Suggestions for bringing DRK up to par, and QoL changes.

[MoarLegion]

The DRK Consolidated Feedback thread has strayed from its original purpose, in my eyes.
My intention is to suggest realistic and feasible changes that fits DRK back into what I see as its intended niche: The Middle Child, more offensively oriented than PLD, but with more/stronger defensive options than WAR.

Broad Strokes Changes in regards to Balance
PLD brings a great deal to the table in terms of DPS output, mitigation, and raid utility. I wont beat a dead horse with the specifics, but the simplest means of balancing PLD's contribution to the tank meta is to lower its DPS.

WAR retains its traditionally high DPS, but Raw Intuition and Vengeance, two powerful defensive CDs, in combination with role skills have actually made it the most defensively oriented tank within the meta.

The simplest change would be to increase the cooldown on RI and Vengeance by 30/60s respectively. This puts WAR's CD rotation similar to DRK but less powerful than PLD.

DRK is currently the weakest tank in regards to the meter sticks of DPS, Mitigation, and Raid Utility, and requires a bit more in depth tweaking.

Suggested Changes(these are individual suggestions and combinations of any would require more specific balancing)

The Blackest Night: Decrease MP cost to 1200mp(1/2 Dark Arts), increase duration to 6-8s, other effects unchanged.

Adjusting the MP cost of TBN has a twofold effect: Increasing DPS output by decreasing PPC loss, and increasing general mitigation. The increase to duration is largely QoL.

Dark Mind: Change effect to "Reduces Damage taken by 10%, DA effect 20%.
This gives us a short, quickfire Rampart, which improves DRK mitigation above WAR, but still below PLD. One could argue that damage typing is an antiquated system and have a solid argument. Personally, I like it for utility on other jobs(ala feint/addle), but I don't think type specific mitgation has any business on a tank.

Shadow Wall: Reduce cooldown to 120s.
With the proposed Vengeance change, this gives DRK a defensive advantage over WAR while still letting PLD have the stronger CD suite.

Dark Passenger: Revert to Heavensward values, rework the skill entirely, or remove it.
This is a particular bugbear for a lot of DRK players, because the reasoning for changing it from HW is largely incomprehensible. Reducing button bloat by making it useless is like trying to lose weight by cutting off a limb: You're lighter but now you're handicapped.

These are, IMO, bare minimum and feasible adjustments to balance tanks and help give them more identity.

Quality of Life Changes:

Plunge: Increase range to 20y. Because other gap closers are 20y.
Blood Price: Increase Blood Price MP regen to HW levels until Level 66 "Enhanced Blackblood" to reduce the burden on low level DRK.
Sole Survivor: Grants 5 points of Blackblood every server tick for its duration, other effect unchanged. This makes Sole Survivor less niche and gives it a decent purpose.

Feel free to contribute, please try to keep changes minimal and balanced. Outrageous ideas are likely to be dismissed out of hand, as will anything that just puts DRK on top of the imbalance.

[Eyvhokan]

I would add that Delirium's effect is so small that currently it does so little.

Delirium: No longer costs blood

Even without the blood cost, it still is a rather small effect for a 2m cooldown. Still, it has no business costing blood while doing so little.

[MeridaQ]

I think some of your DRK changes aren’t bad, but your requests to increase WAR’s cd times for vengeance and RI are very detrimental. If you increased those times as you suggest it would make the tank buster timings in the current content impossible for WAR to line up cool downs with it.

[ArianeEwah]

Delirium: No longer costs blood

Even without the blood cost, it still is a rather small effect for a 2m cooldown. Still, it has no business costing blood while doing so little.

Debatable.

Let's say, you mess up with WAR or even die: You need to replenish your gauge before you can burst. (Totally never happened to me )
PLD: Your mana pool is empty, you can't burst with Requiscat.
DRK would be the only tank job to use this to refill its mana pool with this.

I am all for buffs, but I don't think this one is necessary.

[Eyvhokan]

Debatable.

