5.0 DRK has a Solid foundation, here's why.

[Valic]

-Continued

TBN Feels scary to use now. Before it didn't matter, it was a good mitigation, whether it broke or not, you just had to make sure you had some mana available in some form to make up for the loss if it was. Luckily in SB, we had plenty of ways to do this. Old delirium Quietus's MP regain per hit, blood sword/price, syphon strike that gave us much more MP than now, and even carve and spit if you were TRULY desperate for some reason(not that anyone should've ever done this). In SB, this skill made sense, you were rewarded either the safety of your comrade or a free bloodspiller/Quietus/Delirium to counter with. It created a means for you to adjust your mana how you saw fit, if you had plenty of MP but no gauge, you could TBN to reverse things a bit. There was a synergy that is currently not present now in ShB. Now TBN feels VERY costly with how difficult it is to build mana by ourselves and even when it breaks... It's just giving you a free spend of a skill that's already easily kept up because there's only 2 things that you even use MP for anymore (and they're on shared CD's for single target or aoe so REALLY, it's just one skill). When I get this "dark arts" proc, I feel silly. My timer's already at 50, so I'm not even concerned about keeping it up, and sure it's free damage if the shield is broken, but if it's not? It's a damage loss and you're struck trying to recover MP or feeling helpless at being unable to shield a party member on demand when you thought it was needed. TBN's versatility revolved around the use of your MP and blackblood, considering all of our SB skills no longer provide an additional service like Quietus's MP regen or Delirium's buff duration boost, there is no longer synergy present. Instead, everything we have, we pop off cd because free CD or we use it because we don't want to suffer our blackblood overfilling.

[Valic]

-Continued


It's like we're the new MCH or something. Should've made it so that Inner Shadow is boosted by how much blackblood you have or the potency of your skills is based on your blackblood gauge or ya know, ANYTHING that would relate the skills to one another again. All of this said, seeing how many people are content with this boring 123 combo and bloodpsiller spam nonsense... I'm convinced those people haven't tried WAR or they are like me and want to see this expansion through with the poster boy "dark knight" until the end. Does this job work? Of course, it's brain dead simple and can work for just about any content you wanna do if you really want. Is it fun? That's subjective, but it's not deniable how severely close it is to WAR and how it lacks a lot of synergy that every other tank has some form of. Is Synergy fun? I mean, why else pick DRK other than the theme right? typically people pick a job based on theme or how they play, and DRK plays at level cap like how it plays at level 30. Which is spam 3 GCD's, fill in darkside whenever yo have the MP to spend, and that's it, everything else is just pop it when it's up or something to sugarcoat it's changes to make you believe it's actually engaging. The only changes I appreciate out of this job, is the lack of DA spam replaced by our edge/flood (which arguably gave DRK more identity back in SB than now), our aoe combo (which, everyone has gotten this so nothing special), and Inner Shadow (but even this doesn't have any data about it's potency, how it controls, why it picks out attacks, etc that doesn't make any sense with this job still). Dark Mind and Dark Missionary will always cause a player to go "well... that's... okay I guess" and that is sad and shouldn't be something you have to think in an MMO. When I get a group mitigation, I should think "AWESOME, I CAN SEE SO MANY USES FOR THIS!", when I get dark missionary, I go "I guess it'll work for stack mechs and maybe heal checks". When I got WAR's mitigation in SB, I was intrigued by how it worked and felt good about using it, DRK's "magic" mitigation is always assumed everything uses magic or it'lll be useful because most attacks are magic. What about the ones not int he most? When do I know when they're not? Does that mean I specifically pop these for stack markers or heal checks I may or may not see coming? What if some of them are physical, how will I know? It's never made sense or been a comfort but people still act as though it's perfectly fine to assume it'll be fine for whatever you use it for.

[Valic]

-Lastly, dang this forum character limit.

To use an old quote to support my argument about magic mitigation.

