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

[shao32]

Ok...DRK has been getting some unfair criticism from a lot of people. Many of these people who hopped on early access day, tried it at 70 and came to the conclusion that it sucks. I'm waiting for someone to give a critique at 80.

idk if you know but with the exception of stalwart soul DRK gets nothing that changes his gameplay, edge/flood of darkness are just direct potency upgrades of current ones and living shadow sustitute a bloodspiller in practice so we can judge DRK gameplay pretty early thanks for that since the job doens't change at all betwen the last 8 levels.

[Renato]

idk if you know but with the exception of stalwart soul DRK gets nothing that changes his gameplay,

That's not entirely true. It does play totally different. Sure, not much was added to ability-wise but if you're used to SB DRK, get ready to re-learn the job.

Like I said, I'm fine with how DRK is now. I'm actually really enjoying it personally. I understand that some people aren't and that's fine but just because some people don't like it doesn't mean it's terrible. I've gotten through all of the content up until the point where I am now with no issues. The job functions totally fine.

[Arsthan]

I am not going to argue with you going into the very small details of the drk skillset.
Drk is not going to be least played job, it was least played job due to its underperforming horribly in 4.0. Drk was competely reworked in 5.0 for a reason. If it will be able to pull out a decent dps it will be played and none of your complains will be remembered anymore. It does a ton of dps way more than it used to, if it will keep it for later patches i will guarantee you that it will be even more popular than war. Give it a month or two.
Perfomance of the job matters the most. If you wont find it fun there will be others who will find fun in doing big numbers. If you want a job with nice rotations and deep skillset you should look into dps, tanks are by definition more boring to play. Eot

Mhm, if you're not going to state what is good about ShB DRK, then I have no clue what to tell you. You seriously are white knighting for no reason and I'm starting to think that you aren't even playing DRK (And surprise surprise, your DRK is lv70. I have strong doubts you tried it yourself).

DRK was promised a rework, because people weren't completely happy with it. Doesn't mean that we hated SB DRK, you're confusing those people with yourself. But what they did can be hardly called a rework - that would be an insult to actual reworks, so please don't call this lazy attempt a "rework". One can come up with a lot better ideas in about 5 minutes than what we currently have. It is true that DRK wasn't much played mostly because of lack of utility. Not DPS. Taking DRK as OT in 4.X was a bad idea when PLD existed and why would you take DRK over WAR as the MT? There simply wasn't any reason to. And while DRK underperformed compared to WAR, that sure didn't stop world's first UCoB clear. So again, not really a DPS problem. In fact, I do believe that some DRKs pulled better numbers than WAR did, especially in Alphascape - could be wrong though.

Your statement that performance matters the most is wrong, seriously wrong. MCH had some very good performance - so why did everyone avoid MCH as the plague? It had some really bad mechanical problems caused by ping. You could pull good numbers but most people I know just hated to deal with how you needed to spam all of your stuff in Overheat for Wildfire to do the maximum damage. MCH probably had more problems I'm not aware of, so can't say anything else about this. So again, if numbers are all that matters, why wasn't MCH anywhere? Not like it was excluded from groups. So... you can bet your butt that people won't forget about DRK this expansion, no complaints are going to be forgotten. Especially not after SE promised a rework and said that they'll need 6 months for it. ShB DRK is not a work of six months. Anyone thinking it is would be delusional. Just as a side note; DRK won't do big burst numbers compared to WAR. WAR's going to have still the biggest hits. Go play WAR if that's what you're after.

So again; while performance matters to an extend, what's far more important is the fun factor. If you don't have fun, why would you play that job? The only people who might not care about the fun aspect of jobs are people going on about "META, ONLY META GUYS! Non-meta jobs get out!". And if you didn't know, Meta is only important in speed runs. Nowhere else. Not exactly "a lot of people" do raids for faster times (meaning for the sole reason to be faster than anyone else). And you certainly don't seem to be one of those people.

[shao32]

That's not entirely true. It does play totally different. Sure, not much was added to ability-wise but if you're used to SB DRK, get ready to re-learn the job.

Like I said, I'm fine with how DRK is now. I'm actually really enjoying it personally. I understand that some people aren't and that's fine but just because some people don't like it doesn't mean it's terrible. I've gotten through all of the content up until the point where I am now with no issues. The job functions totally fine.

im talking the evolution of the job betwen lvl 72 to 80, single target whise DRK gets nothing in terms of gameplay just direct upgrades of current skills, and since living shadow cost the same of a bloodspiller just sustitute this last one when living is ready to use, everything is the same, the rate of the MP and blood gains doesn't change so gameplay wise DRK is the same on lvl 72 to 80, the only exception is the aoe with stalwart soul and it's not a big deal either.

so a person at lvl 72 can judge the job since mechanically the job doesn't change at all. the diferences of gameplay betwen SB/HW to SHB it's what many ppl are upset with this new version, nobody doubt the jobs funtions perfectly fine, ppl don't like how it works with is diferent.

