Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

Yeaahhh... I'm gonna give that idea its own thread. More than any other suggestion I've seen for DRK in months, it deserves it. Like a bloody lightbulb zapping on.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Grit: Leaving your tank stance on paladin and warrior are straight gains except in terms of mitigation and selfsustain. Dark knight loses these things as well, but also resource generation, slowing down its mana accumulation by punishing siphon strike and locking blood price which leads to a lower expected dps gain when dropping grit, and loses potency on our hardest hitting move. This doesn't happen to any other tank when leaving tank stance.

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I think you have grit backwards in regards to syphon strike. Going into grit doubles the MP generation of syphon strike not punishes it and also adds the lifestealing effect to souleater. Also argueably DRK is the strongest Tank of the three while in Tank stance because they have permanent dmg increase from darkside, double mana generation increased potency and life steal equipped to their primary dmg combo. In contrast WAR lose all their strongest skills by going into Defiance and PLD has a massive 35% DPS decrease from the loss of sword oaths potency gain. A DRK in grit will out DPS a PLD in Shield and a WAR in Defiance.

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Originally Posted by Sipherous

I think you have grit backwards in regards to syphon strike. Going into grit doubles the MP generation of syphon strike not punishes it and also adds the lifestealing effect to souleater.

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Your are saying the same thing as me just giving it a positive spin, going into grit gives you these benefits, vs leaving grit removes these benefits. At the end of the day this means that part of our potency, mana regeneration, and selfsustain are locked into one stance. More over the "extra" damage is locked into the defensive stance under a penalty of a 20% damage down. Its opposite of what you want, warrior for example going into dps stance is gaining a damage up, potency, and its resource generation is untouched and even enhanced with inner release cutting costs on skills, and it is gaining this dps when it would most want it, while trying to dps.

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Originally Posted by Sipherous

Also argueably DRK is the strongest Tank of the three while in Tank stance because they have permanent dmg increase from darkside, double mana generation increased potency and life steal equipped to their primary dmg combo. In contrast WAR lose all their strongest skills by going into Defiance and PLD has a massive 35% DPS decrease from the loss of sword oaths potency gain. A DRK in grit will out DPS a PLD in Shield and a WAR in Defiance.

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First, a 35% dps decrease is extremely steep. I would expect 25% on the high end (15% for stance and 10% from sword oath). We can loosely compare skills but paladin's combos have higher potencies (in particular goring blade) to match the fact that dark knight has a constant 20% buff, a buff which also essentially exists on warrior except you have to upkeep the skill. Paladins and warriors have a higher amount of self buffing. Warrior also doesn't lose all of its strongest skills going into tank stance, upheaval, for instance is actually stronger in tank stance than in dps stance. Warrior does lose fell cleave, but inner beast is still fairly strong and ignores the damage penalty, and it retains its on GCD selfsustain which is also part of its dps rotation, the difference is warrior keeps this regardless of stance. The point here is that the other two tanks leave tank stance and actually gain dps without losing dps resources (potency and guage). In contrast, Dark Knight is also shedding its damage reducing tank stance, but loses potency and and resource generation in the process, which is counterproductive to the goal which is to do damage as an OT (or even MT if you are into that sort of thing).

Regardless, we can argue theory all day about who does more in tank stance. The quicker resolution I think, is found by appealing to the data compiled by savage players. The conclusion that dark knight out dps paladin in tank stance isn't supported by the data. If you compare percentiles dark knight trails behind warrior and paladin at just about every percentile. Now, at high percentiles we expect this since out of tank stance most people agree dark knight is behind warrior and paladin, but at low percentiles where there are high uptimes on tank stance we still see dark knight behind. If dark knight was more powerful in tank stance, then I would expect to see a reversal at lower percentiles. The thing is we don't see that, we see paladin leading ahead of dark knight contradicting our initial assumptions.

syphon strike bonus on grit was made to secure MP generation as they nerf Blood price how make DRK resources limitless on HW in mass pulling, Blood weapon MP burst its pretty equal to the actual shity Blood price with syphon, dont use It as a excuse BCS the MP generation out and in grit is pretty well balanced.

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Originally Posted by shao32

syphon strike bonus on grit was made to secure MP generation as they nerf Blood price how make DRK resources limitless on HW in mass pulling, Blood weapon MP burst its pretty equal to the actual shity Blood price with syphon, dont use It as a excuse BCS the MP generation out and in grit is pretty well balanced.

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In large pulls sure, but single target this is nerf, we didn’t have limitless mp even with both running. This also does not explain why our GCD selfsustain must be grit locked.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

In large pulls sure, but single target this is nerf, we didn’t have limitless mp even with both running. This also does not explain why our GCD selfsustain must be grit locked.

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Chrono you bring up some really interesting points, basically that Grit gives us bonuses in an area where, were we given the choice, we would not choose to invest them.
That 75 potency on Bloodspiller is cut by 20%.
That 70 potency via MP on Syphon is cut by 20%.
etc.

I think that the Syphon buff in Grit is certainly adapted to mitigate the nerf to BP, and I guess you could say that it succeeds at that in ST and AoE, to some extent or another. But its still a poorly implemented change that they are painting themselves into a corner with, should they ever decide to adjust either of those skills again.

Pair this dynamic with the Quietus buff and you start to wonder why they nerfed BP at all. A lot of people like the Quietus buff, but I think I was in a minority that actually thought it was really stupid, and it is the biggest adjustment we've seen since the expansion and it was really just to band-aid over one of their own mistakes which was nerfing BP in the first place. If they'd kept BP as it is, they wouldn't have had to touch Syphon Strike, or Quietus (from the MP standpoint, anyway - I personally think that Quietus' gauge cost is the most ridiculous thing about it - 50 gauge for 160 potency is really, really weak imo.). In fact they probably could have tuned Quietus' potency higher, or at least had room to do so, had they kept the original dynamic in place. The hilarious thing about this expansion is that they are actually adding additional, different complexities in areas that were nerfed to make up for having nerfed them, when the theme of this expansion was supposed to be simplification. In 5.0, They'll nerf BP to 0.01 of a DA per proc, nerf Quietus to 0.02 of a DA per proc, nerf Syphon to 1/4 of its current value, and then have to add MP regeneration to... idk, Spinning Slash or some other such ridiculous drivel, just to make up for it. I'm not the only one that sees why this is stupid and just adds complexity via nerfs, which are in my eyes, literally the worst possible functions for a nerf to serve.

