DRK - Excessive "Conditional" Effects

[MauvaisOeil]

I think that if you have to work harder, with a greater risk of personal loss or failure, the payoff should be proportionately greater. Its really simple. Working harder to attain results equal to, or in some cases worse, than the other jobs in your role, to me, is not fun.

That's the common belief, but that works poorly in MMO's where the dispredancy only lead to the hardest but more rewarding job beeing the top choice, everyone (good or bad) switching to it and neglecting and refusing the other jobs that are "not so worse" but considered inferior and useless.

People only wants to choices, even if they are miles over their ability to play, and since in FF the tank DPS matter for more than a reasonnable choice, it means if DRK is superior when player accordingly, most people will only want that job and none of the other (or another for LB purpose and choice of spells).

That's the "hair I'm cutting" here, you don't want balance. You want DRK to be better at the expanse of the other jobs, whether it is merited or not, it's simply not fair as is the current clunky situation.

While it used to be a credo in many, many games, the "I't's harder so it must be better in the end" credo ended poorly when people shared logs, guides, rotations, Gcd per gcd studies which ended making anything suposed "hard" an easy to learn bargain. No one will pick a lesser job because it's too hard for them to even waste time on the hardest job.

And because of some communication before the launch of SB, I don't think a hardest job will again be held as the topmost one.

For example purposes, let's look at the respective immunities.

Hallowed Ground; 10s; 7m CD
Holmgang; 6s; 3m CD
Living Dead; 10-19s; 5m CD

At face value they all are relatively even. However, once you look at the effects, you start to see the issue. Paladin requires nothing from anyone since it literally takes zero damage. Warrior, meanwhile, can self-heal if absolutely necessary. Dark Knight is the only tank entirely dependent on a healer to survive its own immunity. Say you're in a scenario where people have died, including one of the healers. Paladin and Warrior can use their abilities to save the day. Now Dark Knight technically can, but you've also put a huge burden on the one healer to heal you within ten seconds. Warrior just switches to Defiance, uses Equilibrium and Inner Beast to buy itself some time.

This is the issue when people talk about how unrewarding Dark Knight can actually be. Nearly every hallmark ability in their arsenal requires more work for only equal to even worse results.

Like you said, it's an example purpose. Because it's the worst one (healer depandancy, death if badly executed), the rest of the DRK toolkit is far from beeing that costly and problematic. LD simply doesn't deserve such a long cooldown, if they don't want to change how it works.

But should the DRK loose it's "costly nature" ? I think not, that would be playing another job.

Should it be best tuned ? Yes.

Should the job be better than the others ? That's not up to me either, but it will only weight the imbalance. I don't mind if the DRK is harder for the same results as others, but making him better will only cause the previously stated problem that cripples the game and the mindset of players.

Of course, everyone wants his main job as the better, and everyone allways have a wagon of reasons that seems plausible to anyone with the same mindset. But is it objective ?

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

You're misrepresenting my argument to advance your own.

What you are hearing me say is that what I want DRK to be pretty much the best tank, because we make sacrifices in a few key areas.

What I would like is for the areas in which we do make these sacrifices to be areas where we attain a greater reward.

You are saying that this would, in the end, result in DRK just being the hands down top tier tank, which is an exaggeration.

If it is your opinion that DRK is fine, or that all it needs is another 10 potency on Souleater, then say as much.

I, on the other hand, do care about balance, and while yes, I want my main job to be better than it currently is, significantly better even, I do not want it to usurp the niches of the other tanks (PLD's raid mitigation and utilities, WAR's burst damage or high uptime CDs, etc.) DRK is far enough behind to make it significantly better in at least one area while still leaving the other tanks plenty of room to shine. This argument that because I want DRK buffed/fixed/re-designed, I want DRK to be the omni-tank, because its my main, is borderline ad hominem and at the very least just misses the point entirely, to say nothing of the fact that, again, (i reiterate) I suggested little-to-nothing in the way of buffs here, merely design flaws. You've yet to even properly analyze the actual implications of changing any of the problems I listed, and thus you've yet to make a counter-argument. What your posts have amounted to so far is basically generalized anti-buffing rhetoric and question-begging.

The imbalance of things like LD, TBN, Delirium, etc. are representative of only a very small part of our toolkit, and if all the things in the OP were completely addressed, all it would really do is boost our DPS and make our sustain/invuln slightly better. It wouldn't even come close to making us the "best tank".