got shifted due to party members casting their rebuffs at the same time.

 

Just a note that's the pre-destiny effect. Nowadays Final Pact just revives you and puts itself on CD, and by either killing X monsters or hitting a boss monster X times you can reduce the CD once. You are also able to choose between three different pacts which have different cooldowns and puts the character in total invincibility for different amount of time after revival (2s iframe at 180s/110s cd, 8s iframe at 260s/180s cd, or 40s iframe at 900s/600s cd).

Of course, DrKs don't really have the whole "low HP risk/reward" thing any more (the gimmick got taken by Demon Avengers). Nowadays they actually want to keep their HP up as much as possible, with a couple of passives/skills that provide benefits only when the character is above a certain % of their HP, so unless the whole class in ML gets revamped it wouldn't really make much sense.

 

I agree DK needs more QoL. The problem with "high risk high reward" is that damage can't be too high or it'll be too broken in some contents. so therefore another way to look at the issue would be to lower the "risk" part instead of increasing the "reward" part.

For example, what Mirror said is a good idea, or, reducing all incoming damage by half while active berserk. It would allow people to berserk at a lower threshold and wouldn't be detrimental during seduce. (to be honest I think DK should get more damage mitigation at all times. DK's kit should HELP DK's playstyle of low HP).

I think both these ideas would make DK less of a hassle to play. Right now all the DKs i know barely use active berserk, kind of a shame, really, as the majority of the rework was centered around "active" berserk.

 

sair enters the chat

 

DK's have no option of utilizing shields and/or defense plays, which tells us how offensive it was designed to be. So the mechanic of getting reduced to 1 is fine imo.

But I'd like to add onto the existing Active Zerk; I've mentioned before, was to grant Seduce immunity on active zerk only, which should cap the floor level of risks and promote further active zerk plays. Where literally from the looks of the zerk aura surrounding the DK, acts as a berserk mode disregarding any obstructions in the way. While some other ideas such as super KB during active zerk arised amongst my discussions and could be expanded should the above be non-viable.

 

I like this idea for two points, because of the QoL that would give a nice boost to DPM, and because it can be used strategically