So...DRK kinda sucks now.

[Dragonkat]

Lets be honest. People complaining about DA spam are actually saying this.

"I had to hit DA between every attack because if I didn't I wouldn't get max dps and be at the top of the parse"

Again it's another example of how SE sacrificing everything to the all powerful DPS > all meta got us Balance bot AST, NIN still being kicked from savage content despite Yoshi's statement on wanting every role to be viable, and this utility free garbage version of DRK that plays like a shallow uninspired warrior wannabe. Minus the things that made it fun and feel like a real unique tank in the form of blood price, sole survivor, AD spam, and passenger among others.

Now if you didn't give a damn about your dps and did oh i don't know this crazy thing called be a tank, DA "spam" was only needed two places.

Dark passenger for the blind
Abyssal drain for the HP

Optional being

Carve and spit if you didn't need the extra mp boost
syphon strike, soul eater, and blood spiller for the extra potency

Saying you had to press it between every attack is frankly ridiculous. And regardless of that at least that DA had what felt like a real impact on my skills instead of this new and not improved DA spam that's an equally visually uninspired sword poke or slash to keep a paltry dps boost up for our watered down IR. Which you'll never bother to use quietus on anyway, and don't even get me started on the nerfs to it's MP gain.

Now DRK is a one trick pony, and that tricks name is TBN. Which even then has gone from a meaningful impact in terms of impact and lore (taking pain to get blood) to just a neutral at best to dps loss at worst power that's not even needed when you can just pop rampart or arms length on a trash pull, pop flood for the dps gain and extra hit off the bat and let the healers do this crazy thing called heal [sarcasm] unless that dips into their precious dps uptime too? [/sarcasm]

The class works, but it's not fun. The problem isn't even homogenization though, it's the shallowness and utter lack of identity that kills it for me. you could have named it big sword guy for all the similarity it has to any previous incarnations of dark knights anymore.

In an attempt to be constructive though I will offer this.

*Give us back old quietus, make that risk vs reward mean something on big pulls
*At the same time give us back a spamable AD at 3000 MP, make us have meaningful choices to bring back the resource management feel old DRK had.
*Give back Blood price for an extra mp regen tool that again can be a risk v reward / or at least make MP regen with delirium consistent, 200 mp for a BS is insulting.
*Take a page from BLM and extend the TBN duration by 3 secs to make it viable to pop on trash pulls when you're overgeared for the content (seriously the fact it works better when you aren't keeping up is idiotic, aug scaven gear couldn't break it until i was fighting 4+ mobs in holminster switch at 71)

[RadicalPesto]

Lets be honest. People complaining about DA spam are actually saying this.

"I had to hit DA between every attack because if I didn't I wouldn't get max dps and be at the top of the parse"

Yes, indeed, the people complaining about DA spam are actually saying that playing Dark Knight correctly, instead of throwing out single target abyssal drains and fully resisted blinds at raid bosses, required you, indeed, to use Dark Arts at a rate of around 10+ casts a minute. Inventing freestyle rotations against raid bosses to compensate for the correct rotation not being fun is not many people's idea of how to make tanking entertaining in this game. If we're going to be talking in the realm of just pressing random buttons at the boss I don't even see why people would complain about the new Delirium, since you can choose to not press the same button 5 times in a row during it, if that is your desire, you could, indeed, mix Quietus and Bloodspillers in randomly since DPS doesn't matter and only tanking does, I guess?

[Nihility]

I like DRK, It just feels like it has a bunch of leftover artifacts from what it used to be making it kind of weird and clunky
It could use a good amount of streamlining

[Duskane]

Sorry. Cant consider the opinion of someone who hasn't even tried the job valid. Level it past 32 then comment on it

Yeah because alts are not a thing

[Xenosan]

Preferences aside, main disapointment I have is in the false advertising of a 'DRK rework.'

