DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[SyzzleSpark]

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I don't want to derail the thread, but I do want to make it known that the way Defiance works is a card played far to often as an excuse for garbage mechanics and design elsewhere. I'm tired of my job being balanced around goddamn Defiance.

Any day now we'll just delete the other two tanks and use Defiance's lack of instant mitigation as the reasoning.

[Chrono_Rising]

Im gonna bring up what so many people in this forum have said to me, "se wants tanks in tank stance." While I think that's bs and not how to play a tank that is how se is looking at the tanks when they design them and so what they see is that warrior doesnt get passive 20% mitigation up all the time so lets give it more cooldowns to help compensate for the additional damage they will be taking." Its one reason healers think warriors take more damage, if they don't have good CD usage then they do because defiance doesnt negate any.

I agree, warrior's cooldown kit is likely the way it is becuase their tank stance benefit is only active when they have full health. So they have the benefit of having a high uptime on mitigation. If we do as SE assumes and keep high uptime on tank stance, then maybe the tanks are sorta balanced in terms of mitigation.

However, lets suppose for a minute that the people who play the game have found a way to play the game which doesn't use 100% uptime on tank stance. Well then what you've done is you've created one job that fits this meta super well and two jobs that can get by in a similar fasion. What SE wants and how to optimize tank play are two different things. The faster SE stops trying to force roles into playing the way they want and assuming this is how we will play the faster things can get balanced.

In general, I'm saving my thoughts on the fixes for tomorrow so I can see patch notes especially given SE's history of keeping information close to the chest.

My opinion on fixes is this, the jobs people are most excited for, paladin, bard, samurai and so on, they have a clear identity that feels like their kit just fits into naturally with their lore. When it comes to dark knight, I feel more and more of this identity and lore gets patched away as we become paladins without shields.

Gone is the mentality of "You can hit me, but its gonna hurt", reprisal: parry the attack damage the enemy and lower their damage, low blow procs: hit me so I can parry and reset my low blow, blood price: hit me and refill a chunk of my mana so I can use it against you (I guess this still works if you get hit 20 times? I'm counting it as not there). Gone is the idea that we are constantly draining ourselves to output damage. Gone are the days of debuffing the boss to take less damage (3.x delirium). For now, we still have selfsustain in the form of lifesteal and some resource steal, I guess that makes us dark knights, for now.

[Alphras]

In contrast to many people here I generally like the current iteration of DRK. It plays fast and fun, is the most flexible of the three tanks when trying to apply its damage and still has really strong magic mitigation thanks to Dark Mind (I think Susano has the only physical tank buster at level 70?).

There are, however, quite a few things I would like to see changed.

1. In no world should DRK do less damage than PLD. This will hopefully be fixed in 4.05
   
   
2. What is up with Dark Passenger? This skill only provides a dps increase in some edge case situations. It has no enmity modifier and getting the blind out of it costs a huge amount of MP. I think it's clear that something needs to be done here.
   
   
3. The Blackest Night. While being a strong mitigation tool (especially with the accessory change in 4.05) this ability is also a very clunky dps increase. I like the concept of trading defense for offense, but this needs a change. Either extend the effect to reduce the dependency on server tick or make it give the 50BG upfront.
   
   
4. Shadow Wall. Why exactly is this on a 180s cooldown? Should have been reduced to 120s a long time ago.
   
   
5. Blood Price. This is more of a little wish of mine, but I would really like this skill to turn on Grit automatically. Having the option to turn on Grit off global with a cooldown would make DRK way more fluid.
   
   
6. Almost forgot. Change the description on Bloodspiller. It's needlessly complicated.

[Dizzy_Derp]

I don't want to derail the thread, but I do want to make it known that the way Defiance works is a card played far to often as an excuse for garbage mechanics and design elsewhere. I'm tired of my job being balanced around goddamn Defiance.

Any day now we'll just delete the other two tanks and use Defiance's lack of instant mitigation as the reasoning.

Well you can get mad about it all you want but it's not gonna change. I'm sure that's how se is looking at it. You don't seem to like it but it's the truth, defiance is different from grit and shield. Its like comparing notc and diurnal sects on an ast, yeah they both heal, just in different ways. they are so diffrent that it would be ignorant to ignore it.

[TouchandFeel]

My feedback and proposed solutions for DRK.

Note: I intentionally avoided adding new abilities or bringing old ones back and instead focused on integrating effects and changes into the current kit, as I feel new abilities and the like are less likely to be considered viable for implementation. Also I prefer the idea of "let us do more with what we have" instead of just adding more stuff to do because it provides a more flexible, dynamic, strategic and ultimately more fun set of tools.

