DRK Change in Patch 3.07

From the patch notes:

"Blood Weapon now applies an effect that reduces the TP cost of weapon skills by 20%."

Assuming 0 skill speed (it won't be, but lets assume), without BW:

15s = 6 abilities = 2 combos of 190 TP each = 380 spent. Recovery is 60TP every 3s, so 300 recovered for net -80TP

With BW:

15s = 7 abilities = 2 combos of 190TP plus an addition 70TP = 450 spent, less 20% = 360 spent. Net -60TP

It seems to me as if the offset really doesn't help TP issues that much, but it's nice to know at least now using BW won't make you run dry even more quickly.

Will be nice to try it out though, to see if the changes makes a impact. I suppose you will mainly notice this if you are OT.

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Originally Posted by Kydi

It seems to me as if the offset really doesn't help TP issues that much, but it's nice to know at least now using BW won't make you run dry even more quickly.

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Which is suspect is the point to the change.

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Originally Posted by Kydi

With BW:
15s = 7 abilities = 2 combos of 190TP plus an addition 70TP = 450 spent, less 20% = 360 spent. Net -60TP

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With old BW :
15 = 7 abilities = 2 combos of 190TP plus an additionnal 70TP = 450 TP spent. Recovery is 60TP every 3s, so 300 recovered for net -150TP.

So you "save" 90 TP every 40s, not that bad. Doesn't do anything when MT'ing though. But I guess you could pop some Unmend to keep your TP afloat.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

With old BW :
15 = 7 abilities = 2 combos of 190TP plus an additionnal 70TP = 450 TP spent. Recovery is 60TP every 3s, so 300 recovered for net -150TP.

So you "save" 90 TP every 40s, not that bad. Doesn't do anything when MT'ing though. But I guess you could pop some Unmend to keep your TP afloat.

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Ya will give it ago tonight, one more level to go on DRK. See the changes in effect.

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Originally Posted by LordHousewife

You're saving 20 not 90 because 70 of that 90 is going to another Hard Slash. Without BW you get 6 GCDs in 15s. With BW you get 7 GCDs in 15s.

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With the old BW you also got 7 GCD.
You're saving 90 when compared to the previous Blood Weapon.

What's the point of comparing the TP drain with and without Blood Weapon ? You don't need to prove that you burn TP faster with BW...

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

With the old BW you also got 7 GCD.
You're saving 90 when compared to the previous Blood Weapon.

What's the point of comparing the TP drain with and without Blood Weapon ? You don't need to prove that you burn TP faster with BW...

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Blood Weapon will now be a (very minor) TP gain though. Without BW you have a net -80 over the 15s window, with BW a net -60 over the 15s window, so a slight reduction in TP spent.

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Originally Posted by Kydi

Blood Weapon will now be a (very minor) TP gain though. Without BW you have a net -80 over the 15s window, with BW a net -60 over the 15s window, so a slight reduction in TP spent.

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It's still useless to compare the two...

Blood Weapon IS a DPS gain, so, you'd have used it anyway.
Before patch 3.07, it was a TP loss of 150TP, now it's a TP loss of 60TP.

Uhh are you guys kidding me? You all trolling or something?
Dark knight hardly needs to use TP, in fact this patch just shat on us.
I use enough TP to maybe pick my nose and scratch my ass.
Maybe it's just the macros I have set up? I doubt it.
Even if I decided to ONLY use hard slash, I am STILL not using enough TP.
So what are you all on about? Unless we get SS down to 0, i'll never use enough TP before it regenerates completely.
What we need is the ability to use Blood Weapon no matter what.
Abyssal drain needs a 2x buff to it's dark arts ability, LD need to freaking work, and Shadow Wall? That should cover the whole party, I'm sorry it just feels redundant to me atm.

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Originally Posted by Yamedo

Dark knight hardly needs to use TP, in fact this patch just shat on us.
I use enough TP to maybe pick my nose and scratch my ass.

