DRK + War

Lots of talk about DRK being the weakest of the 3 tanks.
But havn't seen a ton of discussion about combos and what the benefits of each are.

Having a DRK+War gives you access to Storm's Eye and Reprisal debuff.

While Reprisal isn't always up, it can be up quite a bit.

Apparently they stack, 20% reduced boss damage is nothing to scoff at.

Having a PLD would not give you this, just some food for thought.

PLD's RoH combo decreases STR which reduces physical damage and it too stacks with SE and can easily maintain a 100% uptime. In many if not most fights, the majority of damage is physical so the RoH debuff plus the SE debuff is also nothing to scoff at.

What Reprisal really should function like is a weaker defensive CD that has the extra benefit of raid/party support since it affects damage done and therefore boosts the defense of the entire group. For that to happen so that it can be reliably and strategically used it needs to have the parry stipulation removed from it.

The majority of damage is physical in most fights?

You lost me there. If most of the hard fights did mostly physical damage there wouldn't be such a huge demand for dragon kick from monk in raiding. The most devastating moves in this game are magic based.

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Originally Posted by Dante_V

The majority of damage is physical in most fights?

You lost me there. If most of the hard fights did mostly physical damage there wouldn't be such a huge demand for dragon kick from monk in raiding. The most devastating moves in this game are magic based.

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Dragon Kick being wanted for a few devastating magic attacks doesn't equate to most of the attacks being magic damage, though. Auto-attacks are typically physical. The majority of tank busters are physical. There are exceptions of course (Ramuh's autoattacks, Akh Morn) but most of the damage in raids thus far has been physical.

A Divine Veil shield will probably reduce more damage from a raidwide magic attack than Reprisal, plus you're not guaranteed to have Reprisal for them all. Good luck putting it up before Nerve Gas in T11.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Dragon Kick being wanted for a few devastating magic attacks doesn't equate to most of the attacks being magic damage, though. Auto-attacks are typically physical. The majority of tank busters are physical. There are exceptions of course (Ramuh's autoattacks, Akh Morn) but most of the damage in raids thus far has been physical.

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I didn't say most of the attacks were magic, I said "The majority of damage is magical", huge difference. and I'm talking all damage incurred across the raid, not just the tank. I could post a list of the entire boss rotation for the 4 final coil bosses in this thread a label the damage attacks by type if you want but pound for pound most of the damage incurred across the entire raid is indeed magical making dragon kick way more useful than pallys STR reduction. Auto attacks and tank busters (which sometimes are magical also) are only a percentage of the TOTAL damage taken of the entire raid and the importance of mitigating that damage shouldn't be denied.

The fact of the matter is that the int buff reduces total raid damage to a larger degree then the str debuff as most of the total damage across the entire raid is magic. That doesn't mean the STR debuff is useless, it just means an INT debuff is a greater utility.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

PLD's RoH combo decreases STR which reduces physical damage and it too stacks with SE and can easily maintain a 100% uptime. In many if not most fights, the majority of damage is physical so the RoH debuff plus the SE debuff is also nothing to scoff at.

What Reprisal really should function like is a weaker defensive CD that has the extra benefit of raid/party support since it affects damage done and therefore boosts the defense of the entire group. For that to happen so that it can be reliably and strategically used it needs to have the parry stipulation removed from it.

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Str down is FAR less damage mitigation than 10% all damage reduced. And on top of that the DRK is bringing 10% int down. So really that's a wash.

Bringing a DRK with a WAR specifically to abuse the 20% reduced damage is something that should be explored as a good reason to bring a DRK.

My static intends on Drk MT and War OT Alexander. We're hoping this to be a high dps total, as well as the benefit you mention.

Personally I want to have a DRK in my static raid lead also agree but the struggle is finding a good one on a server as small as mine

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

PLD's RoH combo decreases STR which reduces physical damage and it too stacks with SE and can easily maintain a 100% uptime. In many if not most fights, the majority of damage is physical so the RoH debuff plus the SE debuff is also nothing to scoff at.