1A) Problem: DRK is lacking in lower-end mitigation to be used for basic incoming damage such as auto-attacks when compared to the other tanks.
1B) Solution: Add an additional effect to Blood Price where X% (20%?) of damage dealt is returned as HP.

2A) Problem: Shadow Wall is discernibly worse than it's equivalents on the other tanks, Vengeance and Sentinel.
2B) Solution: Reduce Shadow Wall's CD from 180 seconds to 120 seconds. Maybe give it the additional effect of increasing evasion by X% (20%?) to balance out against Vengeance's longer duration and damage dealing effect.

3A) Problem: Dark Passenger no longer seems to be useful due to low damage and a steep resource (MP) cost.
3B) Solution: Reduce MP cost so it is equivalent to Abyssal Drain. Make blind effect part of the base ability. Increase potency to base 120 and 260 with Dark Arts.

4A) Problem: Unleashed has diminished value when you get Abyssal Drain.
4B) Solution: Additional effect of pulling enemies hit by Unleashed towards the DRK.

5A) Problem: The Blackest Night's duration feels a bit short, especially with a slight delay in activation (hope I'm not the only one that notices this).
5B) Solution: Increase duration from 5 seconds to 6 seconds, same duration as Inner Beast.

6A) Problem: Sole Survivor has little to no use in boss fights.
6B) Solution: WIP. Rethinking this one. With 4.05 I don't want to go with a DoT due to excess dps and am trying to come up with a utility focused idea.

7A) Problem: Living Dead is a way more cumbersome ability compared to it's equivalents on the other tanks, Hallowed Ground and Holmgang.
7B) Solution: First off it NEEDS better visual messaging for the activation of the Walking Dead status so that healers can easily see when this goes active and they need to react, this should at least include a much larger/noticeable visual fx on the DRK. Make self-healing count towards the needed incoming heals with maybe a buff to self-heals. Change the potential of dying if not healed to receiving a weakness/brink of death debuff for X seconds (30 seconds?).

8A) Problem: As of 4.05 Bloodspiller is not enough of a gain when used.
8B) Solution: Additional effect of reducing Delerium CD by X seconds (30?) when used without DA. Decrease potency of non-DAed Bloodspiller by 20 to 380, 455 in Grit. Increase potency of DAed Bloodspiller by 20 to 560, 670 in Grit.

Other things that would be nice to have.
- Delerium gets renamed to something more appropriate like "Blood Frenzy" or "There Will Be Blood".

[IhzaMhaskova]

DRK needs improvements in its mitigation suite before 70, as it is if you exclude role abilities before 70 it has 1 general purpose defensive cooldown, Shadow Wall, which has a 180 sec cooldown and 1 anti-magic cooldown with a 60 sec cooldown. With the only other form of mitigation being Dark Arts Dark Passenger which is 50% of our MP and dependent on the targets being vulnerable to blind. DA-Souleater and DA-Abyssal also lack the healing strength to make up for the heavy MP costs trying to fuel them.

I feel that Shadow Skin and Dark Dance should return, with Dark Passenger getting its cost returned to its old state. This would give us our evasion tank combo back, and we would have another generic defense boost to rotate with Rampart.

Doing any dungeon before 60 is pure pain.

I agree with Shadow Skin needing to return.

There was 0 reason to remove it.

[Dauntess]

I agree with Shadow Skin needing to return.

There was 0 reason to remove it.

They removed it to give us access to rampart. Either way, we need at least 1 more cooldown, but preferably 2. Getting my ass handed to me between TBNs and cooldowns doesn't exactly make me feel like a tank.

[TankHunter678]

They removed it to give us access to rampart. Either way, we need at least 1 more cooldown, but preferably 2. Getting my ass handed to me between TBNs and cooldowns doesn't exactly make me feel like a tank.

When I used Foresight as a makeshift rampart just fine back in HW and got to use it with my Shadowskin too.

[Falar]

When I used Foresight as a makeshift rampart just fine back in HW and got to use it with my Shadowskin too.

Foresight was only going to get better as armor values soared as well.

[Lannybaby]

I think early stormblood levels for drk are extremely awkward; we get blood gauge when we get delirium, but it's such a long cd and there's nothing to do with the recovered blood while delirium is on cd. I propose quietus and delirium switch in the order they're obtained, and for quietus/bloodspiller to reduce the remaining cd of delirium: 0.8s per enemy hit with quietus (1.5s with DA) and 2s per enemy hit with bloodspiller (3s with DA). This would give quietus and bloodspiller a better purpose than just another damage skill.

Another wish is the option to pump DA into TBN, increasing its duration to 8s and providing a 140 potency increase, consumed on your next weapon skill, if it it doesn't pop, for the remaining duration of the recast period.