Blood Price feels underwhemling

[Phoenicia]

Also, hey Phoenicia, long time no see lol.

Too dang long time, actually. It' been since week 2 in HW iirc. I see you're on Goblin now! I might make a little Phoenicia over there to stay in touch! :P

Back on topic. The problem I have with Bloodprice isn't it's lock with Grit, it's its uselessness when activated.

The reasoning behind it being locked in Grit makes a lot of sense to me. Alas the situation of HW repeats where if you have a DRK, stick it to MT even if WAR or PLD are better at taking hits because it's more DPS. Which, not only is the meta, but the fights themselves are heavily designed around. This however, doesn't justify how weak BP is.

Let's compare the other pair of abilities locked behind stances: Unchained and IR. While sharing the CD is ridiculous in my opinion (and I think many tanks share that opinion with me). Unchained is really strong and would be one of the most valuable "utilities" the WAR could bring, had it not shared the CD with Inner Release which just massively outweighs it in DPS gains. Separate these two CDs and WAR is the kind of pulling because of how useful Unchained can be.

Back to Bloodprice, there's absolutely no reason to use it now, and since Grit is just bad, BP is even worse. It was suggested earlier that BP gets a pseudo-unchained effect, which I can get behind, if it either gets a higher CD or a lesser penalty negation (i.e. ignore 5~10% of Grit's penalty).

~ Phoenicia ~

[Deceptus]

It needs a 10-20% damage reduction added to it.

DRK already has the worst base mitigation of the three tanks.

[Chrono_Rising]

Taking into consideration how little you need to be in grit in raids, any buff to blood price, except removing the grit lock, is basically no buff.

[Xenosan]

Taking into consideration how little you need to be in grit in raids, any buff to blood price, except removing the grit lock, is basically no buff.

Truth. However I think a better Blood Price would be an opportunity to fix Souleater. Souleater absorb locked behind Grit, even in 3.x's DRK kit could see this was an ineffective survival element when solo/unsync'd.

You have to be in Grit to get the heal, but that also means your DPS is reduced 20% - thusly extending the duration of the encounter by a similar amount. The HP restores of Souleater do not compensate for prolonging the fight. You're only prolonging the inevitable.

You can say the same of WAR Storm's Path or PLD passive shield blocking, however:

This is not a problem for PLD, as prolonging combat increases Riot Blade use, thusly more Clemency and Requiscat windows with which they can survive.

This is not such a problem for WAR, as prolonging combat allows them to focus on only surviving until the next Equilibrium, Inner Beast, ToB, and Zerk. All of which CDs/Abilities a WAR can grind towards.

DRK does not have any of these target cooldowns/actions to grind towards, save Sole Survivor. Dead end. RIP.

Since Blood Price is locked behind Grit, and so is Souleater absorbs, I'd like to see some synergy between the two.

Also, from a healer's POV, I'll say Blood Price's icon is an eye catcher and a stubborn buff that insist on always being first on the party list and focus target Status Tray. So let Blood Price mean something for healers too. Increased healing received.

Blood Price buff: Larger amount of HP received from health absorbs (something like additional 15% - 30% HP received, increasing with the lower the DRKs HP) and a +10-15% received from healing spells received, maybe even have that exact amount ramp up with association to DRK HP percentage too.

And for Delirium+Blood Price, add to Delirium a 1,200 self heal while in Blood Price (or just Grit). Between Delirium extending buffed Blood Price and offering a 1,200 heal on activation, I'd say Delirium + Blood Price filled a gap in DRK's kit, and the overall sum of effects it provides compensates for the lost DPS of Blood Weapon > Delirium + being out of Grit.

[DWolfwood]

I might make a little Phoenicia over there to stay in touch! :P

Do it! lol Man, looking back to those early days of HW... We knew DRK would be doomed unless raids all catered to DRK lol... ughhh I kinda wish they hadn't and DRK had been on the receiving end of buffs and changes because I never really thought 3.x DRK was a greatly designed job to begin with outside of the first few days I was blinded by excitement.

Back on topic. (Blood Price)

Yeah, I mean there's so many ways in which they could approach it. That's definitely something I can initially get behind, but I'm a little reluctant to favor something that might lock a tank into something like always pulling. I'm not even so sure I'd make total use of a Blood Price like that either. I'd use it sure, just like I do now, but as MT DRK, I only pop Grit up for a single PS combo at pull, as a CD if it's not going to cut into DPS too much, or if healers really need the extra help. I guess it would better benefit the tanks who stay in Grit longer, which admittedly, I think SE might also be more interested in.

