Sustainability

How???

How can someone sustain SO well, solo?

I was playing with a WAR in Pharo hard, on the final boss, we wiped somehow, EXCEPT him. He finished the boss from about 40% remaining HP. We cheered him on as his life would drop down and as it looked like he was gonna die, he’d spring back to life again, and again...and again..We all complimented him and as quick as he came, he just left with an “Lol I’m a Warrior” like that means he can’t be killed?

Then I was in Great Grubal with a PLD and I was healing on SCH. It took me until the third boss before I realized, I wasn’t healing him...Sure I had Selene, but I she was on auto, and I was focused PURELY on DPS..Then we got to the third fight and I realized that his HP seemed to never drop more than 20% and even then it would instantly refill between Selene and whatever he was doing.

Now I can sustain a TINY bit on DRK, between Potions, and my CD’s and life steal abilities, but not quite like that WAR, and I sure as heck have to try harder than the PLD did to mitigate damage.

What am I missing?

A level 60 WAR has access to the self-heal Equilibrium (level 58 skill), which has a 1200 potency and will heal a portion of their HP when they swap to Defiance; they can use it every 60 seconds. They can also use Inner Beast every 50 Beast Gauge (while in Defiance) and a Storm’s Path combo to self-heal, and they can use Thrill of Battle every 120 seconds to not only increase their HP pool by 20%, but also heal themselves for the 20% increase.

PLDs have access to Clemency at level 58+, which they can use to heal themselves; it’s on the GCD, so they can use it whenever they want. So the PLD could have been spamming Clemency in your Gubal run any time their health dropped to a level they didn’t like.

DRK lacks self healing compared to the other two, it has souleater but only in grit, sole survivor on a 2min CD but it also has the need to kill or last the duration requirement and it has abyssal drain, only good for AoEs. Other than that DRK has the blackest night, it’s not healing but shielding, and due to the short duration and mp cost it’s not very sustainable.

Basically all of DRKs self healing kit comes with drawbacks or requirements.

WAR on the other hand gets storms path for free healing, not as strong as souleater but can be used even out of tank stance and can be unchained in tank stance. thrill on a 2min cooldown without any of the kill/duration requirements of sole survivor. Then on top of that it can go into tank stance to get inner beast which tops the blackest night as a heal and equilibrium which DRK doesn’t even have an equivalent for.

PLD gets clemency and that’s all. It’s a huge dps loss and kinda putting all its eggs in one basket, but it’s unparalleled as a tank heal and between sheltron and riot blade they can keep it going pretty much an entire fight. And unlike the other two, PLDs self healing is actually at its best out of tank stance, since it can generate more gauge to get more mp in sword oath than shield oath. Then of course PLD has a mountain of cooldowns to reduce damage taken and increase healing received including hallowed ground to keep them going between clemencies.

So in short, DRK really isn’t built for self-sustain, it is the most healer dependant of the tanks, right down to living dead killing you if a healer doesn’t help. So you can’t really compare with the other two.

WAR have a specially powerful high number of selfhealing skills, right now in defiance WAR is the most defensive and self-sustain tank by a far margin compared to PLD or DRK, DRK only have souleater on grit and sole survivor with it not comparable to inner beast spam rate, equilibrium, thrill of battle and strom path.

the PLD seems he was using properly his defensive skills and meaby use some clemency but this one is pretty limited, if the PLD was on shield and use his skills properly yeah he can keep himself pretty much in a dungeon boss with only selene/eos.

for DRK in general if is under lvl 70 the job suffer without having TBN and even with TBN DRK can't solo anything at the same level like WAR and in less degree PLD, if you healer die you can't barely stand up and you will die more soon that later depending of the boss, so is more that a terrible desing balance more that you own skill in this matter.

