Regarding no DRK adjustments in 4.1

I keep hearing about how powerful the Steel Cyclone buff is, not sure why they even bothered to take Bloodbath away at this point. And before anyone says "well its locked behind Defiance!" - let me refer you to the myriad of WAR players that will readily tout their ability to tank an entire dungeon in Deliverance with zero problems.

Can we get a single button that mimics the dual effect of Dark Dance+Reprisal, since the theme lately is arbitrarily giving things removed from the game for "balance" reasons back to the jobs they were removed from? Maybe get Scourge's DoT just tacked on to Souleater for good measure?

as of 4.1 DRK is worse in almost every category than the other 2 tanks.
As long as tank busters remain magical drk will at least take those hits better than a pld since TBN+DM is always better than sheltron. pld would only be better here when tank busters happen more often than once a min and always exceed the drk's hp.
Also sheltron isn't made for multi-hits.

But I still don't see the point in:

- LD having such a long CD when it needs so much more attention than HG or Holmgang. either shorten the cd, make it easier to handle, or change the penalty

- TBN being meant for frequent use yet is unreliable for auto-attacks. Also unless you factor in the possible gain in healer damage it's a lose outside grit. As a party support tool it's also useless. Only good use is if put on the MT. but why would you let a drk OT in the first place? Either make it more reliable for autos e.g. by giving it a longer duration or by returning a lower amount of blood so it's not a total lose

- DM's DA effect. There is only a very small window where DADM is better than DM+TBN. As I already suggested last month DA should give the party a 10% magic damage reduction

- SW's long cd, low effect or lack of additional effect. My suggesion for DM could also work for SW. Otherwise just lower the cd already or bring it on par with sentinel.

- DP's high mp cost. I just don't know anymore what SE with thinking here. Especially that evading still doesn't work too well with BP. IMO the base damage should be much higher and the DA effect should be similar to a reprisal effect. That might even make it raid relevant even with the high mp cost.

- Sole Survivor. too much trouble for bad returns. I'd still like to see it as a self buff that doubles all absorbing effects for a few moments

- Bloodspiller's lack of impact. imo it just doesn't feel rewarding enough. Either have it return mp similar to quietus and rise the drk's overall damage this way or have it return hp to further give the feeling of being a counter attack.

I think there are so many ways to buff drk without overpowering it or making it feel homogenized. But atm SE doesn't even seem to try.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

- TBN being meant for frequent use yet is unreliable for auto-attacks. Also unless you factor in the possible gain in healer damage it's a lose outside grit. As a party support tool it's also useless. Only good use is if put on the MT. but why would you let a drk OT in the first place? Either make it more reliable for autos e.g. by giving it a longer duration or by returning a lower amount of blood so it's not a total lose

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For the love of cake STOP repeating this nonsense. Its 100% negligible. You GAIN 3 potency near immediately (as soon as you use the 50blood you just got). You MIGHT POSSIBLY loose 6 potency over the course of the fight on average. You do easily TWO THOUSAND potency in that 15 sec CD. You aren't gonna miss +3 to -6.

Unless you are predicting what CD you end the current phase on accurately and are certain it would be a DPS loss or a gain then just use it. But if you were doing that you wouldn't have made that statement to start with.

Stop promoting the idea that TBN isnt usable because its a DPS loss. Its a monumental exaggeration and isnt even true much of the time. For all intents and purposes its FREE. +3 to -6 potency does not effect drk balance in any measurable way. That aspect of TBN is one thing that ISNT actually broken contrary to most drk posters on this forum claims.

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Originally Posted by Aana

For the love of cake STOP repeating this nonsense. Its 100% negligible. You GAIN 3 potency near immediately (as soon as you use the 50blood you just got). You MIGHT POSSIBLY loose 6 potency over the course of the fight on average. You do easily TWO THOUSAND potency in that 15 sec CD. You aren't gonna miss +3 to -6.

Unless you are predicting what CD you end the current phase on accurately and are certain it would be a DPS loss or a gain then just use it. But if you were doing that you wouldn't have made that statement to start with.

Stop promoting the idea that TBN isnt usable because its a DPS loss. Its a monumental exaggeration and isnt even true much of the time. For all intents and purposes its FREE. +3 to -6 potency does not effect drk balance in any measurable way. That aspect of TBN is one thing that ISNT actually broken contrary to most drk posters on this forum claims.

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The issue is that this is an imbalance, no matter how small, to give one tank a cost on mitigation while the others get the same things for free, but actually free because it is literally 0. It automatically creates a preference system where dark is at the bottom yet again. I get that it bothers you for people to talk about this as a dps loss, but at the end of the day it is an imbalance and people do want a fix. If we ignore resource gains sure TBN is a gain, I disagree that we can ignore 28 potency in resources, but we have had this debate to no end. But there are so many other things in their post, and I cannot help but feel it is really distracting to have to go back and forth on this issue of what to do with the 10 blood from soul eater.

Boost bloodspiller to the average potency of our GCD +150 and the whole issue will really go away once and for all while also helping to chip away at our lower dps compared to the other tanks.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

The issue is that this is an imbalance, no matter how small, to give one tank a cost on mitigation while the others get the same things for free, but actually free because it is literally 0. It automatically creates a preference system where dark is at the bottom yet again. I get that it bothers you for people to talk about this as a dps loss, but at the end of the day it is an imbalance and people do want a fix. If we ignore resource gains sure TBN is a gain, I disagree that we can ignore 28 potency in resources, but we have had this debate to no end. But there are so many other things in their post, and I cannot help but feel it is really distracting to have to go back and forth on this issue of what to do with the 10 blood from soul eater.

Boost bloodspiller to the average potency of our GCD +150 and the whole issue will really go away once and for all while also helping to chip away at our lower dps compared to the other tanks.

