Issue with TBN

Imo it should have a reward to the risk.
As an example, poping TBN shield could make the next flood/edge free and be a critical strike. that would increase the skill ceiling and reward ppl that make optimal use of TBN.

And also make Delirium, blood weapon and living shadow more engaging skills... they are so lazy design and boring.

I read the OP, and apologize for not reading the remaining 6 pages.
I love trying to find ways to pop TBN. I think what we may need is more of an incentive to use it.

Outside of a Tank Buster, throwing TBN on yourself or another player is never necessary. If I throw a TBN on my healer during raid wide damage, they probably weren't going to die in the first place were going to throw out a heal anyway. I'm creating extra work for myself to no real benefit to the party.

If Dark Arts gave me a damage boost to my next Edge/Flood, or maybe had a reduced mp cost, resulting in me getting an Edge/Flood at a discount. I'd be more inclined to use it. Until then, I'd rather not gamble my dps if my extra work at using TBN wont result in a different outcome.

The one and ONLY problem with TBN is the animation delay.

You don't actually receive the TBN buff until after the animation finishes so there is a window between when you press the button and when you have the shield.

But, that's just a problem with the game as a whole.

Part [1/2]

This is embarassing. World first clear of Eden savage was done with a Paladin and a Dark Knight. This is testament enough to the strength of DRK currently.

Secondly, many detractors of TBN here have ignored simple math arguments about much more effective TBN is compared to other short cool down abilities.

DRK is the only tank with upfront mitigation. Just some very basic examples to show how busted this is in comparison to say ... GNB and Heart of Stone:

*Assume the damage specified is dealt within the duration window of each mitigation and that each tank has 120,000 hp (Which is accurate around 450 item level):

Incoming Damage: 30,000
DRK damage taken: 0
GNB damage taken: 25,500

Incoming Damage: 60,000
DRK damage taken: 30,000
GNB damage taken: 51,000

Incoming Damage: 90,000
DRK damage taken: 60,000
GNB damage taken: 76,500

Incoming Damage: 120,000
DRK damage taken: 90,000
GNB damage taken: 102,000

Incoming Damage: 150,000
DRK damage taken: 120,000
GNB damage taken: 127,500

Incoming Damage: 180,000
DRK damage taken: 150,000
GNB damage taken: 153,000

Incoming Damage: 210,000
DRK damage taken: 180,000
GNB damage taken: 178,500

Notice : By the time heart of stone has mitigated more damage than TBN both tanks are dead nearly two times over and must resort to invulnerability spells to survive.

Even Better : TBN is available every 15 seconds and can be cast that often if needed. Meaning that even if you DID need to soak high volumes of damage for protracted periods of time (say 30 seconds) TBN would still mitigate more damage than comparable abilities.

"But GNB/PLD can stack Rampart with their short cooldown defensive" : Because most standard damage reduction abilities are % based they stack multiplicatively. Meaning if you stack rampart with heart of stone you are only mitigating 32% of incoming damage for that 7 second overlap of the two abilities.

If we redo the earlier calculations with rampart involved:

Incoming Damage: 30,000
DRK damage taken: 0
GNB damage taken: 20,400

Incoming Damage: 60,000
DRK damage taken: 18,000
GNB damage taken: 40,800

Incoming Damage: 90,000
DRK damage taken: 42,000
GNB damage taken: 61,200

Incoming Damage: 120,000
DRK damage taken: 66,000
GNB damage taken: 81,600

Incoming Damage: 150,000
DRK damage taken: 90,000
GNB damage taken: 102,000

Incoming Damage: 180,000
DRK damage taken: 114,000
GNB damage taken: 122,400

Incoming Damage: 210,000
DRK damage taken: 138,000
GNB damage taken: 142,800

[Part 1/2]

[Part 2/2]

Now : TBN with Rampart is even more effective than Heart of Stone with Rampart. And this disregards that you can get TBN to cast twice during Ramparts duration - although it is admittedly rare that you would ever need to cast TBN twice during Rampart.

"TBN is a dps loss" - assuming you properly use TBN and pop it each time (because if you are taking less than 25% of your maximum HP in 7s why do you even need major single target personal defensive) You are losing 0 dps. You spent 3k mana to get a shield and then cast a free EoS instead of directly casting EoS.

