Dark Knight and Incoming Live Letter 4.2 on 12/15/17

[Lina_Slayer]

The only thing I can think of is that inner release cooldown will be lowered. Or unchained and inner release will be separated.

But reducing IR cooldown is either a huge damage buff (if it goes to 60 seconds) or basically useless if it goes to like 90 seconds because we'll still wait till Berzerk comes off cooldown anyway, changing unchained seems more likely IMO.

[Aana]

The only thing I can think of is that inner release cooldown will be lowered. Or unchained and inner release will be separated.

Dropping it to 60 would be utterly ludicrous. Theres no possible reason for that. Dropping it to anything else would just desynch with zerk timer and would be more frustrating than helpful.

I have really been struggling to figure out what they could possibly do with abilities for usability and the only thing I can fathom is something with unchained. Decoupling IR/Unchain or somehow otherwise buffing unchained so it competes with IR (give a reason to ever choose it over IR if not decoupled). But as its a defiance ability wont have a large impact on much since we avoid it like the plague.

Otherwise it has to be something completely out of left field like removing the auto crits from RI or something equally unexpected and un-requested.

Not really sure where SE is going with this one. What I really hope DOESNT happen is SE listened to Xeno and completely revamp FC and combos for his exaggerated claims of damage distribution problems.

[Valdegarde]

I was seriously refreshing the page to see if it was a typo and they’d change it to say DRK...

Me too...me too. I was sure the translator probably conflated tank adjustments into Warrior or somesuch. But...alas, this is the reality we live in.
I don't think there's a question anymore that Dark Knight's Stormblood treatment is abhorrent.
I even looked at enmity calculations per ability for Dark Knight versus the other tanks, they're routinely about 70% of the other tanks. I'm really starting to notice in Rabanastre when no amount of Abyssal spam can grab things over a Warrior berserk overpowering. It's every single function at this point that Dark Knight is bottom by a margin that is widening into a chasm.

Warrior usability...what a joke. At least they're usable in the first place.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Me too...me too. I was sure the translator probably conflated tank adjustments into Warrior or somesuch. But...alas, this is the reality we live in.
I don't think there's a question anymore that Dark Knight's Stormblood treatment is abhorrent.
I even looked at enmity calculations per ability for Dark Knight versus the other tanks, they're routinely about 70% of the other tanks. I'm really starting to notice in Rabanastre when no amount of Abyssal spam can grab things over a Warrior berserk overpowering. It's every single function at this point that Dark Knight is bottom by a margin that is widening into a chasm.

Warrior usability...what a joke. At least they're usable in the first place.

AD has a lower threat modifier.
The comparable AoE for threat is Unleash. (Though if its threat modifier makes up for its massive potency loss, idk, as I havent bothered looking into it, and of course zerk is still going to give WAR the edge no matter what)

[Valdegarde]

The comparable AoE for threat is Unleash.

I believe it's something like 20x 50 potency for Unleash, and 5x 120 potency for Abyssal. But yet again, it's an avenue Dark Knights must sacrifice their efficiency to even be at a baseline level with the other tanks.
One problem I just noticed over reading reactions on the Japanese tank forum, it is not that they feel differently about Dark Knight...on the contrary, almost every concern we have is echoed there in multiple Dark Knight threads. However the Warrior thread is a massive 401 pages and they seem to be rejoicing about 4.2 possibly addressing their "distinct gap beneath Paladin" without mentioning Dark Knight at all.

[Claire_Pendragon]

the Warrior thread is a massive 401 pages and they seem to be rejoicing about 4.2 possibly addressing their "distinct gap beneath Paladin"

Thats the thing.
If PLD is 150% better than WAR and DRK, then having both WAR and DRK only 75% of a PLD, was semi acceptable, because groups would almost equally pick WAR or DRK as the other tank.

Bringing WAR up to PLD can seem fine in theory, but not if DRK isnt also brought up.
If WAR is arguably 100% and PLD is 100% now, leaving DRK at 75% just means we know who's the better tank combo.

Sadly they are looking at popularity of a job, rather than actual balance of what the job offers.
(Im still in favor of a better MT/OT style, with a 4 tank system, or the prior 4.0 system of PLD is best, and the other 2 are ur left over, yet equal, picks)

[Aana]

Snip

Unleash 20.6× 1030 potency AoE
Abyssal Drain 5× 600 potency ranged AoE
Overpower 10× 1200 potency cone
Flash n/a ~1200 potency AoE

AD will never compete. They all used to be around 600 then SE buffed the low level enmity skills at like 4.05ish for dungeon play and flash/op/unleash got doubled. But they didn't give AD the same treatment for whatever reason separating unleash as the enmity skill, AD as the damage/sustain skill. /shrug.

