DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[SyzzleSpark]

A no-brainer fix to leveling DRK:

Dark Arts: Lv 40 <-> Delirium: Lv 45 <-> Dark Passenger: Lv 62
TBN: Lv 42 <-> Dark Mind: Lv 70

This way we get the Blood Mechanics and appropriate mitigation in the 40s and people can start learning how the job actually plays in endgame sooner rather than at the tail-end.

[InfiniDragon]

A no-brainer fix to leveling DRK:

Dark Arts: Lv 40 <-> Delirium: Lv 45 <-> Dark Passenger: Lv 62
TBN: Lv 42 <-> Dark Mind: Lv 70

This way we get the Blood Mechanics and appropriate mitigation in the 40s and people can start learning how the job actually plays in endgame sooner rather than at the tail-end.

These changes would be fantastic. I've said since I got DRK to 70 that TBN should be pre-60 and just not give Blood until you unlock the gauge; it's just too much of a part of DRK's kit to be at 70 (for better or worse, as I know your stance on TBN being so crucial haha).

[Lyth]

One difficulty in moving abilities around is the job quests. The Blackest Night, in particular, is strongly tied in to the Dark Knight job lore at level 70. I think that max level job balance is a more urgent issue than the play experience at lower levels.

Now that I've had some time to mull it over, I think the problem is that we've gone from being a job with more sustained dps, through DoTs and a steady stream of oGCDs, to one that tries to be more burst orientated without the job mechanics to support it.

To illustrate:

WAR:


PLD:


DRK:


(These are just some examples; the first two are from the same run, but the third is a slightly longer one. Just treat this as purely for illustration purposes.)

WAR has the vast majority of their damage output concentrated in their Berserk windows, once per minute, with a bigger burst every second Berserk due to IR. This has really good buff synergy, especially with TA/Embolden. It's also much simpler to optimise this style of play in lower uptime fights, because the damage is all in one place. PLD tends towards less burst, but more consistent damage, and tends to be more competetive in higher uptime fights.

DRK isn't too bad as far as the opener goes, when everyone's buffs are synced up. The 40s recast on BW puts us out of phase with most raid buffs until the 120s mark, as far as DA potency dumps go.

I'm wondering what would be the impact of dropping BW down to a 30 second recast. You'd have higher overall buff uptime (albeit on a relatively weaker buff than Berserk/FoF/Req), but you'd also be able to sync up with every TA like PLD/WAR instead of every second one.

Bloodspiller
Another issue from a burst standpoint is that individual Bloodspillers aren't as much of a potency dump as DA tends to be. Part of this has to do with relatively high combo potencies, and part of it has to do with the value of the resources tied to each combo step. It's actually surprising how important Syphon Strike is; when you factor in the MP gain, it's worth only a few less potency than Souleater.

As a point of comparison, Bloodspiller is worth 300 potency when it replaces HS, 96 on SyS, and 100 on SE. If you look at FC on WAR, FC is worth 420 potency when replacing HS, 310 on Maim, 230 on SE, and 197 on SP before factoring in Berserk. So each individual hit has less of an impact.

I think that your options are either to increase the net value of Bloodspiller, or to make it come up more frequently. You can address the former by either raising the potency or adding in MP gain. I'm in favour of MP gain, in part because it removes the feelsbad sense that you could be gaining resources off of SyS instead. It also removes the question of whether you should use TBN because it may or may not be a dps loss. We already know that the new Quietus-TBN synergy feels fantastic. Why not bring it over to single target?

Off-Globals
I think the greatest impact to our relative dps comes from the loss of most of the HW oGCDs (Reprisal, Low Blow, and the DP nerf). I can see the reason behind it, with the increase in DA usage. That being said, the remaining oGCDs are in a weird place. DP doesn't have a place in single target, and in AoE DADP for 50% of your MP seems pretty steep.

DA C+S doesn't get discussed much, but it's a net 372 potency/min under Darkside vs. a net 468 potency/min for Upheaval (factoring in SE and the gauge cost) and 600 for Spirits Within. Also, double-weaving DA with C+S doesn't feel good, and there's really only one place in the combo cycle to single weave it. Actually, double weaving DA with any oGCD doesn't feel good, especially during BW, because of the animation length.

I think it probably makes more sense to just build in the resource costs at this point. Perhaps have C+S cost blood and restore MP, while having DP cost MP and restore blood (while actually setting DP's potency/cost so that it's actually usable in single target) to keep that sense of resource exchange going.

Delirium
I think that there's a couple of problems with Delirium. The biggest is that, between the upfront resource cost and the total effect, it doesn't offer that much additional potency to be worth the 2 minute recast. I also think that the idea of a buff extension also runs contrary to most raid buff windows, where the goal is to fit as much potency into a fixed time interval as possible. So while the 8 extra seconds gets you more resources over the total interval, it's not really going to get you extra resources within a 10 second TA, for example.

I feel like this skill needs a rework, and I think that the focus needs to be on intensity rather than duration. My first thought was something along the lines of having DA persist for multiple attacks (similar to DA's original bug effect at launch), but that would leave you without a way to properly dump MP. Some other possibilities would be to have DA potency effects increase under Delirium, or to have DA generate blood and blood usage generate MP. Either way, it's too finicky and offers too little net benefit for the cost at the moment.

I know that there's more issues defensively as well, but I wanted to touch on just the main offensive issues at present (assuming a fight where all three tanks have the freedom to optimise with minimal stance usage, of course).

