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

[DBelmont]

All this talk of "best MT" and "best OT" makes me miss T12.

I don't get why we don't get more fights like these. I liked the scenarios where MT/OT had a minimal distinction and tanking was more universal.

[Brian_]

I don't get why we don't get more fights like these. I liked the scenarios where MT/OT had a minimal distinction and tanking was more universal.

We got plenthy of that this tier. In A1S, once the boss splits, both tanks have identical duties. In A3S, once the boss splits, tanking duties are mirrored between both tanks. A4S through the leg phases also has pretty equal tanking distribution.

Anyways, this topic has a major flaw.

Nobody views raid utility or raid DPS as singular entities. They are viewed within the context of group compositions. The reason why DRK and WAR were preferred this tier was because of the overall compositions they enabled.

If you are going to devalue the INT debuff because MNK can replace it, you also have to consider the other things you lose when bringing MNK over DRK and dropping either NIN or DRG from your DPS comp. If you are going to run a PLD / DRK tank pairing, then you will be bringing NIN and DRG. The advantages that comp has over any other comp is they have much better top-end raid mitigation without giving up NIN's utility. This is made possible by DRK's utility.

[MiniPrinny]

-snip-

This is very true. My own static runs a Paladin ("Main Tank" while learning), White Mage, Scholar, Ninja, Dragoon, Summoner, Machinist, and myself (Dark Knight, "Main Tank" after learning). And while yes, there are times where we bemoan the fact that our Ninja suffers a little, and that I bring less to the table while we're learning encounters, we do enjoy our composition and primary Jobs. Also, now that we can share gear, I'm leveling the other tanks in case we want them for a fight instead of my main.

[Syzygian]

Anyways, this topic has a major flaw.

What you're saying has an even bigger flaw.

MNK doesn't make Delirium better or worse and having a DRG/NIN melee comp doesn't make a DRK OT more desirable; it makes a DRK MT more desirable.

Delirium in and of itself is a fine debuff. Its good for what it is. But by itself? That's a pitiful amount of utility compared to what the other tanks bring, in either role. Now while MTing, Delirium+Reprisal is a perfectly good balance of good utility that stacks and synergizes with the other tanks' kits. No complaints there.

Lets pretend for a moment that MNK doesn't exist and DRK is your sole option for INT down. The only possible melee comp is DRG/NIN.

Now lets say your MT is a PLD. Do you bring WAR or DRK? Path already outdoes Delirium because not only does it cover physical and magical, but damage dealt down > stat down.

And THEN on top of THAT it brings a slashing debuff.

Now lets say your MT is a WAR. Do you bring PLD or DRK? Well, RoH is equivalent to Delirium in value. But THEN it has DV, Clemency, and Cover, which, while the latter two are iffy to use, they're still better than nothing at all, and paired with DV, are a huge thing to miss out on. DV is easily capable of mitigating (especially now that tanks will have more HP) as much or more damage from the same things Delirium was desirable for, such as Cascade in A3S.

The point is melee composition has nothing to do with it when we are talking about a DRK OTing. While MTing, you betcha. But no matter WHAT your melee comp is, if its down to the OT slot, either other tank brings more to your group overall. Not having a MNK doesn't make DRK more desirable over PLD for OT (it offers equivalent (at worst) or better raid mitigation) and it CERTAINLY doesn't make it more desirable than WAR for OT.

[Launched]

Now lets say your MT is a WAR. Do you bring PLD or DRK? Well, RoH is equivalent to Delirium in value. But THEN it has DV, Clemency, and Cover, which, while the latter two are iffy to use, they're still better than nothing at all, and paired with DV, are a huge thing to miss out on. DV is easily capable of mitigating (especially now that tanks will have more HP) as much or more damage from the same things Delirium was desirable for, such as Cascade in A3S.

I disagree. DRK having more DPS than PLD, along with the occasional Reprisal when there's a tank swap or the OT has to tank something, is a valid alternative to DV, Clemency and Cover because Clemency and Cover are incredibly situational. You can say that DV is capable of mitigating more damage at once than Delirium because it is, but you can have Delirium up for every single raidwide aoe like Cascade, while DV is limited by its still long 2 minute cooldown. RoH is physical damage only and most raidwide aoes are magical, and you don't really care about reducing autoattacks on the MT (or tankbusters when they already have IB+Vengeance up).

[Syzygian]

I disagree. DRK having more DPS than PLD, along with the occasional Reprisal when there's a tank swap or the OT has to tank something, is a valid alternative to DV, Clemency and Cover because Clemency and Cover are incredibly situational. You can say that DV is capable of mitigating more damage at once than Delirium because it is, but you can have Delirium up for every single raidwide aoe like Cascade, while DV is limited by its still long 2 minute cooldown. RoH is physical damage only and most raidwide aoes are magical, and you don't really care about reducing autoattacks on the MT (or tankbusters when they already have IB+Vengeance up).

