Unpopular opinion

[Ekimmak]

The Triple Fell Cleave at least felt satisfying to pull off, with each hit being an impressive damage number.

Now the fun has stagnated, because Fell Cleave isn't that much fun when it's something you can see six of at a time.

[BluexBird]

The Triple Fell Cleave at least felt satisfying to pull off, with each hit being an impressive damage number.

Now the fun has stagnated, because Fell Cleave isn't that much fun when it's something you can see six of at a time.

I think that's a bit harsh, considering how hard it is to land 6 Fell Cleaves in most fights. You have to find the right times when you're able to pull off your full Inner Release combo. You'll often have to hold onto it for a while, or go with a lesser version of the combo.

This doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see something else, but I definitely think the way things are now is better than just doing 3 Fell Cleaves.

[Phoenicia]

But I feel like it was the same during HW, only with a Berzerk window.

There is a huge difference between the Triple Fell Cleave combo vs. today's Hexa Cleave.

Heavenward's Triple FC Rotation:
1.5 minute CD, required 4 stacks as Zerk generated the 5th, 1 stack generating CD (RI aligns perfectly) and Infuriate (which is delayed by 50% of its CD). Outside of this window, you liberally FC at 5 stacks. And since the stacks were on a timer, you wanted to spend them anyways.

In this scenario, Berserk was stronger, the majority of your DPS graph is high with even higher spikes. The disparity between the low points and the high points exists, but isn't too big that the loss of a berserk window wouldn't suddenly kill your DPS.

Stormblood's Hexa Cleave:
2 Minute CD, Need 100 Guage available, Infuriate, 1 GCD to fit in Upheaval, and outside of your berserk you CANNOT spend gauge on Fell Cleave as you barely generate enough to have 120, 20 of which is reserved for Upheaval.

In this scenario, your DPS graphis really low, with very high spikes. The disparity between your low point and high point is much higher to the degree that losing any of hte high points lowers your overall DPS too much.
___

So the biggest difference between 3.x and 4.x is that you FC whenever available back in HW, but now you do NOT want to touch FC outside of zerk window. Making our average potency out of burst window a joke. Add this with intentionally choosing to use the 20 potency lower combo of Storm Path instead of Butcher Block to generate gauge faster, further lowering your average potency.

This issue existed for PLD in heavensward where Fight or Flight was your biggest damage "burst", but it couldn't save your average low potency. And you personally were arguing with me about this particular point when my argument was PLD's DPS was "fine" and its issues lied in everything else that further caused the low DPS.

The reason why PLD can out DPS the other two tanks now is that at any given moment, it is operating under a heavy damage buff. You're either under Requiescat window where you are literally nuking with Holy Spirit, the PLD's "Fell Cleave" if you may, or you are under Fight or Flight and dishing out 25% more damage on your already higher than WAR base potency combos. You have literally just under 10 seconds of unbuffed damage which you can easily push into down time phases as there is no actual resource that you need to condition well before hand. You're literally bursting the entire fight.

~ Phoenicia ~

[Chrono_Rising]

Ok I'll bite. I'll take it as a fact that dps wise the tanks are about the same now. Lets look at utility, mitigation, and mobility. I'm not a warrior by any stretch of the imagination so I'll just write what I know.

Utility:
Dark Knight
1. TBN: Shield on party memeber or self for 5k to 10k depending on target, frequent usage, dps loss/breakeven

Paladin
1. Clemency: powerful heal, frequent usage, dps loss
2. Divine Veil: Raid wide shield, medium usage, no dps loss
3. PoA: Raid wide mitigation 15% block, medium usuage, situational dps loss
4. Intervention: 10% or more mitigation on a single ally, frequent usuage, no dps loss

This is not balanced. The mitigations are fairly comparable, except that paladin has more and half of them come at no dps loss. Whereas the dark knight will gamble with their dps to achieve less.

Mitigation
Dark Knight
1. Grit: 20% damage mitigation, 18% mp cost 20% dps reduction on GCD
2. Rampart - wash
3. Shadow Wall: 30% mitigation, no cost, oGCD, 3 minute cooldown
4. Dark Mind: 15%-30% magic vuln down, no cost to 2400 mp, oGCD, 1 minute cooldown
5. TBN: 20% shield, 2400 mp cost, oGCD, 15 second cooldown, gains blood if broken

Paladin
1. Shield Oath: 20% damage mitigation, 8.5% mp cost 15% dps reduction on GCD
2. Rampart - wash
3. Sentinel: 40% mitigation, no cost, oGCD, 3 minute cooldown
4. Bulwark: 60% block up on all damage types, no cost, 3 minute cooldown
5. Shelltron: 100% block rate (unless crit) for 24% mitigation, no cost, 5 second recast provided you have the guage
6. POA: 100% block rate (unless crit) for 24% mitigation, costs dps, 2 minute recast
7. Passive block: RNG blocking 24% damage reduction, no cost, no recast.

Not getting into durations, paladin has more but not necessarily better. This is less clear because half of paladins kit cannot be used together do to half of them being blocks. Having been through the first 3 floors of savage I like the dark knight kit more for tank busters, and the paladin kit for all the time in between so healers can dps more. The biggest differences I can see here:
1. Shadow wall is weak compared to sentinel, that 10% is actually quite a bit more when it come to tank busters.
2. Tank stances, grit costs more and punishes harder.
3. Dark Knight has no passive mitigation, imo between tank busters drk is lacking.

Summing up: Dark Knight has more stacking mitigation, but suffers from 1/5th of them being good against only some attacks and having no passive mitigation other than stance which punishes dps harder than pld while simultaneously costing more. Paladin has more mitigation, likely because the CD's on some of them are longer, and many cannot be stacked, but you should have something up most of the time, less punishing tank stance. Magic turns Dark knight does well (maybe better than paladin), physical turns paladin dominates. Dark knight seems to shine at tank busters, but overall paladin feels more tanky between the busters.

Mobility
Dark Knight
1. Plunge: Awesome nuff said

Paladin
nothing

Clearly dark knight is more mobile than paladin, the rush attack is underrated imo.

Summary, Paladin outshines dark knight in terms of utility. Defensively, drk is semi propped up by the sheer number of magical cleaves and busters in current end game (read dark mind), but suffers from having a more punishing tank stance and lower individual mitigation, how this works out with synergy between skills is more difficult to determine. Paladin has more mitigation abilities, many of which just come naturally. In terms of mobility, drk has a clear advantage in plunge. Does this seem balanced? IMO no, it does not. Does this mean paladin should be nerfed? No, it means Dark knight needs more utility to match paladin, and likely needs some defensive buffs to counteract the passive blocking of paladin.