DRK DPS?

[JayCommon]

I dont understand though, if you are a career tank, this is nothing new to you.

The difference here is 2.0 vs 3.0 and optimal role in a raid. Both of which I don't think you're taking into consideration when using this an a basis of rebuttal.

You can't really base what we are going to get completely off of what we had in the past. All tanks were given abilities that allow them to DPS more efficiently in HW. Yoshi said that when they originally designed raids for 2.0 they never expected our community to have so much healer DPS being pumped out. So guess what? Now our encounters will be tuned for tank/healer DPS. From 50-60 a DRK gets 3 purely DPS moves with no enmity attached to them, 1 enmity AoE/self-heal with dark arts and 1 legit self heal/refresh buff that works best when dealing with multiple mobs and useless against a boss with no adds. Our DPS line-up basically doubles in effectiveness going from 50 to 60 and our tanking ability stays largely the same.

I am an ex-DPS from 2.0, but I leveled everything to 50 and tanked up to t12 so I do understand what it takes to be a viable tank. I also understand what people are going to want and expect out of the roles they bring into a raid. Now, with the Dark Arts dupe being fixed, any spot we may have had as an OT that can contribute legit DPS for longer than a few minutes was dealt a harsh blow. Who is going to seriously bring in two paladins to a progressive raid? Are you willing to hang around until enough people have beaten the raid with an optimal party and they feel like messing around to pull in a WAR to MT? WAR is in a good place from what my buddy is telling me so I don't know firsthand of their viability as an MT in HW, but I know I never saw any groups opting to use a Warrior to MT turn 13. Why, when a paladin is better?

We already get to deal with this conundrum just being a Dark Knight, because many progression groups are going to ask that same question. "Why should I bring you as my MT/OT when I could find a PLD/WAR instead?" Unless you are good enough to prove with your skill that you can mitigate properly and help healers, or DPS enough to contribute acceptable numbers....or have some friends who don't care either way I feel like it will be niche groups and a tough sell for any random composition to settle on a DRK.


In 2.0 if you ran out of TP as a tank it didn't really matter. We could afford for you to just sit there and auto-attack while you regained naturally, even on OT because that DPS was never needed. Raid encounters weren't designed with your DPS in mind. They will be now. That's why people were able to sell FCoB carries pre-echo, other roles that weren't intended to contribute 300+ DPS possibilities (looking at you scholars) and tanks that could potentially hit what a Bard brings to the raid DPS-wise were crushing SE expectations. It's very clear that DRK was designed to be viable in both roles (MT/OT), just as AST was designed to be a really strong complimentary healer to whichever other healer they were paired with. No one knows who designed Machinist because they were shot instantly after

Paladins will never crush 900-1000+ DPS as an OT, like WARs are doing. And WARs can do that for 3mins without even needing to use their TP skill. My TP was completely gone in 3mins. Good DRKs were close to that before Dark Arts was fixed, but will now probably be a good 200+ DPS behind a WAR. I'm curious to what an OT PLD can do, but from leveling it in the past and knowing what skills they get from 52-60 I don't see them being better than a DRK.

Anyway...that's not really what the TP concern for me is about. Like you stated below this quote, Paladin is king of mitigation. I don't want that title on DRK. Warrior is the king of burst, I don't want that title either. We play and feel like a middle-of-the-pack tank that, with enough skill, can perform both roles sufficiently enough to be viable. Our insane burst was nerfed, so now we have above average-to-good sustain DPS. We have enough defensive CD's to weave that we can stay at least protected from anything that would require mitigation. I think we are viable as an end-game MT for a skilled player. I think we need some kind of tool for TP if we are going to be viable in a DPS/Tank role for anything longer than 2-3min periods of time.

Let's just use Turn 8 as an example. If SE drops a "turn" of Alexander that stays in the same vein as that fight, a 2nd tank won't even be brought unless they can contribute high numbers. Serious players running parsers are going to see the complete bottoming-out on the timeline graph for 20-30 seconds after 3mins of DPS on DRK and we will be largely omitted from that content unless we are designated MT, or that the DPS we can contribute is good enough for us to take the hit and still contribute to the win. And if a raid comp consists of PLD/DRK, the DRK is obviously not going to take the MT position away from the PLD and I don't feel like "go out and level a warrior" is a valid reaction to what will almost definitely happen. Maybe not for Normal Alex, but absolutely for Savage Alex.

