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

[MikeZulu]

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Yeah I agree in an Ot role Dark Knights cannot utilize reprisal. Dark Knights are best optimized in MT roles.

[Ragology]

In order to proc reprisals while off tanking, would it be practical for a DRK to position themselves in front of the boss? (kind of like how in the early days of " a relic reborn the hydra" the two tanks could split cleave damage by standing near each other)

[MikeZulu]

In order to proc reprisals while off tanking, would it be practical for a DRK to position themselves in front of the boss? (kind of like how in the early days of " a relic reborn the hydra" the two tanks could split cleave damage by standing near each other)

well if the boss cleaves its possible but not practical to take that damage when the healers are already most likely busy. Dark Knights are just better as main tanks. Reprisal is only useful for physical damage too you cant parry magic attacks. Reprisal would be better on a simple damage taken proc or just a cd.

[RecklessLion]

Brian made valid points......a lot of things are being overlooked just because it's not easy access like others. I don't think DRK needs utility all because DRK handles mobs the best, AoE kings as a tank and mitigate magic best so now you want utility for because WAR has utility? Starting to sound like two year old screaming "mine" and "give me". SE is not balancing tanks or any class for reasons it would destroy the game flexibility to reach out and do something new. The game isn't about optimal parties....

[FallenWings]

Random thought but what if, stay with me here, what if you could cast Sole Survivor on an ally, transferring 20% of your health to them. Reducing your health for a pretty good mitigation tool for another person. Cast on MT or cast on a fragile ally. Or cast on a mob to regain the normal benefits.

[Duelle]

So DRK should continue to bring nothing to the raid as an OT? I'm not following you.

The point I was making is that claiming DPS is not an issue and focusing on utility between the tanks is folly. Every aspect of the three jobs need to be looked at as of now. I wouldn't imply DRK should be left to be useless while OT, and frankly speaking group comps should not hinge so much on who is doing the tanking so long as someone is doing the tanking. In other words, it shouldn't matter which combination of tanks you bring to a raid, and all should yield equal chances of success to a raid group.

In the spirit of evenhandedness- DRK's MT utility is fine. You have an INT RoH, and a non-combo-locked, oGCD Path at no cost to DPS (with the caveat of needing a parry, which is not hard to get at all on DRK), all on the same tank, and both stackable with RoH and SP (synergy!). That's good. Its competitive. And you don't need to make Reprisal usable as an OT to fix this (although that'd be the boring easy way out that SE would undoubtedly gobble up, and the most common (uncreative) suggestion people seem to make), otherwise I'd have named it "Dear Square-Enix: You Forgot About Making Reprisal Usable As An Off-Tank", but you need to give it *something* else. That would actually make DRK unique among the tanks as it would give it different utility depending on OT or MT. Which would be interesting. But I digress.

The only thing I can think of would be to use Dark Arts as a way to bypass the proc requirements of Riposte (the ability would have to be renamed if they went this route). Mind you, to me the ability in its current state is counter-intuitive to how procs generally work so I'd be in favor of the ability being reconceptualized.

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Admittedly, putting such focus on utility in tank design has proven to not be a good idea. Perhaps we'd be better off if the design emphasized "inward" gameplay mechanics and simply got rid of debuffs that affected more than just the tank. Sure, in this context it means removing the debuffs from Halone, Storm's Path and Delirium along with making Riposte a self-mitigation cooldown. You'd still have Divine Veil and Clemency to contend with (as a PLD I'd be fine with changing them in some way to create parity between the tanks), but that's for another discussion.

We could end up going the other direction and give WAR/PLD/DRK their own utility and limiting them to that. Have PLD keep Divine Veil, give WAR the ability to temporarily increase their party's max HP, give DRK the ability to temporarily lower enemy damage dealt to the party, balancing the three cooldowns to offer the same level of group mitigation. Of course, that turns into a slippery slope because when you decide to add Samurai, Beastmaster and Dancer to the tank pool, your chances of overlap are pretty damn high.

[Reynhart]

I don't think DRK needs utility all because DRK handles mobs the best, AoE kings as a tank and mitigate magic best so now you want utility for because WAR has utility?

We want something specifically when OT to stop pigeonholing each tanks in a specific spot. Each one should offer something as a MT and something as an OT.
And I'm pretty sure it would please some WAR to take more MT spot when paired with another job without screaming "abysmally suboptimal"