90% of the DRK rework was the consequence of MP normalization and tank homogenization. They had to make those changes. The only unique rework I feel was in converting DA potency delivery to Edge/Flood (the spam removal). Everything else was residual. Yet the residual of SB : the no DA-Dark Mind : somehow remained as is.. Essentially doubled down on with Dark Missionary.. When they said rework I think of the transformation PLD has gone through since 3.0. And the two are really not comparable, imo.

--And I agree that WAR, though maybe not be as bad shape as DRK imo, is also on the wrong path.

If SE wants/needs a simple job to entice new or less engaged players, dont sabotage an existing, introduce an Onion Knight or something.

[TheForce]

DRK is way more fun now.
No more Dark Arts spam, effective and interesting mitigation technique in TBN that feels great to pull off.
No other tank has anything as satisfying as TBN right now.

Living Dead is still a problem, but it always has been.
Personally I think the penalty for not getting healed in Living Dead should just be weakness, as if you died and were raised, but without actually dying and losing aggro.

Maybe tweak Abyssal Drain. Reduce it's cooldown, and change it's HP regen calculation to give more for the first target and have it drop off from there.

I disagree...especially with what you said about DRK being more fun now. Now mind you, a class's fun factor varies depending on the person so this is going to be a rather subjective debate, but I still would like to share my thoughts with you.

Firstly, I agree that Dark Arts needed a tweak but I don't think the correct answer was to outright remove it (let's be real here, the new "Dark Arts" that grants you the free Flood or Edge is only similar to the old Dark Arts in name, they are completely different mechanics). You got to admit that Dark Arts was a rather interesting concept (situational skill augmentation), it was just handled poorly. The spam and constant MP drain that accompanied it was definitely annoying, but imo, it was much more tolerable than only having one single target combo, snail-like mp regen, an almost scripted playstyle, and overall just less choices/less freedom. Also, I disagree with the new TBN being more satisfying or more interesting. It feels way too scripted now, there's no choice and no options to weigh, which results in less engaging gameplay (imo). In SB, TBN breaking would you 50 meter instantly, and with the meter you could either just do raw damage and cast Bloodspiller, use (my personal favorite option) Quietus if you were in a mob and regain beautiful amounts of MP all while dealing aoe damage and begin your Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain loop while also generating enough MP to cast more TBNs and becoming nearly invincible in mobs, or pop Delirium for that quick and easy MP regen and also extended Blood Weapon/Price.

In ShB, you can either.....do Edge....or Flood, and these are essentially the same moves, just that one is aoe and one is single target. Compared to SB's TBN, ShB's just seems so uninspired and honestly, kind of lazy...

I agree about LD, the skill is laughable and it's very disappointing that they still have not made any tweaks to it. However, the suggestion that you proposed isn't too bad! It almost sounds like you want LD to be a self-raise, I like that.

And as for Abyssal Drain, I think a decent fix for it would be to just give it two charges.

[TheForce]

Preferences aside, main disapointment I have is in the false advertising of a 'DRK rework.'

90% of the DRK rework was the consequence of MP normalization and tank homogenization. They had to make those changes. The only unique rework I feel was in converting DA potency delivery to Edge/Flood (the spam removal). Everything else was residual. Yet the residual of SB : the no DA-Dark Mind : somehow remained as is.. Essentially doubled down on with Dark Missionary.. When they said rework I think of the transformation PLD has gone through since 3.0. And the two are really not comparable, imo.

--And I agree that WAR, though maybe not be as bad shape as DRK imo, is also on the wrong path.

If SE wants/needs a simple job to entice new or less engaged players, dont sabotage an existing, introduce an Onion Knight or something.

Strongly agree.

