Yoshi P./Dev team/Job balance team Please Say Something About DRK

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

Well judging from my research.... you neither player DRK nor have been to any recorded savage content (Shinryu however is fun)

So lets go from here then. Back in 3.x PLD was trash for Alex as almost all tank busters/autos were Magic. Twist this around for 3.x... imagine if all the tank busters were now physical with little-no need for magic defensives. Guess who would have gotten the 4.x buff instead.

All in all, when people stop bringing a job to savage all together the team investigates. Currently in every savage fight I've seen on fflogs so far... PLD/WAR is overtaking DRK in terms of usage & popularity. What Yoshida is implying is that "Well players must not understand how beneficial TBN is, it's less visibly apparently than Shake It Off". This statement is just straight wrong, it's an Apples - Oranges comparison.

TBN is a single target 20%(self) or 10%(another person) hp shield that costs a hefty amount of personal resources on a 15 second cooldown

Shake It Off costs nothing, shields the whole group up to 24% (most people only use the base 8% since its free) at the cost of all your personal defensives if going for the 24%. HOWEVER it costs nothing if you only need the base 8%... which is only 2% less than TBN and has a 90 second cooldown.

TL;DR - What does a DRK bring that a WAR or a PLD can't? The answer is nothing, so people won't bring it. With people not bringing it, it will lead to more exposure by the dev team.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Problem is, even by totally screwing Savage balance, if would never kill the game...in fact, if Savage didn't exist, it wouldn't kill the game, considering the very small part of the playerbase that actually is interested in Savage.

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Agree with Reynhart. A bigger problem is this over-focusing on the end game, savage raiding scene. The casual player won't give a fruit about savage content. To them, the game is fun to play as much as they choose to do so, and in that regard DRK is just fine. Which, on that level, it is, and it's still playable... but the enjoyment has gone down since HW, and people can see and feel that. But it's still a fun class. You've got a big sword to smack things around with, and you can do "magic" too!
From a baseline DRK is overshadowed in terms of how much damage it can soak up until you hit 70 with it. I think that's a terrible design philosophy, but that's just me.

So, I see where YoshiP is standing based on how I interpreted the translation, but I'd love to see what he had said to that question in his native tongue. From there a lot of insight could be gleamed.

Agreed, this is a good way of looking at it!
And it's always a good point regarding translation, who knows what little nuance his original answer had? :)

To CaTi; Remember the guys that are behind the creation of Final Fantasy as well as Dragon Quest also made not 1 but multiple awful movies which include Final Fantasy: Spirits Within... first 5 minutes of that movie couldn't even keep me interested because I was asking "Where the hell is the magicks, the moogles, the chocobos? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHOCOBOS?!?!!!?" Then Advent Children was probably just as bad but for me FF6 had best story, FF4 had best moral and characters, and FF5 had best job System ESPECIALLY the GBA remake that had 4 more optional jobs you could unlock... Only we; the fans are the only ones that actually care... Naoki Yoshida might just as much as a fan but I doubt he gets much say in when things get released or if things need more time to be released for better marketing... but FF15 had a ridiculously long development period and Tetsuya Nomura is JUST NOW WORKING ON KINGDOM HEARTS 3!!!! So yeah... Though I think Yoshi-P might be IRL equivalent of Nanamo....

As I posted in another thread, if yoship is basing how good DRK is off of usage numbers then he's not wrong to say 'Shake it Off is pretty good, DRK doesn't have that' and not say anything more. DRK is about average for its savage participation compared to WAR (which has fewer people playing it) and PLD (which has more). My that metric while yoship probably knows that people want some changes there isn't the same impetus to change things as there was with SMN and MCH to get people playing the jobs.

For DRKoftheAzure: I can see what you're saying and definitely agree with you in terms of say lack of funding for content design and such like. Don't think it's quite the case for a lack of DRK buffs though!

I think something to consider personally is that a fair few of the more significant job changes (looking at you SMN and DRG) we've had including and since 4.0 have been aimed at reducing the gap between the skill floor and ceiling of players in that Job. That seems to be the immediate concern for patching for the most part. As I understand it (do correct me if I'm wrong of course) DRK in it's current iteration (as opposed to the 3.x version) is considered a pretty simple job to get to grips with. Offence is pretty straightforward mostly, mitigation is pretty straightforward for what it is. So that might also be part of the reason the job isn't being looked at (to our knowledge)?

