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

[Reynhart]

The point is still that there has been a LOT of requests to bring back scourge purely for the animation.

I posted on another topic one reason they could bring back Scourge :

Quietus would have its current effect. (A potency increase to 250 would be nice, considering it cost 50 Blood)
BloodSpiller would have its current effect but could combo from Quietus to do a 800 potency attack
We get back Scourge, which cost 50 Blood and apply a 900 potency DoT over 60 seconds, but it could combo with a comboed-BloodSpiller to instantly apply its full damage.

Those three skills would still be used on their own but would do a great "burst" during Delirium. And no spam.

It would give us something else to spend Blood on, and would address the "spam BS during Delirium" by opening a combo that we can't have without it. And they wouldn't even need to change Delirium (again )

[Kreyd]

I don't think it will play that much different from now.


What's basically the same:

SE-combo is still the main thing you do.
Darkside is still always on without thinking about it.
Dark Arts was a 140 potency ogcd to dump MP. Dark Passenger was the same just for aoe and on cooldown. Edge/Flood of Shadow are just the new Dark Arts/Passenger.
Bloodgauge is still spent into Bloodspiller/Quietus.
Ogcd's will still be pressed on cooldown, if not used for specific situations.
Ultimates are still unbalanced in general.


What's really gone:

The 10% speed buff from Blood Weapon, which didn't even change our gameplay. We did the same stuff, we just did it 10% faster.
Double weaving with Carve&Spit.
Sole Survivor was a niche skill that only got usefull after it got buffed and even then it was "meh".
Blood Price was unbalancable. It was either op in aoe and balanced in single target, or it was balanced in aoe and worthless in single target.


What's new:

New Delirium is a cheap copy paste from Inner Release. But it's still better (personal opinion) than it's SB version.
Dark Missionary is a good skill. Who cares if it's magical only? Nearly all raid wide attacks are magical.
The same with Dark Mind. Perfect for Tankbusters which are magical most of the time.
Living Shadow is cool. It looks awesome, has an incredible potency and fits the job fantasy. The only thing that bugs me is, that it's a 2min cd that doesn't interact with the rest of our set.

The only thing that really changes will be part of our aoe gameplay. Instead of Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain Spam + Quietus to regen MP, with skills weaven in like TBN and Salted Earth, it's now Unleash->Stalwart Soul Spam to regen MP and blood + Quietus and the same said skills weaven in.


It's not what people have asked for, for 2 years. But I think it's better than what we got now.

[Kyni]

I don't think it will play that much different from now.


What's basically the same:

SE-combo is still the main thing you do.
Darkside is still always on without thinking about it.
Dark Arts was a 140 potency ogcd to dump MP. Dark Passenger was the same just for aoe and on cooldown. Edge/Flood of Shadow are just the new Dark Arts/Passenger.
Bloodgauge is still spent into Bloodspiller/Quietus.
Ogcd's will still be pressed on cooldown, if not used for specific situations.
Ultimates are still unbalanced in general.


What's really gone:

The 10% speed buff from Blood Weapon, which didn't even change our gameplay. We did the same stuff, we just did it 10% faster.
Double weaving with Carve&Spit.
Sole Survivor was a niche skill that only got usefull after it got buffed and even then it was "meh".
Blood Price was unbalancable. It was either op in aoe and balanced in single target, or it was balanced in aoe and worthless in single target.


What's new:

New Delirium is a cheap copy paste from Inner Release. But it's still better (personal opinion) than it's SB version.
Dark Missionary is a good skill. Who cares if it's magical only? Nearly all raid wide attacks are magical.
The same with Dark Mind. Perfect for Tankbusters which are magical most of the time.
Living Shadow is cool. It looks awesome, has an incredible potency and fits the job fantasy. The only thing that bugs me is, that it's a 2min cd that doesn't interact with the rest of our set.

The only thing that really changes will be part of our aoe gameplay. Instead of Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain Spam + Quietus to regen MP, with skills weaven in like TBN and Salted Earth, it's now Unleash->Stalwart Soul Spam to regen MP and blood + Quietus and the same said skills weaven in.


