to Future DRK Players

[Lyth]

The problem in Stormblood wasn't identity. It was that it was uniquely bad.

DRK had the lowest damage output by a fairly large margin. It wasn't too bad at the start of the expansion when WAR and DRK were about at parity (but well behind PLD), but when WAR was buffed early on, all that changed. DRK was a sustained damage tank at a time when burst was king and had no drawbacks for doing so. Delirium was insipid and weak. Actions were either extremely situational (be sure to Sole Survivor that one rock add that shows up in the entire fight), or locked behind stance (Blood Price and the HP gain from Soul Eater were both Grit only). We were the only tank without a unique AoE mitigation skill at a time when Divine Veil and Shake it Off were being used specifically to cheese Limit Break gauge generation. Shadow Wall was on a 180 second recast at a time when Sentinel was 40% DR and Vengeance was just flat out better.

Heavensward was good, but players were willing to overlook a lot of faults and disadvantages because we could put out some competitive dps at a time tank damage output had a larger impact. Stormblood took a lot of Heavensward's strengths away while leaving behind the drawbacks. Certain expansion-specific issues, like Veil/Shake being obscenely powerful for generating bonus LB (mitigating critical damage generated LB) left DRK consistently warming the bench. Again, that's why I said that context matters. You have to take the job in the context of its expansion in order to understand why it was so bad. And that's why there was overwhelming support for change, both going into 4.3 and later in 5.0.

I think if you look at Shadowbringers as a whole, it does represent a significant improvement over what we previously had. We're still on the lower end of tank damage output and well behind the shield tank, but the overall balance is better than it's ever been. Outside of Living Dead, we're at least not seriously disadvantaged in any one area. And I would much rather take a Delirium that you can meme about than one which is ineffective.

I find it difficult to react to Endwalker's action trailer without having some context on what actions have been removed. I've created a list of the actions that are MIA across all tanks. On DRK, for example, we gain three new actions. We haven't seen any sign yet of Unmend, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind, Living Dead, or Dark Missionary. If I had to play odds, I'm going to guess that Dark Mind is going to be replaced by the new bubble. But what else is missing? Unmend and Shadow Wall are likely still around because Lightning Shot and Nebula showed up in the GNB trailer, but where does that leave us with the last two unaccounted for actions? None of the invulns showed up in the trailer, so if they're gone, tank gameplay is going to be significantly impacted by the change.

There are other questions that I have as well. A lot of players on other tanks have gone on about how powerful TBN is. WAR's new defensive probably replaces Thrill, so is it gaining a TBN-like action? (RPR has its own TBN-like action now which grants AoE lifesteal). Does PLD have a net gain of two single target defensive actions compared to the other tanks, given that they've never really had an analogue to Thrill/DM/Camo? Unless they've lost Sheltron, that's a possibility. Again, without understanding what relative differences will exist between the tanks, it's hard to gauge what the power balance will be.

[Benn]

DRK had the lowest damage output by a fairly large margin.

That is not true.

In aDPS merit he is usually second tank: https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...ps&class=Tanks

He is last only in rDPS merit.

Also your "By larg margin" is also false. The top dmg in rDPS is 56 mediana, the lowest 53. That is like 800 dps dmg difference between top and bottom.

9999 will be top, but if 99996 is the bottom then although statistically something has to be on top and bot: in the grand scheme of things difference is not really noticable at all, more even so for average player.

[Lyth]

????

Why are you citing Shadowbringers statistics in response to a discussion about tanks in Stormblood?

[bundythenoob]

I think if you look at Shadowbringers as a whole, it does represent a significant improvement over what we previously had. We're still on the lower end of tank damage output and well behind the shield tank, but the overall balance is better than it's ever been. Outside of Living Dead, we're at least not seriously disadvantaged in any one area. And I would much rather take a Delirium that you can meme about than one which is ineffective.

I suppose I will have to agree to disagree with you on this topic then. I cannot find any ways in which the SHB DRK is superior to STB DRK given the context of anything outside of balance at lv 80. I also cannot find any ways in which fixing the problems of STB DRK would be worse for the gameplay identity than what we were give in SHB. as you said, "context matters", and from what I've gathered, that means balancing a job for lv 80 gameplay is more important than any other criticisms that have been laid out over the last 2 years, whether they be criticisms towards the gameplay, disjointed kit, or anything else outside of Living Dead.

For your sake, and for the sake of those who believe your stance on LD, I hope the devs fix the skill so that SHB DRK will once again regain its gameplay identity.

[Hierro]

The problem in Stormblood wasn't identity. It was that it was uniquely bad.

DRK had the lowest damage output by a fairly large margin.

After all these years, I can't believe you still believe this. Some things never change in light of hard numerical evidence. Let's take a look at some high uptime fights. We'll start with alte roite in deltascape. Across all percentiles, DRK had an average of 3.2k dps while WAR had an average of of 3.5k. a difference of ~300 dps from the highest DPS tank to the lowest DPS tank is not a "large margin." Even in fights that supposedly would favor WAR over DRK with more downtime, the DPS difference actually decreases.

during sigmascape, same story. In a high uptime fight like godka, we see a dps difference between WAR and DRK, the highest and lowest respectively of ~200. The disparity shrunk from last patch, even accounting for 4.1 WAR's buff. How about that? In a fight with more downtime like o7s, the difference jumps up to ~300, but again, this difference is less significant as both WAR and DRK were now putting out 4.2 and 3.9 respectively. Again, not significant in the grand scheme of total raid DPS.

Then during the last tier in alphascape, we actually see DRK beat out PLD in every single fight across all percentiles.

What "large margin" are you refering to?

[Jandor]

I'm just popping in to say I loved running dungeons as Dark Knight in Stormblood, when you got that AoE loop just right it was so damn satisfying.

I also still have dark arts on my bars

[bundythenoob]

top kek @ the new DRK """"""changes"""""". I hope you guys continue to fight for a better future, cuz the immediate future is looking extra dark.

If you truly wish to see change to DRK, it's time to drop the job and let the numbers do the talking. maybe they'll hint at a DRK a tweak or two in 6.1, come up with an excuse to wait till 6.3, promise to buff it in 6.5, and eventually tell you to wait for 7.0

hell, if you want to see change brought to the overall game's difficulty, encounter design, and job simplification, drop the game entirely and let your wallet do the voting.

[Mekhana]

We're back to full despair mode. Lots of people playing the job. People must be happy and the class is doing great. After all the metrics say so and the metrics are never wrong.

Nevermind people picked the job because of the ShB trailer, the fact we use greatswords or that we're (or used to be) cool looking and edgy.

All in all you can tell how worse the job is by simply looking at the number of traits available and added. Gunbreaker starts at level 60 and has TWICE the traits we do.

They won't fix our pre-tbn leveling skillset, we've mostly received underwhelming versions of other tanks skills and we didn't get anything remotely as cool as the other tanks.

I'm beating a dead horse at this point.

[Axxion]

as i looked at the skills, I just what to know what will be the purpose of having 3 stacks of Delirium. Can someone explain this to me, all seriousness.

And they nerf carve n spit