Dark Knight needs serious help

[Shurrikhan]

I mean drk back in stormblood was the “war” we have now sustain dungeon wise. Abyssal drain and blood price healed you the entire time too full in every trash pack. Boss fights we’re the only one we’re it was a bit more spicy.

Yes, at one point in time (Stormblood, the same expansion that added TBN), DRK had the highest AoE sustain in the game, though still not far above Warrior with IR-IF at the ready.

Some small corrections, though: at that time, AD didn't heal without DA, at which point it still healed for just it's damage dealt (160p per target) and cost over a third of your MP, while each hit received during Blood Price generated only enough MP for maybe 7% of that cost, iirc, and AoEing in any other way came at cost to sustain since it took up MP otherwise usable by Souleater or AD.

What allowed for DA-AD spam wasn't Blood Price, btw; its MP generation was too slow. It was Quietus, especially if/when paired with BW. BP did give some Blood with which to use Quietus, but literally just 1 blood per hit taken; the majority of its Blood gen was passive and dwarfed by Blood Weapon.

BP would net you an extra cast or two at 10 or so targets, depending on their attack rate. At that same count, though, BW-Quietus would be self-refunding and net generate over half your MP per action.

Tl;Dr: BP itself didn't heal and couldn't keep up with the demands of DA-AD except in the highest of rates of hits taken.

[Oizen]

I'd very much like to see Abyssal Drain just be more available overall and not handcuffed to carve and spit.

[Lyth]

What's most likely to happen is for Carve and Spit to merge with Abyssal Drain into an Expiacion-style upgrade that generates HP/MP in both single target and AoE. It feels like a problem that was deliberately created in order to make the fix feel like an upgrade. If this does occur, I want a Minus Strike type effect for lifesteal, that restores more HP the lower your HP becomes, rather than a flat heal. Some blood generation would be nice as well. A straight merge without adding any fresh nuance would be frustrating.

The biggest discrepancy that I see is with the raidwide defensives. My personal preference would be for them to just burn Shake/Veil/Passage/Missionary/HoL to the ground and let everyone get by with Reprisal on a level playing field, which is what they should have done from the start when Reprisal became a role action rather than exposing their inability to design unique but fair equivalents on all jobs. I have no idea why they made WAR into a barrier tank here, and the aesthetic choices are simply terrible. You can tell that they completely ran out of ideas when it came time for Missionary and HoL to be grudgingly added.

Failing that, Dark Missionary needs some sort of advantage to offset its inability to mitigate physical damage and its lack of healing. The solution is going to require the addition of a unique effect like a raidwide movement speed boost at minimum to offer parity.

[Grizzlpaw]

A Healer's job is to keep their allies alive.
A tank's job is to hold aggro and to keep themsleves alive.
The DPS job is to pump out as much damage as possible and avoid taking unecessary damage

Warrior's niche is that they are the lifesteal tank. We don't need to use them as an excuse to rob tanks of the single thing that makes being a tank fun (Besides dealing damage). Keeping yourself alive with smart play in spite of the mistakes of other people in your party.

I love DRK, and as jealous as I am that WAR took the lifesteal niche away from us. I don't want to see others lose the things they find fun so we can all be equally miserable. I'd like to see DRK see some improvements to their gameplay so they can have fun too.
To that end... I wouldn't mind sacrificing a bit of DRK's ability to just not take damage if they don't want to in exchange for some of that lifesteal back. But I'd like for it to be life steal with a trade-off.

[Supersnow845]

A Healer's job is to keep their allies alive.
A tank's job is to hold aggro and to keep themslevesalive.
The DPS job is to pump out as much damage as possible and avoid taking unecessary damage

RIP Away tank sustain and tanks feel like garbage to play. As a tank player you want to see your ability to keep yourself alive increase. It feel amazing to be able to keep yourself standing even when the healer isn't pulling their weight because you managed your resources just right. It feel good to overcome a bad situation that is completely out of your control and do the thing your job is designed to do. Survive. Do. Not. Rip. This. Away.

What need to happen is that SE should take notes from other MMOs like WoW and GW2. Introduce some RNG to fights to everything isn't scripted. Force healers to adapt on the fly to what the boss decides to do.
Make DPS take more damage in general that is unavoidable. Even with skills like second wind and Bloodlust, DPS won't be able to keep themselves up forever without a healer's intervention. This is fine because it does not in any way diminish the fun of playing a DPS, which is to pump out big numbers.

Let tanks keep themslves alive. If we're worried about tanks soloing dungeons with a completely dead group, that's what enrage timers are for. This is what prevents DPS from being rendered useless in parties outside of faster clears.

What MMO are you playing where the tank is immortal and the healers only job is to the DPS

Holy trinity MMO’s have always been designed that the boss whacks the tanks and the healer keeps the tanks alive

The tank should have to care about the party more than “I do whatever I want I hope the healers keep the DPS alive long enough to meet the enrage check”

This also says nothing about the stupid design that all the most powerful heals in the game are AOE, whether I’m healing the DPS, the tank or multiple people I’m still using the same heals so the tank gets them by proxy

[Grizzlpaw]

What MMO are you playing where the tank is immortal and the healers only job is to the DPS

Holy trinity MMO’s have always been designed that the boss whacks the tanks and the healer keeps the tanks alive

The tank should have to care about the party more than “I do whatever I want I hope the healers keep the DPS alive long enough to meet the enrage check”

In WoW, tank sustain makes 14 tank sustain look like a joke. Even Brewmaster, considered to be the most healer reliant tank, can top themselves up with heals during big pulls thanks to Ox orbs and the occasional instant vivify proc. Yet even if you stop DPSing altogether, healing in WoW still keeps you on your toes and really makes you figure out how to squeeze out as much healing as possible during moments when damage is at its highest. And the reason for that is that things HURT a lot more in WoW.