I was a career Bard for 2.0. We went from being the hottest thing since melted butter and the only thing taken into endgame, to being a necessity to raids only during progression, to whatever this shitstorm SE created for us in 3.0. I've watched all kinds of jobs get left behind in content if they didn't level something better to help the group. I love playing DRK, it's the most fun I've ever had with a job in this game. I can deal with being the average tank, because I'm positive I can play it above average. Some type of TP management skill would even it out and at least allow us to perform well in both areas, but not better than the other tanks when played with equal skill.

Just my 20 gil. I talk to much for it to be 2


tl;dr: DRK is the average tank with some very flashy moves and an extremely unique skillset that contributes to how fun it is to play. There is a ton of weaving and micro-management involved in playing the job optimally, but there is nothing fun about being relegated to auto-attacks and spamming one MP move (if you even have MP left) while waiting for TP to regen when you are supposed to be helping DPS. Currently a DRK's viability in a high difficulty endgame setting as an MT is just fine, but it needs some kind of TP management move to allow it's viability as an OT to be the same.

[Ditto]

The difference here is 2.0 vs 3.0 and optimal role in a raid. Both of which I don't think you're taking into consideration when using this an a basis of rebuttal.

You can't really base what we are going to get completely off of what we had in the past. All tanks were given abilities that allow them to DPS more efficiently in HW. Yoshi said that when they originally designed raids for 2.0 they never expected our community to have so much healer DPS being pumped out. So guess what? Now our encounters will be tuned for tank/healer DPS. From 50-60 a DRK gets 3 purely DPS moves with no enmity attached to them, 1 enmity AoE/self-heal with dark arts and 1 legit self heal/refresh buff that works best when dealing with multiple mobs and useless against a boss with no adds. Our DPS line-up basically doubles in effectiveness going from 50 to 60 and our tanking ability stays largely the same.

I am an ex-DPS from 2.0, but I leveled everything to 50 and tanked up to t12 so I do understand what it takes to be a viable tank. I also understand what people are going to want and expect out of the roles they bring into a raid. Now, with the Dark Arts dupe being fixed, any spot we may have had as an OT that can contribute legit DPS for longer than a few minutes was dealt a harsh blow. Who is going to seriously bring in two paladins to a progressive raid? Are you willing to hang around until enough people have beaten the raid with an optimal party and they feel like messing around to pull in a WAR to MT? WAR is in a good place from what my buddy is telling me so I don't know firsthand of their viability as an MT in HW, but I know I never saw any groups opting to use a Warrior to MT turn 13. Why, when a paladin is better?

We already get to deal with this conundrum just being a Dark Knight, because many progression groups are going to ask that same question. "Why should I bring you as my MT/OT when I could find a PLD/WAR instead?" Unless you are good enough to prove with your skill that you can mitigate properly and help healers, or DPS enough to contribute acceptable numbers....or have some friends who don't care either way I feel like it will be niche groups and a tough sell for any random composition to settle on a DRK.


In 2.0 if you ran out of TP as a tank it didn't really matter. We could afford for you to just sit there and auto-attack while you regained naturally, even on OT because that DPS was never needed. Raid encounters weren't designed with your DPS in mind. They will be now. That's why people were able to sell FCoB carries pre-echo, other roles that weren't intended to contribute 300+ DPS possibilities (looking at you scholars) and tanks that could potentially hit what a Bard brings to the raid DPS-wise were crushing SE expectations. It's very clear that DRK was designed to be viable in both roles (MT/OT), just as AST was designed to be a really strong complimentary healer to whichever other healer they were paired with. No one knows who designed Machinist because they were shot instantly after

Paladins will never crush 900-1000+ DPS as an OT, like WARs are doing. And WARs can do that for 3mins without even needing to use their TP skill. My TP was completely gone in 3mins. Good DRKs were close to that before Dark Arts was fixed, but will now probably be a good 200+ DPS behind a WAR. I'm curious to what an OT PLD can do, but from leveling it in the past and knowing what skills they get from 52-60 I don't see them being better than a DRK.

