DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

Hey guys, it's time we get serious and organize our feedback so that we can hopefully get Yoshida and his development team to hear our issues and complaints.

This type of thread is very successful in the JP forums. Ideally you should limit your post to a single issue so that other users may upvote it specifically. This will make it easier for the development team to see which the community stands behind the strongest.

That being said, feel free to make suggestions as other users will be able to make their posts as well.

Please be cordial and refrain from derailment as best as possible.

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Do the developers even look at NA threads? They have every reason not to but I would like to see 1 of the developers or Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida-san himself prove me wrong by replying and quoting this post...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Do the developers even look at NA threads? They have every reason not to but I would like to see 1 of the developers or Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida-san himself prove me wrong by replying and quoting this post...

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I think it'd be a poor idea not to but even if they didn't, using a translator plugin you can kind of read between the bad lines on the Japanese forums and see that they're echoing the same opinion in a lot of places.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Do the developers even look at NA threads? They have every reason not to but I would like to see 1 of the developers or Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida-san himself prove me wrong by replying and quoting this post...

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That's not how things like this work.

It's common practice that developer communication and interaction with players is incredibly limited and heavily controlled, even for directors like Yoshi-P.

Pretty much every form of official communication is done through approved channels by approved people at approved times regarding approved things.

Even the interactions you see on the Japanese forums are vetted in this manner, with only specific people allowed to comment on certain things in certain subforums.

The reason that you don't see as many of those kind of direct channels on the EU and NA forums is most likely language barrier and the extra effort and people that would have to be involved with translating back and forth.

Believe me, just because you don't have devs visibly hanging on the players' every word and popping in to chat and responding to posts doesn't mean that there isn't someone reading through these threads and compiling feedback to pass along. If you watch any of the live Q&A's you can see proof of that.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Do the developers even look at NA threads? They have every reason not to but I would like to see 1 of the developers or Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida-san himself prove me wrong by replying and quoting this post...

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They do, but as stated, we're going to have to work together to make our voice heard more. If one person has an idea and no one supports it, the devs aren't going to waste time on it. However, if a lot of people support an idea, the devs have no choice but to pay attention.

That would make sense then... I just hope they fix DRK soon so that way I can have more fun AS DRK, because right now I feel like playing DRK at lvl cap is chore for even just some basic stuff that should be fun for me, but isn't due to how I basically need to take all of the damage mitigation abilities that all tanks have just so I survive slightly longer... Too many mandatory things to take and no real choice for DRK and WAR for Role action system... also any new problems with DRK that some people aren't aware of?

I changed from PLD to DRK as my main with 4.0 (cause the other tank in our fc changed from WAR to PLD and some other reasons) and I really enjoying DRK. It makes really fun to shield the mt with TBN before a tankbuster, and then use the bloodgauge for Bloodspiller.

However, I think there is still some improvement that should be done and I would like to hear your thoughts about my ideas.

1. Remove Abyssal Drain and buff Unleash
Yeah I know, Abyssal Drain does good aoe dmg and nice healing when buffed with Dark Arts. But its pretty much the same skill as Unleash, plus Unleash seems to do more hate and there are just better things for aoe dmg you can do instead. (like Salted Earth, Dark Passenger, plus TBN and Blood Price and Quietus) So most of the time I totally forgot about Abyssal Drain and already removed it from my hotbar.

2. Add increased enmity to Salted Earth and Dark Passenger
There is not really a problem with aoe enmity, but it would help at bigger pulls.

3. Change Sole Survivor
It's a nice skill in trashfights, but useless in most boss battles. I would prefer something like a debuff on the current target, that heals or restoring mp of the DRK or his party members when striking that target. Would give the DRK some more raid utility beneath TBN and...well TBN...

4. Remove GCD on Bloodspiller and Quietus and buff Quietus
The little dmg buff on Bloodspiller and die mp restore on Quietus were a good thing, but I still think that 160 potency (210 with Dark Arts) on Quietus is a bit low, even for a tank. And keeping both skills on GCD is just annoying when you want to spend your Bloodgauge.

