DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

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Originally Posted by Eliroth-Kaminari

Whit our lack of defence it fits

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We should have no lack of defense. There should not be a definitively less tanky tank. Tanks with more/less utility or more/less DPS, sure. Defense/mitigation? No thanks.

I think the problem is that DRK no longer has a defensive identity.

WAR is the tank with high-uptime, sustained mitigation (Veng/RI/Rampart/Thrill add up to ~75% uptime; that goes above 100% uptime if using IB).

PLD is the 'selfless' tank that mitigates for other people (PoA, DV, Cover, Intervention particularly with Ramp/Sent).

DRK still seems to be stuck as 'the magic tank' in a world where that isn't a meaningful distinction.

I would like to see DRK instead become 'the tankbusters tank', with low-uptime, high-power, high-frequency cooldowns. Dark Mind still feels really good in fights where it works, and I would build on that:

Bump DM to 20%/40% with DA.
Make Shadow Wall a physical-only clone of DM; 20/40% depending on DA, with the same 60s cooldown.

I think that would give DRK a strong defensive niche, and isn't really out of line compared to WAR uptime and PLD party mitigation.

To be honest I hope they don't make any major changes. Just tweeks to potency for an increase and in terms of defensive capability change Shadow Wall to be longer mitigation and higher defensive capabilities. With TBN and an improved Shadow Wall I would be happy and I think those are changes that actually make sense with a lot of these complaints. All in all people will always complain I find them annoying cause they really arn't needed right now since none of the content really ask for a particular tank all 3 can main and off tank ALL of the content in storm blood without issue of the job. I honestly think people that complain so hard are the people who just arn't that good at Tanking but that's just my opinion.


PS- I am DRK main beat all stormblood content so far so my opinion is based on experience and me playing the content daily.

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

if anything it would just replace me pressing dark passenger

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why are you pressing dark passenger?

i main drk and i can handle sb content expt we dont yet know what V1-4 savage will be.
Problem is if 4.05 patch help out wars from they misery drk will fall off and fall off hard.
only excuse of reason drk is in meta raid comp atm is because TBN but as far as i have use it. it is self defence skill and its not utilty ppl think it is.
If this hype die down ppl move back to highest dps tank comp and thats PLD/WAR spechaly if war gets desired fixes. If so drk only excuse of Utilty TBN wont make cut. i think drk need bring more utility in raid then it does atm.

Shadow wall needs to be buffed or have the cool down time reduced

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Originally Posted by Derio

Shadow wall needs to be buffed or have the cool down time reduced

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Man, I didn't expect to see this kind of talk in the forums.

We've already seen the majority of what we'll get in Omega Savage this time around, albeit stronger versions. DRK is going into Omega in a very good place. Dark Mind is going to be extremely strong when coupled with Blackest Night. While there are still some janky abilities that could use work on DRK, the only real problem is their lack of DPS currently.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

DRK is going into Omega in a very good place. Dark Mind is going to be extremely strong when coupled with Blackest Night. While there are still some janky abilities that could use work on DRK, the only real problem is their lack of DPS currently.

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I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it's in "a very good place". Rather, I would say that Deltascape v1, v2, and v4 all seem to have taken specific efforts to cater to DRK from a defensive standpoint, and as a result DRK can be said to either be equal to, or have a slight advantage over, Paladin, in terms of personal main-tank mitigation - while providing lower DPS, offering far worse raid-wide/party mitigation, and existing in a tenuous position where any fight that doesn't specifically cater to Dark Mind (for example: Deltascape v3) pretty much puts DRK in the ground compared to PLD.

The above paragraph is almost word-for-word how you could describe PLD's position relative to DRK in Heavensward from 3.2 through 3.4. In almost every case in HW, even when PLD had a clear and obvious advantage in terms of personal mitigation, DRK was the better choice due to higher DPS and more valuable party utility. Except that in Stormblood, DRK's advantage over PLD against magic tankbusters is far lower than PLD's advantage over physical tankbusters was in Heavensward, and Reprisal's HW advantage over Divine Veil was much less pronounced than PLD's DV/Passage of Arms/Cover/Intervention kit's advantage over Blackest Night. And on the contrary, PLD's advantage over DRK in physical-based fights is actually more pronounced in SB than it was in HW, since DRK no longer has Reprisal, Dark Dance, and Foresight.

