DRK redesign details explained

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

Did they actually give us natural MP regen? Or rather did the new Darkside not stop it? Haven't gone through many videos yet, the one I did watch was an obnoxious pain covering everything up under tooltips, but the idea of natural MP regen on Dark Knight was just so foreign to me I never even considered looking for it.

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It was something I did notice on that, since Darkside was the only thing holding you natural MP regeneration at bay, but with it's removal, it could be possible that not only will we be getting natural MP again, but we will also benefit from any party wide refreshes.

However, this is just speculation. I have not paid attention to MP bars in the videos yet, just the MP values we get with certain MP restore abilities/weaponskills.

After looking again on the tooltips... it's looks like all the tanks lose their defense.

Everyone will have Rampart, Their 30% damage reduction like Shadow Wall and their on demand defensive skill like TBN. The DRK will have Dark Mind on top of that (WAR has a Convalescence effect and GNB 50% parry + 10% damage recution), wich means DRK will actually be the best at mitigation as long as the damage is magical, right? And I hope we can expect a lot of magical tank busters in the raids.

The magical aoe shield vs the all type of damage aoe shield of the GNB is a non issue, since aoe damage tends to be magical anyway (the HP and defense stats of the DDs are balanced around magical aoe damage, casters would not survive physical ones).

Still no idea how i am supposed to tank dungeons and the aoe combo looks boring, but I now think the DRK isn't looking too bad.

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Originally Posted by Esp

It was something I did notice on that, since Darkside was the only thing holding you natural MP regeneration at bay, but with it's removal, it could be possible that not only will we be getting natural MP again, but we will also benefit from any party wide refreshes.

However, this is just speculation. I have not paid attention to MP bars in the videos yet, just the MP values we get with certain MP restore abilities/weaponskills.

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We do get natural MP regen. 200 per tick, so 4000 every minute.

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Originally Posted by ZaleraPraxis

We do get natural MP regen. 200 per tick, so 4000 every minute.

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Oh, that's good to know. Thank you.

So we endured 2 years of "we'll fix it later / in 5.0" and this is what we get? I know it's not finalized but this is some hot garbage compared to the other tanks.

Utterly disappointing is how i feel about this.

Let's break it down. My usual rotation at 70 which has served me well.

* Pop TBN as mass pull begins
* Get 50 gauge from the barrier break as i start the 1-2-3. Getting back my spent MP to ready for the next part
* Pop blood price to keep mp up and more gauge
* Pop DA and Abyssal drain to get back the HP off the pack around me
* Pop Quietus from the gauge to restore back all the consumed mp and have plenty for the next TBN and next rotation of this.

And there it went come 5.0 wrecking it.

So now I get a free hit from one of these new attacks from TBN? But more dps isn't gonna do much if i've just lost my main ability combo to stay alive.

And you've nerfed blood gauge buildup even with the blood weapon changes.

(edited) And you left salted earth more of a joke with a doubled cooldown.

And unless it's heal is significantly buffed to be used as say an emergency heal on bosses and a single target 60 sec AD is a useless novelty you get every couple pulls. From it's mainstay as a DRK sustain tool.

You've nerfed one of the main MP regen tools in quietus so no sustain on the other side.

And let's be honest the point of delirium now is just the DPS burst, what are we going to actually be spending this sudden MP infusion on exactly with dark passenger gone, TBN giving free hits and at best you get one between it and deliriums cooldown, and no need to juggle spending DA for bonuses with other abilities. Combo it with the new DRK attacks by going mp regen hit, flood of darkness, mp regen hit? At least it's not five bloodspillers in a row?

On a side note yes DA was spammy but I have very mixed feelings about it's removal, as combined with other changes it feels like we're on the road to homogenization.

Honestly though and this may sound silly what kills me isn't even the mechanic changes so much as how it does seem to run utterly contrary to the entire lore they've laid out for DRK that's in game personified by the blood gauge among other things. It feels like they gutted what made the class the class by removing the mainstay abilities and combos that encouraged seeing just how many things you could take on (or as i called it, hurt me more snake!) and utilizing the fact from the mechanic standpoint of the more things around the more effective your skills were in the case of blood price abyssal and old quietus.

