Tank Balance

[shao32]

It means something, alright. It means that you can clear the hardest content in the game faster than anyone else even when playing a job that is, according to many, "the worst in every aspect". It also means that DRK is nowhere near as bad as you and many others are making it out to be.

That doesn't mean that DRK is fine, the job definitely has problems, but I'll say it again: It's nowhere near as bad as HW Paladin and yet somehow people are making a much bigger deal out of balancing issues than ever before. I wonder why.

the diference betwen PLD on HW and DRK on SB is after the buffs HW PLD was pretty fine in equal term withs DRK and offer utility while DRK offer some extra dps, but the problem was WAR with they mandaotory eyes buffs and insane levels of personal dps more that anything.

DRK SB on the other hand dont offer nothing, PLD on HW still have things to offer on the table, DRK SB not, HW was more WARs fault that PLD.

our biggest grip about the balance issues is SE apart of promise us a fair balance for the lack of a new job is how they ignore our feedback and data on purpose.

[aeoncs]

the diference betwen PLD on HW and DRK on SB is after the buffs HW PLD was pretty fine in equal term withs DRK

Ehm... what? Even during Creator, arguably the jobs best time in HW, their DPS was up to 25% lower than a WARs and up to 15% lower than DRKs. In today's standards that's like doing up to 1,1~k DPS less than one of your job counterparts. In Gordias and Midas the average difference was even worse than that. DRK was also a considerably better MT for 90% of the bosses, with PLD being downright useless in some encounters.

Nice definition of "pretty fine" you got there. But we're going off-topic. The point remains that DRK is perfectly viable and just needs some minor tweaks, that SE isn't willing to do right now for whatever reasons, to be on par.

[Nedkel]

They are making tanks do the same dps (as if they are not already). But this fixes nothing because in the end people are going to pick a tank with most utility and easier to play.

Someone here was already pointing this out. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

Consequences of parsing and community counting dps.

They are balancing the tanks around that number, it is clear now, since warrior losed like over 5% dps, and PLD about 3%. Nerfing down is also a form of balance, even if none actually likes it.
I will take the bets, next patch notes warrior and PLD will get many nerfs on their utility.

[Riardon]

SE thinks DRK does not exist. The WAR changes are also bad in my opinion not because of the DPS output but because it makes WAR very silly to play with and very boring.
DRK after Stormblood lost its mojo. The cool unique shield animations, the Scourge skill and then it lost it's DPS output. It also became unnecessarily complex but without any reward in DPS output or DPS mitigation.
So now DRK is the hardest tank to handle but also the weakest both in DPS output and DMG reduction. It's a bad combination.
I laughed pretty hard when I read the patch notes. The promised "buffs" were just 2 minor changes that are not enough to elevate DRK at all.

[Metalwrath]

The warrior changes seem very bad on paper for raids.I think the changes were made to make warrior more useable by casual players.Ie the fact there is less focus on building up beast gauge now because they can press one button and use the skills multiple times.They increased potency of the moves themselves and also tried to punish new players less fro keeping up storms eye while tanking.
Thats how it looks to me anyway.
Dark in general seems to need a complete overhaul.It looks like SE arent sure where they want the job to fit in.You can see this in the fact that most patches are based o Warrior versus PLD with Dark being pushed to the sideline in terms of changes.

[RiyahArp]

The problem is lets assume the baseline of job balance is 50 points. This community generally freaks out when a job is at 47 or 53 points, despite that variation still enough to clear the hardest content in the game. Like for DRK, from all the salt you'd assume its fundamentally broken, but no it works really fine, its just a bit less optimal and a bit simpler than other tanks. You're not going to kick your raid bud from the shell over him liking DRK over WAR because it means its impossible to clear stuff otherwise.

Its the whole stupid fflogs culture that focuses on raw numbers and ranking, and it leads to constant seesawing job change. And apart from the whole "make everythign simpler," if you look at job balancing, its really banal stuff like tweaking moves about 10 or 20 potency, or increasing the duration of something a couple seconds.

