I've been playing a lot of Dire Lord through these testing phases. Below are some of my thoughts on how to make it feel better or more in line with other tanks.
Dire Lord has a lot of drawback compared to other tanks. Limited weapons, no shields, no plate armor. This class really needs something to make it feel like these drawbacks come with a positive. At the moment it feels like Im a weird blood mage that wears chain armor.
IMO this is an extremely well written post that should be very useful to development. I've been trying to draw enough of a comparison between Paladin and Dire Lord to choose one for a tank alt. I was noticing some of this early on as a DL. Paladin seems to be on-point and has a great outlook.
I want to +1 this feedback. I currently do not see the pull to choose a Dire Lord over the other 2 tanks. Paladin seems especially good. Warrior seems incomplete (obviously kit is not built out) but great mitigation.
I would add that Dire Lord could be the high skill ceiling tank. Not that the other 2 are mindless to play but certainly their kits are fairly straightforward. But I like the idea that if a player really knows what they are doing and uses the LAS to the utmost, they can shine on a DL. In other words: If the DL were the most "active" tank but can hang with the big boys when they are played well, that would be fine too.
OPINION- of mine
The ability that heal you when you strike with it. Double the health gained from this and reduce the essence cost by 25%
I would not change anything else
I've been thinking along the same lines. Here are my collected thoughts after limited experience playing the class.
Remove casting times on abilities.
100% Agree. Casting time is a huge detriment making Dire Lord's abilities prone to interruption and limiting your movement. Both of which are very punishing as a tank, especially with multiple mobs attacking you. Cast bars do not belong on tank classes IMO.
"Give them 20% more mitigation from Chain" They have no shield
Rather than just giving Dire Lord more mitigation through items, I'd prefer to see this resolved by leaning more into the class fantasy with active skills that can increase effective health (EH) via spending essence.
For example, add reflect shield buff to Boil Blood that reduces and reflects X% of incoming physical damage for its 15s. Maintaining this buff would give us a reason to prioritize Blood Boil over other skills at least once every 15s while improving Dire Lord's lackluster AoE threat generation and physical mitigation. Boil Blood feels sort of out of place at the moment, it's just a mediocre DoT with a cast time that doesn't feel great to use on a tank.
Increase HP by 20%
This one I'm not sure about. Joppa has already stated Dire Lord will have the largest health pool out of all the tanks. More health alone won't solve the problem, which is that Dire Lords lack EH through a combination of armor class (AC) and avoidance (dodge & parry). It's the mitigation and avoidance that need improvement rather than the health pool.
Remove essence cost on sanguine shield.
Also not sure about this one. The whole gameplay style of the Dire Lord is built around managing essence.
I'd rather see the cooldown removed so that Sanguine Shield can be cast at will provided you have sufficient essence. Dire Lord skill usage should be limited by essence generation, not cooldowns. In conjunction with removing the cooldown from Sanguine Shield, Vital Cage would need to be redesigned since it would largely become redundant.
Their stances feel like pointless fluff at the moment.
Current stances don't make a lot of sense to me either. Seems like stances should be built for the Dire Lord's roles: tanking and flex DPS.
Tank Stance: Constitution bonus, 10% threat and incoming damage reduction.
DPS Stance: 20% Essence generation, 10% outgoing damage and inverses all threat bonuses from skills.
This seems to make more sense to me and would enhance the Dire Lord's ability to flex into the DPS role when there's already another tank in the group.
Some other points I've noticed.
1. Lifetap. The damage and healing from Lifetap is negligible, especially considering it's a 2s cast during which time you are not able to auto -- which often results in a net DPS loss. There's practically no reason to ever use Lifetap over any other essence consuming ability. Even less so in a group with a healer.
Changes I'd like to see:
- Lifetap changed to a (instant) DoT rather than direct damage.
- Healing from Lifetap based on a % of your health pool rather than the damage it deals.
- Some kind of secondary EH improving buff from having Lifetap active on a target. A % increase to dodge and parry, scaling with stats, for example.
2. As a tank with no shield, I think Dire Lord should lean more into dodging and parrying attacks. Our skillset should include buffs to avoidance as well as skills that react to avoiding an attack. For example: Dodging or parrying an attack should provide a buff that makes your next ability within 10s cost no essence.
This would assist the Dire Lord in being able to tank multiple mobs since, even at low level, it costs 750 essence just to get your Blood Boil, Devour Dexterity and Devour Constitution up on a single target. This is far too high a resource cost to apply your baseline debuffs. A proc that gives you a free skill upon avoiding an attack means the more mobs on you, the more dodges and parries, the more it would enable you to quickly apply debuffs. It'd also just enable more fun and reactive gameplay.
Alternatively, a way to spread debuffs from your primary target to nearby enemies would also be appreciated.
3. Even if all of these issues are fixed and the class functions as intended, I see no reason why a group would ever give preference for a Dire Lord over other tanks. I understand this is not the style of game that pushes 1:1 balance between classes but right now the Dire Lord seems not to excel in any area compared to Warrior in particular.
