Dark Knight was bad even in Endwalker but

[Connor]

From the perspective of a healer who doesn’t really know anything about tanks I didn’t notice DRK being notably weaker than the others. I do feel like it had a fairly high disparity between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ players. Idk if it’s like more complex than the other tanks in terms of how convoluted its abilities are, but I never had a situation where I went into a dungeon or whatever and though ‘uh oh, a DRK!’.

Naturally that’s just the perspective of someone without knowledge of the abilities specifics I.e potency etc so idk how it actually compares to other tanks. But keeping them alive never felt significantly harder than other tanks to me

[BigCheez]

From the perspective of a healer who doesn’t really know anything about tanks I didn’t notice DRK being notably weaker than the others. I do feel like it had a fairly high disparity between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ players. Idk if it’s like more complex than the other tanks in terms of how convoluted its abilities are, but I never had a situation where I went into a dungeon or whatever and though ‘uh oh, a DRK!’.

Naturally that’s just the perspective of someone without knowledge of the abilities specifics I.e potency etc so idk how it actually compares to other tanks. But keeping them alive never felt significantly harder than other tanks to me

100%

"DRK is squishy" is a player skill issue. Defensively, it's very solid, but it does require a higher degree of player skill to make effective use of its skills.

I don't think DRK needs defensive buffs, I think it needs potency buffs so that the higher effort required to play the job well is rewarded. There is no world in which a WAR should be doing more damage than a DRK, assuming equal player skill.

[Ryaduera]

100%

"DRK is squishy" is a player skill issue. Defensively, it's very solid, but it does require a higher degree of player skill to make effective use of its skills.

This is outright untrue.

We just disagree on the wording then, other tanks being better does in no way mean DRK is bad

If "all of the other options are better" it's bad. Game balance is more important than just player capabilities, it's important because it means that for all jobs to clear the content, all content must be clearable by all jobs. Sounds obvious, right? Well if we have something that is the weakest in its role, then all content must be doable by all weakest in that role, so then what happens when you bring something better than the weakest? It trivializes the role altogether outside of taking yourself in at a disadvantage and choosing the worst one. We literally see this in real time in dungeons when Party members die on bosses, making it more apparent than ever with the new dungeon difficulty, where PLD, WAR, and GNB can solo entire bosses, but DRK just eats crap and wipes it.

Being possible but the worst option is always bad.

[EponaTBHSMH]

If "all of the other options are better" it's bad. Game balance is more important than just player capabilities, it's important because it means that for all jobs to clear the content, all content must be clearable by all jobs. Sounds obvious, right? Well if we have something that is the weakest in its role, then all content must be doable by all weakest in that role, so then what happens when you bring something better than the weakest? It trivializes the role altogether outside of taking yourself in at a disadvantage and choosing the worst one. We literally see this in real time in dungeons when Party members die on bosses, making it more apparent than ever with the new dungeon difficulty, where PLD, WAR, and GNB can solo entire bosses, but DRK just eats crap and wipes it.

Being possible but the worst option is always bad.

Reading this makes me once again understand that the only thing you all care about when judging a tank being good or bad is survivability, which I personally consider to be one aspect that is exceptional or accidental, it really has to be happening to you guys a lot to rank an entire job from just that tbh

-I WILL have to admit that my opinion is largely influenced by the fact that 50% of my gameplay is with friends, and the other 50% are randos that also die extremely rarely

-I ran DT MSQ as PLD and the only dungeon I wiped was Alexandria, I was the only survivor as PLD on the but still died despite my tons of self healing and my Hallowed Ground, the reason why is because we did not know the mechanics (skill issue where game balance did not save me but player capabilities would have)

-DRK does not eat crap and wipes it necessarily, it may not be invincible like WAR but it can definitely take a good 15-20% off a boss solo with good cooldowns, once again that depends on the DRK's player skill

-Calling DRK weak/bad seems to be for this situation only, you cant mean just "clearable by all jobs" because normal content is way too undertuned to have DRK-WAR mitigation difference to be even remotely relevant in whether you clear a dungeon or not, and damage doesnt matter cuz why would you care about speed in a normal dungeon unless you're a speedrunning for the funny number site, you must SURELY have meant "clearable by all jobs without wiping"

[Ryaduera]

Reading this makes me once again understand that the only thing you all care about when judging a tank being good or bad is survivability

Yes... We're tanks. We want to tank.

