Please Stop saying Nerf ___

[kobe-sabi]

they could of fix WHM/MCH/DRK a long time ago but the team seemed busy on a secret project "Bluemage" something they thought people would welcome with open arms. well 5.0 is just over the hill, lets hope they dont make DRK/MCH/WHM OP like alot will say if they bring the heat. I dont get it, its always a tug of war with job balances will we ever see a perfect median or will we have to wait till LVL99.

[Satarn]

they could of fix WHM/MCH/DRK a long time ago but the team seemed busy on a secret project "Bluemage"

To be frank they kinda did fix DRK in 4.3 already. Can we finally stop this lumping with MCH and WHM, as if the job was nearly as clunky or useless? Yeah it's not meta(mostly because of shield cheesing), but it definitely has it's strengths now and is arguably the most fun to play tank job since WAR got dumbed down.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

To be frank they kinda did fix DRK in 4.3 already. Can we finally stop this lumping with MCH and WHM, as if the job was nearly as clunky or useless? Yeah it's not meta(mostly because of shield cheesing), but it definitely has it's strengths now and is arguably the most fun to play tank job since WAR got dumbed down.

They have done no such thing. Dark Knight remains incredibly clunky due to the constant Dark Arts spam and inability to easily double weave. Furthermore, while it has some strengths, it's a far cry from the sheer versatility Warrior and Paladin offer. They have zero party mitigation tools, deal only slightly more damage than Paladin despite having to work twice as hard and lack anything comparable to Equilibrium or Clemency. All Dark Knight has is high sustainability in magic heavy fights. Is it as bad as White Mage and Machinist? No. But it's decidedly third place in the tank meta right now. In fact, it's losing by an almost 4 to 1 margin. Suffice it to say... Dark Knight is far from fine both in its gameplay and overall design. As for fun, that is entirely subjective. I like the job myself but the Stormblood iteration is woefully inferior to Heavensward in my opinion. And I still despise how much we're supposed to Dark Arts.

[Deceptus]

They have done no such thing. Dark Knight remains incredibly clunky due to the constant Dark Arts spam and inability to easily double weave. Furthermore, while it has some strengths, it's a far cry from the sheer versatility Warrior and Paladin offer. They have zero party mitigation tools, deal only slightly more damage than Paladin despite having to work twice as hard and lack anything comparable to Equilibrium or Clemency. All Dark Knight has is high sustainability in magic heavy fights. Is it as bad as White Mage and Machinist? No. But it's decidedly third place in the tank meta right now. In fact, it's losing by an almost 4 to 1 margin. Suffice it to say... Dark Knight is far from fine both in its gameplay and overall design. As for fun, that is entirely subjective. I like the job myself but the Stormblood iteration is woefully inferior to Heavensward in my opinion. And I still despise how much we're supposed to Dark Arts.

Bingo. There's a reason you have an extremely small number of DRK logs. Why would people put forth twice the effort for the same result?

[miraidensetsu]

lets hope they dont make DRK/MCH/WHM OP like alot will say if they bring the heat.

They won't. At least, not WHM. S-E loves SCH and loves AST. And there will be a 4th healer to take care of. I doubt they will give any attention to WHM. It's easier they launch some skills and traits that's just an aftertought (like PI and SOTL2 was) and after some bug fix phase, never touch the class until 6.0.

[Satarn]

They have done no such thing. Dark Knight remains incredibly clunky due to the constant Dark Arts spam and inability to easily double weave.

While we could definitely use some other way to spend mp, we don't exactly spam DA constantly, but rather try to conserve mp for raid buffs and leave a margin in case of needing to TBN for emergencies. Weaving also isn't as bad as long as you don't try to jam DA at the end of a gcd and not nearly as clunky as "oh I have too much sks on gear, I guess now my entire rotation doesn't line up". Changes to Plunge and DM actually helped with that.

They have zero party mitigation tools, deal only slightly more damage than Paladin despite having to work twice as hard

Warriors have zero ways to help their co-tank and paladins have pitiful snap aggro. Balancing dps based on difficulty is a dangerous path to thread in this game. By that logic either PLD should be nerfed to the ground or DRK and WAR brought to the brain-dead level of PLDs rotation and we already know which is more likely to happen due to a revamp caused by the exact same argument. I don't have any more tank jobs to jump on if they decide to merge DA and BW into another Requiscat.

and lack anything comparable to Equilibrium or Clemency.

