Just because DRK cleared ultimate first doesn't mean it doesn't need buffs

Just making that clear. While it doesn't need too much buffing overall, it could use some buffs and some skills need reworking like Dark Mind and Dark Passenger still. I think it could use some more DPS overall, too, so that it's a bit more DPS than PLD for the tradeoff of less utility and defenses.

My fantasy of the three tanks is this:
PLD: Super defensive and lots of utility, brings least DPS to trade off for this. Excels in prog, not as necessary in farm.
DRK: Perfect mix and balance between offenses and defenses. Trades some defenses and utility that PLD brings for more offense and DPS gains. Excels as MT in farm parties, or as OT in prog parties.
WAR: Super offensive with minimal defenses and utility. Trades lots of defenses and utility for much more DPS gains. Excels as OT in farm parties, not so great in prog.

Of course, I want every tank to be perfectly viable as MT or OT in all prog or farm parties.

you dont even main DRK you have PLD as main class why is this topic being made? theres like a million other dark knight topics about this.

I main PLD/DRK equally. I can't pick both for my main class showing on forums. It also feels bad when my DRK is only a small amount of DPS higher than my PLD despite being played nearly optimally. I'd like to see it 150-200 DPS higher at least.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I main PLD/DRK equally. I can't pick both for my main class showing on forums. It also feels bad when my DRK is only a small amount of DPS higher than my PLD despite being played nearly optimally. I'd like to see it 150-200 DPS higher at least.

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DRK WF cleared Ultimate.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

DRK WF cleared Ultimate.

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Lets stop pretending that means something other than viability and skilled players, many if not all of the team were WF on the original coils. You don't need to main Dark Knight to know that the dark knight situation is ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

DRK WF cleared Ultimate.

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Have a feeling you are a troll but I'll humor you. DRK WF cleared Ultimate... huh, I don't remember people ever saying they weren't viable. Just that they have issue upon issue upon issue that makes them unenjoyable and unrewarding. They have the worst defensives, worst DPS, and 0 raidwide utility... simply put they have no niche. Even then, DRK is better than War in ONE, ONE fight in the game where in 99% of other fights they are meh at best.

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

Have a feeling you are a troll but I'll humor you. DRK WF cleared Ultimate... huh, I don't remember people ever saying they weren't viable. Just that they have issue upon issue upon issue that makes them unenjoyable and unrewarding. They have the worst defensives, worst DPS, and 0 raidwide utility... simply put they have no niche. Even then, DRK is better than War in ONE, ONE fight in the game where in 99% of other fights they are meh at best.

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Only thing to add to this is we don't even know if dark is best after progression. We cannot even say this about prog yet. Lets see who the first 10 clear parties are on ultimate. Lots of people started savage as pld/drk comp. Now dark knight is only about 20% of tank clears on savage.

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Originally Posted by Gojin

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6wru...HDLW/giphy.gif

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How have you not been B& yet?

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Originally Posted by Mithron

WAR: Super offensive with minimal defenses and utility. Trades lots of defenses and utility for much more DPS gains. Excels as OT in farm parties, not so great in prog.

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Do you... play WAR or just gather this from the general idea surrounding WAR?

WAR wasn't WF in any raid tier this expansion. Dead class SE buff us like PLD pls.

Me can't wait till SE decides to do a ending turn with high physical TBs!

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Originally Posted by Mithron

WAR: Super offensive with minimal defenses and utility. Trades lots of defenses and utility for much more DPS gains. Excels as OT in farm parties, not so great in prog.

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What...are you smoking? Seriously I want some of that because in HW they sacrificed their buffs like Vengeance and RI to get more stacks now they don't, you also don't know how War works if you're saying they suck in prog War is the tank that universally excels in all compositions.

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Originally Posted by Awful

What...are you smoking? Seriously I want some of that because in HW they sacrificed their buffs like Vengeance and RI to get more stacks now they don't, you also don't know how War works if you're saying they suck in prog War is the tank that universally excels in all compositions.

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I will say that WAR has the least defence against O2S, since practically every attack that matters cannot be parried, so RI is objectively useless. And they can wipe the raid if Inner Release is up during the Long Drop for tanks/healers.

Honestly just nitpicking, though. WAR is in a pretty good spot.

OP's in-their-dreams niches are way too broad.

