Design of DRK and PLD

[Lyth]

Most actively raiding DRK players in Heavensward also played PLD and vice versa. There definitely were fights that were easier to progress on with PLD than DRK, A7S being the blatantly obvious example. You see this decision-making reflected in the WF clears as well. WAR was the only constant in that they were good against all damage types. MNK and DK were completely equivalent to Delirium and were probably up even more often. You'd have to be playing with an incredibly subpar MNK for them to play without their blunt resistance down buff.

I wouldn't consider the proc-based gameplay on HW DRK to be 'tools' or 'utility'. It just ensured that your resource generation was more variable, forcing you to think on your feet. FFXIV players tend to be very much against any randomness or variability that prevent you from mapping out your rotations on a spreadsheet, which is why DRK unfortunately has moved closer towards PLD style faceroll rotational design despite being originally set up as resource management tank. The problem is that it feeds back into this culture that every pull that you do has to be able to potentially yield a mathematically optimal result (even if you're not at the mechanical skill level where you can achieve said result), or else we just wipe and reset until you get the numbers that you want. This was the kind of thinking that made them effectively remove Crit/DH from affecting WAR. It's an incredibly dumb design direction. Who cares if you didn't crit on your 22nd Fell Cleave? Just play your best and you'll average at what you should.

[Ultimatecalibur]

This was the kind of thinking that made them effectively remove Crit/DH from affecting WAR. It's an incredibly dumb design direction. Who cares if you didn't crit on your 22nd Fell Cleave? Just play your best and you'll average at what you should.

Actually it was the opposite of dumb design, what it replaced was dumb design. The initial StB War was very random and Spiky due to so few attacks having such a major influence on average damage. The difference between direct crit Fell Cleave and a normal Fell Cleave during Berserk was 562 potency which was more than Fell Cleave's base potency of 500. When you have only 5 or 6 of those attacks every 2 minutes you only have a total of 25 to 30 of those attacks in a 10 minute fight which is far to few for the law of large numbers to ensure that each run was having the WAR deal roughly the same average damage.

[Shurrikhan]

You'd have to be playing with an incredibly subpar MNK for them to play without their blunt resistance down buff.

Or just one running enough SkS to drop DK only on Demolish and DK itself (for 7+15 bonus potency lost, or at most an extra 8 from the normal auto, while gaining the 130 potency of an extra Boot-True per rotational string). Such could cause small but potentially notable gaps in the Int Down debuff.

I wouldn't consider the proc-based gameplay on HW DRK to be 'tools' or 'utility'. It just ensured that your resource generation was more variable, forcing you to think on your feet.

This, and perhaps a bit more compensation for MTing (which, back then, every tank had in some different form -- DD, Reprisal, Low Blow, and self-heals if in tank-stance; Shield Swipe and MP generation; Vengeance and [very mild] rotational self-heals that didn't require tank stance).

FFXIV players tend to be very much against any randomness or variability that prevent you from mapping out your rotations on a spreadsheet, which is why DRK unfortunately has moved closer towards PLD style faceroll rotational design despite being originally set up as resource management tank. The problem is that it feeds back into this culture that every pull that you do has to be able to potentially yield a mathematically optimal result (even if you're not at the mechanical skill level where you can achieve said result), or else we just wipe and reset until you get the numbers that you want. This was the kind of thinking that made them effectively remove Crit/DH from affecting WAR. It's an incredibly dumb design direction. Who cares if you didn't crit on your 22nd Fell Cleave? Just play your best and you'll average at what you should.

Given the shit we'd bar lock out over minute rDPS gains (that ended up rivaled or even beat out by off-meta comps by StB's end), I wonder what would happen if we ever had to deal with actually playing differently depending on our comps, rather than merely having a 5% dmg shuffle from ones' aDPS to another's rDPS, etc. A true Pandemonium?