Drk: worst designed class

[Lyth]

Most of the Stormblood changes were the result of removing the MP drain from Darkside. Prior to this, MP generation was in a natural state of balance between Darkside and Syphon. You had a relatively slow rise in MP over time, but you also needed to have some MP in reserve for abilities like Dark Passenger and Carve and Spit. Dark Arts was still important, but it tended to come into play during periods of higher MP generation, like Blood Weapon and Blood Price.

Removing the MP drain from Darkside created several issues. First, the MP generation from Syphon was unopposed. Second, you have the addition of the new Delirium which is essentially massive MP dumps. Also, with the removal of Dark Passenger as a viable single target ability, you suddenly have an extra 2 DA worth of MP every minute.

The devs' solution to keep up with this MP excess was to replace the MP drain of Darkside with Dark Arts uses. But in order to keep up with demand, you now had to be able to use it on Syphon as well as Souleater. So if you want to use Dark Arts on an oGCD, it's a forced double weave. If you want to use any regular oGCD, it's also probably a double weave, because you need to constantly use Dark Arts to avoid capping.

I see people occasionally mention that Dark Arts gives you flexibility to "burst when you want." This shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of how the job works. Your MP bar is not big enough relative to the MP cost of Dark Arts to store up extra uses for a rainy day. You use it, or lose it. Burst is not burst. You don't dps harder. You dps longer.

All in all, it was a series of incredibly bad decisions.

If you want to fix it, the first thing that you need to look at is MP generation. Right now, all our MP generation happens on Syphon as one big block. Why? On WAR, they had the common sense to space it out. It's not like all your abilities generate no gauge until you hit Maim, at which point you have 30 extra gauge. Spread it out so that everything generates a small amount of MP. That way, you avoid having these massive MP dumps.

Delirium is another problem here. I'm not sure why the blood cost is there at all. IR had a much smaller resource cost to use at the start of this expansion and it was removed, despite it being a thousand-fold more powerful. But if your goal is to build off of Blood Weapon, it's done in completely the wrong way. What are we going to do with all this MP? We're not going to spend it faster. It's just going to take longer to burn through.

Instead of focusing on Delirium's MP generation, they should have focused on speed. There's a natural limit at which speed boosts are effective, of course. The faster your GCD, the less room you have for double weaving. But there are other ways to do "fast". Have actions hit twice. Shorten the recasts of oGCDs such that they come up very quickly while the window is active. Make it actually feel like it has an impact, instead of being just a longer Blood Weapon.

On the MP expenditure side of things, you need more ways for people to spend it. Carve and Spit should have the MP cost built in. Dark Passenger should be something that you actually want to use in single target.

And as for Dark Arts itself? In a perfectly balanced system, you'd have enough resource spending oGCDs such that Dark Arts didn't need to be constantly used. But I suppose that the easiest solution is to have it last for the full 10 seconds, boost any abilities used while it is active, and just replace MP generation with blood generation. Use Dark Arts, your MP generation stops, and your Blood generation starts.

Also, this bit about TBN being equivalent to self-healing is nonsense. Pick an older fight to solo and try to "self-sustain" yourself using just TBN. There's no way of recovering lost health, so if the fight drags on for long enough, you're going to die. It's like saying that Hallowed represents an infinite amount of self-healing.

[Hierro]

Also, this bit about TBN being equivalent to self-healing is nonsense. Pick an older fight to solo and try to "self-sustain" yourself using just TBN. There's no way of recovering lost health, so if the fight drags on for long enough, you're going to die. It's like saying that Hallowed represents an infinite amount of self-healing.

An older fight? Are we going to talk about relevant situations or not? It doesn't make sense to use "soloing old content" as valid criteria for self healing when the only valuable context is for the sake of giving healers an easier time in relevant content.

[shao32]

An older fight? Are we going to talk about relevant situations or not? It doesn't make sense to use "soloing old content" as valid criteria for self healing when the only valuable context is for the sake of giving healers an easier time in relevant content.

mitigation is not HPS, TBN is not a self-healing skill bcs it's don't recover any HP in the process so it can't be classified as such in any form of argument.

[Hierro]

mitigation is not HPS, TBN is not a self-healing skill bcs it's don't recover any HP in the process so it can't be classified as such in any form of argument.

It's all eHP, so I don't know what to tell you exactly especially when fflogs classifies it as such.

