Dark Knight Feedback on ONLY Dark Mind

[Izsha]

If your going to compare CD between tanks, compare the right ones. Raw intuition has replaced inner beast.

30 sec-ish CD. Designed to be spammed
Tbn. Raw int. Shelltron. Heart of stone.

30ish sec single target support on another player that shares resources/CD with above.
Tbn. Nascent flash. Intervention. Heart of stone.

Rampart. For all.

Shadowwall/sent/vengence/nebula. All 2min, 10 sec, 30%.

Immunities for all.

Job specific 20%:
ToB (10s/90s/20%). DM(10s/60s/20%magic). Camo(20s/90s/10%+50%parry ~20%total). Shield passive.

When you lay them out properly it becomes quite clear what SE is doing. The damage type limited actions have either MUCH shorter CD (dM) or DOUBLE duration (camo). Pld shield is rng, wars is the lowest uptime of everything.

This is the 3rd ot 4th time I've seen people compare raw intuition to dark mind. Raw intuition is competing with 25% hp bubbles and 6 seconds of shield blocks both of which easily match or beat 20% mitigation for 6 sec on RI.

Dark mind =/=Raw intuition.

[FallenWings]

Tank trait shouldn't even be in the discussion or calculations, it doesn't diminish other mitigations because there's never a point it will be off or not in effect, especially when they ALL have it. Its only relevant in old content and that hardly matters as well because you're not going to compare it to whatever damage you took before.

[Tint]

That said, the gap between the power of different CDs is closer than before. Because of this, CDs that increase our HP by a certain amount are EVEN MORE crucial than ever before. The fact that we are getting an on-demand shield that provides 25% of our max HP, with a 15 second cooldown, that alone should tell you our capability to receive magical tank busters is better than before.

You mean, Thrill of Battle is actually better than I thought? And I thought a 20% life increase, 20% selfheal and 20% healbuff was already a good skill.

Well okay, maybe the Dark Mind nerf wasn't really a nerf... buuut the skill still can do only one thing: Mitigating tankbusters in savage. What does this skill do for me in the other 90+% of the game?

And when the co-tank helps with mitigating busters, what is an additional anti-tankbuster skill actually worth?

[Danelo]

This all comes back to "magic tank". Not to beat a dead horse but I'm about to kick it again.

If you want to call DRK a high "resource management tank" bc most of what you are doing is using mp, manipulating mp/blood gauge, to pump out more damage and bolster shielding and I'm cool with that. But DRK having that magic tank stigma is only hurting it and gives it a poor identity.

For one, if DRK is great as a magic tank where is the tank diametrically opposed theme-wise, 3.x PLD, oh yeah they killed it off by allowing it to block magic. I guess SE thought damage specific tanks wouldn't work for PLD but ok for DRK.

Two, you would expect that if DRK were the magic tank, being strong against magic, that it would have an advantage in most things bc most damaging boss attacks are magic-based. It doesn't. Every other job does just fine taking magic damage. As far as CDs go, this "magic tank" theme is what allows for DRK to get magic only CDs. Powerful in there niche use but a niche use never the less. It's a slap in the face to give damage specific CDs. It's spitting in someone's face to give others the same 20% flat damage reduction when DRK gets the damage specific CD. Dark missionary suffers the very same issue as opposed to its counter parts. If you want to give DM damage specific CD then you might as well spread that across the board and that means raw intuition should be physical only. It's an inherent disadvantage baked in because of a poorly themed job identity as things have been stripped out of the game or have been downgraded in value.

DRKs aren't the only tanks who use magic, yet we are the ones stuck with the moniker "magic tank", and so the job will lag behind the rest until this flawed theme is put to rest.

[MaraD_]

Tank trait shouldn't even be in the discussion or calculations, it doesn't diminish other mitigations because there's never a point it will be off or not in effect, especially when they ALL have it. Its only relevant in old content and that hardly matters as well because you're not going to compare it to whatever damage you took before.

