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

[whiskeybravo]

Okay but if I only have a stack of apples, and you have a stack of apples and a stack of oranges, and presumably we want things to be "fair", then at the very least, my stack of apples needs to be as big as your stack of apples combined with your stack of oranges. Right?

Ostensibly.. Yes. But that would assume you like apples just as much as oranges, and we know that's not really the case

I mean I'm not for or against it one way or the other. Just pointing out how I see it. OK, war and pld have abilities used in their main rotation to help maintain aggro, and drk does not. But drk's main aggro combo is *potentially* twice as potent as the others. It's just more or less a wash IMO.

[Crater]

I don't think Salted Earth is a good place for that, considering that it's a DoT. Plunge or (a buffed version of) Dark Passenger would work better.

I'd be more interested in fixing Power Slash as a combo, though. It should be buffed to be comparable to Butcher's Block. Skull Sunder gives the same BG as Maim and has 10 MORE potency; Spinning Slash has 70 potency less MP than Syphon Strike on top of 30 less potency. Butcher's Block gives 10 less BG than Storm's Path but deals 10 MORE potency; Power Slash is not only 10 less Blood than Souleater, but causes your DA to disappear with no potency gain.

Edit: it would be a wash if Power Slash wasn't so terrible. Spinning Slash should give the same MP as Syphon Stroke (remember there's still a 30 potency loss there), and Power Slash should gain 140 potency from DA just like Souleater (remember that you're still missing out on 10 Blood there).

That way, DRK is still the only tank that has to give up potency for enmity, but the potency they lose is small and the enmity they gain is huge, so there are advantages to go with the disadvantages.

[Chrono_Rising]

Ostensibly.. Yes. But that would assume you like apples just as much as oranges, and we know that's not really the case

I mean I'm not for or against it one way or the other. Just pointing out how I see it. OK, war and pld have abilities used in their main rotation to help maintain aggro, and drk does not. But drk's main aggro combo is *potentially* twice as potent as the others. It's just more or less a wash IMO.

Its not a wash, you give up dps to do that combo and even more to get it to do double. If you need to sneak in a few extra to make up for missing aggro in your dps rotation then you are losing dps, which is very unequal.

[Aana]

Ostensibly.. Yes. But that would assume you like apples just as much as oranges, and we know that's not really the case

I mean I'm not for or against it one way or the other. Just pointing out how I see it. OK, war and pld have abilities used in their main rotation to help maintain aggro, and drk does not. But drk's main aggro combo is *potentially* twice as potent as the others. It's just more or less a wash IMO.

But that is the 'choice' for a drk. War/pld will generate agro weather they need it or not.

My idea of Dev mind:
Pld: Circle of scorn is up. Guess ill hit the button. Medium damage. Medium Enmity.
Drk: Hey im OT and don't need enmity. Let me trade that DA power slash for DA BS and 'a LOT' of damage and 'zero' enmity.
AlsoDrk: Hey whm is healing almagest! I need enmity! Let me DA that enmity! DA PS for 'no damage' and 'a LOT of enmity'

RealDrk: DA the highest pot action always and forever to try to keep up damage with pld/war. Why do I feel so squishy and low enmity!?

The concept I still maintain is very good. The implementation is a little undertuned.

They balanced astro because they lock you into a stance for the fight. Real time ability to shift your stats around is very tricky to not over or undertone. It snowballs in the hands of great players REALLY fast to if you can real-time optimize vs a static set of skills like war/pld.

[whiskeybravo]

Its not a wash, you give up dps to do that combo and even more to get it to do double. If you need to sneak in a few extra to make up for missing aggro in your dps rotation then you are losing dps, which is very unequal.

Each tank gives up dps to do their aggro combo. It's just PLD and DRK are affected more because potency difference is huge between threat/damage combos and also because their MP generation is hampered.

But even with "enmity" creep or whatever you want to call it, it's irrelevant because Shirk. If your OT is catching up it doesn't really matter.

If aggro was more of a problem in this game it might add some value to DAPS. But since that's largely not required it becomes an unimpressive ability with obscene cost.

[Valdegarde]

But even with "enmity" creep or whatever you want to call it, it's irrelevant because Shirk. So even if you OT is catching up it doesn't matter.

I agree, enmity doesn't tend to be that big of a deal. The problem is in principle, I brought it up because it's just another area Dark Knight is dead last. And it's being ignored on ALL fronts.

