Suggestions for bringing DRK up to par, and QoL changes.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Considering that Vengeance is equal or better that Shadow Wall in every aspect, it kinda is (As is Sentinel). WAR kept Raw Intuition, DRK kept Dark Mind. Same CD, same single type of damage, and comparable mitigation.

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If you want TBN to be equal to IB then lock it behind grit and make it unable to be used on a party member. Until then, IB should be the more powerful CD.

And, how can the problem with Shadow Wall possibly be Vengeance? I mean, nothing about the 2 abilities changed from HW to SB. But magically now it's a problem? Because.. Reasons?

No, because they stripped the fk out of DRK. And now it's the only native, all-purpose damage reduction CD they possess.. Which definitely puts the spotlight on how bad it really is.

Raw Intuition is quite a bit better than dark mind. They are not the same cd, however (90 sec vs 60 sec), nor do they even provide comparable mitigation (20% physical for 20 sec vs 15% magic for 10 sec) in most content. Raw has higher uptime, ~22% vs ~16%. There's so little possible justification for SE to have done this to drk.

Again, the solutions should bring drk up, not lower the other 2 tanks down. All that internal suffering is DRK lore, don't bring us in to it :p

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I'm not really of the opinion that they should take away abilities, and simply replacing rampart with shadow skin on drk doesn't put them in a better position except by knocking war down a peg.

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Taking Rampart away in exchange for getting to use Inner Beast in Deliverance is not "knocking WAR down a peg" - it's a massive buff to the class. It's just one that doesn't give the class basically every single defensive advantage possible.

This is preferable to "never take abilities away" because that approach leads to massive, unbelievable power creep. I can tell you right now that no matter how much you want to cling on to every ability you have, your class will neither feel satisfying nor powerful if Dark Knight and Paladin have their defenses boosted up to the point where they can match a Warrior that has Inner Beast and Rampart and Vengeance and Holmgang and Thrill/Raw/Equilibrium.

Because at that point, to make DRK on par with Warrior, you'd basically need to bump Dark Mind up to 30%, reintroduce Dark Dance as a Rampart clone that still has a 20s duration and 60s cooldown, and make all of DRK's defensive cooldowns affect the entire party with Dark Arts. You'd need to let Paladin block the same attack twice and reduce it by 26% each time, and pretty much bring Hallowed Ground down to a 3m cooldown.

I really feel like there's an issue here where the Warrior mains in this thread don't seem to realize just how incredibly strong they are defensively. I mean there are people in here who think that a Warrior in Deliverance is flimsy compared to non-Grit DRK or Sword Oath Paladin, when Warrior is currently far and away the tankiest tank - even completely disregarding Inner Beast and camping Deliverance - unless you go a mile out of your way to cherrypick a specific fight that is heavily catered to Paladin (there are zero fights that are so catered to Dark Knight that Warrior isn't stronger defensively - the best you're going to do is "They're about equal if the Dark Knight abuses the hell out of TBN and Dark Mind").

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

More HP doesn't offer its full benefit if you don't receive increased healing, so the calculation on DRK is wrong.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Yes, they do, because once you're under your normal maximum HP, then having more HP is useless. And since your calculation for WAR includes Defiance in the eHP, you can't just ignore that it's a huge difference when compared to TBN.

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This doesnt make any sense. The examples were each tank stance+IB/TBN/Shell. Drk has flat mitigation via tank stance and a shield. What is the right number if mine is wrong? A drk with 20% mitigation from grit and 20% HP shield from TBN will survive anything up to 150% of his normal HP. How is that incorrect exactly? Heals do not factor into effective HP measuring a 1 shot.

What kinda math are you using then?

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

If you want TBN to be equal to IB

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I never said that.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

And, how can the problem with Shadow Wall possibly be Vengeance? I mean, nothing about the 2 abilities changed from HW to SB. But magically now it's a problem? Because.. Reasons?

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Sure, Vengeance and Shadow Wall didn't change, but, in HW, WAR didn't have Rampart so its toolkit was very different. Now that all three tanks have :

• A universal mitigation with very short CD
• A universal mitigation with moderate CD
• A universal mitigation with slighty long CD

It's feels weird that DRK is at a clear disadvantage on the last one.

I mostly agree with all the changes on the defensive cooldowns, especially on Dark Mind, TBN as in right now it's so good it's not even funny all other cooldowns look kinda weak in comparison. But I think we need to push DRK to a identity right now, making more unique or like a *cof* Blood Death Knight *cof*.

• We need Scourge back with some potency increase on the DoT for 60~80.
  
• Give Reprisal back, maybe with another name and same values.
  
• Unleash and Dark Passenger should go back to Heavensward values, there was absolute no reason to even nerf it.
  
• Blood Price should get a increase in the MP regen since we smash DA more often.

Now, this change I don't expect at all, since I know how much this would break some things, and it's sure to be people against it, but... why don't give Sole Survivor a 10% Vulnerability, like on PvP.

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Originally Posted by Gundyr

But I think we need to push DRK to a identity right now, making more unique or like a *cof* Blood Death Knight *cof*.

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Replace Grit with Dread Spikes.

- Reduces damage dealt by 40%
- Reflects 20% of damage taken and gain HP corresponding to the damage reflected. Reflected damage cannot exceed 20% of DRK's max HP.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

I never said that.