Let's say, you mess up with WAR or even die: You need to replenish your gauge before you can burst. (Totally never happened to me )
PLD: Your mana pool is empty, you can't burst with Requiscat.
DRK would be the only tank job to use this to refill its mana pool with this.

I am all for buffs, but I don't think this one is necessary.

Are you sure we're talking about the same ability? delirium doesn't even do anything without Blood Weapon/Price up. All it does is add 8/16s onto those.

[Cheyze]

delirium doesn't even do anything without Blood Weapon/Price up. All it does is add 8/16s onto those.

It gives MP.

Edit:

Restores MP.
Additional Effect: Extends Blood Weapon and Blood Price effects by 8s and 16s respectively.

Blood Gauge Cost: 50

[Eyvhokan]

It gives MP.

Edit:

Ah, forgot about that. But even with that in mind, MP doesn't really work in the same way for DRK as it does for PLD. It's more akin to a WAR using Equilibrium.

Let me reapproach this with a better wording then.

My point is: DRK would be the only job that doesn't need some kind of pool (mana or job gauge) to burst after a screw up.
PLD: "I had to heal just before my requiscat window? Damn, delay it then."
WAR: "I died RIGHT before my sexy FC window! Not even Infuriate ready? Argh."
DRK: "Blood Spiller! Oh, Delirium is ready, but that was my last Blackblood and mana... oh, don't need it! Extra mana, baby!"

I am not saying, it wouldn't be nice. Yet I think Delirium is fine as it is, there should be tweaks in other skills and abilites.

€dit: I still would consider a price reduction to 20, cause it IS a pretty darn important skill to keep on CD.

I see what you mean now. The MP it makes (due to the way DRK works with MP) is more like Equilibrium, but if the cost for missing the window is a concern, then the effect should probably be made more powerful (even with a reduced blood cost), as the 'reward' for it is actually pitiful as we found from a calculation someone here did.

[Reynhart]

If you increased those times as you suggest it would make the tank buster timings in the current content impossible for WAR to line up cool downs with it.

That's not entirely true. maybe they don't wan't to use it to focus on Fell Cleave, but there's still Inner Beast in WAR's toolkit, technically providing a mitigation skill without any long cooldown, and that is much more poweful than TBN.

[Crater]

DRK: "Blood Spiller! Oh, Delirium is ready, but that was my last Blackblood and mana... oh, don't need it! Extra mana, baby!"

2400 MP, without the Blood Weapon extension, is worth 140 potency.

If you use Inner Release, without Berserk, without Infuriate, starting from 0 gauge, it's impossible to get less than at least one extra Fell Cleave out of it (one Eye combo and one Path combo is 50 BG, and IR lets you turn that into two Fell Cleaves instead of one), that is still a gain of 300 potency over your standard combo GCD - twice as powerful as the skill change that you're claiming would be too overpowered to give DRK.

[whiskeybravo]

Realistic and feasible changes?

"nerf War"

How about focus on bring DRK up to PLD/WAR instead of bringing them down to DRK's level.. lol

Bring Shadow Wall up to Vengeance's effectiveness. 30% dr for 15 sec with 120 sec CD. Maybe include some passive mp regen similar to war's passive damage reflect if you want true parity.

Dark Mind 15% dr for 10 sec with 60 sec CD.

Dark passenger needs some adjustment, it feels like the devs put too much value on the blind effect as part of DRK's mitigation kit. Obviously the other part of this was likely their shift to reduce tank damage overall, hence why it's no longer a dps increase to use on 1 or 2 targets. They've already somewhat reversed their direction on tank-dps and need to continue to do so.

Plunge range should be matched to other gap-closers

That's not entirely true. maybe they don't wan't to use it to focus on Fell Cleave, but there's still Inner Beast in WAR's toolkit, technically providing a mitigation skill without any long cooldown, and that is much more poweful than TBN.

I don't really have any suggestion for TBN, but in this regard it's still roughly equivalent to IB. They both have advantages and drawbacks, but neither is clearly "much more powerful" than the other. If anything, a slight edge should go to TBN because it doesn't require the DRK to be in Grit to be useful.