A completely stupid DRK idea

[Payotz]

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'

Yeah. This was always my impression back when I was still new and playing DRK in Stormblood. The job quests always implied that DRK always kept coming, regardless of how much they get hit. In fact in some cases, they hit back harder. So a stagger mechanic that gets converted to damage bonuses would be a lot more lore accurate mechanic than... Inner Release but edgy..

I can understand old Blood Weapon because it just buffs the GCD recast speed, but the whole Edge/Flood spam makes me feel like my two hander is just a knife. It doesn't make any sense.

I want them to experiment into making DRK the "squishy" stagger tank with the highest possible skill ceiling because of how stagger interacts with damage. Kinda like how Blood DK is really.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

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

Totally valid, both were beasts on their own, however perfection is subjective for both of them. HW DRK was more about being the Parry proc tank (Reprisal + Low Blow) with generally low usage of Dark Arts due to MP drain, but also came with tools like Blood Price that scaled MP regeneration with damage taken. For better or worse, that was a cool mechanic that supported not overmitigating to get the most out of it. The original Blood Weapon though if I read the tooltip right did not come with GCD haste, only auto-attack speed which I find somewhat boring. However GCD Delirium combo as an alternative to Souleater, Scourge as a maintainable GCD DOT and Dark Dance were quite fun.

What they lost in the parry engine (which I personally think was stupid as it cemented DRK into MT for the majority of fights for damage) they made up with the Blood System and TBN -> 50 Blood on break, which could be used on an ally. While not a DPS gain, it was a decently healthy alternative. Dark Arts frequency was really high given the extension of Blood Weapon, reworked Delirium and exchanging the MP drain for removing natural MP regen outside of DRK actions. And Blood Price got murdered, like goddamn it gave 1 Blood per hit and a few extra per server tick while only accessible under Grit. And every hit only gave 5% of a Dark Arts / TBN, you'd need to take 20 hits to get a single use out of it. Overall though, it was very fun to play the Speed Tank.

(I post this mainly as a source of information of others who may not know either of these)

[Mekhana]

"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?

I think that's because Koji Fox used to write the descriptions for almost everything now it's a bunch of 'randos'...

Totally valid, both were beasts on their own, however perfection is subjective for both of them. HW DRK was more about being the Parry proc tank (Reprisal + Low Blow) with generally low usage of Dark Arts due to MP drain, but also came with tools like Blood Price that scaled MP regeneration with damage taken. For better or worse, that was a cool mechanic that supported not overmitigating to get the most out of it. The original Blood Weapon though if I read the tooltip right did not come with GCD haste, only auto-attack speed which I find somewhat boring. However GCD Delirium combo as an alternative to Souleater, Scourge as a maintainable GCD DOT and Dark Dance were quite fun.

What they lost in the parry engine (which I personally think was stupid as it cemented DRK into MT for the majority of fights for damage) they made up with the Blood System and TBN -> 50 Blood on break, which could be used on an ally. While not a DPS gain, it was a decently healthy alternative. Dark Arts frequency was really high given the extension of Blood Weapon, reworked Delirium and exchanging the MP drain for removing natural MP regen outside of DRK actions. And Blood Price got murdered, like goddamn it gave 1 Blood per hit and a few extra per server tick while only accessible under Grit. And every hit only gave 5% of a Dark Arts / TBN, you'd need to take 20 hits to get a single use out of it. Overall though, it was very fun to play the Speed Tank.

(I post this mainly as a source of information of others who may not know either of these)

I'd be fine with something like old Dark Arts coming back if it was like a 30 sec CD that turned the skill/ability into a new one with new vfx/sfx and more potency. Even if its something like Abyssal Drain+ or Carve and Spit+ Having to weave it all the time when you have too much MP to still hit like a wet noodle like the majority of SB can stay a memory.