My personal changes to DRK/PLD

[Katana190]

Disclaimer I am not a video game designer so everything put in here is 'MY' idea of how to balance the tanks up to WAR standards.

PLD

Shield Oath/Sword Oath - No Longer on the GCD, has been put on the oGCD with a 10 second recast timer. MP Requirement still there.

Sheltron - Can be used to either 100% block the next incoming attack (Vanila) or to make the next spell uninterruptible. Also while active allows the use of Shield Swipe, even if you haven't blocked. (OT Friendly)

Clemency - oGCD with 30s CD. still uses the same MP. Cure Potency of 1200 and TP restoration of 200. If cast on another party member the effect is halved on you also, like Vanila, but this time you'll get half the TP which is 100TP back

Circle of Scorn - Now on the GCD, same potency which is 100, but DoT is taken away. Uses TP or MP, I think TP would be the way to go to create self Clemency synergy.

Flash - Is now on the oGCD! same effect and MP usage as before, with a CD of something like 15-20s maybe more? maybe less. This will help with AoE and Single target aggro a lot, would be very handy on tank swaps and the such. Almost would say it might be worth Cross Classing now.

Divine Veil - Give me a visual animation when it's proc'ed to show it's radius, similar to deployment tactics.

DRK

Grit - No Longer on the GCD, has been put on the oGCD with a 10 second recast timer. MP Requirement still there.

Dark Dance - Dark Art's effect now just doubles the parry rate and grants a unique buff to 100% parry the next incoming attack to create synergy with Reprisal. This or do the same with how I want Sheltron to work, allow the use of Reprisal upon activation of Dark Dance. Making it OT friendly

Dark Passenger - Dark Art's effect now silences rather then blinds, make that emphasis on DRK being the mage tank more apparent.

Shadow Wall - Once active, along with the 30% mitigation, gives an MP refresh while active and negates Dark Side's draining effect while active, make this more unique then a watered down Sentinel.

Blood Weapon - Allowed to use while inside Grit. Who uses Grit anyways? (I've always been argued for this one, maybe it would be broke?)

Sole Survivor - Along with the HP and MP you get, restore 20% of TP as well, which would be 200TP


My Counter arguments!

The whole oGCD thing would make DRK/PLD too powerful!?
Now... I main WAR, I love WAR. But the argument WAR's make that the Grit/SwO/ShO on the oGCD wouldn't be fair to WAR because they don't get an instant 20% mitigation. Now although this arguement does have this point, is that point entirely true? Yes DRK/PLD's get instant 20% mitigation, but if you're sitting on 5 stacks and you go Defiance, BAM! Inner Beast self-heal for 100% of the damage done, 20% mitigation for 6 seconds and instant access to a 1200 self-heal.

DRK's DA'ed Dark Dance and DA'ed Dark Passenger is a really good combo in dungeons, why change that?
Yes, it's a great combo in dungeons if you've already used Blood Price and ran out of CD's. Dodging everything is very satisfying. But this shouldn't be the case, you shouldn't have that kind of synergy only work in a dungeon, jobs should be designed for raids, and in turn, work great outside them. Not the other way around.

Aren't you giving PLD too much utility?
Maybe... but it's still the most overshadowed tank! giving it a means to restore party members TP would be very desireable.

DRK is drowning in TP now...
So is WAR?

I might edit this some more, I've had these thoughts and ideas in my head for a while, I want to know what you guys think though, are theses changes too much? please be constructive if so. Would love feedback on this!

Edit: Just to clarify I made this thread to get my idea's just out there, I know some of them might not be the best or the most balanced/needed but SE isn't going to take what I say anyways so it's really just for fun.

Edit 2: I know some of this wouldn't even solve the essential need of a WAR, it's more to bring up the 2 tanks to WAR's standards. Unfortunately it's hard to replace WAR while it still reserves the slashing debuff. Although I think in 4.0 this will be addressed. And yes... the Slashing debuff, I know Path is a brilliant skill but having a PLD/DRK would bring Reprisal and Divine Veil. This is why the slashing debuff is such an important aspect of having a WAR, and I truly look forward to how they'll address this in 4.0. (Probably just give all tanks a slashing debuff... )

[MagiusNecros]

I stopped reading once I read "jobs should be designed for raids".

