Just because DRK cleared ultimate first doesn't mean it doesn't need buffs

[Crater]

Considering we have influential players like Xeno who, in the interview posted recently, is shouting from the rooftops that utility should be balanced with damage, I feel this is an up-hill battle. That being said I hope some feeble grasp of these concepts reaches more players.

Yeah but Xeno's an actual no-fooling idiot.

His argument is literally "Damage should be balanced against utility, and therefore Dark Knight [who has the worst utility by a mile] should do more damage than Paladin (with no mention of the fact that by that logic Dark Knight should be handily outdoing Warrior)". He's got nothing of value to say because he's a 100% class-loyalist Warrior fanboy.

I'm pretty sure later on in that same interview he goes on to say that Fell Cleave needs a potency buff because Holy Spirit does "almost as much" damage, which is even more hilarious because that just shows that he's failed to apply 4th grade arithmetic to the comparison (Holy Spirit: 400 potency, buffed to 480 with Requiescat and receives no further modifiers beyond party buffs, and also causes you to lose an average of 2 auto-attacks in a 5-HS sequence, meaning that the effective potency is more like 450. Fell Cleave: 500 potency, buffed 20% by Storm's Eye for 600, then buffed by a further 5% from Deliverance for 630, then buffed by an additional 10% from the Slashing debuff for 696, and then at least 90% of all Fell Cleaves fall under Berserk for an additional 30% bringing it up to an effective ~904 potency. And it has a crit bonus from BG.)
He does a similar thing going all QQ about how Warrior combo potencies are lower than PLD, when Storm's Eye and Deliverance give Heavy Swing an effective potency of 189 to Fast Blade's 160, Maim an effective potency of 239.4 to Riot Blade's 240, and Eye/Path an effective potency of 340 to Royal Authority's 360 - and Warrior still gets the crit bonus from BG.

It's a really good example to point to if people ever wonder why you might get a little annoyed by the WAR-main community. The mental gymnastics you have to do to conclude that a skill is "almost as strong as Fell Cleave" when it's literally like half as powerful is kind of emblematic of the attitude that's gotten us where we are today, where casually throwing off a suggestion for a massive WAR buff is justified "because we're only a little bit better than everyone at everything and we're worse at this one thing that doesn't matter/isn't true", but any suggestion for a buff to DRK or PLD needs to be carefully scrutinized by a team of actuarial scientists to make sure that the net gain of the buff is as close to zero as possible, because it's "ridiculous and overpowered" any time one of those classes is good at anything.

If he's "influential" in the game's community, I don't think you can chalk that up to anything other than people not being diligent enough in calling out the dumb/wrong stuff he says.

[Mycow8me]

Playing warrior and drk side by side... The most notable imbalance is self sustain. I can't speak for paladin since I don't play it but I would say from experience with my raid buddy that his self sustain is even higher than warriors. Drk has no self healing whatsoever outside grit so you will be pestering your healer regularly unless SE is expecting us to spam TBN which doesn't make sense as a resource consumer. I don't know how anyone who plays dark cannot see the self sustain imbalances.

[SyzzleSpark]

casually throwing off a suggestion for a massive WAR buff is justified "because we're only a little bit better than everyone at everything and we're worse at this one thing that doesn't matter/isn't true", but any suggestion for a buff to DRK or PLD needs to be carefully scrutinized by a team of actuarial scientists to make sure that the net gain of the buff is as close to zero as possible, because it's "ridiculous and overpowered" any time one of those classes is good at anything.

Yes.

Seriously. I remember in HW I never really participated in these discussions. DRK had problems, but they were balanced out by some very clear (and frankly enjoyable) strengths. But now that we're compelled to ask for some changes, its nothing short of f*cking Sisyphean, even with long rationally written arguments and statistics to back them up, to A) get SE to notice and B) avoid vicious gaslighting by other tanks shouting us down.

And frankly, our suggestions and feedback and how we present them has been going on for so long now without a reply, that you can actually observe the evolution in ideas, and everything slowly getting whittled down to smaller and more modest buffs, and as of recently, not even buff suggestions, but merely threads pointing out problems with no mention of buffs, and even that is proving offensive to some.

[Wyndam]

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

[whiskeybravo]

I don't know anything.. But my speculation is that there is a high amount of magic damage in the last phases which made it better to take DRK. I can't really think of much else other than maybe that guy is just a better drk than he is a war.

[Crater]

And frankly, our suggestions and feedback and how we present them has been going on for so long now without a reply, that you can actually observe the evolution in ideas, and everything slowly getting whittled down to smaller and more modest buffs, and as of recently, not even buff suggestions, but merely threads pointing out problems with no mention of buffs, and even that is proving offensive to some.

Well, to be fair, I think the tone of DRK feedback has changed a lot, particularly since we learned the nature of the Shake it Off buff, because DRK players (other than a few oblivious diehards) have really been forced to re-evaluate what FFXIV class design is supposed to be, and therefore what DRK's actual place in the game is and needs to be.

Throughout 3.x, as you say, DRK's class design was best described as "Some very powerful strengths, balanced out by an equal number of equally powerful weaknesses". If you take the view that proper class design means that strengths should be balanced out by weaknesses, then 3.x DRK is, hands-down, the best-designed tank that FFXIV has ever seen. And I think the DRK community as a whole kind of settled into the idea of being the dutiful middle child, who always did their chores and took their medicine (ie: dealt with their class's drawbacks and limitations) and worked hard to be rewarded; while Paladin was kind of the neglected kid who wasn't given a chance, and Warrior was the spoiled Golden Child who had everything handed to them for free, never had to do chores or take their medicine because they just had no real drawbacks or limitations. It seemed like DRK was in the sweet spot, PLD needed some better advantages to go with their limitations, and WAR needed to be brought down about six pegs to exist in the same world as DRK.

