DRK - Excessive "Conditional" Effects

I wanted to highlight a major problem with DRK that I've noticed more frequently as of late.

I can sum up this problem with a simple if-then statement with variables.

"This ability gives you x, but if y, then z."
-Where x is a seemingly very beneficial effect, y is a condition that is often either A) partially or completely outside the DRK player's control or B) a scenario that is overwhelmingly commonplace compared to the alternative which would render x intact, and z is something bad, a penalty, or punishment.

There is also a smaller, sub-problem to this, wherein DRK abilities are complicated in a way that conflicts, directly or indirectly, with attempts to balance them, by amounting to excessively complicated expressions.

I.E.
"Ability a costs b and gives you c with an additional effect of d"
-where d is the only actual effect of the ability, and b and c cancel eachother out when the expression is simplified.

Living Dead:
"This ability does gives you [invulnerability], but if [you are not healed for a value equaling or exceeding your maximum HP], then [you die]."

The Blackest Night:
"This ability gives you [a 20% HP shield], but if [the shield is not completely consumed], then [its DPS resource cost is not refunded/you lose 140 potency]."

Sole Survivor:
"This ability gives you [a chance to get a 20% HP/MP heal], but if [your target doesn't die in 15 seconds], then [it does literally nothing]."

Dark Passenger:
"This ability gives you [oGCD damage], but if [you're not in Blood Weapon and about to drop a Quietus that will cap your MP and then some, or tanking 10 or more mobs], then [it costs 1/4-1/2 of your mana for relatively insignificant potency]."

On the second, "sub-problem" the most obvious culprit is Delirium.

"[Delirium] costs [50 Blood Gauge] and gives you[2400 mana] with an additional effect of [+8/+16 seconds on Blood Weapon/Price]."

The Blood Gauge and Mana cancel eachother out - the only thing Delirium actually does is buff Blood Weapon by 8 seconds...
... this literally makes Delirium just a shade over half the gain of the Blood Weapon you buff with it, while being on triple the recast time.


.......
Soak that up.
Delirium is half as powerful as the Blood Weapon you buff with it, and has triple the recast.
.......


To put this in perspective, this would be like Inner Release being a +30% attack power increase for 10 seconds on a 180s cooldown.

TBN suffers from this same issue.

"[TBN] costs [2400 mana] and gives you [50 Blood Gauge] with an additional effect of [+20% HP shield.]."

All it really does is give you a 20% shield, but this is compounded by the fact outlined above - sometimes it'll also cost you 2400 mana.


*****
Anyway. That is all. Just wanted to highlight what I have observed to be some patterns in DRK's many problems, namely, its abilities are deceptively weak given resource conversions disguised as gains, and arbitrarily punishing abilities reliant on meeting conditionals to not leave the player in an equally bad/worse spot than had they not pushed the button in the first place.

Couldn't agree more. And relatively few, if any, of these conditionals are rewarding.

TBN is probably one of the worst offenders of this, as working out our blood conversion benefits further depends on the stance we are in and whether or not there is a raid buff currently active.

It feels as though SE actively needs to work at making our skills unrewarding, and the more you look into it the deeper the issue goes. This is 100% a core issue in dark knight's design.

I know we feel differently on this, but the fact that grit puts just a little more mana restore on siphon strike so that you gain more mp in grit then when dropping grit grinds my gears. Drop grit, lose siphon strike mana bonus, gain blood weapon to make up for it, comes up just a little short. Why?

My main problem with Grit has always been two-fold:

1. It costs both a GCD and 1800 mana, when either of these costs in isolation is sufficient to balance it with Defiance, and
2. Souleater's HP restore.

Can I just take a moment to rant about the f***ing Souleater HP restore?

Here is a thing that is supposed to be our passive benefit in tank stance, a 400 potency attack that restores HP based on damage dealt. They nerfed this to, I believe the figure was 88.4% of the damage dealt, in SB.

WHY IS THE HEAL GATED BEHIND GRIT WHEN GRIT HAS A DIRECT DAMAGE PENALTY AND THUS A HEALING PENALTY ON A LIFE-STEAL-BASED-ON-POTENCY/DAMAGE-DEALT???

You never ever ever... never ever...

NO DRK in the ENTIRE HISTORY of the game, has EVER seen the full value of Souleater's potency as a heal***, because that f***ing heal is gated by and filtered through the Grit Damage Penalty, so you go into it thinking you'll get a 400 Potency heal, but you actually get a 400 * .884 * .8 potency heal.. that's 282.88 healing potency.

