Another Pal an War buff patch, another middle finger to Drks

[PercibelTheren]

In my experience, it comes down to whether the DRK in question knows what they're doing. The ones who know how to use their mits do need healing, but it's nothing major. It's more than WAR and PLD who straight up don't need heals, but they really aren't struggling that much. Maybe you've just been running into DRKs who aren't that experienced?

[ataren3]

From my experience the areas where DRK's lack of sustain are pretty niche, but the most relevant recent example I can think of is actually my attempts at Orthos Solo with the job, and this honestly hits the sweet spot where DRK's mitigations kinda break. The issue I see with the DRK sustain arguments is that DRK has this weird gap of content where TBN doesn't function due to it not breaking, and thats an issue to me because TBN is effectively DRK's only way to extend its longevity and shrug off damage.

The mobs in the early to mid floors do just enough damage to be threatening to you, but not enough damage to make TBN not a damage loss, you can use it anyway of course. But it feels shitty to do so, its also something thats entirely a unique problem to DRK.
The bosses of Deep Dungeons make this worse, as they're going to do constant damage to you, not enough to break TBN, but enough to where you have to worry about it.

It honestly makes DRK into a pot guzzling job for solo attempts of Orthos or even HoH (and in HoH TBN is basically unusable until floor 60 due to this damage threshold), and I think this is notable because I don't think this is the case for the other 3 tanks. Yeah you CAN guzzle those pots to make up for it, and honestly I HAVE started using Hyper Potions from Orthos to fill this gap in DRK's kit to great effect in all content, and even that amount of healing is enough to make DRK feel solid to me.

But its really sad to me that this consumable item from Eureka Orthos gives you more healing than everything in your kit combined.

I finished HoH solo as DRK and while it was fun... yeah TBN really doesn't help much until later floors outside of a landmine or massive pull in the earlier floors. I definitely used a lot of pots; I can't say the same about EO since I did that solo attempt as a healer instead.

[Somnolence]

Which is a problem because you spend less time in raids than you do in all other content

Speak for yourself, I only login to raid

[rxantos]

You can decide to focus on focus on attacking keeping dps your high.
or focus on keeping your mitigation by keeping TBN and other mitigations as soon as they pop. If you focus in the damage, sometimes you will not have enough magic for tbn, making you vulnerable in a w2w.

Tank Focus on damage is great for bosses. Bad for w2w where your focus should be in keeping the agro and surviving by mitigating.

[Oizen]

You can decide to focus on focus on attacking keeping dps your high.
or focus on keeping your mitigation by keeping TBN and other mitigations as soon as they pop. If you focus in the damage, sometimes you will not have enough magic for tbn, making you vulnerable in a w2w.

Tank Focus on damage is great for bosses. Bad for w2w where your focus should be in keeping the agro and surviving by mitigating.

Yeah but the issues people are pointing out is that DRK is the only one who has to do this, for no real upside anymore seeing as they're intent on closing the damage gap completely.
Not that DRK was ever the highest for AOE damage.

[Eorzean_username]

You can decide to focus on focus on attacking keeping dps your high.
or focus on keeping your mitigation by keeping TBN and other mitigations as soon as they pop. If you focus in the damage, sometimes you will not have enough magic for tbn, making you vulnerable in a w2w.

Tank Focus on damage is great for bosses. Bad for w2w where your focus should be in keeping the agro and surviving by mitigating.

I still don't understand this proposed idea that DRK has a "damage" and "defensive" rotation.

As long as you don't overcap MP and also end the pull with zero MP, you didn't lose any damage by holding 3k MP at a time and using TBN on cooldown — unless you're overwriting Dark Arts, which is just playing incorrectly, not a Damage vs. Defense decision.

If you're talking about dumping MP inside party buffs, that's not really an issue, even if you're trying to optimize trash pulls for some reason, because you can open the pull with a TBN pop and then convert your Dark Arts while buffs are still active, then dump your remaining MP, and then have 3k back by the time you need another TBN (or close enough).

