My input on DRK changes

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Paladins have really nice damage now. They out parse DRK, so I am not sure what this is about. By your logic, DRK should have more defenses then Paladin atm. Otherwise they are taking the cake and eating it too.

http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Goring_Blade
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Royal_Authority

With these two skills, Paladins destroy us on damage. Yes, we can get dark arts to increase our potency to 400, sure. However the issue is there is no way to sustain that. You can maybe do it twice, and then run out of MP and darkside goes away. Meanwhile, the Paladin can keep going up and RA, GBing the enemy. They have higher DPS.

Don't believe me? Go into Shield Oath and parse it. Although I would like to see people with the same stats. I trust the paladin will have 100-150 dps over DRK over a sustained period.

What DRK does have, is higher burst DPS. However after 50 seconds that goes down. Most boss fights last longer then 50 seconds.

[Ipkonfig]

Yes, we have a lot of extra damage. I'm almost always far ahead of paladins and sitting along side WAR. In current content there is no reason for you to be bottoming out. There are plenty of mechanics that allow us to refill our TP while we dodge/move. Yes if we get another fight like T8/T10 we will run into issues, but hopefully you have a bard in your group who will also be drained and run Paeon for everyone. To all the QQing by DRKs here I don't know what you are doing wrong, but sitting at i180 now I tank just as well as any other tank out there, and have solid DPS regardless if I'm OT or MT. I'm in the process of getting WAR to 60 (already have the i180 law axe waiting for me!!) and I'm not sure which I'm going to play because I like them both. Also no Hive weps for me yet, and if I don't get a drop I'm torn as to which I will spend my 10 on... it's a toss up!

[Faytte]

Paladins have really nice damage now. They out parse DRK, so I am not sure what this is about. By your logic, DRK should have more defenses then Paladin atm. Otherwise they are taking the cake and eating it too.

http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Goring_Blade
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Royal_Authority

With these two skills, Paladins destroy us on damage. Yes, we can get dark arts to increase our potency to 400, sure. However the issue is there is no way to sustain that. You can maybe do it twice, and then run out of MP and darkside goes away. Meanwhile, the Paladin can keep going up and RA, GBing the enemy. They have higher DPS.

Don't believe me? Go into Shield Oath and parse it. Although I would like to see people with the same stats. I trust the paladin will have 100-150 dps over DRK over a sustained period.

What DRK does have, is higher burst DPS. However after 50 seconds that goes down. Most boss fights last longer then 50 seconds.

Goring Blade does 40 more potency than Scourge.
Royal Authority has 40 more potency than Power Slash, and 60 less than DA + Soul Eater.

Paladins have 1100 potency on off GCD per minute. A DRK is well over 2K, without counting low blow resets while main tanking. I don't know how you think paladins are out dpsing dark--I would love to see the parses you are talking about.

[Ipkonfig]

You need to factor Royal Authority into its combo though. All of those abilities are gated by their combos so it only makes sense to average out the potency of each chain. Also Goring Blade is gated by a combo while Scourge is a stand alone 500 potency DoT.

Royal Authority - 230 avg potency.
Rage of Halone - 203 avg potency.

Power Slash - 223 avg potency.
Delirium Blade - 226 potency.
Dark Arts + Souleater - 266 avg potency.

Paladins also can't just spam Royal Authority if they are MT, it builds less threat and has no debuff, so they need to weave Rage of Halone in bringing their DPS down. When I DRK I have to use Power Slash with Dark Arts one time in a fight and I won't have to worry about threat anymore. From that point on my typical rotation is Dark Arts + Souleater into Delirium Blade, rinse repeat, with Blood Price on CD, regardless of how much I get hit that combo is sustainable. Average potency for DA+Souleater/Delirium Blade is 246 potency.

Paladin's weren't given Royal Authority and Goring Blade to push them ahead in DPS, they were given them to just try and keep up.

[DWolfwood]

If you want to be closer to paladin, then you might want to lose all that extra damage you have (what is it, over 2000 off GCD damage per minute? And effectively a permanent FoF?),AMAZING aoe and mobility. There are -reasons- paladins are so far ahead, cause they lack LOTS of the tools you have. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Extra damage is nice, and I agree that it's a fair balance to keep PLD more defensive while DRK keeps it's damage. The problem is, the mitigation achieved by PLD is "phenomenal" and the DPS gained by DRK is simply "nice." My changes, if you review them, don't encroach on PLD's claim to having best mitigation. It's actually only a very slight buff to DRK.

