DRK the least chunkiest or is it just me?

[ArianeEwah]

It would be nice if DRK got an earlier level ability that's "TBN, but self-targeted and weaker" to help with early levels.
But apparently, early levels are meaningless because they aren't cutting edge, current raids.

And my question is why? There are enough tools to over mitigate dungeon trash and previous boss fights by a mile. You literately have Rampart, Shadowskin, Arm's Length, and reprisal at your disposal. If you're dying still with all of those it more than likely means one of the following.

A. You're not using cool downs correctly
B. You're not up to date on your gear.
C. Your healer is letting you die (A and B applies to them as well)
D. You're missing a game mechanic from one of the monsters.

Assuming your character some how doesn't have a built in weakness.

Their demand is justified. Well sure, DRK has 'enough' tools for mitigation, but it's not a 'balanced' amount of mitigation.

PLD has Sheltron very early now, even before HW content; WAR has Thrill of Battle as an allround heal(/buff), and gets Equilibrium, and Raw Intuition way before level 70; and our newcomer GNB has Heart of Stone, Heart of Light, and Camouflage on top right before 70.
DRK is the only tank before level 70 WITHOUT a short mitigation CD or even aoe raid wide ON 70!

And Dark Mind doesn't cut it. Magical only is useless when you face physical enemies. Every other tank has CDs for both kinds of damage.

This is frustrating and disheartening when you play DRK on lower levels and know you have LESS than any other job on your role.
It's destroying the (fun) experience of this job (and leveling is taking a great amount of experience of a job), and should be changed without destroying current end game balance.

[Seku]

Their demand is justified. Well sure, DRK has 'enough' tools for mitigation, but it's not a 'balanced' amount of mitigation.

PLD has Sheltron very early now, even before HW content; WAR has Thrill of Battle as an allround heal(/buff), and gets Equilibrium, and Raw Intuition way before level 70; and our newcomer GNB has Heart of Stone, Heart of Light, and Camouflage on top right before 70.
DRK is the only tank before level 70 WITHOUT a short mitigation CD or even aoe raid wide ON 70!

And Dark Mind doesn't cut it. Magical only is useless when you face physical enemies. Every other tank has CDs for both kinds of damage.

This is frustrating and disheartening when you play DRK on lower levels and know you have LESS than any other job on your role.
It's destroying the (fun) experience of this job (and leveling is taking a great amount of experience of a job), and should be changed without destroying current end game balance.

And? You just said it yourself Drk has enough mitigation. Which yet again goes back to my starting question why. If not having a single button to press every 2-3 minutes is making the job not fun for you, maybe it's you and not the job. DRK has way worse problems then it's cool down's at the moment, more so given FF14's meta. The only thing that you've said that makes any sense is that Dark Mind needs to get a re-work. Which has been known by the community for a long time.


So please, tell us why DRK should get another button to press every 2-4 minutes for no reason other than just to have it, instead of asking the devs to I don't know, re-work the class so that it's not boring and has a more interesting Kit over all that pushs DRK away from being a WAR clone and why they should re-work their abilities to fit into content that is old and most can be cleared by low man groups?

[DRKoftheAzure]

And? You just said it yourself Drk has enough mitigation. Which yet again goes back to my starting question why. If not having a single button to press every 2-3 minutes is making the job not fun for you, maybe it's you and not the job. DRK has way worse problems then it's cool down's at the moment, more so given FF14's meta. The only thing that you've said that makes any sense is that Dark Mind needs to get a re-work. Which has been known by the community for a long time.


So please, tell us why DRK should get another button to press every 2-4 minutes for no reason other than just to have it, instead of asking the devs to I don't know, re-work the class so that it's not boring and has a more interesting Kit over all that pushs DRK away from being a WAR clone and why they should re-work their abilities to fit into content that is old and most can be cleared by low man groups?

In terms of mitigation, DRK has no real mitigation outside of Shadow Wall, which you might as well make Sentinel a Role action, and most of the tank imbalances come from Role Action as whole, and it mostly affects Tank and Physical Ranged DPS roles and role actions tanks should only have are Provoke, Arm's Length, Ultimatum, and Shirk. But that's just me...


And as far as raid buffs are concerned, DRK and/or PLD will not bring RDM and/or MNK to the party because of Embolden/Brotherhood only affecting everyone else's Physical Damage dealt, especially since we don't if Living Shadow counts as physical damage or magical damage or both or if it's even factored in at all, which is why I believe Living Shadow should be tied to Darkside maintenance and have last as long as you have Darkside up(while reworking Brotherhood and Embolden affect all damage dealt instead of just one type of damage, maybe add haste effects as well to those skills). But, again, that's just me...

[BarretOblivion]

In terms of mitigation, DRK has no real mitigation outside of Shadow Wall, which you might as well make Sentinel a Role action, and most of the tank imbalances come from Role Action as whole, and it mostly affects Tank and Physical Ranged DPS roles and role actions tanks should only have are Provoke, Arm's Length, Ultimatum, and Shirk. But that's just me...


And as far as raid buffs are concerned, DRK and/or PLD will not bring RDM and/or MNK to the party because of Embolden/Brotherhood only affecting everyone else's Physical Damage dealt, especially since we don't if Living Shadow counts as physical damage or magical damage or both or if it's even factored in at all, which is why I believe Living Shadow should be tied to Darkside maintenance and have last as long as you have Darkside up(while reworking Brotherhood and Embolden affect all damage dealt instead of just one type of damage, maybe add haste effects as well to those skills). But, again, that's just me...

