[DRK] Wanna know why Unleashed & Abyssal Drain are both needed?

[Kallera]

Unmend Procing Unleash is a waste of a trait in my opinion.

Its a free attack, usually at a time when you are building hate. What are you on about?

[Giantbane]

Its a free attack, usually at a time when you are building hate. What are you on about?

It's also usually when you have blood price available, so it's not great by any means. And if your group threat pull is supposed to be abyssal, it becomes even more niche/not terribly useful @60.

[Ladon]

It's also usually when you have blood price available, so it's not great by any means. And if your group threat pull is supposed to be abyssal, it becomes even more niche/not terribly useful @60.

How often are you effectively pulling groups with Abyssal Drain? Most groups are still clustered well beyond 5y to hit them all and even then I wouldn't really want to spend 970 mana to hit 3 or so enemies. A few well placed Unmends and a well timed Unleashed or two is going to almost always give better results when pulling.

[Giantbane]

How often are you effectively pulling groups with Abyssal Drain? Most groups are still clustered well beyond 5y to hit them all and even then I wouldn't really want to spend 970 mana to hit 3 or so enemies. A few well placed Unmends and a well timed Unleashed or two is going to almost always give better results when pulling.

Yes, it does "something" sometimes. But because you have blood price and we're talking AoE (where you get a lot of mp back) it usually doesn't really matter much anyway. It's pretty lackluster @ 60.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

How often are you effectively pulling groups with Abyssal Drain? Most groups are still clustered well beyond 5y to hit them all and even then I wouldn't really want to spend 970 mana to hit 3 or so enemies. A few well placed Unmends and a well timed Unleashed or two is going to almost always give better results when pulling.

Abyssal Drain is 15y.

[Kleys]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6cqbBWBhpA

Go ahead. Just watch his parse. And that's with an i190 weapon. This is all while bringing better mitigation than Drk brings.

I'm almost always using Xeno's videos to clear endgame content since T10 so ofc I know this video and what a very good WAR is.

But I was talking about DRK vs WAR, not me against good WAR players. Xeno is a much better WAR than I am as a DRK, but at least I know how I could've done things better if I was just as good as him (and had larger hands), and that's what leads me to say that DRK is able outDPS WARs in A2S while mitigating damage well enough to all healers to have a very high DPS. Not by much, of course.

I don't get what's so wrong with DRK's mitigation in this encounter. It's not that different from PLD, and WAR is rarely using Inner Beast or Storm Path in this fight so how is he providing "better" mitigation than DRK? I didn't felt squishy and my healers didn't have much troubles keeping me alive.
One thing for sure, Abyssal Drain with always 25% drain would be much stronger than a WAR with Berserk & Blood Bath on, because it would be always 25%, could be stacked with Blood Bath, and Abyssal Drain doesn't consume TP. WAR may have Equilibrium, they can't spam Overpower while DRK can spam Abyssal Drain. I'll still try today with Blood Bath instead of Awareness (since none of the mobs ever crit in this fight), just to have a taste of what it could've been if Abyssal Drain actually constantly drained HP.

1020 DPS? I smell a merged parse.

I don't know what you mean by "merged parse", but here is my first-down run with my parse if you're interested:
http://youtu.be/utU-iZqURAc?t=615



Anyway back to the Unleashed & Abyssal Drain topic...

If some people still don't understand that Abyssal Drain can't solve every situations and that every tanks needs at least 2 different AoE in this game, there is nothing we can do about it, experience will teach them.
Now I also believe that SE could've done things slightly differently to prevent these skills from being so redundant, but as of today I've yet to see a good suggestion that isn't gamebreaking. DRK doesn't need to be "better".

Abyssal Drain is 15y.

Radius is 5y.

[Phoenicia]

..
I don't get what's so wrong with DRK's mitigation in this encounter. It's not that different from PLD, and WAR is rarely using Inner Beast or Storm Path in this fight so how is he providing "better" mitigation than DRK? I didn't felt squishy and my healers didn't have much troubles keeping me alive.
One thing for sure, Abyssal Drain with always 25% drain would be much stronger than a WAR with Berserk & Blood Bath on, because it would be always 25%, could be stacked with Blood Bath, and Abyssal Drain doesn't consume TP. WAR may have Equilibrium, they can't spam Overpower while DRK can spam Abyssal Drain. I'll still try today with Blood Bath instead of Awareness (since none of the mobs ever crit in this fight), just to have a taste of what it could've been if Abyssal Drain actually constantly drained HP.
..
..
http://youtu.be/utU-iZqURAc?t=615

DRK has ONLY 2 CDs that "reliably" work for physical damage. Shadowskin and Shadow Wall. Compared to WAR, which has at least 5 CDs that "reliable" work in there, you can easily see the difference. IB, ToB, Vengeance (Far better than Shadow Wall), Raw Intuition, Bloodbath. PLD has passive mitigation with shield, this alone makes it enough but for completion sake: Rampart, Sentinel (Better than Shadow Wall) and Bulwark. Let's not ignore how a PLD can cheese any wave with Hallowed Ground. All three tanks have access to Foresight but WAR's CD is 30s shorter, even if it's a shite CD.

None of the tanks is squishy. But you don't compare them to DPS, you compare them to other tanks. A PLD and WAR will HEAVILY and RELIABLE mitigate more physical damage than DRK ever will.

A WAR will use Overpower + SteelCyclone/Decimate as much as you will use any of your AoEs. You ARE gated by MP and Blood Pact just as much WAR is gated by TP. WAR also has Equilibrium and SC/Decimate are 0TP.

