Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[DaulBan]

Problem is that neing an inferior job than PLD/WAR while being harder and clunkier to play its the very definition of being bad.

Its been brought closer to the other tanks with the recent buffs but the core issues will remain until 5.0. People dont enjoy to put more effort for less reward and mechanically speaking DRK is by far the hardest tank to play due to resource management and weaving skills.

If it were the opposite people wouldnt complain as much if you paid for ease of play with a lower power cap (unless the difference were similar to RDM been beaten even by BRD), but thing is that only playing perfectly DRK gets closer to the other 2 and the dfference grows larger when you are not, and not everyone can play a job at 90-95 percentile

To put in perspective, a bad DRK is so far behind a bad PLD/War is not even funny, while an excelent DRK still lags behind an excelent WAR/PLD despite being more skill demanding

Are you talking about damage?

Using FFlogs statistics, from Sigmascape until now, barring Phantom Train, DRK and PLD are more or less even at similar percentiles, with the differences usually being in the 50-70 DPS range. Even deep into the gutter tier of rankings DRK is comparable, and in Alphascape it is trending ahead of PLD in most 50+% rankings or at worst tied. Itemization this patch will squish the distance between WAR and the other two tanks considerably in damage difference. In terms of DPS, it's likely that DRK will be more than competitive.

If you're talking about utility then sure, it's true that DRK does less than the other jobs. TBN is not a particularly great shield for cotanks with its diminished effect on other targets, and it lacks raid-wide mitigation outside of a reprisal that every other tank has.

But you don't need that anyways. Healers, particularly Scholars, already have the market for unnecessary amounts of mitigation well in hand. Things like shake and veil are not absolutely necessary, and by all rights PLD has the better of the situation regardless with Cover and the addition of Passage (recently buffed for god-knows what reason).

DRK was in world first for both UWU and UCoB, and did not cost them either the clear (obviously) or their world-first-ness. They were able to complete the fights regardless. DRK not being able to provide extraneous under-utilized mitigation anyways does not matter. If you go as PLD over DRK to raid but never save lives or casts of heals with veil, or save someone's life with Passage, you may as well have gone DRK.

Warm feelings that you're playing the 'mitigation tank' are meaningless if you don't actually do anything to make effective use of it; saving lives or saving casts.

In terms of job complexity vs output, personally I don't find DRK much more difficult to play than SAM. This is of course a personal opinion about difficulty and doesn't actually say much about how you or anyone else feels about the job.

That said, asking that all jobs have a complexity that is directly proportional to their difficulty is just introducing a paradox of choice. If a job is complicated people don't play it regardless of how good it is. MCH is a good example, it's good (though I've disparaged and criticized its output in the past) but the requirements for playing it well are both asinine (rotational perfection not found in many jobs) and out of your control (miracle ping that puts you at the whim of God). The job has massive pay-off if played well, the damage is competitive and its output in rDPS is acceptable. But the barrier for entry is high, so few people play it. However, if you remove the complexity from the job you aren't making the job perform better or worse, you're just raising the skill floor.

It's a similar case with DRK, though without the starting 'is actually basically Meta' tag. DRK getting its complexity reduced does not help DRK. It only helps low% DRK players try and get closer to higher end DRK players that are playing the job well. DRK doesn't get any better with complexity removed, it just changes gameplay, and that doesn't make the job any better than it was before.

This is what happened with WAR in 4.2. The IR changes dropped the skill ceiling for the job to the floor, but did nothing to change how the job performed. It was still the tank with the best burst DPS, the best overall DPS, and with the shake it off change made it the second best tank (arguably) behind PLD. Reduced complexity was unnecessary IMO, but the reality is that changing WAR to make it easier did not make it a better job, did not make it so that you wanted it more. It maintained its status, it just had the additional benefit of having a lot more better terrible WARs out there compared to DRK.

DRK getting a complexity reduction improves its popularity maybe if people really were scared of that. It does not make the job more desirable in a party.

