Design of DRK and PLD

[Undeadfire]

DRK is a simlified WAR with a mountain of fluff oGCD, if WAR is bad DRK is worse overall now more clear that WAR moves to the 60s mark raid buffs with DRK, at least the job have more interesting downtime with Infuriate charges, storm eye management and having 3 charges of onslaught allowing him to have one always ready outside of raid buff if he still need it, DRK just sit there eating grass with soul eater spam and a ocasional bloodspiller while his uncohesive kit refresh his fluff and his MP regens at the stepping on eggs speed.

WAR may be no really complex and is easy to manage but his kit is one of the most solids we have in terms of design and cohesion, WAR is the arguable one that would need tweaks to make it more interesting, DRK needs a rework on almost everything it have.

I'm not sure man, Dark Knight has been switching places with Paladin back to back certain Savage fights and it still does in this expansion for having the most disgusting Burst I ever seen.

Warrior doesn't work with a lot comps DPS wise, useless with Drg, useless with Sch. Warriors problem is literally Inner Release, it's a short big burst and that's it can't do anything else for 90 seconds, sits there doing 1-2-3 with a random FC falling hardcore on DPS. Dark Knight is able to keep consistent damage flowing through and take complete advantage of Chain from Sch. Comps stall 30 seconds on CDs to link up with Dark Knight certain fights for perfect timing earning cooldowns after down time. Don't be so quick to jump the band wagon, Dark Knight is in a lot of speed kills over Paladin for it's burst potential and fight timings, Paladin has flaws needing 35-36 seconds without interruption on every occasion never to happen in order to beat Dark Knight.

[shao32]

I'm not sure man, Dark Knight has been switching places with Paladin back to back certain Savage fights and it still does in this expansion for having the most disgusting Burst I ever seen.

Warrior doesn't work with a lot comps DPS wise, useless with Drg, useless with Sch. Warriors problem is literally Inner Release, it's a short big burst and that's it can't do anything else for 90 seconds, sits there doing 1-2-3 with a random FC falling hardcore on DPS. Dark Knight is able to keep consistent damage flowing through and take complete advantage of Chain from Sch. Comps stall 30 seconds on CDs to link up with Dark Knight certain fights for perfect timing earning cooldowns after down time. Don't be so quick to jump the band wagon, Dark Knight is in a lot of speed kills over Paladin for it's burst potential and fight timings, Paladin has flaws needing 35-36 seconds without interruption on every occasion never to happen in order to beat Dark Knight.

Idk if you know the news then, WAR inner release is going to be a 60s coldown now with 3 fellcleaves + beyblade hunga attack as finisher perfect to sync with all the raid buffs any time, yeah the guaranteed crit stuff sucks but at the same time now you have 3 fell cleaves instead of 5 so primal rend since doesn't consume inner release stacks and nascent chaos can be fitted on chain stratagem more easily and get beneficts from it.
On the down time WAR still have to manage storm eye wich adds GCD variety, have upheaval every 30s, have infuriate wich not all are going to fit on burst windows and onslaugh is 3 charges vs other tanks that have 2 so WAR is still the most movile job on the role since the recast will make you have at least 1 onslaught free for that purpose since it wont fit on raid buffs anyway.

DRK is based on use all his stuff on raid buffs, all his MP and all his oGCD since plunge, abysal drain, carve and spit, shadowbringer, living shadow, blood weapon and Delirium have a 60s recast (living dead 120 but fit in the same each window) DRK spend his downtime doing absolutely nothing but soul eater an a ocasional bloodspiller and the why this still exist salted earth every 90s.
considering that DRK doesn't have mechanics to build on with the exception of get the dark arts proc from TBN 1 per 60s since the rest is use on recast and throw all your MP on raid buffs DRK is just all lights and sparkles while in reality you spend most of the time watching netflix until your "random shit go" window come, optimal DRK just sucks.

Im not going in to speed skills since is not a matter of raw numbers but more about job gampelay design.

[Asta_Umbra]

They mean "Shield" as in barrier. It does feels weird for the paladin, who has a literal shield, to not be the tank using "shield" mitigation.
What's funny is that DRK also had a lot of parry incentive on release, gave it a duelist feel as a tank (which I honestly really enjoyed).

Do any of these matters when it comes to savage and ultimate? well i guess PLD does use his shield"Passage of Arms. And by shield what i mean is indeed as Kalaam mentioned. Barrier.

Divine Veil, Intervention, PoA are all "shield" based unless you mean something else again.

and it would be weird to not use them in savage and ultimate.

[Undeadfire]

We'll soon see which is better, it's a matter of opinions at this point. I find Warrior absolutely trash and horrifically boring doing nothing for 80 seconds each round, Dark Knight to me is at least interactive.

I am still very intent Gunbreaker is going to beat Warrior again, Double Down/Hyper Velocity are some serious guns and Paladin, being the main tank priority over it makes it much easier to play.

[ArthurATDayne]

We'll soon see which is better, it's a matter of opinions at this point. I find Warrior absolutely trash and horrifically boring doing nothing for 80 seconds each round, Dark Knight to me is at least interactive.

I am still very intent Gunbreaker is going to beat Warrior again, Double Down/Hyper Velocity are some serious guns and Paladin, being the main tank priority over it makes it much easier to play.

