Why TBN is a powerful but poorly designed ability.

[Kitfox]

When people are saying TBN is a dps increase, are they talking about tanking in Grit?

Am I missing something when I average this out?:
Outside Grit:
No TBN → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 140) / 6 = 250 potency per GCD (Souleater x2 with one Dark Arts)
TBN on CD → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 400) / 7 = ~251 potency per GCD (Souleater x2 with TBN + Bloodspiller)

In Grit:
No TBN → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 140 x 2) / 6 = ~273 potency per GCD (~(Souleater x2 with Dark Arts x2)
TBN on CD → ((150+250+280) x 2 + 650) / 7 = ~287 potency per GCD (Souleater x2 with TBN + Dark Arts + Bloodspiller)

Obviously TBN is not meant to be used for AAs to gain DPS because of the 5 second duration and it seems like major oversight in design that it can be used like that. To be honest, I'm not sure I understand why Bloodspiller is so valuable in Grit besides that they wanted a cool way to bring Grit DPS closer to no-stance. There has to be a better way to achieve the same result without the pitfall that is TBN and Grit Bloodspiller.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

This has been mathed to hell and back and is really not what I want this thread to be about. Bloodspiller's buff means it is a huge gain in Grit, regardless of how you payed for the Blood to use it, and a smaller gain, but still a gain, out of Grit. Basically you answered your own question.

TBN being used on AAs in spite of its 5s duration is not the oversight - the oversight is that we don't have anything else to use instead. We have to use TBN on AA damage, because we interchangeably save Shadow Wall and Rampart to pair (seperately) with it for every TB. This is lessened somewhat in fights with magical TBs, but in fights like Susano it just feels like garbage.

We no longer have things like Foresight, Dark Dance, Reprisal, etc. to lengthen the time it takes for fluff damage to pull our HP down to the point where we require a heal. Thus, we can't NOT at least TRY to use TBN frequently to mitigate that damage, if we care about healer and raid DPS, and if we're lucky our own DPS.

[Kitfox]

So basically they should make the shield duration longer, or give the gauge regardless if it breaks or not. Logically, that's what they should've done if they wanted to bring up the lower skilled players closer to the top ones. Doing either of those things would fix the clunkiness of the ability, would it not?

[SyzzleSpark]

So basically they should make the shield duration longer, or give the gauge regardless if it breaks or not. Logically, that's what they should've done if they wanted to bring up the lower skilled players closer to the top ones. Doing either of those things would fix the clunkiness of the ability, would it not?

I think you misunderstand. The idea isn't to buff TBN, its to buff everything else. Currently the job is over-reliant on it because it is picking up all the slack of everything we lost, which is a lot. Everything that is left over outside of cross-role is either A. an undertuned CD with a ridiculous recast/duration for what it does (Shadow Wall) B. Dark Mind which only works on magic and has a DA effect that is aging poorly, or C. Living Dead, the problems of which are extremely well documented.

If everything else was buffed and TBN maybe kept as is but with a longer recast, we could use TBN in a way that makes sense (on tank busters) and have other CDs for all the nonsense in between.

[Driavna]

So basically they should make the shield duration longer, or give the gauge regardless if it breaks or not. Logically, that's what they should've done if they wanted to bring up the lower skilled players closer to the top ones. Doing either of those things would fix the clunkiness of the ability, would it not?

No, TBN is a well designed skills in term of use and timing and most tank skills should be of similar fashion to make tanking more interesting in general and less passive. We should be more worried about active mitigation than "is XXX a DPS loss?"

[SyzzleSpark]

No, TBN is a well designed skills in term of use and timing and most tank skills should be of similar fashion to make tanking more interesting in general and less passive. We should be more worried about active mitigation than "is XXX a DPS loss?"

The problem is that they've already made our DPS active and less passive in the exact way you are describing, and adding in an active mitigation element that is in bed with our DPS and resources on top of that is honestly a bit much. So much of DRK's rotation is reactionary and priority based that its no wonder we've been reduced to a single combo.

What you're describing is something akin to Sheltron which has little-to-no interaction with our DPS, and what interaction it does have can only ever be a net positive.

[Driavna]

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I don't agree to this, we are tanks our main interactions should be around tanking skills not as DPS with damage reduction skills. I'm not saying maxing DPS is bad or anything, but I play tank to tank not to play a simplify version of a DPS. Others game like BnS allow tanks to do a lot of damage (same amount or more than a DPS) but they have to time all their skills and plan their rotation around immunity frames/blocks/counters/dodge/interrupts instead of just face tanking while pumping out DPS (and mistake can kill you at high-end content).

To me, this game has a really outdated tanking scheme focusing more on face tanking and long term cd's than anything else.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

This is a discussion for any number of other threads on the tanking forum for this topic. This game is designed around tanks being exactly what you believe they shouldn't be and I honestly can't help you with that unfortunately. For DRKs that do want to play their tanking job as the design of this game strongly encourages, TBN is a messy ability. Powerful, yes, but messy.

I'm glad that you like the design direction of it, but that design direction applied solely to DRK while the other tanks "face tank" puts DRK at a disadvantage.

[Falar]

I don't agree to this, we are tanks our main interactions should be around tanking skills not as DPS with damage reduction skills. I'm not saying maxing DPS is bad or anything, but I play tank to tank not to play a simplify version of a DPS. Others game like BnS allow tanks to do a lot of damage (same amount or more than a DPS) but they have to time all their skills and plan their rotation around immunity frames/blocks/counters/dodge/interrupts instead of just face tanking while pumping out DPS (and mistake can kill you at high-end content).

To me, this game has a really outdated tanking scheme focusing more on face tanking and long term cd's than anything else.

Who cares what other games do.

Tanking was in a great place in this game and now they are messing it up.

[Kalocin]

No, TBN is a well designed skills in term of use and timing and most tank skills should be of similar fashion to make tanking more interesting in general and less passive. We should be more worried about active mitigation than "is XXX a DPS loss?"

I think it should be buffed to 6 or 7 seconds due to how you usually have to cast it a second or so earlier due to server issues or the skill just having a horrible activation time.