Please stop making new Dark Knight threads.

This thread does exist for all Dark Knight talk

We don't need more threads with the same predictable posts, "My thoughts for Dark Knight", "Dark Knight rework", "Dark Knight problems", "A way to fix Dark Knight".

We get it, Dark Knight is in a bad state at the moment and getting trashed in Endwalker, we don't need Drk thread flooding, the mega thread exists ^^^^^^^^^^.

Square Enix did this. This is why you don't fracture your job playerbase over three expansions with rework after rework into distinct, all-or-nothing camps that leave a not-insignificant amount of people unsatisfied/angry, and then don't fix anything. With this amount of discontent, even the few positives are getting drowned out.

It's no wonder people are fraying at the ends. Looks like a bunch of desperate people drowning, grasping for something to pull them up to the surface. Even thinking about this job is a headache.

We can fight when EW MSQ is over OK? When the dust settles and everyone who is going to leave has left, we can pick up the pieces, and go back to being ignored.

Everyone should just suffer in peace and quiet. "Original DRK idea do not steal" is only a path to complete misery, even if you could write a PhD thesis on DRK. I would know.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

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We can band together and start making request threads to nerf PLD, if you prefer. As SE's favorite tank for four out of five expansions, you're definitely surpassed WAR in terms of being catered to. I think that there's a fine line between feeling pride in playing a 'well-designed' job and seeing that cross over into arrogance. The rhetoric from players of a persistently overpowered job gets quickly tiring. I would love to see an expansion where a returning player from ARR circa 2014 could just look at the preferred raid comp on a WF clear and say "huh, I don't recognize any of these jobs, their gameplay or their interactions, this looks like a completely fresh and exciting new experience." It's unfortunate that there's so much focus on DPS jobs, because that's really the only role where you see things properly get shaken up.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

We can band together and start making request threads to nerf PLD, if you prefer.

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Bringing down PLD won't raise up DRK.

No, but I also don't see PLD as the perpetually disadvantaged yet mechanically more complex tank that Undeadfire previously tried to sell it as. Which is why seeing them try to shut down discussion on DRK is a bit much.

I don't think that tank damage is really a point of contention here, actually. Tank damage output in Shadowbringers has been fairly tight overall, and the overall raid contribution that tanks bring to the table has progressively declined with passing expansions. One big convenience that PLD has is the fact that Requiescat and now this new unlimited bladeworks combo can be executed from 25y away, allowing you to ignore forced downtime off the boss in ways that melee-focused tanks cannot. You might as well be complaining about 'interruptions' and 'forced downtime' on MCH. If you can't hit the boss, nobody can. I think at higher skill levels, by rights PLD should do less damage than jobs that demand higher melee uptime.

But you don't really see people taking issue with GNB's damage output, which is why damage isn't the only or even the main consideration here. PLD has an extremely powerful defensive and utility kit, which just makes it a lot more forgiving. This bit about self-healing every time you roll your face against the keys is just icing on the cake.

But ... isn't this here another new Dark Knight thread? x)

Im all up to redirect all DRK feedback to the megathread but at the same time i don't mind see ppl just showing his disatisfaction everywhere, DRK it's going to face at least 5 years of poor made Gameplay it's not a thing easy to dealt with.

I think it's fine when people voice their concerns or go analytic on DRK, illustrating potency issues, etc.

I'm starting to think the reason this job is an absolute clusterfuck right now is probably because they just decided what's best and don't really care for our opinions. They gave us Reaper which is traditionally the closest to what DRK was before FF14. We're supposed to be happy and silent. What they don't understand is.. DRK is a tank with a renegade feel to it, it's an edgy tank which used to take a certain requirement of knowledge to play well. Additionally, it had the best animations and questline out of all tanks.

Well, there goes your iceberg. Anyway, I encourage everyone to start posting in the Megathread and switch over to DPS in Endwalker. Leave DRK at 80 and force SE to take action. If you don't you're guilty of it remaining in its shitty state.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Bringing down PLD won't raise up DRK.

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Nah it would just elevate Warriors even further.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

No, but I also don't see PLD as the perpetually disadvantaged yet mechanically more complex tank that Undeadfire previously tried to sell it as. Which is why seeing them try to shut down discussion on DRK is a bit much.

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I'm not shutting down discussion, I am saying we don't need thread predictable post flooding.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If you can't hit the boss, nobody can. I think at higher skill levels, by rights PLD should do less damage than jobs that demand higher melee uptime.