Only you SE, only you... could gate a healing effect behind a stance that actually directly NERFS what its effects would be were it not gated as such. Grit's damage penalty makes Souleater's heal WORSE.

UGH. GROSS.

***Edit: Correction - if you go into an old primal and wipe yourself up to 40% echo, you'll see how much Grit Souleater should be healing you for.

Sounds like DRK needs to be...
{Unchained}

*rimshot*

IDK about {Unchained} but I know about {Berserk}

Us, the day after SE gets their ducks in a row and fixes the job:
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1tlHOK...4-Decor-08.jpg

Completely agree. It feels like our intitial design philosophy was supposed to be take a big risk for a big payoff. Punish us for playing wrong reward us for getting it right. Seems like they just focused on punishing us, and rewarded us with breaking even.

So we went from hidden weaknesses when stacking abilities (3.x) to muddled and strangely weak individual abilities (4.x)?

This is a really good post.

I'm not sure how much substance I have to add to it at the moment, but I would like to throw an opinion on the fire here, speaking at least for myself: I think that it is totally okay for DRK to have complex interlocking mechanics, or for DRK to be reliant on specific conditions for their abilities to be effective, if and only if the reward for successfully mastering those mechanics and using them correctly is much greater than the reward other tanks get for using their more straightforward abilities.

I personally feel - and I don't think I'm alone on this one - that part of the draw toward playing DRK has always been that it's simply a more complex, nuanced, and risky class to play than any of the other tanks. I think that a lot of DRK players like the challenge, and like having to exercise caution and awareness to make full use of their abilities, and want the class to feel as though you're constantly on the cusp of losing control and having your entire kit fall to shambles, as long as the reward for not a mistake and not falling into shambles is that you get to feel seriously powerful in everything that you do.


I don't think there's a clearer example of this than comparing DRK to the other tanks in terms of their 4-man dungeon AoE rotations:

- PLD's dungeon strategy is to maybe Flash once or twice to hold aggro, then spam Total Eclipse and keep Circle of Scorn on cooldown, while rotating defensive cooldowns.
- WAR's dungeon strategy is to get Storm's Eye up while pulling, then spam Overpower for enmity and damage, use any BG you can get on your AoE BG consumers, while rotating defensive cooldowns.

- DRK's dungeon strategy is making sure that you've got the MP to secure aggro, then make sure you have enough MP to use TBN for defense, rationing any remaining MP between Abyssal Drain for damage/enmity, Dark Arts for DAAD healing, or Dark Passenger for burst damage and small mitigation, while also making sure that you don't overcap on Blood, using the Blood on Quietus for extra damage and MP management - making sure that you don't overcap on MP either - which drives further AD damage/enmity, DAAD healing, DP burst, while making sure that you have enough MP in the tank to use your next TBN, and trying not to have to resort to single-target combos, to keep yourself afloat. Strategies for using your various skills differ wildly in Grit compared to non-Grit, rather than just being a simple "same thing, but more/less tanky" difference, because of Blood Price versus Blood Weapon, and how Delirium interacts with either. Actual standard cooldowns basically function only to close the gaps in your active mitigation/defense rotation.


The difference in complexity, the risks you take with each skill use, the tradeoffs you have to make when comparing one option to another, etc, are many, many times greater than what you experience while tanking on WAR or PLD - playing DRK properly in a level 70 dungeon feels about as hectic as holding a controller in each hand and playing a WAR and PLD at the same time in entirely different dungeon runs. But the reward for playing DRK properly is felt very plainly: Your ability to mitigate and otherwise alleviate the healer burden is nearly as good as a Turtle Mode, 100% tank stance PLD or WAR, while you also deal as much or more damage than a fully-offensive WAR. The effort you put in to playing the class well is rewarded, relative to the smaller-effort, smaller-reward results you get on PLD and WAR. (WAR getting a stupid and unnecessary buff to Steel Cyclone's healing component throws this a little out of whack, and once again WAR is getting over-rewarded for not really having to do anything, but it still isn't enough to really upset the power rankings)

3.x DRK also came close to this ideal. It was a significantly tougher tank to play at a high level than PLD or WAR, with lots of limitations and pitfalls, but you were rewarded for doing it well: An optimized 3.x DRK did almost as much damage as a full-offense off-tanking WAR, while also having significantly improved defensive capabilities (barring a few fights where Holmgang being especially overpowered made WAR broken from a defensive standpoint). This wasn't perfect - the skill differential should have resulted in a situation where DRK did as much damage as WAR, not just almost as much - but it made learning to play DRK feel fun and worthwhile, because again, you were rewarded for your effort.


