Small tweaks suggestions to make Drk more reliable.

[Casper]

Lot of people are left wondering if Drk is going to be competitive, given their kit, with the existing tanks. In my opinion, Drk is not lacking power, as much as it is not getting reliable access to its power -- and the issue is that reliability is the name of the game at the moment in endgame tanking.

Honestly, to me, there are two things that need to be changed for DRK to be viable:

1) reprisal need to be accessible in a reliable way, because not having access to it when you want to is terrible for real raiding
2) Drk need a bit of help in the physical side of things; being super good on magical and only decent on physical, and thus a counterpart to pld godly in physical and decent on magical, is fine, but at the moment they are not even decent against regular physical tank busters.

For point 1, i would have two ideas right of the bat. In both case, have the main ability be as it is, except you don't need to parry to activate it, making it reliable even as an off tank. Then, make the trait be one of two things:
-Whenever you parry an attack, reduce the CD by 10 sec
-Whenever you parry an attack, 10% chance to get a buff. The buff last 3 seconds. If you activate reprisal during the buff, it does not go on CD.

In both case the trait ties the ability to parry, as per design, but at least you are not locked into having to parry to use it. The second one is pretty neat lore-wise to function as a "reprisal", and would be super fun. You would keep reprisal ready for the next tank buster, but whenever you are parrying you get a chance to put it up for free, without sacrificing it for the next tank buster. One may want to give it a CD of 15 sec instead of a minute instead of just not using the CD, to avoid abuse of spamming it with a high parry rate, but allowing still one to keep it up if you get a bit lucky.

For the second point, i would tweak dark dance. Currently it function as some kind of bulwark, unreliable. Point being, Drk doesn't have enough stuff to mess around with such things. I would suggest one of two changes:

-Dark art effects: 20% physical damage reduction instead of the dodge
-Dark art effects: increase parry rate to 100% instead of +30% (and remove the dodge too).

In both case, this would turn dark dance into a reliable physical CD.

Given those two changes, which really are mostly "tweaks" and do not add power per say as much as making the existing power reliable, i am sure Drk would be much more competitive with the current tanks.

[Armo]

How about if dark dance would give just parry rating in grit stance and made reprisal have no cooldown? When grit is not activated it would make reprisal proc from scourge tics? Dark Arts would make parry rating higher in grit and without grit it would give 5% damage increase from all sources on the mob.

This would solve the unreliable usage for mitigation both MTing and OTing and drk would be something that raid groups would consider taking with since the increase in group damage when OTing.

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

For the second point, i would tweak dark dance. Currently it function as some kind of bulwark, unreliable. Point being, Drk doesn't have enough stuff to mess around with such things. I would suggest one of two changes:

-Dark art effects: 20% physical damage reduction instead of the dodge
-Dark art effects: increase parry rate to 100% instead of +30% (and remove the dodge too).

You can't have Raw Intuition and I'll kindly ask you to stop trying to steal it.

Seriously though, in the interest of keeping the class unique but still functional, it'd be interesting if Dark Arts + Dark Dance provided some sort of "Darkness Barrier" (shield) that absorbs damage based on your current MP or Max MP.

Regarding Reprisal it does seem odd that the skills cooldown is longer than its duration AND its tied to a parry.

[Xenosan]

Even if Dark Dance had a DA boost making it a legitimate tank buster, it'd still fall short of 3.0's PLD/WAR. WAR has Inner Beast, PLD got Shelltron. Most tank-busters thus far have been physical. TBH I don't really anticipate DD for much except to force Reprisal when it's about to come off CD.

Similiar to your barrier idea, I've envisioned an additional effect to Grit:

HPs absorbed via Souleater/Abyssal when player's health bar is already full will convert into a Doom Spike buff. Doom Spike will act like Stoneskin/Galvanize, eating up an amount of damage equal to the amount that the DRK over-absorbed. It could even reflect that over healed damage.. let me dream..

So kind of like Aldoquium, except the buff is only as strong as the amount of HP over-healed. It wouldn't be the greatest mitigation tool, but it would be on-demand, which is what DRK seems to be lacking, comparatively.

Granted my opinion pretty much changes every dungeon run or trial/raid, so take with a grain of salt

[Hundred]

You can't have Raw Intuition and I'll kindly ask you to stop trying to steal it.

Seriously though, in the interest of keeping the class unique but still functional, it'd be interesting if Dark Arts + Dark Dance provided some sort of "Darkness Barrier" (shield) that absorbs damage based on your current MP or Max MP.

Regarding Reprisal it does seem odd that the skills cooldown is longer than its duration AND its tied to a parry.