They need to eliminate DRK's lopsided magical vs physical defenses, just as they removed PLD's in Stormblood - and they absolutely should not be waiting two goddamn years for the next expansion to do it - and they need to actually give DRK a niche where it clearly and obviously outshines the other tanks, just as PLD outshines the others at keeping the party safe, and WAR outshines the others at being able to stack cooldowns or keep them rolling for sustained mitigation. The former can't happen until DRK has something as good as Dark Mind for physical mitigation, and we're even farther away from the latter, because Dark Mind simply isn't strong enough (even when paired with Blackest Night) to offer that kind of clear advantage over the kit that PLD and/or WAR can now bring to a magic mitigation fight.

Edit: And of course, this is before even getting into any issues with DPS.

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Originally Posted by Crater

snip.

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DRK already is the "tank buster tank" and that is the problem. Our pants are down for everything in between which feels awful. We don't have a single cooldown native to the job with a duration longer than 10s! My god.

If they wanna make DRK the "shield tank" like SCH is the "shield healer" they need to add similar effects to our other abilities and give them longer base durations. As it is, DADM is useless vs. regular DM+TBN unless we very specifically have TBs like A12s chastening heat (multi-hit, magical).

This is the problem with differentiating tanks based on defensive identity. You have to make content cater to whichever one is the weakest which is bad design and feels horrible in the hands of a player.

I wouldn't say that our kit is lopsided towards magic any more than WAR's is lopsided towards physical because of Raw intuition, or PLD's is lopsided towards RNG because of Bulwark. Its lopsided towards TBN. I would gladly take a hit to TBN's uptime and frequency of use for the rest of our kit without it to not be so laughably weak.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

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DRK isn't really any more well-suited to tankbusters than PLD or even WAR right now.

For Blackest Night to outperform Sheltron in terms of eHP, the PLD would have to be using a shield that only mitigated ~17% of the damage on a block, when an at-level shield is almost always at least 20% mitigation (meaning a 5% eHP advantage versus TBN), and can climb as high as 24% by the end of an expansion - at which point it's a ~31% eHP boost compared to TBN's 20%. So TBN only beats Sheltron for tankbusters in the event that A) The tankbuster is multi-hit and Sheltron will only catch one of them, B) Sheltron is mistimed and gets eaten by an auto-attack, or C) we're not talking about a tankbuster so much as about a "tankbuster" that deals such light damage that it makes an appreciable difference in DRK's favor that damage is applied to the shield before touching your HP.

And that's just Sheltron. TBN isn't really doing any more for DRK than Sheltron is doing for PLD, at least with regard to tankbusters, and in a lot of cases, is doing less. But setting aside role skills and invuln cooldowns (the former are by definition identical and the latter are basically well-balanced against each other and largely make their respective active mitigation skills redundant), PLD has two other Block-based mitigation cooldowns, both of which will solve Sheltron's issues with multi-hits and auto-attacks, they have Sentinel which is a strictly superior version of Shadow Wall, and they have Cover, which is fairly close to a second Rampart.

By contrast, DRK's only supplemental abilities (again excepting role/invuln skills) are Dark Mind and Shadow Wall. So a strictly-inferior version of Sentinel, and a good-but-ultimately-not-overwhelmingly-better cooldown which is useful on magic tankbusters and might as well be Shake It Off if all the boss's real tank-directed damage is physical.

On a fight with physical tankbusters, DRK is basically in a position as bad or possibly worse than the position that PLD found itself in during HW in fights like A4S or A12S.
On a fight with magical tankbusters, DRK carries a slight advantage over PLD, but that advantage is significantly less than the advantage that PLD had over DRK during HW in fights like Thordan, Sephirot, or A7S.


To give DRK that niche, the advantage they have against magical tankbusters needs to be significantly bolstered, and to avoid literally just swapping DRK and PLD's places from one expansion to another and repeating the same mistake of making one tank a gimp in fights that don't cater to their specific physical/magical needs, they need to be given equal capability versus physical and magical, much like they did with PLD.


