DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[SyzzleSpark]

Probably because it's a way to say "use this in Grit" without locking the ability behind it. Kind of like how Holy Spirit generates 20 gauge when in Shield Oath.

If we're looking to simplify things, I'd remove the Dark Arts requirement and just make it 540 potency outside of Grit and 650 in Grit. That would remove some of the decision-making from using it since you'd pretty much use it whenever you have 50 blood gauge without MP being a factor at all, though.

DRK doesn't need simplification, what it needs is mechanics that are a net gain or a net loss, instead of things that simply break even. The job is PACKED with choices to make and priorities to manage, but no matter what you choose or prioritize, it barely effects your performance. Because of this, there's barely any incentive to optimize the job, because you're rewarded extremely poorly.

The reason Bloodspiller's tooltip is worded the way it is, I assume, is because unlike Inner Beast, it is not locked behind Grit. Also because of its buff, it no longer simply ignores the penalty, as Bloodspiller is now 400 potency out of Grit, so its baseline Grit potency would have to be 500 and the DA+Grit would have to be 675. The way they have it now they can adjust the potencies individually, whereas with something like Inner Beast they cannot. I'm not saying I'm a fan of this though, as I would rather they simply make up their minds and have Bloodspiller be a defined DPS gain regardless of how we build the Blood to use it.

Currently we have a ton of mana dumps and they all net almost the exact same potency increase with the sole exception being Carve and Spit. The reason for this is because they backed themselves into a corner by removing Delirium and making the changes to Darkside and Blood Weapon for their mana drain/recovery respectively, meaning that if we go through our rotation and only ever Dark Arts Souleater or Bloodspiller we will overflow constantly. So they made Syphon DA-able. Now, why they did this as opposed to simply keeping DP where it was (which would have achieved the same purpose more or less) escapes me. And it really just drives home the thing that a lot of DRK's have been complaining about since day 1 of SB: They didn't buff the job or improve it at ALL with the release of 4.0, they just rearranged a bunch of crap.

If they want to make these DA potencies the same, then the abilities need additional DA effects (Bloodspiller could have a DoT, Souleater could see a greatly increased self-healing effect, Syphon could lower the cooldown on one of our oGCDs or perhaps simply restore more mana, etc.). These abilities need to have some form of parity but they also need a reason to DA one over the other so that the job can have something resembling satisfaction for optimiztation.

On a side note, I'd like to point out that in HW, SE released a fairly substantial job adjustment patch after the launch of Gordias savage but before 3.1, in August of that year: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...7aff5b99d9fb32 ...so if we continue to provide this level of feedback we may see some of these fixes we're suggesting this month.

[Starkbeaumont]

Maybe TBN should use Blood and give back MP. Then add more additional effects via Dark Arts so all that MP can be used on something.

[FallenWings]

Maybe TBN should use Blood and give back MP. Then add more additional effects via Dark Arts so all that MP can be used on something.

We have too much MP gain as it is imo. And putting TBN in Blood Gauge could turn it into Inner Beast levels of usage (i.e rarely) and also limits the usage of other skills. Not to mention it'll also break the synergy it has with Quietus in AoE situations.

[Jandor]

Bloodspiller doesn't quite ignore the Grit penalty. <snip> In short, you lose 5 potency for using the baseline ability in Grit and gain 2 potency for using DA Bloodspiller in Grit. You also gain 35 potency every time you apply DA to it in Grit. The reason for this weirdness is because they buffed the Bloodspiller potency by 20 while leaving the Grit potency unchanged.

Yeah, I know at the moment the potencies vary slightly. What I was trying to suggest and probably worded rather poorly, is that all that seems a bit pointless and Bloodspiller should just be a high potency ability, DA Bloodspiller even higher potency, and Grit shouldn't make any difference either way.
I don't get the purpose of the way it currently is, do they not want you using it when you're not currently MT?

[SyzzleSpark]

I don't get the purpose of the way it currently is, do they not want you using it when you're not currently MT?

It really begs the question doesn't it?

