Suggestions for bringing DRK up to par, and QoL changes.

[MeridaQ]

That's not entirely true. maybe they don't wan't to use it to focus on Fell Cleave, but there's still Inner Beast in WAR's toolkit, technically providing a mitigation skill without any long cooldown, and that is much more poweful than TBN.

Yeah TBN has no drawbacks of stances so it is much more versatile than IB and you can use it more often than IB. Also let’s look at WAR’s defensive kit: Thrill of battle, IB, HG, vengeance and RI. Only two of those reduces damage and one can only be executed in defiance AND if you have the gauge. RI only blocks physical from the front and punishes otherwise. If shadow wall was brought to 120 seconds I see no problem with that. If we added time to vengeance then we would have a mirror comparison thread to this one.

[Mycow8me]

I'm for the most part against changing other classes just to fix one. The other classes are in good spots and have few if any complaints. I'm sure there's a way we could fix drk without touching the others, one of the obvious solutions so far has been to give drks dark dance back but maybe with a rework to it to fix mitigation problems. Possibly either more hp draining attacks or a lower hp drain outside grit from souleater for sustain. One of the solutions for raid mitigation has been to add dark arts to TBN for an aoe shield which aligns well with a smaller MP cost TBN. Since this style of TBN is still resources costly, drks will not want to spam it for every AOE, only the ones that might kill someone assuming they have the MP which is a fair tradeoff for being able to use it more often than passage of arms or shake it off in my opinion anyway. If TBN mp cost stays the same and dark arts makes it an AOE, I have a feeling dark knights will rarely or never use it.

[Reynhart]

If anything, a slight edge should go to TBN because it doesn't require the DRK to be in Grit to be useful.

Inner Beast can easily mitigates more damage than TBN during its duration, on top of healing you for a nice amount of HP, so its effect is more powerful.

Yeah TBN has no drawbacks of stances so it is much more versatile than IB and you can use it more often than IB.

You'd still have something to use even with frequent TB. Not having is not the same as not wanting.

[whiskeybravo]

Inner Beast can easily mitigates more damage than TBN during its duration, on top of healing you for a nice amount of HP, so its effect is more powerful.

If you're comparing IB to TBN then you can only do so if DRK is in grit, so on top of the HP shield they are also getting tank stance damage reduction - vs no damage reduction from Defiance. Furthermore, DRK only needs 1 GCD to replenish MP lost from TBN (while in grit), where as warrior needs a min of 5 GCDs to prepare for/recover from IB. Oh, and TBN can be used on a party member, which IB can not. Need I go on? While IB might be a more powerful CD in a vacuum, they are much more balanced when other factors are considered.

[InfiniDragon]

Add Bloodbath to role skills

Nope.

If they did this, it would just give PLD and WAR another advantage over DRK. PLDs now have Total Eclipse, and while it wouldn't be as powerful as a WAR's, them with Bloodbath spamming AOE would be pretty good in dungeons. WAR would become even more ridiculous because this would mean Bloodbath would work with the new Steel Cyclone. DRK on the other hand would get squat because their AOE is magical.

The rest of the suggestions were okay but with the current tank movesets, Bloodbath as a multi-role skill should never, ever, evvvveeeerrrr get back into WAR's hands.

[Aana]

I already don't like the "Offense, Defense, Middling" concepts. Those aren't niches. They are to broad of a class design. Tanks should not be significantly differentiated by mitigation and damage. They should all be capable of hurting things and surviving things. Their gameplay should feel different. If you intentionally design jobs with the goal of 'low DPS, middle DPS, high DPS' you destroyed balance before you made the jobs. Gameplay. Style. Feel. Theme. Character. Flow. Etc. That's how jobs should be separated. Not by performance. Performance determines balance.

You want to do damage? Play DPS. HOW do you want to do damage? You want to jump from the sky and channel the power of dragons and do damage? Play drg. You want to make the world burn? Play blm.

You want to protect the party? Play tank. HOW do you want to protect the party should determine WHICH tank. Not "I wanna do damage so I play war." If you want the sword n board fantasy play pld. You wanna unleash the beast? Play war. You wanna delve into the edgelord world? Play drk :P

Bring the tanks closer together in performance, not farther apart. That's how we got 3.x pld. 2.0 (not 2.1) war. 4.X drk. A jobs 'identity' should NOT be "I do more/less damage than the other job in my role". That's not an identity. That's terribad design.

Side note: I do love the "IB is so OP compared to TBN". Willfully forgetting that the entire game is (currently) based around not being in tank stance. Yeah its more powerful than TBN to yourself. But no drk I know would trade TBN for IB if you trapped it behind grit and could only target yourself.

[InfiniDragon]

I do love the "IB is so OP compared to TBN". Willfully forgetting that the entire game is (currently) based around not being in tank stance. Yeah its more powerful than TBN to yourself. But no drk I know would trade TBN for IB if you trapped it behind grit and could only target yourself.

I sure as hell wouldn't.

I love TBN and the idea of it. We just need more padding because we can't only use that.

[Lyth]

...

DRK effectively starts at negative resources when you die and is not only locked out of most of their actions, but their mitigation kit as well. It takes two ticks to even get enough MP to even reapply Darkside, and you can forget about trying to get up Grit or TBN anytime soon. If you die on WAR or PLD, you lose dps (that's kind of the way it's supposed to work). If you die on DRK, you lose your ability to even have basic functionality as a tank.

I find that a lot of people struggle to understand how burst works on DRK, let alone Delirium. It's resource-gated burst. Your Delirium needs to happen in sync with raid buffs. If you go into it with zero MP, you're in an equal amount of trouble as anyone else. You're just burning the cooldown to get back on track, similar to if you wasted Infuriate outside of a burst window to get a bit of resources. Your goal is to get as many DA uses into the window as possible, and you can't do that if you're at zero MP.

[Reynhart]

Side note: I do love the "IB is so OP compared to TBN". Willfully forgetting that the entire game is (currently) based around not being in tank stance. Yeah its more powerful than TBN to yourself. But no drk I know would trade TBN for IB if you trapped it behind grit and could only target yourself.

The game is not, only the deeps contest. Again, people can't complain that they don't have the tool if they refuse to use it. And don't worry, we know very well the problem of locking something behind a stance, we have all of our self-healing behind Grit, which makes us far more squishy, considering it's a big part of our survival kit.

[ArianeEwah]

snip

Could you please stop taking my quotes out of context?!

I have played DRK long enough to know how hard it hurts to lose your mana pool and reestablish Darkside or Grit. I've also played it during Alex and there it was even worse!

But guess what, you are exaggerating here as well. EVERY tanks burst window is resource-gated! PLD can't burst without mana, just like DRK. WAR can't burst without a decent filled beast gauge.
PLD also can't switch to Shield Oath instantly after revive, thru it indeed costs less mana than Grit, and WAR doesn't gain anything either when they switch to Defiance after death.
Losing your 'basic funtionality as a tank'? If TBN would be the only CD you have, then WAR only has Inner Beast and PLD only Sheltron.
DRK mitigation is lacking, but not so much that you would lose your 'basic functionality'.

Overwise this job would've never cleared Ultimate. It's not 'unplayable', it is 'undesired'. Notice the difference!