6.0 Both Tank and Healers Need Major Focus on Bringing Back Job Identity

[Arkhon-Infaustus]

I loved using Dark Arts, you had to manage your MP and it was quite the DRK's identity. Coupled with a crit Souleater I felt I was a bit useful to ease the healer's job.
Now I don't play tank anymore, for the reasons explained in this post.

And what's shocking me the most, is that DRK had zero changes sinces 5.0 throughout the patches, as if SE thought DRK is good as it is. Well no, it's not.

I haven't play healer until now and I like it more than tanking in 5.0, but I feel the lack of identity too, and the poverty of their dps: one single target skill, one aoe, one DoT, and we're done.

I think this discussion is the main problem of the game right now, and the reason I could leave, even if I don't want to because there is a lot of good things...

[Juzjuzz]

Tanks are lacking some things indeed...
The most cool thing to do as tank is trying to survive as long as you can when you are the last one standing and kill the boss. But if everything is ok, most of the time the healer will heal everything outside of tankbusters/raidbusters.
Very few offensive abilities work with defense too... Same thing the over way around.
The dps rotation for tanks are almost the same too. Drg, nin, mnk, and sam have some thing in common but all have something that makes then unique. Why tanks don't have that ? Why give inner release to drk ? edit: let's not forget bloodspiller the fell cleave clone.
Tbh making tanking easier didnt help.

I loved using Dark Arts, you had to manage your MP and it was quite the DRK's identity.

Dark arts didnt need to disapear, just change. I'm still surprised they didnt make it less spammy in stormblood.

[Jirah]

Agree to some extent that a lot of jobs are getting dumed down for the sake of gamers greatest enemy “Broad appeal” which in a MMO makes no sense.

But what exactly is the best course of action?

[shao32]

Agree to some extent that a lot of jobs are getting dumed down for the sake of gamers greatest enemy “Broad appeal” which in a MMO makes no sense.

But what exactly is the best course of action?

pretty easy, we have 17 full jobs +1 limited in the game, respect the gameplay and complexity and let the other jobs that have been fair simple stay simple like for example PLD on tanks, dump down everything when we have enough jobs to please all the playerbase demographic so the casuals are the most happy with this has been "with all respect" the most stupid idea ever made.

[Shurrikhan]

At the same time tho a lot of other classes clearly have been listened to and have gotten huge reworks.

My issue is that their reworks tend to comes at the expense of those who already enjoyed the job, to the point of feeling like either malicious compliance or gross over-stepping.
--> "So you want a less ping-punishing NIN and MCH? Here, let's just gut nearly all of their rotational complexity for you."

Blizzard has had its "You guys all have phones, right?" moments, and reluctance to make positive changes where there was just no reason to hesitate, but at least none of those changes in recent memory come with such a slap to the face of those who already play or enjoy a given job. They tend to fix, slower than they should, and improve, with unwarranted delays, but apart from perhaps their Exp rates and how they affect leveling, they don't tear the house down to appeal to an unknown quantity of people who'd play X if it we'd just remove half the things that make it X.

[Lyth]

I don't think that reworks are intrinsically a bad thing. But you have to go in with an overall vision in mind.

As an obvious counter-example, the PLD rework between Heavensward and Stormblood was a success. They re-envisioned the job, taking it from being a purely (physical) "defensive" tank into being a mix of swordplay, offensive spellcasting, and support abilities. They gave PLD an identity. You can argue that Req/Holy Spirit feels very similar to the other "spam X" windows, but the fact that you're casting spells gives it a different flair. I can't really think of anyone who wants to go back to the original.

I'd take the feedback to reworks with a grain of salt. People can tell you that they don't like something, but they may not be able to articulate why. As an example, most of the people who are complaining about the removal of Dark Arts are the same ones who pushed for its removal in the first place. But the problem isn't specifically Dark Arts. You could do an animation swap of DA with the present Edge/Flood and you'd scarcely notice the difference, outside of your character having a tonic-clonic seizure in-between oGCDs. The bigger complaint comes from the fact that it feels too similar to WAR's gameplay, primarily because of the Delirium rework. It's still an improvement over the old Delirium (not difficult), because it previously lacked impact.

I think that part of the problem is that in ARR WAR pushed too heavily into what should later have become DRK's niche (HP manipulation, Lifesteal), and DRK pushed too heavily into the classic barbarian niche of surviving on the edge of death (faux-Holmgang). Now they are struggling to disentangle the two. To make things more complex, we've moved DRK away from fast sequences of sword strikes a la Cloud Strife to allow GNB to carry that aesthetic. As an aside, I'd prefer to have seen GNB differentiate itself through mobility tools. Could we have a tank with a traited faster run rate, like NIN's fleet of foot? Or perhaps a dps neutral gap extender (Elusive Jump)? DRK ends up being squashed out between several very similar job entities.