-DRK does not eat crap and wipes it necessarily, it may not be invincible like WAR but it can definitely take a good 15-20% off a boss solo with good cooldowns, once again that depends on the DRK's player skill

If it can die while a boss is at 50% but the others cannot it is comparatively weaker, yes. I think you're starting to understand the concept, but not understanding why that makes it bad.

-Calling DRK weak/bad seems to be for this situation only, you cant mean just "clearable by all jobs" because normal content is way too undertuned to have DRK-WAR mitigation difference to be even remotely relevant in whether you clear a dungeon or not, and damage doesnt matter cuz why would you care about speed in a normal dungeon unless you're a speedrunning for the funny number site, you must SURELY have meant "clearable by all jobs without wiping"

You're coasting the line of what I'm talking about. DRK can clear all content, yes, but the other tanks tell the players the other party members are optional and serve only the purpose of speeding things up and making stack mechanics necessary and this is in part because DRK is so weak comparatively that the other tanks just don't even care about the content. I leveled PLD first and honestly I couldn't really die my first time in dungeons, including when the party died, and I'd have to either finish it off or let myself die to start over (I always let the party choose) but on DRK when the party dies I'm just sitting on borrowed time. That's where the problem lies. If DRK is brought on par with them, the content can be balanced such that all tanks feel more challenged. This applies to normal content as well as high end content. And honestly, in this raid tier it looks like raid wides are divided between magical and physical damage, in which case you really really don't want to run DRK with GNB and if that's how it is, why would you ever pick DRK? It's less tanky, it offers less damage, and can't main tank as efficiently as WAR/PLD. The problem with DRK being the worst tank is a lot bigger than feeling slightly bad to play sometimes and more that there's no real reason to choose it outside of liking it on a personal level. Now, I'm not naive enough to think that DRK is the only reason content is so easy on the other tanks, but it would be so much easier to balance out content if all tanks were within equal grounds. It was said somewhere that 7.0 the team would focus on encounter design... I'd hate to be the guy sitting there asking if DRK will do well in it.

I'm a little confused. You don't care about tankiness, you don't care about damage, what horse do you have in this race? Interesting and engaging design? Because it doesn't have that either. No interactivity with Darkside, TBN being a DPS loss potential, and a bandaid fix to Delirium being "We have Inner Release at Home" and the overall terrible design philosophy that comes from "Magic damage only" tank as well as the absolute trainwreck that TBN is in the design space of FFXIV. I've worked in Game Balance a long time and it perplexes me that DRK can stay in this state for so long. It's an absolute mess and inconsistent nightmare of a job.

[EponaTBHSMH]

snip

You are tanking even when everyone is alive which is like 97% of the time

I just don't get why it's such a huge factor to call a tank bad when its something that rarely happens or/and that's not supposed to happen. Why does solo survivability have such importance? How many times does it happen for it to be this important?

Talking about party members being optional is something that happens even less, why would any tank try to do that except to prove a point?

And because that part doesnt make sense, the correlation with that and DRK being weak doesn't make sense either because dungeon content is designed around Healer-Tank-DPS content, why imply that SE are tuning content around DRK solo tanking?

the tl;dr is that again all I can get from that is that, you often get parties where people die and you're the only one alive, which is why survivability matters so much in how you rank tanks. Tell me if I'm correct or not, to me this is the gist of your point and your posts

---------

But then you're also talking about raid, which is a very different subject

First off, not only I'm assuming you're talking about savage that is not even out yet, because I don't think physical or magical raidwides really matter in normal, but choosing DRK in savage is

#1 All content is clearable by all jobs
#2 Personal preference, which mind you is a very important reason to choose a tank even in content like savage, unless you plan on parsing or speedrunning why would any reason other to choose a tank matter? If you are a midcore savage player, by the time you get to the last floor you will outgear it damage wise and mitigation wise, if you do mechanics right and very little deaths, DRK or not, you're not enraging the last floor
#3 DPS checks differences only really matter when you're a world prog group running at the lowest ilvl, assuming nothing happens with the HP tuning like P8SP1, DRKs will clear this raid at LEAST by week 2, if not even week 1
-----

Saying I don't care about tankiness means you haven't been reading my posts so let me clarify my stance once again:

A tank that can do wall to wall pulls comfortably without putting a strain on themselves, and be in situations where they HAVE to invuln to survive or make their healer run out of mana or have to GCD heal, is good tank.

if on top of that you have powerful self heal abilities (reminder that DRK does have Abyssal Drain btw) then you are a VERY good tank, because you dont have to press all your mit buttons for your healer to be comfortable.

