DRK AoE threat in dungeons

I've noticed that I've been struggling to hold hate on all mobs in newer dungeons with unleashed. I know that is was nerfed, but with the enhanced threat gain I figured it would be wash. Is anyone else noticing this, or maybe I'm missing something?

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Originally Posted by Nabian

or maybe I'm missing something?

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abyssal drain

i notice is harder to keep agro in the mods bcs the poor returns of blood price making me use the only combo how dont generate agro to build more mp to use more AB.

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Originally Posted by shao32

i notice is harder to keep agro in the mods bcs the poor returns of blood price making me use the only combo how dont generate agro to build more mp to use more AB.

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The blood price nerf makes trash pulls not nearly as rewarding and fun and efficient as before.

Our class is gutted.

Paladin also has Problems with Enmity. If i got very good DPs in my dungeon i have to spam Flash almost until the end of the fight when tanking groups of mobs. Single target is no Problem.

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Originally Posted by Falar

The blood price nerf makes trash pulls not nearly as rewarding and fun and efficient as before.

Our class is gutted.

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ignoring the part of blood price i actually enjoying a lot the trash pulls, they hit like bastards and if i take more than 2 depending of the dungeon i find the healer have to work a lot even using properly all my defensives, sure is bcs we are undergeared but i will love if SE keep this kind of dificulty when we are sinc and overgeared.

I've already put down DRK, i see no redeemable changes to DRK for what we lost, out overall mitigation and dps was nerfed. We got this shitty new reprisal that took our stuff, we got this shitty version of Dark dance that instead of our own, TBN is useless IMO because every healer can do that in the game for you so on the mitigation front its a net loss.

I don't know what to do with quietus we already had plenty of aoe thanks for a redundant skill, bloodspiller one of the more boring ways i've seen to dump your blood gauge on in the history of building up bars from some shitty not limit break limit break skill, No BP out of grit, no scourge (WHY?). DPS is at the bottom of the curve we do less damage then astrologians LOL! Anyone who continues to play the class is just out of share love of the style and nothing more.

Oh just one additional comment, i swear SE thought "man everyone plays DRK's because they love using DA so lets just let them use DA all the time because reasons."
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I've only run the level 61 dungeon. It appeared that the old days of needing 1-2 Overpower and then switching to Deliverance days are gone. I'd swear that they modified the enmity modifiers. Still early to tell, but it seems to hint at SE wanting to tanks to stay in tank stance more often.

However, on bosses, I was able to stay in Deliverance most of the time.

I have been playing PLD and manage to level it to 68 and i feel my emnity keeping skill sorely tested. The skill/ability somehow are not generating enough emnity while the DPS keeps dishing so much.

TBH i don't really like the feel of PLD as of this moment..

I haven't had much of a issue holding hate, but it is indeed no where near as fun pulling more than 3 groups of enemies. With the return on BP so poor, you can't even sustain yourself with AD anymore. I know this is SE'S way of trying to curb mass pulling, but it was the one thing I enjoyed greatly on DRK.

Not to mention we lost quite a lot to our toolkits, it seems we will have to completely revamp the way we play.

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Originally Posted by Esp

I haven't had much of a issue holding hate, but it is indeed no where near as fun pulling more than 3 groups of enemies. With the return on BP so poor, you can't even sustain yourself with AD anymore. I know this is SE'S way of trying to curb mass pulling, but it was the one thing I enjoyed greatly on DRK.

Not to mention we lost quite a lot to our toolkits, it seems we will have to completely revamp the way we play.

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Yes, massive pulls in Dungeons were my specialty and with Blood Price being garbage, no more DA-DD, Dark Passenger nerfed, etc there went my favorite aspect of Dark Knight. THe impossible pulls that people said couldn't be done were what made me motivated to do them. Now, no more.

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Originally Posted by Esp

I haven't had much of a issue holding hate, but it is indeed no where near as fun pulling more than 3 groups of enemies. With the return on BP so poor, you can't even sustain yourself with AD anymore. I know this is SE'S way of trying to curb mass pulling, but it was the one thing I enjoyed greatly on DRK.

Not to mention we lost quite a lot to our toolkits, it seems we will have to completely revamp the way we play.

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Theres nothing to revamp.
Its DA everything now, thats about it quietus makes no sense in our rotation if we are tanking.

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Originally Posted by Falar

Yes, massive pulls in Dungeons were my specialty and with Blood Price being garbage, no more DA-DD, Dark Passenger nerfed, etc there went my favorite aspect of Dark Knight. THe impossible pulls that people said couldn't be done were what made me motivated to do them. Now, no more.

