PLAYER'S JOB ADJUSTMENT MANIFESTO- DRK LVL95-99

[Geabrielle]

For the love of Altana making 2 WS crit based isn't going to change a blasted thing save for time in Abyssea....

Moving on, because as instantly gratifying as it was, it's not the end all - be all. Give it time, adjustments are in the works, some of which have been implemented on the test server, for those with access and giving much needed and insightful feedback.

[Dart]

For the love of Altana making 2 WS crit based isn't going to change a blasted thing save for time in Abyssea....

Moving on, because as instantly gratifying as it was, it's not the end all - be all. Give it time, adjustments are in the works, some of which have been implemented on the test server, for those with access and giving much needed and insightful feedback.

spoken like someone who truly has no clue about melee mechanics.

[Selzak]

We need something that lets us get more use out of our offensive spells.

Drain is really our only good offensive spell.

We need something that randomly resets the cool-down of Dark Magic spells after they are cast, so that once every 3~5 Drains we can cast another immediately after.

Also, Blood Weapon should be made into a 5% job trait, and we should get a new 2HR that does something worthy of a 2HR JA. Blood Weapon was good for the elite DRKs of years past with KC zerging, but SE didn't like our attempts to get some use out of it and nerfed it on everything. That's understandable, I guess... but you should at least replace it with something different instead of just reiterating its uselessness.

For level 99, we need a devastating (and exclusive) offensive Dark Magic spell or else the job will never amount to anything other than a gimp WAR.


So...
New 2HR (Maybe something similar to SMN's Odin, but more accurate and not AoE)
Job Trait: Blood Weapon
Job Trait: (Occasionally resets the recast on Dark Magic spells after casting)
Spell: Demi (Something in the vein of AM, functioning very situationally for nuking situations and mostly just as a toy for big numbers). Maybe with an additional effect of strong DoT, like BLU's Disseverment offers them.


I don't know why we're even taking the time to post these ideas to be honest though. They don't care at all, and the only time they do happen to acknowledge feedback it's from the Japanese players.

[Saiken253]

I absolutely love drk. It's my favorite job in the game, and it saddens me to no end just how unloved it is by it's creators. I have thought of and read many spectacular ideas to help improve drk, and here's some of them:

2-handed Weapon Mastery[Job Trait](has been mentioned: There have been many different versions of this thought of, and here's 1 that I enjoy);
-Reduced delay, Enhanced Store TP(to offset the reduced delay), and a damage bonus with all attacks
when using a 2-handed weapon.

Bloody Road[Job Trait]: The higher a DRK's hp(%) the greater their damage. However, as the DRK's HP lowers the damage bonus decreases, but the delay of their weapons decrease.

Dark Celerity(has been mentioned): Again, to make our dark spells cast faster and cost less(as well as vastly reduced recast times).

Victimize[Job Ability]: Transfers the Dark Knight's hate to an ally(probably at most 50%).

Demonic Fury[Job Ability]: The next offensive action the Dark Knight takes' potency is tripled(physical or magical).

Ultimate Weapon[2hr]: Duration - 30sec; all forms of damage the Dark Knight deals is tripled.

Blood Weapon[Job Trait]: as the way people have suggested.

Murk, Murk II, Murk III, Murk IV, MurkV[Dark Magic]: deals darkness based damage(i.e. our dark nukes we've been crying for).

Demi[Dark Magic](mentioned before): Not dealing a damage% of the target's HP(for MMO purposes), but this should definitely be the epitome of the dark nukes(and would of course be somewhat costly with high cast recast, and definitely situational).

Tier 2 absorbs(as mentioned earlier)

Now I know some of these sound a little OP, but they don't have to be(they can be tweaked! that's what discussion is for!). I have loved drk since before I began playing FFXI and it saddens me just how it keeps getting the short end of the stick. Though I know other jobs have seen less love/attention, but they are still much better off than DRK(looking at you solo king SMN~ <3~)! And just something to help all Melee jobs(and those crazy melee mages, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!) just simply make every single WS in the game have a normal chance to critical hit! It makes sense! Why can I crit on normal swings but not my WS? shouldn't I have more focus during my WS to perform these special attacks than a normal swing? Making every WS having a possibility to land crits would keep things level, and would bring many DDs back up to par. And if SE is worried about all those lovely crit WSs, just give them a higher chance to crit with TP(and starting off with a higher crit rate).

