Try to predict Nerf/Buff/QoL of 4.2 Tank Edition

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Originally Posted by DaulBan

Personally speaking as long as jobs have similar tools but play sufficiently differently I'm fine with that. If the job is fun enough to play and reasonably balanced for the fight (IE damage and raid-wide shielding abilities) then I don't really care if Dark Mind is weird Sheltron or w/e.

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I agree. Theres a lotta people getting hung up on what the tanks can DO. 'All tanks should be able to MT, OT, AOE mitigate, gap close, have an immunity, match damage/defense/utility' isn't the same thing as homogenization. You could make a reasonable argument that war and pld are pretty 'homogenous', but they don't play the same at all. Even if drk got some type of aoe shield it wouldn't just be a pld clone. All the jobs play quite differently even if they bring similar tools. Having a party shield doesn't make the jobs the same. SIO and DV don't feel the same. Req doesn't feel like IR. Hallowed doesn't feel like HG or LD. Etc.

We could easily have a 4th tank just like Sam feels different than Blm even though they just 'do damage' and don't help the party much. Drg doesn't feel like Nin. Etc.

Tools with similar effects don't automatically mean homogenization. Playstyle determines that. Theres no shortage of new tank options that would be fresh play unlike any existing and still have defense/shields/damage in the range of what exists now.

I agree too with...some things said by different people. x'D

Giving each tank specific strenghts and weaknesses really would add some diversity to the game and would also work great with a fourth tank. (I am expecting Viking, using a greathammer to become the next tank btw)
SE could also scale the tanks just like the dds. From high def/utility and low dps to high dps and low def/utility. (scrapping tank stances would be usefull for this)

Or with the introduction of a fourth tank they could declare two tanks as defensive tanks (PLD and DRK) and the other two to dmg tanks (WAR and possbly VKG).

Anyways, my predicts are a small PLD dmg nerf, maybe a small WAR dmg buff and a overall adjustement of DRK.

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

I agree too with...some things said by different people. x'D

Giving each tank specific strenghts and weaknesses really would add some diversity to the game and would also work great with a fourth tank. (I am expecting Viking, using a greathammer to become the next tank btw)
SE could also scale the tanks just like the dds. From high def/utility and low dps to high dps and low def/utility. (scrapping tank stances would be usefull for this)

Or with the introduction of a fourth tank they could declare two tanks as defensive tanks (PLD and DRK) and the other two to dmg tanks (WAR and possbly VKG).

Anyways, my predicts are a small PLD dmg nerf, maybe a small WAR dmg buff and a overall adjustement of DRK.

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nooo pali doesnt need a nerf , i mean all the tanks have the potential to do almost the same amount of damage drk needs more defensive cool downs maybe a slight dps buff we dont need to go crashing on palis world

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

nooo pali doesnt need a nerf , i mean all the tanks have the potential to do almost the same amount of damage drk needs more defensive cool downs maybe a slight dps buff we dont need to go crashing on palis world

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and that's the problem, paladin has better utility than the other 2 tanks combined so they should not have the capability of dealing the same amount of damage as them
well they won't nerf paladin because SE seems to be determined to make paladin better than the other 2 so you don't have to worry, but that doesn't mean they should keep things going the way they are

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Originally Posted by konpachizaraki

and that's the problem, paladin has better utility than the other 2 tanks combined so they should not have the capability of dealing the same amount of damage as them
well they won't nerf paladin because SE seems to be determined to make paladin better than the other 2 so you don't have to worry, but that doesn't mean they should keep things going the way they are

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what would you have it that pali just get their damage slashed so it can just be used in progression content like whm , when pali had less damage it was drk/war, now it can be a mixture of all three thats progress not perfect but better, all the tanks should do around the same damage, but all should have more tools like pali and call it a day. They just need to give drk something to make it better than its current state then maybe all the pali hate can stop

The idea that Paladin has some ridiculous amount of utility is pretty laughable to begin with. They have a lot of tools to mitigate for other party members, and that's basically it. No gap-closer, no free oGCD heal that generates a ton of aggro on pull with no DPS loss, no oGCD stance swaps in or out of tank stance, no slashing debuff, mediocre burst damage, no ranged AoE enmity tool, etc. If you're going to make an argument that a tank should have its wings clipped a little bit and some nerfs should be passed around, Paladin is not where you should be focusing.

