to Future DRK Players

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Originally Posted by VictorTheed

I'm not a DRK player, I'm a RDM player, I may not know the ins and ours of DRK, I know ya'all been wanting living dead to get reworked, but other then that, it seems like Square sent u DRK players a message in that job actions trailer video, that message is play Reaper.

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And my message is: fix your stuff. How come they do anything for certain players but when there's people that ask for a Delirium rework they stumble upon deaf ears.

There's another issue during the time with the release of ShB and Gunbreaker. It used to have better sound effects, but apparently there was a minority on the forum that complained about these sounds. So they changed it. I might be wrong on the topic however. I would love to throw in Viera, but this might be an irrelevant point given I've no statistics or data on how many players wanted male Viera.

They do listen to the minority, sometimes. Especially when it comes to politics as we have seen quite a few times. They do listen to feedback as well, now they expect tank players to transition into DPS players because of an edgy job somewhat resemblant of DRK. Reaper sounds great but tanks play their role for the associated mechanics, they have a different mindset apart from DPS players. I believe they are completly unreasonable when it comes to DRK but it's not like we don't know that given how long they ignored Living Dead.

I only expect blood weapon and delirium to be fixed. Everything else is up in the air. I fully expect LD to not be changed at all and still require a Macro to survive.

But DRK desperately needs some reworking of skills for leveling. Anything below lvl70 is a complete nightmare to tank simply due to DRK being backloaded on skills and not front loaded like the other tanks.

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Originally Posted by Shin96

And my message is: fix your stuff. How come they do anything for certain players but when there's people that ask for a Delirium rework they stumble upon deaf ears.

There's another issue during the time with the release of ShB and Gunbreaker. It used to have better sound effects, but apparently there was a minority on the forum that complained about these sounds. So they changed it. I might be wrong on the topic however. I would love to throw in Viera, but this might be an irrelevant point given I've no statistics or data on how many players wanted male Viera.

They do listen to the minority, sometimes. Especially when it comes to politics as we have seen quite a few times. They do listen to feedback as well, now they expect tank players to transition into DPS players because of an edgy job somewhat resemblant of DRK. Reaper sounds great but tanks play their role for the associated mechanics, they have a different mindset apart from DPS players. I believe they are completly unreasonable when it comes to DRK but it's not like we don't know that given how long they ignored Living Dead.

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If it makes u feel any better, they ruined my old fav job war in shb imo, I remember the glory days of war back 3.0 to the end of 3.1, even the nerfed sb version, but shb version I didn't like taking inner beast heal capabilities away, maybe I suck at war but nasant flash was no substitute for those inner beast heals, I remember solo'n the last boss of drowned city of skalla from 35% to completion cause my whole team died, that still puts a smile on this little Lala's face ☺️

I hope u guys get what u want but it looks like reaper is what your given, I guess with how cool PLD is looking they figure maybe the tanks will switch to it and the people who want the dark edgy theme will go reaper.

I heard SMN raise barely made it in EW rework, I hope it stays, plus I hope they never ruin my fav job RDM by wearing my healing and raising capabilities, I was pulling for you drk peeps to get a living dead remake and whatever else u wanted on drk.

RDM raise and heal are part of their nature being adept with white and black magic so its thematic with the job. SMN got their raise because their base class had it nothing more

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Originally Posted by Lyth

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you bring a lot of interesting points about the HW/STB DRK kits being disjointed, but at the same time you are dismissing valid complaints about the SHB DRK kit being disjointed, which has been a topic of major criticism and concern. are you suggesting you have absolutely NO problems with Salted Earth being nerfed as well as losing blood generation which connected it to our kit? Abyssal Drain losing its mana cost and being placed on a long cooldown rather than being changed to be stronger in single target? Quietus/BS being reduced to spam rather than well timed resource generation skills? are you suggesting that the ONLY thing that needs to be addressed for DRK is Living Dead, and not the lack of impact that a lot of the abilities have besides muh stronk tbn?

I might be in the minority here, but I actually think that the STB version of DRK was superior to the HW version due to a few key aspects, such as having a more dynamic resource management playstyle with its mana and blood interactions, and the overall streamlining of the kit with regards to how mana and blood worked with your skills. losing some of those DOTs and the fun MT revenge mechanics did hurt, but I believe what we gained from STB far outweighed those losses, especially because we got to keep almost all of the DRK core abilities, like DA, AD, SE, DP, and BP.

while you are correct that a lot of the more hardcore playerbase realised that spending DA on defencive buffs was a DPS loss, you're also forgetting that a lot of the more casual to midcore level players utilised those in their daily activities, where the environment is a lot more hectic than in organised pugs/parties in which you can rely on timed heals to make up for the damage. a lot of times in leveling or roulette content, spending mana on defencive buffs could mean the difference between living or dying since not every healer has immediate responses to incoming damage. plus, you're forgetting the most important aspect.. we had branching decisions we could make (whether they be """good""" or """bad""") which was one of the hallmarks of the playstyle that differentiated it from PLDs stricter rotation and WARs GCD based playstyle. this made DRK objectively unique in terms of gameplay, and made it feel fun to engage with the kit in terms of job fantasy.