[shao32]

It's all eHP, so I don't know what to tell you exactly especially when fflogs classifies it as such.

bcs is a shield and i guess its recognice the skill effect at the same way as a galvanize from sch and put the shield mitigation in that section, if you look at WAR logs shake it off is in the same section too.

[Lyth]

...

Self-sustain means exactly what it says on the tin. You cannot measure "self-sustain" if there is a healer present. If you're capable of soloing current content, then we can use that as a metric instead.

Also, don't let fflogs (or other people, for that matter) do your thinking for you.

[Hierro]

Self-sustain means exactly what it says on the tin. You cannot measure "self-sustain" if there is a healer present. If you're capable of soloing current content, then we can use that as a metric instead.

Also, don't let fflogs (or other people, for that matter) do your thinking for you.

Good thing we're talking about healing, not sustainability. Not even WAR can "self-sustain" entirely through today's raids.

[Lyth]

Good thing we're talking about healing, not sustainability. Not even WAR can "self-sustain" entirely through today's raids.

as an interesting aside, I looked up some of the top parses for tanks on A12S. Warriors seem to average around 500 HPS in terms of sustain, but I found a DRK who broke 6.1k DPS while healing 700 HPS through liberal usage of TBN.

Keep moving the bar, friend.

[Hierro]

Keep moving the bar, friend.

You're the one asking for soloing today's content.

[Shurrikhan]

An older fight? Are we going to talk about relevant situations or not? It doesn't make sense to use "soloing old content" as valid criteria for self healing when the only valuable context is for the sake of giving healers an easier time in relevant content.

When the point you're replying to is that 'it's not sufficient in relevant content, despite what others may have you believe about TBN's strength', is it worth jumping down someone's throat to slap on the same parameters they're already implying as the reasonable limits of discussion?

In an ideal world, I wish to see blood weapon and blood price just built into the stances they are a part of, and have our cooldowns buff their attributes further.

<Spitball idea warning>

I've been thinking about this myself. Consider if Blood Weapon's MP generation is a default behavior. It creates MP at a flat amount + per-potency amount. The Blood Weapon skill itself increasingly drains MP to proportionately build Attack Speed or whatnot.

Imagine there as being Shadow, Blood, and then Black Blood (the combination of each) as resources. The first two are simply a graphic overlaid atop the HP and MP bars, showing what portion of your HP or MP can be "tapped" -- used for something more. The third is an optional bar onto which these can be duplicated, along with always showing the shared amount. Generating self-healing taps HP, with overhealing still tapping. Spending MP creates 'tapped' MP - Shadow. Both "taps" gradually fade with time, at a combination flat and percentage rate. To make the largest Blood shield you can, then, you should generate a ton of healing. To maximally augment or sustain defensive Shadow abilities (Shadowskin, Shadow Wall (now utility), Dark Dance, Dark Mind), you should rapidly spend just before having to augment/sustain. As a rule of thumb, Blood provides fixed absorption, Shadow provides chance/percentile mitigation.

Darkside allows you to consume untapped resource, albeit at lesser efficiency. For MP, this means higher potential burst at cost to sustain. For HP, this means being able to put up a blood shield at cost of current HP (where it would normally be free if from "tapped HP" alone, just consuming the tap) in time to be healed up before a big hit.

Let's say we return Shadowskin and Dark Dance in some form and throw on two Blood spenders to balance that out: Red Thirst™ (Bloodbath with a fixed bonus; great for pairing with AD or Unleash) and Grim Ward (slices upward/forward, leaving a trail of [energized, slightly gelatinous-looking] blood that forms a shield before the DRK).

So, Blood Weapon consumes MP for Attack Speed, tapping MP.
Blood Price causes HP consumed/lost to generate MP, tapping HP.
Delirium enhances certain Blood/Shadow effects for its duration.
Then your (buffed) Quietus, The Blackest Night, and Bloodspiller consume both.
(Or, have Bloodspiller spend Blood to deal massive damage and debuff the enemy to provide a flat self-heal bonus to each of your strikes, have a revised TBN spend Shadow, have Quietus spend both, and use a different second Black Blood skill -- whatever, really.)

So, you build MP and HP for bonus damage/effectiveness and survival, tap MP and HP for further bonus effectiveness/abilities, and can combine them through Black Blood for yet more.