Dark Knight follow up thread

If you are using TBN and it's not breaking, we shouldn't blame the skill, we should blame the bad player who used it at the wrong time. A lot of people in this thread who don't know when and how to use a skill.

You should know the fight, you should know when you need to have 3000mp available because something is going to break TBN.

Like, if TBN isn't going to break then why do you even need to use it at that stage. The only time TBN is a dps loss is if a bad player is using it.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

The point is that every other tank can do something similar without using an ability that eats into your dps. It's the same as if heart of stone took ammo or if raw/nascent flash(glint) took a portion of the beast gauge (500 potency loss respectively for the sake of argument). Now imagine if the full value of that ability was not used and you're out the potency.

As it is now, the two jobs mentioned above have it as a gain no matter what. War has a self sustain out of it. Heart of stone is just free. So those jobs get the mitigation at no cost. TBN is neutral at best. It's a simple disadvantage.

All I want is good gameplay to be rewarded. If you jack up, fine, eat the 500 potency loss. But if you do it well then it's a gain and not neutral.. The idea that it's neutral or loss just sucks.

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Do something similar without eating into DPS? Stares in Clemency

The thing is that you get so much more mitigation on TBN than HoS. This is why HoS is free and TBN is not. To really get the healing that would make NF heal as much as what TBN is mitigating, you have to line it up with your hardest hitting skills to get that kind of healing. This makes it more clunky to use than the on demand nature of TBN because if you don't line it up with your big hitting skills then the amount of health you are gaining is mediocre. Furthermore, if it would have killed you anyway then NF isn't going to help. This is admittedly a more uncommon scenario but if you or another party member has 1 or more vuln stacks then it can become a factor.


The gain that you are getting is the TBN shield itself for free not the E/FoS. A Defensive gain may not be enough of a gain to meet your criteria but the fact is that using TBN at the correct time DOES reward good gameplay even though it doesn't reward it the way that you want.

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Originally Posted by Alaray

For most other things, like using it on auto attacks, using it to mitigate raid wides, using it to save a party member, you're punished with a 500 potency lost for a tiny bit of mitigation (since the full shield might not be used in these instances, and a use could be small but could save someone's life who might be sitting at 2k HP). Which, in the grand scheme of healing mapping, won't be impactful enough for your healers in terms of their damage gained to make up for the damage lost.

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If you are using TBN on autos/raid wides then you deserve to be punished for doing so. You have Rampart for autos and you have Dark Missionary for Raid Wides. TBN isn't meant to be used for those scenarios all willy nilly unless you're sure that it'll pop, like if your group took Frost rune for extra DPS and you TBN the MT for the following unavoidable AOE. Using TBN to save someone not only saved your Healer a GCD/MP to rez the person but also saved that person's GCDs from being wasted on rezing and getting into the fight. How is the sacrifice of your DPS not worth the gain of DPS from your healer and whomever you saved? It is just like using Clemency on another person to save them. It isn't optimal and they're sacrificing DPS but is this example really all that different? I can't say that I've ever seen someone tell the Pld that they shouldn't use Clemency in this way because, in the grand scheme of healing mapping, (it) won't be impactful enough for your healers in terms of their damage gained to make up for the damage lost.

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

If you are using TBN and it's not breaking, we shouldn't blame the skill, we should blame the bad player who used it at the wrong time. A lot of people in this thread who don't know when and how to use a skill.

You should know the fight, you should know when you need to have 3000mp available because something is going to break TBN.

Like, if TBN isn't going to break then why do you even need to use it at that stage. The only time TBN is a dps loss is if a bad player is using it.

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So you never missed a TBN in your life?

SE should consider reducing MP cost of all skills to 2500 instead of 3000 and make all MP ticks of delirium restor 600 mp like all other MP restoration skills do.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

SE should consider reducing MP cost of all skills to 2500 instead of 3000 and make all MP ticks of delirium restor 600 mp like all other MP restoration skills do.

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Now these are some changes that I can really get behind.

TBN is great in concept but has some flaws. The punishment is too much for a missclick, no other tank gets punished so hard as DRK, maybe a WAR using infuriate during Inner release is a second close but that is a job mechanic mistake and not a timing mistake.

As you get stronger, it is harder to pop TBN, your iLV increases and the encounters become more unpredictable, some (me included) like to open with TBN to get maximum profit from blood weapon from the very first GCD on the fight, now the bosses autos are enough to pop TBN but in 5.1 maybe will not be anymore...

