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

[LegolasT]

You are using the word "management" a little lightly. What about the new DRK looks like "managing" these three different things will even be somewhat akin to a struggle?

Darkside management refreshes being 30s and it being tied to the only real mana expender, even more in the case of the new dark arts we get via popping TBN, hardly makes that management. I wouldn't really call that management, I'd call that not falling asleep at your keyboard. Where's the interplay with Living Shadow, and why is that ability going to be utterly ridiculous to even attempt to sync up with raid buffs?

Face it, DRK went from the most flexible tank to the most rigid one.


If you think it looks fun, why are we not allowed to think it doesn't look good? We keep being told not to make a prejudgement, but here you are. Thinking it looks good is still a prejudgement.

That aside, yes, some people wanted to be rid of constantly using DA; they did not mean they wanted to be rid of a high APM, and to my understanding it seems a bit clear that most people who play DRK enjoy that aspect of it. But oh wait, let's fit all of our double weaves inside a 10s window because that version of spam sounds a little better. (not really.) Unless they heavily adjusted potencies and mana regen, then we're gonna be playing way slower than before. Find someone in the feedback threads that asked for this job to be slower.


And "cry" we shall, if that means getting back even a speck of what we liked of the job before. Are you here to troll or something?

No one is trolling its just people on the forums sound like cry babies and it's depressing. Hense why alot of players don't take these forums seriously what she said was absolutely accurate. I am a DRK main and I hate it when people say most drks this like they speak for me. I hated the DArts spam made no sense and I complained and it changed great. I am not gonae place criticism on a job until it comes out. I will say in terms of resources management she is right again DRK will be the only tank by the looks of it that will manage anything PLD and WAR were already boring tank is stormblood they will be even more boring is shadowbringers since we have no need to stance dance and manage hate only thing wars have to do is wait for inner realease window and PLD focus on staying alive with some DPS and great mitigation nothing exciting is going on at all with those 2 but people continue to talk and troll on DRK for reasons I will never understand. What crazy it comes from people that don't tank nor play the job at all the most.

[kunoz]

My condolences to you fellow DRK mains, continue to be louder and fight for your class!

[DRKoftheAzure]

And suddenly, for no reason at all, DRKs began to feel animosity toward WAR mains.

I felt animosity towards WAR since they got buffs that made DRK look like **** during 4.x which is around the time party finders were locking out DRK because they didn't have raid wide shields...

Also I never did like how Bloodspiller is Fell Cleave basically, but I do appreciate that not spamming it like Fell Cleave was nice though(btw I actually used a job boost thing for WAR just to see if people are claiming it as good as they as it is but there were definitely times were DRK was better over WAR because of magical tank busters)...

But now it definitely feels like in Shadowbringers they don't know how to re-purpose multiple abilities to help give some jobs more of an identity that isn't just "tank" although GNB looks like they have a solid foundation in terms of DPS rotation for single target and AoE...

[Shurrikhan]

HW DRK WAS THE BESTEST EVAR!!!! - That was then

OMG SB DRK HAD SO MUCH DEPTH WITH DA SPAM YOU COULD PLAN UR BURST DUUUUDEEEE!!! - This is now, the reaction after the reveal of ShB DRK.

You're acting like there's some paradox here, but... there isn't.

HW DRK, for instance, allowed you to bank MP for your burst. In SB, this still remained something of a conscious effort. In ShB, it won't be; you use two skills at the 60-second mark for the TA window and then... wait 60 seconds. There is, therefore, a progression of loss, not some change of opinion over what constitutes good gameplay. You lost some and gained slightly less one expansion and then you lost a great deal more and gained virtually nothing the next.

Being whipped once and feeling pain doesn't make it paradoxical when you get whipped a second time and still... feel pain, even if you may more strongly feel the more recent loss of skin than the first time's.

[shao32]

Let's move on ppl, I don't wanna see another DRK thread deleted bcs we have 1 troll, avoid talking about unnecessary and unhealthy stuff that don't help the thread.

[Valic]

I agree 100% with this thread. I am too one of those who picked DRK because 1. I like the aesthetic, 2. IT WAS DIFFERENT. I liked WAR for what it was, and PLD is pretty neat too. GNB looks appealing but looking at how DRK is going to be in ShB makes it look like it has absolutely no identity. I personally would want to rearrange this job from the inside out to be more of an MP zerker but that's a lot of investment and time that I'm sure they can't afford on so much they've already put into DRK.

