What did your favorite job used to play like?

[Billythepancake]

I miss HW SCH even though I was an absolute massive casual at it, mostly because I LOVE dots, and HW SCH had dots in spades between Bio, Bio 2, Miasma, Miasma 2 (although it was pretty naff here) Shadowflare and Aero, its so annoying that theyve cut back on dots and debuffs in the game now just because of their limitations on how many can be displayed on a boss at once, rather than fixing that limitation.

Unfortunately, I never had the chance to play HW SCH. I only played HW briefly, and that was as a WHM and even then, only up to level 40 or so. Though I'm sure I would've loved HW SCH if I had the chance to play it.

But the SB SCH I did eventually play, man, I was in love as early as level 40. I was thinking the whole time as I was leveling it up "it's like someone in SE made this class specifically for me, this is amazing!". I love healer/DPS hybrids, and after being disappointed in RDM, as that is just a DPS with a Rez and an oh shit heal you will never use outside of niche circumstances, I found my answer in SCH.

Then ShB happened and they ripped it away from me. T_T

[shao32]

Wow, thanks for the link. I'll be giving this a deep read

you welcome, not many know how the job use to be before the actual oversimplificated transfrotmation to dark WAR, you will have more or less a clear view how the job use to work and all the tools at disposal, enjoy the read.

[Ririta]

ARR summoner:

- Always use Aetherflow on cooldown. Gives you 3 stacks of Aetherflow. and some MP.
- Summon your egi. It's probably Garuda, the single target caster pet. Ifrit, the single target attacker pet wasn't too bad if he didn't have to move. Titan for solo so he tanks stuff for you.
- Use Raging Strikes (+20% damage), Spur, Rouse (pet buffs) and Enkindle (pet's mini ultimate ability).
- Set up DOTs. Bio II (35 potency on 30 seconds), Miasma (30 potency on 24 seconds, inflicts disease lowering target's movement and healing), Bio (40 potency on 18 seconds), Shadowflare (25 potency on 30 seconds, was casted on the ground and you could use it as much as you wanted to). If you were good you could keep up Thunder from black mage too (40 potency on 18 seconds).
- If Garuda is out put her on Steady and tell her to use Contagion to extend your powered up DOTs.
- Use Aetherflow on Fester (100 potency per Bio, Bio II and Miasma) or Bane (spreads your basic 3 DOTs to targets nearby and refresh their times). Energy Drain if you really needed MP, or if Aetherflow was coming out of cooldown and Fester was on cooldown.
- Control your pet. Set it to Obey on a target to attack it, set it to Steady before using their abilities while you cast yours so they didn't lose too much time.
- For area damage you used Bane, Miasma II and Tri Disaster (now called Tri Bind).
- Cast Ruin or Ruin II if you don't have to do anything else.

That's it... simplistic but I loved it, very active and at the same time, a very calm gameplay. Later they took away Thunder and allowed us to use Blizzard II from black mage so you used that for area damage.

Scholar was pretty much the same, as we had the same basic abilities from arcanists, main differences being no Fester and no Contagion. You had to use Cleric Stance to deal damage. Cleric Stance didn't let you heal while it was active and had 12 second cooldown (so if you turned it on, you had to rely on the pet and on Lustrate for 12 seconds if you wanted to heal) but made it so scholar dealt almost as much damage as summoner in area targets.

Also, Selene and Eos were separate pets. Selene had one ability to silence the target, one to increase spell speed and one to increase attack speed. She was a bit harder to use than Eos because you couldn't use both of her buffs at the same time.

Scholar's healing kit was really compact: Physick, 400 potency 2 sec cast time. Adloquium: 300 potency 2 sec cast time, put up a shield that doubled its potency if you crit. Succor was Adloquium for area. Leeches was Esuna. And the all powerful Lustrate that instantly healer 20% of target's max HP for 1 Aetherflow. It means that you could heal without switching off Cleric Stance...

There are a bunch of extras such as Super Virus, Eye for an Eye, Protect, Stoneskin, Aero... but if I talk about everything I'll exceed the character limit.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

2.0 PLD, 1 combo that got used. All the defensive cds.

Made it way easier to call fight mechanics out when you didn't have to focus on a rotation.

[OdinelStarrei]

I appreciate that the first post in this thread is about old DRK. Since there was already a small explanation of how it used to work up above, maybe I could give a more personal story about being a DRK main, rather than just saying "used to be good, is bad now."

