No DRK changes?

[Arsthan]

Why is this even a discussion. Sure, TBN is a great shield and no one is saying it isn't. On big pulls however, it pops after the first wave of auto attacks from the trash. Yes, it mitigated instantly 30k HP. But do tell me what your healer is supposed to do with 1 more GCD every 15 sec (in case you don't use Flood, which means you're not DPSing when you can. That is an issue on its own but let's not go there... for now) when the trash is going to utterly decimate your HP for the next 14-13 seconds; nothing much, you just die because while yes, you did mitigate 30k HP, you didn't mitigate the source of the consistent damage which is the most important thing on big pulls. Big difference between if the tank takes 40k with 20% reduction (instead of the original ~50k) every wave of attacks for a longer duration or reduces the first wave to nothing but takes the full damage afterwards. Burst mitigation is incredible for tank busters and such, but not so much for consistent damage - especially now that 700 potency heals do around 30-35k crits while leveling anyway. If you don't see the difference then I feel that you should try healing dungeons yourself. TBN helps, but isn't going to reliably safe you on trash pulls by any means, just delays outcome. Also don't forget that trash can crit too, which adds up VERY quickly.

Though I couldn't care less about the trash pulls honestly. I'd like to hear from someone why a tank is punished for doing its job, mitigating damage and staying alive. You pay a big chunk of your DPS as the first thing, then you get to pray to RNGus to make it pop so your DPS gets refunded. Yes, you can say that the player sucks if it doesn't pop, but the other tanks don't get punished for mitigating like that. If anything, a risk should be accompanied by a reward. The shield itself is not a reward, but a tool you need access to as a tank and whoever says the "refund on EoS" is the reward, just stop and think it through again. Not being punished is no reward - that's the norm and thus "High risk, no reward". What you guys are implying is the same as saying "My partner is beating me every day, but yesterday he didn't! He rewarded me!"
TBN's shield is great, but nowhere near worth all the things problems it comes with.

There are multiple things that can be done. 1) Removing the MP; 2) giving it a DPS gain if it pops (for all I care Dark Arts could be a free EoS and for example a +30% damage increase on it as well - there, you have your reward. There's an unending list of what it could do, even increase your speed for 15 seconds so you WANT to use it whenever you can - this would increase the ceiling though) but if you give it a DPS gain, do increase the duration to 9 or 10 seconds please... stressing about a shield is not good. 3) could be a mix of both: lowering the MP cost but leaving DA what it is today. But refunding at least half of the MP used on it if it doesn't break.

The great thing about HW DRK was that you were rewarded for good play with fun gameplay and quite a it of damage while punishing you if you didn't care for playing like you were supposed to. It just felt great. They're obviously trying to do something similar to that, but they're very visibly concerned about increasing the skill ceiling and lowering the floor. I do get where they're coming from since you want as many people playing as possible which means you don't want people to feel bad when compared to someone playing good. But that's no excuse to lower the ceiling so low that the people playing good don't get rewarded any more than the ones playing badly.

All in all, DRK should not be the only tank that gets punished for mitigating damage and instead of being refunded with a EoS, it should be a DPS gain if they plan to go down this route. How they do it it's completely up to SE. Oh and while we're at it, Dark Mind a is terrible and should be changed. Same thing for LD as I'd like to keep a Bene for better uses than to not die to my own skill, obviously.

Lastly, Blood Weapon and Delirium should be changed... Old BW is superior in both the mechanical and gameplay (fun) aspect, nothing much to add to that - people like the speed and IDK how others feel about it, but I prefered it to proc on oGCDs and auto attacks as well far more than purely on GCDs. Not to mention if they bring back old BW, it'd actually slightly increase the use of EoS and increase the DPS a little. Delirium is a tricky thing but change it somehow... anything but spamming one skill 5 times. I don't really care what it becomes as long as it doesn't stay like this. IR should be just WAR's thing (and no, Requiescat is not an IR copy, it's far closer to DWT if anything)