Design of DRK and PLD

Can anyone explain to me why is DRK a shield tank who tanks with his blood and flesh while PLD is a regen tank who carries a small pp shield?

The long as short of it is because DRK didn't exist in 2.0.

Back then it was only PLD and WAR, and we only went up to 50. PLD was the damage mitigation tank, and WAR was the life steal one. So when they added DRK in, they couldn't really make it focused on drains, since that was still WAR's thing, and made it more parry/dodge focused at release. And from there it was mostly just the jobs evolving in different ways, with PLD gradually getting more healing abilities as it went on to align it with legacy expectations, and DRK just.... kind of getting whatever the other two weren't and changing constantly and then just sort of ended up here since it's not like they have any real direction with the job anymore.

From a new players perspective. It just dont make sense at all. Then i hear from some players saying that DRK will never change cause it was originally inspired by an Anime called Berserk. After watching that anime. It makes even less sense of having DRK being a shield tank. Whats the use of Paladin's shield? I have never seen any "Paladin with shield" in other games that uses shield but almost never uses a shield.

PLD doesn't use it's shield? Uh, lets count the shield-based abilities PLD has:

Shield Bash is heavy physical attack plus Stun but has a slow speed (so you don't spam this)
Shield Lob that is a ranged attack for low damage but high hate (so is the main 'pulling' ability, again, it's not meant to be spammed)
Sheltron resulting in a guaranteed block with the shield for the next physical attack while the effect is active (for 6 seconds).
Passage of Arms throwing up your shield in front to magically defend your party behind you with glowing angel wings.

To say nothing of other abilities technically involving shield in principle or theme (like Cover, Sentinel, even the tank role ability Rampart was originally a GLA/PLD class ability).

And I'm probably forgetting some too but they're the big ones. We also had a few others but they were removed in past expansion launches (Shield Swipe, Shield Oath - this became Iron Will and was guttered of it's defense boost incidentally).

And what do you mean PLD is a 'regen tank'? It has no regen abilities at all - it has a single healing spell in Clemency which is a burst heal, I think you're confusing it with WAR and GNB which do have regenerating abilities. PLD is all about defense and SE's description for the Job on the Lodestone (along with it's GLA base) all but screams "this is a defender".

I'm sorry, but I simply have no idea what point you are trying to make here.

They mean "Shield" as in barrier. It does feels weird for the paladin, who has a literal shield, to not be the tank using "shield" mitigation.
What's funny is that DRK also had a lot of parry incentive on release, gave it a duelist feel as a tank (which I honestly really enjoyed).

Uh, but we do, it's called Divine Veil, but only executes if a healing spell is cast on the PLD while the ability effect is active (plus it only works on party members not the PLD themself, and only for party members in range, possibly as part of the image of the PLD SE was trying to paint as a selfless knight who puts others before themself) - hence this is when you use Clemency, but too many PLDs do not realize this (or care about it to bother). PLD could also cross-class Protect originally so it could boost it's defense too with that, but that was of course scrapped.

I think this comes back to the original concept SE had that PLD was meant to be the 'physical' tank (and hence relied on the shield itself rather than magical 'shield' abilities), where as DRK was the magic tank that did (and thus could be undone with enemies that were pure melee), as I recall there was a lot of complaints about this back when DRK was first released because PLD and WAR were just better against most enemies for this reason. Times have changed though, as all Jobs have undergone revisions and the old cross-class system that was still in effect when DRK launched was scrapped.

Because PLDs use their shields to randomly block hits, decreasing their damage (using the Block Rate and Block Strength stats, which I think are now hidden stats(?)), while DRKs uses the power of darkness as a barrier, absorbing the damage.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

PLD doesn't use it's shield? Uh, lets count the shield-based abilities PLD has:
Shield Bash is heavy physical attack plus Stun but has a slow speed (so you don't spam this)
Shield Lob that is a ranged attack for low damage but high hate (so is the main 'pulling' ability, again, it's not meant to be spammed)
Sheltron resulting in a guaranteed block with the shield for the next physical attack while the effect is active (for 6 seconds).
Passage of Arms throwing up your shield in front to magically defend your party behind you with glowing angel wings.

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Do any of these matters when it comes to savage and ultimate? well i guess PLD does use his shield"Passage of Arms. And by shield what i mean is indeed as Kalaam mentioned. Barrier.

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Originally Posted by RyomaUchi

Do any of these matters when it comes to savage and ultimate? well i guess PLD does use his shield"Passage of Arms. And by shield what i mean is indeed as Kalaam mentioned. Barrier.

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Yes, of course. Some of the usages are more fringe than others, but they matter a lot.

