DRK guard got messed up

I primarily log in to play DRK in Crystalline Conflict. Right now there is a big problem with guard. If you have guard up and try to use an action such as Impalement to restore your HP, your enemies will be able to damage you before your action is registered.

This is a huge problem. It means that it is virtually impossible now to come out of guard without dying.

Guard is essentially a death sentence.

It did not used to be this way. What changed? When you were under heavy attack or your HP was low, you used to be able to pop up guard, and then come right out of it with an AoE like Quietus to safely restore HP.

Now you simply die.

Fellow DRK player here. Game has changed and Guard traded certain strengths for weaknesses and vice versa. More reactive to a variety of attacks (asuming reasonable latency), more punishing at the tail-end of Guard. Enemies can time delayed attacks close to the end of your Guard duration. You can do more fancy things with Guard now, but dropping Guard at a bad moment is simply more punishing.

Manage your MP more wisely and use Recuperate before hitting Impalement so you have an HP buffer. You want to use Guard more proactively to mitigate damage against bigger hits that you can reasonably react to, rather than get hit and then bubble up.

So when you have guard up and you cancel it early by popping off an action that restores your HP, your feeling is that all of the enemy hits should get recorded before your action?

To me this is wrong. You used to be able to come out of guard safely. It’s not about managing your MP. You will find yourself in plenty of situations where you had all the MP in the works but you died because the animations have changed and now you die when you use impalement.

So if you are in a crowd holding down the crystal for your team, our out in front soaking hits, prepare to have all enemy actions count before yours if you have guard up.

Has nothing to do with advanced planning or managing your MP or getting better at the job. It’s a matter of a tank job no longer being able to tank.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Satyagrahi

So when you have guard up and you cancel it early by popping off an action that restores your HP, your feeling is that all of the enemy hits should get recorded before your action?

---

No, what I was saying is that when someone does an attack that would time itself with the end of your buff duration, it is better to hit Recuperate because it would give you a 15000 HP buffer than to use Impalement. Like if MNK inputed Phantom Rush in such a way that it would time just as it ends.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Satyagrahi

To me this is wrong. You used to be able to come out of guard safely. It’s not about managing your MP. You will find yourself in plenty of situations where you had all the MP in the works but you died because the animations have changed and now you die when you use impalement.

---

The changes have downsides as you listed them, but also benefits and it is essentially changing up how you play DRK as a whole. Whether or not you want to relearn this is up to you.

You can react-Guard now when you had to predict-Guard and potentially whiff it entirely. Inversely, the end of your Guard timing simply now matters and you need a backup plan that isn't "I press Quietus/Impalement" - or you need to plan your HP management better and improve your gameplay so you don't get caught like this in the first place. You gained options and lost some and it is up to you if you want to accept that or go play Warrior for example.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Satyagrahi

So if you are in a crowd holding down the crystal for your team, our out in front soaking hits, prepare to have all enemy actions count before yours if you have guard up.

Has nothing to do with advanced planning or managing your MP or getting better at the job. It’s a matter of a tank job no longer being able to tank.

---

If you are tanking on crystal, you should ideally do this with the following conditions:

1.) Salted Earth can be used (Mitigation + regen dome for yourself)
2.) You try to hold in an area where you can walk back and forth with a wall/pillar for LOS protection
3.) At least one stack of TBN available
4.) At least 5000 MP available with (close to) full HP
5.) Impalement in reasonable CD distance (1-6s CD remaining)
6.) You aren't going into a 1v3 crystal hold (exception if Overtime is happening)

You have more than enough tools to be a tank and your Guard can still be quite powerful - you just can't do Guard -> Impalement at low HP. However, you CAN do it at 50-75% HP remaining if you predict the enemy is trying to hit you hard as soon as Guard ends, because the increased damage and therefore increased lifesteal snapshots as soon as the hit lands.

TL;DR: You have to be more proactive with your tools, DRK can still tank - you simply have to learn how in this new system.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Satyagrahi

So when you have guard up and you cancel it early by popping off an action that restores your HP, your feeling is that all of the enemy hits should get recorded before your action?