Pld and war have great kits to staying alive and self healing, proper cool-down rotation can save any skilled Pld or War in level 60 and above dungeons. hell the first boss of the great library I solo it at 70% hp as a Pld because they died to the instant K.O. pld is the ultimate white mage tank, if it still had protect and stone skin it would be the best for running solo. War self-healing was dumb good in HW, they nerfed our self healing to the ground in SB still level 60 content self healing is good but not on par post SB. Now Drk is "F'ed" with a capital "F" it offers nothing to sustained till level 70 "TBN", i wish blood weapon did more. they should design it to return a percentage of damage dealt back as HP while keeping its black blood properties and have Salted Earth act as a life drain for all who step in it, even allies.

With WAR, it's all about playing your cards right. You -could- use ToB in deliverance, but if you use it in defiance, the recovery is greater. You could heal with inner beast, but it's a lot better if you use it with berserk, and especially if you use it with infuriate available and at 100 guage. Then there's their whole suite of cooldowns to take reduced damage for a looong time. If you timed rampart, raw intution, and vengeance, that right there is 55 seconds of reduced damage. You could start with equilibrium and have it back up by the time your mitigation runs out.

Now, DRK can do some sustain, but it's nowhere near as ideal or pretty as the other tanks. I solo'd the final boss of St. Mociannes HM from 40% HP after the party wiped from a mud pie that took 2 hits. I found it very do-able and found myself healing faster than I lost health, given I used grit and DA+SE every combo. It helps to keep away from using DA anywhere else (that includes C&S), or using BS/quietus as doing so delays your self-heal for a GCD. Another tip is to save TBN for unavoidable mechanic damage. White damage from bosses can easily be recovered with DA+SE, but TBN helps immensely with your dungoen tank busters and the like.

DRK can sustain, but it comes at the cost of DPS and isn't really exciting.

DRK just isn’t a complete job till 70 before 70 it literally has nothing that great. Self sustaining absolutely no lol but I will say this DRK is probably your only tank who can mitigate the ish out of a tank buster much more often then the other two simplay due to TBN being so great....besides that bleh

I was quite disappointed with Dark, I made the mistake of expecting the life-stealing solo juggarnaut that Death Knight was in WoW and got this weird clunky mana-tank that is "viable", yes, but excels at nothing except emnity generation, which is hardly necessary, relies on the healer (particularly with no self heal outside grit) and lacks in multiple factors.

Mediocre aoe, moderate dps, poor self-heal, poor mitigation below 70. Dark looks cool, but it ends there, as a class it's not particularly exciting in my opinion.

Since we're on the topic of sustainability, which of the other 2 tanks is the best for self-sufficiency?

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I was quite disappointed with Dark, I made the mistake of expecting the life-stealing solo juggarnaut that Death Knight was in WoW and got this weird clunky mana-tank that is "viable", yes, but excels at nothing except emnity generation, which is hardly necessary, relies on the healer (particularly with no self heal outside grit) and lacks in multiple factors.

Mediocre aoe, moderate dps, poor self-heal, poor mitigation below 70. Dark looks cool, but it ends there, as a class it's not particularly exciting in my opinion.

Since we're on the topic of sustainability, which of the other 2 tanks is the best for self-sufficiency?

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There’s not really a self sustain tank in this game like there is in WoW. Drk can get some funny self sustain on big aoe pulls in dungeons just like warrior. But most self sustain mechanics in this game come at a big cost. Pld loses Holy Spirit casts to cast Clemency. War and Drk both need to be in their tank stances to get the bulk of theirs or at least the most defensive benefit.

If War had Bloodbath still it'd literally be nigh unkillable imagine the healing from Fel Cleave direct crit hits? It's still got the highest sustain out of all the tanks without it.

Pff, back in ARR when Inner Beast still healed for 300% of the damage it dealt, I would actually do healer-less Hard-mode dungeons with my FC just to get through it faster. WAR's sustain now is nothing compared to what it used to be. And the most hilarious thing is that the entire reason WAR was changed back in ARR is because people thought it was underpowered and unviable. Man I miss those days.