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True. My apologies for implying such, I was referring more the the ambiguous "you" as people in general. However, the way it's being presented I interpreted the IB > TBN comment as a sort of indictment on warrior, as if warrior had anything to do with it. IB has been around much longer than TBN, so the devs had plenty of opportunity to balance them the way they thought best. I no longer really want to debate IB vs TBN, mainly because it's rather fruitless. Yes, it's more powerful as a primary mitigation tool, and it should be because it's entirely different type of ability compared to TBN. So I'd rather focus on:

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Originally Posted by Crater

Taking Rampart away in exchange for getting to use Inner Beast in Deliverance is not "knocking WAR down a peg" - it's a massive buff to the class. It's just one that doesn't give the class basically every single defensive advantage possible.

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You're going to need to elaborate on how that's a massive buff. At best, it'd be a wash in personal defense (IB has to be used much more frequently to have equivalent uptime as Rampart) and a hefty loss of personal dps by having to replace FCs with IB to maintain *at best* equal mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Crater

This is preferable to "never take abilities away" because that approach leads to massive, unbelievable power creep. I can tell you right now that no matter how much you want to cling on to every ability you have, your class will neither feel satisfying nor powerful if Dark Knight and Paladin have their defenses boosted up to the point where they can match a Warrior that has Inner Beast and Rampart and Vengeance and Holmgang and Thrill/Raw/Equilibrium.

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I don't really see a problem with this. As I mentioned they should bring DRK up to WAR/PLD levels. There's really no reason for them not to. I play warrior mainly because I've played it forever, I like that the core abilities have never really changed since I started playing it. Feels like home. So I don't forsee any time where I wouldn't want to be on warrior over the other tanks. I have the other tanks leveled, I can play them decently. But if it ever got to a point where I was unsatisfied with War, I'd more than likely just quit tanking and go back to melee dps main lol

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Originally Posted by Crater

Because at that point, to make DRK on par with Warrior, you'd basically need to bump Dark Mind up to 30%, reintroduce Dark Dance as a Rampart clone that still has a 20s duration and 60s cooldown, and make all of DRK's defensive cooldowns affect the entire party with Dark Arts. You'd need to let Paladin block the same attack twice and reduce it by 26% each time, and pretty much bring Hallowed Ground down to a 3m cooldown.

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That's exaggeration for the sake of exaggeration. DRK needs help but not AoE effect on every DA cooldown lol. Realistically they need to tweak SW and LD, fix dark mind into something more useful, and add an additional medium powered CD. I don't really have any input on the dps/playstyle, obviously they need to make some adjustments to DPS, and according to the drk community try to bring back some of the feel of 3.x DRK. (I'm not a drk main so I'm not going to try to guess at what drk mains want here).

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Originally Posted by Crater

I really feel like there's an issue here where the Warrior mains in this thread don't seem to realize just how incredibly strong they are defensively. I mean there are people in here who think that a Warrior in Deliverance is flimsy compared to non-Grit DRK or Sword Oath Paladin, when Warrior is currently far and away the tankiest tank - even completely disregarding Inner Beast and camping Deliverance - unless you go a mile out of your way to cherrypick a specific fight that is heavily catered to Paladin (there are zero fights that are so catered to Dark Knight that Warrior isn't stronger defensively - the best you're going to do is "They're about equal if the Dark Knight abuses the hell out of TBN and Dark Mind").

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This get's back to "primary mitigation tool" in a way. Warrior can tank the entirety of savage content without using their primary mitigation tool. Same can not be said of DRK or PLD. DRK needs TBN. PLD needs Sheltron. While warrior never leaves deliverance. It's obvious, to me at least, war is incredibly strong. I do think pld shield makes a big difference for them and is roughly equivalent, if not slightly better than, the options a deliverance war has available (especially in a raid setting where we have to swap mitigation tools for aggro tools, pld still keeps their shield).

Again, the focus should be on bringing drk up so we are all in better positions as tanks.

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Originally Posted by Crater

I really feel like there's an issue here where the Warrior mains in this thread don't seem to realize just how incredibly strong they are defensively. I mean there are people in here who think that a Warrior in Deliverance is flimsy compared to non-Grit DRK or Sword Oath Paladin, when Warrior is currently far and away the tankiest tank - even completely disregarding Inner Beast and camping Deliverance - unless you go a mile out of your way to cherrypick a specific fight that is heavily catered to Paladin (there are zero fights that are so catered to Dark Knight that Warrior isn't stronger defensively - the best you're going to do is "They're about equal if the Dark Knight abuses the hell out of TBN and Dark Mind").

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Theres a reason War is the defacto OT DESPITE its superior agro generation. Look at the standard Neo strat. War pulls. Gets agro. HGs 1st delta, hands it off to pld after alpha, takes it back to repeat after the halfway point to HG and immediately pass it off again. Why would we do this? Why do raid groups let the drk/pld MT if war has better mitigation AND agro?

TBN/Shelltron is why. In neo for example, the pld/Drk just uses shell/tbn for every aero 3 while dps mode. War cannot afford to use a CD for every aero 3 in the fight or the ever lauded tank CD suite runs outta gas or just use tank stance which is a net loss for the group. You want to know the only way war can do these things without tank stance? A pld or Drk OT using Intervention/TBN ON THE WAR.