A gimmick shadow clone and a couple extra attacks really don't make up for it. Unless that 72 combo really does give enough MP regen to make the new attacks more than once a fight uses.

Either way I'm glad DRK is my secondary class, I'm looking forward to the BLM changes a lot more, the tank changes so far do not leave a good feeling.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

And you moved hp regen to salted earth but doubled it's cooldown while leaving it's damage a joke.

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Salted Earth doesn't heal.

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Originally Posted by Otorinth

Salted Earth doesn't heal.

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Could have sworn when I was watching one of the new videos out about Job changes they said it did, so retract that part if not.

But if they did just double it's cool down and leave as is.... well that would make it even more of a why bother? It's damage is insignificant already, unless they mean for it to be used as just an enmity generator?

EDIT: Oh I realized my mistake, they were in the vid referring to the 60 sec cooldown but now always heals of abyssal I think, they just didn't for some reason actually show the skill at that point. Well either way above opinion still stands.

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Originally Posted by Dragonkat

Could have sworn when I was watching one of the new videos out about Job changes they said it did, so retract that part if not.

But if they did just double it's cool down and leave as is.... well that would make it even more of a why bother? It's damage is insignificant already, unless they mean for it to be used as just an enmity generator?

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It's the third, second until 74, most powerful attack we've got. Even with the lowered potency it's still 420. And that's just looking at single target, on groups it's still the strongest.
Not saying the longer CD isn't bad, just that it's not insignificant damage.

the best tank job....but the ultimate fail is removing the dark arts. felt so satisfying powering up and landing a powerful hit... is that dog on red stink line gone and what happened to the cool black flames?

I almost wonder if they should change the additional effect on Carve and Spit to be a self-heal that would be good for single target, share the recast with Abyssal and tweak some of the numbers on other abilities to compensate for the slight loss of damage and mp gain from linking them together.
That way you basically have an AoE attack+self-heal to use in packs and a single target version to use for bosses, use the one for the situation you are in.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

I almost wonder if they should change the additional effect on Carve and Spit to be a self-heal that would be good for single target, share the recast with Abyssal and tweak some of the numbers on other abilities to compensate for the slight loss of damage and mp gain from linking them together.
That way you basically have an AoE attack+self-heal to use in packs and a single target version to use for bosses, use the one for the situation you are in.

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I'll admit, I'm having a hard time finding the logic here. Why do you want them to have a shared recast time? What does that change even accomplish?

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

I'll admit, I'm having a hard time finding the logic here. Why do you want them to have a shared recast time? What does that change even accomplish?

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Because if they weren't coupled and taking into account the other changes I went over then you would have access to two self-heal on a 60s cool down which is double what other tanks get like WAR with Equilibrium. This would be negligible in single target situations but could be quite excessive when fighting packs. The solution presented was to have a single target version and an AoE version.

Another possibility is move the MP gain to Abyssal Drain, set to a single amount which is independent on how many enemies are hit, but then the name might not make sense. Then give the Carve and Spit the burst heal with a higher cure potency.

Even another possibility is to keep everything as is and just add a smaller potency self-heal to CnS so that when considered together with the self-heal from AD is pretty much balances out with the other tanks.

The crux of it all is that DRK appears to have gotten a bit shafted in the self-heal department and that should be rectified.

2 years rework and it's still worse than the other tanks and now even worse than before, and shadowskin, scourge and dark dance still haven't come back.
Can't abyssal spam in dungeons anymore it's now as useful as dark passenger, living dead still require to be healed 100% instead of the 50% it should be, lost sole survivor for no reason, dark mind nerfed to 20% for no reason, blood weapon no longer reducing cast time for no reason, the shadow does random things, the rotation is still souleater spam, delirium is now a worse unga bunga release without the crit. Absolutely amazing rework.
If they wanted people to stop playing drk and switch to gun they should have just said so.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

I almost wonder if they should change the additional effect on Carve and Spit to be a self-heal that would be good for single target, share the recast with Abyssal

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

Because if they weren't coupled and taking into account the other changes I went over then you would have access to two self-heal on a 60s cool down which is double what other tanks get like WAR with Equilibrium. .