Shield Lob is a ranged attack option that you use when forced to disengage, and you don't have Requiescat up, or you are too early or too late in your physical rotation such that you can't use Holy Spirits as the ranged option for MP reasons. And even though Holy Spirit is used to pull once it's unlocked, all tanks still need a ranged GCD action when synced. This is the gap Shield Lob fits in. It will get more regular usage when Shield Lob no longer breaks combo in EW, unlike Holy Spirit, if the fight design encourages mandatory tank disengagements.

Shield Bash is situationally very useful, even if it breaks combo, does no damage, and ruins your rotation if you don't plan the usage. In Savage, there is only one fight this expansion that takes advantage of it. E8S add phase has a Water sprites that needs to be stunned by Low Blow, Leg Sweep, or Holy before it reaches the center crystal. Since it has the highest HP, it takes the longest amount of time to kill, so the movement path needs to be interrupted by stuns only. Since you are not guaranteed a WHM on your side, (they are probably better off throwing glares anyway), and Low Blow/Leg Sweep are both oGCDs with cooldowns, PLD remains as the one of the two jobs in the game able to chain-stun, and also stun both sets of Water sprites. This of course, isn't useful now with echo and overgearing, but when progging the fight and learning it, this was pretty huge. In earlier expansions, there were similar cases like this, Gordias and Midas in particular were huge about add control like this. It gives PLD another niche. Outside of raids, it is incredibly useful in Deep Dungeons and Exploration content.

Sheltron is the short-term CD. Since it uses gauge, it has the disadvantage of having to charge up at the start of fights, but the benefits greatly overshadow that problem. Being able to use two of them rapidly, the duration meaning you can block multiple instances of damage at the same block reduction, mitigating auto attacks to prevent gauge overcap. With Intervention also being in the kit, Sheltron is really flexible. Sentinel/Rampart + Sheltron + Intervention on the cotank is a staple of double/shared tankbusters, and is efficient CD usage. This is like asking do any of the tanks need their short-term mitigation, and the answer is overwhelming yes. And it's only getting better next expansion.

Passage is arguably the primary reason why PLD is taken in progression groups, next to Clemency. The ability to reduce 15% of all damage for the party, either as a quick weave for a few ticks of damage mitigation for high-powered raidbusters (Morn Afah), or as a focused channel for an taking multiple hits in a row (E12S enrage is a great example of this), on top of the 100% block rate during the entire cast. It's probably one of the best non-invulnerability mitigation skills in the game. Very flexible.

PLD uses a shield, but with all of these tools, PLD falls squarely in "Utility Tank" territory. There is no tank that is better at being a defensive swiss-army knife, in contrast to it's fixed damage rotation. It goes all in on the "Protecting others" part of conventional Paladins. Damage transfer, full party mitigation in the form of direct shielding and mitigation when other tanks have only one, high emergency healing, high rDPS, a ranged phase. It is my firm belief that PLD is probably one of the best designed jobs from expansion to expansion since HW. Barrier tank is firmly DRK's thing now.

Also the most recent Berserk anime is pretty much a crime against the medium, read the manga.

The Real Life Meta Reasons why shields would fall out of favor for a Knight is that the armor that they wear evolved enough that a shield feels redundant for protection and to defeat the defenses of their peers/enemy they needed the 2nd hand for greater control and leverage over increasingly sturdier weapons beyond arming swords so we see more Long Swords/Bastard Swords and later large True Two-Handers that possessed either dedicated thrusting or combination thrust/cutting capabilities to get through the gaps in armor or if thrusting isn't possible at the time, hitting with enough force to better break bone and flesh through trauma etc.

Maybe for narrative reasons we can interpret the Dark Knights/Gunbreakers/Warriors as either possessing enough personal defenses to make shields redundant and/or enough offensive 2-handed leveraged might to get through the best armors of Eorzia & the First, and in the Gunbreaker's "arming sword" case, their Gunblades are so Aether-Tech Mechanically Superior & Powerful that even with one hand they are more than enough to get through enemy armor.

/End Rant

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

as I recall there was a lot of complaints about this back when DRK was first released because PLD and WAR were just better against most enemies for this reason.

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Actually, it was Paladin.

Drk was absolutely disgusting in HW. Blood Price (Any attack taken) adds mp for more Dark Arts spam, Delirium 3rd Combo GCD (INT down) making Monk irrelevant since you had it permanently up, any parry results to free leg kicks (DPS + Stun) meaning it reset the cooldown instantly and Dark Dance helping out (20% Parry increase), Scourge (GCD Dot), Reprisal (short cooldown triggered by parry), Abyssal Drain (GCD), Salted Earth (45 seconds CD), Plunge.

All Paladin got was Clemency , Divine Veil, Goring Blade and Royal Authority. It got no tools compared to what Dark Knight had, including Warrior.

