DRK defense...

[Dart]

take it from someone who's apoc tanked every damn mob in the game. riding that edge of dying in one bad tp move / tanking every mob 100 > 0 is the thrill/point of it. Drk defensive capabilities are fine. Better in fact than most dd jobs. If you don't know this then you lvl'd drk. but play another job 24/7.

ninja edit: Or you're just stupid, and god can't fix stupid.

[Urteil]

Sigh.

Dark Knight has historically been considered a "Glass Cannon", although now it's more like a "Glass 9mm".

Since I don't really feel that this needs an explanation, I'm going to leave you with this. If you don't end up face down in the dirt on DRK, You're doing it wrong.

Thats why in most FF games they use swords and shields right?

Oh okay.

Apocalypse tank? Where is it, and again you make the fatal and retarded flaw of judging a job based entirely on the possession of a relic weapon.

With a weapon that allows you to cure V yourself every 25 seconds I'M SURE tanking is easy, and your defensive capabilities are just fine.

Any job with that ability would find their defensive abilities to be "just fine."

Looks like God can't fix you.

[Dart]

wrong again, i've tanked tiamat without a relic many times. Just shadows and spells.

We're in the middle of the road (i'd argue for upper middle) for defensive capabilities due to our magic.

You really have no idea about drk do you?

Wait you're judging apoc by the curing aspect of it? That's so far off what made the weapon great that it just proves my point further.

You REALLY have no idea about drk do you?

[Kagato]

Dart, what he's trying to say is that DRK has very little options to compensate survival with our high damage output, especially now. Catastrophe is awesome, sure, but it's still a relic.

Also, I'm not doubting that you tanked Tiamat without it, but for how long? Who was supporting you? What gear were you using? Unless you piled on the -PDT or evasion and were cure-bombed, it's honestly hard to believe you tanked Tiamat for a long period of time, especially if it was level 75 cap still. As far as your ninjitsu and dark magic, you'd need a lot of both along with a good fast cast build in order to reliably throw out shadows and dark magic spells without interruption.

So while I don't disagree, I think you're glorifying yourself a little bit too much against a decently powerful NM. If you did tank Tiamat the entire time or majority of the time, I wouldn't believe you at all if you also said it was both easy and required almost no heavy prep. After all, Dark Knights aren't designed to be tanks.

However, we should still have a few more native defensive options so we don't die as quickly as we already do. That's covered by gear choices and subjob choice. Our magic options are there, sure, but we only have 3 and they take a long time to cast and recast. We need something else. At least one more spell or alterations to our dark magic casting time and recasting time. Once we get in a situation where our spells get interrupted when we really need them cast, we're in a very bad situation.

There's also our parry level, which I feel should be much higher, especially if a Great Sword is equipped.

This isn't a matter of being strong enough to become a tank. It's a matter of having something new or updated to assure that we last longer. Glass Cannons we may be, but even after this new update that increased our DD power by a lot, we're no good to anyone if we die even faster as a result.

As I said, I feel DRK has a lot of options, but we're still missing something that stands out.

[Dart]

c

Dart, what he's trying to say is that DRK has very little options to compensate survival with our high damage output, especially now. Catastrophe is awesome, sure, but it's still a relic.

Also, I'm not doubting that you tanked Tiamat without it, but for how long? Who was supporting you? What gear were you using? Unless you piled on the -PDT or evasion and were cure-bombed, it's honestly hard to believe you tanked Tiamat for a long period of time, especially if it was level 75 cap still. As far as your ninjitsu and dark magic, you'd need a lot of both along with a good fast cast build in order to reliably throw out shadows and dark magic spells without interruption.

So while I don't disagree, I think you're glorifying yourself a little bit too much against a decently powerful NM. If you did tank Tiamat the entire time or majority of the time, I wouldn't believe you at all if you also said it was both easy and required almost no heavy prep. After all, Dark Knights aren't designed to be tanks.

However, we should still have a few more native defensive options so we don't die as quickly as we already do. That's covered by gear choices and subjob choice. Our magic options are there, sure, but we only have 3 and they take a long time to cast and recast. We need something else. At least one more spell or alterations to our dark magic casting time and recasting time. Once we get in a situation where our spells get interrupted when we really need them cast, we're in a very bad situation.

There's also our parry level, which I feel should be much higher, especially if a Great Sword is equipped.

This isn't a matter of being strong enough to become a tank. It's a matter of having something new or updated to assure that we last longer. Glass Cannons we may be, but even after this new update that increased our DD power by a lot, we're no good to anyone if we die even faster as a result.

As I said, I feel DRK has a lot of options, but we're still missing something that stands out.

good someone I can talk to.

tiamat and drk tanking in general before CE/VE nerfs:

Yup did tank tiamat without any form of dmg from my weapon at all since we always slept him while he landed. This was of course before the nerf to enmity gained from specific spells that drk also had access too. I was the co-tank with a very good pld friend in my old hnm shell. We duo tanked everything together for a good 4 years (for a little background)

Spellcast is what made it possible. I wasn't like taint with full +1 gear for drk (but I did/do have a great deal just not on his level). It was all in the micro management of macros (lol). full enmity builds for spell sets and spam over and over. Always /nin back in the 75 cap days for everything.

