Try to predict Nerf/Buff/QoL of 4.2 Tank Edition

[Shurrikhan]

Sensible Changes for Dark Knight

Intuitive Scaling:

Walking Dead made to "absorb fatal damage to instead be dealt at end of duration; caps at twice base health".

The Blackest Night provides Blood proportionate to % of its barrier broken, still to a maximum of 50.

Removal of Niches that are Contradictory with Broader Design:

Dark Mind replaced with Dark Dance, which now causes 20% of damage received over the duration to instead be dealt as periodic ticks over the next 9 seconds. Both the application of and damage received by these periodic ticks can be mitigated.

Obvious QoL:

Plunge range increased to 20 yards and animation lock drastically reduced (on par with Bloodspiller).

Sole Survivor activation speed increased.

Parity Buff:

Shadow Wall CD reduced to 120 seconds.

Bloodspiller increased to 440 potency.

Dark Passenger MP cost reduced to ~100/140 of Dark Art's (1800 at level 70).

Logical Redesign:

Delirium now allows Blood to be drained in order to prevent Blood Price or Blood Weapon from losing duration. This drain drain increases with each second of use. No CD, just a toggle. No longer the leading Blood spender, but fills the toolkit at its acquired level.

Blood Price now generates MP based on the would-be damage of attacks made against you (still generating MP if dodged or absorbed), plus an additional flat amount.

________________________

More Likely Changes:
- TBN duration increased to 9 seconds (+29%). Effect on others increased to 14% (+40%).
- Shake It Off percentile reduced to 7%.
- Divine Veil turned into a stacked key to allow for immediate activation, or made to activate immediately and CD reduced to 90 seconds.
- Either the least noticeable or most toss-out way possible to slightly buff DRK potency.

[Llugen]

Honestly they should just give DRK Scourge back, increase the Carve and Spit potency by a tad, and call it a day.

WAR is fine and PLD is either fine or needs a small nerf to Holy Spirit potency and/or Goring Blade potency. DRK should be stronger single target damage than PLD for the amount of support PLD brings, period.

Edit: Oh, and I guess the DRKs I know complain about Grit's MP cost immediately after death and then there's like no way they can get Dark Arts + Power Slash off for enmity back, so maybe tweak that one, too.

[Claire_Pendragon]

My predictions;

DRK (due to being "good enough for Ultamite")
Bloodspiller now consumes 25% of your max mp additionally.
Dark Passenger no longer targets multiple targets when used with Dark Arts
The Blackest Night no longer targets party members. (WAR and PLD need to have something unique to stand out from DRK)
Duration of all mitigations are cut in half, and take twice as long to come back, if not under the effect of blood price.
Blood Price no longer gives MP when hit, but instead makes all mitigation act as it does now, while in effect. (Dark Arts has a 50% chance to reset the CD on blood price)

PLD (Doesnt have enough support to outweigh WARs increased DPS and utility)
Cover's CD is cut in half, duration doubled, and the number of targets can be changed to the entire party if hallowed ground is popped.


WAR (Has the potential to do less DPS than the other tanks, if the other tanks always crit, and the WAR never lands a crit)
Fell Cleave now has a 100% chance to crit while under the effect of berserk

(Sad thing is, you can STILL clear Ultimate with a DRK, even with these changes. Since the content isnt designed to need balance)

[Awful]

I have no expectations, nothing will change with tanks so i'm not holding my breath sadly.

[garret_hawke]

With the way balance was handle in the last patches:
nerfs:
nothing
Buffs:
WAR:
IR now double potency of all BG spender, all moves get passive 10% life steal or something else stupid.

[shao32]

while i love reading some asking to make WAR a game breaking job again so i go to be the counterpart.

apart the DRK buff they need to compete i belive WAR need some nerfs in the defensive field.

holmgang: recast 240s from 180s

vengeance: recast 140-160s from 120s

raw intuition recast 120s from 90s

there is no reason to have such number of skills with so short recast more now they have rampath and still have inner beast.

[Claire_Pendragon]

while i love reading some asking to make WAR a game breaking job again so i go to be the counterpart.

apart the DRK buff they need to compete i belive WAR need some nerfs in the defensive field.

holmgang: recast 240s from 180s

vengeance: recast 140-160s from 120s

raw intuition recast 120s from 90s

there is no reason to have such number of skills with so short recast more now they have rampath and still have inner beast.

The nerf to holmgang alone isnt a small nerf, but a massive one.