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

I agree too with...some things said by different people. x'D

Giving each tank specific strenghts and weaknesses really would add some diversity to the game and would also work great with a fourth tank. (I am expecting Viking, using a greathammer to become the next tank btw)
SE could also scale the tanks just like the dds. From high def/utility and low dps to high dps and low def/utility. (scrapping tank stances would be usefull for this)

Or with the introduction of a fourth tank they could declare two tanks as defensive tanks (PLD and DRK) and the other two to dmg tanks (WAR and possbly VKG).

Anyways, my predicts are a small PLD dmg nerf, maybe a small WAR dmg buff and a overall adjustement of DRK.

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This would actually make it much harder to balance. When you intentionally make tanks with strengths and weaknesses, you inherently make some better than others. When they have specific niches they become OP/Required in situations those niches are advantaged and trash when they aren't. Just look back to the 'Pld is the physical tank, Drk is the magic tank' of 3.x. On fights where magic damage prevailed no one ever took pld. It only stood a chance on the physical fights (people took drk anyway for those but that was due to its superior damage.) If both tanks did the same damage you would have tanks good at 1 encounter and terrible at the other.

Putting tanks into these arbitrary categories just bakes that problem in from the ground up. "X tank is offensive! Y tank is Phy Defensive! Z tank has raid mitigation! 4th XY Tank Magic defensive!". That's just bad design in this type of PVE MMO. You will look at the encounter and grab the 2 tanks that fit that fight and exclude the others. Lots of AOEs? Get Z tank. Physical fight? Your not taking XY tank ever.

Give all tanks similar tools but have them execute them in a different way. War and Pld both do great damage. But war does it with bursts and managing their gauge resource to punch and FC them to death. Pld does it in a steady stream and blowing shit up with holy. They both have a single target heal, but equal and clemency in practice are very different and fit their jobs style and character. Etc. Etc.

Stop giving tanks niches. That's why 2.x was bad. Drk's 'magic tank' leftovers are part of the reason its a little worse. Just make them stylistically different but ultimately have similar mitigation, damage, utility. As soon as you push them to far in 1 direction you just get exclusion for the one that doesn't fit the meta. You can have infinity tanks if they are in the same performance ballpark.

Nerf: Direct Hit will only work on dps, no longer useable for tanks and healers.
Nerf: Punishment for switching out of tanking stance while in a 4 man dungeon (currect earned Eminity reduced by 50%).
Buff: Increase dmg dealt while in tanking stance (all 3 tanks)

Will this happen, no. But maybe It'll make tanks actually tank again.

Signed, a scorned DPS

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Originally Posted by Aana

This would actually make it much harder to balance. When you intentionally make tanks with strengths and weaknesses, you inherently make some better than others. When they have specific niches they become OP/Required in

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i totally agree wit this I feel like it sway more wiggle room to be different with dps, but tanks and heals are just gona have to be pretty similar but just have a different feel to them. I actually would like to be able to switch from tank to tank and notice slight differences but have their aesthetics be the different maker as opposed to one or the other being weaker than another one.

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Originally Posted by Morrigu

Nerf: Direct Hit will only work on dps, no longer useable for tanks and healers.
Nerf: Punishment for switching out of tanking stance while in a 4 man dungeon (currect earned Eminity reduced by 50%).
Buff: Increase dmg dealt while in tanking stance (all 3 tanks)

Will this happen, no. But maybe It'll make tanks actually tank again.

Signed, a scorned DPS

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haha you must of gotten some bad tanks or something

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Originally Posted by Morrigu

Nerf: Direct Hit will only work on dps, no longer useable for tanks and healers.
Nerf: Punishment for switching out of tanking stance while in a 4 man dungeon (currect earned Eminity reduced by 50%).
Buff: Increase dmg dealt while in tanking stance (all 3 tanks)

Will this happen, no. But maybe It'll make tanks actually tank again.

Signed, a scorned DPS

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Also forgot to add:
Buff: Increase effect of Tenacity by 25-50%

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Originally Posted by Morrigu

Also forgot to add:
Buff: Increase effect of Tenacity by 25-50%

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Tanks tank regardless of which Buff icon is on their bar.

Also, buffing tenacity only reduces the need of Tank Stance further.

Also, Threat is such a bad niche. Like, threat is just DPS times a multiplier. It's a pretty simple mechanic that's a formality in most content with the advent of voke-shirk. Crazy opinion by me, but I expect that SE is going to eventually change most DPS to generate half enmity by default or somesuch and introduce more ways to cut it by 5.0. Tanking for me isn't the process of establishing hate, it's controlling where the boss goes, whether or not I have to spam some terrible RoH combo to keep it or not is kind of not the point.

