WARs and DRKs

I keep hearing people say DRK needs a rework or something cause it's to similar to WAR. After switching between all the tanks while farming items for relics I think it's WAR that needs something. DRK, GNB, and even PLD have 2 oGCD attacks while WAR has 1 that not only costs beast gauge but is on a cool down timer. It's gap closer also costs beast gauge instead of having charges so you can't use it at the beginning of a fight. It's AoE opener is a cone instead of a circle so when you are pulling mobs in a dungeon you have to line them up instead of running into the center and grabbing them all. Biggest complaint is also that it's kinda boring to play. DRK has to worry about MP and Blood, GNB gets to combo every 30s and PLD has a melee rotation and a magic rotation. WAR has Infuriate which is basically just Kassatsu, and Inner Release which just lets you spam a weaponskill over and over with a critical direct hit. So I feel like WAR needs something added or reworked over DRK imo. Granted, I don't main tanks.

DRK lost his gameplay identity as a resource management job in order to become a simplified WAR with a small oGCD spam window, i feel absurd and insulting removing DRK gameplay so he become a WAR so WAR can become another thing.

WAR getting more stuff on top of what it have doesn't mean being reworked, they could add it more oGCD and more skills for inner release, and allow me to tell you that no, DRK never worry about MP and Blood right now, Blood is use it as soon you have 50 and have a cap of 100 to comfily spend it whenever you want without think about it and MP works in a 1 min cicle, basically just load and shoot, DRK doesn't have internal mechanics to worry about outside of TBN since everything is just use them on colddown and spend an absurd amount of time doing soul eater combo and his inner delirium window wich overall is way less complex than WAR mechanics that at least you see they do something together and make his skills feel conected.

DRK is the one that need a rework in a lot of parts like Darkside, Delirium, MP economy, Blood system, ect... WAR is boring for my own taste but the job is solid and if need something more then can be easily add it on top of what it have since it's a more complete job and his kit reflect that independent of how easy is to manage.

Overpower being a cone is not only completely fine but can actually be more effective than circle aoes because of it's increased range, you just need to use it differently.
If you are pulling trash packs in dungeons for example you simply sprint through the pack and overpower behind you, when they initially aggro to you they will naturally bunch up and it becomes easier to hit all of them with your cone.

I agree with warrior needing a rework but just adding 1-2 more oGCDs will not fix it, you simply have 2 more buttons that you press on cooldown every 30-60 seconds.


One of the fundamental issues with warrior being so boring is unfortunately it's "signature" ability, Inner Release, because it boils the gameplay down to spamming a button 5 times for 10 seconds and then nothing but a "press 1-2-3 and occasionally 4" filler phase for 90 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

DRK, GNB, and even PLD have 2 oGCD attacks while WAR has 1 that not only costs beast gauge but is on a cool down timer.

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WAR has a second GCD combo and variants to their two big gauge based GCD attacks that they unlock with an ability. DRK doesn't have them so does that mean DRK is worse off than WAR? The answer is no, not inherently because such a comparison is lacking in the greater context of the kits as a whole and the differences in play-style between the jobs. Supposing that WAR has inferior game-play because it has less oGCD attack abilities is the same.
WAR is tilted towards having hard-hitting GCD attacks where DRK is more tilted towards having more oGCD attacks. Neither of those are inherently superior or inferior to the other, they are just different and different players will gravitate towards one or the other based on personal preference.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

It's gap closer also costs beast gauge instead of having charges so you can't use it at the beginning of a fight.

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The gap closer being on the Beast Gauge and making it basically DPS neutral allows you to only need to use it when you actually need a gap closer. With the other gap closers also being DPS gains, that means that players will want to and need to use them for their damage which could lead to a situation where a gap closer is needed but not available because it had been used for its damage and is on cooldown.
Another slight bonus of the WAR gap closer is that it can act as a Gauge dump to prevent over-capping Gauge and therefore losing some potential DPS if Upheaval is on cooldown and not available to use instead, or if you are saving Upheaval for an upcoming burst period.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

It's AoE opener is a cone instead of a circle so when you are pulling mobs in a dungeon you have to line them up instead of running into the center and grabbing them all.

