Stormblood Expansion was a mistake...

[Kalocin]

They're not gonna change the role of a job...

And to me DRK was a "pain" as tank in HW and its still a "pain" in SB - I see why people are upset since it recived some major changes, but its still very playable and still very able to fullfill its tank-role. Holding hate is a non-issue and healing a DRK stayed an issue, so...
I understand people wanting their old DRK back, but its not as if the job is broken as it is right now.

DRK was a pain because of the mana drain mostly, otherwise it was a lot more interesting and required far more skill. Now it's a pain because over half our abilities are gone and our defenses/unique skills got put into the role actions.

[ChloeGrace]

OMG the jobs you like to play aren't fun any more?
You have 3 options: suck it up, find something else that you do like, or cancel your sub and go play something else.
It really is that simple.
As someone who mains bard and plays paladin 95% of the rest of the time, I despised HW for drastic play style changes and severe job imbalances that were never even acknowledged let alone corrected until Stormblood.

[Vidu]

Its a shadow of its former self and it feels badly designed now, you may as well call it broken because the only way in which it is not broken is that it can still do all the encounters. Only by doing so you'll have the constant reminder that choosing your DRK instead of the other two options is a detriment to the group

Honey, I've been maining paladin since ARR and all the way through HW. With bard being my main dps since I learned to love it somewhen during 2.2 or so. DRK got off easy.
And detriment to the group? People cleared Ultimate on a DRK, so, yes it can indeed still do the encounters.
I can understand that its not fun to you, personally, anymore because of the changed playstyle - I did miss the constant MP-drain too for a while, then I got used to it and adjusted (and honestly: I dont know why I've ever missed that now - it was mainly annoying, nothing else) - but theres plenty of other jobs to pick from. The OPs reaction to all of this is way beyond what would objectivly be justified.

I kinda do agree with Chloe here...

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

While I enjoy some of the job changes, some jobs I loved were just viciously gutted and are shells of their former selves, Dark Knight being the prime example, I can barely bring myself to touch it after what they did to it, same with Machinist. Warrior sadly looks like it will be joining them (though I will reserve judgement until I play it)

I am more than happy to play and main other classes, but I used to enjoy playing all of the jobs, now I only have a handful I find enjoyable and its depressing. If you still enjoy them, that is great, but I really miss the old style of play from those classes.

[RaijinSupreme]

Does that mean you’re not playing anymore?

[Melichoir]

I like much of stormblood mechanically. Boss fights feel more interesting, dungeons are a bit cooler, bit more polish on things. I think from a gameplay standpoint, it is better than HW, cause HW was a bit hit or miss on things (A1S-A4S pretty much had tanks strip down to barebones DPS builds to meet enrage timers), there were issues with damage output on certain classes, or how some were overly complicated or had a lot of useless utility. Stormblood in many ways cleaned up stuff mechanically and made it better.

Does that mean its a win all around? No. Some things are still unnecessary (some classes bar/resource system is kind of redundent or implemented wierdly as an example). But its a bit more streamlined, which to me is fine, because it means people can do 'ok' with a class they just pick up. Do do it great is not inherently easy, but with practice is quite possible. But do it great + doing boss mechanics and the like and clearing content, thats where its at (In savage stuff atleast). Which is why I think its fine. If they want to streamline classes to be a little easier so they can make bosses and encounters harder, thats cool to me.

Though admittedly, HW had a better story than SB so far. SB story is a bit...lackluster currently.

[NephthysVasudan]

<snip>

Good thing you don't speak for me. Cause I wouldn't say that tripe.

[AxlStream]

I'm not that happy with Stormblood honestly. Like yes, the story is fine, the dungeons are okay but what is there to realistically do? We get less dungeons for features that get pushed back, they haven't fixed the FATEs in the least, EX trials while fun at first become tedious because SE has failed to raise the skill floor of players at max level and I don't even want to PUG Savage raids reserving that for my statics and Ultimate being too much of a time commitment for many players.

Meanwhile we got only 4 dungeons that the general populace now despises, a class seeing it's 3rd round of massive changes in the next patch (even though it was fine), a feature that was incredibly talked about pushed back from 4.1 to 4.15 to 4.25 and even more disappointing things. It's more like they were confident about Stormblood being this huge game changing expansion but so far, we got something that kind of fell flat.

I like it but it's so easy to see the cracks now while HW hid them better maybe.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Yup, same.

Once you know how to prepare your card, it's not that much a problem.
With Shuffle and Spread at 30s + Sleeve draw every 120s now and even minor arcana. There's plenty of way to efficiently deal with it.

I enjoy the rng factor of the astrologian card mechanics. There is a real strategy in managing your cards and it adds a lot of character to job.

Personally, I don't see why some players want to change how the cards come into play. Remove that and you basically have a white mage.

*snippers* Seriously, can we PLEASE get past the phase of "playing casually = playing badly". Not all casual players are bad, not all "hardcore" players are always good. Let's stop measuring the player base on the achievements of the World First groups, you don't hold people playing pick-up basketball games to the standard of pro players. They may not be able to play on the Pro level for one reason or another, but that does not mean those people are bad players.

Hallelujah! Thank you.

I think they should release Defender for Tank.

I didn't know what a defender was; but, looking it up, it's a paladin in FF: Tactics. Not sure why you think it should be introduced to FFXIV. Would you care to elaborate?

Revamp DRK to be a DPS give it other skills my cousin said tanking on drk is a pain now not like it was in heavensward.

No. Dark knights need to be fixed. Attempting to revamp the job into a damage dealer would make them even worse because there is no place for a two handed sword weilding damage dealer since samurai were released.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Overall I'm enjoying Stormblood, and I really like the MSQ even more this time around. I don't mind what they've done with MCH, but I do find it odd they changed it so quickly after it was introduced.

SE has made some critical missteps that I can't quite overlook of course, and perhaps the rest is attributed to me being a bit of a grizzled vet at this point.

As one might expect from me however, I'm quite outspoken about the major missteps they've made with PvP, ironically now that they seem to be trying harder. Sure, they've gotten more people to play it, but at the cost of the community that was once dedicated to it, and the depth it had all along that people who didn't/didn't want to try it were convinced it either lacked, or had too much of. But that's something I've spoken on at length over in the PvP section. Overall, I'm enjoying Stormblood. Just. . . a little less than I've enjoyed all of FFXIV so far.