Warrior got Deliverance (Damage Increase 5% and Crit rate) making them another dps, Equilibrium, and a strange Raw Intuition which mobs crit you if you got hit from rear/flanks.

Damn HW Dark Knight was fun and reactive with those parry procs.

Most actively raiding DRK players in Heavensward also played PLD and vice versa. There definitely were fights that were easier to progress on with PLD than DRK, A7S being the blatantly obvious example. You see this decision-making reflected in the WF clears as well. WAR was the only constant in that they were good against all damage types. MNK and DK were completely equivalent to Delirium and were probably up even more often. You'd have to be playing with an incredibly subpar MNK for them to play without their blunt resistance down buff.

I wouldn't consider the proc-based gameplay on HW DRK to be 'tools' or 'utility'. It just ensured that your resource generation was more variable, forcing you to think on your feet. FFXIV players tend to be very much against any randomness or variability that prevent you from mapping out your rotations on a spreadsheet, which is why DRK unfortunately has moved closer towards PLD style faceroll rotational design despite being originally set up as resource management tank. The problem is that it feeds back into this culture that every pull that you do has to be able to potentially yield a mathematically optimal result (even if you're not at the mechanical skill level where you can achieve said result), or else we just wipe and reset until you get the numbers that you want. This was the kind of thinking that made them effectively remove Crit/DH from affecting WAR. It's an incredibly dumb design direction. Who cares if you didn't crit on your 22nd Fell Cleave? Just play your best and you'll average at what you should.

I aggree on that, most of the times bosses move, you have to get away, this will delay a GDC or two etc etc. We aren't TAS machines.
A bit of random is fun, having reprisal and low blow proc on parries (I don't remember the rate but if I recall it was fairly high if not 100% ?) was fun oGCD to weave in. The ressource management felt more organic, dynamic than what we have now.
Right now it feels very... cold ? As you said it's spreadsheet where we know exactly, to the digit, how our ressources will be generated and spent. To be honest I kind of prefered MP not being the same cap for everyone and being an actual stat.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This was the kind of thinking that made them effectively remove Crit/DH from affecting WAR. It's an incredibly dumb design direction. Who cares if you didn't crit on your 22nd Fell Cleave? Just play your best and you'll average at what you should.

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Actually it was the opposite of dumb design, what it replaced was dumb design. The initial StB War was very random and Spiky due to so few attacks having such a major influence on average damage. The difference between direct crit Fell Cleave and a normal Fell Cleave during Berserk was 562 potency which was more than Fell Cleave's base potency of 500. When you have only 5 or 6 of those attacks every 2 minutes you only have a total of 25 to 30 of those attacks in a 10 minute fight which is far to few for the law of large numbers to ensure that each run was having the WAR deal roughly the same average damage.

This is largely a perceptual thing, and it can be difficult to wrap your head around, but it doesn't really matter. At all. The expected value is still going to be the same under target dummy conditions, regardless of whether you are playing a burst dps job or a sustain dps job. You can go a step further and say 'Oh, I happened to Crit 522 out of 590 auto-attacks that last run out of pure dumb luck but then we wiped, game is so unfair'. But again, who cares? Anyone can get a really lucky run. What matters is your consistency, pull after pull. This is especially true if you're a tank.

The reason why WAR's 'Crit RNG' received so much attention in Stormblood was because:
1) Increased focus on Crit/DH with the introduction of DH
2) Xeno campaigned for the current 'Critless' WAR design because it was adding RNG to the fflogs rankings

For good or for ill, this was the bandwagon that the community jumped on. WAR Crit/DH on everything, and so, they Crit/DH on nothing. So enjoy, players got exactly what they asked for.

Personally, I don't care too much about whether Crit or DH actually exist. I do think that this game doubles down on comfy predictability too much, and I'd really like to see more twitch reaction-based mechanics and job design which makes you respond on the fly. But that's just my bias. You might think that your spreadsheets are the pinnacle of mechanical skill, who knows.

And now Warrior is a pile of garbage. It provides no interaction than spam Inner Chaos/Fell Cleave, spam Nascent Flash, doesn't work under certain comps, it's Dark Knight on easy mode.

Gunbreaker is fine for now
Paladin is doing great
Warrior needs a rework
Dark Knight needs tuning

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They mean "Shield" as in barrier. It does feels weird for the paladin, who has a literal shield, to not be the tank using "shield" mitigation.
What's funny is that DRK also had a lot of parry incentive on release, gave it a duelist feel as a tank (which I honestly really enjoyed).

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Do any of these matters when it comes to savage and ultimate? well i guess PLD does use his shield"Passage of Arms. And by shield what i mean is indeed as Kalaam mentioned. Barrier.