"You have to hold 3k MP" - Uhuh, ok. You spend upwards of a hundred thousand mana during a fight. Keep in mind you spend every 3k MP you generate in excess of the first 3000. Pretend for a second that you start with 0 mp in a fight. Yes, the first 3000 MP you generate has to be held back for TBN. But any time you use TBN properly you will get the free EoS for that 3000 mp spent. Any extra mana above that 3000 is freely spent on damage. So if you generate 102,000 mana during a fight you will be able to use 99,000 mana on EoS or TBN that generates an EoS. Worst case you have 3000 mana left over towards the end of the fight that you didn't spend (but actually you can just dump that mana when its clear the boss is going down meaning 0 damage lost).

Concessions:

Shelltron blocks 20% with the current best shields in SHB, which is superior to the 15% of Heart of Stone, but still worse than TBN for any amount of damage you would actually mitigate with a short cooldown defensive rather than an invulnerability. So TBN is superior to Shelltron and can be cast on other players, go figure.

DRK has weaker other abilities. Abyssal drain is pathetic compared to Clemency, Aurora and Equilibrium. Dark Mind is a strictly worse version of similar abilities (like Camouflauge and Thrill of Battle).

Warrior can pull off similar mitigation to the DRK by stacking the likes of vengeance or Nascent Flash with Thrill of Battle (or Equilibrium too for effective HP calculations). Of course the warrior is also a main tank so this makes sense. The caveat here is that warriors cannot use these kinds of mitigation as often.

Barring some sort of small balance tweaks in the future DRK will be outscaled in value by WAR. When critical values on gear increase over the remainder of the expansion WAR will probably do significantly more damage than DRK and become more useful by that point alone.

[Part 2/2]

Look at it this way:

If you use nascent flash, heart of stone or sheltron you’re only benefiting from it.

If you use it “wrong” you may not get as much benefit out of it but worst case scenario you get no mitigation and the skill goes on cooldown (or you wasted gauge in sheltron’s case but gauge isn’t spent on anything better so it’s basically the same). If you use it right you mitigate a lot of damage.

With TBN if you use it “wrong” you don’t get as much benefit and you lose dps, if you use it right you mitigate a lot of damage.

See the problem? There’s no reward over the other tanks for using it right, but there’s extra penalisation for using it “wrong”. It’s a cooldown, using it “wrong” should be penalisation enough, it shouldn’t also punish you on top of that.

I understand wanting unique job mechanics, really I do, as a PLD i was very sad to see cover as our primary way to mitigate busters go with the expansion. But it’s not a unique job mechanic, it’s just extra punishing for no realistic benefit, there are better ways for TBN to be unique that actually make it more of a boon when used right, not just extra punishing when it’s not.

As an example, increase the cooldown to 25 seconds, but make it free of cost, remove the dark arts effect and add “if you break the shield it instantly resets the cooldown”. As a bonus.

The benefit of TBN is that it is strictly and immediately better than all other short cooldown mitigation. This is not a spell with a payoff, rather its a busted spell that reduces your damage if you use it improperly. The proponents of TBN in this thread are saying in one way or another that they (and myself included) would much rather have a busted spell that is more complicated to use than a straight forward spell that is easy to use with less payoff. They also argue that if a player is looking for straight forward, no drawback abilities they should play a different class (like say paladin whose invulnerability is only held back by a long cooldown).

From my point of view the biggest problem of TBN is the 500p punishment, on SB was way better and fair since you only lose 140p, for one unique mechanic that DRK still have and make It overall worse.

Careful use of TBN separates good DRK's from so-so ones. It takes actual thinking to use properly, and those people are rewarded for it. If you use it like any other mitigation tool, it'll be a DPS loss. Use it smart though, and let the darkness flow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Interovegas

The benefit of TBN is that it is strictly and immediately better than all other short cooldown mitigation. This is not a spell with a payoff, rather its a busted spell that reduces your damage if you use it improperly. The proponents of TBN in this thread are saying in one way or another that they (and myself included) would much rather have a busted spell that is more complicated to use than a straight forward spell that is easy to use with less payoff. They also argue that if a player is looking for straight forward, no drawback abilities they should play a different class (like say paladin whose invulnerability is only held back by a long cooldown).

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Yes, it’s better, and in the highest end of content where it’s obvious deficiencies are mercilessly beaten out of it it does fine. But what about the other 99% of content in the game? In dungeons I’ve had bosses use stack mechanics on me and I soloed them with TBN and it still didn’t break, it’s kind of ridiculous.

My point being it doesn’t scale down well. You can argue “if you’re not taking enough damage to break it then it doesn’t matter” but that’s bs. If the other tanks are using their mitigation tools to reduce damage and DRK’s is TOO strong to even use it, then how is it better anymore?

THAT is why I say it needs to be adjusted to be less penalising OR have a scaled back second CD that shares a recast more in line with the other tanks skills to use when you can’t use TBN.