The rest of your post is just personal preference on the design of the job, you're entitled to that.

Most of yall in this thread are perpetuating the "DRK bad" meme since Endwalker because you consider powerful self heals to be the new standard for tanking or because you are meeting DRKs that think only pressing TBN in a pull will save them, I can't do that.

[Tunda]

You are tanking even when everyone is alive which is like 97% of the time

I just don't get why it's such a huge factor to call a tank bad when its something that rarely happens or/and that's not supposed to happen. Why does solo out raid, which is

#1 All content is clearable by all jobs
#2 Personal preference, which mind you is a very important reason to choose a tank even in content like savage, unless you plan on parsing or speedrunning why would any reason other to choose a tank matter? If you are a midcore savage player, by the time you get to the last floor you will outgear it damage wise and mitigation wise, if you do mechanics right and very little deaths, DRK or not, you're not enraging the last floor
#3 DPS checks differences only really matter when you're a world prog group running at the lowest ilvl, assuming nothing happens with the HP tuning like P8SP1, DRKs will clear this raid at LEAST by week 2, if not even week 1
-----

Saying I don't care about tankiness means you haven't been reading my posts so let me clarify my stance once again:

A tank that can do wall to wall pulls comfortably without putting a strain on themselves, and be in situations where they HAVE to invuln to survive or make their healer run out of mana or have to GCD heal, is good tank.

if on top of that you have powerful self heal abilities (reminder that DRK does have Abyssal Drain btw) then you are a VERY good tank, because you dont have to press all your mit buttons for your healer to be comfortable.

The rest of your post is just personal preference on the design of the job, you're entitled to that.

Most of yall in this thread are perpetuating the "DRK bad" meme since Endwalker because you consider powerful self heals to be the new standard for tanking or because you are meeting DRKs that think only pressing TBN in a pull will save them, I can't do that.

You clearly love the job as it is

Again job being bad doesn't mean it is that you aren't allowed to enjoy it.

I am working as analytics and I know how to read data

Let's have a matrix to clear what is good and what is bad:

How tank should be evaluated?
Tankiness: 10 points
Damage: 10 points
Utility: 10 points
How it will performe in different type of combs: 10 points
Performance as MT: 10 points
Performance as OT: 10 points
How much they require healer in intermediate contant: 10 points
Job rotation optimization: 10 pointa
You cad add more parameters and let's evaluate all tanks and see what is the worst even OBJECTIVELY

[Ryaduera]

You are tanking even when everyone is alive which is like 97% of the time

I just don't get why it's such a huge factor to call a tank bad when its something that rarely happens or/and that's not supposed to happen. Why does solo survivability have such importance? How many times does it happen for it to be this important?

Then let me add the word effectively.

Talking about party members being optional is something that happens even less, why would any tank try to do that except to prove a point?

It's not about if they will, it's about if they can do things others can't. You're interjecting a player act into the design philosophy of the jobs, that has no place in this discussion

And because that part doesnt make sense, the correlation with that and DRK being weak doesn't make sense either because dungeon content is designed around Healer-Tank-DPS content, why imply that SE are tuning content around DRK solo tanking?

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that DRK is the only reason content is so easy on the other tanks

If you don't understand what I am saying just ask instead of trying to use conjecture. What I'm saying is that any content DRK can clear the other tanks can clear more effectively, and therein lies the problem.

the tl;dr is that again all I can get from that is that, you often get parties where people die and you're the only one alive, which is why survivability matters so much in how you rank tanks. Tell me if I'm correct or not, to me this is the gist of your point and your posts

Incorrect, my point is that in the event things go poorly for the party DRK is the only tank I feel like I can't do anything to turn the tides of battle. The frequency of the occurrence has nothing to do with it.

But then you're also talking about raid, which is a very different subject

Hi, I work in game balance, and no it isn't.

First off, not only I'm assuming you're talking about savage that is not even out yet, because I don't think physical or magical raidwides really matter in normal, but choosing DRK in savage is

Do you think the damage types will change from Normal to Savage? The normal mode that is the prelude and base of the design for the savage?

#1 All content is clearable by all jobs

Yes, but again the issue isn't if it can, it's if it's a good choice to pick that one. I can run 1 mile in dress shoes, but I'd rather use running shoes or sneakers.