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Share the recast. But somehow actually have access two self heals. That are mutually exclusive for being on the same recast time.
You're making even less sense now.

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Even another possibility is to keep everything as is and just add a smaller potency self-heal to CnS so that when considered together with the self-heal from AD is pretty much balances out with the other tanks.

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Making C&S heal both HP and MP could help, yes. Far more than making them share a timer and effect. They'd still be weaker in comparison with the numbers as they are now. It'd be better if they just brought up AD's heal and leave all else alone, no recast sharing especially. Even just bringing it to 800 or so would seem fair, since of the noncombo self heals the tanks have AD is the only one doing damage.

This new rework has no soul. I have even less of a sense of the job's identity now. Superficially, there's a lot of flash, but mechanically, I don't see a theme. It might be a sort of "magical tank", but looking at the other tanks kits, it's probably more accurately just a "weaker against physical damage" tank. The removal of the speed boost on Blood Weapon, as well as the longer recasts on several of the oGCDs (Salted Earth, Abyssal Drain) means that the job is going to be a lot slower, and speed was historically the big selling point from a gameplay perspective.

There's a lot of homogenisation as far as defensives and utility goes, but most of it seems to be in favour of WAR. I think that even if DRK brought a potency advantage that it would offset this. And a number of the other core issues mentioned previously (Living Dead in particular) just don't seem to be addressed.

Living Shadow seems to be an unnecessary layer of clunk. A few people have already pointed out the delays both in summoning it as well as before it starts taking action. The fixed rotation (which includes using AoE moves in single target) seems silly, but I suppose there are limitations to how much you can do with AI. Offensively, I think the fact that it only does 40% of the damage that you would do, despite using AoE moves in single target, speaks for itself. If it ends up having some utility value, they'll probably refine it and copy over better versions to the other tanks next expansion anyways. I think if this shadow functioned more like Bunshin, I might be interested, but right now, not so much.

All in all, Gunbreaker seems like it's the closest thing to the old HW DRK. There are a few issues with personal defensives (in particular Camouflage, which suffers from the usual issue with being damage type specific, as well as Superbolide), but most importantly, it looks fast and fun to play. I'm really glad that they didn't charge for the physical CE yet, because it doesn't look like I'll be needing that DRK statue anymore (it was a bit of a frivolous purchase anyways). Hopefully DRK gets looked at again at some point, but given the Stormblood media tour, I don't have any faith in their ability to fix the job before release. If anything, you'll probably see more potency and recast nerfs to the job in the final version, which is what happened the last time. Either way, best of luck.

Goodbye Cloud and Cecil. Hello Squall.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This new rework has no soul. I have even less of a sense of the job's identity now. Superficially, there's a lot of flash, but mechanically, I don't see a theme. It might be a sort of "magical tank", but looking at the other tanks kits, it's probably more accurately just a "weaker against physical damage" tank. The removal of the speed boost on Blood Weapon, as well as the longer recasts on several of the oGCDs (Salted Earth, Abyssal Drain) means that the job is going to be a lot slower, and speed was historically the big selling point from a gameplay perspective.

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Abyssal Drain itself wasn't an oGCD until this, it was just Salted Earth and Dark Passenger for oGCD aoes. In a three minute period we'll be getting five of them, down from a possible seven, but there's also no resource conflict there so it'll be more reliable.
Beyond that we've got Plunge, Carve & Spit, and The Blackest Night, sitting on the same recasts they used to have, and we've got the Flood/Edge skills filling in where Dark Arts was.
I don't think it's going to turn out to be too much slower compared to how it is now, outside of the lost Blood Weapon haste.

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

You're making even less sense now.