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The cone of Overpower is 8y in length as opposed to the 5y diameter of the circular AoE weaponskills; so while you have to aim a bit more, which honestly is not hard at all, you are able to hit targets farther out which means that you don't have to group the mobs quite as tightly. Also when doing mob pulls, I often am able to get out my initial AoE a split-second earlier with WAR than with DRK because I can do it when they are still in front of me instead of having to wait until they are fully surrounding me.
The 8y cone is not inferior to the 5y circle, they are just different and have separate pros and cons.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

Biggest complaint is also that it's kinda boring to play. DRK has to worry about MP and Blood, GNB gets to combo every 30s and PLD has a melee rotation and a magic rotation. WAR has Infuriate which is basically just Kassatsu, and Inner Release which just lets you spam a weaponskill over and over with a critical direct hit. So I feel like WAR needs something added or reworked over DRK imo.

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DRK's dual-resource game-play doesn't actually require that much management and isn't really all that deep. In contrast while WAR only has one resource to manage in it's gauge, which too isn't too deep, it has other nuances to it's game-play that DRK doesn't such as a buff to upkeep that is tied to a second combo-ender, their gauge attacks shaving time off of their 60s resource/mini-burst ability Infuriate, insane self-healing with Nascent Flash, as well as some other things. You also bring up Inner Release as a major weak-point of WAR game-play, but DRK's equivalent Delirium is virtually the same, at least on the primary negative point you brought up about Inner Release.
So again, the points that you bring forth are overly focused on differences that you feel are lacking on WAR while ignoring what other things WAR does have and the greater context of the whole kits for the two jobs you are comparing.

However, I will agree that I think WAR could use some love in the game-play department and that it can feel a bit simple or boring overall. This however is not a zero-sum situation where only WAR or only DRK is in a state worthy of needing changes to improve their game-play, they both do.
This is something that I talked about a good amount when Shadowbringers first released, that due to a hefty amount of reworking of the WAR and DRK jobs, it seemed like the time and resources allocated to those jobs for this expansion were mostly used up with the reworking part; while PLD, which was not reworked, only moved forward and evolved and GNB, being new, was just built from the ground up to that level with no rework effort draining away time and resources to keep it from reaching the mark. To me WAR and DRK just felt like they were an expansion behind in terms of the level of their game-play. This is one of the major reasons I disagree so heavily with the cries to completely rework DRK again, because it is likely to just get caught in this same situation where all the time is spent changing what was already there and little to no time is spent moving the job forward.
So, imo, both DRK and WAR need a bit more focus and love from the dev team to bring their game-play up to speed with PLD and GNB.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

You also bring up Inner Release as a major weak-point of WAR game-play,

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I didn't actually say it was a weak point. Just that it and Infuriate were kinda boring since it's the only things WAR has.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

I didn't actually say it was a weak point. Just that it and Infuriate were kinda boring since it's the only things WAR has.

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That seems like a strangely unimportant point of contention in the grand scheme of the topic and conversation, but okay.

Calling it out specifically and saying it is boring is saying it is a game-play weak-point.
If an aspect of something is boring, it is less enjoyable. If it is less enjoyable, it is a point of weakness, a weak-point, in the enjoyment of how said thing plays, the game-play of it.
So if something is boring, especially if enough to call it out specifically, it is therefore a weak-point of the game-play.
Their logical relation within this context makes them virtually interchangeable, so while you didn't use the exact words the contextual meaning translates over between the two.

I agree with you OP. Drk feels way more satisfying to me then War. The only time I usually prefer to play war then any of the other tanks is in Bozja and trying to chain blood rage lost action.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

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I mean, completely unrelated to DRK I think it'd be neat if WAR was more fun to play than it is now. It's not like there's a line to the 'make more gooder' booth, if a job sucks hard and there's a way to remedy that it should be remedied regardless of what the other tanks are like.

I think that DRK very much appeals to players who are used to games with a faster baseline GCD. That's why a lot of us miss the old Blood Weapon haste buff and would like to see it become baseline. Your higher oGCD usage also helps to fill this gap somewhat because it effectively 'halves' your effective GCD. You press a button between every button at baseline.

WAR is the BLM equivalent on tanks. That's a pretty deliberate aesthetic choice as well. Much, much more of your damage is weighted on the GCD. If anything, I think WAR should have fewer directly damaging oGCD abilities than it does now, replaced by more oGCD effects that charge up your next attack to get you bigger numbers. Same result, different playstyles and aesthetics.

Technically both WAR and DRK are a far cry from what they used to be though DRK got the worst of it, having the most removed skills out of any tank. It's literally a one trick pony with TBN, which is a great cd but if you compare DRK in 3.0 to 5.0 its literally night and day.

