Yoshi P./Dev team/Job balance team Please Say Something About DRK

[WhyAmIHere]

Did you get all cross-class stuff from both MRD and GLA classes or was this after Stormblood launched?

I took GLD up to the point where I could get voke, then left it there.
So yeah, aside from deflating whatever point you're trying to make, I did play it in HW.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I took GLD up to the point where I could get voke, then left it there.
So yeah, aside from deflating whatever point you're trying to make, I did play it in HW.

And you didn't get Bloodbath and Foresight from MRD?

[Ekimmak]

Well, he said something about DRK. /thread, I guess.

If anything, we should be angry at the person who wrote the question for him, because it undersells the general consensus of issues people have with DRK.

[WhyAmIHere]

And you didn't get Bloodbath and Foresight from MRD?

I did. Again, what point are you trying to make?

Well, he said something about DRK. /thread, I guess.

If anything, we should be angry at the person who wrote the question for him, because it undersells the general consensus of issues people have with DRK.

The question was loaded, and it gave Yoshi an out to dodge giving anything direct. Bad journo, yes.

[Valdegarde]

While I agree the interviewer could have elucidated on some of the issues better, they did cite possibly the most useless skill right now in Dark Passenger, and Yoshida then didn't refer to it at all. Any time Shake it Off was brought up in the past however, they did respond and refer to it by name. Just an interesting thing to note.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I did. Again, what point are you trying to make?

You implied DRK is supposed to be easy to learn just like PLD when PLD didn't get tank stance until level 40 before Stormblood when DRK was WAY more complicated to learn WITHOUT research(yes I did my research how to make DRK effective at it's role, yes I leveled GLA to 34 and MRD to 26 before unlocking DRK).

[CaTi]

TBH DRK was simple to learn, by design I imagine. I mean even as a first tank if you even bother to do the hall of novice tank missions then you know how the basic tank functions work. If you don't well... that's less on the class and more on the player really. That aside, New jobs should really be pretty simple to learn if they aren't level 1 to start. Throwing a bunch of random skills at someone with no context is usually a recipe for a bad time. And while I wasn't around at the start of Heavensward, I know enough people who got into tanking solely because DRK looked cool, with mixed results even with simplicity of the job for the most part...

... most of whom were pretty groan inducing with some really bad habits. So yeah jobs like DRK should be as simple to learn as the lvl 1 classes. I mean every job gets inherently more complicated when you have the full kit and you're looking for min/maxing anyway.

[Derio]

Honestly, I would say PLD is more complex than DRK. Has much more tools to use and more things rotational wise to do. And has a built-in stun.

Everything is balanced towards lvl70 content. But no one wants to address the big issues that makes leveling DRK a pain as well as running lvl60 content as DRK a big pain due to its defensive kit being stripped. Without TBN all content under lvl70 for DRK makes the tank feel like a wet noodle.

[CaTi]

Out of curiosity what do you mean by stripped? Everything mitigation wise DRK lost can be found on the cross role system. And none of the tanks except WAR at (68 for Shake it off?) actually gain any personal mitigation between 61-69 (discounting intervention because it doesn't mitigate for the tank). Though I suppose some changes to drain skills could affect that.

I do think keeping TBN at 70 isn't the greatest place for it. Although I'm thinking more along the lines of blood/MP management on that one.

[Crater]

Out of curiosity what do you mean by stripped? Everything mitigation wise DRK lost can be found on the cross role system.

DRK lost 35 seconds of Reprisal per minute, completely lost Foresight, lost the DA effect on Dark Dance (relevant for dungeons), and effectively lost Dark Dance altogether, because Anticipation is never really worth a slot in your role skills over Rampart, Provoke, Shirk, Reprisal, and Convalescence.

Reprisal alone was a huge loss (and should absolutely be brought back in its original form), but Foresight was a more important mitigation tool for DRK than it was for WAR and PLD, the DA effect on Dark Dance was a pretty major factor in keeping DRK equal to the other tanks in dungeon content, and the baseline Dark Dance effect was basically DRK's answer to PLD getting random shield blocks.

DRK also lost a significant portion of its self-sustain for AoE phases in raids now that Blood Price doesn't return enough MP to keep a DA Abyssal Drain chain going, and while you can argue that it wasn't an outright loss, the relative cost of mitigation from DA Dark Mind has increased substantially because DRK is much more reliant on Dark Arts for damage, and the absolute cost of mitigation from DA Dark Passenger's Blind effect has increased due to the nerfs to Dark Passenger and Blood Price.

A lot of DRK's effective mitigation in 3.x came not from big-ticket mitigation cooldowns like DADM or Shadow Wall, but from an interlocking network of 'small' cooldowns and self-sustain tools that either augmented or filled the gaps between your bigger cooldowns. The overall effect of TBN definitely outweighs the loss of that network, but when you subtract the loss of those skills from the gains you get via TBN, it becomes clear that the net gain of DRK getting TBN was much, much smaller than you would think from just looking at the skill.


I don't think it's quite accurate to characterize the other tanks as "not gaining any personal mitigation" from Heavensward to Stormblood, either. In addition to actual 62+ mitigation tools, both Paladin and Warrior benefit significantly from broader changes to tank mechanics and to changes in their pre-60 toolkit:

- Paladin being given the ability to block magic attacks was a massive buff to their defensive ability, and in conjunction with that, Sheltron was changed from a flat 30s cooldown to a 50-Gauge consumer with a 5s cooldown, meaning that they can use (on average) one Sheltron every 22~23s (down from 30), and can block consecutive attacks as long as they're spaced apart by more than 5s (there are, for instance, multiple cases in Stormblood where two tankbusters/cleaves are 10s apart, which is close enough that Sheltron can block both, but TBN can only mitigate one).
- The trait for Cover turns it into what is essentially a 12-second Rampart on a 120s cooldown. This is now, first and foremost a personal mitigation tool for Paladin, and a 'utility' skill as a distant, distant second.
- Paladin also gets Passage of Arms at 70, which, apart from its party defense component, is a 100% Block Rate skill for the PLD personally, on a 120s cooldown. Its use is definitely discouraged due to the DPS loss, but in instances where party mitigation is unnecessary and personal mitigation is very important, this becomes a very strong personal defensive cooldown for PLD.
- Paladin can now also use the new Reprisal, which is a buff (relative to not being able to use Reprisal at all) on Paladin but a nerf (down from 3.x Reprisal) on DRK

- Warrior was directly given Rampart in the change from cross-class to role actions. This is an enormous buff to Warrior's defensive capability, compared to the (pretty much negligible given the rest of WAR's toolkit) loss of Foresight and Bloodbath.
- Shake it Off, as you mention, can be used by WAR for an 8% personal mitigation shield, if it isn't necessary for party mitigation.
- Vengeance and Raw Intuition were also decoupled from WAR's stack/gauge generation. While Warrior used to be stuck saving at least one of those cooldowns to use during every Berserk (lest they suffer a huge damage loss), they can now arrange their cooldowns however they like, whether incoming damage lines up with their Berserk or not.
- Same deal as Paladin with Reprisal.

Both PLD and WAR received pretty big buffs to their defenses in the move from Heavensward to Stormblood, between new skills they gained, old skills that got updated, or class/game mechanics that got overhauled in their favour, and the losses that they suffered to the Role Action system were not generally very important to their overall mitigation toolkit. DRK lost almost as much as it gained, in addition to the bulk of its defensive ability now being unavailable until level 70.