The real shame of 4.x DRK is that it's really not easier to play than 3.x DRK was - in a lot of ways, the moment-to-moment decisions you have to make, the amount of planning and foresight you need to have, the understanding you need to internalize of the various ways in which the class generates, consumes, and exchanges resources, etc, are actually more complex and difficult to deal with than the Heavensward incarnation of the class - you just simply aren't rewarded for dealing with those tradeoffs and drawbacks, or for mastering the class's nuances. Given the conditions you outline here, and the punishments you suffer for making a bad call, you would expect that a properly played DRK does 150 more DPS than a Deliverance WAR, has all the defensive capability of a Defiance WAR, and can protect the entire party as well as supplement a co-tank's mitigation as well as a PLD, and that these conditions, requirements, drawbacks, etc, are the only thing holding DRK back from ruling over the game's meta in a 3-DRK standard party composition. Instead, a perfectly played DRK is dead last in just about every metric you could use to measure a tank, and all of these conditions just punch it down even lower than that.

There's an audience out there for a hard-to-play tank with lots of pitfall skills and mechanics that can harm you more than they hurt you - but the performance rewards for playing such a tank need to be proportionally higher than what you get by playing the more straightforward PLD and WAR.

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Originally Posted by EuronTribal

Completely agree. It feels like our intitial design philosophy was supposed to be take a big risk for a big payoff. Punish us for playing wrong reward us for getting it right. Seems like they just focused on punishing us, and rewarded us with breaking even.

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This is the basis of almost all skillgap balance, though. Unless you wish to remove the lowest skill-cap jobs from any serious content, complexity can only award control of one's throughput dynamics, not throughput overall.

And even that is enough to potentially bar certain areas of fight design, such as burst phases that time particularly well with x high-control job, or certain spreads and timings of AoE | Cleave | ST requirements, lest one or a few jobs become "required" in kind.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

This is the basis of almost all skillgap balance, though. Unless you wish to remove the lowest skill-cap jobs from any serious content, complexity can only award control of one's throughput dynamics, not throughput overall.

And even that is enough to potentially bar certain areas of fight design, such as burst phases that time particularly well with x high-control job, or certain spreads and timings of AoE | Cleave | ST requirements, lest one or a few jobs become "required" in kind.

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Crater said it better than me , but I’m not saying remove the lowest skill cap class from the game. I’m saying the punishment drks have for say, a badly timed tbn or, not dealing with ld properly are too punishing for what they offer in return. Increase the reward or if they’re too scared to throw balance off lower the punishment.

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Originally Posted by EuronTribal

Crater said it better than me , but I’m not saying remove the lowest skill cap class from the game. I’m saying the punishment drks have for say, a badly timed tbn or, not dealing with ld properly are too punishing for what they offer in return. Increase the reward or if they’re too scared to throw balance off lower the punishment.

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And all I'm saying is that, once achieving an external balance acceptable to SE (relative to its alternative jobs), any tuning of the rewards for complexity, when trying to establish internal balance, ought not to affect DRK's overall viability.

Now, we're not externally balanced yet, so that leaves us more flexibility with which to set internal balance right, but never will our simply being harder to play make us stronger overall.

Thus, we may be able to see faint, faint increases to reward to "complex" play, but I figure our best bet lies with reducing the punishment, reducing the significance of idiosyncrasies where they did not previously contribute to choice.

For instance:

• Delirium now requires that either BW or BP is active before being usable, OR, when neither BW nor BP are active, it causes Delirium to instead embonus the next use of either (beginning its cooldown upon applying the bonus).
• TBN now restores half its % consumption as Blood. It can therefore reward any proportionate amount to a maximum of Blood.
• Living Dead now requires only 75% of the target's maximum HP to be restored and shows a graphical indicator both of the remaining %HP on its HP bar that must be restored before Walking Dead expires (and Doom completes) and of the time remaining to remove Walking Dead, as a 3D graphic above the Dark Knight's head. The Doom effect is now separate from the Walking Dead effect; the death immunity granted by Walking Dead is no longer cancelled when the Doom component is removed.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And all I'm saying is that, once achieving an external balance acceptable to SE (relative to its alternative jobs), any tuning of the rewards for complexity, when trying to establish internal balance, ought not to affect DRK's overall viability.

