With all this DRK feedback, can we get Scourge back please?

[Azerhan]

DRKS weakness is downtime. While the other 2 tanks can plan heavy burst around it, DRKS high sustain damage takes a big hit during windows of downtime.
Bringing scourge back on ts original form would help close this gap in most scenarios.
The only time it would not is during long downtime where the boss is invulnerable.
Even so, I'm all for this change.

Before SB, the idea was like DRK don't really has a burst but it deals good damages during the whole fight, very constent. I would like to go back to that, that was the reason I played DRK over WAR in HW.

[Daniel_Fury]

Before SB, the idea was like DRK don't really has a burst but it deals good damages during the whole fight, very constent. I would like to go back to that, that was the reason I played DRK over WAR in HW.

That aspect of the job hasn't changed much. We're still heavy flat lined sustain damage. Scourge would only compliment the current playstyle and allow our damage to stay sustained while we can't reach the boss. Our potencies are higher than the other 2 tanks, which is exactly why the downtime kills our dps so much.

[Aana]

SE needed to consolidate DoT's due to raid bosses only being able to handle 60 debuffs on the target. Which is why we saw removal of DoT's across the board. I can tell you that as a SMN in VA or even Diadem it was incredibly frustrating to only get Bio up as Bio 2 and Miasma wouldn't get registered due to the cap and a SMN using Fester with 1 dot is just ..... While I don't care if the animation comes back the DoT removal is my biggest concern.

DRG, MNK, NIN, SMN, SCH, WHM, and War all saw the same removal of DoT's as DRK did. And since Fracture was a cross skill PLD did as well.

This post really deserves more attention. There's more going on than just taking your toys away when se makes decisions like this. They cleaned house on dots for a VERY good reason across the board. Bringing back dots literally isn't good for the game on a technical level. Never mind 1 hit dot maintenance is terribly bland gameplay and other reasons.

[Crater]

This post really deserves more attention. There's more going on than just taking your toys away when se makes decisions like this. They cleaned house on dots for a VERY good reason across the board.

Incredibly, the game did not fall apart and they didn't need to drop another Dalamud on it when SE reintroduced Miasma II into Scholar rotations.

SE deciding to get rid of DoTs "across the board" was not some wise, sage decision that was made after very carefully considering every single repercussion and determining that there was just no other way forward. It was a sweeping, heavy-handed "Get rid of ALL X" blunder that created at least as many problems as it solved, because they didn't think it through, and they didn't consider that not all of those DoTs were of equal importance to every class they were taken away from.

Scourge was not Aero, Combust, or Bio; weak DoTs that produce less (or essential equal) damage to the filler direct-damage attacks that healers have. It wasn't Fracture; a skill that was used to manipulate your GCD order more than it was used for its damage; or even a Mutilate; a skill that needed to tick for 18-21+ seconds and avoid replacing a combo finisher before it became worthwhile to use.

Not all DoTs are equal, not all DoTs contribute equally to class performance and playstyle. Scourge, Touch of Death, and Lead Shot were all extremely valuable to their respective classes and should not have been thrown away in some overreaching blanket DoT ban without being given substantial compensatory buffs and large class redesigns to mitigate that damage.

Machinist got substantial buffs and a total class overhaul to compensate for the loss of Lead Shot - now Machinist is in a very good place.
Monk did not get substantial buffs or a class overhaul to compensate for the loss of Touch of Death - now Monk is in the dumpster.

Dark Knight got more nerfs than buffs, and a stripped down version of its former toolkit rather than a class overhaul. Two guesses where it is right now. Actually, no, I don't trust you to get that one right: It's in the dumpster, right alongside MNK, SAM, and BLM.

[Azerhan]

That aspect of the job hasn't changed much. We're still heavy flat lined sustain damage. Scourge would only compliment the current playstyle and allow our damage to stay sustained while we can't reach the boss. Our potencies are higher than the other 2 tanks, which is exactly why the downtime kills our dps so much.

And it results to the worst dps of the three tanks.

I mean, SE clearly wants to make a burst with Bloodspiller, but it doesn't works at all, and it just feel like a low-cost PLD burst. Why not remake the DRK like it really was in HW? That's why the DRK was played a lot. He was different from the others tanks.

[Chrono_Rising]

This post really deserves more attention. There's more going on than just taking your toys away when se makes decisions like this. They cleaned house on dots for a VERY good reason across the board. Bringing back dots literally isn't good for the game on a technical level. Never mind 1 hit dot maintenance is terribly bland gameplay and other reasons.

If this is really an issue to add back one more dot to the game they could always modify it to be a personal buff rather than a dot on the boss. For example make Scourge oGCD with a 30 second cooldown that enhances our dark side to deal damage temporarily. This doesn't have to be an on off decision in terms of dots, isn't 1 push game play, and adds an oGCD to a class that saw the removal of so many.

