Using The Blackest Night as DPS increase

Ok so I've been going through a Lot of fflogs and DRK pov Clear videos lately and one thing I realised is that many people that definitely arent Bad at playing the Job Seem to be using TBN as a damage boost, using it as much as possible, sometimes even Standing in aoe on purpose.

But I always thought TBN is a small dps loss. Now Im not one of those clever people that do Pages of calculations to find Out what the perfect Rotation is but my thought process was basically this (assuming a GCD is Just 2.5s for simplicity):

If I do a souleater Combo and DA once I have (150 + 250 + 440) / 7.5 = 112 potency per second

If I spend my 2400 MP on TBN however I have (150 + 250 + 300 + 400) / 10 = 110 potency per second

Therefore TBN is a small dps loss right?
Please correct me if Im wrong as I Said im Not a pro Player lol

The math does not work out this way because you aren't factoring in things like opportunity costs from pushing back your rotation when you use bloodspiller. However, the result is the same in a detailed breakdown, TBN is a dps loss when not in grit, but there are exceptions.

TBN, out of grit, is an overall gain if it nets you an extra bloodspiller when used in buff windows like trick attack, embolden, ect, or in phase transitions which are long enough to break your combo (this being a rough rule of thumb as well as there are more conditions on this). This is because 10% of 400 potency is a greater gain than 10% of 140 potency (there is even more detail involved because you are necessarily pushing something out of the trick window but you get the picture). I am will to bet that this is what you are seeing. Dark Knights optimizing at higher percentiles popping TBN for buff windows.

Not a pro myself either, but I hope this helps some.

I totally forgot about buff Windows Like Trick attack in my Initial Post lol, Thanks for the answer

In grit. Always DPS gain.
Out of Grit: greyest of greys. It averages out to a miniscule loss, but has a number of situations it ends up as a gain. If you aren't going for 99% on FFLogs, then use it when it prevents damage. The tiny variance wont make a lick of difference for the average player, but mitigation is mitigation.

Certainly don't take MORE damage to use it unless youre that 98% speedrunning master Drk that knows you can eek out a 1 more under a buff window and end the phase on a soul eater by doing it.

Most of the loss/gain of using it is determined by:
*Will using it prevent you from ending a phase/combo break period with a SE
*Does using/Not using it make you end the fight with a large, unusable amount of blood/MP
*Buff windows

Example:
* Used TBN twice, ended fight on 2nd/middle combo and 40 blood. If you didn't use TBN>BS x2 you would have 2 more GCDs finishing the combo for 10 more blood and 1 gcd to use that natural blood spiller and had 2 more DAs instead. So 2 BS(400+400) vs 2DA(140+140), 1 BS(400), 1SE(300). 800 vs 980.

* But there are also situations where using 1 more TBN>BS will be beneficial. What if you skip a TBN and you end the fight on a Hard slash and 12 blood? Well that blood was useless and you should have traded that last hard slash for a TBN>BS. TBN>BS=400 vs DA+Hard 150+140=290

But the big problem with all that is, you can only make the 'right' choice if you KNOW the fight well enough to predict where you will be at the end of a transition/end of fight.

Which brings us right back around to the 1st comment. If you aren't a 98% speed running drk pushing for 99%, working with a static (reliable buff window timing) that lets you practice a fight and pore over parses and time stamp logs to figure out your optimal rotation so you always optimize what GCD you end phases on, then you WONT be able to optimize TBN.
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TLDR:
So don't worry about it. You wont be able to optimize it on the fly in random situations anyway, so use it when it will mitigate damage and wont compromise your resources (don't use it when blood>50, don't use it if you need the MP for something soon like add phases). You may end up gaining or loosing a couple hundred potency over a 10 min fight but your doing TENS OF THOUSANDS of potency in that same fight. Who cares about a couple hundred either way.

Just as an added thing someone actually mapped out buff windows and using TBN on cooldown if anyone is interested. TBN use on cooldown without grit comes at an 7 pps loss about a 3% loss (again don't use on cooldown is the moral of this story.)

https://tinyurl.com/ycjmqann

The 3% dps lost is probably recovered by healer saving GCD on you. Let say we would gain half a stone IV per TBN, how much do we loose?

How is it with grit btw?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

The 3% dps lost is probably recovered by healer saving GCD on you. Let say we would gain half a stone IV per TBN, how much do we loose?

How is it with grit btw?

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There are issues with the healer GCD "making up" for the 3% loss. Here are my top issues:

1) Looking at speed runners that do not use dark knight, healers still do not need to use GCD heals and have found ways to convert their healing GCDs to damage GCDs without TBN. So what exactly are we gaining?

2) Depends on someone else to do dark knights damage. Paladin uses sheltron and gets a oGCD proc worth 150 potency and mana for extra holy spirits while mitigating, I'm not sure why the independent loner tank who walks a personal path for justice needs to have someone else do their damage for them. The prime place I would want to use it is on tank busters, where Sheltron performs even better in relevant content and gives other bonuses (procs and mana). Why is TBN balanced this way?

3) Only useful when in statics. When I heal tanks going into a cleave/buster I will typically try to oGCD heal them or GCD heal them by precast to get them into a regen zone so that I can continue to dps. If you don't type out your plans on when you will use TBN I will either waste a GCD healing no damage or worse waste an oGCD heal that could have been better allocated else where.

In Grit that would turn out better as I have said in other posts, and Aana points out in their post. Grit is no question, if it will break, use it as it benefits everyone. Of course Grit is a loss compared to no grit on everything including TBN, but thats besides the point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

The 3% dps lost is probably recovered by healer saving GCD on you. Let say we would gain half a stone IV per TBN, how much do we loose?

How is it with grit btw?

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Its always a gain in grit as it (functionally) ignores tank stance penalty so it works almost like inner beast. Always good in tank stance.

The 3% loss is if you used it every 15 sec perpetually in theory world where you can always pop it. If that were the case the healer would love you forever as that's a ton of mitigation over a fight. But the principle is the same. Its a loss unless you know/can predict where youll be much later in the fight.

If you are just shooting in the dark, play the statistically correct choice (its a loss) and don't try to use it when it doesn't make sense for mitigation like standing in fire to pop it. But the other side being, if you can use the mitigation don't let the itty bitty loss dissuade you from being a team player and mitigating damage for an miniscule amount of dps. 3% if you spammed every 15 sec for a 10 min fight. That's 1% loss if you used every 45 sec. Under 1% if you use it once a minute. Using TBN 10 times in a 10 min fight is under 1% DPS loss for mitigating your entire HP pool 2x over (1x if used on someone else).


TLDR:
*Yes, its a dps loss, but it is a VERY small loss and you gain significant mitigation for it.
* You wont even know if it was a DPS gain or loss until the phase/fight ends anyway.(unless your a 99% drk pushing speed run ranking then you already preplanned this)

With those 2 points in mind it gets real simple. Don't be shy about it or avoid it, but don't force it when it doesn't fit. Use it when the mitigation would naturally be beneficial.

Well I tend to use it on cd whenever I know the boss will hit hard enough to break it (like rather easy on shin for instance). In the case something big is coming I tend to delay it for the burst and... Using it on os2 is a pain since this boss stop attacking all the time and has the AS of an asthmatic snail.