Should Dark Arts Come Back in 6.0? If so, What Should the Skill Do?

[shao32]

Depends on if the poster boy curse continues. FFXIV has had a history of WoL main job for expansion having some glaring flaws.

-2.0 WAR couldn't survive extreme damage and tank busters like twintania's death sentence. This was fixed in 2.1.
-3.0 DRG had you lose nearly half your potency if you missed positionals and animation locking was very real.
-4.0 MNK had questionable design choices like Tornado kick removing all your GL stacks and sadly MNK won't be "fixed" till 6.0 but that's unsure. 4.0 SAM didn't suffer as bad since it was new job but it had its issues.
-5.0 DRK is a mixed bag. While they made the job more accessible to newer players, it is by far the tank with the most gutted skills with older players missing the identity and feel of older DRK but at least they finally got an aoe at lvl 72. They also gave it a flashy dot in the form of a pet aka, Living Shadow so that's fun right?

The curse of the Derplander yeah, i would say biggest issue of DRG in 3.0 was the fang and claw and wheeling thrust rng proc to get one or the other was his biggest issue, was really annoying, Geirskull blooddragon consume was a bit to tight to my taste too, better now by a mile for sure the job is.

Idk, DRK use to have the best AOE gameplay in the tank role in both HW and specially on SB, now is so swallow and dull like the rest of the tanks and have it on lvl 72 just make the underleves feel even worse but yeah flashy Fray yuhuu.

[Jandor]

Yeah DRK AoE was far superior in StB.

[Lyth]

I don't think we stopped because we were appeased by playing a warrior clone, personally just tired of trying to point out the obvious.

There's no engagement with the playerbase on these issues by either the dev team or the community team. In Stormblood, at least there was a bit of forum interaction that took place in that regard and some promises were made. Even the more recent Live Letter Q+A sessions seem to deliberately ignore even highly upvoted gameplay concerns from players in favor of safe fluff.

I don't think that they have the staff to actually manage the jobs that they have out, let alone the new ones. I'd expect them to just play it very safe and change very little. And at the end of the day, it's more than just DRK; tanking is neither valuable nor engaging. There's just too many problems here without an actual commitment from the team to expect to see anything other than failure. I hope that they manage to do something with healing, since they've vocally committed to that at least.

Let's just hope that Reaper turns out well.

[Shin96]

There's no engagement with the playerbase on these issues by either the dev team or the community team. In Stormblood, at least there was a bit of forum interaction that took place in that regard and some promises were made. Even the more recent Live Letter Q+A sessions seem to deliberately ignore even highly upvoted gameplay concerns from players in favor of safe fluff.

I don't think that they have the staff to actually manage the jobs that they have out, let alone the new ones. I'd expect them to just play it very safe and change very little. And at the end of the day, it's more than just DRK; tanking is neither valuable nor engaging. There's just too many problems here without an actual commitment from the team to expect to see anything other than failure. I hope that they manage to do something with healing, since they've vocally committed to that at least.

Let's just hope that Reaper turns out well.

The day tanking becomes irrelevant and redundant is the day I will quit this game for good.

It's not hard to make tanking engaging at all. We're talking about a company that managed to actually create a functional experience out of the infamous 1.0 build. They can if they want to, but it seems losing a few players loyal to the concept of tanking is a risk worth taking if it means they can increase their playerbase and subscriptions. Back then when ARR released, SE was heavily dependant on their loyal fanbase to salvage what hope was left for FFXIV. Nowadays, they've gained a fortune and apparently don't care anymore, judging by the baffling lack of transparency on issues that keep persisting throughout all expansions.

Reaper just seems like a temporary band-aid to me. A tank main like me won't just be satisfied by playing an edgy job. If they think that's enough to keep me shoving money into their pockets; they are wrong.

All in all, if they keep going this route and I assume they will continue to homogenize tanking even further, they lost a loyal player that put up with these changes for 2.5 years. No point in giving them money if they don't even want to communicate with us. They got enough players that are seemingly happy with male Vieras and their little story than actual gameplay which is far more crucial and persists for far longer than temporary excitement and instant gratification.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Let's just hope that Reaper turns out well.

Reaper just seems like a temporary band-aid to me.

here is a thought that is going to make me livid, if it ends up beings the case...
Hot take: what looked like Reaper has a burst.. IS old Dark Arts, under a new name and void instead of darkness, and Reaper is a "fast" feeling sustained DPS damager, making it actually just the "band-aid fix" for Dark Knight... Reaper ends up being the literal replacement for Dark Knight, because Squeenix told the dev team to just create a new edgy darkness subclass, for all of us discontent Dark Knights to ditch Dark Knight for and switch over to, so that we stop complaining about Dark Knight.

that said, I will ditch Dark Knight for Reaper, if Dark Knight does not improve, and I bet that a lot of other Dark Knights will also ditch Dark Knight for Reaper, so bloody 72 hells...whether it was the intent of Squeenix or not, Reaper looks like it may be just the Dark Knight issues blow-off.

[Lyth]

But think about what a rework could achieve if tanking was actually irrelevant and redundant.

Let's say that you had 17 jobs, of which 14 were DPS and 3 were healers. The boss follows a fixed choreographed dance while spam casting AoE attacks which you have to dodge/heal though, so no actual tanking is required. Of the 14 DPS jobs that you can pick from, 4 of them do significantly less damage than the other DPS, but twice per fight they have the exclusive privilege of participating in a special quicktime event to block a big attack from the boss.

