Crazy idea to improve DRK mitigation

DRK seems just a touch light on mitigation. Definitely in the anti-physical dpt. vs the other two tanks, and for the "anti-magic specialist" (or whatever) it's arguably not much (if any) better than WAR.

So, what if Dark Arts provided -10% damage while it was up? Kind of like a mini mitigation cooldown. You couldn't spam it since it's so expensive. -10% doesn't seem so strong as to be overpowered, but it's good enough you could stack with the existing DRK abilities to make your self that much tougher.

Would definitely make the mana management more interesting at any rate. May even give us a reason to use carve & spit for mana regen instead of damage.

thoughts?

Crazy, yes ... crazy awesome.

I was thinking almost the exact idea last night, except I think I was contemplating a buff to Parry with Dark Arts.
Either ways I think a defensive buff attached to the DA status is a very interesting idea that could really make for some fun decisions and gameplay for DRK.

P.S. I still think C+S should give more MP back, as much as the cost of 1 DA seems fair.

It's not unreasonable. And the 10second duration would make for a nice min/maxing rotation considerations for players.. Especially if it also provided a damage increase as well.

If DA provided even 5-10%mitigation / 5-10%dmg up while active it would create a 'forward-thinking' incentive to using Dark Arts.. Instead of:

Hard Swing > Syphon > [Dark Arts] Souleater

do

[Dark Arts] Hard Swing > Syphon > Souleater

So constantly pre-loading the DAs for whichever skill/spell/CD you want to use it with would be really maxing the job.

There's already an incentive to pre-load DA since it has that 5 second recast cool down.. so such a buff - whether it's just mitigation or also damage up included - would fit in nicely.

Not sure how well it fits with Dark Dance though, might prefer that 10% mitigation over DDance's lolEVA.

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

It's not unreasonable. And the 10second duration would make for a nice min/maxing rotation considerations for players.. Especially if it also provided a damage increase as well.

If DA provided even 5-10%mitigation / 5-10%dmg up while active it would create a 'forward-thinking' incentive to using Dark Arts.. Instead of:

Hard Swing > Syphon > [Dark Arts] Souleater

do

[Dark Arts] Hard Swing > Syphon > Souleater

So constantly pre-loading the DAs for whichever skill/spell/CD you want to use it with would be really maxing the job.

There's already an incentive to pre-load DA since it has that 5 second recast cool down.. so such a buff - whether it's just mitigation or also damage up included - would fit in nicely.

Not sure how well it fits with Dark Dance though, might prefer that 10% mitigation over DDance's lolEVA.

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DDance's evasion works well against anything you *can* dodge, it's just that most of the important stuff can't be dodged and, even then, you can't leave it up to random chance.

I don't know about the dark arts doing extra damage. It seems like we're in a pretty good place for damage, especially while tanking. Think we're going to need more analysis to see how DRK's stronger base potency and numerous oGCD attacks stack up against WAR's burst.

Even then, maybe -10% damage with grit/+10% damage no grit?

But I really like how you would have to think more about DA usage in order to get the most out of it due to the cooldown, high mana usage, and all the abilities that will use up the dark arts effect.

As long as the damage reduction was not something that went away after you used it.

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

As long as the damage reduction was not something that went away after you used it.

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I think it would be a little too much if we got 10s worth of mitigation every time we hit dark arts, regardless of whether we used it or not. Besides, having it go away when used makes the ability more interesting to work around.

For magical/physical tankbusters: Shadowskin/Shadow Wall + DA Dark Mind = 50-60% reduced magic damage. Uh that's better than War, factoring in Grit of course. And that's not factoring in Reprisal or Delirium. Shadowskin/Shadow Wall + Dark Dance = 20-50% reduced physical damage with a longer duration at the cost of parry RNG.

Really tired of people thinking DRKs are too squishy. At level 60, with cross class skills, they have less beefy cooldowns, sure, but not by much, and they have MORE OF THEM, and with CRAZY SHORT RECAST TIMES. Dark Mind and Dark Dance have 60s CDs. OP if anything. Both of these abilities pair beautifully with Foresight/Awareness/Convalescence/Bloodbath and are easily off CD to rotate stacking between them in between Shadowskin/Shadow Wall casts assuming there isn't a tank buster to save those for. In RavEx for example, I rotate between Shadowskin and Dark Dance + Foresight/Awareness/Bloodbath, and when the Prey wave attacks come, drop Shadow Wall for the first four, and then after orbs DA Dark Mind + Convalescence or Shadowskin if its off CD. I've taken less than 1K per hit with Reprisal and Delirium up. In A4, I rotate between Shadowskin + DA Dark Mind and Shadow Wall + Convalescence for Discoid<Perpetual Ray. It hits me like a wet paper bag.

