Oh Square Enix… (A Heartfelt Open Letter To The Developers…)

[Ryahask]

Warrior has the best defensive kit of the tanks by a wide margin - not that it matters much.
Last I checked they also do more damage (generally, though that might depend on the situation).Why does having a strong DoT necessarily matter? The form of damage doesn't really matter, does it? Actually, physical DoTs are worse than other forms of damage because they're unaffected by resistance debuffs and don't work when the boss jumps. Seriously I would like a response to this one because I see it pop up a lot and it's mind boggling. Paladin could have a 5000 potency attack but if it was on a 9 minute cooldown and all of their other attacks did 0 they would suck. I think people would still complain about it because for some reason it gets people's panties in a bunch to see paladin have a hard hitting attack.
You have a Genji weapon so I'm assuming you've completed the raid. When have you felt that Dark Knight has held you back this expansion? I'm not seeing it. Dark Knight is a little weaker than the other tanks and it's boring. It's not a cripple.

I agree that Dark Knight needs some stuff if only to keep it from being so boring but some of you guys are being ridiculous.

Warrior is arguably equivalent to PLD if you assume that they sit in Defiance and use IB frequently.Otherwise, no, they're miles behind. Something to keep in mind when discussing tank stance is that WAR is the tank most heavily punished for being in theirs. This is why their ability to stance dance has never been a real issue. A Warrior in Defiance loses access to their best damaging moves, does 30% less damage on every attack, and loses some % of crit between 1-10. Compare this to a PLD who loses Sword Oath (Last I checked an approximate 10% of their damage) and an additional 15% off each ability while still retaining access to their entire kit. Even with how much less affected PLD is by Shield Oath than WAR is by Defiance, you still ideally minimize time in tank stance always.

Realistically, WAR is vastly behind PLD in their defensive kit. They are vastly ahead of DRK due to an abundance of tools with low cooldowns, but PLD brings far too much to the table defensively. Something to keep in mind that many don't realize as well, is that fundamentally WAR's tank stance is the worst from a defensive perspective as well. This is due to the benefit not taking immediate effect upon swapping. If, for some reason, PLD/DRK need the extra mitigation to survive they can quickly swap into tank stance and receive the full weight of their stance. A WAR swapping into Defiance needs to be healed for their stance to accomplish anything.

To answer your question regarding DoTs you're overlooking a really valuable aspect. A DoT can be applied during a buff phase for your party and it will, for the full duration, receive the full benefit of every buff. Apart from this, DoT's are the most effective DPS tools because in order to be worthwhile they accomplish far more than a single ability ever can. By the nature of a DoT you need to be rewarded for maintaining it, which means the damage potential is far higher. If you want a simple example of thi, let's compare a PLD's Goring Blade under the effect of Fight or Flight to a Holy Spirit in addition to Requiescat.


Goring Blade - 250 Potency
21s DoT, which ticks every 3s for 60 potency resulting in 420
Both of these are affected by Fight or Flight, adding additional 25% damage, or an extra 167.5 potency

Total - 837.5

Requiescat - 350 potency
Holy Spirit - 400 potency
Requiescat bonus Damage - 80 potency
Total - 830 potency

DoTs do frequently work when the boss goes invulnerable, it's about 50/50. It's really inconsistent, but this is just an example of a DoT with only self-buffs. Add the multiple effects that can impact Goring Blade and it suddenly outshines PLD's highest hitting attack by miles.

DRK is far worse in SB than PLD ever was in HW. If you ever agreed with complaints of PLD then, then you should be able to appreciate what DRK is going through. DRK does pathetic damage, lost the complexity which appealed to so many players, lost its niche as the magic damage tank because PLD gained blocking magic damage, functionally received 2 unique new abilities while losing a ton, is unbelievably dull, and provides no valuable utility apart from Darkest Night (Which WAR just got a better version of). Compare this to HW where the only real problem PLD had which prevented frequent use is how cripplingly difficult magic damage busters were to it.

[Freyyy]

Goring Blade IS affected by slashing

Only the initial damage. The DoT damage isn't slashing (just plain physical damage with no type), and doesn't increase with the slashing debuff on at all.

