DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

[LegolasT]

False. Warrior is above drk in dps and mitigation. Bloodspiller was buffed so that our utility was no longer a dps loss. As far as utility warrior still has slashing dark knight has TBN, as far as utility they seem about the same, very far below paladin. According to the sam I run with warrior is super helpful for their opener since warrior has the earliest slashing debuff of everyone now.

I think someone worked out in another post that warrior has less loss involved with its stance swap and than dark knight as well.

Actually heard dark doing more dps now then warrior in Omega!

[Chrono_Rising]

Actually heard dark doing more dps now then warrior in Omega!

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Cost-Numbers

Found the thread discussing warrior stance dancing, this way people can objectively find the math and reasoning while reading this.

As far as numbers in omega story mode... does anyone actually follow this? Can you offer a source for some statistics?

[Starkbeaumont]

I don't really see it. if we go by Normal Omega all tank busters are magic based. That gives DRK Rampart, Shadow Wall and Dark Mind. On top of that you have TBN for every tank buster. You can't beat WAR with all it's CDs but you are better than PLD.
PLD only has Rampart and Sentinel + Sheltron.
In physical fights DRK and PLD are almost equal when it comes to mitigation. The difference is that Sentinel is stronger than Shadow Wall.

imo DRK only needs a buff as OT but so does WAR. Both fit the MT spot more than PLD does. Though PLD is really ahead as OT afaik.
I'd really like to see some real numbers when PLD actually has to use it's utility kit. Using Clemency yields no damage. So does PoA unless you use it when there is some long casting time and you can't target the mob anyway.

[Chrono_Rising]

I don't really see it. if we go by Normal Omega all tank busters are magic based. That gives DRK Rampart, Shadow Wall and Dark Mind. On top of that you have TBN for every tank buster. You can't beat WAR with all it's CDs but you are better than PLD.
PLD only has Rampart and Sentinel + Sheltron.
In physical fights DRK and PLD are almost equal when it comes to mitigation. The difference is that Sentinel is stronger than Shadow Wall.

imo DRK only needs a buff as OT but so does WAR. Both fit the MT spot more than PLD does. Though PLD is really ahead as OT afaik.
I'd really like to see some real numbers when PLD actually has to use it's utility kit. Using Clemency yields no damage. So does PoA unless you use it when there is some long casting time and you can't target the mob anyway.

Paladin also has passage of arms for another 100% block mitigation. Though this could come at a dps loss depending on how long it needs to be kept up. Of course dark mind is also a dps loss if the tank buster requires dark arts in addition the advantage of course being that dark mind can be used more frequently.

Also paladin does have more passive mitigation. Doing nothing but keeping bulwark on CD will mitigate a nice number of attacks.

[Starkbeaumont]

Paladin also has passage of arms for another 100% block mitigation. Though this could come at a dps loss depending on how long it needs to be kept up.

ya but it's also a block. you can't combine it with sheltron if additional mitigation is needed. they have the same effect. PoA would only out do Sheltron if you take a multihit to the face.

[Chrono_Rising]

ya but it's also a block. you can't combine it with sheltron if additional mitigation is needed. they have the same effect. PoA would only out do Sheltron if you take a multihit to the face.

This is true, we'll have to wait for the exact timings of tank busters to determine if it will come down to this. But this actually puts paladin at a large advantage when it comes to multihit tankbusters. If we had multi hit physical tankbusters requiring layering two mitigations to survive, then paladin is definately at the advantage, dark would need to save two mitigations to achieve the same thing (rampart and shadow wall). And in that case poa and sentinel is still more mitigation. But this is super hypothetical at the moment.

However, such large damage I think the player base will likely just ultimate CD their way through it, and if it's frequent enough to require tank swaps then it will become less about individual mitigation and more about the party utility, and the most utility comes from double paladin lol.

[DWolfwood]

snip

I would say DRK beats WAR against Magical, but WAR beats DRK in physical. And yeah, PLD pretty much has the least self-mitigation going into Omega, but as OT, they could take another tank buster via Cover + Sheltron. Giving a MT Intervention and a quick Passage of Arms also seems really strong.

