New Prelim Tank updates

[Shurrikhan]

DRK needed a pinch more physical mitigation, perhaps a buff to Dark Dance, and it needed a reason to ever ever be brought to a raid as an OT. Whether that's buffing Delirium outside of Grit, giving a slashing debuff or hell even a magic defense debuff, making Sole Survivor a TP/MP refresh out of Grit when cast on a party member, whatever, there's any number of things they could have done that they didn't. DRK is a Delirium bitch in the OT role, and it actually can potentially do LESS damage in that slot than it could have MTing.

No tank reasonably competes WAR for the OT slot (or even the MT slot if the WAR really wants to take that too). That's the problem, and these changes have left that pretty well untouched.

Reprisal without parry activation seems to be one of the highly requested changes. As long as it does require that that though, Dark Dance being buffed to, say, 40%, and DA-Dark Dance doubling parry strength would probably be a fair improvement, especially against anything that can't be dodged but can be parried. Natural parry scaling buff might also help... Delirium actually giving <Blunt Resistance Down> so that DRK, although even more the Delirium bitch, wouldn't be put out of use by a Monk seems to be another. Shifting a bit of strength further from Blood Price to Blood Weapon might help OT dps as well, but then we'd curse the change every AoE pull or when you need back to back DA-defensives with oGCDs ready as MT...

I don't know, there seem to be a lot of options, and yet I've no idea why any of the changes picked were chosen. DRKs suffering less TP-wise than PLD, yet now has the lower average TP costs as well. The weaponskills chosen for them don't seem to make sense either, especially given that our enmity will likely have been reduced with the stat changes, which means more enmity combos. ...Which in turn means a larger TP gap between MT and OT DRKs. I thought we'd be getting some QoL changes, maybe some faint mana cost decreases to improve output, and something to boost OT utility, but instead we get 'decreased TP consumption when enmity's not a factor'.

[Reynhart]

Except it does, Delirium, the same thing a MNK is brought for. Paladin though does offer more, Divine Veil for large AoE, Clemency, Cover, and Halone. DRK is definitely behind, but it's not in a horrible spot as an OT. Shame Reprisal is locked behind parry procs.

Delirium is used as MT.
Divine Veil, Clemency and Halone too.

As OT, PLD and DRK both lose some skills, but DRK "gains" nothing in return.

If you look at WAR it can still use Raw Intuition to gain some benefit and, by avoiding its enmity combo, can apply both Storm's Path and Storm's Eye.

[Shurrikhan]

Well ... I'm not going to say that the changes are bad (they are definitely good), but they are not enough.

I'm very happy that Oaths do not cancel combos anymore (though they really should have also been made oGCD to boost total potency), but SwO is still next to useless. As things are now, the biggest benefit to being in SwO is not having the dmg reduction from ShO. They way things will be after the patch, the biggest benefit to SwO is still not being in ShO. Pld's get that benefit by simply dropping ShO. There's no real incentive actually activate SwO (+50 potency on auto attacks... yay....) over just dropping ShO. Regardless, I can live with it it.

My bigger concern is with Tp management. Reducing the Tp cost of a couple of Pld moves is not going to save their TP from flat-lining in longer fights, especially with constantly increasing skill speeds. They've done this before, and it did not work. Pld's just do not have enough oGCD's to sustain their Tp. I'm gonna give this the benefit of the doubt, but I have a feeling that Pld's will still be red-lining their Tp, especially by the end of the 3.0's life cycle.

I'm also a little off put by the ability adjustments (more by which moves they picked, rather than what they changed). Clemency is fine. 2 seconds is a nice change. Divine Veil is a fix, because it should really have always been like that ... Cover? Tempered Will? If anything, I would say that those two moves were in much greater need for adjustments for FAR longer than Clem and DV. TW is almost NEVER used in any fights in the entire game. When SE said they were making move adjustments, I thought that TW would, at the very least, have made the list.

To be honest, the auto-attack bonus is pretty hefty to overall single-target dps. Larger even than Deliverance at full stacks. It just feels like crap.

That middle part is why Skill Speed without changing the TP tick rate to 50 per GCD has always seemed an oversight to me. Granted, with so many TP cost reductions across the board, I don't even feel like I'd have to Paeon anymore. I'd just have the NIN goad the Monk and call it a day. Maybe make the PLD Clemency for his TP. /shrug.

Agreed completely on Cover and Tempered Will. Even just the ability to toggle/cancel the link or properly mitigate the transferred damage or interrupt-proofing on TW would be a godsend.