"The DPS tank", "The Prog Tank", "The Farm Tank" and "The Mitigation Tank" are not niches, those are entire markets on which no job has any business owning a monopoly, nor are these what we mean when DRK players ask to have a proper niche. Nothing so big as these, but also nothing so small as "that tank that has Dark Mind".

One button does not a niche make, and it also doesn't absolve the job of all of its many design flaws that have been present since 3.0. The difference is in 3.0 these were balanced out by considerable power in other areas. Literally all we are asking for is to get that power back. We weren't OP or unbalanced with that power in HW, we wouldn't be in SB either. SB took most of that away, and then buffed the other tanks, exacerbating the gap between them.

-NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE IT UNABLE TO CLEAR CONTENT!
-But enough to make the job inferior, and unfun to a LOT of people.
-And historically, this is enough to warrant changes.
-In fact, in a majority of cases, this is all that it took.

I see that there are people out there that are completely capable of understanding what we are asking for. So I know its possible.
Its not hard.
It really comes down to simply listening and not straw-manning every word that comes out of our mouths, or shouting us down and gaslighting us with "yeah you need some little tweaks but you're pretty well balanced" - no, we're not. Furthermore nobody EVER says what they mean by "little tweaks". Sometimes they mean a lot of really small buffs, which would be fine. Other people mean "just buff DP and then its fine". One could fix things, the other is no different from adding another 10 potency to Souleater or Bloodspiller.


We would like to be balanced. But we aren't. And wanting to be balanced does NOT = wanting homogenization or carbon copies of every toy that PLD/WAR has, and it also does not = believing that we are entirely unplayable or unable to clear content. But this is how we've been portrayed in the last week in particular, and it is supremely frustrating to be this misconstrued and misinterpreted by the community on top of being unable to get a response from SE acknowledging our feedback.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

I will say that WAR has the least defence against O2S, since practically every attack that matters cannot be parried, so RI is objectively useless. And they can wipe the raid if Inner Release is up during the Long Drop for tanks/healers.

Honestly just nitpicking, though. WAR is in a pretty good spot.

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RI isn't useless you can use it in Shake it Off making it strong for the Gravitational Waves, using it as a defensive CD yeah it loses it's usefulness in TBs but those are easily mitigated, and a good War knows not to use Inner Release during the long drop and it can save you too if it's up if you mess up too so it's still really good.

So really Wars toolkit still shits allover Drks as they bring more tools and damage there's literally no reason to bring a Drk over a War for the 2nd spot and that's the whole problem with the tank balance which has been expressed many times in this thread.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

I will say that WAR has the least defence against O2S

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I know its nitpicking, but they have the same option a DRK has.
-20% dmg taken + 20% hp.
(1 GCD and 1 oGCD)

the difference being WAR needs the hp healed, but can get into tank stance quicker, but has a slight DPS loss relying on IB.
(Of course they still have Holmgang, which is always under estimated with its short CD)

I'm not saying that's what WAR is, but how I dream of its fantasy being. I do play WAR too, but I don't enjoy it as much as PLD or DRK. When I play WAR, I want to see my DPS above PLD/DRK but have clear trade offs for it. I want to feel like an axe wielding berserker who focuses much more on offense than defense. That's just how I always view WAR, despite whatever its ever been.

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Originally Posted by Mithron

I want to feel like an axe wielding berserker who focuses much more on offense than defense. That's just how I always view WAR, despite whatever its ever been.

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Does it bother anyone else that, lorewise, it's exactly what a WAR should not be ? They put so much emphasis that a WAR's main focus should be protecting his comrades and not let his rage overcome it to the point of going berserk ?

Yes, especially since a Dark Knight is more in this style, while warrior was about controlling their inner beast.

I don't think it's a good idea to encourage the idea of any one tank being better or worse than the others at "damage" as a whole. You can easily balance DPS vs DPS vs DPS for the tanks in a way that makes them all equally powerful offensively while still maintaining unique offensive identities, because different "kinds" of damage offer different value to a group:

Burst damage should be weighted more heavily than sustained/total damage, because burst damage has additional utility for pushing phases/mechanics, synergizes better with most raid buffs, and becomes stronger as a fight has more uptime. Personal damage should be weighted more heavily than damage from raid buffs, because personal damage is more reliable and raid damage loses its effectiveness more easily.

