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

[Crater]

If the question is specifically in regard to levelling (and 4-man dungeons in general), then losing Dark Dance alone is an unbelievably huge nerf.

For reference, the Evasion bonus on DADD was 20%, and could be paired with the Blind on DADP. In effect, that amounted to a 25-30% chance to mitigate 100% of the damage of every single incoming hit - and a 30% chance to reduce any damage that didn't get dodged by 20%.

That's a 30-35% mitigation combo, for 20 seconds, on a 60 second cooldown.

It's a bigger nerf than if they just deleted Vengeance from the game entirely. And they got nothing in return before 70.

[sonatahi]

This balance between the three tanks does not seem like some ingenuity from the development team. It felt like the balance was unintentional in the between time of the developers trying to readjust the skills of the jobs of each tank. When they were seeing that the tanks' damage output were relatively the same, they gave each tank a defensive skill to use, said, "It's perfect!", and left. They left the tanks with many design flaws that will never be fixed, especially how too strong Paladin is and how Dark Knight feels incomplete. There's nothing legitimizing Paladin to be that stronger than Dark Knight.

[CaTi]

30-35%? I mean it's all hypothetical but if that's true then, well pretty sure we know why that went out the window.

And Chrono you can remove foresight from that equation as that was a skill available to all 3.

Meh it probably shouldn't be as solid as it is presently but what are you referring to when you talk about strength? Tank stuff yup, sure. If we're talking DPS... well that's a problem the community has exacerbated themselves and I certainly wouldn't expect Devs to be in any rush to balance around that nor have any sympathy now that it's turned around.

[Chrono_Rising]

Even with it removed Cati I believe you have been presented with multiple reasons for why HW dark might have felt much better in leveling than current Dark Knight regardless of whether or not some things needed tweaking.

[CaTi]

True I have. But that doesn't mean I agree any of those reasons have matched up with the level of griping going down over this you know? But nevertheless I've gone about as far as I can reasonably go in this subject and I'm not looking to pick a fight or anything. So thanks to the people in this thread for being pretty level headed in their replies. Hopefully you get something soon, all 3 tanks balanced is a good thing!

[Crater]

30-35%? I mean it's all hypothetical but if that's true then, well pretty sure we know why that went out the window.

If you're implying that it's because that's too powerful to stay, you're mistaken. That's weighed up against Paladin having Blind on Flash, passive shield blocks, Bulwark, and Hallowed Ground (the only invuln skill useful for levelling). And considering how much MP was required for DADD and DADP, it's only fair to also include Clemency.

On the Warrior side, you have passive Parry coming from Wrath stacks, Vengeance/Thrill/Raw Intuition totalling up to huge mitigation uptime, Equilibrium, Inner Beast, and Bloodbath attached to every Berserk.

These were all effectively equivalent perks distributed among the three tanks that helped them out while they levelled, except that DRK lost almost that entire toolkit, Warrior lost Bloodbath but received the even more effective Rampart in return, and Paladin's bonuses were strengthened.

[Chrono_Rising]

I don’t think the leveling experience is what anyone is griping about. It’s the entire experience from leveling to raids, dungeons, and high end raids. It’s not one thing that Dark Knight is 3rd place in, its most things. And that’s what the gripe is about.

[CaTi]

Hmm? Ah my apologies, was just having a prod because it sounds outrageous, despite as you say being fairly equivalent across the board. Sorry my humour can be a bit odd sometimes.

Tl;dr misplaced humour is misplaced

[Awful]

I mean there's just too much wrong with Drk, leveling you won't even notice these till you're over 60 where there's tons of issues:

- Blood gauge being useless even at 62 where you use it every 2 mins and sit on 100 blood for the majority of the time
- Quietus is welcome but it's not very good and is a dump, use every now and again repeat
- Bloodspiller while nice is still meh
- TBN is when levleing is over but you notice that even without using it while leveling your defenses as a whole are lackluster

Honestly they could just change Blood Price into a trait while leveling to reduce damage taken or something (seriously the traits suuuuck for Drk),Drk isn't hard to level at all as it's a tank but the higher you go the less and less you have and the costs of everything are just higher and more costly than Pld and War.

But as Chrono said no ones complaining about the leveling process as it's quite easy it's the end result at 70 when you look at all these issues as a whole and you're left with a feeling of "oh these tools are useless (Dark Passenger, Soul Survivor, Blood Price, etc)" and wishing you had more.

[whiskeybravo]

And 2nd comment on tanks.. http://www.mmorpg.com/final-fantasy-...0012236/page/2

“We have three jobs — Paladin, Dark Knight and Warrior — and these all give a different and unique experience while they work as a tank. Any job can be played as a main tank or off-tank, and now, with the changes to Warrior’s Shake It Off” — previously an obsolete self-cleanse, now a buff that protects the party — “we think they are all on the same level and that the balance is very good.”