Dark Knight Changes - Suggestion.

[AnjouMaaka]

Can you try to make a point that doesn't involve "bad players" as a counter argument? Literally every argument can be nullified using "but bad players" because bad players are agnostic to designing power level, they are a complete anomaly and should not be considered for it.

If you want your argument to be taken seriously, at least go with semi-competent players if not experienced, because stuff like Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting paired with the other tools WAR has literally invalidates the need for healers if the skill level of 1 WAR + 3 DPS ranges anywhere from semi-competent to experienced.

I agree with you that stuff like Dark Mind/Missionary getting improvements would be fine or giving Oblation a little bit extra "anything" (doesn't have to be a regen), but that is most likely not what Valence was arguing for here.

The way I understood it is that Valence does not want another tank to be as absurdly tanky and high in sustain like Warrior (and Paladin), which is (are) the clear outlier here. I.e. not something to the power level of Raw Intuition/Bloodwhetting, at least not without something to use that excess HP for.

So quite frankly, you are overreacting to him.

I'm not overreacting. And ignoring the skill level of other players is not an excuse to continue fearmongering about a job just so that the devs ignore a majority that's been pleading for 5+ years to fix certain inadequacies. I could have just as easily used the phrase "less skilled" but the point still stands. They are paranoid because Xenos put out yet another video from the media tour of him doing a dungeon without a healer. Warrior has been able to do that since ARR. That's nothing new, and it certainly doesn't make their role irrelevant. You still need healers, especially for prog. Just cause TOP was cleared without a healer doesn't mean your average joe is gonna be able to do that.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I'm not overreacting. And ignoring the skill level of other players is not an excuse to continue fearmongering about a job just so that the devs ignore a majority that's been pleading for 5+ years to fix certain inadequacies. I could have just as easily used the phrase "less skilled" but the point still stands. They are paranoid because Xenos put out yet another video from the media tour of him doing a dungeon without a healer. Warrior has been able to do that since ARR. That's nothing new, and it certainly doesn't make their role irrelevant. You still need healers, especially for prog. Just cause TOP was cleared without a healer doesn't mean your average joe is gonna be able to do that.

Highlighted the critical points of your response.

1.) If you do not establish a minimum baseline of skill requirement before considering balance adjustments, then any skill is not strong enough because players that aren't skilled enough will not press them. You literally "have to" cut out bad / weak / lesser skilled /whatever-you-want-to-call-it players out of the equation for balancing jobs and actions because it is semi-competent to experienced players that will break your game - and in that area, experienced healers are being bored to death as strats become solved and content becomes routine.

It is no longer fearmongering at this point and just genuine concern - Warrior is literally too strong because the healing of Bloodwhetting/Raw Intuition is per-target rather than per-action like it should be (see PLD's Holy Circle, Confiteor and Blade combo). For dungeon content, there is absolutely nothing balanced about having a Hallowed Ground every 25 seconds for 8-10s (heal timings & amount accounted for) on top of having 1200 + 1000 heal potency on Equilibrium, 15% HP shield + 300p heal + 500p regen on Shake it Off, another 1500p total regen on Damnation (Vengeance II) as well as 20% max HP healing and a +20% recovery boost on Thrill with another +15% on Rampart. And if you do end up having a gap, you can Holmgang for 10 seconds as well. All of this is ignoring the regular mitigation options to boot.

So moving the sustain of any tank up to Warrior - rather than throwing Warrior down to not be broken, which is as fixable as just making Bloodwhetting trigger only once per weaponskill (or making additional targets hit only scale for 100-150p heals) - is a suggestion quite obviously met with ire, by MORE than just tanks because healers are part of this equation.



2.) The Xenos vid is old, but it proves a point. And frankly it isn't limited to high-end raiders to pull this off either. And since you are saying it - just because Warrior has been able to do it since ARR (stormblood WAR would beg to differ) does not mean that this should've been a thing nor should it continue be a thing. It's okay for Warrior and other tanks to be strong, but Warrior literally invalidates the need for a healer in dungeons at Lv56+ (for self heals) and Lv76+ (for party heals).

For reminder, these are things healers are usually known for and you should know that given you have all tanks and healers at Lv100:

- single-target healing, either the tank or spot-healing DPS [Warrior completely negates the need for this]
- AOE healing against raidwide damage, especially when in high frequency [between Nascent Flash & Shake it Off, WAR can handle dungeon AOE as long as the other 3 dps are competent]
- mitigation of incoming damage when available (ST, AOE) [guess what WAR is *really* good at]
- Esuna on important debuffs [underutilized in dungeons]
- doing damage [like everyone else]
- dealing with mistakes made by party members [the first and only thing Healers are truly useful for in dungeons]

Take skill issue out of the equation and healing becomes boring with a WAR around. Plain and simple. Mind you, Warrior's brokenness scales down in savage and ultimate raids (except for Holmgang, but different topic), so this argument is about dungeons.

