A completely stupid DRK idea

[Renathras]

Warrior is fun. The lifesteal is the best part about it,

Is it odd to anyone else that WAR has lifesteal and DRK kinda doesn't really (1-2-3 doesn't count, and Abyssal Drain is once per min)?

Here's the thing, they were like that in Heavensward. There kit was a mess and didn't synergise well but Dark arts would add additional effects to moves such as adding in blinds, I believe a damage down on one move and a defence debuff for enemies. They had more dots than the other tanks and they had parry which was essentially unique to the Dark they had reprisal which I believe could only be used on a parry. They had a buff which gave them increased parry rate too they basically acted as the opposite of a paladin with parry the opposite to the paladin block and the dots and debuffs the counter to the paladins heal and buffs. When they pressed Darkside their mana pool would constantly drain so you had to make you mind up when you were gonna use it to burst, then cancel it to go back to recharging mana.

Imo although their kit was trash and didn't really make a great deal of sense it was the most enjoyable Drk build we've ever had, you always had buttons to press you weren't trapped in 123 hell. It was enjoyable, the world was at peace, and the the stormblood expansion attacked. They got rid of TP and then uniformed mana so we all had the same amount, this didn't really effect the other tanks as they only really used TP and not mana except the one time a paladin healed and everyone laughed at how bad it was. For Drks it was crippling, they completely removed most of our abilities got rid of powerslash at the end of the expac :'(, they never really figured out how to balance the cost of our abilities so we feel impotent mana to zero after like 4 attacks, great. We lost our dots and debuffs, all our unique cool stuff was taken away and spread amongst all tanks, like reprisal. We were forced into being terrible WAR clones from then on. This is the Darkest of timelines.

Honestly, nice history lesson. I never really messed around with DRK until dabbling in it some this expansion to level the Jobs I've not touched up for the various achievements, so interesting to see what it used to be.

Sounds...very different.

[GoatOfWar]

Warrior is fun. The lifesteal is the best part about it, but it's hardly what I want. Slow doesn't necessarily mean boring, and the job can still be fast paced while having more emphasis on GCD based attacks and mana management. I wouldn't mind still having a shit ton of OGCDs, but I'd rather have those OGCDs synergize and buff my next GCD rather than being a flat potency. Feels more weighty and a lot could be done with it.

The only reason I play DRK rn (outside of the badass greatsword aesthetic) is because of TBN, which is our only skill that offers some sort of skill expression. The job without it is about as boring as it gets, no other mechanic it can really call its own.

I'd stop playing the job if they did that. We already have warrior.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I mean, yeah it's impractical, but it does sound pretty damn cool and fun to properly pull off.

I agree with Tint tho. I wish DRK was more about heavy-GCD based attacks that you have to empower using your mana.

Good times. This and Bloodweapon on Stormblood release:
- Recast time reduced from 60 to 40 seconds.
- The effect increasing attack speed by 10% has been changed to reduce weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by 10%.
- The Blood Gauge will now increase by 3 each time a physical attack lands.

GCD-heavy DRK was the best.

[ForsakenRoe]

GCD-heavy DRK was the best.

Having the choice of being crit-heavy and kinda slow, or full skillspeed chimp mode and both being pretty close in damage was also pretty great, I remember making a meme for my FC cos I discovered that swapping one meld from a G5 crit to a G5 skillspeed got me down another 0.01, making me 2.06 under Blood Weapon. Bearing in mind that Dark Arts was a 2s CD, it became almost unbearably fast, as using DA too late in the weave window would cause you to clip. I also borrowed some FC members to throw me Enhanced Arrow and the fairy speed thing, just to see what it'd do. IIRC it got me to like 1.78 on a dummy. Completely unplayable, 10/10

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Having the choice of being crit-heavy and kinda slow, or full skillspeed chimp mode and both being pretty close in damage was also pretty great, I remember making a meme for my FC cos I discovered that swapping one meld from a G5 crit to a G5 skillspeed got me down another 0.01, making me 2.06 under Blood Weapon. Bearing in mind that Dark Arts was a 2s CD, it became almost unbearably fast, as using DA too late in the weave window would cause you to clip. I also borrowed some FC members to throw me Enhanced Arrow and the fairy speed thing, just to see what it'd do. IIRC it got me to like 1.78 on a dummy. Completely unplayable, 10/10

Exactly. While it technically does nearly the same thing as EoS/FoS, Dark Arts compiling more damage into GCDs rather than OGCDs felt more impactful - a critting DA Bloodspiller felt amazing.

