Useless PVP abilities in your opinion?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

You just stated why it's bad in most situations... =/

Honestly the health cost is pretty dumb for Warriors considering how weak the Warrior is defensively and how weak Warrior's heals and health shields are after it was nerfed. At least Drk is designed around doing more damage at lower health with invuln and good healing to make it sort of work.

I really hope they get rid of the health cost on Orogeny and Onslaught tbh. It's just clunky, unfun, and it makes the action not worth using most of the time.

While a big fan of HP-spending abilities, I agree that on WAR it simply isn't in a good spot. Unlike DRK, their survival and damage are basically behind the same button (Bloodwhetting -> Chaotic Cyclone) while Bloodwhetting itself is actually monumentally weaker than the three split buttons on DRK (Quietus lifesteal, Salted Earth regen + mitigation dome, TBN directed shield). Doesn't help their damage scales with current HP (which means they also get stronger with Thrill of Battle), the value is just hard to utilise.

Overall, I think Warrior has too much of its budget put into the Limit Break. For Warrior to really feel nice, you need to reach the Limit Break first while avoiding death like a pest (since you gain no LB during downtime).

I feel you WAR-bros.

[Dreadz]

You could also just say you don't know how to play Dark Knight, because every single thing you just criticised is either a you-problem or you completely misunderstand the value of these abilities.

- The Blackest Night in PvP cannot be and will never be a DPS loss, because you never invested a resource you spend on damage in the first place. You only GAIN on it breaking.
- The Blackest Night's 8000 HP shield is plenty for its' 15s cooldown, especially in conjuction with...
- Salted Earth. It is more than just a draw-in + Bind catcher, this is your actual mitigation which also grants you a regen while in it. the draw-in is there to force the fight where you want it to be.

The HP-spending mechanic of Shadowbringer -> Bloodspiller is what makes Dark Knight a high-risk-high-reward job in PvP while being functional even without spending a lot of HP thanks to tools like Salted Earth and Quietus.

You are no traditional stun-bot, you are a job that can fluidly jump between doing a ton of damage and tanking a fair share of damage, depending on what the situation allows.

Come off it, seriously. TBN is a DPS loss because it makes your next Shadowbringer cost no life if it breaks, thus reducing your Bloodspiller damage and it's 8k potency is nothing considering that most abilities break it one hit, making the slightly shorter cooldown irrelevant. Salted Earth is absolute garbage, you're lucky if it actually draws people into the centre and the bind goes off before they all run out. Also, the damage mitigation you get in SE is also worthless because the AoE is small as hell and the regen is absolutely pathetic, 10k if you stand in it for the entire duration. Don't even get me started on it's garbage LB, where the majority of it's value comes from screwing over cheating or twitchy NINs.

DRK is garbage if you try to play it as tank, RPR does a better job than it. You are just as susceptible to CC and ranged as any other melee job, the only difference is that you have to kill yourself to do any meaningful damage. Meanwhile you have WARs flying around with gap closing AOE stuns, PLDs that can actually tank, alongside HG that makes DRK's LB look like a joke and GNB that can dish out damage without killing itself. DRK brings absolutely nothing of value to the team, any job from any role would be an improvement over having a DRK on your team.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Come off it, seriously. TBN is a DPS loss because it makes your next Shadowbringer cost no life if it breaks, thus reducing your Bloodspiller damage and it's 8k potency is nothing considering that most abilities break it one hit, making the slightly shorter cooldown irrelevant.

That is not how a DPS loss is calculated. If your worry is being too high HP before TBN breaks then you simply spend HP on a Shadowbringer-Bloodspiller combo or two before you use it, then you get a free 6000dmg ogcd + a Bloodspiller likely ranging in the 9000-10000 if you didn't take any extra damage in the meantime (like having applied TBN to a target and it breaking).

A DPS "loss" would insinuate that you actually spent a resource on something other than DPS and the end result being DPS negative. But you did not spend any resource, you only used a cooldown that would give you a free use of Shadowbringer and Bloodspiller upon breaking, the latter being a gain over your entire Souleater combo even at full HP. The only time TBN would generate a DPS loss state would be it not breaking, which means the shield was worthless within those ten seconds and you gained no free damage from it.

