One change for DRK: Darkside increases attack speed instead of damage

[Reynhart]

Living Shadow ? oGCD, 50 Blood Cost.

Yes, build 50, spend 50 on Living Shadow.

If you just build 50 and spend 50, you're gonna end up badly delaying LS, especially when it ligns up with Delirium which delays your Blood generation by 5 GCDs.

LS and Del lign up once every 6 minutes, and for every LS+Del, you have BW available to quickly rebuild any blood you need.

It is more to do than WAR.

WAR has to make sure to not use Inner Release at a bad moment, or he'll lose Storm's Eye, also to not use Infuriate during Inner Release, but to have it far enough in its CD so that it can recharge it without waste during the Fell Cleave spam, while still using Upheaval on CD, IR or not. Also Nascent Flash is better aligned with a burst window, so that your target can take full benefit from it.

I took these examples to prove that having less combos doesn't mean a job is less busy or has less things to do. To prove that there are other ways to make jobs interesting and busy than just giving them extra combo finishers.

But DRK isn't busy. On top of having only one combo, it doesn't have any actual management to do with its main damage buff nor its ressources, and no synergy between skills. And I was suggesting a new finisher because it's an easy "fix". But sure, you could give it another MP spender, so that you'd actually have to judge if you risk losing Darkside, or reducing either the MP gain or the duration, so that refreshing it too soon would be a bad decision...

Which is just using Upheaval on CD since it automatically ligns up. No thought process involved.

Ok, so, basically, the only management you mentionned (Del+LS) always ligns up with BW to compensate for misspending blood, but you use "ligning up" as a way to dismiss any actual management ?

[Freyyy]

Ok, so, basically, the only management you mentionned (Del+LS) always ligns up with BW to compensate for misspending blood, but you use "ligning up" as a way to dismiss any actual management ?

But this is just not true at all. You're not using them back to back or on the same oGCD slot in the opener. They are slightly delayed from eachother. It can also severely be altered by fight mechanics forcing you to delay one or more of these CDs, completely changing their timings and the way it interacts with your resources. Raid bosses aren't dummies. There are times where you have Del with LS close to coming back but you don't have BW at the same time to compensate so you have to plan on having enough gauge before hitting Del so that you'll be able to hit LS right as it comes up after it. Again, it's not super complex but it's still more to worry about than WAR who just has to press Upheaval immediatly whenever it's available. Also, Blood Weapon, which is considered as DRK's Infuriate, isn't just "press and get" with a charge system that makes it very easy to manage. It gives you the extra resources by altering your resource generation on every GCD, making some give you 10 and some give you 30 (since it'll always add 10 extra Blood), which is more active than just pressing the button and getting 50 gauge with a very big and forgiving window of use. It also alters the Delirium phase by making it generate Blood instead of not. Also, even when BW + Del + LS are lining up (which won't happen at the exact same time, it'll line up in a delayed fashion making it more "awkward" in a good way IMO), if you just mindlessly spend gauge everytime you get 50 you're gonna end up delaying LS by multiple GCDs nonetheless since Del + BW only generates 10 per GCD.

WAR has to make sure to not use Inner Release at a bad moment, or he'll lose Storm's Eye, also to not use Infuriate during Inner Release, but to have it far enough in its CD so that it can recharge it without waste during the Fell Cleave spam, while still using Upheaval on CD, IR or not. Also Nascent Flash is better aligned with a burst window, so that your target can take full benefit from it.

The thing with SE having the risk to drop because of IR has also been made trivial by ShB since you can now start your combo, go into IR, then after your 5 FCs just continue the combo. Also, SE has 30sec duration. It's very forgiving with IR being only 10. You can go into IR with 15 seconds left on Eye while having your combo started and just end your combo with Eye after your FC spam and it won't drop. It's... Literally just changing your combo ender once every 30s, as I said. Same with Infuriate as I said earlier. The charge system made it completely trivial since you can wait up to twice its CD and still not lose any DPS. It makes FC cutting its CD by 5sec much more forgiving to optimise compared to SB even when accounting for the fact that IR wants you to avoid using it for 10sec. There's nothing more to manage than before, on the contrary. IR cuts Infuriate's CD by 25sec in total. The charge system gives you a whole extra 60 seconds of flexibility. You just have to use it at least once some time before going IR and you'll be fine. And what's your point with Nascent Flash ? It'll be used on mechanics that require it whether it's during a burst window or not. You're not gonna delay your burst just for that. You might hold on to an Infuriate charge for that but the fight dictates its use more than anything (when you're not just using Raw Intuition for a TB on yourself that is). You sound like you're overthinking WAR a lot.

Also again, I didn't say that DRK was a busy job. I said it was more busy than braindead WAR. Of course, compared to DPS jobs it's very lackluster. I also want SE to make tanks more complex and engaging. I've been saying it on multiple threads. Tanking in this game feels more and more shallow. I just don't think that "it only has one combo" is a valid reason to say a job is less busy or braindead. There are plenty of other reasons, and just giving them an extra combo finisher won't fix its problems. It might help (I suggested to give us Power Slash back with an interesting effect myself some time ago), but if we want to make the jobs more interesting and impactful we need more. And I'm more and more leaning towards the idea that combos are more limiting factors rather than interesting gameplay mechanics in a tab targetting game with such a long GCD. It takes a lot of space and time for something that could take one slot. Space and time that could be used for more interesting skills and mechanics within every job in the game.

snip

Every single one of your points about WAR are just like... "WAR just has to not be stupid". Nothing in there is as complex as you try to make it sound like and/or contradicts any of my points.