4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Aana]

IMO this is not an in theory difference in mitigation, and certainly isn't in the case of paladin vs. dark in mitigation. However, for the warrior question I would need a significant amount of time to collect enough of a sample to show it statistically. Part of the problem is that we still have this pervasive idea of warrior being only an OT which makes collecting a large random sample difficult and in groups who actually swap to maximize mitigation we need to compare boss uptime as well. I don't think there is a website which collects mitigation statistics saddly.

However, you claim that the two are equal (or at least differences are washed out) in practice, have you collected the data already and are willing to share it publicly?

Arguing from experience (inherently flawed I admit), healers generally seem to have less of an issue healing warrior through fluff damage and tank busters, the fluff is primarily physical which warrior has more mitigation there compared to dark knight. We will also need to see how the warrior shielding will be used to impact their mitigation as well. Tank busters are usually big one hits, which dark deals with well, but the majority of the damage of a fight is the time between tank busters, which is usually physical and so dark is at a disadvantage there. Maximizing healers time dpsing is roughly equivalent to minimizing the fluff damage, and dark has less tools to do this than the others.

The real disadvantage comes from turns like v3s where the damage is primarily physical including the tank busters. Dark can make it through, but pld and war are definitely at an advantage. How popular physical turns will be in the future we have no idea. Alexander became increasingly physical damage towards the end.

I have run 'theoretical' models of uptime etc which others have done before comparing CDs. But that's right back to the theoretical. As you mentioned, hard data is rare as FF logs doesn't have a lot of war MTs. But I think that is telling in and of itself. But if that shows war's squishiness out of Defiance, or rather, shows Plds strength using its shield is hard to say. But even in Drk/War comps the Drk is largely the MT.

For my own experience, I ran as war in a war/drk combo for all of HW and start of SB. We then replaced the drk with another, less experienced drk who since changed to pld. TLDR: as I was the experienced tank I have been MT as war for 1/3 (2 we swap obviously) and we haven't beat 4 yet. I think war tanking V3 over Drk makes sense for reasons you've stated. Being able to use Raw Int as a tank buster CD makes life much easier. Similarly I hate tanking V1 for the opposite and wish our pld tanked that one. Were at the point where holmgang may not even trigger and just leaves me in dire need of a heal in the lower tiers.

During progression it was really nice. War in defiance is just indestructible. We can heal, we IB everything, more CDs than we can shake a stick at. But as soon as we got comfy and started pushing DPS to clear and dropping stance, it just became a whole new ball game. The loss of both tank stance+IB for virtually every damaging move hurts. A lot. -40%ish mitigation for nearly every move is just hugely painful while drk/pld just loose 20%. The loss of insta heal equilibrium on a short CD for both oh shit moments and recovery is lost. This leaves us with the basic CD suite that every tank has. We have functionally 1 more CD than pld/drk (ToB) but loose the always on (IB/Shelltron/TBN). I think people underestimate how much padding that constantly available mitigation gives. I like to compare it to: Imagine Tanking as Drk out of grit, but we take away TBN (lock behind grit) and give you ToB to replace it. You could also swap dark mind for Raw int, but that is a pro or con depending on the fight. That doesn't sound very appealing, but that's closer to war tanking in deliverance imo.

Its certainly doable, but think of it this way. War has 1 more CD. But when we have no CD available, that's it. Drk/Pld always have a near equivalent to rampart on demand to fall back on. They never 'dont' have a CD. That easily counters 1 CD deficit and (imo) the shorter timers for that reason. If we turtle tank, war has a very distinct advantage. Defiance war is really just silly tbh. But take that away and I find war to be quite rough as MT. But on that note, pld trumps all tanks in that category by a wide margin. Were really discussing the narrow gap betweemn 2nd/3rd, not closing the gap to 1st.

I also cant ignore that the game is more than savage. War just doing normal stuff by normal players can sit in defiance and be REALLY forgiving and EZ mode. When we talk about top level performance its practically a different game. Does the fact that war has an easy time tanking lower stuff factor into balance at high end speed run style raids? Should it? /shrug.

[Chrono_Rising]

I have run 'theoretical' models of uptime etc which others have done before comparing CDs. But that's right back to the theoretical. As you mentioned, hard data is rare as FF logs doesn't have a lot of war MTs. But I think that is telling in and of itself. But if that shows war's squishiness out of Defiance, or rather, shows Plds strength using its shield is hard to say. But even in Drk/War comps the Drk is largely the MT.