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I'm sorry this is utter nonsense, Paladin is in fact the hardest tank to optimise against the other 3 in SHBs and likely EW. Paladin in many fights has needed customized rotations just to defeat Dark Knight in Eden Savage/TEA, or simply it couldn't in some. Paladin always has issues for targets bailing during it's burst window and it's rotation gets extremely messed up and awkward. Paladin is only easy if you play the basic brain dead rotation. Optimise high tier game? Oh-ho enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

But you don't really see people taking issue with GNB's damage output, which is why damage isn't the only or even the main consideration here. PLD has an extremely powerful defensive and utility kit, which just makes it a lot more forgiving. This bit about self-healing every time you roll your face against the keys is just icing on the cake.

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Paladin hasn't been treated a main tank since 2.1 when Warrior received it's buffs, 17th December 2013, it has never got self sustain in it's release of ARR till this date.

Paladin/Gunbreaker such a problem? Please tell me how Warrior has one of the the most broken abilities and the most broken Main tank ever designed, loads of times Healer don't have to acknowledge they exist. If Warrior wasn't such a train wreck to work with, it would dominate Dark Knight/Paladin relative ease.

Every new expansion 1 new job is a god and the other's trash, always been that way. We have no idea on EW tank meta.

I get so bored of these complexity flexing matches. It's really easy to perceive the job that you invest most of your effort into as being so much more complex than the others, but that's just a reflection of your own personal areas of expertise and deficiency. If you're genuinely doing something that's high skill, people will let you know. You won't ever have to go looking for approval.

I also haven't taken the term 'Main Tank' at face value since circa 2013. There's always tank A and tank B. They're co-tanks. You always want to know how to do both parts comfortably if you're halfway decent, in the event that you get forced to pug into the opposite role. Why does any of this matter? People were hung up that PLD had to be MT for certain fights in ARR (that bit about WAR being the 'preferred MT' in ARR was complete rubbish revisionist history). In fairness, this mostly had to do with the fact that Hallowed was broken and let you reset vuln stack mechanics allowing you to solo fights that you shouldn't. But the real secret was knowing which tank part let you have more greedy uptime, and which tank part got the shaft. You can, er, stand over in the far corner and afk 'main tank' that flare marker. I'm going to stand here by the boss and 'off-tank' <snicker>.

But yeah, people are really upset about this, and it's really not your place to try to stifle or gatekeep this discussion.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I get so bored of these complexity flexing matches. It's really easy to perceive the job that you invest most of your effort into as being so much more complex than the others, but that's just a reflection of your own personal areas of expertise and deficiency. If you're genuinely doing something that's high skill, people will let you know. You won't ever have to go looking for approval.

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If you say so.

Drk: Push all the buttons in Delirium burst window.
War: Push all the buttons in Inner Release burst window.
Gnb: Push all the buttons in No Mercy burst window.
Pld: Keep FOF/Reqs under extreme alignment, or s*** gonna hit the fan.

Those 3 tanks can stall cooldowns to align them in fights, Paladin cannot.
Paladin/Healers lose potency simply letting it main tank.
Paladin almost has double the length burst window compared to GNB, and this can be very problematic in fights sticking long enough, or mess up the whole rotation completely. This means rotation would have to be customized each individual fight just to stay aligned at optimal potency. Some fights ignore this situation for what we call a dummy with mechanics fight.
Pop FOF/Reqs/Pot too early/late, whoopsie have fun recovering the large potency losses.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You always want to know how to do both parts comfortably if you're halfway decent, in the event that you get forced to pug into the opposite role.

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I never needed to learn main tank side after deciding to main Pld in SHBs, it never gets to and it's a questionable move to do so, certain mechanic forcing is different. I never once ever gone Savage raids in pug groups except the one time Turn 5 clear in 2.1. "Forced" is an extreme term.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Why does any of this matter? People were hung up that PLD had to be MT for certain fights in ARR (that bit about WAR being the 'preferred MT' in ARR was complete rubbish revisionist history). In fairness, this mostly had to do with the fact that Hallowed was broken and let you reset vuln stack mechanics allowing you to solo fights that you shouldn't. But the real secret was knowing which tank part let you have more greedy uptime, and which tank part got the shaft. You can, er, stand over in the far corner and afk 'main tank' that flare marker. I'm going to stand here by the boss and 'off-tank' <snicker>.

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Tell that to Turn 5 during it's prime, Warrior outclassed Paladin in 2.1 for having -20% reduction/Heal sustain on demand at any time. I am from 2.0, and none of the advanced tactics were abused we do now back in the day. It took over 2 months for Turn 5 to go down 1st kill, 18 days for Turn 9, 4 days for Turn 13. FCOB is incredibly easy. Hallowed is one time extension, would never uphold a 10 min fight.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

But yeah, people are really upset about this, and it's really not your place to try to stifle or gatekeep this discussion.