It feels like tanks have already forgotten T13 where they actually had to pop more than one CD at a time. DRK is like that, but all the time. Because you have so many CDs and so much potential uptime on some of them, to get the most mitigation out of the job you need to be doubling up on anything not named Shadow Wall or Shadowskin. And if you're cross classing all the MRD/GLA CDs you have more than enough buttons to push to have at 1-2 cooldowns 99% of the time with only a few seconds of downtime.

Also, are people still talking about DA Dark Dance? Don't do it D:< Save your MP for DA Abyssal Drains, C&Ses, Souleaters, and Dark Minds.

I myself feel like my mitigation is indeed fine. However, because of all the talk of being squishy I was thinking of perhaps adding a short 5-10% dmg mitigation buff (maybe 10s?) to a DA Power Slash and maybe make it a Grit effect only? :) I wouldn't tie it to Dark Arts itself at least, IMHO. Also, if anything, I think a "dodge" should restore MP as well when under the effects of Blood Price. But they don't need more tweaking than that if you ask me. DRK is my favorite class so far and my healer tells me I'm not noticably more squishy or incredibly much harder to heal.

What if Dark Dance - instead of consuming Dark Arts - added 10 seconds to Dark Arts duration (refreshing it) ;3

@Syzygian & Valenth
It's a matter of distinguishing the Job from the other tanks as much as it is about balancing

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I rotate between Shadowskin + DA Dark Mind

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Stacking lesser mitigation CDs yea anyone with PLD experience knows the drill. But Shadowskin &&& DA > Dark Mind together? :O

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

Stacking lesser mitigation CDs yea anyone with PLD experience knows the drill. But Shadowskin &&& DA > Dark Mind together? :O

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You mean anyone with "tank" experience. WAR is also all about stacking a CD over IB to deal with tank busters.

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

For magical/physical tankbusters: Shadowskin/Shadow Wall + DA Dark Mind = 50-60% reduced magic damage. Uh that's better than War, factoring in Grit of course. And that's not factoring in Reprisal or Delirium. Shadowskin/Shadow Wall + Dark Dance = 20-50% reduced physical damage with a longer duration at the cost of parry RNG.

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It would be somewhat difficult to pull of Shadowskin + DA Dark Mind + DA since DA has a 5s cooldown. You'd have to prep the DA knowing that the tank buster was coming within the next 10s. Even then you're talking about doubling up DA which drains like 2/3 of our mana. This is more for when Dark mind is down, for use against physical damage, and for some mild mitigation that would occur outside of tank busters. PLD has a shield, WAR has Inner Beast up every 15-20s (not including enrage), but DRK doesn't have any sort of high frequency mitigation like that.

Just use Dark dance or soul eater then if you want mild mitigation for non busters.

This actually is a pretty good idea and one of the more simple yet elegant changes I have seen suggested yet. I've personally made the suggestion that Dark Arts should remove the TP requirement on 3rd hit combo skills like Soul Eater and Power Slash as a form of TP recovery, much the same way that Shield Swipe is Paladin's TP recovery.

Darks already have very good mitigation.

Basically at the start, Darks (mostly X -DPS) could not understand how to tank, and got a bad rap over it.

You have 2 normal damage reducers (like other tanks) and 1 that has a TINY cooldown (1 minute!) and you can throw it ontop of the other two in any magic damage content to pad your health. Dark Dance is less powerful than bulwark but lasts 5 more seconds and has one third the cd.

Basically Dark Knight is not about having tons of cooldowns like a paladin, but having good ones that are up very often.

I would want Shadowskin's and Shadow Wall's cooldown cut down under Dark Arts.

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Originally Posted by Faytte

You have 2 normal damage reducers (like other tanks) and 1 that has a TINY cooldown (1 minute!) and you can throw it ontop of the other two in any magic damage content to pad your health. Dark Dance is less powerful than bulwark but lasts 5 more seconds and has one third the cd.

