Idea for DK Rework - HB skill rework

Will be discussing the rationale

Old HB: Increase HP and MP by 60%
New Proposed HB: Reduce damage taken by party by 40% (MP can still increase by 60%)

Basic Rationale:
- Using 13k hp as a base (considering HP challenges are around 12k, and some additional hp from event equips/monster ring), an attacker would get to 20.8k HP with the old HB. 40% reduction in damage taken would mean that a 20k attack does 12k hp, so low HP attackers have similar survivability.

Pros:
- DK would still be an important utility class at places like PB, or even namie, allowing range attackers to survive.
- DK, with their innate Achilles and HB, will now be able to zerk anywhere, while maintaining their unique HP management mechanic (I think there is an argument to decrease their buffed Achilles, as 70% dmg reduction is a lot).
- Overall, this means that HB keeps a very similar gameplay as it is now, so people wouldn't have to relearn the class.

Concerns (with ideas to fix, or why I think it doesn't matter too much)
- Other warriors would be too strong, with their own innate Achilles and 30k hp. I do agree with this, but perhaps their Achilles wouldn't stack with HB. This would still give them a healthy buff from 15% to 40% damage reduction, but I don't think would be too strong.

- Pirates would benefit a lot from this. Buccs finally have a form of damage reduction as a melee class, and sair takes less damage to their ship. Neither of these classes are that popular so I think it would be a welcome party buff.

- Lack of danger from 1/1s. If a 1/1 consistently only ever takes you to 50% hp, theres really very little danger from them. Perhaps it would be possible for 1/1s to ignore HB?

- Other 30k characters, most notably Shads/NL with high avoid. At first glance, it seems insanely strong that NLs would have effective 50k hp and Shads would have 100k. However, I don't think this is a huge deal. Most places a high HP shad or NL would be in danger of being 2 shot, they would be able to pot in between - so this at most gives more buffer to a bit of inattentiveness. The only place off the top of my head that this meant make a big difference is sed jump into statues at PB... but this is really niche.

- Much lower meso sink for potions due to decreased potion usage. This would have to be monitored, and I'm not sure that parties would specifically be bringing/muling DKs just for pot saving.

TLDR: Change HB from 1.6x hp to 40% damage reduction, low HP characters equally tanky, and DKs get to keep zerking.

Conclusion

This is something I suddenly thought about at 5am, and wrote down for myself to type up later. Very open to further discussion.

For full disclosure, I don't have a DK (except for a lvl40 HB mule and a lvl108 DK on the same account as my shad so it won't ever be played). I just want DKs to have a place in the server.

The next step is to fix heroes afterwards!

 

I’m not sure what new content is on the horizon, but I don’t think goalposts are ever going to move again, because the expected standard is “HP challenges + HB can do all content”.

DK is playable now, but it’s so finicky. Watching my friend trying to maintain ho at exactly 14k at Namie to tank claw still looks annoying (I guess you could pot before claw hits?), and tanking PB body to avoid see notes as well (same with being able to pot beforehand).

From what I’ve heard DK isn’t in a bad place damage wise, it’s just too hard to maintain good damage output and zerk even with 30% Achilles (would appreciate feedback if this is the case from more DK mains tho) at high level content. I do a lot of auf, and the fact that DKs can’t tank clone touch (due to no PG compared to other warriors) during sed just murders their viability

 

I feel like less people would mule this than you might think, cuz this would purely be a QoL buff to use less pots. When was the last time you heard of someone bringing in a hero mule just to use less ciders, for example?

missing out on an attacker, or having to juggle parties, would kind of offset some of the benefit of the dmg reduction

 

hb is for hp challenge characters where necessary (mostly at PB), whereas this would make DKs stronger by allowing them to zerk much more comfortably.

Hence its a DK buff, while maintaining the same HB utility at content where there are characters that need it

This would be a big buff to the DK itself, provide QoL to party, but not enough for it to be muled (IMO), except where it is actually required.

 

I may have overstated DK's lack of survivability at auf. Also, I believe PG is 40% reduction? Tooltip isn't exactly clear haha.

But a DK would have to pot before every sed animation, then if its not sed would have to try to get back to zerk range etc, and it would be really punishing if they ever miss the pot. I've seen some DKs resort to jump attacking clones when sed is up, or jumping up during 2nd clone and not attacking at all. Maybe I haven't seen enough really experienced DKs there though.

As mentioned, I don't play a DK so I don't know the mechanics of dragon blood that well, but the gameplay now just seems to be really skewed towards having to play perfectly with no wiggle room for error, just to be able to match output of other classes.

I'm more than willing to concede on this point though haha, you're definitely more knowledgable on DK than me.

 

I will say I've asked around some DK mains who have told me that they don't even think DK is in a bad place atm, it just requires a lot of focus and reacting to animations and such. In terms of survivability, independence and damage, they felt it was ok.

If that's the case, maybe no rework is needed at all, but it was my impression that people generally felt that DKs needed further changes haha