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Originally Posted by Thatusernameistaken

Pff, back in ARR when Inner Beast still healed for 300% of the damage it dealt, I would actually do healer-less Hard-mode dungeons with my FC just to get through it faster. WAR's sustain now is nothing compared to what it used to be. And the most hilarious thing is that the entire reason WAR was changed back in ARR is because people thought it was underpowered and unviable. Man I miss those days.

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the main problem of WAR in 2.0 is was based only on self heals and well that nice "cough foresight cough" only specially with thrill having a long recast as 1 of the 2 "mitigation" tools they have, now is pretty diferent bcs all tanks have pretty solid mitigation tools but 2 of the 3 have pretty taxed forms of selfhealing compared to WAR's ones.
WAR's sustain is still extremly good, stormblood just limited the selfsustain on deliverance removing bloodbath but on defiance is still pretty broken more with the rework incresing a lot the number of inner beast can be used compared to 4.0, and is the tank with most selfsustain on dps stance with storm path and thrill apart of his improved mitigation kit, WAR gain to much with rampart with only losing bloodbath and foresight and steel cyclone gain a bloodbath effect later on for "reasons" so in the end WAR selfsustain get nerfed on single target and sligthly in aoe in deliverance as his raw mitigation gets extremly boosted.

main problem is WAR is the strongest mitigation tank (on defiance) and is by far the strongest selfsustain tank, not just a selfsutained tank based on incresing you HP and strong selfheals like 2.0, the mitigation kit just get buffed and buffed but the self heals din't get properly nerfed.

DRK sustainability is only at lvl 70.

Hopefully the rework gives it more sustain

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Originally Posted by Thatusernameistaken

And the most hilarious thing is that the entire reason WAR was changed back in ARR is because people thought it was underpowered and unviable. Man I miss those days.

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IB could have been a 1000% self heal, doesn't matter how strong your lifesteal is when you get one shot by the tank buster by severe lack of mitigation tools when Paladin could snooze through almost every Death Sentence easily even at minimum ilvls. Pre 2.1 WAR WAS nonviable in comparison to how absurdly strong 2x PLD was.

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Originally Posted by Thatusernameistaken

Pff, back in ARR when Inner Beast still healed for 300% of the damage it dealt, I would actually do healer-less Hard-mode dungeons with my FC just to get through it faster. WAR's sustain now is nothing compared to what it used to be. And the most hilarious thing is that the entire reason WAR was changed back in ARR is because people thought it was underpowered and unviable. Man I miss those days.

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WAR was incredibly bad in 2.0. The only mitigation tool it had was foresight which was like 8% physical only mitigation.

Inner beast used to be 300% of damage dealt as healing but it didn’t add 20% mitigation and it also removed the 20% healing bonus (which was tied to wrath at the time instead of defiance). So you never wanted to use it because you wanted to sit on your wrath stacks.

Holmgang didn’t have the death prevention so it was literally just bind yourself and the target.

Vengeance was just counterattacks.

Storm’s path didn’t reduce damage dealt.

So the only things WAR had to survive a tank buster was defiance’s increased hp, foresight and thrill of battle. Compared to PLD whose mitigation is almost still the same now as what it was back then.

If you ask me, some of the changes WAR got were overkill, but it definitely needed a mitigation buff.

The only thing funny about the WAR buffs in 2.1 was the WARs claiming it was fine as it is and it just takes more skill to play than PLD, then come HW those same WARs fought tooth and nail with anyone suggesting WAR was too powerful.

What you described happening to the WAR remaining alive when everyone else wiped - This scenario happened to me this morning while I was tanking the last boss in Skalla while on my DRK. Everyone somehow wiped at 53%.

I finished the boss myself while everyone else sat and watched. It was both amazing and satisfying to be able to do this on a DRK, PLD would have been just flat out easy mode (as I've done that on PLD as well). Each tank has their own ways of sustaining, it's really just being confortable with the tank class you play and knowing the fights. If I were tanking on my WAR, I woulda wiped - I'm just not as comfortable on that as I am DRK/PLD.