Is DRK ever getting adjustments?

Hey all! I've been mulling this over for a while as I level my tanks, but with the advent of 5.1 I'm a bit surprised that DRK got nothing but the universal Reprisal and Big Cooldown™ changes. I think it's mostly in a good spot right now, but I feel there's a few sticking points that make it hard to recommend. Right out the gate I'd like to say that I can't speak for every aspect of its gameplay at 80 having not quite capped it yet, so some of this will be extrapolation on current gameplay.

Midgame AoE for DRK is rough right now. Unleash starts strong and Flood is very good in early dungeons, but the other three tanks very quickly catch it and then overtake it on trash. DRK has no AoE combo until 72 when even GNB gets theirs in the 40s, and Quietus is not only weaker than other spender offerings, but sparsely usable until 72 as well. WAR also doesn't get gauge off of Mythril Tempest until 74, but has the benefit of Infuriate to give it free uses, and Delirium is a strictly worse IR. Blood Weapon doesn't actually grant blood until two levels after you get Quietus, and even then you won't get 50 blood out of it in AoE. Requiescat has 12s duration because of spell recast on tanks, Blood Weapon should as well. Salted Earth is just... bad. Its closest analogues (Bow Shock and Circle of Scorn) without exaggeration are twice as effective, accounting for CoS cooldown. It's also a floor effect.

To continue, DRK gets TBN at 70; TBN itself is strong enough that from a balance perspective this was/is fine. The problem is that Abyssal's rework has left a pretty huge gap in DRK's defensive kit until then. In SB, Dark Arts Abyssal was a nice way to smooth out trash pulls; now that it's effectively just a cooldown, having it all be one spike of healing makes it much less consistent to work with despite its raw numbers. In SB I could pull all of Shisui between 1st and 2nd bosses with Abyssal as sustain, and now even being more liberal with cooldowns and with experienced healers that pull is nearly undoable. DRK's AoE situation compounds this, since less outgoing damage on it than other tanks means pulls last longer than they would.

These are points I'm absolutely willing to be wrong on (please feel free to correct any of my wilder misgivings if I have them), but I feel like at least some QoL attention could get thrown DRK's way like what level you get skills at and Blood Weapon duration, especially if it's meant to be the expansion's "image" class. Thanks for reading, and happy tanking!

well it's easy, current tanks are balanced number wise with nothing important about they performance compared to the DPS and HEALERS so it's normal the first pacth take a complacient actitude with tanks and dedicate all the efforts on adjust and solve the severe number of issues betwen most DPS including gameplay reworks to severe skills.

all being said i expect tanks ajustments on 5.2, DRK desperately need somes same as WAR gameplay wise, DRK need ajustments to make blood weapon 5 hits being more consistent and easy to land, currently it's pretty easy to miss the 5th hit, quietus needs help it's just a simple filler, delirium needs to be reworked and make DRK gameplay don't feel like a WAR one with some magic expenders, ajust to abyssal drain like halving the recast and the potency to add more uses per combat will help on aoe situations to keep a decent sustain on pre-70 content, salted earth needs love, living dead not being a damm pain for AST and SCH and for me add darkside management by nerfing edge potency and removing the darkside time grant on flood so we will have some complexity on the job combined with delirium rework make the job have some depth since it have none right now outside of TBN.

for all tanks remove rampart of role skills and bring back shadow skin to DRK, foresight to WAR and "insert name" for GNB all with 20% mitigation wich will be the same but at least look unique, rampart is so lame depending of the job you play.

I think for me it's a bit glaring strictly because DRK for the actual rework as opposed to just new skills layered on top like WAR and PLD got for the most part. Certain things had to be changed but PLD and WAR are roughly equivalent to their SB iterations, just with more polish (particularly for PLD, as it had a bigger gap to close, literally and figuratively). Enough of DRK got reworked that you'd think some more attention would have been paid to its design compared to how the others were shaping up; it's wild to me that the only tank with 100% uptime on a 10% damage buff is in last place, even if overall tank DPS and mitigation is fairly well-balanced. I'm okay with DRK being the best flex tank (TBN really puts in work) and losing some DPS to that, but the effort to reward ration feels unfairly skewed compared to say, PLD, which has the arguably easiest rotation, very minimal weaving and allows you to completely ignore most downtime situations with minimal loss/adjustment.

