Drk blood price

At work and bored. Was looking through the forums and saw a blood weapon post and an idea to buff it a bit. which made me think: if anything needs a buff i think it would be blood price since all it does is give is some mana and some blood gauge. while i feel blood weapon is much stronger. i was thinking why not add something like a thorn effect? i feel it would work with blood price to be able to return a portion of damage received while its active. what do you guys think?

It is garbage, probably one of the worst CDs of any kit.

The MP restore does approximately nothing - it's contribution isn't seen until the Stormblood Blackblood Trait is unlocked which provides an in-combat Blood Gauge refresh. And just what is the value: Accumulate some extra Blood so DRK can use another Stormblood ability that may return MP.. MP that Blood Price should have provided in the first place..

Spikes would be sweet, I think every DRK would like to see that in the kit. But stickling strictly to the role BP is meant to serve at present: it deserves a better MP refresh of it's own imo. Since it gives an in-combat Blood regen now, change base Blood Price to an in-combat MP refresh as well. Same amount of MP restored as a BloodWeapon hit, but only on each server tick. Not sexy, but a correction to something that was way too belligerently nerfed.

Also on that the improvements this makes would be felt a lot more in the lvl55 - lvl69 kit: the pre-TBN and post-Abyssal Drain window.

I thought people aren't using tank stance anyway?

A buff to Blood Price would be nice - it was already a lackluster skill in HW - but Blood Price is actually a strong ability in huge trash pulls, it gives you tons of blood for Quietus so you have mana to spam DA Abyssal Drain for the selfheal.

A counter attack on a skill wich is locked behind tank stance would further buff DRK for huge trash pulls, but does nothing for boss fights, the area where the skill needs a buff. But as long as people aren't using tank stance anyway, what should that buff accomplish?

I think it should be a defense buff or selfheal, nobody will enter tank stance for a damage buff. More defense would also help in progression or in "oh shit" moments, situations where you use tank stance anyway.

i like both ideas. But Tint's idea sounds pretty perfect actually. When i was thinking of the thorn type damage, i was thinking of trash pulls, cuz as of right now (havent finished SB story just yet) i run dungeons with grit on during trash pulls cuz it allows me to pull bigger and also dont always trust my healers lol. but making it a self heal instead would be even better then that way during those "oh shit" moments its a little extra damage reduction plus some healing at the same time.

Also, since on the subject of grit and what not, what about changing the soul stealer ability to be able to heal outside of grit. that would be nice

As Tint pointed out, BP is damn good on large trash pulls. The larger the trash pull, the better BP gets. The amount of Abysmal Drains you can get off is pretty dependent on the MP return of BP, and you can even DA one or two of them to help out your healer a bit.

I want to say buff it to be more effective against single targets, but that's what Blood Weapon is for. These two abilities are nearly polar opposites designed to complement the stance you choose to be in. Against bosses, you're going to be in DPS stance 95% of the time unless something goes wrong. If BP is missing something, it's probably a slight increase to defense while it is active.

Don't get me wrong though. I really like the idea of giving DRK spikes that causes damage to their assailants. But I think it would function better a new ability than an upgrade to BP. I believe BP is fine as is.

Blood price suffer the biggest curse a skill on this Game can suffer and its being locked behind a tank stance specially the most expensive one, its have to be lock out of grit apart of any of you sugestions if we want the skill have any impact.

Actually no, BP is average at much on large trash pulls, you primary source of mp is quietus and this one can be buffed with Blood weapon giving you more mp that you can use, and the primary source of Blood is TBN and salted earth, Blood price help to being a bit constant on grit on those pulls but is far of good.

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Originally Posted by Tint

I think it should be a defense buff or selfheal, nobody will enter tank stance for a damage buff. More defense would also help in progression or in "oh shit" moments, situations where you use tank stance anyway.

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I like the idea of a self heal HoT because it would also flesh a little more identity out of Grit (taken together with Souleater's HP leech)

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The amount of Abysmal Drains you can get off is pretty dependent on the MP return of BP, and you can even DA one or two of them to help out your healer a bit.

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You have to get hit 20 times to get a Dark Arts out of Blood Price... I'd prefer BP made base-line MP restore and Quietus be our new pack-size scaler, personally. SE just loves their gates and 3-mob packs too much.

