What's the general consensus on Delirium?

So, I've been playing FFXIV for almost 2 months now, DRK was my class of choice as soon as I had reached Heavensward and overall I quite enjoy the job, but it has two very annoying issues for me: All your core skills come in too late so the job feels EXTREMELY clunky at lower levels when doing roulettes and such and how Delirium works.

To stay on track, I really dislike spamming the same skill (4 times I think?) over 10 seconds, it doesn't feel like a particularly inspired design nor it feels rewarding really, I keep noticing that one of my biggest issues is that I outright forget to press it a lot of the times because it feels like an easy to forget ability.

But yeah, just wondering how the general DRK players feel about this skill, is this more of a personal issue on my side or it's something that's is genuinely "weird" about the job?

Delirium is god awful. After "fixing" a skill that didn't really need to be fixed about 3 times now, they just took the lazy route and made it a discount Inner Release. And oh yeah, DRK is probably the worst class to level in the game right now. Lvl 60 DRK is no different than DRK at lvl 50 other than the fact you have like 2 more off-globals and a gap closer. All MP management the job used to have has been butchered and put onto a singular lvl 70 skill that's loosely holding the class together. I think they have the right idea for how DRK should play (being the oGCD tank) but keep forgetting that MP management and decision making is a huge part of the job as well. It used to a non-linear class and that's what most people miss about it.

I guarantee you that if TBN (The Blackest Night) were not in the game and instead were some other 15% mitigation skill, there would be 0 DRKs in the game. If you were to post this on reddit, ALL of the replies would just be like "hEr hEr wait for TBN" or "TBN is soooooooooo gooood."

I don't even see the point of having mana pre-70 since all you spend it on is Edge of Darkness/Flood of Darkness. Might as well give those a 30 second cool down. Don't even get me started on how terrible the lvl 80 skill is. The only identity this class has going for it is TBN and its aesthetic. You could count off-globals, but those take years to come off cool down.

In short, you're not the only one who thinks Delirium sucks and the leveling is clunky. There are a lot who think that yet the devs didn't address these issues, even after 2 years in its spotlight expansion. Fingers crossed for Oct. 13th.

Honestly, now that I've reached level 80 and have unlocked most of the content I was looking to unlock(Not really looking to get into Savage raids right now considering Endwalker is right around the corner), I feel really conflicted about DRK, I love the fantasy, I do, I mean, dealing with depression and still dealing with the recent grief of the loss of a parent, the story and class fantasy resonated with me, but at the same time I can't say I have been enjoying the gameplay all that much, I think the only real time I feel like what I am doing feels great is doing big pulls and using TBN + AoE rotation and seeing all those numbers flying as well as that huge Abyssal Drain heal when used in a large pack of mobs.

So I don't know, most of my time in game now is basically me standing somewhere thinking "Do I wanna put in the effort to level another job or should I just push through and continue with DRK?" and it has been draining a bit my enjoyment of the game as of late.

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Originally Posted by Hysorn

Honestly, now that I've reached level 80 and have unlocked most of the content I was looking to unlock(Not really looking to get into Savage raids right now considering Endwalker is right around the corner), I feel really conflicted about DRK, I love the fantasy, I do, I mean, dealing with depression and still dealing with the recent grief of the loss of a parent, the story and class fantasy resonated with me, but at the same time I can't say I have been enjoying the gameplay all that much, I think the only real time I feel like what I am doing feels great is doing big pulls and using TBN + AoE rotation and seeing all those numbers flying as well as that huge Abyssal Drain heal when used in a large pack of mobs.

So I don't know, most of my time in game now is basically me standing somewhere thinking "Do I wanna put in the effort to level another job or should I just push through and continue with DRK?" and it has been draining a bit my enjoyment of the game as of late.

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I feel you man, the DRK quest line is the best I've ever seen, and I'm sorry about your parent. It'll get better man, just takes time.
But as of right now, the looks and the story are the only thing DRK has going for it. Don't get me wrong, if people enjoy how DRK is right now, that's understandable, but Yoshi-P or whoever designs the jobs seriously doesn't know how find a middle ground. I think a big issue is the community, and giving the devs too much praise for things they don't really put much effort in. Now I understand we went through an entire pandemic, and Japan is looking pretty bad right now but at the start of the expansion they still didn't really listen. Things like Living Dead be requested to be reworked for years and even brought up to Yoshi-P himself still has got legit nothing. I just don't get how a few simple job changes and some leveling adjustments can impact development that hard.

