DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[Dizzy_Derp]

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 can't figure out if people are forgetting or just don't know but tbn is a 20% cooldown on yourself you can do just as often as sheltron.

[Falar]

It's probably half the Dragoon/WoW Warrior in me, I hate when I can't use a gap closer. I always detested Unleash personally, and hoped it was going to just outright be replaced by Abyssal Drain in 4.0. I don't really understand why we have so many aoe skills at times, especially adding new ones while gutting DP.

I would have liked that change as well.

However, they gave us a 50 pot Unleash to be stuck with in anything older than the Aery instead.

[SyzzleSpark]

I can't figure out if people are forgetting or just don't know but tbn is a 20% cooldown on yourself you can do just as often as sheltron.

TBN is an Infuriate that costs a quarter of our mana and has a chance to fail based on the rotation of the boss, while providing a shield that is overtuned at the expense of having a well-rounded defensive cooldown suite.

Its mitigation is fantastic. The rest of our cooldown suite is garbage. We would rather see TBN scaled back and the rest of our mitigation buffed.

Right now, as a DRK, you don't ever, ever want to tank the boss, unless its for a tankbuster, and then after that tank buster, you want your co-tank to take it right back. We have literally zero cooldowns that can be saved for fluff damage, cleaves, raid AoEs... everything must be saved for TBs, except TBN. And TBN is a horrible cooldown to use in between tank busters. We literally have nothing but that for 70s out of every 90s. And TBN is designed to pop quickly. It is designed for you to go back to taking FULL damage from the boss in less than 5 seconds. Do we really need to be told why this is bad?

It also is not 20% mitigation, it is a 20% shield that is gone within seconds.

Compare this to say, WAR for instance, who can Rampart (20s) ToB/Conva (40s), RI+Awareness (60s), Vengeance (75s)... and at 75s, Rampart is almost back off CD... You're covered by some cooldown or another for 75s out of every 90s. And this is out of tank stance. With DRK, you're covered for a second or two out of every 15.

TBN is also never enough to mitigate a tankbuster on its own. You must always pair it with either Rampart or Shadow Wall, so you don't even get to use those outside of your TB rotation. The great irony is that an ability that screams "USE ME ON A TANK BUSTER" is not strong enough that you won't have to save your other CDs to pair with it, but has a cooldown so short you're forced into relying on it in their stead for fluff damage. And fluff damage DOES matter, particularly when tanking out of stance. TBs are the easiest damage to take in this game, its a pass fail mechanic, they usually have casts or tells, everyone knows about them, everyone is ready for them. Its in between those busters where people get complacent, and you need some form of mitigation there. TBN works horribly for this purpose, and its all we have.

Before TBN existed, did you see WHMs spamming stoneskins on the tank in between busters? Did you see SCHs spamming Adlos for AAs? No, you know why? Because shields aren't designed for that, heals and cooldowns are. TBN is not a cooldown, its a shield. We need a cooldown.

[TankHunter678]

I can't figure out if people are forgetting or just don't know but tbn is a 20% cooldown on yourself you can do just as often as sheltron.

You need to learn to read.

DRK needs improvements in its mitigation suite before 70

TBN is at 70 and thus only really accessible in 3 dungeons, 3 trials, and the 4 deltas of the current raid section.

And TBN is a 20% health shield, not 20% damage reduction. Then again its supposed to absorb unmitigated damage in order to pop quickly, since it has only a 5 sec duration to begin with, to function as a DPS gain.

[Talec]

It just happened as I thought. DRK is in a bad spot because of it's mechanics. And all SE does is screwing with the potencies. It's so sad. A formidable and fun class got reduced to a spamer oGCD braindead class.

[Dizzy_Derp]

[B]Compare this to say, WAR for instance, who can Rampart (20s) ToB/Conva (40s), RI+Awareness (60s), Vengeance (75s)... and at 75s, Rampart is almost back off CD... You're covered by some cooldown or another for 75s out of every 90s. And this is out of tank stance. With DRK, you're covered for a second or two out of every 15.

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.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

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.

[Rhinos]

Anyway, those two threads cover what I believe to be the primary problems. I doubt the patch tomorrow will fix them if all we're looking at is a completely extraneous buff to Quietus of all things (it is triggering as hell to think that there is a portion of the playerbase out there whose feedback is responsible for us getting this instead of genuinely needed buffs to our mitigation)

To be fair, da quietis does need a buff; it's worthless.

[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.