DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

To stop speed runners granted I never speed run anyway except on very rare occasions...

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This is what I see posted, but I've seen nothing from SE to that effect.

1st, I don't see why "speed running" would be a negative. When you are running a dungeon for the 100th time (for Anima grind or whatever) why would you want to take an eternity? This is why I always "speed ran".

2nd, I can run the current dungeons plenty fast.

it's ridiculous what some ppl suggest here. most of the stuff would overpower drk.

heres my long list of things that should be added to the game because i am master dirk knight and have the sharpest edge in the knifebox.

Sole Survivor: Places Another Victim on the target. All damage dealt to the target is absorbed as HP. If 75% of the maximum HP of the caster is absorbed during the duration of Another Victim, 40% of your MP is restored. 20 second duration.
Another Victim: All unaspected damage dealt to this target by the caster is increased by 100%.

Salted Earth: Cooldown increased to 60 seconds. Potency reduced to 70.
Additional Effect: Every tick reduces the cooldown of Dark Passenger by 10 seconds, if dealt to a target with Another Victim.

Quietus: Dark Arts additional effect: The next Dark Passenger has its MP cost removed.

Dark Mind: Dark Arts: Damage vulnerability reduction increased to 30% (replaces magic vulnerability down).
Additional Dark Arts effect: Doubles duration.

The Blackest Night: Duration doubled to 30 seconds.

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Originally Posted by cetrei

heres my long list of things that should be added to the game because i am master dirk knight and have the sharpest edge in the knifebox.

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No
/10 char

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

No a million-billion times to this. Abyssal Drain is the only tank enmity skill that is both ranged and AoE, and its one of the few things that makes DRK special. I really don't know why some people still have a preference for Unleash, I mean yeah it has niche uses for initial pick-up and positioning, but once you have AD there's only a handful of situations where you want it.

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Personally I only ever use it in initial pulls (trash and boss), and after 'voking a tank swap once or twice.
It's still got its niche uses, and that huge enmity gain from it certainly keeps it on my hotbar, but not anywhere near my frequently used skills.

I’ve not read everything in this thread yet, so I will repeat many things already said, sorry for that. ^^

The state of DRK is not as bad as what WAR's one was before 4.05, but right now, outside of TBN and the fact that Savage bosses have many magic attacks which are its reedeeming factors which favors him over WAR, the DRK is, IMO, the weakest Tank of the game. It's not broken, it's just damaged. Depending on what the Shake it off changes are in 4.1, if it gain raid utility, DRK may lose what are his reediming factors, which are already pretty much weak.

What is frustrating is that its playstyle changed way much more than the two other tanks, where SB feels like an extension of their gameplay (well, acounting 4.05 changes for WAR of course). I've come in terms with the fact we'll never see DRK 3.0 playstyle again, not even in 5.0 (I would be very happy if it woudld be the case tho), and the new playstyle is still fun, DRK is still my favourite tank.That's not saying he is fine as it is.

The problems with 4.0 DRK:

Mains issues:

-First of all, the main problem is that the gameplay is way too centered on The Blackest Night. The skill is awesome, but clunky. It's not strong enough to be used solo on big tank busters when we're not catched up with gearing, so we have to keep another CD to take these big hits. The problem is we have three other defensive CDs, coutning the mendatory rempart, and one of 'em is only effective on magic attacks. That means we're cruelly lacking on mitigation, and are forced to used TBN on CD when main tanking, which feels... well, not good tbh. During 5 sec at most, you don't take damage, and then, back to full damage. Worst case, the buble don't break, and then we don't have the 50 blood, meaning we paid 2400 MP for a mitigation skill of 5 sec, which is underwhelming. With server tics trolls and delayed effect after animation akin to Living Dead one, TBN is as awesome as it is frustrating.
Tl,dr : TBN is good but clunky, we lack other source of mitigation, and using TBN as a means to correct that by using it outside Tank Buster feels really bad.

-Second problem, Dark Passenger. DP is useless in SB, because of the double nerf it got in SB. Nerf in potency and a up to its MP cost hurt it pretty bad, and it’s really sad and infuriating when it was one of our go to move in HW. Using it in solo target is a big no, in multi-target Abyssal Drain is better in every situation and Quietus now drain MP making it also really usefull, and using it for the blindness is not an option, because of the HALF MP BAR IT COST. If it got niche uses, it would not be as bad (but still be bad), but no, Dark Passenger, former top skill in our toolset, can now be remove from our bar.
Tl,dr : DP is useless, period. The Nerf was way too big.