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

[SyzzleSpark]

I would say DRK beats WAR against Magical, but WAR beats DRK in physical. And yeah, PLD pretty much has the least self-mitigation going into Omega, but as OT, they could take another tank buster via Cover + Sheltron. Giving a MT Intervention and a quick Passage of Arms also seems really strong.

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

Given that shared tanking responsibilities is much more efficient, I wish they would differentiate tanks by DPS and utility rather than stuffing us into magical/physical mt/ot boxes. This is how PLD got screwed in 3.x and I don't think anyone wants a meta like that 2 expansions in a row.

[Lyth]

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

There are a lot of mechanics that we probably aren't aware of yet, but of what we've seen, Meteor is the obvious one. It hits hard enough in normal mode that I'd expect it to be a heavy hitter in savage, and having 100% block while it happens means that you don't have to worry about the follow up auto on the tank.

PLD has double the raid mitigation of the other tanks. In addition to Reprisal every 60 seconds, you have both Veil and PoA on a 120 second recast, letting you have some form of raid mitigation up every 30 seconds from the PLD alone. That's the same amount of mitigation that a DRK/WAR comp has access to combined, in the event than anyone actually bothers to run that comp. Even if you factor out PLD's dps advantage, you're still going to be seeing it locked in based on that massive amount of raid mitigation alone. It's kind of ludicrous.

...

I'm not really worried about DRK's personal mitigation. Most tankbuster sets can be mitigated with the level 50 cooldown kit of Rampart/Sentinel/Hallowed or their equivalents, as long as they're spaced a minimum of 35 seconds apart. Abilities like TBN are actually overkill, and the only potential problem that I can see is multi-hit physical tankbusters. There's no point comparing Shadowwall to something like Vengeance, as Vengeance is just flat out overtuned with Rampart available. The reason why I have an extreme dislike for Living Dead is because there's always at least one point each tier where you can't substitute in anything else, and it can be an unnecessary liability. A7S was one example of a fight where most people went PLD in spite of its dps disadvantage, in part because of the heavy physical damage, but also because Hallowed allowed you to completely ignore your tank for its duration. The tank invincibility moves are completely unbalanced, and have been for the past four years. Even if Hallowed was nerfed so that it only nullifies damage at 1 hp to prevent teams from cheesing stack mechanics, LD would still be inferior because of its arbitrary healer penalty. That's probably the single most longstanding balance issue in tankbuster mitigation.

Self-healing is a bit of a weird one. It's nice, especially if you're doing solo content like PoTD, but it's not mandatory to have this be perfectly balanced. I don't really mind if DRK doesn't have an equivalent to spamming 15k Clemency casts until they're at full health. Accessibility matters much more to me, and actually having some form of self healing out of tank stance, however small (like both PLD and WAR have) would be a good start.

With regards to dps, I feel like a lot of the discrepancy between PLD and the other two tanks was to ensure that PLD didn't get excluded for dps reasons alone. I expect that they were aiming for a marginally higher dps just to be safe, but significantly overshot the mark when players brought out the STR gear. I don't see them keeping both the massive utility buffs and the dps. The WAR/DRK dps balance is in a pretty good place, as long as they dial PLD back a bit. Besides, PLD has always had some fairly major advantages when it came to mitigation, even when they were viewed as less desirable. Perhaps this is an opportunity to properly re-balance it?

[DWolfwood]

Given that shared tanking responsibilities is much more efficient, I wish they would differentiate tanks by DPS and utility rather than stuffing us into magical/physical mt/ot boxes.

While I think this is true, I don't see any imbalance currently for the foreseeable future in terms of mitigation and utility. The imbalance lies in DPS and WAR's need for some QoL improvement.

snip

I'm not contesting PLD's utility in raid whatsoever. I'm merely pointing out self-mitigation. Passage of Arms does little more than what Sheltron can do, Divine Veil doesn't affect the PLD, etc, etc. It's pretty obvious they're the best equipped in terms of utility though.