Anyway...that's not really what the TP concern for me is about. Like you stated below this quote, Paladin is king of mitigation. I don't want that title on DRK. Warrior is the king of burst, I don't want that title either. We play and feel like a middle-of-the-pack tank that, with enough skill, can perform both roles sufficiently enough to be viable. Our insane burst was nerfed, so now we have above average-to-good sustain DPS. We have enough defensive CD's to weave that we can stay at least protected from anything that would require mitigation. I think we are viable as an end-game MT for a skilled player. I think we need some kind of tool for TP if we are going to be viable in a DPS/Tank role for anything longer than 2-3min periods of time.

Let's just use Turn 8 as an example. If SE drops a "turn" of Alexander that stays in the same vein as that fight, a 2nd tank won't even be brought unless they can contribute high numbers. Serious players running parsers are going to see the complete bottoming-out on the timeline graph for 20-30 seconds after 3mins of DPS on DRK and we will be largely omitted from that content unless we are designated MT, or that the DPS we can contribute is good enough for us to take the hit and still contribute to the win. And if a raid comp consists of PLD/DRK, the DRK is obviously not going to take the MT position away from the PLD and I don't feel like "go out and level a warrior" is a valid reaction to what will almost definitely happen. Maybe not for Normal Alex, but absolutely for Savage Alex.

I was a career Bard for 2.0. We went from being the hottest thing since melted butter and the only thing taken into endgame, to being a necessity to raids only during progression, to whatever this shitstorm SE created for us in 3.0. I've watched all kinds of jobs get left behind in content if they didn't level something better to help the group. I love playing DRK, it's the most fun I've ever had with a job in this game. I can deal with being the average tank, because I'm positive I can play it above average. Some type of TP management skill would even it out and at least allow us to perform well in both areas, but not better than the other tanks when played with equal skill.

Just my 20 gil. I talk to much for it to be 2


tl;dr: DRK is the average tank with some very flashy moves and an extremely unique skillset that contributes to how fun it is to play. There is a ton of weaving and micro-management involved in playing the job optimally, but there is nothing fun about being relegated to auto-attacks and spamming one MP move (if you even have MP left) while waiting for TP to regen when you are supposed to be helping DPS. Currently a DRK's viability in a high difficulty endgame setting as an MT is just fine, but it needs some kind of TP management move to allow it's viability as an OT to be the same.

While I would like to agree with all of this, 2 things stand out:

1) Drk's mitigation is actually not as good people seem to think it is. I don't know why they do, they must have never played a (Post HW)Warrior or a Paladin in their life. As it stands, Drk's mitigation feels like it was designed to be in 2.0, except it would have even played out horribly there.

Shadow Wall is a completely botched CD that has an obnoxious recast time compared to what it does. Out of all of the similar CD's (Sentinel, Vengeance) it is easily the worst. That aside, we have NO on demand CD we can use. Paladins have Shelltron, that is essentially Inner Beast for them every 30 seconds. Warriors have Inner Beast, that's, well, their Inner Beast on demand.

Drk has nothing to compare, and currently that puts us a step back in terms of mitigation compared to BOTH tanks. I would like to say that we excel at is magic fights, but really, a Paladin or even a Warrior could do those just as easily as we could. Hell, they have been for all of 2.0. A Warrior could solo tank Ramuh EX WHILE overcharged, I've done it so many times already. Paladin could likely do it too.

Then there is Dark Dance, which is a trash mob CD that does absolutely nothing for bosses. I've tried plenty of times, you cannot dodge Blinding Blade, you cannot dodge Tapasya, you can parry them sure, but the parry amount it gives you is so miniscule there is literally no difference in your parry rate. The healers don't have to heal you any less than they have been. Hell, I've yet to even dodge an auto attack yet.

Now on to raid environments. The only physical mitigation skills a Drk has are Shadowskin, and Shadow Wall. Dark Dance isn't reliable and is very similar to Foresight, you just sort of pop it whenever and hope it does something to help you. More often than not, it doesn't do anything. If a physical tank buster is anything within around 50 seconds apart from one another, a Drk will NOT be able to do it. Hence why their tanking kit would not have worked for 2.0 either. Now if we're given something that is almost 'on demand' similar to Inner Beast or Shelltron, things would start to look brighter for us. But as is, we don't have this ability.