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Uh-huh, again not trying to deny, only suggesting to keep them in one place than thread spamming.

Edit: Mistake on Eden Verse, did semi-pug for E8S 1st clear.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I get so bored of these complexity flexing matches. It's really easy to perceive the job that you invest most of your effort into as being so much more complex than the others, but that's just a reflection of your own personal areas of expertise and deficiency.

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I see this happen a lot in fighting games too and it always makes me laaaaugh!
Of course you think your main is deeper, and the enemy is unga bunga, you've been labbing your main!

Players are always reductionistic towards jobs that they don't fully understand or regularly play. By that token, playing 'Flight of the Bumblebee' on piano is really just about pressing all the buttons written on the music script. I think we've described this game in a nutshell: press all the buttons on the spreadsheet at the correct timestamps. Easy.

Before we dive too deep into an explanation on how Fight or Flight is supposedly the pinnacle of mechanical skill, it's worth remembering that the 50%-ish uptime 20-25% buffs on PLD/GNB are designed to help offset the value of 100% uptime 10% buffs like Eye/Darkside. I think there comes a point where a buff is active for long enough in your rotation that it stops being 'burst' and just ends up being 'maintenance'. Granted, I'm sure if people complain enough, they'll just turn Fight or Flight into a trait, much like they're doing with Blood of the Dragon this coming expansion. It's a bit like saying 'uptime is extremely important for my job' which, while true, is a universal statement that applies to pretty much any job. Stalling a burst window is always a dps loss. The decision making comes in understanding when that loss is less than the loss of using it on recast. It's strange how people in this game think that, if they play perfectly, they should be entitled to 100% of a job's potential output. That's really not the point. It's about finding the maximum value that the fight allows you.

I believe that good tanks are flexible and versatile, and understanding what your counterpart does during their sections of a fight can help you salvage a run. I personally wouldn't feel that I understand a fight if I can only do it as tank A or tank B, but different players have different standards.

This bit about Turn 5 and ARR is completely out of left field and historically false. Turn 5 was cleared with double PLD when it was relevant. It's not that you couldn't run a 'WAR MT' on Twintania post-2.1 if you wanted to, but it certainly wasn't the norm. It's also worth noting that players were still learning how the game worked in early ARR. Death Sentence wasn't actually meant to be brute forced and healed through. It was meant to force a tank swap. It's the same way that Garuda Ex wasn't meant to be actually tanked with Garuda and Suprana on the same tank, resulting on double wicked wheels. That was a uniquely NA/EU issue, in part because Mr. Happy mistakenly thought the Ex tethers worked the same way that they did in Hard when his strat got popularized. The JP strat actually has the Garuda and Superna perform a tank swap for you, and allows you to tank the fight at a much lower ilvl. Again, there were a lot of things that were brute forced in less efficient ways because we didn't understand how things worked, and the devs didn't know how to foolproof their designs. Even a WAR MT for T9 was an anomaly. The first time that I remember seeing WAR start to gain a bit of acceptance as a 'main tank' was during 7-player clears for T13, late in the cycle. But it really wasn't until Gordias that the 'Shield Oath PLD MT' went into extinction amongst sensible company, dragging along with it the terms 'MT' and 'OT'. And good riddance. They weren't useful terminology to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think we've described this game in a nutshell: press all the buttons on the spreadsheet at the correct timestamps. Easy.

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The timestamps pushes milliseconds level, not direct hard seconds, it's very dependant on skill speed. GCD stalling mistakes are not an option, perfectly clock timing FoF/Pot grants full potency, failing it you will lose Fof on final Goring/Atonement, lose Pot at Confiteor cast, failing accurately timed cooldowns punishes potency loss, both categories boss mechanic and/or rotation. Not saying it's hard, just more difficult than other tanks optimising.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Stalling a burst window is always a dps loss.

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Wrong, E11S is a prime example to stall 60s cooldowns by 30 seconds, to align cooldowns on the bosses return, personal dps it's a loss, group raid DPS it's a massive gain syncing them. Will take me a while to find more cooldown stall to align in other fights. 2 Min cooldowns are stalled in a lot of fights because of boss mechanics preventing a full uptime burst window and syncing them to 90s CD users. Multitude of logs in fights all prove this.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I personally wouldn't feel that I understand a fight if I can only do it as tank A or tank B, but different players have different standards.