The reason you see a lot of DRKs around in game is cause of the storyline, TBN, and the aesthetic. Each person I've questioned literally gives me the same answers and it just shows that the dev team would just prefer easy tank balancing rather than making unique jobs. I get the more unique the harder to balance, but Shadowbringers was overkill.

you need only look at all of the doomposting on this forum to come to the realisation that Delirium (amogus other things) is completely unwanted and broken. I've even seen a few discussions about the bad state of DRK on reddit of all places, the worlds comfiest safest hugbox!

iirc yoshi stated that Delirium would only have 3 uses instead of 5, with the coming 6.x DRK having Delirium's cooldown reduced to 60 seconds so that everyone can have their openers at the same time.

but does that fix the glaring 1 button spam issue?
will the 3 hits now give us equivalent mana to the 5 hits, or do we lose 2x200 per BS/2x500 per Quietus?
are they going to make Salted Earth generate blood now since we are missing out on the extra damage from those 2 swings? (I hope the new peppered earth doesnt do this, its literally an unneeded ability)

not to mention the plethora of other issues that have gone unanswered throughout 5.x DRK

are they going to make Abyssal Drain a mana spender since we might be seeing cooldowns reduced leading to the need to spend more mana?
what about Blood Weapon? will it be a 30s cooldown that only gives us 9.6sec of mana restoration? or will it remain at 60s along with Abyssal and Salted Earth?
will we ever see a mini TBN below lv 50? or is expecting the resource generation tank to spend resources below lv 70 ""too hard""?


this and many more on the next episode of FFXIV: Sleepwalker

I personally saw it doesn't matter if you ask to someone who hate or love current iteration of the job Delirium will be the most hated skill of the job everyone have issues with in a way or another.
Personally Inner Delirium was the skill that straight forward killed the job for me, i have issues with several changes of DRK of course but Delirium is the number one of the list and the worst by far, changing the skill to 60s recast and 3 bloodspillers won't change at all how about feel about the awful state of the skill, im tired of spam GCDs mechanics specially if GCD skill is bloodspiller wich is so bad to wach it spam.

#DeleteDelIRium

Delirium hurts DRK's overall presentation and gameplay by being Warrior's IR but worse. It's not unique, it's not that fun to do, and it hurts Warrior by making their "thing" not unique. Also, IR works for Warrior's fantasy of just "Hitting the monster over and over again with the same attack in furious rage until its dead" so the gameplay of pushing the same button over and over feels good! It does not work for DRK.. I wonder if our impressions would be different if this was something unique to Dark Knight and Warrior's IR didn't exist, the impressions would probably be more favorable (But I gamble that not by much).

But hey, they didn't show the delirium spam in the trailer.. so there's a tiny bit of hope?

Delirium is just repetitive. I can't but feel disappointment with how it was handled in Shadowbringers, there was room for so much potential but they decided to design it after Inner Release.

It's the same with the Souleater combo. You go 1-2-3 until you hit Bloodspiller again. It's this type of repitition that ruined the job for me. I still play it of course, but I see myself trying other tanks here and there, and I enjoy them far more than DRK. I really don't believe it's that hard to make this job unique, but the developers might have been in conflict of trying to appeal to everyone so they took the safe route for the poster boy; it makes sense from a logical viewpoint.

As I have said previously, reworking Delirium into an ability more engaging than before is far better than reducing it into 3 Bloodspiller uses within a short time frame. It's better than 5 uses but still it doesn't detract from how obnoxious it feels in a gameplay loop. I mean would you want to play this job for 2 years straight? It's a difficult scenario to imagine and 5.0 already felt like a slog to get through with current DRK.

Also I want to add that given the statement on Delirium 6.0, it's better to lower your expectations. DRK might be better than before, but they will most likely stick with their decision to keep the rework with as little deviations as possible.

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Originally Posted by Yagrush

But hey, they didn't show the delirium spam in the trailer.. so there's a tiny bit of hope?

