One change for DRK: Darkside increases attack speed instead of damage

[Freyyy]

Really? A pissing match beteeen the 2 easiest tanks both trying to make their jobs sound like rocket science? Both jobs are pretty braindead right now and shadows of their older versions that had actual resource management, procs, and multiple combos, more defensive skills to manage, stance dancing, enmity concerns, etc.

You giys are just sounding ridiculous attempting to make these jobs sound so complex. They just arent. Drk has a bunch of ogcds, can bank/spend mp for raid buff optimization, and manage tbn properly. War banks gauge the same way as drks mp for burst windows, maintains eye, and (should be) managing nascent around your own damage flexibility and mitigation needs in a tweaked way that drk tries to min max tbn. None of these are terribly challenging, especially when se just reworked virtually every job to be steamlined and simplified way down from their previously punishing versions.

Where did you see me try to make DRK sound complex ? I'll quote myself :

Again I'm not saying DRK is hard or complex. Tanks are all easy af this expac and DRK definitely could use some more little things to make it stand out more (especially when looking at Delirium and IR). But saying DRK is WAR with less things to do is beyond ignorance.

Also again, I didn't say that DRK was a busy job. I said it was more busy than braindead WAR. Of course, compared to DPS jobs it's very lackluster. I also want SE to make tanks more complex and engaging. I've been saying it on multiple threads. Tanking in this game feels more and more shallow. I just don't think that "it only has one combo" is a valid reason to say a job is less busy or braindead. There are plenty of other reasons, and just giving them an extra combo finisher won't fix its problems. It might help (I suggested to give us Power Slash back with an interesting effect myself some time ago), but if we want to make the jobs more interesting and impactful we need more. [...]

I'm saying all over the place that DRK is easy, just like every single tank right now (and don't even get me started on GNB). I just find that there's way too much misinformation and people targetting the wrong things when saying the jobs are easy. Sorry for trying to be constructive instead of jumping on the "complain all the time" bandwagon by just saying the same "Oh YeAh dRk Is bOriNg" arguments in every single DRK thread.

[Reynhart]

I just find that there's way too much misinformation and people targetting the wrong things when saying the jobs are easy.

Several things can make a job not engaging to play, and you said yourself than repeated animation is one of them. Giving it another finisher would reduce that animation loop, and, if we tie a speed buff to it, a better pace and something to manage, on top of being a buff that no other tank have, thus giving a little more unique feel.
And, like I said earlier, it's an easy thing to do, that won't require redesigning the toolkit completely (At best, you slightly reduce some potencies, to compensate for the increased speed)

Another thing that makes DRK feel weird is "spam 5 times the same skill" taken from other tanks. And for that, I made a suggestion that, first, we should have Scourge back as a blood costing DoT, but have a blood combo Quietus-Bloodspiller-Scourge, so that Delirum would actually open a new combo unavailable outside of it. This would also make DRK the only job to have skills used in and out of combo.

[Pyitoechito]

I look away for one week and come back to a debate over which tanking job is more brain dead? Couldn't even keep it on topic for a single page.

I really should have seen this coming...

[DRKoftheAzure]

The haste effect would only be desirable if DRK's offensive toolkit was nothing but GCD weaponskills...

But because DRK has 2 glorified GCDs that are oGCD and 2 glorified oGCDs on GCD, both of which are basically single target and AoE, and 3 spells that make skill speed not worth getting, terrible MP regain, among other things that aren't related to the topic in this thread, it's no wonder why DRK has become the class everyone wants to like but can't because of design choices that make it not worth recommending to other players...

And no you don't need skill speed for 5th Bloodspiller in Delirium, that myth has been debunked and skill speed is only ever applied for server ticks, the ablitiy will get qued in at 0.5 seconds before the skill/GCD is ready...

[Shurrikhan]

Dark Knight is Warrior with even less to do which is not a good thing.

It's kind of like competing over a pebble at this point, but I usually feel like I have even less to do as a Warrior than as a DRK... I was more critical of DRK at first since I'd leveled DRK first again and didn't expect the Upheaval/Infuriate changes to be quite so bland as they ended up, but honestly...

[Nedkel]

From design perspective DRK is still better made than Samurai which has a lot of bloat skills and even useless ones.

