Lets nerf WAR :D

[FallenWings]

Gameplay Mechanics > Trivial definition loyalty.

Alternatively, change the skill name if it irritates people so much.

The very concept of Reprisal is a violation of a Tanking fundamental in this game:

Never rely on RNG to save your buttocks.

And if you read my suggestion a bit more carefully, you'd notice that the cooldown of Reprisal is retained (30 seconds) and the duration lowered so that Reprisal would be used in a similiar fashion to Inner Beast for preparation of a big hit if you weren't spamming it as a DPS oGCD.

The fact that you have to hold a defensive CD just to potentially activate another CD for a big hit is poor effective design and a convoluted gameplay mechanic.

DRK is not fine. It WILL have its glaring issues surface again once content that doesn't explicitly cater to the class arrive.

A reason why people would rather suggest buffs is simply because nerfing WAR in its current state achieves nothing but make more problems.

It's like saying you should turn a fully functional hammer into a screw driver so that the other screwdrivers don't feel bad about being excluded from a hammer job.

[Ultimatecalibur]

A reason why people would rather suggest buffs is simply because nerfing WAR in its current state achieves nothing but make more problems.

No. People prefer buffs over nerfs because of the associated connotations. The term "buff" has positive connotations while the term "nerf" has negative connotations. In other words people feel buffs are good and nerfs are bad even if they would not fix the problem.

Much of the disagreement is about what is causing the known problem (a performance gap between the three tanks). Some see it as the Warrior over-performing as a tank while others see it as the Paladin (and to a lesser extent the Dark Knight) under-performing.

If the cause is Warrior over-performance then the best solution would be to reduce the Warrior's ability to perform, but that would require nerfs (which are "bad") so people prefer to avoid thinking about this possibly.

If the cause is Paladin/Dark Knight under-performance then the best solution would be to improve Paladin/Dark Knight ability to perform, and as this would require buffs (which are "good") so people want to focus on this possibility.

It's like saying you should turn a fully functional hammer into a screw driver so that the other screwdrivers don't feel bad about being excluded from a hammer job.

Bad analogy. A better one for the current situation is that the Warrior is a Combination Powered Circular Saw, Dark Knight is a Crosscut Push saw and Paladin is a Ripping Pull Saw.

The Crosscut and Ripping saws are better when doing the cuts that they specialize in, but the Crosscut has a bit more "oomph" because of it being a push saw. The Circular Saw on the other hand is just outright better at cutting.

[Syzygian]

Never rely on RNG to save your buttocks.

Tired of seeing this argument as well because its quite simply NOT like this in practice.
A Reprisal would be the icing on the cake, other CDs should be up. A Reprisal by itself is simply not ever going to save you.

Also again, sure its RNG, but if you don't parry once in 20 seconds with a 50-60% chance to do so, LOL, I'm sorry but that's just not a common enough problem to warrant a mechanical change.

I can see this argument working if I was trying to say that you should use Dark Dance in the hopes of parrying one specific hit, because as PLDs in T13 learned with Bulwark, you can and will get fucked over, but that's not what we're talking about here, which leads me to my next point.

The fact that you have to hold a defensive CD just to potentially activate another CD for a big hit is poor effective design and a convoluted gameplay mechanic.

Because what else would you use a parry rate increase for? Mitigating auto-attack damage before/after TBs? oh wait...

The way this works is actually very good design, IMO, because it helps shave off the amount of damage you take from autos leading up to a TB, thus requiring less heals to top you off (potentially), and then get a present for it (Reprisal).

In A2S, both were a big part of my CD rotation. While things like SS and SW were on CD I would pop Dark Dance and then put Reprisal on the Doll I was not focusing and therefore not facing and therefore unable to parry its attacks.

Here's some math:

If a boss auto attacks you every 3 seconds and you have Dark Dance up, you have around a 0.083 chance, assuming NO investment in your parry stat, to NOT get a single Reprisal proc inside that 20 seconds. If you land on the pear-shaped side of such odds, I'm really sorry, but you're probably just unlucky. I reiterate, I've never been left wanting for a proc in any situation in savage thus far in which my life depended on it. =/

I feel that the job plays extremely well, and I was not a "paper tank" as so many people warned me that DRK would be in A2S (I'm able to spend almost as much time out of tank stance in there as my WAR OT, and he only gets more time out of it b/c we kill his adds first, naturally). Does it have strengths and weaknesses? Absolutely. But so does every job in the game other than WAR (the whole point of this thread). Do its strengths/weaknesses break it? Nah.

[karateorangutang]

snip

Admittedly, I don't play DRK so this is more a direct question than a critique of your post.

Reprisal is based on parry which does happen often making the ability based on a RNG circumstance. I know dark dance makes this sort of thing likely, seems to work the exact same way as bulward + shield swipe, but shouldn't the real question for the ability be something else?

I guess from my view why should reprisal need to be, even partially, gated behind another CD? I also know Darkside should be up all the time, but if its not for whatever reason then it becomes even less likely.

[Syzygian]

Admittedly, I don't play DRK so this is more a direct question than a critique of your post.

Reprisal is based on parry which does happen often making the ability based on a RNG circumstance. I know dark dance makes this sort of thing likely, seems to work the exact same way as bulward + shield swipe, but shouldn't the real question for the ability be something else?

I guess from my view why should reprisal need to be, even partially, gated behind another CD? I also know Darkside should be up all the time, but if its not for whatever reason then it becomes even less likely.

LOL, I've gotten enough critique as it is for this whole thread. I'm not taking it personally even though a lot of folks are getting REALLY mad.

To answer your question, its not really. I get Reprisal procs all the time in the 30 seconds when their cooldowns don't line up. Reprisal is *only* -10% and as I said, I'm not counting on such a piddly amount to save my life from shit in savage where autoattacks crit for 9K any more than I'm counting on getting a lucky parry. Its just an intelligent synergy between the two abilities that is A. effective and B. fun to use. That and with so many people slamming Dark Dance I'm perplexed as to why anyone would be up in arms for "wasting" it to proc a Reprisal. If it was gated behind something that doesn't already have very high uptime (20s out of every 60? cmon now. You'll have it again before you know it) or that was an extremely powerful CD that I needed to save for something else (Shadow Wall or something) then yeah, I'd agree. But its not. Its just fine where it is.

Also, based again on my experience in A2S (which is just a great example overall for these argument because it requires such high and constant CD uptime for the MT), there would be times where the only thing I would have available to me is Dark Dance, while I'm waiting for another CD or combination of CDs to come back off recast. Frankly, I'm very glad that DD is married so well to another, guaranteed form of mitigation to stack it with, as it makes it possible to pop it by itself, get a proc, and have a decent period of mitigation to fill the gap between cooldowns.

i.e. here was the CD rotation I used in A2S for double jagd (they are staggered in this way due to me using Shadow Wall and Shadowskin on the previous two phases to facilitate keeping Grit off for longer:

0s- bloodbath
convalescence
drac vit pot
10s-


20s- shadowskin


30s-


40s- dark dance
reprisal

50s-


60s- foresight
awareness

70s-


80s- shadow wall


90s- bloodbath (by this point, the entire party is stacked up in the SW corner for next wave so I'm catching a lot more AoE heals and can afford this gap in CDs)


100s-dark dance
reprisal

110s-


120s-shadowskin - one of my dolls is usually dead, no CDs popped after this point to save them for the final wave.


So I guess my point is, the fact that Reprisal can be tied so easily to DD makes DD a very viable CD by itself without having to stack anything, if you're taking a constant stream of physical damage, and the mitigation averages out to close to as much as a Shadowskin.