If you are trying to MT in DPS stance, war is flat out squishier. You can QQ about IB till the cows come home but that's not how raiders play the game because its not efficient. The same reasons that Drks have been crying for months. Drk isn't (overall) the efficient choice. Both can clear everything if you work around their weaknesses.

Its been stated 100 times. War in defiance is a fortress of invincibility. No one has denied that in the slightest. But people don't raid that way. War is categorically the strongest defensive tank in tank stance while simultaneously the weakest in defense without tank stance. And it entirely hinges on the ability to use each jobs best defensive ability that doesn't have a significant CD. For whatever reason, SE has left IB behind tank stance while giving pld/drk similar style abilities that aren't. That's why war has the better suite. When you combine a stronger suite with IB, its stronger (shocking), when you remove IB and just have the suite to stand alone its weaker (shoking!). War defensive strength is entirely dependant on using or not using IB. The meta currently shifts away from that. Maybe 4.2 will shift it back and war will be OP. Who knows. But the blanket statements about war miss the obvious pros and cons of how war lines up with what the game determines is optimal.

1. Warrior is not "the de facto OT" and hasn't been since 3.x

2. While the best strategy (and the current meta) is to do frequent tank swaps whether they're required or not, Warrior's time spent tanking is noticeably more sturdy than Dark Knight's or Paladin's on almost every single fight, because they're less squishy in their DPS stance than the other tanks

3. Neo Exdeath is the definition of a cherry-picked fight to make PLD look good, as there are no auto-attacks or standard cleaves - everything is either raid-wide damage or a tankbuster, meaning that Sheltron might as well have 100% uptime. This is not the case in Exdeath, Halicarnassus, Catastrophe, Alte Roite, Shinryu, or any phase of Unending Coil, which are all fights where Warrior is the sturdiest tank in DPS stance. And WAR is still on par or better than DRK in that fight

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Originally Posted by Aana

In neo for example, the pld/Drk just uses shell/tbn for every aero 3 while dps mode. War cannot afford to use a CD for every aero 3 in the fight or the ever lauded tank CD suite runs outta gas or just use tank stance which is a net loss for the group. You want to know the only way war can do these things without tank stance? A pld or Drk OT using Intervention/TBN ON THE WAR.

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I'm not sure that's entirely true. I created a spreadsheet for myself and co-tank for CD usage and I was able to spread them out in such a way that we have a CD up for every important tank attack (utilizing timely swaps) and the only time I might possibly have to use IB is the charge at the end of GCO. Granted, we haven't actually got there yet so I could've entirely miscalculated everything.

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Originally Posted by Crater

2. While the best strategy (and the current meta) is to do frequent tank swaps whether they're required or not, Warrior's time spent tanking is noticeably more sturdy than Dark Knight's or Paladin's on almost every single fight, because they're less squishy in their DPS stance than the other tanks

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I'm not in full agreement, but maybe I'm just not as good of a MT as my pld co-tank. Visually I see his HP spiking less then mine. But, we've been tanking together on and off since ARR, he's always been the pld mt and I was always the war ot. That's just kind of the roles we've settled in to. I did more recently start mt'ing v1 and doing the pulls, but I don't feel that sturdy unless I take out shirk/provoke for conv/anticipation.

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Originally Posted by Crater

1. Warrior is not "the de facto OT" and hasn't been since 3.x

2. While the best strategy (and the current meta) is to do frequent tank swaps whether they're required or not, Warrior's time spent tanking is noticeably more sturdy than Dark Knight's or Paladin's on almost every single fight, because they're less squishy in their DPS stance than the other tanks

3. Neo Exdeath is the definition of a cherry-picked fight to make PLD look good, as there are no auto-attacks or standard cleaves - everything is either raid-wide damage or a tankbuster, meaning that Sheltron might as well have 100% uptime. This is not the case in Exdeath, Halicarnassus, Catastrophe, Alte Roite, Shinryu, or any phase of Unending Coil, which are all fights where Warrior is the sturdiest tank in DPS stance. And WAR is still on par or better than DRK in that fight

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Any instance where the game doesn't 'force' specific tank swaps (A2 for example) with hard death mechanics and players get to choose, the default strategy is War pulls for agro, uses HG on the 1st available thing worth using HG on and hands it over. Takes it back when you can HG something later in the fight. The way players (when given the option) use war now is for agro and abuse of HG then hand the reins over to the other tank.

Pld has the obvious advantage over everyone for DPS stance tanking. They loose nothing at all. Passive shield blocks, shelltron, standard CD suite. Drk is a lesser version as it lacks the passive shield obviously and rides out TBN. The difference between Drk/War offense stance MT squishyiness is not nearly as drastic as Pld/War though. The only way war is superior in this regard is riding the coattails of TBN/Intervention. War is only a better MT in offense stance when the 'oh so bad' IB equivalents for Pld/Drk are used on war. But again, this is the nuanced way people actually play, not this BS sweeping generalization of "WAR OP". War by itself is binary based on defiance/deliverance. Deliverance war is ONLY superior to Pld/Drk offense stance mitigation USING pld/drk abilities.