Salted Earth is absolute garbage, you're lucky if it actually draws people into the centre and the bind goes off before they all run out. Also, the damage mitigation you get in SE is also worthless because the AoE is small as hell and the regen is absolutely pathetic, 10k if you stand in it for the entire duration.

Salted Earth's damage mitigation is about the same power as Gunbreaker's Nebula without requiring a specific stance for it to be used. -20% damage mitigation is a LOT in pvp terms, at full HP without any additional health gained this would make your effective HP 75000 (as in the effective damage required to kill you if you look in raw potencies). However the moment you add any heals from Recuperate, Quietus, Souleater, SE's regen or even TBN to it, the value of each of those heals is also boosted by the x1.25 eHP modifier. To say Salted Earth's mitigation is worthless is simply not true.

I grant you that unlike Holy Sheltron or Nebula, you have to run in your bubble for the mitigation, but in the same vein you are essentially locking down a zone where you are stronger and thus could potentially avoid enemies crossing into where you are in. Unless you are overrun by 3+ enemies with no allies there to peel / take down targets along with you, in which case the problem is you being in a bad spot.

Don't even get me started on it's garbage LB, where the majority of it's value comes from screwing over cheating or twitchy NINs.

Eventide's value is not purely to bait NIN LB or the like, it is a solid AOE damage tool that also grants you invuln for ten seconds with strong GCD lifesteal. Meaning you can either:
- go really hard on damage by chaining Bloodspiller -> Shadowbringer -> repeat x3 by using the 12000 HP you gain for a chain of 18000 dmg per GCD
- use it to peel for yourself against ultra-diving enemies (only recommended if you actually will have a chance to take them down with the aforementioned combo)
- lock down the crystal for 10 seconds or longer, especially if you end the invuln with Quietus on 2+ targets for some massive HP heal
- use Salted Earth to draw in targets onto a Volcanic Heart bomb AOE and use Eventide to survive yourself while doing 10000-20000 dmg to each target you catch

DRK is garbage if you try to play it as tank, RPR does a better job than it. You are just as susceptible to CC and ranged as any other melee job, the only difference is that you have to kill yourself to do any meaningful damage.DRK brings absolutely nothing of value to the team, any job from any role would be an improvement over having a DRK on your team.

See, the problem you are having is that you can't let go of the holy trinity when evaluating DRK in PvP. DRK is a melee fighter that can range from deceptively tanky to incredibly damaging. It is not a traditional tank - it has no stuns or direct peeling against enemies and it grants at most a TBN to allies (which absolutely does save people given the right conditions). But since you intend to compare it to other jobs:

RPR - similar to DRK, deceptively tanky thanks to its' teleports, but can also bring out a fair bit of damage. However the damage it does is highly predictable. If you are getting heavied, you know he follows with Gibbet -> Gallows. If he uses his shield, he will have higher damage while it is up so it makes sense to break it. If you are under the effect of Death Warrant, you know you should mitigate the damage of at least the final hit, highly reducing the output. Even his Limit Break is predictable in what he will do next. So while RPR is overall a decent pick, it is very predictable when it is trying to do damage.

Meanwhile you have WARs flying around with gap closing AOE stuns, PLDs that can actually tank, alongside HG that makes DRK's LB look like a joke and GNB that can dish out damage without killing itself.

PLD / WAR - those are traditional tank jobs, one better than the other one could argue. In 6.1+ PvP it no longer makes sense to compare DRK to these jobs just like it makes no sense to compare SCH / SGE to WHM and AST. Traditional role definitions got torn down in favour of overall job uniqueness. PLD's Limit Break is indeed very strong, but the weakness is in its' 2min charge-up time, where DRK only takes 1min30s. PLD also generally does less damage as a trade-off for having stun, cover, Hallowed and so on.

WAR on the other hand does average damage outside of its Limit Break, has borderline pitiful defensives (incredibly volatile to getting CCed) and has thus to make up for clever use of Primal Rend and Blota. Unlike DRK, their defensive and part of its highest damage parts is locked behind Bloodwhetting, which heals for less than Quietus by itself + Chaotic Cyclone. Orogeny and Onslaught bring interesting debuffs to the table (damage down and defense down), but cost a significant portion of HP on a job that has rather weak sustain vs PLD / DRK. Does WAR see play? Yes it does, but WAR is not nearly as tanky. You need to be very crafty or risk being a liability more-so than DRK.