I end up finding this kind of thought process a bit strange. When we are over geared for content and it becomes a joke then just don't use TBN. Use the MP for E/FoS. At that point we will be so over geared that we won't be needing to use TBN.

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Originally Posted by Sancho_Nyanta

I end up finding this kind of thought process a bit strange. When we are over geared for content and it becomes a joke then just don't use TBN. Use the MP for E/FoS. At that point we will be so over geared that we won't be needing to use TBN.

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We may not "need" it but it's defense is still something we would benefit from and considering that no other tank potentially loses their frequent use defensive ability due to basic gear/stat progression, it is an issue that needs to be considered.

I don't support removing the MP cost and scrapping Dark Arts like others are calling for but a solution to avoid the ever moving target that gear progression and having TBN break frequently enough creates needs a solution and preferably one that is unaffected by stat scaling.

Increasing the duration is a fix but only a band-aid one. It will either need to keep getting extended as we gear up, be set so long that it will always break no matter what, or it will work fine until we hit a stat threshold and then it doesn't.

I know I mentioned this in a different thread, but that is why I proposed having a small duration increase but then also allowing the DRK to break the shield themselves by pressing TBN again while the shield is still active. That keeps the aspect of not being able to get the full defensive benefit of the shield since it would get broken before all it's HP was exhausted but potentially removes the "loss" aspect as long as the DRK breaks it in time. This actually maintains some level of interactivity and skill to not losing the DA proc moreso than just increasing the duration to the point where it is guaranteed to break. It also is a safeguard against stat scaling since the DRK is in control of it breaking, only allowing them as much defense as what can be fit in the duration. This maintains the strength of the shield in current/relevant content but scales it back similar to the way % mitigation naturally scales back with older content that we out-gear, keeping it more in-line with the other tank frequent use defensives.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

When you start to advocate for LD people stop listening. It makes you sound horribly biased. It's a shit ability and every objective player knows it. When pre planned, short of a whm in the team, I die every use of it on Titania ex tethers and fae light.

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What I did was describe LD's qualities in an objective manner. It has a longer duration and has one of the shorter cooldowns as far as invulnerabilities are concerned. There just so happens to be an encounter where both of those qualities are taken advantage of. LD is what it is, and that's what good players understand.

Considering I've been using LD just fine and with everyday run of the mill pugs on crystal datacenter PF, I don't think the skill is the reason you keep dying. Besides, as things stand WHM is part of the meta, so LD requiring a bene appears to be a non-issue at the moment, and even if that wasn't the case, healers were getting along just fine all throughout HW when the meta was SCH+AST. Neither had bene yet still dealt with LD just fine.

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

If you are using TBN and it's not breaking, we shouldn't blame the skill, we should blame the bad player who used it at the wrong time. A lot of people in this thread who don't know when and how to use a skill.

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And when there's literally no point in the instance capable of dealing 25% of the DRK's HP in 7 seconds short of the DRK jumping into avoidable AoEs?

Maybe change TBN to:
Cooldown 15 secs
Merges your shadow with the target, causing your shadow to take up to 25% of the damage taken for the next 7 seconds. Damage taken will cause mp to drain at a rate of 1mp pt for every 10 damage taken. (Well whatever ratio sets 3k mp to an equivalent amount of hp the shield would provide at lvl 80. Have the shield's mp to hp ratio scale according to some stat, perhaps max hp. Could even do flat ilvl, just something to ensure it keeps up)
Once the effect ends or the limit is reached, your shadow retreats back into you and cause your next edge/flood to deal extra damage according to how much was absorbed. Once again another ratio of x to y.
This way you still have to manage your MP to have your tankbuster mitigation up, if you pop it with less than 3k mp it might not absorb enough to save you. But now when you pop it it's going to be dps neutral no matter what, if it absorbs nothing it cost you nothing, if it absorbs only 10% of max damage, than you only spent a portion of your mana, not the whole 3k, and you still get a powered up flood or edge out of it, just not as strong as if the shield broke.
Later thought: Possibly have the damage bonus from the TBN's stack, so the DRK could game the buff a bit, building up to a larger edge/flood for priority situations. This would make maintaining darkside an actual thing, since you would want to let off the empowered edge/flood while still under the 10% buff from darkside, but would drop APM a bunch since you'd purposefully hold of on edge/flood in certain situations, and drk already feels boring in the rotation anyways.

