Dear Square-Enix: You Forgot About Buffs to Dark Knight's Off-Tank Utility.

It needs them.

+1.

Tank problems won't be solved unless:

- WAR becomes "wanted" as a main tank. (It currently rivals the other two).

- DRK and PLD can rival WAR's ability to OT.

As long as x and y compete for the MT spot while Z watches and laughs because it's guaranteed the OT spot (while it still can beat them at the MT spot), you have NOT solved the tank issues.

Totally agree with OP. DRK provides zero OT utility and with the PLD boosts, DRK will be wrestling with PLD for the MT spot. While that happens, WAR gets the OT spot by default.

Not nerfing WAR is nice. Buffing PLD is nice. DRK turning into an underdog at the end of the day is not really that great.

How about we wait until we see how the raid environment ans out and see what tanks are required to do before we cry bloody murder. Drk still has better sustain than pld, which is +1 in it's favor currently. I'm not saying everything is fine, just we should see how the dice fall. Who knows, maybe there will be so much damage that pld+drk will be required if they really are easing up the damage checks.

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Originally Posted by Violette

How about we wait until we see how the raid environment ans out and see what tanks are required to do before we cry bloody murder. Drk still has better sustain than pld, which is +1 in it's favor currently. I'm not saying everything is fine, just we should see how the dice fall. Who knows, maybe there will be so much damage that pld+drk will be required if they really are easing up the damage checks.

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Crying bloody murder is hardly what I was doing, more like stating an inarguable fact; DRK needs raid utility in the OT slot because it currently brings next-to-none. Its like stating that the sky is blue.

That being said, I DO see where you're coming from, but that still wouldn't change the fact that DRK is a poorly designed OT with no unique raid utility, and that problem will rear its ugly head one of these days even if the (highly unlikely) tank-meta scenario that you're suggesting masks it for this particular tier.

The thing about OT utility is that if we have the case of a lot of single tanking, paladin still bugs out of tp in 3 minutes as an OT and they have no recovery/control mechanics like drk/war. If they bottom out they have to... flash? While drk can still do damage with the un spells.

Pld's utility will only win out should it's healing be needed/the shielding be needed.

If you take ast/whm, the dv may be needed to make up for weaker aoe barriers. But that's a sacrifice. You need to look at the class synergies and what they offer/what is required/what their weaknesses are.

I.e. ninja has the worst physical dps, but if you have a warrior this is somewhat mitigated.

If you take a nocturnal ast, you have potentially more raid dps in return for less solo dps and worse aoe barriers. But if you have a paladin you get some aoe barriers back every 2 mins.

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Originally Posted by Violette

If you take a nocturnal ast, you have potentially more raid dps in return for less solo dps and worse aoe barriers.

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Succor and Nocturnal Helios have the same potency, MP cost, range, and duration. Nocturnal Helios takes longer to cast, but it also isn't the sole AoE healing spell that an Astrologian has. As a reminder, Indomitability isn't a spell, it's an ability, which means it isn't boosted by outside healing boosting abilities, like Mantra or Defiance. Collective Unconscious, while usable less often than Sacred Soil, is much more powerful since it has the HoT which can be extended through Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation. So, I don't see where the "worse AoE barriers" thing is coming from. Also, in terms of their single target, Adloquium is 300 potency, not instant cast, and has a chance to crit for extremely high numbers. While Nocturnal Benefic is 262.5 potency in healing and 341.25 potency in shielding, instant cast, and costs less MP. Really, both shielding healers have ups and downs, the problem is the raid environment in Midas was so hostile to Astrologian that most people didn't even attempt to make it work.

Anyway, I don't have much to add to the main discussion in the thread beyond my continued confusion at SE's fear of making Dark Knight offer more than its damage and Intelligence Down debuff. While some may consider this idea overpowered, I've been discussing with my friends for a while, and they tend to agree that it is baffling that they didn't separate the Infirmity debuff from Dancing Edge and Storm's Eye and separated the Intelligence Down debuff from Dragon Kick and made Delirium effectively a slashing version of Dragon Kick.