Another sort of functionally irrelevant but depressing bit of information is the SSS dummy HP, something I've brought up a couple times in other threads. Most of Dark Knight's dummies have the second lowest HP total of all classes, next to Astrologian. Why? This information doesn't affect real fights, but it's really depressing when over and over it seems that Dark Knight was designed purposely to be last for reasons that I'm not sure are even real reasons anymore.

The complete silence on this front is quickly surpassing the treatment of Paladins in Heavensward, as even as dark as those days were the team tended to imply they understood and were trying (although mostly failing) to rectify this. For close to half a year now the dialogue on Dark Knights has been either treating them completely invisible, or by stating they don't have any particular thoughts on the matter.

[Chrono_Rising]

Each tank gives up dps to do their aggro combo. It's just PLD and DRK are affected more because potency difference is huge between threat/damage combos and also because their MP generation is hampered.

But even with "enmity" creep or whatever you want to call it, it's irrelevant because Shirk. If your OT is catching up it doesn't really matter.

If aggro was more of a problem in this game it might add some value to DAPS. But since that's largely not required it becomes an unimpressive ability with obscene cost.

No where do I claim that it isn’t a dps lose for the other tanks. However, to do what the other tanks do for free Dark has to invest, shirk is great, but not always up when you want it. Aggro creep happens, but much more manageable on warrior and paladin.

And finally here is where apples don't equal oranges. As both Paladin and Warrior I have been able to pull and maintain hate with absolutely no enmity combo because of oGCD modifiers. You can also do it on dark knight, as you can probably guess, its harder.

[Launched]

PLD does not have the highest tank DPS; WAR does.
PLD does not do the highest burst damage; WAR does.

PLD does nearly identical DPS to WAR. At 95th percentile it averages ~80 dps less than WAR. That's 80 DPS when tanks are doing 3400, and when the entire group is doing 25k+. That's an incredibly insignificant gap. It's smaller than the difference between WAR and DRK in HW, and that was already a small gap.

You bring up burst a lot, but it's nowhere near as relevant as you think in Stormblood. Phases in Savage are all based off time instead of HP percentages thanks to people complaining about phase skipping in fights like A11S and Zurvan Ex. Outside of Unending Coil (which most people aren't going to clear and I have no experience with) burst damage isn't that relevant.

PLD does not have the strongest personal mitigation; WAR does - and that's Deliverance vs Sword Oath. Shield Oath Paladin folds like wet tissue paper compared to a Defiance Warrior.

I disagree, WAR has better cooldowns but PLD has blocking that works on everything and Sheltron works outside of tank stance. PLD feels incredibly tanky in either stance thanks to those changes. It's great for tanking both bosses and adds. I don't know which of them objectively mitigates more damage in a proper run with a low amount of mistakes, but in my experience PLD is very good at surviving and isn't harder to heal.

Before you bring up Holmgang, in my opinion it's overrated in Stormblood. The two things Holmgang is mostly used for are suriving tankbusters without a cooldown and surviving mechanics that should be a one shot because of debuffs/stacking/etc. Holmgang is a lot less valuable for the first one because PLD and DRK both got low/no cost mitigation skills that let them survive those tankbusters. Sheltron/Intervention and TBN can completely replace Rampart or Sentinel on a tankbuster. Using Critical Hit as an example, it does about 67k unmitigated. Awareness reduces that to 45k, Intervention reduces that to 40.5k, TBN reduces that to ~28k. Sure, you could Holmgang that, but a PLD/DRK combo has just easily survived it with no DPS loss and with all their actual cooldowns still available for autoattacks and adds.
The second situation is where Holmgang is still good, but in Omega Savage there weren't many opportunities to use Holmgang to survive a one shot. It only showed up in O4S where a PLD/DRK combo could use Hallowed/LD on almost all the same mechanics. A PLD/DRK combo can use them on 2 of the Thunder IIIs on Exdeath and 3 Delta Attacks/2 Double Attacks on Neo Exdeath. Swapping one of them out for a WAR would only let you invuln the third Thunder III on Exdeath, which people have already been skipping for a long time.

PLD does not have the best enmity generation; WAR does.

Bringing up enmity as a balance problem is honestly a joke. None of the tanks have any problems with it at all. You don't bring a WAR because it has the best enmity generation, it's not even worth thinking about thanks to everyone getting access to enmity reducing skills and tanks getting Shirk. The only thing that enmity generation decides is who pulls, a PLD+DRK combo has absolutely no problems with enmity compared to a group with a WAR.

