DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

I'm still waiting for you to make an actual, constructive suggestion, or counter-suggestion, or even a change of subject. All you've really done in here is tell people "no." This isn't an attack by the way, its an observation.

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I already mentioned twice that for example DP and SS need changes and could help making DRK dpsing more interesting, without making optimization a hassle and weakening the class in non savage content at the same time. There are many ways these skills could be made really useful, lots of ideas got posted here already.
Besides its still better to have no changes at all than making bad changes which make things even worse.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Quantity and quality of the kinds of DPS gains we've been talking about do matter. From 4.01 to 4.05 it was technically a gain to hit TBN any time you knew it would pop, regardless of stance, and yet, the world kept spinning and none of the servers went down. It was a very small gain

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Indeed very small and almost the same as it is now. You suggested a significant gain. There is a difference.

We are at the start of the expansion, ofcourse we dont outgear the current content yet in a big way. Also there isnt only savage content you have to consider. Unless you wish for a class that can only perform at its highest when doing latest savage content, while all other classes can do that anywhere.

There are already lots of possibilities in each fight to use TBN in a helpful way for the group with mitigation in mind. Just because its a short cooldown it doesnt mean its a good idea to make the player use it all the time.


Also, comparing TBN to skills of other classes like Third Eye or Sheltron and trying to make a case isnt working. These skills dont function like TBN does. They dont depend on the amount of damage you receive and they dont cost recources which are directly tied to your dps skills. This makes them far less risky. They also cant be used as often as TBN.

I'm not a DRK main, but I had an idea on how to make TBN better (but I do agree it still needs another minor cooldown):

When the shield breaks, the amount it shielded for also heals the one equipped with the shield.

So, basically, it's like a reverse Adloquium.

If SE wanted TBN to be designed to be a break even then the simplest solution would be to have the shield break and return the 2400 mana rather than returning 50 blood, then the skill would just make sense to use in all cases.

DRK seems great for prog because in grit you have this wonderful mitigation that increases your dps while helping you be a turtle. Then when trying to maximize our dps we are in a situation where it is questionable for us to use mitigation, adding additional strain to healers who are also trying to push their dps and optimize. Conceptually this is just weird, it is a dps increase when you want to play defensively, and a break even when you want to play offensively. I play drk to play an active tank, what I dislike about dark is that to maximize the class you need to give up so much to break even with the other tanks.

I drop grit: I lose 20% mitigation, 1200 mana restore, a self-sustain in the form of soul eater, and one of my core mitigations becomes questionable/needs babysiting. We gain access to one dps cooldown in the form of blood weapon. Now maybe we can make the arguement that we lose the bonus 1200 mana restore because blood weapon is a large resource generation, but I feel we might go cross eyed there (I lose resource regeneration because another button does that now every 40 seconds... ok), and nothing replaces the self-sustain or the drop in TBN mitigation. I am also aware that pld and war also lose things by going dps stance, but I think the gains far outweigh the loses in these cases.

IMO (not worth much I've tried selling it but I'm going to say it anyway) a main tank should not have to skimp on mitigation to such a degree to maximize dps. I play this class because its more fun than the other two choices because of its active style and at the end of the day thats what it is about, but similar to the fending/slaying argument I don't want to have to choose between mitigating damage and squeezing in an extra siphon strike or soul eater, and to my knowledge no other tank needs to make a similar choice.

Other things:
The cooldown time on Shadow Wall does not make sense, an additional effect, longer duration, or be on a shorter cooldown are all viable things.
Sole survivor needs a single target effect that doesn't depend on the target dying, especially when there are so few adds in the raid tier, v3s being the exception. Personally I would like to see this convert damage to HP/mana/blood.
Dark passenger needs an additional effect to justify the large mana cost. Perhaps it could act as a personal crit buff, act like a spear (the cooldown reduction version) for dark knight skills, or allow for blood gain from other GCD actions.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Other things:

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I struggle to think of another tank or even another job in the game that as many if-then logic-gate statements in its tooltips and design.