as for your comment on how "all other jobs have changed", it's not hard to see that from certain perspectives, some jobs seem to have regressed in SHB, and that others seem to have stagnated in EW. did PLD really need MORE finishers, especially ones that combo off confiteor of all things, rather than fixing sheltrons cost and duration (especially at lower levels)? did DRG need ANOTHER AOE as opposed to a way to ramp up their eyes or a way to refresh to disembowl like how SAM does? did MCH really deserve nothing but a chainsaw and shotgun? did BRD deserve to have its procs and party buffs removed in favour of ... whatever they got? did SCH deserve to get ignored and told there wasn't much to change, despite almost 2 years of criticism from SCH players? don't even get me started on jobs that regressed in EW... rip DNC, NIN, and SMN mains of old. titan egi will be gone, but never forgotten.

the main problem I see with your issue of invulns and their impact is not DRKs fault, but rather the fault of the devs refusing to hire more employees to fix the spaghetti code, which is why battle content is designed the way it is. MY problem with DRK, besides its atrocious leveling kit, is that disjointedness between its job fantasy and the bone dry gameplay that in no way complements the job fantasy. and the biggest problem I feel is plaguing this game, is the increasing movement away from the more "technical gameplay" jobs with unique XIV twists on them, and that said jobs keep getting dumbed down in gameplay for the sake of "muh traditional FF version"

sure, by all means go ahead and buff Living Dead, but without fixing that disjointed feeling, the job will still boil down to spamming all mana in burst window, spamming 1-2-3 for 60 seconds. but now you get peppered earth and a new flood follow up!



"there wasn't much we could really do with DRK"

I think many players just went to DRK because the edgy dark look plus being the expansion poster boy. Expect DRK numbers to plummet on EW since Reaper looks cool as hell, its new and doesnt bore you to sleep compared to DRK rotation, so many will just go play Reaper

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

I think many players just went to DRK because the edgy dark look plus being the expansion poster boy. Expect DRK numbers to plummet on EW since Reaper looks cool as hell, its new and doesnt bore you to sleep compared to DRK rotation, so many will just go play Reaper

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I doubt that. Reaper is DPS and DRK is tank. I doubt people picked DRK if they dont like tanking since you are froced to tank since the first ARR dungeon you unlock if you picked tank. If someone doesn't like it - edge or not - he won't enjoy it.

Reaper will probably be the most popular job on release since even tank players have DPSes leveled up and everyone will jump on Reaper boat (well, not everyone, but many) but I doubt Reaper will have anything to do with DRK numbers vs any other job. If anything I think other melee DPS numbers will plummet, since for them Reaper will be the equivalent of DRK for tank players. Most healer/tank mains will level Reaper and then go back to their fav playstyle.

Besides there is big difference between DRK and RPR when it comes to look. I for example enjoy Dark Knight for his heavy armor and gigantic sword, RPR doesn't speak to me at all. If anything I think Reaper is not really interesting, even though I love darkness of DRK.

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Originally Posted by bundythenoob

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Our values change with every expansion. This doesn't have anything to do with playing optimally or your time commitment to the game.

Heavensward DRK was a fantastic job, for Heavensward. When you take an action like Plunge, for example, people loved it in Heavensward because it was the only tank gap closer at the time. It also showed up at a point where the broader playerbase was just starting to realize that you could negate a knockback with a well timed gap closer. Sure, you could negate it with Tempered or Holmgang, but Plunge was the stylish way to do it. In Stormblood, it was a liability. It was vastly inferior to Onslaught, which had a longer range, a faster animation, and could essentially be used on demand, and was coupled with the fact that IR negated knockbacks, and Holmgang also negated knockbacks. Stormblood also brought in faster and more frequent knockbacks than we had seen in the likes of, say, Midas. Plunge didn't change. The game did.

I think the interaction between MP and blood in Stormblood was an interesting idea. Dual resource systems are generally fun. The devs flirted with the idea of creating this blue-black deck style design where you burn MP to gain blood and burn blood to gain MP in an infinite resources loop that wins you the game. They did it for AoE and people loved how broken it was. TBN to gain blood, Quietus to gain MP, and so on. But they didn't dare to do it for single target, which is where DRK ended up being seriously disadvantaged. Bloodspiller actually never generated resources, and with very good reason.

You talked about the blood gain on Salted Earth. That's a nice idea, but it's very hard to balance AoE vs. single target. Either you'll generate too much blood in AoE, or too little in single target. The same was true for Blood Price. I think it's better to opt for a versatile kit that is balanced around both, rather than having something that's exclusively strong in AoE ('the dungeon tank').