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Originally Posted by CaTi

For DRKoftheAzure: I can see what you're saying and definitely agree with you in terms of say lack of funding for content design and such like. Don't think it's quite the case for a lack of DRK buffs though!

I think something to consider personally is that a fair few of the more significant job changes (looking at you SMN and DRG) we've had including and since 4.0 have been aimed at reducing the gap between the skill floor and ceiling of players in that Job. That seems to be the immediate concern for patching for the most part. As I understand it (do correct me if I'm wrong of course) DRK in it's current iteration (as opposed to the 3.x version) is considered a pretty simple job to get to grips with. Offence is pretty straightforward mostly, mitigation is pretty straightforward for what it is. So that might also be part of the reason the job isn't being looked at (to our knowledge)?

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Could very well be. It's overall a simple job, but there's plenty of fat that can be trimmed away, and other parts that just need some tenderizing. MP costs, blood gauge and it's associated uses, potencies, comparisons to the alternatives w/ regards to damage and mitigation, the over reliance on dark arts, tanking with / without grit on, etc etc.

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Originally Posted by CaTi

So that might also be part of the reason the job isn't being looked at (to our knowledge)?

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It's hard to know. I went back through the major buffs of HW and a couple of the SB ones and it looks like there are roughly two different types of buffs.

1. Usage-balancing buffs.

2. Internal recommendations / Player feedback.

The first set I'm guessing is based off of SE's internal metrics. Notable HW buffs include MCH and AST which were at the beginning of the expansion (Gordias) they were both hideously under-represented in content. AST would go on to get buffed three more times (Noct buffs twice, as well as the balance buff) while MCH didn't actually wind up changing much after the initial changes to how Gauss Barrel worked.

In SB the most noticeable change is SMN so far, which was another case of incredible under-representation. As of right now SMN has some of the most insane combined rDPS in the game excluding the golden trio (DRG/BRD/NIN) and is probably going to see continued usage growth in the future.

There are of course other examples of low-usage jobs receiving minor buffs, but the common thread for major improvements (MCH became a mandatory part of the Speedkill Comp into SB, AST is still a powerhouse, SMN is looking like it might out-place MCH now) is a dearth of usage, particularly in the early stages of an expansion.

Buffs that don't fit the trend I assume are their actual responses to player feedback or their own internal review. DRG changes to positional damage penalties being changed to improve the skill floor, same with the eyes, and were essentially a net neutral at the top and a net gain in the middle and bottom bands of players (I'm guessing based on what the change means, I've not analyzed fflogs trends). The WAR changes probably are a combination of changing the skill floor (a newbie tank might assume that because Eye is more potency than path they should spam eye instead despite the beast gauge) and player feedback (removing the beast penalty on stances as well as IR and Unchained). WAR also suffers from being under-represented in Savage content, being below DRK (which is sitting at a rough average). WAR is unlikely to receive any changes though.

Based on those two different sets I'd say DRK is looking at more maintenance buffs than anything if yoship decides to have the balance team look at the class and buff it in one way or another. DRK is essentially in the same class as BLM or MNK in HW. Good enough that buffing them won't necessarily affect usage rates (the data says that people are already playing it), even if it doesn't have the same level of utility as other jobs. This might seem cynical but if SB BLM made it into the game and has made it through roughly unchanged it doesn't bode well for anyone hoping that there are any massive changes for DRK. Reason-being is that no matter how much people might complain DRK is in no way in the same position as HW PLD, and not anywhere near as bad as SB BLM vs NIN/DRG/ or BRD.

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Originally Posted by CaTi

For DRKoftheAzure: I can see what you're saying and definitely agree with you in terms of say lack of funding for content design and such like. Don't think it's quite the case for a lack of DRK buffs though!

