DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

Basically DRK is 100% inferior to PLD in every way, and this is what SE needs to fix.

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Originally Posted by Falar

There is a high amount of risk associated with it. I know I am terrified of using it and not having to break to the point I only use it under 2 circumstances:

1. A Bona-fide tankbuster
2. Large trash pulls

Using the STR right side really helps make it pop more consistently.

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Terrified ? Seriously ? You are terrified to use your best skill ?

Personnally, I'm using it ALOT. I've wasted just a few sometimes when I'm not totally used to a combat. But In Susanoo, it needs just 2 Auto-attack to break it, even if I'm main tank, and since Reprisal comes back for every tank buster, I can time how many TBN I do before keeping it for tank buster. (And I'm using VIT accessories)

In Omega story, same easy to break, just have to know the fight or pattern when Boss are doing there "no damage" skill. It's a bit harder on 3rd and 4th but I did those fight only once yesterday.

It's even more easier when you put it on someone else than you (main tank or DPS/heal with a target) and really up how many Bloospiller you do and so your DPS.

I'm also using it on pull and have 50 Blood right away to extend either Blood Price or Blood Weapon. It works really well.

And if it doesn't break, well it means you are taking 0 damage during 5sec against your ennemies. (Or the boss is changing phase or doing no damage. :P)

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Originally Posted by Arek

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You definitely have to use it a lot, because for 70 seconds out of every 90s it is literally your sole source of mitigation in physical fights. And now its at least a surefire DPS gain so long as it pops, so there's that.

Someone earlier in this thread mentioned folding Dark Dance's effect into Dark Mind, and it gave me an interesting thought:
Basically, remove DM's current DA effect, since 15% is often sufficient, and make its new DA effect to add a -15% physical vulnerability down. So if you DA it, it doesn't get stronger percentage-wise, but it becomes usable on physical damage as well as magical. I would take this over an additional 15% magic mitigation that frequently isn't needed any day of the week.

TBN is great, especially when it breaks. Our kit as a whole appears to be lacking a bit however. I'm ok with lacking some mitigation provided it comes with a payoff in dps, this is the Lore of dark knight sacrificing defense to gain attack. However we don't have the dps the others do, it's not making a lot of sense.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

TBN is great, especially when it breaks. Our kit as a whole appears to be lacking a bit however. I'm ok with lacking some mitigation provided it comes with a payoff in dps, this is the Lore of dark knight sacrificing defense to gain attack. However we don't have the dps the others do, it's not making a lot of sense.

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DPS is not a tanks job anymore, and they changed tanks accordingly. Its by design.

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

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if they wanted to change it by design then they needed to COMPLETELY rework how tanks play. in 3.x all of the tanks got mostly skills that were used to deal extra damage (Fell cleave, Goring blade, Royal Authority... the list goes on). so they cant simply just reduce the ammount of damage we do and say "you're not supposed to be suplementing dps anymore" without changing our kits. Other MMOs have tanks that play around CONSTANTLY fighting to keep agro, and constantly mitigating damage and not just the occasional tank buster. ofcource such a change in FF14 would require all the tanks being reworked, rework how enmity works AND change EVERY SINGLE FIGHT IN THE GAME to the new way that tanks work, which ofcource is not feasible.

Bottom lines is that if SE wants tanks to do their main role and nothing else skills like fell cleave, dps stances like sword oath and deliverance, and things like Fight or Flight or Berersk would need to be removed.

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

DPS is not a tanks job anymore, and they changed tanks accordingly. Its by design.

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It's by design to have one tank 10% behind the other two? That sounds like bad design. It's not like the OT sits in the corner waiting for the next tank swap or add to pop.

Tanks are still doing 50% of a dps at least. If you think groups won't look at two tanks equaling out to one extra dps then I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself this, if you had a choice between two tanks,

a) one mitigates more, provides group protection, self heals, and brings 200 dps more

b) mitigates less, brings little group protection, few self heals, and brings 200 dps less

Which tank will you take? This is the position dark knight is in currently.

On offense side what about not adding scourge effect to SE, but simply adding Scourge (Similar style to Goring Blade) to the Syphon Strike combo, the other two tanks get 3 combo enders but DRK gets 2. Possibly removing Bloodspiller and Quietus or at least Quietus off GCD, would allow us to avoid losing resources on its cast. Reduce DP mana cost, and buff potency, and if Blood Price could just give more mana would be great.