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Look at what I wrote and what you quoted again, I said weren't, as in if they weren't coupled (i.e. sharing a recast timer) and both had a self-heal attached, it would be two self-heal abilities that could be used independently within 60s.
That seems pretty clear to me.

Look it's simple, right now the only burst self-heal DRK has is Abyssal Drain which is a 200 pot cure and from what I have seen is per enemy hit which means you need to hit 6 enemies to equal the 1200 pot cure of Equilibrium which is doable in decent sized mob packs. The problem is in single-target like boss fights, where it really matters, it only does a 200 pot cure which is basically nothing.

Because of that I proposed adding a larger potency cure, say 1000-1200 pot, to Carve and Spit because it is a single-target OGCD that costs no resource and is also on a 60s recast timer. That then gives DRK a fairly equivalent self-heal to what other tanks get that works in single-target situations.

However, if DRK got that heal on Carve and Spit in addition to what they already have on Abyssal Drain, that is two self-heals within 60s which is potentially quite a bit more than the equivalents of other tanks, such as the 1200 pot cure from Equilibrium which is on a 60s timer.

In a single-target situation having both available would provide, within a 60s window, a 200 pot cure from AD and a 1000-1200 pot cure from CnS for a total of 1200-1400 potency of self-healing. Fairly equitable and no big deal.
Now in an AoE situation with let's just say 5 enemies, that's a 1000 pot cure from Abyssal Drain and a 1000-1200 pot cure from Carve and Spit for a total of 2000-2200. That is quite a bit more and definitely not equitable.

To avoid the latter situation above I proposed the two abilities share a recast, therefore when you use one the other also goes on cool down making it so you can only ever use one every 60s and they can't be doubled up. I then also proposed to have the potential losses of dps and little bit of MP added somewhere else in the kit to compensate from no longer being able to use both separately.

The end result being two separate abilities that do some damage and provide a burst self-heal, just one that is meant for AoE situations and one that is meant for single-target situations.

Sure there are other approaches to address the underlying problem of poor self-healing for DRK in single-target, some of which I'm sure would be better, but the reasoning behind why I proposed linking their recasts is sound.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

Look it's simple, right now the only burst self-heal DRK has is Abyssal Drain which is a 200 pot cure and from what I have seen is per enemy hit which means you need to hit 6 enemies to equal the 1200 pot cure of Equilibrium which is doable in decent sized mob packs. The problem is in single-target like boss fights, where it really matters, it only does a 200 pot cure which is basically nothing.

Because of that I proposed adding a larger potency cure, say 1000-1200 pot, to Carve and Spit because it is a single-target OGCD that costs no resource and is also on a 60s recast timer. That then gives DRK a fairly equivalent self-heal to what other tanks get that works in single-target situations.

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I was running on the assumption that AD's just a single heal no matter what now given the new wording. If it's still per hit, the 200 is definitely fine in all cases.

Ok, single target situation only.
Dark Knight has one combo, Souleater. 300 Potency heal. They're never going to stop healing. 8 Combos a minute, give or take, so around an average of 2400. And then 200 from AD. 2600
Gunbreaker's got two combos, one of which seems to have a bit of a wait before being able to repeat it while the other heals for 150 and shields as much. Assuming the 30 second Gnashing Fang combo is right, we're looking at maybe around 6 self heal combos a minute, so 1650. Then the regen adds another 1200. 3000, but some of it is in shielding and regens so higher is a fair trade for lack of immediate application.
Warrior's got two combos, one of which needs to see use every 3-4 combos to keep their damage up and another that heals for 250. Again another 6 self heal combos give or take, 1500 average, and 1200 immediate. 2700.
Paladin's got Clemency, which interferes with them doing damage at all.

Honestly, Paladin looks like the one screwed on self healing to me since the power comes at such a high price. Dark Knight's isn't the strongest to be sure, but it's the most consistent.

I've been watching youtube videos especially in-depth ShB tank analysis from Xeno, and is it really worse than SB DRK? It can't be, right?