At least WAR has stayed consistent though it was constantly nerfed so the other tanks can catch up to it. DRK used to be on par with WAR for self sustain heals but that's gone. Though I think the crux of the argument goes to Delirium. In 3.0 it was combo ender lowering INT. In 4.0 it extended Blood Weapon or Blood Price timers. In 5.0 it acts like Inner Release but without the benefits of 100% DHC, negating knockbacks or status immunes.

Honestly this expansion for tanks has been a half step compared to the significant changes that previous expansions had. It's a lot of reworking skills rather than adding new ones for these two tanks. WAR got nothing new if you played in 4.0 since its tool kit just to reworked and recycled. DRK finally got an aoe combo, but at lvl 72. Though personally I knew something was wrong with all the tanks when the only new defensive cd from 70-80, between PLD, DRK, GNB and WAR was Dark Missionary.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

Technically both WAR and DRK are a far cry from what they used to be though DRK got the worst of it, having the most removed skills out of any tank. It's literally a one trick pony with TBN, which is a great cd but if you compare DRK in 3.0 to 5.0 its literally night and day.

At least WAR has stayed consistent though it was constantly nerfed so the other tanks can catch up to it. DRK used to be on par with WAR for self sustain heals but that's gone. Though I think the crux of the argument goes to Delirium. In 3.0 it was combo ender lowering INT. In 4.0 it extended Blood Weapon or Blood Price timers. In 5.0 it acts like Inner Release but without the benefits of 100% DHC, negating knockbacks or status immunes.

Honestly this expansion for tanks has been a half step compared to the significant changes that previous expansions had. It's a lot of reworking skills rather than adding new ones for these two tanks. WAR got nothing new if you played in 4.0 since its tool kit just to reworked and recycled. DRK finally got an aoe combo, but at lvl 72. Though personally I knew something was wrong with all the tanks when the only new defensive cd from 70-80, between PLD, DRK, GNB and WAR was Dark Missionary.

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Spitting Facts there, but I honestly think all the tanks need love not just fix the kits but the leveling experience too. Though I don't see much hope since I saw the benchmark but it can change we still have time. Unique gameplay is all I ask from the jobs, it helps with leveling, choosing what to play etc. For me that is

Warrior and Paladin I think are fine. Dark Knight remains a problem. It's a discount Warrior with TBN.

GNB suffers from button bloat. At least for gamepad players.

To me, DRK very much still feels like WAR-lite in terms of actual gameplay. Functionally they are quite different, being as one brings extreme mitigation while the other has extreme self-healing, but that doesn't do much to differentiate when they feel so similar. It just boils down to identity, of which DRK currently has very little.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If anything, I think WAR should have fewer directly damaging oGCD abilities than it does now, replaced by more oGCD effects that charge up your next attack to get you bigger numbers. Same result, different playstyles and aesthetics.

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WAR doesn't deserve to steal Dark Arts.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

WAR doesn't deserve to steal Dark Arts.

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"Deserve" lol. It already has it, it's called infuriate.

This is infuriating.

More seriously though, Dark Arts was not at all like infuriate, I don't see why making this connexion.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

This is infuriating.

More seriously though, Dark Arts was not at all like infuriate, I don't see why making this connexion.

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Obviously poking fun.

DRK needs the rework.... again. LD, Dark Mind, etc.

Not to mention that DRK is the only tank where its own AOE combo is not based of its skill speed but spell speed. You cannot AOE properly in dungeons with blood weapon, which blood weapon in itself needs a rework.

DRK having the least amount of utility and being the lowest dps tank is also questionable.

But lets be honest here. WAR needs some work too. I see them updating all tank gap closers to match WAR range and remove the gauge cost for WAR gap closer.

The range isn't even the biggest advantage of Onslaught. It's the 10 second recast. Can you imagine removing the gauge cost on an ability like that? You'd be forced to use it every third GCD. It would be Stormblood Dark Arts, but even worse.

There are three types of gap closers at present.
1) Standard design: Use on recast/potency gain, charges. (Plunge/Intervene/Rough Divide/Shoulder Tackle/etc.)
2) Use on demand: Costs resources, short recast. (Onslaught/Gyoten)
3) No damage dealt: Use when you need. (Shukuchi/En Avant)

There are tradeoffs for each. Personally, I like the last category the best because they're the most versatile. But I don't see why people insist on trying to merge the advantages of all of these. Oh yes, I want a 5 second recast gap closer that costs nothing and can teleport me across the length of the arena at will. Let's not.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

Technically

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DRK has lost since 3.0:

