5.3 patch complete note. Yes just keept upgrade WAR and forget about DRK

[shao32]

Considering that SB DRK have way more in comon with HW DRK than current iteration i will say hierro coment i pretty much more acurate, current DRK need more changes than SB one to be like HW since is not even the same job anymore.

[Lyth]

...

Homogenisation
In Shadowbringers, we have homogenisation. In Heavensward and Stormblood, we had partial homogenisation.

Homogenisation is fair, but boring.
Partial Homogenisation is both unfair and boring.

When you can draw a numerical comparison between two actions and see that one is just a flat out better version, that's a problem. Pre-4.3 Shadow Wall was a great example:

Shadow Wall: 30% DR, 180s recast, 10s duration.
Sentinel: 40% DR, 180s recast, 10s duration.
Vengeance: 30% DR, 120s recast, 15s duration, deals damage back to attackers.

Anyone can see that all three are analogues, but Shadow Wall was the weakest of the three without anything to offer to offset that. It is strange, though, that after all this time Vengeance still has that one extra feature that none of the other three tanks have (dealing damage back). It's not a big thing, but when you see things like this consistently across the board it gets irritating. If the devs rebuilt the jobs from scratch now, those skewed advantages wouldn't exist. That's what I mean by 'grandfathered advantages'. Likewise, the reason why most DRK players are up in arms about Living Dead is because it just disadvantages you with nothing of value to offset that. Make the shorter recast ability have the bigger drawback.

Of course, the best solution is to create abilities that fulfill similar functions without being directly compatible. As an example, let's say that one tank has a simple gap closer, and another has an ability that pulls the target in towards them (assuming the 1.0 era potato programming in this game didn't cancel boss abilities if they get moved). Which is better? There's not a clear cut winner, and different players will have different preferences. That's how you build identity, but in a fair way. The advantages or disadvantages cannot be entirely one sided. Likewise, self-sustain doesn't just mean lifesteal. PLD has healing spells. DRK could have a way to turn absorbed shield damage into healing (remember Dread Spikes?) Perhaps GNB could rewind the damage that they received over the past few seconds. When you do it the same way every time but just give one tank a better version, then it doesn't feel good to play the weaker version. It needs to be a different but parallel experience.

Dark Arts
A lot of people liked Dark Arts in Heavensward. It only procced off of Souleater. So you could plan which oGCD you wanted it to activate on, giving abilities two different functions depending on how you used it. That's pretty smart design. The problem with Dark Arts in Stormblood was that it was used as a MP dump to replace the drain from Darkside. The instant that they made that decision, they killed off the ability. There's no problem with two-step actions, as long as they represent choices that you can make on the fly instead of pure potency dumps.

Shields
I don't think there's a problem with shields, as long as the job is designed around the concept from the ground up. As I suggested elsewhere, the easiest way to do this is to have a job that builds up an offensive boost as they shield incoming damage. Make Darkside incrementally buff your attack speed and damage as you shield more damage, with a decay over time. Then it becomes less of an issue of "did the shield break"? There's also not a problem with proc based actions so long as they are consistant. People actually really did like Shield Swipe after it was reworked to be more like Reprisal. The original was of questionable value. The reason why it was removed was because in Stormblood, it was actually preferable to spend your gauge on Sheltron over Intervention even when offtanking because you could convert the block into a swipe proc (and MP).

[Aurelius2625]

absolutely not

[Shurrikhan]

I have to admit, I preferred needing at least two braincells to play Warrior over these QoL changes.

Here's hoping the DRK suggestions won't fall to a similar lowest common denominator.