DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

[SyzzleSpark]

(Yes I've seen the 4.01 Bloodspiller buff. No this is not a "nerf PLD" thread. No this is not a "don't buff WAR" thread.)

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4263080

Just to note ... please keep posting your feedback for each job / role to relevant forums / threads rather than making mega threads.

Thank you very much for your cooperation!

Taking up the development team on their request to continue posting feedback on the jobs.

Main points I want to drive home to the development team with this thread:

• Shadow Wall is unjustifiably weak now and is not balanced against the changes to our defensive suite.
• Dark Mind goes unused too often, and in too many encounters we are simply missing a CD.
• Our cooldown suite is lopsided and forces us into an over-reliance on TBN, which makes our incoming damage spikey, jarring, and "stop-start-stop-start". Every ability we have is designed around tank busters and we have nothing to reliably manage all of the damage that happens in between those tank busters.
• We completely lack the ability to reliably self-heal at the cost of DPS in order to recover quickly in the way PLD and WAR can. Tenacity's self-healing component is also completely, 100% wasted on DRK.
• Our DPS needs to be buffed to be in between PLD and WAR given that we have less utility than the former and more than the latter.
• The current balance of DPS and utility among the tanks makes DRK 100% inferior to PLD in every possible way.

I personally feel that the playstyle of the job is very much intact and that the development team did a good job with it. The job still feels fast and active compared to the other tanks, while having a distinctive priority-based rotation rather than a set sequence of abilities used in the same order all the time. I don't believe this needs to change. To echo Xenosys Vex, the job is still really FUN. Some may disagree, but I believe their grievances do not actually impact the job's objective performance in terms of mitigation/utility/DPS.

I also feel that our gauge is the best designed out of all of the tanks. It is separate from our mana, adding a layer of depth, and it has interactions with many abilities in our kit, both offensive and defensive. That being said, I would have liked an additional defensive ability that consumes a smaller amount of the gauge to use, but I digress.

There is a lot of WAR feedback on the forum right now but not much for DRK. I feel that DRK really only has any spot in the meta right now because of TBN and avoiding the LB penalty. WAR still does slightly more DPS than DRK from what I've seen, so I believe both jobs are in an equally bad spot overall.

Currently DRK does less DPS than PLD and has less utility. If there was no LB penalty, you wouldn't bring one.

The ability pruning on DRK was way too harsh. Currently in a raid setting you will take Rampart, Convalescence, Reprisal, Provoke, and Shirk, leaving you very short on defensive CDs compared to the other tanks. TBN is powerful but not sustained. The loss of the Dark Dance/Reprisal combo means DRKs are taking more damage than the other tanks in between tank busters and other big hits. Basically, we have nothing to mitigate fluff damage with.

DRK also lacks additional personal defensive utilities outside of its core CD suite. To elaborate:

PLD: Sheltron, Bulwark, Sentinel, Hallowed Ground
WAR: Thrill of Battle, Raw Intuition, Vengeance, Holmgang
DRK: Blackest Night, Dark Mind, Shadow Wall, Living Dead

So, all the tanks have 4 core defensive CDs. Each of them also has a CD with a distinctive disadvantage (Bulwark is RNG, Raw Intuition is physical only, Dark Mind is magical only). In this sense, things appear balanced.

However, in addition to these tools, PLD has Clemency and Passage of Arms, and WAR has Inner Beast and Equilibrium. All of these tools cost DPS on the part of the user, but DRK doesn't have an equivalent to these. The other tanks just have more mitigation tools, period. A DRK player does not get to make the choice to sacrifice some extra DPS for more mitigation beyond their core CD suite in a pinch (not counting tank stance usage here as all tanks can make this decision).

Shadow Wall is also now unjustifiably weak. I used to justify Shadow Wall's weakness because of the aforementioned Dark Dance/Reprisal synergy. This combination of abilities made it so that DRKs were routinely taking 10% less damage roughly 50% of the time while tanking.

Also, because of the pruning into defensive cross-role abilities, DRK now needs to make a choice between getting back the abilities that it used to have innately, and getting back the abilities that it used to have in cross-class back in 3.x. It can't have them both. Whereas the other tanks can get pretty much 100% of their tools back, or equivalents (WAR can't get Bloodbath/Foresight back, but it gets Rampart, which in most cases is better than both Bloodbath/Foresight combined), DRK has to pull excessively to get even a shadow of the tools it once had. Most of this, once again, has to do with the Dark Dance/Reprisal combo being removed from the job, in addition to the fact that DRK's cross-class abilities prior to the expansion consisted almost entirely of defensive cooldowns, and a greater proportion of its mitigation was relegated here. Whether you agree with this particular analysis or not, its clear that DRK's mitigation suite is just objectively weaker, and the over-reliance on TBN when Rampart/Shadow Wall are on cooldown feels awful.