[Lovescake]

I stopped reading once I read "jobs should be designed for raids".

thank you for your valuable input.....

hilariously enough, why base a job around dungeons when the main end game is literally the raids, which the jobs are already tweaked and designed around anyway? WHAT A HUGE. COINCIDENCE.

[MagiusNecros]

thank you for your valuable input.....

hilariously enough, why base a job around dungeons when the main end game is literally the raids, which the jobs are already tweaked and designed around anyway? WHAT A HUGE. COINCIDENCE.

You base a job around Dungeons, Trials and Raids, ergo the whole game. Not just a part of it. And even then OP doesn't even solve DRK's OT issues in the face of a Monk. Wants to give DRK a TP restore it doesn't even need and wants to get rid of one of the most fun things about DRK which is evasion boosts. You'd think someone who wants changes would focus on more Grit only effects instead of QoL changes they change little for overall team composition.

By making Flash oGCD I guess PLD's will have even more reason to complain about Aggro generation at lower levels. Good suggestion for sure.

[Katana190]

You base a job around Dungeons, Trials and Raids, ergo the whole game. Not just a part of it. And even then OP doesn't even solve DRK's OT issues in the face of a Monk. Wants to give DRK a TP restore it doesn't even need and wants to get rid of one of the most fun things about DRK which is evasion boosts. You'd think someone who wants changes would focus on more Grit only effects instead of QoL changes they change little for overall team composition.

By making Flash oGCD I guess PLD's will have even more reason to complain about Aggro generation at lower levels. Good suggestion for sure.

Your a funny one. Not a single piece of constructive criticism just stupid nitpicking. If you actually read my post, which you said you wouldn't but mentioning the PLD change proves you have read it.
You would of seen that I clearly state when you design a job around raiding it goes hand in hand with everything else. If you give a job "RAID Utility" It generally translates into dungeons and trials as well.

The funnest part of DRK is the evasion? Do you literally just play DRK in dungeons and nothing else? The fun part of DRK is managing your MP, mitigating damage like a boss and doing a lot of DPS while at it. The evasion aspect is literally the worst part of DRK's toolkit. It's a last resort at most, even then your 2nd blood price will be up by the time there is even a need to do the whole DA Dark Dance + DA Dark Passenger. This creates a bad synergy with it's own toolkit not even cross classed with another job, this isn't right.

Maybe if you used your imagination and not take what I say without making obvious adjustments you wouldn't of even made such a silly post. I should of made it more clear but I thought people would think, if you swapped Circle of Scorn with Flash then obviously give Circle of Scorn at level 10 or whatever and just make flash the Job Quest skill (Making it exclusive to PLD and removing it from the Cross Class section) not the most satisfying acquirement but it would really amp up the PLD AoE.

Edit: The Delirium thing as well? Stuff like this would have to be saved for 4.0, I couldn't personally change anything about WAR's spot in general until new skills are added. This thread was just to get my idea's out there, but obviously that was stupid of me.

[FeliAiko]

I'll be kinda brief in my responses to these suggestions:

PLD

- oGCD stances should never be a thing for DRK/PLD IMO. What I'd prefer is to give them extra, stance-specific effects on certain skills instead. DRK has this currently with Grit-Souleater (even then it's not that impressive, however) so a move in that direction would help differentiate things between the 3 tanks.

- Sheltron just needs to provide TP, period. Just seems odd that a physical only CD doesn't provide a physical based resource, but magic instead.

- Wouldn't mind Clemency being oGCD (not with the TP gain though, too similar to Equilibrium). Flash and CoS changes... eh. Would rather just see Flash do damage instead if it came to it. Nothing major (like 50pot or something) but enough to aid PLD in AOE situations a bit more.

- Veil suggestion is cool, no harm there I guess.

DRK

- Co-sign having DA DD increase parry rate.

- An AoE silence? No, the blind effect is fine. Besides even if you made it a silence, no DRK would waste MP on it when other silence users can do theirs for free.