Tbh Sole Survivor heals about the same amount as Equilibrium and while harder to use for that(and should be mainly used for mp anyways) it at least doesn't require going back into tank stance for 10 seconds. TBN is also a great tool to deal with "laggy" heals and screw-ups, which is the only reason to ever use Equilibrium or Clemency anyways.

All Dark Knight has is high sustainability in magic heavy fights.

It's not only magic heavy fights really. Between reduced cd on SW, LD and the versatility of TBN, DRK has a very strong personal(and "off-tank") mitigation in physical fights as well.

I like the job myself but the Stormblood iteration is woefully inferior to Heavensward in my opinion. And I still despise how much we're supposed to Dark Arts.

Can't disagree with that. I really hope the 5.0 changes will bring us closer to HW DRK, while taking it's faults into account(for example I'd love to get procs back, but parry really isn't a good thing to base them on).
My main point is, 4.3 changes addressed a lot of issues DRK had, so while we could've used a bit more it's not like SE left us completely hanging like MCH and WHM. DRK got, certainly not the best, but legitimately better. MCH and WHM actually got worse(in comparison to BRD/AST at least).

[kobe-sabi]

i don't see us getting a 4th Tank or Healer because of the balancing issues and make these types of classes stand out from their predecessors. we have a blocking tank, Hp tank, and a tank that suffers an identity crisis.... in HW it was going in the direction of invasion, i doubt their will ever be an invasion tank because they will say its OP on how it can cheese TB like many other Tanks already do. for the healers we have a pure healer, shield healer, a healer who can do both and then some, the only option left is a HOT's Healer or a hybrid of shields and HOT's. but if im wrong and we get a 4th healer and tank they need to make sure the DRK/WHM have some type of gimmick that will make players who love these jobs happy before they bring these new jobs out.

[Deceptus]

i don't see us getting a 4th Tank or Healer because of the balancing issues and make these types of classes stand out from their predecessors.

SE shot themselves in the foot in SB. They straight out said we weren't getting a new tank or heal in SB because they wanted to balance out what they had. They failed that in Pre-SB developement and disappointed post SB launch.

So now if they don't release a heal or tank what is their excuse going to be? "We're going to try to re-balance them AGAIN?" If they tried that line again, they'd have zero credibility on balancing.

[NocturniaUzuki]

I have to agree for the most part, to be honest, even if your rhetoric is a bit on the aggressive side.

Games are never perfectly balanced, and it's silly to try. Look at something like League of Legends. That game is balanced around minutae based around what jobs do well in the hands of pro gamers at tournaments. People are doing the same thing here. God forbid the numbers are perfectly aligned. I mean, if they were, every job would be absolutely the same in all ways to the point that people would complain about there being no individuality.

As a few people have said here, the issue is that individuality, and it's.more about how the class feels to play. As long as nothing becomes easy to the point of being trivial, or hard to the point of impossibility, there's not really an issue. The class should play smoothly, but even that is arguable, since "smooth" gameplay often translates as DPS buffs for most people, regardless of whether such a change damages the individuality of a job. People only see things in terms of DPS numbers most of the time, and that mindset's potential to damage job individuality and usefulness is what worries me - not whether or not it's marginally easier or harder to clear the most recent 8 duties (out of 200+ in the game).

[Awful]

Snip.

The big issue this expansion was they said their main focus was balance this expansion (specially for tanks) but they failed and instead we don't know what we're getting in 5.0, if they don't fix these issues with classes like WHM/DRK/MCH then they're gonna be replaced by Gunblade and Dancer if that happens. DRK needs a rework which is what people are hoping for in 5.0, myself included I hope that happens as why would I want to play a former shell of my main class when I can play WAR and get twice the benefit and be more relevant for less effort?

It baffles me that SE has been trying to perfect balance when we have SCH/AST just dominating WHM in every aspect with their toolkit or how clunky MCH and how much DRK is a chore to play or how MNKs blunt debuff brings nothing and SAM is a selfish DPS, but here we are at the end of SB and things haven't really gotten better. I hope for SEs sake they don't shoot themselves in the foot this expansion and actually step back and say "okay we need to find out what works" rather then "here have some potency and QoL changes" that's not balance that's a band aid.