DRK and GNB are incomplete and unthoughtful

While they've really done a decent job with DRK's offensive rotation and a great job with GNB's offensive rotation, what is the theme with the defensive identities? PLD has blocking, covering, and healing. WAR has damage return, heavy burst, and mini-bloodbath. GNB and DRK have almost nothing, and there's where the discontent stems from with these two jobs.
They feel incomplete.

All of GNB's mitigation revolves around "Press this button for x amount of mitigation for x amount of seconds" which is absolutely no better than Bulwark or Sentinel. And all of DRK's mitigation skills are the same except for Blackest Night. They both need to undergo severe defensive and, if necessary, offensive reworks to complete the jobs.

GNB:
What's the lore/story behind why they are tanks? Well first off, they're bodyguards. And another thing they said is that they don't use guns like MCH or Garlean Gunblades for ranged damage. Instead they fire powder shells that have special properties to them, such as healing or shielding.
Suggestions
Give GNB an expanded take on the lost 'Reload' mechanics from MCH. Give GNB three types of ammunition types they need to keep reloading and expending: Healing Shells, Barrier Shells, and Explosive Shells. Take Blackest Night off of DRK and put it as Heart of Stone on GNB. It makes much more sense for GNB to be the barrier tank than DRK. Adjust mechanics accordingly. Allow for healing shells to be a mix of Cures or Rejen effects. Explosive shells stay put as their current offensive skills and rotation due to their offensive identity being pretty good tbh.

DRK:
The lore/story/theme behind DRK? Harder to pin down than GNB due to it being not just a Final Fantasy job, but a widely used concept in many stories and video games as a whole. But in Final Fantasy, DRK is known for being a Tank-ier DPS job that sacrifices its HP for damage rather than MP. It's also known for having Drain Blade and various other siphon skills and a few black magic spells. In non-FF stories, Dark Knights are often known as, for lack of better terms, assholes who simply do what needs to be done, have zero loyalty or bias for anything but the greater good, and often utilize techniques that let them come off at face value as total villains.
Suggestions
Let DRK be a mix of a Siphon-based tank and an auto-revive tank and throw in some double-edged(Give + Take) buffs to himself and party members. Remove Blackest Night as their main mitigation skill and put it on GNB where it more appropriately belongs. Let the majority of their mitigation come from Blood Weapon (All attacks return health). Change Darkside to convert MP costs into % based HP costs for extra damage. Change Dark Arts to increase MP costs ( thus Increasing % Hp costs w/ Darkside) for even more damage (which will inadvertently increase Bloodweapon's restorative effects to help mitigatate Darkside). Allow Living Dead to be put on a party member of choice for Auto-Revive, BALANCE ACCORDINGLY. And let skills like Sole Survivor be a buff to apply to a party member that kills their natural HP rejeneration and puts a rejen effect on the DRK, or maybe Dark Dance will put a Vuln-Up debuff on a party member while buffing your defenses/mitigation by a substantial amount to assist in tank busters.

These are just ideas so don't take them too seriously, but my point still stands. DRK and GNB have unthoughtful mitigation (Tank) identities, which is why there are so many more people concerned about them than WAR/PLD. WAR/PLD has their themes and they get their points across in a way that justifies them as tanks. Gunbreaker and Dark Knight do not. They really do just feel like DPS with high HP and a couple of flat mitigation skills.

Tbh, I think GNB is fine, DRK needs the rework. GNB just needs some changes in mitigation %'s. Next expansion, I'd like to see GNB get some form of overcharge mechanic where after expending both cartridges, you can perform a super combo using both of them or something. But thats just me.

Have you gotten them to level 80 yet? 70 for GNB. GNB rotation isn't really near complete until 70.

I don't know about DRK, but GNB definately feels complete. If anything WAR is the one that feels like its an incomplete class with a lack of depth.

In terms of skill set GNB still feels like bargain basement PLD. The job is not bad by any means, I think think the lower personal mitigation is balanced by the higher damage and the class overall is fine. I've enjoyed it to so far but I think the lore of class is a little thin.

Would be cool to see DRK be more like the series identity. Dont think it will in this game, though. Someone really likes
delirium', possibly so much so its an unhealthy obcession- they might need therapy. Of course it does best describe how you feel when you look at its ff14 skillset. Maybe thats why they cant seem to let it go, they want you delirious when you play as DRK so you dont realize how unlike DRK it really is. Then they give WAR all the life tap skills, for some reason I can only assume roots back to them being delirious and thinking its still 2.0 WAR.