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I personally find it distracting for every, single, solitary drk complaint thread to continually bring up a moot point for 'why drk is broken'. The devs at SE can do math. Every tweak to drk potencies (multiple) has intentionally left TBN as a virtual side grade overall. Its not an accident. SE has repeatedly (through action) stated that TBN is not designed as a damage buff. Its a defensive tool (on anyone) that is 'free' if you use it properly. Its working as intended in the resource cost vs gain department. The fact that this +3 to -6 potency gain when we are talking about thousands and thousands of potency during the CD period gets THIS much attention is really absurd. People either don't understand and just repeat what they have heard or are splitting hairs over an entirely irrelevant point. Its just misinformation at this point and SE is obviously aware of the cost/reward ratio already as they have maintained near perfect balance between all patches. -6 potency isnt the reason drk is in the doghouse. Its 100% irelivant but used as the rallying cry for the last few months. Its in EVERY SINGLE POST and its just exaggerated, misunderstood or both. SE already knows better than the complaints about TBN cost. It just takes away credibility imo. When a dev working on drk reads post after post of drks misunderstanding their own core ability, its harder to take the real issues raised seriously.

Drk got 99 problems, but the TBN in grit cost/reward aint one.

Except that it was a much larger dps loss at release and received buffs after complaints. Looking at your lodestone, do you have an alt with a level 70 dark? I only seem to see warrior at 70. I’m just a curious soul.

I’ve seen you post a few times about dark having problems but I don’t think I’ve seen fixes or suggestions of what those problems are, only posts about tbn. Do you think you could share your thoughts on it?

While I don't have a problem with TBN being a DPS loss or gain, I'm more concerned with its short duration. Everyone keeps saying it should be boosted to at least 6s but I'm of the mind to have it be 10s, like sheltron. If it was more reliable a shield I'd be more confident in fights I'm learning that it would pop. Whiffing a TBN is definitely a large loss.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Except that it was a much larger dps loss at release and received buffs after complaints. Looking at your lodestone, do you have an alt with a level 70 dark? I only seem to see warrior at 70. I’m just a curious soul.

I’ve seen you post a few times about dark having problems but I don’t think I’ve seen fixes or suggestions of what those problems are, only posts about tbn. Do you think you could share your thoughts on it?

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I was wondering how long before someone brought that up lol. Heres the real me. TLDR: I don't carry my main's security token around with me just to log into a forum away from home.

As for fixes id like to see?
* TBN 'usability' buff to allow significantly more use by lowering the associated risk, but without an actual power spike. Either increased duration (5sec is really narrow to break outside of TBs), or making the refund somehow more reliable. Maybe break it into 2 shields and if 1 breaks you get the refund or something else in that vein. Could be combined with a 'get half now, get half later'. 25 blood on use, 25 after break.

TLDR: I don't think TBN needs a power increase, but it needs a consistency, QOL, increase.

* Buff shadow wall already. Just make it 40% like pld to shut everyone up lol.

* Sole survivor is a relic of a skill. It shouldn't be so restrictive and situational. Make it debuff a mob in some way. (if its a party DPS buff then ignore buffing personal DPS etc). Its the shake it off of Drk. Its pretty junky and is a flex slot to potentially fill any desired gap in drk.

* Passenger. SE hasn't learned their lesson about debuff effects that don't work on bosses. It costs so much because it adds blind. Blind doesn't work. It needs to be worth using even without the blind effect (just like shake it off was trash because it didn't work on anything that mattered). This leads to the next point

* Drk AOE skills. Theres to many and the whole process of drk aoe is convoluted and obtuse. They could really just rework the entire AOE system for drks. Passenger, quietus, unleash, abyssal drain. Its just a shit show when all considered.

* Damage: Buff it a smidge. Theres 100 ways to do it and I don't particularly care which. But I like Occam's Razor. Just buff potencies. Its not sexy or flashy, but it gets the job done without some full job redesign that will only bring unforeseen consequences with it.

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Issues I don't particularly care about.

* TBN out of grit. Nuff said.

* 'Bring scourge back!!! QQ'. Dear god. Its an animation. Its purpose was flat damage. It was an unnecessary fluff skill just like fracture. Let it die already.

* 'Only 1 damage combo'. That's an aesthetic issue, not a balance one. I personally enjoy the current drk playstyle quite a bit.

* 'Redesigning drk'. Aesthetic. Not balance. There are people happily playing Drk just like it is. If you dramatically change the playstyle you will just bring those guys to the whine fest instead. That doesn't help.

Aesthetic complaints should be met with new jobs, not changing existing ones imo. You just put the shoe on the other foot and piss a different group off.

Thanks this helps me know this is genuine.

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Originally Posted by Aana

Aesthetic complaints should be met with new jobs, not changing existing ones imo. You just put the shoe on the other foot and piss a different group off.

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It could be posited that many of the complaints regarding the aesthetics of DRK are a result of SE implementing a lot of changes to the job with 4.0 that had a noticeable impact on said aesthetics, many of which are seen to be negative.
Essentially, SE by themselves did exactly what you are saying that people should not ask them to do and now a good number of people are not too pleased with that and are offering suggestions to move it back towards the aesthetics that were already established before.

Me personally, I am in both camps where I feel some of the changes in 4.0 were good and some were atrocious.
I definitely feel that DRK was the most negatively affected by the culling of abilities that happened to all tanks with 4.0, mainly so because I feel that DRK relied the most on those extra abilities to define it's "feel", for example I feel that a large part of DRK's 3.X identity was ogcd ability weaving. While that still exists with DRK, it has definitely been simplified into what people regard as "Dark Arts spam" due to the loss of abilities like Scourge and Dark Passenger becoming extremely questionable in it's usefulness. With less of those "extras" to weave in, the "fast flurry" play-style that I loved about DRK in 3.0 feels diminished to me and apparently to others as well.

