The completely REASONABLE changes to the Dark Knight job thread

[Ipkonfig]

@Hundred Come on man.. You know that Raw Intuition will get fixed right? The auto crit heals from side/back are not part of the buff it would specifically say if that was supposed to happen, it's just like if you use Awareness it stops the negative side of RI from even happening which shouldn't work. Or at release when Awareness stopped all crit heals along with crit damage it just took them a bit to fix it.

@Morcavious I find Souleater annoying because the concept of self healing on a tank is flawed, if you are taking damage your healer should be attempting to heal that or even mitigate it with HoTs. Souleater could end up eating a few ticks of a HoT pushing them into overheals wasting the ticks and making that self healing all together superfluous because the healing would have taken place regardless. If it was changed to an hp buffer it would actually be an effective form of mitigation ignoring what healing is currently happening on you.

I'm saying if you want to change the 30%/20% effect of DA+Dark Dance to just 50% parry then it should have a Dark Arts effect of parry absorbing 10% more damage (I said 20% at first, but doing the math that would be a pretty hefty boost.) 10% would make them almost identical in average reduction but drops the avoidance.

[Morcavious]

@Rbstr: Are we sure it stacks with Path? I thought it was concluded that it didn't. Also, thank you for further expanding upon my point about Raw Intuition. You hit the nail on the head.

@Ipkonfig: Self healing is a tricky thing. It can be incredibly powerful if you run with the same healers frequently, as they can adjust as needed to accommodate those heals as a buffer. In a PUG situation they're usually one extreme or the other. Either the healer is awful and your self heals are a life saver, or the healer isn't paying attention to them at all and they're wasted. Either way you're totally correct in the fact that absorbs were be better. Right now you can't really count the self healing as protection against tank busters, but you can certainly count it towards general auto attack stress.

Ah. Nah, I'd personally rather keep Dark Dance as entirely % Parry. 20% seems to be the 'good enough' buffer for most things. Once you hit that threshold it's usually frequency > potency.

[MuzakFan]

@Rbstr: Are we sure it stacks with Path? I thought it was concluded that it didn't.

Yes, Reprisal definitely stacks with Path. I made sure to watch out for this when I did a Ravana HM fight with me as MT and a WAR OT.

[Xenosan]

But that doesn't make it less valuable in a practical boss-related way. The important point is that Raw Intuition will, not maybe will, give you 20% mitigation against an attack when used properly. That's a reliable cooldown for physical tank busters. Similarly Sheltron will give you >20% on a single hit no matter what.

..I find Souleater annoying because the concept of self healing on a tank is flawed, if you are taking damage your healer should be attempting to heal...

^qft

There's an increasing amount of false equivalencies and paper-stat discussions,

I think those theory crafting need to queue T5, T9, Titan, Odin, and other non-dungeon, non-24man-raid 50 content. (God forbid try PUGing it instead of with friends)

From my experience DRK just isn't matching up to PLD&WAR in any party composition in either OT/MT role. Ramuh felt good but that's about mechanics, 15% magic resistance is QoL, not essential. If tanks didn't need it before, still don't need it now. Dark Arts blown on Dark Mind for additional resistance is a DPS loss.

Post 50, PLD gets extra mitigation and utility, WAR gets extra mitigation and dps

Post 50, DRK get QoL. (Dat gap closer tho!)

If anyone has videos or experience of DRK in any of this content doing well, I'd love to hear or see a Vid to learn from (in case the fault is on me and not the job).

[Rbstr]

There's an increasing amount of false equivalencies and paper-stat discussions,
I think those theory crafting need to queue T5, T9, Titan, Odin, and other non-dungeon, non-24man-raid 50 content. (God forbid try PUGing it instead of with friends)
From my experience DRK just isn't matching up to PLD&WAR in any party composition in either OT/MT role....

If a PLD did it, a DRK could. They could only count on rampart and sentinel for reliable mitigation on any of those tank busters. Dark Dance then provides some decent general non-buster mitigation like bulwark. Think about how powerful Dark Mind is on Akh Morns or Revalations. Plus that extra 10% often up from reprisal. (It's a very big deal, though a bit less than Path, raid wide mitigation can really save the squishies back there).

My main point is that people are hung up on survivability when the difference is primarily one reliable cooldown being magic instead of physical.

Dark Arts blown on Dark Mind for resistance is a DPS loss.

That logic doesn't really hold up. It's not a very big loss. If DPS was truly that important as tank, no one would ever be in a tank as that's about the worst thing can can do for DPS.

[Ipkonfig]

^qft
Snip
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You can't compare running old content with DRK if you are between 51-60 and are not geared since the stat weights all shift when you hit 51, it might shift at 50 actually. I was playing my WAR just to see how Au Ra used an axe and I noticed my parries were about 5% less damage reduction than pre-HW.

Once you get full BiS for current content, I.E. all i180 currently, then run those old instances and see how you do. In reality I can't think of anything in any of those fights that I would have issues with as DRK. DRK has the same basic CD rotation as PLD for dealing with burst. I would actually like DRK in T9 for Bahamut's Claw DA+Dark Dance would always be up for it. Titan is just mechanics if a tank is having issues then he's just a bad tank. Odin hit hard regardless of what you did, even as PLD it was rough for zero reward.

As far as paper-stat discussions.. That's how they design the classes to begin with so I think we need to look at that paper to see what they want for the class.

Thus far there hasn't been a single instance where I felt that I was to squishy, even when I was fresh i145 stepping into the new content, and as I gear it only gets easier and easier. I also run with a WHM who enjoys DPSing and she hasn't changed since I started tanking as DRK.

I'd like more group utility. I know that Reprisal's debuff stacks on a boss with Storm's Path but I still haven't seen proof that the damage reduction actually stacks. If it does it's pretty amazing synergy for DRK/WAR. With the 66% up-time on Reprisal it would be a total 16.7% damage reduction on everything the boss does over an entire fight.

As far as DRK changes I don't know if anything is really NEEDED right now, we don't know what's coming in Alex. DRK's are already tanking Rav Ex with zero issues and that's the current highest content.

I'd like what I listed previously. On Delirium Blade either % Magic Vuln Down, or reduce magic damage by 10%. If Magic Vuln is added I'd like Darkside to change all DRK damage to magic. Also dropping the evasion from Dark Dance, but making sure that Dark Dance maintains the average damage reduction it currently has (~25%) by upgrading the parry effects, rate and strength. I guess I'd like Shadow Wall to have an extra effect.. maybe something akin to the MCH's damage ability that absorbs damage and then applies it for 25% more, but instead put it on Shadow Wall where it absorbs the damage and when Shadow Wall expires you get a health buffer for a % of the damage taken.