It's not what people have asked for, for 2 years. But I think it's better than what we got now.

Except the massiv (roughly 70%) reduction of resource generation and the increase of cooldowns on ogcds ( salted earth from 45 seconds to 90 seconds. why?), both contribute to the loss of speed.

[Satarn]

Dark Missionary is a good skill. Who cares if it's magical only? Nearly all raid wide attacks are magical.

The thing that's wrong, is that just makes it more limited without offering anything in return. Sure, the raidwides are mostly magical, but there will be occasions when you'd like to reduce physical damage and can't, while there won't be any situations where having Emissary would give you an edge over the other tanks.

The same with Dark Mind. Perfect for Tankbusters which are magical most of the time.

Two encounters in Alphascape alone had physical busters, including Tail End which was both notoriously heavy hitting and frequent, while the fight's design did not allow for flexible tank swaps. Also by that logic I could say that most autos are physical so that makes it crap, as auto crits are the most dangerous source of tank damage in savage/ultimate content(and actually also dungeons, in case you wanna slap me with the "not everything is hardcore content" argument).

However, I actually not only have no issue with DM being magical-only, I actually wish we had more cooldowns like it and SB Raw Intuition. DM was perfectly fine in Stormblood, where it offered extra power and low recast at the cost of being more specialized - but SHB iteration nerfed it's mitigation while giving WAR and PLD more uptime on their universal cooldowns. All I'm asking for is to reverse that nerf.

The only thing that really changes will be part of our aoe gameplay.

This is just completely untrue.

Blood Weapon cooldown and duration have changed, which drastically alters it's uptime.
MP recovery has been gutted completely, to the point that DRK will barely spend it outside of the static and tight, 10 second bursts, wherein before you had to constantly manage it.
All damaging ogcds and buffs have been streamlined into multiples of 30 seconds, which also fits them all into same burst windows.

All this completely shifts DRKs focus on sustained dps, flexible bursts and constant high apm, into a job with short and rigid, high activity bursts and basically nothing during downtime in between.

New Delirium is a cheap copy paste from Inner Release. But it's still better (personal opinion) than it's SB version.

It's better how though? The few people defending SHB DRK keep saying DelIRium is somehow better than Delirium, but never back it up with any reasoning. I can however give you plenty arguments as to why the opposite is true.

Old Delirium interacted directly with both our MP and blood management mechanics, connecting them together. For a cost of 50 blood you got a burst of MP and extension of Blood Weapon which gave you even more MP and blood, as well as increased attack speed.
This meant that when Delirium was going off cd you had to keep in mind several things before just pressing it: will I have enough Blood to use it? Is Blood Weapon up so that the extension effect applies? Will it put me above the MP cap? Should I use it now or does the boss become untargetable before extended BW ends, in which case it might be better to save it and use Bloodspiller instead?

Meanwhile 5.0 DelIRium doesn't provide any interaction at all and simply enables you to spam Bloodspiller/Quietus for 10 seconds. It doesn't cost any resource that you'd need to save for it, it doesn't generate any more MP than just continuing your Soul Eater combo would and adds rigid burst to a job that was all about flexibility, horribly clashing with DRK's earlier identity. You just use it whenever it's up, press BS button 5 times and move on.

[Kreyd]

Except the massiv (roughly 70%) reduction of resource generation and the increase of cooldowns on ogcds ( salted earth from 45 seconds to 90 seconds. why?), both contribute to the loss of speed.

True. We do less than we did. (apm sunk) But it's not like we do much different stuff than before. Iirc one of the often called out issues of the last two years was "Dark Arts is cool, but it's too much."

The thing that's wrong, is that just makes it more limited without offering anything in return. Sure, the raidwides are mostly magical, but there will be occasions when you'd like to reduce physical damage and can't, while there won't be any situations where having Emissary would give you an edge over the other tanks.

Yes, on paper "Reduces all incoming dmg." is better than "Reduces magical dmg." But the thing is, most if not all raid wide damages are magical. (Or at least I can't recall any physical raid wide damages...)