Eh, it's a bit of trial and error IMO. It was easy to tell on War because Raw Intuition simply won't parry, I find it easier to do it this way then to try to pay attention to what the animations look like on top of everything else. It'd also be nice if they had some consistency with their naming of abilities, for example Doom Strike sounds like a physical tankbuster so I thought it was physical at first, but it is in fact magical. Meanwhile Heavenly Strike from Byakko is a physical buster. "Strike" would seem to imply a physical attack, but apparently not always. Arm & Hammer in v3s sounds physical, and it is. So I just wish they'd be a little more conscious of stuff like that. But either way you just have to try it and see what happens. Or you know, come to the forums and ask

At least give us some form of indication SE. Maybe colorize cast bars to be orange like they are now when they're physical but color them something else when they're magical? Otherwise, I'm never excited to see "magic damage mitigation" skills. It's niche when you especially can't tell the difference between magic and physical considering the above. thats aid, I feel like I've ranted enough about this time and time again thread for thread, so I'ma leave this here and if you wanna say DRK is fine... Then fine, you're allowed an opinion as anyone else here is. It's always going to be subjective, but facts are facts that DRK is simpler than it ever has been with so many removal of abilities on skills and being you only have the 1-2-3 GCD to perform over and over or Bloodspiller/Quietus spamover and over which is just 1--1-1-1-1-11-1-1

[Crescence]

I changed from DRK to WAR before in SB and doing DRK again now in ShB and I think I'm liking it pretty fine. I don't think it's too similar to WAR, not even with Delirium being a weaker copy of WAR skill. If I want less ability and more crit, then I'll go for WAR.

I thought DRK would be very simple and boring too before but flood/edge actually coud use more attention than I expected (e.g. adjusting and using mana during TA for higher damage or so) and that's pretty fun. At least I won't really say it's as easy as ppl say until I managed to perfectly manage my mana and gives out max dps for the job.

One thing I'm concerned of is Living Shadow. It'd be so very nice if it (he?) would start attacking at least 3 seconds faster. Took him too long just to come out.

[Kaozurei]

New Delirium is amazing compared to the garbage that was Delirium back in 4.0. It barely had any use and despite being a worse Inner Release, it gets the job done and DRK has plenty of other unique things going for them to differentiate them from WAR. I'd say new delirium is fine and unless people can put forward an alternative to match the burst DPS 5.0 Delirium can provide I believe it's the best SE can give Dark Knights.

Overall I agree with OP. Some QoL changes and mitigation changes and it'd be set.

[ShinShimon]

I like that TBN feels more meaningful to use.

I dislike delirium. Makes bloodspiller feel cheap instead of impactful, it doesn't have the same visceral feel as fell cleave that makes it satisfying to spam.

I hate how we went from being the king of big pulls to the worst dungeon tank. My WHM friend has found it much harder to heal DRK than any of the other tanks in ShB's more difficult pulls. It felt really damn good to pull wall to wall, and barely need a healer as you spammed TBN, DAAB, and quietus. Now, I have much more limited mana for tbn, no AoE self sustain except a 90 second cooldown, and a bunch of mostly useless magic damage reducing cooldowns.

[shao32]

I have to disagree, this DRK isn't closer to HW and it's doesn't have a strong base at all, the job is closer to a ARR PLD mixed with SB WAR.

So I have several questions, where are the combos we have on HW? I only see one compared to the 3 we use to have. where is the dark arts interactions with the combos? Egde/flood do nothing. where is the speed and resource generation? Blood weapon is gutted and blood price is dead. where are the parry mechanics? Dark dance and reprisal both are dead. Dark passenger and his blind? Dead. Abbysal drain MP rengeneration and interaction with dark arts? Dead too now is a 60s skill. Where is our aoe sinergy? Where?.I don't see anything of HW in this DRK, I just see a job that every problem it have has been solved with removing the mechanic until it have almost nothing left and added the mechanic of another job to compensate, that's DRK today don't get wrong.

Delirium is not fine, in fact there is so much wrong with this mechanic, what's the point of have different tanks if all of then except 1 have the same stupid thing of spam a skill 5 times in a row? Old delirium was way better and more important, it was unique, bring with the rest of the skills a unique gameplay an unique path for the job to evolve, this not, this put DRK design based on PLD and WAR, DRK doesn't follow his own path anymore.

So no, delirium must be change, blood weapon must be change, DRK need more combos, DRK need more unique mechanics, DRK need take his own path again and stop lookig like the emo child of arr PLD and SB WAR.

[Ranka]

Okay, so before expansion I refrained from making posts (honestly havent posted in forums in a long time anyway) and was fairly pessimistic on the new Dark Knight changes. However, I do believe I had to play it first to get a good feel for it. After taking it to 80 I do have to say I enjoy it. However, like OP stated it is lacking in certain areas, it does have a good foundation. I do not agree with some changes he has posted, but it does need some rework on some of the abilities.