I have other mild bits of confusion as well, such as the bewildering waste of time coding Dark Passenger's Blind and Dark Dance's Evasion. While yes, Blind and Evasion are useful in level 60 dungeons, they are useful up until a point. That point I noticed at level 50, was around the 2.3 dungeons where those debuffs and buffs severely dropped in viability. I wouldn't be surprised if the 3.3 dungeons did the same, since in raids, we already have enemies with accuracy so high that Evasion is worthless, and all Savage mobs are immune to Blind. Soooo... yeah.

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Originally Posted by DBelmont

Totally agree with OP. DRK provides zero OT utility and with the PLD boosts, DRK will be wrestling with PLD for the MT spot. While that happens, WAR gets the OT spot by default.

Not nerfing WAR is nice. Buffing PLD is nice. DRK turning into an underdog at the end of the day is not really that great.

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PLD was once the underdog.

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Originally Posted by Violette

How about we wait until we see how the raid environment ans out and see what tanks are required to do before we cry bloody murder. Drk still has better sustain than pld, which is +1 in it's favor currently. I'm not saying everything is fine, just we should see how the dice fall. Who knows, maybe there will be so much damage that pld+drk will be required if they really are easing up the damage checks.

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With changes to difficulty in new content, dps from DRK won't really matter a ton anymore, unless the community still want speed runs within the first hour of patch release.

Anywho, OT was merely referring to utility as an OT. Even PLD can still reduce the target's damage by reducing it's STR by 10% as an OT.

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

PLD was once the underdog.

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And Warrior before it.

Like I said a while ago. I don't think they understand how to balance the tanks properly. The situation is just going to be flipped in 3.2 between DRK/PLD while Warrior will be guaranteed its spot in a raid. Kind of a shame , you'd think this would have been a pretty easy thing to do.

Well hopefully they'll eventually get out of this mindset of Make X be a MT and Y be an OT.

All 3 tanks should be able to MT or OT and until they can we're going to see this repeat over and over.

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

PLD was once the underdog.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

And Warrior before it.

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I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

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Originally Posted by AI_wass

I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

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It's not. And people that think it is really need to stop.

All tanks and all combinations of tanks (other than dupes) should compliment one another in some way in both the MT and the OT role. Flavors of the month are a sign of bad balancing, and preferred comps should only exist in the purest min/max sense with folks that are focused on top end performance, and not with the majority of parties raiding period because certain comps just outright suck (such as DRK/PLD).

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Originally Posted by AI_wass

I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

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Oh it isn't acceptable it just proves they can't balance Tank roles to save their lives. Right now it's going to be PLD/DRK for MT depending on content and WAR for OT. And WAR can fill in for MT if it wants to.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Oh it isn't acceptable it just proves they can't balance Tank roles to save their lives. Right now it's going to be PLD/DRK for MT depending on content and WAR for OT. And WAR can fill in for MT if it wants to.

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And frankly it's ridiculous. Skills like Shield Swipe and Reprisal are so flawed in comparison to how Warrior was designed, then the lack of real utility between DRK and Paladin is ridiculous as well. DRK functions purely as an MT that can DPS, with some better magic mitigation. Both jobs have lots of potential for utility as well, I don't understand Squares decisions.

Frankly I don't know about you guys but I'm not really in the mood to main PLD/DRK and switching between the two as the flavor of the month dictates with my only possible role being the MT.

Well it's like a lot of people say not only here but other places as well, why play a PLD or DRK when you can take a WAR? Who can MT and OT when needed and do just fine in any content you throw at it. And that's because it has all the utility in the world to serve both roles. PLD/DRK unfortunately do not.

I originally was excited for Warrior back when I first got into this MMO but...seeing how powerful it is I get turned off by it due to it's overwhelming superiority.

You can almost hear Yoshi in the background screaming "working as intended".

