DRK Request - Please Remove the Grit Requirement for Souleater's HP Leech

[TheJarvisMan]

Honestly, this is a minor changes that I would really love to see. This would help leveling DRK's with open world survivability, help add a sustain option in pvp, and really help when doing solo challenges such as non-synced trials and dungeons. Could we please have this examined? This is just a helpful change that would not make us OP by any stretch of the imagination.

[MagiusNecros]

I don't think they will do it. Since it's the only Grit effect DRK's have. I don't even think they would give it even 25% or 50% restore of damage dealt.

[MiniPrinny]

I don't think they will do it. Since it's the only Grit effect DRK's have. I don't even think they would give it even 25% or 50% restore of damage dealt.

And Paladins have zero interaction with Shield or Sword Oath. That's because Shield Oath, Sword Oath, and Grit are all not the core mechanics of Paladin and Dark Knight. Their core mechanics are both MP management and ability management, with Dark Knight having a higher emphasis on the MP management through Dark Arts.

Meanwhile, Warrior's core mechanic is their stances, Defiance and Deliverance play an integral role in the Warrior's kit. Even before Heavensward, Warriors relied on Defiance to flesh out and complete their kit. Dark Knights have little interaction with Grit while Paladins have no interaction with Shield Oath and Sword Oath beyond their defensive, offensive, and enmity boosts.

Now, if you want to talk about possible balance issues, I think it wouldn't be overly unbalanced if Dark Knights had half restorative power on Souleater without Dark Arts while outside of Grit, and only quarter power with Dark Arts while outside of Grit. Then you just write the Grit effect to "Dark Arts Effect absorbs 100% of damage dealt as HP." This would put Dark Arts as a closer comparison to Storm's Path and Inner Beast bundled up into one neat little package.

I am afraid this will never happen. Access to Blood Weapon buffs (SkS, Mana refresh) would make SE comboses too fast and too powerfull - in other words, you will be healing yourself too much in too short time.

And yet, it's fine for the other tank without a shield to have twice the duration of Bloodbath, Berserk, a stance that boosts their damage by another 5%, and again, a spammable combo that restores half the damage dealt as HP with only 10 less potency that also reduces the target's damage output by 10%. And their other HP restoration attack ignores their tank damage reduction, reduces their damage incoming by 20%, and heals them, again, for 100% of the damage dealt.

Edit: Further thought about this, mostly by beating up on a lv60 dummy. Giving Dark Knights 50% absorption outside of Grit and 25% for Souleater would actually make for an interesting dynamic. My Warrior has a weapon 10 item levels below my Dark Knight (Axe of the Sephirot vs Hyperconductive Nothung), and the HP restoration with my proposed numbers are about the same, with the Dark Arts version of Souleater actually being considerably weaker than without, which is a fair trade off for the amount of power the Dark Knight gains from Dark Arts.

[Yuni_Queen]

The Hype!

WAR is spoiled. Thou he cannot heal himself too goodly outside of Defiance. Even with crit its around 10k for on 226 lvl.

But hell, i am not saying no to self-heal buff, m8.
Just do not let it be too OP, or nerf will trigger your dissapointment like a truck!

[Xenosan]

For that to happen I think they'd would have to provide the additional effect of ignoring the Tank Stance penalty for the Dark Arts buff. If not, than the tank stance is working against the life tap. That reason is why I think they tied the Health absorb to Grit in the first place.

It's never made sense to me that Abyssal Drain and Souleater have different Absorb triggers and Dark Arts benefits. In unsync'd content the only self-heal of consequence anyway is Sole Survivor. IMO DRKs healing kit is the worst of the tanks for that content (especially if the boss has no adds for SS).

I would have imagined something like:
Souleater & Abyssal Drain both requiring Darkside for Absorb.
Dark Arts allows both to ignore tank penalty, Souleater increased potency, AD increased AOE range or chance at free proc or something.

Something like that would have made more sense to me, but considering how much time has passed since job adjustments I'd guess the jury's already ruled on this.

(Though count me in on liking a change like OP suggested. So true about the PVP aspect)

[Yuni_Queen]

I am afraid this will never happen. Access to Blood Weapon buffs (SkS, Mana refresh) would make SE comboses too fast and too powerfull - in other words, you will be healing yourself too much in too short time.

[SpookyGhost]

Maybe because WAR's gimmick is self healing, and DRK's isn't. Maybe having an extremely potent heal on it's most used combo in and out of tank stance isn't the smartest choice. Maybe giving it something unique would be better, like HP shields based on % health healed. Maybe.

[Lyth]

Maybe because WAR's gimmick is self healing, and DRK's isn't.

It's kind of like how DRK's gimmick is parry procs, and yet WAR has a built in stance bonus to parry and the only 100% parry rate move in the game. In fairness, having Souleater absorb your enemy's lifeforce makes a bit more sense than doing impeccable parries and repostes with a greataxe. But sometimes things are just added in to maintain equilibrium.