That all said, looking over the OP's fixes, I wholly agree with them entirely and think this would at least give DRK it's own idea back. Not only that, but e have ONE main set of weapon skill combos... and it's the same syphon strike > soul eater we've been doing while we id have dark arts. I'd be glad to actually be able to weave in Edge/Flood just so I forget the fact I'm spamming the 3 damn skills over and over while also ripping WAR's inner release as a means to use bloodspiller. Meanwhile GNB feels like it has a 6 step combo, PLD and WAR still have a different ending combo. AT THE VERY LEAST upgrade my damn weapon skills so they can have a new animation so this random dark slash doesn't look so out of place with our blue/purple MP steal and our red/soul eater shiny weirdness. I really want to stay a DRK but ShB is pushing me away from it very hard by not having a clear identity. I can't tell what attacks are even magic to understand when I'd even need dark mind/missionary as is, very rarely can I actually tell because it's usually something more obvious... Because of that, I never use them and just instead use rampart or TBN in place.

Please SE, give DRK an identity, anything different, idc if the potencies are double digits, I picked DRK for it's aesthetic and different style of satisfying gameplay. Otherwise I'll just go GNB or back to WAR since WAR's practically the same but more satisfying and GNB unbelievably feels new despite us having DRK about 4 years now without a proper fix to make the class entirely unique to itself.

[Lyth]

Here's something that's been bothering me.

Every GCD has a potency value. But when that GCD generates resources as well, the "true potency" value is actually a bit higher. MP generated goes towards EoS/FoS. Blood generated goes towards Bloodspiller and Quietus. So if that GCD doesn't happen, you don't just lose the potency, you lose the potency associated with those resources as well.

Single Target:
Hard Slash: 200

Siphon Strike: 300 + 600 MP (1/5 EoS)
= 300 + 500/5
= 400

Souleater: 400 + 20 blood

To make sense of this last one, we need to figure out how much a Bloodspiller is worth. You might say that it's 50 blood for 550 potency. That's true, but it also occurs on the GCD. So to identify the net gain from using a Bloodspiller, you have to remove the opportunity cost of the GCD that it replaces.

Bloodspiller:
Replacing HS:
50 blood = 550 - 200
50 blood = 350

Replacing SS:
50 blood = 550 - 300 - 600 MP
50 blood = 550 - 400
50 blood = 150

Replacing SE:
50 blood = 550 - 400 - 20 blood
50 blood = 150 - 20 blood
70 blood = 150
(70 blood)(50/70) = 150(50/70)
50 blood = 50(150)/70
50 blood = 107

On average across a given combo, Bloodspiller represents a net gain of 202 potency per GCD. That sounds pretty reasonable, especially when you consider the fact that you have a new Bloodspiller every 2-3 combos, while you have a new EoS every 5 combos.

So now we can go back and plug that in to find:
Souleater: 400 + 20 blood
= 481

Let's take a look at AoE. I'm going to use 'n' to indicate the number of mobs present. So if you were fighting three mobs, 150n would be 150 x 3 = 450 potency.

AoE:
Unleash: 150n
Stalwart Soul: 160n + 600 MP (1/5 FoS) + 20 blood
= 160n + 300n/5 + 20 blood
= 220n + 20 blood

We can already see a problem here. Quietus has a potency value of 180n. Without even accounting the potency value of blood, StS has a higher potency value than Quietus. Keep that in the back of your mind for now.

Again, to find out what the value of this blood is, we need to figure out how much a Quietus is worth. Let's get to work.

Quietus:
Replacing Unleash:
50 blood = 180n – 150n
50 blood = 30n

Replacing StS: 180n – 220n – 20 blood
70 blood = -40n
(70 blood)(50/70) = (-40n)(50/70)
50 blood = 50(-40n)/70
50 blood = -28n

On average across an AoE combo, Quietus represents a 2n potency gain. But it actually oscillates between cumulative net gain and loss.

Long story short, Quietus either needs to be at least 40n potency higher, or it needs to restore MP in order to break even with StS. We'll have to see if the devs pick up on this before launch.

[Kreyd]

snip

lol, u'r right.

If you do 5 Unleash->StS combos + 1 FoS that's a total potency of 1850. Divided by 10 that's 185 potency per gcd.
If you do 5 Unleash->StS combos + 1 FoS + 2 Quietus that's a total potency of 2210. Divided by 12 it's 184.16666... potency per gcd.

Quietus is just wasting your blood.

[Izsha]

Lyth, your always so supportive of making decisions and gcd manipulation. You should LOVE all this ability to outplay spmeone else with intelligent decision making like this!

[Chrono_Rising]

Quietus:
Replacing Unleash:
50 blood = 180n – 150n
50 blood = 130n

Lyth, am I missing something is 180n-150n not 30n?