Dark Knight : Just another mitigation tank

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Originally Posted by Omskahn

Based on a lot of the replies to this thread, SE should never add another class to the game, unless it is very similar to existing classes, so as to not allow any class to be potentially outdo any other.

People are literally saying they like how very similar classes are. You're not gonna get anywhere OP

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They can make new styles fine, it's a matter of how they implement them and they have to be very careful.

When it comes to tanks, SE is trying very hard not to have an FFXI ninja problem again, where you only tanked as ninja or you didn't tank at all because it was so glaringly better than any other tank out there. It was an evasion style tank. lifesteal tanks are equally as difficult to balance correctly. Blood death knight tanking in WoW has either been really underpowered or really overpowered, no in between.

People want new styles of gameplay but they don't want years of broken mess for the sake of it.

Blood tanks aren't reliable. Either they have too low HP and have trouble surviving tank busters, or they have too much HP and end up being the "god tank", with no reason to play any others.

Basically there's no way to balance self healing, HP, and mitigation. Either they suck, or they're OP.

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Originally Posted by Altena

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The first thing you suggested was a blood tank, and when people called that out the only 2 examples you could list weren't even tanks.

Sure saying some sufficiently vague like "more interesting mechanics is better" is pretty universal, but like what? All of your examples so far have been either not tanks, absurdly broken, or - in the case of your personal experiences - shown to just be a straight up lie.

So sure, more creativity is good. Job homogenization at a certain point can get bland. What are you suggesting? And please don't just say "blood tank because it worked in a pvp rts"

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Originally Posted by Altena

- Reprisal is tied to a CD (so max of 66% upkeep), but also requires a parry to proc it, which means Storm's Path trumps this immediately as it's a combo finisher.

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The kicker here is that Reprisal and Path both stack with each other. If this ability were to be changed to not need a parry, they would have to be non-stacking. The CD itself isn't even bad, 66% upkeep is fine, no good raid grp has Path up full-time.

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- Delirium (This debuff becomes completely useless with a MNK in the party, however I am glad that another class got some sort of magic attack reduction skill to make MNK less of a raid core than it already is).

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Can still use it as your dps combo finisher, the debuff doesn't overwrite DK, because it's weaker (no blunt decrease).

Either way, we are not gonna get a blood tank anymore, there are many examples on earlier pages why that's not happening.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

Basically there's no way to balance self healing, HP, and mitigation. Either they suck, or they're OP.

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There's ways. Call me optimistic, but I don't really believe there's no way to tweak it so that it's fair that Dark Knight can Self Heal at a reasonable amount. After all, they have a number of things keeping them from using it regularly.

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

There's ways. Call me optimistic, but I don't really believe there's no way to tweak it so that it's fair that Dark Knight can Self Heal at a reasonable amount. After all, they have a number of things keeping them from using it regularly.

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Considering no one (in all these years) has managed to do it in a way that didn't make it either broken, or underwhelming...I doubt it. There has yet to be an effective and balanced drain tank.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Considering no one (in all these years) has managed to do it in a way that didn't make it either broken, or underwhelming...I doubt it. There has yet to be an effective and balanced drain tank.

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"It hasn't happened yet. It's impossible to do."

Somehow this logic seems a little faulty.

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

There's ways. Call me optimistic, but I don't really believe there's no way to tweak it so that it's fair that Dark Knight can Self Heal at a reasonable amount. After all, they have a number of things keeping them from using it regularly.

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As long SE keep the way they are doing with tank busters in progression, all tanks needs mitigations.
PLD popping CDs, WAR popping IB and Vengence.

Blood heal sounds good for consistent high damage
However if they tweak raids into this, it would have little use for other tanks as their mitigation are short duration with long CD. Might as well just use a tank that can heal themselves all the time. Also, putting a short duration with long CD on self-heals defeats the whole "blood tank" concept if they have to still rely heavily on healers to heal them most of the time

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Originally Posted by Sove92

The kicker here is that Reprisal and Path both stack with each other. If this ability were to be changed to not need a parry, they would have to be non-stacking. The CD itself isn't even bad, 66% upkeep is fine, no good raid grp has Path up full-time.

