DRK suggestions from a non-DRK

[Zyneste]

That still sounds like a terrible Living Dead lol. The whole point is that there shouldn't be a punishment to using your invulnerability skill. PLD isn't punished. WAR isn't punished (thought the root-in-place can suck in dungeons with lots of aoe mobs, generally not a problem in raids). So why is DRK?

WAr can trap themselves in AOEs and is unable to use invuln without a target.

PLD can use the god of all invulns but its cool down is only accessible once or twice an encounter.

DRK has allot of flexibility in his cool down, allowing him to pop it up to 10 seconds early, not a second of his invuln is wasted. It will proc when he actually needs it. He can also run around and use it without a target.

Living dead has allot of things going for it. The punishment mechanic is fine, its just a little too much. This sort of compromise would avoid wipes from failing the skill.

Having a reliable non Grit Soul eater heal would also help in getting their max health back without losing DPS.

[whiskeybravo]

WAr can trap themselves in AOEs and is unable to use invuln without a target.

PLD can use the god of all invulns but its cool down is only accessible once or twice an encounter.

DRK has allot of flexibility in his cool down, allowing him to pop it up to 10 seconds early, not a second of his invuln is wasted. It will proc when he actually needs it. He can also run around and use it without a target.

Living dead has allot of things going for it. The punishment mechanic is fine, its just a little too much. This sort of compromise would avoid wipes from failing the skill.

Having a reliable non Grit Soul eater heal would also help in getting their max health back without losing DPS.

Needing a target has not really been an issue with WAR. Sure, there are a few mechanics spread about, such as Nael diving in on UCOB where PLD might pop HG early (without a target). But those are very few and far between in my experience. And, you can certainly get trapped in AoEs in dungeons, but as I already mentioned it's not been an issue in any savage raid this expansion, at least. The only thing I can think of that comes close is forsaken 3 & 4, you can't pop Holm too late or else you won't make it the edge in time if you get confuse tether. Worst case, it's not like CDs have a strict usage so if you can't use Holmgang for something in particular you just use it on something else. And the most obvious difference should be, WAR doesn't need to be healed to full after Holmgang. That's really the whole kicker with LD, why is there this additional burden? It's not like it's so much better than Holm and Hallowed that it needs a negative condition attached to it everytime you use it.

I think the HP restore is made a bigger deal than it really is. Sure, all the return heals add up over the course of a fight, but at any given moment it's not going to save you, it's not going to get anywhere near close to saving you. And WAR is not performing Storm's Path for the self heal, they are doing it for the gauge generation. The self heal is just there.

That said, I don't see a particular reason why the self heal is currently locked behind grit. (I think it's a relic from the sweeping tank changes SB initially brought) It'd be the same for DRK, not spamming soul eater for the heal but because it's your highest dps combo. The heal just happens to be there. But I'd rather see a significant HP restore for DRK, changing soul eater alone isn't enough. It doesn't really do anything make DRK appreciably better than before.

So I didn't really approach that in my OP since I'd like to see something a bit different. Such as, being able to accumulate another stacking resource by performing Dark Arts that could then be converted into HP or MP in a given situation. It would need to be a fairly simple resource since DRK is already managing 2 (MP and Blood), I just think having another resource like that would open up a lot of avenues to make DRK unique again. Give it a noticeably different feel than the other tanks.

i preffer the use all you HP and being unable to die for at least 7 seconds with the same recast, since we can move it will be perfect, only we need a reliable source of recovering hp.
im in the opinion no invulnerability should be less that 5 min so i dont think that should be done.

Mmm.. I kinda see what you're saying, but in my head the DRK is "technically" invulnerable. I guess I worded it kind of short, but the idea is to have the clone take all damage while it's up. I know it kind of sounds like "if I have 60,000 HP then the clone will only absorb 59,999 HP worth of damage" but that's not exactly what I meant. It would be treated just like you, if you have 60k HP and take 100k damage, you just die. The 40k left-over damage doesn't transfer to someone else. So the clone would be the same. You could pop it a little early to absorb some AA and a TB. But this change wouldn't allow you to use it on something like UE+Hyperdrive because the UE would kill the clone (as there wouldn't be any HP left after). If we change it around and say Hyperdrive was first instead of after, maybe Hyperdrive doesn't do enough damage to kill the clone right away so it's still up to take the UE.