[Brannigan]

Paladin doesn't need to optimize to be optimal

DRK is far worse in SB than PLD ever was in HW

c'mon guys. At least say it doesn't have to optimize to be better than other tanks or something.

[SyzzleSpark]

The reason people are saying DRK has it worse than PLD did right now is because of hindsight, and how easy the content has been in SB up until now. Allow me to explain...

In HW, PLD was far, far more a victim of raid design and fallout from Gordias than it was of its own actual shortcomings. When SE took their heads out of the sand long enough to design a fight without the magical equivalent of a trident warhead every 60-90s, PLD did well (A5s, A7s, A9s, A10s, A11s). PLD wasn't nearly as garbage as people remember it being, particularly after the numerous potency adjustments it recieved, which put its DPS at respectable levels. Its just that there were a handful of fights (primarily the final fights in the tier) where DRK was lightspeed-better, because ~'*`Magic`*'~. Really, after Gordias, DRK wasn't really better than PLD except on A8s and A12s. Every other fight it was a toss-up, with many of them being better for PLD. PLD was really not that bad in HW, period, and before anyone says "but Gordias!" - PLD wasn't the problem, Gordias was.

Fast forward to today, you have people running around saying "every job can clear this content, go home and quit crying" and we have the opposite problem. Instead of content blowing a job's shortcomings out of proportion, we have content easy enough to almost completely mask them. What is gonna happen when another A7s comes around, or just moderately hard or extremely hard content like oh... say... Ultimate?

HW PLD had a niche. A downplayed niche, perhaps, but still a very real and valid niche. SB DRK does not. And with WAR already pushing/threatening to push DRK out of the meta BEFORE 4.1, what has happened now with the Shake it Off buff is basically the equivalent of having given HW DRK a shield and a free AoE Clemency. To be fair, SB WAR didn't really have much of a niche either, other than being better than DRK post-prog due to better mitigation and better DPS. The only argument people had was this flabby claim that DRK brought more utility, which wasn't true even before this patch, but now that 4.1 is upon us, that argument has been given a swig of shotgun mouthwash. PLD and WAR both bring excellent CDs and mitigation, the best and second best utility, respectively, and the second best and best DPS, respectively. There's literally no spot, no niche for a 3rd tank at all right now, and no logical reason for even a moderately serious player to take a DRK into any high level content, for prog or speed clears.

DRK is noticeably behind in every department (dps, mitigation, raid utility) and people are noticing even in the absence of content that holds a magnifying glass over that fact. Contrast this to 3.2-3.5 HW, where DRK and PLD were, if you'll pardon a bit of over-simplication, two halves of the same coin, and PLD only seeemed so god-awful because of raid design and the meta's Gordias PTSD.

I'd like to add that this same power dynamic is the same reason why a lot of people thought HW WAR was broken. Its "well-designed"-ness basically meant that it left no room for PLD or DRK's respective specialties, because the things they did well individually, WAR could do just as well by itself, on top of having its two debuffs that no other job could provide that made WAR a requirement in all raid groups. Contrast this now with PLD, who is probably the current "best tank" and there's a big difference. PLD is *actually* well designed right now. It earns its teamslot because everything it can do is powerful and useful, but yet, it doesn't pack a Storm's Path or Storm's Eye debuff that makes it --MANDATORY-- so kudos there to PLD and whoever designed its current iteration... ...Anyway - DRK got taken along for the meta-ride with WAR-daddy for the same reason PLD was not (sometimes)- raid and content design, and not because of being intrinsically better. I would even go so far as to say that we were closer to balance at the end of 3.5 than we are now. The addition of SAM and NIN's just-as-efficient-as-storm's-eye slashing debuffs would have been all we needed back then to have nudged WAR's mandatory-ness down just 1 nanometer enough to strike a solid balance. Looking back on it now, its amazing how close we came, and how badly it all got screwed up. I miss when we had a god-tank and two demi-god tanks that shared 2nd place. Now we have 2 god-tanks, and as we all know, there's only 2 tank slots in that party list, so if there's two in 1st, there is no second place, only the gutter of RIP.

Today we have the inverse of HW. Instead of having 1 OP tank, and 2 tanks that split the leftovers to fulfill specific themes/roles while being relatively well balanced relative to eachother, you have 2 very good tanks with their own specialties and strengths, and 1 tank that is hot garbage.

