DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

[Driavna]

So I finally manage to reach 70 with DRK and I cleared all content with it a few times, love it much more than my PLD. The class is perfect, however:

- Shadow Wall is the worst skill. Perhaps could last longer by consuming blood? Like "Last one more second for each 20 blood points at the moment of activation up to 5 extra seconds".

- Bloodspiller needs to leave our old DOT after use it. (No need for OGCD skill since don't break any combo).

- Delirium is ok but should still be an OGCD attack with 400 potency and should use old HW animation. 120s CD it's ok.

- Quietus should spread bloodspiller DOT (under dark arts) so we can plan interesting combos from time to time.

- Blood Price no longer needs to give mana but do something else, could reflect damage taken up to a max amount of your total max HP.

- We need our Stun back (and Warriors too).

- Abyssal Drain should combo with syphon strike for extra potency (240?). That way you can either spam or do the combo.

- Dark Passager should become a free cost OGCD skill without blind and 240 potency as base.

- A new skill for raid utility skills, "Shared Pain" (copy paste of WoW Link Totem, but fits DRK theme): reduces damage taken by all party members within 10 yalms by X%. Every 1 sec the health of all affected players is redistributed, such that all players are at the same percentage of maximum health. Last Xs.

OH, as far I know in term of DPS all Tanks are equal and DRK do more damage in tank stance. That's not the problem, but PLD is way more simple and his healing can save others from their own mistakes, when no one is getting unnecessary damage TBR is way better (and more fun to use).

[Chrono_Rising]

There is a significant difference when the metric is maximum dps. As In the letter about balance which requested our feedback job dps is determined by many factors including utility and susceptibility to mechanics. Given the amount of utility drk has compared to paladin it makes zero sense to have a lower dps ceiling or be slightly behind at the 75th percentile. We need either more utilities or more dps to compensate.

In terms of mitigation I think drk is fairly on par with paladin with the exception of shadow wall which makes no sense to me.

In terms of selfsustain paladin blows drk out of the water.

In terms of dps it appears paladin is ahead of drk, and significantly ahead of drk at the highest levels.

In terms of utility pld again is far ahead of drk.

Pld right now feels like drk 3.x, though a bit less busy and with less risk. I really enjoy playing drk, but I do wish we had some more interesting mechanics in our kit. Mana usage lowering blood cooldowns and blood usage lowering mana cooldowns would give the job a really nice ebb and flow feel while leveling the playing field. I would also like to see a more regular buff that delirium, for example making sole survivor give reduced resource costs rather then resource generation when adds die.

In 3.x I mained dark knight because it brought more to the raid group than paladin, and I felt paladin needed buffs. Right now I cannot justify continuing to play dark knight in 4.x for the same reason.

[BlueYukiao]

snip

Fully agree and I really hope we see something like any one of your suggestions... save for one: let's not touch the recast time on Plunge, kthx! I'm a kitty and I need my pounce :3.

Also, if the planets align and we are somehow granted an additional skill - let's find some way to get that scourge animation back!

[Niyuka]

It's by design to have one tank 10% behind the other two? That sounds like bad design. It's not like the OT sits in the corner waiting for the next tank swap or add to pop.

Tanks are still doing 50% of a dps at least. If you think groups won't look at two tanks equaling out to one extra dps then I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself this, if you had a choice between two tanks,

a) one mitigates more, provides group protection, self heals, and brings 200 dps more

b) mitigates less, brings little group protection, few self heals, and brings 200 dps less

Which tank will you take? This is the position dark knight is in currently.

Wrong view. Look at number of tanks. Look at number of players. Look at faceroll content. It does not matter which tank you take, and chances are you wont have a choice. You take the tank you can get and feel lucky to have tanks.

It simply makes, at maximum, the difference of a few seconds of time for the kill, if that. As long as we have no content worth a damn, balance discussions are pointless: in a PvE MMO, balance only matters if there is stuff asking for performance. There has not been content that required any sort of setup or balance consideration in over half a year or more. What makes you think it will come back?

Right now every job is OP relative to the game's content. So this discussion is purely theoretical. Since everything can easily be one-shot through the duty finder, and I havent yet found a way of prioritizing which classes you get there (because you cant), you have to play with whomever you get.

[VenKitsune]

snip

One word for you; Raids.
Did you play Gordias back at release? A3S needed every little bit of dps you could muster in the gear at the time, even Elysium (The FC that has been one of the groups that has gotten a load of world firsts in both coil and alexander) struggled a lot when it came out.
This all being said however, Alexander was a horrible raid tier in terms of balancing. Omega with any luck will actually be balanced propperly this time and the first turns being entry tier. Even then though in hard content its still better to take the best options available to you when there is limited spots, its also more prevelent in this game as you can level all jobs on one character so you can refuse to take a WAR for example and nobody would really bat an eye because then anyone who actually wanted in to the group would simply level and get good at what the group is looking for, in other MMOs its not quite so simple.

[Deathshiro]

I actually like the idea of dark arts applying Scourage on bloodspiller rather than giving bonus potency.

I second this, either that or making it Ogcd and giving us cooldown reduction on Blood weapon/Blood Price/ Delriium

[Chrono_Rising]

@ Niyuka: Forgive me I won't settle for the tank I can get since I play tank. This is not a dps forum begging for a certain tank, this is a tank forum looking for balance between the three. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

My view point is that we should be balanced, each job should bring something to the table and no one should bring everything. You feel this is the wrong view point, okay. Your view point seems to be that nothing requires optimization and therefore trying to shave off those few seconds is pointless. You've disregarded that some of us enjoy that content. Skipping Faust in a9s, skipping adds in a10s, skipping lapis in a11s, and skipping puddles in a12s. These were things I could enjoy on any class, not just optimal ones. But to do that early, Striving to go the extra mile for that extra second had amazing results and was incredibly rewarding.

I understand you don't derive joy from such feats. Some of us do. if you don't want to hear about balance issues, I'm not sure what we are doing right now lol.

As far as content that may require such things we have savage coming in less than 2 weeks and what the developers have dubbed "challenging savage" after in 4.10. This is the context I am thinking in.

[Driavna]

Perfect balanced is a utopia and even if they manage to do it people will still be biased to one class or another. So in your case is not really matter what Devs do, you are always going to pick the option more viable to you. Anyway, with this new difficulty probably salvage will be in line with WoW heroic so probably the "imba" team is only going to be needed for that new mode.

But sure, they still need to tweak stuff here and there (was bound to happen with so many major changes), however, ask for balance changes so soon are not realistic outside number tweaks.

[Chrono_Rising]

Perfect balanced is a utopia and even if they manage to do it people will still be biased to one class or another. So in your case is not really matter what Devs do, you are always going to pick the option more viable to you. Anyway, with this new difficulty probably salvage will be in line with WoW heroic so probably the "imba" team is only going to be needed for that new mode.

But sure, they still need to tweak stuff here and there (was bound to happen with so many major changes), however, ask for balance changes so soon are not realistic outside number tweaks.

You have a nice straw man argument going. No one has asked for perfect balance, would be nice but I won't hold my breath. What we have right now is no where near balanced and many people have listed an overwhelming number of reasons/examples of this imbalance. You are just saying it doesn't exist and so we should stop trying.

You yourself offered some suggestions I don't think adding a mechanic for our combos is too much of a tweak. Honestly it feels as though it should do this anyway.

The developers asked for continued feedback. I believe everything which has been posted is in the vein.

[Xenosan]

Blood Price needs to be reborn.