Even flash with same potency doenst compete if storms eye is up. But if a war is unchained/zerking NO tank will ever take anything. War has always had far superior burst enmity since day 1. Unchained may not see play in raids but if you want threat (like old hunts for credit), nothing comes close to war between unchained, eye, and zerk.

[Valdegarde]

I realize Flash doesn't do damage in an argument versus Abyssal Drain, but they still get to spit out Circle of Scorns for free. And that's just AoE enmity, single target enmity is a similar picture. Dark Knights are routinely ~5x to every other tank's skill's ~7x. Why? Giving them the benefit of the doubt it seems like they're adjusting for Darkside. But that isn't fair at all when enmity for the other tanks is blown up at the beginning of an encounter by Fight or Flight and Berserk.

I don't particularly feel enmity's the battleground to fight for Dark Knight equality, but I'm just trying to show more examples of Dark Knight being dead last in almost every possible tankly function, for...very little justification, if any whatsoever. Enmity just happens to be something the dev team has historically been sensitive about, and even in THIS instance Dark Knight just doesn't seem to matter.

Edit: Yet it's Warrior usability that is in question. Sorry, I'm upset.

[Crater]

The only thing I can think of is that inner release cooldown will be lowered. Or unchained and inner release will be separated.

I mean, they're clearly throwing balance to the wind here and just handing out presents to their favourite child, so there's really a laundry list of what they could do:

- Inner Release/Unchained cooldown could be lowered to 60s.
- Onslaught could have its gauge cost removed.
- Same with Upheaval.
- Inner Release/Unchained could be changed back into separate keybinds with separate cooldowns.
- They could also separate Fell Cleave/Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone/Decimate and let you use any of them in either stance.
- Equilibrium could be changed to give a heal regardless of stance, or always give TP and HP regardless of stance.
- Maybe Butcher's Block gets bumped up to 20 BG so you can do enmity combos and still earn maximum gauge.
- That would probably come with a potency bump to Storm's Path, up to 300, to keep it as "the DPS combo".
- Defiance could give you a 20% heal when you activate it.
- The root effect could be taken off of Holmgang.
- Raw Intuition changed from 100% Parry chance to 20% damage reduction from the front.
- Shake It Off bumped up to a base level of 12-16% HP without consuming cooldowns.

None of them are good ideas, of course, and none of them are necessary. But nothing on that list is even a little bit less ridiculous of a buff than the ones they got to their BG costs in 4.05, or the buff to Shake It Off in 4.1.

[Aana]

I realize Flash doesn't do damage in an argument versus Abyssal Drain, but they still get to spit out Circle of Scorns for free. And that's just AoE enmity, single target enmity is a similar picture. Dark Knights are routinely ~5x to every other tank's skill's ~7x. Why? Giving them the benefit of the doubt it seems like they're adjusting for Darkside. But that isn't fair at all when enmity for the other tanks is blown up at the beginning of an encounter by Fight or Flight and Berserk.

I don't particularly feel enmity's the battleground to fight for Dark Knight equality, but I'm just trying to show more examples of Dark Knight being dead last in almost every possible tankly function, for...very little justification, if any whatsoever. Enmity just happens to be something the dev team has historically been sensitive about, and even in THIS instance Dark Knight just doesn't seem to matter.

Edit: Yet it's Warrior usability that is in question. Sorry, I'm upset.

SE decided to throw all their eggs in the dark arts basket. The theory actually sounds nice. Drk base capabilities are tuned lower than war/pld, but are handed this 1 size fits all tool dark arts. You control the flow to shore up any weakness on the fly in real time decisions. Need some HP? DAAD or DASE. Need some magic mitigation? DADM. Physical? DADP. Want some damage? DABS/DACS. Oh your enmity needs a boost: Power Slash (Dark Arts) 5.5x + Potency 1650 + 1650 Potency. (BB 1960, Halone 1890).

TLDR: Drks base enmity is lower because they 'can' spike it to a whopping 3300 on a single GCD. ~1.7x more than halone or BB. That's really insane. Also with no wind up combo like eye. Drk has serious enmity potential but its an opportunity cost. But with circle shirk and DPS meta its never worth doing. But that's essentially the same problem drk has in every category. DA makes up for drks individual weaknesses, but as a limited resource it cant fix everything at once so people just use it to equalize the damage and everything other facet suffers. In this case, enmity. In the next complaining post sustain. In the next mitigation. Etc. The tool cant handle everything it was envisioned to maintain simultaneously.

The real time flowing concept to put your resources where you need them when you need them into various mitigation, damage, sustain, enmity, etc is pretty sweet. The numbers+the DPS meta just don't play in its favor but its 'cool' imo.