If you break something over and over and over again, it doesn't matter how much or how well you repair it, eventually its going to lose its structural integrity altogether and just turn to a pile of goo.

The Grit bonus to Bloodspiller is equally perplexing. Of course I get that the idea is to make Grit less punishing (that wretched catchphrase "raising the floor, lowering the ceiling" as it were) but it really just serves to make our DPS investment in our actual DPS stance weaker by measure of ratio, whilst giving us DPS bonuses in an area where they are ineffectual, like stacking Dexterity on a f***ing Scholar.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Now, at high percentiles we expect this since out of tank stance most people agree dark knight is behind warrior and paladin, but at low percentiles where there are high uptimes on tank stance we still see dark knight behind. If dark knight was more powerful in tank stance, then I would expect to see a reversal at lower percentiles. The thing is we don't see that, we see paladin leading ahead of dark knight contradicting our initial assumptions.

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A little question on those numbers. Do they take into account who really tanks ?
For example, in O1S, you don't need to tank swap, so you can have a DRK main tanking the whole fight while the PLD or WAR stays out of tank stance. And since DRK brings basically nothing by being an off tank, I'd say it would be a pretty common situation.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

A little question on those numbers. Do they take into account who really tanks ?
For example, in O1S, you don't need to tank swap, so you can have a DRK main tanking the whole fight while the PLD or WAR stays out of tank stance. And since DRK brings basically nothing by being an off tank, I'd say it would be a pretty common situation.

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The only tank that actually brings anything of value under the specific condition that they are not holding the boss is PLD, by virtue of Intervention and Cover, which are functionally nearly useless while tanking the boss unless somebody is screwing up badly.

What you describe is a situation that implies an awareness of what is optimal which means that it would not apply at lower percentiles. Regardless of the reason or situation, there is not a percentile or skill level measured on FFLogs that speaks to DRK having particularly higher tank stance DPS.

At high percentiles, a 100% DRK MT would likely be Gritless, rendering this discussion moot. At really high percentiles, there's no such thing as a 100% MT anyway, regardless of job.

At low percentiles, your argument implies that groups are aware of the fact that DRK is a poor OT. But it isn't really, its not any better of an OT than a MT, neither is WAR, tbh. As I said, the only tank that actually brings something to the raid while being aggro free that they would otherwise not is PLD. There isn't much reason to assume that poorly performing groups wouldn't just stick to the tired PLD=MT mentality, or that the WAR MT watched too many Xeno vids and tried to Deliverance it with no CDs resulting in SICK-DEE----*smack*---[dead]. I'd argue these former two scenarios are far more likely than such a group being savvy enough to realize raid dps would probably be higher with a turtling DRK. Bad players are also probably just as likely to believe TBN is valuable raid utility and relegate their DRK to OT-TBN spam. There's frankly no way of knowing what goes through these players minds. Its pure speculation. What isn't is the data.

Anyway, DRK's DPS being the lowest of the tanks is not really something that is disputable, differences in player skill and gear notwithstanding. Even its SSS dummy has less HP than PLD's, who also has no slashing debuff on a dummy, and also misses out on Shield Swipe procs on a dummy. This by itself of course means little, but in conjunction with flogs data... its not even really up for discussion. The giant dark magic sword does less damage than the 1-handed toothpick and the oversized BTN main hand.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Summoners summon 3 should summon a Dark Knight instead of a Ifrit-Egi.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

At low percentiles, your argument implies that groups are aware of the fact that DRK is a poor OT.

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Even when WAR was the absolute king of the hill, basic mentality was that WAR was an OT. It was wrong even during 2.1 onwards, yet it had a hard time dying. As for PLD, sure, it was THE MT back in 2.x, but great marketing has been made in SB to promote Intervention and the new Cover, leading to a more blurry role. As for DRK, with the heavy magic content in HW, it was also a very common choice as a MT, and at low level, the trend probably just stick.

So I'd say it's less awareness that bad habit.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Bad players are also probably just as likely to believe TBN is valuable raid utility and relegate their DRK to OT-TBN spam. There's frankly no way of knowing what goes through these players minds. Its pure speculation. What isn't is the data.

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Or they could think BloodSpiller is so powerful that it's a neat DPS increase to spam TBN anytime you can just to proc it...

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Or they could think BloodSpiller is so powerful that it's a neat DPS increase to spam TBN anytime you can just to proc it...

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That was my thoughts on SEs view of the dummy hp as well.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

A little question on those numbers. Do they take into account who really tanks ?
For example, in O1S, you don't need to tank swap, so you can have a DRK main tanking the whole fight while the PLD or WAR stays out of tank stance. And since DRK brings basically nothing by being an off tank, I'd say it would be a pretty common situation.

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I don't have a way to seperate out those numbers easily. However, just a quick look at a turn where there are forced tank swaps (v2s and ex death) and the same trend continues so I don't think this is the correct explanation. This may not mean much but I have personal experience on both classes, and nothing in my personal experience suggests turtle dark > turtle paladin. As SyzzleSpark points out, the data supports the opposite claim more. No data I can think of justifies the claim turtle dark > turtle paladin in any actual turn or encounter, and what I do have suggests turtle paladin > turtle dark. By all means if you have something which supports the claim turtle dark > turtle paladin please share.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Or they could think BloodSpiller is so powerful that it's a neat DPS increase to spam TBN anytime you can just to proc it...

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This is definately a lack of awarenss.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

I don't have a way to seperate out those numbers. However, just a quick look at a turn where there are forced tank swaps (v2s and ex death) and the same trend continues.

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It might have something to do with PLD having a powerful ranged attack, allowing it to lose less DPS when it's forced to stay away from the boss. Something we can't really calculate by just looking at raw potencies.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

This may not mean much but I have personal experience on both classes, and nothing in my personal expierence suggests turtle dark > turtle paladin. Nothing I can think of justifies the claim in any actual turn.

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To be fair, even if Turtle DRK would deal more damage than Turtle PLD (Or Turtle WAR), since turtle tanking is basically an inefficient tactic in current content, it wouldn't do anything to make DRK "better".

