DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[DWolfwood]

A DRK MTed world 1st O4S, so RIP SE taking this thread seriously, or any other like it.

Guys, I just wanna chime in and remind people that SE is not going to take us seriously if threads are filled with nothing but pessimism. Please, submit your ideas rather than tear other peoples ideas down.

When all ideas are on the table, there can be a reasonable discussion on what is more urgent and important. We all know this job is broken and we need to work together to get our changes.

If SMN can get a Bahamut Egi, the sky is the limit. Stay positive.

[SyzzleSpark]

Please, submit your ideas...Stay positive.

Well - I've said a lot on these forums already but I'll condense my grievances down to some more succinct suggestions:

DPS:

1. Add a 10% damage dealt buff to Blood Weapon. Casting Delirium on Blood Weapon raises this to 15%.
Reasoning: DRK's damage is arguably the lowest amongst the tanks, but that's not why I'm suggesting this. Currently DRK rewards optimization very poorly. I cite for evidence almost every thread on these forums where optimizing this job is a topic: people are trying to figure out how to gain single-digit amounts of potency on their GCD. Adding a % increase window like this to hit would give the rotation more structure and make you think about how you spend your mana and when. While I'm not in the camp that thinks DRK is braindead as there are still plenty of mistakes and pitfalls on the part of the player and design flaws that can cost you DPS, they cost you very little DPS, and conversely, you gain very little for mastering them. If there are concerns that this is overpowered, if you hit BW on cooldown and perfectly line it up with Delirium such that the full 23s of Delirium BW is a 15% buff, it is only a DPS increase of 5%.

2. Increase TBN to 6s duration. Addionally, vastly increase the base and DA potency of Bloodspiller (say 580 base, 720 DAed).
Reasoning: Right now, TBN not popping for Bloodspiller is a huge loss, whereas getting it to break only merely breaks even (slight loss/slight gain depending on the GCD it replaces as others have pointed out). From a DPS perspective, this renders the interaction between these two abilities extremely frustrating. The extension of the timer and the increase in potency means it will still be a big loss if you mis-time it, but if you DO get it to pop, its extremely satisfying. If there are concerns that this is overpowered, We can revert the extraneous potency buffs the Souleater combo received. In fact, iff any of these buffs are too much, simply trim potency from the Souleater combo so that TBN and Bloodspiller optimization is a greater gain and greater reward for mastering. Having half a dozen skills that are over 400 potency while dealing very meh DPS is not satisfying. Right now TBN, if cast on someone else, is a very, very weak shield, not even matching a Cure 1 eHP gain. You want to use it for DPS, but every time you cast it, you dig yourself a hole, and if it pops, it simply refills that hole with a net gain of, for all intents and purposes, zero.

Mitigation:

1. First and foremost: Double TBN's recast time to 30s.
The purpose for this is two-fold: First- it balances the aforementioned DPS buffs, making TBN-Bloodspillers less overpowered with their increased likelihood and higher potency. Second- it decentralizes the ability from our cooldown suite and gives us room to buff our other abilities and add mitigation tools elsewhere without being too overpowered. If 30s is still too short in light of the buffs I am about to suggest, I suggest 40s.


2. Reduce Shadow Wall's cooldown to 150s and increase its duration to 15s.
Reasoning: This makes Shadow Wall a viable competitor against Vengeance and Sentinel. In terms of mitigation and uptime, this makes Shadow Wall a precise middle-road between Vengeance and Sentinel.
(10/180)*40 = 2.22% (Sentinel)
(15/120)*30 = 3.75% (Vengeance)
(15/150)*30 = 3.0% (Shadow Wall)

3. Add a -10% damage taken effect to Blood Price
Reasoning: This gives us a high uptime, weak cooldown to use between tank busters. While it is locked behind Grit, many other defensive tank abilities are either a DPS loss (Clemency) or locked behind tank stance (Inner Beast, Equilibrium). This gives us an equivalent to that as well. It also just generally makes Blood Price feel better to push.

4. When using Dark Arts on Dark Mind, enable the skill to mitigate physical damage as well.
Reasoning: This ability and its DA effect are very weak in 4.0, and feel awful in physical fights such as Susano. In terms of mana, there is little reason to use DA on DM outside of a multi-hit magical tank buster, as outside of this scenario, TBN and regular DM provide similar mitigation and are 100% more resource efficient. DAing DM needs to be worth something. Unbuffed, it would still only be its niche magical form, which is still useful particularly if the burst mitigation is not needed and the mana would be better served elsewhere.

5. Living Dead: Honestly I tried to think of a creative solution to this one, but I think people are so sick of this ability that a simple solution would just be better. So here is mine: Change Living Dead to function exactly like Holmgang, but to last for 12 seconds instead of 6. Reduce its cooldown to 4 minutes (240 seconds). To further balance with Holmgang, which binds you in place, have the ability place a 20% heavy on you. This is fitting considering the "zombie" theme of the ability.

OR...

Alternatively, keep Living Dead as is, but buff Souleater's HP return back to 100% of the damage dealt, and, while under the effect of Walking Dead, increase this value to 200% of the damage dealt to mitigate the resources a healer must spend.