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That makes you unique compared to every other dark knight in the world then.

Maybe when AOE tanking, sure, you're using a lot of mana abilities. But in a single target rotation on a boss DRK is the most TP intensive class of all - they need to use 70/60/60 TP every single GCD, they dont get invigorate/equilibrium and the game's passive TP regen is 60 every 3 seconds. In long fights you -will- run out unless there are substantial breaks for regen or you're getting perma goaded. Obviously this only applies to long fights on raid bosses.

With zero skillspeed (so 2.5 GCD) doing your 70/60/60 rotation you use 190 TP every 7.5 seconds. That's 760 TP every 30 seconds. You regenerate 60 TP every 3 seconds, which is 600 every 30 seconds. Thus with zero skillspeed a DRK loses 160 TP every 30 seconds. 320 lost in one minute. 960 lost in 3 minutes. That means you can fight for just over 3 minutes before you completely run out of TP. Increasing skillspeed starts to reduce the time you can last even further.

Paladins are in the same boat - they can ease this via Shield Swipe use when MTing but don't have the luxury when OTing as they wont proc it from blocks.

Are you maybe putting in AOE abilities and Unmend into your single target rotations? This alleviate's TP loss, sure, but is a substantial DPS loss too. You mention macros too... what macros are you using? Are you macroing your combos together or something so they don't fire off at maximum speed?

Does BW still absorb mp? I kinda liked getting the most out of ogcd with it on.

Because if it just saves on tp now, shouldn't it be able to be used while in grit?

Also, why is living dead still a crapshoot to use?

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Originally Posted by Kallera

Does BW still absorb mp? I kinda liked getting the most out of ogcd with it on.

Because if it just saves on tp now, shouldn't it be able to be used while in grit?

Also, why is living dead still a crapshoot to use?

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It does everything it did before still, the change was just so that its not a huge TP loss to use it anymore.

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Originally Posted by Malusion

It does everything it did before still, the change was just so that its not a huge TP loss to use it anymore.

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Ill have to try it out then.

Sounds like the mt role doesn't allow much for BW use still. Though stance swapping grit with shadowskin/BW is something I'd like to macro.

At a 2.39 GCD (2.15 with BW), my TP seems to floor at around the 3:10 - 3:20 mark now instead of the 2:10 mark, so it's definitely a noticeable change.

Equilibrium = 200 TP 'Healed' every 1 minute, 400 every 2 minutes
Invigorate = 400 TP 'Healed' every 2 minutes (Outside of Drg)
Blood Weapon = 270 TP 'Saved' (Outside of SS factors) every 2 minutes.

Healed > Saved

In comparison to Equilibrium though, it's not as good, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was before, so I cant complain. I'm fairly sure Skillspeed isn't even going to factor into this too, because you'd have to have enough SS to surpass that 7th GCD to begin an 8th before the buff expires, which is around the 760+ mark. Otherwise SS makes absolutely no difference.

So, what does the change for unleash even mean? "Adjustments have been made to make enemy attack indicators visible." Uh, what?

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

So, what does the change for unleash even mean? "Adjustments have been made to make enemy attack indicators visible." Uh, what?

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Basicly when you use unleash it will cover enemies aoes so you couldn't see it so now I'd imagine you can see them now over unleash.

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Originally Posted by Ditto

At a 2.39 GCD (2.15 with BW), my TP seems to floor at around the 3:10 - 3:20 mark now instead of the 2:10 mark, so it's definitely a noticeable change.

Equilibrium = 200 TP 'Healed' every 1 minute, 400 every 2 minutes
Invigorate = 400 TP 'Healed' every 2 minutes (Outside of Drg)
Blood Weapon = 270 TP 'Saved' (Outside of SS factors) every 2 minutes.

Healed > Saved

In comparison to Equilibrium though, it's not as good, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was before, so I cant complain. I'm fairly sure Skillspeed isn't even going to factor into this too, because you'd have to have enough SS to surpass that 7th GCD to begin an 8th before the buff expires, which is around the 760+ mark. Otherwise SS makes absolutely no difference.

