The Ultimate DRK Rework

[cactuarzzzz]

just want to say I'm happy with drk right now. better than stormblood.
the only thing I can agree with is that tanks need to feel different from each other. right now only pld achieves this. and even here you could argue that magic phase isn't much different from inner release/delirium phase. gnb is different too but just a dps in disguise.

You missed the party? here's the warp portal>https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ut-Living-Dead.

[Starkbeaumont]

You missed the party? here's the warp portal>https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ut-Living-Dead.

what does the old discussion about living dead has to do with this though? it's a bad cd the way it is. I guess every drk can agree on this. unless there is more in this topic you linked but you don't expect me to read the whole thing. Also i don't believe you are not allowed in savage parties cause of LD. A lot of groups just manage fine with drks.

[Baxcel]

As someone who loved to DRK during Stormblood and absolutely hates it right now we do not need to return to stormblood style of DRK..

Now hear me out.. Dark Arts was to much bloat on skills even with your reduction on MP to minimize the use of it.. it is still to much.. people will do what they did with it in StormBlood.. spam it.. freakout about lack of mp and then never return to the class again..

Those that don't do it that way wouldn't return too due to the hate of DarkArts..

My suggestion to fixing DRK would be to fix 3 big issues that currently ruin the class..

1)its Warrior lite.. i don't want my DRK to build a Guage use a knockoff fellcleave(bloodsplitter) and then pop a inner release(delirium) for 5 more blood splitters..

We shouldn't have a inner release rotation we should be able to build up enough blood between combos to put out a bloodsplitter when we need or want.

2)Living Dead needs a rework.. so many time during Stormblood did it get wasted due to being healed to soon or that the healers couldn't meet the healing requirement from Walking Dead to save me.. A super shouldnt require a white mage on standby to Benny me.

I'd suggest remaking the skill so once Living Dead is used you can't receive any healing during the duration.. once you enter Living Dead you take no damage during it so you can only be healed up.. also I would remove the death on not being fully healed.. we shouldn't be cursing ourselves with doom to try an survive an attack.. maybe add a special effect to the DRK that any attack you do during the super will heal you for that much HP.. thus giving the DRK some solo sustainability in emergency situations.

3)DRKs need a heal that isn't attached to their combos.. WAR has Equal.. Pally has Clem.. GNB has Aurora..

I'd suggest a skill that would work like Clemency.. im going call it Blood for Blood for now.. it would be a spell with the same cast time as Clemancy.. let it deal damage an heal for the amount done.. or better yet rework Abysal Drain into the heal.. remove the outrageous timer and make it a single target damage an heal on the GCD

I'm sure someone would have a better idea then this for fixing the glass but I know that's the 3 things that would need to be fixed to being me back to playing a DRK again

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Please,You aren't the one who have to deal with LD and being locked out of savage party that have no WHM. You also aren't the one who have to deal with blood weapon weird tick. BLM Player don't always gonna have to be the tester because they got Mr.producer who main that job to make sure it's perfect before release unlike some other job and I didn't just make a baseless argument many people including the mentor of balance discord noticed this.

Other tank main who's now in a good place sure love to quote "All tank is balance right now" and before you thinking about convince me you better read this thread>https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ut-Living-Dead

I never once mentioned LD, but okay, LD performs well when it is used as a planned cooldown, not so much when used in a panic/ emergency situation. DRK are not locked out of any savage parties, regardless of WHM present or not, that's simply you talking out of your a**. Mentors in DRK balance recommend more Sks if you are missing the last GCD under blood weapon, might be that your gear is inadequate or you're pressing BW too early.

So what if Yoshida plays BLM, doesn't mean the devs aren't gonna not look at the job and see how players play it and then check for a means to balance if there is imbalance or if player find issues within the job or role. If BLM was so perfect, there wouldn't have been as many QoL adjustments made in the past for BLM after an expac launch. Example of players being testers is SB launch, when the players found a better rotation for NIN than what the devs were using, NIN got nerfed, it happens, can't say any job will be perfect at launch.