???
What is TBN not classified as a mitigation tool? Dark mind still has its uses in magical fights... which gee 2/4 of the fights in eden are all magical making DRK really good there. Plus... TEA is almost all magical, I would kill for an extra 20% mitgation for free every minute.

[Reynhart]

???
What is TBN not classified as a mitigation tool? Dark mind still has its uses in magical fights... which gee 2/4 of the fights in eden are all magical making DRK really good there. Plus... TEA is almost all magical, I would kill for an extra 20% mitgation for free every minute.

The topic is how much mitigation DRK has below level 70.

[ArianeEwah]

snip (pressing buttons?)

I don't know where you get that I demand buttons to smash?

I could spam Dark Mind vs everything... it would do literally nothing in most cases, but at least I have buttons to click?

I don't know if or how long you experienced Heavensward, but there DRK had the same amount or even more of mitigation than any other tank (excluding invuls).

WAR: Raw Intuition, Vengeance, Thrill of Battle, (Storm's Path [all])
PLD: Bulwark, Rampart, Sentinel, Sheltron, (Rage of Halone [STR/physical only])
DRK: Dark Mind, Dark Dance, Shadowskin, Shadow Wall, Reprisal, (Delirium [INT/magical only])
You also had Foresight, Bloodbath (MRD/WAR) and Awareness (GLA/PLD) as cross class actions.

Now back to the present, let's list what unique actions every tank get before lvl 70 (exluding 30% mitigations and invuls):

PLD: (Passive block since start) Sheltron [35], (Clemency [58])
WAR: Thrill of Battle [30], Raw Intuition [56], (Equilibrium [58]), Shake It Off [68]
GNB: Camouflage [6!], (Aurora [45!]), Heart of Light [64], Heart of Stone [68]
DRK: Dark Mind [45], (Abyssal Drain [56])

DRK lost Dark Dance as Anticipation, and Reprisal, PLD lost Bulwark, and WAR lost... nothing. GNB even gets its first unique mitigation action at level 6! And their hot/heal before 50, too! This is huge for dungeon runs, or level 50/60 content. Having a disadventage for 2 out of 4 expansions leaves a bad taste.

Additionally, they nerfed DRK in SB hard, (TBN was okayish) gauge generation was a mess (1 per physical hit during BW, 4 per tick in BP, some awkward number in Salted Earth yada yada), Dark Arts usage was awkward and overused, aoe damage before Abyssal Drain was abysmal low (lol at 50 pot on Unleash), and SE did not buff ShadowWall, DM or DP until late into expansion, while still ignoring that DRK was missing additional mitigation AND damage on lower levels. WAR and PLD got buffed since start, or shortly after the launch. DRK was undertuned/underperforming, even on SB endgame content.

Dark Mind needs to be avaiable sooner and get a physical mitigation bonus/trait, or SE needs to add another physical mitigation skill similar to Dark Dance.

tl;dr: It's not about having more buttons to press, but having abilities at your disposal. DRK is missing those when synced lower than level 70.

[Brightshadow]

DRK could really use some love below level 70 they feel very squishy without TBN.

1.) First thing that should be adjusted is giving us a way to know if an attack is magical or physical so dark mind has more usage. Maybe a different color cast bar for magical attacks/tankbusters?

2.) Second thing I would suggest is more unique mitigation. For example give them Dread Spikes.

Dread Spikes (Level 45)
Description: When you receive a physical attack, Dread Spikes drains HP from the enemy equal to X% the damage dealt. (Duration 10s)
Recast: 60-90s

[Magnedeus]

???
What is TBN not classified as a mitigation tool? Dark mind still has its uses in magical fights... which gee 2/4 of the fights in eden are all magical making DRK really good there. Plus... TEA is almost all magical, I would kill for an extra 20% mitgation for free every minute.

And how exactly do you know that all the fights in eden are magic based? Last time i checked there is no way to tell the difference between magical and physical damage. A boss could be swinging his weapon at you for a tank buster that looks physical, but the damage you take could be magical.

[Seku]

???.

I don't care about WAR, GUN, PLD and the amount of defensive cool downs they have in this argument. Your argument is that DRK should have more Defense cool downs below 70. You've yet to explain WHY they need it when they already have enough, by your own admission. If DRK has enough cool downs, why should they get more below 70.

And yes I agree, drk needs a better over all kit. But their defense is in check both at and below the level cap.

[Satarn]

And how exactly do you know that all the fights in eden are magic based? Last time i checked there is no way to tell the difference between magical and physical damage. A boss could be swinging his weapon at you for a tank buster that looks physical, but the damage you take could be magical.

Aside from the fact that most people just check on fflogs(damage taken section has a list of all attacks which are color-coded for physical, magic and dots), you can also just look at the battle log in-game. There's 4 types of different log messages based on whether the attack is physical instant, physical cast, magical instant or magical cast:

EnemyName uses AttackName. - physical instant
EnemyName readies AttackName. - physical cast
EnemyName casts AttackName. - magical instant
EnemyName begins casting AttackName. - magical cast.

Would it be nice if there was some easier way to see it mid-combat, like colors or something? Yeah, totally. However saying there's no way to tell in-game is completely incorrect.