DRK was never overpowered or overtuned, but merely favored by the meta, and yet it was arguably the most drastically nerfed tank.

Our DPS is also consistently below both of the other tanks, and TBN is a shadow of the utility we once had, and almost nothing compared to what PLD brings.

Here are some changes and justifications for those changes that I would like to suggest, and the balance they would strike with the two existing tanks. I would like to add that these suggestions are made under the assumption that WAR will be getting requested and deserved buffs to its DPS to cement its place as the high-DPS/low utility tank. I feel that this is VERY IMPORTANT to mention, because currently both tanks need help, and if you fix DRK but not WAR, WAR will be completely obsolete, and vice versa; if WAR is fixed but DRK isn't, the same problem arises. Most of the WAR threads right now are not accounting for possible DRK buffs. Both tanks need fixing.

It appears that SE are trying to establish WAR as low utility, DRK as medium utility, and PLD as high utility. If they are going to do this, they can't all deal roughly the same damage and PLD certainly shouldn't be out-dpsing both in a majority of cases. If we want to establish DRK as the medium utility/medium DPS tank, and bring its personal mitigation up to par with the other two tanks, I propose the following changes.

Yes, I have seen the 20 potency increase to Bloodspiller in the patch 4.01 notes. Here is a list of possible simple DPS buffs (any 1-2 of these would be good, not all of them):

1. Add Scourge's old damage over time effect to Souleater when not boosted by Dark Arts.
or
2. Further increase Darkside's buff to 25%.
or
3. Add a 10% damage dealt buff to Blood Weapon.
or
4. Increase the potency of the buff provided by Dark Arts with Syphon Strike, Souleater, and Bloodspiller to 180.
or
5. Have Delirium grant a 20% damage dealt increase to Blood Weapon.
or
6. Have every Bloodspiller cast reduce Blood Weapon/Blood Price or Delirium's recast time by 5s.
or
7. Increase the recast time of Carve and Spit, Salted Earth, and Plunge by 50%. Increase their potencies by 100%.
or
8. Return Dark Passenger to its former potency and MP cost values.

Most of these changes would not change DRK's rotation. DA priority would remain the same, Blood Gauge priority would remain the same, etc. Taken in the context of our total DPS, they all come out to a 5-10% increase overall, at most.

Mitigation buffs:

1. Increase Shadow Wall's duration to 20s. In doing this, it becomes a unique cooldown with its own strength (longer duration vs. Sentinel's higher power and Vengeance's lower recast time).

2. Add two additional defensive abilities that require a sacrifice of DPS, in order to compete with PLD's Passage of Arms/Clemency and WAR's Inner Beast/Equilibrium.

--2a. Add a heal over time effect to Blood Price with a potency of 150-200. Combined total potency of 750-1000. Weaker than Equilibrium and Clemency, but with a shorter recast time/resource cost. Because Blood Price is now locked behind Grit, this becomes equivalent to Inner Beast or Equilibrium. Alternatively, a -10% damage taken effect could be added to Blood Price.

--2b. Add a new ability and either A. Lock behind Grit or B. Require 30 Blood Gauge or C. Require roughly 2/3 or 3/4 of a Dark Arts (1300-1800 MP) Have this ability mimic the effects of Dark Dance+Reprisal, but without the raid mitigation component.

Ex. Abyssal Reflect
Cooldown: 60s
Increases Parry rate by 30% for 20s. Additional effect: Grants a 50% chance that a successful parry will reduce damage taken by 10% for 20s. Dark Arts effect: Raises parry rate increase to 60%. Blood Gauge cost: 30.

or

--2b. Raise Souleater's Grit HP return to 150-200% of the damage dealt, in order to properly compete with Clemency/Equilibrium. This also provides a sort of additional passive benefit to Grit that mimics the mitigation provided by PLD's ability to block, and WAR's beast gauge inflating their parry rate under Defiance.

People are continuing to call for more personal mitigation, slight potency buffs, less of an emphasis on -constant- resource dumping at the expense of our GCD/using oGCDs on cooldown, retuning of TBN vs. our other defensive CDs, retuning of the Delirium+Blood Weapon/Blood Price mechanic, and in general additional power to make up for the numerous losses at the start of 4.0. The community clearly wants solutions to at least a handful of these issues come 4.05. We were promised balance after all.