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

It might have something to do with PLD having a powerful ranged attack, allowing it to lose less DPS when it's forced to stay away from the boss. Something we can't really calculate by just looking at raw potencies.

To be fair, even if Turtle DRK would deal more damage than Turtle PLD (Or Turtle WAR), since turtle tanking is basically an inefficient tactic in current content, it wouldn't do anything to make DRK "better".

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My responses are to someone who made the claim that turtling matters, I never claimed it did. Regardless, as for ranged attacks in v4s, have you ever tried holy spirit spamming when being chased by a blackhole, not as easy as it sounds. In v2s the ranged times happen so infrequently that I would expect it barely shows up in the data. If the ranged attacks were such a factor I would expect paladin to be above warrior, also not even close. Again the only thing you are doing is poking holes in evidence by cherry picking single mechanics and flagging them as mattering, and not actually offering any evidence of your own.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Again the only thing you are doing is poking holes in evidence by chery picking single mechnics and flagging them as mattering, and not actually offering any evidence of your own.

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First, I personally didn't claim anything proving DRK to be superior, I was asking an information...that can't be provided. Besides, since PLD (And WAR) lose more DPS than DRK by staying in tank stance (keep in mind losing more doesn't equal being lower), it's understandable that a fight with tank swaps would also benefit them by spreading mitigation needs and allowing more DPS stance uptime, even at low percentile.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Besides, since PLD (And WAR) lose more DPS than DRK by staying in tank stance

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Is this really true?

DRK in grit loses blood weapon, which is quite high uptime (about 37% if used on cooldown), and contributes not only in skill speed, but adds MP and blood generation (basically 'adding' time to the Dark Arts 'berserk') as well, so losing this is quite a big double dip. Because this is on for such a large amount of time, I would consider losing this a pretty big loss.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

First, I personally didn't claim anything proving DRK to be superior, I was asking an information...that can't be provided.

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Maybe you haven't directly said it yet but wait for it...

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Besides, since PLD (And WAR) lose more DPS than DRK by staying in tank stance (keep in mind losing more doesn't equal being lower), it's understandable that a fight with tank swaps would also benefit them by spreading mitigation needs and allowing more DPS stance uptime, even at low percentile.

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There it is. This is a claim not an established fact (even though it is said like one), and I figured it would be your claim from our earlier discussions in July. It is similar to the claim to which I originally responded in this thread.

Heres the thing, there is no evidence for this claim. Not from first hand testimonials, not in the volumes of savage stats collected on another site, and not the SSS dummies. There is evidence, though as you have pointed out it is not proof, that the opposite statement is correct. That Paladin and Warrior lose more going into tank stance is not supported by any observable metric, nor has anyone provided any evidence to the contrary. My point is that despite trying to poke holes in the evidence against dark knight, I still have evidence, though admittedly there are further questions surrounding it. The claim you have made has no support. Maybe your statement is correct, but I have as much evidence for this as I have evidence for a teapot in space orbiting the sun (Russel's Teapot if I'm specific).

More to the point, even if your claim were true, it does nothing except justify that dark knight would act in a "main tank" role for groups who do not tank swap and have a high uptime on tank stance. However, it still suffers from having no evidence, and for it to make sense as a point in this discussion it means that a significant amount of players at a lower percentile also have this awareness and actively use it to their advantage (there is no evidence of this either).

Without this point we have no reason to believe that Dark Knight is skewed in favor of MT at lower percentiles and with the number of paladins and warriors it is impossible that they are all OT all the time. It might skew the numbers slightly but remember we are playing in a time when for every 1 Dark Knight there are approximately 2 paladins and 1.5 warriors doing savage.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

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But in Defiance WAR's Fell Cleave turns into a 437.5 potency attack that heals them and cuts their incoming damage by 20% for 6 seconds, so obviously it has suffered the worst injustice here.

Poe's law, don't fail me now.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

First, I personally didn't claim anything proving DRK to be superior, I was asking an information...that can't be provided. Besides, since PLD (And WAR) lose more DPS than DRK by staying in tank stance (keep in mind losing more doesn't equal being lower), it's understandable that a fight with tank swaps would also benefit them by spreading mitigation needs and allowing more DPS stance uptime, even at low percentile.

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The primary point to make with regards to your posts is that they are muddying the discussion by diverting attention away from the matter at hand with ephemeral discrepancies in perceived performance based on varying uses of individual skills, or stance usage, across percentiles that statistically are inconsequential in the scope of job balance as a whole, and which can be measured regardless of statistical subsets with the data that we actually DO have.

You're basically red-herring-ing everyone away from the implications of data that actually exists to try and talk about the implications of data that doesn't exist or that measures variations that are a very small part of an already measurable whole (Plunge or Holy Spirit usage across percentiles, the number of full-time Grit DRKs vs. full-time Defiance/ShO tanks at one specific very low percentile), effectively distracting people from the fire burning down a house by calling attention to the flames from the neighbor's grill.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

But in Defiance WAR's Fell Cleave turns into a 437.5 potency attack that heals them and cuts their incoming damage by 20% for 6 seconds, so obviously it has suffered the worst injustice here.

Poe's law, don't fail me now.

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Buff it to 600 dps in tank stance.

Poe's Law certified :^)

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

The primary point to make with regards to your posts is that they are muddying the discussion by diverting attention away from the matter at hand with ephemeral discrepancies in perceived performance based on varying uses of individual skills, or stance usage, across percentiles that statistically are inconsequential in the scope of job balance as a whole, and which can be measured regardless of statistical subsets with the data that we actually DO have.

You're basically red-herring-ing everyone away from the implications of data that actually exists to try and talk about the implications of data that doesn't exist or that measures variations that are a very small part of an already measurable whole (Plunge or Holy Spirit usage across percentiles, the number of full-time Grit DRKs vs. full-time Defiance/ShO tanks at one specific very low percentile), effectively distracting people from the fire burning down a house by calling attention to the flames from the neighbor's grill.

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You took the words out of my mouth.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

In large pulls sure, but single target this is nerf, we didn’t have limitless mp even with both running. This also does not explain why our GCD selfsustain must be grit locked.

