New DRK Overhaul Idea

[SkyEdge1]

So I want to preface this by saying that I am in no way an expert on DRK nor will I pretend to know what goes into the various calculations done on the subject of class balance. But I was bored at work and thought of a few ways to get DRK out of the current funk it was in and i'd like everyone's thoughts on it.

Firstly to summarize imo, DRK has 3 sore points for me when im playing it, that i believe are echoed throughout the tanking community as a whole.

The first is Identity, simply put DRK doesn't feel like anything, or to be more precise it feels like a 100 piece puzzle that is missing 5 pieces, yes you can kinda get the picture but its not whole.

Second, Synergy, DRK brings nothing to the table that the other 2 Tanks don't bring in either an easier way. WAR brings slashing and a ton of burst DMG along with some pretty hefty party wide shields. PLD is absolutely bonkers when it comes to mitigation and utility and its damage is nothing to scoff at either. Frankly you bring DRK for either a niche or because you don't want to be seen as a person excluding a class.

Third and probably the one i'll take the most flack for is Dark Arts. To make a long story short, both PLD and WAR have rotations that can be complex because they revolve around a damage window, to some degree or another, stance dancing offensive buffs and even certain defensive CD revolve around the fact that you know you will have a certain time during the fight where you can maximize your damage and use your skills effectively. For PLD switching to SwO popping a defensive CD in time with FoF then sliding to finishing with Requiescat -> HS spam means that all your skills have a certain flow and rhythm to their usage. DRK again does not really have this, due to the sporadic nature of DA and the fact that the cost to spam it is generally very high, playing DRK at anything other than a high skill level results in either lackluster damage or a stupid amount of micromanaging.

In light of these 3 things id like to propose the following changes to the DRK kit.

Dark Arts -> rather than a 1 shot use, Id like to change this to an activated stance useable on a 80 second CD, one that when active will slowly drain your MP lasting untill you are below 5% of your total MP and then turning off. All DA potency increases and effects would remain basically the same give or take away a few potency to account for the change in design. I believe that this would give DRK an active damage window and take away the clunky micromanaging feel of using Dark Arts.

Soul Survivor -> similar to Excogitation this would place a buff on either self or others that sits on a timer. It can be actively triggered or passively expire and would provide a magic defense buff based on the amount of HP the target has loss. Example at -80% 2.5% shield at -60% 5% and -50% 8%. This in my opinion would allow for great synergy between a party as well as provide a higher level of complexity than simply "put on target, hope it dies, get some chump change back"

Dark Dance -> Why the eff was this removed? bring it back, fluff damage and mitigation problems solved

Dark Passenger -> (stay with me here) Make this skill usable ONLY when Dark Arts is active remove its MP cost and place it on a 20 second CD, give it falloff damage and ... place a 5% magic vuln up on all targets hit. This is probably the single most important change to the kit imo. Not only does this help PUG parties that don't have w/e the eff the "meta" comp is, this allows for caster compositions to be focused around a DRK giving it more variability with the dominant phys composed parties. If for example you have a party that has a heavy phys presence but one of your members loves to play BLM or RDM or SMN then you as a DRK are not punished for being a DRK and they dont have to think "well I guess I'll switch to BRD or MCH since i don't want to hold the party back" It fits well with the identity of a magic knight class and adds some MUCH needed versatility to casters.

MP regen under darkside this has always been a silly thing for them to restrict. With this new build you could have casters/ranged who can focus on trying to maximize the up time on DA and allow for the Tank to stay dealing damage for longer.

Living Dead -> tbh i have no clue what to do with this, you either love it or hate it.

These changes, I believe could benefit both casual and hardcore players alike. As was shown with WAR, making the class easier to play doesn't have to take away from the challenge of mastering it. Allowing DRK to be less focused on arbitrarily press DA before every relevant skill, this would make it so that you need to rotate your MP regeneration and Damage output in order to squeeze as much time out of Dark Arts buff as possible.

I would love to hear thoughts and opinions on what I've come up with and see if there are any other ideas that are more along this track rather than the SE bandaid fixes of "you can have 10 more potency and that should fix it"

[Sylvain]

I don't see how your change would make DRK more enjoyable to play.
Your dark art change removed the entire mana management and is yet another berserk/requiesast.(the later being a very dull skill imo)

[SkyEdge1]

You are correct in that I modeled the system after those 2 skill types, mainly because they work so well. Currently DA does not reward optimization at all, playing DRK well simply results in you doing enough dmg to be sort of on par with the other 2. Placing your damage on a renewable window, ie you can increase the amount of time that DA is active via skils like Quietus, CnS, Blood Price/weapon or outside management would allow for an easier curve for new players and would make it so that (in theory anyway) optimizing DRK would result in numbers above PLD without simply just adding potency.