5.Dark Arts
The one thing I am really NOT happy about, is the usage of Dark Arts atm. It's just something you try to use as often as possible, to get that potency buff. The most annoying thing is, that it's on Syphon Strike. If I want to spend it on Souleater (cause more dmg-->more healing-->for time for healers-->more healer dmg) I have to do wait until I used Syphonstrike before I use Dark Arts, but then Syphonstrike restores my mp over 100% and...sigh...you know what I mean...

Imo Dark Arts should be a game changer. Something you think about when and on which skill you use it.
Carve & Spit is a perfect example. You can change a low potency, restoring mp attack into a high potency attack that consumes mana.


Some Ideas for Dark Arts instead of potency buff. (really just some ideas I came up with, to show what I'm thinking of)

Blood Price: Restores your health when hit, instead of your mp.
Dark Passenger: Without Dark Arts: 100 Potency, adds blind. With Dark Arts: 240 potency, but doesnt add blind.
TBN: Spreads your shield at party members around your target for 10% of their max health. (a bit strong maybe for a 15sec CD, but adding some raid utility to DRK would be nice)
Plunge: Leaps to an enemy, dealing 150 potency to the target and all targets nearby.
Salted Earth: Reduce dmg done of enemies inside or increases Bloodgauge gained.


I am also not happy about Living Dead, but there is another thread for that, so i dont want to start about it here.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

I've been working on my DRK alt, and I've gotten Bloodspiller. I still don't see why people were asking for it to be an oGCD.

Don't we have enough abilities already?

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they like single combo jobs with a generic gauge ogdc.

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Remove Abyssal Drain and buff Unleash
Yeah I know, Abyssal Drain does good aoe dmg and nice healing when buffed with Dark Arts. But its pretty much the same skill as Unleash, plus Unleash seems to do more hate and there are just better things for aoe dmg you can do instead. (like Salted Earth, Dark Passenger, plus TBN and Blood Price and Quietus) So most of the time I totally forgot about Abyssal Drain and already removed it from my hotbar.

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While some of your ideas overall might not be bad, this specific point make it hard to take the whole post seriously.

You probably prefer unleash for the easy targetting associated, or maybe the animation, but removing AD from your bar is a complete lack of understading it's awesome usage.

Edit : you don't "have better to do than AD". You weave ogcd or replenish abilities between AD.

After getting 70 and playing around with the full kit for awhile I have to say I really enjoy the DRK playstyle.

The only thing I'd change is upping TBN duration from 5 to maybe 7 or 8 seconds so we actually get a full 5 seconds of it after the animation ends. It just feels garbage to use with its current duration on anything that isn't a heavily choreographed big hitting move, and I'd like to use it a lot more.

Also living dead is useless for PUGs, for me it's a 10 second life extension and hopefully we can finish off some of that large pull before I go splat for real.

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

1. Remove Abyssal Drain

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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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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

While some of your ideas overall might not be bad, this specific point make it hard to take the whole post seriously.

You probably prefer unleash for the easy targetting associated, or maybe the animation, but removing AD from your bar is a complete lack of understading it's awesome usage.

Edit : you don't "have better to do than AD". You weave ogcd or replenish abilities between AD.

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Yeah, that point is really a struggle. I just wanted to point out, that Unleash and AD are quite similar and I dont really see the reason to have both.
I could also remove Unleash and put AD on it's position and nothing really would change for me. I prefer Unleash, others may prefer AD or use both.

My aoe rotation goes 1 Unleash-Salted Earth-Blood Price-TBN-Dark Passenger. Then I go for SE combo (when there is one bigger target in the pull that will live the longest) and weave in as much Dark Arts Quietus as possible (which is actually a lot)

There may be better rotations with AD in it, but I feel really comfi with this one.

Edit: Maybe i was a bit too hard to poor AD. I'm sorry xD

However, I think that change to AD or Unleash, to make them more different to each other, would still be nice, instead of having AD as a kind of "improved Unleash"

Yes, but you don't get AD until the late 50s, so without unleash you won't have any AoE grab for low level synced content

Enmity grab* on phone, can't edit

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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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Yeah, this. With the Unleash nerf (while maintaining its MP cost) I have been really trying to eliminate my usage of it all when gathering but sometimes it can't be avoided. I would give up Unleash before AD.

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Originally Posted by Falar

Yeah, this. With the Unleash nerf (while maintaining its MP cost) I have been really trying to eliminate my usage of it all when gathering but sometimes it can't be avoided. I would give up Unleash before AD.