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While I agree, it fails as a supportive skill by tying it to parry. I would be fine with a longer CD

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Can still use it as your dps combo finisher, the debuff doesn't overwrite DK, because it's weaker (no blunt decrease).

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I wasn't exactly clear in my OP by what I meant, while yes it is still your highest damage skill if you don't have the MP for DA > SE, and you're still going to use it even with a MNK in your party, but the utility part of the skill becomes useless.

It was pretty poorly formatted but I was saying that Delirium was one of the positives to DRK, and you are definitely still going to use it even with a MNK.

They may be functionally the same but all three tanks have distinct play-styles. This is like calling Monk "Just another melee DPS" because Dragoon exists. If you want something that is fundamentally different you run into the issue of superiority by function - Paladin being preferred over Warrior at the outset is proof of that.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

Basically there's no way to balance self healing, HP, and mitigation. Either they suck, or they're OP.

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Isn't this exactly what WAR is currently?

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

As long SE keep the way they are doing with tank busters in progression, all tanks needs mitigations.
PLD popping CDs, WAR popping IB and Vengence.

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The issue that I am seeing in this thread is that there seems to be a very narrow minded view on mitigation. I'm not saying no mitigation at all. I am saying that there are other, more creative ways to mitigate (such as a temporary HP overflow from a lifesteal skill that generates an adlo-style shield, just as one glaring example that I've used time and time again). There are more ways to mitigate tank busters over and above popping a standard CD.

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

"It hasn't happened yet. It's impossible to do."

Somehow this logic seems a little faulty.

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Not impossible, but a pretty big risk that it's understandable not to take. Especially since SE has already been burned on this exact subject multiple times throughout their mmo history. Heck, one of those times was in this game :P

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Originally Posted by Altena

The issue that I am seeing in this thread is that there seems to be a very narrow minded view on mitigation. I'm not saying no mitigation at all. I am saying that there are other, more creative ways to mitigate (such as a temporary HP overflow from a lifesteal skill that generates an adlo-style shield, just as one glaring example that I've used time and time again). There are more ways to mitigate tank busters over and above popping a standard CD.

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And people been replying it is just the same thing.
You pop a CD - reduce damage by 20% or just say 2k damage or so
You pop a shield - reduce/absorbs 2k damage
Still a mitigation tank - no difference.
and the whole temporary part - pretty much an IB that shields instead of direct damage reduction?

While you were raving about blood tank earlier - so you want a mitigation + blood tank? or what
On top of being able to mitigate damage, you want to be able to heal yourself - why use pure mitigation tanks then... WAR itself doesn't have that many mitigation outside of IB and Vengence - foresight is physical only with limited damage reduction - thrill of the battle raises HP but require healers to heal them back up more

At this point in the thread I think it's safe to summarize that OP's overall point that is SE could work better to make DRK have it's own theme.

And I agree.

IDK why why ppl keep fighting against this like it's some kind of monumental task that will certainly lead to the worsening of the game as a whole.

3 tanks. Make them not feel the same. Dats it.

Its doesnt have to be a full on paradigm shift. Just a few interesting abilities , that dont seem like after thoughts, or are just tacked on and can make the DRK do things that other classes can't. Just make it feel special, cuz right now it's just a worse WAR/PLD mix.

It's quite literally their job as game designers. Buy maybe people dont want creative and interesting as long it can get the job done. Why do we even have so many classes then for each role then? Why not just have 3? One for each role. That would be great for balance right?

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

You pop a shield - reduce/absorbs 2k damage
t

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"Pop a shield" ? When did I say that?

