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

[Kuwagami]

No offense, but Living Dead is really... pointless IMO. Yes with WHM's Benediction, the DRK will alive again. But what about the other healer?

you don't need to heal them to max health, but "only" to heal them for as much as they have in their HP pool. It's just a matter of "can you dish out 14-18k heals in 10 seconds ?". The 3 of them CAN do it.

[HorseBoots]

DRK has interesting ideas but still lacks PLD or WAR raid utility, is still inferior to other 2 tanks in their own domain.

Stopped reading there. DRK is and always was fine as it is and fits perfectly within its domain.

The only thing I think SHOULD have been changed was being able to pocket Reprisal procs for when you actually want them (Since Reprisal is closer to a raid wide inner beast than Storms Path) and allowing Dark Art'd Dark Dance parry magical attacks for all-magic fights so you can proc Reprisal.

[AppropriateName8544]

Stopped reading there. DRK is and always was fine as it is and fits perfectly within its domain.

The only thing I think SHOULD have been changed was being able to pocket Reprisal procs for when you actually want them (Since Reprisal is closer to a raid wide inner beast than Storms Path) and allowing Dark Art'd Dark Dance parry magical attacks for all-magic fights so you can proc Reprisal.

You should have continued reading, interesting comments from some players were posted after that (check p9 for instance).
Btw sorry to be critical with your beloved DRK, I was not saying it is not doing ok. But I'm confused with your comment, are you telling me DRK is not inferior to PLD as MT and not inferior to WAR as OT? Or you are just basing yourself on alex magic damage?

[RiceisNice]

...

DRK is superior as a MT to paladin in some instances, such as A1 and A3. Their maintank dps is more of that than the paladin's while having identical cooldowns. DA Souleater also provides a bit of mitigation as well in the form of blood healing, and a DRK needs something to be hitting them to be able to benefit from blood price. The shorter cooldown on DA dark mind is also a godsend on mitigating spells more often, such as having a cooldown rotation for every single hyper compressed plasma (opposed to relying on their 1-hp cooldown) and for drainage in floor 3.

Warrior...is overpowered as an off tank so I won't even argue against that.

[AppropriateName8544]

DRK is superior as a MT to paladin in some instances, such as A1 and A3. Their maintank dps is more of that than the paladin's while having identical cooldowns. DA Souleater also provides a bit of mitigation as well in the form of blood healing, and a DRK needs something to be hitting them to be able to benefit from blood price. The shorter cooldown on DA dark mind is also a godsend on mitigating spells more often, such as having a cooldown rotation for every single hyper compressed plasma (opposed to relying on their 1-hp cooldown) and for drainage in floor 3.

Warrior...is overpowered as an off tank so I won't even argue against that.

So you are basing yourself from a alex raid perspective right ? What about the rest?
Also, by justifying DRK being inferior to WAR as OT saying its OP is just admitting DRK is underpowered...

[Asierid]

DRK is superior as a MT to paladin in some instances, such as A1 and A3.

We are assuming there will be a balance of magic damage in this expansion. Considering the history of bosses in dungeons/primals/raids from ARR, DRK will be "superior" in like three of those bosses. Taking SE's past history with continuing trends...Well, we know where this is going.

Now DRK does get a nifty CD with "Magic only" stuck to it. The worst thing about this whole deal is basically making sure we have some sort of magic damage for them to mitigate, or the other two are already better. DRK's parry skills fail compared to a WAR and a PLD's block is broken when it comes to passive mitigation.

I wouldn't call it more of a niche, it's more like a crutch really, and it is what is holding the class back. They're nothing special without a specific fight.

[RiceisNice]

So you are basing yourself from a alex raid perspective right ? What about the rest?
Also, by justifying DRK being inferior to WAR as OT saying its OP is just admitting DRK is underpowered...

The rest is honestly negligible that it doesn't really matter much if you want to talk class balance. It'd still apply anyway; a DRK is still stronger than a PLD from a maintank dps perspective, which helps in meeting checks. A PLD is still very well capable of tanking the boss and still meeting dps checks with their own contribution.

And a PLD fails at offtanking compared to a warrior too.

We are assuming there will be a balance of magic damage in this expansion. Considering the history of bosses in dungeons/primals/raids from ARR, DRK will be "superior" in like three of those bosses. Taking SE's past history with continuing trends...Well, we know where this is going.

Now DRK does get a nifty CD with "Magic only" stuck to it. The worst thing about this whole deal is basically making sure we have some sort of magic damage for them to mitigate, or the other two are already better. DRK's parry skills fail compared to a WAR and a PLD's block is broken when it comes to passive mitigation.

I wouldn't call it more of a niche, it's more like a crutch really, and it is what is holding the class back. They're nothing special without a specific fight.

That's their perk. Outside of that they also have better maintank dps too. Even without it they'd just use living dead (which is their equivalent of hg/holmy). They also have dark dance which is just as reliable as paladin's buulwacky for mitigation physical hits on a shorter cooldown. They both have rampart/dark skin and senile/dark wall which are functionally exactly the same

They share gear though, so I suppose the other perspective is that you can interchange the two jobs depending on what you need.

[Miscreant]

DRK has interesting ideas but still lacks PLD or WAR raid utility, is still inferior to other 2 tanks in their own domains (MT or OT and even survivability) and is, arguably, bad designed (darkside, parry based tank)

O_O DRK is awesome! Part of the reason A3S was cleared so fast was because of DRK's superior dps output to PLD.

Also DRK has the best mitigation for magic damage which is really useful in Alexander.

I personally prefer having a DRK over a PLD, War is still king for OT though.

[Asierid]

That's their perk.

It is. What I am saying is: Let's see if it is a good perk or not based on the content. I'm just going by history, and there were almost no magical fights then. I really don't see giving DRK one ability changing that mechanic much, otherwise no one would use PLD.

It's all well and good that a DRK can DPS better, but their physical cooldowns suck when compared to a PLD and their blocks. DPS means nothing when you're dead, as the saying goes...

[Kuwagami]

It is. What I am saying is: Let's see if it is a good perk or not based on the content. I'm just going by history, and there were almost no magical fights then

T11, T12, T13 had a good chunk of magical damage thrown at our faces (hello goons o/ ), and even though they're irrelevant in the matter PLD vs DRK as they're not hard fights, Leviatan (MT perspective), ifrit and Ramuh have quite a few magical attacks (100% magical fight for Ramuh)

If we're going by raids only to compare, we have (major damage output) :

physical : T1, T4, T5, T7 (on tanks), T6, T9, T10, T11 (tanks)
magical : T2, T7 (on party), T8, T11 (party), T12, T13

pretty much equal imo