If they don't give DRK that niche... Then we're basically waiting another two years and hoping that 5.0 gives DRK five new defensive cooldowns, because there's no way that they could get anything that would give them WAR's sustained mitigation uptime, or PLD's suite of party/target-other mitigation. And I really have no idea what's left, besides bumping Darkside up to +50% damage and then saying "now DRK is the halfway point between a tank and DPS".

Just because we have Dark Mind doesn't mean we are the "magical tank" now.

PLD's shield works against magic attacks as well now.

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Originally Posted by Crater

They need to eliminate DRK's lopsided magical vs physical defenses, just as they removed PLD's in Stormblood...

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I definitely agree that in a vacuum, DRK (and WAR considering Raw Intuition) needs to be brought back up to PLD's level defensively. I don't see it happening outright until there's a need however. Obviously PLD had a need to be brought up to a reasonable defensive level. I do favor the approach of balancing DRK in this way, simply because I would like to see a bit more variety in endgame other than only magic tank busters.

That said, having all three tanks, they're all pretty balanced right now in terms of self-mitigation, and I'd actually go as far as to say that DRK has the edge on it. PLD's CDs are extremely long, and it's pretty much left with Sheltron and having to use Passage of Arms as self-mitigation. WAR is solid with tons of CDs on short timers to rotate, but losing Raw Intuition when things become magic damage hurts.

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Originally Posted by Falar

Just because we have Dark Mind doesn't mean we are the "magical tank" now.

PLD's shield works against magic attacks as well now.

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Yeah, exactly. Not to mention Cover now works against magical attacks as well.

While I'm glad they addressed PLD's "weakness" to magical attacks in SB, it seems like a gross oversight to have left Dark Mind untouched.

TBN in its current form just isn't enough to make up for all the defensives lost to the battle system changes.

Perhaps they could modify TBN such that when combined with DM, it grants an additional defensive effect (could potentially replace DADM).

e.g. The Blackest Night
Creates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.
Duration: 5s
Increases Blood Gauge by 50 when full 20% (10%) is absorbed.
If Dark Mind is active when using The Blackest Night (on self?), <insert defensive effect here>.

Some ideas for this effect include:

• +Parry chance akin to Dark Dance (and would stack with Anticipation, if you ever actually took it)
• For the next N seconds, whenever you would take damage, immediately restore X% of that damage as health. Not sure how well this would work as a HoT instead. Wording might have to change, but ideally I would see this as healing a percentage of any damage you would have taken (meaning it would still heal you while TBN's shield is up), however you eat the damage first before the heal triggers (something like a reverse Bloodbath).
• Gain the effect of Eye for an Eye.
• The next attack you use heals you for 200% (or whatever #) of the damage dealt.
• Increase the damage absorbed by The Blackest Night to 40% of your maximum HP, or 20% for a party member. Increases Blood Gauge by 20. (#s might need tweaking)

Another thought would be to rework Dark Mind so that it acts as another universal defensive cooldown, but costs Blood to use instead.

Maybe something like this?

Dark Mind
Recast: 60s
Reduces incoming damage by 15%.
Duration: 10s.
Blood Gauge Cost: 50

Given the current state of DRK's damage numbers, this change would need to be supplemented by potency and damage buffs to make up for having to spend Blood to survive.

However, this might make the Blood mechanic even more interesting if you have a legitimate choice between spending it on offensive versus defence, and could combo nicely with TBN, as breaking the shield would allow you to follow it up with DM for further damage reduction once a minute.

Well at least your better than warrior. You get a shield and you do more damage that warrior now that you got a buff.

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Originally Posted by Dizzy_Derp

Well at least your better than warrior. You get a shield and you do more damage that warrior now that you got a buff.

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False. Warrior is above drk in dps and mitigation. Bloodspiller was buffed so that our utility was no longer a dps loss. As far as utility warrior still has slashing dark knight has TBN, as far as utility they seem about the same, very far below paladin. According to the sam I run with warrior is super helpful for their opener since warrior has the earliest slashing debuff of everyone now.

