Perma shelved my DRK: No role, no idenity, no lore, no worthwhile skills, no fun

[shao32]

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has been a bit harder to read with the lack of space betwen you points but in resume all what you dislike about the job it's what make me do something i consider imposible, move to another job, i complety agree with all you points and im glad you still have the stomach to enjoy DRK but i really wish all you point was adresed mid expansion despite how good are balanced tanks so i can come back to my darkside, take your like ^^.

[Shurrikhan]

The DRK toolkit just lacks synergies. And some of thier offensive buffs even DON'T play well together. Try using BW and Delirium at the same time. I know that other tanks also have issues similar to this, but it's still a gripe nonetheless.

I figured that was just part of DRK's identity the developers were glad to keep. HW DRK, especially, had more anti-synergies than synergies, where its unique abilities were each individually powerful (perhaps even a bit overly powerful, on paper), but lost value in combination. BP and BW gave a sense of synergy just through allowing so many additional actions, and at least Dark Dance and Reprisal/Low Blow worked well together, but that was largely it. It was more about choosing the right path and timings for the situation than... unleashing the monster that was DRK all at once?

SB was the first time we got to see synergies to make a player cackle with glee, and there wasn't a whole lot there, either. (BW-DA-Quietus spam, with DA-AD as needed if your healer went afk mid wall-to-wall pull.) I'd have liked to see more of such ridiculous synergies for the sheer joy of them if it were possible, but fundamentally, I don't see any reason to like them more than anti-synergies outside of a desire for burst over sustain. Synergies, just like anti-synergies, are merely a means of controlling pace -- this CD may need to be held for that vs. this CD may need to be held to avoid that. And at least the conflicts we face now are very easily dealt with compared to the durations of inevitable conflict (all dodge DA-DD makes for little MP and few counters) we faced in HW. Rather than true conflicts we now just have a faint management mechanic.

[Refrain695]

I do think I'm comfortable allowing anti-synergies in the dps rotation for tanks as long as, like you said, they are powerful enough to compensate. I think what I was trying to convey was the lack of defensive synergies in thier overall kit. TBH I wouldn't mind LD as much IF we had something in our kit to assist with the healing requirement. Small things like that really go a long way. Thanks for the reply!

[Shurrikhan]

I do think I'm comfortable allowing anti-synergies in the dps rotation for tanks as long as, like you said, they are powerful enough to compensate. I think what I was trying to convey was the lack of defensive synergies in thier overall kit. TBH I wouldn't mind LD as much IF we had something in our kit to assist with the healing requirement. Small things like that really go a long way. Thanks for the reply!

Ooof, yes, true. I loved that LD was pretty much a pure 10 seconds Holmgang without a finishing death sentence for me with the above-mentioned BW+DA-Quietus-DA-AD spam, and it pains me that we don't have anything like that now. Plus, our single-target lifesteal has always seemed a bit... gutless, since we lost the 100% damage->healing modifiers.

[shao32]

i personally preffer have multiple synergies but that can be a bit contradictory with each other like we have on HW or just simple synergies betwen buffs and other stuff like we did on SB that have nothing at all like we have now, the job feels empty right now.

[DemonicNeko]

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Yes I understand what you mean with the blackmage. Though I do not count that as a combo system. That more of a proc system.

I totally agree with you on how tanks are doing these stupid let healers dps thing. Healers dps while is a nice bonus is also the weakest of all the dps. Oh your healer pulled off 1.5k dps. That means your might kill the target 1.5 seconds faster. I also hate holy spam. Pulls a massive group of mobs. Pops TBN and white mage is like. "RoFL Fook you." Holy spam. Making me grit my teeth as that was 3k mana wasted. I have no problem being punish with TBN if I use it wrong. That my fault. I more have a problem if team mates cuck me.

I am with you on we are a one trick pony. You bring a dark knight into a raid for one reason only. TBN and that it. The moment the devs brought in the blood gauge and blood spiller in SB. I was like. "Beast gauge and fell cleave for dark knight." Then SHB comes around and the devs where like. "We heard warriors love their new inner release. Let give it to Dark Knights." I slammed my head on my desk going. "NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."

You are right with the there is zero window for improvement or skill window outside pop a GCD when mp is low, use 123, pretend to be a warrior in your burst window, repeat. The dumbing down of tank roles because of this whole "we don't want party comps" attempt fell on it's face hard. The worse idea FF14 has. Even as an Off tank base. You could still main tank if you play it good. I think all tanks should have a chance to be main tank. The big thing I feel with tanks classes is there should be a degree of difficultly. I will bring up WoW again. A good Death knight and Monk tank will tank better then a Paladin, Druid, Warrior. Yet are harder to pull off. Which if your a bad Death Knight, Monk you might want to be the off tank. While a good one should be the main tank.

