Which DRK was the best

[Danelo]

"Do you know what was the biggest failing of SB DRK? You couldn't do this in single target.

In fact, I daresay that if you could make this happen in Shadowbringers, even Living Dead wouldn't feel as bad."

Last three sentences. Why don't they build on what worked? It felt rewarding once you got it down. Omni-tanks leveled DRK just for dungeon content bc it was the king at sustained AoE.

[Danelo]

Making something harder to play doesnt mean it will become stronger, just saying. :rolleyes.[/S]

Well obviously a job shouldn't be harder to play just because. But if a job is more difficult to pick up then there should be a payoff. I think that is what drew many to HW DRK, that high skill ceiling came with added performance, sometimes, above the rest.

[Renato]

I guessing those who voted for SB never had the chance to play HW DRK.

False. I literally began playing FFXIV again because DRK was released in 3.0 as it's my favorite class and I stuck with it even though I thought it was kind of clunky at times. I preferred SB's version more but there were times I wished certain things from HW remained.

What is the point of arguing which of the two was better between HW and SB? They both had their flaws and perks and the devs should've looked to both while making the SHB iteration rather than scrapping them altogether. What were the fun parts of HW, why were they removed and how could they be reworked to fit with how the game's changed? Which SB additions were good and what was too simplified? Most importantly, how can all these things be made to work with each other to create a cohesive whole?
You might have a preference, but you gotta admit neither was perfect, no job is.

Bickering about how "you only prefer SB because you didn't play HW" or "people look at HW with rose tinted glasses" doesn't actually help anything, it just makes DRK players look like whiny children who don't know what we want. Try to be constructive instead of fighting over which was better so we can have a set direction to push for, rather than getting stuck with the 5.0 mess.

I totally agree with everything said here. Although, I'm actually excited about 5.0 DRK and I feel like everyone should chill until they actually get to play with it. Yoshi even stated in one of the live letters that people are already saying certain jobs suck or will fail and they haven't even used them yet. It's like people are saying, "IT'S NOT WHAT WE ASKED FOR, IT SUCKS" without even giving it a chance.

[MaraD_]

In 3.0 we had the automatic mana drain from Darkside and then we had Dark Arts to further spend our mana and give some skills additional effects.

Honestly that automatic mana drain didn't worked too well, I remember situations especially with many add waves, where you simply could not regenerate your mana properly. An in general it was a bit more difficult to play the job. So the Devs thought they should make DRK easier and more accesible. That was their idea for many jobs in SB anyway.

So in 4.0 they removed the automatic mana drain from Darkside and replaced it with a manual mana drain through Dark Arts.

But then the people complained that the job has too much Dark Arts spam and also that the additional effects of Power Slash and Dark Mind were a dps loss. So they removed the Dark Arts effects or gave it also the 140 potency boost.


What is now the logical way to expand on this?

Dark Arts is just a potency boost button now, so why not simly replace it with an actual off-GCD attack?

3.0 Dont let MP run out
4.0 Dont let MP cap.

Since MP can cap, this is why more abilities used DA, and why DA was spamable.
But they only created the "Dont let MP cap" because people complained they didnt like running out of MP.

There were plenty of ways to deal with DRK, w/o rebuilding it into its newer play style.

(1) Run low on MP (mostly the DRKs fault) how do you handle surprise adds you werent expecting?
Answer: Learn from your mistake, and next time in the same fight, be ready...
Answer#2: DEVs make unleash weaker, but more enmity, and drastically cut its MP cost. Establishing threat is all unleash is for. DA+DP is the burst AoE dmg, followed by AD for sustain AoE DPS.
Most of what I just said came to be, but they could have lowered the cost of unleash, if they didnt want anything too drastic.
Answer#3: Make an AoE WS. Quietus could have been the eclipse of DRK. Both an emergency AoE option under low to no MP, with a minor MP gain based on the number of targets hit (so as not to be used on bosses) plus stacks with blood bath.

(2) Evasion from DA+DP and DA+DD also hurt MP gains. (The primary clunky design of DRK in 3.0) Do you keep evasion DRK? Do you keep the 75% MP loss?
Clearly only used in add phases. Very hard to pull off mid boss fight, less hard to pull off in trash pulls.
Answer: The above version of Quietus semi counters the MP issues.
Answer#2: Evasions proc an MP gain or DPS increase, to compliment the parry/reprisal system. (including procing a quietus)

(3) Reprisal has to go to all tanks, to homogonize their raid mitigation utility. Anticipation is going to all tanks (for some unknown reason, instead of foresight) Do we get rid of fishing for parry procs for physical mitigation?
Answer: You could keep the Dark Dance, and also have anticipation, since its still good to have both. (even more so if they stack for parry fishing) Followed by a replacement to reprisal. The Blackest Night. Parries trigger a use of TBN in place of reprisal. No DPS loss since there's no MP cost, but no DPS gain from the old reprisals DPS. (TBN could still proc a weaker oGCD attack if broken, so as to try and time it still, or to give a free DA if broken)
Answer#2: Dont keep DD, but anticipation can still do the above, or similar.