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you have to keep in mind in HW MP generation in grit was lower that out of grit for no reason, what this means? means grit gameplay was slowler compared to out of grit not only bcs blood weapon, but having less MP means less DA, depend of blood price MP return in single target was clunky and inefective, so was a buff on grit on that field.

if we compared gritless on HW and now on SB i will argue we have more MP now bcs yeah we loose bloodprice out of grit but in the other hand they remove darkside MP drain, and less be honest here, blood price never cover the mana drain of darkside, we generate more MP now that before so tecnically is not really a nerf either, if will be a nerf if darkside still consume MP.

they could do it better? probably, the MP manage is more balanced in both stances? absolutely yes.

and about souleater HP drain on grit well, thats another matter, we get in to the discusion about tank stances again, you complaing about grit having all those bonus but in reality most of this bonus are to make grit gameplay fun and playable, without the bonus grit would be the most clunky, boring and disgusting tank stance ever (it is thanks to the DPS meta but that x100) so there is no sense to nerf grit gameplay to the ground or buff gritless to make grit even more less desirable to use, the problem is not the selfsustain being locked on girt, is the dps penalty.

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Originally Posted by shao32

you have to keep in mind in HW MP generation in grit was lower that out of grit for no reason, what this means? means grit gameplay was slowler compared to out of grit not only bcs blood weapon, but having less MP means less DA, depend of blood price MP return in single target was clunky and inefective, so was a buff on grit on that field.

if we compared gritless on HW and now on SB i will argue we have more MP now bcs yeah we loose bloodprice out of grit but in the other hand they remove darkside MP drain, and less be honest here, blood price never cover the mana drain of darkside, we generate more MP now that before so tecnically is not really a nerf either, if will be a nerf if darkside still consume MP.

they could do it better? probably, the MP manage is more balanced in both stances? absolutely yes.

and about souleater HP drain on grit well, thats another matter, we get in to the discusion about tank stances again, you complaing about grit having all those bonus but in reality most of this bonus are to make grit gameplay fun and playable, without the bonus grit would be the most clunky, boring and disgusting tank stance ever (it is thanks to the DPS meta but that x100) so there is no sense to nerf grit gameplay to the ground or buff gritless to make grit even more less desirable to use, the problem is not the selfsustain being locked on girt, is the dps penalty.

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As much as I loved HW dark, I'm not entertaining arguments of "we had this in HW, they needed to fix it now because...". Sure it is important to understand why things happened, but it is far far far more important to me that the job plays in a way that makes sense now in SB.

The net effect of what they implemented in SB makes our stances dancing even worse on Dark Knight. To enhance resource generation in one stance (in particular the wrong stance) compared to the dps stance doesn't make sense, imagine if on warrior resource generation was cut in half (5 gauge compared to 10) across all skills when switching from tank stance to dps stance. There is really no reason to do this, except that it would make defiance less punishing and give it a "faster" play style.

Maybe the solution might make grit less boring, but this points to a problem with grit play. Even with the extra mana I find grit play boring and excessively slow. I would say the most annoying thing about grit play is breaking my soul eater combo because in large pulls abyssal drain is a dps increase and siphon strike is necessary to keep my mana up. Furthermore, I have never relied on soul eater selfsustain when tanking in grit, maybe I've gotten lucky with healers, or maybe it is because large pulls favor the self heal on abyssal drain. When did I want soul eater self sustain? I wanted it when I was against a single target out of grit and being hammered with autoattacks but in that case I only have TBN for 5 seconds. I don't find grit play particularly fun, enjoyable, nor does it actually flow or feel right. I get why they did it, but that isn't a reason that it should be this way.



*** Before I get flammed by someone with "don't like don't play", I really enjoy tanking on dark knight in dps stance.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

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i dont say we have to return to HW DRK, i just point how was there and how is now, and for me keeping the same ratio of MP generation in both stances its a good thing, the only diference in grit MP is more sustain and out of grit is more burst windows but the result is the same so i dont really see what is you problem there bcs the result is the same MP ratio in both stances, to be more precise gritless generate more MP that grit so thats make you argument more meaningless.

grit is more slowly even now thanks to the bloodweapon+delirium window, blood price dont really match blood weapon in that field, you feel grit is wrong and poorly, i complety agreed with that, but making it even more less desirable or useless dont really solve the problem unleash you want to delete grit and compensate grit bonus somehow.

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Originally Posted by shao32

i dont say we have to return to HW DRK, i just point how was there and how is now, and for me keeping the same ratio of MP generation in both stances its a good thing, the only diference in grit MP is more sustain and out of grit is more burst windows but the result is the same so i dont really see what is you problem there bcs the result is the same MP ratio in both stances, to be more precise gritless generate more MP that grit so thats make you argument more meaningless.

grit is more slowly even now thanks to the bloodweapon+delirium window, blood price dont really match blood weapon in that field, you feel grit is wrong and poorly, i complety agreed with that, but making it even more less desirable or useless dont really solve the problem unleash you want to delete grit and compensate grit bonus somehow.

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I think the issue is that I'm not saying how grit itself should be fixed, because the heart of this post is to not suggest fixes, just identify what needs to be fixed. Grit itself needs a rework, it is boring and clunky game play that is not rewarding. This is very noticeable on dark knight, but this is a tank stance issue in general.

The issue I am identifying is that dark knight offers dps tools when its dps is being punished by tank stance, when we want to dps our resource generation is cut because we lose our "grit bonus" but gain access to blood weapon. This feels weird and clunky like an unhappy patch to a tear in fabric, giving us tools which enhance certain skills but in the wrong context just creates a weird clashing feeling when playing the class and trying to plan out your abilities. Grit should have a way of generating resources in a balanced way compared to dps stance, but locking us out of resource generating abilities depending on stance just creates tension within the class itself.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

To enhance resource generation in one stance (in particular the wrong stance) compared to the dps stance doesn't make sense, imagine if on warrior resource generation was cut in half (5 gauge compared to 10) across all skills when switching from tank stance to dps stance. There is really no reason to do this, except that it would make defiance less punishing and give it a "faster" play style.

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Imagining this type of game play in a different context and it makes no sense. No warrior would look at this and say, "what a great deal", they would say "where is the rest of my gauge in deliverance".

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Imagining this type of game play in a different context and it makes no sense. No warrior would look at this and say, "what a great deal", they would say "where is the rest of my gauge in deliverance".