I think something to consider personally is that a fair few of the more significant job changes (looking at you SMN and DRG) we've had including and since 4.0 have been aimed at reducing the gap between the skill floor and ceiling of players in that Job. That seems to be the immediate concern for patching for the most part. As I understand it (do correct me if I'm wrong of course) DRK in it's current iteration (as opposed to the 3.x version) is considered a pretty simple job to get to grips with. Offence is pretty straightforward mostly, mitigation is pretty straightforward for what it is. So that might also be part of the reason the job isn't being looked at (to our knowledge)?

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

Could very well be. It's overall a simple job, but there's plenty of fat that can be trimmed away, and other parts that just need some tenderizing. MP costs, blood gauge and it's associated uses, potencies, comparisons to the alternatives w/ regards to damage and mitigation, the over reliance on dark arts, tanking with / without grit on, etc etc.

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Too simple for a job you get to unlock as soon as you gain access to Foundation in Ishgard in this expansion which starts as a level 30 job... YOU NEVER MAKE A CLASS/JOB THAT DOES NOT START AT LEVEL 30 SIMPLE TO LEARN!!! It assumes you already have knowledge of tanking with the other 2 tank jobs! Might as well make Ishgard a starting city for the HW jobs and make Ul'dah basically the new Mor Dhona! Or we could have everyone just start in Mor Dhorna and go from there!!!(Sarcasm for those last 2 sentences but serious with the first 3 sentences...)

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

It assumes you already have knowledge of tanking with the other 2 tank jobs!

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aaaaand ima stop you here.
I started playing as a DRG, and DRK was my first tank. I am willing to bet i'm not the only one that picked up tanking only because the appeal of DRK was enough to make me/them want to learn how to tank.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

aaaaand ima stop you here.
I started playing as a DRG, and DRK was my first tank. I am willing to bet i'm not the only one that picked up tanking only because the appeal of DRK was enough to make me/them want to learn how to tank.

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Did you get all cross-class stuff from both MRD and GLA classes or was this after Stormblood launched?

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Did you get all cross-class stuff from both MRD and GLA classes or was this after Stormblood launched?

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I took GLD up to the point where I could get voke, then left it there.
So yeah, aside from deflating whatever point you're trying to make, I did play it in HW.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

I took GLD up to the point where I could get voke, then left it there.
So yeah, aside from deflating whatever point you're trying to make, I did play it in HW.

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And you didn't get Bloodbath and Foresight from MRD?

Well, he said something about DRK. /thread, I guess.

If anything, we should be angry at the person who wrote the question for him, because it undersells the general consensus of issues people have with DRK.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

And you didn't get Bloodbath and Foresight from MRD?

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I did. Again, what point are you trying to make?

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

Well, he said something about DRK. /thread, I guess.

If anything, we should be angry at the person who wrote the question for him, because it undersells the general consensus of issues people have with DRK.

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The question was loaded, and it gave Yoshi an out to dodge giving anything direct. Bad journo, yes.

While I agree the interviewer could have elucidated on some of the issues better, they did cite possibly the most useless skill right now in Dark Passenger, and Yoshida then didn't refer to it at all. Any time Shake it Off was brought up in the past however, they did respond and refer to it by name. Just an interesting thing to note.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

I did. Again, what point are you trying to make?

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You implied DRK is supposed to be easy to learn just like PLD when PLD didn't get tank stance until level 40 before Stormblood when DRK was WAY more complicated to learn WITHOUT research(yes I did my research how to make DRK effective at it's role, yes I leveled GLA to 34 and MRD to 26 before unlocking DRK).

TBH DRK was simple to learn, by design I imagine. I mean even as a first tank if you even bother to do the hall of novice tank missions then you know how the basic tank functions work. If you don't well... that's less on the class and more on the player really. That aside, New jobs should really be pretty simple to learn if they aren't level 1 to start. Throwing a bunch of random skills at someone with no context is usually a recipe for a bad time. And while I wasn't around at the start of Heavensward, I know enough people who got into tanking solely because DRK looked cool, with mixed results even with simplicity of the job for the most part...

... most of whom were pretty groan inducing with some really bad habits. So yeah jobs like DRK should be as simple to learn as the lvl 1 classes. I mean every job gets inherently more complicated when you have the full kit and you're looking for min/maxing anyway.