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Divine Veil, Intervention, PoA are all "shield" based unless you mean something else again.

and it would be weird to not use them in savage and ultimate.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

And now Warrior is a pile of garbage. It provides no interaction than spam Inner Chaos/Fell Cleave, spam Nascent Flash, doesn't work under certain comps, it's Dark Knight on easy mode.

Gunbreaker is fine for now
Paladin is doing great
Warrior needs a rework
Dark Knight needs tuning

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DRK is a simlified WAR with a mountain of fluff oGCD, if WAR is bad DRK is worse overall now more clear that WAR moves to the 60s mark raid buffs with DRK, at least the job have more interesting downtime with Infuriate charges, storm eye management and having 3 charges of onslaught allowing him to have one always ready outside of raid buff if he still need it, DRK just sit there eating grass with soul eater spam and a ocasional bloodspiller while his uncohesive kit refresh his fluff and his MP regens at the stepping on eggs speed.

WAR may be no really complex and is easy to manage but his kit is one of the most solids we have in terms of design and cohesion, WAR is the arguable one that would need tweaks to make it more interesting, DRK needs a rework on almost everything it have.

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Originally Posted by shao32

DRK is a simlified WAR with a mountain of fluff oGCD, if WAR is bad DRK is worse overall now more clear that WAR moves to the 60s mark raid buffs with DRK, at least the job have more interesting downtime with Infuriate charges, storm eye management and having 3 charges of onslaught allowing him to have one always ready outside of raid buff if he still need it, DRK just sit there eating grass with soul eater spam and a ocasional bloodspiller while his uncohesive kit refresh his fluff and his MP regens at the stepping on eggs speed.

WAR may be no really complex and is easy to manage but his kit is one of the most solids we have in terms of design and cohesion, WAR is the arguable one that would need tweaks to make it more interesting, DRK needs a rework on almost everything it have.

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I'm not sure man, Dark Knight has been switching places with Paladin back to back certain Savage fights and it still does in this expansion for having the most disgusting Burst I ever seen.

Warrior doesn't work with a lot comps DPS wise, useless with Drg, useless with Sch. Warriors problem is literally Inner Release, it's a short big burst and that's it can't do anything else for 90 seconds, sits there doing 1-2-3 with a random FC falling hardcore on DPS. Dark Knight is able to keep consistent damage flowing through and take complete advantage of Chain from Sch. Comps stall 30 seconds on CDs to link up with Dark Knight certain fights for perfect timing earning cooldowns after down time. Don't be so quick to jump the band wagon, Dark Knight is in a lot of speed kills over Paladin for it's burst potential and fight timings, Paladin has flaws needing 35-36 seconds without interruption on every occasion never to happen in order to beat Dark Knight.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

I'm not sure man, Dark Knight has been switching places with Paladin back to back certain Savage fights and it still does in this expansion for having the most disgusting Burst I ever seen.

Warrior doesn't work with a lot comps DPS wise, useless with Drg, useless with Sch. Warriors problem is literally Inner Release, it's a short big burst and that's it can't do anything else for 90 seconds, sits there doing 1-2-3 with a random FC falling hardcore on DPS. Dark Knight is able to keep consistent damage flowing through and take complete advantage of Chain from Sch. Comps stall 30 seconds on CDs to link up with Dark Knight certain fights for perfect timing earning cooldowns after down time. Don't be so quick to jump the band wagon, Dark Knight is in a lot of speed kills over Paladin for it's burst potential and fight timings, Paladin has flaws needing 35-36 seconds without interruption on every occasion never to happen in order to beat Dark Knight.

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Idk if you know the news then, WAR inner release is going to be a 60s coldown now with 3 fellcleaves + beyblade hunga attack as finisher perfect to sync with all the raid buffs any time, yeah the guaranteed crit stuff sucks but at the same time now you have 3 fell cleaves instead of 5 so primal rend since doesn't consume inner release stacks and nascent chaos can be fitted on chain stratagem more easily and get beneficts from it.
On the down time WAR still have to manage storm eye wich adds GCD variety, have upheaval every 30s, have infuriate wich not all are going to fit on burst windows and onslaugh is 3 charges vs other tanks that have 2 so WAR is still the most movile job on the role since the recast will make you have at least 1 onslaught free for that purpose since it wont fit on raid buffs anyway.

DRK is based on use all his stuff on raid buffs, all his MP and all his oGCD since plunge, abysal drain, carve and spit, shadowbringer, living shadow, blood weapon and Delirium have a 60s recast (living dead 120 but fit in the same each window) DRK spend his downtime doing absolutely nothing but soul eater an a ocasional bloodspiller and the why this still exist salted earth every 90s.
considering that DRK doesn't have mechanics to build on with the exception of get the dark arts proc from TBN 1 per 60s since the rest is use on recast and throw all your MP on raid buffs DRK is just all lights and sparkles while in reality you spend most of the time watching netflix until your "random shit go" window come, optimal DRK just sucks.