I would prefer they give DRK buffs in more clever ways like making Blood Price not even revolve around being hit and doing something that makes the job feel unique. Blood Price just feels so negligible right now.

Also, I'm curious about your reasoning behind making DRK MT. I think WAR is the ideal MT right now for O3S mainly due to the fact that I only use tank stance on the first 3 GCDs mostly for both of them as MT, and WAR just has so many CDs to rotate by using Holmgang so often while I also prefer DRK as OT because of Dark Mind. That said, I do prefer DRK MT over PLD MT by far.

In O4S, I don't even bother with DRK currently since WAR just feels so strong. If PLD/DRK comp, then yeah, I'd favor DRK taking most the busters, but with DRK/WAR... honestly I feel that comp kinda sucks because they both require healing for their invulns and PLD utility really shines in there. I'd probably still put WAR first for Exdeath, and most likely WAR first for Neo too... though I guess you could get a bit more clever with CD rotations. I'll have to think how I'd even wanna work that out.

[RitsukoSonoda]

So. checking out DRK after SB and seeing what they did with the MP recovery from blood price

I figure since atm out of the 3 tanks DRK has the fewest options for baseline mitigation by observation so far because it feels like about half of DRK's mitigation skills were removed with no real compensation they need to atleast revert blood price's MP recovery per hit back to the ratio it used in HW. This would atleast create a niche for it tanking large groups of enemies since they'd be able to go back to mitigating damage on large pulls through drained HP with repeated use of DA+AD they could sit in until SE does something to actually fix the problem they created for the job trying to simplify the combat flow.

[Ekimmak]

This would atleast create a niche for it tanking large groups of enemies since they'd be able to go back to mitigating damage on large pulls through drained HP with repeated use of DA+AD they could sit in until SE does something to actually fix the problem they created for the job trying to simplify the combat flow.

And that niche is exactly what SE is trying to stamp out, so I doubt that Blood Price will ever be restored. They despise the full dungeon pulls. And since that was a skill tailor made for those sorts of dungeons... away Blood Price goes.

By this point, they might as well make it an MP restore that bypasses the Darkside effect, because the yield isn't even a fraction close to being worth it.

[Capn_Goggles]

And that niche is exactly what SE is trying to stamp out, so I doubt that Blood Price will ever be restored. They despise the full dungeon pulls. And since that was a skill tailor made for those sorts of dungeons... away Blood Price goes.

By this point, they might as well make it an MP restore that bypasses the Darkside effect, because the yield isn't even a fraction close to being worth it.

Of course they despise it, they've made every effort to kneecap the tactic as much as possible; the end result of course being that nothing changes and it just makes everything more tedious for no apparent reason, the same as many such changes. Mitigating a dungeon by draining the life from the enemies is Dark Knight as all hell, and a very interesting way of differentiating them from other tanks. Shame that they're biased against many of the ways tank players try to entertain themselves in their otherwise dull role.

[RitsukoSonoda]

And that niche is exactly what SE is trying to stamp out, so I doubt that Blood Price will ever be restored. They despise the full dungeon pulls. And since that was a skill tailor made for those sorts of dungeons... away Blood Price goes.

By this point, they might as well make it an MP restore that bypasses the Darkside effect, because the yield isn't even a fraction close to being worth it.

Looking at DRK's initial kit when it came out in HW it seemed tailor made for this niche figuring it had an Centered AoE enmity skill that dealt damage, A linear AoE skill that did damage and could blind, and a targeted AoE skill that drained HP. It really felt to me like the go to tank for larger groups of enemies because it could very easily build enmity on all of them with very little concern for stray targets.

If SE wants to get rid of that niche they need to find a new solution or kit on how they want DRK to play out before doing things to try and remove the niche because its about the same as wanting to do performance mods on your car and gutting out all the stock parts long before you have even purchased the new parts that were supposed to replace them

[DWolfwood]

If SE wants to get rid of that niche they need to find a new solution or kit on how they want DRK to play out before doing things to try and remove the niche because its about the same as wanting to do performance mods on your car and gutting out all the stock parts long before you have even purchased the new parts that were supposed to replace them

I personally favor this greatly. Being an AoE king is such a marginal niche. Dungeons are face roll easy, so until they start making AoE a big part of raid, it's not worth making a tank's expertise be this.

That said, what you said about it not making sense to remove without replacing is exactly what they did with most of DRK's HW kit in SB...