GNB just needs Aurora to give a 12 potency heal with 200 potency regen to make it worth using in any situation but it should still be an oGCD, and Camouflage should be 25% mitigation and no parry chance attached to it, and personally I do wish Blasting Zone was a line AoE.


DRK on the other hand, I have made serveral comments and at least 1 thread about this expansions version of DRK... You just need to look for those comments...

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Originally Posted by ADVSS

Would be cool to see DRK be more like the series identity. Dont think it will in this game, though. Someone really likes
delirium', possibly so much so its an unhealthy obcession- they might need therapy. Of course it does best describe how you feel when you look at its ff14 skillset. Maybe thats why they cant seem to let it go, they want you delirious when you play as DRK so you dont realize how unlike DRK it really is. Then they give WAR all the life tap skills, for some reason I can only assume roots back to them being delirious and thinking its still 2.0 WAR.

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Also if you want to talk about unhealthy obsessions, Souleater combo is all you need to look at...

DRK needs some QoL changes, nothing more. GNB I'm leveling (only 64) so I can't give a take on it just yet.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

Also if you want to talk about unhealthy obsessions, Souleater combo is all you need to look at...

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Ohhhh yeah that one too, for real. Be the same, if they made DRG use "Jump" instead of Full Thrust, its bothered me since HW but even more so in ShB than ever, considering,

If you want TBN on GNB, get your DRK to use it on you. Otherwise, no, you can't have it.

From a lore standpoint, "The Blackest Night" is a quoted line from the single best written job quest in the game, invoked by your memory of two dear friends. Written by the very same writer who was responsible for the main scenario for this expansion, in fact. From a gameplay standpoint, it's the reason why DRK is a defensive powerhouse, and it's going to be a massive asset in prog. You can keep your low effort 'big' dps numbers.

In your darkest hour, in the blackest night… think of me… and I will be with you...

...Always.

For where else could I go? Who else could I love but you?

Tbh, all the jobs suffer not feeling "complete" by 60-70, I'm fine if GNB is missing some of its feel good stuff by 70. Though I do think they could've given us the gnashing fang combo earlier for levels 50, then the rest for 60 at the very least. RK just needs synergy to be fun again, and GNB just needs some higher mitigation numbers. I'll even take camouflage 15% with 90% parry rate honestly. Brutal Shell make it a better shield to make heart of stone better and I'd be 100% fine.

I find drk is fine. Haven't touched gnb yet.

Tons of double weaving and ogcd options. The life steal from soul eater is beautiful, if you add up all the hp your actually taking back through out a boss fight.

I like having to manage my mp to make sure I can use TBN when needed.
Also have to manage my blood to make sure I have 50 blood so I can send out esteem asap.

Thanks to TBN paired with other cd's, I find it really refreshing to see 0 damage from tank busters and unavoidable aoes when the other 3 tanks can't do such a thing. Outside of hallowedground and relying on healers shields.

I think the only thing I don't like so much, but can deal with, is how they handled delirium this expansion.

Gunbreaker is fine.

As a job, it plays great. I'd make minor tweaks but nothing more.
As a concept, I'll admit the lore is a little thin but it's serviceable.

It's weird, i didn't like new DRK at first but it's clicked with me now
All i really want is darkside should be more meaningful, it's impossible to lose uptime on it unless you overcap mana

GNB feels like a big missed opportunity for me. The whole cartridge system is just "meh". I had thought of something similar to what OP suggested. But having Solid Barrel generate 3 cartridges and Demon Slaughter 2. You could hold a max. of 6 (like, you know...a revolver barrel) and they could come in different flavors (like OP said, healing/damage/barrier). These cartridges would be spent in order, like shots fired from a revolver, and any skill would receive a small bonus from the cartridge, with certain skills receiving bigger bonuses for certain cartridges (e.g. Any skill you use with a barrier cartridge loaded will give you a 3k shield, but if you use it with Brutal Shell or X you get a 6k barrier instead)

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Gunbreaker is fine.

As a job, it plays great. I'd make minor tweaks but nothing more.
As a concept, I'll admit the lore is a little thin but it's serviceable.

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If we go to Illsberd next, the lore will fill itself out as we probably help the Hrothgar save their kingdom...which will probably include a hidden tomboy-ish princess who ends up becoming the new Queen Gunhildr in the end.

@Bobzitto

Yeah I thought of that too. I just wish they did them better in cartridge side of their job because that's supposed to be the main function and reason for GNB to be a tank, lol. Effectively it works no different than stored DPS charges like everyone else. Super lame.

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

All of GNB's mitigation revolves around "Press this button for x amount of mitigation for x amount of seconds"

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This doesn't really differentiate GNB from the other tanks nearly as much as you make it out to be. These kinds of skills more or less also make up the Paladin's defensive toolkit.

