Question for fellow DRK's who have played its new Shb iteration.

[WhyAmIHere]

I'm sorry but I need to refer to your claim about how Salted Earth is the only skill that was nerfed, that's just plain false.

Off the top of my head, here are all the skills that were nerfed in Shb:

Blood Weapon
Dark Mind
Sole Survivor was outright removed
Delirium
Quietus
Syphon Strike
Salted Earth

Are... are you quoting the right guy???

[TheForce]

Are... are you quoting the right guy???

I'm not lol..that's embarrassing lol.

[Keagian]

DRK really doesn't feel like DRK anymore, the class is slow and requires you to basically always use TBN since its your only defensive CD if Rampart and Shadow Wall is on CD, which means your dps suffers and if TBN doesn't break, even more dps loss. I'm hoping they increase the amount of MP you drain. At least this way we can use Flood of Shadow and Edge of Shadow more often without worry and have MP to use TBN since we don't have as much mitigation as the other tanks. Speaking of Flood of Shadow why is the upgrade version only 50 extra potency, that's barely an increase.

[Nosphuratu]

Maybe I'm amongst the small few but j really enjoy the changes. Only issue I have is that salted earth is on a really long CD. Mana isnt bad but could be better for how high price the skills are outside of burst phase

[Valic]

I'm sorry but I need to refer to your claim about how Salted Earth is the only skill that was nerfed, that's just plain false.

Off the top of my head, here are all the skills that were nerfed in Shb:

Blood Weapon
Dark Mind
Sole Survivor was outright removed
Delirium
Quietus
Syphon Strike
Salted Earth

I didn't say anything about nerfs. Wrong dude.

Speaking of Flood of Shadow why is the upgrade version only 50 extra potency, that's barely an increase.

AOE increases typically work that way. 50 more potency on an enemy is 100 more potency altogether when used on 2 enemies, and so on so forth. Can't buff it too high as far as anyone's aoes go.

[Nosphuratu]

Maybe I'm amongst the small few but j really enjoy the changes. Only issue I have is that salted earth is on a really long CD. Mana isnt bad but could be better for how high price the skills are outside of burst phase

[Arsthan]

No it does not play worse than war, no it was not nerfed and no not everyone is annoyed there are a ton of people in game who are currently playing drk.
No they did not mixed it with war 4.0, you are probably reffering to delirium, but its like saying all tanks have a dash so they are the same. If the fun part of drk was to spam a buff for 140 potency to prevent mp from hitting the max then its a really low fun standards.
The only thing that got a nerf is salted earth because drk is already overloaded with aoe dmg.

Drk is more effective and could land a better punch and burst dmg than ever before, almost like a dps. It is slower for a over minute fight, but still nowhere near the war slowness. Its faster than 4.0 PLD that is for sure.

Okay... I've got enough of you so let's go through your points one by one. If you have a problem with it, that's your fault for white knighting DRK. I'm fine with some people enjoying ShB DRK, but your behaviour is utterly rediculous.

1) It does play like a worse WAR, one could say that Souleater is basicly Storm's Path with MP gain - this leads to Blood Spillers being used the same way as Fell Cleave in 4.0; except you don't have Infuriate. The only thing you could say is different is that you have the new 3k MP skills, but I'll adress this below. And delirium is just the last drop. Mind you, both GNB and PLD play very differently to WAR, with MAYBE the expection of Requiescat on PLD, but rather than being an Inner Release for PLD, it's more like a Dreadwyrm Trance. PLD's rotation is a lot more different too. And while GNB has only one combo, just like DRK, he does have a lot more you have to track if you want to play optimally - not to mention that his secondary combo is used a lot more that it seemed at first. You could also say that GNB's Burst Strike works like the 4th combo hit, which in my eyes after playing it, is a totally valid opinion considering you can always use it after the usual 123 combo, or you could just keep 2 cartridges for 2 Burst Strikes in a row. It's like you have a choice what to do with it.