No other mitigation besides TBN involves any choice related to damage, except maybe finding OGCD slots to weave it in while dumping Dark Knight's "Amazon.com search page" worth of OGCD action bloat.

And as of ShB, keeping aggro involves remaining conscious and spamming 1-2 on your AOE bar; it is also not a tradeoff with damage. In fact, it's caused by doing damage, so they're synergistic goals.

You're not really gaining any meaningful damage as DRK by overspending MP in a pull and leaving yourself without MP for TBN; that's not a "decision" so much as just a clumsy panic response to being flustered or inexperienced. Your total damage will be nearly the same whether you TBN on cooldown or not, assuming again that you use Dark Arts correctly (which is not a high bar of demand).

Also, assuming your party is all using their AOEs, you can deliberately dump to zero when you can see the HP bars of the majority of enemies are about to deplete, because you don't need TBN to survive when there's like 2-3 stragglers leftover at the end. So while you could say, "Holding MP reduces the total number of enemies your MP damages", in practice it's not really an issue.

[Malthir]

You can decide to focus on focus on attacking keeping dps your high.
or focus on keeping your mitigation by keeping TBN and other mitigations as soon as they pop. If you focus in the damage, sometimes you will not have enough magic for tbn, making you vulnerable in a w2w.

Tank Focus on damage is great for bosses. Bad for w2w where your focus should be in keeping the agro and surviving by mitigating.

Play a Drk on the latest expert with trust NPC's then come back to me.

Anyone who want's to say War's needed a buff because they were unplayable in raids, I would like to point out that a WAR solo'd P1 within like a week of it releasing.

WAR's an PAL did a relative amount less damage than Dark based on the self sustain they had, that was the reasoning. Then they ramped up their damage, the first time it was perfectly reasonable, the second time, ok fair enough the damage was pretty low, but now it's a joke. The comparison between the self sustain and the damage difference between Drk and War/Pal is night and day.

[fulminating]

Play a Drk on the latest expert with trust NPC's then come back to me.

Anyone who want's to say War's needed a buff because they were unplayable in raids, I would like to point out that a WAR solo'd P1 within like a week of it releasing.

WAR's an PAL did a relative amount less damage than Dark based on the self sustain they had, that was the reasoning. Then they ramped up their damage, the first time it was perfectly reasonable, the second time, ok fair enough the damage was pretty low, but now it's a joke. The comparison between the self sustain and the damage difference between Drk and War/Pal is night and day.

Trust npcs are notoriously incompetent and not reflective of actual gameplay.
Why does everyone fixate on warrior doing it when gunbreaker and paladin also did, or dark knight was the only tank that didn't.
Yet again you completely gloss over dark knight having significantly better mitigation for raids (dark mind, dark missionary, 2 oblations, tbn) than the other tanks as well as an opener/burst phase several dps would be envious of.

[GoatOfWar]

You can W2W with no problem. As long as you focus on a defensive rotation instead of an offensive one. Offensive one is great for bosses and raids. But not for trash.

What? You pop 2 or 3 mits towards the end of your pull and just use every GCD and OGCD in your arsenal..

[Oizen]

Trust npcs are notoriously incompetent

Yes.

and not reflective of actual gameplay.

Uh....., dont know about that I've seen plenty of people on duty finder where I wished I was with trust npcs.

Yet again you completely gloss over dark knight having significantly better mitigation for raids (dark mind, dark missionary, 2 oblations, tbn) than the other tanks as well as an opener/burst phase several dps would be envious of.

Dark Missionary isn't as good as Shake it off honestly.
That shit instantly heals, grants a shield, and a regen, while also having a damage boost mechanic for the WAR.
By comparison, 10% mit that you can only use on a single damage type isn't amazing. Its not bad but I think I'd rather have the one thats more applicable to all content.

Likewise WAR isn't completely without tools similar to this, Thrill of Battle is just TBN on a long cooldown without the niche benefit of shield hp.

Yeah DRK beats it in raw mitigation, but having an even spread of mitigation and regen is nothing to write off so easily.