Honestly, I would say PLD is more complex than DRK. Has much more tools to use and more things rotational wise to do. And has a built-in stun.

Everything is balanced towards lvl70 content. But no one wants to address the big issues that makes leveling DRK a pain as well as running lvl60 content as DRK a big pain due to its defensive kit being stripped. Without TBN all content under lvl70 for DRK makes the tank feel like a wet noodle.

Out of curiosity what do you mean by stripped? Everything mitigation wise DRK lost can be found on the cross role system. And none of the tanks except WAR at (68 for Shake it off?) actually gain any personal mitigation between 61-69 (discounting intervention because it doesn't mitigate for the tank). Though I suppose some changes to drain skills could affect that.

I do think keeping TBN at 70 isn't the greatest place for it. Although I'm thinking more along the lines of blood/MP management on that one.

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Originally Posted by CaTi

Out of curiosity what do you mean by stripped? Everything mitigation wise DRK lost can be found on the cross role system.

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DRK lost 35 seconds of Reprisal per minute, completely lost Foresight, lost the DA effect on Dark Dance (relevant for dungeons), and effectively lost Dark Dance altogether, because Anticipation is never really worth a slot in your role skills over Rampart, Provoke, Shirk, Reprisal, and Convalescence.

Reprisal alone was a huge loss (and should absolutely be brought back in its original form), but Foresight was a more important mitigation tool for DRK than it was for WAR and PLD, the DA effect on Dark Dance was a pretty major factor in keeping DRK equal to the other tanks in dungeon content, and the baseline Dark Dance effect was basically DRK's answer to PLD getting random shield blocks.

DRK also lost a significant portion of its self-sustain for AoE phases in raids now that Blood Price doesn't return enough MP to keep a DA Abyssal Drain chain going, and while you can argue that it wasn't an outright loss, the relative cost of mitigation from DA Dark Mind has increased substantially because DRK is much more reliant on Dark Arts for damage, and the absolute cost of mitigation from DA Dark Passenger's Blind effect has increased due to the nerfs to Dark Passenger and Blood Price.

A lot of DRK's effective mitigation in 3.x came not from big-ticket mitigation cooldowns like DADM or Shadow Wall, but from an interlocking network of 'small' cooldowns and self-sustain tools that either augmented or filled the gaps between your bigger cooldowns. The overall effect of TBN definitely outweighs the loss of that network, but when you subtract the loss of those skills from the gains you get via TBN, it becomes clear that the net gain of DRK getting TBN was much, much smaller than you would think from just looking at the skill.


I don't think it's quite accurate to characterize the other tanks as "not gaining any personal mitigation" from Heavensward to Stormblood, either. In addition to actual 62+ mitigation tools, both Paladin and Warrior benefit significantly from broader changes to tank mechanics and to changes in their pre-60 toolkit:

- Paladin being given the ability to block magic attacks was a massive buff to their defensive ability, and in conjunction with that, Sheltron was changed from a flat 30s cooldown to a 50-Gauge consumer with a 5s cooldown, meaning that they can use (on average) one Sheltron every 22~23s (down from 30), and can block consecutive attacks as long as they're spaced apart by more than 5s (there are, for instance, multiple cases in Stormblood where two tankbusters/cleaves are 10s apart, which is close enough that Sheltron can block both, but TBN can only mitigate one).
- The trait for Cover turns it into what is essentially a 12-second Rampart on a 120s cooldown. This is now, first and foremost a personal mitigation tool for Paladin, and a 'utility' skill as a distant, distant second.
- Paladin also gets Passage of Arms at 70, which, apart from its party defense component, is a 100% Block Rate skill for the PLD personally, on a 120s cooldown. Its use is definitely discouraged due to the DPS loss, but in instances where party mitigation is unnecessary and personal mitigation is very important, this becomes a very strong personal defensive cooldown for PLD.
- Paladin can now also use the new Reprisal, which is a buff (relative to not being able to use Reprisal at all) on Paladin but a nerf (down from 3.x Reprisal) on DRK

- Warrior was directly given Rampart in the change from cross-class to role actions. This is an enormous buff to Warrior's defensive capability, compared to the (pretty much negligible given the rest of WAR's toolkit) loss of Foresight and Bloodbath.
- Shake it Off, as you mention, can be used by WAR for an 8% personal mitigation shield, if it isn't necessary for party mitigation.
- Vengeance and Raw Intuition were also decoupled from WAR's stack/gauge generation. While Warrior used to be stuck saving at least one of those cooldowns to use during every Berserk (lest they suffer a huge damage loss), they can now arrange their cooldowns however they like, whether incoming damage lines up with their Berserk or not.
- Same deal as Paladin with Reprisal.