I am saying something akin to a mechanic that forces the job to push their lifesteal beyond their HP container which generates a shield.
Look at something like Wildfire, but think of it as a self-buff. You pop it, then in order to get the max potential out of that buff, you need to do a certain amount of damage or lifesteal a certain amount of HP. This generates an adlo-style shield (or if you wish to make it more simple, increases your HP container during the buff duration that only lifesteal can heal).

A blood tank, yes - but does that mean it has to not have a single mitigation CD? What I am asking for is flavour, and not binary mitigation that requires no thought process over and above pressing a button.

Want another mitigation tank? Fine. Just give that mitigation a mechanic that is far more interesting than pushing a CD moments before a tank buster.

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Originally Posted by Omskahn

At this point in the thread I think it's safe to summarize that OP's overall point that is SE could work better to make DRK have it's own theme.

And I agree.

IDK why why ppl keep fighting against this like it's some kind of monumental task that will certainly lead to the worsening of the game as a whole.

3 tanks. Make them not feel the same. Dats it.

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DRK doesn't feel at all like PLD or WAR. Anyone who's actually played DRK to 60 and done party content knows this.

SE did a half hearted gimmicks for all the new classes and sissied out on them. Leaving the new classes while fun feeling disjointed and clunky. Dark arts needed to be attached to more things to give more choices about MP but really Dark mind, carve and spit and SE are the only useful ones. Abyssal drain is redundant its literally just there, and salted earth is also just there.
Same with the ammo system of machinist its half hearted, and with that it makes the class falter.
SE needs to go harder on the gimmicks of these classes or dont even bother.

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Originally Posted by Altena

"Pop a shield" ? When did I say that?
[...]
generates a shield.

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Well, if you didn't say it before...

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

"It hasn't happened yet. It's impossible to do."

Somehow this logic seems a little faulty.

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Since we're stretching "logic" here...

So are time travel, warp drives, and hover boards. Point?

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

DRK doesn't feel at all like PLD or WAR. Anyone who's actually played DRK to 60 and done party content knows this.

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You're certainly dismissing our parrying(which originally was a Warrior thing) and the two major CDs we get(Shadowskin and Shadow wall) are just carbon copies of Rampart and Sentinel which are PLD. The mitigation portion there is nothing short of WAR and PLD subpar. How they DPS, yes, play nothing like the two mentioned. But those abilities don't do anything amazing and just leave an empty feeling. At least, that's just how I feel about it anyway.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

DRK doesn't feel at all like PLD or WAR. Anyone who's actually played DRK to 60 and done party content knows this.

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What can it do that they can't?

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Originally Posted by Omskahn

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This, in a nutshell. Without being specific to one particular class is the entire point I am trying to make.

Currently DRK is so binary it's not even funny. It has an Enmity combo, it has a Damage combo, it has a few off-GCD damage abilities, it has a few snap enmity abilities, then a whole bunch of mitigation that is copied over from other jobs.

What's unique about it? Oh it has Dark Arts, which partially un-gimps some of its binary abilities.

There is nothing interesting about the mechanics of DRK. It is literally a PLD that does a worse job, while emptying its MP container. It doesn't "play" differently. You simply have to press an extra skill (Dark Arts) before you do your standard PLD rotation.

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Originally Posted by Malevicton

Well, if you didn't say it before...

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Wow, do I really have to repeat myself? "Pop a shield" and the mechanic I mentioned are completely different.

Popping a CD that gives you an instant % reduction is completely different to mitigation that you have to build or work for (as in my example)..

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

Though I have not played DRK that high yet, but at low levels it has quite a bit of MP management to keep darkside up. And with other ability coming later requiring MP and darkside up, I feel that it is already a very different play style.