It was pretty simple to do with spell rotation consisting mostly of: sleep, bind, sleep1. The cumulative enmity gained over a prolonged fight where engaging wasn't the standard was really pretty insane. (think of pld and maximizing your flash build with enmity/recast) could hold hate even against very well geared blm's. It was standard tank party for those days. 2 tank, brd, whm, rdm. double march + haste being the key buffs.

For tiamat again the standard either fire resist or -mdt set (I went with an all purpose -mdt set for my multiple jobs and inventory room). You could also do this for khim if you needed too (take out stun) but anytime you can dd helps. Drk's even without apoc can do this due to our magic aspect that other jobs just didn't have access too. The nerf to enmity CE/VE levels of course really killed this so you have to rely on the damage aspect, which is why i've been so outspoken bout upping drk damage levels so that I can tank again!

parry always has and always will be too unreliable to count upon. its "oh hey parry awesome cool!" but you don't rely on it.

Outside our magical phase (which really is strong, and all the crying I see about it really makes me shake my head. We have something that none of the other dd jobs, outside blu, has and the vast majority of the playerbase does not utilize it fully. That being MAGIC!). we have the same def. capabilities as a war sans retaliation, (which i don't even consider to be defensive..). I do agree with one thing, shortening of recast timers would be very welcome addition to our arsenal.

As for where we stand in the hierarchy: outside evasion tanks (thf, nin, dnc (but thf and to a lesser degree dnc have serious issues with hate management) and pld and mnk are in classes all their own i believe that we really stand out for what we bring to the table to help ourselves and our group stay alive. Limiting dangerous tp moves with weapon bash/stun are hallmarks of what we can do/bring to the table. (not to mention saving our own necks) A quick sleep/bind to a mob on the designated healer etc I can go on and on.

inside abyssea /mnk is broken as is, and when you add onto everything we currently have I just cannot justify a need for more without going into "god mode". The only exception to this are mobs with that god awful dispel (hi2u bukhis/azdaja) even then shadows are just fine (really they're two of the very few mobs that I can justify going /nin too)

/sam has become the standard, x hit builds and all this. you know that removing casting penalties from seigan/hasso etc all good things.

Outside abyssea is more of a gray area to me. With the upcoming content still being figured out/incoming we'll have to see what the standard turns out to be.

Honestly kagato what do you want? Evasion like a thf, nin, dnc? A sentinel type ability? I'm not trying to be a douche about it but honestly what else outside reducing recast timers for what we have can we get without making every other job piss and moan. I cannot strongly state this enough, and its been the premise to everything that I've said for the entire drk forums. We don't need a bunch of new gadgets, se just needs to fix what we have!

Another huge step in the right direction is stalwart soul. Drk's universally feared their strongest JA. Founded or unfounded this was the general consensus of the ffxi community so it became true. Now we have a change to fully utilize this without the need of a 150mil goil can opener.

also its not about glorifying myself. I was inspired by the idea by reading about it on bg, then asked about what I would need in order to do it myself. This in turn made more than a few ls mates want to and eventually try it out with regular old weapons and they did it very well. Its about pushing the job to its limits something that the majority of the playerbase never looked into. You yourself i've found to be a knowledgeable fellow, one that I really enjoy throwing ideas around with, and didn't know about how a drk could tank tiamat, jormy, khim, cerb, nid, aspid without the need of a relic and for the most part out enmity a pld.

I don't mean for this to be a flame toward you kagato, but drk is nearly fixed. It just needs a little more. (ws phase, and yes after typing all this out it does need reduced recast timers imo it would not break the job).

holy crap that was a lot.

[Kagato]

Honestly, what I want is a longer Dread Spikes duration and shorter Dark Magic casting times. Throw in a few new cool dark magic spells exclusive to DRK and I'll honestly be perfectly happy.

[vedder]

i agree with dart, i cotanked some hms in the exact manner he said an i by far am not a rich/apoc drk, the ce/ve nerf damn near destroyed this though. Id still like more defensive abilities cus im a greedy sonofaxxxxx lol like some of the spells ive suggested here somewhere and the fixing of our unique spells

[Dart]

i'm pretty happy with my stun set up. I've got the recast down about as low as you can get. I'll agree 100% about dread spikes but equally it isn't a spell that I count on to save my ass in a pinch. I leave that for stun/bash/shadows/thirdeye

[TybudX]

Why does this thread even exist?

Kagato, are you seriously arguing that DRK needs gear, a support job, and proper support to tank HNMs, so it isn't a good tank? I'd like to see how far you get on a naked level 90 PLD against anything. And cure bombing? I'm not even going to explain why that's not a problem; it should be obvious.

[Dart]

and here come the trolls~