In the beginning, I was actually a WAR main in HW, because my cotanks were usually always DRKs, even though I played both pretty evenly over the expansion. I loved WAR though. Back then, instead of having the Beast Gauge, we had Wrath and Abandon stacks (Defiance/Deliverance). It took five stacks to execute Inner Beast under Defiance for mitigation/healing or Fell Cleave for damage. Anyone who was around back then knew how OP WAR was, Fell Cleave became the job's identity for a reason, even if it probably wasn't the right move in hindsight. You got stacks by using combo enders, certain CDs, and I think Maim as well. Berserk was pure damage up with a pacification after it's expiration, so the strat was getting three Fell Cleaves under Berserk with a not so optional Fracture DoT on the 9th GCD. This was all well and good, and it pushed managing your stacks to make that possible each minute. WAR was flexible. In Stormblood launch, WAR got the Beast Gauge, functionally doubling the Wrath/Abandon cap from five to ten at 100 gauge (back to back cleaves were now possible without Infuriate) with Berserk still existing as a damage buff. All Inner Release did was half your gauge costs for all moves for 20 seconds, I think? So that 5 Fell Cleave stuff WAR has now was still there, but you had build up gauge first to ensure you went into it at 100 going into IR, FC down to 75, Upheavel and Onslaught down to 55, FC to 30, FC to 5, and then do some GCDs to regain enough gauge, FC to empty yourself out, and use your Infuriate for a free 50. We also still had back then Enhanced Infuriate, so the more you Fell Cleave'd, the more you could Infuriate.

I thought this was super interesting, because you'd have a "side" burst when Berserk was up, but IR wasn't. Every other Berserk was the IR 5 FC dream cleave time. Proper gauge management was the key, and once they removed the gauge cost on switching stances (don't know who thought that was a good idea), WAR was a really fun job to play. But because of design and the addition of Direct Hit, WAR's damage was highly variable, even among people with the exact same gear. Essentially, if you DH-Crit more Fell Cleaves, you just did better than other people who may have actually played better than you overall. This was a problem with WAR's damage profile, too much potency was loaded into those Fell Cleaves. So, even though 4.1 WAR (my favorite version of the job with old IR, but current Shake It Off), was balanced, it was changed in 4.2 to be it's current DCH, free five FC version with Berserk removed.

This is where the problems started. I loaded into the game that patch day, and was glad WAR's damage was now normalized, but the management between bursts I was looking for was pretty much gone. So, I put down my axe. I still played WAR occasionally, but I fundamentally disagreed with IR, I was not a fan of how easy it was to execute and five GCDs of pressing the same button was a bit boring after awhile. It wasn't exciting like how getting the random crits were before, even if it was for the best. My static had long disbanded by that point, so I was free to play other jobs, and by other jobs, I mean DRK. As Rei posted early on, DRK was the mana engine. It was fast, it's skills were unorthodox in comparison to literally every job in the game. Before my static imploded in Deltascape, I went double DRK with the other tank in some normal Deltascape raids for a bit of friendly competition. TBN gives 50 guage on break with a shield THAT big? Isn't that a huge RDPS gain for the healers? I started thinking, "What if I could max my usages of TBNs, not just for the healers, but to make sure I was getting as many Bloodspillers on the boss as possible? End phases on them? Burst single target under raid buffs if I could get the break in time? It'll keep my mana from overcapping as well, just trading it for blood. There's potential here." My co-tank had never thought of that when I asked him. (casual static) That was the beginning of the journey.

So I practiced. First on dummies, immediately realizing just how fast I was pressing buttons, over twice the actions per minute I was on WAR. No matter where I was in my rotation, there was some kind of non-standard oGCD timer I needed to press, Blood Weapon, Delirium, Sole Survivor, Dark Passenger if I was overcapping too quickly to dump with Dark Arts. I was very interested, because I had always intended on playing DRK as my main job, but this was the first time I was actually able to in real content post-HW. Instead of high damage burst like WAR, I had to be consistent. I had to BECOME speed, and my only speed limit was 0 MP. After practice, I would load into dungeons and be literally invincible due to the Abyssal Drain > BW Quiteus > TBN > Abyssal Drain loop, DRKs were rare, and healers were absolutely shocked, how incredible they told me, seeing my HP yoyo from half to full over and over and over again, without any intervention on their part. Good DRK's were rare, and I was starting to become one. It was euphoric, honestly. By this point, I was full edge. Sigmascape drops, and DRK gets more changes, TBN gets longer duration to break easier, think this is when Dark Mind just innately gave 30% magic up without needing Dark Arts, other things. SE was actually touching the job, like how they were touching PLD and reworking WAR, so I was confident each patch potentially bringing something exciting to incite more players to the job. But in O6S, there was a moment that solidified me not as a DRK main, but as a DRK fanatic. PUG, weekly reclears. Cotank joins on WAR and asks me to switch off, nicely. I comply, O6S is primarily magic anyway, and I was looking for more DRK experience in Savage anyway. Few minutes pass, I Living Dead the stack marker per the standard strats at the time, and we're at that point in the fight where the boss goes to the NE side of the arena and places that MASSIVE tankbuster prey (Last Kiss) on a DPS you need to pass to the OT. However, the WAR isn't there. He's dead. And there's only me, taking double autos after a Demonic Shear tankbuster with another one coming in about twenty seconds. In total, I'm looking at multiple instances of high single target and raid wide damage with no Shadow Wall and no Living Dead.