Bloodspiller by the numbers greatly indicates that we shouldn't feel bad about using it whenever we can regardless of Grit/no-Grit. However, only in Grit is it a well-defined, indisputable gain, and the same goes for TBN. Using TBN to proc it in Grit is most certainly good for your DPS (or rather, as good as it can be considering you're in Grit). The balancing of resources in Grit is actually much better designed than it is out of Grit. Blood Price+Syphon Strike is a problem for some people, but I personally am not bothered by it and I really hope we see some other changes before we see that touched. The bottom line is that while you're in Grit, optimal use of ALL of your tools as dictated by context is rewarded, at least as much as you can be whilst suffering a -20% damage penalty.

Out of Grit however, all of this goes in the toilet.

For one thing, in order to proc TBN Blood, you put a significantly weaker, arguably inconsequential shield on your co-tank or perhaps another party member targeted for a mechanic. Secondly, when this shield breaks, the Blood you get is a DPS loss unless it is being spent on Delirium (in a situation wherein you would not have had the blood to use it, which almost never comes up as Blood Weapon usually generates plenty, and when you hit Delirium during Blood Weapon doesn't matter, so long as it lands somewhere in that window), or unless Bloodspiller edges out a Hard Slash and not a Syphon or Souleater.

So basically, TBN cast on anyone but yourself is inconsequential from a utility/mitigation standpoint, and the Blood it provides is NOT a DPS gain. You could easily have spent that mana on another DA and done, for all intents and purposes, identical damage.

So its not wholly incorrect to say that there is no incentive to use TBN, or a Bloodspiller proc'ed by TBN outside of Grit while off-tanking. Needless to say this is stupid and should be fixed. Outside of seeing Bloodspiller's lovely animation more frequently, its just not there.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Also number of DRK complaint posts is staggering since Stormblood launched... The guys that do balance adjustments really screwed up.... DRK utility should be all about debuffs with decent damage mitigation and damage output, not what PLD and WAR do but A LOT WORSE... at least how I see DRK should be... I enjoyed DRK before 4.0 launch and was a decent tank with decent mitigation and damage output and felt like it needed more utility type debuffs... But role action pretty much confirmed my fears of what would happen to DRK...

[kashi11]

What if one of these happened:

Bloodspiller: oGCD 3s recast.

Or

Bloodspiller: reduced blood cost to 25.

Or

TBN now grants DA upon shield breaking :

Or

TBN has half it's current MP cost.

Or

TBN recast shortened to 5s

[347SPECTRE]

What if one of these happened:

Bloodspiller: oGCD 3s recast.

Or

Bloodspiller: reduced blood cost to 25.

Or

TBN now grants DA upon shield breaking :

Or

TBN has half it's current MP cost.

Or

TBN recast shortened to 5s

Still doesnt help the fact we dont even get a full deck until level cap, making DRK feel hollow pre-70.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

You have touched on the current design flaw with DRK in 4.0, "choice without meaning".

With the redesign of DRK for Stormblood we saw an increase of "choice" with DA usage becoming a greater and more frequent aspect of our game-play. However, as has been pointed out, while more options and choices were given the results are all virtually the same with being a standardized potency boost and therefore the choices feel meaningless because no matter what choice you make it ends up pretty much the same or with such slight differences that it doesn't really matter. Strangely enough, this is what I believe lead to or at least contributed to the feeling for some that DRK had been "dumbed down". While technically the job had complexity added to it by providing more options, it felt more simple because the choices provided little variance in result so it was easy to get consistent results no matter what you did.

To put it more simply, in 3.X DRK had less DA options and frequency of use which resulted in more relative value for each DA option and use. So far in 4.X there was an increase in options and frequency of use while not having differing returns on those options and so the relative value of the greater number of options decreased greatly.
It's like walking into an ice cream shop that serves only vanilla and your only options are what color cup the vanilla ice cream is served in.

As you, myself and others have brought up, this should be solved by attaching differing and meaningful additional effects to abilities based on whether or not they are being DAed and/or whether or not Grit is active.

For example, let's take Soul Eater and Syphon Strike.
Pretty straightforward abilities. SE does more damage when DAed and provides a small heal in Grit. Syphon has the same DA potency boost and returns some MP. Really not much difference in which to DA except a little more HP returned from SE. A very lackluster choice that just defaults to DAing SE for miniscule gains.

Now what if Soul Eater instead did the following: an increased % of damage returned as HP when DAed in Grit along with the current potency boost, when DAed out of Grit gives a small amount of Black Blood (20?).

