Dark Knight and Sigmascape Savage Preliminary Thoughts

[Chrono_Rising]

I cleared it 3 times with drk and I have an average of 20 TBNs for fight and a total of ~240k mitigated in 10 min. Keep in mind that some TBNs were used to mitigate kiss and raid bursts. And I was acting defensively since my healers were struggling to heal both tanks. There is no way someone use 38 TBNs in a single fight.

I agree, 38 seems a bit high of an estimate. I'm guessing their estimate is not counting the first 20ish seconds of the fight that you cannot hit anything, and not excluding the first minute or so where the goddess is not auto attacking yet, or other times when you stop taking auto damage. However, I would guess that warrior would take more damage through that fight as an off tank just by knowing that they do not have a spamable mitigation. Where warrior really shines is in the main tank role for this fight where its cooldowns also blow paladin and dark knight out of the water since they can take even the off tank's tank busters with some HGs.

Not doing a serious analysis but looking through some data it looks like dark knight and paladin are relatively even in the OT role. This also points out the big difference in paladin mitigation between sheltron and tbn. You want to spam both, but paladin is gaining around 100 potency each time it hits sheltron, and dark knight is loosing about 5 each time it hits TBN. Similar end mitigation results, only one is punished.

[Rathael]

I do not understand how you guys are surviving Doom Strike outside of Grit.

I'm full tenacity melded and I die to Doom Strike if I don't have two defensive cooldowns up AND TBN. Doom strike its self has a fairly fast cast time as far as tank busters go, so it is actually difficult to activate them all in time.

I am forced to tank in grit. Furthermore, 20% damage reduction from grit is like ignoring 1 in every 5 autos from the train. Surely that gives a lot more globals to the healers to output more damage?

I cannot clear this damn drain at all. Very few DPS are above 5k in the first phase, yet when I try it on my BLM it is quite easy to get almost 6k, and 16 - 20k on the add group. Most DPSers are below 10k on the AoE add group. Are the other DPS classes really that terrible at AoE?

Also what the hell is up with warrior damage? I've seen so many warrior tanks doing over 4k DPS on this. They just seem overall so much better than the other tanks for savage... but then PLD has tons of utility to make up for that. Even as OT I can barely get over 3k DPS.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

Well, for starters, WAR has this aura (for better or for worse) of "I'll be a DPS with defensive CDs", so usually, nobody expects them to spend much time in defiance, even less than the other tanks. So most parties are ready to give you the MTing and let you DPS through it (I've seen far too many DPSs playing WAR, not even popping CDs. Not talking to you, fellow tanks DPSing, talking about the random DPSs that went out of their way), even giving extra attention to you, knowing you'll be a mess to heal, but a mess worth healing.

Seconds, there's also the fact that WAR has the best mean DPS of all jobs, and as such, it's considered as the most offensive tank (and that's certainly true), so many tanks that focused heavily on doing DPS actually switched from DRK/PLD to WAR, just because it's more offensive, and they like that.

So yeah, I see two reasons for WAR being rocket high (other than the devs loving their OP WAR) in terms of DPS : party focusing on letting them DPS, and a population with a slightly different mindset, more keen to DPSing.

No judgement in that, though, WAR main myself, and I don't think we as players are worth any more than other tanks players. It's just a different mindset, that's responsible for wipes as much as another mindset would be.

[Xan_Kriegor]

I do not understand how you guys are surviving Doom Strike outside of Grit.

I'm full tenacity melded and I die to Doom Strike if I don't have two defensive cooldowns up AND TBN. Doom strike its self has a fairly fast cast time as far as tank busters go, so it is actually difficult to activate them all in time.

I am forced to tank in grit. Furthermore, 20% damage reduction from grit is like ignoring 1 in every 5 autos from the train. Surely that gives a lot more globals to the healers to output more damage?

I cannot clear this damn drain at all. Very few DPS are above 5k in the first phase, yet when I try it on my BLM it is quite easy to get almost 6k, and 16 - 20k on the add group. Most DPSers are below 10k on the AoE add group. Are the other DPS classes really that terrible at AoE?

Also what the hell is up with warrior damage? I've seen so many warrior tanks doing over 4k DPS on this. They just seem overall so much better than the other tanks for savage... but then PLD has tons of utility to make up for that. Even as OT I can barely get over 3k DPS.

