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

[Aana]

Oh yes, how obvious your point was. When you said "they removed non-combo DoTs", what you meant to say was that they removed DoTs that...

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Do we need to continue derailing this thread with debates about the exact number of dots the server can handle, theoretical slippery slope arguments that all classes will get their dots back, other classes rotations whose potency was gained back and then some, misinformation about our combo, and level 60 buffs without mention of half the nerfs? Or can we let other people enter the discussion about if they even want scourge back to even try and gain consensus on how we want our class to be put up to par with the others?

But its not 'theoretical'. This isn't some made up BS that 'might' be a problem. There is a cap of debuffs on a target. Period. Theres no theory. Visual cap was 30, hard effect cap was 60. There was nothing 'theoretical' about people struggling to play their jobs on 24 man and openworld content. Its not a red herring. Its an actual problem that existed in THIS game before they culled the debuffs.

War used to be able to put up 3 debuffs 24/7. Now they can put up 1 permanently and it is overwritten by 2 other copies on other classes and a 5 sec debuff once a minute. Drg used to keep up 3 debuffs full time, (excluding lolFeint) and now only puts up 2 and a 10 sec feint every 120. Brd had 4 debuffs. Now they have 3 and foe cant last as long. Nin Deleted mutilate all together. Combined dancing edge and shadow fang. Virus (and its 3 debuffs) gone, replaced by narrower, role skill actions available to many fewer jobs. Smn the friggin dot class lost 3 debuffs abilities.

This is ignoring the reduction across the board in shorter things like silence/stuns that now have to be cross role instead of part of a permanent damage rotation.
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Net result is they have removed a HUGE number of long duration debuffs. They cut the duration debuffs are on. They removed guaranteed spam as part of rotations and moved them to role skills so they wont even be accessable to everyone all the time. End of the day the result is an utterly massive reduction of debuffs on monsters at any given time. Just in time for new open world content that relics will be grinded in. Last thing SE wants is smns unable to get relics because they cant dot things for points.

They didn't 'overlook' scourge. They didn't forget about it. They systematically went through the entire game to remove skills like this from every class. But sure, im the blind one here. SE obviously didn't have any reasons to mass cull debuffs from the game. Maybe you guys don't remember diadem and smns unable to get gold. Maybe you don't remember 24 man raids when smns could only spamm ruin on single target bosses. It was mildly annoying when I couldn't get a chaos thrust on or a phleb. But some jobs were unplayable in certain content. But screw all that. Drk needs scourge or were gonna flip forum tables.

They did a mass culling across the entire game of DOT effects and debuffs. You can put your head in the sand all you want and keep thinking they are going to bring back the same type of skill they methodically went through the entire game to remove all copies and versions of.

SE has explicitly stated the hard cap numerous times. They also mentioned the cap when developing stormblood. This isn't some made up slippery slope crap to keep drk from getting toys. It has been a serious problem in the past and SE has been uncharacteristically straight forward in discussing this. But you guys are gonna keep whining for scourge just like the last year straight regardless of the plainly obvious and rational reasons it got deleted. You don't need me telling you the obvious truth. This forum has begged for scourge for a year straight. By all means, go forth and be perpetually disappointed every patch you don't get a dot back even though its plainly obvious its not coming and theres rational reasons why.

[whiskeybravo]

TLDR: Scourge WAS replaced and then some. If you still had scourge you wouldn't have drkside buff. SE didn't just 'forget' about it. You aren't pointing out some oversight on their part.

It still leaves the possibility of undertuning. Yes, maybe they intended for the boost in other areas to make up for Scourge, but it just didn't end up being enough.

I like Crater's point about "a source of damage that isn't affected by many instances of forced disengagement from the target." I'm sure the damage-loss impact is relatively minor in this particular situation, but it helps reinforce the point that maybe the boosts simply weren't enough to make up for the changes.

I mean, either they did "forget" and overlooked a few relatively minor aspects that have since snowballed in to an overall bigger issue. Or they knew the disparities existed even after the changes and simply chose to ignore it and leave them as-is. It's pretty cut and dry in this regard, imo. Either they didn't realize it was going to be a big deal, or simply chose not to care. I don't really see a middle ground. Their statements about balance being fine right now doesn't really help clarify which, either.. They still don't get it, or they still don't care? Idk.. Lol

So, no, DRK did not get buffs that "more than" countered what they lost.

It would be nice if, in some alternate universe, there was an untouched-from-HW Lv70 DRK to compare against Lv70 SB DRK.

It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call... the Twilight Zone.

[Chrono_Rising]

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But its not 'theoretical'. This isn't some made up BS that 'might' be a problem. There is a cap of debuffs on a target. Period. Theres no theory. Visual cap was 30, hard effect cap was 60. There was nothing 'theoretical' about people struggling to play their jobs on 24 man and openworld content. Its not a red herring. Its an actual problem that existed in THIS game before they culled the debuffs.

