AST, MCH, DRK and their failure as new jobs at HW launch

[Rhaja]

Warrior tank here since 2.0. Played in one dungeon on DRK and never tried again. It feels even more clunky than PLD (which I got to 50 in 2.0). I just love my axe wielding warrior too much to switch. Why do DRK swing those giant swords so awkwardly? It really makes those swings feel slower.

Too add to the weight of our burden, of our darkness...

XD. I'm going to wait until 3.1 before I make any major switches though. Chances are I'm going to get all three tanks to 60 anyway, but I'm really hoping DRK can finally get some synergy with itself.

[Einheri]

Better to buff than to nerf

[tremor24]

What the heck ? DRK has the same raid utility as PLD (one reduces str, the other int) and brings in more dps to make up for the *slightly* lower survivability. It's a better MT than PLD in both A1s and A3s too.

Unless your group has a monk in which case a DRK has literally no utility to provide and PLD has "something" to offer every comp. However, even with paladin's utility, in current raids either bring a DRK with a ninja or just bring two warriors and you're good to go.

A major issue with DRK right now is that if your group has a monk, why would you ever bring a DRK over WAR/WAR or WAR/PLD? The anti-synergy is real when considering the only utility DRK brings is the one debuff.

[SuzakuCMX]

A major issue with DRK right now is that if your group has a monk, why would you ever bring a DRK over WAR/WAR or WAR/PLD? The anti-synergy is real when considering the only utility DRK brings is the one debuff.

DRK has better damage then PLD and has better magic resistances.

[AnaviAnael]

I'm very disappointed with Machinist. Not because of its DPS or anything, just because it feels like a Bard clone... I think that was an incredibly stupid move and wasted all the potential a new Job could bring...

This is the only reason I would consider MCH to be any sort of "failure." People have been asking for a pure ranged DPS job since day 1 of this game's release. I was hoping MCH would be that, but instead it's another pseudo support role.

[Dante_V]

Unless your group has a monk in which case a DRK has literally no utility to provide and PLD has "something" to offer every comp. However, even with paladin's utility, in current raids either bring a DRK with a ninja or just bring two warriors and you're good to go.

A major issue with DRK right now is that if your group has a monk, why would you ever bring a DRK over WAR/WAR or WAR/PLD? The anti-synergy is real when considering the only utility DRK brings is the one debuff.

Considering the necessity of tank dps and the utility of drg and ninja most people are asking why bring a monk over the other dps as drk is pretty much a bleeding edge staple of progression at this point due to the fact it has the int debuff and crushes pally dps. In fact I don't personally know any progressing savage group on my server without a drk but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Then again there is the fallacy of viewing classes in a vacuum and the overwhelming arrogance of players who think that because they aren't good at something in 3 weeks that it's intrinsically broken.

[Dante_V]

Also I wouldn't consider any of the classes to be "failures" on release. Something needed tuning =/= failure in any literal sense. By that metric every single job in the game has been a failure. It creates a false dichotomy.

[Duelle]

I feel like that MCH (and a bit of BRD) got a lot of wasted potential when it came to the expansion.

I'm of the opinion ammo should have been a separate resource to be generated and consumed by certain MCH skills, with Reload as a cooldown that gives you full ammo when needed. Granted, this would change ammo from being bonus damage on shots to a necessity for shots, but I'd be okay with that.

People who complain about GB or BRD's complaining about WM from what I have seen are usually the bad players who don't know how to be mobile in between GCD's when appropriate to do so.

Sure, let's dismiss the people who found instant attacks and mobility a fun aspect of the job as bad players. Because if you don't swallow the turd sandwich placed before you, you're instantly bad, am I right?

You might want to stop trying to dismiss people who are reacting as expected to bad implementation. There's several threads on the DPS forums that talk about this in detail, even with the trolls that will spew crap like "git gud".

I'm very disappointed with Machinist. Not because of its DPS or anything, just because it feels like a Bard clone. I think that was an incredibly stupid move and wasted all the potential a new Job could bring.

Personally, I'd probably drop the current Gauss Barrel/Wanderer's Minuet effects from both Jobs. Drop many of the support skills Machinist has and instead work them into Bard (a Song version of Rend Mind, for example) instead of the Wanderer's Minuet set of skills Bard got (because right now Bard feels like a weak DPS and a weak support Job. I'd like to see it feel like a strong support Job), so Bard completely loses the Bow-Mage aspect (although it would cast Songs still). Rework Machinist into a DPS, with the cast time being a standard thing, rather than attached to Gauss Barrel (it would be the player reloading the gun).

The thing is that unless you spread around the ability to regen TP and MP in-group, this would make BRD mandatory for every raid group. As much as I'd love Bow-Mage to be thrown into the void to never return, if this is your alternative I'm not going to cosign it.

PS: Yes, I know BRD and MCH are required in raid groups right now. That's not exactly a good thing, either. I only forgive it because I'm assuming TP/MP regen will be spread to other jobs, either caster DPS or melee DPS jobs.

[tremor24]

DRK has better damage then PLD and has better magic resistances.

What I was getting at was if you have a monk and need more dps just bring a second warrior which is fully capable as mt for all content while doing the most damage; also, the single magic cool-down DRK has does not out weight the utility of paladin when a warrior main tank is more than capable and all three tanks have very close offtank dps. Double warrior is also great in A4s so far in early phases to keep path (and eye) up during quarantine and berserk+equilibrium make the high stacks while in quarantine a breeze. In the adds phase, the main tank can easily solo an add down which would be more difficult for other comps as well.

This is with a monk, just want to restate that again. I understand the value of NIN + DRK comps, but my group has been running double war in savage (cleared A1/2 first week and A3 two weeks later) since we have a very good monk and it has been working well with no compelling reason to change it. I started each turn as PLD, but have ended up switching to WAR on each one since it is simply better for our purposes and in most cases.

DRK is the tank class I generally enjoy the most, but the anti-synergy with monk just makes it poor in our group over the mentioned alternatives and I enjoy warrior enough to where it is not an issue I would ever want to slow down progression over. Maybe I am in the minority for this perspective, but this is just an issue I have found from my experience.

[Averax]

AST just got buffed and it is amazing. I feel actually competitive now.

The collective unconsciousness buff was icing on the cake.