With PLD and WAR both at 60, I can also say they are relatively different with PLD mainly taking on MT job turtling as they usually do and WAR as OT keeping up storms path/eye and maximizing damage. I would assume for solo tanking Ravana EX, WAR tank would have to split damage for blinding blade unless both vengence and IB are up while PLD can sentinal or rampart/bulwark through them with less problem (though I'd still prefer to split damage). And not to mention unable to take both hits as WAR for Final Liberation (lawlz cant holmgang with no target).

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Bleh, speaking of daily limit, I've hit it - so I'm responding to this here.

Yes it does have quite a bit of MP management to keep Darkside up but here's the catch - when MT'ing anything worth it - you can't really toggle Grit and use Bloodweapon safely unless you trust or wish to put more stress on your healers (and you trust your knowledge of the fight knowing that you're not going to take much damage). Alternatively you can burn one of the binary mitigation CDs and toggle it off while it's up, but it's a fair assumption that you can't really afford to do that later in harder content.

As far as Blood Price goes, if you are MT you are only taking hits from 1 mob. Therefore it doesn't return much MP (as Price is based on a per-hit basis, and isn't dynamic based on how much damage you recieve).

Your final option here is to spam the Delirium combo until you have enough for a DA, which takes a good number of combos. Meanwhile you are obviously not generating much enmity while you're doing this (which usually isn't a big deal, but it's worth pointing out).

You finally have enough for a DA? Good job! Now to burn your entire remaining MP on DA> Carve & Spit. (Well, provided you have enough to keep Darkside up).

I guess the moral of the story is in order to reach full potential on DRK you are pretty much riding your near-empty MP bar, which doesn't really allow you to do anything fantastic with it.
Its ability to manage MP is fairly poor when tanking a single target, so most of the time you are literally spamming Delirium, with the odd Carve & Spit/Souleater. This is also not forgetting the fact that sometimes you need this MP to buff Dark Mind.

I guess my point in typing all of this out is that they need to adjust either the MP consumption, or the ability to manage MP while maintaining competitive damage and main-tanking.

What this all boils down to is a very static rotation of-
Do I have MP?
- If yes, DA > Souleater
- If no, Delirium
(I'm ignoring enmity here, as that's just a standard thing you always have to watch for).

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Originally Posted by Altena

Wow, do I really have to repeat myself? "Pop a shield" and the mechanic I mentioned are completely different.

Popping a CD that gives you an instant % reduction is completely different to mitigation that you have to build or work for (as in my example)..

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It's a mechanic that would instantly get you killed in this game.

Hence the term...tank buster.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Since we're stretching "logic" here...

So are time travel, warp drives, and hover boards. Point?

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....What? I don't even see how this has any relevance to anything I said. I was saying just because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it is impossible. And the difference between these examples and -GAME MECHANICS- is that the former is limited by technology.

....So, yeah...What?

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

....What? I don't even see how this has any relevance to anything I said. I was saying just because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it isn't impossible. And the difference between these examples and -GAME MECHANICS- is that the former is limited by technology.

....So, yeah...What?

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Shouldn't attempt to use vague answers then. The correct answer would have been that it "could" be done, but doubtful since the very nature if a self sustaining tank is overpowered in itself. Instead we use some watered down philosophical saying that holds no merit. (And no. WAR is not self sustaining in progression content..before we go there.)

This is what people here fail to realize. Can it be done? Yes. Will it work well with the other tanks? No.

Everyone that wants a lifesteal tank seems to forget that they are a pain in the ass to balance. If you give them enough lifesteal to really make a difference, they end up overpowered as hell long before the end of an expansion. If it's strong enough to be viable early expansion, it [B]will[B]be overpowered later.

Also, DRK trying to tank in FFXI only worked in some very niche circumstances. Even then, you needed some really pro healers to make it work. Did they have dreak spikes and drain spells that returned a good amount of hp? Yes they did. Could you spam those spells in order to make yourself a viable tank? No, you couldn't. They weren't meant to make DRK a viable tank. They were meant to mitigate the hate that healers had for DRK players. DRK had to trade hp for damage in FFXI. When you have a choice of two dps jobs that deal equal damage but one is an mp sponge, it's obvious which will be chosen.