But if war is only better working WITH another tank, but if there was no war, then the Pld/Drk combo could do the exact same thing and be even MORE defensive by combining TBN+Shelltrong/Intervention.

Just check FF logs. War is, most often, the tank that takes the least damage/boss time. I know because I was forced into MTing for my raid when we repped our Drk and the new tank wasn't very experienced vs me tanking since 2.0. I tried to find what 'mt' war damage was supposed to look like to see how I was doing by checking wars on FFlogs that MT. They are few and far between.

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Originally Posted by Aana

Just check FF logs. War is, most often, the tank that takes the least damage

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Come Aana, it's obviously because they are the best defensive tank :p

Ironically my dps went up when I started MT'ing v1s. Could be due to other things but I thought it was interesting.

I just want to throw out my *at minimum* suggestions for DRK, and then I need to peace out of the convo for a while. Just based on how I felt when playing DRK and general consensus on the forums:

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Living Dead
CD reduction to 180 sec. If they don't otherwise adjust the instant KO aspect of this CD it should be reduced similar to War. I do feel like the ability to move around is better than being rooted, but the instant KO is every bit as dangerous.

Shadow Wall
Increased duration to 15 sec, same 180 sec CD. Possibly tack on a gauge/mp/hp restore effect to assist in overall survivability/damage potential.

Dark Mind
15% DR for 10 sec with 60 sec CD.

TBN
Duration extension. Possibly add a DA effect to power up the shield. Possibly add a 25-50% self heal upon shield break.

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I think those coupled with the possible re-work posted for HW Reprisal would be enough to bring DRK up to par with WAR/PLD. I'm not real sure how I feel about possibly losing reprisal on war/pld, as there's a fine line where it would have the opposite of effect of balancing the tanks. Just my opinion, but all 3 tank comps should have access to/be able to provide baseline raid mitigation. If HW reprisal is too strong it would simply shoehorn us in to pld/drk or war/drk comps and leave pld/war comps undesired. (I'm eyeballing about 15% uptime, anything more than that and I think it would overtake DV/SiO shield combo, which while hard to calculate exactly have about 10% uptime each as far as I can calculate - feel free to correct me here)

I do believe they deserve some synergy with one or both of their old skills. PLD has synergy with Rampart via Intervention, and War has synergy with Awareness via Raw Intuition. Maybe there is a way to give DRK a better reprisal, or as already spelled out, give them the old reprisal back (would create synergy with Anticipation) and introduce a similar effect role skill that couldn't be stacked with Reprisal.

Or maybe I should just prepare to lose Reprisal lol. Not that I particularly care, but it's one of the of the only 2 things I can use as a war to help out my party. Used to be the only thing so I guess I've gotten a bit attached to it. But I think about how we are able to rotate Reprisal and shields on Neo and that would be lost if Reprisal were to become drk exclusive again.

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Another thought I had, and I don't think it's all that feasible but was just trying to think outside the box. Change DRK's damage to blunt and give them a blunt resist down to help improve another oddly undesirable job - monk. I don't know if it would actually be able to work or even if it would be beneficial. Again just an off-the-wall idea I had to change things up

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Another area where DRK seems to be lacking is in a self heal. PLD has clemency, WAR has Equilibrium.. DRK has.. Sole survivor? IDK. Depends if DRK's want a 1-button self heal or something more complicated/engaging in the style of DRK. But they need some help in this regard, as well. (maybe the TBN self-heal would be enough? A 50% heal 4 times a minute would be pretty close to a crit Equilibrium)

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That's all I can really figure. I leave the rest to the experts

Drk doesn't seem super far behind survival wise. Maybe make living dead a 180s cd, but that'd be fine.

What they really need is higher dps, but only a little. I just want to see bloodspiller grant enough mana for DA. An extra 120 potency per 50 blood is a modest boost that would help out a bit.

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Originally Posted by Zerathor

Drk doesn't seem super far behind survival wise. Maybe make living dead a 180s cd, but that'd be fine.

What they really need is higher dps, but only a little. I just want to see bloodspiller grant enough mana for DA. An extra 120 potency per 50 blood is a modest boost that would help out a bit.

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And it would make sense, as bloodspiller is the only blood move that doesn't restore mana. So I don't think it's too far out there of a request.

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Originally Posted by Zerathor

And it would make sense, as bloodspiller is the only blood move that doesn't restore mana. So I don't think it's too far out there of a request.

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(Sorry, mobile site doesn't seem to have edit option so I'm just replying)
Also for survival, maybe let soul eater have its grit healing effect out of grit. That could add up to a lot.

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Originally Posted by Zerathor

(Sorry, mobile site doesn't seem to have edit option so I'm just replying)
Also for survival, maybe let soul eater have its grit healing effect out of grit. That could add up to a lot.

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I would love to be a fly on the wall in the conference room when they had the meeting about these kinds of things. Was there a discussion about things as minor as SE heal outside of grit? What in the world was their reasoning, and why not be consistent with path (both have or both don't). Some things SE does just make my scratch my head.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Another area where DRK seems to be lacking is in a self heal. PLD has clemency, WAR has Equilibrium.. DRK has.. Sole survivor? IDK. Depends if DRK's want a 1-button self heal or something more complicated/engaging in the style of DRK. But they need some help in this regard, as well. (maybe the TBN self-heal would be enough? A 50% heal 4 times a minute would be pretty close to a crit Equilibrium)

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Actually, rethinking on this, a way to "make it more engaging" and a slight fix to sole survivor, is to actually strengthen sole survivor (why not anyways? its not good enough as is) like double the effectiveness of its heal, and maybe 50% more mp on its return.