Basically Dark Knight is not about having tons of cooldowns like a paladin, but having good ones that are up very often.

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They have good mitigation vs. magic, mostly because of DA + Drk Mnd, but they're a little lacking vs. physical. The problem with dark dance is it's both not all that strong and completely unreliable. With bulwark, the boost to block % is high enough such that you can pretty much count on blocking or parrying any incoming attack when it's active. Of course, if you really need to block something, they also now have sheltron every 30s, drk has no equivalent.

Dark dance is just fairly weak at about a 6% average damage reduction. It's only really useful vs. large groups of enemies or to get a reprisal proc.

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Originally Posted by Xenosan

What if Dark Dance - instead of consuming Dark Arts - added 10 seconds to Dark Arts duration (refreshing it) ;3

@Syzygian & Valenth
It's a matter of distinguishing the Job from the other tanks as much as it is about balancing

Stacking lesser mitigation CDs yea anyone with PLD experience knows the drill. But Shadowskin &&& DA > Dark Mind together? :O

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DRK is infinitely different from the other two tanks.

1. Aggro generation is completely trivial. DRK schools them both.
2. Resource management. You cannot go ham in any sense of the word, offensively or defensively without managing your MP, but when you learn to do so, you eat tank busters for breakfast and deal competitive DPS to a WAR.
3. Proc-on-parry mechanics. Rewards tanks for parrying with free DPS and a Storm's Path debuff in Reprisal.
4. Reprisal is stackable with Path. Generates the most raid-wide damage mitigation between the 3 tanks with a magic-based Halone (Delirium) AND a Path (Reprisal).
5. Focus on magic mitigation in addition to parry. Has a Dragon Kick in Delirium, and a second Shadow Wall albeit for magic only in DA Dark Mind which has a piddly 60s CD which means it can be up for almost every magic-based tank buster in a given encounter.
6. CDs are slightly smaller in potency but have massive potential uptime because of their short cooldowns save for Shadow Wall. This means they are easily stackable with the cross class cooldowns of which it has two tanks to draw from as opposed to PLD and WAR from only eachother. This forces DRK more than the other tanks to think about actively mitigating all damage by mixing and matching all the defensive tools they have, not just for tank busters but for any remotely threatening degree of incoming damage, constant, burst or otherwise. Your CDs also all mitigate damage in widely different fashions forcing you to consider the best tool or combination of tools for the job. Dark Dance for instance pairs very well with Foresight for constant physical damage like in Ravana's Dragonfly stance, and pairs well with Awareness on trash as mobs can crit through parry.
7. You have a gap closer, a placed AoE DoT, and a targeted, ranged, AoE enmity generator (referring to Plunge, Salted Earth, and Abyssal Drain respectively). Neither of the other tanks have these and they are incredibly useful. You execute tank swaps more smoothly than either tank, have greater AoE damage output by a landslide, and are able to effectively pull and get aggro on whole packs of mobs as opposed to just pulling one and hoping you get an AoE off before they fly past you and begin chowing down on your healers forcing you to waste a voke or more TP/MP to get it off them.
8. The MP management is more akin to BLM than to any kind of resource management in the other tanks, just with more abilties to spend and regenerate it with.
9. Sole Survivor is like a Mercy Stroke that actually works. It also returns enough MP at level 60 to DA another Soul Eater or Carve & Split (if off CD) if you're running low, so it effectively nets you 140-350 potency of damage as well depending on the situation.
10. Your DoT (Scourge) isn't a TP whore like WAR's is, and does more damage to boot.
11. Did I mention your AoE damage output puts the other two tanks to shame? I did? Well I'm saying it again then.

The job is infinitely more exciting and involved to play, while not necessarily being more difficult, but requiring more creative and improvisational thinking on how you mitigate damage and your utilities. At any given time, you have a lot of options on how to do almost anything, be it hate generation, dps, utility, or mitigation, and depending on the encounter, there can be multiple right ways to do it. But generally, you can do a lot of it all at once if you git gud.

Also.