And, honestly? When Stormblood launched, it really seemed as though Square-Enix felt the same way about tank balance. Warrior suddenly had one or two DRK-esque limitations to balance out the crazy amount of power it still had, Paladin got boosted up really considerably but still had to deal with shit like needing two GCDs to swap in and out of tank stance (complete with Gauge penalty and MP consumption) and the fact that every Block cooldown they have has a significant downside built in. DRK was a little underpowered, but at the time, it really did seem like all it needed was "a few small tweaks" to bring it up to par, at least in terms of performance (if not playstyle).

But all of that has just been thrown out the window. Warriors threw a tantrum, and SE said that they don't have to take their medicine anymore. They got a bowl of ice cream when everybody else just got a cookie, and they cried about it until they got a cookie too.

The idea that class balance, at least among the tanks, is supposed to be a system of tradeoffs, with advantages and specializations paired with equal disadvantages and limitations, strengths in one area matched up with weaknesses in another, is just dead. You're not supposed to be the dutiful child, you're not supposed to take your medicine, you're not supposed to do your chores. You're supposed to just get things, and to be buffed over and over, and to see your advantages pile up, one after the other, until you've got a perfect solution to every problem, in every situation. You're supposed to be a fabulous class pick in every party composition, in every encounter in the game.

That's a weird attitude adjustment to have to make, if you've been a DRK since 3.x and you've spent the last 2+ years existing in a world where you're not supposed to have advantages without tradeoffs. And that's why I think the feedback oscillates back and forth between actual 4.0 WAR-esque requests for powerful class buffs, and other threads where DRK mains will actually sit there, do the math, figure out exactly how much a proposed change would give them, how that buff would make them relate to the other classes, and half the time revise their own buff requests downward because they're still in that mindset where it feels like you're supposed to be asking for changes that improve game balance, rather than taking the Warrior route of just asking to get buffs to any skill that isn't useful enough, and to have every inconvenient or underwhelming part of your class kit removed or transformed into something you can't wait to use.

Having the posts with the data is probably useful, because then you can point to it when challenged, and just tell people "There's the fucking proof". But realistically, we all sort of know how this works: SE doesn't do the balance adjustments by meticulously calculating out the per-potency effects of every single change they make; it's based on keeping people happy, and keeping people from abandoning entire classes. Keep asking, keep making noise, keep playing other jobs and contributing to those DRK usage statistics tumbling down a cliff, and that's how you get change.

[Chrono_Rising]

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

Sure, because here is the issue with using world first as the end all metric. How exactly did bringing a dark knight beat out all the rest of the competition? No one knows. Would bringing a warrior instead have resulted in a fast clear? No one can answer this.

Are these players just that much more skilled at learning mechanics?

Did they push phases?

Did they put in more prog time then the rest of the groups?

Did they use a strat that only .001% of players could pull off?

People are putting a lot of weight on the fact that there was a dark knight and not looking at any other confounding variables. We have no way of assigning any, if any, of their clear to their party comp. To be clear, these players are extremely skilled, we don't know how how the job of dark knight proved to be an advantage, if at all. When the dark knight was asked why they ran dark, they just said they enjoyed the class and ran it, not that it was a strategic benefit.

[Reynhart]

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

Jobs are not the only parameter in the competition. And, I think we can all agree that what matters most if how skilled you are as a player, especially when you're learning the content.
The good thing about Unending coil is that it does not drop new gear, so, between now and 4.2, every clear that will occur will be done in the exact same condition. At the end, we'll see how each tank will do and judge the balance accordingly.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Just playing devil's advocate here: The argument has been that DRK is perfectly viable, it just isn't competitive. World first clears are pretty genuinely competitive. Possibly the most competitive thing about FFXIV. If DRK can participate in that, then can we still make the case that DRK isn't competitive?

EDIT: You got a lot of responses before I decided to post my reply lol, sorry.

But you're mixing up "Did make world first" with "Is better at making world first".
It's usually a strong indicator, but as pointed out, if something is viable, then why cant a viable option be world 1st?

And the only reason this argument is presented as such, is because there's literally no way to argue with anything else, as DRK really is lacking in options.

Even the argument of Dark Mind being the advantage forgets that the DA bonus really hurts a DRKs DPS, which only puts DRKs further behind WARs in DPS.

I think you're also seeing 1st clear as the same as a speed run, where we're going to see DPS kings take the spot light.

As other pointed out in unrelated threads, that some groups had to drop out of trying for world 1st, despite being so close, due to RL problems.

Anyways, it's pretty sad that Ultimate didnt actually push tanks to their maximum.
If the lower DPS and lack of party support of a DRK was enough, then WAR/PLDs aren't going to be pushed to their max, since they also dont need to use their party support/DPS. (In ultimate of all things)

[Wyndam]

EDIT: You got a lot of responses before I decided to post my reply lol, sorry.

Yeah, and they're getting edited while I'm trying to reply and then I'm noticing the quote doesn't match the post and I'm wondering if I really need to say anything anyway. I think what I'd really like to suggest is that if DRK's numbers appear weak but it's getting through anyway then maybe we're looking at the wrong numbers. And no, I'm not seeing 1st as the same as a speed run. Speed runs are silly and irrelevant in my book. I'm not equating them, I'm dismissing them entirely.