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They definitely ought to. Doing twice the work for the same results is never a viable way to design a fun game, while designing a straightforward baseline-viable 'easy' option and a more effective 'hard' option is proven to work.

And SE's attempts to "reduce punishment" for playing hard classes poorly, along with their attempts to "close the gaps" between skill floors and skill ceilings, have been almost universally disastrous for every class they've tried it on, and have almost always required additional changes just to walk back the damage they've caused (typically by widening the skill gap again).


They've broken their own design "rules" in worse and more egregious ways than this before, so there's really no reason to expect this to be the one line they refuse to cross.

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Originally Posted by Crater

They definitely ought to. Doing twice the work for the same results is never a viable way to design a fun game, while designing a straightforward baseline-viable 'easy' option and a more effective 'hard' option is proven to work.

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When has it ever been proven to work? I've seen plenty of examples of the opposite, be it in WoW, Rift, League, Overwatch, or so forth, but I have yet to see it "work". The closest examples I can think of are player-customization choices within a given class that amounted to very, very little throughput variance, not usually of linear correlation to their increased skill requirements (similar to price vs. quality curves).

Why would any skilled player play a class that requires less skill if they will be noticeably penalized in overall and by-event throughput for that reduced requirement? You would end up with non-choices at each end. And while that might work for a moba with a vast set of class options, that would continue to be met with uproar if classes were effectively pruned from serious content. And when a game is entirely slated towards raiding what is the point of having an easier leveling or dungeon experience on a job that will be significantly disadvantaged thereafter? By that point, you've essentially decided, knowingly or unknowingly, that you will never be good enough for a class with stronger theoretical output to be useful to you. You have chosen to be of lower tier.

The largest aim in class design shouldn't be to have the high skill setups have higher rewards and the lower skills setups lower potential, and so forth: it should be to create enjoyable, balanced classes. If that means offering traditionally "easier" classes more means of control around which to be balanced, then so be it. The only absolute "rule" should be to never confuse convolution with complexity. Players should be rewarded for their understanding and skillful execution of class mechanics with the ability to adapt and control those tools, not merely for maintaining mind-numbing rotations despite artificial difficulty. If it does not provide choice, it does not provide complexity.

:: Also, SE's own stated purposes for design shifts are so tremendously self-contradicting that they really cannot stand as precedent for any of particular design philosophy. There is not a single goal they alleged that has not been made worse in some way, and more importantly, there has never been any thorough attempt on their part to explain and reconcile their decisions. Their alleged goals may as well be considered spattered words divorced from any of the actual content of their changes, promises that got lost early into production.

There's something that also needs to stop : Pointing everything that makes a job itself as a flaw, will only ending making the job lackluster and boring.

The DRK is built, lorewise and gameplay wise about sacrifices and costs. While it might be undertuned and badly done for some part, doesn't mean it needs to go away.

Because, with all the changes you ask, the job will just be a paladin or a warrior with a greatsword and dark visuals, and that's poor...

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

Because, with all the changes you ask, the job will just be a paladin or a warrior with a greatsword and dark visuals, and that's poor...

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Um.

What changes? I only pointed out problems, I didn't really suggest much of anything.

Like Crater said, sacrifices are fine, but we should get a reward for that sacrifice. An investment should turn a profit.

But would you accept standart benefit for well executed investment gameplay, and underpowered ones if badly executed ?

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

But would you accept standart benefit for well executed investment gameplay, and underpowered ones if badly executed ?

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I'm not sure what hair you're trying to split here.

Sure I'd accept punishment for badly executed gameplay sure as I would have accepted losing Darkside for overextending myself back in 3.x.

What I ask of the abilities listed is that if the punishment is going to fit the crime, the reward should fit the investment. It currently doesn't. I didn't outline this in the OP though, because that was not its intended purpose; I really just wanted to point out a design flaw.

Now, if you're saying that we should accept the punishment of things like Living Dead and such based on the benefits they already confer, we're going to disagree there, because that's where it becomes a balance issue wherein the other tanks can do the same thing either more cheaply or without being in danger of punishment. That's not a proper risk-reward.

Risk-reward with respect to balance issues implies that you take a risk the other jobs do not, but if it pays off, you also get a reward that they do not get as well.

Otherwise its not "risk-reward", its merely "risk---"

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

I'm not sure what hair you're trying to split here.

Sure I'd accept punishment for badly executed gameplay sure as I would have accepted losing Darkside for overextending myself back in 3.x.

What I ask of the abilities listed is that if the punishment is going to fit the crime, the reward should fit the investment. It currently doesn't. I didn't outline this in the OP though, because that was not its intended purpose; I really just wanted to point out a design flaw.

Now, if you're saying that we should accept the punishment of things like Living Dead and such based on the benefits they already confer, we're going to disagree there, because that's where it becomes a balance issue wherein the other tanks can do the same thing either more cheaply or without being in danger of punishment. That's not a proper risk-reward.

Risk-reward with respect to balance issues implies that you take a risk the other jobs do not, but if it pays off, you also get a reward that they do not get as well.

Otherwise its not "risk-reward", its merely "risk---"

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I'm simply wondering : would you accept the DRK to be harder with results beeing in line with other, and not better because "harder" ?

You seems to have a harsh opinion about pretty everything, including the core balance of cost in the DRK toolkit, wondering "would balance suffice your expectations, and would you sacrifice the core of gameplay for that ?"

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

I'm simply wondering : would you accept the DRK to be harder with results beeing in line with other, and not better because "harder" ?

You seems to have a harsh opinion about pretty everything, including the core balance of cost in the DRK toolkit, wondering "would balance suffice your expectations, and would you sacrifice the core of gameplay for that ?"

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I think that if you have to work harder, with a greater risk of personal loss or failure, the payoff should be proportionately greater. Its really simple. Working harder to attain results equal to, or in some cases worse, than the other jobs in your role, to me, is not fun.

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

But would you accept standart benefit for well executed investment gameplay, and underpowered ones if badly executed ?

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For example purposes, let's look at the respective immunities.

Hallowed Ground; 10s; 7m CD
Holmgang; 6s; 3m CD
Living Dead; 10-19s; 5m CD

At face value they all are relatively even. However, once you look at the effects, you start to see the issue. Paladin requires nothing from anyone since it literally takes zero damage. Warrior, meanwhile, can self-heal if absolutely necessary. Dark Knight is the only tank entirely dependent on a healer to survive its own immunity. Say you're in a scenario where people have died, including one of the healers. Paladin and Warrior can use their abilities to save the day. Now Dark Knight technically can, but you've also put a huge burden on the one healer to heal you within ten seconds. Warrior just switches to Defiance, uses Equilibrium and Inner Beast to buy itself some time.

This is the issue when people talk about how unrewarding Dark Knight can actually be. Nearly every hallmark ability in their arsenal requires more work for only equal to even worse results.

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I think that if you have to work harder, with a greater risk of personal loss or failure, the payoff should be proportionately greater. Its really simple. Working harder to attain results equal to, or in some cases worse, than the other jobs in your role, to me, is not fun.

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That's the common belief, but that works poorly in MMO's where the dispredancy only lead to the hardest but more rewarding job beeing the top choice, everyone (good or bad) switching to it and neglecting and refusing the other jobs that are "not so worse" but considered inferior and useless.

People only wants to choices, even if they are miles over their ability to play, and since in FF the tank DPS matter for more than a reasonnable choice, it means if DRK is superior when player accordingly, most people will only want that job and none of the other (or another for LB purpose and choice of spells).

That's the "hair I'm cutting" here, you don't want balance. You want DRK to be better at the expanse of the other jobs, whether it is merited or not, it's simply not fair as is the current clunky situation.

While it used to be a credo in many, many games, the "I't's harder so it must be better in the end" credo ended poorly when people shared logs, guides, rotations, Gcd per gcd studies which ended making anything suposed "hard" an easy to learn bargain. No one will pick a lesser job because it's too hard for them to even waste time on the hardest job.

And because of some communication before the launch of SB, I don't think a hardest job will again be held as the topmost one.

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For example purposes, let's look at the respective immunities.

Hallowed Ground; 10s; 7m CD
Holmgang; 6s; 3m CD
Living Dead; 10-19s; 5m CD

At face value they all are relatively even. However, once you look at the effects, you start to see the issue. Paladin requires nothing from anyone since it literally takes zero damage. Warrior, meanwhile, can self-heal if absolutely necessary. Dark Knight is the only tank entirely dependent on a healer to survive its own immunity. Say you're in a scenario where people have died, including one of the healers. Paladin and Warrior can use their abilities to save the day. Now Dark Knight technically can, but you've also put a huge burden on the one healer to heal you within ten seconds. Warrior just switches to Defiance, uses Equilibrium and Inner Beast to buy itself some time.