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I am quite curious though, and I would like to get as much feedback as possible. How many of us have tried doing your usual pre 4.0 mass pull and what was the result? (Doesn't matter the dungeon)

I tried doing so in Sohm Al NM during a roulette with my waifu, and even cycling thru my cooldowns, it seems the healer I had just wasn't able to keep me up, and we wiped the first two pulls. Granted said healer didn't have protect as a Role Skill option because of god knows why..

Regardless, I had been able to do those pulls easily until after the patch..so I am wondering if things really did change THAT much that we need to do smaller pulls from now on?

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

Theres nothing to revamp.
Its DA everything now, thats about it quietus makes no sense in our rotation if we are tanking.

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I just got Quiets and have yet to even test it since the bottleneck for MSQ and leveling taking so long..

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Originally Posted by Esp

I am quite curious though, and I would like to get as much feedback as possible. How many of us have tried doing your usual pre 4.0 mass pull and what was the result? (Doesn't matter the dungeon)

I tried doing so in Sohm Al NM during a roulette with my waifu, and even cycling thru my cooldowns, it seems the healer I had just wasn't able to keep me up, and we wiped the first two pulls. Granted said healer didn't have protect as a Role Skill option because of god knows why..

Regardless, I had been able to do those pulls easily until after the patch..so I am wondering if things really did change THAT much that we need to do smaller pulls from now on?

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As far as defense goes I feel stronger than ever. It is the offense that gives me pause.

I feel that single target because of the HP drain on Soul Eater I feel much more sustainable. On multi-target, however, I do feel weaker. Not being able to regenerate MP the same as before was a big let down. Are any of you spamming AD non-DA to try and keep hate on multi-targets? Just trying to figure out what the most effective method for maintaining hate is. I agree with others that Quietus feels worthless.

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Originally Posted by Falar

As far as defense goes I feel stronger than ever. It is the offense that gives me pause.

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How so? Unless you never did you cross class skills we have less mitigation tools and by proxy we are less tanky we lost bloodbath with warriors too you know.

Since they've removed our attack power scaling from VIT, the only way to increase your threat output is to put back on your STR accessories from 3.0 and keep them on forever. That's what I've been doing and it's no problem for dungeons.

The primals seem to hit harder now though so if you MT you may want some VIT, I dunno.

It's incredibly easy to regain mana with buffed SS but blood price feels so weak.

I feel like my single target dps is better but my AoE suffers a lot. I just Abyssal spam with an occasional non-DA Quietus.

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Originally Posted by Jimsvaliant

It's incredibly easy to regain mana with buffed SS but blood price feels so weak.

I feel like my single target dps is better but my AoE suffers a lot. I just Abyssal spam with an occasional non-DA Quietus.

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Your single target dps is easier to do but its worse overall, and yes aoe tanking has intentionally been weakened by SE because they don't like massive aoe pulling.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

Your single target dps is easier to do but its worse overall, and yes aoe tanking has intentionally been weakened by SE because they don't like massive aoe pulling.

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It's easier but I don't know about worst overall with tenacity and direct hit... You may be right but I'm not minding the bigger numbers til ACT tells me otherwise.

The AoE changes dont bother me as much.

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Originally Posted by Jimsvaliant

It's easier but I don't know about worst overall with tenacity and direct hit... You may be right but I'm not minding the bigger numbers til ACT tells me otherwise.

The AoE changes dont bother me as much.

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We don't get direct hit, its dps only bro, and tenacity is more of a defensive stat then and offensive one, on top of the Str being a primary attack power boost is a straight damage loss my friend and again we lost many of our defensive cd's as well. I mind the aoe changes i can no longer use BP DA+AD as a constant tool to maintain aggro and unleash was nerfed for some unknown reason.

And quietus doesn't even add threat, tbh i rather use DA+AD instead of DA+Quietus because of enmity anyhow, any way you look at it we took loses in every aspect of being a DRK and got nothing to offset these losses.

Man quietus is super useless i'd trade scourge for it anyday.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

We don't get direct hit, its dps only bro

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I'm quite sure the only Role locked stats are Tenacity and Piety. Direct hit is what replaceed Accuracy, and tanks sure as hell have Direct hit on their gear.

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Originally Posted by Nabian

On multi-target, however, I do feel weaker. Not being able to regenerate MP the same as before was a big let down. Are any of you spamming AD non-DA to try and keep hate on multi-targets? Just trying to figure out what the most effective method for maintaining hate is. I agree with others that Quietus feels worthless.

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Spamming non-DA Abyssal Drain should be your default, go-to strategy for dungeon pulls, for both enmity and damage. That was generally true* pre-SB as well - Unleash was always kind of an inferior option next to non-DA AD, which is why it makes so little sense that they nerfed it.

*(Of course, with the old Blood Price you could often work a couple DAADs in between your non-DA ones - but outside of those 'I have infinite MP now' moments, non-DA was still the standard.)