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Pretty much. There really shouldn't be DPS perks to a stance that nerfs your DPS by 20%.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Imagining this type of game play in a different context and it makes no sense. No warrior would look at this and say, "what a great deal", they would say "where is the rest of my gauge in deliverance".

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i dont deny that but otherwise will be imposible play with grit, i mean compared to other tanks they dont generate/use less resources on tank stance, idk why DRK have to have this diference more when MP is not only dps but mitigation too, adding a bonus on gritless can end in a surpluss we cant manage without wasting resources and nerf it in grit hurt grit dps and mitigation, specially dps bcs all mp will be save for TBN, granted at high levels we play without grit but i dont think a change like that can be made without a proper grit rework, other whise grit will me more punishing for no reason.

Please tell me if I miss something, but essentially blood weapon's entire function is to compress our 40 seconds of grit siphon strike into 15 seconds of no grit mana and generate blood.

In 40 seconds in grit I can siphon strike 5 times: in grit this equates to a bonus 6000 mana generated over a 40 second interval. We also are moving our GCD .8 GCDs (1.8 but blood weapon also moves us up 1 gcd during this interval) every 40 seconds, meaning that we will being getting an unaccounted for 6th siphon strike every 80 to 120 seconds due to GCD migration.

Blood Weapon: increases my autoattack speed and GCD by 10%, my BIS for dark has me at 2.38 GCD. I expect from blood weapon 480(15/2.7+15/(.9*2.38))= 6028 mana and about 37 blood.

Blood weapon is just returning the mana we would have generated if we stayed in grit for the 40 second cooldown. Though this is an advantage during bursts (remember we line up for every other one) but this means most of the damage gain is actually coming from not having a grit penalty and the blood generated.

In particular this means that we actually gain more mana in grit with the use of blood price than we do out of grit with blood weapon. So switching off grit actually does lower our mana resource pool as compared to our tank stance.

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Originally Posted by shao32

i dont deny that but otherwise will be imposible play with grit, i mean compared to other tanks they dont generate/use less resources on tank stance, idk why DRK have to have this diference more when MP is not only dps but mitigation too, adding a bonus on gritless can end in a surpluss we cant manage without wasting resources and nerf it in grit hurt grit dps and mitigation, specially dps bcs all mp will be save for TBN, granted at high levels we play without grit but i dont think a change like that can be made without a proper grit rework, other whise grit will me more punishing for no reason.

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Agreed they should not further hurt grit, but they should unify our resource generation, grit needs it but dps stance should see us get as much or more.

I think there's some merit to the idea of giving your tank stance some perks that work to mitigate the damage penalty.

The last time I really enjoyed playing Warrior was in 2.x, and that was largely because way back then, Defiance was actually a really good tank stance: Wrath stacks had a 2% Crit rate bonus each instead of the useless Parry bonus, Unchained had no non-Defiance equivalent, and Inner Beast was actually your strongest attack in either stance. With all that stuff added together, the actual DPS disparity between Defiance and non-Defiance was relatively small; closer to a 15% overall penalty even though Defiance reduced your damage by 25% at the time.

I think that at one point SE did try to consciously evoke some of that idea with Stormblood DRK. Blood Price being locked behind Grit makes it 'free' when you switch into it (and I think that most of DRK's 4.0 design work was done with the idea that Blood Price wouldn't be nerfed into oblivion), the Grit bonus to Syphon's MP recovery raises your effective average potency per weaponskill significantly, and (before they completely lost the plot and stopped trying) the initial version of Bloodspiller dealing the same damage in or out of Grit gave you access to your most powerful attack with no potency loss. Unfortunately, Blood Price got turned into useless garbage, Bloodspiller was given a Grit damage penalty because they couldn't be bothered to update the skill properly, and the Syphon Strike bonus is not enough to carry that concept all on its own. In addition to that, DRK arguably had the least penalized (albeit, yes, still very heavily penalized) stance swapping on Stormblood's launch, but even that little shred of dignity got blown up in the rush to make Warrior overpowered again.

Having said all that, though, I think the idea of giving damage perks to tank stances is a bit of an outdated notion. It was fun to play with in 2.x, because we all played the game a lot more cautiously back then, and tanking typically was actually done in tank stance, but that's been largely abandoned outside of early/blind progression or for players who aren't overly concerned with performance in the first place (and the game is better for it). "Having a good tank stance" these days is an incredibly fringe benefit, with about as much practical use as "having an AoE enmity skill that can be used at range", and shouldn't really be used to inform overall class design or class balance.

No doubt there is merit, warrior has it right. Updated too fast lol. Agreed completely, I absolutely agree that there probably was this concept as described but you are right the connecting plot strings were severed and I don’t think tying them together is the correct solution.

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Originally Posted by Eyvhokan

Is this really true?
DRK in grit loses blood weapon, which is quite high uptime (about 37% if used on cooldown), and contributes not only in skill speed, but adds MP and blood generation (basically 'adding' time to the Dark Arts 'berserk') as well, so losing this is quite a big double dip. Because this is on for such a large amount of time, I would consider losing this a pretty big loss.

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Blood Weapon has indeed 37% uptime. Considering it gives à 10% haste buff when up, it provides, on average 3.7% haste. If you reduce the delay to 96.3% (100-3.7), you increase the DPS by 100/96.3 = 3%
So, by having Grit, your base loss is 23% damage (80%/103%) = 77%. From some testing, I found that you can use at best one more Dark Arts during a Blood Weapon window than a Blood Price window unless you use Delirium (which increase the gap up to three...damn that Blood Price nerf). So, you'd gain around 700 potency (5*140) over the course of 2 minutes, so around +15 pot/GCD. I'm not even sure it makes up for BloodSpiller's "increased potency" in Grit by comparison, to really change that 23%

For PLD, by having Shield Oath, you lose 15% of your damage instantly, plus the effect of Sword Oath wich is basically 50 potency every 2.24 seconds. AFAIK, the best rotation on PLD is GB-RA-RA-HS*5-GB-RA-RA (repeat), this rotation build up your total potency to 8250 (1070 for each GB, 760 for each RA, and 200 for HP Spam). The best part of this rotation is that it's basically a 1 minute rotation to line with Requiescat. So during this rotation, you can use 1 Requiescat for 350 pot, 3 Spirits Within for 600 potency (at best) and 4 Shield Swipe for 600 pot (at best), increasing your potency to 9800. On top of that, you can add Circle Of Scorn and its 250 potency every 25s, basically adding another 600 potency every minute, for a grand total of 10400 base potency. When applying ShOath, you remove 15%, ending at 8840. When applying SwOath, you add 1339 potency to your total (50/2.24*60), ending at 11739. So, between the two, you're losing at least 25% of damage.

