Why TBN is a powerful but poorly designed ability.

[SyzzleSpark]

In discussing possible DRK adjustments and the like on these forums a constant topic has been TBN. Discussions about mitigation come back to "yeah, but TBN!" ...discussions about utility come back to "yeah, but TBN!" and discussions about DPS... well they don't go anywhere really. Most of this thread will discuss TBN as it relates to 8-man content.

Before I get into the problems I have with TBN I want to talk about something we can never ever get back and that is the Dark Dance+Reprisal combo. While DD was something of a meme (it was hard for anything parry related to not be) it was a gateway to DPS, additional mitigation, and was high uptime. The button felt good to push in between tank busters, or during an add phase, etc. The fact that it proc'ed Reprisal I've always likened to something of a built-in Eye 4 an Eye. The Low Blow procs were just the icing on the cake. Reprisal got the treatment that it did for the same reason Storm's Path did. This much is understandable. However Reprisal was as much a part of our personal mitigation as raid mitigation. This is because it was always kept on cooldown; we enjoyed a lot of personal mitigation from this ability, in spite of how much it was more widely known for its raid utility. The ability could easily have been re-tuned to be simply a 10% damage taken reduction on the DRK for 20s instead of a 10% damage dealt reduction on the boss.

The current pruning of abilities and the cross role system means this combination is gone. We can't get it back. 2 reasons for this:

1. Reprisal has double the recast and a quarter of the duration that it used to have. Meaning it is now mostly for TBs/raid busters, which was not typically how it saw use before. If you had it, you used it, and it lasted a relatively long time and was available relatively quickly thereafter. You didn't build your CD rotation around it for the same reason you didn't build it around parry. Yes you needed to parry, but typically it still enjoyed about 30-50% uptime so long as the boss had physical AAs (which most did).
2. Anticipation is simply gone in 8 mans. Even if we wanted it, there is no room for us to take it.

This combination was like DRK's answer to PLD's shield. It was only available while tanking and it mitigated a similar amount of damage over the course of a fight, perhaps even more so.

In 8mans Rampart/Conva/Shirk/Voke are a given, with the 5th usually going to Reprisal. We can no longer get the 20% defense of Foresight, and we would need to sacrifice most likely Reprisal for the benefit of Awareness where applicable. Anticipation moving into cross role makes less sense every time your brain revisits the concept, given that even in 4mans, no other tank will ever take it. Its woefully inefficient on PLD, for whom blocks overwrite parries, and never worth it over Awareness on WAR due to Raw Intuition. The other tanks didn't need it, but because they took it from DRK, they took Reprisal as well.

Basically, SE took two abilities that were a package and not to be separated, separated them, nerfed them, and and gave them to two jobs that won't use them (except for Reprisal in 8man boss fights), at DRK's expense.

SE filled in this hole in our kit with TBN.

Make no mistake - TBN is powerful, versatile, and just all around a great ability. Its personal mitigation, its (very mild) raid utility (I think people over estimate its benefit from a raid utility standpoint quite frequently), and when used properly, it refunds its cost in MP through Blood gauge potency now with the Bloodspiller buff. It is actually a sight DPS gain now if it pops, so now, just like Reprisal, it is a part of our DPS rotation.

All good right? Well...

With the things DRK lost, a lot of ground needed to be made up. And so TBN is, as stated, very powerful. The main issue is that the rest of DRK's defensive kit is extremely dated and so the entire job's mitigation suite is excessively lopsided towards TBN. You can more or less spam TBN every 15s now. Its easy to forget Shadow Wall even exists. Shadow Wall is still very weak compared to its equivalents, and with the power of the DD/Reprisal combo gone, there's no real justification for this. Dark Mind is, as many have pointed out, aging poorly with PLD's ability to block magic, and also due to the fact that TBN+DM is almost always more mitigation than DADM, while having the same MP cost. Living Dead is unchanged, as is our self-healing.