There's only one option to save the DPS. I go into the marker position to take the prey. The DPS hesitates, I know he was thinking, "This guy is going to die, he can't take all this damage!" But he passes it to me anyway. Sole Survivor procs right after one of the AoE raid wides for some desperately needed health, I throw on Grit and Blood Price, Rampart, Dark Mind, Awareness and just start TBNing everything. AoE casts, I'm fine, TBN'd. The WAR is up at this point to take one set of auto attacks, but it's too late, I already have the prey. Prey explodes with another AoE on top, I'm fine, TBN'd again, Dark Mind coming in hot. Here comes that last tankbuster. Reprisal it! TBN'd I'm fine. This whole time my blood gauge is going wild, I'm just Bloodspilling nonstop from the constant +50 from TBN breaks, I have to BS under Dark Arts to avoid losing too much potency, good thing Syphon Strike gave increased MP under Grit or that would've never been possible. I came out of that fight shaking, people said "jesus christ how did you not die from all that damage when the WAR died."

At this point, I had fallen in love. No other tank would've survived that much burst damage without heavy healing support, but while I was internally freaking out, my character was just "meh, all good, i got it, nothing personal kid." I don't think I even dropped to a 1/3 of my HP. That level of defense, that ability to adapt and for my whole mentality to switch on a dime to pure survival from pure speed, I know I'm romanticizing it, but it was intoxicating, I could not get enough of DRK from that day onward and so I continued to push myself further.

Fast forward to Alphascape, and I've become peak DRK. Coming into the raid tier late after a hiatus, I have many fond memories of planning mitigation maps with my WAR cotank to assure we were maximizing TBN's shielding to reduce tank stance usage, being the 100% go to answer for any magic damage in the tier, getting super into GCD-manipulation with Bloodspiller and planning mana around my NIN's trick attack windows, getting as many DA boosted GCDs inside of it as possible. Researching vods of other DRKs who played a bit differently to get more perspectives. But the person who I really respected was my AST. My AST knew I loved DRK, and unlike the rest of my team, I loved going FAST. That's right, Sanic builds used to exist, I'm talking 2.32 GCD recast WITHOUT Blood Weapon. I came out of Eureka Hydatos with a +400 Skill Speed Relic, I was obsessed with fast. So during Omega M/F prog, the stars aligned, and he gave me an Empowered Arrow under Blood Weapon. I was on fire. My GCD hit the game SkS cap of 1.96 recast. I was pressing buttons so fast, gaining mana so fast, I couldn't even double weave without clipping anymore. MNK GL4 level speed, while I had to move the boss and do tank stuff/ mechanics, and manage my mana, oh man I made mistakes, I clipped for sure, but it was delightful.

DRK's community was a little small and often meme'd on, but it was passionate about the job, passionate about talking about it, spreading the word, making people look at it and say "This isn't for everyone, it's hard to control at first, but if you fall in a specific niche of player, you'll love it, just try it, the skill ceiling is SO high!" And that niche was me in every single facet of the word. I made a lot of DRK friends, anyone remember "DA TBN" and how just saying that would immediately start an argument?

Of course, when we got the first ShB trailer with DRK as the focus job, my brain practically exploded. "THIS IS IT! THE YEAR OF THE DARK KNIGHTS! IT'S HAPPENING!" I was in Vegas at the time, not at Fanfest, but I felt it all the same. We had a whole wave of new people come into the job after seeing that, and we were so glad to teach more players how to play the fastest job in FFXIV. I took a lot of "apprentices", for lack of a better word, people who wanted to see what we saw in DRK, people came to me as someone who really understood it, they wanted to learn. And I got more friends as a result. Months later, Media Tour comes out, YOU CAN SUMMON FRAY, I LITERALLY DREAMED ABOUT THIS, YES YES YES YES YES YES.