Basically, no one wants any of the tanks to be shoe-horned into and MT or OT only role, or a physical/magical only role. When your magic focused MT is forced to swap with your physically focused OT, in a magic heavy fight, your party is arbitrarily punished. When your token OT is forced to swap with your token MT, mitigation and DPS suffers. And this problem was not fixed. Both DRK and WAR essentially feel like two halves of a PLD. Why?

With the changes in 4.0, we've gone from being a parry+Reprisal bot to being a TBN bot. The more I think about the ability pruning on DRK, the less it makes sense. Dark Dance and Reprisal were a package, and a big part of our design, and now they've been removed and put in cross-role. Almost no tank ever takes Anticipation and when they do, it is of even less benefit to them than it ever was to us (due to PLD's shield and WAR's Raw Intuition). Why it is in cross-role boggles the mind, frankly. Scourge being removed is also a head scratcher. For DPS jobs, I understand, as their rotations are complex. For WAR I can understand, as it was only situationally a gain. For DRK? Our rotation is relatively simple and the skill was one of our most powerful, and it was honestly the only debuff we had to actually manage, since the others were on an as-needed basis (Delirium/Reprisal). There was never any confusion about when to use it or how often, nor did it "float" from place to place in our rotation like ToD on MNK or Mutilate on NIN. It was on a flat, even 30s timer and coincidentally two of our oGCDs also shared this timer. It was used like clockwork, every 4 combos on the nose. Delirium, while a fun skill and a neat burst window cooldown, did not warrant the removal of a combo ender. This second combo ender could have been re-worked in any number of ways, factoring in Scourge's old DoT, and maintaining BW/BP in a fashion similar to the current Delirium's extension. The MP returns and additional effects of these skills could easily have been re-tuned to account for higher uptime. And while TBN helps in the personal mitigation department, in practice unless you penny-pinch boss AAs inordinately, it is subject to a lot of the same feeling of RNG that Dark Dance+Reprisal was, outside of casted abilities. Placing Rampart/Shadowskin in cross-role was even weirder. Yeah these abilities were clones of eachother, but reworking them could have gone a long way, and as of now they are simply just another mandatory thing that every player MUST take, PARTICULARLY on DRK considering the pruning that claimed so much of the rest of our mitigation suite. And on WAR,
this is supposedly meant to replace Bloodbath/Foresight, in spite of those abilities (in combination or on their own) doing something completely different.Cross-role is shaping up to suffer from the same problems as cross-class, having several abilities that are so clearly more powerful than others, that they will never *not* be taken. So many other abilities could have been pruned and had their effects redistributed more effectively. Sole Survivor for instance - the healing and mana return could have been redistributed to any number of other abilities and tuned to compensate for more frequent use. Low Blow's stun could have been removed while keeping the ability intact, and having it proc on crits outside of Grit, and proc on parries inside of Grit.

For a job to be operating at such a titanic deficit at 60 that it doesn't even feel like a complete job until 10 levels later is awful. It has also robbed DRK mains of the feeling of improvement from this level increase. The 60-70 abilities had to be powerful to compensate for this, so now we have this top-heavy job that feels incomplete for 68-ish levels. There was very little feeling of an "increase" or "improvement". Its awful to get to 70 and be like "Well, okay, I feel about as powerful as I did at 60... now what? Oh? There's nothing else? 70 is the level cap? ...Well okay then..."

The job at 70 feels good, but if there is anything that level 60 and below content indicates, it is that so much of our pre-60 kit is incredibly underpowered and has not evolved with the game at all. Too much of the job's power was removed across the board and then messily stuffed into a couple of powerful, overtuned abilities. We continue to have abilities that are weaker than other tanks' counterparts, and piecemeal, half-measure abilities and effects aimed at replicating what other tanks can do with a single button press.

The nature of TBN is further complicated due to its DPS-related effects. It is unreliable to save for clutch moments, and when cast on another person its defensive effect is negligible and rarely actually helps your healer or your co-tank.

And while the job does operate relatively well at 70, for it to feel so awful for a full 60-68 levels is going to discourage a lot of people from playing.

Similar to WHM, we lost a lot of skills that we commonly used before while retaining things that are situational. The nerf to Dark Passenger springs to mind here.

