Dark Knight Megathread

That was the excuse used for WAR as well, back in Heavensward. That problem wasn't WAR being too powerful, oh no, the problem was that PLD and DRK were too weak.

The crux of the issue actually went back to ARR, and the fact that the game only launched with two tanks and two healers. When there's more jobs present, you're obliged to spread out different unique mechanics across several jobs, like pet based healing, shields, aetherflow's instant cast effects, and so on. But they just put out the standard 'vanilla healer' you see in every game, and the second job was 'everything else'. The same is true for tanks as well. So when they tried to add in a third, there was no design space to expand out additional jobs in. DPS never really suffered from this problem as a role because there were so many more jobs at launch, setting aside the fact that BRD was mandatory for its resource buffs and a subrole had to be created around it to make it work in the long run.

The biggest problem is resistance to change from the playerbase. The game would be very different had all the currently existing jobs been present for the same amount of time. But adding new jobs upsets the entire balance, especially when you have fewer jobs to start with, and you sometimes have to make radical changes to keep everything balanced. But the dev team seemed to be overly worried about hurting anyone's feelings, which lead to them backtracking on much needed balance changes and letting some jobs remain unchecked for way too long.

It ironic given how WAR and DRK swapped places. DRK is currently king, not because it is overly powerful but because everything is catered to it. Nearly all raidwides is magic and some fights are only magic, heavy mitigation meta means shields > HoTs, 2 min meta favors heavy ogcd jobs that can dump all their cds within a small burst window, and all your cds line up perfectly with that regardless of order.

WAR was good in HW for the exact same reasons of fitting in perfectly with the meta of high dps in addition to being totally stacked. Though I still say it was a touch too strong when you consider that no job in the history of this game had a cd that increased your ATK power by 50% (later to nerfed down to 20% before getting reworked entirely). We're not talking physical, magical, crit, direct hit or potency. Literally 1.5 of your current ATK power stat.

I also feel like we may be hitting a breaking point in where we might need to stop introducing jobs and just focus on refining the ones we have. A more horizontal progression with job design. Personally I would like to see them start with weapon design. Give PLD a spear for one of the raid weapons. If the playerbase really is as casual as I think it is then glamour options is an easy way of softening the blow. Sure PLD might be unfun for some ppl but hey you get a spear. Likewise with WAR and hammers.

I feel like WAR's fall from grace has been entirely 6.2 onward. It was definately the golden standard for PF tanking for all of Asphodelos, to the point where even early on WAR could cycle between Holmgang and Kitchen Sinking to effectively solo tank p1 and p2. I cant help but think someone at SE saw that and got mad enough to specifically design the tank busters to be swaps with bleeds to specifically counter WAR cheese. I honestly think they went too far with how much bleed hurts WAR's self regen gimmick, its not unbeatable but it does make the job feel pretty bad. On the exact opposite side, Abyssos has shown just how powerful DRK having 3 unique 60s Mitigations on top of TBN really is.

Alternating Dark Mind, Oblation with Rampart and Shadow Wall gives DRK a defensive edge that I think only post rework PLD can really match now.

Who knows maybe they'll get mad at DRK for Abyssos and every raidwide and tank buster in the final tier will be physical.

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Originally Posted by Vallerie

This is why I want Salted Earth to have 45s CD. It wouldn't affect burst, since it would still only align in opener and then at 6th minute, but you would periodically get another set of 2 actions outside of burst.

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I'd do that and knock 20 seconds off Blood Weapon's CD. BW would still line up with 2-mins but also give one more thing to keep track of during downtime. DRK would need still more things changed to make downtime more interesting, but it would be a good first start they could do even now (they won't mid-expansion but hypothetically they could).

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I feel like WAR's fall from grace has been entirely 6.2 onward. It was definately the golden standard for PF tanking for all of Asphodelos, to the point where even early on WAR could cycle between Holmgang and Kitchen Sinking to effectively solo tank p1 and p2. I cant help but think someone at SE saw that and got mad enough to specifically design the tank busters to be swaps with bleeds to specifically counter WAR cheese. I honestly think they went too far with how much bleed hurts WAR's self regen gimmick, its not unbeatable but it does make the job feel pretty bad. On the exact opposite side, Abyssos has shown just how powerful DRK having 3 unique 60s Mitigations on top of TBN really is.

Alternating Dark Mind, Oblation with Rampart and Shadow Wall gives DRK a defensive edge that I think only post rework PLD can really match now.