[shao32]

Mmm.. I kinda see what you're saying, but in my head the DRK is "technically" invulnerable. I guess I worded it kind of short, but the idea is to have the clone take all damage while it's up. I know it kind of sounds like "if I have 60,000 HP then the clone will only absorb 59,999 HP worth of damage" but that's not exactly what I meant. It would be treated just like you, if you have 60k HP and take 100k damage, you just die. The 40k left-over damage doesn't transfer to someone else. So the clone would be the same. You could pop it a little early to absorb some AA and a TB. But this change wouldn't allow you to use it on something like UE+Hyperdrive because the UE would kill the clone (as there wouldn't be any HP left after). If we change it around and say Hyperdrive was first instead of after, maybe Hyperdrive doesn't do enough damage to kill the clone right away so it's still up to take the UE.

ahhh i see you point, creates a shadow of you in theory (bcs will be a buff and meaby anew effect around you) , able to take x certain amount of HP but dont affect you the excess of damage the shadow will take from a TB and if it dont die you get full recovered right? then yess i belive its a good idea, ok ok sounds pretty, but it doesent matter that relative weaknes since the current living dead make you get the dot too

[Tint]

Dark Arts

I think you don't understand how important the ressource management for DRK gameplay is. It is the core of the job. The constant mana spending and rebuilding is what makes a DRK a DRK (in this game).

You just can't remove the Dark Arts spam without offering an alternative to spend that mana on. Changing Dark Arts to affect combo finishers is nice and all - but it doesn't solve the core problem: The ressource management.

We had the automatic mana drain through Darkside in 3.0 and we have the manual mana drain through Dark Arts in 4.0 now. The manual drain is spammy, but it gives you more control over your mana.

The question is not what else can Dark Arts do - the question is how can DRK spend his mana without losing control over it and without spamming too many buttons.

We already have a tank with different combos and buffs: WAR. I think DRK should keep his ressource management gameplay.

[Xenosan]

I think there maybe solutions to Dark Arts that live closer to it's current implementation, like tweaking some of the current abilities that are just lack-luster. Like Delirium.. not much to complain about - they even buffed in a patch.. but if DRK could trade that for WHM's Thin Air they'd probably be better off. Dark Knight: when healers have a better burst cooldown than you.

For Dark Arts I'd just want a faster activation/animation, and though it is meme-worthy: let us Dark Arts the Dark Arts. Or more accurately - let DRK hold more than 1 DA at a time. This is just a QoL, it's not about removing the spam nature of Dark Arts, but makes it feel less intrusive to the rotation.

Also move Dark Arts to lvl30 (unlocked simultaneously with Darkside as the 1st Job Quest reward), has anyone lvl'd a DRK alt since SB? Is a laughable job intro without a MP exhaust action component.

The issue for me isn't the act of Dark Arts spam itself, it's the fact that SE uses the feature as an excuse to give sub-par performance base-abilities down the pipe because, 'well you should DA it, or trade a DA for it'.

[Lyth]

...

Dark Arts
The difficulty with DRK's design in Stormblood is the rate of MP generation. The MP drain from Darkside in Heavensward was designed to partially offset the MP gain from Syphon, resulting in a gradual rise in MP with each combo. In Stormblood, this MP gain is unopposed, so it happens very quickly. This is why we're required to use Dark Arts so frequently. You can make as many interesting DA effects as you like, but you can't change the frequency with which it is used without addressing DRK's resource generation/expenditure.

The other difficulty is that DRK's total MP capacity, while suitable for Heavensward's rate/expenditure, doesn't work as well with this kind of design. Because you're gaining and spending large quantities of your MP bar every GCD, you have very little leeway to defer spending MP on your next DA move. Of course, if you make the MP capacity too large, then burst becomes less about Blood Weapon/Delirium timing and more about stockpiling resources.

If you want to decrease Dark Arts usage without re-implementing the MP drain from Darkside, then you need more actions that consume MP. oGCDs, like Dark Passenger and Carve and Spit, could be good candidates for this (especially if they moved the DA cost of Carve on to the ability itself, shaving off one DA use every minute). The problem with oGCDs, however, is that they tend to be bunched up together. So you'd either need something on a shorter recast or proc-based, letting you burn off excess MP consistently throughout combat.

One commonly suggested solution is to let Dark Arts activate for X GCDs, or even function as a stance that you can toggle. The difficulty here is that DRK's present MP generation happens in spurts, which is why you need to be able to burn it off in a GCD by GCD basis. You could still make it work, though.

Solution
Here's one possible solution.

1) Give every base combo action (Hard Slash, Syphon Strike, Souleater) a small amount of fixed MP generation.
2) Give the enhanced versions of these a fixed amount of extra potency and blood generation, without any MP generation.

Let's say that you activate Dark Arts, such that it lasts for the next 3 GCDs or so (this could be any number of GCDs, in theory). The main cost of activating Dark Arts would then be to stop your MP generation, in exchange for more blood and more damage.

