Dark Knight dungeon survivability suggestion

I only assume that DRK has the lowest healing is because it has the highest shields among the tanks the only other equivalent to TBN in terms is pure ehp is WAR's ToB and that only increases HP by 20% but with convalescence effect. I guess in Yoshi's eyes and the current heavy mitigation meta, shields > heals. There's a reason why healer shields don't stack while healer dots do. Personally I think its just ppl who don't use TBN on cd during wall to wall pulls in dungeons and sit on 0 MP and expect the healer to carry them. The point of DRK's mitigation is to prevent the damage from happening in the first place and not recovering from it after (which is what WAR already does).

However I will agree that Oblation is bloat. They could have easily made Dark Mind upgrade into Oblation and add the 10% physical mitigation and 2 charge via trait and it would function nearly identical to what Oblation is now.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

I only assume that DRK has the lowest healing is because it has the highest shields among the tanks the only other equivalent to TBN in terms is pure ehp is WAR's ToB and that only increases HP by 20% but with convalescence effect.

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Well, TBN is 25% vs. ToB's 20%, but...

In general, unless there's significant value in making one immune to a debuff via said barrier, a current-and-maximum HP buff of X% is generally going to be better than a short-lived barrier of the same X% HP.

The first raises your maximum eHP for a duration, allowing that eHP increase to be refreshed while also providing the flat bonus to eHP at its start that the barrier provides. The latter is a one-time use. Unless it nullifies a debuff, it's simply inferior, with less that can be done with it.

Add to that the +20% healing taken effect and yeah, ToB is generally better. But... it is also an actual CD, not the on-demand. (Though, WAR's on-demand also tends to be half again as strong as TBN, albeit with half again the CD of TBN. NF's double-healing is the real kicker, tbh, rather than single-target Bloodwhetting.)

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They could have easily made Dark Mind upgrade into Oblation and add the 10% physical mitigation and 2 charge via trait and it would function nearly identical to what Oblation is now.

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You'd need a slight tweak atop that for actual parity.

Without a cooldown reduction, what you suggested would be a nerf for the simple fact that you've only added half of Oblation's value to Dark Mind, instead of the whole.

Remember, you had both before, cooling separately. Combined without any cooldown reduction, you'll have removed Oblation's 10% magical mitigation from the kit entirely and bound up its 10% physical mitigation dependent on popping your 20% anti-magic mitigation skill. Even putting aside the in-practice loss from less fine control, that's a flat nerf of 10s per minute of 10% magical mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I don't really agree, mainly because I've been asked to flex onto WAR a few times this tier and its been really really easy getting a hang of the job. Core rotation difficulty is about the same, save for DRK's higher apm but it’s not so much higher that it’s notable.

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I’ve had the opposite experience in that I main warrior and have been comfortable flexing to dark knight without issues*. I’ve no interest in this tier though, so if it was designed as an anti-drk series then I may have more issues. Hopefully the job-encounter design is a bit more polished next expansion.

*except that time I tried to rely on inner releases innate kb resist for dog1.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

I’ve had the opposite experience in that I main warrior and have been comfortable flexing to dark knight without issues*. I’ve no interest in this tier though, so if it was designed as an anti-drk series then I may have more issues. Hopefully the job-encounter design is a bit more polished next expansion.

*except that time I tried to rely on inner releases innate kb resist for dog1.

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A little bit, its not as notable or as a direct assassionation as Abyssos felt for WAR's regen. But the bleeds are less common and physical damage is way more common.
Its enough for me to think that Missionary and heart should be changed to all damage type mitigation, but its not the end of the world. I've cleared through p10 and 11 as it is now.

It's not just dungeons. War is better in every single piece of content in the game, and frankly i just wish the job didn't exist at this point. Legacy ultimates, savage, extremes, casual content.. *everything*.
War is the fat, massively overweight favourite child among the tanks that gets spoonfed candy and chocolate every patch.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

And not WAR?

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Warrior mains feel entitled to be immortal for free.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

It's the last fraction of warrior's identity as the hp tank and in meaningless content. Why must everything be identical?