-Third problem, Dark Arts don’t feel as satisfying as it should. In HW, hitting Dark Arts to change a skill felt good, because every use of Dark Arts was different, and you had to weight its use because of the draining of Darkside. In SB, we have now Syphon Strike having a Dark Arts Effect, Bloodspiller too, and the effect for those two attacks is the same as Souleater, 140 potency increase. We’ve lost Dark Dance, so that’s one unique effect gone, the effect on Quietus, Abyssal Drain and Dark Passenger feels at best weak, at worst completly useless, and the effect on Dark Mind is weaker than comboing it with The Blackest Night, because with the same MP cost, we’re mitigating about the same amount but are also gaining 50 blood. That means we’re using Dark Arts to increase our damage 99% of time, with one priority, Carve & Spit. Last thing, the change to Darkside, rendering it impossible to lose it even if we hit 0MP, means we don’t have to weight the use of DA, making it a spaming button. The whole majority of thinking around Dark Arts have disapeared, and damaging abilities feels weak when we’re not using DA.
Tl,dr : Dark Arts lost all the subtility it has because of changes made in SB, making it a bit unsatisfying to use.

That’s, I think, the three main problems with DRK right now. Mitigation, Dark Passenger being useless, and Dark Arts overuse whithout any complexity. I’ve seen that it’s what most DRK main are also feeling.

There also are some other « minor problems », and I’ll go quickly around them.

Minor issues:

-Shadow Wall is the weakest « big defensive CD » of all three tanks, with a recharge time equals to Sentinel, but a weaker effect, equals to Vengeance which have added effect and shorter recharge time. Oh, and it last the shortest amount of time too.

-Blood Price nerf is way too strong. Having it gated behind grit, we can live with it without problems. But the MP nerf is way too much, and the Blood Gain is also far weaker than the gain with Blood Weapon, making it a very unsatisfying skill to use, even if it’s not useless.

-We’ve lost Low Blow, Reprisal and Dark Dance to role abilities. Thoses new versions are weaker, have no synergy with our toolkit, and are in competition with other skills, meaning we can not regain them. All of ‘em were « small » mitigation CD, and we’re curently lacking mitigation.

-Sole Survivor is still very situationnal, useless in many raid situations, and feellin weaker than ever with the other means to regain MP we have now. The recharging time is also pretty long.

-Living Dead is also the worst ultimate. It’s punishing and have a relatively long recharge time. The theme of the skill is awesome, but it needs some tuning.

-The loss of a third combo finisher feels bad. Old Delirium was a satisfying move, even if I understand why ther removed it, because of all the removal of stat debuff effects skills.

-The loss of scourge is also a big hit. It’s frustrating, because PLD kept his own DoT because it was on combo…

-Some people are feeling that Bloodspiller and/or Quietus should be OGCD, with no or short recast time. My main fear is by puting them that way, they should nerf em, but I’ll still put thise one, because if it can be change without nerfing the skills, it would feels awesome.

There are some others but well, that’s my own main concerns.


How to improve DRK?

I’ve mention everything I feel is lacking on DRK, but DRK don’t need to have all of these problems corrected to become equal with other tanks, or even as satisfying as it should be. Adressing the main problems is, I truly beleve, a necessity. Addressing one or two minors problems on top of those main issues is enough to make DRK great again.

Balancing everything would certainly means tweaking potencies or recast time, I’ll leave that to SE, the Idea is NOT to make DRK OP.

So here some ideas.

Main issues:

-The Blackest Night:
Improving the lenght of the shield by at least two seconds would be perfect, even if it means we have to up the recast time by 5sec. 5 second of shield at most feels very short, and that’s not counting bad timing with server tics. 7 seconds means we are sure to have two server tics during its duration.
To aleviate the overdependancy on TBN, you can simply add another Defensive CD. Bringing back Shadow Skin for Exemple, with or whitout tweaking. Or a completly new ability.
Another option is to put defensive utilities on some skills, and Sole Survivor is a perfect candidate for that.

-Dark Passenger:
The ideal correction could simply be to revert it back to what it was on HW. I don’t think SE would do that tho. So, you can simply up the potency back to what it was and remove Dark Arts effect, putting blindness on it vanilla. Or you can lower the MP cost to what it was too.
Well, ther is many ways to fix Dark Passenger, and many people have ideas for it, so I will not develop that point further. ^^

-Dark Arts:
Balancing Dark Arts is probably the most difficult change to make. The main idea is really to put back the thinking around this ability we had before. That means we have to make every Dark Arts use being different and somewhat usefull. One exemple is putting a bit more potency to the Dark Arts buff to Bloodspiller, making it a cleat priority over using it on Souleater for exemple, but that’s a very simple exemple, that may be too straightforward.
I’m not too sure of what to propose here, so I’m open to read what you guys have to say in this thread, I’ve already seen some good ideas.