Blood Price needs some kind of mitigation or increased healing ability that isn't too powerful for the 16 second Delirium extension

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Originally Posted by Dj_Seaghost

On offense side what about not adding scourge effect to SE, but simply adding Scourge (Similar style to Goring Blade) to the Syphon Strike combo, the other two tanks get 3 combo enders but DRK gets 2. Possibly removing Bloodspiller and Quietus or at least Quietus off GCD, would allow us to avoid losing resources on its cast. Reduce DP mana cost, and buff potency, and if Blood Price could just give more mana would be great.

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I actually like the idea of dark arts applying Scourage on bloodspiller rather than giving bonus potency.

So I finally manage to reach 70 with DRK and I cleared all content with it a few times, love it much more than my PLD. The class is perfect, however:

- Shadow Wall is the worst skill. Perhaps could last longer by consuming blood? Like "Last one more second for each 20 blood points at the moment of activation up to 5 extra seconds".

- Bloodspiller needs to leave our old DOT after use it. (No need for OGCD skill since don't break any combo).

- Delirium is ok but should still be an OGCD attack with 400 potency and should use old HW animation. 120s CD it's ok.

- Quietus should spread bloodspiller DOT (under dark arts) so we can plan interesting combos from time to time.

- Blood Price no longer needs to give mana but do something else, could reflect damage taken up to a max amount of your total max HP.

- We need our Stun back (and Warriors too).

- Abyssal Drain should combo with syphon strike for extra potency (240?). That way you can either spam or do the combo.

- Dark Passager should become a free cost OGCD skill without blind and 240 potency as base.

- A new skill for raid utility skills, "Shared Pain" (copy paste of WoW Link Totem, but fits DRK theme): reduces damage taken by all party members within 10 yalms by X%. Every 1 sec the health of all affected players is redistributed, such that all players are at the same percentage of maximum health. Last Xs.

OH, as far I know in term of DPS all Tanks are equal and DRK do more damage in tank stance. That's not the problem, but PLD is way more simple and his healing can save others from their own mistakes, when no one is getting unnecessary damage TBR is way better (and more fun to use).

There is a significant difference when the metric is maximum dps. As In the letter about balance which requested our feedback job dps is determined by many factors including utility and susceptibility to mechanics. Given the amount of utility drk has compared to paladin it makes zero sense to have a lower dps ceiling or be slightly behind at the 75th percentile. We need either more utilities or more dps to compensate.

In terms of mitigation I think drk is fairly on par with paladin with the exception of shadow wall which makes no sense to me.

In terms of selfsustain paladin blows drk out of the water.

In terms of dps it appears paladin is ahead of drk, and significantly ahead of drk at the highest levels.

In terms of utility pld again is far ahead of drk.

Pld right now feels like drk 3.x, though a bit less busy and with less risk. I really enjoy playing drk, but I do wish we had some more interesting mechanics in our kit. Mana usage lowering blood cooldowns and blood usage lowering mana cooldowns would give the job a really nice ebb and flow feel while leveling the playing field. I would also like to see a more regular buff that delirium, for example making sole survivor give reduced resource costs rather then resource generation when adds die.

In 3.x I mained dark knight because it brought more to the raid group than paladin, and I felt paladin needed buffs. Right now I cannot justify continuing to play dark knight in 4.x for the same reason.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

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Fully agree and I really hope we see something like any one of your suggestions... save for one: let's not touch the recast time on Plunge, kthx! I'm a kitty and I need my pounce :3.

Also, if the planets align and we are somehow granted an additional skill - let's find some way to get that scourge animation back!

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

It's by design to have one tank 10% behind the other two? That sounds like bad design. It's not like the OT sits in the corner waiting for the next tank swap or add to pop.

Tanks are still doing 50% of a dps at least. If you think groups won't look at two tanks equaling out to one extra dps then I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself this, if you had a choice between two tanks,

a) one mitigates more, provides group protection, self heals, and brings 200 dps more

b) mitigates less, brings little group protection, few self heals, and brings 200 dps less

Which tank will you take? This is the position dark knight is in currently.

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Wrong view. Look at number of tanks. Look at number of players. Look at faceroll content. It does not matter which tank you take, and chances are you wont have a choice. You take the tank you can get and feel lucky to have tanks.

It simply makes, at maximum, the difference of a few seconds of time for the kill, if that. As long as we have no content worth a damn, balance discussions are pointless: in a PvE MMO, balance only matters if there is stuff asking for performance. There has not been content that required any sort of setup or balance consideration in over half a year or more. What makes you think it will come back?

Right now every job is OP relative to the game's content. So this discussion is purely theoretical. Since everything can easily be one-shot through the duty finder, and I havent yet found a way of prioritizing which classes you get there (because you cant), you have to play with whomever you get.