What Reprisal really should function like is a weaker defensive CD that has the extra benefit of raid/party support since it affects damage done and therefore boosts the defense of the entire group. For that to happen so that it can be reliably and strategically used it needs to have the parry stipulation removed from it.

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Reprisal should be a Shield Swipe clone but oGCD like it is currently and with just the enmity and not the pacification.

Dark Dance should be a parry version of Sheltron.

Delirium should be Dark Arts-able to do STR down instead of INT down.

But yeah Rage of Halone + Storm's Eye is 100% more reliable than Reprisal + Storm's Eye in it's present state.

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Originally Posted by MythToken

Str down is FAR less damage mitigation than 10% all damage reduced. And on top of that the DRK is bringing 10% int down. So really that's a wash.

Bringing a DRK with a WAR specifically to abuse the 20% reduced damage is something that should be explored as a good reason to bring a DRK.

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Yes, a flat % damage reduction is better than a % strength reduction which will only affect physical damage. However you are glossing over a point I made in the quoted post as well as something that needs to be considered if comparing the two. RoH can be easily maintained 100% of the time while Reprisal at best could be maintained 67% of the time with a 20 second duration and 30 second cooldown and that is assuming that you are consistently getting parry to proc as the cooldown is expiring which is not necessarily going to happen.

Point being, Reprisal is not way better than RoH both functionally and due to its unreliable nature and that is where the issue that many people have with that ability, that it is unreliable.

Lets assume 50% uptime that's 5% reduced damage raidwide on the boss.

Reprisal debuff is indeed more powerful when looked in context. As I am not comparing it skill by skill, but rather class by class.
Since DRK has int down that pretty much = str down.

What does PLD have that compares to Reprisal in terms of debuffs? He doesn't. That is why he has better self mitigation skills.
Reprisal is not a skill that should be "relied" upon for big hits. It is just a way to lower the overall damage output your raid has to deal with.

I do believe top tier groups will prob stick with PLD/War for obvious reasons, and PLD being clearly the safest tank.

But a 5% less raid damage, and 5% more tank dps (just ballparking) are some reasons that WAR/DRK might be just as viable a combo and in some cases a better combo once players get higher in ilvl.

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Originally Posted by MythToken

Reprisal is not a skill that should be "relied" upon for big hits. It is just a way to lower the overall damage output your raid has to deal with.

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If you're using Reprisal for aoe damage reduction on the party, PLD has divine vile. So unless it's something that occurs on a frequent basis...then your reasoning for taking a DRK over PLD is kinda pointless.

Regardless though, I think people should just play the tank they like and a group will eventually take ya. Because having played DRK to 50 so far, it seems to be a pretty solid tank. Just doesn't bring anything original and can replace a monk's INT down. Maybe a group could take their monk and put a DRG in it's place instead to increase the up time on that new crit buff....and the drk can take over the INT down job....

Divine Veil doesn't hold a candle to 5% reduced damage through the entire encounter of a fight.

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Originally Posted by MythToken

Divine Veil doesn't hold a candle to 5% reduced damage through the entire encounter of a fight.

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What you're suggesting it for, it does. Unless the fight is doing raid damage consistently.

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Originally Posted by Seku

What you're suggesting it for, it does. Unless the fight is doing raid damage consistently.

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Divine Veil is 2 minutes and 30s of Cooldown. Let us be serious here.
Paladin in general lacks low CD mitigation, if it isn't their shield or Shelltron they commit largely in time to mitigate damage.
Which has been one of the 2.1 Warriors hall-marks in that Inner Beast is a frequently available tool.

As far as Reprisal vs Divine Veil goes despite being quite a bit of a mis-match. DV is a 1 and done, if there are more frequent hits on the party it becomes less significant outside of dealing with a specific hit. Over the course of its CD is like what 2% mitigation? Its there for specific hits, throughout its lifetime however its meagre compared to Reprisal or storms path.