[Shurrikhan]

From design perspective DRK is still better made than Samurai which has a lot of bloat skills and even useless ones.

Many are lackluster, but none are useless (apart from perhaps Guren in 8-mans, though we could then make the same argument of Shadowbite, Foul, Flare, Flood of Shadows, etc.). Even Third Eye-Seigan is still a free 28 potency per use.

And why is that interaction, and similar ones, so pointlessly weak? Partly, no doubt, to allow greater freedom in raid damage timings since a stronger effect would imbalance SAM's performance between fights with raid damage every 15 seconds compared to less frequent damage (even if only faintly). But mostly? Because of the same skillgap-gutting that's rampant across the tanks...

So, what's the solution, then? Since we've already gutted these mechanics, do we just give them the mercy blow? Extend combo length to 12 seconds so Delirium, Inner Release, and Gnashing Fang combo with Bloodfest and 2 cartridges already loaded can't possibly run into issues? Get rid of Storm's Eye and Upheaval altogether after that? Or, do you actually make controlling those mechanics matter again, and bring back the means and rewards for doing so?

While I do agree with your points, I would like to nitpick this one a tad. The multi-hit abilities still see use in 8-mans depending on fight design, due to a decent size of them being a dps gain when used on 2 targets.

I realize, which is why I said "perhaps", since some 8-mans will give a second target to cleave. But, that just brings the point home further: there are no actually useless abilities in that toolkit, even if some could be consolidated via conditionals.

[MariaArvana]

Many are lackluster, but none are useless (apart from perhaps Guren in 8-mans, though we could then make the same argument of Shadowbite, Foul, Flare, Flood of Shadows, etc.).

While I do agree with your points, I would like to nitpick this one a tad. The multi-hit abilities still see use in 8-mans depending on fight design, due to a decent size of them being a dps gain when used on 2 targets.

Like in E1S, several of the skills are capable of hitting Eden + 1 orb, hitting multiple orbs, or hitting Eden + 2 orbs (Holy circle comes to mind when properly positioned). Again in E4S, you can hit Titan maximum + a Gaol with a bunch of those abilities resulting in damage gains. Even both Ultimates have instances where using multi-hit skills is beneficial (Garuda summoning plumes, Titan + gaol in his phase, hitting both twin + Nael during their phase in UCOB). The ones most useless in 8mans are the ones that need 3+ targets to be a damage gain. Or if the fight has zero additional targets.

[DRKoftheAzure]

From design perspective DRK is still better made than Samurai which has a lot of bloat skills and even useless ones.

SAM was designed around the "bloat skills" that it has, though Seigan was not designed around Third Eye and Seigan is the only real button bloat.


DRK was designed around stance dancing, like WAR was in ARR to StB, in StB, whereas HW DRK was more balanced around what kind of tank you wanted DRK to be through substats outside of mitigating magic damage, i.e. Parry tank for more physical mitigation more often which also increased DPS through Low Blow procs and Reprisal, Skillspeed for DoTs and Blood Weapon, or a balance of the 2 by going the stance dancing path of substat allocation.


In ShB DRK is just "use all resources for max damage and spam the same 3 buttons until resources are available again or go play something else" which is basically WARs thing as well now...


PLDs resources are used for either mitigation or healing outside of burst window, and GNBs resource is strictly for DPS with GCD based cooldowns so that you don't have to double weave oGCDs in a party wide burst window.


And double weaving oGCDs is the stupidest thing in this game right now which actually hurts burst more than if you have go full Skill/spell speed in ShB and have close to 2.2x GCD because you waste more time trying to fit damage into a party buff window, the party buff will be back up in about 2-3 minutes and you usually don't even notice it because if you are an active melee DPS or PLD/GNB because you are tying to not die to mechanics, and if you happen to be class that isn't constantly active like DRK/WAR/BLM/SMN/BRD/SCH, then you will be one of those people who will want more oGCDs to double weave when you should be wanting more GCDs on top of more oGCDs.

[Valic]

I just want some synergy in the job again. Idc about the speed, just give me a reason to use my oGCD's besides "they're not on cooldown yet". That's boring and tedious and I would be playing a dps instead at that point... Or Paladin.