While I agree, one thing to point out is that healers will be healing roughly 15-20% less from MND no longer having as strong of an effect on thier heals. So technically tanks didnt really gain as much in mitigation as people think.

Oh another edit, we wont have protect either, which for tanks is 5-8% mitigation. (depending on how geared u are.)

[ADVSS]

DRKs aren't the only tanks who use magic, yet we are the ones stuck with the moniker "magic tank", and so the job will lag behind the rest until this flawed theme is put to rest.

100% agree with this. I hate the double standard. If they wanted to push identity over general role usefulness, then DRK should get mp from magic sources and null magic abilities. But this isnt a realistic expectation. All the tanks need to be viable, and like healers need similar tools to do their role, how is it even balanced that the pld has passive magic mitigation, and the magic opposite version cant even block magic passively?
Honestly, the sad fact is that utility is sort of getting in the way, because they cant decide whether to just give tanks a utility, and their identity. PLD should always have 'cover' as a FF troupe, DRK 'darkside/souleater/darkness', WAR/Berserker/Viking 'Berserk' - outside of that identity they just need to be able to handle tanking as effectively as the others. No where do they need to be responsible for party shields and buffing, that should be given to support jobs like healers/support dps, to be blunt. But if theyre going to shift that to the tanks, for balancing, they need to be fair about these skills. They werent FF skills to begin with(well maybe in FFXI I cant really attest to that since I never played it)

[Hierro]

You mean, Thrill of Battle is actually better than I thought? And I thought a 20% life increase, 20% selfheal and 20% healbuff was already a good skill.

Well okay, maybe the Dark Mind nerf wasn't really a nerf... buuut the skill still can do only one thing: Mitigating tankbusters in savage. What does this skill do for me in the other 90+% of the game?

And when the co-tank helps with mitigating busters, what is an additional anti-tankbuster skill actually worth?

ToB is in fact better than you really thought, but understand that TBN is even better!

I mean no disrespect to dungeon tankers, I'm not here to look down from my raiding ivory tower. I love dungeons too. However, let's ask ourselves-- does DRK really need another CD to mitigate trash in dungeons? TBN is the reason we can currently take less damage than WAR in huge packs, with or without tank stance, and perform comparable amounts of DPS. TBN is getting even better, and we're all getting a permanent trait to supplment its power. This means tanking trash is getting EVEN EASIER.

Maybe DM is only good at one thing, but does it matter if your other assets allow you to exceed your competition?

[Tint]

Well, lets wait and see how much mana we will actually have for TBN. The math people said we can use it once every 30 seconds, wich is half as often as we can use it now.

[TouchandFeel]

The math people said we can use it once every 30 seconds, wich is half as often as we can use it now.

Not exactly, that is just the approximate rate of consistent usage based on how quickly it seems DRK will be able to regain MP as well as how frequently DRK should be using TBN to be equitable defensively to the other tanks while keeping up Darkside.

There will be some level of flexibility because there will likely be small amounts of extra MP generated regularly and bursts of extra MP every 60s and every 90s from Blood Weapon and Delirium. This extra MP makes it possible to store up and use extra TBNs but you may do so at the cost of being able to save up and time extra Edges to raid buff burst windows.

In dungeons raid buffs will not really be a consideration so you could use more TBNs in those, which then means that DRKs could potentially be getting to use TBN more frequently than the other tanks can use their frequent use defensive abilities which could make up for Dark Mind not helping much with trash packs.

Also, interestingly none of DRK's burst abilities increase the damage of abilities used during them, they just enable free usage or give extra resources to use more abilities. This is important because it then means that in situations where you don't have to worry about raid buffs, you actually don't have to sync abilities to your burst ability windows which is a big factor in freeing DRK up to use TBN more frequently in certain situations.

[TheForce]

It's just so hilarious to me how Square wants to push this "Magic Tank" crap on us, but they go and nerf the very things that make us a "Magic Tank" XD

Dark Mind got nerfed, and our attack spell Abyssal Drain was butchered.