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There aren't any standards, Warrior out classes all other tanks main category, stopping them from main tanking you're almost cutting half of their tool kit off, GNB has the most self cooldowns, DRK abuses TBN, PLD loses DPS simply losing health in SHBs, Spirits Within: Potency decreases as own HP decreases, Sheltron isn't a damage reduction and all it has is Rampart/Sentinel.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This bit about Turn 5 and ARR is completely out of left field and historically false. Turn 5 was cleared with double PLD when it was relevant.

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Thanks for telling me stories in the past and of course I am aware of double Paladin, Twin was killed 26th October 2013, Patch 2.1 released 14th December 2013 (Warriors rework). It's only Bluegartr released a kill video 2 days later which inspired other raid groups working on beating Twintania, and Paladin was the main add holder, and stun locker for Dreadknight. Sorry this isn't false, it's fact.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's not that you couldn't run a 'WAR MT' on Twintania post-2.1 if you wanted to, but it certainly wasn't the norm. It's also worth noting that players were still learning how the game worked in early ARR. Death Sentence wasn't actually meant to be brute forced and healed through. It was meant to force a tank swap. It's the same way that Garuda Ex wasn't meant to be actually tanked with Garuda and Suprana on the same tank, resulting on double wicked wheels. That was a uniquely NA/EU issue, in part because Mr. Happy mistakenly thought the Ex tethers worked the same way that they did in Hard when his strat got popularized.

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Huh? Mrhappy never was a brilliant player and his strategies are terrible. Turn 5 Twintania didn't debuff Death Sentences till the 1st neurolink and MT abused Conflags for invincibility and another reason tank swap was avoided was to keep Eye for an Eye triggered keeping the boss on a permanent damage down. Conflags made the player currently still targetable for Twin, couldn't do anything but like I said invincible. Turn 1-2 forced tank swaps due to vun build ups, Hallowed Ground only bought more time not permanently. Extreme trio primals built up being killed 7 man, hell could push 6 man possibly.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

But it really wasn't until Gordias that the 'Shield Oath PLD MT' went into extinction amongst sensible company, dragging along with it the terms 'MT' and 'OT'. And good riddance. They weren't useful terminology to begin with.

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Only used in Gordias till it became common knowledge how broken Dark Knight was. Alexander was a utter mess of a Savage raid, poorly built. I'll admit the A7S part Paladin being relevant, but still hard to beat DRK.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

This thread does exist for all Dark Knight talk

We don't need more threads with the same predictable posts, "My thoughts for Dark Knight", "Dark Knight rework", "Dark Knight problems", "A way to fix Dark Knight".

We get it, Dark Knight is in a bad state at the moment and getting trashed in Endwalker, we don't need Drk thread flooding, the mega thread exists ^^^^^^^^^^.

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Did you just make a new topic telling players to stop making new topics about Darknight? You know you have users talking about DKN here?

Why didnt you just go to each spam post and just copy pasta the message or alert the mods to merge the topics or something?

I'm not a big fan of quote-by-quote responses. The formatting is terrible and they're written entirely for the benefit of the writer and not the reader.

I had forgotten about alternate-universe PLD, the job famed for its incredibly high mechanical skill ceiling, requiring button presses down to the millisecond. So unfortunate that latency and human reaction time are one to two orders of magnitude off from that. Again, if you have to sell to others why what you're doing is high skill, it isn't. It's particularly unfortunate that you're playing the vanilla tank in an MMO, so we're pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to mechanical skill ceiling in any game genre outside of say, turn-based farming simulators. I'm sure that your spreadsheet took a lot of time to design and you are very very proud of it. Good work.

I can't hazard a guess as to why historical events panned out the way that they did, but they did. The default NA Garuda strat was awful, but that is the reason why. The devs actually came out in a later interview to explain how they had intended it to actually work, in contrast to what most English-speaking players were doing. I think that's part of the charm of ARR, though, when you look back. There wasn't really a clear-cut formula back then, whether it be dungeons or raid encounters. It's only in later expansions that everything starts to fall into a very predictable paint-by-numbers design approach.

I don't mind new DRK threads, potentially interesting ideas tend to get lost in the maelstrom of the 120+ page mega.

If they were pushing discussion related to other tanks out of sight maybe I'd have a different opinion, but it's not like there are that many DRK threads and it's not like the tank forum is particularly busy right now anyway.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

There aren't any standards, Warrior out classes all other tanks main category, stopping them from main tanking you're almost cutting half of their tool kit off, GNB has the most self cooldowns, DRK abuses TBN, PLD loses DPS simply losing health in SHBs, Spirits Within: Potency decreases as own HP decreases, Sheltron isn't a damage reduction and all it has is Rampart/Sentinel.