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Originally Posted by konpachizaraki

and that's the problem, paladin has better utility than the other 2 tanks combined so they should not have the capability of dealing the same amount of damage as them

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On paper this is sound and I would agree. But as Heavensward and the early 4.0 STR accessory tank phase showed, the only thing that many care about is DPS. All that extra utility? It's great and I love it but it's well and above what's needed to comfortably do anything. if PLD suddenly dropped a huge chunk of DPS it's mostly back to being the unwelcome child after the first 3 days of content again.

Best thing going forward would be to bring DRK a little extra defensive stuff, leave PLD alone for now as the benchmark and start slowly reigning in WAR DPS a bit so we don't get the whole "burst tank for phase pushing" schtick again

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

what would you have it that pali just get their damage slashed so it can just be used in progression content like whm , when pali had less damage it was drk/war, now it can be a mixture of all three thats progress not perfect but better, all the tanks should do around the same damage, but all should have more tools like pali and call it a day.

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paladin in terms of damage should be where DRK is now, and DRK in terms of damage should be where WAR is now, buffing only DRK and not nerfing PLD can only mean 2 things
1.WAR become the unwanted child and tank spot will be mostly DRK+PLD
2.PLD will still get their guaranteed spot and WAR+DRK will clash even more to get their spot in raid
i know that is what you paladin player wanedt because most of you are still bitter about what happened in heavensward, but i'm not going to just agree with it

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Originally Posted by Crater

idea Paladin has some ridiculous amount of utility is pretty laughable to begin with. They have a lot of tools to mitigate for other party members, and that's basically it. No gap-closer, no free oGCD heal that generates a ton of aggro on pull with no DPS loss, no oGCD stance swaps in or out of tank stance, no slashing debuff, mediocre burst damage, no ranged AoE enmity tool, etc. If you're going to make an argument that a tank should have its wings clipped a little bit and some nerfs should be passed around, Paladin is not where you should be focusing.

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1.they have shield swipe as a free oGCD attack(war and drk don't have it)
2.PLD utility is much better than a mere gap closer
3.slashing debuff isn't special for tank anymore because samurai and ninja have them
but pld should not be nerfed, they should nerf another tank because for some reason that particular tank who already competing with other tank for a spot in raid should be nerfed even more, haha NO

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Originally Posted by konpachizaraki

1.WAR become the unwanted child and tank spot will be mostly DRK+PLD

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doubt it, WAR have better dps and shake it of is much more flexible that divine veil and PoA, the 90 seconds recast is pretty strong to be up on every important raid aoe and can be buffed to be even stronger with the cds you dont need on that moment.

WAR is on par of PLD, cover and intervetion are good tools but no fight is desing to have those in mind and WAR can cheat many tank busters and mechanics with holmgang so no, buffing DRK to dealt more dps that WAR and keep the current utility will be more balance that is right now.

What I am hoping for: lots of balancing for tanks (mostly DRK fixes to core issues)
What I am expecting: even less content to do which mean more canceled subs...
What will happen: me getting my Stromblood DRK mount and stop playing if 4.2 is basically the same as 4.1 patch or early access days...

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

What I am hoping for: lots of balancing for tanks (mostly DRK fixes to core issues)
What I am expecting: even less content to do which mean more canceled subs...

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it will be tho , just gona be insert relic grind, insert new raids and u will essentially have the same thing

Most likely changes, if any, in my opinion:

(1) Blood Weapon recast reduced to 30 seconds
(2) Blood Price recast reduced to 30 seconds
(3) Bloodspiller raised 20 potency out of grit

I hope for more, but I think this would at least put us where we should be as off tanks. In particular we really need:

(1) Sole Survivor turned into a raid wide utility (in particular an HP/mp/resource refresh would be ideal)

Paladin and warrior: No adjustment

Mainly hoping for DRK changes here.
Big stuff: Make sole survivor and dark passenger actually useful (party buff and enemy debuff/DoT respectively) in endgame content.

petty petty junk I just can't stop thinking about: please have mana costs sync up to an actual ratio to our MP, I can't stand that 9480 against our 2400 mana costs, either do it by lowering ability mana costs (preferred) or decreasing max mana (really don't want this but it will make me sleep better at night)

Why decrease max MP?

Four uses of DA/TBN is 9600 MP; DRK's current max of 9480 only needs a paltry 120MP to be perfectly divisible by 4.

I honestly don't know why people (myself included) don't complain more about how much of an obvious slap in the face that is. Imagine the stink Warriors would kick up if the Beast Gauge capped out at 95.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Four uses of DA/TBN is 9600 MP; DRK's current max of 9480 only needs a paltry 120MP to be perfectly divisible by 4.