Im not going in to speed skills since is not a matter of raw numbers but more about job gampelay design.

We'll soon see which is better, it's a matter of opinions at this point. I find Warrior absolutely trash and horrifically boring doing nothing for 80 seconds each round, Dark Knight to me is at least interactive.

I am still very intent Gunbreaker is going to beat Warrior again, Double Down/Hyper Velocity are some serious guns and Paladin, being the main tank priority over it makes it much easier to play.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

We'll soon see which is better, it's a matter of opinions at this point. I find Warrior absolutely trash and horrifically boring doing nothing for 80 seconds each round, Dark Knight to me is at least interactive.

I am still very intent Gunbreaker is going to beat Warrior again, Double Down/Hyper Velocity are some serious guns and Paladin, being the main tank priority over it makes it much easier to play.

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I'm appalled! Well, not really. Everyone who played WAR and didn't like it have all sorts of reasons, mines happen to be: 10% Damage Buff that required 1 target combo to apply, Overpower as Targeted Cone that I can't spam unless there's a target selected in melee range, Raw Intuition vs Nascent Flash. EW seemed to address 2 of those annoyances but Overpower is still targeted cone and pisses me off. Also, I hate axe glamours.

GNB I didn't enjoy much so my Squall12345 Alt languished forgotten... until I got a better mmo mouse and mechanical keyboard this year, now interest is rekindled. Now I'm trying to consolidate all 4 Tanks on THIS character so I don't have to change worlds so much.

Yeah I also love the Dark Knight. I like the PLD too but Dark Knight is still fun, has the best glamours, best job story and hilarious.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You'd have to be playing with an incredibly subpar MNK for them to play without their blunt resistance down buff.

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Or just one running enough SkS to drop DK only on Demolish and DK itself (for 7+15 bonus potency lost, or at most an extra 8 from the normal auto, while gaining the 130 potency of an extra Boot-True per rotational string). Such could cause small but potentially notable gaps in the Int Down debuff.

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I wouldn't consider the proc-based gameplay on HW DRK to be 'tools' or 'utility'. It just ensured that your resource generation was more variable, forcing you to think on your feet.

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This, and perhaps a bit more compensation for MTing (which, back then, every tank had in some different form -- DD, Reprisal, Low Blow, and self-heals if in tank-stance; Shield Swipe and MP generation; Vengeance and [very mild] rotational self-heals that didn't require tank stance).

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FFXIV players tend to be very much against any randomness or variability that prevent you from mapping out your rotations on a spreadsheet, which is why DRK unfortunately has moved closer towards PLD style faceroll rotational design despite being originally set up as resource management tank. The problem is that it feeds back into this culture that every pull that you do has to be able to potentially yield a mathematically optimal result (even if you're not at the mechanical skill level where you can achieve said result), or else we just wipe and reset until you get the numbers that you want. This was the kind of thinking that made them effectively remove Crit/DH from affecting WAR. It's an incredibly dumb design direction. Who cares if you didn't crit on your 22nd Fell Cleave? Just play your best and you'll average at what you should.

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Given the shit we'd bar lock out over minute rDPS gains (that ended up rivaled or even beat out by off-meta comps by StB's end), I wonder what would happen if we ever had to deal with actually playing differently depending on our comps, rather than merely having a 5% dmg shuffle from ones' aDPS to another's rDPS, etc. A true Pandemonium?

Honestly I wish gameplay was a bit more variable. All comp viable of course, but to have personal preference as to what other jobs we like to play with X main, a fun synergy between DRK and PLD would be neat given the jobs' history.
But we're getting besides the point.

The problem with creating synergy is, what do you do? You don't want to have it tied to DPS otherwise you start with the case where if you have one of the 2 jobs, you will need the other just for the extra damage. Extra mitigation potential? If it causes healers to save GCDs for more damage, of course it is going to be better.

You could see this issue crop up from the past. In HW you always took a Warrior tank, partly because of their massive damage potential, but also, they could apply the slashing down Debuff. With Ninja being very common due to the power behind Tick Attack, pairing them up meant that Ninja could do even more damage than potentially intended by not having to use Dancing Edge at all (Dancing Edge applied the Slashing Down Debuff and done less damage than Aeolian Edge).

Then you have the double ranged meta, where you had Bard, Machinist and Dragoon. Dragoon was really strong in it's own right, but being able to buff the damage of Bard and Machinist meant you done more damage overall by having double ranged rather than ranged and caster.

With that, Stormblood basically made every job that had a slashing/piercing/etc. Debuff require them to be part of the rotation, so that you couldn't have the cases, where, Ninja wouldn't use Dancing Edge (though, they removed it anyway with this change). Ranged didn't get the ability to apply Piercing because they never had it to begin with, but Dragoon kept it, so Ranged were still strong. Which then leads to where we are now with Debuffs that apply additional damage across multiple jobs being completely removed.