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Though I agree with the spirits within... We really going to say sheltron doesn't mit any dmg
Dang I mean its a rampart for free and you have it almost all the time granted rng with block but
I mean next expansion it gets a regen can you really complain about WAR at that point with heal on dmg spells
...PLDs can't satisfy them if you gave them a two hand sword and a shield with a cannon attached... that sounds pretty cool though

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Originally Posted by Vatom

Though I agree with the spirits within... We really going to say sheltron doesn't mit any dmg
Dang I mean its a rampart for free and you have it almost all the time granted rng with block but
I mean next expansion it gets a regen can you really complain about WAR at that point with heal on dmg spells
...PLDs can't satisfy them if you gave them a two hand sword and a shield with a cannon attached... that sounds pretty cool though

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Sheltron doesn't mitigate damage, it removes the RNG element of blocking, it's not actually giving any additional mitigation. For the next 4-6 seconds after using Sheltron depending on level, you have guaranteed block, but the game could possibly roll blocks regardless of Sheltron for said time without the use of Sheltron, but you'll never know after using Sheltron. Holy Sheltron will have actual mitigation in the form of Knight's Resolve.

Also Blocking is not a free Rampart, it's a scaling stat, with it's peak at 20% and, lowest is at 10%. So levelling, and certain Ultimates you're not getting the full potential from blocking, and also in older content a crit bypasses blockibg invalidating Sheltron.

I mean Warrior is gonna still have some insane amount of healing as usual, nice that Paladin is finally getting some passive healing, it won't be as on demand as Warrior's, but that's not an issue.

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

Also Blocking is not a free Rampart, it's a scaling stat, with it's peak at 20% and, lowest is at 10%. So levelling, and certain Ultimates you're not getting the full potential from blocking, and also in older content a crit bypasses blockibg invalidating Sheltron.

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Precisely what Aodhan says, shield blocking is meant to be Paladins sustain vs Souleater/Brutal Shell/Storm's Path, but it's too unreliable, rng vs guaranteed game and needing 50 points just to be guaranteed, it's been needing changes for years including, Spirits Within.

Endwalker, fixes the very problem preventing Paladin, remotely main tanking, now it's far stronger than, GNB/DRK self sustain.

Its killing me on the inside people talking about DRK like Soul eater and A.Drain are worthy effects at all.

If you really think PLD has it rough because of some miniscule part of a 1000 hour game, or because some meta wizard told you it does. It just doesn't explain why FFlogs has DRK WAR and PLD very often within 100 logs of each class being posted. What ever tears your crying, what ever points your making. They are being muted out by FFlogs saying all the tanks except for GNB are pretty much identical.

Coming from DRK to PLD for my casual ass gameplay is staggering. A useful Heal? A useful Invulnerability? Fun utility? Insta cast AOE that isn't on 2 min freaking CD. Honestly I just couldn't give 2 cares less that 10% of the player base, and 2% of that 10% think that DRK has an easier time putting out more dmg in a burst phase.... Cool your focusing on 30 seconds of gameplay what, 5 times a day if your no lifeing or something.

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Originally Posted by Valknut

Its killing me on the inside people talking about DRK like Soul eater and A.Drain are worthy effects at all.

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Sorry but what? having passive healing is pretty damn solid to have, it's good, reliable healing on Souleater, and Abyssal Drain, while less so reliable on Single Target, in mutli target situations, it's really solid, it's user dependant on how effective it will be. Playing Paladin in end game content, it actually sucks having to resort to using Clemency to stay alive sacrificing GCDs and MP when a healer or both go down, and you need to buy time getting them back up, when said GCDs and MP can be much better spent on Holy Spirits and Confiteor during Requiescat. Paladin has to rely on Blocking as any mean of passive, which in non level 80 Savage and Ultimate, will be bypassed by crits, something your passive healing doesn't have to deal with.

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Originally Posted by Valknut

If you really think PLD has it rough because of some miniscule part of a 1000 hour game, or because some meta wizard told you it does. It just doesn't explain why FFlogs has DRK WAR and PLD very often within 100 logs of each class being posted. What ever tears your crying, what ever points your making. They are being muted out by FFlogs saying all the tanks except for GNB are pretty much identical. Coming from DRK to PLD for my casual ass gameplay is staggering. A useful Heal? A useful Invulnerability? Fun utility? Insta cast AOE that isn't on 2 min freaking CD. Honestly I just couldn't give 2 cares less that 10% of the player base, and 2% of that 10% think that DRK has an easier time putting out more dmg in a burst phase.... Cool your focusing on 30 seconds of gameplay what, 5 times a day if your no lifeing or something.