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

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One word for you; Raids.
Did you play Gordias back at release? A3S needed every little bit of dps you could muster in the gear at the time, even Elysium (The FC that has been one of the groups that has gotten a load of world firsts in both coil and alexander) struggled a lot when it came out.
This all being said however, Alexander was a horrible raid tier in terms of balancing. Omega with any luck will actually be balanced propperly this time and the first turns being entry tier. Even then though in hard content its still better to take the best options available to you when there is limited spots, its also more prevelent in this game as you can level all jobs on one character so you can refuse to take a WAR for example and nobody would really bat an eye because then anyone who actually wanted in to the group would simply level and get good at what the group is looking for, in other MMOs its not quite so simple.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I actually like the idea of dark arts applying Scourage on bloodspiller rather than giving bonus potency.

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I second this, either that or making it Ogcd and giving us cooldown reduction on Blood weapon/Blood Price/ Delriium

@ Niyuka: Forgive me I won't settle for the tank I can get since I play tank. This is not a dps forum begging for a certain tank, this is a tank forum looking for balance between the three. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

My view point is that we should be balanced, each job should bring something to the table and no one should bring everything. You feel this is the wrong view point, okay. Your view point seems to be that nothing requires optimization and therefore trying to shave off those few seconds is pointless. You've disregarded that some of us enjoy that content. Skipping Faust in a9s, skipping adds in a10s, skipping lapis in a11s, and skipping puddles in a12s. These were things I could enjoy on any class, not just optimal ones. But to do that early, Striving to go the extra mile for that extra second had amazing results and was incredibly rewarding.

I understand you don't derive joy from such feats. Some of us do. if you don't want to hear about balance issues, I'm not sure what we are doing right now lol.

As far as content that may require such things we have savage coming in less than 2 weeks and what the developers have dubbed "challenging savage" after in 4.10. This is the context I am thinking in.

Perfect balanced is a utopia and even if they manage to do it people will still be biased to one class or another. So in your case is not really matter what Devs do, you are always going to pick the option more viable to you. Anyway, with this new difficulty probably salvage will be in line with WoW heroic so probably the "imba" team is only going to be needed for that new mode.

But sure, they still need to tweak stuff here and there (was bound to happen with so many major changes), however, ask for balance changes so soon are not realistic outside number tweaks.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

Perfect balanced is a utopia and even if they manage to do it people will still be biased to one class or another. So in your case is not really matter what Devs do, you are always going to pick the option more viable to you. Anyway, with this new difficulty probably salvage will be in line with WoW heroic so probably the "imba" team is only going to be needed for that new mode.

But sure, they still need to tweak stuff here and there (was bound to happen with so many major changes), however, ask for balance changes so soon are not realistic outside number tweaks.

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You have a nice straw man argument going. No one has asked for perfect balance, would be nice but I won't hold my breath. What we have right now is no where near balanced and many people have listed an overwhelming number of reasons/examples of this imbalance. You are just saying it doesn't exist and so we should stop trying.

You yourself offered some suggestions I don't think adding a mechanic for our combos is too much of a tweak. Honestly it feels as though it should do this anyway.

The developers asked for continued feedback. I believe everything which has been posted is in the vein.

Blood Price needs to be reborn.

I don't have any straw man argument but looks like you take my opinion as a personal attack. What I'm saying is a fact, if you are doing top tier raiding you will pick the best tool for each combat period, and no matter how much a developer try to balanc classes, items or encounters we area always favor X over Y (even is not something real but perceived by the community), is this wrong? No. This matter for easy content? No. (A lot of the feedback, not from you, is "delete my class".

Like it or not SE will wait to see how classes perform and their overall presence during the first tier of savage before do any dramatic changes or even a class overhaul, no matter how much you or I think some changes mechanicals changes are needed "now", such is life, mean time probably we will see just numbers tweaked here and there.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

I don't have any straw man argument but looks like you take my opinion as a personal attack. What I'm saying is a fact, if you are doing top tier raiding you will pick the best tool for each combat period, and no matter how much a developer try to balanc classes, items or encounters we area always favor X over Y (even is not something real but perceived by the community), is this wrong? No. This matter for easy content? No. (A lot of the feedback, not from you, is "delete my class".

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The difference between "some classes are better suited for some battles and we will always pick the ones that are best for this encounter" and what we have now is that while sure, earlier different classes brought different things to the table and you could pick what suited your group best, what we have now is more akin to "yeah so we can either take this tank, or we take this other one who deals more damage and takes less damage."