You damn right I stack DA Dark Mind with Shadowskin. For a magic based tank buster that hits multiple times? That CD combination cuts the damage in half. HALF. 50%. Discoid>Perpetual Rays also occur 1 minute apart which means for the next one you can DA Dark Mind + Conva or DA Dark Mind + Shadow Wall (60% mitigation. Healers won't even know you took a tank buster). You would already pop Shadowskin for the first one and Shadow Wall for the second (or the reverse) and Dark Mind's CD is 60 seconds. Its practically free mitigation. Between the tank busters Blood Bath and Conva are easily enough to keep you up with a little help from healers if you're self healing with Souleater and keeping Delirium on the boss.

Can you imagine T13?

Akh Morn #1 - DA Dark Mind + Convalescence

Akh Morn #2 - Shadow Wall

Akh Morn #3 - DA Dark Mind + Shadowskin

Akh Morn #4 - Living Dead + possibly Bloodbath and a DA Souleater or two to help the healers get the buff off of you

Akh Morn #5 - DA Dark Mind + Shadowskin + Convalescence

You could probably even line it up to pop Shadowskin and Shadow Wall together with DA Dark Mind for one of them, totaling an obscene 80% mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

It would be somewhat difficult to pull of Shadowskin + DA Dark Mind + DA since DA has a 5s cooldown. You'd have to prep the DA knowing that the tank buster was coming within the next 10s. Even then you're talking about doubling up DA which drains like 2/3 of our mana. This is more for when Dark mind is down, for use against physical damage, and for some mild mitigation that would occur outside of tank busters. PLD has a shield, WAR has Inner Beast up every 15-20s (not including enrage), but DRK doesn't have any sort of high frequency mitigation like that.

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Wat. Where in my post did I say anything about popping DA twice? I said DA Dark Mind + Shadowskin or Shadow Wall for a magic tank buster for 50 to 60% mitigation. The prep takes all of 2.5 seconds, all the abilities are off GCD. And because Dark Mind's cooldown is so short, you're really only suffering the cooldown time of Shadowskin or Shadow Wall. If tanks in T13 stacked 3 CDs together some even on the GCD in the case of WARs inner beast, DRK can do it too. DRK doesn't have high frequency mitigation? Have you played the job? You have 4 cross class CDs instead of two, and Dark Dance/Dark Mind have 60s CDs. That's HUGE uptime. Because it has so many CDs factoring in cross-class stuff and the short recast times of two of its major abilties, its easy to use these abilties multiple times in a CD rotation and pair them with others. You compare it to WAR's 6s out of every 15-20s Inner Beast. That's the SAME PERCENTAGE as 20s out of every 60s Dark Dance. Da Maff is real.

You could use (Shadowskin) - (Dark Dance + Foresight) - (Convalescence + Bloodbath) - (Shadow Wall) - (Dark Dance + Awareness) - repeat in a fight without any big tank busters, adding Dark Mind as necessary for any stray magic damage, and rotating the pairing of your cross class skills with Dark Dance (due to their varying recast times) and have only a few seconds of downtime between. I was fascinated by the frequency of usage and the quantity of CDs DRK has so I decided to actually test to see if I could make it so I always have SOMETHING up, no matter how small. Turns out, you can get pretty damn close. You don't even need to go that extreme. Rotating between Shadowskin and Dark Dance + something else is enough in the absence of magic damage, (think Ravana Ex, aside from the Prey Charges) especially if you keep Delirium and Reprisal up as much as possible and actively self-heal with Soul Eater. You can always pop Conva if you start to get whittled down.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

They have good mitigation vs. magic, mostly because of DA + Drk Mnd, but they're a little lacking vs. physical. The problem with dark dance is it's both not all that strong and completely unreliable. With bulwark, the boost to block % is high enough such that you can pretty much count on blocking or parrying any incoming attack when it's active. Of course, if you really need to block something, they also now have sheltron every 30s, drk has no equivalent.

Dark dance is just fairly weak at about a 6% average damage reduction. It's only really useful vs. large groups of enemies or to get a reprisal proc.

