Some DRK changes seem annoyingly simple yet are ignored....

[Agner]

it's the least interactive (ironically) when it comes to endgame and it just flat out fucking sucks in dungeons for no good reason.

To reiterate, I would consider the other defensives stacked more "meaningfully" in jobs other than DRK, but that DRK is still alright defensively. It's fine to say otherwise, but I feel like DRK is hilariously a better baseline for what tanks should be closer to—it obviously feels "squishier" in dungeons, but I don't want my healer to be as bored as I am tanking a dungeon. It's been not difficult to tank a dungeon on DRK whatsoever, assuming your healer is paying a small amount of attention. I remember hearing this big funk about how EW DRK is difficult in dungeons, which is why I actually bothered leveling it this expansion. It still wasn't difficult unless your healer was straight up AFK. That, or paying about as much attention as a tank needs to in a dungeon. Fun stuff.

With that said! What I would certainly not argue against is more interactivity between our defensives, or kit in general. However, I still don't have the trust that the team would make that happen without it still managing to be bland. Things like the already simple DA+AD loop while keeping up Blood Weapon and using Quietus to refill MP seem to have been shot out of the game in favor of one button, no failure copies.

I really don't think those would have ever happened if not for people making a fuss about it, cause while we were bringing it to light most non-DRK players were also actively arguing AGAINST any of those changes!

Well, as you said:

You might have a point though, they dumbed the job down mechanically so they have to ramp up how hard it is to get any meaningful QoL or updates lol

"To walk the path is to suffer. To sacrifice. Justice demands no less. But we must never lose sight of why we chose to walk it."

Surely, too, we are meant to internalize that at this point. :)

Liking it doesn't require desperation nor nostalgia, only having played without and with it.

Ya, that's totally fair. I think it's ok to read my former post (or posts) in a dramatic boomer voice, yappin' about "ye olde days" and such.

It's also pretty absurd that people who didn't play in Stormblood blame it for the loss of this or that other capacity...

I feel silly missing things as simple as dungeon pulls in Stormblood, but I get it. Kits would actually flow back into each other regardless of their issues, and there were at least a degree of inputs required to achieve it. It wasn't hard or anything, but it at least took a little bit of attention to perform. To avoid getting too off topic, I'll end with saying that I'd actually prefer that I don't need to multitask to keep my skull occupied. It'd be nice to focus on just the game when playing the game.

[VicariousXIV]

To reiterate, I would consider the other defensives stacked more "meaningfully" in jobs other than DRK, but that DRK is still alright defensively. It's fine to say otherwise, but I feel like DRK is hilariously a better baseline for what tanks should be closer to—it obviously feels "squishier" in dungeons, but I don't want my healer to be as bored as I am tanking a dungeon. It's been not difficult to tank a dungeon on DRK whatsoever, assuming your healer is paying a small amount of attention. I remember hearing this big funk about how EW DRK is difficult in dungeons, which is why I actually bothered leveling it this expansion. It still wasn't difficult unless your healer was straight up AFK. That, or paying about as much attention as a tank needs to in a dungeon. Fun stuff.

With that said! What I would certainly not argue against is more interactivity between our defensives, or kit in general. However, I still don't have the trust that the team would make that happen without it still managing to be bland. Things like the already simple DA+AD loop while keeping up Blood Weapon and using Quietus to refill MP seem to have been shot out of the game in favor of one button, no failure copies.

Yeah dungeons are easy on everything, but DRK is the only tank that can't make it through on it's own and that is the issue, but you have a point that maybe all 3 other tanks being so much stronger in such easy content might be more of the issue. Regardless, either all three others need to be brought in line or DRK needs to be brought up so the difficulty can be increased, cause if it is as things are now the DRK is boned, strangely in the easiest of contents lol

"To walk the path is to suffer. To sacrifice. Justice demands no less. But we must never lose sight of why we chose to walk it."

Surely, too, we are meant to internalize that at this point.

I think we are, the problem is where there are three other paths to walk that do not require such "suffering or sacrifice," it's hard to not just walk those paths and pray that the outlier is eventually smoothed out, call me weak but if I can unga bunga with WAR and generally just do everything better then the DRK can, or play GNB and retain even more uptime, or just go PLD for more complexity, I don't know if my love for the story and edgy aesthetics are enough to keep me on board even though I would very much like to be, the clunkiness and lack of interactivity within it's own kit is just such a turn-off when it's not an issue the other tanks have since they've already received all the QoL their playerbases asked for, especially when there are people who actually want to keep the bullshit for bullshit reasons. Kinda makes me want to just go to the easier roads and let everyone just be happy with their faux "uniqueness."

But honestly putting it so poetically, that has been the most convincing thing to keep me playing it, for now at least lol There's honestly just so much I do like about the DRK that it's infuriating that it still also has so much nonsense built into it.