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So you're saying Piety materia has some value for DRK? :p

On a more serious note, though, how much would the extra MP actually benefit DRK? Just trying to think about in my head I can see 1 extra GCD, most likely being used for bloodspiller, because it's going to free up needing the extra syphon. Or maybe the MP from syphon results in an extra DA. (genuinely not sure). At the very least it seems like another simple adjustment that would help boost their overall damage.

Well an extra 120 MP doesn't really do much to improve overall theoretical performance (DRK theorycrafting tends to kind of assume 100% resource efficiency which really wouldn't be meaningfully affected by 120 MP), and you typically don't ever cap MP or Blood the way that you do BG or PLD MP because the resource generation is too complicated to do it that way.

It's just a QoL thing in the sense that it's kind of stupid for DRK's max MP to be 3.95 casts of DA/TBN instead of 4.

Raising Dark Knight's MP cap wouldn't change its dps by very much since it would literally only give either 1 or 2 extra dark arts over the course of the encounter. Changing our MP regeneration however could give many more dark arts and actually raise our dps significantly.

Ah. Wasn't sure. Seems like it would help more than that, like when they reduced the gauge cost for activating unchained/inner release on war, but maybe not.

Reducing costs would have a nice effect in that it is like increasing our resource generation. Just a flat cap increase from 9480 to 9600 does surprisingly little.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Reducing costs would have a nice effect in that it is like increasing our resource generation. Just a flat cap increase from 9480 to 9600 does surprisingly little.

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^ This.

If playing optimally, once the fight starts you will never hit your max MP ever again so its all about using it as it regenerates. Unless Drk gets some type of % MP based restoration of some type max MP will have virtually no effect.

Imagine 5 min into a 10 min fight your max MP goes up by 1 million. But you only had 5k when it happened. Nothing changes. You still get MP back at the same rate as you were before and can only spend it as fast as you get it. How fast you can generate MP is the only factor that matters.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Ah. Wasn't sure. Seems like it would help more than that, like when they reduced the gauge cost for activating unchained/inner release on war, but maybe not.

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It would help more than people are giving it credit for, I think - it just wouldn't affect things from an on-paper, theorycrafting perspective.

It isn't really apparent while you play the class, but that missing 120 MP never really comes back to you: Syphon Strike restores MP in 1200 MP increments, meaning that every two Syphon Strikes is another DA, but you don't have any 'extra' that make up for the 120 MP deficiency. Blood Weapon restores MP in 480 MP increments, which also divides cleanly into 2400 (480 * 5 = 2400), so there's no extra to make up for the 120 MP deficit there, either.

It would be more obvious if DRK was designed in a way where you ever actually build your MP all the way back up to 9480, but that missing 120 MP really does just mean that you always do one fewer DA than you're supposed to.

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Originally Posted by Crater

It would help more than people are giving it credit for, I think - it just wouldn't affect things from an on-paper, theorycrafting perspective.

It isn't really apparent while you play the class, but that missing 120 MP never really comes back to you: Syphon Strike restores MP in 1200 MP increments, meaning that every two Syphon Strikes is another DA, but you don't have any 'extra' that make up for the 120 MP deficiency. Blood Weapon restores MP in 480 MP increments, which also divides cleanly into 2400 (480 * 5 = 2400), so there's no extra to make up for the 120 MP deficit there, either.

It would be more obvious if DRK was designed in a way where you ever actually build your MP all the way back up to 9480, but that missing 120 MP really does just mean that you always do one fewer DA than you're supposed to.

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1 tick of blood price at 70 is worth 120 mana.

1 extra dark arts in our rotation is either really strong in a very short duration fight (the kind that lasts less than a minute) to not worth very much in a long fight. Where as something like a dark arts costing 2000 mana means every 5 dark arts we get a "free" one compared to the old system and has the benefit of helping dark knights dps no matter the duration.

I did make the comment as something super petty of me, it's just a pet peeve of mine and if they did actually address it I can see them taking away MP from the DRK's pool rather than cut the mana costs of abilities.

They probably will add more aggro multipliers to our tank stances. :D

Because, I, like most DRKs want changes, here's my wish list:

Buffed Action: The Blackest Night: Additional effect added: Restores 1,200 MP if the shield dissipates naturally. Now lasts 8s. Recast increased to 18s.
TBN has always bugged me with the server ticks and latency. Increasing its duration and recast is a good fix to get around the technical issues. Additionally, restoring part of the cost should the ability fail for whatever reason, looking at you, healers... is for the best. The MP restoration also eases the high learning curve of this move.