[TheForce]

We didnt lose some of these things so much as they got displaced by reworks due to TP and tank homogenization. We dont have the blind, per se, but we got arms legth with a slow (so less RNG in that regards). There are nice changes that happened that were good for DRK, but those changes were a matter of addressing tank role changes generally. Overall, yes, DRK does feel heavily peared down. TBN with 25% mitigation is amazing. Not gonna deny that. But if thats it really, well, It just doestn feel super worth it, especially since this change was a bigger benefit to other targets before us (we got what...5% increase, where another target got 15%). All they did with Dark Mind is split it into two CDs now, and make one an AoE. So its like having a second reprisal for magic specific damage (nice length admittedly). AoE combo is cool but SBs aoe management was much more fun and interesting. Doing it just right meant you were pushing out good damage and getting great mitigation. This is now just spam the 2 CD AoE combo, fill it with FoS between GCDs, and use Quietus when you can on 3 or more targets.

It's just kinda...meh. There's nothing that makes it feel like it's own class anymore. Its a mish mash of War and PLD dumbed down to a very low skill ceiling. Im not saying it should be super hard to play DRK, but it doesnt feel like I ahve to do much thinking at all to do well with it. Nothing in its kit stands out as unique. Its all filler or reskins. It really is a killjoy for me.

Nice write up. Agree with everything you said, especially your point about SB's aoe management.

[Duskane]

For new Dark alot of the stuff just doesn't feel great

Blood weapon lost it's haste and now just a delayed infuriate

I don't even mind the blood spiller spam so much but it feels extremely lack luster compared to IR

Living Shadow is just something you throw out occasionally has such a minor effect on overall game play and Delirium only makes Blood spiller free not LS which is kinda odd.

Salted Earth is just bad now no more blood tick either needs to be stronger or Turned into some form of utility for Party similar to healer bubbles.

abysmal Drain needs to have a shorter CD just to help with that self healing

Aesthetically the jobs fine
But Dark in HW and SB was all about speed now it's all been stripped away in ShB
I don't even care if Dark is complex or Brain dead just want the job to not get gutted every expansion and just head back to what it was at some point.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Now if you didn't give a damn about your dps and did oh i don't know this crazy thing called be a tank, DA "spam" was only needed two places.

Dark passenger for the blind
Abyssal drain for the HP

Optional being

Carve and spit if you didn't need the extra mp boost
syphon strike, soul eater, and blood spiller for the extra potency

Saying you had to press it between every attack is frankly ridiculous. And regardless of that at least that DA had what felt like a real impact on my skills instead of this new and not improved DA spam that's an equally visually uninspired sword poke or slash to keep a paltry dps boost up for our watered down IR. Which you'll never bother to use quietus on anyway, and don't even get me started on the nerfs to it's MP gain.

Now DRK is a one trick pony, and that tricks name is TBN. Which even then has gone from a meaningful impact in terms of impact and lore (taking pain to get blood) to just a neutral at best to dps loss at worst power that's not even needed when you can just pop rampart or arms length on a trash pull, pop flood for the dps gain and extra hit off the bat and let the healers do this crazy thing called heal [sarcasm] unless that dips into their precious dps uptime too? [/sarcasm]

The class works, but it's not fun. The problem isn't even homogenization though, it's the shallowness and utter lack of identity that kills it for me. you could have named it big sword guy for all the similarity it has to any previous incarnations of dark knights anymore.

In an attempt to be constructive though I will offer this.

*Give us back old quietus, make that risk vs reward mean something on big pulls
*At the same time give us back a spamable AD at 3000 MP, make us have meaningful choices to bring back the resource management feel old DRK had.
*Give back Blood price for an extra mp regen tool that again can be a risk v reward / or at least make MP regen with delirium consistent, 200 mp for a BS is insulting.
*Take a page from BLM and extend the TBN duration by 3 secs to make it viable to pop on trash pulls when you're overgeared for the content (seriously the fact it works better when you aren't keeping up is idiotic, aug scaven gear couldn't break it until i was fighting 4+ mobs in holminster switch at 71)

You forgot to mention Power Slash(coolest ability for a combo ender btw) for extra aggro/enmity generation, which as an offtank I used over Syphon Strike as that was more of a 'in case main tank dies' scenario I could turn Grit on if I had the MP, Provoke, and Power Slash maybe twice to make sure I had the boss' attention. (had to cut out some of the quote to post and too lazy to edit after posting)