I think someone worked out in another post that warrior has less loss involved with its stance swap and than dark knight as well.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

False. Warrior is above drk in dps and mitigation. Bloodspiller was buffed so that our utility was no longer a dps loss. As far as utility warrior still has slashing dark knight has TBN, as far as utility they seem about the same, very far below paladin. According to the sam I run with warrior is super helpful for their opener since warrior has the earliest slashing debuff of everyone now.

I think someone worked out in another post that warrior has less loss involved with its stance swap and than dark knight as well.

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Actually heard dark doing more dps now then warrior in Omega!

I don't really see it. if we go by Normal Omega all tank busters are magic based. That gives DRK Rampart, Shadow Wall and Dark Mind. On top of that you have TBN for every tank buster. You can't beat WAR with all it's CDs but you are better than PLD.
PLD only has Rampart and Sentinel + Sheltron.
In physical fights DRK and PLD are almost equal when it comes to mitigation. The difference is that Sentinel is stronger than Shadow Wall.

imo DRK only needs a buff as OT but so does WAR. Both fit the MT spot more than PLD does. Though PLD is really ahead as OT afaik.
I'd really like to see some real numbers when PLD actually has to use it's utility kit. Using Clemency yields no damage. So does PoA unless you use it when there is some long casting time and you can't target the mob anyway.

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Originally Posted by LegolasT

Actually heard dark doing more dps now then warrior in Omega!

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Cost-Numbers

Found the thread discussing warrior stance dancing, this way people can objectively find the math and reasoning while reading this.

As far as numbers in omega story mode... does anyone actually follow this? Can you offer a source for some statistics?

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

I don't really see it. if we go by Normal Omega all tank busters are magic based. That gives DRK Rampart, Shadow Wall and Dark Mind. On top of that you have TBN for every tank buster. You can't beat WAR with all it's CDs but you are better than PLD.
PLD only has Rampart and Sentinel + Sheltron.
In physical fights DRK and PLD are almost equal when it comes to mitigation. The difference is that Sentinel is stronger than Shadow Wall.

imo DRK only needs a buff as OT but so does WAR. Both fit the MT spot more than PLD does. Though PLD is really ahead as OT afaik.
I'd really like to see some real numbers when PLD actually has to use it's utility kit. Using Clemency yields no damage. So does PoA unless you use it when there is some long casting time and you can't target the mob anyway.

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Paladin also has passage of arms for another 100% block mitigation. Though this could come at a dps loss depending on how long it needs to be kept up. Of course dark mind is also a dps loss if the tank buster requires dark arts in addition the advantage of course being that dark mind can be used more frequently.

Also paladin does have more passive mitigation. Doing nothing but keeping bulwark on CD will mitigate a nice number of attacks.

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Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Paladin also has passage of arms for another 100% block mitigation. Though this could come at a dps loss depending on how long it needs to be kept up.

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ya but it's also a block. you can't combine it with sheltron if additional mitigation is needed. they have the same effect. PoA would only out do Sheltron if you take a multihit to the face.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

ya but it's also a block. you can't combine it with sheltron if additional mitigation is needed. they have the same effect. PoA would only out do Sheltron if you take a multihit to the face.

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This is true, we'll have to wait for the exact timings of tank busters to determine if it will come down to this. But this actually puts paladin at a large advantage when it comes to multihit tankbusters. If we had multi hit physical tankbusters requiring layering two mitigations to survive, then paladin is definately at the advantage, dark would need to save two mitigations to achieve the same thing (rampart and shadow wall). And in that case poa and sentinel is still more mitigation. But this is super hypothetical at the moment.

However, such large damage I think the player base will likely just ultimate CD their way through it, and if it's frequent enough to require tank swaps then it will become less about individual mitigation and more about the party utility, and the most utility comes from double paladin lol.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

snip

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I would say DRK beats WAR against Magical, but WAR beats DRK in physical. And yeah, PLD pretty much has the least self-mitigation going into Omega, but as OT, they could take another tank buster via Cover + Sheltron. Giving a MT Intervention and a quick Passage of Arms also seems really strong.

