Maybe I came off as condescending or rude, my apologies, that really wasn't my intent, nor is it to present my feedback as unilateral disagreement. I'm always open for DRK discussion. Please forgive me if I caused offense.
1. Ironically, I posted my very small LD thoughts in the thread you made in January before 5.2.
Here it is. "Just slap Convalescence on it." But I know you may be looking for how I may actually rework the skill, as all I ever say about LD is to "stop beating this dead horse please SE isn't listening to us." Here are a few ideas I've had over the years, going from standard to more unique redesigns.
A. Keep Living Dead as is, add 50% from healing actions, as you stated, and tweak the HP needed for recovery if necessary, I'd be okay with even 75%.
B. Living Dead(Skill, 360s CD, +60 seconds from current) Reduces HP to 1, and grants Walking Dead.
Walking Dead (Buff, 10s to 15s Duration, (not too sure how long would appropriate)): Cannot be KO'd by most attacks, 100% HP amount needs to be restored via healing over the duration of the debuff to avoid KO, all single target attacks gain a 1:1 Damage:Lifesteal ratio, and all AoE attacks gain a 5:1 Damage:Lifesteal ratio.
C. Living Dead (Buff, 10s duration, 240s CD, -60 from current) Cannot be KO'd by most attacks, half of all damage done to player is stored. Upon expiration, Living Dead changes to Walking Dead.
Walking Dead (Debuff, 10s duration) Upon expiration of this debuff, damage stored from Living Dead is dealt to the player. Can be mitigated with shields, or mitigating the hits that contribute to the debuff, but not the debuff damage itself. Think delayed tankbuster. Encourages intelligent TBN usages, TBN the buster to reduce the debuff damage, TBN your debuff damage afterwards if needed. This is also to make LD worthwhile even if you don't invuln something, as you will always mitigate damage, just delay the consequences.
D. Living Dead (Buff, 8s duration, 360s CD, +60 seconds from current) Reduces HP to 1, and renders you invulnerable to most attacks.
Isn't this exactly Superbolide? Yes, that's why:
Superbolide (Skill, 8s duration, 240s CD, -120 seconds from current, wonder if -180 would be better) : Create a barrier around yourself for 100% of your HP value. No invuln at all, but mitigation does work. You'll augment the GNB's defensives a bit, but there will be things(but not many) that do above 300K HP instantly that you can't solo, forcing your other tank for that.
Probably more that I've discarded, such as Darkside or another resource capping removing Walking Dead, Walking Dead failure removing all your mana/blood as a consequence, but I think you get the gist of it.
I think there is some merit to knowing the exact damage value of high single target and removal of raid mechanic avoidance with invulnerability to make cooldown maps more distinct between each tanking composition. Kinda wonder if I even want invulns in the game at this point.
2. I understand your intent on separating the two better with your update. But outside of INCREDIBLY fringe situations, cleansing WD early doesn't really happen or have disastrous consequences . I've only been killed by being healed early in something like E7S tankbuster's magic vuln second hit, and that was INTENTIONAL, never happened to me by accident. Phys/Magic vulnerability double busters with short durations that you won't tank swap for post invuln are just not common enough in encounters for this to be truly appropriate. But this is anecdotal, feel free to disagree with me here, I can understand your perspective.
3. It actually does change, please re-read my post, I made an edit halfway about the MP changes under Delirium that you would get rid of. I don't want current Salted Earth, you're right. I DO want Salted Earth in the game, it's one of the only damage puddles left. I'd want to have some kit interactivity, maybe a lower CD, and since it's classified as a buff, maybe give some passive MP or Blood regeneration like in SB? I want there to be a point to the skill, I don't want it axed. I want Sole Survivor back too, there was no reason to remove it, but if you want to change anything regarding the DPS of DRK, it's very easy to do so. You either change to Darkside +damage buff percentage, change the potency of Living Shadow hits, or reduce the potency of Edge/Flood. All of these things will directly lower a DRK's damage in a consistent way without upsetting it's current damage profile. When you start removing and reworking skills, it becomes much harder to see how your damage scales in content. People will always disagree with each other man, that's the point of discussion forums. Your arguments and suggestions should stand under the scrutiny of other players, otherwise, how are they going to stand up against developers with significantly more knowledge than anyone posting on this forum? In theory, anyway. And I DO AGREE with some of the things you're saying here, as stated in my last post.
There is also a critical difference between "ease of use" and "braindead". PvP combos by definition are easy to use, but by SE's own admission, they are not adapting that system to PvE content. PvP combos are like that because of the ever-shifting environments of Feast. I call Delirium braindead, because in PvE, there's so much rigidity in the structure of the game design, that I don't have to think at all about anything other than the cooldown. GCD combo decay, mana amounts, buff alignment, none of that comes into question, that's the main issue. Inner Release is easy to use, but it's not braindead, because you have to consider Enhanced Infuriate Trait and IC, there are repercussions for using IR without those two things in mind.
Also you're right here, even after multiple re-reads, I didn't see that DA is granted on expiration of TBN, but I have concerns about that too. If TBN expires and you still gain the proc, you've kinda ruined openers, because every DRK will start asking for TBN pre-pull so they can start with a pre-fight Dark Arts, and then everyone has to wait. This is similar to the old Aetherflow issue. You've also kinda degraded the aspect of TBN that makes it appealing to players, properly timed mitigation in the middle of battle. If you aren't punished, then why would you not just start TBNing literally on CD? There's no incentive not to, because of the sheer amount of healer GCDs it saves, even with raid buffs accounted for. Doesn't that make DRK too powerful defensively at no cost in comparison to other tank short-duration CDs and also an incredibly overpowered OT?