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In some cases, Paladin does have it rough in comparison to Dark Knight, and vice versa, all tanks have some strengths and some weaknesses, and honestly as you pointed out about being casual, try not take this the wrong way, but why should what is on FFLogs even bother you if you don't bother doing Savage or Ultimate. Unless you are chasing 99%iles and 100%iles, unless you're checking your own performance, or static performance, whatever stats are on FFLogs are completely meaningless to you.

As you have self-proclaimed to be a casual, you probably aren't even getting a sizeable amount out of playing your job, it's not meant as a shot or an insult, it's only meant that apart from the odd Extreme trial, Savage and Ultimate, no content truly pushes a job to the point where you unable to get by and clear with subpar performance. Equally, there's no need to punch down at raiders just because some or us raiders do like to optimise and get the most out of the jobs we choose to play. So I get that you may not see the full toolkits of jobs in the same light, nor do you care so much for the extreme min maxing at the top end or raiding through speed-runs or log farming, but neither casual gameplay should be dragged down due to end game optimisation, equally end game optimisation gameplay shouldn't needlessly be getting dragged down by casual gameplay.

Also "Cool your focusing on 30 seconds of gameplay what, 5 times a day if your no lifeing or something." huh? ngl, you don't need to be doing hardcore content to no life this game, you can spend 20 hours a day in Limsa RPing and still no life this game, and honestly, so what if people choose to no life this game? if they ain't got anything better to do, let them get their money's worth from the game.

There is nothing hard about playing any of the tanks, getting one more OGCD off that another player wouldn't isn't going to win you an award. What could I possibly not be getting out of my class if I can clear any content I randomly que up for and winging it.

You have dmg buttons, you have take less dmg buttons, and you heal dmg buttons. If you learn to press these buttons you to can learn to tank!

I would love to know what PLD struggles at though, really. All tanks clear all content, some are better in most situations, and some are worse in most situations. DRK and WAR by logs, say they are the worst in most situations.

The problem with DRK for most long term players is not - Dmg -Mitigation or -Utility The class feels like balls to play, it lost every cool thing about it during the HW to SB transition. People have been saying that for close to 10 years now and nothing has been done about.

"no content truly pushes a job to the point where you unable to get by and clear with subpar performance" Not true what so ever, tank is the most forgiving role in all cases. There is no fight the average player cannot watch a video about and end up beating " Well x raid only has a blah blah blah clear rate" Ya, the majority of the player base probably doesn't have dun scathe unlocked either, its not a difficulty barrier its that it isnt required, and shoved in their face.

You're miss understanding.

Raiders are people who go to raid groups, static with them a long time and push the jobs the best they can. We have world prog groups, Week 1 raid groups, speed running groups.

World prog groups look for the very best players who can optimise DPS, and acknowledge mechanics quickly spending time physically possible, Week 1 groups take it a little easier, but still they keep the same motive.

Speed running groups the same motive try to competitive teams that are listed on fflogs by legitimate reports, trying to get the fastest kill time, other speed run groups will try to get your setup and try to improve it, eventually a meta starts building up the competitive speed running scene, for example the SHBs meta is the 60 seconds meta, a lot of jobs based around Ninja for Trick Attack, pushing risky hardcore strategies you will not do in PF groups ever, aiming much uptime as possible to get extra DPS %.

Optimising jobs to their max is a difference vs casually playing the job doing what you want pressing the buttons. Cooldown syncing is super important for your raid team, everyone using their burst on Crit increases, Damage increases at the same time during a boss mechanic downtime.

There's nothing wrong with clearing the way you want to, you play what you enjoy. For me, I enjoy the game far more if I'm playing at a high potential gameplay. The competitive scene does exist in FFXIV.

Passive healing is a very nice advantage to have from a player perspective in the short term, but it's a terrible design decision for an MMO. As it is, FFXIV doesn't do a good job of making tanking dangerous. You're not going to wipe because the tank died and the boss systematically oneshot everyone else with auto-attacks, unlike in other games. There's not nearly enough threatening incoming damage on tanks. The only incoming tank damage that matters is the odd tankbuster that you invuln-swap through anyways, and if you mess it up there's usually a way to pick up the pieces while you get instant-cast raised. The real threats are from raidwides, especially if you have a DPS or two who has just messed up a recent mechanic. That then spirals into you failing either a mechanics check or a dps check and wiping. Tanks have so much extra mitigation and self-healing that you're actually burning those cooldowns to ignore mechanics for uptime rather than actually worrying about surviving. Tanks are so safe to play that they're irrelevant.