War used to be able to put up 3 debuffs 24/7. Now they can put up 1 permanently and it is overwritten by 2 other copies on other classes and a 5 sec debuff once a minute. Drg used to keep up 3 debuffs full time, (excluding lolFeint) and now only puts up 2 and a 10 sec feint every 120. Brd had 4 debuffs. Now they have 3 and foe cant last as long. Nin Deleted mutilate all together. Combined dancing edge and shadow fang. Virus (and its 3 debuffs) gone, replaced by narrower, role skill actions available to many fewer jobs. Smn the friggin dot class lost 3 debuffs abilities.

This is ignoring the reduction across the board in shorter things like silence/stuns that now have to be cross role instead of part of a permanent damage rotation.
ETC.

ETC.

ETC.

Net result is they have removed a HUGE number of long duration debuffs. They cut the duration debuffs are on. They removed guaranteed spam as part of rotations and moved them to role skills so they wont even be accessable to everyone all the time. End of the day the result is an utterly massive reduction of debuffs on monsters at any given time. Just in time for new open world content that relics will be grinded in. Last thing SE wants is smns unable to get relics because they cant dot things for points.

They didn't 'overlook' scourge. They didn't forget about it. They systematically went through the entire game to remove skills like this from every class. But sure, im the blind one here. SE obviously didn't have any reasons to mass cull debuffs from the game. Maybe you guys don't remember diadem and smns unable to get gold. Maybe you don't remember 24 man raids when smns could only spamm ruin on single target bosses. It was mildly annoying when I couldn't get a chaos thrust on or a phleb. But some jobs were unplayable in certain content. But screw all that. Drk needs scourge or were gonna flip forum tables.

They did a mass culling across the entire game of DOT effects and debuffs. You can put your head in the sand all you want and keep thinking they are going to bring back the same type of skill they methodically went through the entire game to remove all copies and versions of.

SE has explicitly stated the hard cap numerous times. They also mentioned the cap when developing stormblood. This isn't some made up slippery slope crap to keep drk from getting toys. It has been a serious problem in the past and SE has been uncharacteristically straight forward in discussing this. But you guys are gonna keep whining for scourge just like the last year straight regardless of the plainly obvious and rational reasons it got deleted. You don't need me telling you the obvious truth. This forum has begged for scourge for a year straight. By all means, go forth and be perpetually disappointed every patch you don't get a dot back even though its plainly obvious its not coming and theres rational reasons why.

Aana, literally your entire post is a red herring and a distraction. No one debates the hard cap, what is debated is whether or not 1 more dot would cause issues. They added miasma 2 without issue clearly there is some wiggle room. And if we are at the cap now, then I suggest SE add scourge back as a self buff like salted earth which avoids the issue entirely. Or take away paladin's Circle of Scorn dot and just have it be aoe damage for the full potency including the dot damage and enmity upfront (this is actually a slight buff since nothing will die before the dot finishes ticking), then there is room for another dot in the game.

You point out rational reasoning yet aren’t responding to what the slippery slope is and instead constructed a straw man argument that we claimed that the hard cap is theoretical, I don't doubt its existence and as far as I can tell no one in this thread has either. Yet you keep pointing at it as if we are saying it is made up (which to be clear it isn't).

The slippery slope argument you presented has to do with dark getting back scourge so all classes must get their dots back. That is the slippery slope argument I am calling a theoretical distraction, because like most slippery slope arguments we have no basis for this even being a slippery slope. I don't think Monk's dot would fix its issues, but I imagine it is in a different situation than dark knight. MCH, DRG, and NIN do not need their dots back, they are in a very good place right now without them so I see no reason for why they would need to have them restored.

[Valdegarde]

Summoners are more popular now, what's stopping an alliance of mostly Summoners, Bards and Scholars to clog the DoT limit currently? And for like the 10th time, people are trying to work with that logic anyway, thinking of ways to fill the Scourge-shaped gap in Dark Knight's toolkit in new and more applicable ways. It just so happens Scourge filling a Scourge shaped gap works rather nicely. Something that allows a GCD to mix up the spam of Dark Arts, that has a lasting effect that also increases our overall damage done by a little bit.

It would be nice if, in some alternate universe, there was an untouched-from-HW Lv70 DRK to compare against Lv70 SB DRK.

That's an interesting and ultimately super depressing rabbit hole to leap into. There are plenty of level 70 ilvl 330+ Machinists who miss their level 60, ilvl 270 playstyle for example.

[Aana]

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This is why I said much earlier that the 'bring scourge back' comes in 2 varieties. Animation is cool the 'scourge will fix our damage problem'. The 1st just aesthetic point which has no point in debating what 'looks' cool, the second is strictly 'Drk damage is to low scourge would fix it' (to some degree depending on exact numbers anyway). Bringing back scourge as it originally was is just damage at the expense of an extra dot which have been systematically removed for rational, reasonable reasons. All scourge does is up drk damage and theres already existing weak and underused actions that DONT have dots attached. Which DONT require adding more buttons/combos/mechanics/needlessly that can do damage.

If all you want is damage why isn't there a dark passenger buff thread for every scourge thread? Why not be OK with other passive damage buffs like darkside?