Really, they should just scrap str down/int down and make them all damage down on each tank's weakest combo. For war it stays the same, Halone changes to damage down, and Power Slash changes to damage down. Hell, you could even make them stack with each other so you're just encouraged to bring two different tanks. Then they can just put a buff or something dumb on Delirium (or some extra MP regen to make up for no syphon strike during PS combo).

However, I think Dark Knight will pretty much* be fine this patch. This is assuming that they don't make a physical attack with timing as stupid as A4S missiles. Lack of DPS wasn't the only reason to switch from paladin in 3.0 - required stuns in a3 and a4 murdered its TP or required the damage dealers to do your mechanics, helping with orbs and other things that take you away from the boss is worse as paladin because of no Plunge, and extreme raid damage like Cascade made Delirium and Reprisal good. Also DA Dark Dance in A4S is basically cheating.

They're less likely to make mechanics that screw over dark knight badly but favor paladin, because other than sheltron paladin's unique stuff is either healer overlap (veil/clemency), a long cooldown, or a weakness. So assuming the incoming physical damage to the tank isn't that extreme (making Halone required), you basically have a paladin with no cover/dv/clemency but better mobility, better access to stuns, and (probably still) damage. Oh and good AOE. The biggest thing though is that making something that heavily favors paladin skills like DV/Clemency/Cover/Tempered Will would also kind of screw over Warrior, which they'll never do.

With that all said, it is stupid that DRK/PLD is such a bad composition. No slashing debuff, damage debuffs don't stack against a single damage type, and basically no benefits at all to make up for that. Plus you have TWO tanks who need Goad. Nerf warrior or something so all three comps are equally sucky.


*might suck a little, but not unusable. Sorry boyz.

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Originally Posted by AI_wass

I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

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So long as there are three different classes that have differences, there's always going to be an underdog. One of them is not going to be wanted as much in comparision to the other two, the only way to actually disprove this being to make all classes play exactly identical between damage dealt, mitigation, and debuffs, and if each and every job has the exact same carbon copy abilities, what's the point of making more than one tank?

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

So long as there are three different classes that have differences, there's always going to be an underdog. One of them is not going to be wanted as much in comparision to the other two, the only way to actually disprove this being to make all classes play exactly identical between damage dealt, mitigation, and debuffs, and if each and every job has the exact same carbon copy abilities, what's the point of making more than one tank?

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Incorrect. Look at the melee dps.

Whilst DRK is lacking in OT utility, even moreso if you have a monk in your group, until we know what the new content has in terms of damage to tanks we still can't be absolutely certain which will win out, though through the typing of this post I've become more aware of just how bad the situation is if PLD is now equal to DRK in damage. Warriors of course continue to win as they are the only tank that is still guarenteed their raid slot due to their well-rounded and synergistic skill set that has utility that is either unique to them or in the case of Storm's Eye more preferable to have them use over the ninja.

If the tank busters are all physical then that puts DRK in a worse place depending on how often they come out, otherwise DRK is fine in this regard. If there are a greater number of magical tank busters then PLD may be worse of depending on how often these are, yet they still can utilise their physical cooldowns for pre or post tank buster safety.

If damage needs to be done over more than 2/3 mobs and it isn't just a case of having the warrior pick them up then DRK pulls ahead in this regard as aoe damage is still something that SE seems blind to when it comes to PLD, although the Circle of Scorn DoT has 60% uptime.

If there are long periods of uptime without breaks DRK can keep up their optimal damage for longer than PLD after these adjustments whereas PLD would have to start using Clemency (5k+ heal), Stoneskin (2K barrier at 210 Full VIT HP levels), Flash or casting protect on someone that was just raised. However, any breaks in the fighting allow PLD to contribute to support so once you know a fight PLD can help in that regard whereas DRK has nothing it can do other than use any downtime to toggle darkside for better MP regen.

If tank swaps are a thing, and they always are in at least one fight in the tier, then switching to OT if there is nothing else to tank:
PLD Damage goes from roughly 93.5% to 110% (factoring in FoF used on Cooldown with 1/3rds uptime, in practice though properly timed use of FoF actually would add more than this) and lose Shield Swipe (as OT this would only be for damage)
DRK goes from 92% to 115% damage plus 37.5% uptime on a 10% attack speed buff and loses use of reprisal and low blow procs unless you want to take damage from cleaves. Or 119.3% if you factor in usage of Blood Weapon on cooldown, again in practice good timing will increase this.

