4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Aana]

No, Warrior was powerful enough to be balanced even before the stance cost was taken away. They still had the highest burst damage, best sustained damage, and best personal defence. At 4.00 PLD and WAR were quite well-balanced against one another, and DRK was behind WAR in optimized runs but was a legitimately good alternative with legitimate upsides in unfamiliar, non-optimized, or progression content. If the only change from 4.0 to Savage had been for PLD to get the slight nerf to Holy Spirit, tank balance would have basically been achieved.

Instead they let Warrior way out in front due to the whining, and so we went into Savage with worse tank balance than we should have. And now 4.1 balance is arguably as bad as it was in 3.x, again due to the whining.

So if whining is what gets things done with regard to class balance, then that's what you're going to see, and you've got nobody to blame for it but SE.

Highly debatable. FFlogs has top end plds doing more damage than warrior from day 1 for the 1st couple weeks. (iirc that was about when they nerfed holy spirit & other pld stuff, buffed war/drk potencies a smidge, removed war gauge costs etc). THEN warrior started doing the most damage after they buffed it, but still don't bring as much to the table as pld. I wouldn't consider war 'out in front' of a horse as fast as pld. Pld was OP as a mother at 4.0 launch. Since then they have took pld down a peg, bumped war up a few pegs and raised drk about the height of a sheet of paper. It does surprise me how much hate there is for war while pld was OP as shit at 4.0, and it hasn't changed much since. Drk should be clamoring to get the war treatment so everyones at pld level, not trying to pull down war so everyone can bask in Plds shadow again.

But ultimately this is just a distraction from:

And Dark Knight is now the worst of the three.

[SyzzleSpark]

blahblah

Launched, you just hate DRK. No joke, I've seen you straight-up admit that. All your posts reflect it, and you have a titanic chip on your shoulder about the job even existing. Go home.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Balance is only, can only, be based in the now.

This reactionary philosophy is what led to the balancing disaster in Heavensward. The devs were constantly playing catch up with Machinist and Bard until both overtook Casters. Likewise, they waited so long to fix Astro that despite it being fairly good in Midas, no one was willing to play it, thus it was overbuffed in Creator. Job balance should always be proactive. They should be looking at why Dark Knight is the least popular tank currently, what feedback has been provided and adjust accordingly. Not wait until the community declares it "dead" and starts arbitrarily locking it from content like what happened with Paladin throughout Heavensward. You can fault reddit, this forum and shout how every job is viable (they are), but people will follow hardcore comps. I would much prefer a proactive stance so we see less jobs being relegated to obscurity like what's been happening to Black Mage.

Granted, a significant problem with the dev team's approach is their refusal to nerf when necessary. Hence why the Heavensward meta persists.

No, Warrior was powerful enough to be balanced even before the stance cost was taken away. They still had the highest burst damage, best sustained damage, and best personal defence. At 4.00 PLD and WAR were quite well-balanced against one another, and DRK was behind WAR in optimized runs but was a legitimately good alternative with legitimate upsides in unfamiliar, non-optimized, or progression content. If the only change from 4.0 to Savage had been for PLD to get the slight nerf to Holy Spirit, tank balance would have basically been achieved.

I disagree. Dark Knight would still be inferior as it pulled less DPS than either of its counterparts, had the worst mitigation options and more than a few abilities that have become straight up useless. (Hi, Dark Passenger, Unleash and Blood Price). A slight nerf to Holy Spirit wouldn't have achieved balance, but just made Warrior the strongest tank again, which it arguably was. Not to mention, the stance penalty was straight up awful. Can't say I wasn't delighted that died in less than a month.

[Crater]

Highly debatable. FFlogs has top end plds doing more damage than warrior from day 1 for the 1st couple weeks.

Day one yes, couple weeks no. WAR had pulled ahead pretty definitively by the time any balance adjustments were made, albeit by a very small margin (which is why I think the HS nerf was good, but not the stance penalty change, the IR cost drop, or the Storm's Path buff). The HS nerf would have made that margin clear, without taking away the elements of WAR's initial SB design that kept its offensive and defensive power in check.

Regardless though, yes I agree that this is a tangent and distraction from the actual topic at hand.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Let's be honest, while most of us are mad, the main reason we're mad, is because SE didnt even slightly mention DRK needed a fix.
If they said "we see an issue, and will look into it, but didnt actually do anything until 5.0, MOST (not all) players would shut up about it.

Stopping for a sec to mention Unleash vs AD.
Using unleash for threat instead of DPS, would be fine, if unleash was 100% useless.
Before one was sustained DPS for MP cost, and added threat.
The other was DPS burst, with an options to heal for even more ineffective MP cost.

It was clunky, but we made it work.
We asked for it to be less clunky.

Now its even more clunky, in that the heal is so much less, its pointless to even do.
Its no longer the MP ineffective burst DPS, its the basic DPS rotation/spam for MP effectiveness.

And unleash is just pointless.

If Unleash didnt have an MP cost, it would have its clunky place back. (still needs fixed)
If AD didnt have threat on it, it would be the DPS AoE after we establish threat. A slightly better fix, that none of us want, to making unleash useful.