The only thing since that comes close is Reaper with Death's Design, however that only applies to the damage done by the Reaper and no other job. Obviously, they didn't want it to increase other jobs, otherwise you, again, start having to balance it over every job.

Now, every raidwide buff is being changed so that they affect everyone, as having it only apply to specific damage types potentially limits the groups. Monk's Brotherhood was changed from only physical damage to all damage and gave spells the chance to proc Chakra, Redmage's Embolden, Just physical damage for the raid to all damage for the raid.

By having specific job synergy, you create an imbalance which then goes against the philosophy of any group can clear any content.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

By having specific job synergy, you create an imbalance which then goes against the philosophy of any group can clear any content.

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No, it doesn't. Any set of jobs can have different but (roughly) equally-valuable synergies. (See Overwatch, for instance, whenever it's in a good patch. For almost all hero/job choices, the way you play is more dependent upon your comp than not, and yet even at the professional level, it could take a month or more for even a map-specific meta to outperform comfort picks or intentionally off-meta --harder to counter-- comps.)

Having synergies isn't damning; it just means you have to balance comps, not only individual jobs.

It just comes back to whether players actually want XIV to be a team game beyond merely picking an angle, and perhaps an 'out' or 'in' position if there are more ranged than melee, before performing their mostly unchanged T&S dance. So far, that seems a no. We seemingly like as little effect from playing with others as possible, or indeed of any chance, anything outside our control.

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Originally Posted by RyomaUchi

From a new players perspective. It just dont make sense at all. Then i hear from some players saying that DRK will never change cause it was originally inspired by an Anime called Berserk. After watching that anime. It makes even less sense of having DRK being a shield tank. Whats the use of Paladin's shield? I have never seen any "Paladin with shield" in other games that uses shield but almost never uses a shield.

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If they are using Berserk as inspiration then 3.0-4.0 DRK was the 1997 anime and 5.0+ is the 2016 anime. The former was slow deliberate, punishing but rewarding and jank (though this was a time when most classes were jank as well). The latter is flash but no substance and bombastic for the sake of it. People have their favorites but ultimately DRK didn't do too well in the expansion transitions because it changed from being a magic defense specialist, but when PLD changed to block magic DRK lost that. It then became a haste, resource management tank but then they removed TP. Now its just a tank variant of MCH. The parallels are frightening tbh.

Both MCH and DRK have:
-one combo rotation
-multiple ogcds that only do dmg
-an npc they can summon as a flashy dot
-animations where they are flipping and dipping like wushu masters

I find it really strange that there's so much variety with dps job mechanics, and yet we don't see tanks really exploring any of them. MCH has an interesting variation on the standard combo system in that Drill and Air Anchor are functionally additional 'combo steps' that pop up at different points in your combo cycle. DRG has a five step combo. There are so many more interesting ways to do combo systems than merely alternating between a maintenance combo and a damage combo. It's a shame that more of this doesn't get ported over to tanks. Who knows, you might even be able to make a job like WAR engaging to play for the other 80 seconds when you aren't in burst.

Likewise, MCH and now RPR are both operating on purely resource-gated burst windows, rather than the standard time-gated ones that everyone else has. I think that this sort of design better suits a resource-focused job. It's more organic.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Likewise, MCH and now RPR are both operating on purely resource-gated burst windows, rather than the standard time-gated ones that everyone else has. I think that this sort of design better suits a resource-focused job. It's more organic.

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How so? Just because it's more uptime-dependent and might make SkS slightly less shitty (though Hypercharge, etc., more than reverses that effect overall)? Is this limited just to whichever spenders don't oblige use only at full gauge (so, not Apex Arrow, etc.)?

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I find it really strange that there's so much variety with dps job mechanics, and yet we don't see tanks really exploring any of them. MCH has an interesting variation on the standard combo system in that Drill and Air Anchor are functionally additional 'combo steps' that pop up at different points in your combo cycle. DRG has a five step combo. There are so many more interesting ways to do combo systems than merely alternating between a maintenance combo and a damage combo.

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Similarly, do any further examples come to mind here? I'm trying to imagine from the examples given, but I'm having trouble seeing how MCH or DRG, for instance, vary from the standard.

