4.05 - Tank DPS comparison

[Quor]

There's no denying the value of TBN as a mitigation. No one is saying TBN is wasted MP. Only want to clarify that being able to use BS does not result in a dps increase, if that's what people are trying to get out of it.

I disagree. Based on what I'm seeing here, if there's going to be a delay of even a single GCD for whatever reason (boss re-positions, a knockback) then using BS is a gain. Furthermore, if there's any kind of vuln debuff or other similar thing on the boss, then the effect of the higher potency single GCD of BS is worth "delaying" a combo by 1 GCD.

Again, people need to stop thinking of these fights as massive immovable walls that can be attacked constantly without interruption. There are discrete pockets of time wherein higher damage skills are rewarded more than they would be otherwise. As a SAM, I can blow Guren as soon as it comes off cooldown, and most of the time that's at least ok, but in fights like Susie EX, saving it to break a rock while lining it up to hit both the rock and Susie is a DPS gain that's worth delaying the usage of the skill (as long as it's not delayed more than a minute). Likewise, as WAR, saving Zerk+IR for a few seconds longer is a huge gain if it means I'm dropping those FC's in a TA window.

Here's a more simple calculation than the "average potency per GCD" bs from earlier on.

SE combo = 700 potency over 3 GCD's.
Bloodspiller = 400 potency for 1 GCD.
TBN, if broken, allows for another BS due to the 50 blood gained. Thus, for this example, I'll assume TBN was used (but not DA, on BS or SE, that'll come later) to allow for a third BS, and that the DRK is at 100 blood gauge going in. Now the SE combo takes place over three GCD's, while BS is a single GCD, so we'll be comparing a point at which the two intersect, which will consist of 12 GCD's. This is 4 SE combos or three SE combos + 3 BS.

4 SE combos over 12 GCD's results in a net gain of 2800 potency.
3 SE combos + 3 BS over 12 GCD's results in a net gain of 3300 potency. Again, this assumes no DA's in either combo, and single use of TBN in the second combo to enable a third BS. But even without that third BS, if we just factor in a Hard Slash as the 12th GCD (instead of a BS) then that's still 3050 potency total over 12 GCD's, which is more than just running the SE combo.

Now let's look at what DA does, compared to TBN (since the argument is that TBN is always a potency loss over DA). For this example, we will use four DA's in the SE combo (all on SE) and 3 DA's + one TBN in the BS combo. That means an equal amount of mana was spent, and again we are starting at 100 blood gauge in the tank for the BS combo.

4 SE + DA combos over 12 GCD's results in a net gain of 3360 potency.
2 non-DA SE combos plus one DA+SE, and 3 DA+BS (including TBN) over 12 GCD's results a net gain of 3860 potency.

Or, for those who would prefer to see an average, you have 280 PPGCD for the pure DA+SE combo vs 321.7 PPGCD for the combo that uses 3 DA+BS and TBN.

About opportunity cost

There is none. It's a bullshit idea. It's a simple as using BS appropriately, even to the point of using TBN to get another BS, results in an increase in damage. There is no "opportunity" cost because you are spending a resource that has no use unless it is spent. A good analogy of this was posted by Reynhart earlier; the reasoning used to justify this "opportunity cost" BS is not just logically unsound, but it's Jackie Chan "my head is full of fuck" levels of idiocy. Utilizing a higher potency skill is never an opportunity cost (again, as long as it's done right, see above RE: proper use of cooldowns to maximize gain based on the situation).

This strikes me as a discussion very similar to what I remember some DRG's saying back when FnC and WT came out. The argument against using FnC and WT was that, well, Full Thrust has like, 300 potency! It hits harder than FnC and WT do! So just restart the FT combo! This ignored that adding a 200+ potency hit on the tail end of the combo resulted in more overall damage due to a higher average PPGCD. And it looks like DRK has the same issue here; even though BS is on the GCD, it's not a "loss" to use it, and it's also apparently not a loss to use TBN to get another BS, since in both examples above it's a pure potency gain (and also as Reynhart noted, resources exist to be consumed, not to be stocked endlessly without use).

FUCK IT. Let's go deeper.

Doing all of that above, I realized that since BS is a GCD skill, it has no combo limitations like SE does. It's just a pure 400 (or 540) potency per GCD. This means that while my 12 GCD calculation works in a "theoretical" sense, it isn't a full reflection of the possibilities. You could easily get 3 DA+BS in 5 GCD's.

DA+BS > HS > DA+BS > SS > DA+BS = 2020 potency over 5 GCD's, or 404 PPGCD. Of course, this is predicated on the belief that BS does not interrupt combos in progress, like Fell Cleave or Iaijutsu currently function. If I'm wrong there then let me know because I'll have to reward things.

For comparison, here's a SAM blowing Meikyo on two Midare's plus the 3 sen skills.
Kaiten+MS > Meikyo+Yuki > Kasha > Gekko > Kaiten+MS = 3300 potency over 5 GCD's, or 660 PPGCD. Proper BS usage allows a DRK to get about 61% of the PPGCD of the current highest burst window of the highest DPS class in game atm.

Let's look at WAR during Zerk + IR, accounting for 5 GCD's of Fell Cleave.
5xFC under Zerk+IR = 3250 total potency, or 650 PPGCD (it goes without saying that Infuriate is used, obviously). A hair under SAM, but requiring a trio of cooldowns, one of which is two minutes long. I'm pretty certain a DRK could nail the 3x DA+BS combo more frequently than a WAR can use Zerk+IR, so the burst may be lower but the average for DRK is probably a lot smoother over the course of a fight (and less punished by mechanics, since even a single GCD missed by the WAR due to mechanics will cause the loss of an FC.

Reading all this, I suppose it can be summed up to say that proper usage of TBN turns a 10% damage shield into a 400 potency attack. Based on that observation, the average potency gain from Dark Arts seems to be an additional 140 for all GCD skills that utilize it (save PS obviously). If TBN and DA cost the same, then it would seem that using TBN on cooldown is preferanble for DPS, assuming you can guarantee it will break and provide the blood bonus. But even if you're only getting it to break every other time, that's still a gain of 200 potency, which is 60 more than a DA would do for any other GCD skill.