Minor issues:

-Shadow Wall:
Making it unique, by tweaking its strenght, or its recast time, or its duration, or adding an effect. You can tweak multiple aspect, but really, you have to make it something more than a « weaker sentinell »

-Blood Price:
Make it gain more MP to be viable in Single Target situation for MP regen, or improving the blood gain. Really, we’re not asking much here.

-Low Blow, Reprisal and Dark Dance gone to role abilities:
Well, the ideal here would be to have one or more of em coming back to our kit in some way. I miss the synergies we had with them.

-Sole Survivor:
It’s the perfect candidate to have a complete overhaul, with maybe raid utility effect. I think we have enough ways to recover MPs now, so be creative. The name of the skill was already a bit unrelated to the skill anyway.

-Living Dead:
Same as Shadow Wall, tweaking it to make it as good as the other ultimates with its own distinction. I like the already proposed idea that if we’re not heal enough, we would gain a weakness effect of some sort. It would still retain its strenghts, and aleviate its weakness while being faithfull to the Zombie theme of the skill.

-The loss of a third combo finisher:
It’s the perfect place to put Scourge Back. It would make it a Goring Blade equivalent, and change the rotation a bit. Of course, balancing the potencies would be necessary. After seing Scholar gaining Miasma II back, it doesn’t seems as impossible as before.


Well, that’s it. I love the DRK, its aesthetics, and even after the changes of Stormblood, making it really less complex, it’s still my favourite Tank. I still hope to have a bit of complexity back, and to have the current issues solved.

I repeat that I don’t want to have the DRK being OP, so I’m not for adding all I’m proposing here. They’re just some ideas and direction I think might be good to make the DRK equals to other tanks when WAR will have its Shake it off corrected.

This post was way long. And sorry for the mistakes I’ve left. =B

What I'd like to see is :

- Bring back Scourge as a second combo finisher for Syphon Strike to make it equivalent to Goring Blade (Maybe add a DA effect, but only if it's something different than +140 potency on the initial hit, we already have enough of that).
- Revert Dark Passenger to how it was in 3.X, there's really no reason to have it nerfed. It wasn't even broken to begin with. I really don't understand SE's decision.
- Increase BP's MP and Blood regen, just a little bit at least to make it more satisfying. It feels sooo underwhelming right now.
- Make Dark Mind mitigate both types of damage, since now PLD can block magic. Change DA effect too since using the same amount of MP in TBN + natural DM is way better than DA+DM.
- Add a priority system for DA, instead of everything just doing +140 more potency. Make Bloodspiller the top priority for example, right below C&S.
- If mitigation still isn't enough with the DM fix I listed above, add an Inner Beast-like effect to Bloodspiller but only when used in Grit and with DA (+XX% mitigation for a short amount of time).
- Buff Shadow Wall, but do not just copy Sentinel or Vengeance, make it its own flavor, for example by doubling its duration without touching the effect or the CD.


All of this would fix the issues with the job I think, which are :

- Lack of mitigation compared to the other tanks
- Lack a little bit of damage
- Dark Passenger is complete garbage
- Only one DPS combo
- The coolest animation + sound effect is gone (Scourge)
- Dark Mind completely obsolete (it's only useful in the current raid tier because there are magic tank busters, just like how it was in Gordias)
- Shadow Wall still too weak compared to the other tanks' counterparts, for no reason


I think that those changes would bring DRK to PLD's level without having to nerf PLD. DRK would have higher DPS than PLD, still less utility, and very close mitigation if not equal. WAR needs changes too, but I won't give any ideas here as it's a DRK thread and I'm still only 65 on my WAR.

Shadow Wall need to be 20s duration 120s cooldown.

I want Dark Dance back as well.

60s cooldown 20s duration

Doubles parry effectiveness, allows parry from all directions and makes magic parryable.

Dark Arts effect: Also add 25% evasion/magic evasion.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...in-3.x-and-4.x

Hopefully this will be the last update to my rant because I'm getting tired of ranting about DRK nerfs and I think I just want to lvl PLD since it feels more fun to play than 4.xx DRK.... and when a former DRK says that PLD feels more fun to play than DRK, you know that DRK balance is REALLY BAD....

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...in-3.x-and-4.x

Hopefully this will be the last update to my rant because I'm getting tired of ranting about DRK nerfs and I think I just want to lvl PLD since it feels more fun to play than 4.xx DRK.... and when a former DRK says that PLD feels more fun to play than DRK, you know that DRK balance is REALLY BAD....

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In a way to me 4.0 Paladin feels like 3.x DRK. Even though I am not spamming a "buff other skill" button.