First of all, I do think that Sigmascape V1 Savage is kinda hard if you compare that with Alte Roite for example or even with Sigma V2. Fortunately the dps check is not that high and you can afford some deaths and still clear it.That being said if you are parsing the entire fight 2950 dps with DRK means that you are above 75th percentile so you are doing a great job. This happens because the fight has some downtimes that lowers overall dps, WAR 75th percentile dps is 3390 for example. So this is not a fight where a tank will do 4k+ dps in the end of it (despite 1% of WAR's parses). I do think that you do more damage in this fight while MTing because you can keep more uptime since you have barely no mechs to do. WAR usually has ~300 of dps advantage against DRK but in this fight it is ~400 I think that part of this is because they do tons of damage in the adds phase.

I am not a MT in most of this fight, I recommend you to tank swap when you are out of mitigations. Keep in mind that Doom Strike, the fluff damage and the Ghost damage in the Passenger Chamber Phase are all magical so you can use Dark Mind and even DADM if it is needed. However Head On is physical and I like to tank it close to the boss to not take too much damage from the Demonic Chains and keep uptime. You can also spam TBN for Fluff and if you time it correctly it will always break so you'll have only a minor DPS loss. Also, you can do that to help your co-tank when he is MT. I usually swap during the prey mechanic because it makes the things easier for the healers. If you have a PLD co-tank you can ask him to help you with knockbacks using Cover+Tempered Will.

[Claire_Pendragon]

I do not understand how you guys are surviving Doom Strike outside of Grit.

I'm full tenacity melded and I die to Doom Strike if I don't have two defensive cooldowns up AND TBN. Doom strike its self has a fairly fast cast time as far as tank busters go, so it is actually difficult to activate them all in time.

I am forced to tank in grit. Furthermore, 20% damage reduction from grit is like ignoring 1 in every 5 autos from the train. Surely that gives a lot more globals to the healers to output more damage?

I cannot clear this damn drain at all. Very few DPS are above 5k in the first phase, yet when I try it on my BLM it is quite easy to get almost 6k, and 16 - 20k on the add group. Most DPSers are below 10k on the AoE add group. Are the other DPS classes really that terrible at AoE?

Also what the hell is up with warrior damage? I've seen so many warrior tanks doing over 4k DPS on this. They just seem overall so much better than the other tanks for savage... but then PLD has tons of utility to make up for that. Even as OT I can barely get over 3k DPS.

I think the last patch changed the fights a bit, cuz our WAR never touched defiance, and was able to survive Doom Strike with just rampart up.
THEN the patch hit, and this last week, he was unable to survive Doom strike, with way better gear, and rampart. He doubled up on CDs to survive it. (In another group I helpped, the PLD had to intervention the DRK.)
I should also mention the SCH/AST was shielding the WAR in all 3 weeks, and only now was the WAR dying.

In O6S, we did MORE total DPS than the prior 2 weeks, being more geared, and we kept hitting enrage, with like 10% hp still left on the boss, which wasnt an issue prior, despite lower iLv, and doing less dps, and less total DPS.

So Im fairly confident they buffed both bosses.

O5S was "meant" to be tank swapped honestly, so doubling up on CDs is easy, if your 2nd tank is willing to swap with you. (Also pop that living dead, to save on CDs when you can, so you can double up more often. and try to memorize when TBs are going to happen, so you can have rampart or something up BEFORE u see the cast bar, so you can attempt to put up more stuff. Each oGCD is at MINIMUM 0.5s, if not longer, with a delay when the buff actually hits you, so 3 oGCD is over 1.5s, which not all cast bars from bosses are that long.)

EDIT: forgot to say WARs do more DPS to begin with, but even MORE DPS in fights where u stop fighting, as burst DPS will always do this, and DRK is the least bursty, being more sustained DPS.
So when u stop fighting, WAR gets closer to being able to burst again, while ur doing no DPS.
That adds up.

[shao32]

snip

its not only in you hand, you need shields from you healers too to survive properly outside of grit, and if you healers are good 1 less autoattack every 5 dont mean nothing for they dps .

about the dps sounds like players cant manage they rotations with the mechanics so thats they own problem not the jobs or job aoes capability.

