With all this DRK feedback, can we get Scourge back please?

[Aana]

Incredibly, the game did not fall apart and they didn't need to drop another Dalamud on it when SE reintroduced Miasma II into Scholar rotations.

SE deciding to get rid of DoTs "across the board" was not some wise, sage decision that was made after very carefully considering every single repercussion and determining that there was just no other way forward. It was a sweeping, heavy-handed "Get rid of ALL X" blunder that created at least as many problems as it solved, because they didn't think it through, and they didn't consider that not all of those DoTs were of equal importance to every class they were taken away from.

Scourge was not Aero, Combust, or Bio; weak DoTs that produce less (or essential equal) damage to the filler direct-damage attacks that healers have. It wasn't Fracture; a skill that was used to manipulate your GCD order more than it was used for its damage; or even a Mutilate; a skill that needed to tick for 18-21+ seconds and avoid replacing a combo finisher before it became worthwhile to use.

Not all DoTs are equal, not all DoTs contribute equally to class performance and playstyle. Scourge, Touch of Death, and Lead Shot were all extremely valuable to their respective classes and should not have been thrown away in some overreaching blanket DoT ban without being given substantial compensatory buffs and large class redesigns to mitigate that damage.

Machinist got substantial buffs and a total class overhaul to compensate for the loss of Lead Shot - now Machinist is in a very good place.
Monk did not get substantial buffs or a class overhaul to compensate for the loss of Touch of Death - now Monk is in the dumpster.

Dark Knight got more nerfs than buffs, and a stripped down version of its former toolkit rather than a class overhaul. Two guesses where it is right now. Actually, no, I don't trust you to get that one right: It's in the dumpster, right alongside MNK, SAM, and BLM.

They removed non combo dots. You can make the exact same argument for phlebotomize. It was the single biggest potency gcd on the class whos only purpose is to deal damage. Scourge is the exact same thing as fracture, but because fracture had shit potency and scourge didn't it's somehow God's gift to tanks. Combo oriented classes that had 1 bitton, apply 30 sec dot got killed. Its a core part of drk? At least fracture was used on 3 different jobs strategically to manipulate the rotation. Thats more engaging than scourge ever was.

The only reason people want scourgr back is because it looked cool. If damage is your primary concern there is no reason it needs to be through a 1 button gcd on a combo class.

1 dot won't kill the game? Let's see how long it takes SMN to notice getting cred in eureka to make their relics is harder on dot classes in open world trying to grind out the best weapon in the tier. 5, 4, 3, 2,....

Scourge is a flat skill that provides damage in the most passive way possible. That's not iconic for a class known for its a pm. You like the animation? Drgs miss their poledance too.

Scourge objectively offered nothing but a damage boost. If se wants you to do more damage they would just type a different number in any number of potency boxes. It's the exact same as fracture and phleb. Nothing iconic. Nothing job specific. Just dots to make smns cry in open world content.

[Chrono_Rising]

They removed non combo dots. You can make the exact same argument for phlebotomize. It was the single biggest potency gcd on the class whos only purpose is to deal damage. Scourge is the exact same thing as fracture, but because fracture had shit potency and scourge didn't it's somehow God's gift to tanks. Combo oriented classes that had 1 bitton, apply 30 sec dot got killed. Its a core part of drk? At least fracture was used on 3 different jobs strategically to manipulate the rotation. Thats more engaging than scourge ever was.

Except on Samurai and Paladin. SAM clearly didn't retain its dot being a new class, but if the reason for not having non-combo dots is entirely for SMN benefit I don't see why SAM would be designed with one or why Paladin would retain its dot on Circle of Scorn. I'm a bit sketchy on an argument that all combo based classes needed to lose non-combo dots when 2/7's of them have one. Also I'm relatively certain Chaos Thrust was HW Dragoon's highest ppgcd, but my memory is weak and my knowledge of Dragoon is questionable.

As far as Fracture, I know 1 non-warrior tank in the top 10 in Alexander (on only 1 fight to be very clear) who actually used fracture, and even there the other 9 out of 10 did not use fracture. Not exactly engaging for other tanks (except I guess in that very very small percentage of cases where it might be a consideration), but certainly had its uses for warrior.