GNB - arguably the one job that does make sense to compare since neither is a traditional tank job anymore. GNB does a ton of damage, but to get important damage value it needs Junction: DPS to gain access to Blasting Zone and stronger Continuation. To be tanky it needs Junction: Tank for access to Nebula and the corresponding shields from Continuation. Similar to DRK, you are essentially shifting between high damage and being really tanky, but compared to DRK you are both depending on the enemy team composition and are gated by a 30s cooldown to swap stances. The limit break is solid, but it is a more offense-oriented LB compared to Eventide, so the usecase is different.

DRK brings absolutely nothing of value to the team, any job from any role would be an improvement over having a DRK on your team.

Brings nothing to the table other than being a melee with shifting playstyles for tankiness (Quietus) and high damage (Shadowbringer, Bloodspiller), a zoning tool that you can pair with DRG LB to prevent people from running if timed well (Salted Earth), some defensives you can slap on your allies without risking of imploding yourself from taking their damage (TBN)...



and a gapcloser that reduces a target's HP recovery by 20%, resetting upon kill / assist and granting the DRK 12000HP and 2000MP for each reset, which is where DRK's snowballing power is coming from?

DRK if anything is difficult, but calling it useless means you haven't seen the bottom of it. So I'm going to ask you to follow your own advice: Come off it, seriously.

[Rhyneth]

I see a lot of incorrect opinions in this forum, aheeeewww weeee.

[Petite]

The basic Weaponskill Combo for RPR, DRG, NIN are pretty damn useless. They offer no utility and are not tied to any.

They also deal so little damage that it's often better to retreat and wait for your burst rather than remain exposed and hit people with a pool noodle.

[Dreadz]

Spent 10mins typing up my reply only to be told that it exceeded the word count. -_-
I'll just say this then, your entire post reads like you've never played the job for any significant amount of time in PvP and most your experience with it comes from reading the tooltips. Are you related to G-Serpent by any chance?

Edit: Just remembered pastebin is a thing, so I'll dump it there, it's pretty sloppy though.
https://pastebin.com/3TMdiG7n

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Spent 10mins typing up my reply only to be told that it exceeded the word count. -_-
I'll just say this then, your entire post reads like you've never played the job for any significant amount of time in PvP and most your experience with it comes from reading the tooltips. Are you related to G-Serpent by any chance?

Edit: Just remembered pastebin is a thing, so I'll dump it there, it's pretty sloppy though.
https://pastebin.com/3TMdiG7n

You spent 10min refuting about half of my points with "you're wrong because I said so" (ill grant you the Eventide vs mitigation one) and went full ad hominem (attacking / slandering me in an attempt to discredit my points) , belittling my PvP experience like as if I have not PvPed any significant amount.

Ive been active for the past four seasons of PvP including current:
- Season 18, barely falling shy of reaching Top 100 as WAR
- Season 19, actually reaching Top 100 as WAR DRK
- Season 20, only went for a 2000ish Diamond rating as DRK because I didnt care.
- CC season 1, went for Crystal and then just played for improving vs T100 candidates as DRK PLD GNB
- CC Season 2, actively going for a climb as DRK


My PvP experience from the past year carries well over into this new system, for fundamentals still work and help me a ton. You really aren't talking to some novice here, so if you at least not want to agree with me, cut the BS like "your entire post reads like you've never played the job for any significant amount of time in PvP and most your experience with it comes from reading the tooltips" at least.

Regarding TBN dps "loss". Again, you aren't losing damage. Upon break gaining a free Shadowbringer means you get a zero risk of free 6000 Shadowbringer damage as well a worst case of an average of +2000 damage over combo average at max HP and on average you gain +4000-6000 damage over average combo damage, at a comfy 30-40k HP. What the free Shadowbringer does is not make you "lose" damage, it keeps it stable as it keeps your HP pool stable. Sorry but I really cannot explain this any better for you.

You mention how Salted Earth is still seemingly useless to you and cited the glaring weakness vs ranged damage and how it cripples it. Since you did so well belittling me, shouldn't you know that using walls is crucial when engaging against ranged attackers? I use walls extensively in combat since season 18 thanks to good advice I received back then, which helps take off a lot of pressure off myself. So for similar reasons, I place Salted Earth on corners so I can combine the bubble mitigation with wall dancing.

