Is anyone surprised at this point?

[Lyth]

I think that part of the problem is that the English forums have had by far the least active community team in the past year, especially post-Covid. I'm not even convinced that bug reports are getting through, while you at least see acknowledgement of bug feedback and localization mistakes if you look through the German and French Dev Trackers. You can always blame the language barrier, but if your community support isn't even bothering to feedback the information to the team, you can't even blame the devs for being out of touch. I'm not sure how the problem can be fixed, when we don't even have a voice to begin with.

[OdinelStarrei]

Wait, I thought people enjoyed this part of it.
Players are coming out of the woodwork pining after old versions of DRK. One of the points consistently touched on was 5.0 turned Delirium into a mindless Fell Cleave spam as opposed to how it used to be something you had to plan your rotation around to optimize lining up the right skills inside it.
Now with Blood Weapon I'm hearing "you gotta prep for that part of the rotation to hit certain skills within it? No thanks!"
Is this really what the common consensus? Cuz now I'm getting very mixed messages...

Delirium is bad, but at least it's consistent. I can trust Delirium to work properly.

I'm not sure if you are being intentionally obtuse, but there is a very distinct difference between "I really like setting up portions of my job kit to be utilized in unique ways." and "This skill has an incorrect tooltip and unintended or unintuitive interactions." I'm going to give you an example of the former. Getting 4 Atonements inside of FoF on Paladin is a small potency optimization by removing a Riot Blade and replacing it with an Atonement, without going into too much detail. Is it intended? Probably not, but it is 1. Reasonable to come to the conclusion that it is possible because of the extremely long 15 second duration given on the 3 stacks of Sword Oath, when you only really need 10, and executing all 3 stacks back to back only takes 5. It is comfortable. And 2. NOT doing 4 Atonement does not significantly alter, transform, or ruin the PLD rotation by not being executed. It's not the lynchpin of the physical phase.

As for the latter, when MNKs were pre-pulling Anatman for a GL stack before the rework, was that technically "high-end optimization that increased the skill ceiling"? Yes, but it's also bad job design to rely on a an unknowable tickrate for ideal opener conditions. When SMNs have to triple-weave in Bahamut for an optimal burst phase, is that "utilizing your entire kit under raid buffs?" Yes, but it's counter-intuitive on a basic level, and on a SMN-specific level, it contributes to an already clunky job setup, looking at you Trance/Deathflare/Enkindle: Demi/Enkindle: Summon/Brand of Purgatory. When BLMs were legitimately dropping Blizzard IV out of their rotation entirely in SB due to lackluster potency contribution, that's a failure of the job design.

I do not need to plan my rotation around Blood Weapon. I need to make concessions for Blood Weapon. 0 - 2.5 - 5 - 7.5 - 10. That's five GCDs at 2.5 GCD, mathematically, but not practically. Blood Weapon is tooltip'd as a 10 second buff. It's 9.8~. Tooltip is lying. And so is Inner Release, and all the buffs like it. But those are lies that give leeway to the player for the sake of a smooth, consistent gameplay experience by adding the extra second. It benefits the player, while BW punishes the player with unrecoverable resources. At the end of the day, 5 GCDs should be 5 GCDs. Requiescat is 12 seconds for a reason.

Is it a big deal? Well, that depends. Logically, no, it doesn't really matter. But I'm going to tell you right now, when I have to pull Oracle to the south of the arena, and for SOME reason, Blood Weapon doesn't activate on a hit, outside of me cursing in voice, a few things start happening over the next thirty seconds, one from a ADPS perspective (the only thing keeping DRK engaging), and a resource management perspective.

1. Because I missed 600 MP on the last hit, for reasons I cannot really determine outside of "I lagged" or "I was too far away for a centi-second positioning the boss" , I can no longer get in the last Edge of Shadow at the very end of fifteen-twenty second raidbuffs (Divination/Battle Litany/Technical Step etc etc) activated in the opener. Will this ruin the pull? No, but it's FEELS REALLY AWFUL, knowing that I could've had consistent, maximum raid contribution, but I was undone by a sub-second error or the complete lack of lag compensation. It's already bad enough with the MP ticks. This is particularly frustrating if you've been given a melee card.

2. Because I missed that 10 blood, the potion that popped after the 1st Syphon Strike, will be missing the very last Bloodspiller at the end of the 30 second duration. I do not generate enough Blood naturally to end my potion with my highest GCD action. This is just lost damage for no reason. Which again, doesn't feel good.

