Rambling tank thoughts going into 5.0

[Kabooa]

Am I the only person on the planet who actually enjoyed Dark Arts, lol?
Pretty much everyone else playing DRK seems to hate it.

Pushing a button to make another button better is generally removed between expansions.

I would have found Dark Arts more compelling if they were actual said 'Arts' of the magic they use.

Unmend, Abyssal Drain, Salted Earth, etc.

[Kolsykol]

Pushing a button to make another button better is generally removed between expansions.

I would have found Dark Arts more compelling if they were actual said 'Arts' of the magic they use.

Unmend, Abyssal Drain, Salted Earth, etc.

Not saying that it was perfect, but I sorta liked the flare surrounding it.
It just made me feel as if I am using dark magic to power up my attacks.

I just hit the dummy for a while without it and it felt very boring and like something was missing imo.

[Kabooa]

Not saying that it was perfect, but I sorta liked the flare surrounding it.
It just made me feel as if I am using dark magic to power up my attacks.

I just hit the dummy for a while without it and it felt very boring and like something was missing imo.

I'm a little skeptical. The lack of being able to control the shadow clone hampers the fun factor to me. I don't mind lower actions per minute so long as there's sufficient weight behind it, but at a glance, I'm not getting that sense from the toolkit.

[Maneesha]

Dark Mind is a tricky one. If you make it both damage types, then it'd essentially just be a second Rampart (It's CD would go up to 90s to match Thrill/Camo)...

Nothing really tricky if one would to look at warrior's raw intuition changes.

i don't get why devs wanna keep the "magic only" def skills on drk and give him 1 more with dark missionary, given that paladin can block all types of attacks since stormblood ( as far as i remember he couldn't block magic before..)

on dark arts, i don't think people really disliked it per-se, but disliked that that was the only mp dump(outside of aoe encounters) and u had to spam it that much, in hw no one really complained about dark arts and the animation in it self looks actually pretty cool.

[dragoelete]

on dark arts, i don't think people really disliked it per-se, but disliked that that was the only mp dump(outside of aoe encounters) and u had to spam it that much, in hw no one really complained about dark arts and the animation in it self looks actually pretty cool.

people didnt mind dark arts in HW because it was only attached to like 3 or 4 skills and most of those were ogcd... so you weren't spamming it any where near as much. compared to now where your spamming it pretty much every other combo as well as on some ogcd.

[Kalise]

Nothing really tricky if one would to look at warrior's raw intuition changes.

Except that Raw Intuition is a variant of Sheltron/The Blackest Night/Heart of Stone. With a low CD for some short term (5-6s) mitigation.

While Dark Mind is a variant of Thrill of Battle/Camouflage with a modest CD (90s for ToB/Camo and 60s for DM)

Dark Mind currently has a shorter CD than ToB/Camo/Rampart because it only works vs a single damage type. If you made it work against both damage types, it'd be OP on its current 60s CD. But if you bumped it up to a similar CD to the other similar skills, then it would be literally Rampart (20% damage reduction for 20s with 90s CD)

That's where it becomes tricky. Since, obviously, you wouldn't want to just give DRK a skill that is just a second Rampart, you'd want to give them something unique.

[Duskane]

well i dont think Dark missionary should just be copy pasted version of GNB

10% physical mitigation and 20% magical mitigation what i would put it as
i understand Drk is the magic tank but it should Excel in magical mitigation not be limited to it

[Freyyy]

In HW Dark Arts wasn't nearly spammed as much as in SB, and we were totally fine with this iteration. Our high APM back then came from other oGCDs like Low Blow procs, the old Dark Passenger (that used to have way more potency than it does now and costed half a DA making it priority over DA even in single target), and the old Reprisal as well. All of that combined with Blood Weapon's haste, C&S and some Dark Arts when we had nothing else to spend MP on made the class much more fun. We didn't need to spam DA to have high APM. Then came SB.

HW had that really nice priority system on MP spending abilities. It was DA C&S > DP > DASE, DP going first in AoE situations. Going back to such a system could be very good for the job. It just felt right back then.

[Izsha]

I'm not terribly worried about it really. The vast majority of all aoes in the game are magic by a wide margin. You will also be paired with another tank. Pld has a shield and mitigation, but both on longer cooldowns. War just has a shield. Gun has mitigation. In most cases you will rotate your party mit woth your co tank. Drk grabs the magic, other tank grabs phy. It is highly unlikely there will be a fight that only has phy aoes and SE is aware of this. Historically there are almost exclusively magic aoes. This skill will be highly valuable based on precedent. Ignoring precedent is a bit illigocical when we have 5 years if consistent magic aoes to look at now.

As for personal mit, drk mind is 10/60 20% magic vs a 10/90 all 20%. Also a ok trade. The frequency of a CD is the most important part of it. (Looking at you people that hate holmgang). I see a lot of people focusing on the magic limitation and gloss over the unparralelled recast. It's the fastest CD for any tank once you get past the shelltron/tbn/ib clones. This thing will always be ready for a buster or any magic damage really. It is a powerful mitigation tool. And again most fights lean on magic or have a mix. You use tbn and your other cds for phy busters. Magic for magic. There are very few existing examples where drk would not be able to use its upcoming CD suite effectively. That is unlikely to change.

[NyneSwordz]

I know we've got a few threads going around but wanted to pen down some of my thoughts and encourage others to do so as well.

PLD:
This job actually seems fine TBH. HP effecting Spirits Within potency is somewhat questionable after removing it from Upheaval. Sheltron may end up being busted at higher item levels as PLD block damage increases.

WAR:
Nascent Flash being tied to Raw is questionable. Quite frankly it would've made more sense to have Nascent Flash replace Inner Beast but include the option to simply be given to a target at reduced potency. The self heal seems rather inconsequential. Onslaught needs Beast gauge cost removed, or potency increase to 225. As it stands 20 BG is worth a minimum of 216 potency.

DRK:
Rework not enough. Remove the DoT from GNB and give it to DRK. Dark Missionary needs to reduce all damage 15%, not just magic. Dark Mind should have 2 effects like Thrill of Battle or Camaflouge, since fluff mitigation was neutered, or apply to all damage types. LD needs to be re-evaluated in some capacity, either make it stronger/less punishing to justify 5 min CD or lower the CD to justify using it more freely.

GNB:
Camaflouge parry buff is questionable, 10% flat reduction is nice but CD may be a bit too long. Need to see this in action to gather much else, it's sounding like it may need some help in DPS but really it's too early to tell without getting our hands on it. Auto shield from combo seems really great.

---- Other thoughts

I find it incredibly odd that GNB gets 3 combos and 2 DoTs while DRK was stripped of everything but Souleater combo, there is more than enough room for DRK to get Scourge back. And please stop with the physical/magic damage type separation, we tank both types in all the different content.

Missing a lot of our old fluff mitigation CDs, which is a bit sad, although I suppose it's somewhat offset by constant 20% damage reduction. It's just going to be hard to "feel" how effective the new tank stance trait is, since we won't really get to see how much damage we'd be taking without it.. Nor will we have any interaction with it (which honestly I may just value higher since WAR doesn't have a lot of oGCDs, fluff mitigation was practically all we had to press between our attacks >.>)

Other than that it's seeming fairly well balanced, just a few minor tweaks to help bring the tanks more in line with one another.

Gonna miss Dark Knight's Power Slash and War's Butcher's Block. They had great animations.

Couldn't agree more about Onslaught needing cost removed or some other adjustments. = )