Divine veil is nowhere near 10% reduced damage.

And reprisal is a lot more available than people are making it out to be.

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Originally Posted by MythToken

Str down is FAR less damage mitigation than 10% all damage reduced. And on top of that the DRK is bringing 10% int down. So really that's a wash.

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I don't know about *FAR* less damage mitigation. For instance, lets take WAR's berserk. This raises attack power (not all damage) by 50%. In practice, this tends to equate to around a 40% damage increase. So it's safe to assume attack power (STR) will account for something like 80% of the outgoing damage (very roughly). By that assumption, you can probably guesstimate ROH's effect at around 8%.

So 8% physical reduction all the time vs. 10% all reduction at MOST 67% of the time (good luck with that), whose availability can be influenced (dark dance) but is ultimately not 100% reliable to be up when you want it. I'd personally go with RoH when you're worried about physical attacks.

Reprisal can be a good choice vs. bosses you can parry when you're worried about raid wide magical attacks, as it stacks with SP and delerium/DK. Course it also depends on the boss attacking fast enough so it's likely that it will proc, and that you can anticipate the attack well enough that you can ensure reprisal is up in time. But that's really the only way that it outshines RoH.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

PLD's RoH combo decreases STR which reduces physical damage and it too stacks with SE and can easily maintain a 100% uptime. In many if not most fights, the majority of damage is physical so the RoH debuff plus the SE debuff is also nothing to scoff at.

What Reprisal really should function like is a weaker defensive CD that has the extra benefit of raid/party support since it affects damage done and therefore boosts the defense of the entire group. For that to happen so that it can be reliably and strategically used it needs to have the parry stipulation removed from it.

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-10% STR is nowhere NEAR as potent as -10% Damage. I mean, they aren't even in the same galaxy as far as effectiveness. -10% damage is far, far more effective.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

-10% STR is nowhere NEAR as potent as -10% Damage. I mean, they aren't even in the same galaxy as far as effectiveness. -10% damage is far, far more effective.

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if you actually cared to research this, a quick test on just about any Physical attacking mob can show you that -10% Strength is roughly 8% physical damage reduction. so that's 8% reduction on all Physical attacks that is available 100% of the fight. Reprisal has no such uptime.

so, no. Reprisal is not "far more effective" than Halone's debuff on Physical attacks.

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Originally Posted by theamato

if you actually cared to research this, a quick test on just about any Physical attacking mob can show you that -10% Strength is roughly 8% physical damage reduction. so that's 8% reduction on all Physical attacks that is available 100% of the fight. Reprisal has no such uptime.

so, no. Reprisal is not "far more effective" than Halone's debuff on Physical attacks.

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I'd like to see a link to how those calculations are done. Because increasing your character's STR by 10% does not increase damage by 8%. So unless monsters use a different system...

Furthermore, even if that's true, that's only physical damage it's reducing, not magic. Reprisal does both.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan94

I'd like to see a link to how those calculations are done. Because increasing your character's STR by 10% does not increase damage by 8%. So unless monsters use a different system...

Furthermore, even if that's true, that's only physical damage it's reducing, not magic. Reprisal does both.

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uhh, you go up to a physical attacking mob, turn your back (so no Parry or Block), and let it hit you with AAs.

then you go up to the same mob, apply Halone, and let it hit you with AAs. with your back turned.

voila, results. repeat until you have a comfortable sample size.

as for Reprisal, it has far less uptime than Halone (67% if you Parry at the first possible downtime moment). it's good but it cannot be relied on like 100% mitigation.

What no one seems to bring up here, and is of utmost importance in a discussion such as this, is the Golden Rule of tanking. Repeat after me:
Spikes kill tanks!
Nothing else. Tanks do not die to autoattacks or steady boss damage. Unless the boss has powerful repeating physical cleave or exclusively physical tank busters RoH str debuff does not compete on the comparison.
It all boils down to what kind of damage the predictable spikes deal/what is the raid damage made up (in most cases this is magical)/does your setup have a MNK. I am MT of our static, and bringing up my DRK to use both PLD and DRK maintank whichever fits better the encounter at hand. Also our static does not sport a MNK.
Dark Knight definitely has the tools and the potential is there.