DRK's AoE output is alot more than you are thinking. Flood of Shadows is *really,* *really* strong as a 250/300 **oGCD** AoE attack. Without their respective burst windows in IR, FoF, NM, the other tanks have virtually no comparable oGCD and need to catch up through more than *8* GCDs to reach that initial 750/900 pot burst from just Flood alone. Throw Abyssal Drain (200) and Salted Earth(360) in and you will understand why DRKs AoE GCDs are comparatively lower with Stalwart Soul being only a 10 pot upgrade from Unleash and Quietus only 70 pot higher.

Throw in the mana and blood gain from Stalwart and Blood Weapon and DRKs Flood uses per pack rises from 3/4 to 6-7. That's another 600/900 oGCD pot thrown ontop.

The nerf to Abyssal Drain and subsequently Steel Cyclone for Warrior is specifically to kneecap both DRK and WAR from being overpowered dungeon god tanks to being balanced with PLD and GNB. It was fun to recover ourselves and pull those 1v1 clutch moments with bosses when the party was dead but it was broken. SE clearly doesn't want us to refill our HP to 100% per GCD whilst PLD and GNB have no such options. It is not completely taken away as Abyssal Drain albeit being a cooldown still heals per target and can be used as a burst heal in large packs and Warrior gained Nascent Flash where they have to actively manage their bursts into it whilst have a reasonable 25 second cooldown on the skill to prevent the aforementioned broken self sustain.

The defensive gap in their kit only really exists in Dark Mind where WAR has Thrill and GNB Camouflage. But with current tank toolsets adding Arms Length and the new Reprisal, we have more than enough cooldowns to handle any situation, provided the DPS aren't single targeting a massive pull.

As the tank with the strongest AoE Burst at 80(Living Shadow, 4-7 Flood, Abyssal Drain, Salted Earth) and the ability to "cooldown" their burst AoE engine(Flood) faster by regaining mana in between pulls DRK is in a very good state.

In Savage raids/trial DRK is one of the most durable tanks next to WAR whilst having second last/last damage output on average(remember this margin is less than 3%. We're looking at 300 DPS at most currently and your own personal skill is what matters more) and gaining the most from raid buffs thanks to their incredible flexibility which would put them 2nd highest when optimized.

DRK is fine. It's skill acquisition during leveling is a big think with TBN at 70 but everything else is designed and relatively balanced reasonably.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

The nerf to Abyssal Drain and subsequently Steel Cyclone for Warrior is specifically to kneecap both DRK and WAR from being overpowered dungeon god tanks to being balanced with PLD and GNB. It was fun to recover ourselves and pull those 1v1 clutch moments with bosses when the party was dead but it was broken.

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Oh no, not the expert roulette!

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Oh no, not the expert roulette!

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If it's such an inconvenience being reasonably balanced why don't we also just ask for DPS to have instakill buttons?

I mean, expert roulette amirite? /s

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Oh no, not the expert roulette!

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You know, it's (not) hilarious to see people talking about how dungeons don't matter, and balancing doesn't need to be made for it, and then go and set their Savage LEARNING parties to have iLevels that need you grinding for expert tomestones since day #1.

It's part of the content, and does need to be considered when balancing things out. Anyone who says otherwise should leave iLevel requirements and [Duty Complete] off their savage PF groups, and then tell us how their weekly clears went.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

If it's such an inconvenience being reasonably balanced why don't we also just ask for DPS to have instakill buttons?

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DRK and WAR having good self healing in casual content.

DPS having instant kill buttons.

Yes, because those are two directly comparable things.

Game is not balanced on 1-70 lvls and will never be.
Dont expect any changes to it, because they will never happen in this expansion.

