The Ultimate DRK Rework

[TouchandFeel]

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Many of the rest of us have also been playing since the beginning of ARR or even before with beta or 1.0, and a decent amount of us have been active on the forums and have been engaging in tank discussions since the very beginning.

Since the very beginning discussions on balance and whether things were fun or not, and lets not forget lot and lots of complaints, have been a constant thing. Players complaining about tank jobs is not something new and honestly, I recall there being far more complaint threads on DRK during Stormblood compared to what we have seen so far in Shadowbringers. There were also plenty of complaint threads during Heavensward as well, for example there were quite a few threads that complained that DRK being a tank wasn't "true to the job's identity in the series" and that DRK should be made a DPS instead, and of course a bunch of DRK complaint and "the job needs fixes/needs to be reworked' threads. Seriously, just go back and look at the tank forum threads during Heavensward and Stormblood and it becomes quite clear that many players did not have the rosy outlook on DRK during those times that some like to espouse these days.

As for the devs "not listening" and "doing nothing", what exactly are they supposed to do when so much of player feedback and recommendations are all over the place, often contradictory and just as often plain bad ideas. The few times that some of us have stepped up and tried to create an understandable consensus among DRK players on what the big problems were and what sort of things we wanted, we actually tended to get good results and saw changes that reflected what we said. Except for Living Dead, seriously SE just fix that damn ability already.
Anyways, if you look back on a lot of the complaint and rework threads for DRK through HW and StB you can actually see a direct correlation between them and the reworks that we would end up getting later. Sure sometimes we didn't get exactly what we wanted or the changes didn't go as far as we would have liked, but we talked, a lot, and the devs did listen. It only seems to some like they don't listen because people like to live in their own head-space where the way they want things to be is "the consensus" and the way things should be done, and if the devs do something different they obviously aren't listening. Not to mention people also tend to suffer from a heavy dose of rosy retrospection.

So just because some of us disagree that "Square really messed up this expac", although many of us do agree that mistakes were made and some fixes should happen, and that we disagree with some of the complaints or ideas presented, guess what we have our own complaints and ideas, that doesn't mean we are "blinded by loyalty", "balance obsessed elitists" or whatever other negative labels that tend to get leveled in situations like this. We just simply have our own thoughts and feelings on things based on our own experiences and fueled by our own passion for the game and the job.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

....

I get that the posters are passionate, just don't expect the reader to share in the same enthusiasm, when they see the 100th DRK rework thread (hyperbolic) on the forums. It's understandable that it's impossible to keep everyone happy, and ShB DRK isn't it's finest iteration to date. But too many of the same threads, saying the same thing, can leave readers in a constant state of eye rolling.

I'm by no means impressed with tanking in 5.0. I am happy old stances and aggro combo are gone, it felt only WAR gained any benefits, while PLD and DRK got shafted if and when they needed to use em, which shouldn't have been a thing in the first place when playing your job.

As a PLD main since beginning of HW, I have a strong ideal that balance must be adhered to when devs design the jobs, because no job should be left out. It doesn't mean devs should have gutted jobs in that pursuit, but balanced be damned is a burning train wreck waiting to happen and would leave some job unplayable. Personally I'm more on the boat of encounter design needs to be improved upon by SE that gives tanks more to compensate what's been removed instead of designing fancy orchestrated fights that cater to DPS.

I'll be honest, the biggest decline to combat has been due to casuals complaining jobs/ fights are too difficult instead of putting the effort in, and SE listen to them. Sooner SE stop listening to them sooner the game can "return to form."

[TouchandFeel]

Personally I'm more on the boat of encounter design needs to be improved upon by SE that gives tanks more to compensate what's been removed instead of designing fancy orchestrated fights that cater to DPS.

I agree wholeheartedly and feel that encounter design is what really needs to be leveraged to give tanks more direct engagement for the role and to feel like a "tank".
To me being a tank is about keeping control of the fight and making sure that the boss is doing what you want it to do. The design of essentially a tank and spank while navigating general mechanics that affect the whole party doesn't really convey that feeling.
The general mechanics, the tank busters, the dps checks and the stuff they have done so far are good and they should keep doing that, but they need to start adding in more things specifically for tanks to have to control and manage asides from being able to take a beating.
A few things that come to mind are making boss positioning a more important and dynamic thing in encounters, more aggro drops/resets/multi-enemy boss fights that require swapping targets between tanks and other such things forcing tanks to have to utilize on-the-fly aggro tools like provoke, and more mechanics requiring the tanks to actively protect other party members with their abilities. Stuff like that. Then give the tanks more abilities to deal with those mechanics like a stronger defensive to use on others but on a longer recast.
I feel doing things like that would do a lot to make the tank role feel more unique and sell the fantasy of being a protector.

[Lyth]

The problem that I have with most rework suggestions is that they're too detail orientated. Should the potency of New Awesome Skill X be 350 or 375? Should the duration be 10 seconds or should it be 10.1 seconds? I certainly don't know, and I'm sure that you don't either. I really don't want to or need to read your back-of-the-envelope calculations if you have them, either. Keep it simple.