Though I have not played DRK that high yet, but at low levels it has quite a bit of MP management to keep darkside up. And with other ability coming later requiring MP and darkside up, I feel that it is already a very different play style.

With PLD and WAR both at 60, I can also say they are relatively different with PLD mainly taking on MT job turtling as they usually do and WAR as OT keeping up storms path/eye and maximizing damage. I would assume for solo tanking Ravana EX, WAR tank would have to split damage for blinding blade unless both vengence and IB are up while PLD can sentinal or rampart/bulwark through them with less problem (though I'd still prefer to split damage). And not to mention unable to take both hits as WAR for Final Liberation (lawlz cant holmgang with no target).

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Originally Posted by Altena

I am saying something akin to a mechanic that forces the job to push their lifesteal beyond their HP container which generates a shield.
Look at something like Wildfire, but think of it as a self-buff. You pop it, then in order to get the max potential out of that buff, you need to do a certain amount of damage or lifesteal a certain amount of HP. This generates an adlo-style shield (or if you wish to make it more simple, increases your HP container during the buff duration that only lifesteal can heal).

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So... instead of a instant mitigation skill, you pop it 15 seconds before you get hit - hit the mobs a few times and then a shield generates.
And what does this shield do? Absorbs damage aka mitigation - sounds like you just want more work for the same thing - mitigation.
What's wrong with calling this popping a shield - you even called it a shield.

And last post here, shit's getting boring reiterating the same shit. Pretty sure gonna hit that 20 post limit soon

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

And last post here, shit's getting boring reiterating the same shit. Pretty sure gonna hit that 20 post limit soon

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But I want stuff that's different! Give it a gun and the ability to eat random med kits while riding on the back of a bald eagle.

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Originally Posted by Altena

You simply have to press an extra skill (Dark Arts) before you do your standard PLD rotation.

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when did they give drk fast blade, savage blade and rage of halone?

The third kind of tank is called a Lifetap Tank.

Tanking through Sustain rather then mitigation. It is a rather awesome playstyle.

Example:

Shadowknights in EQ2.

Lifetaps,
Sacrifices for effects,
Draining,
DOTs

It was a damage over time mage tank with lifetaps, sword and shield.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

But I want stuff that's different! Give it a gun and the ability to eat random med kits while riding on the back of a bald eagle.

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Huh. I'd try that job tbh.

You could toggle your eagle off and lose evasion, but when you toggle it back on it'd come back with more medkits. Could totally work.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

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You could ask what I mean instead of trying to shoot back and missing the target. The problem is here that people are convinced that it isn't going to work out because it's going to be weak or overpowered based on previous MMOs. There's no thought process into making it work save TC's attempts.

> Will it work with other tanks? No.

These assumptions based on nothing. That's what brainstorming is about and experimentation. Nothing gets done if people don't actually take the dive. We can assume and theory craft all day, but until results happen, they're just words at the end of the day.

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Originally Posted by RBlackshield

Everyone that wants a lifesteal tank seems to forget that they are a pain in the ass to balance. If you give them enough lifesteal to really make a difference, they end up overpowered as hell long before the end of an expansion. If it's strong enough to be viable early expansion, it [B]will[B]be overpowered later.

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EQ did it with Shadowknight which had life taps and diseases. The life taps werent meant for self sustaining, it was mean to balance out the weaker mitigation the other heavy tanks had. Its main purpose was enmity generation. Using disease spells to damage and debuff, was a pretty fun tank job. But other tanks where preferred due to their higher mitigation. Swapping between them on raid content, you easily felt the difference. Thus Deathknight was never taken (unless heavily outgeared) for end game main tanking.

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

stuff

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Why would you take the other tanks? This guy can sustain himself. Hell, who needs healers? Heals and bubbles to keep himself alive? Pfft. Healers.