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Homogenisation didn't seem to be a problem when other tanks had their damage brought up to, and above Drk's.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

It's the last fraction of warrior's identity as the hp tank and in meaningless content. Why must everything be identical?

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I just want IR/BW/NF's functionality reverted back to Shadowbringers' %damage->healing, and Nascent Flash adjusted such that --rather than both WAR and the target ally healing fully-- only the target ally's overhealing would be transferred back to the Warrior or vice versa. At absolute most, give non-overhealing only 50% transfer back to the Warrior, a la Clemency.

Goat, you’ve never even played the actual dark knight. We can all see your achievements page and there’s not one before 2020. As people have repeatedly claimed in the past, damage is not a valid identity. It wasn’t for warrior, it isn’t for dark knight. Dark knight actually has less of a claim to it given historical precedent, but nevertheless it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter.

Yeah I think shadowbringers had a significantly better approach to nf/ri. I would rather they kept the 5.3 change to allow targeting self though, if only because it wasn’t as utterly braindead to stay alive with it. That said it’ll be a bit easier with orogeny and the abundance of inner releases now that it’s down to 60s. Also the shake changes should be reverted, being able to sac mit for a bigger shield is enough. It didn’t need the heal and it didn’t need the hot. I don’t really have any faith that sensible changes are incoming though, both support roles have been in terminal decline for years.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Goat, you’ve never even played the actual dark knight. We can all see your achievements page and there’s not one before 2020. As people have repeatedly claimed in the past, damage is not a valid identity. It wasn’t for warrior, it isn’t for dark knight. Dark knight actually has less of a claim to it given historical precedent, but nevertheless it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter.

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I can only imagine how much more furious Goat and others who started DRK in 5.0 would be if they were there for Stormblood and prior. Stormblood DRK is still the most fun I ever had tanking in any mmo.

To repeat yeah, damage isn't, and shouldn't be, considered an identity. The amount of dps it deals is meaningless if it feels like garbage to play for the majority of its rotation.

...Which is why people are now moving away from it and it's seeing a lot less use. Even without the self-healing, why would the hardcore play Dark Knight for the dps when they can now play Warrior which feels much better to play, even if it gets boring because of how mindlessly easy it is?

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Yeah I think shadowbringers had a significantly better approach to nf/ri. I would rather they kept the 5.3 change to allow targeting self though, if only because it wasn’t as utterly braindead to stay alive with it. That said it’ll be a bit easier with orogeny and the abundance of inner releases now that it’s down to 60s. Also the shake changes should be reverted, being able to sac mit for a bigger shield is enough. It didn’t need the heal and it didn’t need the hot. I don’t really have any faith that sensible changes are incoming though, both support roles have been in terminal decline for years.

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Warrior in general during Shadowbringers hit a good middle ground, I will never understand why they thought its healing needed to be even stronger than it already was. It's unnecessarily potent in literally every type of battle content in the game. I'm still baffled by splitting Nascent Flash into two abilities, it was fine as it was as a single button.

I want to believe they have something in store for tanks/healers in 7.0, but I'm not getting my expectations up. I know they can design better than this, they can do better than this, it's what makes it so disheartening to see the current state of things.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I can only imagine how much more furious Goat and others who started DRK in 5.0 would be if they were there for Stormblood and prior. Stormblood DRK is still the most fun I ever had tanking in any mmo.

To repeat yeah, damage isn't, and shouldn't be, considered an identity. The amount of dps it deals is meaningless if it feels like garbage to play for the majority of its rotation.

...Which is why people are now moving away from it and it's seeing a lot less use. Even without the self-healing, why would the hardcore play Dark Knight for the dps when they can now play Warrior which feels much better to play, even if it gets boring because of how mindlessly easy it is?



Warrior in general during Shadowbringers hit a good middle ground, I will never understand why they thought its healing needed to be even stronger than it already was. It's unnecessarily potent in literally every type of battle content in the game. I'm still baffled by splitting Nascent Flash into two abilities, it was fine as it was as a single button.

