TBN & WD probably wont be fundamentally changed (in 6.xx)

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

We see lots of points about how the DRK kit fights itself and suggestions for how to make it not fight itself, but many of them don't take into account the work and flare that has been put into the jobs.

Square puts a lot of work into making the jobs feel different even if they are largely homogenized in capabilities, and one of those things that have a big visual impact is the job guages themselves.

Suggestions to make TBN free for example, don't take into account that TBN could no longer grant Dark Arts, and DA is baked into the job guage itself. And you can't just say "ok then have it grant dark arts and be free" cause that blatantly is a dps increase.

Its not like they couldn't reduce or remove the dps loss in other ways, but the suggestions we keep seeing tend to either neglect the Dark Arts mechanic job-flavor (it doesn't matter if you scoff at job flavor, the devs definitely value it), or are just a blatant dps increases.


Similarly with Walking Death, they put effort into it and its an interesting difference like superbolide. In theory it has the potential to be the best oh-shi button in the game cause you have 10 seconds to *catch* your invulnerability, and your invulnerability *starts* when you reach 1 hp. Thats actually... really awesome. Plus again, they put a lot of work into it.

So while they might (and probably should) change TBN and WD in 6.xx, the suggestions to fundamentally change them are probably just doomed to be howls at the moon. Of course all suggestions are likely just to be howls at the moon, but the suggestions to fundamentally change them are especially howling at the moon.

So like, the chance of missing out on an Edge/Flood of Shadow is definitely intended, but that doesn't mean that TBN couldn't be more forgiving.
Likewise the ability to still die with Walking Dead is intended and probably won't be removed, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be more forgiving.

[ForteNightshade]

... They completely overhauled Ninja's entire Mudra system last expansion; changing them from oGCDs to GCDs, which fundamentally changed the job's rotation. And they did this during Shadowbringers. Both Monk and Summoner have become completely different jobs from their predecessors. Astro's original card system was abandoned and Bard went through Caster phase.

Changing Walking Dead or scrapping it completely wouldn't even be a fraction of the aforementioned changes I just listed.

Similarly with Walking Death, they put effort into it and its an interesting difference like superbolide. In theory it has the potential to be the best oh-shi button in the game cause you have 10 seconds to *catch* your invulnerability, and your invulnerability *starts* when you reach 1 hp. Thats actually... really awesome. Plus again, they put a lot of work into it.

Quoting this specifically to say, no it doesn't. Even theoretically, Living Dead has always sucked. You never used it as an "oh, crap!" button due to the healing requirement almost ensuring your death. The whole "catching your invuln" as you describe has always been a jebait. It had miniscule value at best yet was still woefully and hilariously outclassed by Holmgang. Which is made even more apparent now despite Holmgang being nerfed to 4mins.

They didn't put a lot of work into it. That's nonsense. They tried being unique without considering the gameplay implications and ignored how widely superior Holmgang has always been. "Flavor" over functionality is bad design. A tank invuln should never kill the user. At least not when there are zero drawbacks to every other tank. All that does is create an imbalance. If it weren't for Dark Knight's absurd damage output right now, it'd be a dead job because of it's janky "flavor". Buff PLD or WAR to GNB levels—which is still weaker than DRK—and you'll see the job's player rate plummet. Nobody likes the "flavor" of LD.

[Lyth]

@OP

TBN is fine the way it is. It requires you to know roughly how much damage goes out and at what times. That ought to be basic knowledge for any instance you actually know how to tank. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to see the MP cost unnecessarily removed and the recast nerfed to 25 seconds because Xeno seems to have planted that idea in some players' heads. The 'Dark Arts' gauge is completely superfluous and is a wasted UI design element, much like the Living Shadow duration timer, but it's no big deal whether they're there or not.

Oblation is what really needs to be looked into, because it's completely underwhelming. Single target 10% DR on a 60s recast is really poor for a level 82 ability. Now if it upgraded TBN at level 82 to absorb a portion of the damage mitigated as HP, Dread Spikes style, then we might be talking. Tuning the exact amount would be tough though.

Living Dead has a multitude of problems, and the dev team made a commitment to addressing them during the last Live Letter because there was a fairly significant and widespread backlash against its design. You can read about what the issues are here. Alternatively, you could always try fully levelling the job and experience some of them for yourself.

[The_User]

Did he even unlocked DRK job before writing all this?