1 dot won't kill the game? Let's see how long it takes SMN to notice getting cred in eureka to make their relics is harder on dot classes in open world trying to grind out the best weapon in the tier. 5, 4, 3, 2,....

I would like to point for a second time that there is no reason that Scourge needs to come back as a dot. I imagine it could be redesigned as an oGCD selfbuff like salted earth and avoid the issue of there being a cap on dots entirely. It could retain its animation, but be oGCD and that avoids all the issues which have been raised. I for one would love to see some more oGCD on DRK that isn't Dark Arts spam.

Scourge objectively offered nothing but a damage boost. If se wants you to do more damage they would just type a different number in any number of potency boxes. It's the exact same as fracture and phleb. Nothing iconic. Nothing job specific.

As someone who played dark knight all through HW I actually liked the dot management that came with the DRK, and was rewarding because better uptime was rewarded. People are asking for it back, apparently they liked the way that it interacted with the game play of dark knight too. Thats despite what you have pointed out. Personally I think it would be great for the class since they decided to make it a two combo class (and really effectively 1 combo class), it would go a long way in breaking up the soul eater spam DRK currently has.

[Valdegarde]

This whole argument that the reason DoTs were nixed was because 24 person groups, hunts, and Diadem rings rather hollow to me, since, although frustrating, when did a DoT make or break such incredibly difficult, critical hardcore encounters? I personally believe SE just removed (most) of them because they figured it was too many more buttons to press, not realizing it wasn't that simple for some jobs. All sentiments that have already been said, of course.

It's just frustrating for a lot of players I think, that Dark Knight has lost a lot of outgoing sources of its damage that needed to be combined together to feel like a fully functioning class.
We used to have to juggle Low Blow and Reprisal along with using Salted Earth, Carve & Spit, Plunge and Dark Passenger on cooldown, all while timing dark arts between and the balance between Scourge and Delirium.
Now holding onto dark arts has become much more restrictive, there is no more Low Blow/Reprisal, and Dark Passenger is useless, so you're really only looking at Salted Earth, Plunge and Carve and Spit as alternatives besides Bloodspiller/Souleater to...well...be an entire Dark Knight, frankly. 5 ways to do damage.

For comparison, Warrior has Onslaught, Upheaval, Fell Cleave, Vengeance, Storm's Path and Eye, 7, while Paladin has...gosh, let's see, Shield Swipe, Spirits Within, Circle of Scorn, Holy Spirit, Requiescat, Goring Blade, Royal Authority, also 7, if you don't want to count Sword Oath uptime as its own source of damage.

Even Plunge also feels like a punishment to use, with its reduced range and animation lock, while Dragoon and Ninja have been getting quicker animations and Warrior and Monk can just zip right at anything with no care in the world. There's a fat chance of getting Reprisal and Low Blow back in any recognizable form, and SE has been notably stubborn on wanting Dark Passenger to be an absolute joke.

Scholars getting Miasma II back gives just the smallest flame of hope that we can get some form of differentiating damage besides just being the Salted Bloodspiller class with a Carve and Spit once in a while. It's weird, Dark Knight feels almost more like a healer with its rotation now.

[Tint]

i said it again somewhere but i am glad that they removed the dot. sure, the animation was cool and DRK lacks damage right now and it seems that scourge could fill that dps gap - but however, there are other ways to bring DRK on par dps wise and i like the fact that i finally can play a class without a dot (ok, salted earth technically IS a dot...). it was so annoying that every single class had to manage dots until the 4.0 change... more variety please! (and yeah, dark arts spam isn't really what i consider better than keeping a dot running, but i don't want the dot back anyway).

[Crater]

They removed non combo dots.

Thunder
Bio I/II/III
Miasma
Miasma II
Windbite/Stormbite
Venomous Bite/Caustic Bite
Aero III
Aero I/II
Higanbana
Circle of Scorn

You can make the exact same argument for phlebotomize.

You can, and it was okay because Dragoon received a huge overhaul to its core class gameplay.