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Yoship as comfirmed that Delirium is going to be the same but instead of being 5 bloodspiller spam under a 90s recast it's going to be 3 bloodspiller spam under a 60s recast just like WAR inner release window with the diference that WAR have a finisher now.

Its very bad. I would much rather delirium be one button that grants 5 different animations.

They did change it to 3 bloodspillers and 1 new finishing move but its still not fun to do. I wish they would just come up with something different. I was also disappointed that salted earth stayed.

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Originally Posted by Derio

Its very bad. I would much rather delirium be one button that grants 5 different animations.

They did change it to 3 bloodspillers and 1 new finishing move but its still not fun to do. I wish they would just come up with something different. I was also disappointed that salted earth stayed.

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don't be disappointed that Salted Earth stayed,
be disappointed that the devs chose to ignore the 2 years worth of requests to return it to its glory days of being a powerful aoe blood builder that synergised with the kit,
in favor of giving us a needless follow up that probably wont build resources either
because giving players too many buttons would overwhelm them

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Originally Posted by shao32

I personally saw it doesn't matter if you ask to someone who hate or love current iteration of the job Delirium will be the most hated skill of the job everyone have issues with in a way or another.
Personally Inner Delirium was the skill that straight forward killed the job for me, i have issues with several changes of DRK of course but Delirium is the number one of the list and the worst by far, changing the skill to 60s recast and 3 bloodspillers won't change at all how about feel about the awful state of the skill, im tired of spam GCDs mechanics specially if GCD skill is bloodspiller wich is so bad to wach it spam.

#DeleteDelIRium

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It's an improvement, but only due to the fact that they reduced spamming the same button from 5 times down to 3 times now. Inner Release is still an incredibly uninteresting, unengaging and lazy ability...and Delirium is the low budget version of that.

Right now, the abilities that use blood are Bloodspiller/Quietus and Living Shadow. If you don't like 'Bloodspiller spam', then why do you want Salted Earth to increase the rate of blood generation?

In Heavensward, Salted Earth was just an AoE DoT ground effect, like it is now. It's unique in the fact that no other tank in the game has one, and it can be fairly versatile if you know where mobs spawn. The main reason why people have been unhappy with Salted Earth in Stormblood/Shadowbringers is because of potency nerfs. I think that's going to be the make-or-break factor here.

If Delirium is changing to a charge system, then you probably don't need to spam Bloodspiller because you're not on a timer. It just means that your next three Bloodspiller/Delirium uses are free. I think we may end up seeing a shift in focus to Living Shadow being the main 'burst' on the job, especially depending on how the new super Flood action interacts with it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Right now, the abilities that use blood are Bloodspiller/Quietus and Living Shadow. If you don't like 'Bloodspiller spam', then why do you want Salted Earth to increase the rate of blood generation?

In Heavensward, Salted Earth was just an AoE DoT ground effect, like it is now. It's unique in the fact that no other tank in the game has one, and it can be fairly versatile if you know where mobs spawn. The main reason why people have been unhappy with Salted Earth in Stormblood/Shadowbringers is because of potency nerfs. I think that's going to be the make-or-break factor here.

If Delirium is changing to a charge system, then you probably don't need to spam Bloodspiller because you're not on a timer. It just means that your next three Bloodspiller/Delirium uses are free. I think we may end up seeing a shift in focus to Living Shadow being the main 'burst' on the job, especially depending on how the new super Flood action interacts with it.

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That'd be pretty cool, actually having a mechanic designed around what people thought you were ACTUALLY supposed to do with living shadow. Time it with your burst/when you're at the most active part in your rotation.

But, I still think it's just gonna result in spam. You could use PLD's 4 atonement rotation as an argument, but PLD has a buff timer where you actually have to manage your uptime to see if you could even do it in the first place. Instead of Inner Release, Delirium might just end up looking like Sword Oath. Which is on the right track, but could still be way better IMO.

I know I'm jumping to conclusions, but I'm just desperate for probably the coolest looking job in the game. It has so much visual identity, yet so little gameplay identity.

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Originally Posted by Sazuzaki

But, I still think it's just gonna result in spam. You could use PLD's 4 atonement rotation as an argument, but PLD has a buff timer where you actually have to manage your uptime to see if you could even do it in the first place. Instead of Inner Release, Delirium might just end up looking like Sword Oath. Which is on the right track, but could still be way better IMO.

