Blood Price feels underwhemling

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The biggest issue is that it's nearly useless in single target. It really needs something along the lines of reducing the damage penalty of tank stance, and/or lifting the MP regen penalty when it's active, in order to ever justify using Delirium on it. Even there, forcing the player to stay in tank stance for 30 seconds just to get the full effect is a pretty tall order.

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Correct me if my math is wrong, but assuming server tics with average ping, that'd be 30s of a 20% damage boost every 2min, assuming delirium is only ever used to boost BP, correct?
Also, and this is new to me, but BP reduces innate MP regen?

Souleater combo is everything now. Bloodprice is only really effective for pulls with lots of little adds where you can reliably use it with Dark Arts plus the aoe skill for self-heals. I agree, it could use a boost against single opponents like a boss.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You mean like Storm's Eye?

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Storms eye can drop off thank you very much. And it's a three step combo that lasts for 30 seconds.

DRK can always have darkside active, even when pulling unlike any other tank.

Don't think BP will ever really be worth it, the Grit penalty is just too high.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

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Blood Price does not lift the MP regen penalty at the moment.

Blood Price presently gives you 120 MP (0.05 DA) and 1 Blood per hit. As long as you're in combat, you also gain Blood at a flat rate of 4 per server tick, giving you about 20 blood. I think the idea is that in single target, most of your gains come from the flat rate, and in AoE, you see very marginal gains over the flat rate such that you don't immediately cap your resources. The flat rate doesn't do anything for MP however, which is why they were forced to increase the MP gain of Syphon in Grit to give you a more reliable MP source.

With Darkside off, you regain 568 MP (0.24 DA) per tick. Removing the MP regen penalty with Blood Price active would effectively give you a flat MP gain to go with the blood gain. You'd then gain both MP and Blood at a roughly flat rate in single target, and have marginal increases in the rate gain of both as you add in more mobs. As a comparison to BW, with this approach you would generate 1.2 DA and 20 blood outside of ticks with BP, in contrast to BW's 2.4 DA and 36 blood. You'd be in a pretty good place to have them both get the same delirium extension at that point, and make them interchangeable on swapping.

As far as the damage penalty goes, a partial reduction is fine. Blood Price wasn't originally designed to be Blood Weapon's Grit counterpart, so it has to provide some sort of damage value to the player if you want to justify extending it with Delirium.

The reason for all of this is Delirium. Delirium just barely breaks even if you don't factor in the extension to Blood Weapon/Blood Price (it's about a 3 potency gain, but that changes each patch), and this is supposed to be our big two minute cooldown. If you decide to use it on Blood Price, it forces you to sit in Grit for 30 seconds just to gain 20 extra blood. No thanks. It would be acceptable if you at least switched between the Blood Price/Weapon effects when you change stance, but that's only possible if they both provide the same duration extension (i.e. they both confer similar benefit).

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Originally Posted by Tegernako

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First rule of WAR: Don't let Maim/Storm's Eye fall off. That hasn't changed since ARR. There's no point trying to improve anything else if you're losing those buffs.

Darkside costs you 4.73 DA per minute to maintain. If you die, it turns off, locking you out of most of your skills, and you have to turn it back on for an additional 0.25 DA. Either way, you're going to see nearly 100% uptime on both of these buffs when the two jobs are played properly.

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Originally Posted by Tegernako

Storms eye can drop off thank you very much. And it's a three step combo that lasts for 30 seconds.

DRK can always have darkside active, even when pulling unlike any other tank.

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Yes, it can fall off, but baring large gaps with nothing to attack I believe it is unlikely to actually fall off, and points to rotation issues if it does.

Dark knight likely is able to pull with darkside active because it does not have oGCD enmity moves which are part of its dps rotation, basically it is front loading your aggro. This is in contrast to paladin and warrior who both have oGCD enmity boosting moves.

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Originally Posted by Tegernako

The MP cost exists because DRK has something no other tank has, a 100% uptime 20% damage buff. It's a tradeoff.

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Except you can have Darkside active, without Grit. This argument makes no sense. It's clunky as hell and doesn't belong.

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Originally Posted by Tegernako

Storms eye can drop off thank you very much. And it's a three step combo that lasts for 30 seconds.

DRK can always have darkside active, even when pulling unlike any other tank.

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Yeah it can drop off...except most Warriors are going to be on top of that shit and make sure it doesn't so that argument is pretty weak.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Most of this is historically inaccurate. You didn't take DRK into raid in HW because of mitigation. You took it because WAR/DRK offered higher raid dps than WAR/PLD or DRK/PLD. You'd still generally take it into a fight where DRK was at a mitigation disadvantage (i.e. any physical fight), as long as you could compensate with smart use of defensive cooldowns, because it offered higher raid dps than PLD. The exception was on fights like A7S prog, where PLD's defensive advantages and the fact that LD is a liability in that fight tipped the balance in favour of PLD/WAR.