I'm not quite sure what you are insinuating by saying the skill isn't the reason I died... I popped it in between first fae light and second then went to 1 hp before the third hit... Check it worked. Oh but the healers couldn't save without beni. Same with the tethers. So what about that did I not do right?
Did I not use enough skills to heal myself up? AD with its 200 pot and SE at 300 pot when you finally get to it. Not going to do it. Death.
Did I not use any of my other healing abilities to help the heal myself? Nope, because I don't have anything else. Dead again.
Did I not take full advantage of a life steal(or some other) mechanic activated by walking dead to assist in healing myself. Nope, it doesn't exist. Still dead.
So if there's nothing in the DRK kit that allows me to help and I'm left with praying then I guess you're wrong and the ability killed me.

I'm glad you've come across good pugs on crystal datacenter but you're just spreading false info when you say this is a good invul.

As far as the longer duration - it depends. You have 9 seconds to go to 1 hp. After that you truly have 9 seconds to receive healing equal to your max hp. When is that point reached? No one knows until WD goes away. That's problem number 1. So let's say you and your whm time this perfectly - at max 18 to 19 seconds. Really that's just 9 seconds of time you can't die, not time that you don't take damage, bc almost every gain your non whm healers make is being wiped away by autos so even if you do live from WD you may die anyway depending on where the next follow up attack is. But hey, you managed to shave 8-10 seconds of its next recast. Great! Worst case scenario is that you don't cut much time off the next cd usage because it wasn't feasible or some other reason. Then you go down to 1 and you get beni right away and you got 1-2 seconds of "can't die" before you get killed by the next leg of a multi hit TB. It is a healer CD pit and not a true tank CD. Useless outside of group content. Completely depending on healers to make this ability ... Work.

There is no comparison to the other tank CDs as a stand alone or when you look at how the kit backs up that ability. You're being anything but objective if saying LD doesnt need a rework.


Side note: saying that whm is in the meta now, therefore a rework of living dead is not necessary, is a weak sauce excuse for devs to be lazy.

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Originally Posted by Sancho_Nyanta

Do something similar without eating into DPS? Stares in Clemency

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Nice try. Clemency is a self sustain and if you wanted to compare to the DRK kit it would be AD. A fair comparison to TBN would be Shelton. I don't have pld leveled but last I check Shelton was off the gauge (like all of their defensive utilities which have cost) and damage off mp, except clemency which I imagine is why you used it as a stand in for the false comparison. Besides, clemency has been a dps loss for a long while in most circumstances and is not used outside of solo content with rare exception. It's a side note that the pld isn't built around clemency the way DRK is built around TBN as a core feature so it's a poor comparison for that reason as well.

I would take the free ability over the defensive cd tied to your damage resource. The number of times hos won't save you but TBN will is tiny. In those cases you will more than likely invul if you have it up or move your cd map around. Generally though it's all going to do the same except one is free (ergo a dps gain bc it's not tied to your damage) and the other in not free and dps neutral at its best and a loss if the shield fails to pop.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

The whole "TBN should not be tied to MP and DPS" argument has only really become a thing since Xenosys Vex's post 5.0 release tank video. I don't recall ever seeing this sentiment before then and now it is all over the place :p



The complication with making DA use a straight gain, such as giving Edge/Shadow a potency boost when used through DA, is that it then in turn increases the potential loss if TBN doesn't break. By increasing the potential gain, you increase the potential loss since they are not separate factors. It also then leaves the foundational problem of the shield potentially not breaking unresolved. While doing something like making DA a gain seems at first glance like a good idea, it potentially just makes the problem worse or at best, more divisive.

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Regarding xenosysVex's vid yeah, it's Fair, but does that make it any less of a good point?

I never argued for more of a loss to the way TBN is set up now. Currently it's a loss, or neutral. In addition to how it's currently built make it refund 3000 mp when it pops. Good play is rewarded, bad play is punished. And if you don't think it'll pop, don't use it.

The other tanks are brain dead. Don't any of you want some job that has a higher skill ceiling and lower floor?

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Originally Posted by Danelo

Regarding xenosysVex's vid yeah, it's Fair, but does that make it any less of a good point?

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The point of Xeno was also that making TBN a skill that actually rewards you for good use would also make DRK skill ceiling much higher...but he somehow decided that it would be a problem, which I don't understand why. Let's also remember that, before ShB, breaking TBN did reward with Blood, which, depending on the fight, could be a clear DPS gain instead of being neutral at best.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

Don't any of you want some job that has a higher skill ceiling and lower floor?

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When you have 80 levels to learn how to play your job, I think it should be expected that you do more that rolling you head on the keyboard to have good results.

All the streamlining make the game more and more boring to play, in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Danelo

Nice try.