2) DRK was nerfed in the MP gain department. You cannot possibly argue this point. You got a lot more MP in SB than right now AND the MP costs were lower - meaning you did use Dark Arts more frequently than the new 3k ones. Which brings me to your nonsensical white knighting about how ShB DRK is so much better than SB - How is it better? That you have to press less buttons for easier DPS? Because you could very well take SB DRK, increase MP costs, lower MP gains, give it Inner Release and you get ShB. How in the hell can you like DRK now when it plays similarly to the DRK you so hate, just with way less buttons to press in the regard of the new 3k skills? Now mind you that you shouldn't be using the new skills until TA is up, anything else is bad play on your part - that's just a fact. So the question again; How is EoS different to Dark Arts? Because more potency is not an answer here. And you hate Dark Arts, right?

3) Yeah they nerfed Salted Earth, nothing much to say here... is what I'd say if you stopped after the "nerf" part and didn't continue with "because our AoE is so good now". What in the world makes you think that Salted Earth was exclusively used for AoE? It was a very good single target DoT for bosses and stuff. They nerfed the potency, CD and duration - assumably because EoS has so much potency. Oh yeah and it doesn't give blood anymore. This skill got hit hard for almost no reason if you ask me. Balancing could have been done differently.

4) Now to your last point... first off, no one ever asked for DRK to become more bursty. We had WAR for that already. PLD and DRK were very stable DPS, but WAR was on top of them mainly because WAR's burst went very well with the party burst windows. You know how you could balance the damage of PLD and DRK to WAR levels without giving them a burst of their own (Ignoring FoF and Requiescat right now)? Upping the potency of their combos, oGCDs and so on. Burst is definitely not required. And you better be able to back up your words about WAR and PLD being slower than DRK, because I'll be ignoring your point otherwise.

Now I do want to adress the whole 4th point I make with saying this; people are complaining about DRK not because of DPS or balance - this comes afterwards the most important point. And that is "Is the gameplay fun?". People are not happy that the gameplay took a huge hit, you think this whole uproar would be just about DPS? That's the last thing on our minds. Defensively it still is rather strange that we're focused on magic damage but whatever... there are other things to be adressed first.

Again, anyone is free to like ShB DRK as much as they want. No one is going to blame them for it as fun, in the end, is subjective. But you really shouldn't be defending the new DRK while calling SB DRK bad. Especially when it is quite obvious from your statements that you didn't even bother with playing SB DRK how you should be, meaning optimally. If you like DRK because it's a lot easier now, fine by me. Just stop bashing other people's opinions. That is just not nice.

SB DRK had his problems, but we still liked DRK in a way. That is just not the case anymore. It is also pretty likely that when raiding comes out, DRKs are going to be the least played job/tank. This will most likely cause SE to do something about it. Or they'll say that their DPS is fine and just ignore DRK for another expansion, who knows.

[Danelo]

For all the things I dislike and loathe about the new changes, I was less dissatisfied than I thought I'd be. I think the one reason for that is the element of "counter attack tank". The dark arts proc off TBN for free edge of/flood of feels more, to me, to exemplify that counter attack tank feeling the class had in 3.0. I didn't feel that from SB DRK although it gave the resources to use a BS. I will miss the versatility and flexibility of 4.0 DRK.

[Drtoxicmedica]

snip.

Your dps doesn’t suffer if you use tbn and it breaks only if it doesn’t. It’s a free shield every tank buster. You trade 3k mp for a free edge/flood which also cost 3k mp. Meaning it breaks even no lose but more gcd’s For the healer. No one here is actually looking at how and what darks kit does. It’s no longer spam the same ogcd till your key falls of it’s not spread out across its kit. Sb dark was nothing but spam dark arts how the hell is that fun? And no management lol you could never lose dark side what are you managing no for exactly? Oh yeah the same stuff you manage mo for now burst windows and tbn when it’s needed. Except now tbn isn’t a crap shoot on whether it’s a dps loss or not

[currentlemon]

snip

I feel very discouraged to play the class now after reading this. Not that I'm blaming you; rather, I'm blaming SE for their poor attempt at a rework. And that's a shame because I've been interested in the job for quite some time. I want to Tank, and I want to play DRK, but seeing that the job got such a poor rework is disheartening. With that said, I'll still play DRK. Since I was able to play the stale WHM till lvl. 70, I think I can handle the 'boredom'. But SE needs to work fast or else DRK, the poster boy for Shadowbringers, will continue to sit in the sidelines while the other tanks flourish (still early, I know, but from what I'm hearing on these forums, PLD and WAR seem like great tanks).