Putting aside the good point you made against Eventide for it being weak to mitigation, you are again wrongly comparing PLD's and GNB's LB to it. All three have completely different usecases and recharge times.

PLD at 2:00min recharge grants massive defense to your team and lets you apply Confiteor debuffs for quite some time. It is incredibly high value, but the long cooldown means you can't just freefire it.
GNB at 1:00min recharge is very accessible and turns you into a meat grinder with bonus mitigation, however you are not immune to interruption not are you invincible. The game here is going fast in, get value, get out unless you have ressoirces to keep going.
DRK at 1:30min charges average at odd intervals to PLD. It grants you similar staying power and higher damage potential, but you are at risk getting CCed, so positioning matters. Using walls once again is key.

What sets it apart from the other two is the timing of when the LB is ready, the speed / range of the initial damage going out and the overall flexibility of the LB not needing to place it for your team vs LB combos (PLD) and not having to hard commit to get any value out of it by daahing in (GNB).

Calling Plunge's Heal reduction not worth mentioning is also quite surprising, given the relative permanence of the uptime of it. Cutting off 3000 HP per Recup and lowering potency-based shields go a long way for pressure. You are also incorrect of it giving only one Shadowbringer worth of HP, if you take MP for recuperate into account this is actually two Shadowbringers worth of ressources, or simply 24000HP in the survival piggy bank.

Lastly, ever since the Bloodspiller scaling adjustment you don't actually need to nearly kill yourself to do good damage, already at 30-40k HP do Bloodspillers do respectable damage.

Look, I can see where you are coming from, I originally shared various viewpoints you had, but I extensively tried DRK because I wanted to learn the job. The job isn't nearly as gloom as you make it and despite you malding over how i'm pretending to just play the job, I actually main it and get pretty decent results. Ofc it is difficult, especially in Crystal, but DRK is actually in a good place.

[Vatom]

DRK is actually in a good place.

First Off I agree

But to state what I saw with DRK that I think needs help

LD on Cloud (forget them right now) when you get hit up in the are you will still die
Doesn't happen with HG and yes I understand your still taking dmg but the fact is I shouldn't die to it but hey thats just me
also the fact that its dmg is based off of your HP being full and not lower is contradictory to me if they could solve these two I will shut up

Also why didn't no one note that Salted gives a 10% debuff to everyone in it
I mean when everyone is on the point its a game changer especially if there is a turret with you OP
2k per tic heal
4k dmg per tic
20% mit
10% debuff
draw in
bind which works even if they leave the area btw aslong as they touch the area but I do believe there is a window for how long till it doesn't
but it could be latency Im still playing with it
I am king of this land

Plunge is a beautiful snowball sleeper no one but the few notice
when the team collapse on one player plunge , see someone low plunge, securing a kill plunge Bloodspiller
Let the good times roll

TBN stronger then BW's shield by 2k doesn't tie you down can be given to others so let the MNK engage first and shield him then plunge whoever is the lowest
This talk of DPS lost in PVP is dumb dmg does matter but whats the point it your enemy still stands MNK can LB someone at 100% or at 50% they still can live
but wait there is more the game isn't about dmg its about the point if they are off it you gain if they are on it you don't the game wins off of that (This wasn't for you but for the other one that doesn't use their kit to its fullest)

DRK benifits from more enemies its near LB and all if no one is near you, you are positioning bad
if you want to talk about Dps loss not hitting more then one person with ShB is a Dps lose hmmm? dumb I swear

You only gain dmg from low health on BS so why would you rush to get low health
My idea of how DrK and WAR play is like a runner you run (take dmg and do dmg) and when you about to give (if not CC'd lol) you get your second wind (Quietus and BW) and do it all over again and I guess you could call your runner's high your LB

Ok Im done

[Dreadz]

First of, I apologize for slandering you or belittling your PvP experience, it's just that from my experience in other games, people who usually just use numbers and tooltips to get their point across more often than not don't even play the thing they're discussing. So again, I apologize.

Regarding TBN, we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. I see the ability as being nigh worthless considering it's low potency and the reward you get for breaking it sucks. An easy fix I would suggest is for Dark Arts Shadowbringer to have a potency of 8k instead of 6k.