I'm appalled! Well, not really. Everyone who played WAR and didn't like it have all sorts of reasons, mines happen to be: 10% Damage Buff that required 1 target combo to apply, Overpower as Targeted Cone that I can't spam unless there's a target selected in melee range, Raw Intuition vs Nascent Flash. EW seemed to address 2 of those annoyances but Overpower is still targeted cone and pisses me off. Also, I hate axe glamours.

GNB I didn't enjoy much so my Squall12345 Alt languished forgotten... until I got a better mmo mouse and mechanical keyboard this year, now interest is rekindled. Now I'm trying to consolidate all 4 Tanks on THIS character so I don't have to change worlds so much.

Yeah I also love the Dark Knight. I like the PLD too but Dark Knight is still fun, has the best glamours, best job story and hilarious.

[Kalaam]

Honestly I wish gameplay was a bit more variable. All comp viable of course, but to have personal preference as to what other jobs we like to play with X main, a fun synergy between DRK and PLD would be neat given the jobs' history.
But we're getting besides the point.

[Mikey_R]

The problem with creating synergy is, what do you do? You don't want to have it tied to DPS otherwise you start with the case where if you have one of the 2 jobs, you will need the other just for the extra damage. Extra mitigation potential? If it causes healers to save GCDs for more damage, of course it is going to be better.

You could see this issue crop up from the past. In HW you always took a Warrior tank, partly because of their massive damage potential, but also, they could apply the slashing down Debuff. With Ninja being very common due to the power behind Tick Attack, pairing them up meant that Ninja could do even more damage than potentially intended by not having to use Dancing Edge at all (Dancing Edge applied the Slashing Down Debuff and done less damage than Aeolian Edge).

Then you have the double ranged meta, where you had Bard, Machinist and Dragoon. Dragoon was really strong in it's own right, but being able to buff the damage of Bard and Machinist meant you done more damage overall by having double ranged rather than ranged and caster.

With that, Stormblood basically made every job that had a slashing/piercing/etc. Debuff require them to be part of the rotation, so that you couldn't have the cases, where, Ninja wouldn't use Dancing Edge (though, they removed it anyway with this change). Ranged didn't get the ability to apply Piercing because they never had it to begin with, but Dragoon kept it, so Ranged were still strong. Which then leads to where we are now with Debuffs that apply additional damage across multiple jobs being completely removed.

The only thing since that comes close is Reaper with Death's Design, however that only applies to the damage done by the Reaper and no other job. Obviously, they didn't want it to increase other jobs, otherwise you, again, start having to balance it over every job.

Now, every raidwide buff is being changed so that they affect everyone, as having it only apply to specific damage types potentially limits the groups. Monk's Brotherhood was changed from only physical damage to all damage and gave spells the chance to proc Chakra, Redmage's Embolden, Just physical damage for the raid to all damage for the raid.

By having specific job synergy, you create an imbalance which then goes against the philosophy of any group can clear any content.

[Shurrikhan]

By having specific job synergy, you create an imbalance which then goes against the philosophy of any group can clear any content.

No, it doesn't. Any set of jobs can have different but (roughly) equally-valuable synergies. (See Overwatch, for instance, whenever it's in a good patch. For almost all hero/job choices, the way you play is more dependent upon your comp than not, and yet even at the professional level, it could take a month or more for even a map-specific meta to outperform comfort picks or intentionally off-meta --harder to counter-- comps.)

Having synergies isn't damning; it just means you have to balance comps, not only individual jobs.

It just comes back to whether players actually want XIV to be a team game beyond merely picking an angle, and perhaps an 'out' or 'in' position if there are more ranged than melee, before performing their mostly unchanged T&S dance. So far, that seems a no. We seemingly like as little effect from playing with others as possible, or indeed of any chance, anything outside our control.

[Mikey_R]

No, it doesn't. Any set of jobs can have different but (roughly) equally-valuable synergies. (See Overwatch, for instance, whenever it's in a good patch. For almost all hero/job choices, the way you play is more dependent upon your comp than not, and yet even at the professional level, it could take a month or more for even a map-specific meta to outperform comfort picks or intentionally off-meta --harder to counter-- comps.)

Having synergies isn't damning; it just means you have to balance comps, not only individual jobs.

It just comes back to whether players actually want XIV to be a team game beyond merely picking an angle, and perhaps an 'out' or 'in' position if there are more ranged than melee, before performing their mostly unchanged T&S dance. So far, that seems a no. We seemingly like as little effect from playing with others as possible, or indeed of any chance, anything outside our control.

What you have to remember is that balancing between PVE and PVP have different things to be considered. Whilst PVE is being balanced against each other to fight a static encounter, PVP have to be balanced not only between each other, but the dynamic environment of a human on the other side.

This is why SE balances in each role. All the tanks are similar enough that you can choose any and be fine. Start adding synergy between 2 tanks, and you would have to add it for all different compositions, otherwise, you start having imbalances. That is 6 different combos for the tanks, not much, but it is still something to think about. Then you have the fact the synergies will not apply in dungeons, which SE do balance around.

If anyone can give examples of potential synergies, I am willing to look at it as there might be something I have overlooked.

[Shurrikhan]

What you have to remember is that balancing between PVE and PVP have different things to be considered. Whilst PVE is being balanced against each other to fight a static encounter, PVP have to be balanced not only between each other, but the dynamic environment of a human on the other side.

You seem to be forgetting that they're also balanced separately, with entirely separate toolkits between PvP and PvE for each job?