Original Delirium
Power Slash
Spinning Slash
Shadowskin
Sole Survivor
Dark Dance
Dart Arts
Scourge
Darkside(animation)
Dark Passenger
Convalescence (GLA cross class)
Awareness (GLA cross class)
Foresight( MRD cross class)
Mercy Stroke (MRD cross class)
Bloodbath ( MRD cross class)

Warrior has lost since 3.0:
Butcher's Block
Skull Sunder
Fracture
Mercy Stroke
Bloodbath
Maim's ATK buff (actually reduced and swapped onto Eye)
Storm's Eye's slashing debuff
Brutal Swing
Foresight
Unchained
True Berserk (It has been rolled into being a less effective IR)
Internal Release(PGL cross class)
Second Wind (PGL cross class)
Featherfoot (PGL cross class)
Awareness (GLA cross class)
Convalescence (GLA Cross class)

DRK has gained since 4.0/5.0:

The Blood Gauge
New Delirium
Edge of Shadow(darkness)
Flood of Shadow(darkness)
Dark Missionary
The Blackest Night
Quietus
Bloodspiller
Living Shadow
Stalwart Soul
Arm's Length (Role -> first time in history DRK has anti-knockback 5.0)

WAR has gained since 4.0/5.0
Onslaught
Inner Release
Upheaval
Convalescence effect lumped onto Thrill of Battle
Rampart (Role)
Nascent Flash

This is off the top of my head, but basically, they've lost similar amounts of things, while gaining other things. WAR has gained far less in new attacks than DRK, while losing big in terms of % damage increasing effects that used to justify its low amount of oGCDs. That's kind of what you're driving at anyway, but I think it's important to note that WAR possibly lost more, while only really gaining things that partially made up for stuff it lost instead of entirely new toys for the job. DRK feels immensely more fresh when I play it, whereas WAR feels old, almost outdated even.

You'll notice I didn't count Inner Chaos or Chaotic Cyclone into the things gained, and that's because they're literally Steel Cyclone and Inner Beast with slightly larger animations and slightly different sound effects. I can't confirm it, but any time I am synced below having Fell Cleave and Decimate, I swear that Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone were also nerfed in animation/sound effect to feel dimmer too. That's probably a psychological thing at play, but quite literally to me it's like they purposely threw something on WAR to make the paint peel, then painted over it with the exact same old paint but labeled the colors as something new.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

You'll notice I didn't count Inner Chaos or Chaotic Cyclone into the things gained, and that's because they're literally Steel Cyclone and Inner Beast with slightly larger animations and slightly different sound effects. I can't confirm it, but any time I am synced below having Fell Cleave and Decimate, I swear that Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone were also nerfed in animation/sound effect to feel dimmer too. That's probably a psychological thing at play, but quite literally to me it's like they purposely threw something on WAR to make the paint peel, then painted over it with the exact same old paint but labeled the colors as something new.

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The sounds iirc for FC was nerfed in in SB but not a big deal since I always have sfx pretty low, or listening to other music. Like I said, WAR and DRK feel like half steps but WAR has been consistent which is good or bad depending on your view. WAR was always the self heal, build up gauge via gcds, burst tank and its design was fixed after 2.1, only to being perfected in 3.0. All these radical changes to DRK just tells me that the devs aren't sure what they want to do with the job. WAR comes off as confident in its design and whether you played in 2.0 or 5.0 you will always know that if you hit something with big damage, you will get a big heal in return. It why even though the tool kit got reworked WAR still more or less functions the same as before, just with less damage due to Berserk nerfs. Doesn't matter how much skills are lost if the core design retained.

I feel like DRK is a prisoner of the game design, constantly changing with each expansion as the devs rework how the game plays and remove things like TP. 3.0 DRK was designed as a magical tank to complement PLD, who was the physical tank (couldn't block magic in 3.0). 4.0 DRK was the resource management tank, since PLD can now block and WAR was getting nerfed. It had a mix of fast gameplay (too fast for some players) and burst while managing MP and TP. 5.0 DRK seems to want to be the shield tank with how strong TBN is. I think this a good start but the devs need to stop radically changing this job.

Also, you forgot WAR SiO used to be able to remove debuffs like Doom from Exdeath. Problem is game design has shifted so this skill can be either overpowered (removing all debuffs) or underwhelming (very niche use), sadly its the latter. SiO would have been great in 2.0 or 3.0 when Berserk had pacification but since that was removed in 4.0 it was reworked to what we have now, which was a good call imo to have a party utility rather than rework the entire game around this one skill.

Both DRK and WAR have changed significantly around making the jobs more accessible and easier to play.