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

I would say DRK beats WAR against Magical, but WAR beats DRK in physical. And yeah, PLD pretty much has the least self-mitigation going into Omega, but as OT, they could take another tank buster via Cover + Sheltron. Giving a MT Intervention and a quick Passage of Arms also seems really strong.

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

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Given that shared tanking responsibilities is much more efficient, I wish they would differentiate tanks by DPS and utility rather than stuffing us into magical/physical mt/ot boxes. This is how PLD got screwed in 3.x and I don't think anyone wants a meta like that 2 expansions in a row.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

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There are a lot of mechanics that we probably aren't aware of yet, but of what we've seen, Meteor is the obvious one. It hits hard enough in normal mode that I'd expect it to be a heavy hitter in savage, and having 100% block while it happens means that you don't have to worry about the follow up auto on the tank.

PLD has double the raid mitigation of the other tanks. In addition to Reprisal every 60 seconds, you have both Veil and PoA on a 120 second recast, letting you have some form of raid mitigation up every 30 seconds from the PLD alone. That's the same amount of mitigation that a DRK/WAR comp has access to combined, in the event than anyone actually bothers to run that comp. Even if you factor out PLD's dps advantage, you're still going to be seeing it locked in based on that massive amount of raid mitigation alone. It's kind of ludicrous.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

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I'm not really worried about DRK's personal mitigation. Most tankbuster sets can be mitigated with the level 50 cooldown kit of Rampart/Sentinel/Hallowed or their equivalents, as long as they're spaced a minimum of 35 seconds apart. Abilities like TBN are actually overkill, and the only potential problem that I can see is multi-hit physical tankbusters. There's no point comparing Shadowwall to something like Vengeance, as Vengeance is just flat out overtuned with Rampart available. The reason why I have an extreme dislike for Living Dead is because there's always at least one point each tier where you can't substitute in anything else, and it can be an unnecessary liability. A7S was one example of a fight where most people went PLD in spite of its dps disadvantage, in part because of the heavy physical damage, but also because Hallowed allowed you to completely ignore your tank for its duration. The tank invincibility moves are completely unbalanced, and have been for the past four years. Even if Hallowed was nerfed so that it only nullifies damage at 1 hp to prevent teams from cheesing stack mechanics, LD would still be inferior because of its arbitrary healer penalty. That's probably the single most longstanding balance issue in tankbuster mitigation.

Self-healing is a bit of a weird one. It's nice, especially if you're doing solo content like PoTD, but it's not mandatory to have this be perfectly balanced. I don't really mind if DRK doesn't have an equivalent to spamming 15k Clemency casts until they're at full health. Accessibility matters much more to me, and actually having some form of self healing out of tank stance, however small (like both PLD and WAR have) would be a good start.

With regards to dps, I feel like a lot of the discrepancy between PLD and the other two tanks was to ensure that PLD didn't get excluded for dps reasons alone. I expect that they were aiming for a marginally higher dps just to be safe, but significantly overshot the mark when players brought out the STR gear. I don't see them keeping both the massive utility buffs and the dps. The WAR/DRK dps balance is in a pretty good place, as long as they dial PLD back a bit. Besides, PLD has always had some fairly major advantages when it came to mitigation, even when they were viewed as less desirable. Perhaps this is an opportunity to properly re-balance it?

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Given that shared tanking responsibilities is much more efficient, I wish they would differentiate tanks by DPS and utility rather than stuffing us into magical/physical mt/ot boxes.

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While I think this is true, I don't see any imbalance currently for the foreseeable future in terms of mitigation and utility. The imbalance lies in DPS and WAR's need for some QoL improvement.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

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I'm not contesting PLD's utility in raid whatsoever. I'm merely pointing out self-mitigation. Passage of Arms does little more than what Sheltron can do, Divine Veil doesn't affect the PLD, etc, etc. It's pretty obvious they're the best equipped in terms of utility though.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

snip

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My expectations at this point are that they will buff drk and not nerf the others, but you seem to suggest/believe otherwise. If PLD's DPS and WAR's cool downs are overtuned/need dialing back, what is the argument for not simply buffing DRK?

Too many people suggest zany ideas SE has given us no precedence for. I don't trust SE to balance anything through nerfs tbh.