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How long could you go if you were to use Unmend on the 7th GCD instead of Hard Slash/Scourge? Just interested to see what the damage trade off would be for, I assume, quite significant increased sustainability.

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

So, what does the change for unleash even mean? "Adjustments have been made to make enemy attack indicators visible." Uh, what?

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It used to be a little difficult to see an AOE indicator under Unleash (only sometimes though).

Yea the AOE markers just overlap it's animation now. Though something feels different for me as far as it's animation goes. Don't know why.

http://i.imgur.com/wrP0gsz.jpg

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Originally Posted by Kydi

How long could you go if you were to use Unmend on the 7th GCD instead of Hard Slash/Scourge? Just interested to see what the damage trade off would be for, I assume, quite significant increased sustainability.

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Long enough to where I likely wont be able to get an accurate result because I wont remember to unmend every 7th out of habbit in between firing off oGCD's between my GCD's like they owe me money. Though it probably isn't worth unmending every 7th because then you'd be skipping out on the TP you would have otherwise saved using something else, to instead use a low damage ability that you can use to save on TP at any time.

With Blood Weapon going, blowing as much TP as you can in order to save as much TP as you can is what you should be doing. And using Unmend over any other harder hitting ability when it's available is a loss of damage. Should only Unmend if you're unable to do anything else.

All I'm seeing is DRK is not a problem child as an OT now. Which does please me. I've been only really playing it as MT because it works well there.

I am enjoying all the vaccuum math previously posted as though boss fights last longer than 3 minutes outside of raiding AND because Raid Bosses don't jump.....like all the time, but w/e.

At the end of the day, I still want Blood Weapon to be useful to MT, but that really only works with tank swaps. DRK still beats out PLD, which wasn't touched this patch, and i guess that's good enough for now. I do feel bad for the PLD mains though.

This is a much needed buff and puts Drk in a much better place when OT. Honestly I haven't really had a need to have BW on while MT. It would increase the dps for sure but It's specifically designed as an OT move and works well in that position. Depending on the fight you could always blow a cooldown and stance dance BW into the rotation when not getting hit with a lot of damage. Sometimes I do this, but mostly for dps increase or to speed up a phase change. I haven't had to rely on BW for MP as an MT yet and staggering unleash will maintain your TP to a good degree, if it's a raid situation you should ideally have a support class that is able to provide some help if you get too tp starved. I definitely agree that the "in a vacuum" assessments are a bit ridiculous.

I love BW to be honest. Reminds me a lot of the Knights in Ragnarok Online.
I came to terms with it not being a buff for MTing, since it can't be used on Grit.
It just keeps me bothering that getting off Grit is quite clunky :/

But that TP save... *drools*

Drk needs alot more attention then just a tiny boost in TP...

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Originally Posted by Medicine

Drk needs alot more attention then just a tiny boost in TP...

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Yeah, physical mitigation screams for help!

Also self conflict!

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

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Drk needs alot more fixed then just that too.

I agree drk needs a lot more adjustments then just that one thing that affects only the OT stance. I'm disappointed with this because drk needs so many more adjustments to specific moves to be useful that this one change for a dps tank stance feels like nothing compared to overall.

I rarely ever ot and most of the issues I see are issues on mt or either stance

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Yeah, physical mitigation screams for help!

Also self conflict!

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Ill happily take more self-conflict for my DRK, please. :)

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Originally Posted by IveraIvalice

I agree drk needs a lot more adjustments then just that one thing that affects only the OT stance. I'm disappointed with this because drk needs so many more adjustments to specific moves to be useful that this one change for a dps tank stance feels like nothing compared to overall.

I rarely ever ot and most of the issues I see are issues on mt or either stance

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I think the thing that sucks the most is the lack of Living Dead adjustment. I genuinely feel bad when I have to use it because of the strain that it puts on my healers. It's by far the worst of the emergency buttons.

