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

[Kabooa]

Ok, so where is the fast paced tank with skills that actually synergize with each other to achieve great performance ?

Or, another question : Who are the people targeted by this new DRK that couldn't find what they wanted in either the old DRK or the other tanks ?

Gunbreaker.

I dunno. I haven't gotten to try it extensively yet, but the main issue I see is just a matter of resource tuning, and changing Delirium to something else.

[Reynhart]

Gunbreaker.

For now, I've only unlocked it, not really played it. But I will likely level all tanks to 80, so I'll see how it goes.

What bugs, me, if Gunbreaker actually fills that niche, is that past jobs were stripped away of their mechanics so that those can be given to new ones. "Yeah, Machnist doesn't rely on procs anymore, so let's create a Ranged DPS job that rely on procs and call it Dancer"...And the continuation combo already feel like the old Dark Arts in-between to enhance your full combo.

It depends on what your goals are. Do you just want to keep Darkside up? That's probably simple enough. Do you need to mitigate something with TBN? You could probably just keep a bit in reserve. Are you trying to save up for a burst window?

Yes, you ought to keep 3000 if you need TBN once in a while, but that's already what past DRK did. But, back then, breaking the shield during a burst window would give you an additionnal Bloodspiller, or to have instant access to Delirium. It was more than spending 3000 MP to do one move or spending those same 3000 MP to do the same move 5s later with mitigation in-between.

You may have noticed that you can't enter a combined Delirium/BW window with more than 50 blood.

You'll just delay your window by one GCD, and do the exact same number of Bloodspiller during the burst window anyway. It's not like IR where doing a "naked" Fell Cleave is far less powerful than a Fell Cleave during IR. Also the MP return of Delirium+BW will give you just above an additional Flood/Edge during that burst window, so unless you manage to spend all your MP, it won't make a real difference.

You also can't enter Delirium as LS is coming off cooldown with less than 50 blood.

Not level 80 yet, so didn't experiment it yet. On a sidenote, though, a problem I see with how engaging DRK is is that between lvl70 and lvl79, your single target gameplay doesn't change at all. The only real new skill you gain is Stalwart Soul, which, I admit, makes AoE situation a lot more fun. At least, PLD gets a new rotation at 76 with Atonement on top of an AoE magic phase (that it never had before) with Holy Circle and its gap closer at 74.

The answer then, as it is now, is to play it yourself and see.

I am playing it, and I'm mostly bored by it.