I thought people have been saying that SB is the lowest point of DRK? Not talking about job identity or how it plays but compare to its previous incarnations.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Hopefully DRK gets looked at again at some point, but given the Stormblood media tour, I don't have any faith in their ability to fix the job before release. If anything, you'll probably see more potency and recast nerfs to the job in the final version, which is what happened the last time. Either way, best of luck.

Goodbye Cloud and Cecil. Hello Squall.

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Yeah, pretty much. I'm amazed they said they needed six months to do a rework and had us wait for the expansion instead, but this... is what they came up with? It looks like hardly any time was spent on it at all. I was already wary after the job actions trailer, but now I'm full on just gonna level GNB first and then do DRK when I have the time for it. It's seeming like all the fun was swapped to that job. ShB DRK just looks like an even more simplified version of what we had in SB, minus being at least somewhat quick. I thought this was supposed to be a rework, but it just looks rather embarrassing.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong when I actually play it, but it sure as hell ain't looking good. Guess it's Renzokuken time.

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Originally Posted by EusisLandale

Abyssal Drain itself wasn't an oGCD until this, it was just Salted Earth and Dark Passenger for oGCD aoes. In a three minute period we'll be getting five of them, down from a possible seven, but there's also no resource conflict there so it'll be more reliable.
Beyond that we've got Plunge, Carve & Spit, and The Blackest Night, sitting on the same recasts they used to have, and we've got the Flood/Edge skills filling in where Dark Arts was.
I don't think it's going to turn out to be too much slower compared to how it is now, outside of the lost Blood Weapon haste.

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While Flood/Edge are filling in where Dark Arts was, MP regen is SO much lower that we'll be using them only 1/3 as much. Combined with Blood Weapon losing its haste AND Salted Earth being such a long CD now, there's really no way it won't be much slower.

I'm a bit wary of how DRK will end up in the meta due to GNB having a straight up better raid CD and DRK not providing anything that immediately stands out as compelling, but I'm not at all on the gloom and doom train. The only thing I outright hate is the nerf to Abyssal healing and its use in general; I loved being able to ranged AOE pull as I ran past mobs and will miss it, as well as the massive heals in Blood Weapon with Quietus.

But the TBN change is a massive buff, flat 25% is huge. And I think they're going to put out a lot of DPS if the numbers stay final as the potencies on Edge/Flood are way better trade for your MP than old DA. So we may end up in a situation where DRK doesn't have as much utility again, but actually has the damage to back up not having it this time around.

IMO the biggest problem about this new DRK is that the "maintaining Darkside" mechanic is just a non-issue since you'll just use the Darkside extenders as MP dumps too. If we had a more damaging MP spender that DOESN'T extend Darkside, we'd actually have Darkside to manage even tho it wouldn't be a lot harder. Hell, Darkside could have been implemented as an additionnal effect given and extended by a second combo kinda like Huton on Ninja with armor crush, that way DRK would have more than a single combo. As it is right now (if it isn't changed before release), Darkside could be just a trait and Edge/Flood of shadows could just be MP dumps without any other effect, and the gameplay would be the exact same. Delirium just being Inner Release is also pretty disappointing.

I like the overall changes about the tanks in general, I like the idea of Darkside being something to extend over the fight (kinda like BotD and Huton), but the execution as it is shown in that build is pretty bad. The job is still lacking something identity and mechanics-wise.

On top of that these issues are still not fixed :

- Only one combo (it's even worse than before since we don't even have Power Slash anymore to pretend we have a second combo)
- Magic damage specific mitigation moves (it's even worse than before since our raid mitigation is also magical even tho it won't matter in application since 99% of raid-wide damage is magical)
- No Scourge animation
- Living Dead

They also added these issues :

- They deleted the better looking combo (Spinning Slash has more weight than Syphon imo and Power Slash looks way cooler than Souleater)
- The Living Shadow as it is shown in this build looks very random and clunky
- Job identity is even less existent now that Delirium is just a clone of Inner Release
- The job is absolutely going to be slower-paced than before

I hear a "FIX SHADOWBRINGERS DRK" thread in the works given how much backlash there is for DRK...


