Tank Balance

[Ayer2015]

If they made Dark Mind both physical and magic resistance, plus art arts making it party wide, I would be happy with DRK. Making Dark Passenger useful would be nice as well.
People make out DRK to be far worse than it is.

[HoodRat]

Its the whole stupid fflogs culture that focuses on raw numbers and ranking, and it leads to constant seesawing job change.

Most of the drk complaints I've seen have to do with qol for tbn and mitigation...so clearly fflogs is the problem right? /s

[RiyahArp]

Most of the drk complaints I've seen have to do with qol for tbn and mitigation...so clearly fflogs is the problem right? /s

is the lack of mitigation making drk not a viable class to play in savage? Or is it just its slightly worse than comparable abilities? Or, is it just that the mitigation it has tends to result in minor dps losses, and people want more OGCDS not because the mitigation is bad, but because they want higher dps overall?

It usually boils down to increased dps, more than serious qol issues. and its not because drk has very low dps, its just lower than the others. And usually, when you get that kind of mincing over minor differences, its fflogs and the whole "focus on raw numbers." If it were anything more, we'd be seeing jobs being kicked for being nonviable, or there's be no disagreement like in HW launch AST or MCH. I mean, I don;t think people even kick jobs in speedruns or farm parties; the balance isn't THAT off to do so even there. It's almost pure number crunching and potential theorycraft

[Rasikko]

Because Shadow Wall takes 400 years to be ready again.

[Ametrine]

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.

This is a good way of thinking about it, and I do feel every job in every role sits in this level of comparison now.

What we and the devs want, is for every job to be consumable by players of any taste and skill, and for ever job to be viable in all content. We have that. Quite a few buffs here are just QoL improvements. (I.E., the Excog and Benison changes.)

The only exception being something as obscure as PotD solo runs. Only RDMs can get to those final floors, but we also wanted RDMs to be the jack of all trades job when implemented, and that's what it is.

[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.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I'm pretty sure that SE did lots of testing etc, to make the class easier to play, but not to lower its dps
maybe you should just wait for it, do some parses and see for yourself instead of going hypocrite mode

Uh... do you know what that word actually means? Even if Warrior's DPS turned out exactly the same, I wouldn't be a hypocrite.

As for SE doing testing. Considering how many times they've had to adjust Ninja because players found a better rotation. I have my doubts.

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.

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.

And perhaps people are making a big deal because the devs did absolutely nothing yet have changed WAR three times now. It shouldn't take almost a year for something as simple as making Dark Passenger useful and Shadow Wall not objectively the worst "big" CD.

[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?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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

In that case, they should never touch the jobs again. Everything can clear.

There is a stark difference between viability and balance. If certain jobs are superior to their counterparts people will be naturally inclined to favour those jobs, albeit with some exceptions (Machinist). Can Dark Knight clear Savage? Absolutely. It still has a harder time doing it while equally benefiting the group less. Now in more casual oriented groups, they aren't going to care. The higher up the totem pole you climb the more likely you'll come across people who value more than simply clearing. For myself, I use FFlogs as a silly little "achievement" system no different than PS4 Trophies. I reach say, 70, then try to best myself each week. That keeps Savage interesting for me (key word: me). Without it, I would simply get the gear I want and move on to something else. Granted, with Ultimate, I'll likely do that regardless.

I suppose the simple question to ask is: Why should Dark Knight mains just accept their job has inferior utility, DPS and mitigation tools? Should Samurai mains also enjoy the fact they offer absolutely nothing to their group and will soon be out-dpsed by Monk? People like to feel their job of choice contributes on a close enough playing field.

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.

On a rare occasion, we agree. Hence why I find "but it cleared Ultimate!!" little more than a cop out.