Speaking of which, Clemency and Equilibrium seem like they've been added in response to the introduction of DRK with DASE, but it leaves both PLD and WAR with ready access to self healing without a significant cost to their damage output, whereas DRK does not. This isn't really an issue in raid content (every tank has their strengths and weaknesses), but with 3.3 ushering in new solo content with an element of speed clears, I could get behind the idea of giving DASE some kind of a healing bonus out of stance.

[SpookyGhost]

It's kind of like how DRK's gimmick is parry procs

I question whether 2 skills that proc/reset from a Parry and one CD count as a "gimmick". If you look back at 2.0 WAR, as much of a mess as it was, it very clearly revolved around doing damage (Storm's Eye, Unchained, Berserk, Maim, etc) and self healing (Thrill, Bloodbath, IB, Path), as well as an entire system based on GCD usage that needed to be managed and carefully planned for every fight (until they made everything faceroll in 3.0, kinda getting back to the fun times though). Then they revamped WAR, made it more homogenized with PLD instead of fleshing out it's more unique aspects, and now we have the beast that is WAR.

and yet WAR has a built in stance bonus to parry and the only 100% parry rate move in the game

I actually couldn't tell you why WAR gets +Parry for every Wrath stack, it was a really weird change but I guess they wanted to make it different from Abandon stacks so they just threw Parry on it. RI seems really weird in a vacuum, but if you look at the kits as a whole it's not actually so weird. RI lasts the same duration as Rampart/Shadowskin, has the same CD timer, but only is affected by physical attacks. Vengeance is your Sentinel/Shadow Wall. Holmgang is your LD/HG. IB is your Sheltron/(DA+)DM. The thing that stands out is actually Thrill, though DRK and PLD have unique equivalents - Reprisal and Divine Veil.

Speaking of which, Clemency and Equilibrium seem like they've been added in response to the introduction of DRK with DASE, but it leaves both PLD and WAR with ready access to self healing without a significant cost to their damage output, whereas DRK does not. This isn't really an issue in raid content (every tank has their strengths and weaknesses), but with 3.3 ushering in new solo content with an element of speed clears, I could get behind the idea of giving DASE some kind of a healing bonus out of stance.

Equal has a 60s CD, Clemency costs a GCD of 0 damage and most of your MP, and Souleater... does 400 potency + gives a big self heal. Dunno if I'd consider that a balance. I'm all for DRK getting something to help it in this sense, but I just don't think that Souleater is the place to put it. Then again, if it were up to me, DRK would get overhauled from the ground up, but y'know... baby steps.

[Lyth]

I question whether 2 skills that proc/reset from a Parry and one CD count as a "gimmick". If you look back at 2.0 WAR, as much of a mess as it was, it very clearly revolved around doing damage (Storm's Eye, Unchained, Berserk, Maim, etc) and self healing (Thrill, Bloodbath, IB, Path), as well as an entire system based on GCD usage that needed to be managed and carefully planned for every fight (until they made everything faceroll in 3.0, kinda getting back to the fun times though).

The association between DRK as a concept and parry goes back to the original announcement in Fanfest London. Thematically, at least, I'm not sure why WAR gets the bonuses that it does to parry. I understand why RI exists, although it would have made more sense as a physical vulnerability reduction cooldown than as one related to parry.

And neither PLD or WAR have "ready access" to healing at no DPS loss. Clemency isn't ready access because it can be interrupted and is a lost GCD of damage. Equilibrium requires Defiance to function as a heal and being in Defiance to use Equilibrium is a DPS loss. In that way, it's not any different from how SE's self healing is gated behind Grit.

I'm not really sure who this is addressed to, as I don't see a post which actually makes the claim you're refuting.

This isn't a raiding issue. Every tank has advantages and disadvantages, and your access to self-heals isn't going to make or break you as a tank in raid. DRK is in an excellent spot in that regard. But self-healing is an issue in solo content, which is what we were talking about.

There's a lot of a difference between spending a few globals as WAR in Defiance when your HP gets low in order to access Equilibrium and IB (and let's not forget that ToB is stance independent), and staying in Grit on DRK the whole time and using SE to inch your HP back up to where it once was. And when your MP trends down, as it invariably will quite quickly from using DASE, bear in mind that unbuffed SE has an even lower potency than PS.

The reason why you don't see 8 DRK clears of content isn't because we're too edgy to hang out with each other. It's because trying to recoup lost HP with SE is painfully slow and not fun to watch.

SS makes for a reasonably good self heal, but you don't always have access to something small and weak that you can kill when trying to solo a hunt mob or unsynced raid boss with a lot of HP.

This isn't really a problem at present, but with 3.3 ushering in the Palace of the Dead as solo content, I can see certain jobs being significantly overrepresented in time trials. So yes, this is something worth revising for the future.