In WAR's case, the central focus in from 3.0 to 4.2 was around building up towards and setting up for your big burst window. The critical change in 4.2 was in changing IR from halving gauge costs to making them costless. Instead of having to build up resources towards your burst, your burst window just happened whenever things come off cooldown. That's where a lot of the WAR ennui comes from. The big damage just happens at set intervals, and you no longer get to do anything in the interim to actually earn it. I'd say that even the earlier change of removing the gauge cost from IR was one more thing that undermined WAR's dwindling resource management. You no longer were slowly building up towards getting angry. It just happens at fixed timers regardless of what you do.

5.0 didn't actually change anything up significantly, but it did move WAR from being overpowered and boring to mediocre and boring. The underlying weakness was there from 4.2. If you want to fix WAR, you really need to revisit how they build up towards their IR window over the rest of their rotation. The problem is that most players only focus in what makes them more powerful, not in what challenges them and keeps them entertained for the long haul.

DRK's problems in Stormblood came out of players struggling with Darkside and MP management. Using Dark Arts as a replacement for Darkside's life drain was a really bad idea that's been thankfully fixed. The magic tank/physical tank was never a worthwhile niche; WAR was just better at both. TBN is a really fantastic ability to build a theme around, and they just need to commit harder to it. Overall things are moving in the right direction, but we just need changes to happen more quickly (i.e. not once every two years).

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Originally Posted by Lyth

In WAR's case, the central focus in from 3.0 to 4.2 was around building up towards and setting up for your big burst window. The critical change in 4.2 was in changing IR from halving gauge costs to making them costless. Instead of having to build up resources towards your burst, your burst window just happened whenever things come off cooldown. That's where a lot of the WAR ennui comes from. The big damage just happens at set intervals, and you no longer get to do anything in the interim to actually earn it. I'd say that even the earlier change of removing the gauge cost from IR was one more thing that undermined WAR's dwindling resource management. You no longer were slowly building up towards getting angry. It just happens at fixed timers regardless of what you do.

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Hilariously, I think WAR is at it's best in the 64 to 69 range right now because that's when I have the most fun setting up it's burst. Starting Berserk with exactly 100 Beast Gauge while your combo is at Storm's Path lets you Fell Cleave (Upheaval) - Storm's Path (Infuriate) - Fell Cleave (Infuriate) - Fell Cleave - Fell Cleave. Working towards that 100 Beast Gauge without overcapping to make sure I get as many Fell Cleaves and an Upheaval in Berserk is fun. But then I hit level 70+, Berserk turns into Inner Release, and I just shut my brain off because Beast Gauge management for my burst means absolutely nothing. It's just weird to me that the complexity of WAR goes out the window as I level it up while other Jobs are getting new and more interesting things added to their kits.

the quest is supposed to be available at lvl 30 but you can not get to the quest giver till lvl 50. What am I doing wrong?

Dont talk about drk on the forums. You'll get HWS fans or DA spam boys. Yes it sucks they're similar but there is a big difference between pushing buttons and pushing the right buttons.

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Originally Posted by Jbaud

the quest is supposed to be available at lvl 30 but you can not get to the quest giver till lvl 50. What am I doing wrong?

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You are doing nothing wrong is a quest design problem that affect DRK, AST and MCH saddly, DRK quest is aviable at level 30 but the zone where is located is Ishgard wich is only accesible after complete ARR at level 50, complete the story until you reach Ishgard and you Will have full access to the job.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

Dont talk about drk on the forums. You'll get HWS fans or DA spam boys. Yes it sucks they're similar but there is a big difference between pushing buttons and pushing the right buttons.

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A recent poll on reddit showed that DRK is currently the most popular tank, and second most popular job overall after RDM. I noticed none of the tiny vocal minority of DRK haters brought this up anywhere.

If nobody was interested in DRK, then nobody would post about it. People are vocal about popular jobs, not unpopular ones.

I think a lot of people are drawn to DRK's aesthetics. That's not surprising, given that a disproportionately large portion of main characters in FF games use greatswords, and DRK has a lot of its own signature flair. I think that any time you add series nostalgia to a job (like MCH and Air Anchor/Drill/Bio Blaster/Auto-crossbow), players become more excited to play it (now where is the likes of Dolphin Kick and Omnislash?)

You can like a job's aesthetics and not like the direction that it's been taken in. Players are going to be more opinionated about DRK because it carries so much series heritage. What if you felt that DRK should play like its FFT variant, with a heavy resource leeching focus? What if you felt that DRK should manipulate its total HP to do more damage? Not everything is going to be practically possible, but these prior experiences influence what people want to see.