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I wouldn't mind them combining it with other skills. Like giving the Dark Arts HP drain to Unleash and making Unmend an AoE if Dark Arts'd.

Just updated my little DRK rant thread. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...in-3.x-and-4.x

Fellow DRKs who are interested can look at it and see if you also think the same way or have a similar mentality.

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

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In its current state its pretty much better to just not have dark passenger and use more AD. You get more overall damage that way. AD used twice is 240 potency, for only a little more then stock DP, but you need to DA DP to get the same potency for nearly 2x the cost, eating up 50% of your mana in the process.

For reference, I am at level 60, 2 ADs is 1944 MP. DP is 1768 MP and so is DA. So I can spend 3536 MP to do the damage output of 1944 MP. Now if I am lucky the targets can be hit with blind, which is so so defense as mobs start to miss a little more often, but not often enough to make up the rest of the cost.

Also while AD does not have as large of an enmity modifier its AoE design is better suited for when you drag the pack to one side of you. Allowing you to aim for the center of the pack and hit everything, instead of unleash only hitting half of the pack if its a really big pack.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

In its current state its pretty much better to just not have dark passenger and use more AD. You get more overall damage that way. AD used twice is 240 potency, for only a little more then stock DP, but you need to DA DP to get the same potency for nearly 2x the cost, eating up 50% of your mana in the process.

For reference, I am at level 60, 2 ADs is 1944 MP. DP is 1768 MP and so is DA. So I can spend 3536 MP to do the damage output of 1944 MP. Now if I am lucky the targets can be hit with blind, which is so so defense as mobs start to miss a little more often, but not often enough to make up the rest of the cost.

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You forget that Blood Price MP regen is garbage anyway as of 4.0... so DA+AD is not worth using 3 times or more in a row now...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

You forget that Blood Price MP regen is garbage anyway as of 4.0... so DA+AD is not worth using 3 times or more in a row now...

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Which is why they added in Quietus giving MP return, like what 5% per mob hit, granted that does not help at my level at all.

Seriously why the hell did they have to nerf blood price?

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

Which is why they added in Quietus giving MP return, like what 5% per mob hit, granted that does not help at my level at all.

Seriously why the hell did they have to nerf blood price?

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

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

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I KNOW RIGHT?! I'm not the only who thinks that! I feel slightly now... Still mad about the nerfs to DRK though... too many negatives that outweigh the positives...

Also I counted how many negative things in 4.xx for DRK rant (15 negatives), all of those negatives DO NOT make a positive...

They really need to do something about Grit now.

With the recent patch, Defiance/Deliverance are back to being free, and because of PLD's new trait which was balanced around their gauge costs (which have now been removed), their stance swaps effectively saw a 50% MP cost reduction, and now Grit is unchanged? >.>

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

They really need to do something about Grit now.

With the recent patch, Defiance/Deliverance are back to being free, and because of PLD's new trait which was balanced around their gauge costs (which have now been removed), their stance swaps effectively saw a 50% MP cost reduction, and now Grit is unchanged? >.>

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Agreed.

I feel that stance dancing is mandatory now too with BP being soooo bad, so much worse than BW now and Delirium really shinign with BW.

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Originally Posted by Falar

Agreed.

I feel that stance dancing is mandatory now too with BP being soooo bad, so much worse than BW now and Delirium really shinign with BW.

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Fun fact, Delirium with BP is still a DPS gain over Bloodspiller due to the MP and increased Blood generation. In fact the MP from Delirium alone outweighs the PPGCD increase from Bloodspiller. This is assuming you'll be in Grit up until Delirium's next recast of course.

But BP still feels awful to push and needs some additional effect though.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Fun fact, Delirium with BP is still a DPS gain over Bloodspiller due to the MP and increased Blood generation. In fact the MP from Delirium alone outweighs the PPGCD increase from Bloodspiller. This is assuming you'll be in Grit up until Delirium's next recast of course.

But BP still feels awful to push and needs some additional effect though.

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Thank god delirium IS a dps gain. For a 2min cooldown, a viable effect is what we are awaiting.

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

Thank god delirium IS a dps gain. For a 2min cooldown, a viable effect is what we are awaiting.

