Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[Bhearil]

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, thenext 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.

Except everyone knows that Blizzard couldnt properly balance their games even if they had a loaded gun pointed at their heads (last balanced game from Blizzard was Brood Wars and it has rained a lot since then). Balancing by maps just put a bandaid on the glaring balance issues by allowing X faction to dominate or at the very least hold their ground despite their shortcomings. Theres a reason why SC 2 never reached the popularity of SC 1 on competitive gaming

You realize what happened when SE tried to enforce certain itemization to X job? Say hello to crafted items or just use lower ilv accesories with more interesting stats than the ones they want you to play with(remember Heavensward lv 60 accesories being used at lv 70?).

True balance can never be reached, but that is akin to take the easy way out and let players deal with the job imbalances until their next job remake, because "hey balance is impossible so why bother? perhaps on your next job remake well hit gold". Blizzard is quite infamous to let overpowered jobs to reign supreme for a long time before they touch them again (aside things that literally broke the game like protection pala one shooting world bosses with enough stacks on vainilla that were fixed in days/weeks)

The very basic that is allowing to every job is able to complete content it already exist but thats the bare minimum not the objective of balancing jobs.

What people is asking is that every job offer something good and/or unique be it damage, utility or whatever, not a job that is outperformed by others while bringing nothing special to the table to add insult to the injury

[shao32]

405 weapon stats on WAR will mean nothing when the relic come up, a 405 weapon will the hability to get the substats you want will make WAR dps builds skyrocket they dps again.

And the prey mechanics will never enhance DRK bcs PLD is King there, cover and intervention are far better and costless that TBN, the current DRK desing will never make it being more desirable by just changing the content bcs the other 2 still do the same and better that DRK.

[whiskeybravo]

405 weapon stats on WAR will mean nothing when the relic come up, a 405 weapon will the hability to get the substats you want will make WAR dps builds skyrocket they dps again.

Yea but that's not likely to happen until the end of the expansion, which is typically when all the hardcore padding occurs anyways.

[Kabooa]

Yea but that's not likely to happen until the end of the expansion, which is typically when all the hardcore padding occurs anyways.

Get your 99s in this week, bois!

[shao32]

Yea but that's not likely to happen until the end of the expansion, which is typically when all the hardcore padding occurs anyways.

The last step will come at 4.5, 4.55 like much, that will be January-february when most statics will be around O12s, and the next expansion will come at June-July, assuming no tank ajustments WAR dps will be even higher half of the tier.

[Aana]

Except everyone knows that Blizzard couldnt properly balance their games even if they had a loaded gun pointed at their heads (last balanced game from Blizzard was Brood Wars and it has rained a lot since then). Balancing by maps just put a bandaid on the glaring balance issues by allowing X faction to dominate or at the very least hold their ground despite their shortcomings. Theres a reason why SC 2 never reached the popularity of SC 1 on competitive gaming

You realize what happened when SE tried to enforce certain itemization to X job? Say hello to crafted items or just use lower ilv accesories with more interesting stats than the ones they want you to play with(remember Heavensward lv 60 accesories being used at lv 70?).

True balance can never be reached, but that is akin to take the easy way out and let players deal with the job imbalances until their next job remake, because "hey balance is impossible so why bother? perhaps on your next job remake well hit gold". Blizzard is quite infamous to let overpowered jobs to reign supreme for a long time before they touch them again (aside things that literally broke the game like protection pala one shooting world bosses with enough stacks on vainilla that were fixed in days/weeks)

The very basic that is allowing to every job is able to complete content it already exist but thats the bare minimum not the objective of balancing jobs.

What people is asking is that every job offer something good and/or unique be it damage, utility or whatever, not a job that is outperformed by others while bringing nothing special to the table to add insult to the injury

I didnt mean to imply that you should never balance classes/factions/whatever directly via buffs/nerfs. My general idea is that you smooth out the big picture problems until they are very close. Once you have something that is 'close' to balance, instead of trying (and failing) to reach an unattainable ideal ('Perfect' Balance) that you instead move to the content the jobs/factions/etc function in.

Once the baseline performance is within a small margin you stop focusing so hard on making sure they are EXACTLY the same because they will be slightly different in different situations and you are chasing a moving target that shifts.

Hypothetical example: Drk/War damage are nearly the same on a dummy. Balanced. Well We go into a fight with large gaps of untargetable periods. War will perform better because of spike damage (IR) than Drk even though they have same on paper damage. Well now we need to buff Drk to do more damage. Next fight: Its a high uptime dummy fight. Well now Drk is outperforming War. Time to nerf Drk again.

