Trying to understand the complaints about DRK

[Chrono_Rising]

Dark Knight has been a class which has historically centered around enfeeblement, sacrifice, and damage, it has been a kind of "hurt me I dare you" job. I could get behind this job as a tank because the idea of a tank which enfeebles enemies for defense (reprisal and delirium), steals resources (syphon strike and souleater), and has something of a counter attack system in low blow procs was appealing, fast, and the combination of it all felt good. There were some issues and things could have worked better, but nothing huge.

Stormblood rolls out and SE has decided to remove all of that and replace it with dark arts spam. While I enjoy actively hitting buttons, I have to agree with others that it does offer very little variation. What would I prefer as dark arts? First off I would prefer if dark arts was only spent by GCD actions. It would make the mini buffs feel a but more if you could dark arts, oGCD with a dark arts effect, and then hit your GCD action to consume your buff. I would also prefer systems which had some sort of interplay with the rest of our kit. Perhaps leave DA on Souleater as a damage and HP restore, make dark arts siphon strike a bleed which deals damage and restores mp/blackblood, and perhaps have a third GCD which has a dark arts effect which extends blood weapon/price or adds additional haste bonuses.

I also disagree that warrior and paladin are bland. Warrior is balancing its gauge spending with maintaining its crit buff while also spending as much gauge in buff windows as possible. Paladin is looking to abuse its utilities/defense to gain more shield swipes for damage. Both classes are also using GCD manipulation to end phases with more damage just like TBN. I think you are short changing the other tank jobs a little here. However, I do agree with you that complaining about how many buttons have to be pressed is probably a sign that you are playing the wrong job and another might be more appealing.

[whiskeybravo]

One day I'll learn to be as pragmatic as Chrono. But that day is not today.

People were complaining about a lot more the DA spam. Did you actually read those threads?

Have you tanked lv70 content on all 3 tanks?

Have you tanked savage content?

Did you tank on DRK during Heavensward?


If the answer to any of those questions is no, you will have a hard time understanding the complaints about DRK. Most of the complaints are in relation to how it performs compared to the other 2 tanks. DPS, defense, raid utility, synergy with other jobs, etc.. These are all things you need the context for to really understand why so many people feel DRK is lacking and in a bad spot. Let's not even bring up the salt about War getting nearly immediate attention compared to the 11 month wait DRKs had to deal with.

Recent patch did do some good. I'd venture to guess most DRK's aren't completely happy, I myself still think they need a bit of DPS buff. But I don't raid on DRK so am not going to offer to many suggestions as to what DRK players want, I just like getting my popcorn ready and having good discussions

[Hierro]

Have you tanked lv70 content on all 3 tanks?

I can answer yes to all your questions, and even I have a hard time understanding the complaints. People cite the old delirium combo as being variation offered, but really, the goal was always to spam our soul eater combo as much as possible, and one button is hardly "variation."

I fully agree with the decision to cut out RNG procs like low blow and reprisal. I never liked having inconsistent damage from one encounter to the next all because one had more procs than the other. DRK was full of button bloat, too centered on watching your buttons more than the fight. To have it concentrated to DA is something I appreciate.

Oh, and I so don't miss Dark Dance.

Also, for DPS, it's about equal to PLD, and for defense it arguably has the best personal mitigation kit, and for utility, schmutility. SiO never saved a wiping party.

[whiskeybravo]

Also, for DPS, it's about equal to PLD, and for defense it arguably has the best personal mitigation kit, and for utility, schmutility. SiO never saved a wiping party.

Now it does, but not when most of the complaints were relevant. I just don't see how the OP could've formed the opinion that DRK is fine, based on what? They don't appear to have ever raided on tank or even have the other tanks leveled.

Everybody has different taste. You say you didn't like the RNG procs in HW but a lot of DRK mains did. Hence complaints. DRK used to have to manage MP, some people liked that it required more prep/planning others didn't. Hence complaining. DRK's cds were longer and had less impact than PLD/WAR. Hence complaints. DRK kit had no synergy with itself or party members.. Hence complaints.

OP just boiled all that down to "you don't like DA spam play another job". You don't have to be a DRK main to see how foolish an assessment that is..

The other comment about SiO is funny. What does any tank have that's actually capable of saving a wiping party? The closest thing is being able to cover/clemency a healer so they can LB3 before they die

[Sylvain]

Beside using it on Plundge for aggro or abyssal drain for some sweet heal, the problem is that for the vast majority of skill it's a simply potency increase.