I feel like a fair few people aren't reading OPs post thoroughly enough to get a handle on the discussion here. I don't think they're bothered with % numbers/defensive effectiveness/potencies - they're discussing the identity & theme of the kits given to each. It's something I feel pretty strongly about as well, as GNB lore explicitly discusses the flexible nature of cartridges. To see the only main resource we manage relegated to simply doing more damage is a massive waste - a take on old MCH ammo or even a cartridge-based spender akin to Dark Arts, where move are augmented to bolster effects would have been superb.

As for DRK, I have less experience with the job, but I feel like simply making it magical tank with a baller shield isn't robust enough.

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

Suggestions Take Blackest Night off of DRK and put it as Heart of Stone on GNB. It makes much more sense for GNB to be the barrier tank than DRK.
Suggestions
Let DRK be a mix of a Siphon-based tank and an auto-revive tank and throw in some double-edged(Give + Take) buffs to himself and party members. Remove Blackest Night as their main mitigation skill and put it on GNB where it more appropriately belongs. Let the majority of their mitigation come from Blood Weapon (All attacks return health). Change Darkside to convert MP costs into % based HP costs for extra damage. Change Dark Arts to increase MP costs ( thus Increasing % Hp costs w/ Darkside) for even more damage (which will inadvertently increase Bloodweapon's restorative effects to help mitigatate Darkside). Allow Living Dead to be put on a party member of choice for Auto-Revive, BALANCE ACCORDINGLY. And let skills like Sole Survivor be a buff to apply to a party member that kills their natural HP rejeneration and puts a rejen effect on the DRK, or maybe Dark Dance will put a Vuln-Up debuff on a party member while buffing your defenses/mitigation by a substantial amount to assist in tank busters.

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1) TBN is as good as it is because we have the least amount of Defensive CDs.

2) The other proposed changes would cause a lot of issues in raids and would almost certainly mean the death of the class in the raid scene, PF and Static both.

Honestly, there isn't a single job I'd call "complete", but GNB seems about as solid as, say, PLD to me (leveling both on my tank alt.)

I think we just tend to expect more from newer concepts or reworks; we're not yet inundated by playtime under consecutive iterations, and thus our creativity (that "but they could have done X!" part of our minds) haven't gone mute yet.

Now, would I like to have seen more ammo choice stuff from GNB, possibly in place of its massive button bloat (trading non-decision skills for efficient button layouts and actual decisions that can be made)? Sure. Absolutely. But, I could say the same in some way of all but a few jobs.

DRK, on the other hand... It's a disappointment, to say the least.

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Originally Posted by 347SPECTRE

Have you gotten them to level 80 yet? 70 for GNB. GNB rotation isn't really near complete until 70.

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I had been wondering about that myself. I’ve started levelling mine and it did feel incomplete and missing something, I was kinda holding out to level 70 to see if I like it more. If at 70 or 80 it’s worth it, then I’ll definitely persist. I know some jobs don’t come into their own until they get certain abilities and can make a world of difference.

I'm finding DRK to be a blast. I've tanked for some time now, but I've never been confident enough to MT current raid level content before, but now it's just all falling perfectly into place, and TBN is an incredible mechanic.

Someone searching for high level of complexicity should consider swaping to dps.
Tanks job is not only to execute rotations, they have more work to do. Make tanks as complicated as machinist and you will make everyone else to suffer because small amount of tanks will be able to execute everythin properly on top of doing their tank job.

Picked up the GNB quest recently to check out the new tank class and... oh boy are there a lot of buttons. Do they really need to have this many buttons? Why do I need three additional buttons bloating up my bar space dedicated only to a combo that's only available once every 30 seconds? Why can't the combos be on single rotating buttons like that MSQ? The technology is apparently there, why are the players not given it? Is SE's definition of 'skill' bloating up your bars and hoping you don't fat finger the wrong key when executing your combo order?

I don't know what the design process was with this class but I think I may try something a little more streamlined...

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Originally Posted by Donnicton

Picked up the GNB quest recently to check out the new tank class and... oh boy are there a lot of buttons. Do they really need to have this many buttons? Why do I need three additional buttons bloating up my bar space dedicated only to a combo that's only available once every 30 seconds? Why can't the combos be on single rotating buttons like that MSQ? The technology is apparently there, why are the players not given it? Is SE's definition of 'skill' bloating up your bars and hoping you don't fat finger the wrong key when executing your combo order?

I don't know what the design process was with this class but I think I may try something a little more streamlined...

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Probably because there's another combo you get at lvl 70 which you weave in between the Gnashing combo, and that one does work with a single button that "flips" to different skills.