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Originally Posted by Cidolfas86

I think the thing that sucks the most is the lack of Living Dead adjustment. I genuinely feel bad when I have to use it because of the strain that it puts on my healers. It's by far the worst of the emergency buttons.

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It's not that much strain.

Just 3 Cure 2's will generally cut it unless the DRK is full VIT, in which case you throw in a Cure 1.

And that's assuming solo healer.

Or just cheese and use Bene

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Originally Posted by Cidolfas86

I think the thing that sucks the most is the lack of Living Dead adjustment. I genuinely feel bad when I have to use it because of the strain that it puts on my healers. It's by far the worst of the emergency buttons.

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It's no more strain than using Holmgang puts on a healer. In fact, in terms of end result, it's basically the same. Yes, Holmgang doesn't require you to be totally topped off when it fades, but still. The extra 4 seconds to heal a DRK in Living Dead balances it all out.

@IveraIvalice: I suspect it's main purpose is to be used as an "Oh, shit! I'm out of other CDs, and there's a huge tank buster coming!" button. Same as Holmgang in that regard. /shrug

I agree, living dead is unnecessarily complicated just for the sake of being different. Half the time if doesn't activate in time to save me and if it does then healers need to heal me to full within 10 seconds. In most cases if your hp is that low it's because the healers are struggling already and its not that easy to get you back up to full. And using benediction solves the issue but then that's 2 peoples life saving moves that have to be used just to save me

Yeah, it is amazing how Living Dead doesn't have any of Holmgang's flaws (requiring a target, getting rooted, lasts only 6s, having a slight animation delay, etc.) yet it still manages to be worse!

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Yeah, it is amazing how Living Dead doesn't have any of Holmgang's flaws (requiring a target, getting rooted, lasts only 6s, having a slight animation delay, etc.) yet it still manages to be worse!

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It doesn't though. People just have no idea how to use it or how to deal with it.

It's great in PVP though, pop it, sprint, use purify, and laugh to fight another day!

Except that it can't be one ilm punched off >___>

Honestly though now that healers are stronger it hasn't been nearly as much of an issue. That being said, with Holmgang you do get the benefit of WAR's toolkit; Thrill, Second Wind, Inner Beast, Berserk, and now Equalibrium. It's got it's drawbacks, but you can help out. I can't remember if Soul Eater counts towards the heals for Living Dead.

I don't know if this is true for Living dead or not but some times I see that I'm not even topped off befor the time runs out. So it could be one of 2 things I think is going on. The most likely reason is I was topped off but took a hit befor I realize it. Other is maybe it doesn't take into account of the hp from either bonus vitality or the vitality from gear.

But one of the biggest problems I see with DRK is that Grit is on gcd and it takes a lot of mp to put up so if DRK is ot it can't swap to tank stance fast because of 2 things mp cost and gcd not bk up. I could be fine with the mp cost really if Grit was off gcd I'd be fine too if puting Grit up broke a combo.

So right now you either have it on all the time to grab hate at a moments notice or become perfect and predict when the moogle crap will hit the fan.

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Originally Posted by Rhaja

Honestly though now that healers are stronger it hasn't been nearly as much of an issue. That being said, with Holmgang you do get the benefit of WAR's toolkit; Thrill, Second Wind, Inner Beast, Berserk, and now Equalibrium. It's got it's drawbacks, but you can help out. I can't remember if Soul Eater counts towards the heals for Living Dead.

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Not sure if Souleater counts or not, and let's assume it does, it is too small (2.7k was my biggest crit with it) to rely on anyways. And, being a third hit in a combo, for the duration of LD, you can get 2 at most. This coupled with the fact you need to be healed for the max of your HP makes Souleater just irrelevant.

Personally I think LD is good for what it does (prevents death) and is probably better than Holmgang in that regard. It's just that the strain it puts on the healers is unnecessary.