[MiniPrinny]

The problem is lets assume the baseline of job balance is 50 points. This community generally freaks out when a job is at 47 or 53 points, despite that variation still enough to clear the hardest content in the game. Like for DRK, from all the salt you'd assume its fundamentally broken, but no it works really fine, its just a bit less optimal and a bit simpler than other tanks. You're not going to kick your raid bud from the shell over him liking DRK over WAR because it means its impossible to clear stuff otherwise.

Its the whole stupid fflogs culture that focuses on raw numbers and ranking, and it leads to constant seesawing job change. And apart from the whole "make everythign simpler," if you look at job balancing, its really banal stuff like tweaking moves about 10 or 20 potency, or increasing the duration of something a couple seconds.

Okay, let's just run with your example for a moment. Let's say all tanks start at 25/50 points and say each 100 DPS past the lowest count is worth 5, as well as every significant Job-specific skill to mitigate party-wide damage. Improvements on the weakest single target mitigation abilities available are worth 3 points.

Let's start with WAR, just because they have the least unique abilities. Vengeance is a flat upgrade to Shadow Wall, bringing them to 28. They deal 200 more DPS than the lowest tank on average (DRK), so there's 38. They have Inner Beast, which is about equal with Sheltron since it has benefits that Sheltron does not, so nothing there. Shake It Off is great, so there's 43. And then they have their HP abilties, Thrill of Battle and their tanking stance, Defiance; both of these abilities are incredibly powerful and undervalued and together they place WAR at 49. So WAR would be average, right where they need to be.

Next is PLD, they do 100 more DPS than DRK, so they're at 30 from the start. They have both Divine Veil and Passage of Arms, adding another 10 to make 40. Then they have Sentinel, which is again, an upgrade over Shadow Wall, so there's 43. Sheltron is actually a bit weaker than the TBN due to how damage is calculated, so no points gained there. They do have Bulwark however, which while unreliable, covers more damage and for a longer duration and lower cost than Dark Mind, so there's 46. Then we bring in Cover and Intervention, I'll consider these a package deal, bringing them to 49 as well. PLD is like WAR. They're just about perfect, they have their niche, they do less damage than WAR, but make up for it with their incredible toolkit.

Now onto DRK, ready to see some suffering? DRK does the least damage of their peers, they're not even tied with PLD, keeping them at 25. Shadow Wall is the weakest heavy mitigation ability, still at 25. Dark Mind is weaker than Bulwark over all, but it has its moments, so we'll be generous and say it's worth points, up to 28. TBN is powerful, but it's not useful for party mitigation, since its limited to a single target, up to 31. And... we're done. That's it. 31/50 points for DRK. They have no niche outside of Dark Mind, but that ability is situational and to get the most from it requires investing a lot of resources that could have been used for offense. This isn't about FFlogs. I just used damage as a margin of comparison because it is so highly valued by both the developers and the playerbase.

So please, don't assume this is a cut and dry issue, this is a core problem, a third or more of the tanks in this game are vastly under prepared for most situations and the only reason you see DRKs like myself clearing content is because we know what we're doing really well. I've done fights on PLD, I do a lot better on PLD. And not just because PLD is easier or I'm more comfortable on it, it's because PLD is better in every single category.

And the worst part about this all is? DRK has always been this way. They had another of your 10 points in Heavenward through Reprisal and Delirium. But that's gone now. DRK hasn't changed for the better, it's gotten worse.

[RiyahArp]

Okay, let's just run with your example for a moment.

but you are comparing this to other classes, when it should be on whether or not the job clears content.

Like say overall the jobs abilities rank it 10, which means no one picks it for anything. at 20, no one does level 70 stuff with it. at 30, no one does ex trials or easier savage, and at 40 hard savage or farm runs it gets kicked. Would you argue that due to its abiltiies, DRK falls on that spectrum?

I mean, you really need to get into optimization before these become any real issue, and content that would reflect those disparities would probably be so hard that no one could really do it nayways.

It cleared Ultimate because the rapid-fire machine volley thrown at you are virtually allow magic based. This allowed DRK to spam Dark Mind and TBN. If we ever get a primarily physical based Ultimate, Dark Knight dies.

