Design of DRK and PLD

[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.

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

You'd have to be playing with an incredibly subpar MNK for them to play without their blunt resistance down buff.

Or just one running enough SkS to drop DK only on Demolish and DK itself (for 7+15 bonus potency lost, or at most an extra 8 from the normal auto, while gaining the 130 potency of an extra Boot-True per rotational string). Such could cause small but potentially notable gaps in the Int Down debuff.

I wouldn't consider the proc-based gameplay on HW DRK to be 'tools' or 'utility'. It just ensured that your resource generation was more variable, forcing you to think on your feet.

This, and perhaps a bit more compensation for MTing (which, back then, every tank had in some different form -- DD, Reprisal, Low Blow, and self-heals if in tank-stance; Shield Swipe and MP generation; Vengeance and [very mild] rotational self-heals that didn't require tank stance).

FFXIV players tend to be very much against any randomness or variability that prevent you from mapping out your rotations on a spreadsheet, which is why DRK unfortunately has moved closer towards PLD style faceroll rotational design despite being originally set up as resource management tank. The problem is that it feeds back into this culture that every pull that you do has to be able to potentially yield a mathematically optimal result (even if you're not at the mechanical skill level where you can achieve said result), or else we just wipe and reset until you get the numbers that you want. This was the kind of thinking that made them effectively remove Crit/DH from affecting WAR. It's an incredibly dumb design direction. Who cares if you didn't crit on your 22nd Fell Cleave? Just play your best and you'll average at what you should.

Given the shit we'd bar lock out over minute rDPS gains (that ended up rivaled or even beat out by off-meta comps by StB's end), I wonder what would happen if we ever had to deal with actually playing differently depending on our comps, rather than merely having a 5% dmg shuffle from ones' aDPS to another's rDPS, etc. A true Pandemonium?

[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.

[Marxam]

From a new players perspective. It just dont make sense at all. Then i hear from some players saying that DRK will never change cause it was originally inspired by an Anime called Berserk. After watching that anime. It makes even less sense of having DRK being a shield tank. Whats the use of Paladin's shield? I have never seen any "Paladin with shield" in other games that uses shield but almost never uses a shield.

If they are using Berserk as inspiration then 3.0-4.0 DRK was the 1997 anime and 5.0+ is the 2016 anime. The former was slow deliberate, punishing but rewarding and jank (though this was a time when most classes were jank as well). The latter is flash but no substance and bombastic for the sake of it. People have their favorites but ultimately DRK didn't do too well in the expansion transitions because it changed from being a magic defense specialist, but when PLD changed to block magic DRK lost that. It then became a haste, resource management tank but then they removed TP. Now its just a tank variant of MCH. The parallels are frightening tbh.

Both MCH and DRK have:
-one combo rotation
-multiple ogcds that only do dmg
-an npc they can summon as a flashy dot
-animations where they are flipping and dipping like wushu masters

[Lyth]

I find it really strange that there's so much variety with dps job mechanics, and yet we don't see tanks really exploring any of them. MCH has an interesting variation on the standard combo system in that Drill and Air Anchor are functionally additional 'combo steps' that pop up at different points in your combo cycle. DRG has a five step combo. There are so many more interesting ways to do combo systems than merely alternating between a maintenance combo and a damage combo. It's a shame that more of this doesn't get ported over to tanks. Who knows, you might even be able to make a job like WAR engaging to play for the other 80 seconds when you aren't in burst.

Likewise, MCH and now RPR are both operating on purely resource-gated burst windows, rather than the standard time-gated ones that everyone else has. I think that this sort of design better suits a resource-focused job. It's more organic.

[Shurrikhan]

Likewise, MCH and now RPR are both operating on purely resource-gated burst windows, rather than the standard time-gated ones that everyone else has. I think that this sort of design better suits a resource-focused job. It's more organic.

How so? Just because it's more uptime-dependent and might make SkS slightly less shitty (though Hypercharge, etc., more than reverses that effect overall)? Is this limited just to whichever spenders don't oblige use only at full gauge (so, not Apex Arrow, etc.)?

I find it really strange that there's so much variety with dps job mechanics, and yet we don't see tanks really exploring any of them. MCH has an interesting variation on the standard combo system in that Drill and Air Anchor are functionally additional 'combo steps' that pop up at different points in your combo cycle. DRG has a five step combo. There are so many more interesting ways to do combo systems than merely alternating between a maintenance combo and a damage combo.

Similarly, do any further examples come to mind here? I'm trying to imagine from the examples given, but I'm having trouble seeing how MCH or DRG, for instance, vary from the standard.

DRG's two 5-step combos, after all, are just a maintenance (DB-CT) and damage/filler combo, just like any Goring Blade, Storm's Eye, Gnashing Fang, or the like.
Meanwhile, Drill and Air Anchor are just... Sonic Break. They're each just another braindead, keep-aligned-by-firing-and-forgetting-on-cooldown damage CD -- merely GCD rather than oGCD -- that, at best, you may get another use of at inefficiently high Skill Speeds in some incredibly rare fights... if and only if you don't have to hold to align them with raid buffs, likely wasting total damage even then.