DRK - Excessive "Conditional" Effects

[Bourne_Endeavor]

But let's consider also: with Benediction at the ready, Living Dead provides up to 19 seconds where you do not need to be worried about your tank.

This doesn't change the argument as Dark Knight remains entirely dependent on a White Mage to maximize its own ability. Considering SCH/AST has been "meta" since Creator, thus popular. It's quite likely you won't have Benediction. Now Astro can handle Living without too much fuss, but the crux of my point is Dark Knight essentially gets punished if the healer can't respond fast enough whereas the same isn't true for Warrior or Paladin. It may not be optimal for Warrior to use Equilibrium and spam Inner Beast, however they have some way to control their own immunity. Dark Knight doesn't.

I just don't like the idea that because a job as a whole is more complex, it must also be rewarded as a whole, and outpace all less complex opposition, which is an altogether separate thing that I hear asked for widely and consistently... until it's given -- at which point it has become a point of public outcry every time I've seen it.

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 ?

Without reward, what purpose does higher risk and complexity serve? If I can achieve far superior results on Paladin without half the effort, why am I going to bother with Dark Knight? There has to be some incentive otherwise its complexity for complexity's sake. Like Syzzle, I'm not looking for Dark Knight to be OP, but competitive. Right now, it's objectively inferior to both its counterparts in every way.

[Shurrikhan]

Without reward, what purpose does higher risk and complexity serve? If I can achieve far superior results on Paladin without half the effort, why am I going to bother with Dark Knight? There has to be some incentive otherwise its complexity for complexity's sake. Like Syzzle, I'm not looking for Dark Knight to be OP, but competitive. Right now, it's objectively inferior to both its counterparts in every way.

I'll agree absolutely that DRK needs certain improvements. I'm just saying that no one is going to accept reduced skill requirement as a excuse for poorer optimal performance. That removes classes from viability in the only content that actually requires tight balancing -- the upper end, much like DRK is pushed out right now. While players do not uniquely invest nearly as much time into a particular job here as in, say, Legion WoW -- wherein even each spec on a given class may require unique BiS gear, over a year of Artifact grinding, and separate playstyle mastery, and no gear, experience, or story progression is shareable between classes to boot -- "your class is easier, so expect to fall behind in the higher percentiles just as you outpaced others in the lower percentiles" almost certainly will not go well. Heck, just ask any dedicated top percentile Red Mage...

To repeat:

I'd be totally fine with the areas that require the most precise control (over our class) to also be the areas in which... we are capable of the most precise and helpful control (over our circumstances)..., and can therefore get the most from them

...but something as broad as highest overall continuous average DPS or should not be a reward, at least by a significant margin, for having more means of control. That complexity should feel like a boon in its own right. If it doesn't, it's probably more "convoluted" than it is finely "complex". Check over these more "complicated" areas of DRK: how many of them actually provide additional, viable choice, rather than just artificial difficulty, or vulnerability to latency, miscoordination, etc.? If primarily the latter, make them more intuitive first and then judge whether they need to be buffed just to bribe people to use them. Let's smooth it out first, and make it feel polished, and then let's up the numbers as necessary, without using any old (or remaining) clunkiness as excuse.