Paladin has raid utility in spades and the only thing that may be invalidated is Clemency. DRK on the other hand has little and basically offers nothing when forced to OT if you already have a monk. Also as DRK's stun is used as damage tool when MT if it will need to stun it has to think more carefully before using as parry procs are not guarenteed.

DRK Raid Utility
Reprisal: 10% Damage reduction for a target with 2/3rds uptime, Only usable if you parry so almost only as OT, does a nice 210 potency hit too.
Delirium: Reduce target INT by 10%, but can't Stack with Dragon Kick. Is the DRK's strongest non-DA combo and second strongest combo otherwise. If you have a monk, unless there is more than one target all it does is damage.

PLD Raid Utility
Shield Bash: Chainable stun for when things actually can (and need to be) stunned.
Rage of Halone: Reduce target STR by 10%, has nothing that clashes with it, though it's on the PLD's now weakest combo.
Cover: Takes physical damage another party member would, useful when OT to help MT and useful to sheild a healer or DPS from physical mechanic damage that is not targetted in regards to enmity.
Spirit's Within: Silence, occasional thrown curveball usefullness.
Divine Veil: Next heal on you triggers a barrier on nearby party members equivalent to a stoneskin using the PLD's max HP. In I210 full VIT this is about 2k. I'm pretty sure this stacks with both shields and stoneskin so it's very useful for raidwide damage.
Clemency: 5k+ heal that takes roughly 40% of your max MP to cast, can be used on other party members to give yourself a heal of 50% of the heal number.

Edited for a slight oversight I had.

What if delirium lowered magic defense?

Then Dark Knight would be required for every raid group with a caster in it.

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Originally Posted by Akasha_Carnelian

PLD Damage goes from roughly 93.5% to 110% (factoring in FoF used on Cooldown with 1/3rds uptime, in practice though properly timed use of FoF actually would add more than this) and lose Shield Swipe (as OT this would only be for damage)
DRK goes from 80% to 115% damage plus 37.5% uptime on a 10% attack speed buff and loses use of reprisal and low blow procs unless you want to take damage from cleaves. Or 119.3% if you factor in usage of Blood Weapon on cooldown, again in practice good timing will increase this.

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You're assuming 80% as if Darkside didn't apply as MT, when it does. DRK does 92% of its Grit-less damage (80% * 1.15) while MT, while PLD still does 85% of its non-oath damage in 3.2 (100% * 0.85). If your weighted math is correct, then PLD and DRK are functionally identical in damage modifiers when you look at burst phases, but DRK will continue to be superior as soon as FOF expires (read: for 60 seconds, DRK does 7% more damage than PLD does, with higher potency/enmity combos available to it).
Actually, now that I think about it, your weighted math doesn't include SwO's AA bonus, which is 11-16% depending on the delay of the sword. I'd estimate PLD gains 13% over a fight long enough for AA contributions to matter, plus the 15% they recover for dropping ShO.

If anything, DRK will be preferred for MT, simply because they offer slightly better mitigation and the best damage while coasting on that 20% tank stance. Defiance WAR might be close, but a Defiance WAR isn't being a Deliverance WAR, which is a waste of a WAR, right? Riiiight?

Thanks for reminding me of these things, I got caught in trying to sort out what I trying to say.

I didn't factor in the auto attack boost of Sword Oath because I'm not well versed it how much damage it adds overall to the calculation. I know that Auto Attacks are roughly 100 potency and that Sword Oath adds a 50 potency hit to each Auto Attack. As it wasn't something I could quantify off-hand I omited it from calculations, I didn't mean to decieve.