For Square to take an ability and nerf it by 75% - to a literal quarter of it's original effectiveness - and not instead replace or change it is something I find alarming. Which skills are they going to nerf to a fraction of their value in 5.0, just so the new cap-stone abilities can make up the difference? What they've done with Blood Price (and in-Grit Siphon Strike MP-double-restore) is something I hope they don't make a habit of. New abilities should add to the kit, not reverse-engineer them (DRK isn't alone on this)

I'd feel a little more assured if they straightened that out before the expansion, though that is unlikely.

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

You have to get hit 20 times to get a Dark Arts out of Blood Price... I'd prefer BP made base-line MP restore and Quietus be our new pack-size scaler, personally. SE just loves their gates and 3-mob packs too much.

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I won't argue with you. My DRK is only 66 and I suck at crunching numbers when it comes to these things. But what I can say is that my MP is greater sustained during large trash pulls with BP up, and I still have access to Quietes. This ability only needs DA to be boosted and does not rely on a stance. Should I not be spamming the living crap out of Abysmal Drain until the pack has reduced numbers and/or I go into offensive stance?

I understand BP was nerfed to oblivion, but in those rare times I am in tank stance or doing dungeon trash pulls, I see no reason not to use it. It's an ogcd, and cost me absolutely nothing. To me, that makes any need to get hit x amount of times to return x DAs trivial. Even if it returns only one, that is one you did not have before. If it returns none, it at the very least will mitigate the cost of your subsequent DA.

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For Square to take an ability and nerf it by 75% - to a literal quarter of it's original effectiveness - and not instead replace or change it is something I find alarming. Which skills are they going to nerf to a fraction of their value in 5.0, just so the new cap-stone abilities can make up the difference? What they've done with Blood Price (and in-Grit Siphon Strike MP-double-restore) is something I hope they don't make a habit of. New abilities should add to the kit, not reverse-engineer them (DRK isn't alone on this)

I'd feel a little more assured if they straightened that out before the expansion, though that is unlikely.

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So since I am not the best at looking at things from a numbers perspective, can you elaborate for me how DRK would be in its current state, but without the massive nerf BP received? Would it be OP, or just more along the lines with PLD and WAR? I don't play the other tanks so I cannot make comparisons from my own experience. I currently do not have an issue with BP, but I also understand that since I started playing DRK post nerf, I do not feel these effects. However, does that mean there is truly a problem with BP?

In any case, I do know that there are still some DRK related issues that need to be addressed, and I agree that it likely won't happen until 5.0. Personally, based on SEs history, I am a bit more worried they will actually over tune DRK since they have a tendency to leap frog jobs when making adjustments.

I would remove it as grit only
Make as a defensive CD that restores MP on hit
Then it can have a Dark Arts effect that makes it similar to divine veil and Shake it off
If shield breaks restores like 5-10% mp

also this would help DRK level struggle with defense

In HW Blood Price was actually pretty decent compared to its SB version now.

It had no restrictions regarding stances, and even vs single target it generated a big chunk of mana.
However the amount of mana it generated was a must because Darkside drained mana over time instead.
Now it just doesn't let you regenerate any mana.

At the beginning of SB, SE wanted tanks to be... well, tanks. They introduced stance dance penality (DRK was not affected), accessories without STR, and locked some "beneficial" abilities behind tank stance, such as Blood Price. But in addition to that, they also nerfed the mana gain from Blood Price.

After a huge sh*tstorm SE removed the penality, and later added STR to accessories, so healers wouldn't get stressed out from tanks using STR accessories. Yet Blood Price didn't recieve any additional changes.
Which is conflicting: if SE wants to loosen the stress on healers, I would image something like small pulls, "full time tank stance"-tanks.
Blood Price is the total opposite: to be effective, you NEED to pull big. But even then the mana generation is not high enough to spam DA Abyssal Drain, neither is the duration long enough to do so.

So, DRK end up pulling big, not using DA AD as much as we would like to, and would rather tank without tank stance. A full load of stress on healer. (In addition, you don't want to DA Dark Passenger, 'cause that would blind your enemies. They hit less -> you generate less mana during Blood Price.)
SE achieved the exact opposite of what they originally intended.

The whole design of DRK is contradictory when you pull big. Their abilities are not complementary. They are counterproductive!
(This was also a problem in HW.)

b@topic: I wouldn't add a "thorn" effect, vengeance already has that, it sound too similar.

