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

[Elvandil]

I totally agree with the first part of the first post. I don't find the things for what i played DRK until now.
There is no more Mana management, no more agro management (maybe the same for all tanks), no more need to "think" about what spell use and when, etc...
The news skills are not really skill (really, the skills at lvl 64 to only up the potency of 50 ? The shadow skill at 80 that has no impact on the gameplay ?)

I don't want to change but there is no more pleasure to play DRK. Some people says that GNB is fun. PLD ?
I don't have the other tanks at lvl 70, so it will be really painfull...

I'm too sad, DRK was my classe of heart even when she was at the bottom...

[Barachim]

"Because it's fun." That was literally the only reason why I stuck with Dark Knight, instead of Paladin or Warrior. I always heard how Dark Knight was supposed to be the worst Tank, but numbers never mattered to me. As long as the Job was fun and felt good to play, I was happy. Well, I am not happy anymore.

[Lyth]

I think a lot of people just don't know what they want. People glorify the old days of Heavensward DRK, and complain about Stormblood. Yet when this plays closer to Heavensward than Stormblood ever was, people want to go back to the old broken design. Please let's not.

People complain about how little resource management DRK has now. Yet, in the same breath, they also complain how difficult it is to generate MP and about the scarcity of resources. Which is it?

Both in terms of gameplay and in terms of job strengths, DRK is in probably the best place that it's ever been. There are plenty of ways that you can make it worse. If you're looking for a job to provide helpful rework suggestions to, might I suggest Gunbreaker? It's a pretty edgy job too. We could stand to have a few less DRKs floating around as it is, and there's probably going to be a surge in numbers when the raid tier hits anyways.

[Reynhart]

Yet when this plays closer to Heavensward than Stormblood ever was, people want to go back to the old broken design. Please let's not.

How do this play closer to HW ? They just replaced spamming Dark Arts for DPS with spamming Darkside skills for DPS, thus making Darkside the same non issue that it was. They only increased the MP cost so that using them 5 times in a row wasn't a "bad strategic decision" it's now simply impossible.
In HW, you had to make sure to keep Darkside, you had another combo for maintaining DPS when Dark Arts was not available and you needed the int debuff, you had a very satisfying AoE phase with Abyssal Drain and Blood Price.

I'll only speak for me there, but in my eyes, they didn't fix any of the issue I had with SB DRK, while making the job slower.

[Lyth]

It has to do with the net rate of MP generation. In Heavensward, you generated enough MP for one DASE every two Delirium combos. This was because the MP gain of Siphon was offset by the MP drain of Darkside.

In Shadowbringers, they achieve a similar rate at baseline through a combination of MP ticks (200 every 3 seconds) and a lowered rate of Siphon MP generation (600). What has changed is that you're getting less out of each Blood Weapon (although the gains are more consistent, now that you can use it in AoE). But that's also offset by the existence of the Blood system, which didn't even exist in Heavensward.

Freyyy's come to a similar conclusion independently, and we've both posted our thoughts here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5052323

INT down was just a reward for bringing a DRK or MNK in Heavensward. If people thought that they were actually making decisions about which combo to use, then perhaps they, too, were under the effects of that debuff.

Like I've said elsewhere, I'm going to be very interested to see what people's Darkside uptime numbers are. Not because it's hard (nor was it hard in Heavensward), but because you should never underestimate the playerbase's ability to mess up what should be a simple mechanic.

[Awful]

I was worried that I wouldn't like DRK so I leveled GNB which is alot of fun as well with how much APM uptime there is but with the base of ShB DRK it's honestly fun. I love how snappy Edge/Flood of Darkness is and once you hit 72 for your AoE it just gets better from there on, I wanna hit 74 to see the potency changes in F/EoD so I can see how they hit which will probably be later today.

I also like how DRK still has their priority system vs other tanks, do I pool 3k mp for TBN for this TB? Or can i burst and make it more of a gain? I cant wait to run stuff at lvl 80 kinda sad I leveled GNB first but I dont regret it either.

[Reynhart]

If people thought that they were actually making decisions about which combo to use, then perhaps they, too, were under the effects of that debuff.

You can call it what you want but it's still something you needed to keep track on, based on the debuff timer and your MP pool. The exact same as Storm's Eye, Goring Blade, Disembowel, Twin snakes, etc...
The less things you have to pay attention, the less punishing a job become...but also the less engaging.

I also like how DRK still has their priority system vs other tanks, do I pool 3k mp for TBN for this TB? Or can i burst and make it more of a gain? I cant wait to run stuff at lvl 80 kinda sad I leveled GNB first but I dont regret it either.

It's not really a priority system since, unless the TB doesn't break the shield (very unlikely) you'll be able to do Edge/Flood anyway, and since its an oGCD available everytime, you don't lose anything by delaying it.

[Izsha]

Hes referencing buff situations. "TA is up. Do i use 1 more ogcd for damage during this window or do i need to save it for tbn later and get the ogcd outside the buff window." Thats the priority hes referencing once he hits lv 80 content.

If your just soloing or have no party buffs you can just spam without thought and leave enough for tbn. If you want to optinize it will take a bit of planning.

[Selova]

"Because it's fun." That was literally the only reason why I stuck with Dark Knight, instead of Paladin or Warrior. I always heard how Dark Knight was supposed to be the worst Tank, but numbers never mattered to me. As long as the Job was fun and felt good to play, I was happy. Well, I am not happy anymore.

Imo, nothing about SB's iteration was fun. Dark arts spam: The Class was never even remotely enjoyable. The sheer amount of people claiming they enjoyed this completely baffle me.

[CrazyAce]

I preferred Dark Arts spam over never knowing if I'm going to get Dark Arts during a fight at all. They need to make The Blackest Night Duration like 15s or something (its 7s right now) to even make getting Dark Arts viable in any content that's not a boss AOE mechanic.