If you decide that there really should be a correlation between how complex a job is and how good (desirable) it should be, then you have to make a critical design choice: How hard can I make the best option? How easy should the worst option be? How much of a skill curve can I have at all before I'm just muddying how good a job is in practice? Does NIN lose TA because its not as hard as MCH and thus should be at least as good or does it keep it? Does BLM get better or worse because of movement restrictions? How do we balance jobs that are ultimately very comparable when we want to have some variety of different impacts on gameplay in terms of buffs or options (defensive or utilitarian?). Should ranged phys get harder by the virtue of having one of the best role skills (refresh)?

[DRKoftheAzure]

Problem is that being an inferior job than PLD/WAR while also being harder and clunkier to play its the very definition of being bad.

Its been brought closer to the other tanks with the recent buffs but the core issues will remain until 5.0. People dont enjoy to put more effort for less reward and mechanically speaking DRK is by far the hardest tank to play due to resource management and weaving skills. Pushing 3 buttons to do what others do in 1-2 is not very compelling

If it were the opposite,(easiest tank to play) people wouldnt complain as much if you paid for ease of play with a lower power cap compared to the other tanks(unless the difference were similar to RDM been beaten even by BRD), but thing is that only playing perfectly DRK gets closer to the other 2 while the difference grows larger when you are not. And not everyone can play a job at 90-95 percentile skill levels

To put in perspective, a bad DRK is so far behind a bad PLD/War is not even funny, while an excelent DRK still lags behind an excelent WAR/PLD despite being more skill demanding

It also doesn't help with the fact that DRKs and good number of jobs are punished severely if they die ONCE. Darkside no longer falling off when you die is a double-edged sword, because on one hand; you still have that 20% damage up and recover MP quickly if off-tank or main tank; on the other hand you still don't get MP refresh effects from others.

And as for other examples of jobs being severely punished for dying once; MNK(see Greased Lightning), DRG(see Blood of the Dragon), NIN(see Huton), BLM(see Elemental gauge), SMN(see Pets), SCH(see Pets), AST(see Cards).

I would have listed WAR but Beast Gauge just either increase Crit rate or Parry rate based on stance(though it is more appropriate to call it an Aura rather than stance), also Inner Release is a thing...

[DaulBan]

And as for other examples of jobs being severely punished for dying once; MNK(see Greased Lightning), DRG(see Blood of the Dragon), NIN(see Huton), BLM(see Elemental gauge), SMN(see Pets), SCH(see Pets), AST(see Cards).

DRK loses both the blood they had and the MP they had. This is wholly moment-to-moment, but it's probably very comparable to a poorly timed PLD death where you could miss an entire Req window due to not having MP song up (and even if it is up, which you can't know for sure, you can still just have to reset your rotation).

As for the jobs you mentioned, MNK recovery isn't bad, DRG depends on when you die (more eyes more pain), NIN depends on Ninki and TA (timing dependent, mostly). It sucks for SCH and AST probably second harshest because they're healers with slightly poor MP economy (compared to WHM at least), with SCH losing its tether gauge.

But SMN has the biggest chance of missing out. Dying during or right before bahamut costs you 3 aetherflows worth of wind-up, which is usually a full third to a quarter of the fight.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Also SAM is basically a copy paste of DRK made DPS, but SAM has more rotation options around Hissatsu: Kaiten, meaning you could use it at the end of every combo or use it on an Iaijustu, and it feels like the Kenki gauge was built around Hissatsu: Kaiten and all of the other melee abilities that have 1 second recasts were meant to use MP...

DRKs Dark Arts is basically a pointless ability because it does nothing interesting outside of another 140 potency for a good chunk of abilities, a 50 potency increase to 1 ability, additional effects that are either useless(see Dark Passenger) or should have been baseline to begin with(see Abyssal Drain), all of which can be remedied by making Darkside and Dark Arts get the Berserk and Inner Release treatment. And same goes for Blood Weapon and Blood Price.

DRK was brought down to the point where most fights are DRK proof (see Dark Mind) so there really was no need to nerf DRK when going from Heavensward to Stormblood, but that is a main problem when a new game/expansion is put into the hands of actual players rather than a handful play testers to make sure the game is working correctly.