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Dark Mind is a straight gain over the other tanks, its like having a second Shadow Wall with 1/3rd the recast time for magic only, but we all know how infamous magic tank busters are in this game. And Dark Dance is every bit as unreliable as Bulwark is, just ask any pally that didn't proc a block on Flatten with it up. And just like Bulwark, you would never pop Dark Dance by itself, but paired up with Foresight/Awareness to level-out and mitigate fluff damage and constant physical attacks. Also the Reprisal debuff+Dark Dance is plenty of mitigation alone. You'd never pop it for a tankbuster unless you were pairing it with Shadowskin or something, just like you'd never pop Bulwark for a Flatten unless you were stacking it with Rampart.

Bulwark also has TRIPLE the recast time of Dark Dance and lasts 5 SECONDS LESS. I'd say they're even at worst.

Basically just like WAR or PLD you'd pop one of your big mitigation CDs like Rampart or Vengeance (Shadowskin or Shadow Wall in DRKs case) and stack it with something else like Bulwark or Foresight for a big Flatten-style physical tank buster. If anything DRK has an edge because it has an additional CD for stacking with magical tank busters, as illustrated by the absolutely PATHETIC damage they take from properly stacking CDs on things like Discoid-Perpetual Ray in A4. When the PLD in my static MTs that fight he has to Hallowed after the third Discoid cast.

DRK can MT or OT anything in the game currently with its own advantages and disadvantages over WAR/PLD in the same spot, its not broken for good or for bad, its fun to play and its well designed. I can MT or OT anything in 3.0 without any issue, and if there's ever a situation where a DRK is wishing it had some of the buffs people are suggesting in this thread in the current content, it means they fucked up. I should know, I just started maining the job a few weeks ago like a lot of people, I fucked up plenty. It doesn't need a buff. Stop selling it short, git gud, and leave it be. D:

Literally the only two complaints (neither of which are really being addressed that much in this thread) that I can muster are the TP issues from Blood Weapon while OTing against punching-bag bosses like T8 (oh wait there aren't ANY bosses like that in 3.0 content)... and... I guess I wish the MP returns/costs on our abilties weren't fixed but instead potency/percentage based so I could benefit from an accessory or two pentamelded with Piety? ...more MP to burn directly adds to our DPS. But really these aren't even problems but more just "aww.. well... that sucks but okay..."

DRK for life.

It actually benefits Piety that the mp costs of abilities are fixed, because Piety increases max MP and by extension your MP regen per second.
Thing is though Dark knights only gain 4. mana something from Piety points. It takes 50 mana to increase your mp regen per tick in combat by 1 (aka decrease the degen tick of darkside by 1). Since Darkside costs 127 after the natural regen tick from 6917 mana (265-138 = 127), its 63.5 mana to decrease the cost of Darkside by 1% which is like 15.875 Piety.
I think with melds + food + attributes its possible to decrease Darksides cost per second by 10% but then one has to wonder still why they would spend so much money on melding Piety. Unless that translates to a DPS increase via more Soul Eater spam which I guess might if you did Slaying melded with Piety.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

They have good mitigation vs. magic, mostly because of DA + Drk Mnd, but they're a little lacking vs. physical. The problem with dark dance is it's both not all that strong and completely unreliable. With bulwark, the boost to block % is high enough such that you can pretty much count on blocking or parrying any incoming attack when it's active. Of course, if you really need to block something, they also now have sheltron every 30s, drk has no equivalent.

Dark dance is just fairly weak at about a 6% average damage reduction. It's only really useful vs. large groups of enemies or to get a reprisal proc.

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Lacking? Compared to whom?Dark Dance isnt as strong as bulwark--no one is debating it is. But you are saying that its 6% mitigation, would mean with a law shield a paladin is getting 12% out of bulwark (shields are blocking 21% at this time, unless you got ravanna ex shield). Of course, it only lasts 15 seconds vs dark dances 20...and it has a 180 cool down vs 60.



And you are ignoring the 20% dodge which works on auto attacks (which is, against auto attacks, a flat 20% mitigation).

So against auto attacks you have 26% mitigation, and 6% against parriable specials in raids (or 26% period in dungeons).
Bulwark is 12% (by your logic) against all abilities that are pariable/blockable.
Dark lasts 33% longer, is also has 1/3 the cd.