With how the game is now, there are no reasons to ever pick DRK over PLD.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

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I get where you are coming from. I also understand that the current situation is not well-designed, and I agree with you it would be great to have 3 balanced tanks. I am simply very dubious whether we will actually see content that makes these things relevant. What you listed is years-old content that has publicly been dubbed a mistake in terms of difficulty, and we have already seen 2 tiers of content being MUCH softer, and far less demanding especially on tanks.
With Omega and the current Ex Primals, it seems to me SE is avoiding having to properly design balanced classes by simply making content easy enough so it wont matter.

But be that as it may, one MAJOR problem with tank balance will always be that tanks work along very very limited sets of parameters, in regards to what actually makes a good tank. In order to differentiate between the tank jobs, SE tried to give them niches, but whats to prevent everyone only bringing the niche tanks to their respective fights? I think in the end, all tanks will need to be pretty much the same, just different visuals, before true balance can be achieved.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

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You said perfect balance is impossible and so the best we can hope for is tweaks. This is a straw man argument, just because perfection is impossible doesn't mean the issues are minor. That was my point. I'm not taking anything personally.

In fact I agree with you that there is always an optimal composition and that will favor certain classes. But optimal and balanced are two different things. In my opinion warrior and dark knight are far below paladin and they need to be brought up to level and in some cases tweaks are fairly large.

I also agree that they will likely only tweak numbers at first. But if we come together as a community and voice a direction on a job they may listen. At the end we can say we tried.

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

... What you listed is years-old content that has publicly been dubbed a mistake in terms of difficulty, and we have already seen 2 tiers of content being MUCH softer, and far less demanding especially on tanks...

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Just a small correction, what I listed was the most recent tier which had a much more positive reception than Gordias.

I think that if the Alex had gone in the reverse order it would have been much better received, but that's neither here nor there. I think a more balanced approach to tanks will draw people back to tanking, it is a goal in its own right independent of how demanding the content. at some level most classs do the same thing.

At any point I said: "no changes needed everything is perfect!"

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Originally Posted by Driavna

At any point I said: "no changes needed everything is perfect!"

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Once again, never said you did, so I'm not sure why you are using quotes.

For clarity I will repeat myself.

I agree, perfect balance is impossible.
I agree, there is always an optimal composition for content, this is different from balance.
I disagree that either of these imply only small corrections, or tweaks, are necessary.

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I disagree that either of these imply only small corrections, or tweaks, are necessary.

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I never said that either, I said: for now at best we will get numbers tweaks till after the first savage tier.

Fair enough, I consider tweaks to be small changes to a system, and you indicate that you use it as adjusting numbers. I think our difference of opinion is semantic in nature.

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Originally Posted by Arek

Terrified ? Seriously ? You are terrified to use your best skill ?

Personnally, I'm using it ALOT. I've wasted just a few sometimes when I'm not totally used to a combat. But In Susanoo, it needs just 2 Auto-attack to break it, even if I'm main tank, and since Reprisal comes back for every tank buster, I can time how many TBN I do before keeping it for tank buster. (And I'm using VIT accessories)

In Omega story, same easy to break, just have to know the fight or pattern when Boss are doing there "no damage" skill. It's a bit harder on 3rd and 4th but I did those fight only once yesterday.

It's even more easier when you put it on someone else than you (main tank or DPS/heal with a target) and really up how many Bloospiller you do and so your DPS.

I'm also using it on pull and have 50 Blood right away to extend either Blood Price or Blood Weapon. It works really well.

And if it doesn't break, well it means you are taking 0 damage during 5sec against your ennemies. (Or the boss is changing phase or doing no damage. :P)

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If it doesn't break its a major screw up (like we never had in our rotation before) and I can't stand mistakes. Losing a whole DA is a loss.

I want to revise my list of changes from the OP here, factoring in the fact that SE is very unlikely to actually add or replace whole skills outside of the expansion's initial patch. They've never done this before so I don't expect them to add Scourge back or give us a new defensive CD. So realistically, with that in mind:

Defensive:

Dark Mind:
Reduces magic vulnerability by 15% for 10s.
Dark Arts effect: Reduces all damage taken by 15% for 10s.
-This makes DAing this ability extremely worthwhile. For magic tank busters, you can probably keep it unboosted, but in between tank busters it becomes a really good cooldown for tanking out of stance, mitigating cleaves and AAs, etc. and still comes at a cost of DPS to balance it out.