And then there is Grit. This worked for Paladin due to them having an extra layer of defense with their shield. We're lacking that layer of defense, thus making us naturally more squishy than they are, even if neither side uses CD's. Before an attack goes through to a Paladin, it checks their block, then it checks their parry, then it hits. In a Drk's case, it checks their parry, then it hits. That parry of which is no different for us than it is for a Paladin or a Warrior (Who funny enough parries more than we do), even though we are a tank that focuses, and relies on parry. We have a completely raw tank stance is what it comes down to, but nothing to back that tank stance up. Now I'm not saying we should be as tanky as Paladins, but there has to be equal grounds here, and as is, Drk is missing quite a bit.

So really, no, Drk's viability in a 'high difficulty endgame setting' is not ok at all. Not when you could take a safety net Paladin instead, who also so happens to be able to support the group while doing a better job at tanking and taking hits than we do. (Don't bother bringing up personal player skill because that is irrelevant. No matter how good you think you are, a new skill is not going to magically appear on your hotbar and save you from eating a tank buster completely unmitigated)

2) Paladins DPS is nothing to overlook anymore. They can pull some crazy numbers. Some are supposedly even keeping up with Warriors, if not only a bit behind them.

[Kiteless]

A agree mostly with JayCommon and entirely with Ditto. DRK has some serious issues with consistent mitigation that makes no excuse for actual skillful application. Additionally, I wouldn't be surprised if DRK has the lowest DPS of the tanks, now that Double Dark Arts has been removed (not even counting the current state of affairs where DRK can't receive buffs without losing MP, which would make them far lower).

[JayCommon]

snip

Some very good points. I guess I am compensating for the fact that every 3rd GCD we can heal ourselves, but I know self-healing isn't an acceptable form of "mitigation" because it isn't really mitigating anything....just healing after the fact. You do have a lot to pop and rotate as far as defensive CD's, but none of them feel as protective as anything a Paladin can do.

As for the tank buster thing, that's kind of irrelevant also. The nature of a tankbuster is insanely high damage, so eating it "unmitigated" is wrong. It makes no difference if one hit can deplete my 16k HP instantly if I didn't mitigate it because that's my fault. The utility a PLD brings now is absolutely a great point and I didn't even consider that. And I agree with Shadow Wall, it's pretty bad, but you can at least still time it with some knowledge of the fight in the right spot to be effective for something like a tank buster. That's why I brought up player skill, because on top of all the MP/TP micro-management you already succumb to as a DRK, you have to pop those buffs spot-on timing in order to actually mitigate properly.

So far, I have never popped Living Dead and lived after I went into Walking Dead, and I even have a macro telling the healer exactly what to do. WHM have Bene, does SCH/AST even have anything like that? Or do we basically rely on a WHM being in the party to even activate that skill? Trash. The only defensive CD's we have that actually feel like real mitigation is Shadowskin and Dark Mind (use that to mitigate Dry/Wet Fins in Bismark EX and you can see that they are pretty effective for magic based attacks), and knowledge of the fights will allow you to comprise defensive CD rotations that will allow for a win.

While you bring up some good points about the DRK's lack of MT ability too, I still think it's in much better shape than our OT ability. Spamming Unmend/Unchain procs for 30 sec after going OOT only gave me enough TP to make use of 1 single application of Blood Weapon. And after you have done the Unmend/Unchain spam, if using Dark Arts vigorously like you should be when DPSing, you don't have much MP left either. You are stuck auto-attacking for however long until you're comfortable going back into a normal rotation. And it isn't like the "stoppage" will allow you to recover over time into something respectable. You will continue to run out of TP and much quicker than before because I highly doubt anyone would auto-attack long enough to regain all 1000 TP in a raid setting.