Consider the role of Dire Lord.
Magic damage tank.
As far as I can see, our role as the "magic damage tank" is contained mostly in two skills. A single magic spell absorb shield with a 30s cooldown and a minor magic resist buff. At the cost of less reduced AC, avoidance and significant group utility. Doesn't seem to balance out even in magic heavy encounters.
DPS Flex.
Assuming Dire Lord has the highest potential DPS of all the tank classes, the various buffs and utility skills offered by Warriors will still provide more total DPS for the group.
Even Paladins ability to occasionally off-heal and resurrect players is more utility than the Dire Lord provides.
Feels like more needs to be done to make Dire Lords desirable to groups when compared with the other tanks.
Some ideas.
- Change the passive magic resist from Sanguine Cloak to a magic resist aura that affects all group members.
- Change Blood Fiend so that all nearby group members receive healing based on their damage done.
- Make the Dire Lord's shields return a portion of magic damage absorbed as mana to nearby group members.
These are just random ideas off the top of my head. Point is, Dire Lord needs group utility. Even if the class is equally capable of filling the tank role, if it's the only tank that doesn't provide any group utility it will, by default, become the least desirable tank.
I see some of the issues but I think it can be worked around. Sort of.
I think in all honesty, my main issue with the class is that we don't have enough source of mitigation. We may have a big HP pool, that's well and fine but meaningless in the long run if we can't mitigate damage albeit having lifesteal of any form of life generation.
That being said, I do wish we'd have access to Plate armor. We're a tank after all and we're already suffering from not having the use of a shield, so may as well at that point.
Stances as it stands right now, don't really feel good. The difference isn't there. Sorry.
And yes, if they really want us to go the route of less AC, lots of HP then give us % based healing. Whether it is through Dots or casting (Yes, I'm actually fine with the casting because I found a way to work around with my CDs to make it work... Surprisingly.)
Parry based / dodge based skills would be an interesting venue admittedly. But we'd need the stats for it.
But yeah, I see them fun and all in the beginning of the game but late game, they'll fall off and it's a bit of a shame.
On another note, I'm actually wondering what was VR's take on the Dire Lord as a Tanking Class, how they envisioned it. I'd love to hear more about it in all seriousness.
Again though, thanks VR. I hope you're reading this. <3
@Nore
To address your statement of "On another note, I'm actually wondering what was VR's take on the Dire Lord as a Tanking Class, how they envisioned it. I'd love to hear more about it in all seriousness.":
The DL is being designed to be a high magic resist tank (and can even protect the party from magic attacks) with incredibly high "single target" threat generation so DPS can go harder than with the other tanks. They have beefy health pools and can absorb dmg and heal themselves to help supplement not having higher armor or a shield.
(The paladin may be better suited for multi-target tanking with AoE and cleave attacks, and the warrior will be the tank that takes the least physical dmg per hit having the highest defenses as well as the resilience mechanic)
On a side note, I agree with your statement of "But yeah, I see them fun and all in the beginning of the game but late game, they'll fall off and it's a bit of a shame" but that's a dead horse that's been beaten, resurrected, and beaten over and over again lol.
Allow Direlords to use daggers (would make a halfing Direlord more viable as a race option)
Make Blood fiend available between levels 6-7 (this is more for new players wanting that class feel, before giving up)
make sanguine shield a passive that gives 5% dmg resistance vs all attacks ( I would take this with heavy chain over plate).
If this is supposed to be a self heal / avoidance tank, as in all MMOS they are rng based. Give us a safety net like at 25 to 30% health or less our leaching attacks can heal 50 percent more.
If using High, Moderate and Low as measures of damage and mitigation relative to the other tanks, its a paper/rocks/scissors game:
DL-
DPS: High
DMG mitigation: Low, increased to Moderate with self healing/shields
Warrior-
DPS: Moderate
DMG mitigation: Moderate
Pal-
DPS: Low
DMG mitigation: Moderate, increased to High with self healing
The main goal of the tank though is to hold threat - its ultimately the responsibility of the healer to keep the tank alive, and the responsibility of the DPS to not pull threat - so the goal of the fight and the makeup of a group should determine the best tank for that group and situation. A group full of wizards would prefer the DL with huge threat and just burn down the target in seconds, while the group with a lower level or inexperienced healer may prefer the Paladin, and a well seasoned group trying to use reliable metrics to complete a difficult encounter may prefer the warrior. If the DL could mitigate damage as well as the Warrior and self heal as well as the Paladin, why have other tanks at all? I know that sounds silly, but it's kinda serious lol.
Darch,
I agree with most your post save the last part, i dont think anyone here is trying to build DL as the one tank above all.
I play Paly(mostly) and DL, i sure dont want to see paly left behind.
In regards to avoidance tanking, that is not a major trait i want to see applied to DLs.