Also, I never believed in the whole sacrifice idea. No sacrifice can bring something good enough unless the ratio or loss/gain is 1/1000 imo. This goes for drk as well. SE keeps trying to make DRKs these brash fools that have a fancy for taking damage with little to nothing to show for it. I have always thought of DRKs to be more... vampiric or demonic, but not insane(i only say demonic because of the armor). Anyways those are my ideas of how to specifically make drk better(as well as the game as a whole with the WSs part...).

/em braces for the trolls

[Selzak]

I really feel like DRK should excel more at magical DoT. Bio II is not useless with high Dark Magic skill, but when you compare it to something like Disseverment it's not even notable. I feel like if DRK can't use its magic to deal damage, then it should at least be the king of using spells to decay a mob's HP over time.

Maybe this could be the direction of our exclusive dark-based nuke. Moderate damage, but with the added effect of huge damage over time.

After all, DRK is supposed to "use its magic to torment its foes" isn't it?

[StingRay104]

I really feel like DRK should excel more at magical DoT. Bio II is not useless with high Dark Magic skill, but when you compare it to something like Disseverment it's not even notable. I feel like if DRK can't use its magic to deal damage, then it should at least be the king of using spells to decay a mob's HP over time.

Maybe this could be the direction of our exclusive dark-based nuke. Moderate damage, but with the added effect of huge damage over time.

After all, DRK is supposed to "use its magic to torment its foes" isn't it?

SCH says HI!!!

You are misguided on that front man. As for anyone who brings up demi there is no reason to ever suggest that a spell with that name should be used in a MMO except for HNMs, for purposes of game balance reasons. Their are plenty of more acceptable names so I really got to ask why is it always demi. Finally DRK isn't supposed to "torture" its foes with its magic its supposed to hinder its opponents with its magic while increasing his own advantage IE, your hp is higher than mine, Drain not anymore, or absorb str now your weaker and I'm stronger. Now one could argue this as being torture but its not so much as it is "vampiric" if you will and it is the main reason for a DRK to even have magic. Spells like bio, poison, or any elemental spells are just a side effect of being infused with the arcane arts, true they have their uses but they aren't meant to be the showcase of the jobs capabilities. If anything we should protest 4 things, 1. Absorbs be unerfed, undecayable, and able to stack with anyother buffs. 2. Scarlet Delirium be removed, or fixed in any of the numerous forms presented in the forums, IE made so that its actually usable 40% or more of the time instead of a fraction of 1%. 3. Give us greater damaging abilities or god forbid make our high attack bonus actually mean something. 4. Remove Retaliation and Restraint from the war JA list and put them on DRK where they were supposed to go in the first place.

[Zoner]

SCH says HI!!!

You are misguided on that front man. As for anyone who brings up demi there is no reason to ever suggest that a spell with that name should be used in a MMO except for HNMs, for purposes of game balance reasons. Their are plenty of more acceptable names so I really got to ask why is it always demi. Finally DRK isn't supposed to "torture" its foes with its magic its supposed to hinder its opponents with its magic while increasing his own advantage IE, your hp is higher than mine, Drain not anymore, or absorb str now your weaker and I'm stronger. Now one could argue this as being torture but its not so much as it is "vampiric" if you will and it is the main reason for a DRK to even have magic. Spells like bio, poison, or any elemental spells are just a side effect of being infused with the arcane arts, true they have their uses but they aren't meant to be the showcase of the jobs capabilities. If anything we should protest 4 things, 1. Absorbs be unerfed, undecayable, and able to stack with anyother buffs. 2. Scarlet Delirium be removed, or fixed in any of the numerous forms presented in the forums, IE made so that its actually usable 40% or more of the time instead of a fraction of 1%. 3. Give us greater damaging abilities or god forbid make our high attack bonus actually mean something. 4. Remove Retaliation and Restraint from the war JA list and put them on DRK where they were supposed to go in the first place.

My version of Demi makes complete sense in FFXI as a higher tier of gravity that does instant damage + weight effect. Why you ask? Because in previous iterations of Final Fantasy Gravity is Demi, or at least a variant of it. Of course in FFXI it would not take percentage of HP like it did in the past, but a set amount of damage.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/G..._%28Element%29

[Lordscyon]

DRK should get NINJA 2hr since DRK its all about Death and emo stuff.