Shadow Wall:
Reduces damage taken by 30% for 20s.
-As stated in the OP, this makes Shadow Wall unique and gives it its own strength compared to Vengeance and Sentinel.
-Alternatively, if we wanted to make it more like Vengeance (shorter recast, weaker, but with a DPS benefit...)
Shadow Wall:
Reduces damage taken by 30% for 10s. Recast time 150s.
Dark Arts effect: Gives 50 Blood Gauge.

Blood Price:
Restores partial MP when damage is taken for 15s and reduces damage taken by 10% (or increases parry rate by 40%)
Additonal Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 1 immediately and another 4 over time while in battle.
Can only be used while under the effect of Grit.
-Since Blood Price is now locked behind Grit there is very little reason why it should not have a defensive benefit in the same way that Blood Weapon has an offensive benefit. If people feel this is unbalanced, I would be fine with them having the two skills share a cooldown to add an additional trade-off mechanic to the job, especially when factoring in a Blood Weapon change I've outlined below.

Abyssal Drain:
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 120 to the target and all enemies near it.
Dark Arts effect: Restores 1000% of the damage dealt as HP, divided by the number of targets hit.
-This makes Abyssal Drain an excellent Clemency equivalent. It cuts into our DPS just like Clemency does (or how Equilibrium does due to being Defiance locked) but provides us with snap-sustain. If this feels too unbalanced, it can keep its original 100% heal on every target while out of Grit, and lock the distributed 1000% effect behind Grit.

If these defensive buffs seem like too much in light of TBN, I would be okay with them increasing TBN's recast to, say 20 or 25s to make it less spammable. I feel like this would be a good QoL thing as well to reduce APM bloat. The power of and over-reliance on TBN right now makes our entire defensive cooldown suite feel incredibly lop-sided. The job doesn't feel good anymore defensively. It completely lacks the ability to smooth out incoming damage consistently and is extremely stop-start-stop-start with its mitigation as opposed to being able to level out the damage evenly and in a way healers can properly account for. TBN's stop-start nature makes our damage-taken unnecessarily spikey. We'll take the full brunt of incoming damage on our bare ass for 10s and then take no damage for 5s, as opposed to our HP just gradually falling slower in a way that healers can predict and deal DPS around.

As far as DPS....

After some thought, I don't think damage over time should be added to Bloodspiller or unboosted SE, because it would make our rotation unnecessarily rigid in terms of when you can use these abilities in terms of not clipping the DoT, so here is what I thought of instead.

Dark Passenger:
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150 to all targets in a line before you.
Additional effect: Damage over time with a potency of 70 for 15s.
No Dark Arts effect, MP cost returned to 1200.
-Because of the defensive buffs above and the fact that the blind still somewhat clashes with Blood Price, I decided to remove the Dark Arts effect. In exchange, the ability is now returned to its old MP cost, same recast time, and has the same total potency as Scourge. (150+(70*5)=500)

This would bring DRK's DPS up to an acceptable level to keep it competitive with PLD given its lesser utility.

Alternatively, they could do either of these instead:

Blood Weapon:
Additional effect: Increases Damage dealt by 15%.
-or-
Delirium:
Additional effect: Extends the timer of Blood Weapon by 8s and increases damage dealt by 30% for the duration.

Both of these would be roughly a 5% increase. (15% * (15s / 40s) = 5.6%) or (30% * (23s / 120s) = 5.7%)

These I feel are more interesting changes, but alternatively, they could simply buff several of our GCDs/oGCDs by 50-100 potency (as well as their DA effects, if applicable, to keep DA priority the same), or increase Darkside to 25%.

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Originally Posted by Falar

If it doesn't break its a major screw up (like we never had in our rotation before) and I can't stand mistakes. Losing a whole DA is a loss.

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I think a possible solution to this is to have it return a % of Blood equal to the damage that was absorbed even if it didn't pop. But honestly, I like trade-offs, and the existing TBN mechanics are acceptable to me. People are complaining a lot about the job's low risk/reward and I feel like the risk of TBN not popping is an acceptable instance of that kind of risk/reward playstyle that still is present with the job.

YEah it is fine, I was just responding to the guy that made it sound like he uses it as a DCD and doesn't care if it pops.

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Originally Posted by Falar

YEah it is fine, I was just responding to the guy that made it sound like he uses it as a DCD and doesn't care if it pops.

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To be fair, it is really hard to have it not pop on someone else since it is only a 10% shield; if the MT takes any damage at all its going to pop. The only way you can screw this up is if you don't know the boss's rotation and put it up during a long cast time (I've done this a few times in o1-4, as many of the Omega bosses stop hitting the MT for several seconds while they use raid AoEs or mechanics that have cast times, and many of these cast times have seemed unusually long (4-5 seconds or more).