[DWolfwood]

gl with TP

Currently we have 2 endgame fights for DRK at lv.60, Ravana and Bismark EX. Neither of which present TP problems for DRK; Bismark because of the time spent as MT as well as downtime, and Ravana because there are so many breaks in the action that even as OT, there are no problems. If you're referring to old content, whether undersized parties or level sync'd, the changes made will not make them any different than PLD, which I think is fair. WAR's versatility as being DPS and Tank are unique to them, and should stay that way for now. The mentioned changes will buff DRK's DPS as both MT and OT.

[SpookyGhost]

Currently we have 2 endgame fights for DRK at lv.60,

Highlighted the key word here.

[DWolfwood]

Highlighted the key word here.

Having tanked and off-tanked as WAR throughout all of 2.x, I never had any TP issues that could not be solved with smarter playing. In fact, the only fight where I ever found myself close to bottoming out was T10, and that was because of literally one too many overpowers. DRK does not have this issue in that sort of situation because our bread and butter AoE control are several Magic based attacks, two of which are on GCD.

In the scenario where we do not use those AoE attacks, this will literally put us on the same playing field as WAR was in the 2.x series. Which is to say, completely solid.

Edit - Changed "three" Magic based attacks to "several" because I wasn't counting "Salted Earth," which should technically be counted, I suppose.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

You need to factor Royal Authority into its combo though. All of those abilities are gated by their combos so it only makes sense to average out the potency of each chain. Also Goring Blade is gated by a combo while Scourge is a stand alone 500 potency DoT.

Royal Authority - 230 avg potency.
Rage of Halone - 203 avg potency.

Power Slash - 223 avg potency.
Delirium Blade - 226 potency.
Dark Arts + Souleater - 266 avg potency.

Paladins also can't just spam Royal Authority if they are MT, it builds less threat and has no debuff, so they need to weave Rage of Halone in bringing their DPS down. When I DRK I have to use Power Slash with Dark Arts one time in a fight and I won't have to worry about threat anymore. From that point on my typical rotation is Dark Arts + Souleater into Delirium Blade, rinse repeat, with Blood Price on CD, regardless of how much I get hit that combo is sustainable. Average potency for DA+Souleater/Delirium Blade is 246 potency.

Paladin's weren't given Royal Authority and Goring Blade to push them ahead in DPS, they were given them to just try and keep up.

Nobody in their right mind is going to waste Dark Arts for attacks now. That is silly and ridiculous, you need them for your defenses. You also are missing Shield Oath's extra attack.

I am not being silly when I say its either very close or a bit better.

I also like how you forgot to mention Goring Blade, which is the highest damage DOT in the entire game with a combined potency of 540.

Paladins do not need silly Arts to make their attacks good, they also don't need to drain their Mana constantly either. They also don't need to use 1/4 their mana to use a temp defensive buff.

This is why I said actually parse it.

[Seku]

Paladins also can't just spam Royal Authority if they are MT
Paladin's weren't given Royal Authority and Goring Blade to push them ahead in DPS, they were given them to just try and keep up.

Actually Pld can spam RA if they are MT, weaving in Goring every two rotations, and then use shield swipe to keep them ahead in hate, which is over all a net gain in terms of DPS over RoH. Currently nothing in the game makes or breaks you over 10% str down, more so since we have excessive Physical damage reduction to begin with (which allows us to tank in Sword Oath).

IIRC, if a PLD was in sword oath, which at the end could be used even as MT on everything, they were keeping pretty close to warrior all through out 2.X in DPS terms. We were given RA and GB to keep our DPS aligned, as all jobs were when they were given new DPS options. So I don't know where the "they were given these to try and keep up." is coming from.

Whoops I mean....pld is weak. Give us more options SE oh god....we're so weak.

You also are missing Shield Oath's extra attack.

Not sure if I missed something or if you're just plain out mistaken. But Shield oath doesn't have an extra attack, you mean Sword oath?