When you have multiple jobs competing for similar design space, you have to go in with a clear vision of what specific flair each should have. I don't think that's at odds with the basics of job balancing. I think that the problem with a lot of reworks is they go in with the tunnel vision mindset of "let's mollify the playerbase by fixing XYZ" instead of looking of how everything fits together as a whole.

With regards to Blizzard, they certainly do reworks. I just have a better sense of what these reworks mean as a cohesive whole, generally because there's a blue post or patch note that says exactly what their broad strokes vision for the class/character is.

[Marxam]

I loved using Dark Arts, you had to manage your MP and it was quite the DRK's identity. Coupled with a crit Souleater I felt I was a bit useful to ease the healer's job.
Now I don't play tank anymore, for the reasons explained in this post.

I find it ironic that in 3.0 players complained DA was too spammy (I didn't mind it) but in 5.0 almost every other ogcd is a Shadow spam. All they needed to do was increase the DA cd and make it only affect combo enders exclusively and some defensive cds, instead of it also buffing siphon strike which was where most of the complaints came from. 10 secs DA cd would have suffice to reduce the DA spam while still allowing options for DA buffs, though it may become more methodical since you could either buff a powerslash or buff a dark mind for an upcoming TB and have to choose which one.

I'm just sad that we lost a lot of good attack animations, with DRK getting the worst. WAR got Steel Cyclone back which I like but I'm still not a fan of the golf swing Inner Chaos.

[Lukeal]

I think you might mean 4.0? In 4.0 DA was really REALLY spammy and the only effect it had was increase the potency of weaponskills and CNS if i remember in 4.0.

In 3.0 it didn't just increase potency but also it changed how an ability worked. Dark Passenger (DA) had a Blind Debuff, Dark Dance (DA) increased both evasion and parry, Dark Mind (DA) increased its mitigation effect i believe. The only ones that have were kept in Stormblood were CNS (DA) increased Damage over gaining MP, and Soul Eater (DA) having increased potency. Power Slash (DA) had an enmity bonus but that's really the only difference in Stormblood. In Heavensward DA was costly and you wanted to manage how you used it on which abilities, so it was less spammy and more tactical? It's been awhile since Heavensward so i don't remember as well.

[Lyth]

Dark Arts was well suited for 3.x. In 4.x they removed the MP drain from Darkside to make DRK more accessible, which in conjunction with 4.x's Delirium gave you a ton of extra MP that had to be burned through with DA uses. The core design problem in DRK is always: how do we balance out resource generation and expenditure? If you generate too much too quick, it becomes thoughtless spam. If you generate too little too slow, the pacing falls off and it starts to feel like WAR. The nice thing about 3.x was that DRK had a steady stream of oGCDs, but they weren't all the same oGCD.

[Recon1o6]

Dark Arts was well suited for 3.x. In 4.x they removed the MP drain from Darkside to make DRK more accessible, which in conjunction with 4.x's Delirium gave you a ton of extra MP that had to be burned through with DA uses. The core design problem in DRK is always: how do we balance out resource generation and expenditure? If you generate too much too quick, it becomes thoughtless spam. If you generate too little too slow, the pacing falls off and it starts to feel like WAR. The nice thing about 3.x was that DRK had a steady stream of oGCDs, but they weren't all the same oGCD.

even then it wasn't that much, in 3.0 you could pump out 4 dark arts boosts for a burst phase or to recover lots of hp but you really needed ethers or bard mp songs, whereas 4.0 it was only 3 because mp recovery was either nonexistent or high depending on whether blood weapon was on cd
the core problem is the devs giving it an overhaul and destroying its niche in 4.0 that it didn't need, and being lazy in 5.0 by making it a warrior clone

Drk was a magic tank that focuses on debuffs (slash down, magic vul up, ground dot and scourge dot). Since the devs hate non dot debuffs apparently, there's still a niche for it to be a shields focused or self buffing tank pulling elements from 3.0 and 4.0 (boosting damage through DA, haste, parry rate etc)

Personally, something the devs should explore is a return to the DA focus of 3.0 when the job was at its prime, but remove Dark arts from mp entirely, using it to cast spells or attacks like the current one.
instead put dark arts on a charge button like plunge.