New DRK is awful. Here’s why and what could be done about it.

[Freyyy]

The MP regen from Syphon has been greatly reduced and Stalwart Soul gives the same value, so you won't gain extra FoS in AoE situations by using this instead of Quietus since 99% of the time AoE pulls don't last that long. But I agree that it should either deal more than 180 potency or give MP, which can very easily be changed before or after release anyway.

[Giubba]

You know it hit me that if you take all the abilities in small bubbles they work good together, it's when you start to assemble them that everything fall to pieces. It's the classic "forcing the square shape in the circle"

[TouchandFeel]

You know it hit me that if you take all the abilities in small bubbles they work good together, it's when you start to assemble them that everything fall to pieces. It's the classic "forcing the square shape in the circle"

Interesting assertion. Could you elaborate on this?

[Giubba]

i don't know if it makes any sense but if you look it this way you have :

-(your single target ability and your aoe ability for the blood gauge)
-(your single target ability and aoe ability for your normal rotation)
-(your utilities for both you and the party)

And so on but when you start to assemble the bloody cogs togheter you notice that they do not bloody fit each other and everything falls apart

[Kanitezz]

Have you played it yet? You might actually enjoy it.

[Ultimatecalibur]

So why should I ever want to waste my GCD on Quietus when my combo gives me mana wich I can use on TBN, wich I need for mitigation, or directly on FoS? Every Quietus will delay my combo, wich means I will generate less mana.

Because you can't generate anywhere near the amount of MP needed for 4 FoS/TBNs per minute even if you only use the Stalwart combo. It will take about 4 minutes for the MP you gained by using the SS combo instead of doing Quietus to be enough to pay for an extra FoS/TBN and which point you have lost more dps than the FoS would make up.

[TouchandFeel]

i don't know if it makes any sense but if you look it this way you have :

-(your single target ability and your aoe ability for the blood gauge)
-(your single target ability and aoe ability for your normal rotation)
-(your utilities for both you and the party)

And so on but when you start to assemble the bloody cogs togheter you notice that they do not bloody fit each other and everything falls apart

I understand and see the division and organization of abilities for DRK, and really all the tanks, into single-target and AoE for different categories of usage/situations, that aspect is apparent.

How do they not fit together and fall apart?
How are you even trying to "assemble" them?
Is it that you feel that the abilities are perhaps a bit too encapsulated within themselves and are lacking in synergy with each other and if so how and where are they lacking in synergy?
How is this situation similar and/or different than the other tanks?

Just repeating that they don't fit together and that everything falls apart really doesn't provide any more of the necessary information to understand your viewpoint.

P.S. I am in no way trying to be passive aggressive or invalidate your opinion or statement and am genuinely curious as to what potential insights that you, or anyone really, may have gleaned. I just like to know the details and reasoning involved for the sake of gaining a better understanding.

[Giubba]

I understand and see the division and organization of abilities for DRK, and really all the tanks, into single-target and AoE for different categories of usage/situations, that aspect is apparent.

How do they not fit together and fall apart?
How are you even trying to "assemble" them?
Is it that you feel that the abilities are perhaps a bit too encapsulated within themselves and are lacking in synergy with each other and if so how and where are they lacking in synergy?
How is this situation similar and/or different than the other tanks?

Just repeating that they don't fit together and that everything falls apart really doesn't provide any more of the necessary information to understand your viewpoint.

P.S. I am in no way trying to invalidate your opinion or statement and am genuinely curious as what potential insights that you, or anyone really, may have gleaned. I just like to know the details and reasoning involved for the sake of gaining a better understanding.

Because each "bubbles" at the moment do not flow into another one .
The new aoe combo do not lead to a natural follow up in the new dark sided sphere (actually what exactly change the new dark side? I completely missed it) or blood gauge sphere. What bind together each sphere? Nothing at the moment each transition between abilities is a jump in the void hoping that a series of external consequences come in out favor (did tbn trigger?).

Reworked abilities like delirium imho should follow this purpose,binding together the various resources and their abilities not

[TouchandFeel]

The new aoe combo do not lead to a natural follow up in the new dark sided sphere (actually what exactly change the new dark side? I completely missed it) or blood gauge sphere.

The AoE combo and all resulting abilities to use in AoE situations are relatively straight forward.
The combo provides both your resources of MP and Blood, basically think of Stalwart Soul as a combined Syphon Strike and Soul Eater in that regard. The MP generated allows for TBNs to keep your defenses up which will be more important now that some fluff damage defensive abilities were removed from role action. TBN usage then feeds into Dark Arts by generating a usage when the shield breaks, allowing for a Flood of Shadow at the pace at which you will be throwing up TBNs which should be around every 20s-30s, based on MP generation. This pace matches up pretty much exactly with the time then added to Darkside, resulting in about every 30s you add 30s back to Darkside, thus keeping it up. The Blood generated by your combo and other abilities then just allow you to do a Quietus, or Living Shadow when available, every so often for a bit more dps. Most other abilities work just like they have in Stormblood or the same as in single-target situations. You'll still be dropping Salted Earth, still be tossing out Carve and Spits just like before. I'll speak on Delerium and Blood Weapon later.

Yes, gone are the days of TBN to Quietus to DA Abyssal spam which I likely think is due to the devs finding it too powerful because of the infinite self-heals and so they got rid of it just like the self-heals from WARs gauge abilities. Instead they changed AoE combat to be more similar to single-target combat with combo actions and more predictable resource generation, and they did this for all the tanks.