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I don't know what you mean by "inaccurate" as that's literally what I said in my post:

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

...But because of the massive DPS it gained from nigh infinite MP from BP + BW access along Reprisal and Low Blows procs which DRK completely loses access to in the OT position.

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The mitigation part was mentioned because a lot of people have false understanding on how tanks' mitigation works.

Unless you're talking about Shield Swipe being a 3.5 PPM, yes, I was wrong, it's 7 as the CD is 15s, not 30s.

The point of my post is that SE is trying to shift away from tanks gaining DPS just by getting hit, which would encourage certain tanks to want to MT in DPS stance just because it's more DPS even when it's detrimental to the group.... Exactly like how DRK was in HW. You drop Grit because it's bad, you have excess MP from BP + BW which meant more DAs to spend on everything.

I could be slightly off with numbers and I didn't go into the detail you went in with TBN because it's not the topic of this thread. I know proper usage of TBN "can" net you damage gain (or loss, yes I know). What is "proper" usage is not the scope of this topic. But the point, again, is that TBN is not there so you can just get more DPS and as such you stand in AoE and pop it even as OT because you get more DPS by getting hit, which goes with the whole philosophy of none of the three tanks gains DPS by taking hits all the time.

~ Phoenicia ~

Blood Price is extremely underwhelming, but if we are locked into the current blood/mana gains then I see no real reason it needs to be locked behind grit. Freeing this ability from grit would make it at least some what powerful in that it could be extended with blood weapon and delirium. Given the minimal returns on single target bosses I don't see this as being op, and when pulling huge mobs you'll be in grit anyway and won't have access to both.

I think they should first just remove the restriction of needing to be in Grit to use. While I know this contradicts their whole attempt to force us into tank stance, their attempts simply aren't making any difference. It's even more important than ever to tank without tank stance, and DRK is simply the worst at it. It shouldn't force DRK into the MT position alone, but then again who knows. Perhaps if they nerfed it and made it the same CD as Bloodweapon, we'd get a buff for DRK to compensate, which I would be okay with.

I think adding more Bloodgauge accumulation would be a good solution lorewise too, but I'm not gonna ask for too much here, less they just dismiss us entirely, like they seem to be okay with.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

snip

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Also, hey Phoenicia, long time no see lol.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

Also, hey Phoenicia, long time no see lol.

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Too dang long time, actually. It' been since week 2 in HW iirc. I see you're on Goblin now! I might make a little Phoenicia over there to stay in touch! :P

Back on topic. The problem I have with Bloodprice isn't it's lock with Grit, it's its uselessness when activated.

The reasoning behind it being locked in Grit makes a lot of sense to me. Alas the situation of HW repeats where if you have a DRK, stick it to MT even if WAR or PLD are better at taking hits because it's more DPS. Which, not only is the meta, but the fights themselves are heavily designed around. This however, doesn't justify how weak BP is.

Let's compare the other pair of abilities locked behind stances: Unchained and IR. While sharing the CD is ridiculous in my opinion (and I think many tanks share that opinion with me). Unchained is really strong and would be one of the most valuable "utilities" the WAR could bring, had it not shared the CD with Inner Release which just massively outweighs it in DPS gains. Separate these two CDs and WAR is the kind of pulling because of how useful Unchained can be.

Back to Bloodprice, there's absolutely no reason to use it now, and since Grit is just bad, BP is even worse. It was suggested earlier that BP gets a pseudo-unchained effect, which I can get behind, if it either gets a higher CD or a lesser penalty negation (i.e. ignore 5~10% of Grit's penalty).

~ Phoenicia ~

It needs a 10-20% damage reduction added to it.

DRK already has the worst base mitigation of the three tanks.

Taking into consideration how little you need to be in grit in raids, any buff to blood price, except removing the grit lock, is basically no buff.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Taking into consideration how little you need to be in grit in raids, any buff to blood price, except removing the grit lock, is basically no buff.

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Truth. However I think a better Blood Price would be an opportunity to fix Souleater. Souleater absorb locked behind Grit, even in 3.x's DRK kit could see this was an ineffective survival element when solo/unsync'd.

You have to be in Grit to get the heal, but that also means your DPS is reduced 20% - thusly extending the duration of the encounter by a similar amount. The HP restores of Souleater do not compensate for prolonging the fight. You're only prolonging the inevitable.

You can say the same of WAR Storm's Path or PLD passive shield blocking, however:

This is not a problem for PLD, as prolonging combat increases Riot Blade use, thusly more Clemency and Requiscat windows with which they can survive.