[shao32]

It just seems like the same core problems between the tanks haven't gone anywhere. If anything its worse now b/c DRK and PLD will be at each other's throats for that MT slot, while WAR looks on wondering wtf is wrong with them.

Oh yeah and... Has anyone noticed that the tank stances having increased enmity to make up for the damage nerf is likely going to indirectly make it harder to tank out of tank stance? Wonder how that will play out.

im with you un this, the drk changes un this patch are kinda dissapoint me, yeah they buff the pld and thats is great but the core problem still there and no fight desing can change that, and yeah when i log in i go to test our new agro levels.

[Rei_Fails]

Delirium is used as MT.
Divine Veil, Clemency and Halone too.

As OT, PLD and DRK both lose some skills, but DRK "gains" nothing in return.

If you look at WAR it can still use Raw Intuition to gain some benefit and, by avoiding its enmity combo, can apply both Storm's Path and Storm's Eye.

Applying Delirium as MT is irrelevant, it still offers that as an OT, similarly to how PLD offers Halone as MT and OT, Warrior should be applying Eye/Path as MT/OT regardless since spamming butcher's on worthwhile content is pretty wasteful and/or stupid, it's true it doesn't gain anything, but it's not in a dire position. If anything Reprisal would have to be accessible in a similar means to Storms Path.

Edit: If you're going to say WAR "gains" RI as an OT in terms of DPS, then DRK does indeed gain Blood Weapon as an OT, but we were specifically talking about utility based abilities, not DPS.

[Februs]

To be honest, the auto-attack bonus is pretty hefty to overall single-target dps. Larger even than Deliverance at full stacks. It just feels like crap.

You just outlined the problem with it right there. The fact is that it is only a Dps gain on single targets. In any circumstance in which there is more than one, your auto-attack is essentially useless. Personally, I was hoping to see it adjusted for TP management. Something along the lines of swapping to SwO grants additional Tp for each auto attack, while increasing overall skill speed.

That middle part is why Skill Speed without changing the TP tick rate to 50 per GCD has always seemed an oversight to me. Granted, with so many TP cost reductions across the board, I don't even feel like I'd have to Paeon anymore. I'd just have the NIN goad the Monk and call it a day. Maybe make the PLD Clemency for his TP. /shrug.

That's the same problem that we have now. The only way for a Pld to actually sustain their TP over the course of a fight is to actively sabotage their own Dps by not maintaining their attack. That's garbage. Clemency is great and all, but Pld's should not have to use it when they don't have to use it. It should be used for utility, not as a stop-gap in our TP draw.

Agreed completely on Cover and Tempered Will. Even just the ability to toggle/cancel the link or properly mitigate the transferred damage or interrupt-proofing on TW would be a godsend.

I would have even taken an esuna effect. ANYTHING would have been better than the way it is now.

[Syzygian]

I've never had a problem with Reprisal needing a Parry. Its a *reprisal* after all. But DRK needs something else to make it a competitive OT other than close-to-WAR DPS and a not-unique-to-the-job-debuff.

PLD at keeps all of its utility in either role with Shield Swipe being the only thing truly lost.

[Astrelle_hyperion]

Personally, I love cover and wish it were more useful. But I think that would require making it cross class able so all tracks have it. Perhaps with a PLD trait for some improvement. Then they could design for it in encounters, etc.

[TouchandFeel]

I've never had a problem with Reprisal needing a Parry. Its a *reprisal* after all. But DRK needs something else to make it a competitive OT other than close-to-WAR DPS and a not-unique-to-the-job-debuff.

While I understand the concept of the ability and how what it currently does makes sense with the name, the problem is that it (and Shield Swipe for PLD) is too locked behind MTing and doubly so when the debuff that Reprisal brings is/could be huge for raid utility which many of us agree DRK really needs.

While it would be requiring less attachment to the name, I still think making it so that you can DA+Reprisal or Parry proc+Reprisal would potentially be the simplest solution to making Reprisal more useful.

Being able to apply the Reprisal debuff as OT plus something like the Sole Survivor MP refresh idea you presented earlier (one debuff and one buff) would do wonders to for DRK OT utility.

[Rei_Fails]

Having it usable after a combo would be sufficient, fidelity to it's name isn't really important, nor is an ability that isn't "unique". Reprisal is effectively path with a gimmick, shadow skin is rampart, the list goes on. Delirium is still utility and allowing some way to force reprisal activation would be pretty good.

DRK/PLD lose more or less the same swapping from MT to OT, a parry/block based ogcd attack, and DRK additionally loses stun resets but gains Blood weapon. I just don't see DRK in that bad of a position at all, the biggest change besides Reprisal usage that I'd like to see is Dark Arts Power Slash being useful.