The best thing you could do is to rush through 70 lvl.
And i doubt they are going to change tanks in any way in upcoming patches.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Throw in the mana and blood gain from Stalwart and Blood Weapon and DRKs Flood uses per pack rises from 3/4 to 6-7. That's another 600/900 oGCD pot thrown ontop.

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I'm genuinely unsure if you read the post. The near-entirety of my concerns are with how DRK plays while levelling, and I specifically mention how good Flood is to start, but it falls off HARD once the other tanks have access to actual combo actions. If someone's post is "DRK really struggles with AoE before 72 and as a result has issues with big pulls compounded by reworks to its defensive kit", it's a bit rich to talk about how good it is after that point. I'm not saying DRK has to be an AoE star at all points of the game, just that it's glaringly bad for a considerable part of its levelling experience. In the end most of the issues could be resolved by some skill acquisition order changes or other small QoL things like Blood Weapon duration, it doesn't need sweeping buffs.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

DRK and WAR having good self healing in casual content.

DPS having instant kill buttons.

Yes, because those are two directly comparable things.

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"Good" self healing? More like "I will now heal to full in one button press and trivialize the existence of healer and damage intake".

Just because content is deemed casual doesn't mean we should further remove any degree of challenge or thought process in them. The further you diminish and automate it, the more you have to ask why are you even playing it in the first place.

And yes I do compare instakill buttons with those old self healing toolsets. They were insanely broken and were an upset to reasonable balance amongst the tanks in dungeons and any possible future horde type encounters. A single tank shouldn't just straight up be virtually invincible.

Self heal still exists and is more fairly rationed against content and other tank toolsets.

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Originally Posted by Breadgehog

I'm genuinely unsure if you read the post. The near-entirety of my concerns are with how DRK plays while levelling, and I specifically mention how good Flood is to start, but it falls off HARD once the other tanks have access to actual combo actions. If someone's post is "DRK really struggles with AoE before 72 and as a result has issues with big pulls compounded by reworks to its defensive kit", it's a bit rich to talk about how good it is after that point. I'm not saying DRK has to be an AoE star at all points of the game, just that it's glaringly bad for a considerable part of its levelling experience. In the end most of the issues could be resolved by some skill acquisition order changes or other small QoL things like Blood Weapon duration, it doesn't need sweeping buffs.

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I'm unsure if you've even bothered to read my post then. I've already explained that Flood is the reason DRK is not doing bad and is adequeately balanced with the other tanks. The other tanks with their "combo" do not match up to the Flood burst until *atleast* 8 GCDs in, in which everything is already dead and DRK is also regaining mana to, again blast out more 250/300 oGCD potency.

If you were talking about gameplay then maybe? Although I hardly see how 1-2 1-2 is any more engaging than 1a 1a 1a 1c 1e.

But as far as actual effectiveness goes, DRK does fine whilst levelling and is probably the best dungeon tank at 80. No TBN till 70? Rampart + Shadow Wall + Reprisal + Arms Length is more than enough.

I'd love to be in the levelling parties you're in where everything's dead in 8 GCDs - those sound wonderful, honestly. And DRK has practically no AoE MP gains until it gets its combo action, which is why Flood doesn't hold up to the others when they have combos. Blood Weapon will never give you a full Flood because of its duration (unless you specifically switch to ST for the 5 GCDs and drag out a pull, which the DPS loss is not worth), and Delirium is good for a burst of it but isn't enough to sustain anything.

DRK is hitting 165 per Unleash(GCD) and 275x3(Flood oGCD) and Abyssal/Salted for an extra 220 and 396 respectively(also oGCD).

Delirium lets them hit Quietus 5 times for 231 each hit.

You can get 600 mp per hit of Unleash in Blood weapon for about 4 times thanks to Unleash being strictly 2.5 second recast which totals to 2400. Add in the leftover 1000 MP thanks to our 10k MP total and thats another free 275 AoE oGCD potency. Natural regen and a bonus 600mp from Carve and Spit should the pack last long enough should let you blast out a 5th Flood for another 275 AoE oGCD potency.