I would like it to...
a. increase mana generation (to the point we can get along with mob missing hits)
b. change into a mana "regeneration trigger" with increased duration per hit
c. add a life leech (bloodbath) effect (maybe magical damage dealed only?)
d. usable outside of Grit once again or
e. complete rework

It doesn't need changed, it's fine. DRK's Grit resource generation got reworked, not nerfed. In single target Syphon Strike gives double MP so you don't have to rely on getting hit to get enough MP back. In aoe you still get plenty of MP (because you're doing big pulls, right?), but you also get Blood for Quietus which is more damage than AD and also gives a lot of MP back. It's slightly less braindead than HW DRK.

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Originally Posted by ArianeEwah

Blood Price is the total opposite: to be effective, you NEED to pull big. But even then the mana generation is not high enough to spam DA Abyssal Drain, neither is the duration long enough to do so.

So, DRK end up pulling big, not using DA AD as much as we would like to, and would rather tank without tank stance. A full load of stress on healer. (In addition, you don't want to DA Dark Passenger, 'cause that would blind your enemies. They hit less -> you generate less mana during Blood Price.)
SE achieved the exact opposite of what they originally intended.

The whole design of DRK is contradictory when you pull big. Their abilities are not complementary. They are counterproductive!
(This was also a problem in HW.)

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I disagree. Yes, the AoE blind effect doesn't fit that good into DRKs kit, however...

first you can extend the duration of every second Blood Price with Delirium for an additional 16 seconds, for a total of 31 seconds Blood Price uptime (and the extra mana regeneration of Delerium is nice too for AoE spamming). And since Blood Price cooldown is 40 seconds, you can activate it again after just 9 seconds downtime. So the uptime of Blood Price is actually quite high and should last for the whole big pull.

And the whole Blood Price > Blood, Blood > Quietus, Mana > TBN, TBN > Blood works actually very good together and gives you enough extra mana for DA Abyssal Drain in bigger pulls, plus the shield of TBN of course.

Seriously, I am sitting on capped Blood in some pulls, because I am too busy spamming DA Abyssal Drain to have time to spend the Blood on Quietus >.>

Remember that the reason why SE added strenght on tank accesories was to avoid being power creeped by dps, since otherwise tank damage and consequently, aggro would only scale with the left equipment side while dps would scale with both left and right. The obvious solution would have been to make tanks damage scale from their main stat like everyone else but obviously SE doesnt want that

That would make dps damage eventually skyrocket so hard compared to tank's that no ammount of aggro increase skills would compensate for that unless they were up to ridiculous levels and even so it would need to be upped even more again after gear reached certain thresholds. But honestly it feels like a badly done bandaid

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Originally Posted by Tint

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I am gonna try to explain why I think it doesn't work that well.

In theory the ability sounds awesome. Blood overflow, endless mana generation, mana boost with extended duration when Delirium is used. You name it.

But the reality is different. The reason for this is dungeon design and the base (non-Delirium) version of Blood Price.

Most dungeons only allow a big pull of 6 monsters max. Most of them are big, though guys, slowly hitting every 2.5 sec. So, Blood Price generates 1 Blood per hit and 4 every 3 sec for 15 sec. That's 56 Blood without Delirium. Also, your mana generation will only skyrocket once you get multi-hitted or by more than 6 mobs if you get a lucky dungeon pick.
(I could cry every time I get Swallow's Compass and I can pull only 4 mobs at a time.)
BP doesn't increase your damage or life leech, nor decrease damage taken or recast time.

Blood weapon on the other hand generates at the very least 45 Blood, if you get CnS and Plunge in your BW window 51. More once you hit another GCD tier. In addition to that, you deal more damage because your GCD is reduced. (More mana than BP on single target.)

In a scenario where DRK pulls 6 mobs and uses BW instead of BP (no Grit), it generates more mana and blood with Quietus than with BP. BW regeration rate doesn't depend on being hit either, so DA DP will actually be beneficial.

BP only become superior to BW once you use Delirium on it.
While BW gets about 50% duration increase, BP gets more than 100% duration increase.

I agree that BP gets better once you hit 7+ mobs.
BW Quietus would probably overkill in blood and mana generation anyway.
Yet, as I stated in my previous post, that doesn't fit with SE intention and there's definitly a design flaw. It doesn't make tank stance more appealing, and other abilities still don't work well together with BP.