"...if that target should be KO'd in battle..."
"...if full 20% (10%) is absorbed..."
"...if, before the Walking Dead timer runs out..."

Its convoluted, messy, an unrewarding. For a job with so many conditionals to not excel in a given area I find baffling and frustrating.

Granted a lot of these were present in 3.x, but in 3.x we offered higher relative DPS, our additional magic mitigation was more meaningful, and we had appreciable raid mitigation utility. Again there's that whole high-risk/low-reward motif.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

I struggle to think of another tank or even another job in the game that as many if-then logic-gate statements in its tooltips and design.

"...if that target should be KO'd in battle..."
"...if full 20% (10%) is absorbed..."
"...if, before the Walking Dead timer runs out..."

Its convoluted, messy, an unrewarding. For a job with so many conditionals to not excel in a given area I find baffling and frustrating.
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Just because an if/then branch isn't explicitly stated in the abilities doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Most of the jobs operate on a basic if/then priority system. Dark Knight isn't different in that regard and frankly has nothing on current Summoner, Machinist, and possibly Astrologians on that front.

Sole Survivor not being an execute type ability is a giant waste though.

One thing that I don't think I've seen anyone mention about DRK is that their shallow MP/Blood pools are kind of at odds with what is ostensibly the class's biggest strength in terms of DPS optimization.

In theory, DRK's biggest strength is that their burst happens whenever they want to spend MP and Blood, instead of being tied to cooldown buffs on a strict timer. In practice, they can't even store 4 DAs worth of MP, and can only hold 2 BSs worth of Blood (TBN will overlap your Blood if you have enough for even one BS). So you end up having to spend it as it comes, instead of being able to save a meaningful amount.

If DRK's MP pool were bumped up from 9.6k to about 15k, and the Blood pool bumped up to 200, I think that would go a long way toward letting DRK capitalize on the unique resource-based nature of the class.

Some of these issues mentioned could be relieved by changing the effects Sole Survivor. Perhaps cutting the Blood Gauge cost of Bloodspiller in half, as well as doubling Blood gain from Soul Eater for its duration would help a bit.

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Originally Posted by Crater

One thing that I don't think I've seen anyone mention about DRK is that their shallow MP/Blood pools are kind of at odds with what is ostensibly the class's biggest strength in terms of DPS optimization.

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I think the reason you don't see this suggestion is because it, in effect, is the same as cutting all of our MP and blood costs in half, as well as all of our returns. That being said it would make the job a lot more fun and allow you basically DIY your own burst windows wherever/whenever you please, which would be really neat.

I think the biggest pain right now is, as you mentioned, there is only enough Blood you can store for 2 BSs, and if you ever hit 100 Blood its almost always overflow and thus a DPS loss unless you landed on precisely 100, which is pretty impractical and rarely happens. It just doesn't allow for much burst with the job. I've landed a triple Bloodspiller before, and while it felt awesome, at the same time it was probably awful for my DPS. I really don't believe it should be this way.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Its convoluted, messy, an unrewarding.

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DRK has been that way since it's launch in Heavensward. Devs don't know what they want it to be evidently.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

I think the reason you don't see this suggestion is because it, in effect, is the same as cutting all of our MP and blood costs in half, as well as all of our returns.

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No, changing the maximum size of the MP/Blood pools wouldn't have any effect on costs and a miiimal effect on resource generation - it'd still be 1200 MP per Syphon, 480 per BW proc, 50 Blood per TBN, 10 per SE, etc. The only differences would be an extra 2 DA worth of MP at the beginning of the pull, half an extra DA per Sole Survivor, and a pretty inconsequential increase in natural MP regeneration when DS is dropped.

Part of the reason there's so much controversy around TBN-BS versus DA for DPS is that you just can't store enough Blood (or MP) to save for a burst window. A TBN-BS under Trick Attack is an unambiguous DPS gain over DA used outside of TA - but you can barely hold enough MP to DA your whole TA window, and you can't sit on your Blood to put it into the window either.