DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[SyzzleSpark]

Quoting this here for how appropriate it is, originally from the tank balance thread:

With regards to TBN, I don't think the devs are specifically balancing around it. The value of TBN depends on the relative potency of Bloodspiller to that of your average combo action. Make Bloodspiller more powerful, and TBN becomes more powerful. Make combo actions more powerful, then TBN becomes less so. What happened over the past two patches is this: in 4.01, Bloodspiller was buffed out of Grit. This made it a dps gain on average. In 4.05, SE was buffed. This made it a dps loss on average. In both patches, it is never a consistent gain or loss, either, as it depends on which GCD combo action it replaces.

What probably happened was this. The devs created an ability which blocks an attack for either yourself or a friend. And when the shield shatters, you launch into a counterattack! That feels pretty fun! And they probably didn't think about it a whole lot further.

The problem is that most of DRK's new actions are interrelated, so flat potency gains just shift around your priorities, rather than giving you the needed dps boost. DRK's issues at the moment are resource related, rather than potency related.

DRK's rotation and damage dealing capabilities particularly when it comes to burst, feel the way they do because every action you make towards the job's priority system doesn't actually net you a gain of any kind, you're filling one cup and draining the other. Thus, we wind up with a job that looks like a meal on a plate that hasn't been touched, but its contents have been shuffled around to give the appearance of someone having actually eaten something. This is pretty much the entire dynamic of TBN-Bloodspiller, and it becomes the larger dynamic of DRK as a whole, since those two abilities were designed, almost single-handedly (a little help from Delirium) to replace a metric-fuckton of potency, utility, and mitigation that they removed, for reasons I still don't quite fathom.

Because they can't make up their damn minds what they want for us, its become an extremely frustrating job to optimize, as you're optimizing for pennies on the dollar. You're given the illusion of all these choices but in terms of DPS and even raid utility/mitigation, those choices make about as much difference as flavor response dialogue in most RPGs, and are similarly dissatisfying. Every time you pop a TBN and use Bloodspiller, the DRK next to you that didn't and simply DAed his Souleater is doing probably almost the exact same DPS, all other things being equal. Here's a resource. Use it. Doesn't matter how, just use it. Push buttons.

Right now, I use TBN any time I think it will pop, not because I know its a gain or a loss, but because if I don't I'm just ignoring that button outside of tankbusters, and then it feels like I'm not playing my full job. Having to participate in a zero-sum mechanic out of nothing greater than a personal obligation to use all of your job's tools even if it makes no difference to your performance is an awful feeling. And honestly, its this kind of banality that drives me up the wall, as it doesn't jump out as a problem in such a way that people will complain loudly about it.

In the spirit of that sentiment, us all keeping this thread on the front page until the next patch will hopefully go some distance towards getting the kind of changes we want to make the job satisfying on this level again.

[Chrono_Rising]

I would like to see at least some of the following changes:

(1) TBN: break time increased to 6 seconds
(2) TBN added effect: breaking makes your next bloodspiller or quietus oGCD
(3) Sole Survivor: turns damage delt to enemy into hp and mp for 15 seconds (raid wide)
(4) Living Dead: Change to "Dark Pact" damage taken becomes hp restored for ten seconds
(5) Dark Mind: when struck has a chance of decresing enemy str/dex/int/mind for 6 seconds, can be refreshed

opps I forgot one of the super important things because it was late and I was tired.

(6) Grit: take this off the GCD.

[Lyth]

I'm personally in favour of seeing TBN used as a dps optimisation tool, much like how Third Eye gets used on Samurai to squeeze in a bit of extra dps in exchange for fight knowledge.

The simplest solution with regards to TBN is to have it grant the DA effect on your next blood action. The DA effect reimburses you for the cost, and the Bloodspiller/Quietus is your reward for performing it correctly. This guarantees that it is a potency gain when you break it and a potency loss when you don't, without having to buff Bloodspiller's potency to the moon.

As far as Bloodspiller itself goes, I'm in agreement with Brannigan's earlier suggestion that it have an MP restoration effect. The TBN > Quietus interaction is a lot of fun in AoE. Of course, the flipside is that if you make Bloodspiller stronger, you make Delirium weaker, which is kind of already the case in AoE.

Between BW and BP, BP is fairly underwhelming. It needs to be rebalanced so that it's effective in single target.

Defensively, the main issue is resource costs. Half of your defensive abilities (in particular, the ones with the shortest recasts) cost MP. Grit costs 18% of your MP. TBN costs 25%. DADM costs 25%. This is a lot of MP to stockpile, especially if you're stance dancing. Resource-based mitigation only really works if all tanks pay to access their mitigation moves, or if you have a higher baseline dps to offset the losses.

At a bare minimum, Grit should not have an MP cost and DM's DA effect should be baseline. This stuff is just too expensive. There's also no reason why Grit should terminate BW and BP. If they are to be mutually exclusive, just keep one single buff and have the effect swap with stance.

As far as Sole Survivor goes, it's not really used for self-sustain. They could probably swap out the HP gain effect and replace it with blood gain.

Finally, with Living Dead, I think they need to reconsider how it fits in the spectrum of tank invincibility moves. If the effect is left as is, then they should swap the recast with Holmgang to bring it in line with the 3 minute Benediction. As it stands, it does not represent a middle ground between Holmgang and Hallowed. If they want to keep the recasts where they are, then it needs to be a better ability than it is now. Extend the invincibility duration to a full 10 seconds regardless of when the effect is cleansed, and give the player longer to cleanse it. Perhaps give MP restoring effects lifesteal when the effect is active so that the DRK can help their healer out.