For my own experience, I ran as war in a war/drk combo for all of HW and start of SB. We then replaced the drk with another, less experienced drk who since changed to pld. TLDR: as I was the experienced tank I have been MT as war for 1/3 (2 we swap obviously) and we haven't beat 4 yet. I think war tanking V3 over Drk makes sense for reasons you've stated. Being able to use Raw Int as a tank buster CD makes life much easier. Similarly I hate tanking V1 for the opposite and wish our pld tanked that one. Were at the point where holmgang may not even trigger and just leaves me in dire need of a heal in the lower tiers.

During progression it was really nice. War in defiance is just indestructible. We can heal, we IB everything, more CDs than we can shake a stick at. But as soon as we got comfy and started pushing DPS to clear and dropping stance, it just became a whole new ball game. The loss of both tank stance+IB for virtually every damaging move hurts. A lot. -40%ish mitigation for nearly every move is just hugely painful while drk/pld just loose 20%. The loss of insta heal equilibrium on a short CD for both oh shit moments and recovery is lost. This leaves us with the basic CD suite that every tank has. We have functionally 1 more CD than pld/drk (ToB) but loose the always on (IB/Shelltron/TBN). I think people underestimate how much padding that constantly available mitigation gives. I like to compare it to: Imagine Tanking as Drk out of grit, but we take away TBN (lock behind grit) and give you ToB to replace it. You could also swap dark mind for Raw int, but that is a pro or con depending on the fight. That doesn't sound very appealing, but that's closer to war tanking in deliverance imo.

Its certainly doable, but think of it this way. War has 1 more CD. But when we have no CD available, that's it. Drk/Pld always have a near equivalent to rampart on demand to fall back on. They never 'dont' have a CD. That easily counters 1 CD deficit and (imo) the shorter timers for that reason. If we turtle tank, war has a very distinct advantage. Defiance war is really just silly tbh. But take that away and I find war to be quite rough as MT. But on that note, pld trumps all tanks in that category by a wide margin. Were really discussing the narrow gap betweemn 2nd/3rd, not closing the gap to 1st.

I also cant ignore that the game is more than savage. War just doing normal stuff by normal players can sit in defiance and be REALLY forgiving and EZ mode. When we talk about top level performance its practically a different game. Does the fact that war has an easy time tanking lower stuff factor into balance at high end speed run style raids? Should it? /shrug.

As far as V1S Warrior has an excellent defensive rotation because of the physical cleaves that come before the magical tank buster. Mitigating those two hits is a major boon to healers, and can be mitigated further by using rampart or vegeance shortly after the first one to catch the second cleave for free as well as the tank buster for bonus healer helping. thats good practice for both groups of runners. The new HP shields (which apply to warrior as mitigation) are a helpful addition for healers for the double roar mechanics and other such party wide damage, which depending on your CD rotation can be snap shot and turned into bonus shields at the end.

In Ex death the 16K autos and holmgang basically mean its cheese time for warrior, you can have mitigation up for everything HG the buster, then swap and have your cotank do the same, and then swap back to war and repeat, and this is without touching your new shields which are up for every fire phase again lowering raid wide healing and reducing party wide deaths. The shields are what make warrior really stand out over dark knight in neo.

The game is more than savage, but IMO these issues are a non issue outside of difficult content. Theres no real time where I felt 1 more thing would have saved me in a dungeon. However, on the note of "one more" mitigation I believe with the new shake it off we are at two more now, also if dark or paladin were to fall back into their tank stance, war presumably could do the same and gain access to a oGCD self heal as well as the third mitigation which is IB. The disparity becomes worse bringing tank stance into the conversation not better, IMO of course.

...As you mentioned, hard data is rare as FF logs doesn't have a lot of war MTs. But I think that is telling in and of itself. But if that shows war's squishiness out of Defiance, or rather, shows Plds strength using its shield is hard to say. But even in Drk/War comps the Drk is largely the MT. ...

The final thing I will say about this post, is that warrior is thought of as the go to OT and these prejudices are likely from misunderstandings of wars kit. For all of HW people agreed that warrior was likely the better MT and OT, but paladin and dark knight relied on taking damage for their numbers, and war did not. Therefore to maximize dps warrior became the "OT" while pld and drk were viewed as the go to MT, and going back to Gordias, this was only true for the parties that didn't run double warrior. That was time before LB penalty. This idea has persisted into SB, but there is really no reason for it anymore. Just because the community runs warrior as OT still does not imply that they are an inferior MT, they just likely have held onto the old meta ideas.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

DRK works in practice because of raid design. This past raid tier was one of the easiest in the game. As soon as we get something more on the level of Midas, that isn't overflowing with TBs that are Dark Mind Bait, I guarantee you'd start seeing problems.