DRG's two 5-step combos, after all, are just a maintenance (DB-CT) and damage/filler combo, just like any Goring Blade, Storm's Eye, Gnashing Fang, or the like.
Meanwhile, Drill and Air Anchor are just... Sonic Break. They're each just another braindead, keep-aligned-by-firing-and-forgetting-on-cooldown damage CD -- merely GCD rather than oGCD -- that, at best, you may get another use of at inefficiently high Skill Speeds in some incredibly rare fights... if and only if you don't have to hold to align them with raid buffs, likely wasting total damage even then.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

No, it doesn't. Any set of jobs can have different but (roughly) equally-valuable synergies. (See Overwatch, for instance, whenever it's in a good patch. For almost all hero/job choices, the way you play is more dependent upon your comp than not, and yet even at the professional level, it could take a month or more for even a map-specific meta to outperform comfort picks or intentionally off-meta --harder to counter-- comps.)

Having synergies isn't damning; it just means you have to balance comps, not only individual jobs.

It just comes back to whether players actually want XIV to be a team game beyond merely picking an angle, and perhaps an 'out' or 'in' position if there are more ranged than melee, before performing their mostly unchanged T&S dance. So far, that seems a no. We seemingly like as little effect from playing with others as possible, or indeed of any chance, anything outside our control.

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What you have to remember is that balancing between PVE and PVP have different things to be considered. Whilst PVE is being balanced against each other to fight a static encounter, PVP have to be balanced not only between each other, but the dynamic environment of a human on the other side.

This is why SE balances in each role. All the tanks are similar enough that you can choose any and be fine. Start adding synergy between 2 tanks, and you would have to add it for all different compositions, otherwise, you start having imbalances. That is 6 different combos for the tanks, not much, but it is still something to think about. Then you have the fact the synergies will not apply in dungeons, which SE do balance around.

If anyone can give examples of potential synergies, I am willing to look at it as there might be something I have overlooked.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

What you have to remember is that balancing between PVE and PVP have different things to be considered. Whilst PVE is being balanced against each other to fight a static encounter, PVP have to be balanced not only between each other, but the dynamic environment of a human on the other side.

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You seem to be forgetting that they're also balanced separately, with entirely separate toolkits between PvP and PvE for each job?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Start adding synergy between 2 tanks, and you would have to add it for all different compositions, otherwise, you start having imbalances.

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Yes, obviously. Which creates exponentially more work because --when it's not just a mere +X% damage by which to shuffle numbers on a meter and then unshuffle them back in a resultant log-- it's exponentially more gameplay available to each job in party play. The question is merely whether it's worth it, whether we actually want team play, or mostly just simultaneous play.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

If anyone can give examples of potential synergies, I am willing to look at it as there might be something I have overlooked.

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Honestly, most would be dependent upon actual undermechanical depth, such as not all elements doing the exact same thing (solely raw damage), let alone the same thing as physical damage. Those synergies are things that come pretty quickly and naturally out of fire having some appended mechanic, of wind having an appended mechanic, of multi-strike attacks actually having a intuitive difference from big, single-hit attacks, of attacks that seem--in their animations--to knock enemies to the ground or into the air, of mobs that have more ways to manipulate their behavior than just to be at the top a damage-times-modifier list (a.k.a. Enmity), etc.

Flare goes off in the middle of the enemy pack and for that brief moment, the Ninja has n-1 shadows to jump to. The White Mage draws a torrent from the lifestream (literally just taking advantage of ground on which heal or Holy casts previous landed) or draws up an occluding boulder (ala Stoneshield / ground-targeted Stoneskin) and the Ninja can use that block line of sight between enemies and himself and go into Stealth. The White Mage can project Fluid Aura through Suiton, adding that much potency-to-HP to its wave as it heals and cleanses allies, damages and purges enemies. Etc. Etc.

It's just a matter of having more to our abilities than mere timers, resource gauges, and linear unlock sequences so that a battle doesn't almost precisely as it did, save for perhaps holding an extra GCD before deploying oGCDs in one's opener, in party play as it does against a striking dummy. The synergies form simply from the types and classifications that'd come into play. That's not to say they wouldn't need a fair bit of balance so that, say, a Black&White NIN/BLM, DRK, WHM, PLD doesn't become the go-to speedrunning group for hard dungeons or the like or that you don't end up just stacking Monks and Warriors for the stagger they might induce on adds in a given Savage raid such that you don't even need a second healer. Such wouldn't be "easy". But it's not a fatally flawed course of action to have synergies, nor absurd to want more from party play. It's just more work... mostly because there's then more gameplay actually there.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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Why is it that in many games, a player's 'ultimate attack' is gated behind some form of resource gauge? I'm not just talking about Final Fantasy as a series and its Limit Break/Trance/Overdrive/Quickening systems. You see it come up in other genres as well, including fighting games, and even team based PvP games like Overwatch. Why don't you just Omnislash on a fixed recast timer?