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Originally Posted by Donnicton

Picked up the GNB quest recently to check out the new tank class and... oh boy are there a lot of buttons. Do they really need to have this many buttons? Why do I need three additional buttons bloating up my bar space dedicated only to a combo that's only available once every 30 seconds? Why can't the combos be on single rotating buttons like that MSQ? The technology is apparently there, why are the players not given it? Is SE's definition of 'skill' bloating up your bars and hoping you don't fat finger the wrong key when executing your combo order?

I don't know what the design process was with this class but I think I may try something a little more streamlined...

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Warrior has very little to press.
I love current GNB it feels dynamic and pressing a lot of different buttons is what makes it feel fast.

DRK is almost perfect at what it's supposed to do: tank stuff.
it's only weak CD is Living Dead and it's probably still like this to balance the rest of it's kit.

the complaints I see here are usually an issue of what ppl expected and how it plays in the end.

it performs great and will very likely remain a great raid tank

How is war burst part of its "defensive identity"? And no one cares about the damage reflect on Vengeance.

Nascent flash is a great action though. Albiet unuseable without a macro.

The only thing I'd like to see on GNB is the ability to spend Cartridges on Defensive cooldowns. Like, give us one or two bigger, beefier defensive cooldowns, but have it use up a Cartridge. You could even replace Camouflage with something like this (since Camouflage is currently weak as hell).

The identity for DRK has always been a tank that converts MP into damage. They’re not going to do the traditional path of having a DRK concert hp into damage for obvious reasons, so they choose MP. The core of the job was using Dark Arts to boost various skills offset by the fact that Darkside killed your refresh so you had to use Blood Weapon and Syphon Strike to get it back. In theory, Dark Arts should have boosted all our skills and we should have had to manage our resources. In practice, the choice was really whether you DA’ed Syphon or Souleater and hope you picked the one that cries. The current iteration is just more straight forward since we just convert mana into either Edge for more damage or TBN for defense.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

The only thing I'd like to see on GNB is the ability to spend Cartridges on Defensive cooldowns. Like, give us one or two bigger, beefier defensive cooldowns, but have it use up a Cartridge. You could even replace Camouflage with something like this (since Camouflage is currently weak as hell).

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SE's philosophy on the gauges has been to simplify and singularize (screw it if that's not a word it is now) their focus. Either it's 100% offensive, or 100% defensive, at least as far as tanks go.
I'd rather see an oGCD shell spender, and a 3rd shell holster in the gauge.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

SE's philosophy on the gauges has been to simplify and singularize (screw it if that's not a word it is now) their focus. Either it's 100% offensive, or 100% defensive, at least as far as tanks go.
I'd rather see an oGCD shell spender, and a 3rd shell holster in the gauge.

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I wish this was the case with all tanks, because if it was, Onslaught shouldn't cost gauge =p

And prior to ShB it especially wasn't the case given that IB had a pretty nice shield and HP regen tied to it, and Steel Cyclone returned HP.

I feel the War guage has always really been the odd in that regard. Where it was possible to "singularize" the guages for PLD and DRK because they had mana as an additional resource, War only ever had rage.

Now in ShB, with Infuriate turned into stacks and it triggering Nascent Chaos, it's sort of a second resource for Wars to watch over--albiet one that isn't independent of the first resource rage.

I dunno... I just wish they made Onslaught free at this point since it really isn't strictly a dps action and tying it to War's only resource makes it compete with dps actions and prevents the "singularization" of the resource.

As for GNB, yeah, feels odd that there's only 2 stored shots available. It's such a weird number. They could have at least made it 3.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Warrior has very little to press.
I love current GNB it feels dynamic and pressing a lot of different buttons is what makes it feel fast.

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Sounds fun. Maybe I'll main GNB. I'll see how tank balance goes after 5.05. But I agree that War could use a few more buttons to press. I remember when wars had brutal swing, that one execute attack for enemies below 20% health, bloodbath as OGCDs to play around with. We also had fracture dot. We sorta got bloodbath back with nascent flash, and upheaval is sorta like that execute action as it's just something you hit once it's ready. If we can maybe get another OGCD, maybe make Onslaught free and on the charge system, it could fill out War's kit a little more, and make it more interesting to play. Or maybe make Upheaval apply a burning dot? That could be cool.

With that said, I've been enjoying Inner Chaos more than I thought I would. It hits like a truck - like the way FC used to hit before Inner Release was a thing. Pair Inner Chaos with Nascent Flash for 17 or 18k heals and it reminds me of what FC + Berserk + Bloodbath used to feel like.