PLD has the worst mobility of all the tanks; WAR has the best.

What does mobility contribute to? Just DPS, and even with Onslaught WAR still barely beats PLD. Tempered Will might have a 3 minute cooldown, but PLD also has Holy Spirit to actually do decent damage at range (for example during Black Holes on Exdeath) while WAR/DRK can only use Tomahawk/Unmend.

PLD doesn't have costless, off-GCD stance swaps; WAR does.

WAR has off-GCD stances, but they're not costless. Defiance locks you in for 10 seconds, it removes the crit buff from Deliverance, it removes access to WAR's strongest skills and the skills unique to Defiance consume resources that WAR wants to keep for Deliverance. Want to use Unchained? That's going to use up your Inner Release for the next 2 minutes. Want to IB for the mitigation? One less Fell Cleave when you leave Defiance. And to use your self heal you need to be in tank stance unlike Clemency. It hasn't been a problem in Stormblood yet, but if we get a fight like A2S with lots of adds WARs will be choosing between HP or TP from Equilibrium.

Grit/Shield Oath can be dropped without a GCD (just that tiny delay waiting for the GCD to be available). Sword Oath can be reactivated when the PLD has to move away from the boss. And let's not forget that Defiance is a weaker tank stance than the others thanks to how the healing increase works. It wasn't really a problem in ARR because the only healing abilities were percentage based, but each expansion added more and more abilities that don't get buffed by Defiance at all which means that if you do swap to tank stance, you'll need more healing. It really sucks for abilities like Tetra, Asylum, Lustrate, Excogitation, Essential Dignity and Earthly Star to heal noticeably less on a WAR. No, WAR stances and stance swapping isn't a direct upgrade to PLD's/DRK's, it has its own advantages and disadvantages.

There is exactly one arena in which PLD is stronger than WAR - party mitigation - and even there, WAR's party mitigation tool (Shake it Off) is at least as strong as the strongest party mitigation tool PLD has (Divine Veil), and the usefulness of PLD's party mitigation kit falls off a cliff once you get past DV and Sentinel/Rampart-buffed Intervention.

At least as strong? Shake it Off is weaker than Divine Veil unless you consume 2 cooldowns. It has a shorter cooldown, but PLD has a whole extra party mitigation skill so its mitigation is still up more often if it's actually needed. Passage of Arms might not be used a whole lot when farming, but 15% raidwide mitigation at the cost of 1 or 2 GCDs is great when learning a fight or when things go wrong. Intervention is a really good skill, both the regular 10% that can be combined with other skills like TBN for a bunch of free mitigation and the buffed version that you mentioned that can let the other tank completely ignore popping a cooldown. A buffed Intervention can be up for almost every single Twinbolt in in O1S so the MT doesn't have to use a cooldown at all. I don't know why you're completely ignoring Cover, it's great now that it works on both damage types and has built in mitigation. It can let you avoid tank swaps because it transfers debuffs to the PLD too, and it makes some mechanics incredibly easy like Aero III/Earthshakers during Almagest in O4S. Cover has a ton of potential to fix mistakes, more than anything WAR/DRK have and sometimes better than what a healer can do. Then there's Clemency, a heal that's about as strong as Equilibrium that also works on other people. Sure, you want to avoid using it just like Passage of Arms, but it's always there for the times when you really need it. It's buffed by Convalenscence when self healing (which feels better than using Berserk during Defiance to buff Equilibrium) or heals the PLD for 50% if they target someone else. It's a powerful skill that can do a lot to make fights easier to learn/clear for the first time/recover from mistakes.

PLD has weaknesses; WAR does not.

I'd say it's the opposite. PLD is great in every situation with a skillset that lets it do a lot to help the group, sometimes at a DPS loss, but WAR is mostly restricted to just taking/dealing damage and barely does that better than PLD. There's a reason why most groups on FFlogs have a PLD, and why groups are usually PLD+WAR or PLD+DRK. WAR+DRK is the least popular combo for a good reason: they're both worse than PLD.

[Hierro]

they're both worse than PLD.

This guy gets it

[Valdegarde]

And this is exactly why Warrior buffs are back on the line and Dark Knight in 3rd place becomes pushed farther and farther down. This is what SE listens to, apparently.