As for WAR, it's much simpler. Having Defiance up already reduces your damage by 20% (Corrected) while Deliverance increase them by 5%, so your base loss is around 24% (Corrected). And any Beast ability linked with Defiance is a DPS loss when compared to the corresponding Deliverance ability, even if it ignores the damage penalty. The only tricky skill is Onslaught, I haven't really tested if the increased HP makes up for the damage penalty.

Keep in mind that these calculations consider 100% Tank stance vs 100% DPS stance, and I'm fairly aware that they don't apply as they are in real content, when you take into account the mechanics. And, again, I don't claim that DRK deals more damage. If you have one job at 3000 that loses 25% damage and the other at 2800 losing 23%, the first one is still higher.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

The primary point to make with regards to your posts is that they are muddying the discussion by diverting attention away from the matter at hand with ephemeral discrepancies in perceived performance based on varying uses of individual skills, or stance usage, across percentiles that statistically are inconsequential in the scope of job balance as a whole, and which can be measured regardless of statistical subsets with the data that we actually DO have.

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Frankly, I really dont think DRK is "the matter at hand". The whole content design that enforce people to drop as much mitigation as possible is what makes tank balance a mess.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

For PLD, by having Shield Oath, you lose 15% of your damage instantly, plus the effect of Sword Oath wich is basically 50 potency every 2.24 seconds. AFAIK, the best rotation on PLD is GB-RA-RA-HS*5-GB-RA-RA (repeat), this rotation build up your total potency to 8250 (1070 for each GB, 760 for each RA, and 200 for HP Spam). The best part of this rotation is that it's basically a 1 minute rotation to line with Requiescat. So during this rotation, you can use 1 Requiescat for 350 pot, 3 Spirits Within for 600 potency (at best) and 4 Shield Swipe for 600 pot (at best), increasing your potency to 9800. On top of that, you can add Circle Of Scorn and its 250 potency every 25s, basically adding another 600 potency every minute, for a grand total of 10400 base potency. When applying ShOath, you remove 15%, ending at 8840. When applying SwOath, you add 1339 potency to your total (50/2.24*60), ending at 11739. So, between the two, you're losing at least 25% of damage.

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Sword Oath is 75 potency per auttoattack hit. Also you include the full 60 seconds for the sword oath buff, this may or may not actually work out since you might not auto when spamming holy spirit.

This analysis in general is not going to match in game application. First, blood price I imagine has a context in which it is restoring as much mana as blood weapon, and the missing context makes it extremely difficult to compare notes on. Warrior is by far the most difficult to play this kind of analysis with because it has so many moves which ignore the damage penalty inflicted by its own tank stance. The only tank which you analysis properly could apply to is paladin because its skills are not changed depending on stance. And thats what the issues with your analysis boil down to.

If you want a proper analysis you will need to go ahead and pull endless amounts of data comparing full time dps stance to full time tank stance to get an actual answer on this one. Play optimally in tank stance, play optimally in dps stance, and compare the % difference in damage.

I have been typing this reply and all of the reasons for why you analysis is lacking, but rather than posting a small novel I settled on just giving the reason above as the reason. I've come to a conclusion. Your post has nothing to do with anything about dark knight design once you stopped talking about dark knight, Dark Knight is the express purpose of this thread. This proves nothing, and is in general taking away from the conversation. What does this have to do with the design and core issues with Dark Knight?

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Frankly, I really dont think DRK is "the matter at hand". The whole content design that enforce people to drop as much mitigation as possible is what makes tank balance a mess.

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It absolutely is when you're posting in a thread titled "Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight"

If your issue is with the focus on DPSing while tanking then perhaps this game just isn't for you, because that's a "problem" that is outside the focus, scope, and frankly potential of this thread. Again, its muddying the discussion.

Then again, if you think eschewing mitigation at all costs without any qualifying statements or situational if/ands/buts is the nature of tanking in this game, I can say for certain that that is 100% subjective and there are numerous instances of its falsehood to balance out any sad-face experiences that may have turned you off to tanks' motivation to master the risk-reward dynamic of dps vs. mitigation.

I cite for reference Xeno's stream during day 2 (?) of prog on UCOB, wherein he drank up a 70K crit followed by a 30K cleave from Twintania within 4 seconds before finally going down, strictly by virtue of having been in Defiance and making liberal use of IB.

The entire argument falls apart when you realize that when you strip away all of the tank mitigation essentials from every tank (stance, CDs, utilities) the remaining differences are few.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

It absolutely is when you're posting in a thread titled "Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight"

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Sorry, I thought we were in this thread :

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

However, in the spirit of not trying to "suggest fixes" I hope others will follow in not posting how to fix the issues, only post what the issues are in their view.

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So, yeah, in my view, the issue is "content design". And how it is related to DRK is mostly by TBN, which is supposed to be our all powerful skill allowing us on demand mitigation, but that we barely use because it makes it harder to beat enrage timers by reducing our DPS, or even how Dark Arts is worthless to spend on Dark Mind or Dark Passenger in significant content.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Sorry, I thought we were in this thread :

So, yeah, in my view, the issue is "content design". And how it is related to DRK is mostly by TBN, which is supposed to be our all powerful skill allowing us on demand mitigation, but that we barely use because it makes it harder to beat enrage timers by reducing our DPS, or even how Dark Arts is worthless to spend on Dark Mind or Dark Passenger in significant content.

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You've made no point about content design. What you have posted is an egregiously flawed argument that dark knight might lose the least amount of damage in going into tank stance. Even though it like is still behind in dps in any stance, or any mix of stance dancing. It has nothing to do with anything.