Who knows maybe they'll get mad at DRK for Abyssos and every raidwide and tank buster in the final tier will be physical.

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While also giving PLD Light Mind, which reduces physical damage taken by 20%.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I feel like WAR's fall from grace has been entirely 6.2 onward. It was definately the golden standard for PF tanking for all of Asphodelos, to the point where even early on WAR could cycle between Holmgang and Kitchen Sinking to effectively solo tank p1 and p2. I cant help but think someone at SE saw that and got mad enough to specifically design the tank busters to be swaps with bleeds to specifically counter WAR cheese. I honestly think they went too far with how much bleed hurts WAR's self regen gimmick, its not unbeatable but it does make the job feel pretty bad. On the exact opposite side, Abyssos has shown just how powerful DRK having 3 unique 60s Mitigations on top of TBN really is.

Alternating Dark Mind, Oblation with Rampart and Shadow Wall gives DRK a defensive edge that I think only post rework PLD can really match now.

Who knows maybe they'll get mad at DRK for Abyssos and every raidwide and tank buster in the final tier will be physical.

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WAR's been doing that since SB, when holmgang was a 3 min cd, only getting nerfed to 4 mins last expansion. The increase to duration is okay but when you realize that tank busters by their design is only one hit (most of the time) duration is only additive but not a benefit when compared to being on a shorter cd. Even then, if you make tankbusters appear every 2 mins WAR is still going to rotate between holm and cds swaps. It's one of the reasons why I think tankbusters should be more frequent than it currently is now. In addition to being varied, i.e. single hit, multi stack, multi hit, etc.

If they wanted WAR to match TBN in terms of defensives they only need to reduce ToB to 60 secs so it is up every time a tank busters is there similar to TBN.

They should change Provoke to be like, 5-10s CD, that way A: they make it more casual-friendly (provoked the wrong mob? less lockout til your next chance to provoke the right mob), and B: it would allow them to have more-often tankswaps. Imagine a fight where they have a WOW style 'every autoattack gives a stack of 10% vuln', and you have to keep swapping to mitigate how many stacks you have, with stuff like 'purposely hold the boss for a bit longer, so when your cotank takes it, their stack count isnt as high when the tankbuster casts'

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

They should change Provoke to be like, 5-10s CD, that way A: they make it more casual-friendly (provoked the wrong mob? less lockout til your next chance to provoke the right mob), and B: it would allow them to have more-often tankswaps. Imagine a fight where they have a WOW style 'every autoattack gives a stack of 10% vuln', and you have to keep swapping to mitigate how many stacks you have, with stuff like 'purposely hold the boss for a bit longer, so when your cotank takes it, their stack count isnt as high when the tankbuster casts'

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Agreed, it would make things leagues more interesting on the actual tanking aspect.

Although, I'm partial to making tankbusters more frequent across the board. They are pitifully underwhelming in normal mode content when we have a surplus of cooldowns to use for them.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Although, I'm partial to making tankbusters more frequent across the board. They are pitifully underwhelming in normal mode content when we have a surplus of cooldowns to use for them.

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With the shift to every tank having some short ~25s CD Super Mitigation tool, the game really doesn't teach you how to use it optimally at all. I think it be good to teach players earlier on by increasing the need for tanks to actually use their mitigations.

Tank is honestly all over the place in terms of how difficult or easy it can be based on the content being run its honestly a bit crazy.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

WAR's been doing that since SB, when holmgang was a 3 min cd, only getting nerfed to 4 mins last expansion. The increase to duration is okay but when you realize that tank busters by their design is only one hit (most of the time) duration is only additive but not a benefit when compared to being on a shorter cd. Even then, if you make tankbusters appear every 2 mins WAR is still going to rotate between holm and cds swaps. It's one of the reasons why I think tankbusters should be more frequent than it currently is now. In addition to being varied, i.e. single hit, multi stack, multi hit, etc.

If they wanted WAR to match TBN in terms of defensives they only need to reduce ToB to 60 secs so it is up every time a tank busters is there similar to TBN.

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Busters being more varied would already help Warrior's kit as it is right now, it was completely fine in Asphodelos.
If they kept the bleed busters on everything however I don't think making ToB a 60 second cooldown would change much, it's just not good against the current tier's tank damage.


What would I rather have, 20% max HP (and a heal that is barely even noticeable when 1 bleed tick deals as much damage) that run out before the DoT has even finished ticking? Or 20% flat mitigation on the buster, leading to the DoT doing less total damage overall?