So Dark Missionary will be up on par with PLD's and WAR's skills in most if not all situations. And I think "most if not all" is pretty good balanced. Not perfect, but pretty good. SE could change it to all damages to bring it up on par 100% on the time. But it's not as DRK is ruined because of it.

Two encounters in Alphascape alone had physical busters, including Tail End which was both notoriously heavy hitting and frequent, while the fight's design did not allow for flexible tank swaps. Also by that logic I could say that most autos are physical so that makes it crap, as auto crits are the most dangerous source of tank damage in savage/ultimate content(and actually also dungeons, in case you wanna slap me with the "not everything is hardcore content" argument).

However, I actually not only have no issue with DM being magical-only, I actually wish we had more cooldowns like it and SB Raw Intuition. DM was perfectly fine in Stormblood, where it offered extra power and low recast at the cost of being more specialized - but SHB iteration nerfed it's mitigation while giving WAR and PLD more uptime on their universal cooldowns. All I'm asking for is to reverse that nerf.

I am on your side here. Dark Mind has a disadvantage in dungeons and fluff mitigation over ToB and Camouflage, so a higher magical dmg reduction would be ok. Just o be fair; PLD doesn't even have one of this "special" mitigation skills (it has more raid mitigation though)

This is just completely untrue.

Blood Weapon cooldown and duration have changed, which drastically alters it's uptime.
MP recovery has been gutted completely, to the point that DRK will barely spend it outside of the static and tight, 10 second bursts, wherein before you had to constantly manage it.
All damaging ogcds and buffs have been streamlined into multiples of 30 seconds, which also fits them all into same burst windows.

All this completely shifts DRKs focus on sustained dps, flexible bursts and constant high apm, into a job with short and rigid, high activity bursts and basically nothing during downtime in between.

I kinda fail to see where this changes our single target gameplay. In SB you did SE combo, which build up blood and MP, which then were spent into DA/Bloodspiller to provide overcaping. ogcd's and more DA were used when they were ready again (optimally in burst windows).
In SB you will do SE combo, which builds up blood and MP, which are spend into EoS/Bloodspiller to provide overcaping. ogcd's and EoS are used when they are ready again (optimally in burst windows).

It'll be less apm because EoS has higher mp cost and potency than DA, Salted Earth's and Bloodweapons cd's are increased and Bloodweapon lost it's 10% speed buff. But that doesn't change what we will do, it just changes how fast we do it.

It's better how though? The few people defending SHB DRK keep saying DelIRium is somehow better than Delirium, but never back it up with any reasoning. I can however give you plenty arguments as to why the opposite is true.

Old Delirium interacted directly with both our MP and blood management mechanics, connecting them together. For a cost of 50 blood you got a burst of MP and extension of Blood Weapon which gave you even more MP and blood, as well as increased attack speed.
This meant that when Delirium was going off cd you had to keep in mind several things before just pressing it: will I have enough Blood to use it? Is Blood Weapon up so that the extension effect applies? Will it put me above the MP cap? Should I use it now or does the boss become untargetable before extended BW ends, in which case it might be better to save it and use Bloodspiller instead?

Meanwhile 5.0 DelIRium doesn't provide any interaction at all and simply enables you to spam Bloodspiller/Quietus for 10 seconds. It doesn't cost any resource that you'd need to save for it, it doesn't generate any more MP than just continuing your Soul Eater combo would and adds rigid burst to a job that was all about flexibility, horribly clashing with DRK's earlier identity. You just use it whenever it's up, press BS button 5 times and move on.

It's just a personal opinion, but I think that a skill that allows for multiple uses of our hardest hitting attack is better than a skill, that may interacted a lot with our kit, but in such ways that as a mediocre player I never used it, because I couldn't estimate if it is actually a dps gain or loss. Also, I personally dislike the idea of a skill, that takes a use of our hardest hitting attack from us away to extend a buff in general.

I've read a lot of ideas for Delirium in this forum that would've been straight more interesting and fun to play than Bloodspiller spam.

[Satarn]

Not perfect, but pretty good. SE could change it to all damages to bring it up on par 100% on the time. But it's not as DRK is ruined because of it.