- MP refresh how? Like Blood Price or Shroud/LA? Either way Shadow Wall does need something more than being a Sentinel-lite. Not sure if this suggestion is the answer though.

- There has to be some kind of trade off for making BW available under Grit. Keeping it as is would probably make the Job broken.

- Do DRK even have TP issues for Sole Surivor to get changed like this? Yes WAR getting a mini Invigorate was silly but you can't use that as reasoning to give another Job something it doesn't need.

In conclusion, these suggestions give me the impression that you just want DRK/PLD to be another flavour of WAR, instead of emphasising their own individual elements to make them stand out more. I get that this is your wishlist of what you'd want, but it nonetheless suffers from the same problems these kind of threads get: it doesn't address the things that should be changed, but simply what you want changed, because reasons.

[Katana190]

I'll be kinda brief in my responses to these suggestions:

PLD

- oGCD stances should never be a thing for DRK/PLD IMO. What I'd prefer is to give them extra, stance-specific effects on certain skills instead. DRK has this currently with Grit-Souleater (even then it's not that impressive, however) so a move in that direction would help differentiate things between the 3 tanks.

- Sheltron just needs to provide TP, period. Just seems odd that a physical only CD doesn't provide a physical based resource, but magic instead.

- Wouldn't mind Clemency being oGCD (not with the TP gain though, too similar to Equilibrium). Flash and CoS changes... eh. Would rather just see Flash do damage instead if it came to it. Nothing major (like 50pot or something) but enough to aid PLD in AOE situations a bit more.

- Veil suggestion is cool, no harm there I guess.

DRK

- Co-sign having DA DD increase parry rate.

- An AoE silence? No, the blind effect is fine. Besides even if you made it a silence, no DRK would waste MP on it when other silence users can do theirs for free.

- MP refresh how? Like Blood Price or Shroud/LA? Either way Shadow Wall does need something more than being a Sentinel-lite. Not sure if this suggestion is the answer though.

- There has to be some kind of trade off for making BW available under Grit. Keeping it as is would probably make the Job broken.

- Do DRK even have TP issues for Sole Surivor to get changed like this? Yes WAR getting a mini Invigorate was silly but you can't use that as reasoning to give another Job something it doesn't need.

In conclusion, these suggestions give me the impression that you just want DRK/PLD to be another flavour of WAR, instead of emphasising their own individual elements to make them stand out more. I get that this is your wishlist of what you'd want, but it nonetheless suffers from the same problems these kind of threads get: it doesn't address the things that should be changed, but simply what you want changed, because reasons.

I like this comment because it's very constructive, so I appreciate it. Although the things I still nitpick is the Blind is not fine, an AoE silence will be extremely viable, and not even broken. the Sole Survivor thing was just a thing which isn't too important, It's just triggering how odd the TP looks when playing DRK... I believe giving Shadow Wall an MP refresh will give it a lot more flavour and can't think of what else you would give it (Yes Shroud). The PLD thing was more for Aesthetics, the flash animation doing damage just looks silly, although I wouldn't mind it. Please change the animation and name, maybe trait it "Holy Flash", dealing holy aspected damage. I disagree with your last point as well, I am in no way trying to just make them WAR clones. For PLD you can see I emphasis on giving them more Utility, as that's the type of Tank PLD is. For DRK I emphasis on getting rid of the evasion as it's not needed, creating OT friendly mechanics (Because jobs based on OTing and MTing is just bad, all 3 tanks should be able to MT and OT at the same effectiveness with different pro's and con's.) I also emphasis more on the "magic tank" due to silencing... Idk why silencing on DRK wasn't a thing.

[Sarcatica]

4.0 should be exciting with the thorough changes that have been promised (I hope? SE pls).

None of these changes you desire addresses how a tank relates to the other tank. This is the 2 tanks slots we are talking about. When you give classes too much utilities, they get abused heavily. See SCH and WAR. These are the 2 jobs currently very prominent in the raid up till now.