If we add the low and high ends of the extra Sword Oath Damage we'd get 122.1% - 127.6%, but it's entirely likely that my maths is flawed. And until we know the ratios for STR and VIT for attack power it's only theoretically possible to calculate what adavantage PLD has by having greater base VIT if I recall correctly.

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Originally Posted by Akasha_Carnelian

And until we know the ratios for STR and VIT for attack power it's only theoretically possible to calculate what adavantage PLD has by having greater base VIT if I recall correctly.

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The VIT recalculation is just designed so that if you stack fending and VIT bonus points, you'll end up at or near where you are today in AP. Given that SE said they want to lower tank DPS slightly, I would guess that the recalculation will give lower AP than we have now, but the AP distribution will remain the same, with PLD the lowest of the three.
I'd stick to looking at the relative damage changes for having tank stance and bonuses up, especially since PLD and DRK have different potency combos available to them (in 3.2, the DPS combo is a difference of one AA worth of damage).

This thread isn't about personal DPS. Its about raid utility. A DRK OT has none, other than a debuff that is replaceable. Its DPS is not and was never the issue.

Indeed, to wait and see was part of what I was saying with my long post. I wasn't getting overly detailed with the maths as Potencies and rotation differs between the tanks, there are people that will dedicate more time than me to deliberating which of PLD or DRK you'll want to complement a group's WAR for this raid tier.

Honestly if your raid group worth raiding with and aren't trying for world/server firsts then they shoul have no issues with either as the dev team still tries to design fights so that pretty much any 2 tank, 2 healer, 4 DPS comp of appropriate gear/skill will clear.

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

This thread isn't about personal DPS. Its about raid utility. A DRK OT has none, other than a debuff that is replaceable. Its DPS is not and was never the issue.

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DRK's raid utility is that it takes the least penalty for being in tank stance (read: best MT). It is about personal DPS, because if you throw that out of consideration then yes, DRK is the worst tank choice in 3.2 because it offers absolutely nothing besides personal DPS.

All this talk of "best MT" and "best OT" makes me miss T12.

If we're going to front the idea that DRK's main contribution to its group is its personal DPS while having the poorest utility, shouldn't it have the best DPS a la MNK? Currently the tank with the best DPS overall, ALSO has the best utility.

Since DRK's DPS is not the problem and WAR is readily identifiable as the "DPS tank", DRK needs a raid utility buff. It just does. If current content masks that by proping DRK up (high magic damage and dps checks, two things SE has said they are shying away from this tier) it won't actually fix anything, and with PLD being buffed, its going to be a harder thing to justify.

tldr DRKs dps is not the issue and if the content masks its crap OT utility by pigeonholing it into MTing, thats not a solution.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't dark have the best MT damage?

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Originally Posted by Doudousteve

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't dark have the best MT damage?

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So? He's talking about when they're off tanking.

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

All this talk of "best MT" and "best OT" makes me miss T12.

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I don't get why we don't get more fights like these. I liked the scenarios where MT/OT had a minimal distinction and tanking was more universal.

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

If we're going to front the idea that DRK's main contribution to its group is its personal DPS while having the poorest utility, shouldn't it have the best DPS a la MNK? Currently the tank with the best DPS overall, ALSO has the best utility.

Since DRK's DPS is not the problem and WAR is readily identifiable as the "DPS tank", DRK needs a raid utility buff. It just does. If current content masks that by proping DRK up (high magic damage and dps checks, two things SE has said they are shying away from this tier) it won't actually fix anything, and with PLD being buffed, its going to be a harder thing to justify.

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Thing is that if you even out utility, you still have DPS variances. While you say it's not an issue, the spotlight is going to fall on that if you were the make utility equal/close to equal between WAR, DRK and PLD.

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Originally Posted by Doudousteve

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't dark have the best MT damage?

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It does. And WAR has the best OT damage. So why doesn't DRK at least have equal utility to WAR? WAR doesn't lose its utility when it goes MT, why should DRK lose theirs when they go OT?

This whole thread is about DRK's OT raid utility. It has none, that's the problem. It has nothing to do with DPS. No good DRK on the planet has ever ever ever complained about their job's DPS. Our DPS is pretty fucking baller in the hands of a good player.