Yes Dark Knight big problem solver is TBN. Which I love it but at the same time. Hate it. It a good but super lazy ability. Lazy on game design and lazy on functionality. Look at boss cast timer. Know you are about to take 50k damage. Hits TBN and laughs at the devs. This is basicly the same problem with tank busters. Lazy poor game design. Creating cool boss mechanics like the delay timer on E2 is good game design. Just have the boss have an ability to go 80k damage is bad game design. Because of the combo system combat for all melee, (some range classes.) With Tank Busters design. The devs have really painted them into a corner with how creative they can be.

[DemonicNeko]

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I honestly do not want to be pigeon hold into playing a GNB to have fun as a tank. I want more high risk high reward play style. I want more buttons to push. I want more things to manage. I want high ceiling hard to master classes. Yes it ok to tell bad players this is not their class. It ok to reward good players. It ok to give players room of improvement if they play the class right. I want Dark Knight to be like a Monk. Not a dps but a hard to play tank that rewards players for good skill. Punish players with bad skills.

I am still pissed off that when the devs said they could not rework Dark Knight in 4.2 saying it would take to much time and energy. As all they did was turn the dark art spam into TBN spam. With 2 new abilities. That was not a rework. That was a side grade and a down grade. The biggest changes we got was the same change all tanks got.

[WhyAmIHere]

I honestly do not want to be pigeon hold into playing a GNB to have fun as a tank. I want more high risk high reward play style. I want more buttons to push. I want more things to manage. I want high ceiling hard to master classes. Yes it ok to tell bad players this is not their class. It ok to reward good players. It ok to give players room of improvement if they play the class right. I want Dark Knight to be like a Monk. Not a dps but a hard to play tank that rewards players for good skill. Punish players with bad skills.

I am still pissed off that when the devs said they could not rework Dark Knight in 4.2 saying it would take to much time and energy. As all they did was turn the dark art spam into TBN spam. With 2 new abilities. That was not a rework. That was a side grade and a down grade. The biggest changes we got was the same change all tanks got.

i mean you have to consider, they were redesigning DRK, while designing GNB, while restructuring all the tanks. that's a lot to balance on top of, ya know, literally every other change they were doing. Sure it's no excuse for laziness from the devs, and yes the 5.0 iteration of DRK is an uninspired mess of a WAR clone. But, it functions.

[shao32]

i mean you have to consider, they were redesigning DRK, while designing GNB, while restructuring all the tanks. that's a lot to balance on top of, ya know, literally every other change they were doing. Sure it's no excuse for laziness from the devs, and yes the 5.0 iteration of DRK is an uninspired mess of a WAR clone. But, it functions.

if they feel overcome by the amount of the tank ajustments they made at the same time they desing GNB the best aprocah would be just ajust numbers of SB DRK kit since it functions too. with the new MP cap and other stuff they could control easily the amount of DA you have to press in combat with is was the main complaing about DRK desing but instead they choose rip everything and add to another 2 jobs the spaminner release mechanic, DRK and MCH, what worry me more is this specific mechanic if being pressent on so many jobs, 3 of then beings tanks with minimun diferences, i mean the devs never ask themself if ppl don't like this mechanics they are only reducing the viable options for this players?, they way they keep adding inner release to so many jobs it's a reason to say "hey stop right there" not only to recover the original DRK but to prevent they add this stupid mechanic to GNB or another job in the future.

[WhyAmIHere]

if they feel overcome by the amount of the tank ajustments they made at the same time they desing GNB the best aprocah would be just ajust numbers of SB DRK kit since it functions too. with the new MP cap and other stuff they could control easily the amount of DA you have to press in combat with is was the main complaing about DRK desing but instead they choose rip everything and add to another 2 jobs the spaminner release mechanic, DRK and MCH, what worry me more is this specific mechanic if being pressent on so many jobs, 3 of then beings tanks with minimun diferences, i mean the devs never ask themself if ppl don't like this mechanics they are only reducing the viable options for this players?, they way they keep adding inner release to so many jobs it's a reason to say "hey stop right there" not only to recover the original DRK but to prevent they add this stupid mechanic to GNB or another job in the future.

like, I get that. But i know i've said it before and as have others, the playerbase by large was just not touching DRK as much as they were WAR/PLD in 4.x. SE saw that and said "we have to do something!" What they came up with is what we have now. There's plenty more of what could have been done but remember that most of the complaints were "we press DA too much," so SE could either, while all the team is working on making sure GNB is functional and balanced, and introducing DNC, and overhauling how tanks in general function, pour time into making DA work, or just remove it.

Expediency led to them removing dark arts and SE backed themselves into a corner with DRK's design.