Full Thrust got bumped up from 360 potency to 450 potency since 3.x. If Souleater had gone from 280 base potency to 370, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Power Surge was removed, and was instead built into each and every Jump that a Dragoon does, while the other parameters of Jump were unchanged. If Dark Passenger had kept its HW MP cost and potency and had simply had the Dark Arts Blind and 100 potency built in, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Dragoon went from 4 GCDs per combo to 5 GCDs per combo, with the 4th and 5th GCDs bumped up to 300 and 400 potency respectively. If Delirium were a 4th combo GCD on Dark Knight with a potency of 350+, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The Heavensward class mechanic of Dragoon consuming their BotD timer to use Geirskogul was removed and replaced with a powerful second-stage upgrade to BotD that gives the class a huge burst of damage under LotD. The Heavensward class mechanic of Dark Knight gaining tons of potency from Parrying and taking damage in general was removed and replaced with absolutely nothing.

1 dot won't kill the game? Let's see how long it takes SMN to notice getting cred in eureka to make their relics is harder on dot classes in open world trying to grind out the best weapon in the tier. 5, 4, 3, 2,....

No it won't kill the game, don't be dense.

In Heavensward, every class could apply 3-4 DoTs or other high-uptime debuffs except for BRD (2 DoTs), BLM, and MCH (1 DoT each). In Stormblood, no class except SCH (after the restoration of Miasma II) can apply more than 2 high-uptime debuffs. Dark Knight can apply zero. Restoring Scourge is not going to cause a single problem. Period.

[Lyth]

Scourge had its faults. It was probably one of the biggest places where players lost dps in HW outside of pure uptime/autos and it forced rotational structure on a job which was freeform in all other respects. But the one nice thing about Scourge was that people didn't see it as Fell Cleave. It could be a 500 potency dot and nobody would complain about it. There is a strict upper cap on how powerful Bloodspiller can be, simply because there's an expectation that it "must" be weaker than Fell Cleave (since WAR is the "offensive tank".)

The solution is not to bring back Scourge, but to ensure that DRK is adequately compensated for its loss.

[Ekimmak]

There is a strict upper cap on how powerful Bloodspiller can be, simply because there's an expectation that it "must" be weaker than Fell Cleave (since WAR is the "offensive tank".)

Which is a really weird thought to me, as someone who has mained WAR and DRK.

It takes more time to build up enough blood to use bloodspiller than to build up BG to use Fell Cleave, unless you count the 50 blood you get from TBN. Which can be used far more frequently than Infuriate can, but Infuriate has a long cooldown time instead of a massive resource cost. Fell Cleave is saved to be spammed during WAR's burst phases... I don't know whether there's any proper strategy to be used for bloodspiller.

I really don't like comparing the two. With all these factors on each side, just a minor adjustment could have unintended consequences.

[Lyth]

You're absolutely correct. In terms of raw damage, Bloodspiller doesn't compare to Fell Cleave (even comparing it as a 540 potency attack under DA to a 650 potency one under Berserk). In terms of frequency, if you look at the best DRK performances on a given fight, Bloodspiller gets used less frequently than either Holy Spirit or Fell Cleave. As a result, you'll see both HS and FC have a significantly larger contribution to PLD and WAR's dps (more than autos), while Bloodspiller has a lower contribution to total dps than autos. Ideally you want to fit in more Bloodspillers under raid buffs (TA/Embolden/Hypercharge) and infusions, but there's no simple way to queue them up and spam it like you can on the other two jobs, and there's no fixed personal buff window in which you can do so.

It just doesn't offer up enough to offset what we lost.

[Crater]

Balance arguments aside, it's really a crime that Bloodspiller, with its incredibly dramatic animation that ends in a giant black Ahk Morn beam shooting up into the sky is a less powerful attack than Fell Cleave with it's wussy little axe lovetap.

[InfiniDragon]

Balance arguments aside, it's really a crime that Bloodspiller, with its incredibly dramatic animation that ends in a giant black Ahk Morn beam shooting up into the sky is a less powerful attack than Fell Cleave with it's wussy little axe lovetap.

Yep, Bloodspiller is one of the coolest looking attacks in the whole game, you spiral through the air like something out of Metal Gear Rising and dunk the unfortunate target, on top of the black beam blasting into the air.

It's one of the most satisfying attacks in an MMO I've played, apart from needing to be stronger IMO.