DRK tanking. A little bit of pain.

[MagiusNecros]

Thing is though if you took away the heal you basically discard the only bonafide separate Grit Effect a DRK has which IMO there should be more Grit effects across the DRK's kit.

Furthermore it further cements the fact that DRK has no on demand self healing unlike the PLD and WAR. Yeah you got DA Abyssal Drain and Grit only Souleater right now but in the long run it's pretty garbage. And SoSu is reliant on a target dying to get their essential 1200 potency HP Heal. And just as a weird example the enemies in Hullbreaker Hard that just end the encounter do not proc SoSu...making half the dungeon useless for SoSu.

Really shows how reliant the DRK can be with it's healer.

From the traditional perspective Souleater shouldn't be healing you anyway but since they want Tanks to be balanced they slapped one on it's most damaging combo move under Dark Arts.

[ArdorGrey]

1: "lore" of other games doesn't matter because ff14 isn't every other ff. yknow what other class doesnt line up with the lore of other games? warrior. a master of all arms and armor is now the stereotypical "hulk SMERSH!!". instead of a refined soldier, we have an animalistic almost shaman-like barbarian.
heck, Astrologian doesnt even HAVE any lore from other games. so basically the "lore" point is moot

warrior is an amalgamation of "fighter", "berserker", "pirate", and "viking". They merged a bunch of fairly niche classes into one pretty cool new one. and even if your view of the class is rigidly limited to ff11, they still were best with great axes and were hardly "refined".

[SpookyGhost]

snip

Something that might be interesting is changing the effect in and out of Grit. So if you use DASE while in Grit you get the heal, but if you use it out of Grit it applies some debuff to the boss, a buff to yourself, or whatever. Kind of like how WAR's abilities change effectiveness in Defiance/Deliverance.

[Xenosan]

What if simply the HP absorb of Souleater scaled on a modifier that worked similar to Spirits Within? The lower the DRK's HP, the the ratio goes from 1:1 damage-to-health up to 1:1.5? Just the hit point return scales, not damage inflicted. That at least would pull the heal out from under the Grit reduction, which Second Wind, Clemency, and Equilibrium do not suffer. And it's a bit of a shout-out to the edginess of FFXI's Souleater.

I don't think we're going to see much more reverse-engineering of any job's kit until 4.0 though, tbh.

[MagiusNecros]

Something that might be interesting is changing the effect in and out of Grit. So if you use DASE while in Grit you get the heal, but if you use it out of Grit it applies some debuff to the boss, a buff to yourself, or whatever. Kind of like how WAR's abilities change effectiveness in Defiance/Deliverance.

It could be interesting but like stated while I feel they will look at DRK again come the next expansion I wouldn't expect heavy changes until that time. My only question I'd be asking is why is Souleater the only skill with a Grit effect and nothing else. Seems like a missed opportunity to differentiate the boon of Grit being on or off as far as weaponskills are concerned outside of damage reduction across the board.

But I think the core issue here is that WAR has concrete stances that do different shit and DRK only has Grit. Darkside is more a passive buff. Pretty much Maim as a toggle and lets you use your full repertoire of skills.

[Shurrikhan]

All I've seen on the front page for the past two weeks is "give DRK all the things, all the time, regardless of stance, regardless of MP, at the same time, forever, with shorter CDs, and no forethought required. I don't wanna manage my MP, I don't wanna think about how to optimally use my buffs/debuffs in a rotation (I wanna blind things and pop Blood Price at the same time and then complain about it), screw it, I just don't wanna push buttons period." Please consider what you could be doing to play the job more efficiently and optimally, accept the fact that you are playing a job with a high skill cap and a lot of active thought required beyond the basics of tanking, and either press on, or play a different job.

And admittedly a lot of those—many of my own included—therefore shouldn't be taken seriously. But not all, or likely even most, most complaints are made with the intent or short-sided allowance of dumbing down the job. Some stem from more fundamental questions like "what is the actual opportunity cost of Grit even supposed to be tuned against?" (Because if it's PLD's 2-GCD stance-dance, there are even more complaints in that sector because of how that compared to Warrior's 10s no-GCD swap.)

"Why is Dark Arts set at the mana cost it is, or the AoEs set at theirs, and the mana-generators at their particular outputs? What was the attempted ratio?"

"Is the DRK toolkit is so individually strong that its sum has to be weaker than its parts?"

"Why is the DRK's primary method for mana generation vs. AoE packs built to be in conflict with its strongest mana-consuming defenses (especially against—get this— AoE packs).

If you wonder why these suggestions keep popping up, you need look no further than how you and others tend to answer them—with defensive classism for your veteran set of players (which is right and fine; you are the people actually invested in this job), rather than with the math that might show where the balance really lies and why these conflicts exist, likely even to the DRK's benefit in terms of interesting gameplay and situational/burst capabilities.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

"Why is Dark Arts set at the mana cost it is, or the AoEs set at theirs, and the mana-generators at their particular outputs? What was the attempted ratio?"

