Dark knight

[Drkdays]

OT drk definitely suffer from not being able to use blood price or reprisal reliably. It's a "use a drk arts ability regain a bit of mana and repeat until you need to focus on just recovering mana" story that's made even more difficult if you have to keep grit on for short swaps. OT warriors are able to reset their fel cleave just by using a combo and don't suffer at all from stance swapping. They don't even lose their stacks if I remember correctly. Certainly a difference there, at least for OT.

[SyzzleSpark]

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Thank you Chronons, I'll admit I get pretty impassioned on some of these debates. The more I study DRK the more I see design parallels between the other tanks and SE's intentions become more clear, and sadly being an advocate for this job in certain ways isn't always easy. People have a lot of prejudices.

OT drk definitely suffer from not being able to use blood price or reprisal reliably. It's a "use a drk arts ability regain a bit of mana and repeat until you need to focus on just recovering mana" story that's made even more difficult if you have to keep grit on for short swaps. OT warriors are able to reset their fel cleave just by using a combo and don't suffer at all from stance swapping. They don't even lose their stacks if I remember correctly. Certainly a difference there, at least for OT.

I disagree. While OTing, should you maintain proper uptime, Blood Weapon reliably grants you over 3K MP per use. When a swap is coming, you should go into it with at least 3K MP and be preparing to meet that quota beforehand. The lack of Blood Price while OTing should not hurt you at all. In fact you should still be popping it on cooldown to get an extra piece of MP from any stray raid-targeted damage.

I think some people use the Scourge-DASE-Delirium-DASE-Delirium-repeat rotation too rigidly. You can chain together as many Deliriums or as many DASE's as you want, but you're always going to need to use an equal number of them to safely maintain. If you just swapped with your OT, you can hit Blood Weapon and chain together 4 DASEs and then start spamming Delirium in preparation for the swap back.

Next, you should never keep Grit on after a swap no matter how short it is. You should be dropping that shit pronto. Blood Weapon is only 15 seconds long. You don't even need to turn it back on immediately when you swap back unless your co-tank is deliberately fighting for aggro. As long as you prep a Power Slash it should be easy-peasy. Anyway if you turn Grit back on for a swap and find yourself at critical MP you've over extended yourself. No two ways about it, that's what happened man, I'm sorry.

People complain all the time about LD requiring healer intervention, WAR's entire tank stance is designed from the ground up on healer intervention. Sure they can make up the difference with SW or Equil, but what good WAR is going to blow those cooldowns for that purpose? That would be highly inefficient. WAR gets *zero* eHP gains from switching into Defiance until A. They blow their precious stacks on IB, or B. Get healed. DRKs, like PLDs, get an instant, infinite IB (albeit on that does no damage) as soon as they swap. Consider that.

There is also often a bit of downtime between swaps (moving back to and from the boss for mechanics, adds, boss jumping, etc.) where you can activate tank stance with no DPS penalty (since you're not interrupting your DPS - b/c its downtime). A7 and A7S is a perfect example of this. While OTing, there's boss jumps, adds to run back and forth to (when Plunge is on CD, anyway), etc. between the tank busters. Activating Grit at any of these points ensures that the only thing lost is MP, and not a GCD that could have been spent on anything else.

Reprisal is a subject that I, from the bottom of my heart, am extremely tired of debating with people.

Reprisal is an amazing ability and one that, having only while tanking, is an issue of balance. You have a Storm's Path and it is A. Not combo locked, B. Not a DPS loss, and C. doesn't cost a GCD.

Reprisal functions as DRK's shield. It is not part of their defensive cooldown kit, its something extra. Like PLD has a shield, WAR has heals, etc. The Reprisal-parry synergy causes DRK to take 10% less damage between 50-60% of the time than the other two tanks. Its like a built-in Eye for an Eye. The fact that it is raid-utility as well is a bonus.

That being said, I do agree that extra utility while not getting hit (I word it that way since no tank really should be the de-facto 100% OT all the time) is a thing that DRK could use. I do not think it needs to have Reprisal 100% of the time though, nor do I think that would be balanced.

[Chronons]

OT drk definitely suffer from not being able to use blood price or reprisal reliably. It's a "use a drk arts ability regain a bit of mana and repeat until you need to focus on just recovering mana" story that's made even more difficult if you have to keep grit on for short swaps. OT warriors are able to reset their fel cleave just by using a combo and don't suffer at all from stance swapping. They don't even lose their stacks if I remember correctly. Certainly a difference there, at least for OT.

I don't think DRK really suffers from not having access to Blood Price or Reprisal while OT. In fact Blood Price is only a substantial dps increase when both it and Blood Weapon are available ie. MT not in Grit. Having that extra damage locked behind being able to stance dance is fair in my opinion. No different really then tanking in Deliverance or Sword Oath - you get more dps if you can play the classes well. Reprisal is a free Storms Path that can stack with your Delirium - would be waaay too OP if it was at will.

I cant think of any short swaps that I wouldn't drop Grit for, as long as you aren't pushing your MP to dangerous limits you should have plenty to step back in. Plus Blood Weapon is likely ready to go if you were just MTing in Grit.

Thats an interesting point about Fell Cleaves and WARs. I would actually give DRK the advantage in that regard. If a WAR blows a big cooldown to extend the Abandon timer they are out that resource for 60-120secs. Whereas as DRK if I accidentally Dark Arts(like before a boss jump) i'm only out that MP - a resource I can actively work to generate back. Also, in all fairness we cant just say WARs get to stance dance for "free". They just suffer a different cost than us. For them stance dancing costs dps (Defiance is -25% to their dps) for us it costs MP and far less dps (1.5kish MP and -8% to our dps). What that means is they are going to be more likely to stance dance then we are as it benefits them more to be risky. That doesn't make stance dancing "easier" or cheaper for them in my opinion, just different.