DRK - Excessive "Conditional" Effects

[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.