DRK redesign details explained

[Agner]

Hopefully DRK gets looked at again at some point, but given the Stormblood media tour, I don't have any faith in their ability to fix the job before release. If anything, you'll probably see more potency and recast nerfs to the job in the final version, which is what happened the last time. Either way, best of luck.

Goodbye Cloud and Cecil. Hello Squall.

Yeah, pretty much. I'm amazed they said they needed six months to do a rework and had us wait for the expansion instead, but this... is what they came up with? It looks like hardly any time was spent on it at all. I was already wary after the job actions trailer, but now I'm full on just gonna level GNB first and then do DRK when I have the time for it. It's seeming like all the fun was swapped to that job. ShB DRK just looks like an even more simplified version of what we had in SB, minus being at least somewhat quick. I thought this was supposed to be a rework, but it just looks rather embarrassing.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong when I actually play it, but it sure as hell ain't looking good. Guess it's Renzokuken time.

[HaaliaOnyxus]

Abyssal Drain itself wasn't an oGCD until this, it was just Salted Earth and Dark Passenger for oGCD aoes. In a three minute period we'll be getting five of them, down from a possible seven, but there's also no resource conflict there so it'll be more reliable.
Beyond that we've got Plunge, Carve & Spit, and The Blackest Night, sitting on the same recasts they used to have, and we've got the Flood/Edge skills filling in where Dark Arts was.
I don't think it's going to turn out to be too much slower compared to how it is now, outside of the lost Blood Weapon haste.

While Flood/Edge are filling in where Dark Arts was, MP regen is SO much lower that we'll be using them only 1/3 as much. Combined with Blood Weapon losing its haste AND Salted Earth being such a long CD now, there's really no way it won't be much slower.

[InfiniDragon]

I'm a bit wary of how DRK will end up in the meta due to GNB having a straight up better raid CD and DRK not providing anything that immediately stands out as compelling, but I'm not at all on the gloom and doom train. The only thing I outright hate is the nerf to Abyssal healing and its use in general; I loved being able to ranged AOE pull as I ran past mobs and will miss it, as well as the massive heals in Blood Weapon with Quietus.

But the TBN change is a massive buff, flat 25% is huge. And I think they're going to put out a lot of DPS if the numbers stay final as the potencies on Edge/Flood are way better trade for your MP than old DA. So we may end up in a situation where DRK doesn't have as much utility again, but actually has the damage to back up not having it this time around.

[Freyyy]

IMO the biggest problem about this new DRK is that the "maintaining Darkside" mechanic is just a non-issue since you'll just use the Darkside extenders as MP dumps too. If we had a more damaging MP spender that DOESN'T extend Darkside, we'd actually have Darkside to manage even tho it wouldn't be a lot harder. Hell, Darkside could have been implemented as an additionnal effect given and extended by a second combo kinda like Huton on Ninja with armor crush, that way DRK would have more than a single combo. As it is right now (if it isn't changed before release), Darkside could be just a trait and Edge/Flood of shadows could just be MP dumps without any other effect, and the gameplay would be the exact same. Delirium just being Inner Release is also pretty disappointing.

I like the overall changes about the tanks in general, I like the idea of Darkside being something to extend over the fight (kinda like BotD and Huton), but the execution as it is shown in that build is pretty bad. The job is still lacking something identity and mechanics-wise.

On top of that these issues are still not fixed :

- Only one combo (it's even worse than before since we don't even have Power Slash anymore to pretend we have a second combo)
- Magic damage specific mitigation moves (it's even worse than before since our raid mitigation is also magical even tho it won't matter in application since 99% of raid-wide damage is magical)
- No Scourge animation
- Living Dead

They also added these issues :

- They deleted the better looking combo (Spinning Slash has more weight than Syphon imo and Power Slash looks way cooler than Souleater)
- The Living Shadow as it is shown in this build looks very random and clunky
- Job identity is even less existent now that Delirium is just a clone of Inner Release
- The job is absolutely going to be slower-paced than before

[DRKoftheAzure]

I hear a "FIX SHADOWBRINGERS DRK" thread in the works given how much backlash there is for DRK...