The aoes are set at their values based on two magic numbers - 884 and 1768. Most of the Dark Knight's kit revolves around them.

Unleashed is 795(technically 795.6, but the game seems to ignore decimals), or 0.9 the value of 884
Abyssal Drain is set at 972, or 1.1 the value of 884
Dark art's cost is exactly 2x 884 or our magic 1768
Blood price returns 353 MP, or just the tinsy-tiniest bit under 1/5th a Dark art's cost. (19.9%) Unmend also costs this same amount
Carve and spit returns 884MP last time I checked when un-dark arts'd, forgive me if I'm wrong, or 1/2 a Dark Arts cost. same with Syphon strike.
Dark passenger is the magic 884, or 1/2 a dark arts cost.
Blood weapon is the only odd one out, as it requires 7.5 hits to recover a Dark Arts cost.
Grit is exactly 0.75 the cost of a Dark Arts, and is 50% more MP than our magic 884 number (1326)


Dark Arts itself is close to 25% of your max MP (Due to racial stats)

With that in mind, It's safe to say Dark Arts was balanced at base MP at 60, then (mostly)everything was ratio'd around it.

The ratios on Blood price and blood weapon make sense in context though. Boss autos are roughly 2-3 seconds in between, so Blood price will basically refund one dark arts if the boss continues to auto during the whole time. and Blood weapon, accounting for GCDs only, basically refunds you a dark arts cost. Blood weapon's ratio is also lower due to the fact that autos and OGCDs are also triggering it as well, whereas Blood price is strictly locked to being attacked.

Looking at the values, Grit's MP cost can also be looked at in terms of Sword and Shield Oath. They both cost 884MP (Magic number again), and take 2 GCDs to switch from one back to the first. Grit only consumes 1 GCD to turn on, while not consuming one to turn off. Since it only uses 50% of the GCDs, it also costs 50% more to activate at all.

WAR's opportunity cost is 10 seconds of being locked into the stance which can be fatal if fat fingered at a bad time (Due to IB being locked to tank stance) as well as having to sacrifice either their major mitigation tool (IB) or strongest potency move (Fell Cleave) for at minimum 10 seconds, as well as 30% of their damage(Deliverance -> Defiance wise). In addition, a WAR going from Deliverance -> Defiance is NOT at full HP as only their max HP is increased, whereas a PLD/DRK instantly gain the effect of their tank stance from turning it on. If a DRK and a WAR were both at 20K HP and taking a hit worth 23k within the next second, the DRK would pop Grit, be left at 1600HP. A WAR taking the hit would turn on Defiance and unless he had an instant heal or received one, is dead regardless.

Obviously, such a situation isn't exactly common, but it does show that WAR pays it's opportunity cost on dps and not receiving the EHP of their tank stance immediately. How much that hinders WAR or if its even an issue is for another topic though.

As far as Dark Dance/dark passenger Evasion vs Blood price, I think that more comes down to something the player is supposed to be thinking about actively, not trying to tie together. For example, my opener on any Large pack as DRK is to pop a defensive CD + Blood Price, then go ham with DA+ Abyssal. Between the sheer self heals going and the damage% reduction, I've had healers comment on the fact they basically didn't need to heal besides regens. Then when BP's timer is approaching 0, I stop Abyssal to build MP to go -> (DA+DD) + (DA+DP) which usually carries me till the death of the whole pack.

At least in my opinion, it should be obvious that BP works against evasion, so you actively make sure NOT to use it with evasion and get creative with it. Like how WAR can use Awareness to turn Raw intuition from something that would be hellish in large pack situations positioning wise into an awesome CD.

[Mattelot]

I do not agree with people who say that it would make you the worst tank. WoW's Death Knight had abilities that expended health and they were a fantastic tank. Before someone chimes in "this isn't WoW"... you're right, but the point being the concept has been done and worked. You would just have to compensate somewhere else.

[Drkdays]

I do not agree with people who say that it would make you the worst tank. WoW's Death Knight had abilities that expended health and they were a fantastic tank. Before someone chimes in "this isn't WoW"... you're right, but the point being the concept has been done and worked. You would just have to compensate somewhere else.

I agree. Most of my tanking experience comes from dk tanking in WoW where I ran nearly all of the end game content, often during when it was current. It's not like I want to make drk into dk, but the similarities are undeniable and dk is still one of the most fun classes to play. Rather than emphasizing how wow is not FF, why not simply acknowledge wow's greatness and learn from it?

[Kitfox]

Looking at the values, Grit's MP cost can also be looked at in terms of Sword and Shield Oath. They both cost 884MP (Magic number again), and take 2 GCDs to switch from one back to the first. Grit only consumes 1 GCD to turn on, while not consuming one to turn off. Since it only uses 50% of the GCDs, it also costs 50% more to activate at all.

You can't really apply DRK's "magic numbers" on PLD because PLD has a different amount of max MP, making the mp cost a different scale. Grit is ~19% mp cost (1326/6935) while Oaths are ~17% mp cost each (884/5201).