Is DRK ever getting adjustments?

[Breadgehog]

Hey all! I've been mulling this over for a while as I level my tanks, but with the advent of 5.1 I'm a bit surprised that DRK got nothing but the universal Reprisal and Big Cooldown™ changes. I think it's mostly in a good spot right now, but I feel there's a few sticking points that make it hard to recommend. Right out the gate I'd like to say that I can't speak for every aspect of its gameplay at 80 having not quite capped it yet, so some of this will be extrapolation on current gameplay.

Midgame AoE for DRK is rough right now. Unleash starts strong and Flood is very good in early dungeons, but the other three tanks very quickly catch it and then overtake it on trash. DRK has no AoE combo until 72 when even GNB gets theirs in the 40s, and Quietus is not only weaker than other spender offerings, but sparsely usable until 72 as well. WAR also doesn't get gauge off of Mythril Tempest until 74, but has the benefit of Infuriate to give it free uses, and Delirium is a strictly worse IR. Blood Weapon doesn't actually grant blood until two levels after you get Quietus, and even then you won't get 50 blood out of it in AoE. Requiescat has 12s duration because of spell recast on tanks, Blood Weapon should as well. Salted Earth is just... bad. Its closest analogues (Bow Shock and Circle of Scorn) without exaggeration are twice as effective, accounting for CoS cooldown. It's also a floor effect.

To continue, DRK gets TBN at 70; TBN itself is strong enough that from a balance perspective this was/is fine. The problem is that Abyssal's rework has left a pretty huge gap in DRK's defensive kit until then. In SB, Dark Arts Abyssal was a nice way to smooth out trash pulls; now that it's effectively just a cooldown, having it all be one spike of healing makes it much less consistent to work with despite its raw numbers. In SB I could pull all of Shisui between 1st and 2nd bosses with Abyssal as sustain, and now even being more liberal with cooldowns and with experienced healers that pull is nearly undoable. DRK's AoE situation compounds this, since less outgoing damage on it than other tanks means pulls last longer than they would.

These are points I'm absolutely willing to be wrong on (please feel free to correct any of my wilder misgivings if I have them), but I feel like at least some QoL attention could get thrown DRK's way like what level you get skills at and Blood Weapon duration, especially if it's meant to be the expansion's "image" class. Thanks for reading, and happy tanking!

[shao32]

well it's easy, current tanks are balanced number wise with nothing important about they performance compared to the DPS and HEALERS so it's normal the first pacth take a complacient actitude with tanks and dedicate all the efforts on adjust and solve the severe number of issues betwen most DPS including gameplay reworks to severe skills.

all being said i expect tanks ajustments on 5.2, DRK desperately need somes same as WAR gameplay wise, DRK need ajustments to make blood weapon 5 hits being more consistent and easy to land, currently it's pretty easy to miss the 5th hit, quietus needs help it's just a simple filler, delirium needs to be reworked and make DRK gameplay don't feel like a WAR one with some magic expenders, ajust to abyssal drain like halving the recast and the potency to add more uses per combat will help on aoe situations to keep a decent sustain on pre-70 content, salted earth needs love, living dead not being a damm pain for AST and SCH and for me add darkside management by nerfing edge potency and removing the darkside time grant on flood so we will have some complexity on the job combined with delirium rework make the job have some depth since it have none right now outside of TBN.

for all tanks remove rampart of role skills and bring back shadow skin to DRK, foresight to WAR and "insert name" for GNB all with 20% mitigation wich will be the same but at least look unique, rampart is so lame depending of the job you play.

[Breadgehog]

I think for me it's a bit glaring strictly because DRK for the actual rework as opposed to just new skills layered on top like WAR and PLD got for the most part. Certain things had to be changed but PLD and WAR are roughly equivalent to their SB iterations, just with more polish (particularly for PLD, as it had a bigger gap to close, literally and figuratively). Enough of DRK got reworked that you'd think some more attention would have been paid to its design compared to how the others were shaping up; it's wild to me that the only tank with 100% uptime on a 10% damage buff is in last place, even if overall tank DPS and mitigation is fairly well-balanced. I'm okay with DRK being the best flex tank (TBN really puts in work) and losing some DPS to that, but the effort to reward ration feels unfairly skewed compared to say, PLD, which has the arguably easiest rotation, very minimal weaving and allows you to completely ignore most downtime situations with minimal loss/adjustment.

