Perma shelved my DRK: No role, no idenity, no lore, no worthwhile skills, no fun

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not questioning your personal preference. Some people like strict rotation-based jobs, some people like more flexible jobs where you have to manage resources and make decisions on the fly. I think that you need both in game.

Your post is internally inconsistent, though. You claim that DRK doesn't have enough going on to keep your attention, but in the same breath you also say that you struggle to keep track of everything. That's not boredom. That's struggling with job mechanics. You've simply re-framed it in a way that makes you feel better about the whole thing. It's a common enough phenomenon, though. Most of the sour grapes posts express this in some form or another.

No, that part isn't internally consistent. (Another is, and I'll mention it later.) It's not like I'm overcapping MP or forgetting to use my TBN or anything. It's just that while on any other job you could ask pause the game, blindfold me, and ask "how long until X comes up" and I'd have an answer for you, accurate within a couple seconds, without raid buffs to bank for I don't have nearly so clear a mental picture of anything but TBN because there's just no reward for tracking it, and that makes me lose engagement. I constantly feel like I'm forgetting something or slipping up just because I quickly start to lose track -- not to the point of mechanical slippage, but slippage nonetheless. It literally felt to me like sleep-shakes (hypnogogic jerks, if you prefer). Paradoxically, by having so much control compared to normal, I feel less in control. I realize that's like claiming a template gives freedom and it will change with time or by giving myself the rhythmic guidelines I'm currently missing, but that was my 71-80 experience at the time I wrote it. It was merely a comment on my experience and my own confusion at it.

Again, people don't get better at something when increasing the difficulty they face because of issues within the thing itself, or else you wouldn't then see improvement under that decreased leniency / increased intensity. There must be something tangential to the issue which is then mitigated in the new circumstances. That's simple logic.

[Lyth]

...

Most of this is gibberish. I understand your sentiment, though. It's worth noting that the biggest change to DRK this expansion is how buff dependent the job has become. You effectively have three different 'buffs' that are all slightly out of phase with each other. Each of them have different effects on your two resource gauge. When BW and Delirium sync up, you want to enter in with low blood, or else you're forced to cap. When Delirium and LS sync up, you want to enter with high blood, or else you're forced to delay LS. TBN adds an interesting element as well, in that it allows you to effectively 'stockpile' MP above your cap just prior to entering into a raid burst window. You need rotational freedom because each of these interactions require you to plan ahead on how you want to use your resources. Every pull, there are a ton of little tiny adjustments that you realise that you can do differently.

I think that's what makes DRK different from all the other tanks. On GNB or PLD, it feels like if you do something dumb, it's a bad mistake, but an obvious one that is usually easily fixable. DRK bombards you with the potential for dozens of small errors that add up into bigger ones. That's where your feeling of dread comes from. You can either treat it like a challenge and keep pushing yourself harder, or just sour grapes the whole thing and switch to one of the other options. I know what my decision is.

[Shurrikhan]

Most of this is gibberish. I understand your sentiment, though. It's worth noting that the biggest change to DRK this expansion is how buff dependent the job has become. You effectively have three different 'buffs' that are all slightly out of phase with each other. Each of them have different effects on your two resource gauge. When BW and Delirium sync up, you want to enter in with low blood, or else you're forced to cap. When Delirium and LS sync up, you want to enter with high blood, or else you're forced to delay LS. TBN adds an interesting element as well, in that it allows you to effectively 'stockpile' MP above your cap just prior to entering into a raid burst window. You need rotational freedom because each of these interactions require you to plan ahead on how you want to use your resources. Every pull, there are a ton of little tiny adjustments that you realise that you can do differently.

Only one part of this is even new to 71-80. One. LS. Nothing more. And it's obvious to anyone who's played around SAM's Guren. The rest was already seen with our former variant of Blood Weapon. So why belabor points that have been common knowledge for two years? TBN pre-popping may be more versatile now, if you will. But, tracking one's current combo progress and using TBN to trade an ending Hard Slash for a Bloodspiller if more than 15s from the next tankbuster wasn't any less nuanced. I'd argue, even, it was more difficult to manage (if slightly) than what we have now through our Edge of Shadow refund.

I think that's what makes DRK different from all the other tanks. On GNB or PLD, it feels like if you do something dumb, it's a bad mistake, but an obvious one that is usually easily fixable. DRK bombards you with the potential for dozens of small errors that add up into bigger ones. That's where your feeling of dread comes from.

I agree with you as to why DRK feels distinct, and enjoy that part of it, but such simple mechanics are not the source of my "feeling of dread", as you put it. This isn't a "ton" of adjustments. Almost are are just... playing a basic form of SAM, but with a split gauge.

I'm increasingly enjoying the job, but only in the process of finding out which things will work to pop TBN and where I can fit it for additional defense for myself or (especially fun for me) a party member who'd otherwise have lethally screwed up. It's nothing to do with subtle mechanics that have long been habitual to deal with; they've long since been discovered, enjoyed, and made... part and parcel of the job (among others) in no surprising way.

You can assume that anyone who disagrees with you somehow isn't engaging with as many aspects of the job or to the same degree as you do, but that's just not always going to be the case. Unless you have another list twice that length somewhere, it's not the case here. Call me the curmudgeon for wanting more if you like, but it appears I'm engaging with all the same mechanics you are. Finding DRK a bit lacking is not an opinion based solely on ignorance, as much as you might like to reduce it to such.