I want to believe they have something in store for tanks/healers in 7.0, but I'm not getting my expectations up. I know they can design better than this, they can do better than this, it's what makes it so disheartening to see the current state of things.

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Personally I found Stormblood Drk terrible in comparison to Heavensward when it comes to fun. That is where they started to bolt inner release into Drks

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Originally Posted by Malthir

Personally I found Stormblood Drk terrible in comparison to Heavensward when it comes to fun. That is where they started to bolt inner release into Drks

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That was Shadowbringers DRK. Stormblood DRK had double resource management without "press button receive 5/3 bacon" with GCD haste, GCD enhancement and MP-Blood interplay in TBN, Delirium and Bloodweapon, particularly in AOE with Quietus.

4.0 PLD and 4.2 WAR were the jobs with the initial "press button receive 5 bacon" long before DRK had it in Stormblood, Shadowbringers is what gave us the horrible homogenization.

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Originally Posted by Malthir

Personally I found Stormblood Drk terrible in comparison to Heavensward when it comes to fun. That is where they started to bolt inner release into Drks

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No, it's not. Stormblood Delirium was literally a "do your fun thing from HW DRK, for longer, with more MP" CD. It had nothing to do with Inner Release.

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Originally Posted by Malthir

Personally I found Stormblood Drk terrible in comparison to Heavensward when it comes to fun. That is where they started to bolt inner release into Drks

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I can really only repeat what the others have said, it was in Shadowbringers that they did that. Stormblood DRK played nothing like Warrior.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I can really only repeat what the others have said, it was in Shadowbringers that they did that. Stormblood DRK played nothing like Warrior.

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Yet ironically it matched WAR in terms of self sustain, proving that it is possible to have the same job function identically while being vastly different from each other. DAAD in dungeon pulls was like spamming SC with Berserk. Pair that with Blood Price and suddenly you are invincible for the next 15 secs (25 if used with delirium iirc).

I'd just toss 300 cure potency on Bloodspiller and Quietus and call it a day.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

Yet ironically it matched WAR in terms of self sustain, proving that it is possible to have the same job function identically while being vastly different from each other. DAAD in dungeon pulls was like spamming SC with Berserk. Pair that with Blood Price and suddenly you are invincible for the next 15 secs (25 if used with delirium iirc).

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Actually it was better to stay out of Grit and use Blood Weapon.

Spend excess 2400mp on TBN -> gain 50 Blood, use Blood Weapon then use Quietus to receive 960mp per enemy hit as well as 3 blood per enemy hit iirc.

Spend more excess MP on AD or DAAD for damage and sustain. Potentially use excess Blood to extend Blood Weapon with Delirium and regaining 2400mp, or Quietus if on CD.

Blood Weapon haste also affected your spellspeed so there was further offensive benefit.

I think that goes for all tanks in SB where tanking out of stance and stance dancing was the meta. Depending on situation, if you had enough mobs hitting you, blood price can effectively keep your MP capped but yeah blood weapon in general was definitely better in most cases, especially in savage. You also have to consider this was an era where healers can/will rip aggro because new tanks are in their OT stance so sometimes staying in MT stance was preferred, especially with new healers who can't deal with the spike dmg or giving you a regen before pulls so now you have to chase after the stray mobs running for the healer while the DPS goes balls to the wall on aoes causing you to lose more.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

I think that goes for all tanks in SB where tanking out of stance and stance dancing was the meta. Depending on situation, if you had enough mobs hitting you, blood price can effectively keep your MP capped but yeah blood weapon in general was definitely better in most cases, especially in savage. You also have to consider this was an era where healers can/will rip aggro because new tanks are in their OT stance so sometimes staying in MT stance was preferred, especially with new healers who can't deal with the spike dmg or giving you a regen before pulls so now you have to chase after the stray mobs running for the healer while the DPS goes balls to the wall on aoes causing you to lose more.

