Just reducing her Ion skill PvP damage to half of what it is and calling it a day will make the class unusable for anyone who isn't gear capped. Her dps outside of her ion skills is abysmal and she can barely string together combos because it is assumed that she will just 1 shot people.

Drak's DPS needs to be spread more evenly across her skills. The ion skills should do less damage while the normal skills should do more, both should be faster with speed that increases based on how weak the skill is. The overall result should be an only slightly higher Time To Kill (TTK) but with more skills used in the process, meaning that killing a few tightly packed/stationary targets can still be done quickly, but 1 shotting multiple people who are not CCed and/or are moving with each skill usage will be near impossible without a massive gear difference.

Additionally Ions should be harder to generate passively and easier to generate actively. Currently, it is better to charge your ions BEFORE you engage because trying to gather them outside of Markthanan's scales is extremely risky. This rewards passive play (waiting to act) instead of active play (creating opportunities to act) and is much less skill based. Markthanan's scales shouldn't generate ions unless the caster is being hit or hits people with the shield. In exchange Abyssal Fang should be given SA, not only creating more opportunities to use certain skill flows but also rewarding those that play more aggressively

Changes like these should make her better for PvE and 1v1 while also making her MUCH less oppressive and braindead in Mass PvP (which is almost exclusively what people complain about)

Finally, as an aside, I think there is a lot of wasted opportunities for skill flows and cancels, if the damage gets rebalanced so that her non-ion skills are worth using having more ways to use them via cancels/flows would be nice. For example, being able to use Markthanan's domain from the air as a plunging attack, making asphyxiate cancel into embers for air attack damage, being able to use soaring assault as a cancel from dragon's maw or embers, removing the charge from eviscerating wings by canceling into it from a movement skill like dragon's advance/markthanan's wings/dragon walk

TL:DR

-Don't just nerf succ Drak damage.

-Rebalance her damage for similar DPS but lower single skill damage.

-Make ions easier to generate in battle and harder to generate out of battle.

-Add more skill flows/cancels to make the class more fun

1. Release new class

2. Make it absurdly strong

3. Leave it op while you work on new new class

4. Nerf new class

5. Release new new class quickly after

6. Repeat.

They've done this with corsair, sage, nova, and probably will with drakania when they release the monkey.

What PA doesn't realize is that their intense focus on selling weight and inventory for new classes is pushing players away.

There's also the fact that this game is P2W and that should incentivize them to keep every class as balanced as possible so it doesn't become a deterrent for the whales to spend money on the game, you want the whale to win because he spent money and not because he picked a class(which is free).

nerf protected self heals while using skills

nerf self slow cleanse on basically seemingly "every" combat skill

make their self PA grant ions at the very end of skill so if they get grabbed or they cancel skill somehow - no ions gained

nerf ion skill damage "a little", its hilarious levels atm with endgame gear and rbf gems.

No, just nerf Shai PvE even more. That'll balance everything.

The damage nerfs were expected, but Ions (and subsequently PvE) also got a knife to the gut. It's Sage all over again. At this point it doesn't feel like this is motivated by greed, it's pure malice for their players and customers.

I don't even play drak and only tried it out to see if it's PvE would be any fun, but they went and threw succ into the trash bin. Awk players that are hoping for a better PvE experience have got to be worried now.

Succ stresses you out trying to be a try-hard the entire time to maintain that meter.

Freakin twisting my brain into a pretzel to make sure I'm in the right position each time because E has such a pathetic reach.

"Responsibly": well, that went out the window.

Well you get your wish, I was fine with the damage changes in global labs for pvp. which includes pvp damage scaling and hit amount reduction.

What I don't agree with is removing ion generation from literally almost everything usable in larger skirmishes. Succ drak had 5 ways to generate ions W+RMB (forward guard),  LMB (no protection), E (No protection), shift Q (super + PA) and finally E buff.

In the recent global labs patch, they removed ions generation from Shift Q and E buff. AND added Ions cost to the E buff.

The shift Q, is unfortunate but acceptable, its already a heal and PA, I agree that some aspects are probably overtuned.

BUT the E-Buff no longer remains unique for the class, its just a bland AP/speed buff now, with nothing else associated. This effectively makes succ drak have no real Ions generation in Larger skirmishes, since as soon as you use E or LMB you're most likely going to get CCed immediatly. Which is essentially punishing the class's mechanics and foundation, why have a class that needs another ressource to do damage but can't effectively generate it. As a comparison, Awake Nova, also needs another ressource to "unlock" Accel, however the ressource can be generated by various ways including literally 90% of her skills. Sure you can sit back and absord your vacuums but you have alternatives. For succ drak if these changes take effect as they are, you are left with spending half a minute trying to gather ions from W+RMB and then engaging, every single time. Why punish the player through a mechanical limitation. The class is defined by how well the player can manage ions, so change the way ions are generated or add options.

I can meet half way by saying the E buff is an easy way out, it essentially makes ions available for 30 seconds every 3 mins but removing ions generation and adding a cost is forcing the player to simply wait on ions by spamming a skill before any fight or hoping they can use an unprotected and low damage skill during a large fight. We all know that you're going to get CCed for those unprotected skills. (1v1 is fine) So any succ drak player really needing ions are just going to sit back and spam W+RMB. Is that really the gameplay pearl abyss is aiming for?

Definitely didn't get my wish. I wanted the class to be more flexible in exchange for not braindead easy at annihilating everything. The damage nerfs on her ion skills are fine in concept, I think most people can agree on that; but the class being just as slow as before, still having no damage on her non-ion skills and having even worse ion generation both in and out of combat make these nerfs basically a death sentence.

it just shows that they put about 5 minutes of thought into this. "Main complaint" damage - solution remove damage and render class mechanicaly unfeasible. Easy fix that really anyone could come up with. Why even make classes with additional requirements (ressources - Ions/Star's breath) . These classes should have a hard skill ceiling but also rewarding when done right. Since the player has to put additional thought into management.  Add more options for generation.

This would be similar to removing Star's breath generation from Awake Nova's skills and just having vacuum absorption or removing the protection on the skills that do generate star's breath so that they can't be realistically used in larger scales and calling it a day. Its incredibly silly.