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At first I thought the same, IR and Delirium having 3 stacks might lead to some interesting scenarios where you hold onto stacks for dps gains later.

The problem is that this only exists for PLD's Atonement because Sword Oath is tied to a generic 1-2-3 combo and because it has Fight or Flight, neither warrior nor drk have a skill that not only temporarily buffs their own melee dps but is also independent of generating said stacks (atleast as far as we know).

The 3 stacks they get for Fell Cleave and Blood Spiller are directly tied to their "big" dps cooldowns which automatically align with party buffs and I somewhat doubt that you can hold onto a stack for 60 seconds.


Depending on what buffs we gain from mitigating damage this could however still be a possibility.

The change to IR is a net positive but honestly every TA window is just going to be a WAR's version of gnashing combo but with onslaught and upheaval weaved inbetween each gcd. It's not going to get interesting beyond that. It's also going to work like perfect balance where you got a set time i.e. 10-15 secs, to use up said stacks.

The issue with Delirium is that they keep changing DRK with each expansion and it just felt like in ShB they ran out of time and just made it like IR and called it a day. It's one of the problems when you don't have an "identity" tied to a tank. WAR is a berserker, PLD is holy knight, GNB is Squall from Dissidia, DRK is ???. Actually DRK is the tank equivalent of MCH. Both have one combo rotation, rely heavily on ogcds as filler, summon a glorified dot NPC, and have a single button spam rotation. Though DRK has no control over Esteem and can't summon it as frequently. Though it would make for interesting synergy with some mechanics. Like if you are about to die from Living Dead you can pop Esteem and he will take the death for you.

Personally I would like to see DRK transition to a "Rend" Knight, using skills like Sanguine Blade, Shadow Blade and Crush skills. The animations already exist in-game via Cid the thunder God, so why no use it? But at this point just pick something and stick to it.

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Originally Posted by Yagrush

Delirium hurts DRK's overall presentation and gameplay by being Warrior's IR but worse. It's not unique, it's not that fun to do, and it hurts Warrior by making their "thing" not unique. Also, IR works for Warrior's fantasy of just "Hitting the monster over and over again with the same attack in furious rage until its dead" so the gameplay of pushing the same button over and over feels good! It does not work for DRK.. I wonder if our impressions would be different if this was something unique to Dark Knight and Warrior's IR didn't exist, the impressions would probably be more favorable (But I gamble that not by much).

But hey, they didn't show the delirium spam in the trailer.. so there's a tiny bit of hope?

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The sheer irony is despite Delirium being little more than budget IR, it's technically better simply due to melds. Inner Release having forced DhC instead of a flat damage buff is why Warrior is the only tank melding Determination over Direct Hit. Which is annoying.

That aside though, I agree. Spamming Bloodspiller just doesn't suit the more methodical and cerebral aesthetic Dark Knight is going for. Not to mention it just feels lazy. I don't think Delirium would be as hated if IR never existed, though probably still disliked. But when it's a literal copy of an existing ability, it really stands out as the dev team having no creativity.

Sadly, it still exists since Yoshida specifically mentioned Delirium being 60s. My hope is instead of spamming Bloodspiller, they shift it to something else. Even a simple change like "Bloodspiller, Quietsis, <new ability> all have the same potency under Delirium". So now you cycle through them similar to Fray. It's not the best approach but it'd certainly feel better.

I wonder. If IR is going to a stack system, any associated buffs will likely be tied in to those stacks and not the active window. Otherwise you could just sit on your stacks and gain Crit/DH buffs on all your actions endlessly.

Thinking back, did we see Fight or Flight and No Mercy? I wonder if we're seeing a trend towards bigger damage moves with their potency buffs baked in.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Right now, the abilities that use blood are Bloodspiller/Quietus and Living Shadow. If you don't like 'Bloodspiller spam', then why do you want Salted Earth to increase the rate of blood generation?

In Heavensward, Salted Earth was just an AoE DoT ground effect, like it is now. It's unique in the fact that no other tank in the game has one, and it can be fairly versatile if you know where mobs spawn. The main reason why people have been unhappy with Salted Earth in Stormblood/Shadowbringers is because of potency nerfs. I think that's going to be the make-or-break factor here.