The job's DPS being so low makes no sense. What is the purpose of not being able to carry a shield and block damage if using that free hand to wield your bigger, heavier weapon does not yield more force? The loss of trade-offs with the job also removes a lot of indications of failure to comply with the job's mechanics. Dark Arts always yields potency and is impossible to waste, Darkside never falls off. Yet we see similar, smaller, but more frequent losses every time a resource overflows, or TBN doesn't pop. Yet for all of these potential pitfalls, we are in constant danger of overflow over the course of our very simple but insanely hectic rotation, and yet executing all of this flawlessly yields A. barely higher DPS than someone that didn't, and B. weaker DPS than an equally skilled player of a different tank. Basically, you can still screw up, but it isn't nearly as punishing, but conversely, not screwing up barely rewards you at all. People didn't roll DRK for this kind of playstyle. Quite the opposite.

Then there is team composition. While tanks are seemingly more interchangeable than before, there is still a comp which is hands-down worse than all others (DRK/WAR), and it is not entirely clear why this composition needs to miss out on so much utility from a balance point of view, because it doesn't even offer ideal raid DPS.

I know it is unlikely for us to get anything truly ground breaking come patch, but heres what I would like to see replace our old parry mechanics:

1. Bloodspiller lowers the cooldown timer on carve and spit by 6 seconds.

2. Dark arts lowers the cooldown timer on delirium by 3 seconds per use.

3. Sole Survivor grants 15 seconds of no resource cost for abilities.

4. TBN grants 10% reduced damage taken for 5 seconds if shield breaks.

Change Living Dead so that all incoming damage is converted into MP loss. Alternatively, give us some way to cleanse the Walking Dead effect ourselves. There are lots of ways of implementing DRK's ultimate defensive ability, none of which arbitrarily penalise your group and your healers for taking you. Being able to actually use it in solo content would be nice too, like you can with Hallowed or Holmgang.

I'll outline some general tank gameplay, so I don't have enough time to do a full write up of several classes.

Tank 1: Passive mitigation via a defensive stance. General-use cooldowns that mitigate damage.
Tank 2: Active mitigation tank. Has to manage resource recovery and generation in order to mitigate hits on set intervals, with abilities that can be used to survive tank-busters. Mathematically is the same as tank 1, but has to press more buttons and keep an eye on resources to be competitive.
Tank 3: Upkeep tank. Relies on secondary effects from attacks in order to achieve mitigation (certain attacks grant Defense Up, Evasion Up, Parry Up and so on). Mathematically the same as tank 1, but is much more reliant on their physical attacks to also allow them to reach the intended levels of mitigation.

Tank 1 is perfect for someone like me, who likes simple and straightforward gameplay. Tank 2 is more for the risk/reward type of player. Tank 3 is for the player that likes to constantly press abilities.

Defensive:

Dark Mind:
Reduces magic vulnerability by 15% for 10s.
Dark Arts effect: Reduces all damage taken by 15% for 10s.
-This makes DAing this ability extremely worthwhile. For magic tank busters, you can probably keep it unboosted, but in between tank busters it becomes a really good cooldown for tanking out of stance, mitigating cleaves and AAs, etc. and still comes at a cost of DPS to balance it out.

Shadow Wall:
Reduces damage taken by 30% for 20s.
-As stated in the OP, this makes Shadow Wall unique and gives it its own strength compared to Vengeance and Sentinel.
-Alternatively, if we wanted to make it more like Vengeance (shorter recast, weaker, but with a DPS benefit...)
Shadow Wall:
Reduces damage taken by 30% for 10s. Recast time 150s.
Dark Arts effect: Gives 50 Blood Gauge.

Blood Price:
Restores partial MP when damage is taken for 15s and reduces damage taken by 10% (or increases parry rate by 40%)
Additonal Effect: Increases Blood Gauge by 1 immediately and another 4 over time while in battle.
Can only be used while under the effect of Grit.
-Since Blood Price is now locked behind Grit there is very little reason why it should not have a defensive benefit in the same way that Blood Weapon has an offensive benefit. If people feel this is unbalanced, I would be fine with them having the two skills share a cooldown to add an additional trade-off mechanic to the job, especially when factoring in a Blood Weapon change I've outlined below.

Abyssal Drain:
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 120 to the target and all enemies near it.
Dark Arts effect: Restores 1000% of the damage dealt as HP, divided by the number of targets hit.
-This makes Abyssal Drain an excellent Clemency equivalent. It cuts into our DPS just like Clemency does (or how Equilibrium does due to being Defiance locked) but provides us with snap-sustain. If this feels too unbalanced, it can keep its original 100% heal on every target while out of Grit, and lock the distributed 1000% effect behind Grit.