[FallenWings]

DRK's AoE output is alot more than you are thinking. Flood of Shadows is *really,* *really* strong as a 250/300 **oGCD** AoE attack. Without their respective burst windows in IR, FoF, NM, the other tanks have virtually no comparable oGCD and need to catch up through more than *8* GCDs to reach that initial 750/900 pot burst from just Flood alone. Throw Abyssal Drain (200) and Salted Earth(360) in and you will understand why DRKs AoE GCDs are comparatively lower with Stalwart Soul being only a 10 pot upgrade from Unleash and Quietus only 70 pot higher.

Throw in the mana and blood gain from Stalwart and Blood Weapon and DRKs Flood uses per pack rises from 3/4 to 6-7. That's another 600/900 oGCD pot thrown ontop.

The nerf to Abyssal Drain and subsequently Steel Cyclone for Warrior is specifically to kneecap both DRK and WAR from being overpowered dungeon god tanks to being balanced with PLD and GNB. It was fun to recover ourselves and pull those 1v1 clutch moments with bosses when the party was dead but it was broken. SE clearly doesn't want us to refill our HP to 100% per GCD whilst PLD and GNB have no such options. It is not completely taken away as Abyssal Drain albeit being a cooldown still heals per target and can be used as a burst heal in large packs and Warrior gained Nascent Flash where they have to actively manage their bursts into it whilst have a reasonable 25 second cooldown on the skill to prevent the aforementioned broken self sustain.

The defensive gap in their kit only really exists in Dark Mind where WAR has Thrill and GNB Camouflage. But with current tank toolsets adding Arms Length and the new Reprisal, we have more than enough cooldowns to handle any situation, provided the DPS aren't single targeting a massive pull.

As the tank with the strongest AoE Burst at 80(Living Shadow, 4-7 Flood, Abyssal Drain, Salted Earth) and the ability to "cooldown" their burst AoE engine(Flood) faster by regaining mana in between pulls DRK is in a very good state.

In Savage raids/trial DRK is one of the most durable tanks next to WAR whilst having second last/last damage output on average(remember this margin is less than 3%. We're looking at 300 DPS at most currently and your own personal skill is what matters more) and gaining the most from raid buffs thanks to their incredible flexibility which would put them 2nd highest when optimized.

DRK is fine. It's skill acquisition during leveling is a big think with TBN at 70 but everything else is designed and relatively balanced reasonably.

[Jandor]

The nerf to Abyssal Drain and subsequently Steel Cyclone for Warrior is specifically to kneecap both DRK and WAR from being overpowered dungeon god tanks to being balanced with PLD and GNB. It was fun to recover ourselves and pull those 1v1 clutch moments with bosses when the party was dead but it was broken.

Oh no, not the expert roulette!

[FallenWings]

Oh no, not the expert roulette!

If it's such an inconvenience being reasonably balanced why don't we also just ask for DPS to have instakill buttons?

I mean, expert roulette amirite? /s

[Ekimmak]

Oh no, not the expert roulette!

You know, it's (not) hilarious to see people talking about how dungeons don't matter, and balancing doesn't need to be made for it, and then go and set their Savage LEARNING parties to have iLevels that need you grinding for expert tomestones since day #1.

It's part of the content, and does need to be considered when balancing things out. Anyone who says otherwise should leave iLevel requirements and [Duty Complete] off their savage PF groups, and then tell us how their weekly clears went.

[Jandor]

If it's such an inconvenience being reasonably balanced why don't we also just ask for DPS to have instakill buttons?

DRK and WAR having good self healing in casual content.

DPS having instant kill buttons.

Yes, because those are two directly comparable things.

[Nedkel]

Game is not balanced on 1-70 lvls and will never be.
Dont expect any changes to it, because they will never happen in this expansion.

The best thing you could do is to rush through 70 lvl.
And i doubt they are going to change tanks in any way in upcoming patches.

[Breadgehog]

Throw in the mana and blood gain from Stalwart and Blood Weapon and DRKs Flood uses per pack rises from 3/4 to 6-7. That's another 600/900 oGCD pot thrown ontop.

I'm genuinely unsure if you read the post. The near-entirety of my concerns are with how DRK plays while levelling, and I specifically mention how good Flood is to start, but it falls off HARD once the other tanks have access to actual combo actions. If someone's post is "DRK really struggles with AoE before 72 and as a result has issues with big pulls compounded by reworks to its defensive kit", it's a bit rich to talk about how good it is after that point. I'm not saying DRK has to be an AoE star at all points of the game, just that it's glaringly bad for a considerable part of its levelling experience. In the end most of the issues could be resolved by some skill acquisition order changes or other small QoL things like Blood Weapon duration, it doesn't need sweeping buffs.