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Right, now if we could just get a few other choice abilities on a 2 minute cooldown...

Honestly, I think Delirium could use an even shorter recast. WARs seem to think Inner Release being on 120s is too long and I tend to agree, but Delirium being on 120s is also a little much. It should be cut down to at least 90s so that we can reliably burst in every phase without getting interrupted, because this is what Delirium is, its our burst cooldown. The amount of DA use it elicits equates to almost a 30-40% increase in potency on average for a 23s duration on BW, so given that the other tanks have 25-30% damage ups on 60s recast I don't think it'd be unreasonable to have ours at 90s.

Was a bit of a strain to adapt to the new DRK but I eventually grew to like it. I thought I didn't like it at first but I haven't had to adjust my playstyle too much. Sure I miss some old abilities but I just learned the new style. Whatever changes that may come from this thread will change that style and I will have to adapt again but that is ok for me. I am just in love with drk so I keep playing it no matter what happens. On a side note it is a lot of fun in PVP ohhhhhhh man.

Personally I'd not like the TBN duration extended, I enjoy the clutch aspect.

However, you need to be more rewarded for a proc. A small heal for 5% (OT) 10%(Self) of the dmg blocked would be excellent.

Also, make the cast for TBN, Sole Survivor and Living Dead instant but keep the animation intact. Give Foresight Shadowskin animation and maybe, maybe make Dark Mind an AoE buff for half effectiveness for non self.

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Originally Posted by Mekhana

However, you need to be more rewarded for a proc.

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So much of DRK isn't rewarding. So long as you're actively pressure-valving your mana, your DPS barely fluctuates at all no matter how much of the nitty-gritty min-maxing aspects of it you get right. Over the course of a 9-12 minute encounter, the DPS of a DRK that proc'd TBN on cooldown will not be different from the DPS of one that doesn't even have the skill on their hotbar by any statistically significant degree, and this is just awful, because TBN management has become the most challenging mechanic of the job and yet you have no DPS incentive to do so, you just do it because its mitigation.

In a way this makes DRK's playstyle the most defensively minded of all the tanks, which is insanely ironic because our mitigation is arguably the worst. I don't mind an active playstyle in terms of mitigation, but they've designed this game for tanks, and all roles, to be focused on DPS, so for this extremely centralizing mechanic to basically be a net gain of zero in that department feels awful.

I think TBN has more design flaws than just what I've stated here, but I think a big first step is to make the skill a net gain if it pops, because right now, you're rewarded extremely poorly for optimizing it. A simple way to do this would be to have the skill cost half of its current mana cost, or to have it instantly grant 25 blood upon the cast, and the additional 25 if it breaks.

I like the idea of TBN activating a Bloodspiller proc that increases its potency. One problem with these recent patch changes is that every time you boost the value of DRK's combo potency relative to Bloodspiller, you change it from a dps gain to a dps loss. So we've flip-flopped from a 19 potency loss, to a 4 potency gain, back to a 3 potency loss over three consecutive sub-patches.If TBN breaking applied, say, a built in DA effect to the next Bloodspiller, then it would be a consistent dps gain, regardless of how the devs tweaked the potencies. It would also make it feel more like a counterattack.

I think the single biggest issue with DRK at the moment are the stance penalties. BW is functionally similar to FoF or Berserk, but is only accessible outside of Grit and is terminated by switching stances. Delirium is strong, but also commits you to spending the next 23-30 seconds locked in whatever stance you started out in, and any stance swaps that occur during this period completely waste the effect (costing you over 200 potency). Blood Price looks like it's tuned for having multiple targets present, but you need to be hit about 3-4 times per second for it to be comparable to BW (in practice, this happens in situations where you have about 9+ mobs attacking you). The passive blood gain somewhat helps, but there at least needs to be a passive MP gain if it's going to be tuned so low. Overall, in order to make full use of these cooldowns, you need significantly more planning than you would for either FoF or Berserk, and mistakes are punished much more harshly. That's not even including the issue of the MP penalty associated with stance swaps.

I will say that I like what they did with Quietus. There's a neat interaction with TBN there that makes AoE tanking really fun. Unfortunately, this makes BP even less desirable, as there's little reason to use Delirium on it.