As for what I would fix;

-Add HP restore on hit on Blood Weapon along with haste effect (unless they buff Darkside to have Haste effect)
-Bring back Spinning Slash and Power Slash and they still have the same combo tree as before, but they now have 50% chance to proc Dark Arts
-Buff Syphon Strike with HP regen and Souleater with MP refresh and they both give health shields to DRK and they make the Dark Arts proc chance 100%
-Make "Darkside" basically "Blood of the Dragon" in terms of activation and duration
-Unleash combos into Queitus which then combos into Stalwart Soul
-Abyssal Drain changes the properties of the AoE combo above into line AoE combo(Unleash becomes Dread Spikes which combos into Dark Passenger which combos into Flood of Dread which buffs Flood of Shadow with more potency)
-Using Dark Arts procs reduces Abyssal Drains CD by 5 seconds
-Bring back Sole Survivor and add a trait to where it increases targets damage dealt by 5% and a second trait to where if the first target dies the effect spreads to other targets and resets duration on all other targets if another target dies but recovery is 50% weaker than the first target

That might help DRK a bit but if heal shield on both Syphon Strike and Souleater is too much then might just have it apply to Souleater only...

Honestly, the only positivity I heard regarding Dark Knight, came from 'Very Merri'. And he had pretty much the opposite take. While he's not as happy as everyone else and views Gunbreaker as the weakest possible main tank of the group, he actually loves Dark Knight. Gonna wait with my complaints/praise, until I actually get to try the changes for myself.

To me the highest priority issues that need to be addressed as soon as possible are:
- Living Dead, it's just not on par with other tank invulnerable abilities and needs to be reworked to make it less convoluted and to not have unnecessary penalties.
- The Blackest Night needs it's duration increased slightly to compensate for the increased shield strength so that it doesn't become too difficult to break, especially when we start out-gearing content. Just going from 7s to 8-9s should hopefully be enough.
- Something needs to be done about DRK's burst self-heal in single-target situations. Abyssal Drain is great for packs of enemies but it's heal is ineffectual in boss fights.

There are other things that I am uncertain about but I would have to see DRK in actual play after release to form a proper opinion.

Yeah a 25% shield that you WANT to break has a too low of a duration unless you use to mitigate heavy atacks, making the low cd moot since it forces you to hold on it to not waste mp and using it only on powerful atacks/tankbusters

I honestly don't even understand why TBN even has a short-ish duration in the first place since it's just a barrier, it could just be like 30s since we only benefit from it for a set amount of damage anyway. It's not like a damage mitigation %, it's literally just an amount of unhealable bonus HP. It should just be up until it breaks so that they wouldn't have to worry about lengthening the duration whenever they want to increase its strength.

Edit : After posting this message I realized that it would probably be seen as being a bit busted since we'd just reapply it as soon as it breaks and use Dark Arts procs for our mana spenders all the time and we'd take next to no damage outside of tank busters, so I just wanted to add that you'd still need MP to use TBN anyways, so while you'd be able to use free MP spenders while having TBN up, it'd only last for maybe 4-5 consecutive TBNs before MP starving (3x3000 MP + one or two extra TBNs granted by MP regen abilities during that time). We'd still have a bit of downtime with no TBN at all so we'd still take damage, it could even make the job a bit more engaging since we'd have to account for tank busters so we wouldn't be just blindly using back-to-back TBNs all the time.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

I honestly don't even understand why TBN even has a short-ish duration in the first place since it's just a barrier, it could just be like 30s since we only benefit from it for a set amount of damage anyway. It's not like a damage mitigation %, it's literally just an amount of unhealable bonus HP. It should just be up until it breaks so that they wouldn't have to worry about lengthening the duration whenever they want to increase its strength.