Blood Price should have a defensive mitigation added to it.

Sole Survivor should have a MCH Wildfire mechanic change, that compounds damage into healing at its expiration -- It's currently not viable for raid encounters with such a long CD and useless on a boss-only encounter.

Abyssal Drain/Unleash should be re-worked -- There's no sense in having two AoE Enmity abilities that hardly cost more/less than each other.

Shadow Wall -- Compare to Vengeance = 1 min longer CD, Same Reduction, No Additional Effect, Lasts 5s shorter -- How did this fall through the cracks?

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Originally Posted by ChenDynasty

Blood Price should have a defensive mitigation added to it.

Sole Survivor should have a MCH Wildfire mechanic change, that compounds damage into healing at its expiration -- It's currently not viable for raid encounters with such a long CD and useless on a boss-only encounter.

Abyssal Drain/Unleash should be re-worked -- There's no sense in having two AoE Enmity abilities that hardly cost more/less than each other.

Shadow Wall -- Compare to Vengeance = 1 min longer CD, Same Reduction, No Additional Effect, Lasts 5s shorter -- How did this fall through the cracks?

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Blood Price should absolutely have like a -10% damage taken added to it. This would make it a more accurate equivalent to Blood Weapon and help DRK in between tankbusters.

The sole Survivor idea is interesting. I think I would rather see that compounded into a shield instead of healing, simply because the healing would likely be overhealing because of the timing element.

The AD/Unleash bit is the only one I disagree with, since they do have different purposes and one doesn't actually wholly replace the other. I wouldn't mind something piddly like the PVP bind being added to Unleash but these skills are fine and the nerf to Unleash has barely any effect on the job at all in spite of people's complaints. The nerf to Dark Passenger however...

Shadow Wall - total agreement. This skill needs to have something to make it stand out between the other tanks' equivalents. Right now its strictly inferior. And if this was balanced around TBN, they need to dial back TBN so that we are not so excessively over-reliant on it.

By now Dark knight got an inferior kit if compared withe the Paladins one. Ignoring the shared skill we got this situation:

PLD
Sentinel
CD: 180s Reduces damage taken by 40%.
Duration: 10s

Drk
Shadow wall
Cd: 180s Reduces damage taken by 30%.
Duration: 10s




PLD
Cover
Take all damage intended for another party member, suffering only 80% of it.

Drk
No party utility comparable with cover





PLD
Bullwark: Increases block rate by 60%.

DRK
Dark Mind: Reduces magic vulnerability by 15%.
Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside.
Dark Arts Effect: Increases magic vulnerability reduction to 30%
Cost us resources to work full potential, while only lowering magic damage. Block rate now works for both damage





PLD
Hallowed Ground: Renders you impervious to most attacks.

DRK
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, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd.
This is Hilarious. HG plain reduce all damage to 0. No downside,
at the the end of it you are full HP and healthy.


PLD
Sheltron: Blocks the next attack.

Divine Veil:Upon HP recovery via healing magic cast by self or a party member, a protective barrier is cast on all party members within a radius of 15 yalms.
Barrier Effect: Prevents damage up to 10% of your maximum HP

Clemency:Restores target's HP.
Cure Potency: 1200
Additional Effect: Restores to self 50% of HP restored to target if target is a party member

Passage of arms: Increases block rate by 100% and creates a designated area in a cone behind you in which party members will only suffer 85% of all damage inflicted.


Drk
No party or self utility comparable with those




PLD
Intervention: Reduces target party member's damage taken by 10%.
Additional Effect: Increases damage reduction by another 50% of the effect of Rampart or Sentinel if either are active.

Drk
The Blackest NightCreates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.

The only skill ahead in the drk kit. However using it during trash is a huge waste of mana

Didn't mentioned Dark passanger blind effect 'cause the mana cost isn't affordable.

i can deal with a dowside either in the party utility, mitigation or dps. But right now we are behind in all three sides.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

Read the OP fully and you'll realize why TBN doesn't make up for what DRK is missing.