And Syphon did the following: when DAed provides the existing potency boost and an increase to MP gained (25% the cost of a dark arts?).

These abilities are now much more complex and interesting in their usages and interactions with other abilities and resources. You actually have a choice that seems more worthwhile; do you want more HP to soften incoming damage, do you want more resources by trading mp for blood or by slowing mp burn by increasing regain while retaining the potency boost, etc.

I strongly feel it is this conceptual approach that the devs need to take when looking at fixing DRK's issues.

[Duelle]

The job is PACKED with choices to make and priorities to manage, but no matter what you choose or prioritize, it barely effects your performance. Because of this, there's barely any incentive to optimize the job, because you're rewarded extremely poorly.

While I agree the job lacks feedback in how well you're doing, most of the choices are no brainers because the bulk of DA effects are potency increases. It'd be a different story if every ability that interacted with Dark Arts was like Carve and Spit, where it serves two different purposes depending on DA (though I think that would go against the approach the devs have taken with Stormblood).

Currently we have a ton of mana dumps and they all net almost the exact same potency increase with the sole exception being Carve and Spit. The reason for this is because they backed themselves into a corner by removing Delirium and making the changes to Darkside and Blood Weapon for their mana drain/recovery respectively, meaning that if we go through our rotation and only ever Dark Arts Souleater or Bloodspiller we will overflow constantly.

I'd blame that on their abandoning the original intent for Dark Arts and the MP management minigame that was DRK through all of last expansion, because if the concern was the lack of a non-DA combo finisher, Souleater could have been buffed to 400 potency baseline, DA increase the potency to 440 and add a weak drain out of Grit that becomes very powerful in Grit (the way the current MP recovery works for Syphon Strike).

Non-sequitur:

What I'd like is for the devs to make up their mind on what is the DRK resource. The blood gauge currently exists only because of Delirium, Bloodspiller and Quietus, and the only one that adds anything to that gameplay-wise is Delirium because of how it affects Blood Weapon (arguably Blood Price, though in its current state it's not as big a benefit). TBN was designed in such a way to further justify the gauge's existence.

Here's some bullet points with ideas:

- Darkside entirely removes the MP bar when activated, replacing it with the Blood Gauge. Adjust Darkside to enter the leveling scheme of DRK as a lv2 ability for level synch purposes.
- Dark Arts no longer costs MP, but has a 15-second cooldown. Clicking on Dark Arts while it is on cooldown allows you to activate it again, but it restarts the cooldown and consumes 50 Blood Gauge.
- Syphon Strike, Souleater, Blood Weapon, Carve & Spit (non-DA), Blood Price and Quietus generate blood. Maybe add a trait where auto-attacks have a 30% chance to generate 1 blood; incidentally, Blood Price and Blood Weapon are no longer tied together, but one cannot be used while the other is active.
- Unmend generates 2 Blood per use, costs no MP.
- Unleash costs no MP, has a 10s cooldown and generates 2 Blood.
- The above combined with Salted Earth means you have extra sources of blood. We can thus nerf the gauge generated by TBN from 50 to 10-15 (the intent here being that the mitigation provided by TBN outweighs the resources it generates).
- TBN would follow the same rule as Dark Arts, where the first one is free but using it before the cooldown is done restarts the cooldown and consumes 50 gauge.
- Defensive cooldowns (Dark Mind, Shadow Wall) have a baseline level of mitigation that grows with accumulated blood. They don't consume blood, but are stronger when your gauge is above 20-30.
- Blood spenders: Dark Passenger, Abyssal Drain, Bloodspiller, Quietus.
- Delirium changed into a cooldown that increases blood accumulation and reduces the on-cooldown cost of Dark Arts and TBN by 80% for 20s. (fun fact: the JP name of Delirium is "Blood Delirium", so the name even fits in this case)
- Grit changed to a toggle. Increased mitigation (40%~) with no damage penalties, but damage taken consumes 35 blood gauge per hit; if you hit blood levels below 35, Grit instantly deactivates. This is meant to be a last resort for mitigation, assuming you've run out of cooldowns during a fight. Yes, this means DRK would no longer have a tank stance.

This is me spit-balling ideas, but yeah.