You cant keep just chasing the balance ghost forever. Once they are 'very close' you HAVE to look at the practical situations those jobs/factions play in. So a good balance team would work with the battle team and adjust the map. Instead of open fields vs choked off areas in starcraft, you have high uptime and low uptime fights. You need to narrow the gap between those types of encounters so neither job gets a HUGE advantage over the other. Or in the party utility case, you do the same with a better mix of single target and AOE damage so both TBN and war/pld aoe shields get a fair shake for value.

There is a point in which chasing perfection is a waste of time. I dont think we are quite there yet, but we are getting there. The 3 tanks ARE closer than they have ever been at any point in history at this very momment. Right now. (not 'fun' or any personal preference. But in actual performance). Its not perfect by any means, but its getting pretty darn good. If this trend continues, we will have to start looking at content instead of just numbers and more tweaks.

As for starcraft, there are a LOT of reasons SC2 did not meet the popularity of SC1. Dont try to dump the balance team as THE reason SC2 failed. And even that is hyperbole. It 'failed' compared to the greatest single esport game ever to exist. It still had a good 5-6 years of very robust pro scene, excellent sales, and vibrant community, and still has all those things but in smaller numbers to this day. Thats hardly a failure in the gaming world. You have to give the devil his due. It was still a very balanced game. Not SC1 level, but nothing else really is. SC1 was an accident and has yet to be recreated.

[whiskeybravo]

The last step will come at 4.5, 4.55 like much, that will be January-february when most statics will be around O12s, and the next expansion will come at June-July, assuming no tank ajustments WAR dps will be even higher half of the tier.

Perhaps, but it's not a guarantee. I don't think every WAR will get relic, I certainly have no motivation to start a slog through Eureka. I'd imagine if it's a "numbers" thing then it's basically going to be the same people pushing up logs. Like, I don't see the more casual players that frequent Eureka obtaining a WAR relic and then jumping in to savage to inflate logs, it's going to be *mostly* the same MC/HC people that already have purples/oranges trying to squeeze out X amount more DPS because now they have crit. Will have to keep an eye on that 50% group.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

I mostly agree, however I don't feel, and am not saying you are saying this, that it is an either/or situation but that the whole picture must be looked at as well as it's individual parts.

The content itself is very important to the balance of jobs in this or any game. If a lot of content has too many mechanics and gameplay aspects that favor aspects of one job over others, something is wrong with the content and that needs to be looked at and adjusted.

I would actually support and be perfectly okay with DRK not getting an AoE mitigation ability and WAR keeping SiO as-is as long as they were balanced against each other not only mechanically, which I feel they conceptually are pretty damn close with TBN's cost to benefit being an entirely separate debate, but also in the content itself.
Like you stated, the content has been the biggest culprit of this disparity providing more value to an AoE shield than to a more frequent single target one. IMO, in an ideal world they would leave the more frequent and/or stronger single-target shield on DRK and the weaker and/or less frequent AoE shield on WAR and then have the content switch-off which it favors, so it gets back more to where there is a very equal distribution to content that allows certain jobs to shine. Basically content should not be designed in a way that gives one or a certain group of jobs a discernible advantage, nor should it be designed to prop up or be a band-aid for a job's inherent weaknesses and faults. There needs to be a happy median point for it all.

In addition I agree with the point that Whiskey Bravo and some others have made that stat allocation can be a way to sort of "soft" balance, with a great example being limiting Crit on tank gear to provide a soft nerf to WAR damage. Stat allocation on gear is actually a great way to slightly tweak and shift elements of tank game-play and job balance.

However, as I alluded to at the beginning, issues with a job can't necessarily be entirely solved through adjusting the content nor through just adjusting the job themselves, they need to work in tandem to find a harmony where they work together.
No amount of adjustments to the content will necessarily improve the general distaste that many players have for the way that Dark Arts currently feels and works. Stuff like that is almost entirely independent of the content and gear stat weights.
On the other hand, a job could see significant tweaks that make it "on paper" appear to be the most amazing thing ever, but if the content doesn't take advantage of it then these advantages can be reduced to being effectually worthless.

So in conclusion, it shouldn't be simplified down to the ideas that "the content can fix the perceived problems with the jobs" or "direct job adjustments are the only solution", it's more complex than that which requires a properly measured look at the issue, it's aspects and the context that surrounds it. Both are needed and they are not mutually exclusive.