You can also like a job's aesthetics and direction and not enjoy certain elements of its execution. Living Dead is awful. I know that everyone has different tastes, and I'm sure that there is probably someone out there who doesn't even play the job and holds a different view, but this is not a matter of taste. It's just flat out bad design. You can also dislike how Blood Weapon is so finicky and timer based when it would benefit from a stack system. You can want Delirium to offer something different other than being an objectively weaker copy of Inner Release. You can want Living Shadow to do something interactive with the rest of your kit (why does it have its own UI element to track it's timer?) You can want all these things and still keep playing the job as your main for six years running.

I don't think that any of this comes from a place of toxicity or 'DRK hating'. It's actually the complete opposite. It's constructive feedback from dedicated fans, and that's gold dust to successful game companies. One would hope that they would listen to a fraction of it.

Wasn't this part of Yoshi-P's presentation when he came in ? "Listen to complaints. If players complain it means they still care" or something of the sort.

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

A recent poll on reddit showed that DRK is currently the most popular tank, and second most popular job overall after RDM. I noticed none of the tiny vocal minority of DRK haters brought this up anywhere.

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If you are talking about this poll, I wouldn't count that as "representive". It's actually a result of 720 people voting on this one.

But I could turn the tables by showing you this poll!
It has over 1.3k votes, nearly double as the one above and it shows DRK as the WORST tank. Do I think that is representive either? No, I don't!
I don't give a damn about polls that don't show how you get those result, or who voted. Could be all WoW refugees, or full-fleshed veterans, at this point everything is just speculation.

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Wasn't this part of Yoshi-P's presentation when he came in ? "Listen to complaints. If players complain it means they still care" or something of the sort.

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When he came in yes, but its not exactly true nowadays unless the job literally doesn't function

We'd have fun healers if that was the case. Or dark's with livign dead being actually useful. Or the many problematic levelling kits being fixed

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

When he came in yes, but its not exactly true nowadays unless the job literally doesn't function

We'd have fun healers if that was the case. Or dark's with livign dead being actually useful. Or the many problematic levelling kits being fixed

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Healers are currently the way they are because they listened to ppl. Just the ones they listened to and were louder were the ones that didn't enjoy healers having more dps options. LD is probably because they can't think of a method that's not too samey as the others

Living Dead isn't doing anything novel. It's a more convoluted version of Holmgang that has an unnecessary penalty attached.

We've been giving them alternative suggestions to Living Dead for years. If you want to create something that's sufficiently different, there's a really easy way to do it:

If an attack would reduce your HP to less than 1, you are rendered impervious to it.

In short, it invulns big attacks, but little attacks still go through, until your HP gets chipped down low enough. Another alternative is to prevent incoming damage and healing.

That being said, if it's that difficult to come up with reasonable invulns, they should probably scrap them altogether. They'll need to introduce in more tank jobs eventually. What then?

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

A recent poll on reddit showed that DRK is currently the most popular tank, and second most popular job overall after RDM. I noticed none of the tiny vocal minority of DRK haters brought this up anywhere.

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Originally Posted by RinaB

Dont talk about drk on the forums. You'll get HWS fans or DA spam boys. Yes it sucks they're similar but there is a big difference between pushing buttons and pushing the right buttons.

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100% legitimate olive branching being done right now. As someone who from the very start has said the ShB DRK was a dumpster fire of design, and have actively told players, both new and old, to not play the job or drop it for GNB or DPS, after doing every piece of content in FFXIV on ShB DRK in some capacity, I now possess a more nuanced opinion.


I will admit frankly, that I uplifted the previous versions of DRK, when ALL of them had issues that crippled them from being able to grow in future versions of XIV tanking. I said it in a previous post before, and I'll say it again, regardless of how fun past iterations may have been to some people, I don't think DRK has ever been well-designed, it's too inconsistent. Mistakes have been made with implementation on every step of this job's lifespan. They wanted to remove the MT = DPS gain, and dependence on Int Down/Damage down via GCD combos, so HW DRK had to go. They wanted to address LEGITIMETE complaints about Dark Arts in 4.0, so we have what we have now, on top of the complete restructuring that tanks got in general, of which, only GNB really coming out ahead on, with PLD remaining mostly untouched. DRK was ALWAYS the most burned by overarching system changes.

