Feedback The State of Dark Knights and Moving Forward

Quick buy out all the Alchupiz before Gurk does!

 

I missed this part, holy shit drk actually goated now for survival in pb

 

Okay. So every 60 seconds, you press Berserk. At that point, you don't need to keep track of your HP anymore but you do need to make sure you're hitting an enemy at least once every second, at least for the first 20 seconds. Is that right? To me that sounds less interactive than passive zerk. Instead of dodging attacks, you might choose to face tank the attack in order to keep Berserk up. You also no longer need to manage HP, which was the whole point of DK. HP management is what makes a DK a DK. So it's a more passive playstyle and a big departure from DK... Why was this the design you guys decided to go forward with?

 

This undermines DK class identity.

Edit: I feel that I didn't give enough details/explanation of what I meant by this. So I decided to go through the DK rework objectives and respond to the class identity as defined by the balance team.

I think that Warriors as a whole are meant to be the tankiest class in the game, but I disagree that DKs in particular are meant to be the tankiest. While Spearmen do have stuff like Iron Will and HB, White Knights, Crusaders, and Chief Bandits get access to shields and shield mastery. DK are not designed to use a shield. As most shields provide significant defense and less attack (in most scenarios) than two-handed weapons, it appears to me that Heroes, Paladins, and Shadowers were intended to be tankier than DKs in many respects (defense, avoid, damage mitigation through Guardian, etc).

Instead, I would say that DKs are supposed to have the highest HP in the game. This is not the same as being the tankiest, but is related.

Final Fantasy IV, which released in 1991, featured the earliest predecessor of the DK that I could find. It featured a Dark Knight character that used HP to deal damage and continuously drained HP while increasing attack. We see this idea first with the Dragon Knight class in MapleStory. Skills like Dragon Roar, Sacrifice, and Dragon's Blood make clear that the intention for the DK was to spend or lower HP in order to deal damage. Berserk is an extension of this idea. Thematically, the name "Berserk" calls to mind historical berserkers: viking warriors who wore bear skins instead of armor, shapeshifting into bears (becoming more animalistic and violent) in combat.

While you could reduce this idea to "appropriate levels of risk," this is a particularly opinionated interpretation of the basic design of using (and losing) HP to deal damage.

An abstraction of an abstraction. Nothing in the DK's skillset suggest "active" or "skill-based" any more than any other class. In fact, I'd put DK (and warriors in general) as rather inactive, slow, and binary. I think the idea here is that managing HP somehow suggests more active gameplay. This is true when comparing to Paladin, for example, but in general doesn't seem to be the case. It's also non-sequitur to suggest that active gameplay implies higher APM and more buttons to press, which seems to be the argument used in most of the proposals. MapleStory itself is not a particularly active or demanding game in terms of APM.

Yes, having to keep your HP low as a slow melee class is quite difficult in many of the bosses in v62 MS. But that doesn't mean that DKs were designed to be higher APM.

I'm sorry... what?? I don't necessarily disagree that DKs should have some valuable beyond giving people HB, but what about DK's kit suggests that the class is meant to function solo? I don't think you can deduce this as part of the "class identity."

It feels like BT is confusing class identity with their idea of how an MMO should be designed and consistently siding with the latter.

I'd like to propose an alternative list of core class identities of the DK.

1. DK has the highest HP in the game and a high level of tankiness.
2. DK uses spears and pole-arms to attack, and primarily uses melee-range attacks.
3. DK spends and lowers HP to increase their damage.
4. DK provides HP and defense to party members.

 

Yea, I mean, that's how I intend to play it. But if active Berserk is going to stay in the game, I would prefer if it functioned in this lower hp -> more damage paradigm.

 

I gotta say the thematic identity of being a raging berserker who isn’t afraid to smash whatever is in front of you, even targets that other people are afraid to hit, is fucking AWESOME

Sounds like a lot of fun, wish I could playtest it and give it a shot

 

Yeah but not for nightlord which was the most popular class (as every class demographic table has shown over the years)

 

If I recall correctly that the class distribution information was shared in July 2024. I hope they will post the information for 2025.

 

I'm referring to active zerk there, not passive zerk. Sorry if it's unclear. I don't like the idea that the optimal way to play the game involves abandoning the class' main mechanic. Of course, I can and will just ignore what's optimal in favor of what's more fun... but I would prefer if BT didn't make that sort of change as I don't think it's a good direction for the game.

 

Sorry to say this, but this change is on par with Big Bang update. Slapping every buff to DK and making them self-reliant is just setting a bad precedent. Now they have superior survivability, self si, attack that stuns, no downsides and great party utility. Not to mention the already existing buff effects that gives free accuracy and weapon attack.

Adding the cap on healing potions so that passive zerk can always be active and now DKs is able to play mindlessly, is like turning them into Hero, but much better. Seriously, what is even the point of Heroes when DK is just in every way much more superior. The more balance patches are done, the more imbalance the game becomes.

If we are okay with self-reliance, what's stopping NLs from asking for self se? If we are okay with complete mechanics overhaul, what's stopping Sairs from asking for infinite boat hp? Might as well give self si to sair and mm at this point.

 

:V

 

We need a pre-BB server for ML. LOL

 

There is no healing cap on potions. To optimize between damage and survivability (55% threshold) requires constant cleric heal or DB, whereas potions run counter to this.

 

I agree.
LF corsair infinite boat and self-SI, I think it is the only reasonable next step as the ranged DK counterpart.

 

If there's concerns over active berserk granting full damage at full HP, maybe there's a solution involving damage resistance that ends up with the same effective HP while still keeping the DK at low hp?

It would probably have to be a more complicated solution, but I think it could help preserve the skill's low HP = high damage function even during the active state while more or less maintaining the current proposal's functions.

The main concern I can see would be if the damage resistance stacks additively. Since there's already a lot of damage resistance in DK's kit, it could get problematic. Achilles at 30% and elemental resistance at 40% would mean even a 30% damage resistance on active berserk would render a DK actually immune to elemental damage if it all stacked additively. At the same time it would leave the DK with less effective HP against physical damage than just being at max HP would give them, assuming my math is correct (just Achilles for phys damage resistance).

Maybe there's some potential for a multiplicative damage resistance that avoids that issue though?

 

I lost motivation to update that damage reduction thread atm, but there's actually a few updates. The relevant one here is that it's actually just pg+achilles that is additive. Achilles+ele res is multiplicative (though iirc poison ticks and fall damage actually lie and achilles thinks it applies when it actually does not reduce damage to the hp bar).

 

I do share some common sentiment as far as the effective removal of the need to ever be not at full hp. With a 20 second "charge" into an extra 40 second extra damage period and a presumably 60 second cd, that would mean either full coverage of "full or bonus zerk damage" or a few seconds gap between casts if finishing the charge too early overlaps with its 40 second bonus (the latter likely would feel quite janky). And since it provides a blanket damage boost, it means that this time players are virtually required to interact with it even if they dont need the other benefits. Im not inherently against a damage boost for completing the (hold the attack button we were going to hold anyways) challenge, but is there really no way make the effect one that further enables the ability to maintain zerk hp rather than surgically remove the need to interact with it? Between enabling cleric heal/dragon blood hp ticks, and aligning damage taken through improved achilles for everything outside of pb high roll touch (which itself probably just does too much damage, causing ripples among the hp challenges), I can't help but feel we're finally on the cusp of successfully integrating zerk into this game.