[DRKoftheAzure]

DRK loses both the blood they had and the MP they had. This is wholly moment-to-moment, but it's probably very comparable to a poorly timed PLD death where you could miss an entire Req window due to not having MP song up (and even if it is up, which you can't know for sure, you can still just have to reset your rotation).

Except PLD can still receive MP Refresh effects from other party members, hence why it wasn't mentioned.

As for the jobs you mentioned, MNK recovery isn't bad.

Oh yeah, Riddle of Wind... and Perfect Balance... I forgot about those... forget what I said about MNK then...

[Bhearil]

In fact id say that RDM gets hit the hardest if he dies with Lucent Dream on cd. The mp you have after reviving will last less than 60 seconds (and forget about ressing), so unless you get outside help you are a sitting duck for the remaining time until Lucid Dream is back.

And by the way the old "DRK was world first so its fine" is getting tiresome. On super high level, players could do the content with any kind of composition BECAUSE they are that good. Average players dont finish savage content and similar on days/weeks they need MONTHS

If a player has complete expertise of a job, even if that job sucks he will still manage because ALL the content is designed to be completed by ANY job.

Its like saying to do content you need a 5 points score, DRK played at best efficiency is a 6 (pre buffs) while WAR/PLD is 8-9, thus DRK is fine since it was "world first"...

Hell even when asked why use DRK on world first clear, the answer was "because he liked DRK" and didnt mention any good part of the DRK aside the basic justification to even bother to use a certain job (because someone playing a job he dislikes wont last long)

[shao32]

If you're talking about utility then sure, it's true that DRK does less than the other jobs. TBN is not a particularly great shield for cotanks with its diminished effect on other targets, and it lacks raid-wide mitigation outside of a reprisal that every other tank has.

But you don't need that anyways. Healers, particularly Scholars, already have the market for unnecessary amounts of mitigation well in hand. Things like shake and veil are not absolutely necessary, and by all rights PLD has the better of the situation regardless with Cover and the addition of Passage (recently buffed for god-knows what reason).

DRK was in world first for both UWU and UCoB, and did not cost them either the clear (obviously) or their world-first-ness. They were able to complete the fights regardless. DRK not being able to provide extraneous under-utilized mitigation anyways does not matter. If you go as PLD over DRK to raid but never save lives or casts of heals with veil, or save someone's life with Passage, you may as well have gone DRK.

shake it of and divine veil are layers of security, necesary or not the skills are excepcional usefull improving the security of the party and cover the usual mistakes you will find in midcore and casual statics/runs like a vulnerability before a big raid aoe, lack of protect bcs revive a few seconds ago and alarge ect, both shields help a lot in progresion reducing a lot the weight of the healers by presing 1 single buttom, have a DRK will request everyone do the mechanics perfectly bcs the chances of recovering from mistakes will be lower specially since is the job with the lower self sustain too.

speaking of dificulty of the job, the dificulty of the job dosen't matter if the job have a niche, the problem DRK dosen't have it, there is nothing unique that justifify the actual gameplay and ppl tend to complaing you have to work harder for barely same dps as a PLD, less utility and lack of do something impactful like take several TB with holmgang saving CDs, slashing debuff making ninja and sam rotations smoother, divine veil and SIO covering potential mistakes and able to keep yourself alive at the cost of dps if thats save the run, or not but you try it with it more that a DRK can do.

[Bhearil]

shake it of and divine veil are layers of security, necesary or not the skills are excepcional usefull improving the security of the party and cover the usual mistakes you will find in midcore and casual statics/runs like a vulnerability before a big raid aoe, lack of protect bcs revive a few seconds ago and alarge ect, both shields help a lot in progresion reducing a lot the weight of the healers by presing 1 single buttom, have a DRK will request everyone do the mechanics perfectly bcs the chances of recovering from mistakes will be lower specially since is the job with the lower self sustain too.

speaking of dificulty of the job, the dificulty of the job dosen't matter if the job have a niche, the problem DRK dosen't have it, there is nothing unique that justifify the actual gameplay and ppl tend to complaing you have to work harder for barely same dps as a PLD, less utility and lack of do something impactful like take several TB with holmgang saving CDs, slashing debuff making ninja and sam rotations smoother, divine veil and SIO covering potential mistakes and able to keep yourself alive at the cost of dps if thats save the run, or not but you try it with it more that a DRK can do.