Sorry--its not paladin levels, but paladins dont have your offense, aoe, threat, ability to use magic damage (Ravanna seeing eye force fieldanyone?) and mobility. Yes--you make a trade off. Paladins right now are basically of no use in A4--most of their tricks do not apply, but they retain the disdavtange of terrible threat and damage---and you are better off bringing a warrior as an OT or even MT. So yes--the opposite situation will apply as well. The goal is not to homogenize everyone. You can level up every tank and pick what you need for the fight after all, or deal with a slight imbalance where a fight favors one or the other. Other classes deal with this all the time---movement fights classicaly did not favor Black Mages (and still dont). Certain fights favor WHM or Scholar over one another (pre nerf lustrate and Rammuh Ex when that was new).

Honestly I would like Soul Eaters HP Leech to be 200 - 250%, make self healing a legitimate mitigation. I've always loved life leech tanks.

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Originally Posted by Faytte

Lacking? Compared to whom?Dark Dance isnt as strong as bulwark--no one is debating it is. But you are saying that its 6% mitigation, would mean with a law shield a paladin is getting 12% out of bulwark (shields are blocking 21% at this time, unless you got ravanna ex shield). Of course, it only lasts 15 seconds vs dark dances 20...and it has a 180 cool down vs 60.

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PLD get this magic cooldown that's up all the time called holding a shield. It's as good as dark dance, but it's always active.

The thing about bulwark is that you can use it for a pretty reliable cooldown against tank busters and periods of high damage. The reason for this is because because if you take the base PLD block rate and the bulwark block rate and the PLD parry rate, they're *probably* going to mitigate any incoming attack. True, it's not 100%, but it's at least fairly close. You can't use dark dance in the same way because the % to parry is so low.

And then there's sheltron

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Originally Posted by Faytte

And you are ignoring the 20% dodge which works on auto attacks (which is, against auto attacks, a flat 20% mitigation).

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how often, when listing out stuff WAR has, do people include the evasion ability from MNK? There's a reason for that...

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Originally Posted by Faytte

Sorry--its not paladin levels, but paladins dont have your offense, aoe, threat, ability to use magic damage (Ravanna seeing eye force fieldanyone?) and mobility. Yes--you make a trade off. Paladins right now are basically of no use in A4--most of their tricks do not apply, but they retain the disdavtange of terrible threat and damage---and you are better off bringing a warrior as an OT or even MT. So yes--the opposite situation will apply as well. The goal is not to homogenize everyone. You can level up every tank and pick what you need for the fight after all, or deal with a slight imbalance where a fight favors one or the other. Other classes deal with this all the time---movement fights classicaly did not favor Black Mages (and still dont). Certain fights favor WHM or Scholar over one another (pre nerf lustrate and Rammuh Ex when that was new).

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The problem, as I see it, is if DRK is supposed to be the magic specialization tank, they're not all that special. Compare a PLD to a WAR when you're talking about physical defense. The WAR is good, but the PLD comes out pretty obviously ahead. If you compare DRK vs. WAR, it isn't as clear due to IB's very frequent use, the ability to keep storm's path up 100% of the time and the fact a MNK can bring magic down, while nobody else has an equivalent to storm's path.

PLD is also better vs. magic than a DRK is against physical. Most of this comes down to a stronger Convalescence, Sentinel > Shadow wall, Clemency, Stoneskin and the almighty Hallowed Ground. And again, MNK can bring the magic down for a PLD. Nobody but a PLD can provide the halone debuff for the DRK.

That's not even considering utility or lack thereof on DRK.

So, I don't think a mild increase is unreasonable. It definitely wouldn't make a DRK as good as a PLD against physical attacks.

I would agree with this if it weren't for the fact that most tank busters are magic based (revelation, akh morn, perpetual ray, A1S name escapes me etc), so you already have the advantage on what matters the most in raid content.

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Originally Posted by RayneBoemir

I would agree with this if it weren't for the fact that most tank busters are magic based (revelation, akh morn, perpetual ray, A1S name escapes me etc), so you already have the advantage on what matters the most in raid content.

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DRK has the advantage here over PLD, yes. Advantage over WAR? ... maybe

Besides, despite DRK being better vs. magic busters, we're still seeing PLD in A1 Savage clears (wasn't world first with a PLD?). So we're still seeing PLD being used in A1 where their lower DPS and anti-magic deficiencies put them at a disadvantage. On the other hand, are there DRKs clearing A2, I'd only heard of raids using PLD thus far.

I guess we'll see how A3/A4 play out.