But it wouldn't last.

The only reason I have a forum account now was to protest the changes to DRK in ShB when the Media Tour came out. I wrote a lot of posts, detailing the destruction of the MP economy, the removal of being fast, and the worst thing, the Delirium and BW changes. Those topics are deleted now, but I still have writings stored somewhere of those pre-ShB initial thoughts. I had already designed a theoretical opener, and my worst fears were confirmed. WAR's and DRK's GCD rotation and burst timings were practically identical. 4.2 Inner Release had come back, but this time, but as a worse version, removing a skill I really liked, devaluing Bloodspiller as a counter attack gauge dump device, and as a result, making me Dark Warrior. My journey as a tank main had come full circle. I tried to escape Inner Release after it ruined WAR for me, only for it to ruin DRK for me an expansion later. I know how crazy this sounds, but it felt like SE directly said to me, "Stop having fun with this job, we're making it WAR, we know you don't like 4.2 WAR, we don't care, and there's nothing you can do about it. "

People ON THE FORUMS said I was insane at the time for being so reactionary, "just wait and try it" but I knew SE wouldn't change the fundamental overhaul if they had already designed a new job UI and mana "economy" for these changes. FFS, we HAD an ENTIRE section on GNB and how it was different but appealing to a higher skill set of players, other jobs got IN-DEPTH explanations on how the ShB expansion was going to change them, and what did DRK get from the developer team? "Summon your inner darkness!" and that's the last thing we've heard about DRK since. Pre-release ShB about a 2 minute cooldown that does nothing but damage and has no job interactivity. BW bugged and only has 9.66 duration instead of the 11 like new Delirium? Nothing for a year now. No design docs, no acknowledgement from devs about the concerns pre or post release.

So when I loaded up ShB the first day, and I tested my "theoretical totally not final" rotation on a dummy, I knew the dream was dying. Then I swapped to my WAR, did pretty much the exact same button presses, for the same result. Then I knew the dream was dead. So I removed all those greyed out actions off my hotbar on DRK, except for Dark Arts. I placed Dark Arts in a spot on my hotbar I didn't use, because I wanted a reminder that I loved this job at some point in time.

A year later, and I still have that greyed out Dark Arts action sitting there, reminding me of better times. I've tried every job in this game for hours on dummies and in Extremes. Nothing speaks to me the same way. DRK community is fractured, between people who swapped to GNB out of disgust, to people who constantly lament how DRK has devolved in comparison to it's former versions, to newer players who don't really understand why DRK mains are constantly miserable all the time. And that's the people who stayed. Everyone who I personally knew really did become GNB mains or they quit the game entirely. I'm the only DRK left out of my friend group and my FC who hasn't thrown the job stone in the damn trash can. Because I can't give up on it. I've tried to leave, and I can't.

I'm so miserable playing new DRK, it's so boring, it's so slow, but it's effective, and I'm the de facto DRK main, so that's what I do. DRK numbers have never been higher, but I doubt you'll find anyone at a high level say they LOVE the job like how we used to love it back in HW/SB. Every time I press Blood Weapon and the fifth hit fails, ruining what little mana management there is, I get angry because it didn't used to be like that. Every time I burst all my mana in opener, and then do absolutely nothing for 40+ seconds because mana regen is so slow, I get frustrated and bored. And every time I get a WAR co-tank, and our IR burst at 90 seconds looks exactly the same, EXACTLY THE SAME, I just feel empty. I wish I could fill the void with something like Ultimate, but I don't have the time or the confidence.

These constant negative feelings from myself, and other DRK players have made me go from loving XIV, to practically hating it, because the method of which I experience the game's combat mechanics are inherently uninteresting on my favorite job in the franchise. I see no real reason to improve myself as a DRK. Everyone plays the same, which plays the same as WAR. It all relies on crits and just NOT pressing buttons outside of burst, ironically placing us in the same issues as 4.1 WAR with the rotation of 4.2 WAR. The entire job is TBN. Much like how WAR is only Fell Cleave. TBN being so good carries the job to the detriment of the entire job's design.

And chances are, nothing will change this expansion. I can't even hope 6.0 changes things AGAIN. No tanks or healers have gotten any sweeping changes, and tanks in particular have not received a single adjustment in this entire expansion outside the SiO buff and the +5 seconds on the 30% CD. I hope for change, only to be disappointed again and again with silence, not just for me, but for healers and ranged and other tanks. Why does NIN get a rework and SAM a new job element but I can't get Blood Weapon fixed with a 1 second extension? Why won't they say anything? Why did they kill what I liked? Why? It'll be one year since ShB's release this month. And I have to deal with this shadow of another job for another year, at least. I don't want to.