One thing that makes MCH and now RPR's resource systems interesting is that they have their burst windows set up as a sort of 'personal limit break'. The limitation of this approach is that you have to pretty much dedicate a resource bar (Heat/Shroud) to the one action. But that generally happens anyways. If you have two use-on-demand actions competing for the same resource, you'll just use the one that gives you more potency. If Living Shadow wasn't gated behind a timer, you'd never want to use Bloodspiller.

The other nice thing about resource systems is that they allow you to be a bit less predictable with your button presses, because little variations in gauge gains can result in you being at different resource levels on different pulls. This is especially true if you set up a number of possible conditions for resource gains, much like the limit break system does. For example, if DRK gained a small amount of blood every time their bubble shields absorb damage in addition to the standard combo based gains, you have a system that plays out a bit less predictably.

You can do the same thing with timers and resets, but it's a bit more heavy-handed.

What stands out about MCH and DRG's respective base combo systems is that they feel a bit different from the rest. After spending ARR juggling Path and Eye, most damage combo/maintenance combo sets feel very samey. DRG is different in that the combo chains themselves are quite a bit longer, and MCH's setup with Drill being roughly on a seven GCD multiple makes it functionally a variable four step combo of sorts. The common theme is that the order of the button presses gets swapped up in varying ways.

Either way, I think that we need at least a few jobs out there that aren't completely predictable in their button presses and force you to react dynamically to either what you have active (resets) or your current resource level. But players have to buy into the idea that a bit of randomness and unpredictability is good for us. It means that there's a higher mechanical skill cap.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Why is it that in many games, a player's 'ultimate attack' is gated behind some form of resource gauge? I'm not just talking about Final Fantasy as a series and its Limit Break/Trance/Overdrive/Quickening systems. You see it come up in other genres as well, including fighting games, and even team based PvP games like Overwatch. Why don't you just Omnislash on a fixed recast timer?

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I'm cool with backloaded damage; I just don't quite see why it'd be any more "organic" than a CD when it's used at a precisely regular integral unless faced with downtime (in which case one is merely punished for being a resource- and therefore more uptime-dependent job in any non-continuous fight).

I guess I could see it if (A) those gauges just had a larger bankable maximum (in generation time) so you could actually delay for and work around various CD periods and/or (B) the kits weren't otherwise discouraged from using Skill Speed, so it'd actually feel like we have an effect on the frequency of those 'ultimates'?

Due to the flat 1.5 non-SkS-scaling GCDs and present examples time-to-cap, we just don't really seem to have that, but if those two things get fixed, I'd love to push some of the APM bustle of the opener back to later in the fight so we don't feel so "on-off" or one-note.

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The other nice thing about resource systems is that they allow you to be a bit less predictable with your button presses, because little variations in gauge gains can result in you being at different resource levels on different pulls.

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That feels like the very first thing any raider would want to be rid of, but admittedly, the need to do so (to maximize uptime, to have a tank-pull, etc.) is itself gameplay, so I quite like that.

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MCH's setup with Drill being roughly on a seven GCD multiple makes it functionally a variable four step combo of sorts. The common theme is that the order of the button presses gets swapped up in varying ways.

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If I ever actually had to decide on which CD-weaponskill to use first on MCH, instead of being able to cycle the very same order at all times with no conflict, I would agree.

I don't think MCH or DRG force button presses to get swapped up in varying ways (except perhaps shallowly in the case of Fang & Claw -> Wheeling Thrust and Wheeling Thrust -> Fang & Claw -- though one could just hit both buttons and queue whichever one is possible at that moment), but I'd be all for a job that actually did cause us to swap them up.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Either way, I think that we need at least a few jobs out there that aren't completely predictable in their button presses and force you to react dynamically to either what you have active (resets) or your current resource level. But players have to buy into the idea that a bit of randomness and unpredictability is good for us. It means that there's a higher mechanical skill cap.

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It is interesting to me that this sentence almost perfectly describes DNC and RDM gameplay. Random Procs completely determine what skills you use and there is no set rotation. The line I quoted above suggests that these types of systems should theoretically "increase the mechanical skill cap." In practice, we see that this isn't true for FFXIV. DNC and RDM are considered two of the easiest jobs to play at a high level in the game. Perhaps, if the jobs had more complex proc mechanics, instead of the mindless 50% chance procs they currently have, your comment would line up with what we see in the game. It's also interesting that you used DRG and MCN gameplay to argue your point, when these are also considered to be some of the simplest jobs to master.

I don't really agree or disagree with the premise of your argument, I just thought this was interesting.

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

DNC and RDM are considered two of the easiest jobs to play at a high level in the game.

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Technically, DNC requires Technical Dance casted on time, sharp, prog wise it isn't very strong, DNC very depends on team mates for their usefulness. Rdm has only been treated as a progression job and gets destroyed by Smn/Blm on high end. Blm is the strongest caster out of the lot, problem is you have to cater strategies around them.