Interview with xenosys-vex

[TouchandFeel]

Yet they quickly addressed and made changes to WAR, changes that were not just potency tweaks and could be easily defined as "fine tuning" if what DRKs are asking for is being labeled as such.

Why was it so imperative for a large portion of the tank community to have those things fixed while DRKs should be accepting of nothing to minimal fixes for their problems.
Why is it acceptable for SE to so quickly and vocally acquiesce to WAR and give them what they ask for and more while giving DRK naught but a shrug.

Just imagine the response if SE had taken the same stance with WAR.

People taking an attitude of "well fixing stuff is not SE's style so just deal" is absurd when less than a patch cycle ago we were shown the contrary.

Also DRK's problems are not just issues that can be fixed with slight potency buffs. While players like to focus a lot on dps and DRK's damage is part of the problem, it is just part of a much bigger mess that goes much deeper than anything potency tweaks will fix.

[Aana]

Yet they quickly addressed and made changes to WAR, changes that were not just potency tweaks and could be easily defined as "fine tuning" if what DRKs are asking for are being labeled as such.

Why was it so imperative for a large portion of the tank community to have those things fixed while DRKs should be accepting of nothing to minimal fixes for their problems.
Why is it acceptable for SE to so quickly and vocally acquiesce to WAR and give them what they ask for and more while giving DRK naught but a shrug.

Just imagine the response if SE had taken the same stance with WAR.

People taking an attitude of "well fixing stuff is not SE's style so just deal" is absurd when less than a patch cycle ago we were shown the contrary.

Also DRK's problems are not just issues that can be fixed with slight potency buffs. While players like to focus a lot on dps and DRK's damage is part of the problem, it is just part of a much bigger mess that goes much deeper than anything potency tweaks will fix.

The war thing honestly came out of left field. People kinda shut up about war (its never silent. Hell theres a fix pld thread up right now) after the gauge changes (which were just numbers btw. Nothing 'hard' on the dev side all thigns considered). Just a quiet post here and there about giving a reason to have SIO on a hotbar, kinda like the occasional mention of survivor these days. 'Itd be nice if' posts. But even the SIO thing was a single skill overhaul. So for all the comparisons done, Devs changed the numbers in some skills and recreated SIO. Why should we expect something much more dramatic for drk? Buncha number tweaks (potencies here an MP reduction there etc) and maybe something like a survivor rework if we're really lucky.

There are 2 separate issues with the way drk works now.

1. Power. Its underpowered by a smallish margin in DPS, threat maintenance, etc (though with shirk/nin etc enmity can easily fall into the 'good enough' category for SE). These are all easily addressed by number changes. EZPZ. What I advocate.
2. Playstyle. Clunkyness. dis-Synergy. Goes by many names but people don't like how it 'feels' to play drk.

1 is easy to manage and I advocate tweaking the numbers to bring about rough parity with tanks. Its considerably lower investment by devs and brings everything in line at a practical level.

2 has a myriad of problems. Starting with lack of consensus. Some people actually like drk as it feels now (shocking I know!). Some want it like HW. Some want to transform it into their own view of what drk should be, etc. Secondly, its significantly more dev work. These are playstyle changes, redesigns, etc. They take more work to do and no matter how SE does it, everyone wont be happy anyway. You make it the high skill cap fast job in HW? theres gonna be angry drks that wanted 123 (which used to be pld and got moved to SB Drk and doesn't exist anywhere else now).

The last overhaul of a job in this game was 2.0-2.1 war. And that was because it couldn't actually tank the content in the game. Even though it actually FIXED war, people were STILL mad they destroyed the 'blood tank' style. You still see the remnants of that in the constant bloodbath whining. War could not actually tank the content in the game and that is the one and only time any job got a non-expac rework. Period. And when you really look at it, war didnt get any new actions, animations, or other work. It was just a MASSIVE number overhaul. No other job got a new skill or animation outside of an expac ever with the single exception of SIO (which is why it was so out of left field imo). The closest they've done is give sustain back which was already developed. Drk isn't getting a fundamental rework. I'm sorry, but its just unrealistic and setting yourself up to flip more tables.

So instead of asking for the moon when we don't even have a plane let alone a shuttle, why not ask for a nice road trip? Tweak some numbers. Bring drk from 'slightly behind' to being in the pack again. You aren't getting HW drk back anymore than War is getting bloodbath or path back. So tone down war, bring up drk #s to match pld, (or bring everyone to war, or down to drk. whatever. you get the idea.) Its not that bad being on the bottom if the difference is 1 inch, and since someone will always be the bottom, best design is just to reduce the gap between jobs so whoever gets the shit RNG that patch isn't head and shoulders up or down. Just an inch.