Both PLD and WAR received pretty big buffs to their defenses in the move from Heavensward to Stormblood, between new skills they gained, old skills that got updated, or class/game mechanics that got overhauled in their favour, and the losses that they suffered to the Role Action system were not generally very important to their overall mitigation toolkit. DRK lost almost as much as it gained, in addition to the bulk of its defensive ability now being unavailable until level 70.

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Originally Posted by Crater

... because Anticipation is never really worth a slot in your role skills over Rampart, Provoke, Shirk, Reprisal, and Convalescence.

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Shirk is specific to 8-man parties with two tanks. It's a waste of a slot in 4-man dungeons, and 24-man raids (1 tank per party, and only works on party members).

If anything, I find Convalescence to be barely worth it, as it's not a defensive cooldown. It's a slight buff to incoming healing magic, when people are already overhealing you before and after any intensive damage.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

Shirk is specific to 8-man parties with two tanks. It's a waste of a slot in 4-man dungeons, and 24-man raids (1 tank per party, and only works on party members).

If anything, I find Convalescence to be barely worth it, as it's not a defensive cooldown. It's a slight buff to incoming healing magic, when people are already overhealing you before and after any intensive damage.

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It basically boils down to guaranteed heal increases (baby Defiance) on Convalescence versus not guaranteed parries on Anticipation. If say, they had sacked Raw Intuition and turned that skill into Anticipation, then there'd be no question it would be better. But because there's no guarantee you can't rely on it in anything major.

I do use it in 4 man stuff though, because lots of things hitting you is where that move actually gets a chance to shine (more chances to parry) and Shirk is useless outside of 8 man, as you said.

Well thanks for the breakdown Crater, it's a handy reference point so much obliged! I will tilt my head and acknowledge a few things you've said as they are fair points, especially concerning the drain potential in an AoE scenario, do remind me how much DA dark dance buffed parry chance? That said remembering my question was in the context of the leveling experience of DRK made in the post before mine, gonna have to fight you on a few points in there :)

Foresight. Sorry but it's the same CD for everyone and as such equally important/unimportant. I could make the (really, really tenuous) argument that it's more useful for PLD because everything but Rampart is on a big CD. Foresight certainly had no more importance to DRK than anyone else. I certainly made good use of it back in the day.

Cover. Ok this is not a defensive CD first and utility second. What am I gonna do? Shirk some poor sap, take their hit then take aggro back? In a dungeon? With the Shirk I probably didn't bring in a 4 man? The leveling trials don't do enough to ever bother with it either. Endgame you have a point and it's great there. Before that? Nah.

Passage is a 70 skill and has no impact on the leveling experience (won't deny it's usefulness at 70, but irrelevant to this point)

Eh I do agree with anticipation being kind of sketchy as a role choice usually. That said: Shirk is useless in 4 mans, convalescence has debatable use and reprisal will hardly do much for you against crowds and very few bosses in the leveling circuit do enough of anything to really see use out of it so you can definitely slot anticipation pre-70 for most things.

True PLD did gain magic block but I do ask, how many magic Auto attack casting enemies do you see in dungeons? Not a lot (particularly in SB) so that's debatable at best.
Sheltron is a fair cop though. Although would also point out that a once and done block is pretty ineffective vs a pack. And Oath generation is pretty poor in Shield Oath pre-64 (Holy Spirit) and casting Holy Spirit for gauge doesn't really happen with 3+ enemies. So your mileage may vary on that one.
In the same vein, old reprisal was good but it was still only a single target thing and a proc based one. I'd question exactly how useful it was in anything beyond a boss (which as previously mentioned make up the lesser portion of the leveling experience).