The problem is that they removed abilities that we used in between tank busters, which were very helpful while tanking out of stance, for instance, and replaced them with another TB oriented ability. TBN feels horrible to use on AAs, and yet it is against AAs where the hole in our kit existed to be filled. It requires this penny-pinching, bean-counting approach to the boss's rotation that no other job has to focus on. It also is a gamble. It may mitigate nothing at all, in which case not only are you out the mitigation, but also the DPS from the 50 BG.

Every 15s you take this gamble. If you save it, it could be a DPS/mitigation loss. If you don't save it, but mis-time it by half a second (such that it catches 1 AA instead of 2), its a loss. Yet you have every incentive to try to do so. If it pops, its a DPS gain, and with DRK's current kit being what it is, in between tank busters TBN is often our only form of mitigation, which again, feels awful. Its essentially a second DA around which our mana and BG must be managed. Tankbusters have always been a pass-fail mechanic, and yet now TBN makes all damage a pass-fail mechanic, only this time against our mana rather than our HP. Its a razor's edge timing/trade-off mechanic with such thin margins, and it is just not fun to revisit that every 15s.

No other job in the game needs to concern themselves with risking 1/4 of their resource for a gamble on mitigation and/or DPS every 15 seconds. Punishment for failing a trade-off mechanic is fine, but to force us to jump through that flaming hoop every 15s seems excessive, and a hefty price to pay to make up for mitigation that used to be free.

DRK has become a job about pushing a lot of buttons actively to achieve the same effect that most jobs get by pushing a single button.

For example, Dark Arts. In terms of % gain to potency, DA is anywhere from roughly a 30% to 50% boost depending on what you use it on. Pretty awesome right? Hell Syphon Strike enjoys a massive 56% increase from DA, more than the 3.x Berserk. This is definitely interesting and active and engaging, from a DPS standpoint. This is fine. DPS lends itself to button mashing. Mitigation the other hand does not. However, when you hit 70, TBN is ultimately asking you to do this with your mitigation as well. It places undue focus on a boss's AA rotation that neither of the other tanks need concern themselves with. If you choose not to use it on cooldown, its a small DPS loss, but more concerning is the mitigation loss. If you're saving Rampart and Shadow Wall for your TB rotation, your pants are completely down in between assuming the boss uses physical AAs (and most do, and even if they didn't, DM lasts only 10s). TBN is there for you to constantly attempt to keep your pants up.

In terms of DPS, DRK definitely needs some changes, and assuming that you manage all of what has been discussed so far perfectly, your DPS is still lower than that of PLD and WAR, and barely higher than that of someone that managed it all poorly. Which is a problem in itself, but the real point of contention here is personal mitigation.

It may seem like I am complaining a lot about TBN, and I am, but its not because I think it is weak, or because I am undervaluing it. On the contrary. It is extremely powerful and it makes our entire cooldown suite lopsided, because instead of balancing DRK around its remaining CDs, they balanced it around one button, and that is TBN.

Having to precisely time a cooldown every 15s and manage your mana around it requires a decent amount of skill and awareness, and yet its not fun. Its just stressful. Our DPS and mitigation are so entangled with timing this one single button every 15s, to such a strong degree, that it just becomes a button that symbolizes stress. Is it possible to precisely time it every time? Well, yes, I suppose. That is such a precise, nitty-gritty mechanic and playstyle element that it pulls at the threads of your resources, DPS, and mitigation by an entirely over-centralizing amount. Its also very difficult to account for the mitigation that TBN provides by healers, in part because it lasts for such a short time, and also in part because its use is so frequent. Instead of popping a weak cooldown and ticking down slowly over time, during which a healer can DPS until a heal is required, your HP just stops falling for 1-5s, and then plummets like a stone. Because its usefulness is so granular and condensed into this 15s window, it offers no time for you or your healers to adjust your play based on its effect.

