Ideas to improve ShB DRK's gameplay (Please SE)

[Freyyy]

Hello fellow tanks/DRK mains. (And hello Square Enix, if you happen to read this)

Since the media tour embargo has lifted and the highly anticipated DRK rework got revealed, a lot of people including me have expressed their dissatisfaction in the tank forums.

I'm not going to list every issues people have with the incoming iteration of the DRK job here, but I will link you to some posts in other threads in order to summarize it :

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5000392

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5002292

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5000824

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5002685

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...25#post5004725

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So now let's get to the main topic of this thread. Since we got all these informations, I've been thinking about how the devs could "fix" this rework without spending an eternity on it. I want it to be reasonably achievable within one or two patches after release. I've had multiple ideas, one of which is briefly mentionned in one of the posts above. I'm going to put a little more details on that.

I'm not going to go into potencies; this is very easily adjusted. What I want is more engaging gameplay for the job. Performance is important but it's just changing numbers.

First off we have to make the "maintaining Darkside" idea an actual thing gameplay-wise.

Then we have to implement another combo besides Souleater, because right now ShB DRK's GCD rotation is gonna feel like a WAR without Storm's Eye. Just straight up Path spam with Fell Cleaves here and there outside of Inner Release window.

We can hit two birds with one stone on both of these issues. There is my suggestion :

- Bring Power Slash back as a Darkside extender. Make it combo off of Syphon Strike so that we don't lose MP regen.
- Make EoS/FoS pure damaging MP spenders.

That's a step in the right direction, but that's not enough. It'd just make us change our combo finisher once every 30sec. So I thought about something like that :

- Power Slash should only extend Darkside. Not give it.
- Instead of having Edge/Flood of Darkness automatically upgrade to EoS/FoS at level 74, make them upgrade in-battle through job mechanics.

How do we make that happen ?

- EoD/FoD would give Darkside, but they have the same MP cost and lower potency than EoS/FoS. Going in Darkside would then upgrade them to EoS/FoS, which in exchange don't give Darkside anymore.
- Power Slash would then be used to extend Darkside. Stalwart Soul for AoE rotation (maintaining Darkside being a non-issue in AoE doesn't really matter).

Failing to extend Darkside properly would lead to losing EoS/FoS potencies by forcing us into using EoD/FoD to reapply it on top of losing Darkside's passive bonus damage. It rewards good rotation just like NIN with Huton and Armor Crush.

That's already a lot better. Then just give us Blood Weapon's haste and lower CD back, and change Delirium. Maybe instead of enabling free Bloodspiller spam, enable free EoS spam, that way it's a little different. You'd go GCD > EoS > GCD > EoS > GCD > EoS > GCD > EoS instead of just Bloodspiller five times. Again, potencies can be tweaked, I'm not going into complex DPS calculations.


This first part would be enough to make the job more interesting.
But you know what would be ideal for a lot of DRK mains ?
Getting back the HW feel of the job in some way.

Luckily as of the writing of this I came up with something for that :

Put EoS on a 30s CD, give us Dark Arts back as a button and make our MP regen rate similar to HW's in terms of % per minute (If you have to bring back Darkside's MP drain then do it). No more DA Syphon Strike or DA Plunge.
Only Souleater and Carve & Spit. No spam.

This would bring back the old MP priority system. We used to have that, remember. DA C&S was 350 potency for 1 DA, DP was 150 potency for half a DA, and a DA on SE was worth 140 potency. It led to DA C&S > DP > DASE priority (when it came to single target at least). So every 30 seconds you had to account for the MP needed for DP, and every 60 seconds you had to account for a DA on C&S. The rest of the time you'd just be using DASE to prevent overcapping, but it was far from spammy since we also had the Delirium combo.

In ShB, such a system would then be EoS > DA C&S > DASE. Every 30s you'd have to think about having the MP for an EoS, every 60s for DA C&S, and then you'd use DASE to prevent overcapping.

TBN could stay as it is in the current ShB build. DA could be spent on EoS as well to make it free, on top of having all the other effects.
Delirium would put EoS/FoS on a 2sec cooldown for 10seconds while making it free. Huge oGCD spamming burst window instead of GCD like Inner Release.

We'd still have the Blood meter, Bloodspiller and Living Shadow with all that. You'd then have Darkside, MP and Blood to manage, that way DRK would be the oGCD-heavy resource management tank once again for real. BOOM, job identity bois.


If I was able to come up with that in ten minutes of thinking, then the devs can pull something similar if not better in a month, or even within one or two patches after ShB's release.

Come on Square Enix. Yoshi, please dude. It's not that hard is it ?


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Tank mains, DRK mains, your feedback is appreciated.

Edit : English isn't my first language, I have a pretty good level but my grammar might be somewhat inaccurate sometimes, so sorry if that's the case.