Ultimate is content so hard that barely 2k people or so have cleared it in NA. It shouldn't be used as any balance example pro or con, any more than RDM clearing floor 200 in POTD means we need to rebalance jobs too.

[Chrono_Rising]

but you are comparing this to other classes, when it should be on whether or not the job clears content.

Like say overall the jobs abilities rank it 10, which means no one picks it for anything. at 20, no one does level 70 stuff with it. at 30, no one does ex trials or easier savage, and at 40 hard savage or farm runs it gets kicked. Would you argue that due to its abiltiies, DRK falls on that spectrum?

I mean, you really need to get into optimization before these become any real issue, and content that would reflect those disparities would probably be so hard that no one could really do it nayways.



Ultimate is content so hard that barely 2k people or so have cleared it in NA. It shouldn't be used as any balance example pro or con, any more than RDM clearing floor 200 in POTD means we need to rebalance jobs too.

Applying this logic no job balances have been necessary since 4.05. Please roll everything back.

The problem with HW paladin was that it didn't bring the dps, half its mitigation kit was garbage in magical fights, and half its utility didn't work in magical fights. On things that you would grade HW paladin on it came out to be the worst in all three areas.

Are things "HW paladin" bad with dark? No, Dark is very capable of making it through current content. Is there an area that Dark Knight is excelling so that there is a strategic reason for bringing a dark knight? Most people think the answer to this is no. That is the issue many have, its a repeat of HW paladin, not as dramatic, but still existing. We thought this lesson was learned pre stormblood when tank balance issues were going to be the fore front of importance, at which point the devs repeated their HW mistakes.

What would make these things better? Probably an open beta where players can trial changes and give feedback on skills well in advance of expansions. People noticed many of the current concerns with the jobs near immediately once the tooltip information was released.

However, and this is just my two cents, part of the reason warrior is so popular is that the development team seems to take real time and effort to change the class and fix things quickly as issues arise.

Stormblood Warrior has had: costs and penalties removed from abilities, buffs to its combo potency, new effects added to abilities like steel cyclone, and complete reworks of 3 skills and a trait to go along with it. This is a good thing, they probably needed some of that and it was fixed within half a year.

Heavensward paladin needed at least a change to blocking and a change to cover to give them some reasonable sense of utility in Heavensward. They waited 2 years for the change. Why?

Stormblood Dark Knight has been trying to get the cost on dark passenger reduced to a reasonable level for 6 months so its potency matches the mana cost, this has been met with absolute silence. Why?

Why does it seem like only one class is being heard in these discussions even for the most reasonable of changes? I saw in another thread that Yoshi P doesn't understand why more people are playing warrior than dark knight. My question is, when you show so much care to one class but not the other why wouldn't people pick it?

[Kalocin]

Are things "HW paladin" bad with dark? No, Dark is very capable of making it through current content. Is there an area that Dark Knight is excelling so that there is a strategic reason for bringing a dark knight? Most people think the answer to this is no. That is the issue many have, its a repeat of HW paladin, not as dramatic, but still existing. We thought this lesson was learned pre stormblood when tank balance issues were going to be the fore front of importance, at which point the devs repeated their HW mistakes.

Stormblood Dark Knight has been trying to get the cost on dark passenger reduced to a reasonable level for 6 months so its potency matches the mana cost, this has been met with absolute silence. Why?

Why does it seem like only one class is being heard in these discussions even for the most reasonable of changes? I saw in another thread that Yoshi P doesn't understand why more people are playing warrior than dark knight. My question is, when you show so much care to one class but not the other why wouldn't people pick it?

This has largely been a lot of my own personal frustration but also something I've noticed regarding the player base, even from players. Warriors are incredibly popular so they get focus, whether good or bad, and so the development team will make changes. As a result we seem to have weird popularity contests, especially when applied with forum aggression to see any form of understanding, let alone the changes. We can even remember earlier at the start of Stormblood with the healer issues to see that vocal outrage precedes discourse for proper balance (not to say that it wasn't valid, simply it took precedent over all other discussions). When you acknowledge the many tank forum threads largely ignored by the development team you really have to ask: Why?