[Kniteroad]

IMO they should just re-implement a lot of what was lost in heavenward. I really enjoyed the complexity of the way Dark Knight worked. Give us scourge back, give us shadow skin back. And rework sole survivor and park passenger slightly to make them not useless abilities and even if they don't just give us scourge and a little more mitigation. Dark Knight is in such a bad spot not because it needs an overhaul its because they tried to simplify it way to much.

[Shurrikhan]

I like Dark Arts to be a Dark Arts.

I just want it to be closer to HW frequency, rather than being available every second to third GCD.

[Sylvain]

I like Dark Arts to be a Dark Arts.

I just want it to be closer to HW frequency, rather than being available every second to third GCD.

Well see, this is a legitimate request. I prefer the new version but I totally understand why people would prefer the last one. I do agree that we spam it a bit too much for very little effect tho.

On the other hand, I don't understand why so many people want scourge back. I just can't understand how this skill was interesting and brought anything to the job. (if your concern is purely dps, bumping up a few potency on your main combo would do the trick)

Having a dot for the sack of it is totally uninteresting. A bit like that post about SMN dots having no purpose because they don't interact. They are just there.

Lastly, remodeling skill purely around dps optimisation a dangerous route leading to unnecessary homogenisation. The proposed change to DA was made with Berserk and Requisath in mind. DA is the one truly unique thing about DRK and you propose to make it like another dps cd.

The problem I see is also the way the proposed DA was formulated. A good DRK would be able to keep it longer and do more dmg.
I do not say that optimizing dps is bad far from that. But I'd like to point that the one thing you want to address on a tank is "dps optimisation"
In other words, DRK tanking ability, design and effectiveness aren't your concern. Your concern is how DRK can optimise its dps and you would destroy the one unique thing about it to make it more like a dps rather than what it should be in the first place, a Tank.

Your proposed idea for instance destroy the improved on demand regen/aggro from our main combo, or the interaction it has with defensive or offensive skills.

[Shurrikhan]

Lastly, remodeling skill purely around dps optimisation a dangerous route leading to unnecessary homogenisation. The proposed change to DA was made with Berserk and Requisath in mind. DA is the one truly unique thing about DRK and you propose to make it like another dps cd.

I'd also point out that Dark Arts is fundamentally not (solely) a damage ability. If that were its function, then it would simply be baked into the abilities themselves.

What Dark Arts allows (more so in HW than now) is for the MT to sacrifice damage for survivability, much more alike to how Inner Beast and Fell Cleave work atop their respective stances than anything like Berserk or Requiescat.

Blood Weapon and CnS are as close as DRK is going to get to a burst phase, and, imo, that's a good thing.

[Nedkel]

Living death could give unlimited blood gauge like inner release does to warrior. :P

[Faeon]

Living death could give unlimited blood gauge like inner release does to warrior. :P

But that is a totally different ability, you would then need to give them an additional utility to replace it with.IR is not tied to Holmgang so you cant make living dead like an IR.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Living death could give unlimited blood gauge like inner release does to warrior. :P

Tank Mitigation and tank dps OGCD's should not be sharing the same button, as all that you create is a meta where the defensive aspects of the skill are massively or completely ignored due to how much of a dps loss it is to NOT use it for offense. It's a similar issue to Unchained VS Inner Release that was plaguing WAR before 4.2; why would you ever use unchained when Inner Release is just infinitely more important in comparison? Or how much WAR avoids IB unless it's absolutely necessary due to Fell cleave being so much stronger?

Even on DRK itself; look at how TBN interacts with Bloodspiller, and how if it's not at least dps neutral, you'll have optimal DRK dps play never using it outside of emergency situations.

Though beyond that, I would have an issue tying DRK's ultimate dps ability to having to die. That's just begging to cause drama and wipes due to mis-use and/or arguments with DRK's telling healers to stop healing them during their burst window, when the other two tanks can use their ultimate dps C/Ds with no repercussion. There are better ways to make a dps C/D more interesting than having massive drawback to it.

On the other hand, I don't understand why so many people want scourge back. I just can't understand how this skill was interesting and brought anything to the job. (if your concern is purely dps, bumping up a few potency on your main combo would do the trick)

I can't speak for anyone other than myself; but it's simply because DRK feels way too straightforward. WAR and PLD at least have some nuance to their combo chains, DRK is just "RAWR Dark Arts!" with soul eater spam over and over. I personally wouldn't want Scourge back as a 1-button DoT; I'd want it to come back in a new iteration similar to goring Blade, where it's a combo ender off of siphon strike to have more fun managing combos and timers than DRK does now, with adjusted potency to it and Soul Eater due to its addition so DRK stays roughly the same on dps.