DRK redesign details explained

[Giubba]

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.

Imho considering the change to healers the only explanation I can fathom is that damage will be increased overall so having a shorter time kinda make sense.....maybe

[Freyyy]

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

I don't think it would make it "use and forget". I edited my last post to add on to this idea. But yeah they probably want to make it feel like active mitigation, but I think that the more you increase its power, the further away you move from active mitigation since you still need it to break, so you'll need to increase its duration anyway, and it'll end up feeling more and more passive.

[TouchandFeel]

Imho considering the change to healers the only explanation I can fathom is that damage will be increased overall so having a shorter time kinda make sense.....maybe

From what I have gathered based on comments from people that played DRK at the NA media event was that the 25% shield on TBN was really powerful, which it is even though it's only 5% more, and that it was hard to get to pop because of that slight boost.
Now of course the difficulty tuning and exact numbers weren't in place then and they were mainly playing mid 70's dungeon content, but I don't forsee the overall incoming damage to be much greater than before.

[Bhearil]

Dont forget tanks get extra HP due to new trait increasing further both damage from STR AND Hit Points from VIT

[Baxcel]

So why are we not talking about how you only get dark arts from breaking a TBN shield now.. And the fact that TBN's duration went from 15sec I believe down to 7sec?

Its already hard enough to eat an entire shield in 15sec with our currently 50-80k hp going into ShB were looking at 100-150k hp with the shield being even larger and needing it to break on trash mobs during dungeons or only getting Dark Arts during a boss.. Rather disappointing in my opinion.

[Agner]

^ TBN's duration went from 5 to 7 in patch 4.2, so no, that's fine. You're thinking of the cooldown for it being 15 seconds.

[Bhearil]

On aoe situations the shield WILL break as usual, problem is against single target with moderate damaging skills which now wil be unable to break it. Tons of bosses have atacks that are absorbed entirely by the shield and it breaks on the very next auto. Increase the hp on the same duration and wont break anymore, unless we are talking about their heaviest hits which makes the low cd moot since you wont be able to use it often in fear of not breaking and wasting resources

[Awful]

After watching some videos and taking a second look I think I will be switching to GNB for ShB, I just feel that DRK isn't as fast paced as it was in HW and SB it feels slower which to me doesn't feel great at all. GNB just looks a lot more busy and rewarding and less clunky, yes I like the idea for a Shadow Clone but if its not executed properly and is wonky I won't have as much fun, GNB also shines with its party utility to me and I love how there's so many combos and chains with how fast it can play.

All in all I'm pretty conflicted with the DRK rework and sadly i'm leaning towards GNB as it is fast paced like HW DRK which I sorely miss as it was my favorite incarnation of said class so sadly I'll be hanging up the greatsword yet again as I played WAR far more than I did DRK for SB.

[Bhearil]

Sadly im starting to think on switching to GNB as well, the only downside GNB has right now is kinda lackluster defensive skills and a bit lowish potencies(at least this part is easy to fix). Anything else looks like tons of fun

[Tint]

Yeah, I consider switching too. Why should I play DRK when there is GNB wich looks like so much more fun? Also no stupid ressource-tied on demand cooldown and enough fluff mitigation for large dungeon pulls...

Only problem is raiding... I think I signed up to take the maintank post besides a WAR / GNB. DRK as MT and GNB as OT would work well... but GNB as MT and WAR as OT? Weeeell... how do I tell my raidgroup about this idea? xD