[Chrono_Rising]

Snip

I like your analysis and suggestions, I think more and more that we should behave more like black mages in terms of our resources, mana => blood => mana. What do you think about somethink like:
DA+SS => potency + bonus blood
DA+SE => potency + bonus blood
BS => + bonus mana
DA+BS => +bonus mana x 1.5

[TouchandFeel]

snip

I definitely agree that DRK needs a better focus on resource management and juggling/swapping of MP and Blackblood.
The general mechanics of using TBN to get Blackblood and using Quietus to get MP are fun and I would like to see this resource trading mechanic expanded and done more with.

I feel like this skill needs a rework, and I think that the focus needs to be on intensity rather than duration. My first thought was something along the lines of having DA persist for multiple attacks (similar to DA's original bug effect at launch), but that would leave you without a way to properly dump MP. Some other possibilities would be to have DA potency effects increase under Delirium, or to have DA generate blood and blood usage generate MP. Either way, it's too finicky and offers too little net benefit for the cost at the moment.

This made me think of an idea, perhaps a bit crazy but I think would definitely be fun.

First, they combine the Blackblood and Enhanced Blackblood traits into one single trait because really there is no need for them to be split into two.
This then opens up a trait slot where they could give us the following new trait.

Darker Arts
lvl.66
Allows for the storing of multiple Dark Arts usages up to a maximum of 3. Each Dark Arts stored resets the duration of all the stored Dark Arts usages to 10s.

The levels that Quietus, Bloodspiller and Delerium are acquired would need to get shuffled around with Quietus at 62, Bloodspiller at 66 and Delerium to 68.

Then change Delerium to the following.

Delerium
lvl.68
Ability - Instant - 120s.
Restores MP.
Additional Effect: Every time Dark Arts is activated it provides two usages instead of one.
Duration: 20s.

Similar to Inner Release but hopefully different enough to make it not feel the same.

[Kowen]

One difficulty in moving abilities around is the job quests. The Blackest Night, in particular, is strongly tied in to the Dark Knight job lore at level 70. I think that max level job balance is a more urgent issue than the play experience at lower levels.

I don't know, I think a few tweaks to the low level experience could have a big effect on player retention. I've gotten many friends to try the game out, but most of them just can't get through the ARR slog. Changing the order of some skills would be easy and go a long way to making pre-70 combat less boring.

The general consensus seems to be that RDM is one of the more fun jobs to play at low levels, and I think it's because they have most of their main rotation spells by 30. Imagine if they didn't get the mana gauge and combo until after 60? That's kind of how DRK feels to me right now.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

I think SE needs to simply pick a couple of spots to buff and focus those down; right now it seems like they can't make up their minds. Every buff they give us makes it harder for us to burst in any real capacity - they take turns buffing our nuke abilities and then turning around and buffing our generic combos so that the difference is nigh-nonexistent. Its almost as if the guy that designed 3.x DRK, 4.x DRK, and the 4.x buffs/adjustments are all 3 totally different people that don't talk or even commute to the same building every day.

I frankly could have done without the ridiculous buffs to our combo potencies and would rather have seen a more satisfying buff to Bloodspiller and Delirium like the ones you have stated here. If they want us to not have burst but be more about sustain we just become a poor-man's PLD.

Here's some concrete adjustments I'd suggest based on your statements:

Bloodspiller: Delivers an attack with a potency of 470, 610 while under the effect of Dark Arts. Ignores the Grit Damage penalty. Additional effect: Restores MP 1440 MP. Blood Gauge cost: 50
Carve and Spit: Delivers an attack with a potency of 450. Restores 960 MP. Blood Gauge cost: 20
Dark Passenger: Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Restores 10 Blood Gauge. MP cost: 1800
Delirium: Restores 2400 MP and increases the damage dealt of Dark Arts augmented abilities by 40%, while increasing the Blood returns of Blood Price and Blood Weapon by 100%. Blood Gauge cost: 50. Cooldown reduced to 80s.
Dark Arts: Generates 10 Blood per cast.

Under these changes, Bloodspiller and Carve and Spit would restore 3x and 2x Blood Weapon procs worth of mana, respectively. C&S would have a minor gauge cost to offset the fact that it no longer require's Dark Arts. Dark Passenger would function the opposite way, being double its current potency for 1800 mana, making it mana efficient next to DA, but also restoring a decent amount of Blood Gauge. Dark Arts would have Blood generation built into it, and Delirium would no longer extend BP/BW but instead increase their Blood returns and increase the damage dealt of DA'ed abilities by 40%, while keeping the initial mana return and Blood Gauge cost the same. I would also have its cooldown cut so that it could line up with every other Blood Weapon and not every 3rd, giving it parity with things like Zerk/IR and GB-RA/FoF which also line up every other cast instead of every 3rd.

[kashi11]

I really like this ^^^ It would also give us access to the blood gauge earlier, which I think makes a lot of sense.

[InfiniDragon]

One difficulty in moving abilities around is the job quests. The Blackest Night, in particular, is strongly tied in to the Dark Knight job lore at level 70. I think that max level job balance is a more urgent issue than the play experience at lower levels.

Perhaps they could trait TBN in some way that enhances it at 70 and merge Enhanced Blackblood into the base Blackblood trait (which IMO should have been the case anyway), therefore keeping the lore significance which the DRK techniques always have over the other jobs without making you have to wait until effing 70 for such a crucial skill. Like for example, have untraited version be called Shadowskin and be 30 seconds, then have the trait change it to the 15 second CD and the TBN name like a Jolt > Jolt II sort of thing so that it keeps the plot significance. Or make traited TBN and base one have the same CD, but make traited still give some blood gauge meter even if the shield doesn't break.