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

While I'm not going to respond to the snark, or defend things I never said; the point I was trying to convey is that the suggestions we keep getting from players in videos and forum posts are often not tweaks but wild, fundamental changes that would end up impacting way more than just the abilities they are discussing.

In this very forum there are suggestions for DRK changes that are "Simple" .. and have a table of contents followed by a novel.

Its fun to daydream and all, and we can call things superfluous and bad design all we want, but thats just an opinion.. we aren't devs and they didn't make it the way it is on accident.

Just saying, maybe think inside the box, and not rewrite the entire tooltip is all.

[Archwizard]

Just saying, maybe think inside the box, and not rewrite the entire tooltip is all.

Problem is, the only ability you listed here where pure number adjustments are possible to fix the skill's inherent flaws (or at least address player concerns) is maybe Oblation.

There is no variation of Living Dead where the numbers can be adjusted to make it more balanced. If you reduce the 100% HP requirement, healers will easily clear the "unkillable" component of the skill tied to such drawback. If you reduce the recast to compensate for its weaknesses, healers are taxed to deal with it more often. If you increase the duration, players will try to cheese with it by begging Pure Healers not to heal them quickly. Not to mention that either way, the healer presently has no way of knowing how much they need to continue healing, nor does it synergize with any of DRK's own skills unlike WAR and GNB's self-heals.

Likewise, albeit to a lesser extreme, with TBN: Any adjustment you make to it has to account for the Dark Arts interaction and the skills it affects, and how it impacts your effective damage output. If TBN's cost is reduced/removed (or even the duration is increased by any significant amount) and Dark Arts remains the same, the DRK is encouraged to waste TBN for more efficient damage output. If the effective barrier potency is increased, the difficulty of getting Dark Arts rises with it.

Even if you bump up the effective mitigation or duration of Oblation itself, you still have to deal with it being a double-weave with TBN to match the effectiveness of other on-demand skills.

There's a reason for the "novels" you complain so much about. If fixing DRK was as easy as just fudging some numbers, don't you think they would have done that already?

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

In this very forum there are suggestions for DRK changes that are "Simple" .. and have a table of contents followed by a novel.

Fundamentally, I do agree with part of your post. Far too many people think that its even in the realm of possibility the devs will do radical changes to DRK's job kit and how it operates before 7.0 and not just simple tweaks.
But at the same time, for an ability like Walking Dead that is so fundamentally broken and negative, it's very easy to radically change how the ability works and make it far more usable and player friendly without even adding or re-writing the tooltip:



Unless the backspace key is broken on every computer at Square Enix HQ, they can radically change WD into a usable ability by wiping out a single IF statement and nothing else. No thought or game design doctorate needed.

Otherwise, FortenightShade has pretty much all of my opinions summarized. Flavor is always welcome in a job's kit, but not at the detriment of its usability. They tried to be unique with Walking Dead in a simpler time of the game's lifespan, but content design and job balance has rendered Walking Dead an active hindrance rather than a benefit, and it has no place in today's FF14 design.

[The_User]

"Similarly with Walking Death, they put effort into it and its an interesting difference like superbolide. In theory it has the potential to be the best oh-shi button in the game cause you have 10 seconds to *catch* your invulnerability, and your invulnerability *starts* when you reach 1 hp. Thats actually... really awesome. Plus again, they put a lot of work into it."


We never gonna ran out of people who didn't main or play DRK without having a personal dedicated healer that for some reason is more than willing to take the risk than your average healer but said DRK would still say the current LD/WD isn't the worst

and when we reply ok then, the pld,war,gnb or the tank that you really main can have wd instead.

They scream

"NOOOOOOO how could you?"

[Undeadfire]

... They completely overhauled Ninja's entire Mudra system last expansion; changing them from oGCDs to GCDs, which fundamentally changed the job's rotation. And they did this during Shadowbringers.
Changing Walking Dead or scrapping it completely wouldn't even be a fraction of the aforementioned changes I just listed.

Making a comparison to this, Ninja DPS was close to Dnc DPS parses, it was horribly bad and groups couldn't clear E4S till they switched it out for first week. Drk being able to clear content easy, and unpopular opinions on it's current rotations isn't going to make SE completely overhaul it.

[Lyth]

In Patch 4.1, 112 days after its introduction in the official release of Stormblood, Shake It Off was changed into a different ability complete with a new animation to reflect this change. All of this was done in response to player feedback. Anything is possible if you play the right job.

There are some things that you can't achieve by tweaking numbers alone.