[Selzak]

SCH says HI!!!

You are misguided on that front man. As for anyone who brings up demi there is no reason to ever suggest that a spell with that name should be used in a MMO except for HNMs, for purposes of game balance reasons. Their are plenty of more acceptable names so I really got to ask why is it always demi. Finally DRK isn't supposed to "torture" its foes with its magic its supposed to hinder its opponents with its magic while increasing his own advantage IE, your hp is higher than mine, Drain not anymore, or absorb str now your weaker and I'm stronger. Now one could argue this as being torture but its not so much as it is "vampiric" if you will and it is the main reason for a DRK to even have magic. Spells like bio, poison, or any elemental spells are just a side effect of being infused with the arcane arts, true they have their uses but they aren't meant to be the showcase of the jobs capabilities. If anything we should protest 4 things, 1. Absorbs be unerfed, undecayable, and able to stack with anyother buffs. 2. Scarlet Delirium be removed, or fixed in any of the numerous forms presented in the forums, IE made so that its actually usable 40% or more of the time instead of a fraction of 1%. 3. Give us greater damaging abilities or god forbid make our high attack bonus actually mean something. 4. Remove Retaliation and Restraint from the war JA list and put them on DRK where they were supposed to go in the first place.

Eh, names are just names. It's the abilities and spells themselves that I think people are trying to present. I don't think Retaliation or Restraint belongs on DRK at all...Blood Rage, probably. Your point is well taken though, WAR did manage to steal a lot of DRK's repertoire I think- like two similar political candidates or something.

As far as DRK and DoT is concerned, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I think a DoT is a "hindering" effect, and I think that this opens a good opportunity for DRK to use the offensive magic that it's supposed to have. It wouldn't step on BLM's toes at all because it would work over time and not be a super-powerful nuke.

I'm thinking a spell that does ~500-700 dmg and lands a powerful DoT would be the perfect "ultimate" dark magic nuke without turning DRK into a BLM that can melee well.

Another way to get us casting (and this is really the issue that I want to address- I'm tired of feeling like a gimp WAR, and I don't even want to feel like a good WAR...I want to feel like a good DRK) would be to give us some kind of trait that occasionally (like 25% imo, but testing would show the best place to put it) reduces the recast on Dark Magic spells to 0:00 after casting them.

Drain, Drain II, and Stun are all fantastic spells and are almost the sole reason why we even use MP on DRK. There's a problem here, though. The recasts on these spells are so high, that these capabilities are not allowed to define the job and are more like "special" abilities that our gimp WAR gets to use every now and then. Stun is fair I guess, but since Stun was DRK's biggest utility throughout most of the game and now it has no advantage with it- it'd be nice if we got an extra one every so often.

Drain is the biggest problem IMO. At level 10 - 30ish Drain is a very useful spell and it makes DRK a very fun and interesting job to play, its power/MP ratio stays top-notch... but by level 95 the effects of this spell are simply not significant enough to mean anything once every 60 seconds. Either the formula for Drain and Drain II need to be adjusted (this is probably the root of the problem) or we should be allowed to cast them more often (this would be the more fun option).

Blood Weapon is not a 2003+ 2HR ability. Some DRKs made up for this when we were able to get our hands on a Kraken Club, but then every NM gained immunity to it and our 2HR was indirectly nerfed back into worthlessness. Blood Weapon is an effect that belongs in our Job Traits as our 'magical' form of WAR's Double Attack Trait. The Blood Weapon rate should probably be similar (similarly meritable too) to THF's Triple Attack Trait. Blood Weapon should properly "Drain" the mob's HP, dealing damage as well as restoring the player's- but it should have moderate resist rate (nothing crazy...there's no reason for it to suck.)


As far as melee is concerned...I believe that's only a problem because we don't have the right abilities/freedom to use our abilities to do anything but try and melee like a WAR. If the devs would really take a few moments to sit down with the idea of DRK and what its role should be in the game, I think they'd see that giving the job some unique, useful capabilities that define its place and make it presence necessary (or just...wanted) would end the idea that DRK ought to be dealing melee damage consistently like any other job can (which is hard to reconcile). You can't blame us though- you've made us play gimp WAR for years, it's the only way we can see the job now.



