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

[Chrono_Rising]

Snip

And if the dev team is reading I hope they read this. This is the problem with continuously creating super tanks. This is why people get upset about tank balance. Two years of working on it, we get paladin super tank, the new mandatory choice. Instead of finding a balance between the remaining two, one got buffed while the other was ignored. And its 3.x all over again, except dark is the new paladin. Offers little to groups and is eclipsed by what the other two can bring. Sure you can run it, you can even get world first, but it offers no advantage to groups like the other two do. We already see the numbers switching, we see people being asked to change mains for groups, all people are asking is to improve Dark Knight so that it can compete with Warrior and Paladin.

[Jukebox12]

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.

It ain't just dark knight that loses mp or potency loss it's pld.

[Chrono_Rising]

It ain't just dark knight that loses mp or potency loss it's pld.

I'm not sure why you are quoting me.

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.

This quote is in the context of using dark arts to amp up the enmity of the power slash combo. The point of it is that to break even with the enmity combo and dps rotation of Warrior and Paladin you need to expend dark arts. This further bolsters the idea that to break even dark knight's balance requires dark arts use. The problem is that when you need to break even on mitigation, enmity, and dps but can only choose 1 to invest in fully, you will generally come up short, especially in a main tank senario where you need to choose at least two. In dps dark knight can invest all its energy into dark arts, but the job is already behind there even with full dark arts usage.

To be super clear it is definitely a dps loss on all tanks to do enmity combo. However, Warrior and Paladin can avoid their entirely. Dark Knight can as well, its just more difficult since the job has no oGCD enmity modifiers, and requires more group effort. All that extra effort and group coordination and what do you get for it? You get to be closer to paladin and warrior! What a reward!

[SoulSkyheart]

You know... I’ve been having a really tough time trying to find a job to play after the release of SB. I’ve always played Dark Knight mostly and on and off PLD and WAR in HW, but now that I know PLD and WAR can do DRK’s job better and are more satisfying to play, I wonder why the job exists currently.

Many others like it how it is but those aren’t really justifications that the job is doing well. Staying up till 6 am, waiting for the live letter to begin and sit through 2 hours only to know that,

1. DRK didn’t get mentioned.
2. WAR did (hooray for blm)

Leveling other jobs currently and about to hit my 7th class to 70 and I still can’t find a replacement for the hole in my heart that’s been caused by Dark Knight’s upsetting class performance.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Leveling other jobs currently and about to hit my 7th class to 70 and I still can’t find a replacement for the hole in my heart that’s been caused by Dark Knight’s upsetting class performance.

This is poetry right here... and I really mean that(despite me not being really good at poetry it is a great art nonetheless)... so dark... so beautiful... so fitting...

[Aomine1992]

Leveling other jobs currently and about to hit my 7th class to 70 and I still can’t find a replacement for the hole in my heart that’s been caused by Dark Knight’s upsetting class performance.

Agreed what's the saddest part is I so badly wanted my favorite class to get some better attention and sadly it didnt and now it just doesn't seem to fit in anywhere....the fact that when I farm V4s on dps and we get a DRK tank everyone is like "eww go war or pld which is sad"

[NozDeathlos]

I'm relatively new to the game and I main Dark. I can't seems to see why dark is inferior in comparison to other tanks. The only real experience i had when Dark is not wanted is Shinryu extreme - and that is because of the living dead and how healers refuse to heal dark. in terms of mitigation, I find the blackest night is very flexible (i cant say for the other two tanks, I only have them on level 60). In terms of DPS, well, I am still struggling to find the optimal rotation so cant really comment on that. Then again maybe i need to play PLD/WAR at level 70 to really feel the differences

[Cabalabob]

I'm relatively new to the game and I main Dark. I can't seems to see why dark is inferior in comparison to other tanks. The only real experience i had when Dark is not wanted is Shinryu extreme - and that is because of the living dead and how healers refuse to heal dark. in terms of mitigation, I find the blackest night is very flexible (i cant say for the other two tanks, I only have them on level 60). In terms of DPS, well, I am still struggling to find the optimal rotation so cant really comment on that. Then again maybe i need to play PLD/WAR at level 70 to really feel the differences

Not really, even during levelling the gap between DRK and the other two in mitigation is noticeably large.

The issue with DRK is simply that anything it can do the others do better and it even lacks some of the tools the others have.

E.G. PLD has sentinel 40% mitigation 3min CD, WAR has vengeance 30% mitigation + counter 2min CD, DRK gets shadow wall, 30% mitigation 3min CD.

PLD has divine veil, WAR has shake it off, DRK has nothing.

[Chrono_Rising]

Not really, even during levelling the gap between DRK and the other two in mitigation is noticeably large.

The issue with DRK is simply that anything it can do the others do better and it even lacks some of the tools the others have.

E.G. PLD has sentinel 40% mitigation 3min CD, WAR has vengeance 30% mitigation + counter 2min CD, DRK gets shadow wall, 30% mitigation 3min CD.

PLD has divine veil, WAR has shake it off, DRK has nothing.

In addition to this missing utility/not bringing something meaningful and unique as a utility and holes in its mitigation, Dark Knight has the lowest dps when either actively tanking or not actively tanking. There is really no reason to bring a dark knight to a raid other than enjoying the class and its aesthetic.

Dark is adaptable (as you noted), and plays that way. But that adaptability to make split decisions really has no value when the class either breaks even or falls short on almost any metric you would want to measure a tank on.

[whiskeybravo]

All that extra effort and group coordination and what do you get for it? You get to be closer to paladin and warrior! What a reward!

I gotta say, thanks for the chuckle this morning lol

I'm relatively new to the game and I main Dark. I can't seems to see why dark is inferior in comparison to other tanks. The only real experience i had when Dark is not wanted is Shinryu extreme - and that is because of the living dead and how healers refuse to heal dark. in terms of mitigation, I find the blackest night is very flexible (i cant say for the other two tanks, I only have them on level 60). In terms of DPS, well, I am still struggling to find the optimal rotation so cant really comment on that. Then again maybe i need to play PLD/WAR at level 70 to really feel the differences

Definitely would need to play the other 2 to feel the difference. And what Chronos is trying to point out, you might feel decent in mitigation as DRK with TBN but it's costing you in DPS (more TBN = less Dark Arts). But if you do more DA it's costing you mitigation, etc etc