As for that TOP example you threw in at the end - yes, it is unbelievably difficult to do, requires two Paladins and two Red Mages with a combined 130ish Clemency & Vercure casts and Cover cheesing Magic Number, a WAR to round it out and 3 other dps with AOE healing available and it is obviously significantly easier to do with a standard 224 composition, but the problem here isn't Warrior nor is it Healer irrelevance, it is the fact that this was even possible in the first place, which is a design failure of not putting in frequent enough healing requirements that mandates having dedicated healers. Principle is the issue here.

[Derio]

Honestly DRK just needs help for dungeon content. Especially dungeons below lvl 70. This can be fixed by unpairing CS from AD and making AD cost 3k mana with a 5s recast timer and adding a 200 potency heal to weapon abilities that consume blood.

DRK bandaide is easy, just devs dont really care about DRK because it does the most damage so its considered fine. I think the biggest problem that will come with DRK is criterion. What incentive do DRK players have to do criterion other than suffer through a dungeon and put the healer through more stress.

When criterion releases it will be same as last time where if you are not playing as a WAR or PLD then you are grefing the group.

[Valence]

People saying that WAR was able to solo heal/tank dungeons back in ARR and HW is completely misleading. Blodobath was on 90s cd, so yeah, perhaps it was, but one pull out of two at best, and only for 20s. Unless you were ready to sit and twiddle your thumbs until bloodbath was back. This is disingenuous at this point.

To top it off, ARR/HW Bloodbath WAR and ShB Nascent WAR, while kinda broken already in my opinion, still required a modicum of skill expression since the self heal was directly tied to damage, so to the skills used under the effect (which also limited the power of Nascent WAR outside of its burst window every 60s). It's just not comparable, but it has certainly crept dramatically.

Funnily enough DRK was better than WAR at tanking with the old Dark Arts Abyssal spamm.

[Shurrikhan]

People saying that WAR was able to solo heal/tank dungeons back in ARR and HW is completely misleading. Bloodbath was on 90s cd, so yeah, perhaps it was, but one pull out of two at best, and only for 20s. Unless you were ready to sit and twiddle your thumbs until bloodbath was back. This is disingenuous at this point.

30s, due to the Marauder trait. And, Inner Beast healed for 900 potency back then.

But yes, though I did solo heal-tank some dungeons even before we had complete overgeared them, it was tough going and consistently slower than using mass-SMNs/SCHs or more standard comps of the time (e.g., BLM WHM BRD PLD). At least until so hugely overgeared that melee DPS splitting threat, too, could easily tank said dungeons... which I also did from time to time when tanks had a tantrum or d/c.

Funnily enough DRK was better than WAR at tanking with the old Dark Arts Abyssal spam.

Ehhh... it depended on the amount of incoming damage. You could only get out 2 DA-ADs per full MP bar, after all, since AD itself cost quite a bit atop DA's 25% of your base MP. And in Stormblood... both were just gods during their full CDs. Delirium-BW spam gave temporarily infinite MP and, well, Warrior was Warrior (not quite so OP during CDs, unless really leveraging how broken Holmgang was by comparison even then, but probably putting slightly out greater total Mit+Healing overall). Honestly, though, all three tanks felt distinctly powerful back then even without needing the likes of absurd passive eHP.

To top it off, ARR/HW Bloodbath WAR and ShB Nascent WAR, while kinda broken already in my opinion, still required a modicum of skill expression since the self heal was directly tied to damage

And that's the key part imo. Not only did the IR/BW change hurt Warrior balance; worse, it hurt Warrior engagement and theme.

[AnjouMaaka]

Highlighted the critical points of your response.
Take skill issue out of the equation and healing becomes boring with a WAR around. Plain and simple. Mind you, Warrior's brokenness scales down in savage and ultimate raids (except for Holmgang, but different topic), so this argument is about dungeons.

Dungeons is where DRK is lacking the most, so yes, this argument really boils down to that in the first place. Too many players overestimate their own skill level, and this in turn makes it underestimated how many players have skill issues, which is why I fail to see how it isn't fearmongering when these healer mains come here to the tank forum with the sole purpose of defending what they should know by now to be terrible design flaws. Is it boring for the experienced player? For some it is, but not all. The experienced player is far outnumbered by the inexperienced, and that gets proven every time I solo queue for roulettes. It is the inexperienced players that help make plays like soloing the dungeon boss from 60% be a skill expression, even if you are doing this as a warrior. Which further proves how much of a pushover dungeons are designed to be. Experience tells me there's probably a 30% to 70% divide of experienced players to inexperienced, and around 60% of both groups wanting DRK to receive at least some kind of defensive buff. So you just want around 70% of the player base to be completely invalidated by nerfing warrior into the ground instead of buffing DRK? I'm sorry but anyone who wants that has lost the plot.

Honestly DRK just needs help for dungeon content. Especially dungeons below lvl 70.

DRK bandaide is easy, just devs dont really care about DRK because it does the most damage so its considered fine. I think the biggest problem that will come with DRK is criterion. What incentive do DRK players have to do criterion other than suffer through a dungeon and put the healer through more stress.

Criterion definitely makes the dark knight issues be glaring and in your face, cause they often aren't even allowed into the party finders I've seen for criterion. I haven't even attempted criterion since the first one, because of the lack of rewards. But, yes, the fix for dark knight is quite easy to do, and doesn't really even require new abilities added to it. Just minor fixes to what's already there.