Funny this is also what I expected them to have, I could've sworn it was mentioned in a live letter.

[rogandiamond]

As a lot of people have said..DRK is in a pretty awkward situation trying to fit into the PLD/WAR scene. I obviously haven't done endgame, but , by just doing DUNGEONS DRK is becoming a sore. A couple of things i've noticed, if I am dumping a MASSIVE amount of MP for Dark Arts, why do I still have to use the 100% mp cost of lets say Dark Passenger? I don't know, small things like that are starting to get to me. Granted, I don't DA + DP spam, but it's the small things; atleast give a reduced MP cost or something.

[Ditto]

To be honest, they need a little more than that in my opinion.

Paladin is a block tank, Warrior is a reactive tank that has more use to parry now as well. Both of them can parry, and Paladins can block crazy amounts of damage.

What is Drk? A Paladin without it's shield, nor anywhere near the amount of mitigation. A Parry tank basically, but both of the other two tanks do that just fine, and Parry does nothing for a Drk, nor is it influenced in any way by them just being a Drk. Their kit in general needs an overhaul, along with something to make parrys more effective, such as a trait that increases parry rate and parry block damage.

As it is, we're a tank that is relying on a very base, unaltered system that both of the other tanks can do perfectly well, and more. As a matter of fact, good Warriors stayed AWAY from Parry simply due to how bad it was for all of 2.0, and as far as I can see, 3.0 brought no new changes to parry, but created yet another class that is so heavily reliant on it as it's general mitigation. Difference this time around is we don't have the reactive Inner Beast Warriors had, which only puts us in an even worse spot.

I'd list out my suggestions but I'll have to do that once the servers are up again, always get some of the names confused if I try to think of them off fo the top of my head.

[Xenosan]

A couple of things i've noticed, if I am dumping a MASSIVE amount of MP for Dark Arts, why do I still have to use the 100% mp cost of lets say Dark Passenger? I don't know, small things like that are starting to get to me. Granted, I don't DA + DP spam, but it's the small things; atleast give a reduced MP cost or something.

Let's remember Dark Passenger, buffed, is a 250 potency AOE..

That's a Dragonfire Dive on demand.

Steel Cyclone, even when accounting for it's ignore tank stance damage reduction, is still lower.

[Ditto]

Let's remember Dark Passenger, buffed, is a 250 potency AOE..

That's a Dragonfire Dive on demand.

Steel Cyclone, even when accounting for it's ignore tank stance damage reduction, is still lower.

On paper, sure, but lets go into specifics.

Dragonfire Dive is a 360 degree AOE, Dark Passenger is only a line in front of the tank, which is awfully narrow too.

Dragonfire Dive is instant, so is Dark Passenger. They both also have a cooldown to them. Hell it's hard to even compare Dark passenger to Dragonfire because they're 2 different things, both used 2 completely different ways.

Steel Cyclone can hit like a truck, and generates a MASSIVE amount of threat in a 360 degree radius around the Warrior. Dark Passenger should never be used to gain threat, that's what Abyssal Drain is for. They both however cost a ridiculous amount of MP to use.

TP can be regenerated on downtime, or just by not using skills for a little. Wrath can be generated every GCD beyond the base swing, and even some off gcd's. Our MP CANNOT be replenished unless we are either attacking something, or something is attacking us. The latter being a terrible method of restoring MP against any less than 3 targets. For us to gain MP through attacking, we have to be doing our combo that does not generate enmity. In specific, Siphon Strike being the only skill that gives us MP (An incredibly low amount), compared to 2 skills giving you Wrath after every base combo.

If we have no MP, we have no AOE threat. No way to pull the mobs off of the party members they are running loose on other than 1 at a time striking them with an enmity generating hit until your MP returns.

Now not that a Drk should ever let themselves run out of MP, but it's very, very easy to go critically low on MP.

[rogandiamond]

Let's remember Dark Passenger, buffed, is a 250 potency AOE..

That's a Dragonfire Dive on demand.

Steel Cyclone, even when accounting for it's ignore tank stance damage reduction, is still lower.

Yes....but let's just use, for example, at my level 51 DRK DA+DP is a MASSIVE 600+MP cost out of my what 2k pool WHILE BEING DRAINED from DARKNESS? I understand the meaning behind it, I do. No one, including me, wants a DRK spamming DP with DA but a 600MP cost is more than enough drain to be able to use that ability without another cost added.

Honestly, I was talking to a few buds of mine and removing GRIT from the GCD would do wonders as well. I like dropping grit and enabling blood weapon + blood price for an awesome MP return. Again like I said though, waiting for the GCD to return to drop Grit is kind of clunky.