Living Shadow Shadowstride Oversight

To the point, Living Shadow now loses a huge potency every time Esteem has to reposition, due to Shadowstride not dealing any damage.

When Esteem tries to reposition, they will use Shadowstride and then resume their combo. Not only does this result in a loss because of the loss of a whole action, but sometimes it results in the loss of (Esteem's) Disesteem, which not only feels bad but is an additional damage loss.

Arguably this increases the "skill" level, but there is nothing the player can do to compensate or adjust for this beside drifting.

In ShB Esteem used Plunge which damaged and did not have a loss at all.

In EW, it was only a loss if it somehow (very difficult) prevented a use of Shadowbringer.

Even if Plunge was kept, in DT it would still be a loss if Disesteem at the end was lost due to repositioning, since it has a higher potency than Plunge. That small potency loss on its own is "skill" enough, losing a whole attack is too punishing for something so minor, when it used to never be a problem at all.

I don't believe this change is intentional due to it being anti-synergistic with the reasoning behind removing the Blood cost of Living Shadow.

There are three different fixes to this.

1.) Change Shadowstride on Esteem to a damaging move or revert it to Plunge. (I'm sure a lot of people would be happy if he kept Plunge.)

2.) Change Living Shadow's attacks to be stack based and have Shadowstride not consume stacks of attacks.

3.) Remove Shadowstride and simply let Esteem walk to the target.

The second is definitely the most drastic change but would also make Living Shadow feel better to use in a lot other contexts. For example, at the end of a pull when enemies are going to die before LS finishes (if it was stack based they could be kept into the next pull/boss).

Hope we see this addressed.

It's almost like the devs forgot to future proof Living Shadow after they designed it... Though Dark Knight needs a massive re-work to make it feel and/or play like Dark Knight, as opposed to whatever we currently have for Dark Knight... but then again I'm pretty sure the devs do not care about the other tanks so long as Warrior is top DPS and expect the devs to NEVER address this AT ALL...

Yeah I don't think Living Shadow was designed with the intent that every single DRK capstone trait for the end of time would be "Enhanced Living Shadow #" that randomly replaced its attacks.

I don't even get why the thing needs a duration, you think it be just as easy to set it to do all of its attacks once then leave.

I'd be surprise to see if they even attempt to fix anything on DRK, who ever is working on DRK's skill list seems to hate the job with a passion and hell bent on making it feel like the worst job in the game.

The more I play of Dawntrail the more it feels like they didn't play test anything or even think about issues that might arrived and just did a half baked job and said it was good enough.

Dawntrail fight mechanics are indeed better but boy the jobs really need a good deep dive into potential issues and fixes.

To say nothing of the fact that again the duration time starts at 20, but Fray doesn't actually attack due to summoning animation until 15 seconds into it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Keagian

I'd be surprise to see if they even attempt to fix anything on DRK, who ever is working on DRK's skill list seems to hate the job with a passion and hell bent on making it feel like the worst job in the game.

---

I feel this, I started in SB, so I can't say I know how DRK was in HW, but in SB, DRK was the coolest tank ever imo. Sure, Living Dead was bad back then, but all of DRK's mechanics and actions were actually COOL and interesting. Dark Arts to enhance your actions have a lightning bolt boosting your power? Cool. The Power Slash combo with the magic shot at the end? Cool! Sole Survivor is still the most non-braindead tank action imo. Super Cool! And we also had Quietus restoring MP for every mob hit. We were also the only tank with a damaging gap closer.

Literally all the coolest thing about DRK has been stripped away, some of which given to WAR; Delirium's given to all tanks; all tanks got a damaging gap closer, and then they removed it from the original one, once again giving what DRK got to WAR; and Sole Survivor is no longer surviving. Every expansion, I hoped to see DRK just getting treated nicely, and every expansion, I see it getting worse. Even in ShadowBringer, with DRK Meteor on the poster of the damn expansion, DRK got worse. It's hard not to suspect some form of malice when it's so consistently done.

On the other hand, maybe the devs wanted to give us DRK enjoyer a taste of what it's like to roleplay as Guts?

You know the class you play feels awful in terms of gameplay when your state of mind changes from :

Please give us something new.
to :
Please stop taking stuff from us!!!