[kashi11]

Yeah I agree with that. What do y'all think of the suggestions I put in post #191 page 20?

[Deathshiro]

And honestly, its this kind of banality that drives me up the wall, as it doesn't jump out as a problem in such a way that people will complain loudly about

Everywhere I've seen pretty much everyone thinks DRK is the best MT/OT... I'm over here thinking War & DRK still need buffS to be on plds level. Even then when people say "yeah they literally the best" I ask them how, all I get is "they have TBN"

Because we have one utility we are now an amazeball tank the likes that has never been seen?
I honestly don't get it, is it because Warrior doesn't have Utility? I honestly don't get it, and I've played this job through every raid and every piece of content. What do we have that Warriors don't other than TBN!?!

[WhyAmIHere]

Everywhere I've seen pretty much everyone thinks DRK is the best MT/OT... I'm over here thinking War & DRK still need buffS to be on plds level. Even then when people say "yeah they literally the best" I ask them how, all I get is "they have TBN"

Because we have one utility we are now an amazeball tank the likes that has never been seen?
I honestly don't get it, is it because Warrior doesn't have Utility? I honestly don't get it, and I've played this job through every raid and every piece of content. What do we have that Warriors don't other than TBN!?!

A slashing debuff. Oh wait.
A gap closer. Oh wait.
A decent skill that temporarily prevents death. Oh wait.
An oGCD that restores health. Oh wait.
A large health pool to take advantage of the HP-based shield. Oh, wait.

[SyzzleSpark]

Everywhere I've seen pretty much everyone thinks DRK is the best MT/OT... I'm over here thinking War & DRK still need buffS to be on plds level. Even then when people say "yeah they literally the best" I ask them how, all I get is "they have TBN"

Because we have one utility we are now an amazeball tank the likes that has never been seen?
I honestly don't get it, is it because Warrior doesn't have Utility? I honestly don't get it, and I've played this job through every raid and every piece of content. What do we have that Warriors don't other than TBN!?!

I have no idea who you're hanging out with but DRK is not the best at anything right now other than perhaps pulling the boss. So maybe you could say they're the best MT for the first 20-30s of a fight, but best OT? Where did you read that, Erowid? What cocktail of drugs is required to come to that conclusion?

TBN is not utility. If it saves the current MT, all it means is that they mucked up their CD rotation. If they survive with appreciably more than 5K HP, TBN was not necessary. Moreover, it does not mitigate enough damage to actually replace anything in your co-tank's cooldown rotation. Tankbusters are dealing upwards of 70-80K right now. A 5K shield is peanuts, and I would argue that it is not any more valuable than WAR's slashing debuff, except that the latter can actually be of value depending on your group composition.

[Kalocin]

I have no idea who you're hanging out with but DRK is not the best at anything right now other than perhaps pulling the boss. So maybe you could say they're the best MT for the first 20-30s of a fight, but best OT? Where did you read that, Erowid? What cocktail of drugs is required to come to that conclusion?

You'd be surprised what's on Reddit and off forums as there's a general mindset that DRK is basically the same from 3.0 with people saying things like we get mana back from blood price still. Anytime I see posts regarding tank balance, there's always some DRKs in there trying to tell em how it is but usually not as prominent as warriors or paladins talking. There's no downvote system here so luckily it's less of a hive mind.

Most recent that comes to mind (I couldn't find it unfortunately), right after OS4 was cleared, someone took a fight scene in an anime throwing in all their skills in the video that more or less implied that Dark Knight was OP and better than all others. A lot of people thought it was funny and true while a lot of Dark Knights posting were like "Yeah I wish", but most just assuming that's how it was.

There was another one too saying the TBN has made off-tanking fun, same kind of mindset there too. (With most of the negativity being that pre-lvl 70 is boring without TBN).

Gist version: Lots of ignorance regarding the job from those who do not play it or a tank in general.

[Jandor]

Why we don't have some sort of self heal that costs mana/blood escapes me, as we are a tank, after all, and our self-healing is by far the weakest, and yet we do not have the ability to convert this one resource into HP even though half of our job is converting blood into mana, mana into blood, or either into potency. Seems we should be able to convert at least one of those resources to HP.

Reverse convert/self clemency is a great idea, one of those things that once mentioned you wonder how you never noticed it was missing.

That plus a more useful sole survivor and TBN breaking giving you a free dark arts and I think DRK would be in a pretty good spot. Although I'd still miss scourge.

[Deathshiro]

Gist version: Lots of ignorance regarding the job from those who do not play it or a tank in general.

@Syzzle Trust me, I more than a good few know the garbage spot we are in. Ever since O4s/V4s was cleared with a DRK for world first everyone somehow though "DRK IS FINE WAR IS GARBAGE LOLOLOLOLOL" since players at a higher level of play than 99.9% of the population cleared it first with this certain comp

I'm pretty sure DRK was only brought for the approx 5k shield on the other tank because world first. That and most people in the race geared PLD/DRK because warrior was bad and no one knew for certain what changes they would get

Then people look at Warrior and go "WELL SHAKE IT OFF" yet people forget we have Dark Passenger, another useless ability. They also SOMEHOW(no clue how) believe that our mitigation suite is as good as PLD, and that warrior is lacking.

TL;DR - World first ruined majority of reddit mindset for class balance, as usual.