If these defensive buffs seem like too much in light of TBN, I would be okay with them increasing TBN's recast to, say 20 or 25s to make it less spammable. I feel like this would be a good QoL thing as well to reduce APM bloat. The power of and over-reliance on TBN right now makes our entire defensive cooldown suite feel incredibly lop-sided. The job doesn't feel good anymore defensively. It completely lacks the ability to smooth out incoming damage consistently and is extremely stop-start-stop-start with its mitigation as opposed to being able to level out the damage evenly and in a way healers can properly account for. TBN's stop-start nature makes our damage-taken unnecessarily spikey. We'll take the full brunt of incoming damage on our bare ass for 10s and then take no damage for 5s, as opposed to our HP just gradually falling slower in a way that healers can predict and deal DPS around.

As far as DPS....

After some thought, I don't think damage over time should be added to Bloodspiller or unboosted SE, because it would make our rotation unnecessarily rigid in terms of when you can use these abilities in terms of not clipping the DoT, so here is what I thought of instead.

Dark Passenger:
Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 150 to all targets in a line before you.
Additional effect: Damage over time with a potency of 70 for 15s.
No Dark Arts effect, MP cost returned to 1200.
-Because of the defensive buffs above and the fact that the blind still somewhat clashes with Blood Price, I decided to remove the Dark Arts effect. In exchange, the ability is now returned to its old MP cost, same recast time, and has the same total potency as Scourge. (150+(70*5)=500)

This would bring DRK's DPS up to an acceptable level to keep it competitive with PLD given its lesser utility.

Alternatively, they could do either of these instead:

Blood Weapon:
Additional effect: Increases Damage dealt by 15%.
-or-
Delirium:
Additional effect: Extends the timer of Blood Weapon by 8s and increases damage dealt by 30% for the duration.

Both of these would be roughly a 5% increase. (15% * (15s / 40s) = 5.6%) or (30% * (23s / 120s) = 5.7%)

These I feel are more interesting changes, but alternatively, they could simply buff several of our GCDs/oGCDs by 50-100 potency (as well as their DA effects, if applicable, to keep DA priority the same), or increase Darkside to 25%.

To start off, changes for tanks in general:
Increase tenacity effectiveness per point by 0.75x.
Give accessories with the Fending attributes a split amount of Strength and Vitality, if you insist on not making VIT the primary damage stat for tanks.
Now, changes for DRK:
Make Dark Arts boost Blood Price for 10% damage reduction, and/or Blood Weapon for 10% extra damage dealt.
OR
Give Dark Arts synergy with Shadow Wall. When Shadow Wall is used under the effects of Dark Arts, the damage resistance is boosted to 35%, the cooldown is lowered by 40s, and each attack you take inflicts a stacking DoT that starts at 30 and increases by 5 with each additional hit you take. Maybe give the DoT a lifesteal or MP syphon effect. Otherwise, damage resistance boost to 45% with the same CD as before to make up for the MP cost of DA.

Dreams~

Bloodspiller

added effect:

Extends Blood Weapon and Blood Price duration by 8 and 16 respectively.
* Effect only applies if damage is inflicted.

Quietus

added effect:

Extends Blood Weapon and Blood Price duration by 8 and 16 respectively.
* Effect only applies if damage is inflicted.

Delirium

added effect in Grit:

Dark Knight is healed for 2,700 potency.

The Blackest Night

added effect: if barrier dissipates:

Target is healed for 380 potency.
Dark Knight +5 Blackblood

added effect: if barrier is destroyed:

100 potency damage is reflected onto dispelling attacker

Blood Price

added effects:

Can Parry magic,
Can parry from all directions,
30% chance that parried attacks will reflect 100 potency back to attacker,

(bonus points if they would also change Blood Price's name to Shadowskin and give it that old animation)

Unleashed

Abyssal Drain can also proc Enhanced Unleash.

Enhanced Unleash added effects:
increased to 100 potency,
Dark Knight is healed for 380 potency,
Dark Knight regains MP (non-Grit Siphon amount),

..It wouldn't be OP would it?

I find that Delirium BW/BP refresh so tantalizing ; ;

I want it a permanent part of the rotation, balance be damned it'd be fun

By now Dark knight got an inferior kit if compared withe the Paladins one. Ignoring the shared skill we got this situation:

PLD
Sentinel
CD: 180s Reduces damage taken by 40%.
Duration: 10s

Drk
Shadow wall
Cd: 180s Reduces damage taken by 30%.
Duration: 10s




PLD
Cover
Take all damage intended for another party member, suffering only 80% of it.

Drk
No party utility comparable with cover





PLD
Bullwark: Increases block rate by 60%.