And with what your saying about PLD DPS....yeah it needs addressed. Our potencies are great and all but if you can't use them then they equal zero. Plenty of DRK's are MTing Ravana right now. Mitigation problems aside, it is still possible. It is plainly not possible to sustain the ceiling of your DPS on DRK for any longer than 3 minutes. I would like to see both addressed, but TP in DPS stance was more glaring to me. Hell just attach a TP reduction on to Blood Weapon, we don't need the extra TP when MT.

[Faytte]

Ravana is not a raid boss. For those of us that did coil 10-13 before echo, Ravana EX is an utter joke. You are not being hit that hard, which is why people were able to clear it so quickly after freshly hitting 60 and getting law gear. It's a stepping stone fight, and people are getting a false impression of tanking from it honestly.

[Hesitate89]

Rotation w/o i190 WPN,
https://youtu.be/wHgh14H-EqY

w/ Hive Claymore Still only netting 850-950 DPS in STR build. We can still do good initial burst for a phase change or on pull. Around 3k Crit Crave and Spit.

Issues so far, I can see that I want and feel needs to be changed is:
-Scourge. It would be better to make it like NIN's Mutilation, not being able to put up DoT cause i have to combo for Hate hurts DPS.

[Hesitate89]

- Dark Mind, I understand if they didn't want us to be completely nullify Magic Dmg taken, but atleast make the MP cost worthwhile, majority of the time I'd rather only use w/o it. For the MP cost, if you make it atleast 50% Magic DMG taken, it will be on par with Paladins Physical Dmg Mitigation. Make Dark Mind one of the best utilities DRK has to offer to a Party as MT. When they Fixed the Dark Arts Bug, this became rather insignificant to spend MP on.

- Unleash same with MP Reduction cost, having to Main Tanking Ravana and not being able to take any Dmg to convert with Blood Price, or Do Combos with Blood Weapon either because I need to stay Grit or I can't attack period cause of Parry Shield Mechanic, Unleash mp cost at 50 was reasonable, when Blood Price proportions was reliable. Now at 60 it can lead you to quick MP Starvation, We shouldn't have to resort to using Flash 140-150mp cost vs Unleash roughly 800mp cost.

[Hesitate89]

-Increase MP recovered from Carve and Spit, I wish it recovered more then 890 MP, make it worthwhile saving to recover mp, it feels punishing to use it w/o Dark Arts. For a 100 Potency attack w/o Dark Arts and long Recast, give us bigger returns on MP.
- Reduce Cast time, or Increase duration of Salted Earth, 24 Sec wait period between DoT fading and being able to re-apply feels off, especially when majority of the first set of my Crossbar is filled and I have to keep tabs on it by changing Sets to see if its up. With increase Duration I'll atleast have a visual cue when re-apply. If i can re-apply it as soon as it disappears would be amazing.

[Hesitate89]

*All around reduce MP Requirements to use abilities, not a huge overhaul but atleast 25% Reduction across the board.
-As much as I would like to use Dark Arts+ Dark Passanger for possible blind and dmg, its not worth it outside of AoE Rotation, when it could help boost our dps since it doesn't share CDs with our Combos.
-Re-adjust the MP returns on Blood Price, around lvl50 it was okay, the conversions were decent for the MP pool we had and damage we take, but at 60 the returns are minimal, almost required to Take off Grit and Darkside and Use Blood Weapon while Main Tanking. Sometimes the Warrior who is DPS their heart out will Steal hate quickly if you don't use Dark Arts which you have to spend 30% MP for everything to re-apply stances.
maybe at least 25% increase in recovered mp. Sort of how PLD in FFXI when they used their AF body to Cover someone they recovered dmg taken converted to mp by 30%. It felt good to use the Abliity.

[Dualblade]

So far, I have never popped Living Dead and lived after I went into Walking Dead, and I even have a macro telling the healer exactly what to do. WHM have Bene, does SCH/AST even have anything like that? Or do we basically rely on a WHM being in the party to even activate that skill?

Just poppin to say from what I have seen said, unless they changed it in the hotfix things like Benediction don't count as "healing to 100%" for Walking Dead since it "replaces" the health rather than actually healing or something like that. We believe this is unintentional, because it really is BS if its working as intended. I believe Lustrate falls under the same problem, though if they get you to 75% and heal the rest to 100% I think it still counts as the heal part.