In Susano Ex for instance - In between Stormsplitters, you have literally nothing but TBN to mitigate damage, because Rampart and Shadow Wall must be saved to pair with TBN for Stormsplitter, and other than that you have... Convalescence? Reprisal?

This is even worse if you wanna tank out of Grit and you literally just have your pants down in between TBN casts. Like I said, the over-reliance on TBN in between things like Rampart and Shadow Wall feels awful.

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You don't need to stack Shadow Wall and Rampart to survive Stormsplitter. Just one of them and using TBN along with Reprisal is more than enough to take the hit and then when you are up again for the tank buster just replace Shadow Wall with Rampart along with TBN and Reprisal again. Then just repeat the cycle since Shadow Wall will be off cool down when you are up again to take the hit.

Then the only sort of real CD you need during the fight in between is the AoE magic damage ability which you can use Dark Mind with DA and sometimes you won't even take damage. The rest I still have Anticipation just in case something goes wrong.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

I see a lot of people arguing that it is DRK and PLD that are instalocked, but I tend to agree that unless a group is giving TBN more credit than it honestly deserves, most will take WAR.

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TBN is a skill base ability you got your time it to get gauge back to become your dps which is highly rewarding

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Originally Posted by Janhyua

TBN is a skill base ability you got your time it to get gauge back to become your dps which is highly rewarding

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Yet you only get it at the very max level and Dark Knight still does less damage than the rest, even assuming you use your TBN perfectly, so it's not all that rewarding

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Originally Posted by Janhyua

TBN is a skill base ability you got your time it to get gauge back to become your dps which is highly rewarding

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As someone who parses pretty high in susano/lak... this ability feels like garbage to use. For the most part, to me it's a "well I don't have a defensive and I got a lil mana to spare" button. I rarely use Bloodspiller without DA unless I'm about to cap on blood during blood weapon.
The 400 potency is just a lil better than DA syphon strike and worse than a DA Souleater for the same mana cost essentially. Not only this, it further delays my mana regen from Syphon strike which makes it feel like even more of an ass ability to press. Maybe giving it another effect or more damage and I'd feel like it's worth losing the 140 potency potency of Syphon strike?

Other than that TBN is fine, it's single target and aoe blood usages are lackluster and boring to press.

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Originally Posted by MixZ

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Stormsplitter hits for about 60k unmitigated. In full Vit gear at around 48k HP, TBN is a 9.6k shield. You need a minimum of 4% additional mitigation to survive the tankbuster (assuming that your co-tank provoked mid-cast and you shirked, to ensure that you don't take a follow up auto for an average of 9k extra damage (20k if crit). I feel that Reprisal is a bit wasted here, as it's better for raid damage like Ukehi, but your approach does work, and one tank can handle all of those reprisals on their own.

If you're doing it in STR gear at 36k HP, TBN is a 7.2k shield. You need a minimum of 28% additional mitigation to survive the tankbuster. That's requires SW at the absolute minimum, and it's pretty tight at that. I can see the rationale for stacking Rampart and SW to get to 44% mitigation, if you end up having to take more than one Stormsplitter (with just one, you can LD instead, and use Rampart and SW to soften incoming autos).

I suspect that you're both correct, but Syz is almost certainly talking about a STR scenario, and you're probably talking about a VIT one.

I don't think WAR is in as good of a spot as some people here think but other then that, this seems really spot on and nobody can argue OP is being "toxic" or whatever as an excuse to downplay the criticisms.

I will be spreading this thread around as much as possible. Both tanks are in really bad spots imo right now.

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Originally Posted by Janhyua

TBN is a skill base ability you got your time it to get gauge back to become your dps which is highly rewarding

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Originally Posted by Lyth

snip

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My wording was misconstrued, I mean that you'll use both for Stormsplitters but not at the same time i.e. Rampart/TBN - > SW/TBN - > Rampart/TBN. I've found this to be enough to survive with a 4:1 STR:VIT accessory setup, and HQ level 60 food which is what I usually default to in pugs. (this usually nets just over 40K HP)

A lot of people have said that it sounds like the devs designed this job all the way up to level 69 and then realized the job had its mitigation utterly eviscerated and then decided rushedly to cram all of what it was missing into one ability (TBN). I think a lot of people would prefer a longer cooldown on TBN in exchange for more of our defensive power redistributed elsewhere. I still think Blood Price could use a small defensive effect (-10% damage taken) or something similar, in exchange for TBN being on a 20-30s recast instead.