#2 Personal preference, which mind you is a very important reason to choose a tank even in content like savage, unless you plan on parsing or speedrunning why would any reason other to choose a tank matter? If you are a midcore savage player, by the time you get to the last floor you will outgear it damage wise and mitigation wise, if you do mechanics right and very little deaths, DRK or not, you're not enraging the last floor

If you as a player are willing to choose a suboptimal choice for your content that doesn't do its absolute best then that's a perfectly fine choice for you and your group, but some of us don't have groups or statics and resort to PF groups where we're expected to pick up the slack for the less efficient players and push ourselves to the absolute maximum to do what they cannot, in which case, DRK is the obvious choice to leave behind outside of personal choice, and a good amount of players do not want to intentionally choose the worse option.

#3 DPS checks differences only really matter when you're a world prog group running at the lowest ilvl, assuming nothing happens with the HP tuning like P8SP1, DRKs will clear this raid at LEAST by week 2, if not even week 1

Not accurate even in the slightest. Performance always matters at every stage.

Saying I don't care about tankiness means you haven't been reading my posts so let me clarify my stance once again:

A tank that can do wall to wall pulls comfortably without putting a strain on themselves, and be in situations where they HAVE to invuln to survive or make their healer run out of mana or have to GCD heal, is good tank.

I had to Invuln plenty on DRK if I wanted to pull at the pace of PLD and WAR because I just ran out of mits where the others didn't. I mean, I didn't need to invuln, and usually when I did healers didn't see it and just GCD healed me anyway because LD is so poorly designed that using it without a notification macro will make it go completely unnoticed. I could have just slowed down, but have you seen how random DPS players run dungeons these days? You are expected to go at WAR/PLD/GNB pace in pulls just because that makes up 75% of the tank jobs (idk about play rate) and that plays into the factor of why DRK balance is a problem. It creates an unhealthy environment for the DRK and for parties that have DRK in them. I can take 3 left turns to go right, but it was still better to just take one right turn.

And before I see "Then you were undergeared" No. In 14 you cannot enter a dungeon undergeared, everyone in the dungeon meets the gear requirement set by the balance team regardless of current ilvl in that space. This "undergeared/overgeared" discussion for dungeons is silly and I will not have it in a discussion about class balance. If anything, my DRK was better geared because I saved all my dungeon gear for it.

if on top of that you have powerful self heal abilities (reminder that DRK does have Abyssal Drain btw) then you are a VERY good tank, because you dont have to press all your mit buttons for your healer to be comfortable.

Even if you assume you are hitting 20 targets (A LOT) with AD it still doesn't even reach GNB healing, and GNB is third in healing potency (arguably higher than the others in healing efficiency since HoC is an excog effect making it highly unlikely to overheal) and a 1 minute cooldown is a long time so calling it a powerful effect is logical fallacy. Hallowed Ground on PLD is considered to be one of the worst tank invulns despite having an inarguably better effect than the other invulns, but it's regarded as a weakness due to it's colossal cooldown. Calling AD a powerful tool is outright misleading. It's a "Once per pull" took that every other tank has 2 of in a pull.

The rest of your post is just personal preference on the design of the job, you're entitled to that.

Hi, I work in game balance. DRK is designed poorly with extremely limited interactivity with its own kit, and while I don't work in design, I work in balance, this is the kind of design I'd send back to the design team on the grounds that they've made my job harder with this jobs design.

Most of yall in this thread are perpetuating the "DRK bad" meme since Endwalker because you consider powerful self heals to be the new standard for tanking or because you are meeting DRKs that think only pressing TBN in a pull will save them, I can't do that.

Nobody here thinks only pressing TBN will save them. I can link the math to you if you like, but DRK is suffering. And this is particularly strange because it looks like you're admitting it's weak next to the other tanks cooldowns and recovery tools. It's okay to like DRK, I liked the inarguably unhealthy Stance Dancing that was terrible for the tanks playerbase back in 3.0, but I'm not so bullheaded I'll sit here and say it was a good thing. I liked something that was probably bad and that's okay, I miss it but I am glad its gone because it has seen the game I play and care about succeed easier in the hands of the players, which is exactly what I want for DRK. It doesn't even need major changes. I'd like to see major changes, but honestly I think that a handful of small changes solves everything, and I can do it without adding healing if you like.

Most of yall in this thread are perpetuating the "DRK bad" meme