As far as changes I would/wouldn't like to skills:

• Delirium I think does need some rework, though its not as bad as people make it out. The problem most people seem to have with it is its a copy of warriors fel cleave spam, so its just a identity issue.
• Abyssal Drain can go in 1 of two directions, keep it AoE friendly by reducing cool down to around 30 seconds would be fine or like OP said give it 1 high potency cure regardless of targets hit for more single target utility(more against this option).
• Salted Earth I must agree with OP on, it does feel like they are phasing it out for next expansion, this should not have doubled in cool down unless it gave some additional affects, it doesn't. I would just put CD down to 45 seconds again or add a additional affect for it (maybe like dark knight while in AoE takes 15% reduced damage or something that add to a reason for this CD increase).
• Living Shadow as much as I love this skill, its also just a fancy dot that does nothing for the first 5 seconds of duration except a cool animation summoning. Would prefer if it copied your moves at reduced damage so it can go in line with other burst phase (in case delirium does not change).
• TBN I will say does not need any changes, this works great as is. If people are having issues with never breaking shield, its because they pop it at poor timings (which I have done to). When you learn mechanics you know when and when not to use it. Maybe that will change when people are overgeared for content, but until then I will not speak of "when overgeared" effects at the beginning of an expansion because its all speculation.

Potency changes I'll leave to SE and hopefully that can sort itself out, I am more concerned about mechanics and Identity of the class then potency numbers atm, within reason. (hopefully don't get nerfed because from hear-say drk is on the lower end atm, but I also hear they are near top *shrug*)
There are some other minor changes id like them to make, but I will probably put more input in after doing extremes tomorrow with friends.

P.S Sorry if grammar is bad, it is 3 A.M here and I decided to write this before I called it a night.

*Edit*
Sorry, there are other tweeks I would say as well *minor* but I'll leave that for another time, or a different feedback post. The ones above are just the ones I feel more strongly about atm.

[Kaozurei]

Delirium is not fine, in fact there is so much wrong with this mechanic, what's the point of have different tanks if all of then except 1 have the same stupid thing of spam a skill 5 times in a row? Old delirium was way better and more important, it was unique, bring with the rest of the skills a unique gameplay an unique path for the job to evolve, this not, this put DRK design based on PLD and WAR, DRK doesn't follow his own path anymore.

So no, delirium must be change, blood weapon must be change, DRK need more combos, DRK need more unique mechanics, DRK need take his own path again and stop lookig like the emo child of arr PLD and SB WAR.

While I admire the way you looked at it, Delirium was a skill which, while certainly unique, was useless most of the time. Extending Blood Weapon was only meaningful when you were absolutely sure you'd have enough uptime to make the best use of said extension to generate more MP/blood and extending Blood Price, while useful during big pulls in dungeons, wasn't always worth giving up 50 blood for as opposed to using another Quietus to restore more MP than Blood Price ever could, especially after the late Stormblood Blood Price MP generation nerf. Now Delirium is worth using on cooldown and gives DRK a much-needed burst window.

You also talk about three tanks now having the same concept of spamming one attack five times in a row, yet very few people complain about PLD's Holy Spirit and many even say it's a lot more fun to play now in ShB despite this concept still being a thing. Just because a job has a similar mechanic to another job doesn't mean they're now carbon copies of each other.

Finally, you've voiced your discontent with ShB DRK on many threads now, but you've mostly just stated that "X must be changed". If you have any ideas on how to improve the job then by all means, share them with the forums. SE claims they read them when balancing/reworking things and last expansion's Shake it Off rework is proof of this, so maybe something will come out of it.

[Danelo]

Quietus feels like a punishment to use. It needs a potency buff and to generate mana.

I do agree with the top line post that BS should generate mana. Either that or lower the recast time for BW by a good chunk. A resource management job should not be setup to be resource starved. Everything should be an eb and flow of resources while doing damage and most importantly, tanking. Everything should generate something.

I'm a roulette away from 80 and as much as I don't want to admit it, the new DRK has grown on me slightly. I know, play WAR... I won't. Like I said and, again, much to my chagrin, I'm enjoying it but I still want more synergy between abilities and resources.

Side note: I actually like how TBN works currently but with a few tweaks I could love it more. I want a certain amount of mana back when it pops. The full 3000 might be OP but 2k would be nice. Also make it 9 seconds duration.