If Delirium is changing to a charge system, then you probably don't need to spam Bloodspiller because you're not on a timer. It just means that your next three Bloodspiller/Delirium uses are free. I think we may end up seeing a shift in focus to Living Shadow being the main 'burst' on the job, especially depending on how the new super Flood action interacts with it.

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First things first: Salted Earth didn't recieve any nerfs in Stormblood, in fact, it got buffed from lvl 62 onwards by generating blood.

As for myself, I did enjoy those changes in Stormblood. It had great synergy with DA Abyssal Drain and Quietus, and that what most hope blood could be again. Spend MP on DA AD, use Salted Earth, gain blood, use Quietus, gain MP, spend it on DA AD, repeat loop.

I guess that's what made DRK interessting to play during AOE. You didn't spam the same action 5 times in a row, but rather at intervals. The blood gauge in Stormblood was imo a great addition because it interacted with your "other gauge" (MP), at least in AOE. You gain blood by using your abilities (Blood Weapon, Salted Earth, TBN, Blood Price), use blood skills to gain MP (Delirium, Quietus), use that MP to increase your dmg, defense, enmity or gain blood again (TBN, DA Plunge, DA Dark Passenger).

But since Shadowbringers, both gauge are completely disconnected! There is no synergy between them: When I spend my blood, I don't get any MP, when I spend MP, I don't get any blood. Only SOME abilities give us both, that's all there is to it. And our 3rd gauge (Darkside buff) is a complete waste of space on your screen. If our Darkness/Shadow abilities would increase the duration by 15s, we might have had to think twice before overcapping the gauge - since we can only cast it 4x/min. But 30s is just preposterous, it makes you turn off your brain and forget about the Darkside gauge entirely.

HW/SB was neither perfect, nor optimised, maybe even a mess. But its design was far superior to what "DRK" is now and probably will be for the next years to come.

I mean what do we even get in EW? Salted Earth is probably still weak, its burst most likely pathetic, and - if Salted Earth still remains as a ground effect, independed of your (or your enemies) ever changing position - the ability will be unreliable, too. It doesn't affect MP nor blood gauge, disconnected from the rest of the kit. The other is some kind of finisher move after EoS (FoS not confirmed), apparently an action Fray is going to learn, but whether it increases his dmg is still unknown.

What remains from ShB? Abyssal Drain is still embarrassing on single target, and will - no matter what - used together with CnS, adding to button bloat. Blood Weapon still remains as the weaker Infuriate, and considering we didn't get the so long awaited "Bunshin treatment", I doubt it will be on stacks - thus still risky without any real reward. Still on one combo btw. Inner Delirium is now copy and paste 2.0, it recieved the very same changes as Inner Release, f* well done, SE! Such creativity, many changes, very innovative, wow!

They've had way more time to create interessting designs compared to last expansion. And all they've done for tanks and healers is: remove Nocturnal stance from AST, and change NOTHING else, set everything to 60/120s CD, and then call it a day? Really? That's the exact same move they did in ShB by removing stances from tanks without even experimenting a bit, never have tanks be more bland, and now they top that with EW! You had time to rework MNK and SMN, but didn't even touch tanks and healers? I see your priorities lie somewhere else, SE, and you gonna neglect those roles, until everyone plays a DPS...

tl;dr @ OP: There is no use to even discuss Delirium, the job as a whole is pretty much broken and screwed design-wise. There is nothing interessting that emerges the feeling "yes, this is DRK, that's the reason why I play it!".

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

It's an improvement, but only due to the fact that they reduced spamming the same button from 5 times down to 3 times now. Inner Release is still an incredibly uninteresting, unengaging and lazy ability...and Delirium is the low budget version of that.

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I don't consider it an improvement at all since if nothing else has changed then Delirium will just merged in to the bloodweapon oGCD window with the bloodspillers compresing the burst window even more and then the downtime until the next burst will be exclusively a boring soul eater spam window with the sad salted earth there in the middle.

Outside of that it's a personal matter i hate spaming the same GCD for more than 2 times since always, specially if is a mechanic copied from another job and even more if is bloodspiller involved, the most antispaming animation ever made, for me DRK will remain dead until Delirium is reworked or deleted no matter how much the rest improve wich i doubt anything else will improve at all with the current dev team.