Dark Knight needs serious help

[Rithos_Kirien]

Mainly posting this in the hope that Square sees it. Dark Knight really needs some help in the surviveability department. Every other tank got huge buffs and self healing this expansion - except Drk. We got Oblation and thats basically it. Dark Knight really needs some type of sustain other than Abyssal Drain, which is on a 1 minute cd. Dark Knight is may favorite tank, and I dont even use it anymore because all the other tanks are just so much better at.. well.. tanking.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Dark Mind - changed to -20% magical reduction and -10% physical reduction like Addle.

Is literally all it needs. At most a decoupling of Abyssal Drain from Carve and Spit or making each 30s recharge 2 stacks for sustain uptime. DRK doesn't need the ridiculous HP recovery of the other tanks.

If anything, healers need to let DRK use Living Dead during pulls, it is literally a benediction during trash packs.

I don't struggle with DRK regardless of level range. I only want the Dark Mind change and thats it.

[Oizen]

I view that as a big issue for DRK as well, having two skills (Dark Mind and Dark Missionary) be completely worthless in certain content can make DRK feel frustrating.
Dark Mind especially feels worthless around the time you unlock it, then starts to feel good in current content, 50 levels later.

Making Abyssal Drain more available wouldn't hurt either.

[GoatOfWar]

Mainly posting this in the hope that Square sees it. Dark Knight really needs some help in the surviveability department. Every other tank got huge buffs and self healing this expansion - except Drk. We got Oblation and thats basically it. Dark Knight really needs some type of sustain other than Abyssal Drain, which is on a 1 minute cd. Dark Knight is may favorite tank, and I dont even use it anymore because all the other tanks are just so much better at.. well.. tanking.

Not gonna happen, War mains now suddenly care about homogenisation after being buffed and given the tools they demanded, that other tanks have. And think that your job should be definined by shortcomings and jank while theirs should be defined by being the best at everything. We had the best short cd mitigation, so they demanded buffs to theirs. We had a damage advantage, which they demanded to have as well. We had reprisal, which they demanded to have as well.
As long as Warrior exists, the others might as well not. And frankly, tanking just isn't that enjoyable anymore knowing that i am factually playing the incorrect job.
And i blame War mains for the tank homogenisation that they now conviniently seem so worried about to be completely honest.

[Rithy255]

Hello Dark Knight mains, The legion of Paladins support your efforts to nerf Warrior, by our request we need your help.

In general Dark Knight is the tank I'd want changes for the most outside a lot of Paladin useless bloat and our rotation being turn boring, I feel like I'd actually be more interested in Dark Knight if they added more magic rotational effects and made the job less of "busy warrior with weird annoying defensives" But obviously keeping some Jank and uniqueness is fine, just other tanks like Warrior/GNB generally being good without that Jank kind of stings.

[Lyth]

The end goal isn't to go out of our way to 'nerf WAR'. What players are asking for is fair treatment across the board, so that every tank can feel unique while being able to tackle a variety of tanking tasks equally well. This may result in 'nerfs' on all jobs. If we scrutinize raidwide mitigation in particular, PLD is the only tank job that brings two job-exclusive raidwide mitigation tools in both Divine Veil and Passage of Arms. Historically, the reason for this was because they also had one less personal defensive, and Passage contained both functions in one action. Now that Bulwark was added mid-expansion as a free half duration Rampart (or alternatively, a Dark Mind variant that works on all damage types), the setup becomes incredibly difficult to justify on a tank that already had the highest action count out of any job in the game prior to addition. I expect that we will all need to make some sacrifices in the name of fairness, and PLD is no exception to this.

Historically, DRK has always been an oGCD heavy job, which means that burst windows tend to be busy and downtime tends to be a little dull. It's a similar feel to NIN in that sense. I don't see that changing overnight. I think that DRK could stand to benefit from taking lessons from RPR's design, in particular, the potential to situationally to 'store' your one minute burst for a larger burst window under tincture (i.e. Triple Enshroud), and having access to a temporary speed boost with a proper 'darkness' aura. It is difficult to make big changes to a job when you only have three actions to work with, however. I suspect one change is going to be to merge Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain down into a single new action with the properties of both (Abyssal Strike?), similar to how Expiacion added AoE functionality to Spirits Within. If that is the case, then we're not going to have much left to work with. Do you commit to rotational changes by adding another GCD action and a Living Shadow Finisher to make the job less oGCD heavy? Alternatively, do you expend one of those slots to fix a longstanding problem elsewhere, like improving DRK's raidwide mitigation capabilities?

Either way, what I'm hoping they do is sit down sometime before the next expansion and lay down some design principles both in terms of what every tank should be able to do equivalently, and what unique thematic elements each tank should keep as 'their unique toys'. As an example, if the end goal is for every tank to provide one job-exclusive raidwide mitigation action that works on all damage types without providing any additional self-sustain, then you mercilessly bring down every tank to exactly one action that fulfills that task. There can be multiple unique ways of achieving the same goal - area damage reduction, flat damage shield buffs, % damage shield buffs, temporary HP buffs, damage down debuffs, split damage with teammates, redirect damage to yourself, and so on. This is why having a clear 'theme' across a tank is helpful, because then you can start tackling each of these mandatory tasks in a consistent, unique, and equivalent way.

[Oizen]

The only way WAR should be nerfed is if theres a concious effort to reduce how insane tank sustain has gotten, in which WAR obviously would take the biggest nerf there while DRK would probably just go untouched.

I don't see this happening though.

[Absimiliard]

Each tank has its own lane. WAR's just happens to be extremely potent self-healing, which people believe to be far more powerful than it actually is because of the job's performance in non-endgame content. Conversely, DRK winds up being written off as bad because of its poor sustain despite all the other goodies it brings to the table. They are two different kinds of tanks, and so trying to compare them on a 1 to on 1 basis is already a bad start.

[PercibelTheren]

I'm a healer main, so my view is likely gonna be very skewed, but I disagree. I think other tanks should lose their insane sustain instead.

[Absimiliard]

I'm a healer main, so my view is likely gonna be very skewed, but I disagree. I think other tanks should lose their insane sustain instead.

My question to this would be: Why?
Healers have plenty to do at endgame. Tanks are really only trivializing content that's already a joke.