None of what they did to DRK's AoE makes sense to me. Unleash doesn't do enough damage or generate enough enmity to be viable, and Blood Price doesn't generate enough MP to consistently use Unleash in the first place. Dark Passenger no longer makes sense to use in any context - the MP is better spent doing another two Abyssal Drains, or even an additional two Unleashes if you don't have AD, because you probably need the enmity - save the possibility of padding your DPS on some pack of adds that's expected to live for only 3-4 GCDs.

Abyssal Drain is unchanged and still good, but it's a level 56 skill, leaving you high and dry if you end up in any dungeon below The Aery. And DA Abyssal Drain is pretty much a non-starter - with the nerf to Blood Price it's more effective for the group to offload that healing to the actual healer than it is for you to piss away a DA worth of MP away, which doesn't feel good compared to being able to alleviate some of the pressure from the healer.

Quietus is also extremely underwhelming due to the Blood Price change. With the old BP, using a DA for 50 extra AoE potency would have been no problem, and actually would have been a pretty nice, elegant solution to the problem of just not being able to dump your MP fast enough. As it is now, it never makes sense to DA Quietus, and a 160 potency AoE skill that's only realistically usable once or twice per pull is extremely underwhelming.


I'm a pretty big proponent of the changes DRK got to their single-target game; in contrast to a lot of people, I find it more effective, more challenging, and more fun than the old way. But for AoE, there's really no silver lining - DRK got absolutely mutilated.

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Originally Posted by Esp

I'm quite sure the only Role locked stats are Tenacity and Piety. Direct hit is what replaceed Accuracy, and tanks sure as hell have Direct hit on their gear.

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Yea i miss interpreted his post i though he was talking about the crit multipliers that dps get.

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Originally Posted by Crater

I'm a pretty big proponent of the changes DRK got to their single-target game; in contrast to a lot of people, I find it more effective, more challenging, and more fun than the old way. But for AoE, there's really no silver lining - DRK got absolutely mutilated.

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I agree wholeheartedly and i'm trying not to lament the loss of scourge. I honestly like how DRK feels. Quietus would have made more sense to me if it was ogcd.

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Originally Posted by Crater

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Thank you for this. I started doing this in my previous dungeon and noticed a significant difference.

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Originally Posted by Esp

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I did fractal continuam today as drk, and I can definitely feel the nerf already (I'm still only 61, so idk it at 70 yet). To put it bluntly, Blood Price is now garbage. I used to be able to mass pull and sustain myself with D+AD spam. With the BP nerf, you get maybe two of those before youre in the red. I did realize that you can use SS to gain a good portion of mp back, in grit at least, and this can allow you one more DA+AD before you need to use SS again (BP is still up at this point, doing next to nothing). So basically you have to alternate between SS and DA+AD, which reminds me a lot of PLD in 2.0. spam flash till you bottom out, then riot blade for mp, rinse and repeat. On the mitigation side, the only downfall that I noticed was no more DA+DP. In fact, you might as well not use DP anyway because that's an extra DA you could spend on something else.
In boss fight is where it hurt the most. I never realized how awesome scourge was until I had to do without it. I was out of grit for most of the bosses, and I just felt so weak compared to what I used to be in this dungeon. It's hard to even put my finger on it. But it's just....boring now. It doesn't have the same feel of controlled chaos anymore.

I used to love dungeons as DRK. I prided myself on how fast I can pull a party through a dungeon.

Now I loathe them. Everything we have now is jsut so......shitty in comparison.

I'm 66 now and I haven't had any issues as a Drk in any of the dungeons i've had maybe 2 Red Mages and a bard pull threat off me because they were attacking different targets and I forgot to do a threat combo because I wasn't focusing enough. I also OT'd Susan'o and did 3rd for damage on it, mostly because my group sucked but it's something I guess, I don't get why people are throwing away Drk when it has it's not a bad class at all.

What I have noticed is:

-outgoing damage on tanks has increased a lot, obviously gotta wait till 70 to test
- can still rotate CDs and using Reprisal when it's needed
-able to mess around with class Roles I use some for some dungeons, where I use others for other dungeons
-Delirium is honestly a god send for our DPS combined with Blood Weapon and using it on Blood Price is great for generating blood
-I can still tank out of tank stance on bosses just gotta be more mindful

There'll be more when I hit 70 which I hopefully can at least get to 68 tonight if the servers will actually hold...till then i'm still optimistic about Drk, there's also having the new stat Tenacity to toy around with so once we have more info on that it might be a huge factor for us tanks.

Holding threat is easy, anyone that can't do that is undergeared or needs to "L2P".

The problem is how gimped we are in AoE mode now. Dark Passenger and Unleash useless, much less MP to go around.