However, I agree that giving back a 3rd combo won't really fix or address the root of the concerns that I believe people have, and in fact I feel that it would be a move in the opposite direction of what I feel DRK's style niche should be, which would revolve less around a structured combo style of system and more around ogcd weaving, gcd abilities that don't break combos and can be inserted in the middle of them like Blood Spiller, and abilities having variable effects attached to them based on circumstance (stance, whether DAed, etc). This would provide more of move back towards what drew me into wanting to main DRK; that faster-paced, split-second decision, push myself to the edge style of play.

Basically if I could sum up what I think of the tanks jobs in regards to what they should "feel" like into single words it would be, PLD = Sturdy, WAR = Fury, and DRK = Flurry.

In the end, SE ended up themselves causing all the aesthetics/'feel" complaints that are now being seen by altering those with the 4.0 changes. It is a bit unfair to dismiss these comments asking for change out of hand when they are a reaction to change that was not asked for in the first place. Especially so when you see such requests and comments having been put forth quite regularly for WAR and PLD, which I feel have received more support and attention from both the playerbase and the devs.

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Originally Posted by Aana

Stop promoting the idea that TBN isnt usable because its a DPS loss. Its a monumental exaggeration and isnt even true much of the time.

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The problem is that SE has proven, conclusively with no room for debate, that this is the kind of feedback they will respond to.

It was a monumental exaggeration to claim that Warrior was underpowered or unplayable or destroyed (and whatever else people were throwing around) back in 4.00 when they lost Gauge on stance swaps. Their response to that feedback was to take away the stance cost, and instead of giving them a small nerf elsewhere to compensate for removing that restriction, they buffed the class by taking away the gauge cost on Inner Release/Unchained and by giving them potency increases to their combos.

It was then an even more monumental exaggeration to come back on the forums post-buff, when Warrior was overpowered in literally every aspect except for party mitigation, and just cry and whine and throw a fit that it's not fair that Warrior does the most damage and has the strongest defenses and the highest burst damage and the best enmity generation and the best mobility, because they can't put shields on other players. Who did SE listen to - the people who pointed out that Warrior was already overpowered and didn't need any new perks? Nope. They came back and gave Warrior a party-wide shield that's stronger than Divine Veil (and therefore essentially stronger at overall party mitigation than Paladin, even though that's kind of Paladin's entire schtick).

SE does not respond to thoughtful, reasonable, modest suggestions about class balance. It does not matter if the "DPS loss" from TBN over DA is negligible-to-nonexistent - you have to raise a stink and stomp your feet and be obnoxious about it, because if you don't, then the only tank changes from 4.1 to 4.2 are going to be reducing the cooldown on Inner Release to 60 seconds, making Equilibrium apply both the HP and TP restores regardless of stance, buffing the Deliverance damage bonus to 10%, and restoring the 300% HP heal on Inner Beast.


The new party line on Dark Knight needs to be that Bloodspiller has to be 500 potency before Dark Arts to match Fell Cleave, since Dark Knight doesn't even have Berserk, that Dark Mind needs to be 30% mitigation baseline and Dark Arts gives the rest of the party a 15% mitigation, that Sole Survivor needs the Trick Attack effect from PvP, that Blackest Night needs to last 10 seconds and cost 1800 MP, that Shadow Wall needs to have its cooldown lowered to 120s and its duration raised to 20s since it doesn't have the damage reflect like Vengeance, that Dark Passenger needs its MP cost removed, and that Blood Weapon and Blood Price both need to be usable in or out of Grit, with cooldowns reduced to 30 seconds to line up better with party buffs.*

If the feedback on DRK is any more reasonable or measured than that, then SE is just going to ignore it, or are going to give DRK pity buffs of 10 more potency to Souleater like they did with PLD in Heavensward. This is not hyperbole, and it's not disputable; this is clearly the way that SE conducts themselves with respect to class balance, and we've had years to notice the pattern. It is simply not reasonable nor rational to continue offering realistic, balanced suggestions for class balance, because they produce absolutely no results.

*(Spoiler: The funny thing is that even though I tried to be ridiculous here, this still actually isn't overpowered compared to how stupidly good 4.1 WAR is)

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

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TLDR: Pretty much that.

SE backed themselves into a corner with Drk. Over time you should refine and enhance job's identity/feel and then create new jobs for new experiences.

Example done right? Holy, protective sturdy Paladin. It was already sturdy. They refined the holy/protective aspects of the theme. Regardless of balance, people LIKE playing paladin as it is. It fulfills the paladin fantasy.

Example done mediocre? SB Warrior. They did ok refining the fluid, 'toe the line' play between control/rage, but they went a little heavy on the 'rage' part but took a giant step back with the clunky gauge implementation (that doesn't mean it wasn't strong or balanced, but the fluid aesthetic was dead). BUT they quickly fixed the aesthetic via minor changes (they only changed numbers. No new combos, no fundamental changes because the core abilities and changes were actually still in line with the original aesthetic and quite well refined tbh).

Example done wrong and then some? Drk. They killed the old feeling of playing drk. SB drk doesn't feel like HW drk at all. Then they let it sit so long that the current playstyle is the 'new normal'. But changing a few potencies wont bring back the 'old' Drk feeling. They cant drop the cost of a random ability and recreated heavensward Drk (a la War). Drk would need a fundamental redesign to recapture that. But a full redesign would have so many unintended consequences it would set back tank balance even more. The best we can do at this point is get the balance right with the playstyle they made Drk into unfortunately.