While there's a certain appeal for a 'lifesteal' tank to be able to solo content without the need for a healer, they're usually based around intelligent decision-making about when to invoke that lifesteal. If you take Warcraft's Deathstrike as the classic example, you need to know when damage spikes happen to effectively reverse the damage. It's active lifesteal, not passive. But that's what you get when the game designers don't understand tanks and just cater to whatever poorly thought out demands that the playerbase throws out. It's okay for one tank to thematically focus on some form of damage reversal or active, timed self-healing as a unique playstyle. But if more and more tanks come with passive self healing on every attack, you might as well have the bosses ignore the tank and just throw out raidwides. Your healers won't know the difference because they're still ignoring you anyways. It's a bad experience for tanks and a bad experience for healers.

I thought that the bit about Sheltron not mitigating any damage was amusing, and I'm surprised nobody was called out on it. I suppose it's largely a semantic debate about whether you might have blocked it anyways if you fell asleep and didn't press the button, but at the end of the day it's an action that you use to survive a specific attack. Mitigation is pass-fail for this reason. The fact that there's a random chance that said PLD could be grossly incompetent and still survive by means of a lucky proc is besides the point.

Either way, I suppose that my mindset on all this is different. I would expect that if you're a decent player, you want the game to challenge you in ways that push you to get better, and also allow you to differentiate yourself from others by means of skilled play. You want your job to be less powerful at baseline and more powerful when played at a high skill level. Instead, I see so many people demanding that their jobs reward them for breathing. If it's just the job that's powerful, people will just swap to it blindly, and nobody sees it as skilled play. If it's powerful only at high skill levels after time and practice, then people will try to swap to it, fail, and then respectfully note that the job takes skill to do well.

Everyone knew that HW WAR was a powerful job. But everyone respected HW DRK. That's the difference that you want to see in your job. It's that Genji effect - players are drawn to it for that chance to be a game changer, but it requires a skill and time investment to get to the point where you can pull it off.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I would expect that if you're a decent player, you want the game to challenge you in ways that push you to get better, and also allow you to differentiate yourself from others by means of skilled play. You want your job to be less powerful at baseline and more powerful when played at a high skill level.

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I'm surprised that someone as well thought out and imaginative as you only sees one valid way for "decent players" to think.
(that's not supposed to sound aggressive, please don't read it that way, I respect you)

Skill expression is cool and all, don't get me wrong, but I rather enjoy my skill level being tested by the challenges I'm engaged with, by the bosses, and less by how well I can exercise the nuances of my job.

In either case I'm reaching for the skill ceiling and trying to optimize my runs.
-- If a boss is tough, they stand between me and the ceiling.
-- If the rotation is elaborate, it stands between me and the ceiling.
We definitely need a mix of both, but is it really so strange or wrong that some prefer more of the challenge to come from the former than the latter?

It's really hard to pitch a given fight to a range of skill levels. You can do it by means of gear, which was the traditional approach in MMOs - as better gear becomes available later in the tier, more and more people clear. You can also do it by means of difficulty settings, which tends to a bit less popular because everyone wants to be a part of that 'in' crowd that is idling in town with the latest raid gear. This is why 'difficult' game modes tend to become more accessible over time and you have to invent newer and newer names for actual 'hard' version as the older names become obsolete (Hard is not Hard, Extreme is not Extreme, Savage is not Savage, and so on). The problem is that if you try to push players in terms of fight difficulty, it gets seen as making the content (and rewards) inaccessible. And we can't have that, now can we?

That's why job skill ceilings are so important. There will always be players who just want to see all the content and clear, and that's fine. It's the same reason why you have some characters with auto-aiming turrets in team-based FPS games. Yet you'll also have the odd person who wants to dedicate a lot of time to getting better, so that's why there are also high mechanical skillcap characters which take thousands of hours of practice to get good with. That variety is what we need to see in job design. You'll actually find that there are plenty of players who are willing to be bad at a hard job, just as long as they can keep practicing to reach that pinnacle of skill. It's also great from a streaming perspective, because when you have something that is widely recognized by the community as being uniquely difficult, players flock to see how the job can be played at the high end, and become inspired to do better.

I think it's a mistake to simplify every job just to make them all accessible. We have plenty of tanks. PLD can continue to be a solid, reliable tank that requires good game sense but minimal mechanical skill to play well. That's perfectly fine. I also want to see higher effort, higher skillcap alternatives that we can choose from that are appropriately rewarded. But at the moment it looks like you have to play melee dps to get that.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

There will always be players who just want to see all the content and clear, and that's fine.
[...]
Yet you'll also have the odd person who wants to dedicate a lot of time to getting better, so that's why there are also high mechanical skillcap characters which take thousands of hours of practice to get good with.

