Regarding no DRK adjustments in 4.1

[Aana]

The only people who "universally agreed" on that BS are A) people who didn't know what they were talking about, and B) spoiled prima donna WAR mains who think that WAR being balanced against the other tanks means that WAR is underpowered. At Stormblood launch it was well-balanced against the other two tanks. When Delta was released and WAR's stance swap penalty was removed, it became the strongest tank, because it lost the big disadvantage that was meant to balance out its myriad strengths, which is where we are now.

The only reason that this delusion about WAR needing buffs survived in the first place is because the class's whiny-ass player base spent the last six months tossing out ludicrous suggestions like "Fell Cleave needs to be 750 potency and Inner Release needs to be on a 60s cooldown". It was never actually true.

And you could swap war with drk and your post would still be true. Have you seen the multiple 50 page threads that whine in just the same manner? People overlooking what drk does have, completely downplaying anything good they have going and stating anything that could be construed with negative for drk? Just like this one?

All 3 tanks are within 5% of each other in DPS. All 3 tanks have been shown capable of completing content at the highest levels (FFlogs has all combos of tanks just in the top 10 alone). Pld's party support is frequently overrated as it is largely unnecessary and overhyped in effectiveness (ignoring things like passage completely killing DPS). Drk IS the bottom of the 3, but not by the orders of magnitude these 50+ page whine threads claim (just like you state for war previously)

DPS: Drk DPS it has the simplest and least punishable ST rotation of all tanks. Its dps is also slightly lower potential by a few %. Lowest? Yes. A travesty of this age? Not at all considering the ease at which it is used. SE has even used that exact justification for DPS jobs slight variations in damage. ie: Ease of use and mechanics interference in performing. The relative DPS performance of all tanks fits their model and is not that terribly significant in their current state. Minor adjustments to potency can easily move this needle. No major retool needed.

Utility/Support: Was second. Probably now 3rd. (I have a sneaking suspicion one of the 'unnamed' buffs will be either a %hp increase or duration buff, but that's speculation.) Would not need dramatic changes to current kit to maintain parity.

Personal defense. All tanks have rough parity in stances, 'always up' CDs (IB/Shell/TBN), Same role skills, Immunities, Heavy CD. This leaves:

War: Raw intuition. Strong reliable Phy defense. Short CD.
Drk: Dark mind. Strong reliable Magic defense Still shorter CD.
Pld: Bullwark. Strong (less) reliable all defense on a long friggin CD.
2 high uptime abilities effective on magic/phy. vs 1 longer CD with less reliability that works on everything. Rough parity.

This leaves ToB on war and Passage (when used as a self CD) vs Nothing on drk.

Theres your hole. That's it. Drk is 1 medium CD away from virtual parity with other 2. Tob is weaker than passage, but doesn't stop damage and has a shorter CD. Drk needs 1 medium-ish CD to balance the scales. That's it in defense.
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TLDR:
DPS is within justifiable levels considering the devs approach of fight interference and ease of use.
Party defense: War had zero. Pld has a lot. Drk in the middle. A slight TBN or other adjustment would easily bring drk up to par with war.
Defense: Drk has 1 hole that the others don't. One could argue that TBN makes up for it with its near zero cost, OGCD nature, and absurdly short CD.

The only real problem is that all of drks balance design on defense parity and party support rides on TBN and its a smidge underperforming in both areas. Minor tweaks could easily bring back that balance in both areas and a couple potency adjustments can do the same for any remaining DPS disparity.

Drk is not broken beyond belief. War is not OP beyond belief. Pld has been largely overhyped for what it brings. Tanks are the closest to balance as in any time in history. Yet we get hyperbolic BS about the abysmal state of drk. A few slight tweaks and the world will be fine. The only 'complaints' at that point will be aesthetic. "I want scourge animation! 1 combo is boring!". But on a PRACTICAL level, tanks are VERY VERY close to overall parity. But these threads keep trying to blow minor disparities WAAAY out of proportion.

Calm your tits and wait for the 4.1 notes.

[whiskeybravo]

Theres your hole. That's it. Drk is 1 medium CD away from virtual parity with other 2. Tob is weaker than passage, but doesn't stop damage and has a shorter CD. Drk needs 1 medium-ish CD to balance the scales. That's it in defense.

I made a fairly simply spreadsheet to analyze cd rotation uptime. I guess the result wasn't really surprising

WAR: Vengeance, Rampart, Thrill+Conv, Raw+Awareness, Anticipation
DRK: Shadow Wall, Rampart, Awareness, Anticipation, Conv
PLD: Sentinal, Rampart, Bulwark, Awareness, Anticipation, Conv, Passage

Methodology has WAR using the 2 combo'd abilities per synergy. If we didn't use them together it would be about equal to PLD duration. 300 second rolling CD rotation to find gaps (windows) where there isn't a buff available.

War: 2 windows of 5-sec no buff
Drk: 3 windows of 5 sec each, 1 window of 10 sec no buff
Pld: No windows. Cds to rotate the entire 300 sec

So, yes, I think the key to fixing DRK is Shadow Wall reduction. If reduced to 120 sec cd with 15 sec duration it would actually be slightly better than War with only 1 5-sec window with no buff. I know the cds themselves are not all equal, but I really wanted to find out exactly how much difference there was between having buffs up and not. Obviously this isn't a "real-world" type scenario, just for comparison purposes.

It looked a little something like this: