Low developer effort rework for the DRK Job

[RefundEndwalker]

You can tell these hacks didn't have any plan to make things better when they stealth nerfed Living Shadow's potency for the SOLE PURPOSE of putting it back to its original potency 8 levels later, and pretend it's new. It's like if your dad took your playstation out of your room, boxed it and gave it to you as a christmas present a year later. It's either maliciousness or incompetence, and either option should be met with scorn, not the praise that's being dumped on it by the zealous idiots who pretend Square can do no wrong.

[Shurrikhan]

You can tell these hacks didn't have any plan to make things better when they stealth nerfed Living Shadow's potency for the SOLE PURPOSE of putting it back to its original potency 8 levels later, and pretend it's new. It's like if your dad took your playstation out of your room, boxed it and gave it to you as a christmas present a year later. It's either maliciousness or incompetence, and either option should be met with scorn, not the praise that's being dumped on it by the zealous idiots who pretend Square can do no wrong.

This... clearly wasn't thought through. I realize it's fun to get offended, but note that unless you end up underpowered over the affected level range, potencies have merely been shuffled (in this case, to your advantage) rather than removed.


Living Shadow being less important over the 80-87 range would only be worth complaining about if DRK's damage were weaker than other tanks across levels 80 to 87. Otherwise, having already been balanced without the full-power Living Shadow, you're simply looking at Living Shadow making up a slightly smaller portion of your overall damage than it used to, until level 88. That's not a problem; it's probably even ideal.

Consider the alternatives. If you're balanced across level 71-80 but then get a stronger capstone skill than most, you're temporarily overpowered at a level cap important to synced content. That's not great. Now, you could nerf anything or everything else related to rotation ST damage instead of that skill, but then you're undertuned while leveling AND you need more traits cluttering up your Actions & Traits page by which to give back that lost power to many skills, rather than just the one, come level 88.

The end result is really just that the capstone skill is temporarily less important, making less of your damage involve a DoT on a long CD. Unless we're actually underpowered over only the span reliant on that level 80 skill for parity... so what? It just means your damage is less hampered by / invested in a clunky DoT.

Tl;dr: They more than likely simply nerfed Edge of Shadow less than they otherwise would have, slightly increasing DRK's damage at 74-79. The alternative would have you suffering from potency loss for 5 levels more. Unless your level 80 damage increased more than other tanks', at worst you're now a bit overpowered leading up to level 80.

______________________

What matters is tight parity (both ST and AoE) at level caps and as near to that as would be worth the effort between level caps. If you're wondering why we got 3 single-target traits across 81-90, look no further than Salt and Darkness and Shadowbringer, both 50% AoEs with significant, even if not huge, potency per minute.

Note that PLD saw minimal ST dps increases from traits, and likewise 50% AoEs across its new skills. WAR's new attack was only a 30% AoE and an AoE spender choice (shared cooldown) that requires 3 targets to pull ahead while all traits were likewise ST. GNB? Roughly the same thing. ST traits, and a 20% AoE.

[RefundEndwalker]

This... clearly wasn't thought through. I realize it's fun to get offended, but note that unless you end up underpowered over the affected level range, potencies have merely been shuffled (in this case, to your advantage) rather than removed.


[A whole bunch of dumb irrelevant bullshit]

Man that Square Apologist energy surging hard. "Oh no see it's fine that we reduced your potencies and increased the other tanks' so that you don't do much more damage than they do. What's that? Every other tank can tank 10x better in this new expac? Well jeeze, why are you complaining? You still do a very negligible amount more damage than them, so it all evens out!"

Nah man get bent. One of the very few "upgrades" DRK gets is to literally put it back EXACTLY where it already was for potency, while other tanks get buffs to their damage and survivability.

[Crater]

Man that Square Apologist energy surging hard. "Oh no see it's fine that we reduced your potencies and increased the other tanks' so that you don't do much more damage than they do. What's that? Every other tank can tank 10x better in this new expac? Well jeeze, why are you complaining? You still do a very negligible amount more damage than them, so it all evens out!"

Nah man get bent. One of the very few "upgrades" DRK gets is to literally put it back EXACTLY where it already was for potency, while other tanks get buffs to their damage and survivability.

No, Shurrikhan is absolutely right here. SE actually spent a comically long amount of time prior to Endwalker's release talking about how displayed potencies for some classes were being lowered in Endwalker because damage calculations were being changed such that stats like Weapon Damage and potency calculations could be made universal across physical and magical classes. On average, most skills for physical classes had their displayed potency reduced by 20-25%, because the underlying math was changed such that their damage-per-potency was increased by a proportional amount to be roughly the same in terms of relative performance to caster classes.

Living Shadow at level 80-87 dealing 240 potency per hit in Endwalker is, in fact, the rough equivalent of Living Shadow at 80 dealing 300 potency per hit in Shadowbringers, and the level 88 trait upgrading it to 300 potency per hit in Endwalker is roughly equal to a trait that would have upgraded it to 375 or so potency in Shadowbringers.

This isn't "apologism". I don't even think it's a good thing - Living Shadow is an atrociously-designed skill that's incredibly unfun to use, and placing so much of Dark Knight's power budget into such a terrible skill has always been a problem. But if this forum is the primary place SE goes to trawl for player feedback on the game (as unbelievable as that seems to be), then it's important that we do our best to maintain a decent signal-to-noise ratio. Dark Knight has a huge number of severe issues that need to be addressed, and this is absolutely not one of them.

I suggest taking a look at the before and after potencies on Paladin, Warrior, Samurai, etc before you flip out over this one.

[Shurrikhan]

"Oh no see it's fine that we reduced your potencies and increased the other tanks'..."

This would make sense... if the all potencies among physical classes (Tanks, Melee, and Physical Ranged) weren't reduced. Alas...

Really, is it so much to ask that, when repeatedly informed that there would be broad-spanning potency changes, one look at the situation of the other tanks before complaining about comparative strength? And as you yourself have already stated, damage isn't DRK's issue. Not at 90, and not at the level span under un-traited Living Shadow.

If your point here is that DRK should continue to have a problematic mitigation kit but be compensated for it with a far greater lead in damage, I hate to break to you, but that will not be sustainable design. Each fight is going to be tuned around the least survivable comp within standard role proportions. Given that, a DRK would nonetheless be sufficient, in which case its damage lead would make it obligatory.

[Danelo]

You can tell these hacks didn't have any plan to make things better when they stealth nerfed Living Shadow's potency for the SOLE PURPOSE of putting it back to its original potency 8 levels later, and pretend it's new. It's like if your dad took your playstation out of your room, boxed it and gave it to you as a christmas present a year later. It's either maliciousness or incompetence, and either option should be met with scorn, not the praise that's being dumped on it by the zealous idiots who pretend Square can do no wrong.

No joke. My parents gave me a cd of Peter, Paul and Mary back in the day. As soon as I opened it they took it and returned with a cdrw. My parents and, now SQEX, the indian givers.

[RefundEndwalker]

No joke. My parents gave me a cd of Peter, Paul and Mary back in the day. As soon as I opened it they took it and returned with a cdrw. My parents and, now SQEX, the indian givers.

Ignoring the fact that the term "indian givers" is actually kinda hella racist, it's still worth keeping in mind that there are actually bootlicking apologists trying to defend the fact that your level 88 ability only GIVES YOU BACK WHAT YOU ALREADY HAD while they happily play mainly on other classes. Shit like this is why DRK is never going to be fixed, and why I'm not playing this shit game after finishing EW.