Also I'm not an elite tank. I'm just a tank.
4. DRK in HW/SB was only self-healing god in dungeons. Outside of dungeons where Abyssal > MP gain > Abyssal loops could not be sustained, DRK did not have more self-healing than WAR. It just didn't. Self-healing has been ingrained into WAR since 2.0 with the first Inner Beast version, to the detriment of the job. Ever since those bad times, we've seen things like, Bloodbath+Fell Cleave don't heal me i'll live, Defiance directly affecting the HP bar, Thrill, NF and Equilibrium as CDs that directly affect the HP bar, OG Storm's Path being objectively better than Storm's Eye after slashing debuff because of the self-healing on top of debuffing. Even now, NF in dungeons is a lesser, but still accurate version of Bloodbath+Decimate/Steel Cyclone HP steal, where again, WAR says ,"actually don't heal me, i do more HPS than you will anyway". I want DRK dungeoning to return too, but you'd need to rework so much other stuff it's not applicable to a 5.3 QoL thread. It requires BW to have multiple target application for mana regeneration, Abyssal to be changed back to a GCD with life steal, or given a charge system (I actually like this), Blood generation to be increased, a lot of stuff. I want it, but I also want to be realistic.
And I thought HW DRK's identity was "lol Perpetual Ray what's that?" DRK's identity has been in conflict for years. I understand the frustration with being a clone, but we can't elevate DRK beyond other tanks as a result.
5. Like I said before, my tone could be interpreted as too harsh, and I apologize again. Understand that I'm not ridiculing you, because you haven't presented your side as unequivocally correct and immune to all pushback even it's coherently presented. Which is what I'm trying to do. There's a reason why I took the time to write this out, and not just say "yeah ok bud" and ignore your posts entirely like some others, because it seems like you actually care about DRK and push for changes. But they should be rational ones that fit with the job. Also, I know you don't intend to bring DRK to the top, no one intends to do that for their job at the cost of game balance I would like to think, but that's exactly what's happening when I looked at your suggestions with a more critical eye were they to be implemented, as is. (outside of TBN expiration, I would've addressed that my in last post, my mistake)
6. I think MP regeneration is too slow with Edge too expensive, I'd like less drastic differences between the two, including nerfing potencies but increasing usages of Edge/Flood, nerfing the potency of Bloodspiller so it isn't the most damaging skill in DRK's damage profile by the end of encounters, and some skills reverting to previous versions. If you go into PvP, there's DRK systems in there regarding the MP acquisition and spending that could be translated (with adjustments) back to PvE for a more smooth, and engaging experience.
I do think Darkside upkeep is a critical problem, and I've written some posts on that as well, that I'll go ahead and snip a synopsis of that for your purview, hidden under the following tag.
From this data, two things are very apparent. This is the personal opinion part. Feel free to skip over it.
Darkside, regardless of what you’re doing with your playstyle or MP consumption CANNOT be dropped. It’s not like on PLD or GNB where you could miss a GCD in your FoF/No Mercy window. And it’s certainly not like WAR where an entire GCD combo needs to be dedicated to upkeep the buff. No matter what you do, core XIV combat design of “Always Be Casting” and “Don’t overcap” ensures that Darkside will always remain active, to the point of where I wonder why it even has a gauge or a buff timer at all. It takes zero effort on the behalf of the user. If the damage buff on Darkside did not exist, I would still use the exact same opener and follow the same priority systems in my rotation simply because of MP overcap. You could buff all DRK potencies by 10% and literally nothing about the job would change, and I don’t think that’s a compelling game design decision, particularly when compared to past iterations of Darkside implementation.
EoS gives way too much Darkside, the cap is far too large, the excess duration does nothing for your job, and frankly, I think it’s because of the those things that make post-burst window DRK so dull, not the limited amount of GCDs. In contrast, WAR has Storm’s Eye and Infuriate to watch out for outside of burst, and GNB/PLD have dedicated, FIXED rotations that need to be morphed around an encounter, with GNB in particular having the cartridge system on top. We COULD have something similar with a reduced Darkside cap and EoS extension nerf, but it wouldn’t really solve the problem as it’s just a button you press impacting your GCD rotation like other tanks or intense, immediate punishment for failure.
Minor nitpick/side note/detour, but even the fact that the Darkside gauge shows the duration on Living Shadow rubs me the wrong way, since the duration of that can not be modified whatsoever. It just looks cool. Instead there’s nothing, and that’s a core problem with Darkside. Instead of there being something there, it feels not only empty, but unfinished, like Blood of the Dragon before you get Wheeling Thrust or Fang and Claw.
The second, and more hopeful conclusion is that there is a VAST amount of potential that is up for job expansion here. This is the secondary reason I made this topic. According to the data, on average, you’re looking at an almost equivalent amount of Darkside Overcap time relative to the time you actually spend in combat. 600 seconds is a long time, and it’s a very deep pool. Is it possible for SE to do something with this?
I’ve always been saying “The player FEELS exactly what’s wrong, but has exactly zero idea HOW to fix it properly a lot of the time without breaking things.”
That’s why I don’t often throw out my own ideas for rebalancing, job expansion, reworks, or anything of the like. However, this time, it is glaringly obvious that there NEEDS to be a reason for Darkside to have such an excessive amount of duration and buff accumulation potential in comparison to every job in the game.
SE is not going to rework this job another time, so we have to build upon the foundation that we have in 5.X rather than rip it out by the roots again in 6.X. Anything too drastic, overcomplicated or antithetical to CURRENT tank design isn’t feasible.
And regarding to "forgetting the feelings of normal tank or normal person sometime ago."
You're probably right.
But I'll never forget how much I love DRK, cringy as that is.