And yeah, some issues of it was like the 2s recast or the comparatively low MP cost vs MP generation, both of which could've been solved with reducing the recast to 1s (like EoS/FoS) and increasing the MP cost (and potency) by +50% to reduce frequency while keeping potency per MP the same and making GCDs feel even more weight behind them.

I miss the tempo of Bloodweapon the most though, in Stormblood you had 47.5% uptime alternating Delirium BW and standard BW windows. Big refresher from the GCD monotony.

[Payotz]

This will probably not gonna happen in FF14 but I have ideas about turning DRK into a stagger/recover tank (Brew/Blood DK hybrid).

Haven't really fleshed out the idea, but it basically involves TBN absorbing damage, turning a portion of the damage back into mp, and then diverting the damage absorbed into the DRK as stagger damage over the course of 10 seconds. Bloodspiller would then be used to reduce or remove the stagger damage, adding the stagger damage removed to the base Bloodspiller damage.

If TBN breaks however, it stores that damage in you as a debuff that makes your TBNs squishier. Popping Delirium would turn the debuff stacks into stagger damage that only starts ticking after 10 seconds, giving your Bloodspiller the meatiest biggest hit.

--

I just don't really the fact that Bloodspiller is spammable in current DRK. It kinda lowers the oomph of the skill compared to old Dark Arts Bloodspiller

[Mekhana]

I'm not personally a fan of SB DRK, especially off the perfection that was HW DRK.

[Sazuzaki]

"Attune with the darkness within you"
"Can only be used when succumbing to the Darkside"

God that's so fucking cool. Why don't they do flavor text like that anymore?

[ForsakenRoe]

This will probably not gonna happen in FF14 but I have ideas about turning DRK into a stagger/recover tank (Brew/Blood DK hybrid).

Back in SB while it was the black sheep of tanks, I thought the same. Call it 'Suffering' instead of Stagger, have Dark Passenger be the 'remove some of your Suffering' button, have CDs that interact with the Suffering amount, be that by making more of the damage be converted into Suffering, ways to counteract the Suffering buildup by healing some of it off, or something like having TBN pause the Suffering timer, at the cost of 'well now the DOT is going to hit harder per tick once it wears off'

And I feel the same about Carve, it used to be THE big hit, now it's lost it's oomph. If you look at older skill animations, eg Hard Slash, Syphon Strike, Carve, you can see that when your character swings the sword there's a kind of 'momentum' the blade holds, like you're not 'swinging the sword', moreso lugging it in the direction of the enemy and letting it's own weight do the job. Bloodspiller was the first skill where it makes the blade look kinda weightless, and it's just followed from there

I don't want to have all these Shadowbringers and Edges to spam, I want to be Guts and slam the enemy with a massive slab of metal. Guess I have to go WAR for that

"Attune with the darkness within you"
"Can only be used when succumbing to the Darkside"

God that's so fucking cool. Why don't they do flavor text like that anymore?

Old DOT descriptions were better previously too. Biolysis and Combust 3 both say 'dealing unaspected damage over time' when you mouse over them on the enemy's debuff list, iirc. Miasma was 'Lungs are failing, causing damage over time' and Combust 1 was 'Proximity to a theoretical sun is causing damage over time'

[Sazuzaki]

Combust 1 was 'Proximity to a theoretical sun is causing damage over time

How'd we go from that to 'dealing unaspected damage over time'

Feels like the creative juices I hear about from the old days have gone away. I hope things get better after FF16 releases.