DRK's AoE are spells, spells do NOT benefit from Bloodbath. So no, DRK cannot benefit from Bloodbath in AoE. So "because it would be always 25%, could be stacked with Blood Bath, and Abyssal Drain doesn't consume TP." is just so wrong on so many levels. Abyssal Drain is not free either, it costs MASSIVE MP. It having a base 25% drain barely puts you on equal footing with the other two tanks. Let's not forget WAR's Bloodbath lasts twice as long and WAR's AoE is the same base potency with a stronger damage buff with Maim, add Deliverance for more power! (20~26%).

In your parse, you were OT most of the fight. In Xeno's parse he was MT for the last 3 waves. Xeno pulled hardly 20 less DPS with an ilv190 weapon compared to your ilv200. If you "still" refuse to see how your DPS is not better than WAR's, then you're just being stubborn.

[Kleys]

In your parse, you were OT most of the fight. In Xeno's parse he was MT for the last 3 waves. Xeno pulled hardly 20 less DPS with an ilv190 weapon compared to your ilv200. If you "still" refuse to see how your DPS is not better than WAR's, then you're just being stubborn.

"MT" and "OT" is absolutely meaningless in this fight.
That aside, wtf. I did everything like Xeno but as a DRK during the whole fight, except the very last mob at the very end where I asked for a switch, but that was absolutely not needed and wouldn't have changed my tanking or my DPS.

And once again (2nd time you conveniently misread to turn this into a contest for some reasons), it's not about my dps against others dps, it's about DRK's DPS against WAR's DPS. I did 1020 by doing way more mistakes than Xeno or that other 1050 DPS WAR in your video. I'm just simply being realistic considering my mistakes about the DRK performance if played properly. Hopefully I'll be able to raid soon and perform better so I can bring up more accurate numbers.

I won't bother debating about the mitigation, you didn't read what I said about IB & Storn Path and you seem heavily biaised anyway (PLD's Shield and Bullwark is "reliable" but Dark Dance isn't even worth mentionning, 'k).

You're right about Bloodbath, doesn't work on spells. Too bad.

However we're talking about DRK in A2S. So, a DRK that is getting hit a lot. Blood Price give more MP than you can consume by spamming Abyssal Drain during its entire duration, so you can manage the fight in a way that will allow you to always be able to AoE whenever it's worth it, unlike WAR, thus Abyssal Drain is free.

[Phoenicia]

Stuff.

When I said "Xeno MT'd" I wasn't talking about where he stood or who the mobs faced, Xeno was in Defiance instead of Deliverance. Losing 30% DPS potential for that entire time. During that time, you turned off Grit. Don't tell me that doesn't affects its overall DPS now. Also you ignore that he had a worse weapon! Weapons are a VERY big deal when it comes to DPS performance.

I am not talking about "your" DPS vs Xeno/Pizwah. Though in both cases they performed slightly better/worse with a worse weapon! I'm saying WAR vs DRK, WAR has more AoE potential.

As for Blood Price, there is only so much MP you can recover before MP gained becomes higher than MP spent and you "cap" at MP recovery. Considering you're almost never hit by more than 5 mobs (most of the time 2~4) at any point in A2S, Blood Price recovery isn't as huge as you make it. Blood Price is also time gated. Up 15s and down 25s. If you are not careful, you WILL floor your MP and lose Darkside. So Abyssal Drain is not free.

Also when I first tanked in A2, my WAR friend thought it was funny that he would zerk Steel Cyclone + overpower the adds I gathered to rip hate off me leaving me MP starved after the few Abyssal Drains used didn't get me the hate back. Though I'm not saying there is a reason for WAR to do it or a it is a weakness of DRK. Just the possibility of it happening makes me sad.

When WAR is taking heavy damage (tanking 1 big mob), it will use IB over Steel Cyclone. It's not like WAR is gonna keep it up 100% and spend every infuriated buff on it, but ignoring that it IS there for when the WAR needs it is fallacy. I didn't mention Storm Path in my post at all, but Xeno used it for added mitigation when he MT'd the last 2 waves. So you can't deny its usefulness and reliability. Just the fact that the option exists makes WAR mitigation "better" than DRK.

Bulwark > Dark Dance for the time it's up. In a stream of attacks, Bulwark is twice as reliable as DD. Not to mention Shield Block in general is twice as reliable as Parry since it scales better. Lastly, with a tower shield, shield blocks ~50% more damage than a parry. So even though DD and Bulwark will probably average the same amount of parries/blocks, damage mitigated by Bulwark is higher. Since A2S does not have tank busters but instead is filled with streams of high incoming damage, you can see how average mitigation provided by shield is more reliable than whatever pity parry DRK/WAR have in their "let's-avoid-parry-because-it-sucks" gear.

I am not saying DRK isn't viable, however, I am just saying that out of the three tanks, it's possibly the worst.

[Cooperal]

I barely use it but I sure know what it's for. Big pulls. Not for bosses. Not for dungeons where more than 5 trash will push you into a reasonably serious risk. Places that you're very well geared for like Fractal/Neverreap trash.

If you use it where you're supposed to be using it, the self-heal will actually be significant (gaining hate from one enemy for every extra enemy that's hit) and blood price will be at its most effective, erasing the cost of DA and AD in pretty short order. I'll typically use it near the front-end of a battle with the weaklings, before a single one has fallen. In a lower gear case it's helping you when the hoard of enemies is at its strongest, in a higher gear case it's allowing a healer to branch further out of healing.

There's really nothing critical about it. It makes larger groups more bearable where someone would be a little worse off if unleash was their only instant AoE and a time-consuming soul-eater combo was their best self-heal. It's like it was designed to be awful in serious content, while it's true purpose lies in making speed runs accessible slightly earlier.

It's just one of those things. Every job has a few abilities that just shouldn't used for comparisons when facing elite content, because they're openly tailored to something other than that. I am saddened to have stained my eyes with such a discussion.