TLDR: They refined Pld/War aesthetic and are now able to tweak the balance via numbers. Drk they upended the aesthetic in SB. Redesigning an entire job midstream would be complicated with lots of unintended consequences that would just set tank balance further back and anger the 'new' drks because its sat to long in this form. But we can still achieve balance via tweaks.

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Originally Posted by Crater

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To translate for those on the internet with a severe linguistic intolerance.

Tank balance changes come out,

WAR sees their buffs and is all ...
http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/df5aedc4...d5fe7cb7e5.gif


While DRK just wishes people knew they existed ...
https://peacesofbrittney.files.wordp...364co1_250.gif


While somewhat in jest, I will admit it is really starting to grate a bit on me when I see a noticeable section of WARs say "If only we got X buffed/fixed, then we would be perfect and everything would be great!". Then they get that buff and I immediately start to see "Well X is great but ... we really need Y buff too". They then get that and rinse repeat infinitum. I get it, you want your chosen class to be awesome, but seriously ...

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Originally Posted by Aana

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I both agree and disagree with your stance on what it would take to "fix" the feel of DRK.
I agree that the exacts of the 3.X version of DRK are gone and that people should try to get past it. However I feel that large steps to getting back to the core of what was enjoyable about DRK could be made with a combination of small changes like tweaking some numbers particularly things like resource costs and recast times, as well as some more medium sized changes ranging from things like adding an additional effect to certain abilities, to a complete rework of certain other abilities (cough ... Sole Survivor ... cough). None of this is any more drastic of a change than what we have seen WAR be the recipient of so far in 4.X and SE managed to churn those out very quickly. So I too am opposed to a "burn it to the ground and build again" stance for fixing DRK, but I feel that fixing DRK both in feel and in balance is not an out of reach goal that couldn't be achieved within the regular patch cycle of the game. Small and medium changes, when intelligently designed and applied, would add up to a much greater whole. First thing that needs to be done though, is that SE needs to admit that there is a problem and then they need to fix it. Second, they need to just decided on exactly what the core concept of DRK is supposed to be and "a middle ground" is not a core concept.

Also, while I myself prefer more measured, well thought out and refined changes that form a synergy that is both subtle and powerful, I also have to agree with Crater in that SE has a distinct pattern of catering more to players throwing tantrums. As such I am fine with people cranking the complaints and asked for changes up well past eleven, if only to create enough of a ruckus to get SE to actually hear and acknowledge the DRK playerbase.

People keep complaining about Houses when this is the real tragedy right here

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

To translate for those on the internet with a sever linguistic intolerance.

Tank balance changes come out,

WAR sees their buffs and is all ...
http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/df5aedc4...d5fe7cb7e5.gif


While DRK just wishes people knew they existed ...
https://peacesofbrittney.files.wordp...364co1_250.gif


While somewhat in jest, I will admit it is really starting to grate a bit on me when I see a noticeable section of WARs say "If only we got X buffed/fixed, then we would be perfect and everything would be great!". Then they get that buff and I immediately start to see "Well X is great but ... we really need Y buff too". They then get that and rinse repeat infinitum. I get it, you want your chosen class to be awesome, but seriously ...

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lol I really don't understand the constant request to separate unchained from inner release (among other GIMME GIMME GIMME war requests). No, upheaval doesn't need to be free just because spirits within is. No onslaught doesn't need to be free because (insert rando war) is bad at math. Its TBN of War. It is usually a sidegrade/miniscule loss in damage but occasionally a gain if used properly. Its a tool. Not everything needs to be an on CD spam damage ability. Ugh. I just wanted the stance cost changed to free to get fluid war gameplay back. I was shocked when they removed inner cost from IR/Unchained. Shake it off needed to go. It was just junk. The best use I ever had was getting heavied from mobs on choco. Hop off, cleanse, hop back on. Best use of that thing lol.

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Originally Posted by Aana

Shake it off needed to go. It was just junk.

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Funnily enough, the new 24-man actually has moments where having it would be pretty handy.

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Originally Posted by Aana

lol I really don't understand the constant request to separate unchained from inner release (among other GIMME GIMME GIMME war requests).

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WARs don't like that Unchained is nearly pointless in Stormblood. I don't particularly care at this point because WAR doesn't need any more power, but it isn't very good design.

It's true that we have great issue as Drk, our defensive potential is cleary under pld and war.

Here's some suggestions with different version

Shadow wall : the most famous unexplained 3 minute CD...
To match this with the same CD from the War, a suggest :

Reduce damage taken by 35% CD 120sec

Or

Duration increased to 20sec CD 120sec

Cause we don't counter attack with this, we need some counter part.

Dark mind : we're supposed to be magical tank, but since magic can be parried... I suggest to just mitigate physical damage as well. No heavy change their

Dark passenger : I don't even use this skill... Why? Cause this is just impossible to use effectively without an tremendous cost of MP... Even then, the blind effect doesn't have any synergy with blood price.

Reduce mana cost to 1200 MP, change the dark art effect to "reduce damage inflicted by 10% for 5 seconds"

Or

Potency increase to 140/260 DA, mana cost 1800, inflict a DoT at the target, potency 50, 15sec duration

Sole survivor : honestly, this debuff is the most useless in the omega savage raid. We need to kill a monster within 15 sec for 20% Hp and Mp.

New effect : "inflict a debuff who need massive damage to stack on the target, can stack 10 times, 15sec duration". at the end of the timer, the stacks explode and produce a heal for every member of the group. (maximum heal possible to give is 6000)

Or

Create a massive drain effect for every member of the team, healing them for 2% of their max hp, duration 10sec.

Undead : this skill got a great potential, but the punishment for avoiding death is just too high. Don't have an idea on it for now...