I'm also not convinced one more dot would break the game, nor am I convinced that Scourage was the best move to remove. If anything I would think they would have removed Paladin's Circle of Scorn as a dot, give them the damage of upfront rather than deal it as dot damage, then there is room for 1 more dot in the game.

My real question is why it seems like so little care was taken to balance and design Dark Knight, but other classes saw so much care put into their design. At release, Dark Knight *apparently* needed all these nerfs and then got a 5% boost to its darkside. There are just so many questionable and poor choices that were made with this class IMO, and I just cannot explain why.

1, People didn't like the two rotation life of Paladin. Why not try it on dark knight?

2. People play Dark knight because it has all these oGCD moves that make the class feel fast paced. Why not remove most of them and add almost no oGCD skills back? To add to this: Let's double down and remove one of dark knights hardest hitting moves and replace it with another hard hitting move that doesn't make up the difference between Scourge and oGCD skills! The follow up I imagine was Dark Knight being undertuned, so lets just buff darkside and call it a day.

3. People don't like that 3.x Dark Knight has some anti-synergy in its kit. Why don't we remove the synergy that is there (dark dance + reprisal or dark dance + low blow) and leave the anti-synergy (blind + blood price, stun + blood price)?

4. Lets standardize Dark Arts as a damaging buffing move, but lets keep it as a cost for tank defense as well!

5. People look at Dark knight as a Paladin clone, lets remove some of its enfeeblement identity to help make it stand out.

6. Dark Knight has strong AOE game, better nerf Dark Passenger! Oh better add more AOE, lets give an AOE move using Blood!

I get that things needed to change, there would be no room on our hot bars if they didn't remove abilities, I get that they needed to accommodate their servers so some instances would work as intended. What I don't get is why they took so little care with some classes. I don't see how it is good design to ignore why your player base plays a certain class and then radically change the class from one expansion to the next. If your hands were tied and you needed to gut one class in particular, at least put in the time to make sure that the spirit of the class was maintained or even improved. Right now Paladin feels more like 3.x Dark Knight, more than 4.x Dark Knight feels like 3.x dark knight, and that is just a weird thing to happen in an expansion.

[Ekimmak]

5. People look at Dark knight as a Paladin clone, lets remove some of its enfeeblement identity to help make it stand out.

All tanks had to lose their enfeeblements, as those were being used as reason to not bring PLD.

Even if we still had debuffs on Delirium, Rage of Halone, and Storm's Path, DRK would be at the bottom because the majority of Tankbusters are physical, and DRK has the least to contribute to raidwide damage.

[DRKoftheAzure]

snip

PLD uses the most buttons in the game right now... 3 of which are ability bloat because 4 player party dungeons (Flash, AoE spin attack, and GCD stun), which just so happens to work better with gamepad users who use the WXHB feature(somehow...) and they basically the exception to this rule of cutting ability bloat... REALLY GREAT BALANCING DECISION!!!

[DRKoftheAzure]

All tanks had to lose their enfeeblements, as those were being used as reason to not bring PLD.

Even if we still had debuffs on Delirium, Rage of Halone, and Storm's Path, DRK would be at the bottom because the majority of Tankbusters are physical, and DRK has the least to contribute to raidwide damage.

Would have made more sense to make DRK the enfeeblement tank that specializes in lifesteal for tanking and would give DRK a better identity than it already has right or even during Heavensward! But instead we got a "tank" that hates everything including themselves... que the Linkin Park playlists going on until 5.0 because things are going to get even cringier... And if DRK start sparkling in bright light like those "vampires" from... "Twilight Saga" of all things.... *bleugh* then we will know something went HORRIBLY WRONG...

[Chrono_Rising]

All tanks had to lose their enfeeblements, as those were being used as reason to not bring PLD.

Even if we still had debuffs on Delirium, Rage of Halone, and Storm's Path, DRK would be at the bottom because the majority of Tankbusters are physical, and DRK has the least to contribute to raidwide damage.

Far more busters are magical in my experience actually. Giving both warrior and dark a 100% uptime on raid mitigation is clearly a reason against bringing paladin, having 1 tank which provides this is not, it then becomes something unique which only one tank brings. Really it is ok to think to yourself hmm, I wish I was tank x right now it could handle this so much better. Its not ok to feel like a job brings nothing of value in most situations.

For example, it is fine for Paladin to have a raid wide shield. It is fine for Warrior to have a raid wide shield. It isn't fine that two tanks bring a raid wide shield and the third option doesn't, as you noted, this is just a reason to not run that third tank.

I don't think that the jobs should be homogenized, but I do think they need to be able to bring something that is valuable to the group as a whole and is unique. If one tank shields, while another tank lowers damage, while yet another tank provides life/resource steal, that gives three ways of handling raid damage in three unique ways each of which has its own down side.

(option 1 scales off player HP but provides static reductions, option 2 mitigates variable damage but requires a target, and option 3 requires a target and for the party members to live through the attack but has great synergy with the first two options)