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Originally Posted by Hundred

Random information that I already know

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Your first paragraph has nothing to do with anything I've said or argued against.

Second, your second paragraph just repeated what I said, with some extra useless information I wasn't even debating, aka the storms path vs DV.

So I don't even know why you're responding to me as you just agreed to the very thing I just said

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Originally Posted by Hundred

if there are more frequent hits on the party it becomes less significant

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Originally Posted by Seku

What you're suggesting it for, it does. Unless the fight is doing raid damage consistently.

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Now back on topic. Even if reprisal was something to be use to prevent 10% damage on the raid, these actions normally only occur during certain times in a fight. It makes it unreliable. Unlike warriors damage reduction ability, it cannot simply be put up at will or timed.

I personally think too many people are comparing DRK to the other tanks, but really should be comparing it to what ground it already covers and if it can be switched out. Aka take the monk out of the party and replace it with a DPS that has better raid utility. Doing this you've got a tank that can still keep up the INT down and deal pretty good damage (seen parses with 900 dps, not sure now since they took a hit) and can allow for another party member to get in there to increase over all damage.

Example: Double ninja = 20 seconds of vulnerability and 2x goad.
Double Drg = 40 seconds(need to check source) of critical rate up.

Having these spread through out the party would increase damage quite a bit, while still maintaining the INT down, through DRK, that a monk previously would have brought to the table.

That or just play the job you want because everyone knows that SE is going throw a Echo buffs into the raids, which is when a majority of the player base does things that matter, and optimizing won't matter that much.

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Originally Posted by Seku

snip.

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I do wonder what MNK will be given to remain relevant. So far the only valid reason I've ever seen for including a DRK over another tank is "So you dont have to take a monk and can take a dps that has more utility". In other words, MNK is in DRGs position from ARR of not bringing anything.

And yes, the only reason to bring a DRK is so you don't have to bring a MNK. No amount of whining about how "great" reprisal is will change that. Reprisal is a ok move that can only be used while MT and is overwhelmingly un-reliable to the point where it cant be used as a reasoning for bringing a DRK. And reprisal is the only unique thing the class brings.

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Originally Posted by Tila

I do wonder what MNK will be given to remain relevant. So far the only valid reason I've ever seen for including a DRK over another tank is "So you dont have to take a monk and can take a dps that has more utility". In other words, MNK is in DRGs position from ARR of not bringing anything.

And yes, the only reason to bring a DRK is so you don't have to bring a MNK. No amount of whining about how "great" reprisal is will change that. Reprisal is a ok move that can only be used while MT and is overwhelmingly un-reliable to the point where it cant be used as a reasoning for bringing a DRK. And reprisal is the only unique thing the class brings.

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MNK's still do a respectable amount of damage, and people will want Int down without a DRK? Who knows, maybe Alexander will be crazy unlike Coil.

Quick Question...do we have difinitive proof if reprisal and storms path (or w/e the warrior debuff is called) stack or dont?

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Originally Posted by Rhaja

MNK's still do a respectable amount of damage, and people will want Int down without a DRK? Who knows, maybe Alexander will be crazy unlike Coil.

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So can DRG and Nin. Except Drg is like top tier DPS right now or very close and Ninja is a superior TP regain and can make everyone do 10% more damage.

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Originally Posted by Tila

I do wonder what MNK will be given to remain relevant.

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The only thing Monk has is that healing up by 20%. Which could be good for progression when you don't know when something is about to come flying down and hit you and the raid for a lot of damage. Ie: Good means to recover and give the healer's breathing room. But assuming you've got a paladin in the group, Divine Vile probably gives about the same breathing room, but 30 seconds more on the timer.