8.0 Dark Knight capstone skil

[Terhix]

I mean, the difference is marginal. It exists, don't get me wrong, but mitigation are 95%+ identical in function. They all look&feel somewhat different but it just doesn't make a meaningful difference. You don't have any fights where non-DRKs cannot mitigate something and hence aren't useful for a specific mechanic, you don't have any fights where the extra mitigation is the difference between a wipe and a clear. It's all just smoke and mirrors to give the illusion that the four tanks aren't for all intents and purposes identical.

I haven't claimed that the difference is huge, and you are now exaggerating it in the other direction. DRK can comfortably take a magic buster with a TBN + Oblation + Dark Mind alone and can do so every minute on the dot, WAR's analog would be using only Bloodwhetting + Thrill which is noticably less eHP with a much longer cooldown. There is no content where another tank can't mit something, but there is plenty of content where another tank has to commit much more important cooldowns than DRK, or - more commonly - where DRK just mits frequent but not super lethal damage spikes better than other tanks, but other tanks retroactively heal later.

Between the 4 tanks the way DRK's kit works is the most different, and it is different enough to be a reason for someone to prefer to play DRK over other tanks, and for other people to prefer other tanks over DRK, and that's good. If we are going to do changes or additions to tanks I think you'd agree that making DRK more like other tanks is the exactly wrong direction this game should take?

[Carighan]

Of course it should only diversy, my point was more that the existing difference makes no actual difference. It's stylistic only, for all intends and purposes just smoke&mirrors with no gameplay element behind it.

Because, and this is the crucial part: Yes, DRKs can in theory absorb a 60s staggered magic tankbuster. Sure.

So... which fight has that exactly? That's right, none do because the other tanks could not survive it and we cannot have that. The fact that DRKs have more and shorter-CDed mits is neat for flavor, but it makes no actual difference to class identity as everything is designed to be mitigated by warriors anyways. There is no fight where a DRK due to their increased mitigation supply can survive something without external healing that say, a Paladin could not, and hence in this fight a healer now doesn't have to swap over to a different platform (or so) to provide healing. Though now that I mention it one exception to this comes to mind but it's not on mitigation, during M8S phase 2 Paladins could heal themselves and the other tank when doing the tethers when opposite the healers, preventing the healers from ever having to leave their stack-tower and hence providing a bit of safety. That's Paladins with Clemency though, and it made all of ~2 casts per kill difference. That is actual class difference, right there. It made a meaningful impact, sadly only in a single fight, one where the entire gameplay of the group changes based on the capabilities or incapabilities of a specific class.

Compare also how in TBC WoW tank Paladins could stand with their groups for add-pickups due to being able to leave the high-aggro consecration at the add spawn or how in early GW2 raiding you would find Chronomancers able to go for their scepter to essentially tank from range so they are properly centered for buff range.

I mean right now I have equivalent hotbar setups for 3 out of the 4 tanks, every 60 seconds I press Shift+3, then 3, 4, 5. It works out that way, perfectly. Yes, Shift+3 does nothing every second time on DRK (Living Shadow) but eh, still awfully close to playing 4 Megaman levels with one controller performing one set of inputs to all four at once, no?

That being said I also don't want to gloss over the existing differences still being important, simply because they're all we have right now. You are absolutely right in that regard. And in a better class system these smoke&mirror things would still be the majority of all differences, they'd just no longer be the only ones. I struggle a bit to explain what I mean, but there should be moments like feeling like a Warrior in a dungeon, but for every tank, constantly. But different for each tank. If that makes sense?

[Shurrikhan]

Of course it should only diversy, my point was more that the existing difference makes no actual difference. It's stylistic only, for all intends and purposes just smoke&mirrors with no gameplay element behind it.

Because, and this is the crucial part: Yes, DRKs can in theory absorb a 60s staggered magic tankbuster. Sure.

So... which fight has that exactly? That's right, none do because the other tanks could not survive it and we cannot have that.

Not aimed just as yours, Carighan, as others have followed the same warrant, but...

In any serious content (outside of perhaps... Savage Criterion?), we absolutely can have that, because we have two tanks, allowing between them many more available timings for meeting tankbusters.

You'd have to face magical tankbusters beyond what can be dealt with via both tanks' Rampart and one's 2-minute combined every 30 seconds (or every other magical TB beyond the above within a minute of the other with 2 occurring per average of 75s) for this to become an issue.

A small extra bit of typal capacity therefore tends to become more a matter of ease of positioning or swaps (often by not needing to swap), rather than a potential necessity for survival (or wholly wasted beyond that).

Beyond that, maybe one tank could 1/5/2 comp sooner than others for a given fight, or without a Scholar required, but that's not a problem.

[Terhix]

(...) There is no fight where a DRK due to their increased mitigation supply can survive something without external healing that say, a Paladin could not (...)