I'm not qualified to talk on WAR and how that plays so I'll let someone else take that one should they wish :)

So yeah I can't personally see DRK being that much squishier than it was pre-SB compared to it's peers for leveling outside of the (pretty fair point) AoE drain stuff and possibly some loss on Dark Dance percentage. At 70 I'll grant you stuff like reprisal and Passage but that's another question entirely ^^

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Originally Posted by Crater

- The trait for Cover turns it into what is essentially a 12-second Rampart on a 120s cooldown. This is now, first and foremost a personal mitigation tool for Paladin, and a 'utility' skill as a distant, distant second.

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Cover only reduces redirected damage, so it's only a utility skill.

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Originally Posted by CaTi

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So yeah I can't personally see DRK being that much squishier than it was pre-SB compared to it's peers for leveling outside of the (pretty fair point) AoE drain stuff and possibly some loss on Dark Dance percentage. At 70 I'll grant you stuff like reprisal and Passage but that's another question entirely ^^

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If we stay out of the CR system, since all tanks have access to the same things from there, then we have:

Paladin: passive blocking, sentinel, bulwark, Sheltron, Hallowed Ground

Warrior: Raw Intuition, Vengeance, Thrill of Battle, Inner Beast, Holmgang

Dark Knight (SB): Dark Mind, Shadow Wall, Living Dead

This is why people say Dark Knights are squishy in leveling. Dark Mind does nothing in physical packs, Living Dead is likely to get you killed in a dungeon, and the blind on Dark Passenger is super expensive. Also, Dark Dance, when used with dark arts, was an evasion bonus. The weakness in packs is not made up for by its defensive options vs. a single target either.

Its made worse by no self healing potential outside grit beyond expending a large amount of MP for an abyssal drain which is worthless on single targets and a low damage gcd at that.

New "feedback"

“We have three jobs — Paladin, Dark Knight and Warrior — and these all give a different and unique experience while they work as a tank. Any job can be played as a main tank or off-tank, and now, with the changes to Warrior’s Shake It Off” — previously an obsolete self-cleanse, now a buff that protects the party — “we think they are all on the same level and that the balance is very good.”
- http://www.mmorpg.com/final-fantasy-...ADi535s1STD.99

Sophia would be exasperated at SE's idea of balance.

Chrono I hear you, not gonna deny DRK is squishier in general, because it definitely is and I don't think there's much reasonable ground for challenging that. I was just contesting the notion that DRK had been overly stripped in that department when SB came around compared to how it used to be. And with regards the leveling circuit I stand by that assessment mostly (drain stuff is definitely a good point though).
I don't think I've been that clear in my opinion so I'll restate. DRK hasn't been stripped of much of anything since SB that really hurts them in leveling, they're as squishy as they've always been, it's just become more apparent with the general damage output. Equally the other two haven't gained much of anything that actually matters in leveling (well except Shake it off. Not that I've seen many people bothering to use it). But that's just my 2 gil so make of it what you will :)

Edit: forgot about the Rampart for Foresight swap on WAR. That's a gain

Though nothing was directly gained group mitigation wise, Dark Knight saw:

Foresight taken away, which was like paladin’s block but weaker and predictable. Yes this was a warrior skill but they got rampart as a replacement.

Saw our blind cost double in price making it near unusable

Lost an evasion skill in dark dance

These loses paired with having less to begin with makes Dark Knight feel even squishier, more than in HW. Warrior and paladin only saw buffs by comparison.

If the question is specifically in regard to levelling (and 4-man dungeons in general), then losing Dark Dance alone is an unbelievably huge nerf.

For reference, the Evasion bonus on DADD was 20%, and could be paired with the Blind on DADP. In effect, that amounted to a 25-30% chance to mitigate 100% of the damage of every single incoming hit - and a 30% chance to reduce any damage that didn't get dodged by 20%.

That's a 30-35% mitigation combo, for 20 seconds, on a 60 second cooldown.

It's a bigger nerf than if they just deleted Vengeance from the game entirely. And they got nothing in return before 70.