[Eliroth-Kaminari]

i was sole survivor DRK in FC untill today. Now im PLD because i cant make my WAR co tank to swich between pld/war all time because i refuse to change.
I quess SQ will get feetback in numbers when Amount of DRKs in new extreme and raid tier drop into abismal numbers.

Most sad thing is its clear:
SQ think that DRK is ok and "Balanced"

Today i ran first time new dungeon whit PLD in stead of DRK.
i was thinking ye sure i cant do AOE dmg as much as i do whit DRK but when i reeched end of dungeon at last boss all 3 partymembers wiped at 75%
and i solo killed last boss from there as pld i was just poleaxed how stupid that is.
where if i were DRK there i would have folowed Party fate in next 10-20s

I agree V1-4 dont force best out of tanks. But i quess Ulitmae savage actualy might do and u will see war/PLD clears more in there.
but allso there is fact that when you run war/PLD comp now whit this patch you gain extra midigation for party what make overall party saftynet bigger resulting survieing v1-4 whit 1 mistake more
that would help midcore teams that have not so consistant gameskill.
That mean whit that small change DRK fell out of midcore raids like that.

[akisya]

Went in O4S as a PLD today with a WAR, Shake it off + Divine Veil for the first Almagest makes it seriously a joke. It's pretty clear that DRK is far worse than HW's PLD atm, seeing as how much mitigation you can get with a WAR and PLD. It's also just ridiculous how braindead PLD's rotation is, not to mention pretty forgiving since PLD's damage output is just so high. Very unfair compared to DRK where they heavily rely on a meta comp to do consistent damage. I'm really hoping SE can see how unbalance the tanks are at the moment, it's really a step backwards in what they were trying to achieve in SB.

[Derio]

DRK is far worse than PLD was in 3.x

The new 60-70 skills make that apparent, and when you combine WAR and PLD group mitigation content becomes alot easier.

I dont even think a developer has commented on a single DRK thread in the english nor JP forum which is sad.

[WhyAmIHere]

DRK is far worse than PLD was in 3.x

The new 60-70 skills make that apparent, and when you combine WAR and PLD group mitigation content becomes alot easier.

I dont even think a developer has commented on a single DRK thread in the english nor JP forum which is sad.

What if the situations such that, they're aware, but realize that if they say /anything/ until they have a fix ready, that it'll just seem like a hollow appeasement and only further rile up the people here?
Could be that they know they royally screwed up with DRK, and they themselves cannot seem to figure out, despite many suggestions being given here (which in and of itself could be an issue), what exactly to do? Whether that be simple potency adjustments, skill tweaks/overhauls/replacements, or a full-on re-do of the job?

Not trying to come off as an apologist, tho I know thats how I sound now.

[Chrono_Rising]

... Something to keep in mind when discussing tank stance is that WAR is the tank most heavily punished for being in theirs. This is why their ability to stance dance has never been a real issue. A Warrior in Defiance loses access to their best damaging moves, does 30% less damage on every attack, and loses some % of crit between 1-10. ...

Minor correction, Warrior in tank stance offensive penalty was lowered to 20%, same as dark knight, but 5% higher than paladin.

[SplittingSkies]

What if the situations such that, they're aware, but realize that if they say /anything/ until they have a fix ready, that it'll just seem like a hollow appeasement and only further rile up the people here?

They were aware of the problems people had with PLD, some exaggerated, although many on here have argued why that was the case yet they got buffs and a rotation which isn't as punishing as WAR if you mess it up. WARs shake it off got introduced way too late after they removed the pacification penalty for using berserk, they were aware of how useless it was and informed the community through live letters that they were going to fix it, and they did. Giving WARs their own stack able version Divine Veil. There have been quite a few suggestions as to how they can buff DRK, some real good ones as well. Yet up to this patch they have said nothing, only to give us minor potency buffs and to "fix" blood price which is still locked behind grit.

I think I speak for most here when I say it would be nice for them to acknowledge the problems with DRK then not say anything at all. I don't know, maybe we aren't taking the right approach to this getting noticed. What exactly did the WAR mains do to create such noise and get things gradually fixed in a short space of time?