Quote Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure View Post
What I'm trying to go for is more variety in the GCD rotation... especially in the early levels so that some players are less tempted to buy progression skip items from the mogstation but let's be real here, they're gonna do it anyway...
Stripping away oGCDs and reducing overall apm to introduce alternate GCD combos only gives you "more variety" in the GCD rotation for the brief moment before hitting [Button 2] after [Button 1] becomes automatic. And you end up with far less variety in button-presses / movement across the keyboard / joystick overall in turn.

But Abyssal Drain would be a GCD that costs 3k MP, instead of 60 sec cooldown, when you first get it, and Flood of Darkness/Shadow would be the combo ender for that, nd yes I would make sure the AoE MP burst spender do just as much as the single target job gauge spender, and I have to say job gauge to clarify what resource should be used...
You'd make Abyssal Drain deal as much damage per target as... Edge? Why then would Edge exist? (Or is the "single target job gauge spender" supposed to be... Bloodspiller? You need to specify which gauge. DRK technically has 3, MP, Blood, and Darkside.)

Job gauge is single target Combo that restores HP and MP, and MP Spender combo is AoE that is just as strong in single target as it is in single target (DPS neutral in single target DPS gain in AoE) that Restore HP and generates job gauge if this explanation is easier and better to understand.
That is much better, yes.

Still, though, you've completely removed all offensive oGCDs from the game until level 52 (Salted Earth), with only 3 in total by level 90 (it, Carve and Split, and Shadowbringer). On a job that has traditionally been the most packed with offensive oGCDs. This doesn't seem thematic, let alone cohesive.

Darkside needs its own re-work though...
Aye. I'd recommend you start there, then. Decide first whether you even want a spendable duration gauge a la HW Blood of the Dragon (which is the only way you're going to be able to leverage that gauge as more than just an oGCD-procced Surging Tempest), whether you want to replace that gauge with something completely different, or it's better off scrapped entirely.

Personally, the strongest choice seems to be to start from the assumption that Darkside is gone. In that way you avoid convolution and focus on getting the rest of the kit up to par. In the course of that, if you find something that'd make the rest click, the create it in order to advantage the rest of the kit, but it makes little sense to involve Darkside just because Dark-Tempest / Surging-Dark exists at present. The debris of half-assed systems doesn't require replacement. The space, instead, just needs to look a whole better, and that's often easier without the garbage still scattered about.

As for the enmity combo question; people still don't how to turn on/off tank stance, don't know how Shirk works, and don't know how Provoke works... their are also fights that are designed with tank swaps that also auto-attack 2 players and still use the enmity list to determine where autos go for some reason... I am not joking...
That's not a warrant for the return of enmity combos though. If anything, it would assume that that effort would be pointless and could actually detract those first three brain cells' of output from occasionally hitting their tank stance button.