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We're talking specifically about dungeons here however, where for Dark Knight specifically it was better to just stay out of Grit because Blood Weapon regenerated MP based on the amount of enemies hit and with TBN + DA Abyssal (It's selfheal and increased enmity generation) you never needed to worry about being too squishy or losing aggro.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

I think that goes for all tanks in SB where tanking out of stance and stance dancing was the meta. Depending on situation, if you had enough mobs hitting you, blood price can effectively keep your MP capped but yeah blood weapon in general was definitely better in most cases, especially in savage. You also have to consider this was an era where healers can/will rip aggro because new tanks are in their OT stance so sometimes staying in MT stance was preferred, especially with new healers who can't deal with the spike dmg or giving you a regen before pulls so now you have to chase after the stray mobs running for the healer while the DPS goes balls to the wall on aoes causing you to lose more.

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Theirs wasn't a general comment, but an idiosyncracy of DRK, specifically. (And no, the norm wasn't stance-dancing so much as stance-dropping; you'd open in tank stance and stay in it only as long as necessary to drop it for the remainder of the fight without any non-tank overtaking your Enmity.)

Rather, the MP and Gauge generated from Blood Weapon ultimately aided your survival via its unlimited DA-AD in mass-pulls more than the mere small amount of MP per hit taken under Blood Price (available only to Grit) did, and since DA-AD healing was based on damage dealt, the 25% more damage and healing dealt (by not facing the 20% damage penalty) was often worth more than the 20% less damage taken. More importantly, the healing itself was enough to top yourself off every other GCD (the Bloodwhetting life, so to speak), so... why would you nerf your damage anyways?

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Originally Posted by Marxam

-snip-

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Absurdity and Shurrikan have cleared up most things I wanted to say, just some small additional points:

• I've played that era of tanks religiously, it was when I started the game to be precise.
• The amount of time you wanted to stay in tank stance, assuming up-to-date gear, generally never exceeded 2 GCD actions for the sake of enmity building. WAR even less since Overpower had bonus enmity built-in.
• To even remotely get enough MP out of Bloodprice you needed more than 20 enemies hitting you at once, so you'd generate 2400mp and around 24 Blood in 3 seconds. Then you needed more to continue attacking or use DA/TBN depending whatever you didnt use.
  
  In SB I remember like one dungeon with a pull even have more than 20 mobs is Ghimlyt Dark pull after 1st boss.
  
  However in any case you'd have more survival and consistency ignoring Blood Price's full duration and only use it as you are gathering the mobs and building a burst of enmity with Unleash.

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Originally Posted by Derio

DRK dungeon survivability is fine. It gives the healers the ability to do more than just spam their one aoe damage skill because they would actually have to heal the tank.

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Nah, just prep heal in advance and you can forget the tank..and spam your AOE :)

I miss stormblood DRK so much.

C'mon, Yoshi. Give it back. It was fun. If the haters don't like spamming dark arts, they can literally play WAR. It's basically what they're doing now anyways.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

I miss stormblood DRK so much.

C'mon, Yoshi. Give it back. It was fun. If the haters don't like spamming dark arts, they can literally play WAR. It's basically what they're doing now anyways.

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Its funny how they botched DRK in favour of accessibility and killed off arguably the only real speed tank we ever had.

The loss is real.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Its funny how they botched DRK in favour of accessibility and killed off arguably the only real speed tank we ever had.

The loss is real.

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Speed "builds" in general kind of died after SB.

Not a tank expert by any means, but just for a fun interaction/choice idea: how about bring Dark Arts back as a 25 or 30-second cooldown (same as Warrior's Bloodwhetting), which can be spent on a Souleater to add a regen effect on top of it, or on a Bloodspiller for extra oomph? (As an aside, Bloodspiller feels so lame that it might as well be the alternate combo ender Power Slash used to be.) But anyway, the point is, dark knight is seriously lacking a regen, and a modifier button that gives you the choice of a regen or something else if you don't need it... would be cool, I think. Anything to break up the 1-2-3 monotony. Dark knight is the only tank confined to just a 1-2-3 combo over and over and the only one without a regen, so this could potentially kill both those birds with one stone. Even just doing a straightforward trait that adds a regen on TBN barrier break would probably assuage people who find TBN underwhelming and the odd one out of its peers now.