BUT if you press sole survivor again, it actually cancels the effect, to only give you half the HP portion of it's effect. (or something along those lines)

Or allow it to target PT members too, and Walking Dead triggers the effect of sole survivor.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Actually, rethinking on this, a way to "make it more engaging" and a slight fix to sole survivor, is to actually strengthen sole survivor (why not anyways? its not good enough as is) like double the effectiveness of its heal, and maybe 50% more mp on its return.

BUT if you press sole survivor again, it actually cancels the effect, to only give you half the HP portion of it's effect. (or something along those lines)

Or allow it to target PT members too, and Walking Dead triggers the effect of sole survivor.

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It would help, I think, but the problem is drk can't use it in raid to get the full effect, except perhaps on add phase. It's pretty much an (odd) dungeon ability, and it needs to be more useful or replaced.

An interesting take on walking dead, but again it becomes an ability with a niche use. You wouldn't be able to use for the same things Eq or Clemency are used for.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Actually, rethinking on this, a way to "make it more engaging" and a slight fix to sole survivor, is to actually strengthen sole survivor (why not anyways? its not good enough as is) like double the effectiveness of its heal, and maybe 50% more mp on its return.

BUT if you press sole survivor again, it actually cancels the effect, to only give you half the HP portion of it's effect. (or something along those lines)

Or allow it to target PT members too, and Walking Dead triggers the effect of sole survivor.

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Sole survivor+walking dead synergy. That's a new one. I kinda like that.

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Originally Posted by Aana

Any instance where the game doesn't 'force' specific tank swaps (A2 for example) with hard death mechanics and players get to choose, the default strategy is War pulls for agro, uses HG on the 1st available thing worth using HG on and hands it over. Takes it back when you can HG something later in the fight. The way players (when given the option) use war now is for agro and abuse of HG then hand the reins over to the other tank.

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What game are you playing? Because it certainly isn't 4.x FFXIV.

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Just check FF logs. War is, most often, the tank that takes the least damage/boss time.

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I suggest you do the same. 9/10 of the top 10 PLD/WAR clears on v1s, 8/10 on v2s, and 10/10 on v3s, have the Warrior doing more tanking than the Paladin (often 2.5-3x as much). It's the same story in Exdeath and Neo Exdeath.

DRK/WAR compositions see a lot more parity, where it's 5-5 for who does more tanking on most Deltascape fights, but even then it's back to the Warrior doing the bulk of the tanking for 8/10 of the top ten DRK/WAR clears on v2s (bear in mind that v2s is almost 100% magic damage, so this is a 'good' Dark Mind fight for DRK to be tanking).

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

It would help, I think, but the problem is drk can't use it in raid to get the full effect, except perhaps on add phase. It's pretty much an (odd) dungeon ability, and it needs to be more useful or replaced.

An interesting take on walking dead, but again it becomes an ability with a niche use. You wouldn't be able to use for the same things Eq or Clemency are used for.

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Thats why i was saying you could "cancel" the effect, so if the fight is just 1 boss, no adds, pop it when its up, and turn it off imediately. (unless you want the heal to reflect how long its been active, then canceling it at the last second gives the biggest heal)
The act of turning it off, puts it on CD, and heals HP only, comparable to the current amount, maybe less if its based on how long its been on the enemy.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

(unless you want the heal to reflect how long its been active, then canceling it at the last second gives the biggest heal)

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That's a decent solution, honestly. I just meant, like, you wouldn't be able to use it for the full effect if it was instant activation for half. But this suggestion would solve that for the most part, although, there's still the minor issue of potency vs need. IE, "I need this heal right away but 25% isn't enough". Which is certainly better than it currently is, but still a bit behind compared to the other tanks options.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

That's a decent solution, honestly. I just meant, like, you wouldn't be able to use it for the full effect if it was instant activation for half. But this suggestion would solve that, although, there's still the minor issue of potency vs need. IE, "I need this heal right away but 25% isn't enough"

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While not incorrect, Im too casual of a player to think of it that way.
I break it down into priority.

(1) Do I have a WHM to benediction me when I hit Walking dead? If So, go to #2, if not, I save sole survivor for Walking dead.
(2) Is there any adds in this fight, where I need to AoE a lot? If not, go to #3, if so, sole survivor the 1st add to die, to keep my MP going for more AoEs.
(3) Is there an add in the fight I need to tank, while also MTing the boss? If not, go to #4 if so, then I'll probably use sole survivor for the MP, and hope the heal helps. (Otherwise i'd be in the situation ur proposing.)
(4) Its only a boss in this fight. If so, I'll just use it as an emergency heal.

Essentially, I pick based on the fight, rather than in the moment.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Or allow it to target PT members too, and Walking Dead triggers the effect of sole survivor.