Let's see about how we evaluate the real changes that SE might think. Every raid tier is heavily tuned by how much the current jobs can do. Taking utilities away will inevitably make the said jobs easier thus SE will have to tune the difficulty again. Likewise, you overload utilities, damage output blablabla and guess what? The need to perfectly do your utilities to the dot or you cant survive the said mechanics. Bosses' HP will have to be higher if the potential damage output from the jobs is really high.

TLDR: removing/releasing powerful skills will affect how the raid will interact with you. Especially more relevant to how fast a raid tier is first cleared.

If you see the current Creator Savage, people might think it's easy to clear. Sure, easy to clear in full i270. In full i250 however? SCH and WAR are just too powerful for any team not to bring to tackle a new raid tier due to the amount of damage you take in such a low ilvl environment.

[Sarcatica]

wants to get rid of one of the most fun things about DRK which is evasion boosts.

Is evasion really that fun to play around? That is IMO at the same level of usefulness as Parry. Dem RNG rolls. Can I please evade a tank buster, SE pls? Anyone?

[FeliAiko]

Snip

A few things that gave me the 'another flavour of WAR vibe':

- oGCD stances, right down to the recast times. Same as WAR, except PLD/DRK ones would cost MP (yet when put side by side with WAR, would end up putting WAR at a disadvantage).

- oGCD TP refresh (Clemency), just like Equilibrium. Yes, you also included how PLDs can also get it through using it on others but I see that as just tacking it onto Clemency's current effect regarding HP.

- Your Shadow Wall idea reminded me of Unchained (nullification of a stance's penalty), plus the three-tiered element of it (mitigation, stance penalty nullification, MP refresh) gave me a Vengeance vibe (mitigation, +1 Wrath/Abandon, autoattack damage reflection)

Nonetheless, I didn't come here to nitpick, it's just the impression I got from seeing some of your suggestions.

Although the things I still nitpick is the Blind is not fine, an AoE silence will be extremely viable, and not even broken.

In what meaningful scenario would an AoE silence be valid, outside of say PvP? It's worth noting that MNKs have an AoE silence yet it's been nowhere close to being viable (unless as a desperate last resort tactic).

Now I wouldn't be opposed to DP becoming a silence, but if that happened then I'd expect the ability to become a free cost, single-target oGCD (like the majority of silences in this game are), along with the DA modification removed (or changed accordingly). Heck, they could take the silence from Spirit's Within and replace that with a SwO-only additional effect.

I believe giving Shadow Wall an MP refresh will give it a lot more flavour and can't think of what else you would give it (Yes Shroud).

Thing is, DRK already has Blood Price, Blood Weapon, C&S, and even comboed Syphon Strike as MP-sustinance options, so I don't think they need a Shroud equivalent on top of that.

Regarding Shadow Wall as a whole, I was thinking that DRK could get a reflect-type ability (to highlight their 'magic gimmick' theme) added to it, then realised that it would be like Vengeance (unless they downgraded Vengeance to have only 2 effects in response).

I disagree with your last point as well, I am in no way trying to just make them WAR clones. For PLD you can see I emphasis on giving them more Utility, as that's the type of Tank PLD is.

The issue with PLD is that they have quite a bit of utility as it is. The problem is that they're either niche, or only benefit the PLD themselves, so SE can't design content to make them important otherwise it forces PLD to become the 'must-have' tank. The design to PLD should be simple: lowest personal damage but able to raise the damage and survival options of the raid through its defensive options and support skills.

For DRK I emphasis on getting rid of the evasion as it's not needed,

Which I also agreed with changing.

creating OT friendly mechanics (Because jobs based on OTing and MTing is just bad, all 3 tanks should be able to MT and OT at the same effectiveness with different pro's and con's.)

If you're referring to the Reprisal idea, then yeah... I didn't want to go there in my initial post but on the whole I feel moves like that need to be adjusted so they're not revolved around the user having to take damage. Then it would get rid of the meta where one Tank has to be MT/OT etc.

I also emphasis more on the "magic tank" due to silencing... Idk why silencing on DRK wasn't a thing.

Wanting to give DRK a silence (or some other magic-related gimmick) is fine. I just don't agree on it being an AoE silence.