This is not such a problem for WAR, as prolonging combat allows them to focus on only surviving until the next Equilibrium, Inner Beast, ToB, and Zerk. All of which CDs/Abilities a WAR can grind towards.

DRK does not have any of these target cooldowns/actions to grind towards, save Sole Survivor. Dead end. RIP.

Since Blood Price is locked behind Grit, and so is Souleater absorbs, I'd like to see some synergy between the two.

Also, from a healer's POV, I'll say Blood Price's icon is an eye catcher and a stubborn buff that insist on always being first on the party list and focus target Status Tray. So let Blood Price mean something for healers too. Increased healing received.

Blood Price buff: Larger amount of HP received from health absorbs (something like additional 15% - 30% HP received, increasing with the lower the DRKs HP) and a +10-15% received from healing spells received, maybe even have that exact amount ramp up with association to DRK HP percentage too.

And for Delirium+Blood Price, add to Delirium a 1,200 self heal while in Blood Price (or just Grit). Between Delirium extending buffed Blood Price and offering a 1,200 heal on activation, I'd say Delirium + Blood Price filled a gap in DRK's kit, and the overall sum of effects it provides compensates for the lost DPS of Blood Weapon > Delirium + being out of Grit.

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Originally Posted by Phoenicia

I might make a little Phoenicia over there to stay in touch! :P

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Do it! lol Man, looking back to those early days of HW... We knew DRK would be doomed unless raids all catered to DRK lol... ughhh I kinda wish they hadn't and DRK had been on the receiving end of buffs and changes because I never really thought 3.x DRK was a greatly designed job to begin with outside of the first few days I was blinded by excitement.

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Back on topic. (Blood Price)

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Yeah, I mean there's so many ways in which they could approach it. That's definitely something I can initially get behind, but I'm a little reluctant to favor something that might lock a tank into something like always pulling. I'm not even so sure I'd make total use of a Blood Price like that either. I'd use it sure, just like I do now, but as MT DRK, I only pop Grit up for a single PS combo at pull, as a CD if it's not going to cut into DPS too much, or if healers really need the extra help. I guess it would better benefit the tanks who stay in Grit longer, which admittedly, I think SE might also be more interested in.

I would prefer they give DRK buffs in more clever ways like making Blood Price not even revolve around being hit and doing something that makes the job feel unique. Blood Price just feels so negligible right now.

Also, I'm curious about your reasoning behind making DRK MT. I think WAR is the ideal MT right now for O3S mainly due to the fact that I only use tank stance on the first 3 GCDs mostly for both of them as MT, and WAR just has so many CDs to rotate by using Holmgang so often while I also prefer DRK as OT because of Dark Mind. That said, I do prefer DRK MT over PLD MT by far.

In O4S, I don't even bother with DRK currently since WAR just feels so strong. If PLD/DRK comp, then yeah, I'd favor DRK taking most the busters, but with DRK/WAR... honestly I feel that comp kinda sucks because they both require healing for their invulns and PLD utility really shines in there. I'd probably still put WAR first for Exdeath, and most likely WAR first for Neo too... though I guess you could get a bit more clever with CD rotations. I'll have to think how I'd even wanna work that out.

So. checking out DRK after SB and seeing what they did with the MP recovery from blood price

I figure since atm out of the 3 tanks DRK has the fewest options for baseline mitigation by observation so far because it feels like about half of DRK's mitigation skills were removed with no real compensation they need to atleast revert blood price's MP recovery per hit back to the ratio it used in HW. This would atleast create a niche for it tanking large groups of enemies since they'd be able to go back to mitigating damage on large pulls through drained HP with repeated use of DA+AD they could sit in until SE does something to actually fix the problem they created for the job trying to simplify the combat flow.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

This would atleast create a niche for it tanking large groups of enemies since they'd be able to go back to mitigating damage on large pulls through drained HP with repeated use of DA+AD they could sit in until SE does something to actually fix the problem they created for the job trying to simplify the combat flow.

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And that niche is exactly what SE is trying to stamp out, so I doubt that Blood Price will ever be restored. They despise the full dungeon pulls. And since that was a skill tailor made for those sorts of dungeons... away Blood Price goes.

By this point, they might as well make it an MP restore that bypasses the Darkside effect, because the yield isn't even a fraction close to being worth it.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

And that niche is exactly what SE is trying to stamp out, so I doubt that Blood Price will ever be restored. They despise the full dungeon pulls. And since that was a skill tailor made for those sorts of dungeons... away Blood Price goes.

By this point, they might as well make it an MP restore that bypasses the Darkside effect, because the yield isn't even a fraction close to being worth it.

