WAR raid "UTILITY" (Tank Balanced achieved?)

[RLofOBFL]

Every savage except 3 caters to DRK's dark mind....a 1 minute CD. It's up for every single tankbuster.

I'm not saying DRK is better per se but give credit where it's due. Not to mention WAR is significantly harder to Max dps on than DRK. You miss a BW you lose a small bit of dps, you mess up 1 inner release and you may as well just give up there bc youd prolly do more damage in full tank stance at that point.

Lol why am I defending DRK. I really do think it needs buffing but people also keep taking it for granted.

[Chrono_Rising]

Every savage except 3 caters to DRK's dark mind....a 1 minute CD. It's up for every single tankbuster.

I'm not saying DRK is better per se but give credit where it's due. Not to mention WAR is significantly harder to Max dps on than DRK. You miss a BW you lose a small bit of dps, you mess up 1 inner release and you may as well just give up there bc youd prolly do more damage in full tank stance at that point.

Lol why am I defending DRK. I really do think it needs buffing but people also keep taking it for granted.

This is also deeply worrying that so much of our viability hinges on dark mind being so easily paired with TBN to get through tank busters. The same turns with physical busters at 1 minute intervals would not have been so kind to dark knight.

[RLofOBFL]

That's exactly what they did to PLD in 3.x after the first raid tier. A5, some of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 all had physical tank busters to make PLD wanted.... It didn't work though. Since PLD can block magic now as well, most TBs from here on will almost certainly be magical for drk's sake. Only WAR misses out by Raw Intuition, but that's usually not a TB blocker anyway.

[Chrono_Rising]

That's exactly what they did to PLD in 3.x after the first raid tier. A5, some of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 all had physical tank busters to make PLD wanted.... It didn't work though. Since PLD can block magic now as well, most TBs from here on will almost certainly be magical for drk's sake. Only WAR misses out by Raw Intuition, but that's usually not a TB blocker anyway.

Yes, but 6, 8, 10 and 11 also have a number of magical mechanics and busters which could be cleared with dark mind and delirium saving the rest of your kit for the physical stuff, in addition they had large magical aoe damage where delirium could lower incoming damage to the party. I'm not sure how dark would fair if we had only physical busters and mechanics at time frames like o1s.

[Crater]

Every savage except 3 caters to DRK's dark mind....a 1 minute CD. It's up for every single tankbuster.

I don't think this is really fair to say. The back-to-back tailwhips in v1s and the Paranormal Waves in v2s are every bit as threatening (moreso in v1s, I'd argue) as the actual cast-bar Twinbolt/Evilsphere capital-T Tankbusters - Dark Mind doesn't affect the tailwhips at all, and even TBN doesn't cycle fast enough for any of those. In v4s, Double Attack and Earthshaker aren't affected by Dark Mind in the first place and hit for tankbuster damage, and so does being in the front position for Terminal Antilight, which happens in too close a proximity to Aero IIIs for Dark Mind to catch them all.

Even in a nearly purely magic-based fight like v2s, Vengeance is just flat out better than Dark Mind, because DM's short 10s duration means that it will catch fewer big hits than Vengeance, and the 15s cooldown on TBN is too long to make up for it. In a fight like v4s, the combination of low-duration on DM/SW and TBN not having a short enough cooldown to cover attacks 10s apart means that basically all of Warrior's cooldowns are ideal for the Aero III -> Earthshaker combos, while DRK has to blow Rampart and then awkwardly spread DM and TBN across both attacks.

Not to mention WAR is significantly harder to Max dps on than DRK. You miss a BW you lose a small bit of dps, you mess up 1 inner release and you may as well just give up there bc youd prolly do more damage in full tank stance at that point.

Also absolutely one of those misconceptions that came out of spoiled WAR mains whining at SB's launch. WAR is easy to maximize DPS on compared to both PLD and DRK, because most of it comes from only 20 seconds every minute, and you can screw around for the other 40 seconds (and you don't need even close to the full 40 seconds to build up enough gauge for your next Berserk). Downtime actually helps your damage on WAR, relative to the other tanks, because it basically means that a higher percentage of your overall uptime will be spent in Berserk, while PLD can only afford 22 seconds of downtime per minute before they start wasting buffs, and DRK needs 15 seconds of uptime every 40 seconds before they start bleeding damage (and missing a BW isn't a 'small bit of DPS'; the overall damage increase is fairly comparable to Berserk and FoF).

It's also basically impossible for a WAR to lose out on damage by overcapping their resources, and it's very easy for a Warrior to figure out whether they have enough resource to 'spare' to throw out a BG attack outside of Berserk, while DRK can very easily overcap on both MP and Blood due to how fast those resources swing up and down, and it's much less clear whether you're going to lose DPS by blowing a Dark Arts or a Bloodspiller earlier than you should.