Basicaly this, DRK has no special situation where you would say "man i wish we had a DRK" and despite its lack of niche you are burdened with cumbersome mechanics and gameplay forcing you to work more for less rewards

Also it really lacks an identity: Pala: Holy fighter, great defences with tons of group utility. WAR: Berserker-like tank with huge damage numbers, good lifesteal and considerable group utility. DRK: Edgy tank with 1 single target skill as group utility, low damage with low burst, and meh lifesteal. With PLD blocking magic with their shield on SB, DRK lost their Heavensward identity as "magic tank" alongside most of its offensive kit like Low Blow procs, Scourge, Delirium, Riposte etc

[whiskeybravo]

With PLD blocking magic with their shield on SB, DRK lost their Heavensward identity as "magic tank"..

I don't think anyone would deny this. PLD blocking magic damage killed DRK, well before Shake it Off change was even implemented. SiO was just the final nail in DRK's coffin.

Though, I hear WAR isn't particular great in 12s, doesn't have the Holmgang advantage or something like that. Between that and killing our 405 weapon with skill speed it does feel like a sort of ninja nerf. Not complaining, just pointing out that it doesn't take direct nerfs or buffs all the time. Balance the content better so there isn't as many clear-cut advantages by running a certain comp. It's kind of a step in the right direction.

[Aana]

I don't think anyone would deny this. PLD blocking magic damage killed DRK, well before Shake it Off change was even implemented. SiO was just the final nail in DRK's coffin.

Though, I hear WAR isn't particular great in 12s, doesn't have the Holmgang advantage or something like that. Between that and killing our 405 weapon with skill speed it does feel like a sort of ninja nerf. Not complaining, just pointing out that it doesn't take direct nerfs or buffs all the time. Balance the content better so there isn't as many clear-cut advantages by running a certain comp. It's kind of a step in the right direction.

I am a big fan of balance through content personally instead of balance through theoretical balance (theoretical max DPS, etc). As an example, starcraft used this method. If you made a map with no walls, cliffs or chokepoints Zerg would swarm every other race easily with their extremely speedy units. Similarly a highly narrow/chocked off map with bottlenecks everywhere, terrans could turtle up impenetrable defenses. Whenever 1 race started to edge to far in the win rates, the next seasons maps would be changed. Not the entire dang race's stats. If zerg were loosing they would have slightly more open maps. If terrans were struggling they would add more high ground and chokes.

The same approach can easily be taken here. As Whiskey pointed out, the gear options are going to tone war damage down relative to pld/drk a hair. Mechanics can also completely shift the balance. For example, a return to single target prey type mechanics immediately enhances drk and cuts at war/pld. AOE shields are great (and largely unneccesary with little to no effect unless your healers are sleeping), but still do not cover the power and frequency of TBN used on single targets can provide. If there are powerful prey mechanics at frequent intervals on squishy parties for an entire fight, the community will start to think "Man i wish we had a Drk for this fight". No patch notes. No job tweaks. Balance through content. I far prefer this type of balance because we will never, ever, under any circumstance obtain 'true' balance in a literal sense without homogenization. But we can get practical balance through content highlighting different qualities for success. We ahve been in a VERY heavy AOE meta for most of omega. 1hp moves, giant raid aoes, healers crying and (unsurprisingly) people have been praising the crap out of SIO and divine veil. However, if you recall in 2-3.X series there were many more prey mechanics, Earthshaker mechanics, teathers that deal damage mechanics, exploding debuff passing mechanics, and other hard hitting moves that targeted 1-2 players at a time. Drk (in its current form) would be hugely desirable in those fights via TBN.

Instead of trying to create balance through an imaginary ideal that can never be reached, SE needs to get their head back on the ground and make content that works for all tanks instead of trying to make tanks that work for all content.