DRK changes from Prelim notes

[Duskane]

Soul eater would be nice out of Grit,stopping blood price being Grit exclusive and becoming a defense CD that restores MP(fix that MP restore too) would be nice too, always iffy on dark mind being magic only and not just straight up all damage.

[Rubytoe]

Darkmind 30% magic damage reduction for 10s every 60secs? Annnnd Shadowskin every 120secs? + Rampart & TBN? Im going to love fighting these bosses that use magic attacks.

[Saeno]

Some good changes but unfortunately they dont change much for DRK aside from the shadow wall change. A lot of these changes should have happened a very long time ago. That's ok though because these changes make improvements for DRK and hopefully they help DRK's make a strong impact on the 5.0 DRK we're all waiting for.

Powerslash: Still a DPS loss to use this move as you dont get MP back from this combo. The increased enmity generation will be HUGE though. DA powerslash at 300 potency already did good aggro but at 440 potency, yeah nah you're not losing hate.
Grit: MP reduction is nice. This needs to be oGCD though for anyone to really consider it. You still will not use Grit no matter what.

Dark passenger: The potency is not enough. You can avoid using this skill single target and it's still fine since you can swap it out for a Dark arts and not miss any damage. It's much better on 2+ targets now so there's that. The increased aggro is VERY nice though. I felt like DRK needed more oGCD enmity tools and this is exactly that.

Dark Mind:Saw this one coming. Doesn't change much but this is still a very nice change. DRK mitigating extra magic damage won't matter still since no tank struggles with magic but hey at least you're taking less damagfe (when dark mind is relevant).

Darkside: neat

Shadow wall: VERY nice change. Easily the biggest change next to Sole survivor

Plunge: more oGCD enmity for DRK and QoL? I'll take it. Not sure if I like the DA effect.

Sole survivor: Very big change. 30% Hp from killing something is pretty damn big especially if that's also 30% MP. This does change things for DRK now since you will use this move on CD just for the MP and HP restore. That means more MP and more DA in the fight, so that's very cool.

All in all I'm neutral with these changes as I didn't expect anything major. I still think it should be doing more DPS but that's my personal opinion. DRK will be fun to play and that's all that matters to me.

[Jandor]

Good changes mostly, would be nice if the 20% HP/MP on Sole Survivor was front-loaded with the extra 10% as a bonus if you kill the mob but it's still a positive change.

The main 'what?' change is DA Plunge, I was really hoping they'd move away from DA on oGCD abilities.

[garret_hawke]

SE why DA-plunge couldn't you have put the increase enmity baseline.

[Crater]

Mostly changes that make DRK "less bad", without much that really makes it "good". Fixes some (not all) of the class's most fundamental failings, and probably does legitimately give it a small niche in certain fights, but it's not going to do much of anything to reverse DRK's fortunes.

- The Power Slash change was so incredibly obvious that it's kind of insulting it wasn't in the game all the way back in Heavensward; basically everybody with two brain cells to rub together was asking for this one. It's pretty irrelevant, though, because Power Slash is still a terrible combo that nobody should ever use - you still lose 70 potency worth of MP, ~30 potency worth of Blood, and another 30 potency directly when you use the combo, and this change just makes it so that you don't lose an additional 140 potency if you decide to DA Power Slash.

- Grit: Also a bit of a no-brainer; how good this is depends on how low the MP cost is. Realistically, the cost should be removed, not reduced, if the GCD cost is staying, but if it's only 480-600 or so MP, that's probably good enough. If it's still 1200 or more, they messed up, and this change doesn't really do anything.

- Dark Passenger is not terrible, but should have been 150/300 potency rather than 140/280. You don't get the 10% Slashing bonus on it either way, so 150 is still a slight loss in single-target compared to a Dark Arts, and 140 is a small but appreciable loss. It's strictly a gain in multi-target/AoE situations, can eke out negligible potency gains if used during a party buff window, and is probably finally a big enough gain in 2-target scenarios that it won't feel like splitting hairs just to point out that it's technically stronger, but that was never really the core weakness. The enmity modifier is possibly/probably very good, though, and (depending on what the multiplier is) could give DRK a rough equivalent to WAR in terms of being able to drop small amounts of potency to generate medium amounts of extra enmity.

- Dark Mind: Again, total no-brainer. Should have been in at Stormblood's launch, or patched in during the first two weeks of 4.0 just like WAR's costless stance-swapping.

- Darkside: QoL adjustment, doesn't affect anything really.

- Shadow Wall: This is an alright change. It's still strictly worse than Vengeance, but is probably most of the time better than Sentinel. This (and the DM change) finally kind of puts it into a place where TBN and Dark Mind can probably roughly make up for the disparity between DRK and WAR personal defensive kits - in certain fights that use magic tankbusters. On fights without magic tankbusters, I don't think this is enough to let DRK compete with WAR, but it is enough that I think DRK will pretty handily beat out PLD for personal defense. This gives DRK a niche, but not an especially great one: they still get edged out by PLD any time that you want to maximize tank DPS, any time that party-wide defenses are important, etc, and WAR is still a guaranteed slot in every fight.

- Plunge: Really good change; basically nobody was defending Plunge's terrible animation lock. The DA effect is really good: Since it's completely DPS-neutral (and sometimes even a gain) to use DA Plunge, it can be considered part of DRK's overall rotation, and that means that (depending on the enmity modifier they gave DA Plunge) DRK finally has enmity built into their optimized DPS rotation like the other tanks. This has been a unique weakness of DRK since Heavensward, and it's good to finally see it go.

- Sole Survivor: Another really good change. A 20% heal on a 120s cooldown makes it a pretty potent self-heal that rewards foresight and timing. Can't be used quite as often as the free Equilibrium that WAR gets every time Unchained is up, but will probably heal for roughly similar amounts, and comes with about 110 potency worth of MP to make up for that.



It's not even close to the kind of thing that's going to bring me back, but at least it wasn't literally just "+10 potency to Souleater". At the very least I feel slightly vindicated at spending so much time here harping on how bad DRK's passive enmity generation was, when nobody else really seemed to be picking up on it.

[Daniel_Fury]

Im loving these changes! Much hype for me.

[Esp]

I like most of these changes. I'm really thankful for the Shadow Wall, Dark Mind and Soul Survivor change. Some of the others are ok QoL changes.

But that DA added to Plunge...just, why?

And I'm surprised they didn't increase the RANGE of Plunge instead of adding a DA effect to it (Like we needed MORE things to DA when we have been asking for less DA spam).

Dark Passenger change is...ok I suppose. The extra enmity will be nice, but still not enough to keep it on my main bar. If they had either reduced or remove the MP cost and did these changes, it would have been a really great change.

All in all though, still pleased. I'm interested to try out DRK when 4.3 hits :P

[Shurrikhan]

The way they've evened out DA now is that no matter what you're getting the 140 potency gain. With DM, PS, and DP before (actually not sure about DP but w/e) you were losing out on potency for using the DA effect. Now that everything that uses DA does damage there's no real need to worry about if your DA gets 'Eaten' or not. Personally, I think that's a welcome change. I think it's pretty clear with the new DA effects which ones you're going to prioritize (obviously aggro in plunge and DP if you're holding hate and aggro is an issue) but otherwise it's fairly good.

But the rDPS increase from a DA on Power Slash will be worth far, far more than what just the DA is contributing on any other weaponskill. SS and SE are now the least efficient uses of DA if you'd otherwise have to use an extra PS combo.

[Deceptus]

Yo Dawg, I heard you like Dark Arts. . .