Delirium : can restore our mana for 2400 pts, on a 120 sec CD. The CD is really heavy for just this effect and the duration increase on blood skill, don't really have an idea here

Blood weapon : quit a great burst CD, the attack speed it give is really good and with the Mp regeneration too, but unable to do it under grit, so I got an idea that the bonus of this skill have different effect on the way you use it

New effect : Under grit : ignore grit penalty for 15 sec
Without grit : the basics skill as always.

Blood price :

Added effect : reduce damage taken proportionaly to your actual MP (between 5 to 20% max), the more you got Mp the more effective it is.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

"DRK also has zero party defensive skills"

I wonder what The Blackest Night actually is then !
Maybe just some other useless dark flashy skill

:rolleyes:

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TBN is awful to use. Lag is terrible with TBN and can shave 2 of the 5 seconds of duration. So you have to time it pretty freakin well even if you want it to be remotely useful. Also it does a 10% HP shield on a SINGLE party member. TBN also costs 2400 MP. The 15 second CD implies you can use it for DPS but with Dark Arts/Souleater spam competing for your MP resource a some people argue that using TBN for DPS is a DPS loss. Even on tankbusters TBN is not very effective unless paired with rampart/shadow wall/awareness...

Its not comparable to Shake it off, Passage of Arms...These abilities can flat out reduce party damage and costs no resource and they are on relatively short cooldowns..

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Originally Posted by Phileas

TBN is awful to use. Lag is terrible with TBN and can shave 2 of the 5 seconds of duration. So you have to time it pretty freakin well even if you want it to be remotely useful.

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Its not lag. it takes effect after the animation completes. Same as EVERY skill in the game. Ever used HG/Hallowed/LD/Bene and still died even though the action went off and the CD has started? The animation needs to be done before the effect happens. You don't get 20% buff till after the 3rd 'swing' in Eye. If you use a jump immediately after disembowel, you don't get the piercing bonus because the effect isnt on the boss yet. IB/any defensive CD doesn't actually work until the animation finishes.

You don't 'lose' 2 seconds of time. You get the full 5 sec, its just delayed by the animation, just like everything in this game. TBN isn't any more gimped than every other action in the game when it comes to latency.

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Originally Posted by Phileas

Also it does a 10% HP shield on a SINGLE party member. TBN also costs 2400 MP. The 15 second CD implies you can use it for DPS but with Dark Arts/Souleater spam competing for your MP resource a some people argue that using TBN for DPS is a DPS loss. Even on tankbusters TBN is not very effective unless paired with rampart/shadow wall/awareness...

Its not comparable to Shake it off, Passage of Arms...These abilities can flat out reduce party damage and costs no resource and they are on relatively short cooldowns..

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Why does having a 15 sec CD 'imply' you can use it for DPS? If I have a stoneskin effect that can happen every 15 sec, my 1st thought is not "WOW imagine how much DPS ill do with a defensive shield every 15 sec." Its designed to be DPS neutral/nearly unperceivable gains/losses. Not sure why everyone thinks every button is supposed to be a spam on CD DPS increase. Any more than you should spam onslaught on CD. They are tools. Being DPS neutral means you have the freedom to use them freely as needed, not on CD. Sure you can minmax the situation to get a smidge of DPS out of abilities like this, but overall, just use it when the effect would be useful, not on CD.

Not every action needs to be a DPS increase you spam on CD. DPS neutral skills like onslaught, TBN, Sams Jump back>Jump in combo, etc etc are all just tools. They are all virtually DPS neutral which just lets you use them when you need to for the actual effect. You don't just spam every button the moment it comes up. These are tactical skills. Not part of your standard dps rotation any more than shirk or shake it off. Not every skill needs to INCREASE damage.

(this is not to say drk doesn't need a little boost in the dps department, but TBN is a tool skill. If drks dps is also centered around using it on CD it will stop being used as a defensive skill just like tank stance. It would just be used on CD regardless of intelligent mitigation use because MAH DEEPZ. Please don't do that to TBN.)

I personally find TBN awful to use as well. Having to plan it for the exact window of an untelegraphed buster or one of those super quick ones like Tornado from the Kelpie in Skalla is maddening. It sure feels like there is lag, but even if it's "just" the animation, having to plan a few seconds ahead for anything nasty to be remotely non-squishy while you have a lot else to do feels far more punishing than the other tanks have to deal with, and god forbid missing it...it sets you back so much.
Comparing it to those "ultimate" skills with questionable animations is really making TBN look worse, TBN is designed to be used as often as possible on anything it can, not as an emergency or around extremely predictable junctures in a fight.

TBN is not stoneskin. TBN is not Intervention. TBN is not Cover. All of these actions offer more defensively, at lower cost.

TBN is a defensive cooldown with an offensive twist. I understand why people worry about it being an offensive gain. I don't want to be mindlessly popping it on recast to break it on random autos. But it's actually a ton of fun to try to shield unmarked cleaves and tankbusters on your co-tank and counterattacking after each one. The problem is that TBN's dps neutrality so closely straddles the line of being a situational loss/situational gain that, while you can do it for your own amusement, there's always the risk that you might inadvertently hurt your dps without providing any tangible benefit in return for the risk.

If you look at the breakdown of tank dps, the biggest contributions to PLD and WAR dps, unsurprisingly, comes from Holy Spirit and Fell Cleave, respectively, followed by auto-attacks. On DRK, the biggest contribution to your dps comes from Souleater, followed by auto-attacks, followed by Bloodspiller. This isn't just because HS and FC are placed in buff windows so they hit harder. It's also because Bloodspiller generally gets less uses per fight than HS and FC. Bloodspiller doesn't need to be more powerful, but it certainly needs to occur more often. It's almost like an additional resource-based combo action, and it makes the rotation more interesting.

