A completely stupid DRK idea

[Payotz]

This will probably not gonna happen in FF14 but I have ideas about turning DRK into a stagger/recover tank (Brew/Blood DK hybrid).

Haven't really fleshed out the idea, but it basically involves TBN absorbing damage, turning a portion of the damage back into mp, and then diverting the damage absorbed into the DRK as stagger damage over the course of 10 seconds. Bloodspiller would then be used to reduce or remove the stagger damage, adding the stagger damage removed to the base Bloodspiller damage.

If TBN breaks however, it stores that damage in you as a debuff that makes your TBNs squishier. Popping Delirium would turn the debuff stacks into stagger damage that only starts ticking after 10 seconds, giving your Bloodspiller the meatiest biggest hit.

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I just don't really the fact that Bloodspiller is spammable in current DRK. It kinda lowers the oomph of the skill compared to old Dark Arts Bloodspiller

[Mekhana]

I'm not personally a fan of SB DRK, especially off the perfection that was HW DRK.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I'm not personally a fan of SB DRK, especially off the perfection that was HW DRK.

Totally valid, both were beasts on their own, however perfection is subjective for both of them. HW DRK was more about being the Parry proc tank (Reprisal + Low Blow) with generally low usage of Dark Arts due to MP drain, but also came with tools like Blood Price that scaled MP regeneration with damage taken. For better or worse, that was a cool mechanic that supported not overmitigating to get the most out of it. The original Blood Weapon though if I read the tooltip right did not come with GCD haste, only auto-attack speed which I find somewhat boring. However GCD Delirium combo as an alternative to Souleater, Scourge as a maintainable GCD DOT and Dark Dance were quite fun.

What they lost in the parry engine (which I personally think was stupid as it cemented DRK into MT for the majority of fights for damage) they made up with the Blood System and TBN -> 50 Blood on break, which could be used on an ally. While not a DPS gain, it was a decently healthy alternative. Dark Arts frequency was really high given the extension of Blood Weapon, reworked Delirium and exchanging the MP drain for removing natural MP regen outside of DRK actions. And Blood Price got murdered, like goddamn it gave 1 Blood per hit and a few extra per server tick while only accessible under Grit. And every hit only gave 5% of a Dark Arts / TBN, you'd need to take 20 hits to get a single use out of it. Overall though, it was very fun to play the Speed Tank.

(I post this mainly as a source of information of others who may not know either of these)