If the proclaimed problem REALLY is that drk doesn't do enough damage, then why is scourge the predominant battle cry to fix damage? Even if it has negative effects on the game?

The game doesn't benefit from bring back a 1 off dot. It actually is hurt by it. You can claim slippery slope, but the fact is adding 1 more dot raises the avg number of debuffs on encounters by a measurable amount. When you have millions of players doing stuff constantly, that '1 little dot' is a very real increase to the average number of debuffs for a given encounter and when dealing with open world content that is a very rational concern. Is it going to singlehandedly take the servers down? Of course not. But it will bring the average debuffs up and increase the instances over time that it negatively affects other players. Most balance changes don't actually degrade other players experience and its just a QQ like "You don't want drk to be better cuz it knocks you off the top" kidna stuff. This is one of the few instances that a specific 'buff my job' suggestion would actually hurt other players outside that job. There are infinite numbers of ways to increase drks damage without adding a dot that hurt no one in any conceivable way. So why get stuck on this one? Because people are conflating their 'Scourge aesthetic was cool' with 'Drk needs more damage'. That's why there are 1000 scourge threads. The dot is not good for the game. But people wont move away because they are stuck on the 'coolness'. HW Scourge will never be the solution to Drk damage.

[Chrono_Rising]

Because, as has been stated multiple times, a dot to apply and upkeep would actually break up the combo monotony that is Dark Knight at the moment. Two birds one stone. Dark passenger also needs love, but it doesn’t solve the rotation being reduced to constant SE spam.

[Crater]

Just to repost it: Dark Knight currently applies zero high-uptime debuffs. Wringing your hands over Ohhh, there's a debuff cap, won't somebody PLEASE think of the debuff cap?! at the prospect of a class going from zero debuffs to one debuff is so flagrantly ridiculous that it's difficult to believe anyone could seriously expect the argument to be taken seriously for even a second.

Ruining a thread over it for multiple pages, getting increasingly more and more pedantic and logically unhinged, can't really be explained in any way other than "This person is trying to deliberately poison the discussion."

My advice? Just ignore it. Every post at this point has been thoroughly refuted long before it's actually posted.

[Ekimmak]

If all you want is damage why isn't there a dark passenger buff thread for every scourge thread? Why not be OK with other passive damage buffs like darkside?

Because Dark Passenger has become a joke bigger than the number of clipped GCDs on a Ninja: There are people who actually advocate removing it from the hotbar so you don't press it by accident.

[Shurrikhan]

Aana, literally your entire post is a red herring and a distraction. No one debates the hard cap; what is debated is whether or not 1 more dot would cause issues. They added miasma 2 without issue clearly there is some wiggle room.

Given that Miasma II is SCH's ONLY direct AoE spell, that its return was absolutely necessary for parity, and that far fewer debuffs are inflicted during AoE situations, this is also a red herring.

I'll agree on all other accounts, but let's also note that, as lip-service as any reason actually given may be, Yoshida explained the removal of DoTs as mitigation of gap-building artificial difficulty. While in fact, it probably has more to do with hard cap, some unknown avenue of future-proofing, or curtailing cleave DPS, we do at least know that development for whatever reason wanted DoTs gone from most jobs, and Yoshida was willing to mouthpiece that.

[Chrono_Rising]

Given that Miasma II is SCH's ONLY direct AoE spell, that its return was absolutely necessary for parity, and that far fewer debuffs are inflicted during AoE situations, this is also a red herring.

I'll agree on all other accounts, but let's also note that, as lip-service as any reason actually given may be, Yoshida explained the removal of DoTs as mitigation of gap-building artificial difficulty. While in fact, it probably has more to do with hard cap, some unknown avenue of future-proofing, or curtailing cleave DPS, we do at least know that development for whatever reason wanted DoTs gone from most jobs, and Yoshida was willing to mouthpiece that.

This is not an example of a red herring, since the topic is adding back a dot and how much room we have to the hard cap I don't see how this can be considered a red herring at all. Though Miasma II is certainly scholar's only "direct" (quoted because I'm not sure what makes this aoe over shadow flare and Bane is it the initial hit?) AOE you make a major unjustified assumption that the job only uses the skill during AOE situations. It has multiple single target uses during everyday raid mechanics as well.

If two or more raid buffs are about to drop and you don't have time to cast, Miasma II's potency could reach above an unbuffed broil II.

If a single target is about to become untargetable but still take damage and you do not have time to cast broil II miasma II can be used on insta cast.

If you are forced to move for a period of time Miasma II can be used to recover some damge.

If you need to get another Energy Drain off but do not have swiftcast or need to put up bio, miasma 2 can avoid the clipping associated with broil 2 energy drain.

Clearly the developer can have their reasons for not wanting these skills, but then I need a justification on why they left dots on any melee. I would also like to point out that just becuase the developer wants something doesn't mean it is the be all end all of discussion.

As far as "dot maintinence" can be considered challenging, I consider it to be about in the same relm as self buffing on brd, drg, mch, mnk, etc. Put it on our bar give it more visuals to make it easier to see when it waers off and the challenge level comes down.