But if TBN is a dps gain, how do you prevent players from just throwing it out there in the hopes that a stray auto or passing wind breaks it? Simple, make it harder to break. If your teammate shield was 20% (like it is in PvP), then it really only would break on something like a cleave. It would also prevent players from preferentially off-tanking over main-tanking just to fish for procs. Even at 20%, it would probably be less powerful than Intervention, which sits at 20-30% DR after buffs, while actually making it relatively stronger than the whole party shields (DV and SiO, the latter of which can create a 8-24% party shield which benefits from both ToB and Defiance, if you really wanted to).

Basically, you could easily make TBN a potency gain if the shield was just appropriately tuned to take big hits, rather than breaking on trivial ones. There are a number of players out there that complain that tanking isn't defensively minded enough. What better way to change that than making cleave and tankbuster timings actually matter to your off-tank? The playstyle is there, they just need to make it rewarding to do so. It's ridiculously good fun.

I agree with almost everything you mentioned, especially that TBN shouldn't be thought of as a DPS tool. However, my frustrations with it ARE defensive-minded. Ideally it'd be wonderful to prime it up for those big hits, I don't think that kind of playstyle is in question, but trying to break it on all the "little" things (which aren't so little anymore in Stormblood...), speaking at least for myself, is not to eke the tiny bit of DPS out of TBN...it's because that's all we have to use! Rampart just doesn't cut it, and otherwise we're taking rather gnarly auto attacks and critical hits that matter and set healers back with only TBN and Souleater (ha!) in between busters. Trying to catch everything possible with TBN to earn your MT spot really straddles the line between fun (on some fights) and needlessly stressful (on most others) to me.

If we did have enough cover between busters, such as...I don't know, for example, Heavensward Reprisal, I'd feel a lot less pressured to break or blow TBN on anything over 10k damage.

I feel like this has all been mentioned before, but I really just want to reiterate that not everybody finds TBN fun as a defensive tool, since the discussion about it tends to devolve into DPS frequently.

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Originally Posted by Valdegarde

I agree with almost everything you mentioned, especially that TBN shouldn't be thought of as a DPS tool. However, my frustrations with it ARE defensive-minded. Ideally it'd be wonderful to prime it up for those big hits, I don't think that kind of playstyle is in question, but trying to break it on all the "little" things (which aren't so little anymore in Stormblood...), speaking at least for myself, is not to eke the tiny bit of DPS out of TBN...it's because that's all we have to use! Rampart just doesn't cut it, and otherwise we're taking rather gnarly auto attacks and critical hits that matter and set healers back with only TBN and Souleater (ha!) in between busters. Trying to catch everything possible with TBN to earn your MT spot really straddles the line between fun (on some fights) and needlessly stressful (on most others) to me.

If we did have enough cover between busters, such as...I don't know, for example, Heavensward Reprisal, I'd feel a lot less pressured to break or blow TBN on anything over 10k damage.

I feel like this has all been mentioned before, but I really just want to reiterate that not everybody finds TBN fun as a defensive tool, since the discussion about it tends to devolve into DPS frequently.

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Oh I feel ya. I fully support making TBN a little more forgiving to use. (Longer shield duration or something funky like break 20% shield into 2x10% shields, if 1 breaks you get the payback etc). TBN is already the centerpiece of Drks overall mitigation and 'utlity' wrapped up into 1 and it is slightly underperforming in both areas. Drk also is behind in DPS. TBN should not be the 1 stop shop for everything wrong with drk by making it the center of their damage rotation as well. I really don't want to see DPS buffs become the centerpiece of TBN. Leave it DPS neutral, make it a little 'safer' to use in reliably recouping the blood for the MP. But dear lord don't make it some big DPS buff. Then we will just have the complaints that Drk cant maintain DPS with other tanks and use their mitigation/utility properly at the same time because they will all share the same button.

Let TBN do its job a little better. Fix Drk DPS somewhere else. Theres no shortage of weak/mediocre skills to do that with.

The difficulty with TBN is that it is not consistently dps neutral. There are times, such as during your opener, during pots or raid buffs, where it's a dps gain to use. So you break it on a random auto as a sort of mini-infuriate, in part to get the extra bloodspiller under trick, but more importantly, to get the extra DA usage attached to it in the window (since you can't DA on HS - which is also why you should try to DA C+S before HS in a buff window, if possible). The problem with TBN at the moment is that it actually promotes the sort of optimisation that you're worried about, while discouraging its defensive use outside of these buff windows.

From a defensive standpoint, I don't think that TBN will ever really fill the same niche in average mitigation as Reprisal previously did or block presently does. I think a lot of those issues could be sorted by fleshing out DRK's existing lifesteal, given that it historically played an important role in the job throughout previous Final Fantasy games. Lifesteal should be our answer to block.

I 100% agree about lifesteal.

TBN is not consistently a loss. In particular any time you are in grit it is the best thing you can do for your offense, besides dropping grit. At which point tbn becomes situational for your dps. It’s just odd.

Oh I see you are playing defensively: here press this as often as possible.

Oh I see you are playing offensively: why are you looking at me?

Only problem with that is, lifesteal didn't work out so well for 2.0 Warrior. So I'd be cautious in wanting that to be drk's niche.

Among other things such as adjusting defensive CDs and making some potency adjustments, it would be nice if drk maybe also got slashing. If you're running PLD/DRK then you have to bring sam or nin to get slashing. Not hard to find sams, at least. But even with adjustments in the other areas a pld/drk comp will still be at a disadvantage without slashing. RIP monk lol

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Only problem with that is, lifesteal didn't work out so well for 2.0 Warrior. So I'd be cautious in wanting that to be drk's niche.