Either way, it's a fairly complex problem that requires a rework of how our resource generation works. This is before we've even got into a discussion of Delirium, which is a more difficult issue in itself.

Blood Price
Abilities that generate resources on being hit are very difficult to tune. I remember that WoW had a similar issue with Rage generation, in that you often had too much or too little. In the case of Blood Price, if you tune it for single target, it becomes too powerful when you have multiple targets. If you tune it for multiple targets, it becomes nearly useless in single target.

What made this more obvious going from Heavensward to Stormblood was the fact that it was both stance locked as well as being re-tuned for very big pulls. Abilities locked behind Grit generally aren't going to be used to begin with.

I think that if the developers don't like the "resource gain on hit" idea, they should just drop it, rather than keeping it in its present form. If we get another ability crunch going into the next expansion, Blood Price and Unleash are my two top picks for replacement.

Living Dead
The number one problem with Living Dead that you always have to "work around" using it. As long as that's the case, players are going to hate using it. You should be rewarded for pressing the button.

If an ultimate move has a two minute longer recast, I want to see it have a more powerful effect. What would I like to see? I'm open to anything that doesn't involve that doesn't involve the present "heal or die" game. But here's an idea:

Living Dead: Lose all your current HP except for 1. For the next 10 seconds, you can't take damage. All attacks done to you or by you restore HP at a fixed rate (like a Blood Weapon/Price effect).

Would be a bad ability to accidentally fatfinger, but the same is true for any ultimate move.

Either way, thanks for giving your take on things.

[347SPECTRE]

The problem with axing unleash is that you're kinda screwed out of an AoE aggro move when synced down below the level in which you get abyssal drain. And if there were to get rid of Blood Price, I'd suggest removing the stance lock on Blood Weapon.

[Lyth]

In the absence of Unleash and Blood Price, I would drop Abyssal Drain down to level 6, and make Blood Weapon stance independent. I know that some people like their circular AoEs, but AD is incredibly versatile in its targeting.

[Tint]

I actually have an idea how to fix the Dark Arts spam without reworking the job too much.

Idea is to bring the automatic mana drain back. Darkside is a useless skill now anyway, activate it once and then forget about that button. So Darkside gets the mana drain back.
But instead of the mana drain over time, it becomes a mana drain for every action you use, similar to MP-Turbo. Basically every attack skill (excluding auto attacks) will have a small mana cost attached, as long as Darkside is up.

This should be closer to HW-DRK gameplay wise, but still has some benefits of SB-DRK to keep the job accessible for not so good players.

However, this idea leads to problems with TBN usage and especially to problems in tank stance, like lost selfheal from Souleater (because you can't use Dark Arts that often on it anymore) and lost damage from Dark Arts usage on Bloodspiller (Dark Arts does technically more than 140 potency when used in tank stance together with Bloodspiller).

Of course you can adjust the selfheal and potencys... but I fear there really is no easy solution. And a complete redesign of the job will upset a lot of people.

[Kabooa]

I would really rather we move away from Maintenance Weaponskill and Spam Weaponskill. Dark Knight only has Spam at the moment, but adding Maintenance to that doesn't make it more interesting. It just becomes another carbon copy.

I want to point out that "Dark Arts Spam" itself is a symptom of an underlying problem - That most OGCD abilities are just the sort you can spam whenever the cooldown is off, outside specific buff pairings. Dark Arts just reduces this to the base level - Hit button for potency. Hit it more during buff window. That said, I enjoy the idea of adding specific Dark Arts effects, which we could use more of. Rather than 'reduce Dark Arts spam', we should diversify the options for 'Dark Arts'. In a for fun rework, Dark Arts simply became a subset of abilities with the same uniform MP cost.

So using your Combo-Ending buff-granting schemata, we'd have something look like this.

Dark Arts: Black Blade
Cost: [Current DA Cost]
Recast: 30
Effect: The next 3 Weaponskills gain 60 potency. Power Slash, Soul Eater, and [New Attack] gain additional effects.

Rather than have 'maintenance' and 'spammers' you instead apply more situational boosts to an individual combo line, granting a more immediate boon instead of a rotational requirement. Ideally none of them are a 'go-to' and while this Dark Arts would be used as much as possible, the decision of which one to utilize would be made when it comes up.

Off the top of my head

Power Slash: Applies an empowered Provoke effect, matching Enmity to the highest target and adding 10% to that.
Soul Eater: Marks the target with Drain for 15 seconds, granting party members attacking it 20% of the damage they deal as health, up to 20% of your maximum health.
Guillotine: Guillotine and the next two weapon skills have their range extended by 15y.

Granted the three main lines would likely still fall into maintenance and spammers, but Dark Arts relating to weaponskills expands the toolkit rather than simply matching the others.