So lets say they are roughly equivalent - DRK only bringing a debuff that is easily expendable/replaceable as its sole party-based raid utility (personal DPS is not raid utility) is really.... really bad.

[Akasha_Carnelian]

The point is that it is speculated that the 3.2 adjustments to tanks and tank damage are to bring all 3 tanks in line damage wise. Thus if PLD and DRK are both equal in damage, logically you would take the one that has greater or more valuable utility and this applies whether you are filling MT or OT role.

Having a MNK in the group lessens a DRK's already lacking utlity and when the rest of it's utility needs it to be tanking something to work or engaging in the questionable practice of skirting cleaves for procs when parrying isn't guarenteed.

Paladin on the other hand has a ton of utility that it can draw on and it can do so whether it is tanking something or not. Some of said utility reqiures lowering personal DPS which is fine but will still potentially leave it more desirable for raid group without a monk and even moreso for those with.

DRK players shouldn't need to feel like they are going to be pressured to change to PLD and vice versa just because situations conspire to make one or the other flavour of the month (or 6 months since we're talking aout raiding), but the fact is that regardless of if there are tank swaps or not if damage is equal between the two you are going to want whatever brings the most in other areas which at the moment PLD has in spades whilst DRK has 1.5 things as MT and 0.5 as OT.

And as stated elswhere WAR utility is always going to be wanted even if it's only a Slashing Buff and a -10% damage debuff as if you have a NIN is is less of a loss for the WAR to apply and -10% raidwide damage that can be applied always is quite the boon.

[Brian_]

We go one raid tier and everyone forgets that Dragon Kick was basically mandatory in 2.X progression.

Dude, I understand you have a dog in this fight but saying that RoH is equivalent in value to Delirium is unfiltered stupidity. No sane raider actually thinks that and any educated player knows that Delirium is significantly better.

DV will never, ever mitigate as much damage as Delirium throughout a fight. Even with the reduction in recast, you cannot have it available for every cascade let alone active through every splash, protean, sluice, or whatever. DV mitigates more damage than delirium for a single moment. While they might both fall under raid mitigation, they are used in very different ways. This is why PLD comps will still have a MNK.

The raid leader from Elysium's old team 1 explained it best. In 2.X, people designed progression comps around raid consistency and the ability to deal with any situation. The race was a sprint and having a comp that didn't cover all your bases left you vulnerable. That's the real reason PLD was great and MNK was mandatory. In 3.X, that mentality went out the window because it was all about DPS.

At this point, who knows what 3.2 will bring. Like I said in my original post, 3.X so far has actually forced both tanks to "MT" a great deal. If there is a moment like A4S's 4th leg mortal revolution again that teams cannot survive even with heavily stacked raid mitigation, we might be in a world where teams bring PLD and DRK for Reprisal, Delirium, and DV for maximum raid mitigation. If there is a mechanic like Ravana's Final Liberation dives which you can just straight cheese with two immunities then that might be a thing.

And MT or OT does not matter as long as we're dealing with issues of overall raid balance. You can't pretend MNK doesn't exist because they do. You can't pretend we only have 1 melee DPS comp because we don't. Any discussion about DRK's OT utility has to be done without impacting their overall utility.

[Cynric]

snip

It really depends on what you'd rather have. Delirium is very much replaceable by Dragon Kick, and Reprisal is very much replaceable by Path.

The bigger question goes into the melee comps themselves. Will the Monk buffs be enough to replace a Ninja with one? If you can reliably replace Ninja with Monk then there's no need for Dark Knight at all. Dark Knight doesn't really bring anything special or unique. Especially while being an OT.

And neither Paladin nor DRK can replace a Warrior even if the DPS was brought very close Warrior still wins out in utility.

If you replace Warrior with DRK/PLD you most definitely don't have bases covered and you will probably do far less raidwide damage(your ninja would definitely lose out)

[Syzygian]

snip

You're still failing to make me understand how Delirium alone is considered adequate OT utility. Its a fact that the jobs OT utility is crap compared to the other tanks. It needs a buff. How anyone could argue the contrary, I'm not following.

I heard from patch 3.0-3.15 nothing about DRK OTs other than how bad they were and how they offer no utility. So now that PLD has been buffed, people suddenly don't believe that anymore? Suddenly its utility when OTing is better all better now? How?

And PLD OTs... their DPS was never notably far behind DRK OTs (unlike the MT gap between them, of course)... and due to Clemency getting interrupted while MTing and Cover being more beneficial when directed at another MT, it was not uncommon these past few patches to argue that PLD's utility was better overall while OTing. It brings more to the table, more options, no matter how situational, and none of them are replaceable by a melee DPS.

Sure you can do crap like voking the boss or an add to stick Reprisal up on something, I understand that and I do it all the time, but that's such a cumbersome way to operate. No other tank has to fuck with another tank's aggro or voke something just to have a chance to operate off their max utility.