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110% agree. Making a draintank as the primary function/theme of a tank is inherently problematic. There is a absurdly tiny line where its balanced. Anything easier than that line is completely neutered in difficulty. Any content above that line the draintank is useless.

Theres 2 ways draintanks can function. Drains based on your stats (grows with you, think war 2.0), or drains based on enemy power (monster hits you, you recover x% of damage taken. No matter how they drain, it creates problems. The latter is a convoluted way to just have mitigation. Instead of taking 100 damage -40%=60 damage taken, now you just take 100 then heal 60 instantly because of 'drain spikes' or whatever. Same effect in the end, but the heal tank is now extra vulnerable to 1 shots and dying because they still take the damage before they are healed compared to mitigation.

Drains based on your stats.

*OP part: Think wars pre SB. They have been able to solo content no other class has been able too because as you overgear content you BOTH take less damage and heal more damage through skills. Those effects just escalate to the point that overgearing content trivializes it MUCH faster than just ilvl alone would for any other tank. If the entire kit is centered around this mechanic it happens even faster and more dramatically.

*Broken (bad) part: Think 2.0 war vs pld. War could trivialize crap content with 300% heal IBs and such. But because your survivability was entirely based on your personal stats, it failed miserably when undergeared or in overtuned content. Pld was the ONLY MT in coil 1 because it mitigated damage based on boss damage. -40% sentinel becomes STRONGER the harder a boss hits while self heals based on stats gets worse. War couldn't survive death sentence when it 1 shot you no matter how much you 'could' have healed up after. Youre dead. To late to heal now.

Example

EZ content: Lets say IB heals 1k. Boss hits 100 damage, pld takes 60. War takes 100 but heals 10x that. War takes 10 busters neutralized by 1 IB. Pld slowly dies.

Hard content: Boss hits 100k. Pld taks 40k. Lives. War takes 100k dies, and even if they lived that 1k IB wouldn't do jack shit to help anyway.

Drain tanks have a single fine line of balance for any given ilvl. If they are at that point they are balanced. Below that point OP, above that point they suck.

Drain tanks are a fun concept and they work for things like turn based games or DOT style streams of damage tanking, but they don't do well in this tank buster/bursty style game we have. They would just get watered down into mitigation tanks just like 2.1 war did or suffer the same fate as 2.0 war. Yoyo between utter trash and OP depending on the toughness of the content.

Its a fun theme and it fits the FF iconography of Drks in other years, but drain tanks just don't work in this type of game unfortunately. We need a different type of Drk than the classic drain tank DD it has been historically.

As much as I'd like a draining type playstyle to become more prominent, I do agree with the arguments that the precedent doesn't quite allow for it to be smooth or effective. However, there are ways to incorporate an overall drain mitigation effect that we haven't seen before on a tank, such as the damage to drain% being applied over time like a weak regen instead of in one hit, or an Excogitation effect, or increasing HP past the maximum for x amount of seconds like the Mage's Ballad Troubadour, or even being used to charge a reserve self heal cooldown that may be used on command. It's not impossible to think outside the box as far as this is concerned, however the bigger question to me is how far SE is going to consider altering a job's playstyle so dramatically for the rest of an expansion.

I guess Shake it Off was a pretty dramatic change...I don't know, I'd like to see something. I have soloed dungeon bosses with clever use of TBN and Souleater, while in anything remotely difficult it's fairly useless due to the Grit requirement and your healers ideally not letting you remain at low enough HP for Souleater to matter. Feels like a wasted opportunity even though % mitigation tends to win out.

It doesn't necessary need to be replacing mitigation. While PLD can heal others, DRK could simply heal himself on a regular basis.

More like a signature work, than a fully mitigation competitive play. Since TB are everything in this game, some lifedrain shouldn't break the meta.

As far as tankbusters go (i.e. burst mitigation), TBN works as long as you have an adjunctive cooldown to help mitigate the damage. For magic damage, you can pair it with DM fairly readily. The issue is more for physical damage, which is why people are asking for adjustments to either SW or some sort of physical DM. But not every defensive action is about spike damage. Some skills like conva are just there to help out your healers and reduce the healing load.

There's more to damage than tankbusters. There are fights which have higher sustained damage, either because of hard hitting autos, or a stacking damage buff. This relates to "average mitigation", "proc-based mitigation", and "average healing requirements". TBN is not so great here because of duration. Historically, you would have used other cooldowns such as Dark Dance or Foresight to smooth out the damage. PLDs are probably the best at this due to the added effect of block, but WAR is quite good as well, having the ability to rotate through a lot of short recast cooldowns if need be.

You could do something like reinstating Dark Dance to cover this niche, but I think DRK has the right tools built into the job already. If we're no longer "parry tanks", why not look at lifestealing? Souleater is functionally our "passive block", except we lose its defensive benefit when we drop Grit. You don't lose access to block when you drop Shield Oath. DA AD can be used to offset some of the damage in pulls, as you rotate between TBN, Quietus, and AD, so it's already a part of reducing healing requirements on big pulls. Soul Survivor could easily be turned into a drain over time that resets on killing the mob. Perhaps Blood Price could be used to temporarily increase lifesteal effects. It's just a question of tuning to produce a similar effect through a different means.

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Originally Posted by Aana

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I don't think the suggestion is to make dark knight entirely a drain tank. I believe the suggestion is to build lifesteal into our skills. The primary function would be to offset the healer burden for auto attacks and other fluff damage where dark is currently lacking. In this way we complement our damage reduction with self heals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure warrior's solo'd any relevant content, wasn't it mostly thinks like level 50 ex primals when we were level 60 and the players uncapped? As far as being OP, isn't that also only in the case of undersized parties where the idea is to be OP? Presumably our skills would still level sync.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I don't think the suggestion is to make dark knight entirely a drain tank. I believe the suggestion is to build lifesteal into our skills. The primary function would be to offset the healer burden for auto attacks and other fluff damage where dark is currently lacking.