(...) There is no content where another tank can't mit something, but there is plenty of content where another tank has to commit much more important cooldowns than DRK, or - more commonly - where DRK just mits frequent but not super lethal damage spikes better than other tanks, but other tanks retroactively heal later. (...)

Nice strawman.

[Reginald_Cain]

DRK wasn't "robbed by Warrior", though, any more than Warrior itself was. Both were simply dumbed down in Shadowbringers, losing on-demand spenders in favor of CDs. Remember, WAR lost its self-heal GCDs [Inner Beast, Steel Cyclone] at the same time (while PLD in turn lost the ability to buff its GCD heal).

Moreover, only one of those jobs launched without a damage reduction ability (or, none greater than 5% mitigation, and only one mitigation tool at all), and it wasn't DRK. WAR is XIV's original self-healing (and originally self-healing and max-Hp-boosting only) tank (with Inner Beast originally just healing for up to 1700 effective potency since it healed for 3x damage dealt and could thereby crit).

Not sure why you're trying to lecture someone who's played the game since its start on what was in it, and Carighan's post was very explicit in preferring a more necromantic (DoTs and minion(s) approach to DRK. Which is already something one can find on WoW's DK (Death Knight) just fine but has nothing to do with XIV's DRK (Dark Knight).

Yeah cool warrior was robbed of its depth and fun too. That was never something I denied. That doesn't take away from the fact dark knight had cool healing skills like soul survivor and gcd abyssal drain. I can live with dark knight being more damage, shielding and timing centric but I think abyssal drain is a cool animation and I'd like to to be the aoe soul eater equivalent. Maybe make it heal once and not per target. Make it give mana and blood too so it doesn't slow down the aoe mana gen.

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah cool warrior was robbed of its depth and fun too. That was never something I denied.

It was something you entirely mis-attributed so badly, though, that one can't help but wonder at the rest. A gamewide simplification =/= a job having its feature stolen by a job that (A) had the feature first and more integrally/importantly and (B) lost the exact same feature.

Soul Survivor

Amounted to, at best, 15% hp per minute. It healed for about as much, at the time, as a Souleater.

I can live with dark knight being more damage, shielding and timing centric

It's been this since Stormblood, which was when DRK was at its most unique.

I think abyssal drain is a cool animation and I'd like to to be the aoe soul eater equivalent.

Let's consider what this really means, gameplay-wise, though: a 3-step AoE combo. No more, no less. At present, the AoE combo is more resource-efficient than the ST combo because Stalwart Soul gives both the MP of Syphon and the Blood of Souleater. Adding a third step, especially if unable to do anything on a per-target-hit basis, would just cost us an extra button just to needlessly slow our AoE.

Make it give mana and blood too so it doesn't slow down the aoe mana gen.

Stalwart Soul already does this, though, so what is the intended result other than just seeing Abyssal Drain's animation more often? Is there to be any gameplay involved (beyond making the AoE combo more sluggish)?

And if that's our goal, we can manage that more easily just by unlinking CnS and AD (or giving them an extra shared charge and a 30s CD and making Abyssal debuff its primary target for life steal for 7 seconds or so as to be more often of use) but giving Shadowbringer an MP cost in turn (as not to bloat our opener), etc.

Or even just by moving the self-healing from Souleater to Bloodspiller and then replacing Quietus with Abyssal Drain (again, ideally, with some situational ST usefulness).

[Carighan]

Yeah I'd prefer if Bloodspiller and Quietus had some actual use. I originally thought they'd be the moves that generate mana, since that'd somewhat make... sense? Generate blood via combo -> blood to mana -> mana to shield -> shield to proc -> proc to damage buff.

[Absurdity]

Yeah I'd prefer if Bloodspiller and Quietus had some actual use. I originally thought they'd be the moves that generate mana, since that'd somewhat make... sense? Generate blood via combo -> blood to mana -> mana to shield -> shield to proc -> proc to damage buff.

Which is somewhat how it used to function in Stormblood.
Spend MP to boost your damage with Dark Arts or mitigate damage with TBN, generate blood with your combo or TBN, spend blood on either Bloodspiller for damage or Delirium to extend Blood Weapon, longer Blood Weapon = more MP to use on TBN or Dark Arts.

Of course there could've been more interaction between blood and MP, but the Shadowbringers rework went in the completely wrong direction and made the two resources not interact at all.

[ThorinG]

Yeah I'd prefer if Bloodspiller and Quietus had some actual use. I originally thought they'd be the moves that generate mana, since that'd somewhat make... sense? Generate blood via combo -> blood to mana -> mana to shield -> shield to proc -> proc to damage buff.

Fully agree with the MP generation part to be added to Blood gauge's actions, since each of the Scarlet Delirum actions restores 200 MP, they can add the same MP restoration amount to Bloodspiller and Quietus.

[Mikey_R]

Interestingly enough, Quietus used to restore MP whereas Bloodspiller did not. I see no reason why they couldn't just add MP restoration got both.