WARs have the most easy and the less cost dps rotation of the 3, plus sure those WARs are you talking about are runing with full pentamelds + comp metas and you are with tenacity, the job itself is pretty hard to do wrong now.
yoship say WAR is very strong right now, with is really true is the best tank on every field (again).

[Hruodig]

I do not understand how you guys are surviving Doom Strike outside of Grit.

I'm full tenacity melded and I die to Doom Strike if I don't have two defensive cooldowns up AND TBN. Doom strike its self has a fairly fast cast time as far as tank busters go, so it is actually difficult to activate them all in time.

I am forced to tank in grit. Furthermore, 20% damage reduction from grit is like ignoring 1 in every 5 autos from the train. Surely that gives a lot more globals to the healers to output more damage?

I cannot clear this damn drain at all. Very few DPS are above 5k in the first phase, yet when I try it on my BLM it is quite easy to get almost 6k, and 16 - 20k on the add group. Most DPSers are below 10k on the AoE add group. Are the other DPS classes really that terrible at AoE?

Also what the hell is up with warrior damage? I've seen so many warrior tanks doing over 4k DPS on this. They just seem overall so much better than the other tanks for savage... but then PLD has tons of utility to make up for that. Even as OT I can barely get over 3k DPS.

It sounds to me like your gear is just bad. I would survive the first one just fine with unbuffed dark mind+shadow wall+tbn outside grit, and shadow wall would be back up for the tank add if you don't do the warrior/rdm skip. You should swap with your co tank for the second one. And if you're barely pulling over 3k dps then you might need better mp management, that or-like I suspected-your gear is bad.

In regards to the extra healer gcd argument, anyone who has ever made this argument apparently doesn't realize that the extra dps that both tanks get from being in dps stance>the extra gcds healers get from you being in tank stance. It's an un-arguable raid dps gain. In addition to that, any good healer will tell you that the way they heal a tank in dps stance vs a tank in tank stance isn't any different in reality.

If you get crappy pugs who can't do simple mechanics though and you just want the clear? You might have to just forget about optimization and slap on tank stance, especially if your gear is bad. Just depends on the group.

[whiskeybravo]

I'm full tenacity melded and I die to Doom Strike if I don't have two defensive cooldowns up AND TBN. Doom strike its self has a fairly fast cast time as far as tank busters go, so it is actually difficult to activate them all in time.

Totally unrelated to Drk, but I use vengeance + IB for the 2nd doom strike. Vengeance is usually enough but we stack up front for that so I swap to defiance and use the IB for the extra 4% on Shake It Off then switch back. My PLD takes the first strike because cover for knockback. It does have a faster cast time compared to other busters so you just have to anticipate when it's coming

But I've also yet to eclipse the 4k mark on any fight lol. #thestruggleisreal

[RLofOBFL]

You can survive the TB in O5 with barely anything. At full hp it won't even one shot you. It does like 55k no tank stance. And to top it off, on DRK you can basically always have Dark Mind & TBN up at the bare minimum lowering to around 35k, much more manageable. But ofc you can also just pop more cds and tank swap the prey buster so the other tank can take it. As for the cast time, you have to figure out when they happen so you can just CD early. Dps wise imo tanks should be at least around 3.5k in V5, unless you die, so either rotation, gear, or uptime issues.

[Lyth]

...

The difference has nothing to do with mindset.

Let's say that you have two jobs which do identical dps on a target dummy. One has all of their dps focused into a relatively short burst window. The other has it spread out across their entire rotation. In a low uptime fight, the job with higher burst will pull out ahead. In a high uptime fight, the two will just about break even.

WAR is privileged in that it is not only the most burst focused job in the game, but it also does higher dps than other tanks in a target dummy fight. So in a fight with high uptime, a PLD or DRK has the opportunity to narrow (but not quite close the gap) by playing perfectly for the entire fight. In a low uptime fight, the gap widens significantly, because the WAR just uses their burst when the boss is active and goes to grab a coffee when it isn't, while the other two tanks are continuously losing dps for time spent off the boss.

Proper balancing would make it so that burst focused jobs pull ahead in low uptime fights, while sustained dps jobs pull ahead in high uptime fights (i.e. on a target dummy). I don't think we'll see any legitimate tank balance until more tanks are added however, and SE is forced to abandon the idea that "WAR is the best offensive tank" and "PLD is the best defensive tank" constitute job identities.