Also like Starkbeaumont, I ain't reading some random dude making yet another qq LD is bad post for the 1,000th time on the forums. For you to claim LD makes DRK lesser to the other tanks, even though the skill has not changed once since it has been introduced, and thus disregard the rest of the job's toolkit, is so pathetic. So you actually have to use the thing between your ears before using the skill. But that is very much DRK for the last two expacs, risk versus reward, TBN and LD are both risk versus reward. All tanks are accepted in PFs, all tanks are capable of clearing any content without a single issue, and all tanks are in close proximity of DPS in all fights, that's as balanced as you are gonna get in performance.

[bundythenoob]

So what if Yoshida plays BLM, doesn't mean the devs aren't gonna not look at the job and see how players play it and then check for a means to balance if there is imbalance or if player find issues within the job or role. If BLM was so perfect, there wouldn't have been as many QoL adjustments made in the past for BLM after an expac launch. Example of players being testers is SB launch, when the players found a better rotation for NIN than what the devs were using, NIN got nerfed, it happens, can't say any job will be perfect at launch.

Yoshi P playing BLM allows him to see the faults in the jobs performance and make necessary QOL adjustments. that is a good thing forsure, but where is the developer who plays tanks and can make changes when players find issues with the job? what about the devs who plays healer jobs and notice that there are some QOL changes that can be made?

-why have the only QOL changes within the last year been a few tweaks to WAR (that any WAR player would have noticed within 5 mins of
playing) and the reluctant readdition of Energy Drain (which comes too late to help lv 30-45 SCH mana problems)
-Where are the changes to DRK and healers in general since so many people have had an issue with the reworks since the job changes were shown before launch?
-Where are the changes to SCH since so many people have had an issue with its ghosting fairies, deleted utility, and unsatisfying gameplay loop for the game's traditional tactical battle medic?

just the fact alone that BLM got so many QOL adjustments should be proof enough that having a dedicated developer for certain jobs would be much better than only having 4 people, who dont even like to play the tank or dps jobs. seeing as how we've had about a year straight of radio silence on the matter, I would sincerely hope square is working on hiring more job developers and battle system devs, because this game is way too popular and brings in way too much money for them not to work on the gameplay identity issues present in the job kits.

[bundythenoob]

just want to say I'm happy with drk right now. better than stormblood.
the only thing I can agree with is that tanks need to feel different from each other. right now only pld achieves this. and even here you could argue that magic phase isn't much different from inner release/delirium phase. gnb is different too but just a dps in disguise.

I'm glad you're enjoying SHB DRK, but don't you think even this iteration could use some tweaks to bring back some of its old gameplay identity?

why not make abyss drain a mana spender for some variety? with a bit of number tweaks it can be balanced for single target and multi combat efficiency.
why not make dark arts proc affect more skills than just 2? it could easily have solved the problem of dark arts spam, since its effectively now on a 15s+ timer. it could have easily brought back the HW level of decision making to empower our kit.
why not move stalwart soul to lv 40 to fix the jobs lack of mana generation? and make its rotation feel much better than just unleash till lv 66 when u get to hit quietus every now and then?

PLD achieved the ability to become accessible while retaining its identity, so why should DRK players settle for a WAR remake that only serves to lessen WARs identity as well?

[bundythenoob]

I agree wholeheartedly and feel that encounter design is what really needs to be leveraged to give tanks more direct engagement for the role and to feel like a "tank".
To me being a tank is about keeping control of the fight and making sure that the boss is doing what you want it to do. The design of essentially a tank and spank while navigating general mechanics that affect the whole party doesn't really convey that feeling.
The general mechanics, the tank busters, the dps checks and the stuff they have done so far are good and they should keep doing that, but they need to start adding in more things specifically for tanks to have to control and manage asides from being able to take a beating.
A few things that come to mind are making boss positioning a more important and dynamic thing in encounters, more aggro drops/resets/multi-enemy boss fights that require swapping targets between tanks and other such things forcing tanks to have to utilize on-the-fly aggro tools like provoke, and more mechanics requiring the tanks to actively protect other party members with their abilities. Stuff like that. Then give the tanks more abilities to deal with those mechanics like a stronger defensive to use on others but on a longer recast.
I feel doing things like that would do a lot to make the tank role feel more unique and sell the fantasy of being a protector.