And don't even get me started on missing a Blood Weapon hit in situations where that last hit is the difference between me being able to summon Living Shadow or Bloodspiller in time for the 2 min Divination or 6 min re-openers or god forbid, boss phasing. Again, I INTENDED for my buff to work properly, I put BW in the second weave slot, and the game says nah, just have 2.4K/40 instead. That is frustrating. Jank is not engaging, it is frustrating.

I should not feel like I am fighting my primary resource acquisition oGCD.
It doesn't make any sense to consider 4 hits to be the default, when every other buff in the game that gives job resource on every job does it on their own with no additional influence from MP ticks or GCD acquisition, from Meisui, to Bloodfest, to Ikoshoten, to Barrel Stabilizer, all give at least 1 usage of their gauge spender. Some give two. BW, if intended to be 4 hits, would not even give 1 usage of Edge/Bloodspiller on it's own. That doesn't make any sense. 5 hits make sense. It lines up in the opener correctly, it gives me just the right amount for a total MP/Blood dump in raid buffs and potion time. That can't be an accident. Shout-out to Bozja Haste gear making this problem irrelevant by the way.

I think that part of the problem is that the English forums have had by far the least active community team in the past year, especially post-Covid. I'm not even convinced that bug reports are getting through, while you at least see acknowledgement of bug feedback and localization mistakes if you look through the German and French Dev Trackers. You can always blame the language barrier, but if your community support isn't even bothering to feedback the information to the team, you can't even blame the devs for being out of touch. I'm not sure how the problem can be fixed, when we don't even have a voice to begin with.

I'm going to go even further. This is arguably why it seems so "hyperbolic". Because people are just whining into the void about it and it gets no acknowledgement. People act like "Oh this is just like Living Dead, they don't listen to DRKs, they only listen to players who don't play it." I'd actually disagree, and say this is a drawn out, less serious version of the Ungarmax situation, where NA/EU just outright are not listened to about anything of consequence, despite multiple reports, and is honestly baffling when SE has gone out of their way to attack elements of the game that require optimal ping. (see: NIN rework) . That's a bit worse than my personal performance taking a hit. Ungarmax alone should've been the catalyst for taking a closer look at international feedback, and it was said as much during the discussion of the event itself, but it has not materialized for this specific issue on DRK alone.

[ItMe]

I'm not sure if you are being intentionally obtuse,

Nope.
I'm just someone who often struggles to understand. It can make people upset, so thanks for the civil response and write up. It was illuminating.

[Sqwall]

As for the latter, when MNKs were pre-pulling Anatman for a GL stack before the rework, was that technically "high-end optimization that increased the skill ceiling"? Yes, but it's also bad job design to rely on a an unknowable tickrate for ideal opener conditions. When SMNs have to triple-weave in Bahamut for an optimal burst phase, is that "utilizing your entire kit under raid buffs?" Yes, but it's counter-intuitive on a basic level, and on a SMN-specific level, it contributes to an already clunky job setup, looking at you Trance/Deathflare/Enkindle: Demi/Enkindle: Summon/Brand of Purgatory. When BLMs were legitimately dropping Blizzard IV out of their rotation entirely in SB due to lackluster potency contribution, that's a failure of the job design.

I don't know....this is pretty spot on. I find it all to often I have to really dissect a job's rotation to get unintended results. Ultimately the dev usually realize...."That's not right....here let me fix that to what we really wanted it to do."

I'm getting off topic....

DRK isn't broken...just...not tightly designed like the other tanks. And people are noticing. Same went for MNK...a dumpster fire burning since 2015...and each subsequent expansion was a jug of gasoline pitched on that fire. How people thought that was "fine" I'll never know, and what we have now albeit isn't perfect, but is LEAPS and BOUNDS better then that out of control locomotive running off a cliff.

DRK is fine, but it could use some "tuning". Personally I think TBN needs reworked to grant Blackblood (50 points) and Delirum ALSO removes MP cost on edge and flood so you can weave better. That might solve some potency issues...no?

[shao32]

I just hope that the lack of qol on DRK is bcs they are planing to revert blood weapon so transform it to a bunshin skill is to much work when they are going to change it back or something, I mean DRK Received heavy critics from the begining mostly asking to revert blood weapon and rework delirium, mine included.

Still I agree I feel our feedback doesn't reach devs ears, at least not as often as I would love and no matter if there is 100 threats like DRK complains or 1 mega threat like GNB sfx they seems to don't do anything about it, I say it before I would love to have an confirmation that our feedback has been delivered in a way or another, and if is not clear then a few words from the community management can make us improve our feedback, this constant yell to the void hoping for changes that never came or when they come they do it totally wrong is frustrating.

