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

[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]

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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]

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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.

[Cynric]

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?

The problem is people aren't considering a couple of factors.

Tanks will do less DPS period. A5+ will be more physical oriented(according to the devs anyway), Monk was just buffed, Mch also received a hefty bonus for any comp not using 2 casters.

DRK/PLD is a definite no no. DRG is still very much amazing, there's also the chances of PLD/WAR/NIN/MNK/DRG/MCH, PLD/WAR/MNK/DRG/MCH/BLMor SMN just outright destroying any comp running DRK just for an Int debuff.

If Warrior wasn't the guaranteed OT this wouldn't be an issue, however that is the case and so, you'd have to decide what is worth more when the content releases. Mitigation or DPS.(DRK/PLD comps will bring neither of these in spades aside from not needing a monk for Int down)

[Shurrikhan]

I'll give you a great reason why they didn't make that horrific change.

Monk puts up blunt res down. DRK is doing his combo, puts up slash res down. The int debuff cannot stack, would be too strong, so the result is dragon kick is erased, mnk damage lowered. Then monk uses it again, delirium erased, drk damage lowered.

Starting to see the problem?

You're missing the possibility that they could actually fix their debuff design, such that components within two particular debuffs simply do not stack with each other, rather than the debuffs themselves being considered mutually exclusive.

Or there's another method for this they've already done with Vengeance, if only for ease of design: just split the (de)buff. Delirium applies Int Down and Slashing Resist Down. Dragon Kick applies Int Down and Blunt Resist Down. The Int Down effects replace each other. Done.

[Brian_]

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.

Dragon Kick alone was enough to make MNK mandatory for all of 2.X. That was despite NIN and DRG being higher DPS.

Again, one raid tier was enough to make everyone forget a year+ of raiding meta.

And, one patch is also apparently enough to make everyone forget reality. PLD utility? What utility? DV is their only high impact utility. Stoneskin is good but nobody has ever considered bringing PLD because of Stoneskin. RoH is mediocre because strength down is just not that useful. Clemency is not suddenly good now that it is 1 second faster to cast. Cover has always been very very rarely useful.

On the flip-side, Delirium was the entire reason NIN DRG melee comps became a thing. Delirium caused a job to go from mandatory in progression to being the red-headed stepchild of melee DPS jobs. I would call that pretty damn impactful. Ask all the unemployed or converted MNKs if they think Delirium isn't a big deal.

The reality is again, MT and OT does not matter. The two roles swap constantly in content. What matters is overall raid comp balance. You cannot throw off overall raid balance just to give DRKs more OT utility. If you want to make this argument, then provide an easily implemented and balanced way to increase DRK's OT utility while not impacting overall raid balance. I doubt you can.

[Violette]

Pretty much the long and short of it. Reducing the damage of nearly every tank buster (except a3s) is a massive deal. What OT utility does a drk bring? Chances to drop a monk in favor of a drg/nin. Pld kind of forces a monk for dk.

[Syzygian]

You can't pretend MNK doesn't exist because they do.

If you have a DRG/NIN setup and need an OT, there's no reason to take DRK over WAR. Zero. DRK only competes as a MT. Path mitigates everything Delirium does and more. What serious group would take a DRK instead of a WAR for that role?

The reality is again, MT and OT does not matter. The two roles swap constantly in content.

You're consistently saying this and consistently (and conveniently) leaving out the fact that PLD and WAR don't lose utility from that swap. DRK does.

I'm noticing you're saying all sorts of things about my comparison between DRK and PLD but being very careful to avoid saying anything about DRK vs. WAR for the OT spot because you know that argument can't hold water. If you don't have a MNK, but need an OT that can reduce magic damage, you'll bring a WAR (like yourself... you'll forgive me for pointing that out), because it reduces both, and reduces them by more.

You're also being very careful to not address the topic of a DRK/PLD composition being a complete handicap to a progression raid-group.

A job shouldn't have to hope for a given raid composition in order to be viable or even optimal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEBV_zEM7_M

^^^Here you can see a pair of the bigger names in tanking absolutely rip DRK apart in regards to issues that this patch barely touched and issues that you seem determined to sweep under the rug.

Things were fine when we were guaranteed the MT slot b/c we were being propped up by the nature of the content (high DPS checks, high magic mitigation checks)... but now that's likely to not be a thing anymore, and the issues are no longer overshadowed by PLD's need for buffs.

I understand you have a dog in this fight

What is your dog is in this fight? Are we trying to make sure DRK stays gimped unless content favors and melee DPS compositions favor it? Can we say the same about WAR? Is it being propped up? Should all the tanks not be equally well designed in their own way and able to offer EQUAL levels of (different) utility regardless of whether or not they have aggro at a given moment? Answer my questions instead of just saying "that doesn't matter".

Just because DRK's problems were overshadowed by how horrible PLD was in comparison does not mean, now that PLD has been substantially buffed, that we can just pretend those problems never existed or that DRK is "working as intended".

[Valkyrie-Amber]

PLD was once the underdog.

yep and now Darks want to maintain tank number two by demanding buffs so PLD remains in the sidelines in raids till they overgear just like in 3.1

[Syzygian]

yep and now Darks want to maintain tank number two by demanding buffs so PLD remains in the sidelines in raids till they overgear just like in 3.1

Yeah, I'm happy you got buffs too buddy. You'll excuse me for wanting for DRK the ability to raid with its PLD-bros instead of us both being tied down with WAR 24/7.

Catty bitterness aside, I'd actually much prefer there be no "tank number #" and instead be able to have a 1:1:1 type of thing going on.