[KatsuraJun]

I reiterated multiple times that balance-wise it seems perfectly fine to me at least.
The playstyle's been butchered though in the sense that if you liked DRK for being a fast-paced resource management based job, well... none of that exists anymore.

[TheForce]

That's not entirely true. It does play totally different. Sure, not much was added to ability-wise but if you're used to SB DRK, get ready to re-learn the job.

Like I said, I'm fine with how DRK is now. I'm actually really enjoying it personally. I understand that some people aren't and that's fine but just because some people don't like it doesn't mean it's terrible. I've gotten through all of the content up until the point where I am now with no issues. The job functions totally fine.

This is just a poor argument to make. Just because you can scrape through some content doesn't mean the class is good. I haven't heard anybody say the class is unplayable. It's so much deeper than that. The reason why I and many others are not enjoying the new DRK boils down to a few main things:

1. It's slow. Which is a big problem because DRK was known to be a busy, fast-paced class. This was a defining feature of DRK. Even the MP regen is slow now, forcing you to desperately spam your ONE single target combo to merely even out after using literally any MP skill you have. How is this enjoyable? This is absolute garbage class design.

2. It was severely watered down. Losing depth is never a good thing, and DRK lost just about all of its different options and crazy skill combinations that had insane results (In a giant mob, you could quickly pop Quietus -> DA -> Abyssal Drain. And still have nearly a full mp bar).

3. It's lazy and uninspired. Literally, it's obvious that they wanted 5.0 DRK to be off-brand WAR. There wasn't any real innovation here, no creativity, just a lower quality copy/paste of a class that already exists.

There's more, but these are the big hitters.

[JohnSeal]

I think people struggle with changes that’s all! I definitely love the new Drk and it’sway better than in SS but just rotation and dmg wise.
Sadly the defensive toolkit is inferior to the other 3 tanks I was hoping them to change LD to a more healer friendly version and Drk definitely need an extra skill possibly a self healing one like Equilibrium.
I think the new rotation and gameplay it’s great, I miss Sole survivor tbh and salted on 45 sec but now you won’t have anymore mp management issues that if you make a mistake or misuse DA you were doomed before. DA was a horrible thing and finally is gone the DA buff to keep it’s so easy to manage, delirium allows to use 5 BS/ Quietus with no cost and Blood weapon it’s great just different from before totally. Can’t wait to unlock the shadow clone, more dmg and you won’t risk to overcap your mp in your opener. The rotation is fluid and interactive and I think feel way better than before. People are unhappy with Delirium because they compare it with WAR’s IR.
I think most of player complaining about the gameplay are not even crunching numbers and trying to create a rotation but just waiting for other to study the class for them and explain to them how to work with DRK buff etc.
As a matter of fact the rotation of a class it’s something you need to like it personally too and now the tanks are decently balanced so doesn’t matter what you play.
I personally find PLD rotation boring and stiff but that’s my personal feeling still the new PLD is technically amazing for skills and defences.
War it’s way to simple for me but an amazing MT always!

GNB and DRK are both much more fun xD

[Renato]

1. It's slow. Which is a big problem because DRK was known to be a busy, fast-paced class. This was a defining feature of DRK. Even the MP regen is slow now, forcing you to desperately spam your ONE single target combo to merely even out after using literally any MP skill you have. How is this enjoyable? This is absolute garbage class design.

I will agree with you on this as far it being slow. But if you're spamming ONE of the MP combos the whole time, you're either still on lv70 or you're playing the job wrong.

2. It was severely watered down. Losing depth is never a good thing, and DRK lost just about all of its different options and crazy skill combinations that had insane results (In a giant mob, you could quickly pop Quietus -> DA -> Abyssal Drain. And still have nearly a full mp bar).

Going back to my comment above. There are different combinations. I've said before that they're not as efficient as the SB MP regen methods but they work.
Siphon Strike - 600mp
Siphon Strike>Quietus>Quietus - 2400mp
Unleash>Quietus>Stalwart Soul -2400mp
Delirium>Quietus x5 - 3000mp

Those are just some of the combos not even including the using Blood Weapon in combination with your other MP Regen attacks. You have options, it's not just "use one combo to restore MP." You just have to figure out a new rotation.

[WhyAmIHere]

I will agree with you on this as far it being slow. But if you're spamming ONE of the MP combos the whole time, you're either still on lv70 or you're playing the job wrong.

. . .He specified single target. DRK doesn't have a second single target combo. Or are you saying he should cycle between Unleash -> Stalwart on single target??

[NealSnow]

I'm lv72 drk and I loveeee it. Guess people actually liked spamming dark arts over and over and over ect.

If you were expecting all classes to play radically different at 80 that's on you as far as expectations. Not every job needs reinvented every time there's an expansion. DARK gets 3 new skills, and the upgrades to flood and edge compliment drk. I'm not sure what people were expecting but each day it seems people only come to the forums to complain about x thing, or how y is bad now.

OP I do garentee trying it yourself unless you loved dark arts spam. If anything DRK feels more engaging to me.