I also don't buy that WAR suffers when it is not turtle tanking. All of its CDs have relatively short recasts, and its invulnerability CD shares the same recast as Shadow Wall, whereas WAR's equivalent to Shadow Wall has recast that is a full minute shorter, and lasts 5 seconds longer. PLD and DRK may have Sheltron/TBN frequently, but neither of those will mitigate a TB individually without also being stacked with something else, so you still need another non Sheltron/TBN CD for every buster, i.e. its a moot point.

[Aana]

DRK works in practice because of raid design. This past raid tier was one of the easiest in the game. As soon as we get something more on the level of Midas, that isn't overflowing with TBs that are Dark Mind Bait, I guarantee you'd start seeing problems.

That's my point though. If they keep throwing magic tank buster during fights, then does it really matter that in magical theory land Drk CDs aren't as good? Cuz in the real world, Dark mind is friggin amazing atm. Just like the old days when Int down from Drk was AWESOME cuz virtually all raid aoe was magic and people laughed at silly little halone Str down. But if every raid aoe was phy, Drk would have been in the dog house. On paper the abilities are of equal value. In real life play, there were very big value differences. Sure, SE 'could' stop using magic damage all together and make Drk even worse. Or they could make everything magic and make it more powerful. But a buncha mights and coulds doesn't mean jack when we decide what tank to bring to my raid tonight. Your entire statement is 'what if SE does a thing that makes drk worse! Therefore it needs a buff for the thing that hasn't happened.". Do you see the questionable logic there?

We cant just use theoryland for balance when the real world gives no shits about imaginary fights that do perfectly mixed amounts of damage.

[SyzzleSpark]

Do you see the questionable logic there?

No, because we're only asking for the same wiggle room that every other tank has. Saying that we should can it b/c what we have is *enough* is antagonistic when our competition has *more* than enough. WAR can Holmgang every other crit in o3s and Awareness/Vengeance the rest, having Thrill, Raw, and Rampart left over. The typical DRK rotation in there leaves them with only Rampart left. Its lovely that your particular raid group doesn't decide what you should bring based on what is actually optimal. I dunno how much bearing that should have on balance discussions though. My co-tank back in Gordias/Midas was a WAR that I frequently out-DPSed on DRK, who had a horrid CD rotation, low eye uptime and excessive path uptime. We didn't come to the forums and say that WAR needed buffing. We replaced him.

Its tiresome, that in discussions about buffing tanks, PLD asks for buffs, people argue about it, PLD gets them. WAR asks for buffs, people argue about it, WAR gets them... DRK asks for buffs and people like you come in here and are all like...



I see some questionable logic there too.

[Chrono_Rising]

That's my point though. If they keep throwing magic tank buster during fights, then does it really matter that in magical theory land Drk CDs aren't as good? Cuz in the real world, Dark mind is friggin amazing atm. Just like the old days when Int down from Drk was AWESOME cuz virtually all raid aoe was magic and people laughed at silly little halone Str down. But if every raid aoe was phy, Drk would have been in the dog house. On paper the abilities are of equal value. In real life play, there were very big value differences. Sure, SE 'could' stop using magic damage all together and make Drk even worse. Or they could make everything magic and make it more powerful. But a buncha mights and coulds doesn't mean jack when we decide what tank to bring to my raid tonight. Your entire statement is 'what if SE does a thing that makes drk worse! Therefore it needs a buff for the thing that hasn't happened.". Do you see the questionable logic there?

We cant just use theoryland for balance when the real world gives no shits about imaginary fights that do perfectly mixed amounts of damage.

So we role out dark mind for 1 attack then go right back to physical attacks and that is perfectly balanced. Second, no one is claiming dark is unusable, what is claimed is that it has less mitigation. Using TBN and dark mind for one attack while mitigating none of the damage around it is the whole point, other tanks mitigate and they have mitigation before during and after, we have this one and done button for 2/4 fights, a not at all in 1/4, and alot of usage in 1/4 (v2s). Thats hardly "amazing". If only someone outlined some examples of one tank having in practice better mitigation practices.