This is the issue when people talk about how unrewarding Dark Knight can actually be. Nearly every hallmark ability in their arsenal requires more work for only equal to even worse results.

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Like you said, it's an example purpose. Because it's the worst one (healer depandancy, death if badly executed), the rest of the DRK toolkit is far from beeing that costly and problematic. LD simply doesn't deserve such a long cooldown, if they don't want to change how it works.

But should the DRK loose it's "costly nature" ? I think not, that would be playing another job.

Should it be best tuned ? Yes.

Should the job be better than the others ? That's not up to me either, but it will only weight the imbalance. I don't mind if the DRK is harder for the same results as others, but making him better will only cause the previously stated problem that cripples the game and the mindset of players.

Of course, everyone wants his main job as the better, and everyone allways have a wagon of reasons that seems plausible to anyone with the same mindset. But is it objective ?

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

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You're misrepresenting my argument to advance your own.

What you are hearing me say is that what I want DRK to be pretty much the best tank, because we make sacrifices in a few key areas.

What I would like is for the areas in which we do make these sacrifices to be areas where we attain a greater reward.

You are saying that this would, in the end, result in DRK just being the hands down top tier tank, which is an exaggeration.

If it is your opinion that DRK is fine, or that all it needs is another 10 potency on Souleater, then say as much.

I, on the other hand, do care about balance, and while yes, I want my main job to be better than it currently is, significantly better even, I do not want it to usurp the niches of the other tanks (PLD's raid mitigation and utilities, WAR's burst damage or high uptime CDs, etc.) DRK is far enough behind to make it significantly better in at least one area while still leaving the other tanks plenty of room to shine. This argument that because I want DRK buffed/fixed/re-designed, I want DRK to be the omni-tank, because its my main, is borderline ad hominem and at the very least just misses the point entirely, to say nothing of the fact that, again, (i reiterate) I suggested little-to-nothing in the way of buffs here, merely design flaws. You've yet to even properly analyze the actual implications of changing any of the problems I listed, and thus you've yet to make a counter-argument. What your posts have amounted to so far is basically generalized anti-buffing rhetoric and question-begging.

The imbalance of things like LD, TBN, Delirium, etc. are representative of only a very small part of our toolkit, and if all the things in the OP were completely addressed, all it would really do is boost our DPS and make our sustain/invuln slightly better. It wouldn't even come close to making us the "best tank".

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

For example purposes, let's look at the respective immunities.

Hallowed Ground; 10s; 7m CD
Holmgang; 6s; 3m CD
Living Dead; 10-19s; 5m CD

At face value they all are relatively even. However, once you look at the effects, you start to see the issue. Paladin requires nothing from anyone since it literally takes zero damage. Warrior, meanwhile, can self-heal if absolutely necessary. Dark Knight is the only tank entirely dependent on a healer to survive its own immunity. Say you're in a scenario where people have died, including one of the healers. Paladin and Warrior can use their abilities to save the day. Now Dark Knight technically can, but you've also put a huge burden on the one healer to heal you within ten seconds. Warrior just switches to Defiance, uses Equilibrium and Inner Beast to buy itself some time.

This is the issue when people talk about how unrewarding Dark Knight can actually be. Nearly every hallmark ability in their arsenal requires more work for only equal to even worse results.

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But let's consider also: with Benediction at the ready, Living Dead provides up to 19 seconds where you do not need to be worried about your tank. If he dies, he only "dies", and he can absorb infinite damage between having "died" and the end of Walking Dead, just like Holmgang. Chalk up a second to reaction time and latency and you've got almost twice the duration for less than half the cooldown, plus that an additional period of safety before Walking Dead even begins because you know that Walking Dead will eventually take effect anyways. That seems pretty balanced to me.

Now, we could reduce the issues involved in that by reducing the healing requirement thereafter, showing the healing requirement yet required, displaying the Walking Dead timer more clearly, or even making Living Dead (just that pre-activation portion) itself last... infinitely (but only beginning its cooldown upon entering Walking Dead), or even make it a passive that activates upon death with a 5 minute ICD, but at that point (or even just half way to that point) it'd not only free up healers the most over time, especially with a WHM or even AST, but would also be the easiest to use.

I like that a more complicated ability may have the highest potential throughput, situationally. Heck, I'd like there to be more ways to do Living Dead "wrong" or "right" that aren't simply due to latency or awkward HoT crit ticks or the lack of on-screen graphics or buff sort orders, in order for it to warrant that.