To me this is wrong. You used to be able to come out of guard safely. It’s not about managing your MP. You will find yourself in plenty of situations where you had all the MP in the works but you died because the animations have changed and now you die when you use impalement.

So if you are in a crowd holding down the crystal for your team, our out in front soaking hits, prepare to have all enemy actions count before yours if you have guard up.

Has nothing to do with advanced planning or managing your MP or getting better at the job. It’s a matter of a tank job no longer being able to tank.

---

I wonder if this is because recup has that silly "flex" animation, and attacks register until the animation is complete?

TL;DR: Guard is death sentence for DRK below 50% HP, and I am perfectly ok with all enemies getting their hits in before my action counts, even though I was the one planning ahead and taking initiative.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

No, what I was saying is that when someone does an attack that would time itself with the end of your buff duration, it is better to hit Recuperate because it would give you a 15000 HP buffer than to use Impalement. Like if MNK inputed Phantom Rush in such a way that it would time just as it ends.


The changes have downsides as you listed them, but also benefits and it is essentially changing up how you play DRK as a whole. Whether or not you want to relearn this is up to you.

You can react-Guard now when you had to predict-Guard and potentially whiff it entirely. Inversely, the end of your Guard timing simply now matters and you need a backup plan that isn't "I press Quietus/Impalement" - or you need to plan your HP management better and improve your gameplay so you don't get caught like this in the first place. You gained options and lost some and it is up to you if you want to accept that or go play Warrior for example.



If you are tanking on crystal, you should ideally do this with the following conditions:

1.) Salted Earth can be used (Mitigation + regen dome for yourself)
2.) You try to hold in an area where you can walk back and forth with a wall/pillar for LOS protection
3.) At least one stack of TBN available
4.) At least 5000 MP available with (close to) full HP
5.) Impalement in reasonable CD distance (1-6s CD remaining)
6.) You aren't going into a 1v3 crystal hold (exception if Overtime is happening)

You have more than enough tools to be a tank and your Guard can still be quite powerful - you just can't do Guard -> Impalement at low HP. However, you CAN do it at 50-75% HP remaining if you predict the enemy is trying to hit you hard as soon as Guard ends, because the increased damage and therefore increased lifesteal snapshots as soon as the hit lands.

TL;DR: You have to be more proactive with your tools, DRK can still tank - you simply have to learn how in this new system.

---

Again it is not about being proactive
It is not about having MP
If you think salted earth is your answer for coming out of guard, please let’s dual

It’s about how wrong it is to have all your enemies get their attacks in when YOU ARE THE ONE INITIATING AN ACTION with guard up.

Also TBN is glitched coming out of guard too, so there’s that.

Guard is broken on DRK right now due to animation. It did not used to be.

I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you - I have played DRK for a LONG time and it is still the job I main in PvP, before and after does not matter to me. The job works worse in specific aspects you described them and is something you had to adjust on, however Guard DOES work as I described it and I have been actively playing like that.

Salted Earth is not a tool I use to come "out" of Guard, it's something I do before pressing Guard. I think of 5v5 pvp more in macros of actions and not just "I press a button, but I still die, why is this not working". If you hit the point where you are being ganged up numerous times as your Guard ends, then either your positioning, your game sense, your situational awareness and/or your gameplan for DRK are flawed.

It does not matter that you are "initiating an action when you had guard up" - for the same reason you can react faster with Guard, you will lose your Guard protection as soon as it actually ends, with server ticks taking a HUGE backseat. You need to start experimenting with the snapshot changes, Guard is more powerful in some aspects, but weaker in other aspects.

I will give some benefit of doubt and think that a reason why your problems with Guard currently exist is literally latency. At low latency (less than 50ms) the game works incredibly well, but it obviously works different than pre-7.1 pvp. Above that, especially in the triple digits, you will definitely struggle a bit and need to adjust based on that.

Also, I refuse to take "if you think X, duel me" seriously as an argument. This isn't CoD.

This is not a thread about putting up things prior to guard. I have played DRK in PvP since day one on multiple characters in multiple data centers. Every single one of your tips like putting up salted earth prior to guard is a given. Those are the basics and are a given. You offered them as an answer to the new guard animation glitch. They are not an answer.

I am talking about the fact that you used to be able to use an action such as Quietus coming out of guard. Now, the system registers all the actions of your enemies during your animation when -YOU- were the one initiating an action WITH GUARD UP.

THAT
IS
WRONG

The answer of “just go play another job” or “understand the game” better cannot be taken seriously.

DRK did not used to have this problem.

Now it does.

Having MP does not fix this. This job is literally designed to thrive on that razor edge of risk/reward you get from sacrificing your HP for damage and skirting the line of having low HP as a tactical tool.

Currently, guard does not work properly for DRK.

Ok, since you are saying that all those things that I said are a given, then let's leave those out, clearly this won't help your current problem.

Guard works identical on all jobs and has been changed from 7.08 to 7.1 to the one you are experiencing on DRK. You are welcome to send me video footage on Discord (@doehardt) to show me otherwise, perhaps there is a detail that I am missing to read or you are missing to explain.

But to simply explain - Guard and essentially ALL BUFFS AND DEBUFFS have changed netcode wise from "you press button and it snapshots from button press" to "what you see is what you get". If a buff/debuff is visible, it is active. If the buff/debuff disappears, it's inactive/gone. This means as soon as you drop Guard for ANY REASON and the buff disappears from your HUD, your mitigation is gone - no backsies, no server ticks saving you like in PVE. Inversely, you can sneak in Guard/other buffs and debuffs before damage lands as animations are playing.

The reason why you find this wrong is because you have been playing with snapshot-based FFXIV/PvP for the entire time. The days of being able to safely execute a Quietus out of Guard is gone, simple as that. No job has this luxury anymore and they traded it for being able to use Guard when attacks are in animation and mitigating that instead. Bonus info - your position when using Impalement also matters, as the position snapshot is equally at the end of the animation. This means you can wind-up the hit while nobody is in reach yet and move into enemies to line up the AOE attack.

The point is, Guard works, just not in the way you want it to work - it's not bugged. I am actively PvPing and DRK is my go-to job in Crystalline Conflict, so I can with great confidence tell you that it works as intended with the new snapshot system, assuming decent latency (<50ms).

PvP simply changed and certain techs won't work anymore while others will now. You can either accept that and get used to it or join the others in wanting a revert to the snapshot overhaul for all of PvP, because that is your actual problem with Guard.

Yes the snapshot is terrible right now. I agree it is across the board. DRK suffers in particular when one of your primary jobs is to survive under fire, but you can’t even come out of guard safely.

Letting all enemy actions hit you during the animation lock for an action YOU initiated, is flawed design, plain and simple. The logic doesn’t even make sense and I am saying I am not ok with it. DRK was designed to work a certain way—flirting with lower HP as a trade off for bust—and the problems with snapshot are PARTICULARLY bad for DRK coming out of guard. I do t think it’s just my latency but I hope it is and I’m being bitchy for no reason.

Is anyone else experiencing this? I have very fast internet (fiber), and my PC has been more than enough to run the game so idk why it sucks so much now.

If you don't think it works properly, put in a bug report. That will tell you whether they agree or not.

You have to adapt to the changes, and learn new skills/gameplay.

So the “new skill/gameplay” I have seen is to Zerg anyone in guard because guard is now a death trap.

A skill that is supposed to be used tactically for protection is now a signal to for your enemies to do a coordinated burst and abuse animations.

I hope this helps explain why the current state is so egregious.

So the “new skill/gameplay” I have seen is to Zerg anyone in guard because guard is now a death trap.

A skill that is supposed to be used tactically for protection is now a signal to for your enemies to do a coordinated burst and abuse animations.

I hope this helps explain why the current state is so egregious.