DRK has very few advantages over any other tank in any current fight. DRK's overrepresentation in early prog had much less to do with the class's efficacy and much more to do with the fact that Warrior players were putting on too much of a pout at the time over losing their godlike mandatory-pick status to see that they were still the strongest tank class.

[MyaValentine]

-the 2 bolded parts contradict eachother, so I'd wager this is a moot point. (But it is worth mentioning this, because of SE's reasoning behind why they made DRK how it is.)

-Technically it was 4 PLDs and 4 WARs, with the PLDs using hallowed for various parts, and helping with clemency on other parts. the PLDs usually MTed, while the WARs were just DPS with survivability.

-WAR did more dmg as a MT than DRK did. Only reason DRK was the MT, was because part of its DPS requires being hit, and WAR did even more dps in OT than DRK does, so the best way to utilize them both, was to put the DRK into MT stance, despite the fact 2 WARs would do more DPS than DRK+WAR. (plus WAR would mitigate more dmg than a DRK would. My group even did double WAR tanking, even with the slight hit to our LB.)
PLD handled physical heavy fights better than DRK. DRK had to rely on foresight, and a reprisal, in order to survive tank busters, and then living dead when those were down, as every other physical CD was down too.
I forget which all those were, other than Sophia (which DRK is fine for, unless ur other tank dies, and u need to take constant TBs) and A11S, which had me stretch my CDs too thin, as there wasnt magic dmg to worry about.
PLD lacked CDs for magical heavy fights, and usually just did a tank swap, to last long enough till the next CD was ready.



-The difference in DPS, compared to DRK, in 3.0, was roughly +100 for WAR, and -100 for PLD.

- That's not a contradiction regarthless of rotation or situation if you have a drk in your party you will maximize more damage by having him as MT as it will do more damage and the other 2 tanks will do more damage as you later pointed out.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSwjtz1Jvg4

-war did not do more damage as mt, stance dance=/= tanks stance, if for some reason drk had to saty the whole fight in tank stance drk did more damage overall. war was just op stance dancing mt was the strongest in everything. most of the fights in HW had magic tank buster then they change it but it didn't change anything as drk+war still offered more mitigation and damage.

- I don't know where to begin but if you think the difference was only 100 dps you are denial not only the difference was higher and the fflogs for pallys were mostlly inflated warriors could more constantly bring those numbers pld could only reach it with dedicated groups, not only that the dps gain didn't came only in personal damage, warrior constant slashing debuff and physical damage debuff allowed for dps to hit harder and healers to dps more, combine with drk you had a full magic/physiscal 10% mitigation warrior self sustain also translated into more healer dps, you will overall net more dps with a warrior than what you could ever done with a paladin.
but as you said this was later patched but bringing down the dps checks demand and allowed for more flexible tank damage.
and yeah while for now the gap is 200 between war and drk you are completely right with 5% vs 20%

not only that but there's nothing you will get with one tank you will miss with the other not only the difference in dps is minimal the none of them offer significant pt buffs to blow eachother out of the water, the balance is much better drk just need a small adjustement and we might have it.

[RLofOBFL]

Mmm you may be right. For O4s I haven't actually tried it as a DRK but even on PLD I feel like I barely have enough CDs and DRK seems to lack even more. And the tails of O1 are most definitely scarier than the TB. I am not arguing against DRK buff, I am just trying to make people give good points as to why it needs fixing....or maybe I just like arguing?

And WAR only having 20 secs every 2 mins is why WAR is hard to maximize dps. DRK gets 5 BW and WAR gets 1 IR window and if you mess that up you bleed dps, where DRK gets 5 chances and only loses a lot if it messes up all 5, which is highly unlikely. But as with every class, once you figure out the right places to use stuff in all the fights, every class is technically easy. But personally I find DRK far more forgiving than either tank. You do make somewhay good points though...

[MauvaisOeil]

And WAR only having 20 secs every 2 mins is why WAR is hard to maximize dps. DRK gets 5 BW and WAR gets 1 IR window and if you mess that up you bleed dps, where DRK gets 5 chances and only loses a lot if it messes up all 5, which is highly unlikely. But as with every class, once you figure out the right places to use stuff in all the fights, every class is technically easy. But personally I find DRK far more forgiving than either tank. You do make somewhay good points though...

No it's not.

In usual mmo's, burst classes allways have a lower dps than sustained classes. Because burst classes favor the use of party cooldowns or specific mechanics ( like a vuln debuff at some point) while streamlined sustained classes won't dip out as much during thoses windows, and end up equal or inferior when thoses synergies can be used.

But for tanks they decided burst would be better and synergize better with party composition, for the odds of making a sustained tank like DRK lower in any situation.