As far as V1S Warrior has an excellent defensive rotation because of the physical cleaves that come before the magical tank buster. Mitigating those two hits is a major boon to healers, and can be mitigated further by using rampart or vegeance shortly after the first one to catch the second cleave for free as well as the tank buster for bonus healer helping. thats good practice for both groups of runners. The new HP shields (which apply to warrior as mitigation) are a helpful addition for healers for the double roar mechanics and other such party wide damage, which depending on your CD rotation can be snap shot and turned into bonus shields at the end.

In Ex death the 16K autos and holmgang basically mean its cheese time for warrior, you can have mitigation up for everything HG the buster, then swap and have your cotank do the same, and then swap back to war and repeat, and this is without touching your new shields which are up for every fire phase again lowering raid wide healing and reducing party wide deaths. The shields are what make warrior really stand out over dark knight in neo.

[Crater]

So we role out dark mind for 1 attack then go right back to physical attacks and that is perfectly balanced. Second, no one is claiming dark is unusable, what is claimed is that it has less mitigation. Using TBN and dark mind for one attack while mitigating none of the damage around it is the whole point, other tanks mitigate and they have mitigation before during and after, we have this one and done button for 2/4 fights, a not at all in 1/4, and alot of usage in 1/4 (v2s). Thats hardly "amazing".

There's also the fact that Dark Mind is flat out just not really "amazing" even for its extremely specific, narrow purpose. It's only 15% mitigation until you give up a DA's worth of damage for it, and it has a short 10-second duration even though there are a lot of fights where heavy-hitting attacks are spaced 10-12 seconds apart and you have to choose which ones to use it on.And as insult-to-injury, when those things happen, you basically have to burn TBN to compensate, so you don't even get to pair it with DM.

Vengeance is basically flat-out superior to Dark Mind in, say, v2s, even though that fight is almost purely magical.

[TruebladeNuke]

I waited until after 4.1 released to see if any changes would come to DRK, and before I finally threw my own voice in. But seeing as how no changes came for DRK, I'm going to finally speak up. Let me start off by saying that despite always being a PLD at heart, I actually ended up loving DRK during Heavensward to the point of which I would take it more over PLD during my dungeon runs.

Why?

To some others, DRK was just another damage soaking tank that kept it's own HP up there through Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain combined with Blood Price and defense cooldowns. And while I myself did those things too... to me however... it was a matrix evasion tank. The fact that I could buff myself to having a roughly 40% dodge rate against all incoming enemy auto attacks on large pulls was very satisfying to me. IMO, THAT is what made DRK stand out from the other tanks to me when dealing with mass pulls. But the developers took that away with the release of Stormblood... by getting rid of Dark Dance. And to rub salt on that wound, they follow it up by increasing the MP cost of Dark Passenger. Suddenly, my favorite strategy of tanking as a DRK against mass mobs that was followed up off of the usual cooldowns of Blood Price, Abyssal Drain aggro control, and a standard defense cooldown... was no longer there. I wouldn't begin to really feel it though until I started taking DRK to level 70 after I got PLD up there.

And let me tell you, I just wasn't having anywhere near as much fun on DRK anymore. Oh sure, the new abilities are nice, but they don't help much when it comes to damage mitigation, save for the one you learn at level 70... which can then only be used at level 70. After a few runs of taking my DRK through lower level dungeons again, I couldn't help but feel that something was really off. And then I note the "Anticipation" skill that's sitting where "Dark Dance" used to be... and realize that one of my favorite damage migation strategies as a DRK is completely gone...

After I finally got around to WAR and started taking it to level 70 myself (and getting it to level 70 just a few weeks before Patch 4.1 came around to give WAR more buffs), I couldn't help but note that I was actually having more fun on WAR then DRK. Yes. You read that right. I was having more fun on WAR then DRK. (Mind you, I do play as all three tanks and have fun with all three) Combine that with the fact that I'm a PLD at heart and rather enjoying all the buffs PLD got for Stormblood... that alone should tell you that DRK went from being my top favorite tank to play as... to being my least favorite of the three the moment Stormblood launched. And it seriously saddens me. I can't be a matrix evasion tank as a DRK anymore... which was my #1 favorite thing about the job against mass pulls.

Long story short, I miss Dark Dance. I seriously do. And that raised MP cost of Dark Passenger is not helping matters. With all that said, I'd like to purpose my own suggestions to how to make DRK better in Stormblood. (Mind you, it's still useable in content, and I still play the job. I just don't like what the developers did to it for Stormblood) Some of which I'm about to suggest may very well result in me echoing what others have said already:

Suggestion #1: Buff Shadow Wall.
As it currently stands right now, it's basically just a weaker Sentinel with the same cooldown time. There's 2 possiblities I would like to suggest here for buffing Shadow Wall.

