A new tank stance to fit Dark Knight better

[Reynhart]

You lost me as soon as you said "retaliate 20% of damage taken" most people will read that and go "Oh I need to get hit by everything so I can maximise DPS! that makes me MLGPro"

Any tank who say "I have to maximize DPS above all" is already a bad tank.

So really what you are saying is you want DKs to be known as the tank that stands in every AoE that doesn't one shot them and to rage at SCH/AST for using all their healing abilities because shields will reduce their DPS by absorbing damage before it hits them and that's just in 4-mans.

I know that's not what you mean but I would be willing to bet that would end up being the case.

Ok, I don't understand. Why do everyone keep saying "No, it's a bad idea because people will be bad at it" ?

Do you want to remove Sword Oath because some bad PLD can say "I have to maximize DPS, I don't care it I take too much damage and can't keep aggro on the Uber-DPS" ?
Or Cleric Stance, because some bad healers might want to keep it 24/7 ?

And in terms of "lore" isn't grit meant to be all "I will not die to you" kinda thing so mind over matter type deal? "grit - courage and resolve; strength of character."

Lorewise, the first thing you learn on your first quest is that "pain gives you power, you have to manage your pain so that you doesn't end up killing yourself in your thirst for power" It'd become the basic tutorial of managing Dread Spikes
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Nope, not a fan. While the HP refund might sound as good as a standard 20% mitigation, those blows that do end up hitting extremely hard will make you suffer for it.

DRK already has a lot of difficulty with tankbusters as it is, this would only drive the knife deeper.

Unless the hit eats all your HP, you're good to go. And if its one-shot, it's either "You didn't use a cooldown to reduce incoming where you should have" or "You clearly lack the gear to stand there, how did you even enter the duty ?!"

Furthermore, multiple attacks that hit before the next server tick will end up absolutely gutting you, as the lack of mitigation could end up killing you before the server decides to actually refund your HP.

I'm not really sure it works that way. The lag we see is between a client command and a server response "I moved out of that AoE !" "No you didn't"
There, all will be server side, so there's no reason for a delay.

Addressing the other side of this idea, by automating a good portion of DRK damage, you end up getting rid of a lot of the complexity that makes the job interesting in the first place.

I don't think so. You"ll still have Darkside and Dark Arts, still need to manage your MP, and your enmity, especially is you do less damage on you own (Not sure if retaliation adds enmity for Vengeance). But, I'd change Dark Arts so that it doesn't increase potency for Souleater or Carve and Spit, but only enhanced the additionnal effect.
But it would add another layer of complexity : Managing the damage you receive. You'd have to know when it's better to reduce 20% of damage, 30%, or even take all of it with Living Dead. By the way, that skill could be awesome with Dread Spikes. You could take all incoming damage, activate Walking Dead, retalitate 20% and leech HP to give head start on your "healing back all HP".

For the record, I'd cap the retaliation to 20% of DRK's max HP too. No uber counter attack from an 18k Akh Morn