And hell in an IR window you don't get 5 BW but 3, with one beeing delirium-ed.

And in an IR window you get two berserks as well.

[Chrono_Rising]

Mmm you may be right. For O4s I haven't actually tried it as a DRK but even on PLD I feel like I barely have enough CDs and DRK seems to lack even more. And the tails of O1 are most definitely scarier than the TB. I am not arguing against DRK buff, I am just trying to make people give good points as to why it needs fixing....or maybe I just like arguing?

And WAR only having 20 secs every 2 mins is why WAR is hard to maximize dps. DRK gets 5 BW and WAR gets 1 IR window and if you mess that up you bleed dps, where DRK gets 5 chances and only loses a lot if it messes up all 5, which is highly unlikely. But as with every class, once you figure out the right places to use stuff in all the fights, every class is technically easy. But personally I find DRK far more forgiving than either tank. You do make somewhay good points though...

I agree I think arguing about which class is easier is pointless, none are particularly hard to play. However, I will say I disagree with one point, which is that you say we lose alot of dps only if you mess up all 5 blood weapon windows. Really if you mess up one your resource generation is messed up and your sustained dps drops, its not as huge as missing a warrior window but it is enough to mess up your run for the night. If you miss all 5... well yeah at that point I would lose all hope in the run for a week at that point I would feel like I might as well turtle and hope the healers can make up my missing dps. You also have to make sure you can actually get all 5, if you are delayed by a phase change or anything else you run the risk of loosing a blood weapon entirely, meaning you want to use these at a time when you will actually have all 5 blood weapons which means finding a time when all of them can more or less be used on cooldown. So the question becomes is it easier to fit 5 buff windows into a 2 minute interval or 3. But again, this is an issue of planning your cooldowns, which every class needs to do anyway.

As for reasons why dark needs buffing here are my big ones:

1) For our mitigation to equal paladin or warrior we need to use TBN, this is a dps loss out of tank stance. I'm not a fan of lossing dps to mitigate as a tank, and I enjoy not being in grit. I'm not saying this needs to be a dps increase, but its only 6 potency on bloodspiller to be a dps break even. All the tanks should be equal in mitigation imo.

2) We do less dps than both paladin and war. War is clearly at the bottom in utility right now and I think it should be at the top of tank dps to compensate. Paladin is at the top of tank utility and I think it should be tuned to have the lowest dps of the three. Dark should offer the middle ground.

3) In light of warrior getting a party utility I think dark should get a party utility to maintain is middle of the road utility option. I would suggest buffing sole survivor so that it converts party dps into an hp and mp refresh on the party by taking % of average party dps. For example if your party dps was 28k then your average per person is 28,000/8 = 3,500. I would return this at maybe a 50% rate regen for hp and 20% for mp to give 1750hp/700 mp for 15 seconds. This way paladin and warrior have shields and dark takes a regen and resource route.

4.1 changes threaten to make drk the bottom in all three of those options (mitigation/dps/utility once war gets it buff). This just shouldn't be the case since we would be stepping back into what was wrong with tank balance in 3.x jsut hte names would change.

[Azerhan]

@MyaValentine: I will not answer to all your points, Claire did that very well for me, and before all, I want to apologize, I was thinking you were really bored about everyone talking about DRK - english is not my native langage, and I surely miss some words or expressions that make me misunderstand.
But I want to reply about something:
"-first of all the concept of MT and OT is heavily outdate all tanks can MT and OT perfectly and you should be turning around to maximize damage. "
This, makes me very wondering about your vision of Tanks in FF.
What is your definition of MT and OT?
Their is the best definition in this game for MT and OT: MT is the player with the aggro of the boss. OT is not.
A tank isn't everytime MT or OT, they can swap during the fight.
And yes, every tanks can MT and OT, BUT! Some will do that better than others. That is the point now with the tanks in SB.
A guy in another has proved with a board of all tanks's cds that the DRK was the worst about Mitigation. Yes, even with TBN... And, in tank stance, DRK as the worst damages of the three. At this moment, why taking a DRK in MT instead of WAR and PLD?
Also, for OT, why taking a DRK - DRK is weak compared to the other. Yes, maybe it's not a lot in comparison with the PLD during HW, yes it's not really important for a tank to make 3k dmgs everytime but, if we are logic, we should take another tank than DRK for that too.
Another thing: while PLD and WAR has a great mitigation, DRK is not. So it's even more difficult to stance dance with it, and it's even harder by the fact Grit is a GCD with a cost of mana...

I don't hate DRK, and I don't hate the others two tanks. But DRK was my favourite tank during HW, and SE did to him the same thing that he did with PLD during HW, like they haven't learned from that mistake.