Once you know when these mechanics/casts will happen in the boss's rotation, I'd absolutely recommend keeping it on CD. I think once you've learned how to MT a particular fight, OTing it while managing TBN on the MT will be much easier since you know when all the damage happens/doesn't happen from a MT perspective.

EDIT: Another thing I have noticed is that while there is sometimes an animation delay with the shield actually applying, there seems to be an equal delay in it actually falling off. I've found that as long as the buff icon is still present when a boss starts its attack animation or finishes a cast bar, I will get the blood from TBN even if the buff itself falls off in between that moment and the moment when the damage (or lack thereof) registers on my character/the MT.
i.e.
- > cast TBN
- > boss finishes cast or starts animation before TBN falls off
- > TBN falls off
- > attack lands but still registers TBN
- > 50 blood

I probably wouldn't pay 1 DA for 15% physical mitigation, especially when both TBN and Grit individually give greater DR for a lower net cost. As it is, I'd have a lot of trouble justifying DA DM in 4.0 for the 30% DR outside of multi-hit magical tankbusters, given that TBN and baseline DM usually give you more mitigation for a lower net cost on a single hit. I like Brannigan's suggestion from earlier in the thread about turning DA DM into raid-wide mitigation.

Shadow Wall doesn't do anything exciting, but it gets the job done. The only real way to improve on it is to either lower the recast or have it reflect damage, and the former is overkill with TBN. I feel that with the addition of Rampart to WAR, Vengeance is overtuned, so it's not really a great point of comparison. The main problem with DRK's mitigation is LD, which needs to be flat out reworked so that it doesn't arbitrarily penalise your healers. Both Hallowed and Holmgang are vastly superior for different reasons.

Blood Price is odd. Even if there's nothing actively happening (i.e. phase transition/animation), you gain 4 blood per tick so long as you're in combat, netting you about 20 blood. It's not worth swapping to Grit for, but if you are in Grit during a phase transition, it's basically free blood. It even seems to tick up while you're doing an ATE, such as Susano's sword. I think part of the problem is that they tuned it based on tanking multiple targets (you gain 0.05 DA/tick as opposed to BW's 0.2 DA/tick), so it tends to be a bit underwhelming against a slow hitting mob in single target. One possibility could be to remove the MP regen penalty of Darkside with it active, granting you 568 MP per tick passively. This would let you use it similarly to SAM or MNK's meditate ability during in-combat downtime to restore MP and blood. I don't think that simply adding DR to it will make it see more use, however.

As far as self-healing is concerned, the best solution is to allow Souleater's lifesteal to function out of Grit as well (or at the very least, let it function under BW). This not only removes the need for a Clemency or Equilibrium equivalent, but also offsets some of the passive DR advantage that PLD has from block. DA AD is extremely expensive healing (1.4 DA), and using it in single target as a self-heal seems to go against the spirit of its use.

I understand some of the concerns about DP, but I don't think that people are necessarily thinking about it correctly. Efficiency matters only in sustained encounters where you run the risk of running out of MP. Most AoE situations often are shorter, burn-orientated encounters which have you running a surplus of resources (i.e. you gain it faster than you can spend it). Potency per unit time is much more important than efficiency in these situations, because any MP gains when you're at cap are wasted. The main problem with DP is that there really isn't any situation where you'd want to use the baseline ability without DA, because it fits neither of those categories. I think they'd be much better off creating an MP efficient but low potency baseline DP for use in single target, and keep DADP as it is for use in multiple target/burn phases. Alternatively, just bake the DA cost into DP for simplicity, if there is nothing to be gained from the baseline ability.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Blood Price is odd...

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I don't see them giving back or improving Blood Price MP returns, though that is a good idea allowing native regen.

As poignant as the BP nerf was though, seems clear they knew what they were doing and had their reasons for moving the MP restore to Grit Siphon. That's why I think some additional effect of a different sort is plenty warranted. I'm hoping for a damage reflect - because ..tl;dr.. I'm a DRK main, kek.

A passive DR improvement by buffing parry, and a RNG damage reflect on parry procs (Low Blow resets baked into the CD essentially). Make those PLDs jealous. But BP being only available in Grit, it has it's drawback to PLD/WAR Shield Swipe & Vengeance.

Its more DPS in tank stance. Regarding that: compared to WAR/PLD, DRK has to be in Grit more, so it feels justified. Higher tank-stance DPS is less of a perk, more a necessity (though really WAR -25% needs to be reduced, among other things). But also the fact that it is a lvl35 ability is why I'm eager to see any additional effect.