The last issues have been dealt with mostly, even you pointed out as much with DM and PS.

I would be fine with a direct dmg version of DA, IF we dont have the interplay of DA on DP and DD. (DP needed an adjustment, so you chose between AoE or single target basically. Only getting the blind on the AoE as well, and a bare bones threat modifier on the DA version. The DA DPS increase shouldnt have been worth it on single target.)

But if most hard/savage content is built around single target, then DA has little use right? Well, yes and no, as some bosses did have adds, and picking between Mp for more AoE, or using CnS for single target DPS ends up being the main decision maker. So it was mostly fine in HW.
Having it effect DM was unnecessary. (unless it could do something towards DPS, but that requires much more reworking)
Having it grant HP drain on AD w/o DPS increase is similar to how it feels rather weak to put on DD as well. (plus u wont really have the MP to do that too much, w/o DD being fixed to not interfere with MP gains)

Anyways, there were plenty of options to fix DRKs clunkiness, and at the same time, give the people (that want easier MP DRK) something to work with.
honestly DRKs MP management wasnt hard at all. Things like extra MP drained on SS in tank stance only works for those who dont leave tank stance, and werent probably very skilled as players. If they werent skilled, spaming unleash instead of AD was more than enough to do what content they did. I even showed people how lazy they could be, by not putting up DS (grit only) only using VIT accessories, and ONLY used flash on trash pulls, no CDs. But I only used Power Slash on bosses. Never had MP issues, never had threat issues, I was just obviously not doing good DPS. A bad player could easily handle HW DRK. The issue is they just didnt like being careful. The current DRK does penalize being careful (capping MP) but they just arent aware of it. You notice you're messing up when you cant AoE on new adds, but they dont notice when they have max MP, and can AoE newly spawned adds, since it seems like they handled the situation just fine.

[Giubba]

Hello since today the poll is closed.


Here the results





As you can see the overwhelming majority picked Heavensward iteration as the best one.


As stated previously i will re propose this question 1 month in ShB launch and see what will be the result.

[Valic]

I didn't even play DRK in HW and I can already agree it was better back then.... or ya know, more original.

[RyuDragnier]

DRK was definitely better in HW. Rather than just spamming DA for almost every attack to avoid capping out on MP, you were instead constantly losing MP so using it was a tactical move on your part. You had to actually think on when it was best to use it...plus it was mostly used for cooldowns, making it more of a defensive option than the offensive option it became in SB (a move which made me hate DA).

[guardin]

Heavensward Heavensward Heavensward.
The fact that people even voted for Stormblood at all is kind of worrisome to me.

HW dk was decent but sb was better. the dark arts made us feel like dk. hw felt clunky. shb seems to be the best of both worlds until they kinda shot their selves in the foot by removing dk best feature dark arts. didnt even get a cool aura like in the trailer...

[Shurrikhan]

Wow... censorship much Square-Enix?


I actually had two posts from the old thread detailing what I liked about DRK in Heavensward and what good changes Stormblood had and how to even improve upon those 2 iterations...

Remember that 1000+ post Summoner thread full of good ideas from the HW era? If so, it's existed only in your memories since page 104 or so. Can't have too much constructive criticism in one place, after all! Or, at all, since it wasn't exactly split in its removal.

I've seen some toxic threads shut down. I think, at this point, though, I've seen at least as many civil and highly detailed threads removed as soon as their discussion gets far enough along in the concreteness of listed wants or comprehensiveness in suggested solutions.

To get back to the topic at hand, this is actually a lot more lopsided than I expected it would be. I figured a more 60/40 split, or even closer, and that's coming from someone who ultimately, however slightly, preferred the HW idea of a DRK.

That being said, prior to the Shadowbringers iteration I would have had to ask simply, "Why not both?" We could have returned counterattacks, defensive spending options, and the oGCD diversity all while maintaining DRK's APM and while making even better use of the Black Blood skills.

...Now, instead, I have to wonder, "Why play DRK?"

[Reynhart]

shb seems to be the best of both worlds until they kinda shot their selves in the foot by removing dk best feature dark arts. didnt even get a cool aura like in the trailer...

What really bugs me about ShB version is the Soul Eater combo ad nauseum. I thought they were past this when the added new combos to PLD in HW.