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Long time ago, I suggested somes changes to Living Dead.
- Increase its recast to 6 min.
- If your HP reaches 1, you create a Zombie enemy with the same HP as your max HP. If the Zombie is still alive after 10s, it kills you.
- If the Zombie dies while under the effect of Sole Survivor, Living Dead recast is halved.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Long time ago, I suggested somes changes to Living Dead.
- Increase its recast to 6 min.
- If your HP reaches 1, you create a Zombie enemy with the same HP as your max HP. If the Zombie is still alive after 10s, it kills you.
- If the Zombie dies while under the effect of Sole Survivor, Living Dead recast is halved.

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The obvious weakness to this would be the DPS loss, unless the zombie is taking over threat for you, and attacking the boss with the same amount of DPS you'd be doing.
(if its tanking and dpsing, then the next weakness is that it can potentially add too much dps)

While this may be a bit overly complicated, its technically an improvement when it comes to future tanks, and needing to make invincibles, and not just be copy pasted from what we have now. (as it would free up another "survive at 1hp" styled one. and of course a zombie fits DRK more than another future tank, unless its a pet class, liek BST)

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Essentially, I pick based on the fight, rather than in the moment.

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Sure, ideally that could all be planned out once you know what you're up against. I guess I'm thinking of it as, I've seen a lot of clutch Eq's and Clemency save the day. It'd be hard to use that version of soul survivor in the same way. Like say you're using it for the MP in situation like 2 or 3 but then get a couple of untimely crits, clipped by an aoe, healer falls asleep, whatever, rip clutch self-heal lol

I do think a combination of that, and tacking a heal on TBN break might be sufficient. In LD you could shield yourself from a bit of damage while the healer starts healing, then it breaks and boosts your HP up on top of the SS. Or in the situations above, pop SS and shield yourself for the extra heal. I think it would put drk in a lot better shape in the self-heal dept.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Long time ago, I suggested somes changes to Living Dead.
- Increase its recast to 6 min.
- If your HP reaches 1, you create a Zombie enemy with the same HP as your max HP. If the Zombie is still alive after 10s, it kills you.
- If the Zombie dies while under the effect of Sole Survivor, Living Dead recast is halved.

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Isn't that kind of double-dipping? Like, you already can't go below one, then the zombie creates an additional HP pool to take hits for you for 10 sec?

Or I guess you'd have to "die" to an auto-attack or something while the TB kills the zombie so the zombie doesn't kill you. Hmm. It's an interesting idea. Would likely be difficult during prog. Or what if there's no auto-attacks like Neo? Seems like mechanics would be spread apart too far for it to work. Except for maybe the quick aero 3 > earthshakers. But maybe not

*edit, yea I'm not sure it would work in neo. If we just look where the invulns are used. The first delta attack you'd have to "die" to aero 3 - but delta attack happens exactly 10 sec later. For the double attack, there's like 7 seconds between antilight and the double attack. Might be enough. The second Delta attack is like 17-sec after antilight, wouldn't work there. The third double attack is 8 seconds after charybdis.. That takes you down to 1 HP, right? Might work there. So that'd be enough I suppose, as long as one tank can get the first and last doubles and the other tank can get the delta attacks. Kinda funny that, if I'm looking at this right, it would pretty much guarantee a spot for war based on this as you couldn't do it with pld/drk.* Sure you didn't intend for that :P

(* - I guess you could still do it the proper way by sharing damage)

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

No. As I said, the Zombie is an enemy. You (the party) have to kill it before the timer runs out.

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Didn't see that coming. DRK would then have the only invuln that reduces raid damage on boss. Granted, 57k is not a lot at current ilevels. Still be pretty odd. I don't approve lol

Zombie punching bag better idea xD

Since the subject has kind of turned to Sole Survivor and how it desperately needs some re-tuning, I had this thought the other day:


Sole Survivor -> Survivor
Recast: 120s
Duration: 15s

Creates an area in which party members will only suffer 85% of all damage inflicted.
4% of your HP and MP are restored (per-tick, self-only, unrelated to the protection field, for a total of 20% of each by the time it expires).
Cannot be used with any other area-creating actions (meaning, basically, overwrites Salted Earth and vice versa; this seems to be a limitation shared by any class that can put down multiple fields).

That way it retains the self-heal and MP gain that the skill currently has, but makes them more reliable, and useful in every fight, not just those with adds.
It gives DRK a party mitigation skill - and creates some symmetry between the tanks: Warrior has a party barrier, Dark Knight would have a party mitigation field, and Paladin would have both a party barrier and a party mitigation field.
And, if party mitigation isn't especially necessary/useful in a given fight, it also functions as a sorely-needed personal mitigation tool to flesh out DRK's anemic Dark Mind/Shadow Wall repertoire.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

Isn't that kind of double-dipping? Like, you already can't go below one, then the zombie creates an additional HP pool to take hits for you for 10 sec?

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No. As I said, the Zombie is an enemy. You (the party) have to kill it before the timer runs out.

I'm a bit late to this but I wanted to add my two cents.

Warrior in deliverance is definitely not squishier than the other two tanks, and in no way depends on the other two tanks utility to effectively main tank. They have a higher up time on all of their mitigation, except rampart obviously, and have an additional cooldown to boot because their "on demand" mitigation is tank stance locked.