The ability presents you with a risk-reward scenario entirely too often, and one that is entirely too punishing to fail (the loss of 2400 mana) for how often it is presented, and how often you are encouraged, if not required to use it.

This covers a lot of why TBN just feels bad to use for what you will use it for most of the time, which is mitigating fluff damage and procing extra Blood. Yes its a TB ability, but the casts directed at mitigating TBs generally account for a small percentage of TBN casts throughout a whole fight now that Bloodspiller's potency has increased.

Again, it is a very powerful ability, and a good ability, in a vacuum. But far too much rides on it far too often. And our mitigation suite is clearly balanced around it.

Which brings us to the main issue here: The rest of our cooldowns are incredibly lackluster in comparison. Sometimes I forget I even have Shadow Wall. And because TBN is up for every buster, you'll almost never use another one of your cooldowns outside of a tank buster again, because if its not up for that TB, TBN often isn't enough to mitigate it by itself. Are we seeing the problem yet? TBN is a cooldown that screams "USE ME ON A TANK BUSTER" and yet its existence precludes you from using any other CD on anything BUT a tankbuster, and thus makes it your sole form of meaningful mitigation on every other kind of damage the boss outputs, except tank busters. Confused? You should be.

DA-DM is obsolete, Shadow Wall is undertuned, and Living Dead is aging horribly. Souleater and Sole Survivor's self heals continue to be situational half-measures that in no way approach the usability and utility of skills like Equilibrium and Clemency, on the one job that could use such tools perhaps even more so.

The more I study TBN and its place in our rotation the more I've come to resent the button and everything it represents. Its power and accessibility is due in no small part to the fact that it was required to balance out our existing cooldowns in their ailing state.

What I would really like to see on DRK from a mitigation standpoint (DPS buffs are needed too but I feel like that is a given at this point, what with the job being a 100% weaker than PLD on all fronts, and TBN being its sole, rather miniscule advantage over WAR), is for TBN to be nerfed and the rest of our CDs to be buffed.

Shadow Wall should be competitive with Sentinel/Vengeance without being strictly inferior. We should not nerf Vengeance or Sentinel but instead buff Shadow Wall.
DM's DA effect is nearly obsolete and needs re-tuning. Outside of multi-hit, magical tank busters, why would you spend 2400 mana for 30% magic mitigation, when you could spend it on a 20% shield against all damage, with 15% magic mitigation on top of that, and potential to have the 2400 mana refunded back to you in BG?
Living Dead is still arbitrarily punishing, mostly because of our lack of reliable self-healing.

Even with these fixed, DRK still lacks so much when it comes to not taking the full brunt of incoming auto attack, cleave, and raid AoE damage on your bare ass outside of strictly TBN and TBN alone. I think Blood Price could be given a small 5-10% damage taken down effect, which would kill two birds with one stone in that it would also make it less of a downer to push instead of Blood Weapon.

I would like to see all of these things fixed, and have TBN be on a longer recast so as to not be so excessively over-centralizing. The problem right now is TBN is 20/10 and the rest of our kit is 1/10. In my opinion, spending 70s out of every 90s with TBN as your sole source of mitigation with your DPS, Mana, Blood, and mitigation hanging in the balance is poor design. Please dial back TBN a bit, lengthen its recast, and instead make our other defensive CDs not garbage. o/

[Falar]

Man, I never thought about a Reprisal replacement that just reduced damage on us. THAT would be an awesome skill! And one that brought back that sound effect/visual.

[Dauntess]

I ageee with everything you said. Although, while TBN is great for tank busters, it's terrible for mitigating AA. In large pulls, you can pop it and it will drop the second you use it. I'd like to add to the list of what I feel is a need, a 3rd combo/finisher. It gets pretty boring using the same combo, it's giving me PLD ptsd. I'd love for scourge to make a comback, perhaps it could be our 3rd combo.