On an additional unrelated note, someone in another thread mentioned that DAC&S pretty much mandates double-weaving since there is only one GCD in our rotation across which you can weave it (Hard Slash). I can see this being really annoying for players with less than perfect ping. Now, double weaving has been a staple of DRK rotations since its inception, but to have an ability that is practically locked behind the technique feels... idk. Clunky.

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Originally Posted by Deathshiro

As someone who parses pretty high in susano/lak... this ability feels like garbage to use. For the most part, to me it's a "well I don't have a defensive and I got a lil mana to spare" button. I rarely use Bloodspiller without DA unless I'm about to cap on blood during blood weapon.
The 400 potency is just a lil better than DA syphon strike and worse than a DA Souleater for the same mana cost essentially. Not only this, it further delays my mana regen from Syphon strike which makes it feel like even more of an ass ability to press. Maybe giving it another effect or more damage and I'd feel like it's worth losing the 140 potency potency of Syphon strike?

Other than that TBN is fine, it's single target and aoe blood usages are lackluster and boring to press.

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You're severely undervaluing TBN, and your mana management may need a little work, based on limited context clues. You should never have "a little mana to spare sometimes", rather, you should always have the mana to spare a DA or TBN, considering 4800 is the sweet spot for DRKs where you're still doing overall max DPS and are able to respond to C&S coming off CD or baiting a TBN, and not overflow when Delirium comes up for BW.

That said, TBN is a flat DPS positive since Bloodspiller's potency was increased, especially since you can hold the blood you've bought until you can comfortably churn out a DA for it so long as you properly plan ahead to resource dump before TBN'ing, say, Susano's Stormsplitter. If you're using Bloodspiller raw, then sure, it's a loss - but you shouldn't be, unless you severely messed up your gameplay and need to dump blood fast, as wasting blood is even worse.

tl;dr TBN is a great defensive and offensive boon to overall DRK DPS when used and planned around correctly.

Dark passenger and DA quietus will have to be buffed, it's like not even arguable otherwise. Dark passenger is crap both baseline and dark arts, and dark arts quietus is like....Why? The MP you spend on dark arts quietus can be spent on two more abyssal drains for 240 potency as opposed to the 2400 MP to get 50 extra potency on quietus. It's laughable.

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Originally Posted by Mattiux

Drk
The Blackest NightCreates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.

The only skill ahead in the drk kit. However using it during trash is a huge waste of mana

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Also are you for real? TBN used during trash is a waste of mana? It's amazing for trash specifically. You get a sizable HP buffer and either a higher potency aoe (So it's basically a dark arts worth of MP for a big shield + 160 potency) or the shield and a free delirium. This isn't even taking into account the GCD or two that you free up on the healer.

DRK needs some help, but definitely not in the form of blackest night. It's EASILY our best ability, especially now that they buffed bloodspiller to incentivize more usage of it.

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Originally Posted by Praesul

...but definitely not in the form of blackest night. It's EASILY our best ability...

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Yeah... this is kind of the problem. TBN is so good because the rest of our kit is garbage. And you know that SE knows it, because that is specifically why they made it as such. TBN screams "oh crap, we nerfed the living balls out of DRK's mitigation, quick, give it something crazy and top-heavy to even it out!" I'd happily trade a longer recast time on TBN in exchange for Shadow Wall, LD, or DM being buffed. As it is they are relics of 3.x that are aging rapidly and poorly.

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Originally Posted by SyzzleSpark

we nerfed the living balls out of DRK's mitigation

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i guess you are talking about the old reprisal? cause DA dark dance was never a thing for raids. and non of the other skills got nerfed. rampart = shadowskin, shadow wall is the same as before, so is dark mind, conva and living dead. grit is also the same.

and talking about reprisal. you couldn't even use it in some encounters as it required a parry to activate.

Is DRK perfect? hell no! is it as bad as some ppl say? Definitely not.