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

[Eliroth-Kaminari]

At this point they might as well make DRK into DPS class because its ovious they dont know how balance 3 tanks into 2 tank meta.

[Ryutamashiisan]

Considering SE's track record with DRK I predict the following:

Nerfs:
Shadow wall timer increased to 7 minutes
Living dead now requires you to be healed to 500% max HP
Damage penalty on grit increased to 50%
Blood Spiller max potency reduced to 300 and varies with HP.
Dark Arts MP requirement increased to 4800

Buffs:
Souleater potency increased by 10

[CaTi]

They seem pretty satisfied with balance right now so probably just a few random, minor potency/QoL tweaks here and there.

... unless playtesting for the next Omega tier throws up any new major issues.

[Tegernako]

Take away Slashing from Warrior and you've made Ninja more or less a guaranteed lock in every group.

I've never raided with anyone who took warrior for slash debuff.

[Claire_Pendragon]

I've never raided with anyone who took warrior for slash debuff.

My raid groups NIN had to go tank (has DRK or WAR)
and we had to accept a DRG as a replacement.

DRK offers no useful utility over WAR, and WAR offers slashing debuff.
It was a no brainer which tank he was maining. (He wanted to be DRK though, but knows its pointless to bring)

[Crater]

The Slashing debuff should just be removed from the game entirely and replaced with a 10% bump to all single-target potencies, honestly. It serves absolutely no purpose other than to eat up a debuff slot and to punish players for using off-meta party compositions.

If it's not going to be removed, then I'd rather see them just give it to DRK and PLD than take it away from WAR. It could easily just be a secondary effect on Royal Authority for PLD, and a secondary effect on Souleater, Dark Arts, or just Plunge on DRK.

[Lyth]

I'm not really sure why we still have Slashing/Piercing debuffs. I thought the point of removing 100% uptime debuffs like INT down was to avoid forcing players into certain comps? I don't even think it's a numbers re-balancing issue, because they didn't have any difficulties reducing Piercing from 10% to 5% in Stormsblood.

If they want to keep these sorts of things in as flavour, they should be limited duration and involve raid coordination (i.e. convert Slashing/Piercing into a mini-trick attack for the affiliated jobs). Also, if you're providing a raid dps buff, your dps should be proportionally lower for it, to compensate groups that don't want run the job in their comp.

[Chrono_Rising]

I can only hope that when they look at their party composition and completion rates for ultimate and savage they recognize that dark knight is being run as significantly lower rates and make adjustments accordingly.

In particular these adjustments would be nice (I think these are some combination of the best suggests for dark knight proposed over the past few months lol):

Dark Knight

Nerf:
The Blackest Night
25 second cooldown.

Buff:
Shadow Wall
120 second cooldown. For 10 seconds reduces incoming damage by 30%. Grants the effects of Blood Price for its duration(Ignores Grit Restriction). Restores MP(1 Dark Arts Equivalent).

Delirium
No Blood Cost. Extends the duration of Blood Weapon and Blood Price by 9 seconds/15 seconds. Doubles the effects granted by Blood Weapon and Blood Price for their duration.

The Blackest Night.
6 second duration. When broken for the full amount of shielding, grants 50 Blood and gain the effects of Black Arts(Black Arts is used as a Dark Arts effect when Dark Arts is not active, 6 seconds duration).

Dark Passenger
150 potency. Costs a full/half Dark Arts.

Dark Mind
Reduces incoming damage by 15%. Dark Arts effect: Reduces incoming damage by 15% for allies within range. 90 second cooldown.

Bloodspiller
Delivers an attack with a potency of 500.
Dark Arts Potency: 700
Dark Arts effect: Restores 20 Blood.
Ignores the damage penalty of Grit.

"New" Dark Dance
120 second cooldown. Gain 100% Parry chance.

QoL:
Plunge
Removed animation lock. Increases Blood Gauge by 10.

Carve and Spit
Removed Dark Arts effect.
Deals 450 Potency baseline.
Costs MP(1 Dark Arts Worth.)

Living Dead
Swap current HP and MP percentages at the end of Walking Dead.
Removed Healing requirements.

[Crater]

The closest you're going to find to a coherent argument in favour of Slashing/Piercing/Blunt debuffs is the idea some people seem to have that it's supremely important to the game's sense of depth and challenge that you open every fight, every add spawn, and every post-downtime reengagement with 2-3 GCDs where you're missing 10% of your damage.

Every other argument is inconsistent at best, and more frequently, just completely incoherent. There's just really no other defence - the most likely explanation for their current incarnation is that SE flat out did not think things through.

[whiskeybravo]

My raid groups NIN had to go tank (has DRK or WAR)
and we had to accept a DRG as a replacement.

DRK offers no useful utility over WAR, and WAR offers slashing debuff.
It was a no brainer which tank he was maining. (He wanted to be DRK though, but knows its pointless to bring)

Similar here. I leveled up DRK as an option to help my static, but after realizing we had no other source of slashing it wasn't really worth trading slashing for TBN utility. So I just stayed War.