If we leave raid buffs out of the conversation, it's very possible to balance all three tanks against each other, purely offensively, just by considering the value of burst versus sustained damage:

- Give WAR the highest burst damage, but the lowest total DPS at the end of a full encounter.
- Give DRK (or PLD) the highest total damage, but give them little to no burst, so their damage is nearly a flat line, but consistently high.
- Make PLD (or DRK) the in-between tank, with bursts that are strong but nowhere near WAR's burst, and total DPS that falls in between WAR and the other tank.

Balancing by painting with an overly broad brush (like "offense" or "defense" as a whole) tends to lead to situations where one tank is the best at the most important thing (typically damage), one tank gets to be the also-ran second place who gets the we-don't-want-an-LB-penalty consolation slot, and one tank is left out of the equation entirely.

Damage should be balanced against damage; defense should be balanced against defense; utility should be balanced against utility.


The biggest problem this game has with tank balance is that Warrior ends up having the highest burst damage, and the highest total damage, and they're the only tank with a (small) contribution to raid damage in that they have the Slashing debuff. They need to, at the very least, choose between giving WAR the best burst or the best overall DPS - not both. The damage should be balanced versus other damage.

The second biggest problem it's had since Stormblood is the one they introduced by giving Paladin all of the party-wide mitigation tools, and none to the other tanks. That might have been workable if they'd stuck to their guns on it, but now that they've kicked off an arms race with this Shake it Off buff, party mitigation can now fairly be considered a mandatory part of every tank's class kit, and they need to give DRK a viable competitor to those tools.

The third biggest problem is that they worked hard to break Paladin's reliance on specific incoming damage types when it comes to how effective their mitigation toolkit is, but they did nothing about Dark Knight's similar reliance on incoming magic damage (and in fact removed several of DRK's tools for mitigating physical damage, by axing Foresight, getting rid of Reprisal, and turning Dark Dance into a shitty cross-class skill you don't have room for), and to a much lesser extent left Warrior with a physical-only cooldown that shouldn't be. There are more than enough ways to balance mitigation tools without using damage type reliance (duration, cooldown, mitigation strength, shields/HP versus damage reduction, secondary effects/costs like Vengeance's damage reflection, Bulwark's RNG, Dark Mind's DA interaction, Raw Intuition's rear/flank auto-crit mechanic, Holmgang's root, Living Dead's healing requirement, Sheltron's single-hit limitation, IB/Holmgang's target requirement, Passage of Arms stopping your damage, etc), and so magic and physical requirements should be the exclusive realm of cross-role skills rather than parts of core job toolkits. Mitigation should be balanced against mitigation.

In all those cases, it's more than possible to balance the tanks against one another while staying like-for-like, and not trying to balance your offensive apples versus your defensive oranges versus your utility kumquats. That's the ideal that the game should be chasing.

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Originally Posted by Crater

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Considering we have influential players like Xeno who, in the interview posted recently, is shouting from the rooftops that utility should be balanced with damage, I feel this is an up-hill battle. That being said I hope some feeble grasp of these concepts reaches more players.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Considering we have influential players like Xeno who, in the interview posted recently, is shouting from the rooftops that utility should be balanced with damage, I feel this is an up-hill battle. That being said I hope some feeble grasp of these concepts reaches more players.

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Yeah but Xeno's an actual no-fooling idiot.

His argument is literally "Damage should be balanced against utility, and therefore Dark Knight [who has the worst utility by a mile] should do more damage than Paladin (with no mention of the fact that by that logic Dark Knight should be handily outdoing Warrior)". He's got nothing of value to say because he's a 100% class-loyalist Warrior fanboy.

I'm pretty sure later on in that same interview he goes on to say that Fell Cleave needs a potency buff because Holy Spirit does "almost as much" damage, which is even more hilarious because that just shows that he's failed to apply 4th grade arithmetic to the comparison (Holy Spirit: 400 potency, buffed to 480 with Requiescat and receives no further modifiers beyond party buffs, and also causes you to lose an average of 2 auto-attacks in a 5-HS sequence, meaning that the effective potency is more like 450. Fell Cleave: 500 potency, buffed 20% by Storm's Eye for 600, then buffed by a further 5% from Deliverance for 630, then buffed by an additional 10% from the Slashing debuff for 696, and then at least 90% of all Fell Cleaves fall under Berserk for an additional 30% bringing it up to an effective ~904 potency. And it has a crit bonus from BG.)
He does a similar thing going all QQ about how Warrior combo potencies are lower than PLD, when Storm's Eye and Deliverance give Heavy Swing an effective potency of 189 to Fast Blade's 160, Maim an effective potency of 239.4 to Riot Blade's 240, and Eye/Path an effective potency of 340 to Royal Authority's 360 - and Warrior still gets the crit bonus from BG.