I just don't like the idea that because a job as a whole is more complex, it must also be rewarded as a whole, and outpace all less complex opposition, which is an altogether separate thing that I hear asked for widely and consistently... until it's given -- at which point it has become a point of public outcry every time I've seen it.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

You're misrepresenting my argument to advance your own.

What you are hearing me say is that what I want DRK to be pretty much the best tank, because we make sacrifices in a few key areas.

What I would like is for the areas in which we do make these sacrifices to be areas where we attain a greater reward.

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Until reading this, I too was under the impression that the prior was what you wanted.

I'd be totally fine with the areas that require the most precise control (over our class) to also be the areas in which... we are capable of the most precise and helpful control (over our circumstances).

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You're misrepresenting my argument to advance your own.

What you are hearing me say is that what I want DRK to be pretty much the best tank, because we make sacrifices in a few key areas.

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Which you are doing yourself, on the very same sentences you're willing to correct me.

The fact is : I only take your sentence as litteral. You said yourself you don't think working more for the same results is fun to you, which cannot be solved by equality of performances between tanks with a different and harder gameplay for DRK. Which then means, if DRK has to sacrifice or pay, he must have greater rewards and greatest performance.

The point is : I don't have much of an argument here, except "Tank balance is a tiny thing people pay to much attention", you were hyperbolic during month for a less than 5% dispredancy with PLD, now due to warrior having grown to 5% more than PLD and thus, about 10% more than DRK, you're doing even more.


DRK is not fine, because his toolkit is clunky, incomplete, and lacks synergy. The balance of mitigation and damage is thin enough to be working, and could be tuned somehow else. But as your words were : "If it cost more, it should reward more" and not "If it cost a lot, maybe it just costs too much".

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

"If it cost more, it should reward more"

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I still stand by these words. Where you're losing me is how that statement, as it applies to the handful of abilities I listed in the OP, implies a belief that DRK should actually be 100% better than the other tanks.

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

you don't want balance. You want DRK to be better at the expanse of the other jobs

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I don't want DRK to be the best tank because we make sacrifices in a few key areas.
I'd like those few key areas to be better.

The alternative is to simply make them less costly, which is an option, but not one that many people want, because then it robs the job of an aspect of its identity that drew people to it in the first place.

DRK required a lot of work and sacrifices in 3.x, and the payoff was huge, and yet it still somehow refrained from being the "Best tank" or imbalancing the game in and of itself, or robbing either of the other tanks of their niches, so it appears that history disagrees with your assessment. It still had its fair share of weaknesses and flaws, many of which are still present in addition to those that were added in 4.x. There's no reason that I'm seeing that it cannot have this same dynamic in 4.x that people enjoyed in 3.x.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Otherwise its not "risk-reward", its merely "risk---"

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DRK does have rewards/benefits to the skills in the OP.

TBN is available every 15s. That's more often than Sheltron, and Sheltron is only really great against tankbusters while TBN works well on everything: tankbusters, boss autos, and trash packs. A 10k+ shield (closer to 12k at i340) every 15s is a lot of mitigation and it doesn't even have diminishing returns when stacked with a % mitigation cooldown. Sheltron only works on a single hit so it's not amazing against autos and bad against trash. IB is the best mitigation of the 3, but it's also a guaranteed DPS loss because it requires tank stance unlike the other two and also uses a DPS resource that won't get refunded. So for the risk of a small DPS loss you get a great cooldown that's almost always available and works in pretty much every situation. Converting MP to Blood also stops DRK from being as boring as it could be by letting you use Bloodspiller/Quietus instead of another Dark Arts/Abyssal Drain.

Living Dead has a 2 minute shorter cooldown than Hallowed and only activates when you actually hit 1hp so you don't have to be as exact with the timing. In exchange, your healer has to do a little bit of work to keep you alive after. That shorter cooldown means you can use it in places a PLD couldn't use Hallowed, like all 3 Delta Attacks in Neo Exdeath. Then there's Holmgang, which has just over half the duration of the other two cooldowns and also roots you. If you're planning to use Holmgang on a specific mechanic then your healers need to heal the WAR too: Thrill isn't enough HP and you don't want to swap to tank stance for Equilibrium/IB. DRK isn't the only one that requires healing. Tanking isn't just about using your invincibility cooldown as a panic button.