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Because they are trying to reward proper usage of the shield instead of "use and forget". Problem is that if you buff its power you need to increase its duration as well or it will restrict its uses since it wont break now where before it worked

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

To me the highest priority issues that need to be addressed as soon as possible are:
- Living Dead, it's just not on par with other tank invulnerable abilities and needs to be reworked to make it less convoluted and to not have unnecessary penalties.
- The Blackest Night needs it's duration increased slightly to compensate for the increased shield strength so that it doesn't become too difficult to break, especially when we start out-gearing content. Just going from 7s to 8-9s should hopefully be enough.
- Something needs to be done about DRK's burst self-heal in single-target situations. Abyssal Drain is great for packs of enemies but it's heal is ineffectual in boss fights.

There are other things that I am uncertain about but I would have to see DRK in actual play after release to form a proper opinion.

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Imho considering the change to healers the only explanation I can fathom is that damage will be increased overall so having a shorter time kinda make sense.....maybe

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Because they are trying to reward proper usage of the shield instead of "use and forget". Problem is that if you buff its power you need to increase its duration as well or it will restrict its uses since it wont break now where before it worked

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I don't think it would make it "use and forget". I edited my last post to add on to this idea. But yeah they probably want to make it feel like active mitigation, but I think that the more you increase its power, the further away you move from active mitigation since you still need it to break, so you'll need to increase its duration anyway, and it'll end up feeling more and more passive.

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Originally Posted by Giubba

Imho considering the change to healers the only explanation I can fathom is that damage will be increased overall so having a shorter time kinda make sense.....maybe

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From what I have gathered based on comments from people that played DRK at the NA media event was that the 25% shield on TBN was really powerful, which it is even though it's only 5% more, and that it was hard to get to pop because of that slight boost.
Now of course the difficulty tuning and exact numbers weren't in place then and they were mainly playing mid 70's dungeon content, but I don't forsee the overall incoming damage to be much greater than before.

Dont forget tanks get extra HP due to new trait increasing further both damage from STR AND Hit Points from VIT

So why are we not talking about how you only get dark arts from breaking a TBN shield now.. And the fact that TBN's duration went from 15sec I believe down to 7sec?

Its already hard enough to eat an entire shield in 15sec with our currently 50-80k hp going into ShB were looking at 100-150k hp with the shield being even larger and needing it to break on trash mobs during dungeons or only getting Dark Arts during a boss.. Rather disappointing in my opinion.

^ TBN's duration went from 5 to 7 in patch 4.2, so no, that's fine. You're thinking of the cooldown for it being 15 seconds.

On aoe situations the shield WILL break as usual, problem is against single target with moderate damaging skills which now wil be unable to break it. Tons of bosses have atacks that are absorbed entirely by the shield and it breaks on the very next auto. Increase the hp on the same duration and wont break anymore, unless we are talking about their heaviest hits which makes the low cd moot since you wont be able to use it often in fear of not breaking and wasting resources

After watching some videos and taking a second look I think I will be switching to GNB for ShB, I just feel that DRK isn't as fast paced as it was in HW and SB it feels slower which to me doesn't feel great at all. GNB just looks a lot more busy and rewarding and less clunky, yes I like the idea for a Shadow Clone but if its not executed properly and is wonky I won't have as much fun, GNB also shines with its party utility to me and I love how there's so many combos and chains with how fast it can play.

All in all I'm pretty conflicted with the DRK rework and sadly i'm leaning towards GNB as it is fast paced like HW DRK which I sorely miss as it was my favorite incarnation of said class so sadly I'll be hanging up the greatsword yet again as I played WAR far more than I did DRK for SB.

Sadly im starting to think on switching to GNB as well, the only downside GNB has right now is kinda lackluster defensive skills and a bit lowish potencies(at least this part is easy to fix). Anything else looks like tons of fun

Yeah, I consider switching too. Why should I play DRK when there is GNB wich looks like so much more fun? Also no stupid ressource-tied on demand cooldown and enough fluff mitigation for large dungeon pulls...

Only problem is raiding... I think I signed up to take the maintank post besides a WAR / GNB. DRK as MT and GNB as OT would work well... but GNB as MT and WAR as OT? Weeeell... how do I tell my raidgroup about this idea? xD