This balance between the three tanks does not seem like some ingenuity from the development team. It felt like the balance was unintentional in the between time of the developers trying to readjust the skills of the jobs of each tank. When they were seeing that the tanks' damage output were relatively the same, they gave each tank a defensive skill to use, said, "It's perfect!", and left. They left the tanks with many design flaws that will never be fixed, especially how too strong Paladin is and how Dark Knight feels incomplete. There's nothing legitimizing Paladin to be that stronger than Dark Knight.

30-35%? I mean it's all hypothetical but if that's true then, well pretty sure we know why that went out the window.

And Chrono you can remove foresight from that equation as that was a skill available to all 3.

Meh it probably shouldn't be as solid as it is presently but what are you referring to when you talk about strength? Tank stuff yup, sure. If we're talking DPS... well that's a problem the community has exacerbated themselves and I certainly wouldn't expect Devs to be in any rush to balance around that nor have any sympathy now that it's turned around.

Even with it removed Cati I believe you have been presented with multiple reasons for why HW dark might have felt much better in leveling than current Dark Knight regardless of whether or not some things needed tweaking.

True I have. But that doesn't mean I agree any of those reasons have matched up with the level of griping going down over this you know? But nevertheless I've gone about as far as I can reasonably go in this subject and I'm not looking to pick a fight or anything. So thanks to the people in this thread for being pretty level headed in their replies. Hopefully you get something soon, all 3 tanks balanced is a good thing! :)

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Originally Posted by CaTi

30-35%? I mean it's all hypothetical but if that's true then, well pretty sure we know why that went out the window.

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If you're implying that it's because that's too powerful to stay, you're mistaken. That's weighed up against Paladin having Blind on Flash, passive shield blocks, Bulwark, and Hallowed Ground (the only invuln skill useful for levelling). And considering how much MP was required for DADD and DADP, it's only fair to also include Clemency.

On the Warrior side, you have passive Parry coming from Wrath stacks, Vengeance/Thrill/Raw Intuition totalling up to huge mitigation uptime, Equilibrium, Inner Beast, and Bloodbath attached to every Berserk.

These were all effectively equivalent perks distributed among the three tanks that helped them out while they levelled, except that DRK lost almost that entire toolkit, Warrior lost Bloodbath but received the even more effective Rampart in return, and Paladin's bonuses were strengthened.

I don’t think the leveling experience is what anyone is griping about. It’s the entire experience from leveling to raids, dungeons, and high end raids. It’s not one thing that Dark Knight is 3rd place in, its most things. And that’s what the gripe is about.

Hmm? Ah my apologies, was just having a prod because it sounds outrageous, despite as you say being fairly equivalent across the board. Sorry my humour can be a bit odd sometimes.

Tl;dr misplaced humour is misplaced

I mean there's just too much wrong with Drk, leveling you won't even notice these till you're over 60 where there's tons of issues:

- Blood gauge being useless even at 62 where you use it every 2 mins and sit on 100 blood for the majority of the time
- Quietus is welcome but it's not very good and is a dump, use every now and again repeat
- Bloodspiller while nice is still meh
- TBN is when levleing is over but you notice that even without using it while leveling your defenses as a whole are lackluster

Honestly they could just change Blood Price into a trait while leveling to reduce damage taken or something (seriously the traits suuuuck for Drk),Drk isn't hard to level at all as it's a tank but the higher you go the less and less you have and the costs of everything are just higher and more costly than Pld and War.

But as Chrono said no ones complaining about the leveling process as it's quite easy it's the end result at 70 when you look at all these issues as a whole and you're left with a feeling of "oh these tools are useless (Dark Passenger, Soul Survivor, Blood Price, etc)" and wishing you had more.

And 2nd comment on tanks.. http://www.mmorpg.com/final-fantasy-...0012236/page/2

Quote:

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“We have three jobs — Paladin, Dark Knight and Warrior — and these all give a different and unique experience while they work as a tank. Any job can be played as a main tank or off-tank, and now, with the changes to Warrior’s Shake It Off” — previously an obsolete self-cleanse, now a buff that protects the party — “we think they are all on the same level and that the balance is very good.”

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