DRK
Dark Mind: Reduces magic vulnerability by 15%.
Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside.
Dark Arts Effect: Increases magic vulnerability reduction to 30%
Cost us resources to work full potential, while only lowering magic damage. Block rate now works for both damage





PLD
Hallowed Ground: Renders you impervious to most attacks.

DRK
Living dead When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd.
This is Hilarious. HG plain reduce all damage to 0. No downside,
at the the end of it you are full HP and healthy.


PLD
Sheltron: Blocks the next attack.

Divine Veil:Upon HP recovery via healing magic cast by self or a party member, a protective barrier is cast on all party members within a radius of 15 yalms.
Barrier Effect: Prevents damage up to 10% of your maximum HP

Clemency:Restores target's HP.
Cure Potency: 1200
Additional Effect: Restores to self 50% of HP restored to target if target is a party member

Passage of arms: Increases block rate by 100% and creates a designated area in a cone behind you in which party members will only suffer 85% of all damage inflicted.


Drk
No party or self utility comparable with those




PLD
Intervention: Reduces target party member's damage taken by 10%.
Additional Effect: Increases damage reduction by another 50% of the effect of Rampart or Sentinel if either are active.

Drk
The Blackest NightCreates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.

The only skill ahead in the drk kit. However using it during trash is a huge waste of mana

Didn't mentioned Dark passanger blind effect 'cause the mana cost isn't affordable.

i can deal with a dowside either in the party utility, mitigation or dps. But right now we are behind in all three sides.

Yeah, exactly. Not to mention Cover now works against magical attacks as well.

While I'm glad they addressed PLD's "weakness" to magical attacks in SB, it seems like a gross oversight to have left Dark Mind untouched.

TBN in its current form just isn't enough to make up for all the defensives lost to the battle system changes.

Perhaps they could modify TBN such that when combined with DM, it grants an additional defensive effect (could potentially replace DADM).

e.g. The Blackest Night
Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 5s
Increases Blood Gauge by 50 when full 20% (10%) is absorbed.
If Dark Mind is active when using The Blackest Night (on self?), <insert defensive effect here>.

Some ideas for this effect include:

• +Parry chance akin to Dark Dance (and would stack with Anticipation, if you ever actually took it)
• For the next N seconds, whenever you would take damage, immediately restore X% of that damage as health. Not sure how well this would work as a HoT instead. Wording might have to change, but ideally I would see this as healing a percentage of any damage you would have taken (meaning it would still heal you while TBN's shield is up), however you eat the damage first before the heal triggers (something like a reverse Bloodbath).
• Gain the effect of Eye for an Eye.
• The next attack you use heals you for 200% (or whatever #) of the damage dealt.
• Increase the damage absorbed by The Blackest Night to 40% of your maximum HP, or 20% for a party member. Increases Blood Gauge by 20. (#s might need tweaking)

Another thought would be to rework Dark Mind so that it acts as another universal defensive cooldown, but costs Blood to use instead.

Maybe something like this?

Dark Mind
Recast: 60s
Reduces incoming damage by 15%.
Duration: 10s.
Blood Gauge Cost: 50

Given the current state of DRK's damage numbers, this change would need to be supplemented by potency and damage buffs to make up for having to spend Blood to survive.

However, this might make the Blood mechanic even more interesting if you have a legitimate choice between spending it on offensive versus defence, and could combo nicely with TBN, as breaking the shield would allow you to follow it up with DM for further damage reduction once a minute.

In addition WAR/DRK lost skills that were not replaced or now have inferior versions. For instance instead of changing foresight to reduce all damage and letting us slot rampart alongside, they just remove it. They removed fracture and mercy stroke with no replacement and brutal swing was "replaced" by the inferior low kick. As a whole, WAR lost out heavily as did DRK with the pruning while PLD wasn't affected by the changes at all, actually it benefitted from them.

DRK isn't really any more well-suited to tankbusters than PLD or even WAR right now.

For Blackest Night to outperform Sheltron in terms of eHP, the PLD would have to be using a shield that only mitigated ~17% of the damage on a block, when an at-level shield is almost always at least 20% mitigation (meaning a 5% eHP advantage versus TBN), and can climb as high as 24% by the end of an expansion - at which point it's a ~31% eHP boost compared to TBN's 20%. So TBN only beats Sheltron for tankbusters in the event that A) The tankbuster is multi-hit and Sheltron will only catch one of them, B) Sheltron is mistimed and gets eaten by an auto-attack, or C) we're not talking about a tankbuster so much as about a "tankbuster" that deals such light damage that it makes an appreciable difference in DRK's favor that damage is applied to the shield before touching your HP.