It's a really good example to point to if people ever wonder why you might get a little annoyed by the WAR-main community. The mental gymnastics you have to do to conclude that a skill is "almost as strong as Fell Cleave" when it's literally like half as powerful is kind of emblematic of the attitude that's gotten us where we are today, where casually throwing off a suggestion for a massive WAR buff is justified "because we're only a little bit better than everyone at everything and we're worse at this one thing that doesn't matter/isn't true", but any suggestion for a buff to DRK or PLD needs to be carefully scrutinized by a team of actuarial scientists to make sure that the net gain of the buff is as close to zero as possible, because it's "ridiculous and overpowered" any time one of those classes is good at anything.

If he's "influential" in the game's community, I don't think you can chalk that up to anything other than people not being diligent enough in calling out the dumb/wrong stuff he says.

Playing warrior and drk side by side... The most notable imbalance is self sustain. I can't speak for paladin since I don't play it but I would say from experience with my raid buddy that his self sustain is even higher than warriors. Drk has no self healing whatsoever outside grit so you will be pestering your healer regularly unless SE is expecting us to spam TBN which doesn't make sense as a resource consumer. I don't know how anyone who plays dark cannot see the self sustain imbalances.

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Originally Posted by Crater

casually throwing off a suggestion for a massive WAR buff is justified "because we're only a little bit better than everyone at everything and we're worse at this one thing that doesn't matter/isn't true", but any suggestion for a buff to DRK or PLD needs to be carefully scrutinized by a team of actuarial scientists to make sure that the net gain of the buff is as close to zero as possible, because it's "ridiculous and overpowered" any time one of those classes is good at anything.

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Yes.

Seriously. I remember in HW I never really participated in these discussions. DRK had problems, but they were balanced out by some very clear (and frankly enjoyable) strengths. But now that we're compelled to ask for some changes, its nothing short of f*cking Sisyphean, even with long rationally written arguments and statistics to back them up, to A) get SE to notice and B) avoid vicious gaslighting by other tanks shouting us down.

And frankly, our suggestions and feedback and how we present them has been going on for so long now without a reply, that you can actually observe the evolution in ideas, and everything slowly getting whittled down to smaller and more modest buffs, and as of recently, not even buff suggestions, but merely threads pointing out problems with no mention of buffs, and even that is proving offensive to some.

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

I don't know anything.. But my speculation is that there is a high amount of magic damage in the last phases which made it better to take DRK. I can't really think of much else other than maybe that guy is just a better drk than he is a war.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

And frankly, our suggestions and feedback and how we present them has been going on for so long now without a reply, that you can actually observe the evolution in ideas, and everything slowly getting whittled down to smaller and more modest buffs, and as of recently, not even buff suggestions, but merely threads pointing out problems with no mention of buffs, and even that is proving offensive to some.

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Well, to be fair, I think the tone of DRK feedback has changed a lot, particularly since we learned the nature of the Shake it Off buff, because DRK players (other than a few oblivious diehards) have really been forced to re-evaluate what FFXIV class design is supposed to be, and therefore what DRK's actual place in the game is and needs to be.

Throughout 3.x, as you say, DRK's class design was best described as "Some very powerful strengths, balanced out by an equal number of equally powerful weaknesses". If you take the view that proper class design means that strengths should be balanced out by weaknesses, then 3.x DRK is, hands-down, the best-designed tank that FFXIV has ever seen. And I think the DRK community as a whole kind of settled into the idea of being the dutiful middle child, who always did their chores and took their medicine (ie: dealt with their class's drawbacks and limitations) and worked hard to be rewarded; while Paladin was kind of the neglected kid who wasn't given a chance, and Warrior was the spoiled Golden Child who had everything handed to them for free, never had to do chores or take their medicine because they just had no real drawbacks or limitations. It seemed like DRK was in the sweet spot, PLD needed some better advantages to go with their limitations, and WAR needed to be brought down about six pegs to exist in the same world as DRK.