I disagree to just about every nerf here.
DRK needs buffed, but these arent the ways to help DRK.

WAR is arguably in a decent spot, in comparison to PLD.
Nerf it, and its no longer in a decent spot compared to PLD.

So its DRK who needs raised up.
Not someone else brought down.

[shao32]

snip

while i agree DRK need more help and dont really touch the other 2 at all, i still find hilarious why WAR is still so strong on defense to dont need to use inner beast never.

But looking about WAR favouritism i belive they will get the dps buff ppl asking but dont need It before even see a Buff on DRK.

[Lyth]

...for the three tank jobs, warriors had very high solo performance and were top choice as off-tanks. They had a lot of self-healing ability and burst power, so that job already felt close to complete for us.

But that's what's great about warrior. And since so many people use it, rather than trying to push warriors back, we instead focus on what puts warrior in the standing it's currently in, and supplemented the weaknesses of paladin and dark knight on that basis.
-Yoshi-P, Dengeki Interview, Stormblood

We see this idea thrown around a lot. If there's a power difference between two jobs, it's better to buff one than nerf the other. It seems nice on paper. Everyone likes buffs. Nobody likes nerfs.

Here's the problem:

Job buffs influence encounter design. Take mitigation for example. In ARR, your main tankbuster mitigation kit might have consisted of Rampart, Sentinel, and Hallowed. Because you had fewer cooldowns to work with, 20% DR was considered very good.

With each expansion, we've been given more cooldowns to work with. Partially to give players new toys, but also to keep parity between the tanks. The problem is, if you're given multiple cooldowns, raid design has to be adjusted accordingly. Damage values inflate, and you're expected to stack multiple cooldowns to survive. 20% DR generally isn't enough anymore. The difficulty with TBN, for example, is that it's an adjunct. You have to pair it with something else to reach a safe threshold. Damage inflation devalues the ability. In ARR encounter design, an ability like this would have carried a lot more weight.

The more damage values inflate, the more WAR's mitigation toolkit becomes preferable, due to the recasts of Vengeance and Holmgang. The more a fight encourages you to stack multiple cooldowns, the more powerful Holmgang becomes, since you can just bypass one set and give your other cooldowns time to recover.

The end result is a bit of an arms race. It's not enough to hand out a new ability to every tank. Giving out buffs changes the relative effectiveness of every existing ability in the toolkit. You actually have to re-evaluate everything from the ground up.

The same applies for raid defensive buffs as well. In a world where every tank only has access to Reprisal, all things are equal. If you start adding in more raid defensive buffs, the relative strength of Reprisal drops off, because you're expected to stack these other buffs on top. The solution to balancing PLD's raid buffs was never to turn Shake it off into Divine Veil Mk.2. The solution was to re-balance PLD's defensive buffs.

There eventually comes a point where job balance requires that you hand out nerfs, or else the whole thing becomes unmanageable. Also, the fact that "so many people use" a given job shouldn't play into whether you nerf it or not. Job popularity is a reflection of how easy it is to play and the rewards you get for playing it. With such a balancing mentality, it's easy to see why overpowered jobs remain unchecked. If you're afraid of the consequences of nerfing any given job, you haven't a hope of achieving balance.

[Kabooa]

Paladin
-Requiscat is moved to Magical Damage
-Shield Oath generates gauge on being hit instead of on blocking.
-Sword oath generates gauge on weaponskill usage instead of Auto Attacks.

A small nerf on Paladin's damage, a nerf on Sword Oath gauge generation, a gain on paladin's Shield Oath generation.

Dark Knight
-TBN no longer costs MP. When self cast, it uses up to 25 Blood and refunds twice the amount it took when the shield breaks.
-Sole Survivor grants ramping Damage Reduction based on how many enemies were nearby upon activation. Killing a nearby enemy extends the duration.
-Power Slash adds half its potency to the next damaging Spell or Magic Ability utilized.
-Souleater instead grants 5 Blood. Siphon Strike and Spinning Slash now grant 5 blood.

Dark Knight's dynamic with TBN and MP is removed. TBN remains best utilized on Tank Busters and the 'risk/reward' mechanic is now solely for blood. Straight up Buff.
Sole Survivor is made useful to fill the mitigation hole in Dark Knight's kit.
Power Slash is given another pay off to minimize bad feelings for having to use your Threat Combo. Most effectively utilized with Salted Earth or Dark Passenger
Blood redistribution to not so heavily stack Souleater's combo line.