As another idea, I think we should be able to use Abyssal Drain more often again. Doesn't need to be spammable like it once was, but ever since they made its cooldown so long I've been pretty bummed about it, especially being tied to Carve and Spit.

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Originally Posted by ed3891

I came here to say exactly this. People complaining about tank survivability/self-sustain in the easiest, lowest-tier content the game has on offer either have the memory of a goldfish, or don't bother to touch anything more difficult than a story trial fight. Any tank with a skilled player at the helm can make up the difference against a dungeon boss when the healer goes down, and frankly, I would rather have that option on the table instead of a daily roulette run taking in excess of 30-40m (or worse, ending in failure) because the guy who queued on the other critical light party role isn't up to snuff.

There are entirely too many people running around in basic level 90 content with questionable competency, and I'm glad that job design in other areas, even if it's tuned specifically to handle high-end, covers these short-comings.

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The double standard is amazing, isn't it? It fine if a role is useless as long as it not yours.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Speed "builds" in general kind of died after SB.

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Sorry for the late reply - not really. DRK 2.43s was the minimum standard to deal with Bloodweapon's duration but many opted for faster speeds up 2.36s. Same applied to WAR.

PLD, GNB and DRG wanted something in the ballpark of 2.45s for buff alignment if I remember right. (PLD Requiescat was only 5 spells at the time and outside of FoF and in StB Requiescat tail-ended FoF). SAM also had various speed tiers and subsequently some realignment options for their 60s cycle.

However changes like with MCH Heat Blasts definitely caused issues (skills with no interaction to speed or being speedcapped).

And then ofc Endwalker genuinely just trashed this altogether. It also does not help that there is no actual gear variety for me to pick since Asphodelos as they decided to cave in and basically no longer create gear with speed. It's a dilemma, I can neither effectively try fast speeds nor does the game support it with good job design.

Calling speed differences like 2.43 "fast" makes me sad.

I'd love it if it was completely viable to just cap out on skill speed rather than play the double crit roulette on every single job

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Calling speed differences like 2.43 "fast" makes me sad.

I'd love it if it was completely viable to just cap out on skill speed rather than play the double crit roulette on every single job

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Oh no 2.43s was slow as heck. The only point I was trying to make that we had certain speed requirements whereas now we have none after all the quality of life changes.

Genuine fast was scraping the 2.0s on DRK in Stormblood, I was praying for weapons WITHOUT skillspeed because I went too fast. The only real options were the Seiryu Spine and before that the Omega Claymore.

We had certain requirements but at the same time we had more options...especially when Elemental +1 gear became a thing.
Now, despite all the QoL changes, it's basically all reduced to as slow as possible.

You won't find a 2.32 GCD DrK, a 2.34 GCD Warrior or a 2.19 GCD Dragoon nowadays.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

We had certain requirements but at the same time we had more options...especially when Elemental +1 gear became a thing.
Now, despite all the QoL changes, it's basically all reduced to as slow as possible.

You won't find a 2.32 GCD DrK, a 2.34 GCD Warrior or a 2.19 GCD Dragoon nowadays.

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Even if it was complete garbage to gear this way, you'd almost think that giving us a form of content providing gear that fills the lack of skillspeed gear (alliance raids + requiring upgrade material for instance, or hey Criterion Dungeons) so we can build det sks, crit sks or ten sks...

... ya know, it would be at least a nice lie that we'd have options when gearing even if they werent ideal.

They can't even bother naming most of the new gear, or making new models for it. Can't expect them to make even more gearsets for things like options or variety.

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Originally Posted by Mekhana

They can't even bother naming most of the new gear, or making new models for it. Can't expect them to make even more gearsets for things like options or variety.

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take next alliance raid gear
implement a way to upgrade it, same looks
call it Augmented <x>

It is easy and zero effort, but they just dont want to.