And, honestly? When Stormblood launched, it really seemed as though Square-Enix felt the same way about tank balance. Warrior suddenly had one or two DRK-esque limitations to balance out the crazy amount of power it still had, Paladin got boosted up really considerably but still had to deal with shit like needing two GCDs to swap in and out of tank stance (complete with Gauge penalty and MP consumption) and the fact that every Block cooldown they have has a significant downside built in. DRK was a little underpowered, but at the time, it really did seem like all it needed was "a few small tweaks" to bring it up to par, at least in terms of performance (if not playstyle).

But all of that has just been thrown out the window. Warriors threw a tantrum, and SE said that they don't have to take their medicine anymore. They got a bowl of ice cream when everybody else just got a cookie, and they cried about it until they got a cookie too.

The idea that class balance, at least among the tanks, is supposed to be a system of tradeoffs, with advantages and specializations paired with equal disadvantages and limitations, strengths in one area matched up with weaknesses in another, is just dead. You're not supposed to be the dutiful child, you're not supposed to take your medicine, you're not supposed to do your chores. You're supposed to just get things, and to be buffed over and over, and to see your advantages pile up, one after the other, until you've got a perfect solution to every problem, in every situation. You're supposed to be a fabulous class pick in every party composition, in every encounter in the game.

That's a weird attitude adjustment to have to make, if you've been a DRK since 3.x and you've spent the last 2+ years existing in a world where you're not supposed to have advantages without tradeoffs. And that's why I think the feedback oscillates back and forth between actual 4.0 WAR-esque requests for powerful class buffs, and other threads where DRK mains will actually sit there, do the math, figure out exactly how much a proposed change would give them, how that buff would make them relate to the other classes, and half the time revise their own buff requests downward because they're still in that mindset where it feels like you're supposed to be asking for changes that improve game balance, rather than taking the Warrior route of just asking to get buffs to any skill that isn't useful enough, and to have every inconvenient or underwhelming part of your class kit removed or transformed into something you can't wait to use.

Having the posts with the data is probably useful, because then you can point to it when challenged, and just tell people "There's the fucking proof". But realistically, we all sort of know how this works: SE doesn't do the balance adjustments by meticulously calculating out the per-potency effects of every single change they make; it's based on keeping people happy, and keeping people from abandoning entire classes. Keep asking, keep making noise, keep playing other jobs and contributing to those DRK usage statistics tumbling down a cliff, and that's how you get change.

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Originally Posted by Wyndam

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

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Sure, because here is the issue with using world first as the end all metric. How exactly did bringing a dark knight beat out all the rest of the competition? No one knows. Would bringing a warrior instead have resulted in a fast clear? No one can answer this.

Are these players just that much more skilled at learning mechanics?

Did they push phases?

Did they put in more prog time then the rest of the groups?

Did they use a strat that only .001% of players could pull off?

People are putting a lot of weight on the fact that there was a dark knight and not looking at any other confounding variables. We have no way of assigning any, if any, of their clear to their party comp. To be clear, these players are extremely skilled, we don't know how how the job of dark knight proved to be an advantage, if at all. When the dark knight was asked why they ran dark, they just said they enjoyed the class and ran it, not that it was a strategic benefit.

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Originally Posted by Wyndam

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

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Jobs are not the only parameter in the competition. And, I think we can all agree that what matters most if how skilled you are as a player, especially when you're learning the content.
The good thing about Unending coil is that it does not drop new gear, so, between now and 4.2, every clear that will occur will be done in the exact same condition. At the end, we'll see how each tank will do and judge the balance accordingly.

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Originally Posted by Wyndam

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

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EDIT: You got a lot of responses before I decided to post my reply lol, sorry.

But you're mixing up "Did make world first" with "Is better at making world first".
It's usually a strong indicator, but as pointed out, if something is viable, then why cant a viable option be world 1st?

And the only reason this argument is presented as such, is because there's literally no way to argue with anything else, as DRK really is lacking in options.

Even the argument of Dark Mind being the advantage forgets that the DA bonus really hurts a DRKs DPS, which only puts DRKs further behind WARs in DPS.

I think you're also seeing 1st clear as the same as a speed run, where we're going to see DPS kings take the spot light.

As other pointed out in unrelated threads, that some groups had to drop out of trying for world 1st, despite being so close, due to RL problems.