If nothing else, why not just toss some different ideas onto the test server? This goes for PLD (which I don't even play) and DRK both. The jobs are obviously not where they should be, so why not just brainstorm and toss some interesting and creative ideas out there and see how it works? If it's overpowered, you can nerf it; if it doesn't fit, you can remove it; if it works, solution! At least you can say you gave a shit that way.

[StingRay104]

Restraint originally allowed your ws's to gain more power the more times you struck an opponent and it cost you the ability to crit. At the time war already had some crit builds and with mighty strikes as its 2hr this made no sense in fact the whole concept was perfect for DRK. As for retaliation I stand by the grounds that DRK is meant to be the ultimate blade and that retaliation is an ability that lets you take damage to deal more damage which is perfect for DRKs image, plus someone brought up that a similar ability was used in past FF games on DRK.

As for the DRK king of dot spells, again SCH SAYS HI!!!!!!!

Sch already fills this role in both dark, elemental, divine, and even curative. Schs lot in life is blm and whm jr that focuses on the dot spells. It really would be completely pointless to try to fix DRK by stepping onto schs toes.

As for the name my original point still remains valid, there are far better names for darkness based nukes and the past versions of demi make it impossible as a player spell in the mmo setting, unless you want DRK to be completely broken. Zoner's concept of a darkness based nuke that inflicts gravity could work as a good substitue for the broken version of demi but honestly all we really need is the spell gravity on our list, unless your suggesting DRKs higher tiers of this spell have greater effects than gravity which would cause rdms to go into an uproar, idk why its not like they use the spell anyways cept to kite.

Blood rage I will always say should be a thief ability and just like retaliation and restraint, should never have been given to war. Its really as if they aren't even trying to make any other jobs good just the select few.

I honestly don't mind Blood Weapon, although I agree it shouldn't be a 2hr, more like a 10 min ability and a jt as well (war can use a ja to proc DA why can't we use the same to proc BW, granted theres can be used on ws so I think having our 30 sec duration would still fit the bill), doing this would help bring some balance back to DRK. Problem I keep running into is what should we have in BWs place as a 2hr. I got it how about a a 2hr that makes Scarlet Diarrhea not suck, it could be a 2hr duration with a 2hr recast that way our 2hr would be useful, or they could just fix the ability, seriously I'd take either from SE.

DRKs spells have big problems, mainly the fact most of our job specific spells are useless and the rest have ridiculous recast times or have been nerfed. If we truly want to talk about DRKs niche it should be with spells that mimic Impact. Impact is the perfect DRK spell, it has unique enfeebs, it does great damage even on DRK, and it has a casting cost of 666 which is a fantastic number for DRK, cept if you actually want to use the spell often. I have always supported the concept of DRK specific ele nukes that also enfeeb the target in the same way, for instance a fire nuke that drops opponents str, you could stack this with absorb str and really cripple an opponent. I have also found the suggestion of t2 absorbs to be most excellent, a more potent verions of absorb spells but they also drain a supportive stat like str and att. Let them stack with base absorbs and the new elemental spells and DRK would be welcomed in any circle.

Finally melee. DRK is the ultimate blade, when a DRK goes all out he can outdamage any other job but at huge cost, IE nearly killing himself in the process. The jack of all trades melee war should never have been king of dd's in fact I wish SE would nerf them back a peg or two and give it some more defensive abilities so it can once again bridge that gap of being dd or tank but not both at same time. DRK was always intended to be the heavy hitter, don't believe me check out our tiers of attack bonus. Problems arose with the first teams overall lack of giving DRK anything significant to truly arise in this department, plus the whole BW SE KC solution to defeating AV really ticked them off (If they were smart they would of given us some good solid clues on how to beat him legitly instead of us using glitches or KC DRKs to solve the problem). Then the team moved to the abysmal failure known as FF14 (it doesn't even deserve roman numerals its so bad) and we got a new team that really understood the game and was able to fix a few jobs, IE Drg never had a niche til this team came in, but due to there sucess and FF14's failure they got moved to 14 and the guys who made abyssea step in. Now it all makes sense, abyssea is for only 5 jobs and this team is only capable of buffing these 5 jobs so it shouldn't be a surprise that we get scarlet diarrhea. Anyways I've completely lost topic now so I'm just gonna close with melee is our cake and spells are the icing on the cake and right now we get worlds smallest cupcake compared to wars 7 layer ultimate wedding cake for the Queen.