I believe Dark Knight and Machinist are the only jobs with just one lvl 50 ability. MCH needs the most TLC, so I don't know if seeing a new ability being introduced to either DRK/MCH or both isn't plausible. Curious it is that the other extra Job AST kept Synestry instead of it going to the Role pool (lolRescue).

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

DRK has to be in Grit more

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Wait... why? O.o

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I probably wouldn't pay 1 DA for 15% physical mitigation, especially when both TBN and Grit individually give greater DR for less MP. As it is, I'd have a lot of trouble justifying DA DM in 4.0 for the 30% DR outside of multi-hit magical tankbusters, given that TBN and baseline DM usually give you more mitigation for a lower net cost on a single hit. I like Brannigan's suggestion from earlier in the thread about turning DA DM into raid-wide mitigation.

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This is an excellent point that I haven't even considered. TBN+DM renders DADM pretty much obsolete right now, so the DA effect of that ability is pretty undertuned. Honestly after reading this I kinda wish they'd just redesign the ability entirely. I'm not a fan of the raidwide mitigation component suggestion simply because it doesn't fix either of the problems that I see with DRK right now; its DPS and personal mitigation. I don't really have a justification for it, I admit, but I just feel like what DRK needs isn't bordering-on-PLD-levels of utility. It needs more damage to make up for its lower utility, and it needs some sort of addition or buff to its defensive kit. Basically, in fights where DM isn't used, I find it... jarring... to rely solely on TBN for a full minute or more in between Rampart/Shadow Wall casts. I wish that the ability was not so lopsided, its powerful and that's great, but I would rather they increase its recast time a bit and redistribute that power into another CD to give us more options. Getting the most out of TBN requires a DRK to know a boss's rotation down to the last auto-attack which I honestly find a little silly, and an artificial illusion of depth/difficulty/complexity.

Anyway. I given that they've now established TBN as the standard for mitigation-to-mana, it seems like they need to add something equally powerful to DM in order to make it relevant. Since TBN basically defines DRK mitigation now, we're a shield tank, so my gut tells me DADM should just be DM with a TBN effect tacked on, that lasts longer but doesn't grant Blood. Powerful, sure, but for a DPS loss and a longer cooldown... idk.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Shadow Wall doesn't do anything exciting, but it gets the job done. The only real way to improve on it is to either lower the recast or have it reflect damage, and the former is overkill with TBN. I feel that with the addition of Rampart to WAR, Vengeance is overtuned, so it's not really a great point of comparison. The main problem with DRK's mitigation is LD, which needs to be flat out reworked so that it doesn't arbitrarily penalise your healers. Both Hallowed and Holmgang are vastly superior for different reasons.

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Like I said in the OP, I feel like Shadow Wall was tuned in such a way to make up for the high uptime of Reprisal's personal mitigation. We're missing that -10% now. Sure we have TBN, but now PLD can block magic, WAR has Rampart... idk. Without the DD+Reprisal Combo, Shadow Wall feels extremely weak. It also occupies such a strange spot in our cooldown suite. Not all fights will be like Susano, surely, but in that particular fight I had Rampart+TBN for every buster and would look at Shadow Wall and be like... what do I do with this? Eventually I started using SW instead of Rampart every other TB, but then for certain rotations I'd have Rampart and other's I wouldn't. Again, the term lop-sided comes to mind.

LD... for once I can't really empathize. I'm fully aware of LD's shortcomings, but for whatever reason, in my personal experience it has never left me wanting. I think I'm less focused on it because it is an invuln and I'm more concerned about our high-uptime (or lack thereof) cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Blood Price is odd. Even if there's nothing actively happening (i.e. phase transition/animation), you gain 4 blood per tick so long as you're in combat, netting you about 20 blood. It's not worth swapping to Grit for, but if you are in Grit during a phase transition, it's basically free blood. It even seems to tick up while you're doing an ATE, such as Susano's sword. I think part of the problem is that they tuned it based on tanking multiple targets (you gain 0.05 DA/tick as opposed to BW's 0.2 DA/tick), so it tends to be a bit underwhelming against a slow hitting mob in single target. One possibility could be to remove the MP regen penalty of Darkside with it active, granting you 568 MP per tick passively. This would let you use it similarly to SAM or MNK's meditate ability during in-combat downtime to restore MP and blood. I don't think that simply adding DR to it will make it see more use, however.

