Is the new Dark mind buff being underestimated?

Idk if its just the players that only do dungeons all day, but against most of the high end bosses that use magic attacks/tank busters, this skill shines bright.
Its like using sentinel which is on a 180sec cd every 60 seconds? And on top of that shadow skins cd is 120secs? I haven\\'t done savage Chadarnook, phantom train, or God kefka yet since the Drk update, but man this skill is great. Most reviews i see of Dark mind are like "meh cool".

Dark Mind's up for almost each tankbuster mechanic. That's glorious. And anytime there's a physical buster, you still have Shadow Wall ready.

It’s “meh cool” because dark mind is exactly the same as it’s always been, it just doesn’t require you double weave a dark arts anymore, which is nice yes, but it’s nothing game changing for DRK.

The usual Dark mind issue people complained about is still unchanged, that it’s only good against magical busters. As soon as there’s a physical mob dark mind is useless same as PLD’s shield was against magical attacks in HW, one of the many reasons no one touched it back then.

Most people think that this change is "meh" because you could actually get 30% mitigation with DA, or they only used it in combination with TBN. Either they didn't try it themselves yet or don't really see the impact of this change.

To be honest, the change isn't huge, but still pretty damn neat. Cabalabob already mentioned you don't need to double weave a DA for its full effect, and even more, you actually SAVE a DA for extra DPS.

Before this change, either your healer had to heal the extra damage you took or you paid a DA for it. Now, it's "free" and in combination with Sole Survivor every 2nd Dark Mind, your healer has more time to DPS.

You shouldn't pay (extra) for a simple defensive CD, and they made that right with 4.3.

I still see DRK behind PLD in term of mitigation because of PLD passive blocking, but now I bet this job beats WAR in most raids by far.

The changes to Dark Mind, Power Slash, and Dark Passenger are all based around similar design decisions. When you use DA, it should, at the very least, be dps neutral. The fact that we've moved away from "140 potency or bonus effect" towards "140 potency and bonus effect" is a very nice development. There are still some implementation problems with this (such as Dark Passenger not benefiting from slashing), but that speaks to a much bigger problem (why on earth are 100% uptime raid-wide buffs like slashing still around?)

Going forward, though, I think the question that we need to ask is whether we want to see more mitigation tools that are conditional depending on damage type, like RI and DM. On the one hand, yes, it represents a form of variety. Your performance is better in certain fights than others. But it's a bit like the elemental resistances problem. Do we have to bring the fire mage along to fight the ice golem? Or, alternatively, do we need to turn every fight into an ice fight so that the fire mages can stay viable? There are plenty of ways of creating defensive variety without resorting to "resistance type".

I think that this is a nice initial set of changes, though, at least defensively.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

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Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The fact that we've moved away from "140 potency or bonus effect" towards "140 potency and bonus effect" is a very nice development.

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I too am very glad that they seem to be heading in this direction as it has been something I have been wanting and pushing for for quite a while.
However, like with DRK's kit overall, there still is a good deal of ground to cover with this. They still need to begin implementing this design philosophy with other parts of the kit, such as the GCD combo abilities with DA effects as well as for the GCD AoE abilities like adding the DA potency boost to Abyssal Drain (+50 like DA Quietus).

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Going forward, though, I think the question that we need to ask is whether we want to see more mitigation tools that are conditional depending on damage type, like RI and DM ... There are plenty of ways of creating defensive variety without resorting to "resistance type".

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In regards to the magic/physical damage dichotomy, I see two potential routes.

First is to relegate all "fluff" damage as physical and all big-hits/"busters" (potentially excluding multiple small hit "busters") as magic damage, therefore splitting the damage based more on design intent and the physical/magical labels being more or less just thematic trappings.

Second is to completely get rid of the split and re-tune the few abilities that are physical/magical only so that they fit more into the usage design that they were inadvertently relegated to by their damage-type restriction. Take for example Dark Mind, due to it being magic damage only it makes it almost exclusively an "anti-buster" ability since busters are where magic damage is most prevalent. It could be made to defend against all damage-types but have it's duration shortened (6s like IB?) so that it is fairly ineffective against "fluff" damage due to the short duration, although not completely worthless, and is best when used to defend against situations of fast incoming, high damage like busters.

Personally I feel the second route is arguably the better way to go, but I wouldn't be surprised if SE goes more with the first route since it seems closest to what they have going now.

Overall, the DM and Shadow Wall changes were a nice boost. The main place that DRK still feels lacking in its defensive/mitigation kit is with self-heals where it really needs the SE heal to not be stance-locked and perhaps a self-heal attached to a big-hit ability like on the DA effect for Bloodspiller.

for a only dungeon person saying "for mobs" honestly dungeons really don't require much cool downs so it quite annoying to here these casual players speak of mobs when a simple shadow wall rampart rotation can get the job done in any dungeon on ffxiv. In terms of real content players who raid the change for DRK mind isn't even close to meh, it actually huge especially with dps uptime, coupled with the fact that Dark mind can eat almost if not all magical tank buster's off tank stance with no additional TBN coverage no problem.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

It’s “meh cool” because dark mind is exactly the same as it’s always been, it just doesn’t require you double weave a dark arts anymore, which is nice yes, but it’s nothing game changing for DRK.

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... Except it's not a DPS loss to do so any longer.

I'm still trying to get into the habit of not using DA whenever I use DM, since the update no longer requires DA to trigger the 30% reduction.

The changes to DM and Shadow Wall are awesome.

Previously, in O8S there was no real reason to take DRK but after these changes you can pretty much delete the Hyperdrive tank buster and the dot that comes with it with no loss to your dps and still have cds up for the many other busters.
To me, this finally gives DRK some value in the fight.