Let's first recognize that the "main tank/off tank" meta is really behind the times, double your cool down pool and tank swap frequently, even when not necessary. This provides the healers with more time to join in on fights than having one tank constantly smashed in the face without mitigation with the exception of tank busters. You'll find yourself swapping once every few minutes and you'll find your cool downs come back while you are not actively tanking so when you swap back your full kit is ready.

Second, the swap mentality has not become a big enough thing yet, but there are a few factors in why we don't see many warrior's main tanking fights from start to finish.

1. Persistent concept that warriors are off tanks for damage and are squishier than paladin and dark knight as main tank. An effective warrior will mitigate as much or more on average as any other tank, and they will lose little personal dps in either role.

2. Paladin gains damage from main tanking. Shield swipe is 150 potency oGCD on a 15 second recast but it requires the paladin to block attacks to activate it. In a Paladin/Warrior comp paladin should want to be getting hit more than not.

3. Dark Knight offers more to the party in a main tank role than in an off tank role. If you have a dark knight in an off tank role spamming the blackest night on a warrior main tank then you might as well switch the warrior and dark knight and have them spam TBN on themselves and double the amount mitigated. Since dark knights have a lower expected dps than warriors and paladins; if someone is going to have to "maybe" go into emergency tank stance, that person should probably be the dark knight since they are doing less damage anyway. This shoves Dark Knight into a main tank role.

The entire reason we don't see warrior's main tanking as much is that warrior's do not gain much from being in the main tank role. Technically they lose some vengeance counter attacks, but this doesn't come close to a paladin losing their shield swipe procs. It has absolutely nothing to do with how well warrior mitigates damage.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

I do think a combination of that, and tacking a heal on TBN break might be sufficient. In LD you could shield yourself from a bit of damage while the healer starts healing, then it breaks and boosts your HP up on top of the SS. Or in the situations above, pop SS and shield yourself for the extra heal. I think it would put drk in a lot better shape in the self-heal dept.

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Its a lot simpler than that. "Walking dead heal to 100% requirement now includes shields". TBN now helps patch you up and would make it a little easier on the 'shield' healer if adlo/every other shield/etc also counted.

While all these suggestions to replace Living Dead sound nice, personally I really like how Living Dead works.

Aesthetic-wise, it's a very interesting system; you die, but have a chance to get your life back while your soulless body continues to fight until you either recover or it just tears apart. It's interesting, if you /gpose LD and pause the animation at the right frame you can see your (I assume) soul escaping your body before it takes too much damage. I'm curious how Living Dead works in lore, it says on the wiki that "aether is released from the body upon death and then disappears from the physical realm" Maybe it's already off to the other realm, but the spell (or ritual, whatever you'd call LD) prevents that from happening until your body just falls apart. Same thing for Holmgang lol, how's that even work? anyways, way off topic.

All I'd really love to see changed with the skill is the healing requirement lowered. 60-80% of your max HP healed instead of the full 100% would already be very good IMO.

Idea for a possible Dark Passenger rework: 2400mp, reduces target's damage dealt by 10%, DA 15-20%. Since raid-wide mitigation seems to be the bandwagon, reducing the boss's damage is the same as putting a shield on people.

If SE doesn't feel like giving dark dance back... Dark passenger could just be a mitigation skill that does damage against physical attacks cause that's what it currently is, albeit a very clunky one that doesn't do anything on bosses except damage. Something like a 5% drain spikes with dark dance's original duration and cooldown, only works on physical non ranged attacks. Something not meant to save you from a tank buster but increase sustain during downtimes and increase dps.

Edit: Just realized that it would not help as an off tank unless we could apply this to other people. We don't have any raid mitigation so another single target party member buff would atleast increase our off tank versatility a bit.

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Originally Posted by Aana

Its a lot simpler than that. "Walking dead heal to 100% requirement now includes shields". TBN now helps patch you up and would make it a little easier on the 'shield' healer if adlo/every other shield/etc also counted.

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They could alternatively give TBN a self heal since DRK currently lacks one of those as well.

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Originally Posted by MoarLegion

Dark Passenger: Revert to Heavensward values, rework the skill entirely, or remove it.
This is a particular bugbear for a lot of DRK players, because the reasoning for changing it from HW is largely incomprehensible. Reducing button bloat by making it useless is like trying to lose weight by cutting off a limb: You're lighter but now you're handicapped.

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Technically, it'd be like trying to lose weight by paralyzing your limb, no? It still takes up the exact same space and weight regardless, even if you can now only use it to deadarm slap someone.
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My own minimal changes suggestion, though these do little to solve our identity issues:

Background Change: Periodic and delayed damage now display a predictive indicators on their victims' health bars. This should help to visualize DoT damage already instilled on enemies and lingering damage to affected tanks.

1. Dark Passenger mana cost reduced from 1 DA (2400 at 70) to .75 DAs (1800 at 70). Even against a single target it is now only 4% less efficient than spending mana via Dark Arts on SS or SE.
2. The Blackest Night now generates up to 50 Blood based on the percent of the shield missing when its duration expires.
3. Bloodspiller potency increased from 400 to 440, and its DA potency from 540 to 580. Grit value removed. Instead, simply reads "Ignores the damage penalty inflicted by Grit."
4. Quietus potency increased from 160 to 300, and its DA potency from 210 to 440, but now deals 15% less damage to its second target, 30% less to the third, and 45% less to all remaining targets. This leaves its AoE potency unaffected, but boosts its effectiveness against low numbers of enemies.
5. Living Dead reworked.