Another consequence of things hurting more is that when DPS die, Tanks will eventually get overwhelmed.

If the healer dies, the DPS will also die. If the DPS die, the tank might stay alive for a while with their self-sustain tools, but eventually they'll get overwhelmed, run out of cooldowns, and die too.
This encourages the tank to do their part to limit the damage the party is taking as well. Either with CC, enemy damage reduction, group healing, or other tools they have in their arsenal. So they're not just hoping the healer keeps their DPS babies alive.

Healers are forced to stay engaged and keep the DPS alive because without them the party will get overwhelmed, the damage taken will eventually force out all of the party's cooldowns.

And DPS, even with their impressive group and sustain by 14 standards are encouraged to limit how much they dip into it because downing things faster means you can conserve resources for later.


14 is a casual game. It doesn't need to be that intense. I'm not asking that 14 become a hardcore MMO where a single mistake from 1 person can end a run. I'm also not asking for tanks to become so immortal that they can solo content. I'd like things to hit harder in general and I'd like healers to have to babysit more than just their tank. There's 2 other healthbars besides the healer and tank that I think should matter a bit more.

[Grizzlpaw]

I'll give a more concrete example. Lets say we scale up damage to a point where pulling 2 packs of trash dishes out roughly as much damage to the party as current wall-to-wall pulls do.

A GNB might be able to self sustain though the first pull with the help of Aurora and HoC. But during the next, they might have their aurora charges on CD and need their healer to help out. If the healer is inexperienced, they'll have to factor that in and take things slow. Maybe go 1 pack at a time or they'll go down.

Bosses in general could also deal more auto attack damage to the tank. Enough that they have to burn through their sustain tools faster than they can come off CD. A good one will be able to stay alive for a bit if they have CDs up, but they'll still go down eventually.

DPS will also take more damage in general, so on top of tanks having to use up more of their own sustain, healers may have to commit some of their oGCDs to topping up their DPS.

Which is one less oGCD that they have to help the tank once their sustain tools run out. This will force them to dip into the GCD heals more often. DPS will feel encouraged to actually try to deal as much damage as possible so the pressure doesn't mount up on their tanks and healers as their cooldowns run out.

Now the party is actually relying on each other. And all it took was making enemy damage more lethal.

[Supersnow845]

I’m so confused, now you are arguing that tanks should take more damage, isn’t that directly going to encourage healers to actually use their heals, right now they don’t have to because tank sustain is too powerful and healer kits are too strong, right now you need to pull close to 4 packs to even remotely push the healer into being cool down negative

Nerf tank sustain or increase damage the result is functionally the same, but in the current design the tanks are too strong

[Grizzlpaw]

You are right technically.
If you boil things down to a function of damage taken vs damage mitigated/restored then it doesn't matter from which end you pull. Whether you increase damage taken or reduce our ability to recover damage, the end result is that tanks take more damage.

But this completely ignores a very important factor. Gameplay.

Take away a tank's sustain tools, and two side effects of that are that you are both reducing a tanks agency over their own survival, and squishing the skill ceiling of the game further for tank players. If the sustain is gone, a tank just has to worry about cycling their mitigation and leave the rest to the healer.

I say "take away" and not "nerf" because removing things is generally how SE interprets feedback like this.

Increase damage taken, and you end up at the same end point. Tank sustain is comparatively weaker because it can't keep up with the damage they take. But a bad tank who doesn't make use of those sustain tools will feel a lot squishier than a tank who uses them well. You achieve the end goal you want, but you leave the skill ceiling intact, and most importantly.

You aren't sacrificing fun on the altar of balance.

Make DPS take more damage as well, and you go a step further. Now the healer goes from having nothing to do but spam 1 2 1 1 1 1. To having to help their tank manage the higher damage they're taking. To having to help their tank and also keep their DPS babies alive. Using Medica II when the AoE goes out won't cut it anymore.

I don't think we need to nerf tank sustain down to the level of DRK. Maybe we can tone WAR down a bit by giving Bloodwhetting a potency cap (So they can't literally pull an entire dungeon and be fine), but I think every other tank should be left alone in terms of sustain.

[Supersnow845]

They are never going to change the entire core of the game to make current sustain work with difficult healing because they are never going to go back and fix old content to also make it work with said design, if they buffed mob damage then we all know it would only be for new and current content, doing it this way also doesn’t change the fact that no matter how much damage you are taking you are functionally immortal when bloodwhetting is up (holy Shelton and the ranged combo isn’t much better)

There is also the argument to be made that tanks already have a more interesting rotation and design so that if one role has to suffer in this problem it should be the better designed role (I don’t agree with this but it’s something to consider), tanks get a full DPS rotation and pressing a mitigation is functionally never useless, healers get 111111111 and a wealth of heals they will never use, sure healers should be fixed outside of the problems with tanks but isn’t nerfing the thing unbalancing two roles easier than coming up with 601848285 different theories about how we can change the entire game design instead