Who said anything about it "ruining" the job? It's just one minor complaint in the sea of much more important play-style issues. Heck, I even already said in one of the earlier comments that it's the least of our problems, although that doesn't mean the issue can't be rised.

Just o be fair; PLD doesn't even have one of this "special" mitigation skills (it has more raid mitigation though)

More raid and targeted utility and also passive block which scales up as tiers progress. That's a pretty high chance to get straight up free mitigation on anything that hits them.

I kinda fail to see where this changes our single target gameplay.

Really.

High apm, flexible, resource management job.
Slow, strictly timed burst with no resource management because everything is crammed inside the 10 second window.

No difference at all?

It's just a personal opinion, but I think that a skill that allows for multiple uses of our hardest hitting attack is better than a skill, that may interacted a lot with our kit, but in such ways that as a mediocre player I never used it, because I couldn't estimate if it is actually a dps gain or loss.

The only time extending BW was a dps loss was if you did so right before downtime or just straight up didn't use resources - that's not some bigbrain optimization, it's just a bit more than "hurrdurr press things on cd".
Sorry to say, but not using it isn't "mediocre", it's just plain bad.

[gman1311]

Who said anything about it "ruining" the job? It's just one minor complaint in the sea of much more important play-style issues. Heck, I even already said in one of the earlier comments that it's the least of our problems, although that doesn't mean the issue can't be rised.



More raid and targeted utility and also passive block which scales up as tiers progress. That's a pretty high chance to get straight up free mitigation on anything that hits them.



Really.

High apm, flexible, resource management job.
Slow, strictly timed burst with no resource management because everything is crammed inside the 10 second window.

No difference at all?



The only time extending BW was a dps loss was if you did so right before downtime or just straight up didn't use resources - that's not some bigbrain optimization, it's just a bit more than "hurrdurr press things on cd".
Sorry to say, but not using it isn't "mediocre", it's just plain bad.

That’s like your opinion,man.

[Kreyd]

The only time extending BW was a dps loss was if you did so right before downtime or just straight up didn't use resources - that's not some bigbrain optimization, it's just a bit more than "hurrdurr press things on cd".
Sorry to say, but not using it isn't "mediocre", it's just plain bad.

Well, I guess I was a bad DRK then...

Really.

High apm, flexible, resource management job.
Slow, strictly timed burst with no resource management because everything is crammed inside the 10 second window.

No difference at all?

Flexible? Where? You have to spend MP/blood before it overcaps and you want to spend it in buff windows. Where is the difference between ShB and SB?

Ressource managemant is still there. And it's still the same principle. Spend MP/blood before it overcaps, but save the majority for buff windows and TBN. Just because we'll hit EoS less times than we did hit DA doesn't make it different gameplay. It just makes it less busy.

Yes, the apm is lower. But that doesn't change the gameplay either. It'll be like comparing NIN with and without Huton and saying they are two completely different jobs.

I get what you want to say. ShB DRK will have a lot less ogcd pressing than in SB and therefore will feel slower and less busy. But it's still a ressource management job with decision making. You could say because of the less but stronger decisions each decision is more weightfull than it was before.

Edit: Don't get me wrong. I understand that, if the fast and busy gameplay of DRK was what you loved about this job, these changes totally suck, cause I kinda feel the same way. I will deeply miss DA. The Animation, the sound, the idea of beeing able to use my MP to boost my attacks. I will miss Dark Passenger. It was an awesome skill that just lacked in potency. Heck I will even miss the little blow we did with each Power Slash, even wehn we hardly ever used it...

[RatCopter]

Flexible? Where?

Consider the fact that currently one Syphon Strike gives us a TBN or DA to play with, whereas with the media tour numbers, one Syphon Strike will give us a 5th of a TBN or [mana dump skill]. That is a significant reduction in flexibility. And with the way things are looking, we're not likely to overcap outside of the new BW/CnS and Shittier Release windows. So all we're doing is building mana up to spend in shortly before or during those windows.

Compared to what SB DRK is, I wouldn't call something so blisteringly simple resource "management".

[Izsha]

Point of note, syphon only gave that much mp in grit. It does half that without, and most of these discussions are focused around optimal play.