The problem with throwing that many CDs to mitigate the downside of another CD is that's a VERY ideal situation. But then again, you use Holmgang in 1 of two situations: 1 - planned to save CDs. 2- Emergency because otherwise you'd die.

Now let's look at those two situations:

1- If it is planned so you save CDs. (Example: use on tank buster and get healed back up to save CDs for other busters).

The issue with throwing Berserk + Equilibrium + ToB + IB + SW is that you just defeated the whole purpose of saving CDs. I mean if you pop ToB + IB you would've survived the buster anyway!

2- Emergency death prevention:

Usually, this happens if 1) you eff'd up your CD rotation or don't have wrath for IB or 2) you popped CDs but are still dropping low because no heals and you wanted to buy 6 more seconds. In the first scenario, it's understandable to pop Equilibrium and co. But in the latter scenario you have already popped CDs and are dying, as a result you used Hg. By the time Hg's duration is down, you probably won't have those heals to save you.

These two have exceptions of course (like not swapping on Phoenix and eating a second Revelation). But if you're eating a second revelation, you probably don't have your CDs back up yet since you used them 1 minute prior mitigating the original revelation.

Hence, the flaws of Holmgang. And that's not even touching how the root can sometimes make you eat an AoE and die anyways lol.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

Yeah, it is amazing how Living Dead doesn't have any of Holmgang's flaws (requiring a target, getting rooted, lasts only 6s, having a slight animation delay, etc.) yet it still manages to be worse!

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Living Dead does have an animation delay, same as Hallowed and same as Holmgang.
Holmgang has a shorter duration, but also has a much shorter CD.
The root is a valid negative of Holmgang as is the target requirement in some situations, but Living Dead killing you if you are not healed for your max HP is also a very valid negative.

To me there are a couple things that tips Living Dead into being by far the worst of the Tank anti-death abilities.

First is that it has two separate stages to it and has virtually no visual messaging for the activation of the Walking Dead state or when the kill-you debuff falls off. Right now it is only shown via small buff/debuff icons that can easily get lost in the UI jumble. The visibility of these state changes need to be better messaged by the usage of visual fx, for example when Walking Dead gets activated a large spectral reaper fx appears above the DRK player and disappears when the death timer debuff goes away.

Removing the debuff that kills you also removes the buff and no healer in their right mind would risk waiting until the last second to remove it to try to maximize the uptime, therefore it's 10 seconds of functional uptime (once Walking Dead is activated) is never fully realized. With this in mind, it makes the much longer CD of Living Dead a bit hard to justify. Two possible solutions I see for this. One, keep it as is with the buff going away when the debuff does, but drop the CD to be inline with Holmgang. Two make it so the buff stays for its duration even after the debuff goes away and the CD stays the same (or it could be shortened just a bit imo).

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

Snip.

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I am aware of the animation delay on Living Dead. I was just listing all of Hg's flaws that came to mind.

Speaking of functional uptime. Holmgang is even worse since you have to have some HP before you activate the ability. This means that if you pop it at 10% you need 1 or 2 seconds to actually reach the 1 HP and you need to be healed before the buff wears off or you die. In the case of Hg, any time spent above 1 HP is time not benefiting from it. Living Dead at least has a buffer time with LD buff, so any time "lost" form Walking Dead immunity is probably made up for from Living Dead being up before the killing blow.

Also this is a shared flaw with Living Dead, when your healer heals you so you never reach the 1 HP, you never benefit from the CD. (Holmgang is wasted and Walking Dead is never triggered). Unless, of course, these skills were used to prevent things that kill you outright.

Thing is, though, I do not see that removing the Walking Dead buff as a bad thing. Specially with what is required for it to be removed (to be healed for your maximum HP). Look at it this way: If Walking Dead is triggered, then this skill has successfully prevented your death! Whatever that was going to kill you, didn't kill you. And since you need to be healed for your maximum HP, unless the healer was super slow in removing it by healing you then letting you take big damage then healing you again until the buff wears off, by the time WD is removed by the healer, you should be safe from dying.