Anyways, it's pretty sad that Ultimate didnt actually push tanks to their maximum.
If the lower DPS and lack of party support of a DRK was enough, then WAR/PLDs aren't going to be pushed to their max, since they also dont need to use their party support/DPS. (In ultimate of all things)

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

EDIT: You got a lot of responses before I decided to post my reply lol, sorry.

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Yeah, and they're getting edited while I'm trying to reply and then I'm noticing the quote doesn't match the post and I'm wondering if I really need to say anything anyway. I think what I'd really like to suggest is that if DRK's numbers appear weak but it's getting through anyway then maybe we're looking at the wrong numbers. And no, I'm not seeing 1st as the same as a speed run. Speed runs are silly and irrelevant in my book. I'm not equating them, I'm dismissing them entirely.

One thing to keep in mind about Unending Coil is that, despite the extreme difficulty of the fight as a whole, that difficulty comes almost entirely from the rapid-fire mechanics that constantly ramp up in complexity, and not from raw numbers checks. The DPS checks are really not especially tight, and the auto-attacks and tankbusters aren't really much more punishing than you'd expect from a standard raid encounter tuned for i340.

In addition to that, the fight is basically designed to minimize differences in class performance. The enrage timer resets on each new phase, so on a clear attempt, the only DPS check that really and truly matters is in the last ~3 minutes. If you're 5% behind in damage over the course of a normal 15-minute fight, you're 45 seconds behind by the end, but over 3 minutes, you only fall 9 seconds behind.

The benefits of an optimal composition are pretty weak in this fight relative to any other.

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Originally Posted by Crater

But all of that has just been thrown out the window. Warriors threw a tantrum, and SE said that they don't have to take their medicine anymore. They got a bowl of ice cream when everybody else just got a cookie, and they cried about it until they got a cookie too.

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That's a pretty unhealthy attitude. I was one of the lone warriors trying to defend SE's initial changes to War (mainly beast gauge fiasco), because I believe in playing a game the way it's made. I chalk it up to being a old-school gamer, even a fairly recent example like Demons Souls: an original, hard af game that's never been updated or nerfed in anyway by the devs. Much respect.

But that being said, in the end I think the changes were good. It was a bad design to end up with 3, 7, 9, 11, etc quantities of gauge. I agree with the intention of the devs to bring tank (specifically war) dps back down to Hydaelyn, but it was a bad implementation in this particular case. As for the change to Shake It Off, honestly it seemed like an easy way out/knee-jerk reaction kind of change, like they didn't know what to do with it so just made it another party shield to stack on top of all the other party shields, which ended up making it borderline OP. But I have no disagreement that the original Shake It Off was a terribly useless high level ability that quite frankly no job should have been given.

DRK had clear advantages before the change to SiO, and SE screwed that up - not the players. They could've changed SiO to be anything else. Yes, the players complained about it and wanted a change, but SE ultimately made the call on how/what to change exactly - Not warrior mains.

So now they are in a position where they must do something with DRK. All the power and more to you DRK mains still sticking it out, still trying to find something to say or do to get SE to hear your cause. I'm sure they know, they can't be entirely oblivious. I think the housing debacle is overshadowing everything else right now, so maybe it's just bad timing to expect a response. Tank balance is important, but housing is important for far more players. So once the dust settles from that I'd expect SE to start working on how to fix DRK.

In all reality pld should be doing less than dark and warrior and warrior damage is mostly see how many crit or crit direct fell cleave you can do. Dark and warrior needs a buff

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I chalk it up to being a old-school gamer, even a fairly recent example like Demons Souls: an original, hard af game that's never been updated or nerfed in anyway by the devs. Much respect.

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Why should they ? Even if you don't like the game, you find it too hard and enrage a lot on forums, you've already paid for it, they don't have to keep you motivated if you decide to give up on your own.
That's not the same with a subscription based MMO.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Why should they ? Even if you don't like the game, you find it too hard and enrage a lot on forums, you've already paid for it, they don't have to keep you motivated if you decide to give up on your own.
That's not the same with a subscription based MMO.

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Can I hug You?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Why should they ? Even if you don't like the game, you find it too hard and enrage a lot on forums, you've already paid for it, they don't have to keep you motivated if you decide to give up on your own.
That's not the same with a subscription based MMO.

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Was I comparing Demons Souls to subscription based MMO? No. It was just an example (even if a bad one) of respecting a developers creation.