Warrior spends the first three GCDs building up Storm's eye(Single target) then rotates into Overpower(143) and (220) ad infinitum with a free Decimate(275) per minute. They can Berserk for 5 GCDs every 90 seconds but then every other tank just crits naturally which closes the gap from any gain on Berserk.

PLD rotates 120-220 with a CoS(369) every 25 seconds and Flight or Fight every minute.

GNB rotates 150-250 with Bow Shock(780) and No Mercy every minute.

In a 30 second pull scenario
DRK will have used 12 Unleashes, 5 Floods, 1 Salted, 1 AD.

WAR will have used 4 Overpowers, 4 Mythril Tempests and 1 Decimate.

PLD will have used 6 Total Eclipses, 6 Prominences and 1 Circle of Scorn.

GNB will have used 6 Demon Slice, 6 Demon Slaughter and 1 Bow Shock.

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DRK
12x 165 (1980)
5x 275 (1375)
1x 396
1x 220.

3971


WAR
4x 143 (572)
4x 220 (880)
1x 250

1702

Or if they have holdover/prepared Storm's Eye

+286(2 Overpowers)
+440(2 Mythril Tempests)

2428

Slap on a generous 996 pot from Berserk if you want to assume the other tanks never crit. (2 Overpowers, 2 Mythril Tempests and 1 Decimate Direct Critting) and Warrior still Falls Short at 3424.

Op>MT is a 33 pot gain over 2x Unleash.
Warrior will then need 16 more GCDs to catch up to DRKs burst in the same in which DRK is still casting 16 more Unleashes.


PLD

6x 120
6x 220
368

2408. Or 2918 with Fight or Flight applied (across all 12 gcds even though it should be 11)

TE>PE is a 10 pot gain over 2x Unleash. PLD will need to cast 100 more GCDs(lol) to catch up to DRK in which DRK would have casted 100 Unleashes.

GNB

6x 150
6x 250
1x 780

3180. Or 3660 with No mercy applied (across all 12 gcds even though it should be 9)

DS>DeS is a 70 pot gain over 2x Unleash. GNB just needs 5 more to overtake DRKs Burst but DRK would have casted 5 more Unleashes. GNB is pretty busted early levels in all fairness and they're relatively even with GNB pulling ahead all tanks in general in early dungeons.

TLDR DRK is fine.

Side note: Bow Shock is gained at 62. Pre 62 GNB would be missing 780 pot every minute from their total which is substantial. DRK and WAR numbers are post Darkside/Storm's Eye respectively(10% Damage buff). Circle of Scorn and Bow Shock are also post FoF and NM respectively.

Add in another 605 for DRK if you want Delirium to be considered. Queitus is 66 pot gain over Unleash(5*66=330) and grants 500mp per cast, 5 casts granting another Flood for 275 free oGCD pot.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Snip.

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He is right.

Ho, you forgot to says that we got Living shadow at level 80 and the 3 AoE around 350 potency it does (So 1050). Great job anyway.

It's not to talk about number, but did you actually look at the burst a DRK can offer at the beginning of the fight ? It's litteraly twice the DPS they can manage to keep, during a fight on a damn dummy.

Beside that, Monster pack seems to literraly dissolve when a DRK do a AoE burst correctly, It's insane. the number of damage that appear is overwhelming.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

"Good" self healing? More like "I will now heal to full in one button press and trivialize the existence of healer and damage intake".

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If limited to casual content and to the infrequent result of setup... I've no issue with that.

I mean, just compare that to what's saved by, say, Holy spam, which requires no such setup...

The imbalance in SB dungeons was due to one tank dealing 50% more AoE dps than the other two over any typical run far, far more than it had anything to do with Clemency being lackluster in solo-clutch scenarios compared to SC or DA-AD (though still better than either of those for keeping your dps from dying after the healer takes a swan dive).