The "role" reprisal is SHIT. Zero damage and 5s of uptime per 60s? No thanks. I am sure it will see use in raids later but man talk about a low uptime, low reward skill.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

I don't know what to do with quietus we already had plenty of aoe thanks for a redundant skill, bloodspiller one of the more boring ways i've seen to dump your blood gauge on in the history of building up bars from some shitty not limit break limit break skill, No BP out of grit, no scourge (WHY?). DPS is at the bottom of the curve we do less damage then astrologians LOL! Anyone who continues to play the class is just out of share love of the style and nothing more.

Oh just one additional comment, i swear SE thought "man everyone plays DRK's because they love using DA so lets just let them use DA all the time because reasons."
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Pretty much this ^ and worst part is, there was no reason, none at all to break the class like this. nothing justifies it, it wasn't complex, it wasn't OP, it needed some tweaks and fixing but instead they gutted it.

Actually abyssal drain is a good answer. It has much higher emnity modifier and only costs a smaaaaall bit more mp than unleash. And since unleash potency was massacred, AD seems to be a good replacement.

The blood price nerf was probably for the specific purpose of gutting self susain large pulls. Blood price + DA Abyssal was literally self sustaining and didn't need any heals whatsoever. They did the same thing to WAR by removing Bloodbath(BB +berserk + vengeance + double decimate, OP spam). PLD oddly enough still has clemency, but its only a heal and doesn't double as damage.

Problem with new DRK is, that he has no longer any personality in Defence-Play. He has the same GCDs that do the same (decreasing dmg) like the Paladin, like the Warrior. The tanks have become completely exchangeable to each other. And Dark Arts on second Skill gets really on my nerves, because it's kinda wasted. Before the Patch DA felt Special, like rewarding. Now it has been degraded to just some stupid button-smashing.

I join the guy who said: SE just pretty much thought, if DRK can spam more DA, everything else is ok.

But it's certainly not! The loss of all niche-gameplay, the loss of Dark Dance and that uninspired Dark-Arts spam has made the class a hell of boring. I stopped playing DRK and switched to a DPS. This game has lost a tank. Not really what SE should have aimed for.

at least with all the dark arts spam i feel more like an actual mage with an sword, rather than a sword fighter with some magic. dark arts, dark arts, dark arts, TBN is a magic shield, magic aoe, magic everywhere.

it's still boring gameplay wise, but at least i can feel a job identity as battle mage now.

But DRK wasn't a Battlemage. A Battlemage would be...well... a Battlemage.

A DRK is someone who sacrifice something (usually Health, but now MP in this game) to gain extra Impact on his strongest actions. But with all that DA-Spam, it's not longer any "meaningfull" but simple spaming it to no Ends.

I didn't realize that Squeenix wanted to gimp doing multiple group pulls in Dungeons now, the changes make a lot more sense. The class just feels much more weaker in all regards except for single target DPS; and even that feels boring to play since it's just basically spamming DA on soul eater, with no other debuffs or dots to manage.

With the loss of DDance it just feels like we're immensely squishier and have no options to mitigate damage for those pulls too. Anticipation brings 5% physical damage reduction in comparison. There's also no more juggle between using MP for mitigation or DPS.

I was hoping the expansion changes would add more interesting tools for our class to combo DA with since that's basically the reason why DRK is fun to play, but all we got was some Black blood mechanic that essentially is just a damage rotation every minute or so. Granted I haven't gotten Blackest Night yet, but it seems silly to have our main mitigation be locked to the level 70 capstone action.

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Originally Posted by Falar

Holding threat is easy, anyone that can't do that is undergeared or needs to "L2P".

The problem is how gimped we are in AoE mode now. Dark Passenger and Unleash useless, much less MP to go around.

The "role" reprisal is SHIT. Zero damage and 5s of uptime per 60s? No thanks. I am sure it will see use in raids later but man talk about a low uptime, low reward skill.

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I think the threat issue is across the board. On my paladin with a 255 weapon in siren song, 3 flashes and total eclipse spam and I'm having to struggle with aggro in groups

From spamming Stormblood dungeons I noticed holding aggro seems alot harder than it used to be with trash. Flash doesn't feel like it does jack compared to the hate that RDMs and SAMs generate. I often have to sit there and hit it 5-7 times in a row before I get a moment to use other attacks. For bosses though there's no issue, one round of RoH and I'm free to use the dps combos and magic to my hearts content.

You know if they wanted to kill aoe pulls why didn't they just make the trash pulls hit harder/debuff/silence/slow etc? I mean there tons of ways to kill mass pulls but the direction they took was the nerf the player and not buff the game.

Also before some one says OH then the content will be too hard and new players and bad players would quit, you know what i say about that? It not good to assume that every new player is gonna suck at the game its a little condescending too if you think about it.