I think people just want more nuance.
The spam in itself it's a matter of preference, I don't mind it, some people do, but to me the core of the issue is the lack of impact DA has.
This, on top of having a single dps combo, makes the job very simplistic (altough one could argue that doing a different combo once every30sec isn't super engaging too)

But for instance, let say they'd cut in half the MP gain from Syphon Strike (to reduce the amount of DA you could do) and they'd add new effect to DA on top of the 140 potency

For instance
Soul Eater: Double healing received from Soul Eater
Carve and Spit (no DA) : gants 2400mp 160potency
Carve and Spit DA : Heal for 20% of missing health 300 potency
Blood Spiller: consumes an additional 2400 to inflict bleed: Potency 70 duration :12s (280 potency for 2DA worth of mana basically)
Salted Earth (DA) : Salted Earth damage heals you for 50% of the damage done. (no potency gain)
Unleash (DA) : Increase damage to 150potency per target. No longer increase threat generated (didn't really think about the math here, the idea is just to make it a good AoE for damage and not aggro only)

With less mana, each DA would matter more thus making the choice more relevant as long as the effect is more than more potency.
100% more healing on Soul Eater is significative over the course of a fight.
A well executed carve and spit would be seen


I didn't think about what I suggested for an extensive period of time nor are these suggestion meant to be balanced within 4.x serie , but the point I'm trying to make is that DA could be more than simply +140 potency

It could be something that you pop to make a difference and enhance a specific skill for a specific situation (a bit like Abyssal Drain, when there are a lot of ennemies on you, the heal can be a life saver, it is nice, and there could be more nice skills like this.)

[Insanecell]

I’m still not 100% sure on how quoting and what not works so bear with me.

@Chrono_Rising: I don’t agree with reworking DA effects to such a degree. I think that creates an unnecessary amount of balancing. I think the current state of DA is fine except for the DA effect on Syphon Strike. What I think is best is moving away from the spam entirely by re implementing the MP drain on Darkside instead of leaving it as a trait that you can toggle on and off. Adding in a third combo finisher that has the same principal surrounding the old version of Delirium, except its a vanilla attack that has 20 more potency than Soul Eater solves a lot of issues that I think a lot of people have. It creates a combo that has no DA effects, and gives people a lot of breathing room to bank their DA uses on OGCDs. I also think its a lot more realistic to focus efforts on getting the devs to implement a third combo rather than rebalance most DA effects or entire reworks I’ve seen on the forums. Also get rid of that Grit effect for doubling Syphon Strike’s mp return and make Blood Price a button worth pressing. Or just get rid of it and make Blood Weapon universal.

@Hierro: With the removal of Parry as a stat and the number of fights with almost universal magic attacks I don’t see a point to returning to a reactive style of game play that relies on parry either. However I will argue that making a third “Delirium” like combo that breaks the monotony of just spamming the Soul Eater combo over and over would be worth it in of itself. Sometimes variety can come in one extra button. Also good to see another player from Mateus.

As per the DPS of the class, I would stick it right next to PLD, but just a hair above. Defensive wise I think the class is fine and it just gets better on magic encounters. I would like to see Soul Eater heal for half the damage it deals outside of Grit, maybe through a DA effect if anything but I think what we got now is fine. Utility wise, turn the class into a self-sufficient tank like the Blood Death Knight from WoW and the class becomes its own utility on a fight with nasty tank busters or effects like God Kefka.

As always, these are just my opinions. I don’t see the need for a massive rework of the class, instead just go back to the basics by cutting the mp cost on DP in half and a third weapon skill combo mixed in with current Stormblood additions instead. It would be easier to work in along with re implementing the MP drain on Darkside and it would make the class a lot better if it could be done in time for the next tier.

[LeoLupinos]

The complaints are "DRK changed a lot, it's better now, but let's not stop there"

I feel that Lvl 50 and 60 needs improvement. Blood Price is useless pre 60, recovering 88MP at lvl 60 per hit is nearing useless.

[shao32]

I actually enjoy old DRK and current DRK but i easily see why many ppl is upset with the current desing.
Compared to heavensward DRK lose many of they flexibility, the constant double weaving is unfriendly and the loss of many sinergy betwen skills specially dark arts make the job feels worse that the older one.

On stormblood DRK was treathed pretty bad on every field, our defensive kit go to the ground loosing overall physical mitigation and fluff mitigation was conplety removed for no reason, out utility reprisal was nerfed and shared with the other 2 and we get a weak ST shield for others on return.

DRK in general is still the hardest tank to play and optimice but thats not a problem bcs hardest Jobs are fun if are rewarded properly, the problem is the actual Gameplay is fairly unfriendly for many and i agreed all this work for general lower performance just raise the concern why da feels so bad now, if drk performance was better balanced probably less ppl will complaing about it, but since they under perform in every field (thankfully not mitigation anymore) its normal ppl complaing even more about It .

[Seraphor]

it's actually not that easy. so i activate Dark Arts, spend some mana and have now the Dark Arts buff in place for the next couple of seconds. Great! but now i overcap my mana and have no way to dump it since Dark Arts is already active...

to change the giant stream of incoming and outgoing mana the DRK has to handle you have to basically rebuild the whole job from scratch. increasing the mana costs of dark arts or recuding the incoming mana to balance out that you don't use dark arts that often anymore leads to other problems with your aoe attacks and TBN, wich also depend your mana.

Pretty simple work around for this:
DA as a buff costs no MP, however causes all comparable skills to cost that much more MP to use for their DA effect.
If you don't have enough MP to do So, the buff is cancelled and you then use the basic version of that skill.

[Aluja89]

What's so difficult to understand? The class is boring to play, doesn't feel like a Dark Knight and doesn't stand out. It's like a monotonous treadmill.