DRK is popular, and that's fine. It's the worst tank, but it's actively played, even if by spite. That's actually good, because now, there's a possibility that we, are for the first time, going to get a EXPANSION on the job. Instead of trying to appease people who cannot play previous designs, or trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by making very stupid design choices (some of which are being made on ShB DRK and have not been fixed), there is real room for growth, and the entire foundation of the job will not be compromised trying to meet the demands of a very divided group of players. We are not at that conceptual breaking point that SMN and BLM are at, but the exact opposite.

Another thing I think goes understated is how the only reason we're able to do things like Souleater combo for 50 seconds straight is because the developers are not designing DRK for fights in full single target uptime, outside of basic 12K MP per minute mandates. When you consider that they're making DRK in the lens of dungeons where you have way higher MP regen out of combat, things make a little more sense. When you view it in the lens of something like TEA, where you are ENCOURAGED to use your AoE combos to generate more resources quicker, it makes sense. Where you actually have downtime doing mechanics where all your skills are allowed to come back on cooldown while the boss is untargetable. Skills like Flood of Shadow actually have practical use in fights with more than just 1 enemy you hit, positioning for both you and the enemies becomes way more important. We were missing too much of that this expansion. Situations where we could leverage our superior resource acquisition AoE toolkit to make GCDs less boring, and maybe increase the amount of oGCD Edges/Floods in the encounter. And that is an encounter design issue, not specifically a DRK one. DRK is so boring on a target dummy, because you don't have raidbuffs to optimize in, you don't have two target cleave, you don't have DA procs to store, and that's a big problem, because none of target dummy gameplay we have in most encounters extrapolates on the jobs strengths.

That's why people keep saying, IT'S JUST A WAR CLONE, all day. The game itself is not making the bit of complexity this design offers more obvious, or rewarding enough to the players to manifest, through the rotation itself, the encounters we find ourselves in, or the performance/numerical difference between DRKs who optimize and DRKs who don't. Skill expression is big on every job. When I play this job in hard content that really demands usage of Flood, Stalwart, and my team supports me with raid buffs I can abuse, I am really enjoying myself. But when I'm stuck on target dummy #94 like E10S and I'm just Souleatering forever with no raidbuffs, no optimization, that's where I start to hate the job again.

If we got more frequent updates, more information, from the developers, things would be so much less vitriolic. I can admit that I was very harsh on the rework, to the point of where it clouded some of my objectivity (ie you took away my favorite toy, every other toy sucks!), but I will never concede that SE is outright incompetent at communication towards this niche of tank/healer feedback.

More than anything, I hope that we can come to a real consensus in ten days with the Live Letter and job action reveals, and we can all stop fighting and be happy like other jobs are. I'm sick of this.

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Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei

I will never concede that SE is outright incompetent at communication towards this niche of tank/healer feedback.

More than anything, I hope that we can come to a real consensus in ten days with the Live Letter and job action reveals, and we can all stop fighting and be happy like other jobs are. I'm sick of this.

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Not gonna happen, they are 1000% going to screw healers again; 8 years of being completely ignored and the same thing happening over and over again had told us it won't change.

They're going to dumb down tanks even further, and I suspect even further homogenization of Healers, and like the removal of the singular dot we all have now.

As for Dark Knight, get ready for disappointment, because they just don't know what to do with the job, and will likely again completely rework the job for absolutely no reason, into a even worse incarnation.

The crux of the issue is they need to hire some god damn battle team designers, period.

Enough of the making excuses for SE, they are 1000% doing this because they know they can get away with it, especially now that's it reached similar popularity to Wow, and the new players wouldn't know Assize from their own ass.

What communication? This entire business model hinges on one-way keynote speeches from Yoshi-P. There is no player dialogue here, simply because there's nobody either qualified to or trusted to talk to the playerbase on a direct conversational level. What would you do if you were interested in engaging with tank player concerns? For starters, I think the obvious approach is to put someone in charge of 'tank design', and have them engage with players directly. Here is what we think are the main issues with tanking. This is our vision for tank A, B, C, D. This is why we designed ability X this way. Players would naturally step in and engage with that. At the moment, you're left to rummage through a dozen random interviews and live letters from a single mouthpiece which may or not mention something actually relevant to your interests. There's much too diverse a pool of information that is expected to come from a single source.

I don't doubt that they're working on changes. Healers weren't ignored for 8 years, even if it feels like that. Players were fiercely arguing amongst themselves about whether healers should be doing damage at all as late as in Stormblood. The community has provided about as much direction as the dev team has on this. Things have finally come to a head this expansion, primarily as a function of DPS jobs reining supreme over everyone else. But that's where they needed to introduce someone with some half-competent communication skills in as 'healer design lead', and have them engage directly with you on what the problems were and how the dev team intends to fix them. There's no point quietly putting something together, because the community needs to buy into it as well.

