DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[SyzzleSpark]

The DA effect might as well not exist now, and a 15% magic DR cooldown is not an acceptable substitute for having both ToB and RI on WAR. That's before we even attempt to make a comparison between Vengeance and Shadow Wall, or Holmgang and Living Dead. There's simply no comparison. WAR mitigates more for less effort, less resource management, and loses less dps to do so. It's just more forgiving at all skill levels, and there's four weeks of raid performance data to support this.

Removing all the resource costs from WAR's stance dancing on top of removing the costs from IR/Unchained was what pushed this over the edge. They had a slight advantage over DRK prior to going into 4.05, and now it's a significant one.

A bit of a tangent, but I can't help but notice a distinct inability between DRK and WAR mains to see eye-to-eye on the value/lack thereof inherent in their different playstyles. They mitigate effortlessly, but their DPS requires a bit more effort to maximize, however they are rewarded with the highest tank DPS for doing so, and they think this is awful. All you see is them complaining about how hard it is to do damage on their job.

Meanwhile in DRK world, we would kill to mitigate with the ease that they do, and to have a higher skill ceiling that rewards us for maximizing the job. I wonder how the community doesn't see this. Would they rather have to work for their mitigation whilst barely being rewarded at all in DPS for optimization? Cause if so they should all play DRK if you ask me.

[FallenWings]

A bit of a tangent, but I can't help but notice a distinct inability between DRK and WAR mains to see eye-to-eye on the value/lack thereof inherent in their different playstyles. They mitigate effortlessly, but their DPS requires a bit more effort to maximize, however they are rewarded with the highest tank DPS for doing so, and they think this is awful. All you see is them complaining about how hard it is to do damage on their job.

Meanwhile in DRK world, we would kill to mitigate with the ease that they do, and to have a higher skill ceiling that rewards us for maximizing the job. I wonder how the community doesn't see this. Would they rather have to work for their mitigation whilst barely being rewarded at all in DPS for optimization? Cause if so they should all play DRK if you ask me.

Your 3.0 WAR PTSD is showing. Funny because I'd say DRK was also low key OP during that time but agreeably not as bad as WAR.

Your constant generalizing of the WAR playerbase and bitching of your own class is frankly getting annoying to read when you're meant to be a source of well thought out DRK input.

No one likes the Duality of WAR. Because there is no duality. There is hardly ever a time where IB > FC or Unchained > Inner Release. You don't see any reasonable DRK petitioning for Blood Price to be on the same cooldown as Blood Weapon, so why even bother nuking WAR further with this crippling system? WAR does not have a middle ground like DRK or PLD where they are not crippled as hard for choosing to play in either Stance. If anything, DRK doesn't even have as big a penalty for being in Grit other than the cost of turning it on. Bloodspiller being virtually same in both states as well as TBN being availiable in both and hardly costing you DPS for using it is fantastic.

I'd kill to have Inner Beast in Deliverance and I'd kill if it didn't cost me an FC, but that's not going to happen because dur Beast Gauge.

You may think WAR is great numbers wise, and they may be.

But it surely isn't fun still having half my toolset being largely terrible to use because of what it costs me.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

As hard as it may be to believe, it doesn't come from a place of malice. The job I run content on most often after DRK is actually WAR. And frankly the only honest justification I have for continuing to main DRK is that I just like the job more. That being said, when I'm on WAR, I feel I am able to far more reliably and easily mitigate more damage consistently, and while finding the sweet spot for IRzerk can be a challenge, it feels good to do and master on a fight-by-fight basis. I have room to optimize and I'm rewarded for it. The job offers everything I loved about 3.0 DRK, actually (except utility). I don't have a logical reason for continuing to main DRK other than "I wanna."

Its fair to say "grass is always greener..." but that's a two way street. For a lot of DRK mains WAR as a job is enjoying a lot of what they miss about 3.x DRK (again, sans the utility), and yet many of its players are complaining about those very things. If you don't want easy mitigation and a higher skill ceiling we'll gladly take them.

The duality of WAR was something that a lot of people, as I recall, hailed about the job in 3.x. People praised the ability to freely make choices on the fly and the fluidity of doing so. I think more than anything in Defiance being bad, IR was just really unbalancing for the job overall. But that's a topic for another thread. The trade-offs that were inherent to the job were considered one of the neatest things about playing it.

I'm sorry my thoughts on that job are so triggering to a lot of people, but I'm actually trying to stick my nose in a lot less lately, since apparently I'm on a bloody watchlist for some people, keeping track of what I say about WAR and how often (last time I said anything on the subject was over a week ago?). It feels weird that people actually keep tally of what I say and have preconceived notions about what opinions that I, specifically am allowed to express. I'm just one person (syz drk post good yay syz war post bad grr). Lythia's points simply got me thinking.

[FallenWings]

If you don't want easy mitigation and a higher skill ceiling we'll gladly take them.

Take them, WAR is continuing to disappoint me with how mindless it has become. I don't like IR because of how 'hard' it is, I welcome that challenge. I hate it because of what it does to WAR outside of it and how it breaks my beloved Unchained.

Outside of their numbers, WAR is just not FUN. Pressing a oGCD on virtually off cooldown and spamming a linear SE>SP>SP rotation is mind numbing.

I'll gladly take DRKs overall toolkit. Atleast with DRK there is mana/blood management as well as the various sprinkling of Bloodspillers, Salted Earth placements and TBN to keep me active despite its single combo rotation.

The only issue(for me) really was numbers for the most part but the class is at the very concept, fun to play and execute. That should be something to be considered in the design of a class. How fun it is to play mechanically.

[Launched]

A bit of a tangent, but I can't help but notice a distinct inability between DRK and WAR mains to see eye-to-eye on the value/lack thereof inherent in their different playstyles. They mitigate effortlessly, but their DPS requires a bit more effort to maximize, however they are rewarded with the highest tank DPS for doing so, and they think this is awful. All you see is them complaining about how hard it is to do damage on their job.

Meanwhile in DRK world, we would kill to mitigate with the ease that they do, and to have a higher skill ceiling that rewards us for maximizing the job. I wonder how the community doesn't see this. Would they rather have to work for their mitigation whilst barely being rewarded at all in DPS for optimization? Cause if so they should all play DRK if you ask me.

It's because from a WAR point of view, the things we do better than the other tanks don't actually make a difference in how fast or efficiently or safely we clear fights.

We do more dps, yes. On average, 50-80dps more than PLD and 90-130dps more than DRK depending on percentile. The problem is, this isn't HW anymore. Those are actually smaller dps gaps than the ones between the tanks in Creator. (Edit: I forgot about A9S aoe padding. PLD was 170/100/200 dps behind DRK in A10S, A11S and A12S respectively, while DRK was very close to WAR). We're doing 80% more damage and the gap hasn't really changed. In relation to the entire party's dps, the dps gained by playing WAR is just completely irrelevant.

Yes, we have the best mitigation. But you're comparing tanks individually as if you're solo tanking instead of being part of a team. It doesn't matter which combination of tanks you take, you can reliably survive any tankbuster, and beyond that point more mitigation is useless overkill. A PLD/DRK combination has TBN and Intervention/Sheltron (depending on who's tanking) for every single tankbuster, that's a lot of mitigation even before using other skills like Rampart. Taking WAR in place of either other tank won't suddenly make things easier to heal because you should be making use of both tanks' cooldowns.