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It isn't one or the other though is what I'm saying.
Players aren't just "I want to clear content" vs "I want the job itself to be where the complexity lies"
Those aren't even opposite stances of each other.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

You're miss understanding.



For me, I enjoy the game far more if I'm playing at a high potential gameplay. The competitive scene does exist in FFXIV.

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I'm not misunderstanding at all. The majority of people who have a problem with DRK are NOT high end raiders. Why would prog/speed clearing groups ever care about class balance? They care about what is the best and they pick what is best, and that is the end of that conversation. You don't run ANY% on a game and and just not use the best tools in your kit.

Once again you seem to be forgetting your own enjoyment of the game. "Optimizing jobs to their max is a difference vs casually playing the job doing what you want pressing the buttons. Cooldown syncing is super important for your raid team, everyone using their burst on Crit increases, Damage increases at the same time during a boss mechanic downtime." Ya people have be doing this since the dawn of MMOs, its never been hard, want to know why its never been hard? Coincidentally burst windows always line up with one key element of the fight. A massive lull in boss mechanics. Which are scripted in this game, which makes it even less RNG dependent. You can chase top parses, you can enjoy it, but when your whole party is there to boost your dmg so you can have that top parse, maybe just maybe, it isn't really a great achievement.

If you would like hard content though, the necromancer title is always up for grabs.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

That's why job skill ceilings are so important. There will always be players who just want to see all the content and clear, and that's fine. It's the same reason why you have some characters with auto-aiming turrets in team-based FPS games. Yet you'll also have the odd person who wants to dedicate a lot of time to getting better, so that's why there are also high mechanical skillcap characters which take thousands of hours of practice to get good with. That variety is what we need to see in job design. You'll actually find that there are plenty of players who are willing to be bad at a hard job, just as long as they can keep practicing to reach that pinnacle of skill. It's also great from a streaming perspective, because when you have something that is widely recognized by the community as being uniquely difficult, players flock to see how the job can be played at the high end, and become inspired to do better.

I think it's a mistake to simplify every job just to make them all accessible. We have plenty of tanks. PLD can continue to be a solid, reliable tank that requires good game sense but minimal mechanical skill to play well. That's perfectly fine. I also want to see higher effort, higher skillcap alternatives that we can choose from that are appropriately rewarded. But at the moment it looks like you have to play melee dps to get that.

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Simplifying jobs is all they have done every patch/expansion since HW. The game is pretty shallow when it comes to optimizations. I agree with what you have been saying in here.

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Originally Posted by Valknut

Once again you seem to be forgetting your own enjoyment of the game. "Optimizing jobs to their max is a difference vs casually playing the job doing what you want pressing the buttons. Cooldown syncing is super important for your raid team, everyone using their burst on Crit increases, Damage increases at the same time during a boss mechanic downtime." Ya people have be doing this since the dawn of MMOs, its never been hard, want to know why its never been hard? Coincidentally burst windows always line up with one key element of the fight. A massive lull in boss mechanics. Which are scripted in this game, which makes it even less RNG dependent. You can chase top parses, you can enjoy it, but when your whole party is there to boost your dmg so you can have that top parse, maybe just maybe, it isn't really a great achievement.

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Heh, I'm not forgetting my own enjoyment, it's how I enjoy the game, I always love to play my hardest and clear week 1 Savage raids. If SE stopped making Savage/Ultimate raids, I would be quitting 14 immediately.

Necromancer title is a game of patience, and be real lucky which only around 2 jobs can possibly clear it.

The old method of parties padding you was fixed years ago for top parses, it's very relied upon your own performance now and usually requires speed runs to obtain, and it's a RNG game requiring DH/Crit to proc on the biggest bursts if you really wanna reach Top 20.

if we all did it your way, then Dark will never get fixed as it doesnt seem to work "the japanese way"

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As SE's favorite tank for four out of five expansions, you're definitely surpassed WAR in terms of being catered to. --Lyth

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finally people are realizing PLD is the favourite child and SE isnt even trying to hide it anymore. Also, read the patch notes, Lyth. Warrior isnt really catered to. they do slight adjustments because SE always messes it up somehow. that isnt catered to. BANDAIDS isnt catering to. And often when they "fix it" they take it away and mess it up, AGAIN.

and yes, more people need to bring up that SE is only focusing on dps jobs and screwing over the support. it needs to stop. all jobs need similar care and effort into them.

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Bringing down PLD won't raise up DRK.

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oh really? at this point, it might actually be a thing. people said this about warrior in ShB. guess who the best tank was in SB? No. i was NOT warrior, but paladin. but bc war wasnt "top deepus" that means it was OK, right? RIGHT?