Oh wait. We're playing that version already.

[Shin96]

But think about what a rework could achieve if tanking was actually irrelevant and redundant.

Let's say that you had 17 jobs, of which 14 were DPS and 3 were healers. The boss follows a fixed choreographed dance while spam casting AoE attacks which you have to dodge/heal though, so no actual tanking is required. Of the 14 DPS jobs that you can pick from, 4 of them do significantly less damage than the other DPS, but twice per fight they have the exclusive privilege of participating in a special quicktime event to block a big attack from the boss.

Oh wait. We're playing that version already.

Next up, they will remove the Tank stance and simplify tanking to the lowest common denominator. I can see it already.

Their mistake was taking enmity out of the equasion without finding a suitable replacement. Now they created a void. How will they intend to fill it? Not by making tanking even more irrelevant than it currently is. I was bothered by the changes in 5.0 alot, but I can't possibly imagine they will remove even more out of what is left anyhow. I blame the playerbase as well, their reaction towards these changes was non-existant but when it's a lack of hairstyles for a race or a missing gender they flip the tables upside and down. In any case, I'm not a DPS player so I most likely will just end up leaving but that's fine. I got my enjoyment out of this game before 5.0 when tanks were more fun to play, in my opinion.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

It is... Quite the enigma. FFXIV's Combat gameplay only ever becomes worse, and more of boring, dull, lousy, lower quality, and simple, to the point of not even being a RPG any longer, and just mere glorified action; and yet Squeenix continues to succeed in their goal of "more players"...
I wonder how the dev team feels about this, forced by Squeenix to do this to their game.

on a different scale, the Old Dark Arts returns conundrum is bothering me again...
say that Dark Knight's damage potential is as good as the other tanks, but then old Dark Arts had some effects to increase the potency of attacks, so this would cause a modern Dark Knight with old Dark Arts, to out-damage any other Tank, unto which either Dark Arts would be nerfed and ruin the point, or Dark Knight's damage would be nerfed; which would make the Dark Knight's damage reliant on Dark Arts, to be equal to other Tanks, and none of us Dark Knights want old Dark Arts to come back as a Liability...
and then the irony of this concern, if we consider the fact that the current "Dark Arts".. that comes from The Blackest Night, and in effect The Blackest Night itself, IS a liability to our damage potential, due to the stupid design of "Broken shield = damage gain".

one common agreement is that the problem-solve would be: Dark Arts does not affect damage potential, but I am not certain how to do this, since if Dark Arts has effects related to MP recovery and management, or our other resource(s), that would affect the damage potential of the Dark Knight... As such, what would be a "safe" effect for old Dark Arts? is the answer defensive and HP recovery effects only?
but then that bother-some argument of "but spending MP on Dark Arts would be a damage loss, no matter what" comes into play, and the effects of Dark Arts gets regarded as: "how much of a damage loss?" ...What would be the within reason problem solve to this?, I have been thinking to myself...and the answer came to me, while reading the ongoing subject in here, about the issue with Tank gameplay.

there is, simply, a fundamental serious problem with Tanks. why is damage potential and DPS, or the loss of, even a concern.. for TANKS?
there is a fundamental design flaw in this game, and that is: "DPS is more important than aught else, and only damage matters"; Tanks are just tankish DPS, not true tanks, which ruins any attempt at all to design the Tanks as "Tanks", including our Dark Arts problem, because the Tanks need to be tankish damagers, not real Tanks.
every design idea that I think up for Dark Arts, hits this aggravating wall of disapproval, but other players are irritatingly correct, in the sense of any idea has one issue or another with it, because of this aggravating fundamental battle/fights combat design flaw.

[AziraSyuren]

there is, simply, a fundamental serious problem with Tanks. why is damage potential and DPS, or the loss of, even a concern.. for TANKS?
there is a fundamental design flaw in this game, and that is: "DPS is more important than aught else, and only damage matters"; Tanks are just tankish DPS, not true tanks, which ruins any attempt at all to design the Tanks as "Tanks", including our Dark Arts problem, because the Tanks need to be tankish damagers, not real Tanks.
every design idea that I think up for Dark Arts, hits this aggravating wall of disapproval, but other players are irritatingly correct, in the sense of any idea has one issue or another with it, because of this aggravating fundamental battle/fights combat design flaw.

I've always been skeptical of the idea of making tanks less about DPS and more about tanking because, at some point, you can optimize everything but damage out of existence in all but the most difficult of content- and even then, sometimes you can. It happened with enmity, and it still happens with healing and gearing. It wouldn't be much of an improvement if, by the time a fight was mostly mapped out and optimized, tanks were still stuck with a boring and unsatisfying rotation (inb4 "make fights more random").

We really don't need perfect or even great solutions that'll tie everything up in a neat little knot, either. I'd personally be completely satisfied if tanks were given more complex and interesting rotations. We're going to bitch and whine no matter what they do anyways because of how consistently the dev team comes just short of getting it right when it comes to job design.

[Lyth]

I disagree with this artificial dichotomy between 'dps' and 'tanking'. Doing damage is part of tanking. Positioning and moving bosses is part of tanking. Mitigation is part of tanking. Right now, all of these areas are lacking. You don't have to make tanks 'less about dps' to fix the rest of them. Just fix them all.