As for what I would fix;

-Add HP restore on hit on Blood Weapon along with haste effect (unless they buff Darkside to have Haste effect)
-Bring back Spinning Slash and Power Slash and they still have the same combo tree as before, but they now have 50% chance to proc Dark Arts
-Buff Syphon Strike with HP regen and Souleater with MP refresh and they both give health shields to DRK and they make the Dark Arts proc chance 100%
-Make "Darkside" basically "Blood of the Dragon" in terms of activation and duration
-Unleash combos into Queitus which then combos into Stalwart Soul
-Abyssal Drain changes the properties of the AoE combo above into line AoE combo(Unleash becomes Dread Spikes which combos into Dark Passenger which combos into Flood of Dread which buffs Flood of Shadow with more potency)
-Using Dark Arts procs reduces Abyssal Drains CD by 5 seconds
-Bring back Sole Survivor and add a trait to where it increases targets damage dealt by 5% and a second trait to where if the first target dies the effect spreads to other targets and resets duration on all other targets if another target dies but recovery is 50% weaker than the first target

That might help DRK a bit but if heal shield on both Syphon Strike and Souleater is too much then might just have it apply to Souleater only...

[Barachim]

Honestly, the only positivity I heard regarding Dark Knight, came from 'Very Merri'. And he had pretty much the opposite take. While he's not as happy as everyone else and views Gunbreaker as the weakest possible main tank of the group, he actually loves Dark Knight. Gonna wait with my complaints/praise, until I actually get to try the changes for myself.

[TouchandFeel]

To me the highest priority issues that need to be addressed as soon as possible are:
- Living Dead, it's just not on par with other tank invulnerable abilities and needs to be reworked to make it less convoluted and to not have unnecessary penalties.
- The Blackest Night needs it's duration increased slightly to compensate for the increased shield strength so that it doesn't become too difficult to break, especially when we start out-gearing content. Just going from 7s to 8-9s should hopefully be enough.
- Something needs to be done about DRK's burst self-heal in single-target situations. Abyssal Drain is great for packs of enemies but it's heal is ineffectual in boss fights.

There are other things that I am uncertain about but I would have to see DRK in actual play after release to form a proper opinion.

[Bhearil]

Yeah a 25% shield that you WANT to break has a too low of a duration unless you use to mitigate heavy atacks, making the low cd moot since it forces you to hold on it to not waste mp and using it only on powerful atacks/tankbusters

[Freyyy]

I honestly don't even understand why TBN even has a short-ish duration in the first place since it's just a barrier, it could just be like 30s since we only benefit from it for a set amount of damage anyway. It's not like a damage mitigation %, it's literally just an amount of unhealable bonus HP. It should just be up until it breaks so that they wouldn't have to worry about lengthening the duration whenever they want to increase its strength.

Edit : After posting this message I realized that it would probably be seen as being a bit busted since we'd just reapply it as soon as it breaks and use Dark Arts procs for our mana spenders all the time and we'd take next to no damage outside of tank busters, so I just wanted to add that you'd still need MP to use TBN anyways, so while you'd be able to use free MP spenders while having TBN up, it'd only last for maybe 4-5 consecutive TBNs before MP starving (3x3000 MP + one or two extra TBNs granted by MP regen abilities during that time). We'd still have a bit of downtime with no TBN at all so we'd still take damage, it could even make the job a bit more engaging since we'd have to account for tank busters so we wouldn't be just blindly using back-to-back TBNs all the time.

[Bhearil]

I honestly don't even understand why TBN even has a short-ish duration in the first place since it's just a barrier, it could just be like 30s since we only benefit from it for a set amount of damage anyway. It's not like a damage mitigation %, it's literally just an amount of unhealable bonus HP. It should just be up until it breaks so that they wouldn't have to worry about lengthening the duration whenever they want to increase its strength.

Because they are trying to reward proper usage of the shield instead of "use and forget". Problem is that if you buff its power you need to increase its duration as well or it will restrict its uses since it wont break now where before it worked