Why TBN is a powerful but poorly designed ability.

[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.

[Kalocin]

I don't think it should be nerfed to buff everything else, because chances are with the way things are, it'd likely leave us in a mediocre state compared to paladins (unless we did stupid amounts of damage). I don't think there's anything wrong with saying the mitigation shouldn't be just TBN, and honestly at the current point they either need to change dark mind or give us another CD we can use.
Outside of Role Skills and TBN we have : Shadow Wall and Dark Mind. That doesn't feel or sound right.

My personal stance? With how many AoEs and how horrible Dark Passenger is, I'd honestly prefer if they just changed it into a mana-less (or lowered) debuff of some kind.

[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.

[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.

[Driavna]

.

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.

[Driavna]

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.

And what I saying it's relevant to this topic:

- Skill design it's fine (we need more like TBN).

- Instead of sticking with this design they need to change it once and for all, all this DPS meta happens because how boring passive tanking is (once again relevant to this topic).

You are asking for a solution to numbers and I requesting a deeper solution related to this topic.

[Starkbeaumont]

Lets say you have a TB that does 54000 damage in one hit. Lets say you have 45K HP. Mix of fending and slaying, some HQ food, whatever.
DADM = 37800
TBNDM = 36900, plus blood gauge.

If it does 54000 spread out over 6 hits of 9K...
DADM = 37800
TBNDM = 38250, plus blood gauge.

I don't understand your math here.
The DM mitigated attack hits for 45.9k. You have 45k+9k (TBN). so you survive with 8.1k
DADM mitigated hits for 37.8k. You'll survive with 7.2k

That is also true if you are looking at a multihit. TBN is just an extension of your HP

DM+TBN wins.

Now let's say the tank buster's base is 60k.
DM+TBN: 45k + 9k - (60k*0.85) = 3k HP left
DADM: 45k - (60k*0.7) = 3k HP left

Both are equal for mitigation. DM+TBN still rewards Blood

Tank buster base at 64k.
DM+TBN: 45k + 9k - (64k*0.85) = -400 HP. dead DRK
DADM: 45k - (64k*0.7) = 200 HP left. not so dead DRK

DADM is the winner.

So DM+TBN is not always better.

[TankHunter678]

-snip-

Paladin I have come to find is a better proactive tank (leveling mine still, only around level 43 just about to hit 44) then DRK because of how spammable shield bash is. Were it not for CC resistance well... all I would need to do is just rotate between mobs shield bashing. Then there is sheltron (which feels good to use, even in potd).

I mean when I ran Stone Vigil I was undergeared, with an undergeared group, and SCH as healer. I got into a number of bad pulls because of bad positioning from the sprouts with me. We did not wipe, only because out of desperation I was shield bash spamming to give the healer time to catch up. Pulls that my DRK would wipe we made it through because a enemy that cannot act is an enemy that cannot dps me down faster then the healer can heal me back up. Not to mention shield swipe letting me cancel enemy AoEs.

DPS meta was going to form anyways because as the old saying goes "The best defense is a good offense".