Edit:
Your other post went up while I was making mine, so yeah we are pretty much in agreement here.
Your bit about having it so DRK has greater DPS in high uptime fights but WAR having greater DPS in fights with lots of breaks is a great example of what could be done and then managed by the content and it having a good mixture of both types of fights.

[Aana]

I mostly agree, however I don't feel, and am not saying you are saying this, that it is an either/or situation but that the whole picture must be looked at as well as it's individual parts.

The content itself is very important to the balance of jobs in this or any game. If a lot of content has too many mechanics and gameplay aspects that favor aspects of one job over others, something is wrong with the content and that needs to be looked at and adjusted.

I would actually support and be perfectly okay with DRK not getting an AoE mitigation ability and WAR keeping SiO as-is as long as they were balanced against each other not only mechanically, which I feel they conceptually are pretty damn close with TBN's cost to benefit being an entirely separate debate, but also in the content itself.
Like you stated, the content has been the biggest culprit of this disparity providing more value to an AoE shield than to a more frequent single target one. IMO, in an ideal world they would leave the more frequent and/or stronger single-target shield on DRK and the weaker and/or less frequent AoE shield on WAR and then have the content switch-off which it favors, so it gets back more to where there is a very equal distribution to content that allows certain jobs to shine. Basically content should not be designed in a way that gives one or a certain group of jobs a discernible advantage, nor should it be designed to prop up or be a band-aid for a job's inherent weaknesses and faults. There needs to be a happy median point for it all.

In addition I agree with the point that Whiskey Bravo and some others have made that stat allocation can be a way to sort of "soft" balance, with a great example being limiting Crit on tank gear to provide a soft nerf to WAR damage. Stat allocation on gear is actually a great way to slightly tweak and shift elements of tank game-play and job balance.

However, as I alluded to at the beginning, issues with a job can't necessarily be entirely solved through adjusting the content nor through just adjusting the job themselves, they need to work in tandem to find a harmony where they work together.
No amount of adjustments to the content will necessarily improve the general distaste that many players have for the way that Dark Arts currently feels and works. Stuff like that is almost entirely independent of the content and gear stat weights.
On the other hand, a job could see significant tweaks that make it "on paper" appear to be the most amazing thing ever, but if the content doesn't take advantage of it then these advantages can be reduced to being effectually worthless.

So in conclusion, it shouldn't be simplified down to the ideas that "the content can fix the perceived problems with the jobs" or "direct job adjustments are the only solution", it's more complex than that which requires a properly measured look at the issue, it's aspects and the context that surrounds it. Both are needed and they are not mutually exclusive.

I agree with most all of that. My only distinction is I tend to put the 'fun' or how a job 'feels' to play in an entirely different and unrelated category than balance (both job and content related). I dont tend to comment much on the 'DA Spam' feelbads on drk to much because that is a personal preference in my opinion. Some people have stated they really love the new dark. Many have said they hate the new 4.x Drk. I find that to be both entirely separate from balance discussions and entirely subjective so I dont really bother commenting much on those points. The power of a job and the value it brings to the content of the day are the sticking points for me. I really liked 4.x warrior. I hate the way IR changed how the job plays, but that isnt relevant when talking about how much damage it can put out or how it's defensive suite lines up in the current content. They are two separate discussions in my opinion. It just gets muddled in the "Lets fix X job" threads because half the posts are "ARRR! Dark arts spam needs to diaf" and the other half are "Drk DPS isnt high enough" or whatever, but those arent the same problem and fixing 1 doesnt fix the other.

But on every other point ^^b

[TouchandFeel]

snip

I agree. The feel of a job and how it plays is definitely different than things like numeric balance. Complaints about how DA feels "spammy" is a completely different topic than whether or not DRK does enough damage overall and I DEFINITELY agree that people could be overall better about separating things out and looking at things objectively and with a fair-minded view.

Feel doesn't equate to balance and balance doesn't equate to feel, but balance can effect feel and never should feel justify state of balance.
They are independent but linked.
However, because they are linked solutions to problems with one should obviously take into account the state of the other.
For example, if both are seen as lacking a good solution will adjust upwards for both. If one is seen to be in a good state, such as balance, then any adjustment to feel should avoid inadvertently changing balance, with the changes to Inner Release being a good example where this did not happen.

I feel that it is because of this inherent interplay and people often not breaking things down before trying to piece them back together that we run into many of the issues with job discussions that you alluded to.