If you're in a static and your static needs an OT, the MT slot is already filled, there is ZERO reason to take a DRK over a PLD or WAR. Its not that it needs the SAME utility, it just needs something different but of equal value depending on the encounter.

If you need an MT, yeah, DRK brings the highest DPS in that department, but WAR is RIGHT on its heels, with arguably better utility, and if its a PLD, well... they just got a substantial MT DPS buff... and they also bring great utility.

Its a hole in their toolkit and its synergy. DRK is not a competitive OT.

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Originally Posted by Duelle

Thing is that if you even out utility, you still have DPS variances. While you say it's not an issue, the spotlight is going to fall on that if you were the make utility equal/close to equal between WAR, DRK and PLD.

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So DRK should continue to bring nothing to the raid as an OT? I'm not following you.

DPS is DPS. Its less than, greater, equal to, whatever. But utility comes in all forms and its value varies quantitatively and qualitatively, which is fine. Having none at all is not.

In the spirit of evenhandedness- DRK's MT utility is fine. You have an INT RoH, and a non-combo-locked, oGCD Path at no cost to DPS (with the caveat of needing a parry, which is not hard to get at all on DRK), all on the same tank, and both stackable with RoH and SP (synergy!). That's good. Its competitive. And you don't need to make Reprisal usable as an OT to fix this (although that'd be the boring easy way out that SE would undoubtedly gobble up, and the most common (uncreative) suggestion people seem to make), otherwise I'd have named it "Dear Square-Enix: You Forgot About Making Reprisal Usable As An Off-Tank", but you need to give it *something* else. That would actually make DRK unique among the tanks as it would give it different utility depending on OT or MT. Which would be interesting. But I digress.

Suppose there's an encounter design that somehow EXTREMELY favors a WAR MT. And you don't want to bring another WAR because its an overlap of utility where you could get extra utility from one of the other two tanks. DRK offers nothing here.

And then there's the fact that a DRK/PLD composition has no synergy whatsoever, and while that's another can of worms, its an indirectly related issue.

DRK is only valuable as an MT, period, and thats a problem. Imagine if you took a PLD OT and stripped it of DV, Clemency, Cover, Stoneskin etc. ...That'd suck right? Bringing nothing to the raid other than personal DPS and RoH?

PLD and WAR keep their utility no matter what role you stick them in. If a DRK wants to get into a serious raid group, he/she better hope they need an MT and not an OT, and if they need an OT and not a MT, he/she better hope no one else is trying out for that spot (assuming candidates have equal gear/skill etc.)

DRK should've been the de facto OT, due to being made a tank in the first place. Well it isn't, but it doesn't even have any utility whatsoever. This isn't new, but it was ignored by the PLD (understandable) complains.

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Originally Posted by Tanathya

DRK should've been the de facto OT, due to being made a tank in the first place.

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To be fair:

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/W...Final_Fantasy)

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Originally Posted by MiniPrinny

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Anyway, I don't have much to add to the main discussion in the thread beyond my continued confusion at SE's fear of making Dark Knight offer more than its damage and Intelligence Down debuff. While some may consider this idea overpowered, I've been discussing with my friends for a while, and they tend to agree that it is baffling that they didn't separate the Infirmity debuff from Dancing Edge and Storm's Eye and separated the Intelligence Down debuff from Dragon Kick and made Delirium effectively a slashing version of Dragon Kick.

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I'll give you a great reason why they didn't make that horrific change.

Monk puts up blunt res down. DRK is doing his combo, puts up slash res down. The int debuff cannot stack, would be too strong, so the result is dragon kick is erased, mnk damage lowered. Then monk uses it again, delirium erased, drk damage lowered.

Starting to see the problem?

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

-snip-

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While we're at it, Dark Knights in the single player games have always been "tanks" with high HP, access to the most powerful defensive equipment, access to generally powerful melee weapons, and access to shields. Honestly, FFIX if anything was a disservice to the image of the Job.