I likewise don't think that DRK's problems are particularly difficult to solve. Stormblood was a thousand times worse than what we have now, even if they have swung to the other extreme on the resource generation/expenditure spectrum. We've fairly clearly laid things out, I'd really just like to see acknowledgement of the key issues and a timeline as to when they'll get sorted.

Being angry and resentful won't help create a conversation either. Complaining is fine but let's keep it respectful (of devs and other players with different opinions).
I understand the frustration of not having answers, and I really hope someday they'll put up a more direct way of communication (like an AMA or a special forum in which they sometime share what they took our of the general feedback and suggest stuff for players to give an opinion on)

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What communication? This entire business model hinges on one-way keynote speeches from Yoshi-P. There is no player dialogue here, simply because there's nobody either qualified to or trusted to talk to the playerbase on a direct conversational level.

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What about all of the Q&A's they host? Both the ones specific to journalists and to regular players?

The Q+A sessions used to be relatively good. The problem is that the questions are increasingly filtered. Previously you'd wade through a bunch of questions on housing and glamour (can we have more personal houses per server?) as well as questions that you could easily look up the answers to elsewhere ('will there be new dungeons next expansion?) mixed in with timewasting banter to get to the actual gameplay questions. Now, those actual gameplay questions are getting rarer. There doesn't even seem to be a correlation to what gets upvoted. They're just cherry picking questions that they want to answer, rather than what the playerbase wants to see answers to. Even the so called 'live Q+A sessions' have consisted of pre-prepared questions ever since the NA Vegas Fanfest in 2018.

Which is fine, but I really just want to see the dev team sit down and talk about the design of the game. Not the lore. Not the artwork. Not the music. The actual battle system and raid design. Don't spare me the details. Why are various jobs and actions designed the way that they are? Introduce the person who designed DRK this expansion. Sit them down in front of us, and have them talk through all the actions and why the are designed the way they are. Why certain actions are changed or not changed across expansions. What's the overarching job direction, and what can we expect in the future? Because if I was designing a job, that's the very first thing that I'd want to communicate. It's actually okay to disagree with what your players are suggesting, as long as you can talk them through your reasoning. If your players don't understand the why, they won't get on board with your design.

It's this one-way flow of information that I have a problem with. I think that many NA/EU players expect their devs to interact more directly with the playerbase. I think part of it, again, is that they're afraid of disagreeing openly with the playerbase on design decisions. Even the no-s in most of these sessions tend to be elaborate 'well, we would really like to, and we'll maybe look into this, but, we can't.' The most hilarious version of this was during early Stormblood. Tank damage output gets severely nerfed at the start of Stormblood, accessories don't have strength, and tanks can't equip melee dps accessories anymore. Tanks asked the dev team to do more damage, but the nerfs were deliberate. "Oh, you want to do more enmity you say? Here, have some more enmity. What's that you say? You're not asking for more enmity? Well, I can only here 'enmity' from up here." And then we proceeded to equip i270 STR accessories from Heavensward until they begged us to stop. "What was that? There's STR on tank accessories now?" Of course, then they came back and nerfed our dps properly this expansion. Rather than trying to be cute about it, they should have just said what they had intended to do openly and implemented it. And opened up discussion on other ways to give tanking value.

The dev team is great at PR, but terrible at communication.

The problem i see with the dev team is they acknowledge the problems yeah but half of the time the go free style in the way how they solve it, and when i say half of the time tanks and healers are mostly all the time in that side.
The dev team aka the 4 guys in charge on the job design department have very little consideration on tanks and healers feedback and veterans most of the time and we end with the current DRK-WAR design frustrations or how currently healers are, for me is ¿what is the stuff they are going to ruin this expansion? bcs we haven't saw a expansion without mayor problems on both roles.

The only time i saw a honest Q&A from the dev team was when Yoship visit some jp random world and accept direct questions from the playerbase and even there i bet he cherry pick and avoid some of them, Yoship needs to make his team do regular updates about most popular concerns or comunicate more openly so we don't feel we have to wait 2 freaking years to get an answer in the form of what they are doing for the next expansion, but considering how small the dev team is it's not like they are going to have time to do that, i still can't belive they allowed they workload being tripled without increasing the number of designers involved, no clue why the mid expansion adjustments has been a joke this last expansions.