Let's be serious, Sole Survivor isn't "a chance to get healed". It lasts 15s, it's off-gcd, and it doesn't cost anything. You use it on something that's at low HP and you're going to get that heal/MP. It's not Mercy Stroke, it doesn't require you to get the kill with a low potency skill. It's not an impressive skill, but when you have the chance to use it (in every single dungeon and plenty of bosses) it's going to work.

You're also making Dark Passenger sound a lot more complicated than it is. Got a lot of MP coming in from a big pull? Go ahead and use it. Forced to do a small pull with 2-4 enemies (like after the second boss of Skalla)? Use it. It's a boring off-gcd and should be deleted in my opinion, but it's not really complicated or risky.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

But let's consider also: with Benediction at the ready, Living Dead provides up to 19 seconds where you do not need to be worried about your tank.

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This doesn't change the argument as Dark Knight remains entirely dependent on a White Mage to maximize its own ability. Considering SCH/AST has been "meta" since Creator, thus popular. It's quite likely you won't have Benediction. Now Astro can handle Living without too much fuss, but the crux of my point is Dark Knight essentially gets punished if the healer can't respond fast enough whereas the same isn't true for Warrior or Paladin. It may not be optimal for Warrior to use Equilibrium and spam Inner Beast, however they have some way to control their own immunity. Dark Knight doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I just don't like the idea that because a job as a whole is more complex, it must also be rewarded as a whole, and outpace all less complex opposition, which is an altogether separate thing that I hear asked for widely and consistently... until it's given -- at which point it has become a point of public outcry every time I've seen it.

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

Of course, everyone wants his main job as the better, and everyone allways have a wagon of reasons that seems plausible to anyone with the same mindset. But is it objective ?

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Without reward, what purpose does higher risk and complexity serve? If I can achieve far superior results on Paladin without half the effort, why am I going to bother with Dark Knight? There has to be some incentive otherwise its complexity for complexity's sake. Like Syzzle, I'm not looking for Dark Knight to be OP, but competitive. Right now, it's objectively inferior to both its counterparts in every way.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Without reward, what purpose does higher risk and complexity serve? If I can achieve far superior results on Paladin without half the effort, why am I going to bother with Dark Knight? There has to be some incentive otherwise its complexity for complexity's sake. Like Syzzle, I'm not looking for Dark Knight to be OP, but competitive. Right now, it's objectively inferior to both its counterparts in every way.

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I'll agree absolutely that DRK needs certain improvements. I'm just saying that no one is going to accept reduced skill requirement as a excuse for poorer optimal performance. That removes classes from viability in the only content that actually requires tight balancing -- the upper end, much like DRK is pushed out right now. While players do not uniquely invest nearly as much time into a particular job here as in, say, Legion WoW -- wherein even each spec on a given class may require unique BiS gear, over a year of Artifact grinding, and separate playstyle mastery, and no gear, experience, or story progression is shareable between classes to boot -- "your class is easier, so expect to fall behind in the higher percentiles just as you outpaced others in the lower percentiles" almost certainly will not go well. Heck, just ask any dedicated top percentile Red Mage...

To repeat:

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I'd be totally fine with the areas that require the most precise control (over our class) to also be the areas in which... we are capable of the most precise and helpful control (over our circumstances)..., and can therefore get the most from them

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...but something as broad as highest overall continuous average DPS or should not be a reward, at least by a significant margin, for having more means of control. That complexity should feel like a boon in its own right. If it doesn't, it's probably more "convoluted" than it is finely "complex". Check over these more "complicated" areas of DRK: how many of them actually provide additional, viable choice, rather than just artificial difficulty, or vulnerability to latency, miscoordination, etc.? If primarily the latter, make them more intuitive first and then judge whether they need to be buffed just to bribe people to use them. Let's smooth it out first, and make it feel polished, and then let's up the numbers as necessary, without using any old (or remaining) clunkiness as excuse.

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Without reward, what purpose does higher risk and complexity serve? If I can achieve far superior results on Paladin without half the effort, why am I going to bother with Dark Knight? There has to be some incentive otherwise its complexity for complexity's sake. Like Syzzle, I'm not looking for Dark Knight to be OP, but competitive. Right now, it's objectively inferior to both its counterparts in every way.

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I get your point but turn it sideways :

"Why would I stick with a job that cannot compete with others, because it's easy to learn in design?"


I'm not saying that's the right choice of design, but there are flaw in both choices, either complexity = payoff, or complexity =/= performances.