Both skills require a good level of communication with your healers to really benefit from them. Otherwise they will cause panic on healers' side.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

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This sums up how I feel.

People look at it only in a way where if it saves your life, it did it's job! But that isn't how it works, and wasn't even how it worked for these types of abilities in 2.0. There are many, many uses outside of pressing it when things get rough to save your life.

Such as cheesing content! (Looking at you Hollowed)

Now the problem comes in when you realize that you only have 10 seconds to heal 100% of the Drk's HP to keep them from being insta-killed. BUT if you heal 100% of their HP, they lose their immortality. So which do you do? Ontop of that, the amount of healer attention it requires is far, far worse than Holmgang. Holmgang doesn't instant kill you. In T13 after soaking a set of Akh Morns with Holmgang, you can be left with 1 HP for a bit and be completely fine until the healers throw a heal at you, I've done it so many times. You do that with Living Dead and you're dead.

The healers either need to spot heal you throughout it's duration while risking removing Walking Dead from you too early and getting yourself killed anyway, or they need to wait until after all of the threatening damage stops coming in, and rush to top you off as fast as they can, or blow benediction (Assuming you have a WHM in your group). By then, you're down to having only a couple of seconds to do that.

Think 2.0 Warrior having to choose between bonus healing from Wrath, or the self heal from Inner Beast. It's the same concept.. but one bad enough to insta-kill you if it isn't dealt with perfectly. There are only 3 things they need to look at though to fix it easily:

1. Give Walking Dead a visual to stronger notify others when you are undead. I recommended using the one your other half has during the level 50 Quest here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...lames-are-LOVE! (2nd Image is it) It would make sense, seeing as you get the ability during that quest, and your other half even mentioned taking control the first opportunity it gets, if you let your guard down.

2. Separate the immortal status, and the health healed requirement into 2 different debuffs. This is the biggest problem the ability has. A healer should not be able to remove my immortality just by doing their job and healing me, or panicking because I nearly died and instantly throwing a benediction at me. Imagine if Hollowed Ground or Holmgang wore off if the Pld/War was healed. That's what it's like.

3. (Personal gripe) Are we self healing tanks or not? Choose, and stick with it, because right now we're a half fast excuse of a self healing tank with Souleater. A Paladin can Hollowed and then Double Clemency. A War can Holmgang and then Equi/thrill/whatever else and pump his own HP back up easily to a spot where he isn't going to be backhanded away. What can we do as Drk in a situation where we do not have a healer? Like hell we're Souleater'ing 100% of our HP within the duration of Walking Dead. It just doesn't make sense to me why we're such a selfish tank in design, yet still so dependent on others doing things for us more so than both Paladin and Warrior are.

Very small detail about Holmgang in particular(and I guess living dead) and in the context of T12. Since it pushes you down to 1 HP its actually potentially another cheese method as it is one of the many ways you can proc a burst LB fill. The requirement is having been healed from critical health(10% or lower) and this was utilized to get LB2 for a ... 5? 4? I forget.. Bennu push back when I was progressing. It's quite a neat effect that not many people actually know about. So theres that for Pros vs HG. :3

Example: http://youtu.be/boZ9HG5LxwU
Watch the first two revelations and the LB bar.

Here's my idea for LD. A bit of a different take on it more like a rework then an adjustment.
When you activate walking dead, at that point a big reaper appears above your head slowly preparing to kill you. You have 10 seconds of invulnerability, immobility, and pacification. As you get healed to full the reaper goes away and you are saved but the difference is with invulnerability you aren't taking damage while your getting healed with your health going up and down causing panic for your healers. It will just rise. As your hp rises the reaper fades more and more making it really easy to tell what is going on. The invulnerability still ends when your back to full hp but without your hp rising AND dropping it will be easier for your healers to top you off at the right time.
I think this is interesting and a bit unique. But I doubt squeenix would put in the reaper VFX because that requires more work then I think they care to add