(actually what exactly change the new dark side? I completely missed it)

Darkside is now a buff that provides a 10% damage increase (the 10% is based on what was said in Xeno's video and may change). It is applied by using either Edge of Darkness/Shadow or Flood of Darkness/Shadow. Each usage adds 30s to the duration of the Darkside buff up to a maximum of 60s.

What bind together each sphere? Nothing at the moment each transition between abilities is a jump in the void hoping that a series of external consequences come in out favor (did tbn trigger?).

The Blood abilities mainly boil down to abilities to use that provide extra dps and just get weaved in when the resources are available which will be at a steady and regulated pace from combos and other abilities like Blood Weapon. The only real time that they then feed back into other abilities is with Delirium. So really this is not too different than now except there are less additional things feeding the Blood resource resulting in it being more paced out and less "bursty" than we have now with TBN breaking giving 50 Blood.

In regards to external consequences and TBN breaking or not, that is exactly how it is now except instead of getting 50 Blood we get a Dark Arts proc to use on a Flood or Edge ability, so basically getting MP instead of Blood to fuel an attack. This actually has more synergies built into it than what we have now since you need to use TBN to get those Dark Art procs to then use Flood or Edge to then keep up Darkside. Potentially more punishing if you screw it up? For sure, but there are objectively more interactions there, not less.

Reworked abilities like delirium imho should follow this purpose,binding together the various resources and their abilities

Blood Weapon is virtually the same as before, they just removed the multi-hit aspect for AoE abilities so that resource generation is the same in single-target and AoE situations which likely was intended to make things more predictable and easier to design and balance around. Yes the haste part was removed but that wasn't much of a contributor to synergy among abilities and since job dps is easily tweakable with potencies, mainly boils down to a "feel" thing.

Delerium, whether or not you want to hate it for being similar to Inner Release, it is still functionally better than what we have now and will feel more impactful on use which is what people asked for. I agree that the devs could have been more inventive with creating a burst window ability for DRK but an improvement is still an improvement. Additionally, Delirium actually does feed back into the other aspects of DRK because it also generates MP for each of the free Blood Spiller and Quietus hits which can then be used towards TBNs or potentially a raw Flood or Edge.

so TLDR

I personally don't feel that the "cogs don't fit together" and that "everything falls apart".
I feel it is more of a situation of the cogs being changed out with new ones of slightly different shape and they now fit together to create something different than before, for better or worse.

[KatsuraJun]

While TBN is indeed very strong, Paladin and Warrior have also gained very good additions and changes to their own mitigation and utility kits.

WAR no longer needs to rely on Holmgang to make up for their lack of on-demand cd with changes to Raw Intuition(which also has lost it's limitation to physical damage), while Holmgang not only retained it's insanely low cd, but also got most of it's weaknesses removed. They gained Nascent Glint to help their co-tank with both mitigaiton and self-sustain and even Shake it Off has been indirectly buffed, by lowering cooldowns of RI and Thrill, so that they can boost it's power more frequently.

PLD meanwhile got Sentinel's cooldown dropped to 2 minutes(the mititigation also has been lowered, but let's be real - this is objectively a buff overall) and Sheltron now blocks everything for full 5 seconds instead of only the first hit and remember that with higher tier gear, the block's power will increase. They also retained two raid mitigation tools and while cover has been nerfed, they are now free to use Intervention whenever needed without a dps loss, thanks to removal of Shield Swipe procs.

My thoughts:
-Holmgang is indeed the most major balance issue between tanks now and the fact that it hasn't been bumped up to at least 4 minutes is stupid. With that being said, DRK still has the 2nd lowest CD so it's not the worst off.
-Sentinel's cooldown drop is meant to equalize all of its clones in effectiveness for mitigation. All of them (dark wall and vengance) are now 120 seconds.
-Sheltron blocking everything for 5 seconds is still inferior to TBN given the gauge cost making its true cooldown higher than TBN's. That, and it effectively shares CDs with intervention in that sense because they both draw from the same gauge.
-Divine Veil now has a DRK counterpart in Dark Missionary, while they still have a leg up over everyone in raid mitigation with PoA that sports no equivalent, the other tanks have an additional cooldown to compensate with much lower cds compared to PoA(Dark Mind, Thrill, Camo) PoA is rather clunky in most situations as it forces both correct positioning and turns off the ability to attack which is a huge cost, so this is an acceptable trade-off.
-Nascent Flash is pretty much the worst of all the OT protection skills as its mitigation is complete garbage, amounting to 7 or 8% when stacked with the MT's own cds, and the delayed heal is probably useless given that it'll be unreliable and thus likely result in overheal unless the heal is massive and can be timed to expire right after the TB, allowing the healers to ignore healing altogether. But that's unlikely, so it's probably shit. And the CD isn't even low or anything. It's ok for helping mitigate auto damage given that the heal won't be as wasted then and its effectiveness will less likely be diminished by CD stacking, but that's pretty bad compared to the other tanks.
-Intervention meanwhile still requires a real CD to be comparable in power, which is a massive downside.
-Remember that Shake it Off getting its power "boosted" is not really being boosted to be better, it's boosted to be comparable. It's only an 8% shield without boosts compared to the 15% offered by DRK and GNB, and 10% offered by PLD.