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Of course they despise it, they've made every effort to kneecap the tactic as much as possible; the end result of course being that nothing changes and it just makes everything more tedious for no apparent reason, the same as many such changes. Mitigating a dungeon by draining the life from the enemies is Dark Knight as all hell, and a very interesting way of differentiating them from other tanks. Shame that they're biased against many of the ways tank players try to entertain themselves in their otherwise dull role.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

And that niche is exactly what SE is trying to stamp out, so I doubt that Blood Price will ever be restored. They despise the full dungeon pulls. And since that was a skill tailor made for those sorts of dungeons... away Blood Price goes.

By this point, they might as well make it an MP restore that bypasses the Darkside effect, because the yield isn't even a fraction close to being worth it.

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Looking at DRK's initial kit when it came out in HW it seemed tailor made for this niche figuring it had an Centered AoE enmity skill that dealt damage, A linear AoE skill that did damage and could blind, and a targeted AoE skill that drained HP. It really felt to me like the go to tank for larger groups of enemies because it could very easily build enmity on all of them with very little concern for stray targets.

If SE wants to get rid of that niche they need to find a new solution or kit on how they want DRK to play out before doing things to try and remove the niche because its about the same as wanting to do performance mods on your car and gutting out all the stock parts long before you have even purchased the new parts that were supposed to replace them

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

If SE wants to get rid of that niche they need to find a new solution or kit on how they want DRK to play out before doing things to try and remove the niche because its about the same as wanting to do performance mods on your car and gutting out all the stock parts long before you have even purchased the new parts that were supposed to replace them

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I personally favor this greatly. Being an AoE king is such a marginal niche. Dungeons are face roll easy, so until they start making AoE a big part of raid, it's not worth making a tank's expertise be this.

That said, what you said about it not making sense to remove without replacing is exactly what they did with most of DRK's HW kit in SB...

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

So. checking out DRK after SB and seeing what they did with the MP recovery from blood price

I figure since atm out of the 3 tanks DRK has the fewest options for baseline mitigation by observation so far because it feels like about half of DRK's mitigation skills were removed with no real compensation they need to atleast revert blood price's MP recovery per hit back to the ratio it used in HW. This would atleast create a niche for it tanking large groups of enemies since they'd be able to go back to mitigating damage on large pulls through drained HP with repeated use of DA+AD they could sit in until SE does something to actually fix the problem they created for the job trying to simplify the combat flow.

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as i explained earlier in this topic, DRK already has gotten his niche back, but not until he hits lvl 64 and learns Quietus.

Blood price > Blood > Quietus > Mana > Darks Arts + Abyssal Drain

with enough enemys Blood Price revovers enough blood to spam Quietus and also with enough enemys Quietus recovers enough mana to spam Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain.

compared to HW they just added more button bloat and unnecessary complexity (wich is the whole opposite of what they wanted to achieve with SB), all for the sake of having a job gauge.

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Originally Posted by Tint

as i explained earlier in this topic, DRK already has gotten his niche back, but not until he hits lvl 64 and learns Quietus.

Blood price > Blood > Quietus > Mana > Darks Arts + Abyssal Drain

with enough enemys Blood Price revovers enough blood to spam Quietus and also with enough enemys Quietus recovers enough mana to spam Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain.

compared to HW they just added more button bloat and unnecessary complexity (wich is the whole opposite of what they wanted to achieve with SB), all for the sake of having a job gauge.

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Too bad AoE pulling with Blood Weapon and Quietus is way better and gives you even more mana back.

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Originally Posted by Accelerating

Too bad AoE pulling with Blood Weapon and Quietus is way better and gives you even more mana back.

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really? blood weapon gives only blood and mana when used with physical attacks, but all the aoe's are magic based. so you have to single target for blood and mana in these huge pulls o.ô;

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Originally Posted by Tint

really? blood weapon gives only blood and mana when used with physical attacks, but all the aoe's are magic based. so you have to single target for blood and mana in these huge pulls o.ô;

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Quietus IS a physical attack that receives MP gain from blood weapon.

But it also burns 50 blood gauge, and I'm not sure I'd want to take on a group large enough to see MP profit outside of grit.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

Quietus IS a physical attack that receives MP gain from blood weapon.

But it also burns 50 blood gauge, and I'm not sure I'd want to take on a group large enough to see MP profit outside of grit.

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It's rather ballsy, but generally for larger groups you can establish enmity in grit, drop and through shadow wall up to hold yourself over until you can start cycling your moves. If your DPS and healer are decent, then it's a superior tactic, however if your healer is sub-par or watching netflix it's probably a death sentence.

In larger pulls you're probably going to be hitting TBN a few times, which should help with Blood gain. Most times I'm dumping Blood and MP during pulls on DA +AD and Quietus.