Yes, I also use walls and place SE near them. The problem is walls are not always available, especially if you're trying to contest the crystal and ranged characters can simply adjust, especially on maps like Cloud Nine and Palaistra. Again, SE's biggest problem is that the damn draw-in barely does it's job and by the time Salt and Darkness goes off, people are well outside the AoE, which conveniently puts them out of Quietus' AoE.

I don't think it's wrong to compare DRK's LB to GNB and PLD, considering DRK's LB is literally a mix of both, but worse. If you want raw damage, GNB beats out DRK, if you want survivability, PLD beats out DRK, this isn't even mentioning that both GND and PLD LB apply a debuff/buff that their teammates can use. DRK's LB is completely selfish, require high hp to actually do noticeably damage (20k), said damage is easily reduced to 5k by way of one heal and leaves the DRK at 1hp. The 30sec gap between DRK and PLD is basically a non-factor as well, considering PLD's LB has a much higher potential to actually be impactful in the match.

I find plunge useless because you need teammates to followup on it to get any actual value out of it and since the effect isn't super obvious like say a stun, the chances of that happening are slim. I was wrong on the HP regain though, completely forgot that it gave back enough MP for a heal as well.

The Bloodspiller changes were nice and like you said, you start doing decent damage at 30k-40k HP mark, the problem here is that there is no way to maintain that mark without using up all your MP.

I think the job is okay for what it is, but I see no reason to play it over any other job in PvP. I've made it my goal to OTP DRK to Crystal this season and progress has basically stopped since hitting diamond 4. Players there hard focus me because they know that DRKs can't dish out damage and receive damage at the same time. The amount of individual DRKs I came across during that time is also extremely low, to the point that I can count them on one hand. The job is high-risk, mediocre reward.

One thing that bothers me though, is that for some reason, everyone seems to forget about the disgusting amount of CC in PvP and DRK suffers the worst because of it. Hit character limit again -_-

[Vatom]

Regarding TBN, we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. I see the ability as being nigh worthless considering it's low potency and the reward you get for breaking it sucks. An easy fix I would suggest is for Dark Arts Shadowbringer to have a potency of 8k instead of 6k.

I wont fight you on that giving it 2k more dmg isnt a bad thing as for worthless eh... we will just go with agree to disagree

Again, SE's biggest problem is that the damn draw-in barely does it's job and by the time Salt and Darkness goes off, people are well outside the AoE, which conveniently puts them out of Quietus' AoE.

I think this is more impacted by server tic then anything but I understand the frustration when you can leave one spot it gets to me when I got off of any other class and play DRK

DRK's LB is completely selfish, require high hp to actually do noticeably damage (20k), said damage is easily reduced to 5k by way of one heal and leaves the DRK at 1hp.

At first I was going to agree but if you look at the LB and look at the kit
Salted happens every 30s GNB LB every min both de buff 10%(if in circle)/20%(if hit) and CC DrK(Pull/Bind) GnB(stun) I can give you nebula also mits but ET stops you from dying (unless thrown in the air-_-) Ofcouse GnB does more dmg but it also dies faster there is a trade off
I think HG is just Op so I can't say much to that 2mins doesn't give it the right either but they can't debuff and only have one stun also cant AOE often so its hard to pin down I main issue is that the dmg is tied to your health in the most stupid of directions but wait theres more Salted heals 2k you can use ShB even if you have 2hp so you can spam each tic and wait theres more quietus to shoot your hp up during this but would be nice to have 2 draws or draw and bind at the same time would be easier to deal with since servers are bad

I find plunge useless ////since the effect isn't super obvious like say a stun, the chances of that happening are slim.

Yeah the fact that it doesn't give some type of mark on their head saddens me since when i drop a enemy to 30% no one helps me finish when I'm low health
This is also tied to player skill to some player don't even know what you did even if it had a marker
I mean if you fight for it you can kill someone but that's if the team isn't blitzing you

everyone seems to forget about the disgusting amount of CC in PvP and DRK suffers the worst because of it.

I agree with you here but I mean what can you give them CC immunity? maybe if they tied it to TBN but if its on the LB then whats the difference between WAR and DRK they need to fix purify first maybe extend the duration when hit still at 1 or maybe when CC the duration pauses and you still are immortal IDK CC is a big issue with PVP right now