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I mean, if they aren't going to adjust other cds to bridge the gap defensively, then that's a reasonable solution. I just wanted to bring up that the lifesteal tank already happened in a way, and it didn't really work out. Passive hp regen would certainly help in the fluff damage department, but is it enough to solidify a "niche" for drk? My initial thought is it would lean toward being OP in dungeons but nearly worthless in raids. Although, it would depend a lot on how it's actually implemented (such as, is based on damage you deal or damage you take?)

(I mean passive as in either built on to existing weaponskills or an actual passive recovery rate, opposed to dedicated type self heal like clemency/equilibrium)

I don’t think any one change is enough to fix Dark Knight. To be clear I didn’t intend a necessarily passive damage, I was thinking more along the lines of releasing soul eater from grit, and adding a % restore to blood weapon and price abilities.

Souleater's Grit-gate HP Absorb should have been moved to an adde DA effect like Abyssal Drain's a long time ago.

With Blood price, instead of trying to buff MP returns on Blood Price.. I like it to have an added effect like:

Restores partial MP when damage is taken.
*Delivers an attack with potency of 50 every time you suffer damage from the front.
**A portion of damage dealt is restored as HP.

Essentially old Bloodbath+Vengeance but without the damage resistance.

After all, DA effects amount to an HP absorb (AD), +Damage, or +Enmity. This addition does a small amount of all three.

Just cut out the middle man.

Delirium is already a stance-specific buff since you're choosing to use it on either BW or (Grit)BP. IMO a Grit exclusive 1300pot heal off it makes more sense than SE's absorb being Grit bound. But that isn't saying much.

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Originally Posted by Argyle_Darkheart

WARs don't like that Unchained is nearly pointless in Stormblood. I don't particularly care at this point because WAR doesn't need any more power, but it isn't very good design.

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How is unchained pointless it's free extra damage when tanking

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I don't think the suggestion is to make dark knight entirely a drain tank. I believe the suggestion is to build lifesteal into our skills. The primary function would be to offset the healer burden for auto attacks and other fluff damage where dark is currently lacking. In this way we complement our damage reduction with self heals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure warrior's solo'd any relevant content, wasn't it mostly thinks like level 50 ex primals when we were level 60 and the players uncapped? As far as being OP, isn't that also only in the case of undersized parties where the idea is to be OP? Presumably our skills would still level sync.

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Fair enough. Regarding the old war stuff, I was thinking more of Wars soloing dungeon bosses and even mob packs with no healer support in a time before clemency. Its not 'savage' level by any means, but gets the point across. The EX solos just demonstrate the drain tank effect. Other games have done true heavy drain tanks and walked smack into that problem.

But even as a counter to shield for fluff damage, it always runs that risk. ie: consider shelltron vs TBN. If a boss hits for 100k that 25% off from shelltron is 25k mitigation while a 20% of your stats shield (~50k hp) is only around 10k. But if a boss hits for only 10k TBN would make you invincible while shelltron you take 7.5k still. Apply small version of the same to a 'soft' drain vs shield block as a form of fluff mitigation.

You can have small enough quantities that it wont affect much, but the fundamental problem with HP drain based on your stats vs mitigation is always present. Theres a reason they took out bloodbath and I (unlike a lot of wars apparently) do not want to bring it back. Don't get me wrong, I loved using it, but I liked it for that OP sustain on easy content and actual balance on hard hitting content. Increasing self sustain as a REPLACEMENT for mitigation is always dangerous in my book. Every tank should have some level of sustain, which drk is currently behind on, but not in lieu of mitigation. Though TBN being a 15sec CD shield complicates that comparison by negating damage instead of healing it. Makes it harder to compare and situational vs the more reliable pld/war heals and entirely dependant on being at that fine edge of content difficulty where you can reliably, frequently break TBN without it being to little damage and you waste mana or so much that the flat mitigation is just more powerful than a static HP shield.

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But even as a counter to shield for fluff damage, it always runs that risk. ie: consider shelltron vs TBN. If a boss hits for 100k that 25% off from shelltron is 25k mitigation while a 20% of your stats shield (~50k hp) is only around 10k. But if a boss hits for only 10k TBN would make you invincible while shelltron you take 7.5k still. Apply small version of the same to a 'soft' drain vs shield block as a form of fluff mitigation.

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That's fun calculation, but while it's true for the last part, where absorbs will slowly overwrite low damages, a 100K hit will kill you with sheltron or TBN.

There is now way to have perfect balanced tanks in every level size or content, the priority is that it's balanced is content that is relevant : Savage for top end raiders, the wolf nest for pvp, and current dungeons for current geared player.


With overgearing or over levels, you will allways get situations where some job will turn overtuned and some other undertuned, except if every job turns out to be the same.

Wow has blood DK which has a self healing mechanic since the creation of the class, and they didn't need to fix it (except the ultra scaling from damage they had back in 3.0) or constantly nerf, remove it or turn it into some pathetic healing you don't even notice like SE now.

It's still the best class for soloing content or raidbosses, and no one gives a shit.

Why should it be different here ?

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

How is unchained pointless it's free extra damage when tanking

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I don't really want to get into it in this thread, but it's because it shares a recast with Inner Release, which is better than Unchained.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

How is unchained pointless it's free extra damage when tanking

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Because tanks doing highend content tend not to be in tank stance in important content and Warriors would rather use the cooldown for Inner Release for even more damage.