Your post:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Blood Weapon has indeed 37% uptime. Considering it gives à 10% haste buff when up, it provides, on average 3.7% haste. If you reduce the delay to 96.3% (100-3.7), you increase the DPS by 100/96.3 = 3%
So, by having Grit, your base loss is 23% damage (80%/103%) = 77%. From some testing, I found that you can use at best one more Dark Arts during a Blood Weapon window than a Blood Price window unless you use Delirium (which increase the gap up to three...damn that Blood Price nerf). So, you'd gain around 700 potency (5*140) over the course of 2 minutes, so around +15 pot/GCD. I'm not even sure it makes up for BloodSpiller's "increased potency" in Grit by comparison, to really change that 23%

For PLD, by having Shield Oath, you lose 15% of your damage instantly, plus the effect of Sword Oath wich is basically 50 potency every 2.24 seconds. AFAIK, the best rotation on PLD is GB-RA-RA-HS*5-GB-RA-RA (repeat), this rotation build up your total potency to 8250 (1070 for each GB, 760 for each RA, and 200 for HP Spam). The best part of this rotation is that it's basically a 1 minute rotation to line with Requiescat. So during this rotation, you can use 1 Requiescat for 350 pot, 3 Spirits Within for 600 potency (at best) and 4 Shield Swipe for 600 pot (at best), increasing your potency to 9800. On top of that, you can add Circle Of Scorn and its 250 potency every 25s, basically adding another 600 potency every minute, for a grand total of 10400 base potency. When applying ShOath, you remove 15%, ending at 8840. When applying SwOath, you add 1339 potency to your total (50/2.24*60), ending at 11739. So, between the two, you're losing at least 25% of damage.

As for WAR, it's much simpler. Having Defiance up already reduces your damage by 20% (Corrected) while Deliverance increase them by 5%, so your base loss is around 24% (Corrected). And any Beast ability linked with Defiance is a DPS loss when compared to the corresponding Deliverance ability, even if it ignores the damage penalty. The only tricky skill is Onslaught, I haven't really tested if the increased HP makes up for the damage penalty.

Keep in mind that these calculations consider 100% Tank stance vs 100% DPS stance, and I'm fairly aware that they don't apply as they are in real content, when you take into account the mechanics. And, again, I don't claim that DRK deals more damage. If you have one job at 3000 that loses 25% damage and the other at 2800 losing 23%, the first one is still higher.

Frankly, I really dont think DRK is "the matter at hand". The whole content design that enforce people to drop as much mitigation as possible is what makes tank balance a mess.

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Just ends with a statement about content design. Nothing you have said up to this point has anything to do with content design.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Sword Oath is 75 potency per hit.

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Not really. It's 75 potency affected by attack speed, the same calculation as auto-attacks. So 75 for 3s delay, and 75/3*2.24 = 56 with the Susano Sword. And if it was 75, it would only make the gap between ShOath and SwOath even higher, enforcing even more my "claim".

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

First, blood price I imagine has a context in which it is restoring as much mana as blood weapon, and the missing context makes it extremely difficult to compare notes on.

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The context of my test is that during its window, Blood Price restores not enough MP or Blood to make a real difference...so basically, it's just used as a 40s timer.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

You've made no point about content design.

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The very first sentence after the exchange regarding my initial question :

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

To be fair, even if Turtle DRK would deal more damage than Turtle PLD (Or Turtle WAR), since turtle tanking is basically an inefficient tactic in current content, it wouldn't do anything to make DRK "better".

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

No, it's not. It's 75 potency affected by attack speed, the same calculation as auto-attacks.

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Yes, and you quote it as 50, not 75. Yes it scales with skill speed, but the base potency is still 75 per autoattack. Updated original post to explicitly say autoattacks.

The practice of turtle tanking is related to content, but if you feel the content needs to change to support this then this is a much bigger issue that just a little ole issue with dark knight.

Even if you analysis was correct, and to be very clear it isn't, what does it prove except that maybe dark knight retains more damage in tank stance than paladin or warrior?

Does that mean we don't have dps issues? Do we not still have mitigation issues? Do what I feel are resource issues no longer really issues? Does it address how the class feels to play, or inconsistencies in its design? Does it mean we have better selfsustain?

Does it address this:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Please tell me if I miss something, but essentially blood weapon's entire function is to compress our 40 seconds of grit siphon strike into 15 seconds of no grit mana and generate blood.

In 40 seconds in grit I can siphon strike 5 times: in grit this equates to a bonus 6000 mana generated over a 40 second interval. We also are moving our GCD .8 GCDs (1.8 but blood weapon also moves us up 1 gcd during this interval) every 40 seconds, meaning that we will being getting an unaccounted for 6th siphon strike every 80 to 120 seconds due to GCD migration.

Blood Weapon: increases my autoattack speed and GCD by 10%, my BIS for dark has me at 2.38 GCD. I expect from blood weapon 480(15/2.7+15/(.9*2.38))= 6028 mana and about 37 blood.

Blood weapon is just returning the mana we would have generated if we stayed in grit for the 40 second cooldown. Though this is an advantage during bursts (remember we line up for every other one) but this means most of the damage gain is actually coming from not having a grit penalty and the blood generated.

In particular this means that we actually gain more mana in grit with the use of blood price than we do out of grit with blood weapon. So switching off grit actually does lower our mana resource pool as compared to our tank stance.

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Most importnantly: Does losing the least in activating tank stance mean groups want to take dark knight over a warrior or paladin who will dps more, mitigate more, and give the group higher defense through shields? Because to me, if this were even true and you analysis does not accurate reflect this, this seems like a fairly useless trophy to put on the dark knight shelf, and it looks pretty lonely.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Yes, and you quote it as 50, not 75. Yes it scales with skill speed, but the base potency is still 75.

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Of course I did, since I specifficaly said "50 potency every 2.24 seconds". But yes, I should have said 56 potency. Again, wider gap.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Also you include the full 60 seconds for the sword oath buff, this may or may not actually work out since you might not auto when spamming holy spirit.

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Holy Spirit has a shorther cast than your auto attacks, so you'll still do all your AA even when spamming HS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

The practice of turtle tanking is related to content, but if you feel the content needs to change to support this then this is a much bigger issue that just a little sole issue with dark knight.