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In the post I was responding to, you had said that all the tanks could do something similar when someone was talking about the amount of mitigation that TBN brings. My point was that Clemency is the only other skill from all the tank skills that is able to deal with as much damage and is as flexible as TBN. That said if you want to consider self sustain to be in a different category all together, then allow me to prove that NO tank is capable of replicating what TBN brings to the table.

At current ilevel, we are able to have around 123k for max HP making TBN around 30,750. All other comparable skills are forms of % based mitigation and come in 5 different % levels from 10% to 35%. Looking at a one on one comparison, with the 35% example (Intervention + Rampart + Sentinel) you'd have to take 88k or more in damage by any number of hits across Intervention's duration to equal the mitigation of TBN. Even worse is that this goes up exponentially as the % goes down. For a 30% mitigation to match TBN you'd have to take around 100k in damage. Anything 20% or lower won't even matter as once you match TBN the remaining damage will kill you anyway.

Further more, assuming that my understanding of how TBN interacts with % based mitigation is correct, then there is no reduction from stacking TBN with those skills. So if used with Shadow Wall, I get the full 30% off of the top and then TBN absorbs what it can of the remaining damage.

So what tank is able to do ANYTHING like this? You want a free WEAKER shield because you don't want to risk anything for something that strong? Even worse is that, in making it free, you'd make us EVEN MORE like War than what we already are.

BTW: yes I know that technically Intervention + Rampart + Sentinel is more than one skill being used but the max % for Intervention is what I am comparing. The player getting Intervention is not using Rampart nor Sentinel.

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Originally Posted by Inuk9

So you never missed a TBN in your life?

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Nope, not saying that. Nobody is perfect, but we aren't talking about missing TBN. I know when to use TBN, if I miss it because I've made a mistake then I need to improve my timings.

We are talking about people who are using TBN willy nilly and then complaining about it not breaking.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And when there's literally no point in the instance capable of dealing 25% of the DRK's HP in 7 seconds short of the DRK jumping into avoidable AoEs?

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Well if that's the case, then you don't need to use TBN and should spend that MP on Flood or Edge.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

The point of Xeno was also that making TBN a skill that actually rewards you for good use would also make DRK skill ceiling much higher...but he somehow decided that it would be a problem, which I don't understand why. Let's also remember that, before ShB, breaking TBN did reward with Blood, which, depending on the fight, could be a clear DPS gain instead of being neutral at best.

When you have 80 levels to learn how to play your job, I think it should be expected that you do more that rolling you head on the keyboard to have good results.

All the streamlining make the game more and more boring to play, in my opinion.

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I get that xeno didn't think devs would do it bc it would allow for a dps gain, instead of neutral, when used optimally. And I understand that. But the second point was that it shouldn't be tied to a dps resource. That's a difficult think for fans of a resource management style tank to understand. I agree with xeno regarding the current build bc the resources to build mp back up have been decreased. So there has to be some give someplace.

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Originally Posted by Sancho_Nyanta

In the post I was responding to, you had said that all the tanks could do something similar when someone was talking about the amount of mitigation that TBN brings. My point was that Clemency is the only other skill from all the tank skills that is able to deal with as much damage and is as flexible as TBN. That said if you want to consider self sustain to be in a different category all together, then allow me to prove that NO tank is capable of replicating what TBN brings to the table.

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I may be wrong but I could swear I heard TBN is front loaded in the damage calculation to aid in it popping. But that's not really my issue. Any monkey can throw up TBN on yourself or mt against a raidwide or TB to get it to pop. My biggest problem is that when mp regain resources were plentiful it was not a big deal but now the best we have is BW on a 60 sec cd timer. So if you're pushing it to find where you can get it to pop on autos it becomes punishing when resource gain abilities aren't as good as they, in the past, have been but the cost aspect has stayed the same (cost 600 mp more from SB). It's a core feature of the class. Everything else is meh. This is where you're gains should be made but it's entirely neutral at best.

I'm getting the impression I'm entirely by myself on this and that's okay. I'm just wanting that reward for risk not neutral for risk.

I'm not saying TBN isn't powerful. I'm also not huge on the math but it seems to me that as the hits get bigger the % damage reduction CDs will become more powerful up to the point you die no matter what. Comparatively TBN, unless hp scales up as time goes by, will be weaker over the course of the expansion. Again, that's my understanding, could be wrong. I'm not putting TBN into direct competition with rampart, vengeance and the like. I'm comparing it to raw/nascent flash, hos, and Shelton. No one can deny that TBN is powerful. I'm just looking for more engaging gameplay with a reward for squeezing out every opportunity to mitigate and do dps. But if I'm taking a risk for neutral I might as well hold out for eos and that's boring and discouraging gameplay to me by comparison to what I've suggested.