World First UCoB DRK, at the time when the job was at it's worst in SB, when asked, "why did you play DRK, was it for the magic resistance or some other speciifc reason, why over another tank?"
"Because it was fun."

And if you were someone who said "HAHAHAHA DARK ARTS THE DARK ARTS SO FUNNY" and didn't even attempt to play the job
I hate you.

I should've been a PLD main. I wish I never played DRK at all.

[Vahlnir]

Shadowbringers Gunbreaker. Oh, wait...

[ItMe]

ARR summoner
[…]
Scholar
[…]
There are a bunch of extras such as Super Virus, Eye for an Eye, Protect, Stoneskin, Aero... but if I talk about everything I'll exceed the character limit.

Man, very calm is right. ARR SMN sounds super chill. Sounds like, in that respect, it's kind of in the place BLM is now?
SCH def sounds more compact. Where there just less abilities on your hotbar back then? Or are those just the main ones?

And yeah, if you have more to say and that pesky character limit is getting in your way feel free to make another post. I'd love to hear more.

2.0 PLD, 1 combo that got used. All the defensive cds.
Made it way easier to call fight mechanics out when you didn't have to focus on a rotation.

Hahaha considering I started tanking so I could pay attention to my hotbar less and help my group with callouts I can see how ARR's PLD would have been very cool~

I appreciate that the first post in this thread is about old DRK. Since there was already a small explanation of how it used to work up above, maybe I could give a more personal story about being a DRK main, rather than just saying "used to be good, is bad now."

Wow, that was an intense story. Thanks for the really thorough response.
I picked up DRK about 3 weeks before Shadow Bringers dropped, and in that time wasn't able to really play it enough to understand what I was doing. Hearing all this though, perhaps ironically, gives me hope for the future of the job.
I'm sorry to hear that things have fallen so far for you. If you ever try Ultimate or take a break and play PLD let me know how it shakes out for you. Who knows, maybe that's just what you need.
Either way, I'll be rooting for you.

[Esmoire]

All tanks had a formality of doing like an enmity rotation or two and kicking their tank stance to the curb immediately; as a WAR this felt satisfying but felt awful on the other tanks to have to use a GCD. Don't miss it.

What I did like, as a WAR, is how our self-sustain worked before. Nascent Flash is not a bad action per se, but they took out the healing we had from the old Defiance and tried to streamline it. The overall healing is not bad, but it feels clunky and leaves low level duties feeling hollow. WAR feels very hollow at a low level, even more so than at least GNB or DRK doing 50 stuff which is saying a lot because DRK without TBN is ehhhhh but at least you can enjoy the frequent weaving and MP play.

I think part of it is the fact that, with TP management, we would only do a handful of Overpowers on a pack because we had to be thinking about budgeting our TP, thinking about how much would regen before the next pull. This means we used our 123 combos on trash more, which meant more beast gauge. Mathematically Overpower -> Mythril Tempest is the right thing to do a lot of the time, but it's really boring before we get a trait that allows us to build gauge. Should be a baseline feature.

[Billythepancake]

Man, very calm is right. ARR SMN sounds super chill. Sounds like, in that respect, it's kind of in the place BLM is now?
SCH def sounds more compact. Where there just less abilities on your hotbar back then? Or are those just the main ones?

And yeah, if you have more to say and that pesky character limit is getting in your way feel free to make another post. I'd love to hear more.




Hahaha considering I started tanking so I could pay attention to my hotbar less and help my group with callouts I can see how ARR's PLD would have been very cool~

Fairy back then used to not take up any space on your hotbar. You see when you have Eos/Selene out there's a hotbar above yours that has stuff like six/stay/whatever. Their abilities used to be on that as well, and you could use them while simultaneously casting. You didn't have to stop. It was perfection.

It was even better because back then, if you told a fairy to do something, they did it with no delay. Maybe a minor delay at worst of like 1 second. And then they decided "what If fairy was completely useless and clunky" at this point its only real use is to be dissipation fodder.

[Bopsheezi]

I first played DRK in 4.4. There were things I liked about it, and things I didn't. I liked the speed you got from Blood Weapon, but hated pressing Dark Arts so often. To this day I find myself pressing my DA button before many of my skills, but it doesn't do anything now. I miss the old Darkside.

But even so, DRK is still fun IMO. I dislike the Inner...erm Delirium spam, but that's the only thing I "dislike".