"New" Action: Scourge: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional effect: damage over time, 40 potency, 30s. Additional effect: increases the target's vulnerability to magic damage by 5% for 30s.
DRK desperately needs utility and damage. This would give them some of both while opening up more compositions in the meta.

Revised Action: Dark Passenger: Potency increased to 150. Dark Arts potency increased to 280. Dark Arts effect changed: Lowers damage dealt by all targets by 5% for 10s.
This is purely to fix dark passenger. It's obvious they don't want it used often for single target, but let's be honest, Dark Passenger/Souleater is the big DRK move. No one should not use this on cooldown. Changing the blind to flat damage reduction just fits in better with the game as it is and sures up lower level mitigation on trash.

Revised Action: Soul Survivor: Additional effect added: Increases damage you deal to the target by 10%.
Soul Survivor needs a use on bosses with little to no adds, such as Bahamut Prime. Making it a personal damage boost also fits in with DRK's toolkit.

Revised Action: Plunge: Additional effect: Resets the recast timer for the Blackest Night.
Sometimes, you need to shield two targets. Sometimes you need rapid heavy mitigation.

Removed Action: Blood Pact
This thing is garbage.

Revised Action: Blood Sword: Can now be used in Grit. And its MP regeneration applies to magical damage.
No blood pact basically requires this.

New Action: Blood Mist: Chokes the target with blood mist, reducing the damage dealt by the target's next attack by 15%. 10s duration, 120s recast.
More tank utility. DRK is an offensive counterpart to PLD, it should look like one.

Nerfed Action: Syphon Strike: No longer has a Dark Arts combo potency.
This is mostly to reduce complexity to make up for the complexity in DPS added by Soul Survivor and Dark Passenger.

Nerfed Action: Darkside: Now drains MP passively again.
This is to fix the stupid overflow of MP. There's just too much MP coming in as everyone else has mentioned.

General change: Dark Knight basic attacks and all Dark Knight actions now does magic damage.
This is just for justify Scourge more and because lore would hint at this, since DRKs fight with enchanted swords cloaked in umbral magic.

Just with regards to the MP pool discussion: DRK still uses roughly HW proportions between Syphon Strike, DA, and your max MP. The problem with this is that MP generation is much higher in SB with the removal of Darkside's drain effect. This makes it a lot more difficult to "float" your MP between the two extremes, because you're required to handle a much higher incoming rate of MP. A larger MP pool relative to Syphon Strike/DA would give you more room to manoeuvre (due to the larger "storage capacity").

Blood Price is a bit of a wasted ability. Look at this bit of lore:

"So as I was saying, that heretic was fighting like a man possessed. Even after he took several wounds, he showed no sign of pain─though there was no mistaking the blood. As the fight wore on, it began to soak through his armor, spreading to every ilm of his body. But when it began to rise and envelop him as a mist, I realized it wasn't blood, but something dark and twisted..."

I understand the balance difficulty with an ability which gives you resources for being hit. It's bound to be either very powerful or very weak depending on how it's tuned. They could have just re-purposed it as a defensive cooldown - perhaps let its defensive power scale with the amount of damage taken while it's active. As you bleed out, it soaks into your armour, reinforcing it. Either way, I'd rather them change it if they don't think that they can safely balance it, instead of getting a deliberately undertuned action.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Just with regards to the MP pool discussion: DRK still uses roughly HW proportions between Syphon Strike, DA, and your max MP. The problem with this is that MP generation is much higher in SB with the removal of Darkside's drain effect. This makes it a lot more difficult to "float" your MP between the two extremes, because you're required to handle a much higher incoming rate of MP. A larger MP pool relative to Syphon Strike/DA would give you more room to manoeuvre (due to the larger "storage capacity")

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I'll take your word on this , I always found dark knight rather rhythmic in its rise and fall of mp with party buffs. If they increased our mp pool to 13K thats fine and well, I just think it is important to note that it doesn't add anything meaningful to Dark Knight DPS, it would still be behind paladin over the duration of any single target fight that matters.

However, increasing the proportion of mp restored could be a vehicle to raise dark knights dps through more dark arts. Really a huge number of dark knight's problems would go away with just raising our resource generation and increasing the duration of mitigation. A 20% increase to resource generation and 50% boost to mitigation duration could be just what the doctor ordered.

Though Dark Knight would still be boned in the area of raid utility.

The DRK discussion has bled into the dps forums it's so bad.