The big picture is important. What's wrong, in broad strokes? What abilities need to be reworked, in general terms?

DRK's present problem is the lack of a central, thematic concept that unifies everything. What direction do we push in? Lifesteal? Counterattacks? Pick a direction and commit to it. And make it exclusive. If everyone else has a copycat skill, it's not really an identity.

[Seraphor]

The problem that I have with most rework suggestions is that they're too detail orientated. Should the potency of New Awesome Skill X be 350 or 375? Should the duration be 10 seconds or should it be 10.1 seconds? I certainly don't know, and I'm sure that you don't either. I really don't want to or need to read your back-of-the-envelope calculations if you have them, either. Keep it simple.

The big picture is important. What's wrong, in broad strokes? What abilities need to be reworked, in general terms?

DRK's present problem is the lack of a central, thematic concept that unifies everything. What direction do we push in? Lifesteal? Counterattacks? Pick a direction and commit to it. And make it exclusive. If everyone else has a copycat skill, it's not really an identity.

I've posted 'big picture' job ideas in the past with example potencies merely to illustrate functionality of the skills, and been met with:
"Ackshully, 300 potency wouldn't be enough to compete with the existing jobs in this role so your entire concept fails."

[Lyth]

I wouldn't even post example potencies. It's completely meaningless. The devs are the ones with the gameplay formulas and gameplay testing teams. How are you supposed to figure out what the correct potency should be? All the potencies changed this expansion. They're entirely relative numbers set by the devs.

And like you said, you always run the risk of running into that person who did a first year math course in college that one time and feels the need to flex their introductory math skills. They might even own a graphing calculator that they don't entirely know how to use properly and be part of a theorycrafting circle. That road leads to a long, boring conversation with lots of quotation boxes that have nothing to do with your original post. Please don't do it, for all of our sakes. Just leave out the potencies and talk in general terms. You're a consumer. What do you like, what don't you like? What is your subjective opinion? If it's a long list, do it as a bullet problem/solution list so that people with shorter attention spans can make it to the bottom.

[cactuarzzzz]

I wouldn't even post example potencies. It's completely meaningless. The devs are the ones with the gameplay formulas and gameplay testing teams. How are you supposed to figure out what the correct potency should be? All the potencies changed this expansion. They're entirely relative numbers set by the devs.

And like you said, you always run the risk of running into that person who did a first year math course in college that one time and feels the need to flex their introductory math skills. They might even own a graphing calculator that they don't entirely know how to use properly and be part of a theorycrafting circle. That road leads to a long, boring conversation with lots of quotation boxes that have nothing to do with your original post. Please don't do it, for all of our sakes. Just leave out the potencies and talk in general terms. You're a consumer. What do you like, what don't you like? What is your subjective opinion? If it's a long list, do it as a bullet problem/solution list so that people with shorter attention spans can make it to the bottom.

Might not be relevant but 5.0 show how dev didn't know how to do the math,. It make us wonder did they really have a gameplay formulas and gameplay testing teams? because I sure feel like I'm a guinea pig, a beta tester instead of being a consumer.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Might not be relevant but 5.0 show how dev didn't know how to do the math,. It make us wonder did they really have a gameplay formulas and gameplay testing teams? because I sure feel like I'm a guinea pig, a beta tester instead of being a consumer.

I mean players are always gonna be some form of tester no matter what game you play, regardless of what stage the game is at, that's how developers learn to improve, change, double down or nerf jobs or other aspects of games. In regards to the devs maths, they are actually better overall this expac in terms of potency, where the gap has been the closest it's ever been, at least in terms of balance among the tank role. What is lacking, is content that pushes tanks to make full or creative use of their toolkits.

[Starkbeaumont]

just want to say I'm happy with drk right now. better than stormblood.
the only thing I can agree with is that tanks need to feel different from each other. right now only pld achieves this. and even here you could argue that magic phase isn't much different from inner release/delirium phase. gnb is different too but just a dps in disguise.

[cactuarzzzz]

I mean players are always gonna be some form of tester no matter what game you play, regardless of what stage the game is at, that's how developers learn to improve, change, double down or nerf jobs or other aspects of games. In regards to the devs maths, they are actually better overall this expac in terms of potency, where the gap has been the closest it's ever been, at least in terms of balance among the tank role. What is lacking, is content that pushes tanks to make full or creative use of their toolkits.

Please,You aren't the one who have to deal with LD and being locked out of savage party that have no WHM. You also aren't the one who have to deal with blood weapon weird tick. BLM Player don't always gonna have to be the tester because they got Mr.producer who main that job to make sure it's perfect before release unlike some other job and I didn't just make a baseless argument many people including the mentor of balance discord noticed this.

Other tank main who's now in a good place sure love to quote "All tank is balance right now" and before you thinking about convince me you better read this thread>https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ut-Living-Dead