I think it would be reasonable to change Abyssal Drain such that it's balanced around both single target and AoE. But to do that, you'd need to have fairly significant diminishing returns in AoE to keep it appropriately powerful in single target.

I don't see what Living Dead's problems have anything to do with coding. It's just a badly designed action all around. The actual invuln effect is not the problem. It's mathematically inferior to Holmgang even before you take the penalty into account. And the penalty itself is poorly executed, relies entirely on another player to understand how your actions work, has incorrect tooltips, and has no UI support to show how much healing will remove the effect. It'll be even better next expansion when your shield healer is struggling to cleanse it.

Stormblood didn't streamline Heavensward's kit. It ripped out large chunks of it and donated inferior versions as role actions shared across all tanks. It locked actions like Blood Price behind Grit such that you were denied access to them. It was conditional and clunky. It was widely regarded as the worst tank by a large margin for that expansion, and we're still recovering from the aftermath of it. Stormblood DRK was a terrible job, for Stormblood. Context matters.

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Originally Posted by Shin96

There's another issue during the time with the release of ShB and Gunbreaker. It used to have better sound effects, but apparently there was a minority on the forum that complained about these sounds.

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That issue is pretty widely known. People complained that the explosions were too weak in the original sound effects, SE fixed the explosion sound but at the same time managed to somehow make the actual blade sound like you're hitting things with a pool noodle.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Context matters.

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if context is as important as you say, then lets look at all iterations of DRK from a couple of different contexts.

firstly, if DRK was a "bad job" like you said in the context of STB, then why did they not fix the problems with the job for the next expansion, an expansion in which the job was not only the poster boy, but in the same xpac where the devs showed they could make a new tank with a different playstyle from the existing ones (GNB),
keep an old tanks playstyle while evolving its rotation further (PLD),
and even fix the problems people had with the 5.0 version of a tank (WAR)?
was there really a need to make drastic changes to a job that was loved by the people that played it and enjoyed the challenge? you even pointed out some ways in which the STB DRK could have been made better while keeping its old kit AND having a UNIQUE playstyle.
what context justifies breaking a unique playstyle in an MMO which is inherently supposed to allow for multiple playstyles to suit the multiple people that play the game?

secondly, you say that HW DRK is superior to STB DRK given the context of the jobs' abilities at the time, but in what way is that context even relevant to the conversation of the erosion of the job's identity? they both fundamentally maintained the same playstyle, using Dark Arts to strengthen your core abilities while juggling resource generation. the only difference between HW DRK and STB DRK being that if HW DRK was not locked to MT it would lose out on some procs, whereas STB DRK would lose out on some abilities while it was not MT. both versions of the jobs had issues, there's no denying that. but neither of these versions have as much problems as the current SHB DRK kit.

looking at these changes from the context of HW to STB, the devs already stated why they removed dots from jobs, and they have also stated they removed those "revenge mechanics" because they didn't want jobs competing for MT slot. what we lost was more than made up for with a new resource system, strong abilities to play with that helped interlink the two resource systems, and a powerful shield that rewards the player for smart decision making
a shield that to this day remains a powerful staple of DRK gameplay while simultaneously being a rewarding tank ability that FEELS like a proper tanking cooldown due to the cost and reward feedback

finally, in the context of SHB to EW, why were absolutely no changes made to fix the myriad of valid criticisms of SHB DRK laid out by DRK players for the last 2 years?
the issue of our resource generation abilities lacking impact could be solved many ways, such as the removal of mana regen ticks which would allow power to return to said abilities.
the issue of delirium feeling like a cheap clone of another ability, rather than being a unique resource tool for the resource generation tank
the issue of the disjointed kit because of the lack of interplay between said resources
the issue of Living Dead being a poorly designed skill (something which people seem to be adamant is the PRIORITY to fix, and not something that should be fixed ALONGSIDE the above problems)


the ONLY context I can think of is that Square decided that pandering to people who are unwilling to put in the work required to become proficient at a job far outweighed the option to continue to make improvements to jobs that their core playerbase would enjoy; however, the big problem with this """context""" is that they showed that they can continue to make jobs evolve without destroying their unique playstyle, while simultaneously lowering the skill floor to both healing and tanking with the new aggro changes. or am I just looking into this all wrong? I mean they DID basically imply that players who wanted a return to complexity should instead expect the SHB versions of jobs to be """built up""", yet they also showed no additional buildup for multiple jobs, not just DRK. why was the posterboy for the expansion shown no love compared to others like WAR, NIN, or AST? why was DRK shown no love in the next expansion, where they could have drawn upon MULTIPLE sources of feedback?

at this point the meme quote should be "there wasnt much we could do with drk/sch/mch/brd/pld/drg/dnc" because there wasn't much """Build up""" aside from a few enders and more needless AOEs. then again, this is just the opinion of someone who was told to look elsewhere, despite years of nothing but love and support for the game which showed me there was an MMO worth investing time into.