A thread about DRK - What I think is good, and what I think can change.

Greetings.

I have been playing DRK for a bit, since Shadowbringers, and will probably continue to play it. It is mostly related to the fantasy of it. In virtually every game I like, big sword guy has been my aesthetic. Furthermore, DRK as a job has an amazing legacy in Final Fantasy and has always had wonderful flavor. The job quests of DRK brought me in and I will probably never quit this job.

I have done all savage tiers since E9-12 as DRK, and have completed two ultimates, plus nearly finished DSR. (P6 PF experience was hell and I took a break from that, especially for dawntrail).

The changes in Dawntrail were a little bit disappointing to me. I want to talk about what I feel like the biggest issues are in hope that this is read and at least brought to the a neutral point where we were in Endwalker.

First, I will start with the positive:

1. If we are talking about *good* ways of removing button bloat, the basic idea of combining the effects of blood weapon and delerium into one button is good. I will talk about a potentially inadvertent issue this has caused in a moment. But the buttons were always used together. This is the type of streamlining I endorse.

Some will say that this can cause you to overcap if you arent careful but I think this is an amount of rotational awareness that people can play around.

2. The delirium combo is very cool. No notes. The animation is great, and its so much better than spamming bloodspiller 3 times. I would almost recommend providing parts of the combo at earlier levels!

3. I like that Diesteem has significant range on it. Even in EX2 I use it during the chains mech to maintain uptime on the boss. Considering there is some flexibility on when it is used in the burst, allows for skillfull DRK to optimize its usage for uptime.

4. Removing the blood gauge cost of Living Shadow is good. Whether planned or not, it is good that you are not punished for pulling a boss with Unmend. It is way easier to align in raid buffs.

5. Removing potency from gap closers is good and encourages tanks to use them as utility, and not for damage. (I will talk more about this in negatives however)

Now I will go into some negatives. These are changes that have hurt the job from a feel and performance perspective that I would like to see changed.

1. I sort of referenced it with my first point. The change to making blood weapon and delerium one the same has meant that DRK lose about 2400 mana every two minutes. To some, this may not sound like a lot, but that is a TBN every 2 minutes, and also a slight reduction in blood gauge per minute (offset by a free LS). There are significant damage implications to this, but I will more focus on the defensive loss.

Using TBN to mitigate damage outside of tank busters was already perilous. You had a chance on not breaking the TBN if you mistimed the TBN and did not take enough damage from the auto attacks. Failing to break the TBN netted a significant DPS loss. I cant directly compare it to "losing a fell cleave" because that attack always direct hit/crits, but it is similar in potency to compare. However, with the changes to mana gain, you now have a much greater chance of darkside dropping completely.

This doesnt feel good. Every other tank can use their mit to assist their healers with simple auto-attack damage. The only risk being the CD right before a big tankbuster. DRK gambles when you using TBN, which is punishing for just trying to help out your healer.

I am touching on a greater issue with TBN, one that has not been resolved since Shadowbringers. I would talk about it greater, but this is to provide context as to why losing more mana regen magnifies an existing issue.

What I hope for right now is something fairly simple: restore the original amount of mana gained from blood weapon as it was in Endwalker. The amount needed would be 400mp per blood weapon hit, so 1200 per minute, 2400 per 2 minutes would restore us to the MP regen we were at during EW. Alternatively, just 5 stacks of blood weapon with its original effect. This makes our blood and MP generation as it was. I am less concerned about the blood gauge generation, the MP generation is a more significant issue when I play.

2. I am sure you have heard many many complaints about the new gap closers. I too much prefer the *animation* of plunge. I get my fill of it in PVP, but plunge was a cool flip, and would enjoy having that back, sans the potency. As I discovered however, It wasn't just the feel of Shadowstride that was off, it is in fact, a delayed animation. This probably has a less significant impact on new players, but for me, the delay feels really awful.

I have this idea that the designer for the GNB and DRK job had the opinion that if an ability does no damage, the animation should not involve a strike to the enemy. While admirable, I do not know how many people would be bothered by this. I for one would not have cared.

I too join the chorus of people who prefer the old gap close animation. If the designers are absolutely married to Shadowstride, then please speed up the startup animation so its at least snappy.

Those are the negatives that I have.

Even if no change were to occur, I would be sad, but I will still main DRK. I also look forward to 7.2 for greater combat changes.

I have a wishlist for greater DRK changes for 7.2, but I will keep that to another thread. I want to keep the focus of this thread extremely focused to the changes brought via Dawntrail.

I do want to thank the developers for the existing trials being pretty interesting so far to tank. I eagerly await the release of Savage and FRU.

- Lea Ornstein