Or the sustained heals are so low that 8ts nothing more than a solo/low party tank. IE: shadow knight.

It's been done numerous times in numerous games. Each time failed. There's the proof. It's been done with burst heals, leeches, draines, HP sinks, bubbles, debuffs. What else is left at this point? How many times are you gonna sink a game into the ground over it before we get it.

Might as well make the lizard man from Soul Calibur a tank that eats people for HP. Least it's something new...

If the issue is popping cooldowns before the hit...why not make it after. Make grit let drk take all hits and transfer them to a side pool that can go bust and insta kill the drk. In exchange the drk has to use his skills to prevent fron ever going bust within certain time limit. His hp wont ever go down from max but healers can see his debt debuff stacks and heal him accordingly...which will just empower his skills to help him pay his debts to the void..

As someone that mains a Blood Death Knight in WoW, which is a perfect example of what's the OP is asking for.

It's just a mitigation tank that absorbs a flat amount of damage.
-Death Knights work via an ability called Death Strike. When this ability is used, and can be used twice in a 10s window depending, the Death Knight is healed on damage done and receive a bubble based on amount healed.

While it does work at all levels of play decently, it's not really anything special. It took Blizzard the better part of two years to figure out balance on the design and it still starts weak at the beginning of an expansion and ends with being horrendously overpowered. It has the simplest form of Active Mitigation, and requires extensive personal and external cooldown usage.

The OP is really just wanting a different tank for "reasons". No real need for one and on the development side might require more effort to make work within this games structure.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

As someone that mains a Blood Death Knight in WoW, which is a perfect example of what's the OP is asking for.
It's just a mitigation tank that absorbs a flat amount of damage.
-Death Knights work via an ability called Death Strike. When this ability is used, and can be used twice in a 10s window depending, the Death Knight is healed on damage done and receive a bubble based on amount healed.

While it does work at all levels of play decently, it's not really anything special. It took Blizzard the better part of two years to figure out balance on the design and it still starts weak at the beginning of an expansion and ends with being horrendously overpowered. It has the simplest form of Active Mitigation, and requires extensive personal and external cooldown usage.

The OP is really just wanting a different tank for "reasons". No real need for one and on the development side might require more effort to make work within this games structure.

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If you did play blood DK you know how insane they could scale and that they could be utterly broken in a small party game such as this.

I remember our warrior tank dying sometimes in the start of WoD and the blood DK could handle a 2 man tank fight for a looong time on his own, was freaking ridiculous.
Or How about Mionelol that could solo raid bosses, yes current end expansion raid bosses.

Something like lifesteal will always be super iffy to balance around since it will be either UP and useless or OP and you can solo whole raids.

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Originally Posted by Asierid

Even more stuff~

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You're making the self-healing thing go WAY out of proportion and such, overpowered to the point healers are not needed. Taking Soul Eater right now, the self heal potency is weak and laughable because of the three factors: Damage received, 3 GCD and MP(Dark Arts). But even with that, we need healers. So let's try boosting the potency of that heal up more to a reasonable point where we need cures still, but can actually use Soul Eater for more than just it's Combo Potency. And yes, you can make it so that the drain is tied only to Dark Arts.

This is just a simple tweak to their toolkit already. But this is what I mean as far as brainstorming instead of dismissing the ideas completely because "everyone else failed, it's going to fail here too". Now we have come back to square one.

"It has yet to be done. It's impossible to do."

But hey, whatever floats the boat. DRK needs tweaks in general. It doesn't need to go blood tank, if it does, it'd be unique. I'd just be on board with them actually making them viable to take into progression. The most I saw the use of DRK was probably DRK using DA Dark Mind for Discord because it drops the numbers to the same levels as Shadow Wall. But you normally only see Discord twice in that fight where you only really need two CDs for it. What good is the third~? Stay tuned for Dark Knight relevance in Savage!