[Age_of_Oblivion]

I agree, though you could have made these excellent points with 1/4 of the text.

[Kabooa]

Isn't Exdeath's buster Magic based?

...Doesn't that basically mean DA-DM's not obsolete by virtue of a raid tier having magic busters?

[SyzzleSpark]

Isn't Exdeath's buster Magic based?

...Doesn't that basically mean DA-DM's not obsolete by virtue of a raid tier having magic busters?

Unless the tank buster hits multiple times in a row, TBN+DM is better bang for your MP.

Any single-hit magical tank buster will be almost as if not better mitigated by TBN+DM, and TBN will refund its own cost whereas DA+DM will not.

Lets say you have a TB that does 54000 damage in one hit. Lets say you have 45K HP. Mix of fending and slaying, some HQ food, whatever.
DADM = 37800
TBNDM = 36900, plus blood gauge.

If it does 54000 spread out over 6 hits of 9K...
DADM = 37800
TBNDM = 38250, plus blood gauge.

Its hard to argue for DADM really.

I agree, though you could have made these excellent points with 1/4 of the text.

Very true, its a problem. However posting on these forums for a while has shown me that people will misinterpret your words if you don't say the same thing in at least 2 different ways.

[Sarcatica]

Isn't Exdeath's buster Magic based?

...Doesn't that basically mean DA-DM's not obsolete by virtue of a raid tier having magic busters?

If you have mana to do DADM, DM with TBN is just strictly better for most. Unless ofc if you need to use both DADM and TBN.

On another note, TBN does require more timing for 2 autos from bosses. Omega V.3 and V.4 do feature hard hitting autos, Susano hits pretty hard as well that 1 auto is enough to proc TBN out of Grit, at least iirc because I still do a mix of slayings into my build.

[Kitfox]

When people are saying TBN is a dps increase, are they talking about tanking in Grit?

Am I missing something when I average this out?:
Outside Grit:
No TBN → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 140) / 6 = 250 potency per GCD (Souleater x2 with one Dark Arts)
TBN on CD → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 400) / 7 = ~251 potency per GCD (Souleater x2 with TBN + Bloodspiller)

In Grit:
No TBN → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 140 x 2) / 6 = ~273 potency per GCD (~(Souleater x2 with Dark Arts x2)
TBN on CD → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 650) / 7 = ~287 potency per GCD (Souleater x2 with TBN + Dark Arts + Bloodspiller)

Obviously TBN is not meant to be used for AAs to gain DPS because of the 5 second duration and it seems like major oversight in design that it can be used like that. To be honest, I'm not sure I understand why Bloodspiller is so valuable in Grit besides that they wanted a cool way to bring Grit DPS closer to no-stance. There has to be a better way to achieve the same result without the pitfall that is TBN and Grit Bloodspiller.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

This has been mathed to hell and back and is really not what I want this thread to be about. Bloodspiller's buff means it is a huge gain in Grit, regardless of how you payed for the Blood to use it, and a smaller gain, but still a gain, out of Grit. Basically you answered your own question.

TBN being used on AAs in spite of its 5s duration is not the oversight - the oversight is that we don't have anything else to use instead. We have to use TBN on AA damage, because we interchangeably save Shadow Wall and Rampart to pair (seperately) with it for every TB. This is lessened somewhat in fights with magical TBs, but in fights like Susano it just feels like garbage.

We no longer have things like Foresight, Dark Dance, Reprisal, etc. to lengthen the time it takes for fluff damage to pull our HP down to the point where we require a heal. Thus, we can't NOT at least TRY to use TBN frequently to mitigate that damage, if we care about healer and raid DPS, and if we're lucky our own DPS.

[Kitfox]

So basically they should make the shield duration longer, or give the gauge regardless if it breaks or not. Logically, that's what they should've done if they wanted to bring up the lower skilled players closer to the top ones. Doing either of those things would fix the clunkiness of the ability, would it not?