How bad are the issues with DRK?

[Conando]

It depends on whether you're cool with spamming Dark Arts. It feels worse to me than both PLD and WAR, but it's not like you can't play it if the style suits you. Despite the "meta" talk, any tank does fine unless you're trying to speedrun savage.

[Age_of_Oblivion]

Dark Mind has good uses in both the Ex fights, as well as V1, 3, and 4.

[Ryutamashiisan]

I would say there are a few pain points.

1) Blood Price is bollocks and is completely useless outside of generating blood gauge. its MP restoration has been nerfed to the ground unless you are getting hit by an entire dungeon.

2) Dark Mind is near pointless. It no longer servers the unique purpose it had in 3.0, which helped separate DRK and PLD. Now its just kind of a gimp cool down. Imo Dark mind should just have its magic damage reduction changed to a general damage reduction while keeping everything else the same.

3) Dark Passenger is now completely useless.

4)No Scourge

5) Delirium needs a recast reduction.

6) We lost a lot of our moves and gain virtually nothing. Reprisal : Taken and Nerfed, Dark dance: Taken, Scourge: removed, Shadowskin: removed, Dark Passenger: nerfed into uselessness. In terms of sheer job abilities DRK got royally screwed.

7) My biggest gripe is all the complexity has been removed from the job. DRK used to be loaded with off GCD's to manage as well as 3 combos with MP management. Now it just uncomplicated as 3.0 PLD with none of the advantages. Basically 3.0 PLD and 3.0 DRK switched places and styles in 4.0. Instead of just buffing PLD they basically took what was great about DRK and gave it to PLD

[Falgern]

1) Blood Price is bollocks and is completely useless outside of generating blood gauge. its MP restoration has been nerfed to the ground unless you are getting hit by an entire dungeon.

Grit MP management was moved to Syphon Strike, your MP generation is now more normalized across AOE/Single target. It's a good change for single target.
"You get used to it"

2) Dark Mind is near pointless. It no longer servers the unique purpose it had in 3.0, which helped separate DRK and PLD. Now its just kind of a gimp cool down. Imo Dark mind should just have its magic damage reduction changed to a general damage reduction while keeping everything else the same.

Just pop it on any magic damage? Use it together with another cd for further reduction? It's still as good as it was, spending the mp on TBN is just simply better.

3) Dark Passenger is now completely useless.

In 99.5% of the cases yes.

4)No Scourge

Scourge potency was moved into our dark arts spam. Creates a more unique class, more than a "fire and forget" weaponskill ever could.

5) Delirium needs a recast reduction.

Why? What's the reasoning for this?

6) We lost a lot of our moves and gain virtually nothing. Reprisal : Taken and Nerfed, Dark dance: Taken, Scourge: removed, Shadowskin: removed, Dark Passenger: nerfed into uselessness. In terms of sheer job abilities DRK got royally screwed.

Reprisal essentially turned into TBN for a shorter defensive CD. TBN is many times better than reprisal.
Dark Dance was extremely situational as a defensive CD for bosses and was more of a trash defensive, it's still in the game as "Anticipation" if you want it.
Shadowskin is the same as rampart
Scourge potency has been shifted around
Dark passenger.... is not great

Single target MP generation went up. Single target tanking mitigation went up. The class was made more different from the other two classes. Almost all abilities are useful for most fights.
Drk sure is screwed, feels like I'm really holding my party back when I'm playing now! /s

7) My biggest gripe is all the complexity has been removed from the job. DRK used to be loaded with off GCD's to manage as well as 3 combos with MP management. Now it just uncomplicated as 3.0 PLD with none of the advantages. Basically 3.0 PLD and 3.0 DRK switched places and styles in 4.0. Instead of just buffing PLD they basically took what was great about DRK and gave it to PLD

We have more button presses now than before, just because it changed from pressing 5 oGCDs into pressing dark arts doesn't mean it lost any complexity.
"Manage" combos. Power slash for Enmity, Delirium for damage/int down, Souleater if you used dark arts. So instead they put the damage into Souleater because they removed the int/str/dmg down debuffs from tanks and this change also increases survivability of drk with the (grit) HP steal.

dont see much magic in susano.

There is literally only one physical attack in Susano other than auto attacks. "Assail" used in the first phase. The rest are magical.

* flavor of day change atm ppl are overly exited about TBN(sort of 6 fell cleave moment) in raid combs calling it utility where it is just equal to shildron or ib. what still leaves dark behind whit mitigation and utility skills.

TBN is the DRK equivalent of sheltron and inner beast, but also have the utility of "Intervention". You have the choice between using it to protect someone else(utility) or yourself(defensive cd).
The sheer number of skills may be lower but wont change how they can be used. TBN costs a single Syphon Strike worth of MP meaning you can always have it up for a tank buster as long as they are at least 15 seconds apart.

[Kabooa]

Why? What's the reasoning for this?
.

Delirium in Grit is basically just a +10-15 Gauge increase for the most part. you are choosing between "Bloodspiller now or Bloodspiller later"

Delirium with Blood Weapon is a little short for the cooldown but at least prolongs the DPS boost.

[Eliroth-Kaminari]

TBN is the DRK equivalent of sheltron and inner beast, but also have the utility of "Intervention". You have the choice between using it to protect someone else(utility) or yourself(defensive cd).
The sheer number of skills may be lower but wont change how they can be used. TBN costs a single Syphon Strike worth of MP meaning you can always have it up for a tank buster as long as they are at least 15 seconds apart.

Issue is moment someone cover 3 pld skills whit TBN.
u earlyer mentiond TBN replaceing loss of repaisal.
THen u mention TBN is equivilent to shildron and IB
and then u mention intervention.
Witch is it then.
Because TBN is single skill whit 15s cd. Not 3 skills whit 15s cd.

[Falgern]

Issue is moment someone cover 3 pld skills whit TBN.
u earlyer mentiond TBN replaceing loss of repaisal.
THen u mention TBN is equivilent to shildron and IB
and then u mention intervention.
Witch is it then.
Because TBN is single skill whit 15s cd. Not 3 skills whit 15s cd.

In the 3.x each tank had a defensive ability on a short cooldown with low mitigation.

Sheltron for Paladins.
Inner Beast for Warriors.
Reprisal for Dark Knights.

Reprisal suffered from requiring you to parry, as well as being the lowest in terms of tank buster mitigation due to it also being able to lower all damage rather than just the damage the tank takes.

Their way to bring dark knight up to the rest was to give them their own ~20% mitigation in form of TBN.

TBN is equal to Sheltron and Inner Beast in terms of personal mitigation.

Paladin has the choice to instead of spending 50 gauge on Sheltron they can use it on Intervention. Instead of having two different abilities Dark Knight has a single one that can be casted on yourself or an ally.

TBN is a replacement for 3.x Reprisal.
It is equal to Sheltron and Inner Beast.
It can be used on an ally to get a similar effect to that of Intervention.

[TankHunter678]

TBN is a replacement for 3.x Reprisal.
It is equal to Sheltron and Inner Beast.
It can be used on an ally to get a similar effect to that of Intervention.

Then TBN should of been given when Reprisal was and had a trait or two to upgrade it to where it is now at 70.

Cause as it stands right now until you hit 70 you got some big holes in DRK's mitigation suite compared to its competitors. Especially given the loss of Shadow Skin, DADD+DADP, Foresight, etc.