Dear Square-Enix: You Forgot About Buffs to Dark Knight's Off-Tank Utility.

[Cynric]

Like I said a while ago. I don't think they understand how to balance the tanks properly. The situation is just going to be flipped in 3.2 between DRK/PLD while Warrior will be guaranteed its spot in a raid. Kind of a shame , you'd think this would have been a pretty easy thing to do.

Well hopefully they'll eventually get out of this mindset of Make X be a MT and Y be an OT.

All 3 tanks should be able to MT or OT and until they can we're going to see this repeat over and over.

[AI_wass]

PLD was once the underdog.

And Warrior before it.

I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

[InfiniDragon]

I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

It's not. And people that think it is really need to stop.

All tanks and all combinations of tanks (other than dupes) should compliment one another in some way in both the MT and the OT role. Flavors of the month are a sign of bad balancing, and preferred comps should only exist in the purest min/max sense with folks that are focused on top end performance, and not with the majority of parties raiding period because certain comps just outright suck (such as DRK/PLD).

[MagiusNecros]

I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

Oh it isn't acceptable it just proves they can't balance Tank roles to save their lives. Right now it's going to be PLD/DRK for MT depending on content and WAR for OT. And WAR can fill in for MT if it wants to.

[Cynric]

Oh it isn't acceptable it just proves they can't balance Tank roles to save their lives. Right now it's going to be PLD/DRK for MT depending on content and WAR for OT. And WAR can fill in for MT if it wants to.

And frankly it's ridiculous. Skills like Shield Swipe and Reprisal are so flawed in comparison to how Warrior was designed, then the lack of real utility between DRK and Paladin is ridiculous as well. DRK functions purely as an MT that can DPS, with some better magic mitigation. Both jobs have lots of potential for utility as well, I don't understand Squares decisions.

Frankly I don't know about you guys but I'm not really in the mood to main PLD/DRK and switching between the two as the flavor of the month dictates with my only possible role being the MT.

[MagiusNecros]

Well it's like a lot of people say not only here but other places as well, why play a PLD or DRK when you can take a WAR? Who can MT and OT when needed and do just fine in any content you throw at it. And that's because it has all the utility in the world to serve both roles. PLD/DRK unfortunately do not.

I originally was excited for Warrior back when I first got into this MMO but...seeing how powerful it is I get turned off by it due to it's overwhelming superiority.

[FinalWolf]

You can almost hear Yoshi in the background screaming "working as intended".

[Brannigan]

Really, they should just scrap str down/int down and make them all damage down on each tank's weakest combo. For war it stays the same, Halone changes to damage down, and Power Slash changes to damage down. Hell, you could even make them stack with each other so you're just encouraged to bring two different tanks. Then they can just put a buff or something dumb on Delirium (or some extra MP regen to make up for no syphon strike during PS combo).

However, I think Dark Knight will pretty much* be fine this patch. This is assuming that they don't make a physical attack with timing as stupid as A4S missiles. Lack of DPS wasn't the only reason to switch from paladin in 3.0 - required stuns in a3 and a4 murdered its TP or required the damage dealers to do your mechanics, helping with orbs and other things that take you away from the boss is worse as paladin because of no Plunge, and extreme raid damage like Cascade made Delirium and Reprisal good. Also DA Dark Dance in A4S is basically cheating.

They're less likely to make mechanics that screw over dark knight badly but favor paladin, because other than sheltron paladin's unique stuff is either healer overlap (veil/clemency), a long cooldown, or a weakness. So assuming the incoming physical damage to the tank isn't that extreme (making Halone required), you basically have a paladin with no cover/dv/clemency but better mobility, better access to stuns, and (probably still) damage. Oh and good AOE. The biggest thing though is that making something that heavily favors paladin skills like DV/Clemency/Cover/Tempered Will would also kind of screw over Warrior, which they'll never do.

With that all said, it is stupid that DRK/PLD is such a bad composition. No slashing debuff, damage debuffs don't stack against a single damage type, and basically no benefits at all to make up for that. Plus you have TWO tanks who need Goad. Nerf warrior or something so all three comps are equally sucky.


*might suck a little, but not unusable. Sorry boyz.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

I'm not sure why this should be an acceptable explanation or excuse.

So long as there are three different classes that have differences, there's always going to be an underdog. One of them is not going to be wanted as much in comparision to the other two, the only way to actually disprove this being to make all classes play exactly identical between damage dealt, mitigation, and debuffs, and if each and every job has the exact same carbon copy abilities, what's the point of making more than one tank?

[Syzygian]

So long as there are three different classes that have differences, there's always going to be an underdog. One of them is not going to be wanted as much in comparision to the other two, the only way to actually disprove this being to make all classes play exactly identical between damage dealt, mitigation, and debuffs, and if each and every job has the exact same carbon copy abilities, what's the point of making more than one tank?

Incorrect. Look at the melee dps.