Dark Knight - I Used To Love You

[TouchandFeel]

I dont understand people complaining about quietus/bloodspiller spam, when asked what was so amazing in stormblood DRK everyone says it was DA and abyssal drain spam. wat???

It basically breaks down into two things, one not being very justifiable and the other being very much so.

First is human nature and its tendency towards selective reasoning and memory.
People tend to build up or look more positively on things that they don't have or lost, while undervaluing or looking more negatively on what they do have.
In regards to Abyssal Drain spam, people look back fondly on it because of how ridiculously overpowered it was. The fact that you could basically spam AoE attacks that also healed you vast amounts essentially indefinitely, making you virtually unkillable was something that people look back on fondly because it felt "powerful" to them. Same with the ridiculous self-heals from Inner Release Cyclone spam. Was it anymore mechanically complex or interesting than the Bloodspiller or Fell Cleave spam? Not really, no. I am honestly thoroughly convinced that if the AoE "spam Abyssal Drain non-stop" so-called "rotation" for DRK was left intact for this expansion, but had it's self-healing nerfed to make it not so overpowered, people would be complaining about how lame and boring the AD spam was.
People will always find something to complain about, even if it was something greatly lauded previously, and they will always find something to put up on a pedestal, even if it was greatly maligned before.

Now the second reason, because spamming a single ability a bunch of times in a row IS boring.
Honestly, IMO spamming something around 3 times is okay but once you get past 3 you are kind of pushing it (no pun intended). I would surmise that it was only really accepted in the past because there wasn't really any example in the game that players could point to as ways to do an ability-spam burst period but make it a bit different and more interesting, at least not on a tank. However with this expansion they have shown that they can mix it up and make more evolved versions of the spam-burst concept with the evolution of the Requiescat spam period on PLD being a perfect example of taking the spam-burst formula and just changing it up slightly to make it feel vastly different.
That's why the single button spam-burst that is still present on WAR and now DRK is maligned, it feels old and tired because it is. It is a design that has existed for multiple expansions now and while it has evolved on some jobs, it has either stayed the same or been introduced in it's antiquated form on other jobs.
That is why I have said in the past that WAR and DRK in Shadowbringers feel like they are one expansion behind the other tank jobs in regards to design, they feel a bit too much like how we were playing last expansion and don't really feel like they got that extra bit of evolution that PLD got, likely because much of the time spent on WAR and DRK for this expansion was used up on reworking things instead of evolving them. That is one of the main reasons I tend to be so skeptical of the frequent "burn it to the ground and rework" it requests that I see so often thrown around for jobs like DRK, but I digress.
This lack of excitement and engagement from the single-button spam-bursts are then exacerbated by being on the two tanks that are the most beholden to their burst periods forming the majority of their active-engagement, with most of the inbetween feeling like "down-time" or just getting ready for/waiting for the next burst period. Then on top of that, WAR and DRK have the most spaced out bursts, so the inbetween periods are longer, adding to the feelings of less overall engagement.
Essentially on WAR and DRK you wait longer between bursts just to then have your burst feel like a bit of a let-down because it is a bit overly simplistic in execution. In contrast you have the other tank jobs that have more frequently cycling bursts also have their spam-bursts be more mechanically complex. That feels a bit backwards to me tbh, where the developers put too much of the complexity (designwise, not execution) on a set of jobs instead of breaking it up and spreading it around accordingly. The jobs with the more engaged rotations, PLD and GNB, really should have the more straight-forward and simple burst periods, especially since the bursts also happen more frequently; while the jobs that have the more simplistic and free-form rotations and rely more on their burst for periods of more complex engagement should therefore have those bursts be more complex and engaging
PLD and GNB, more complex and engaging rotation. WAR and DRK, more complex and engaging burst. That's the way it should be, yet not what we have and that rightly doesn't sit well with players.