In a 30 second pull scenario

WAR will have used Nascent Flash + best AoE abilities available at the time, whether it be Decimate x5, or Infuriate-boosted Decimates, or Overpower/Tempest

We wont see any adjustments to DRK other than potency changes until 6.0

For them to fundamentally move skills around to different levels along with updating the job guide would be an overhaul.

However if anything LD needs adjusting before anything else.

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Originally Posted by Elixirboy

In a 30 second pull scenario

WAR will have used Nascent Flash + best AoE abilities available at the time, whether it be Decimate x5, or Infuriate-boosted Decimates, or Overpower/Tempest

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That's cool and all but the quick maths were for the rotations sub 70 which was what OP was worried about. Post 72 all tanks begin to rocket up having access to bigger AoE toolkits and it generally balances out based on tank performance in expert roulette dungeons. (Especially beneficial for PLD since they gain Holy Circle and Confetti).

Blah blah DRK gains Flood of Shadow, more MP and Blood gain in Stalwart Soul, Living Shadow and just naturally crits and direct hits. Gunbreaker gains Fated Circle and just naturally crits and direct hits. PLD gains Holy Circle and Confetti and naturally crits and direct hits(1200 AoE potency > 800 AoE potency that can't crit or direct hit).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

If limited to casual content and to the infrequent result of setup... I've no issue with that.

I mean, just compare that to what's saved by, say, Holy spam, which requires no such setup...

The imbalance in SB dungeons was due to one tank dealing 50% more AoE dps than the other two over any typical run far, far more than it had anything to do with Clemency being lackluster in solo-clutch scenarios compared to SC or DA-AD (though still better than either of those for keeping your dps from dying after the healer takes a swan dive).

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Holy still having the stun component while Art of War and Gravity not even having any additional CC is indeed busted but I wouldn't imbalance the tanks just because WHM made out like a bandit.

WAR being vastly stronger in damage didn't also need the incredible self sustain in the chamber. Fun in breaking dungeons is one thing, fun in being able to bring your class without being vastly inferior to another is also a consideration in which I'm sure SE has taken with the balance of ShB. All tanks should be able to be brought to dungeons without having a significant(IR+Op+Steel Cyclone vs Total Eclipse lol) leg up over another, this is especially good for the health of DF and prevent "ugh! X inferior class is here".

Personally I'd rather be able to bring all tanks to DF or be queued with any tank and not feel the run would be considerably worse for it over feeling temporary joy in being obviously overpowered.

Nascent Flash exists. Nascent Flash is extremely good and requires more setup and thought process with a reasonable cooldown, something WAR currently desperately needs. Abyssal Drain doesn't straight up scale to ludicrous healing anymore and that's fine, DRK is fairer for it considering their now burst king status and feel good durability in TBN.

And I'm sure our healers would appreciate being able to do their primary job and not being further forced into their bare bones DPS rotation as much as possible. Overpowered tanks make for bored green DPS I'd imagine.

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Originally Posted by FallenWings

Holy still having the stun component while Art of War and Gravity not even having any additional CC is indeed busted but I wouldn't imbalance the tanks just because WHM made out like a bandit.

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But consider, that's a result of AST losing its stun and its external mitigation/suppression kit and SCH losing its slow and external mitigation kit. That's kind of the point: every tanks had something special, albeit only really within their burst phases. Warrior's had the least frequency but the most reliability and burst; DRK's required a minimum number of mobs to exploit significantly, but had half-intervals to hasten its frequency; PLD's, at per 60s, cost the most uptime and therefore had the least simultaneous throughput, but could actually save a group.

For the most part none of these saw any significance in raids, but they were damn fun to have in dungeons, even if it was... glaringly overpowered. I'm just not sure--neither as a tank nor as a healer--that that was in any way a detriment to the game. The monsters that are NF during IR, Req-Clemency, and TBN itself are still great, of course; I just don't think there was anything wrong with how they were -- save perhaps that DA-AD really shouldn't have been so poor a heal in low-mobcount situations.