It's just not comparable, but it has certainly crept dramatically.

Dark knight wasn't even around in ARR. Honestly, if players like you had the reigns of this, we'd probably still have TP and warrior wouldn't even exist anymore. What's disingenuous is saying it's not comparable while at the same time still claiming that the healer role is being crept on. The main point is what you're fearmongering about has been possible since ARR, which means you are beating a dead horse for the sake of defending design flaws.

[Shurrikhan]

Dark knight wasn't even around in ARR.

This has got to be trolling. There is no separate mention of ARR in the post you quoted. There is "ARR and HW" and "ARR/HW and ShB".

Honestly, if players like you had the reigns of this, we'd probably still have TP and warrior wouldn't even exist anymore.

...It has nothing to do with TP. Val simply noted the difference in skill expression available between something that actually scales with your surrounding damage and something that does not.

The main point is what you're fearmongering about has been possible since ARR

That, though, is false by any useful measurement. No-healer WAR runs back then were scarcely any more practical than taking 6 melee non-jobs to a raid to cycle Perfect Dodge or using BLMs to tank via old Mana Wall. Now, skipping the healer to have Warrior deal with everything... is not only decently common but frequently optimal.

_____________

If your position on tank balance is somehow serious, it seems to come down to this simple crux: to (A) screw over any and all inter-role balance in order to make dungeon tanking foolproof enough for your very subjective preference, or to (B)... not do that, and instead be mindful of both in-role and inter-role balance.

[Supersnow845]

which is why I fail to see how it isn't fearmongering when these healer mains come here to the tank forum with the sole purpose of defending what they should know by now to be terrible design flaws.

because as shocking as it is to explain to someone who apparently opposes one man army tank design people who have a shred of competence in this game don’t particularly like having healers made irrelevant and tanks being made unable to die. The real point that nobody can understand is why tank mains still seem to cling to this weird belief that their job changes occur in a vacuum

If you advocate for every tank to be given raw intuition that is just as much (if not more so) a healer balance issue than it is a tank balance issue. You don’t see people on the healer forums going “why isn’t WHM’s holy stun permanent, it would give a nice strong niche to WHM who struggles in dungeon healing compared to the shields”. You know why people don’t say that; because that sort of decision is just as much a tank balance issue as it is a healer one because that decision would invalidate the tank

People don’t have to “irrationally fear monger” as you put it that tanks are overtaking the healer role, they’ve damn already done it since EW since with the advent of EW they removed skill expression from tank sustain, which is completely different to ARR WAR HW/SB DRK or ShB WAR

[Carighan]

because as shocking as it is to explain to someone who apparently opposes one man army tank design people who have a shred of competence in this game don’t particularly like having healers made irrelevant and tanks being made unable to die. The real point that nobody can understand is why tank mains still seem to cling to this weird belief that their job changes occur in a vacuum

You can really notice how Anjou looks at things from their own level of (lacking) skill, and hence assumes everyone else to be just as bad. :')

Which isn't exactly fair, anyways. I dislike only balancing for the top end as much as the next person, but I also feel balancing for the lowest common denominator is wrong. As you say, healers need some relevance beyond spamming 1 nuke and keeping 1 DoT up. DRKs and GNBs need some relevant beyond "budget tanks", especially now that GNB lost their identity.

It's much easier to state what really needs to happen, and see DRK reworks - in particular because we got some useful buffs, but they further homogenize tanks - as part of an overall shift of role interdependency:

* Tanks need to take significantly more damage, both against groups (but less so) and in particular against single targets and bosses (and we're talking 3x-4x the current damage intake here!). This not only implements a need for active healing, but more importantly also makes tank-defenses non-trivial and means there's player skill expression in mitigating auto-attacks.
* On the "other side", emnity needs to once again be non-trivial, so that tank skill can be expressed in lifting the "ceiling" of how much damage DPS can even do. Tanks should be less about optimal DPS and more optimal emnity in raids, and as a result emnity generation should not rely (solely) on damage dealt. For example if Warrior keeps their insane self-healing, maybe make it so that their tank stance mostly massively boosts emnity from healing, hence they directly feed their own emnity level with it, too.
* And likewise, between-job balance inside tanks needs a good hard look after this overall balance is done. Strong dehomogenization would be good, but is difficult to even judge while a) everything is so binary, either it kills you it is ignorable and b) Warrior has no downsides to balance their upsides.

Also I'm not sure how valid arguing with Anjou even is. They have a strong troll-flavor, putting out nothing but a consistently weird message that is completely disconnected from how the game actually plays.

[Valence]

Dark knight wasn't even around in ARR. Honestly, if players like you had the reigns of this, we'd probably still have TP and warrior wouldn't even exist anymore. What's disingenuous is saying it's not comparable while at the same time still claiming that the healer role is being crept on. The main point is what you're fearmongering about has been possible since ARR, which means you are beating a dead horse for the sake of defending design flaws.

Did you miss the mention of HW in "ARR/HW" or are you trying to dig your grave even further than this trainwreck of a thread has been for you so far?