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I think maybe I wasn't clear. My intention wasn't to make BP see more use it was just to add something to our kit that gives us an additional mitigation option at the cost of some DPS (being locked behind Grit), since all of the other tanks have something like this (Clemency, IB, Equil, even PoA). They all have that option to supplement their core cooldown suite with something extra if they are willing to sacrifice some damage, resources needed for damage, or go into tank stance. DRK doesn't really have that. It has 4 innate cooldowns and that's it. Both WAR and PLD have a powerful self heal and an extra albeit DPS inefficient mitigation tool.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

As far as self-healing is concerned, the best solution is to allow Souleater's lifesteal to function out of Grit as well (or at the very least, let it function under BW). This not only removes the need for a Clemency or Equilibrium equivalent, but also offsets some of the passive DR advantage that PLD has from block.

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This suggestion makes my heart sink to be honest. What Souleater's heal needs is power, not accessibility. And even then, its locked behind a combo so its rarely possible to time it for when you need it regardless of how much it heals. Many is the time on WAR for instance where I have popped the absolute bare minimum mitigation that I would require to survive (Thrill alone, even Foresight back in the day) and just Equil'ed myself right back up to a safe HP level. No biggie. I find it really cheap that we cannot do this. And if we could heal ourselves for a meaningful portion of our HP as opposed to having what basically amounts to a slow, combo locked regen that mostly just contributes to overhealing, it'd go a decent way towards alleviating your previous concerns about LD.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I understand some of the concerns about DP, but I don't think that people are necessarily thinking about it correctly. Efficiency matters only in sustained encounters where you run the risk of running out of MP. Most AoE situations often are shorter, burn-orientated encounters which have you running a surplus of resources (i.e. you gain it faster than you can spend it). Potency per unit time is much more important than efficiency in these situations, because any MP gains when you're at cap are wasted. The main problem with DP is that there really isn't any situation where you'd want to use the baseline ability without DA, because it fits neither of those categories. I think they'd be much better off creating an MP efficient but low potency baseline DP for use in single target, and keep DADP as it is for use in multiple target/burn phases.

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My suggestions for DP where merely an example of a way to buff our DPS. I'm hard pressed to find someone that disagrees with the fact that having both less utility AND lower DPS than a PLD is textbook feelsbadman, and honestly since they aren't likely to add meaningful raid utility to either DRK or WAR post expac, the most logical thing to suggest seems to be DPS buffs. And I mean its just ridiculous from a thematic/lore standpoint. Why sacrifice a shield for a two-handed sword that deals less damage than a 1-hander? Why would 2-handed swords even exist in the game's universe from a technological standpoint? "Here's this two-handed, heavy sword that requires you to forego a shield, and yet you will take longer to kill monsters with it." Who would buy that? DRK should deal more damage than PLD. Everything else about PLD is better, but DRK has a big sword, so the most logical edge for it to have over PLD is DPS. Perhaps a more creative mind than me will have a better suggestion, but in terms of what the devs are realistically likely to add and suggestions they'll realistically respond to, a simple re-working of costs/potencies/percentages usually comes before adding whole new abilities/affects.

Make
Bloodspiller
OGCD FOR HALONES SAKE.

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

Make
Bloodspiller
OGCD FOR HALONES SAKE.

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No. They should not do this. I like having my combo broken up by Bloodspillers, without it being on the GCD we really would be 1-2-3ing it. Also how are you playing the job, such that you feel you even would have room for Bloodspillers with all of the stuff that is already crammed in between our GCDs?

If the justification is that it would be a DPS gain, sure, but there are other ways to buff our DPS without making our GCD rotation even more faceroll than it already is and making our oGCD rotation even more busy and chaotic. Its a bad, poorly thought out suggestion that I do wish people would stop making.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Snip

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Eh it would be more fun for me personally, if anything it would just replace me pressing dark passenger and give me something else to do whilst spamming the 1-2-3 we have now. Just feels clunky to me personally, DRK to me was high apm explosiveness with Reprisal, billions of low blow procs, dark arting your soul eaters and carve and spits, etc. I see what you are saying though, I just like pressing buttons as fast as possible.

My ideas I have had reading all ppl thoughts.
Shadow all 3 min CD would be OK if it reflect back some kind of debut to boss example magic defence down. Why magic defence and not physical is to avoid it being used as berserk for self buff rather as raid synergy utility.

Other skill that could work whit that kind of change would be da dark passenger change blind effect to something that all so work in raids and benefit party not just you. If pld is defective utility tank then drk would be offensive utility tank. Whit our lack of defence it fits