TBH I haven't tested myself as to whether or not it is front loaded or not. This was just something I was told and why I prefaced it with saying if my understanding was correct.

The thing is that you can't just use it like some knuckle-dragger. Take the unavoidable AOE after Frot rune in Titania. If your party doesn't stack for Frost rune and have the vuln stack then TBN won't pop for this. Testing for these kinds of things and finding when I can and can't use it effectively is the thing I'm finding engaging about it because our resources are much tighter. In SB if it did or didn't pop, I wouldn't really care just b/c resources were so plentiful and it wasn't much of a defensive or offensive gain. Now it is a massive defensive gain while being a offensive neutral. The issue is that people want it to be both an offensive and defensive gain.

As far as the math goes it isn't that difficult. The max damage that you have to take to compare to TBN is just "(max hp)*.25/%" where % is the % of the CD you are comparing. This is a flat amount regardless of timing, number of hits, or when TBN pops. Like taking 100k dmg over 5 hits (so 20k per hit). TBN pops on the 2nd hit (using my 30.7k example) and you take the remaining 3 hits raw. If you compare this to say Sheltron (which is currently blocking for 20%), you'll have all 5 hits mitigated but the overall result will be less mitigation because:
Damage Taken:
TBN-> 100k - 30.7k = 69.3k
Vs
Sheltron-> 100k * 20% = 80k

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Originally Posted by Sancho_Nyanta

TBH I haven't tested myself as to whether or not it is front loaded or not. This was just something I was told and why I prefaced it with saying if my understanding was correct.

The thing is that you can't just use it like some knuckle-dragger. Take the unavoidable AOE after Frot rune in Titania. If your party doesn't stack for Frost rune and have the vuln stack then TBN won't pop for this. Testing for these kinds of things and finding when I can and can't use it effectively is the thing I'm finding engaging about it because our resources are much tighter. In SB if it did or didn't pop, I wouldn't really care just b/c resources were so plentiful and it wasn't much of a defensive or offensive gain. Now it is a massive defensive gain while being a offensive neutral. The issue is that people want it to be both an offensive and defensive gain.

As far as the math goes it isn't that difficult. The max damage that you have to take to compare to TBN is just "(max hp)*.25/%" where % is the % of the CD you are comparing. This is a flat amount regardless of timing, number of hits, or when TBN pops. Like taking 100k dmg over 5 hits (so 20k per hit). TBN pops on the 2nd hit (using my 30.7k example) and you take the remaining 3 hits raw. If you compare this to say Sheltron (which is currently blocking for 20%), you'll have all 5 hits mitigated but the overall result will be less mitigation because:
Damage Taken:
TBN-> 100k - 30.7k = 69.3k
Vs
Sheltron-> 100k * 20% = 80k

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I believe you are supposed to use the skills you mentioned with another skill that has a longer recast, due to how on demand Sheltron, The Blackest Night, Heart of Stone, and Raw Intuition/Nascent Flash.

And the only reason why Nascent Flash and Raw Intuition share a cooldown is because the devs didn't want players to have stack 2 on demand cooldowns at the same time with a cooldown that has a longer recast, something players hated before on WAR with Unchained and Inner Release...

Of course then again tanking in FF14 is all about stretching out your cooldowns for tankbusters...

I'm playing DRK casually for role quest but delirium just seems bad. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I use it and just spam bloodspiller over and over. I would have preferred delirium just remove mp cost of Edge/Flood of Darkness so i could weave them in between weapon skill combos.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

I'm playing DRK casually for role quest but delirium just seems bad. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I use it and just spam bloodspiller over and over. I would have preferred delirium just remove mp cost of Edge/Flood of Darkness so i could weave them in between weapon skill combos.

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nope, you are not doing it wrong, is use delirium and land 5 bloodspillers and get 1000 mp, nothing more nothing less.

So I have an FC leader that is really pushing their luck with their terrible dark knight jokes(the call dark knight "dork knight") and it just further proves that dark knight really needs buffs and a rework and I would rather sacrifice content for DRK rework this early in the expansion... it's just that bad(and before anybody DRK or the jokes, I say both)

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Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

Well if that's the case, then you don't need to use TBN and should spend that MP on Flood or Edge.

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It's not a matter of A vs. B. It's a matter of A was free, and now it's not, and thus you have only B. You're not newly trading out TBNs for EoS/FoS. You're just no longer getting viable access to your on-demand mitigation skill.