[ForteNightshade]

I just hope that the lack of qol on DRK is bcs they are planing to revert blood weapon so transform it to a bunshin skill is to much work when they are going to change it back or something, I mean DRK Received heavy critics from the begining mostly asking to revert blood weapon and rework delirium, mine included..

It's more they don't want to put any work into job kits at this point in the expansion. Changing Blood Weapon to five stacks just isn't a big deal to them when the expansion is more or less over. At a level where many people care about changes like that. I don't necessarily agree with that philosophy but it's essentially what they said during the Live Letter, albeit more eloquently. Slapping some extra numbers on Warrior is far easier. Not to mention, I suspect their intended goal was to prop up Warrior's play numbers, which have been the lowest throughout Shadowbringers.

[shao32]

It's more they don't want to put any work into job kits at this point in the expansion. Changing Blood Weapon to five stacks just isn't a big deal to them when the expansion is more or less over. At a level where many people care about changes like that. I don't necessarily agree with that philosophy but it's essentially what they said during the Live Letter, albeit more eloquently. Slapping some extra numbers on Warrior is far easier. Not to mention, I suspect their intended goal was to prop up Warrior's play numbers, which have been the lowest throughout Shadowbringers.

Yeah exactly but what i mean if they planned to keep current Blood weapon design for Endwalker why not just give it the bunshin change considering the request is pretty old? So I hope is a sign they are hopefully going to revert it or something.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

It could very well be that SE doesn't want to touch Blood Weapon at all because they intend to heavily rework it in 6.0. Of course, that's just speculation, and it's still not a great reason to ignore simple (at least on paper) QoL adjustments for Blood Weapon.

[whiskeybravo]

I think that it's perfectly fine for a job to feel comfortable and accessible to play. I think that every job should be viable, and they've done a good job of that as far as comparative tank dps totals this expansion. They've also, up until just now, done a reasonable job of rewarding sustain and burst appropriately.

I do, however, believe that comfort should come at a cost. Effort should always translate into a performance advantage, however slight, so that you get recognized for the work you put in. Uptime focused jobs should, by rights, always win out over jobs that have an advantage in burst. It doesn't have to be a big advantage, but there should be a difference.

As an example, one of the key reasons why there are endless complaints about Living Dead (design problems aside) is that it's completely inferior to Holmgang, despite being significantly more punishing. Why go through the extra hassle if you can have more rewards for less effort? Likewise, one of the reasons why people are questioning this potency change is because it rewards you for breathing. Congratulations, you picked WAR and have an intact brainstem. It doesn't reward you for doing something skillful or clever with your burst window. It doesn't force you to do something engaging outside of your burst window and then reward you for it. It arbitrarily hands out sustain benefits to a job that has canonically always been given an advantage over everyone else in burst.

Nobody is begrudging you having a beginner friendly, accessible tank that feels comfortable to play. But be sure to properly reward more skillful play on other jobs appropriately and fairly.

Yea 20 pot/gcd is such a reward. Game breaking even.

Putting in more effort on any job usually results in a relative performance advantage.

Except in fights with more downtime phases, right?

Comparing LD with Holmgang over a minor potency buff is irrelevant here. I agree with pretty much everyone else that LD needs to change, as far as I can tell it's about the dumbest ability in the entire game. People have complained about it for years, why it hasn't been changed is far beyond all of our combined comprehension. Could you actually imagine the explosion of hot air if WAR got some other significant rework in the ways you mention to compensate for the minor potency buff, while DRK continued to remain in such a pitifully abandoned state? My advice would be to save your energy on this battle, it's probably not even going to be noticeable by 6.0.

[WhyAmIHere]

Instead of being upset that it just doesn't give me space for 5 GCDs, I guess I'm just not getting worked up because I see it more as giving me more than enough space for 4.
Especially since the game never tells me "you should be getting 5," so I've never felt shafted that in AoE vs single target situations parts of my kit work a little differently.

So, you're settling for less and accepting an inferior return on investment because "well that's just how it works out for me."
Barring my phrasing at least. But that's what I see.

It's not me being worked up. Sh**posts i post as copypasta on the balance are me being worked up. Expletive laden essays are me being worked up. Expressing my disappointment and disapproval of how things are being handled in one regard of the game I use as escapism entertainment? Nah. Not enjoying DRK doesn't mean there isn't anything else I cannot enjoy in FF14. But having something you once enjoyed being neglected and mistreated never feels good.