And that's just Sheltron. TBN isn't really doing any more for DRK than Sheltron is doing for PLD, at least with regard to tankbusters, and in a lot of cases, is doing less. But setting aside role skills and invuln cooldowns (the former are by definition identical and the latter are basically well-balanced against each other and largely make their respective active mitigation skills redundant), PLD has two other Block-based mitigation cooldowns, both of which will solve Sheltron's issues with multi-hits and auto-attacks, they have Sentinel which is a strictly superior version of Shadow Wall, and they have Cover, which is fairly close to a second Rampart.

By contrast, DRK's only supplemental abilities (again excepting role/invuln skills) are Dark Mind and Shadow Wall. So a strictly-inferior version of Sentinel, and a good-but-ultimately-not-overwhelmingly-better cooldown which is useful on magic tankbusters and might as well be Shake It Off if all the boss's real tank-directed damage is physical.

On a fight with physical tankbusters, DRK is basically in a position as bad or possibly worse than the position that PLD found itself in during HW in fights like A4S or A12S.
On a fight with magical tankbusters, DRK carries a slight advantage over PLD, but that advantage is significantly less than the advantage that PLD had over DRK during HW in fights like Thordan, Sephirot, or A7S.


To give DRK that niche, the advantage they have against magical tankbusters needs to be significantly bolstered, and to avoid literally just swapping DRK and PLD's places from one expansion to another and repeating the same mistake of making one tank a gimp in fights that don't cater to their specific physical/magical needs, they need to be given equal capability versus physical and magical, much like they did with PLD.


If they don't give DRK that niche... Then we're basically waiting another two years and hoping that 5.0 gives DRK five new defensive cooldowns, because there's no way that they could get anything that would give them WAR's sustained mitigation uptime, or PLD's suite of party/target-other mitigation. And I really have no idea what's left, besides bumping Darkside up to +50% damage and then saying "now DRK is the halfway point between a tank and DPS".

Major points of contention, as well as some stray observations/opinions of my own include:
1. Our personal mitigation, notably the lack of reliable self healing, Living Dead QoL, Shadow Wall being undertuned, our cooldowns being lopsided towards an over-reliance on TBN, DA-DM being wholly inferior to TBN-DM, and DM itself being undertuned compared to the buffs to PLD's magic mitigation.
2. Low DPS compared to the other tanks, combined with weaker utility than PLD.
3. The weakness of the Delirium+Blood Weapon burst window compared to Berserk, Fight or Flight, Requiescat, and Inner Release.
4. APM bloat related to resource overflow, particularly as it relates to TBN and Dark Arts. The biggest DPS losses to the job now involve resource overflow, and the constant dumping constantly puts us in scenarios where we must chose between resource overflow and delaying our GCD, or delaying oGCDs. Most notably, Hard Slash is now the only GCD in our DPS rotation across which a DA can be held. DA Carve and Spit all but mandates double weaving, making latency more punishing than it was even in 3.x.
5. The balance between Blood/Mana and Abyssal Drain/Quietus in AoE is extremely vague. Quietus does not have a clear enough advantage over Abyssal Drain other than dumping your gauge and giving your mana a rest. The skill also far more heavily lends itself to AoE DPS rather than AoE tanking, which confines a lot of its worth to 8-mans.
6. Blood Price is undertuned compared to Blood Weapon and needs an additional advantage, particularly to warrant using Delirium on it in situations where it would delay a Delirium+Blood Weapon window assuming you will be swapping with your co-tank soon.
7. Blood and Mana are not effectively balanced. Now that TBN is always a DPS gain assuming it pops, we have far more mana dumps than we do blood dumps. There is also no defensive use for the Blood Gauge.
8. The with a few exceptions (TBN being one of them) the job's equivalent skills to what the other tanks bring are substantially weaker.
9. The job's playstyle is very DPS focused while offering a lower DPS ceiling than both of the other tanks in spite of an extremely high degree of button mashing. The gauge is completely spent on DPS, and only one defensive ability interacts with it (TBN).
10. TBN in general is just too powerful and its power should be redistributed elsewhere. It is too over-centralizing to the job's design, making every other defensive skill we have feel horrible in comparison. The shield itself is fine, but its cooldown does not need to be so short, and instead, additional mitigation should be applied to another frequently used ability.

Bottom lines:

• DRK's defensive cooldown suite is lacking in comparison to the other tanks, particularly when factoring in Inner Beast, Equilibrium, Clemency, and other abilities for which they can sacrifice DPS, for example during raid progression, to gain extra mitigation beyond their 4 core cooldowns. Shadow Wall is extremely undertuned and active mitigation is overly dependent on TBN usage.
• DRK's damage should be slightly higher than PLD to compensate for its relative lack of raid utility and raid mitigation in the form of things such as Cover, Intervention, Passage of Arms, Clemency, and Divine Veil.