Lastly, AD honestly needs a potency increase with DA. This 100% replaces why we even currently have DP.

Which pretty much needs removed, or changed.

DP giving blind was always clunky, as we were supposed to be getting MP back for being hit.
While i can think of multiple ways to make the ability better, in the end, its almost always clunky, unless it straight up lowers dmg dealt by enemies directly, like reprisal.

(which is why I think the HS nerf was good, but not the stance penalty change, the IR cost drop, or the Storm's Path buff).

Honestly, they didnt need to nerf HS so much as buff Storms Path, and then they would need to buff up DRK.
As the SP upgrade was "semi" needed for the non WARs having to deal with WARs who like to only spam butchers block, because they only like seeing potency.
So comparing the HS nerf, to the SP buff, id easily pick the SP one.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

If we talk about brutal numbers of stuff's statistics they're no difference between the 3 tank

But, cause their game play change, everything about their efficiency can be quite unbalanced. So I'll make some suggestions for the DRK to be more useful in a party.


Let's suggest this : Paladin got an effective way to reduce damage for the party, and War can create shield. Why not something that heal everyone on a little amount?

Sole Survivor : Inflict a drain effect on the target that restore 2% max hp of the attacker, 10 sec duration, CD 120sec

I think that will be quite balanced, the heal efficiency will be more effective on melee class, but still effective for distance one. In a way to calculate 2% max hp is more or less 600 hp for a dps (I take an average of 30k hp)


Now there's an other problematic, Shadow wall and the inexplicable 3 minute CD.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Shadow wall : reduce damage taken by 35%, duration 15 sec. CD 120sec.

This way, we're in the middle of War and Paladin, we mitigate a little bit more than a War for the same duration, but we don't counter attack, I think this is quite balanced with the War.

Now we still have a skill that don't really work : Dark passengers

Dark passenger : Area of effect in the front of the DRK, that inflict damage. Dark Art : reduce damage of monster by 10% 5 sec duration, Mp cost 1200, Potency 170/260 DA, CD 50 Sec.

This way Dark passenger cost less, is more powerful And got a useful utility for the DRK. I think this way the CD must be a little longer cause the damage is increased, so it make sense to have 50 sec instead of 30 sec. And the little difficulty is the Dark art version to place on a wide raid damage, so that make challenge.

Don't hesitate to respond for this suggestion. But I think this little change make the DRK more valuable in party

[Eyvhokan]

I would be wary of having the Potency of a damage reduction ability be a gain over Dark Arts as I would be then inclined to cast it on cooldown instead of when needed.

I would probably put the potency at 70/210 (with 1200 base cost). Always a gain vs. 2+ targets, but against one it breaks even so we can slip it in between Dark Arts when needed.

[Chrono_Rising]

..Long quote...
Fundamental job reworks are exceptionally rare. The last one we got was 2.1 war, and that was only because there was a grand canyon chasm of difference between pld/war at that time. Things are 'close' now. We aren't going to get fundamental job reworks when the jobs are this close. Redesigns are only realistically used when jobs are beyond help or an expansion. We aren't getting an entire drk rework. We can, and will, get minor tweaks.

Getting back on track with our discussion, I agree any massive job changes are things which I don't think can be implemented quickly. I think there are some interesting suggestions that could be changed going into 5.0, and I think developing those expansion type of ideas now is a good thing.

Part of this difficulty is that it is hard to tell what exactly can be tweaked and what needs a full patch cycle (4.0 to 4.1) to accomplish. I draw the line here at adding a new effect being something which will take at least a patch cycle to change (like shake it off). Changes to delirium, sole survivor, and adding a blood price effect to shadow wall fall into this category. I think these are necessary changes but may take time. Just knowing the developers are working on something would be enough to hold most people over imo.

In the unquoted part of your post you mentioned darkside being direct changes. I think the most helpful direct changes (other than DS changes which I feel fairly strongly should not be done) on something which can be tweak is the cooldown on blood weapon and blood price. Bringing these down to 30 seconds would have the highest impact changes to our job as it directly effects how often we can use dark arts and bloodspiller. Though not as powerful as a 7% overall boost, it goes part of the way to closing the gap. Increasing dark passenger damage (I think 300 - 400 potency would be a fair comparison to circle of scorn) or lowering mana consumption, lowering the cooldown on shadow wall, and for TBN lowering the mana cost or increasing the blood returns and lengthening the duration do not seem like changes which should not take long to put into the game but would help close the dps gap between dark knight and the other tanks as well as improve its mitigation.

[Chrono_Rising]

Shadow wall : reduce damage taken by 35%, duration 15 sec. CD 120sec.

This way, we're in the middle of War and Paladin, we mitigate a little bit more than a War for the same duration, but we don't counter attack, I think this is quite balanced with the War.
...

I like the idea, but I would rather have an extra source of mana regeneration. Warrior gets a counter attack, I believe dark knight having a blood price effect on this move makes sense and balances the skill out more than the extra mitigation.