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DRK has its issue, sure. It's probably even worse than PLD was in HW, but I think most of it is related to how the jobs are designed vs the content. For example, the penalty regarding Oath and Beast gauge at 4.0 wouldn't have been a problem if bosses hit hard enough to discourage repeat stance swap. Giving TBN as the only new mitigation skill wouldn't be a problem if DPS wasn't that much more useful than mitigation. And even if stance dancing or tanking in DPS stance was kept, a turtle setup should offer some values, by redisrtibuting raid DPS between members (For example, healing a turtle should give healers significantly more time to DPS)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Even if you analysis was correct, and to be very clear it isn't, what does it prove except that maybe dark knight retains more damage in tank stance than paladin or warrior?

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Nothing else

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Does that mean we don't have dps issues?

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No, but I never claimed that.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Do we not still have mitigation issues?

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No, but I never claimed that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Does it address how the class feels to play, or inconsistencies in its design?

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Feeling is a very subjective point, I personally find it more fun to play than WAR.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Does it mean we have better selfsustain?

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No, but I never claimed that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Most importnantly: Does losing the least in activating tank stance mean groups want to take dark knight over a warrior or paladin who will dps more, mitigate more, and give the group higher defense through shields? Because to me, if this were even true and you analysis does not accurate reflect this, this seems like a fairly useless trophy to put on the dark knight shelf, and it looks pretty lonely.

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No, it doesn't...it's almost as if someone clearly acknowledged that keeping your tank stance all the time was worthless...I can't remember who it was...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

To be fair, even if Turtle DRK would deal more damage than Turtle PLD (Or Turtle WAR), since turtle tanking is basically an inefficient tactic in current content, it wouldn't do anything to make DRK "better".

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Of course I did, since I specifficaly said "50 potency every 2.24 seconds". But yes, I should have said 56 potency. Again, wider gap.

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Read the tooltip, 75 potency scaled with autoattack or56 potency.

Regardless of the sword oath potency, your analysis doesn't actually reflect how tank stance interacts with skills, and your listed reasons for content issues again rely on the other two tanks penalties and not dark knights. Also, everyone can dps and do content both tanks and healers. It just requires teamwork. And given your above post it appears you recognize that the entire discussion you posted has nothing to do with the price of tea.

I don't think you are posting to do anything constructive at this point, as you are only commenting on autoattack potencies, and staying entirely silent about the fact that you completely ignore jobs having attacks which ignore their tank stance penalty despite assuming 100% tank stance uptime or glaring issues in their resource generation. I think you are just posting to argue. And I'm done wasting my time responding.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Read the tooltip, its 75 not 50.

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Yeah, read the tooltip : Deals additional damage with a potency of 75 after each auto-attack. Damage affected by weapon delay.
Or do the math...
The current weapon delay of 2.24 change the effective potency of SwOath by the same calculation of auto-attacks. Why should I use a value that can't even be used in real situation, since no Sword has a 3s delay ?

In real situaiton, SwOath with a 2.24 gives 56 potency to the additionnal attack, not 75.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

The very first sentence after the exchange regarding my initial question :

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Quote:

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To be fair, even if Turtle DRK would deal more damage than Turtle PLD (Or Turtle WAR), since turtle tanking is basically an inefficient tactic in current content, it wouldn't do anything to make DRK "better".

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See, right here is when it should have clicked that this is a topic for another thread, but instead you're poisoning the well in here. It has no bearing on a discussion of core issues with 4.x Dark Knight because it refers to core issues with 4.x tanking (if you even agree that this is an issue, which is far more open to debate than DRK needing several fixes/buffs). When you make such a topic a point of contention in a thread like this one, you dilute the discussion by bringing the other tanks and the meta into a discussion about a job's design in and of itself, which just derails the thread as you can plainly see.

*****************

Back on topic...
Cursory overview of core issues as I see them:

*1. DPS
->Lowest sustained DPS, lowest burst DPS, no contribution to raid DPS, meaning having a DRK in your party is a 100% DPS loss assuming a given player can play WAR/PLD with an equal degree of skill or there is another player available that can do the same. Tank stance DPS is not a metric because it does not represent a measurable ceiling since sitting in tank stance for 100% of a fight (either by virtue of maintaining excessive mitigation that is not beneficial, or if mitigation is needed, by virtue of not utilizing swaps and thus giving both tanks equal DPS stance uptime) is essentially playing the job incorrectly, a situation around which we should not balance design decisions for any job or jobs, as that is how we got into this mess in the first place.

*2. Utility
->TBN as a utility is undertuned and cannot be accounted for by healers anymore than Parry investment could have been in 3.x
->A party is simply missing a massive amount of raid mitigation in the absence of either PLD or WAR.
->Tertiary or personal utilities (things like having high mobility, extra stuns, gap closers, CC, extra AoE or ranged DPS potential, etc.) were largely eradicated as a balancing metric between the tanks with the introduction of the CR ability system and new skills like Onslaught, essentially amounting to a healthy dose of homogenization.

3. Mitigation
->Reliance on defensive CDs tuned for spike damage to mitigate sustained damage.
->Piggy-backing off of the above, CDs are short in duration and mostly lengthy in recast.
->Mitigation outside of TBN is very poor, a symptom of balancing decisions intended to orbit TBN's design, which is problematic for reasons discussed in the resource management section.

4. Resource Management
->Blood gauge is poorly balanced by everything costing 50 gauge and no less.
->Conversion from Blood to Mana is on a 120s CD whereas the reverse conversion is on a 15s and entangled with a primary mitigation tool in TBN, meaning the choice is typically already made for us on our resource management via this ability as per whatever the current mitigation needs are at a given moment. In essence, in order to effectively utilize TBN at most basic level, we need to A. Need the mitigation, B. Have a surplus of mana, and C. have a shortage of Blood, which is FAR too many checkboxes to mark off every 15 seconds.
->Mana has been cemented as a standardized DPS resource whilst still being used to pay for mitigation; no other tank has this problem, in fact very few jobs in general have this problem.
->Blood gauge consumption is never a greater gain than an equivalent consumption of Mana, and occasionally is a loss, making "not capping out" the sole motivation for dumping the resource at all. The logic of its usage is circular.

*Mitigation and Resource Management are problems and are in many ways intertwined with DPS and Utility. However I have *'ed DPS and Utility due to these core issues representing a 100% loss to a group utilizing a DRK in lieu of either alternative, and therefore I believe these two areas are in the most dire need of addressing.