Even still, just because you pay a sub every month to play this game doesn't mean the devs have to pander to your wants/ideas. You don't like it then you don't play. If the devs want more money from more subs then they'd be wise to listen to what the players want, but it doesn't follow that they are required to. Much the same as Demons Souls could've been made for a wider audience for more sales, but it wasn't.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Was I comparing Demons Souls to subscription based MMO? No. It was just an example (even if a bad one) of respecting a developers creation.

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This vision was destroyed the minute Steps Of Faith was butchered.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Even still, just because you pay a sub every month to play this game doesn't mean the devs have to pander to your wants/ideas. You don't like it then you don't play.

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That's not how the dev team can communicate.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

If the devs want more money from more subs then they'd be wise to listen to what the players want, but it doesn't follow that they are required to.

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Or they find others way to earn money. Cashshop is one of them. Accumulated subscription days is another, clearing putting a twist on "you can play something else while you wait for new content"...that is to say "as long as you keep your subscription running". Doesn't it feel weird to you that, right after Stormblood, the moment where we get a whole lot of new content, a campaign was created that basically enforces you stay sub for 3 months straight ? I see it as "The honeymoon's gone, now we need something so that people don't leave en masse"

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Much the same as Demons Souls could've been made for a wider audience for more sales, but it wasn't.

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FFXIV has a lot of pression over its shoulder, bringing money for lots of other SE's projects. I doubt it would really achieve that if it was a "niche" MMO.

Call me cynical, but it's becoming harder and harder for me to see FFXIV with benevolent eyes.

Jfc.. All because I have an appreciation for old-school video games lol

Just forget I ever mentioned it. My apologies for inadvertently sidetracking the conversation with an example.

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Originally Posted by Wyndam

Yeah, and they're getting edited while I'm trying to reply and then I'm noticing the quote doesn't match the post and I'm wondering if I really need to say anything anyway. I think what I'd really like to suggest is that if DRK's numbers appear weak but it's getting through anyway then maybe we're looking at the wrong numbers. And no, I'm not seeing 1st as the same as a speed run. Speed runs are silly and irrelevant in my book. I'm not equating them, I'm dismissing them entirely.

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While the reasoning you use, I feel isn't the best way to come to that conclusion, I am now at the same conclusion due to further examination of whats been said recently, on how the main checks are just doing the rapid fire mechanics, and the actual checks in numbers arent there. (heal/dps/tank buster checks)

So if the checks arent there (and i personally dont agree to removing number checks) then you're correct in that it doesnt matter if DRK is weaker, because the ONLY thing a WAR can bring over a DRK now, is solely DPS for speed runs.
(I also find 1st clears to be equally as irrelevant as speed runs, but i wouldnt dismiss it just because I find them pointless and uninteresting.)

In short, my concerns were how much easier a WAR would, or would not make the run for a group.

If the content isnt made to be difficult in a numbers way, then WAR doesnt technically make the hardest content noticeably easier. (Though I guess u could argue O4S is still easier with WAR)

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Originally Posted by Crater

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The community has changed as well. In 3.x, DRK was generally respected as a high skillcap tank. We were willing to have more punishing conditionals on our abilities because it was generally recognised that this was part of the job's difficulty. Performing well on it made people sit up and take notice. WAR was considered good because of its so-called "superior design". DRK was considered good because of the players.

With 4.x, there was a lot of anxiety surrounding job nerfs, especially for WAR. Instead of openly bragging about the job's power, it became more commonplace to talk about how difficult it was to play, in spite of the fact that the Berserk rotations and resource generation are significantly more streamlined than in HW. At the same time, a few well-known tanks have pushed the agenda that DRK is somehow "braindead easy" to play, despite not even bothering to clear the tier on the job. Move over DRK, WAR is now "harder" to play. Or that's at least what they'd like you to believe.

I suppose it doesn't really matter too much, but as a result, a lot of DRKs have turned around and said, "Well, if we don't have to live up to the expectations of playing a 'difficult' tank, then why do we have so many punishing conditionals on our abilities?" You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The devs do have a responsibility to address the balance issues, but the community is part of the problem. We've created this mindset that DRK is simultaneously easy to play, not fun to play, and less useful to play, despite being paradoxically more punishing to play. Which is why it's refreshing when one of the eight best players in the world comes out and unapologetically acknowledges that they love playing the job, after completing the hardest difficultly content in the game.

It's all the more reason for SE to take action. We care about DRK.