The argument of tanking being better designed sadly is a lost cause when it comes to this game, mostly due to the developer's intentions of being casual friendly. In terms of savage and ultimate, yes that's where the devs have the room to implement the most tank-like gameplay ideas, and I believe they will continue to do so going forward, but sadly those ideas will not see the light of day when it comes to the dungeons, trials, and even normal raids.

looking at it from the beginning with their ARR combat design, square has designed most of the game to get people to focus solely on their rotations and maximising output, and then adding difficulty with enemy positioning, mob patrol routes, or even having small dungeon gimmicks to keep the players on their toes by the lv 50 content. sadly though, as the years have gone by, they have toned down the difficulty, and so if they tried to add anything that would be fundamentally tank-like, not only would they need to overhaul 90% of the game, but the players themselves would have to actually put in effort to beat even the daily faceroll content that they've become used to.

it's my strong belief that the designs of dungeons and trials were acceptable because tanks and healers had more complicated designs in their job kits to make up for that, but now that the jobs have been simplified, the holes in those cracks are starting to show.

so now the question becomes.. does square make the jobs perform better while keeping content brainded, or do they make content much harder and allow jobs to stay brainded? (i say why not both, but that requires the playerbase to git gud as opposed to facerolling everything)

[cactuarzzzz]

what does the old discussion about living dead has to do with this though? it's a bad cd the way it is. I guess every drk can agree on this. unless there is more in this topic you linked but you don't expect me to read the whole thing. Also i don't believe you are not allowed in savage parties cause of LD. A lot of groups just manage fine with drks.

And A LOT MORE DON'T. You would know if you at least have the gut to read half of that thread.

[cactuarzzzz]

I never once mentioned LD, but okay, LD performs well when it is used as a planned cooldown, not so much when used in a panic/ emergency situation. DRK are not locked out of any savage parties, regardless of WHM present or not, that's simply you talking out of your a**. Mentors in DRK balance recommend more Sks if you are missing the last GCD under blood weapon, might be that your gear is inadequate or you're pressing BW too early.

So what if Yoshida plays BLM, doesn't mean the devs aren't gonna not look at the job and see how players play it and then check for a means to balance if there is imbalance or if player find issues within the job or role. If BLM was so perfect, there wouldn't have been as many QoL adjustments made in the past for BLM after an expac launch. Example of players being testers is SB launch, when the players found a better rotation for NIN than what the devs were using, NIN got nerfed, it happens, can't say any job will be perfect at launch.

Also like Starkbeaumont, I ain't reading some random dude making yet another qq LD is bad post for the 1,000th time on the forums. For you to claim LD makes DRK lesser to the other tanks, even though the skill has not changed once since it has been introduced, and thus disregard the rest of the job's toolkit, is so pathetic. So you actually have to use the thing between your ears before using the skill. But that is very much DRK for the last two expacs, risk versus reward, TBN and LD are both risk versus reward. All tanks are accepted in PFs, all tanks are capable of clearing any content without a single issue, and all tanks are in close proximity of DPS in all fights, that's as balanced as you are gonna get in performance.

LOL that thread filled with feedback and info how DRK and Healers have a hard time with it[Yes the one who is in charge of getting DRK out of WD not some co tank who didn't have to do something about it like you] You just admitted you refused to took at the truth meanwhile trying to smart mouth.

[Starkbeaumont]

And A LOT MORE DON'T. You would know if you at least have the gut to read half of that thread.

unsatisfied customers speak up way more often. just cause you see dozen of topics it doesn't mean the majority is unhappy.
if you take a closer look you see it's just the same bunch of ppl over and over again.
and if you look again you'll see that those can't even agree on what to change. everyone has their own ideas. most of those just push drk to the top without trying to achieve any kind of balance with the other tanks.
now if SE decides for one out of 10 ideas you are very likely still left with 9 unhappy customers. and on top you'll get someone taking the spot of the now happy one