   Living Dead — Grants the effect of Living Dead. When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead. Living Dead Duration: 10s
   
   While under the effect of Walking Dead, all would-be fatal damage instead generates Death's Pact. Death's Pact deals and consumes one third of its stored value every server tick, dealing all remaining damage when Walking Dead ends. The damage stored by Death's Pact cannot cumulatively exceed 80% of the Dark Knight's maximum HP at any time; any damage in excess will be negated completely. Damage taken from Death's Pact may be further mitigated.

6. Dark Mind replaced with Dark Dance.

   Dark Dance — Duration - 10 seconds. 20% of all damage taken instead generates Death's Dance. Death's Dance deals and consumes one third of its stored value every server tick, dealing all remaining damage after 10 seconds of Dark Dance's activation. Dark Dance will end if the damage cumulatively stored by Death's Dance exceeds 50% of the Dark Knight's maximum HP at any time. Damage taken by Death's Dance may be further mitigated.

7. Shadow Wall reduced to a 120-second CD.
8. Grit now consumes only 1/3 the mana of DA, and consumes only a two-thirds of a GCD.

Compensatory Changes:

Warrior

• The cooldowns of Defiance and Deliverance now scale with one's GCD.
• Defiance now affects all healing received, not only healing received from spells. Equilibrium's Defiance healing has been reduced from 1200 to 1000 to compensate, amounting to an identical heal given the previous change.
• Raw Intuition now causes you to take reduced damage based on your Determination, and to have a chance each to take reduced damage based on your Direct Hit and Critical Strike.
• Enhanced Infuriate renamed to Primal Instinct, and now affects Raw Intuition as well.
• The potency of Inner Beast has been increased from 300 to 400 and of Steel Cyclone from 200 to 270, but neither remain immune to the damage penalty of Defiance. This indirectly increases the value of Unchained.

Paladin

• Shield Oath and Sword Oath no longer consume mana, and now each consume only two-thirds a GCD.
• Shelltron now guarantees that you will block all attacks until having blocked an amount of damage equal to 15% of your HP. The attack which depletes Shelltron will still be fully blocked.
• Divine Veil now activates immediately, and additionally reduces all damage taken by the affected party member by 5% while the barrier is active.

Notes:

• The idea behind the Living Dead and Dark Mind/Dance changes were to remove penalty from gearing in LD while introducing a new, consistent mechanic that would be unique to DRK while providing a universal mitigation form. Technically, Dark Dance does not in itself mitigate, but it does allow for Rampart and Shadow Wall to double dip, affecting both the original damage and then the periodic damage.
• The idea behind the Blackest Night and Bloodspiller changes are that at present, Dark Knight damage falls slightly short even in the best of situations; thus it seemed apt that I should target The Blackest Night's damage output and regularity thereof (by smoothing its Blood gains), via Bloodspiller, rather than attempting to tack on additional effects to TBN itself, or make it any less of a decision in its moments of use.

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Originally Posted by SummerScorcher

While all these suggestions to replace Living Dead sound nice, personally I really like how Living Dead works. [...]

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I generally agree. I think all of the qualities of Living Dead are good, and wouldn't want to fundamentally change it. It's just somewhat undertuned compared to the overpoweringly strong qualities of the other invuln skills (3m cooldown, total invulnerability, both are pretty busted).

Personally though, I'm okay with the amount of healing required. What I would like to see, though, is for Walking Dead to last the full duration, instead of instantly getting cleansed once the healing requirement is satisfied (and maybe add a Doom effect that can disappear to let healers know when they're safe to stop healing). That way, you get the full length of the invuln, even if Benediction comes immediately.

I also don't think that it would be out of line for Walking Dead to have the duration bumped up from 10s to 15s.

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Originally Posted by Aana

Its a lot simpler than that. "Walking dead heal to 100% requirement now includes shields". TBN now helps patch you up and would make it a little easier on the 'shield' healer if adlo/every other shield/etc also counted.

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That would be good. I actually do like Walking Dead right now but having a bit of patch up yourself, as well as making it more fair on SCH and Noct AST would do a lot to help.

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Originally Posted by Crater

Personally though, I'm okay with the amount of healing required. What I would like to see, though, is for Walking Dead to last the full duration, instead of instantly getting cleansed once the healing requirement is satisfied (and maybe add a Doom effect that can disappear to let healers know when they're safe to stop healing).
I also don't think that it would be out of line for Walking Dead to have the duration bumped up from 10s to 15s.

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This is a nice idea, but I'd like to have one tweak to it; Alongside it being 15sec standard, instead of having the Doom effect, when fully healed just revert it back to Living Dead for the remainder of the WD duration, but the duration of the next Walking Dead is reduced by, say, 3 seconds. This change combined with some very coordinated and skillful healing/luck, would have the potential to give up to (20? my math skills lack lol. *many*) seconds of invulnerability. Very OP, but it'd be very high risk/very high reward.