[Sarcatica]

The top speedrun already indicates DRK being lowest DPS of the 3, doubt the 20pot increase does anything. But that also is attributed to the lack of mechanic movements and downtimes for the 2 Primal EXs.

There needs to be more variables in the instance design if SE wants to keep the tanks as is. I would take having to do multiple jobs than having the best 2 jobs dominating the role. Like for example, you need AOE you will want to bring DRK as the prime. You need a lot of defensive CDs to sustain high dps, you take WAR. The fight has a lot of downtimes, take DRK. High uptime less movement, take PLD.

At this rate WAR and PLD are instalocked on high uptime instances.

[ADVSS]

I have to sat I really like the depth and thought you put into this, I think we see tank balance similarly, especially on the sustain department, When we asked for balance we didnt ask to nerf WAR, I dont think if putting 3,x warrior and this 4,0 paladin side by side, that id have a problem with it, But DRK seems to lack and had lacked things like sustain at nearly the levels the other two had even before now. Wish I could like more than once

[SyzzleSpark]

At this rate WAR and PLD are instalocked on high uptime instances.

I see a lot of people arguing that it is DRK and PLD that are instalocked, but I tend to agree that unless a group is giving TBN more credit than it honestly deserves, most will take WAR.

[Esp]

We could actually add a ability to our kit as we speak. Since Blood Weapon/Blood Price is currently locked to stance, why not just combine the two buttons and have it change depending on what stance you currently have on (Making Blood Weapon the default if not in either stance), like some of the WAR skills do. This would allow us to either gain a new defensive ability, or return an older one without increasing our current abilities to keep us the same.

The newer ability could be acquired at the level or job quest where you would have gained Blood Price or Blood Weapon.

[SyzzleSpark]

We could actually add a ability to our kit as we speak. Since Blood Weapon/Blood Price is currently locked to stance, why not just combine the two buttons and have it change depending on what stance you currently have on (Making Blood Weapon the default if not in either stance), like some of the WAR skills do. This would allow us to either gain a new defensive ability, or return an older one without increasing our current abilities to keep us the same.

The newer ability could be acquired at the level where you would have gained Blood Price or Blood Weapon.

My only problem with this is that it makes Blood Weapon share a cooldown with Blood Price, and judging from WAR's reception to the same treatment being given to Unchained/Inner Release, I don't know if I like this idea. Considering DRK has the lowest number of total abilities/spells/weaponskills out of all of the tanks (1 less than WAR and 3 less than PLD iirc) I don't think adding a whole other ability would really make or break anything as far as button bloat. That said, they're not likely to do it. But they're asking for feedback so I felt I would be remiss in not finally giving mine.

[Esp]

My only problem with this is that it makes Blood Weapon share a cooldown with Blood Price, and judging from WAR's reception to the same treatment being given to Unchained/Inner Release, I don't know if I like this idea. Considering DRK has the lowest number of total abilities/spells/weaponskills out of all of the tanks (1 less than WAR and 3 less than PLD iirc) I don't think adding a whole other ability would really make or break anything as far as button bloat. That said, they're not likely to do it. But they're asking for feedback so I felt I would be remiss in not finally giving mine.

Ah, your correct on that. I always forgot about how it would affect that. ><

[Flash039]

Dark knight have an Skill call The Blackest Night which is an 15 sec RECAST So in defensive i would say Drk and Pld is on par but PLD is OP now

[Esp]

Dark knight have an Skill call The Blackest Night which is an 15 sec RECAST So in defensive i would say Drk and Pld is on par but PLD is OP now

The skill is nice, but for trash pulls, isn't sustainable. Not to mention it does not help with any dungeon below level 70...

[SyzzleSpark]

Dark knight have an Skill call The Blackest Night which is an 15 sec RECAST So in defensive i would say Drk and Pld is on par but PLD is OP now

Read the OP fully and you'll realize why TBN doesn't make up for what DRK is missing.

In Susano Ex for instance - In between Stormsplitters, you have literally nothing but TBN to mitigate damage, because Rampart and Shadow Wall must be saved to pair with TBN for Stormsplitter, and other than that you have... Convalescence? Reprisal?

This is even worse if you wanna tank out of Grit and you literally just have your pants down in between TBN casts. Like I said, the over-reliance on TBN in between things like Rampart and Shadow Wall feels awful.