Possibility #1: Buff Shadow Wall's damage mitigation to 40%. This will make it exactly like Sentinel.

Possibility #2 (My preferred one): Decrease Shadow Wall's recast timer by a bit. If it's going to be weaker then Sentinel, it should have a shorter recast timer.

Suggestion #2: Change Dark Mind.
There's only one possibility I wish to suggest here.

Change Dark Mind from "Reduces Magic Damage by 15%. 30% if Dark Arts augmented" to "Reduces damage by 10%. 25% if Dark Arts augmented." (Dark Mind has a shorter cooldown compared to other defense cooldowns mind you)

Suggestion #3: Un-nerf the increased MP cost of Dark Passenger, bringing it back to Heavensward level of MP usage.
I don't think anything else needs to be said here.

Suggestion #4: Add a Dark Arts trait to "The Blackest Night"
"Dark Arts Effect: "The Blackest Night" shields everyone in your party within a certain range, totaling 10% of everyone's maximum HP. Gain 5 points of Blood Gauge for each shield broken." (I considered 10 points of blood gauge per shield broken, but in an 8 man party, that sounds kinda OP to me...)

And now... the big one...

Suggestion #5: Give "Dark Dance" back to DRK, complete with the Dark Arts trait of buffing the DRK's evasion by 20%. Delete "Anticipation" from the role actions and replace it with a re-worked "Foresight". (I have no details to share about how a re-worked "Foresight" would work as of now, so don't ask)

Have I mentioned how much I want my matrix evasion DRK tank back?

And those are the biggest changes I want to see. Heck, I would be pretty happy if they even just gave us back our Heavensward "Dark Dance" back. But I'd be very happy if they took all these suggestions for DRK and put them in as changes for DRK in the next patch... or a little later. (Heh, heh. "Happy" DRK. Is there such a thing?)

Now, mind you, this is just my opinion of course. I did make an effort to not have the changes come off as OP sounding, but I don't often take the time to actually think about how to make skills work for jobs. I usually just leave that to the developers... usually.

Alright, I've dropped my 2 cents. Carry on.

[Llus]

Suggestion #1: Buff Shadow Wall.

Possibility #2 (My preferred one): Decrease Shadow Wall's recast timer by a bit. If it's going to be weaker then Sentinel, it should have a shorter recast timer.

Suggestion #4: Add a Dark Arts trait to "The Blackest Night"
"Dark Arts Effect: "The Blackest Night" shields everyone in your party within a certain range, totaling 10% of everyone's maximum HP. Gain 5 points of Blood Gauge for each shield broken." (I considered 10 points of blood gauge per shield broken, but in an 8 man party, that sounds kinda OP to me...)

DA+TBN with a +5 break would be great, but they also need to guarantee that when you use TBN it gets broken because as of now, AST shields, SCH shields, PLD shields & WAR shields could overwrite that TBN and prevent the +5 per(+40 party wide would be great) (and currently the +50 solo target)

I think the +5 per for a +40 party wide is a fair trade off for an excellent raid utility and that change itself would easily put DRK back into the raid meta before the next tier comes out and won't just be PLD+WAR or GTFO

Shadow wall timer reaaaally sux compared. TBH Sentinel's mitigation is kinda stupid, nothing hits that hard that you need a 40% but let's not try to "fix" pld...
Compare SW to Vengeance same mitigation, hell of a different CD SW +30%, 10s, 180s; Vengeance +30%, 15s, 120s +damage reflect ... yea that's fair

[Aana]

I see some questionable logic there too.

A: You completely missed my point.
B: I have repeatedly posted my preferences for Drk changes, and most line up with the most common complaints, but thanks for trying to paint me as the bad guy using TNG memes. I love the show.

To reiterate:

DRK works in practice because of raid design.

So it works in practice. K.

This past raid tier was one of the easiest in the game. As soon as we get something more on the level of Midas, that isn't overflowing with TBs that are Dark Mind Bait, I guarantee you'd start seeing problems.

IF we get something that we don't currently have THEN Drk will "start seeing problems".

Your entire statement is 'what if SE does a thing that makes drk worse! Therefore it needs a buff for the thing that hasn't happened.". Do you see the questionable logic there?

Did I say drk DOESNT need a buff? Nope. Did I say Drk is fine? Nope. I asked a question about your thought process you expressed in the forum because the process has some logical issues.