Tank Balance Achieved?

[Lyth]

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There are two problems with talking about "overall balance" when it comes to tanks. First, there are some things that you just can't do a proper comparison on. How does more frequent raid mitigation compare to higher raid dps? You can strike a balance between personal and raid dps, but when you add mitigation and self-healing to the mix, it becomes a comparison between apples and oranges.

Second, as a tank, you can't afford to fall too far behind in any one area. It's possible to be overpowered in one domain and underpowered in another. They tried this with the "physical tank" and "magical tank" in HW, but it just encouraged players to swap jobs on a fight-by-fight basis.

There are a few different domains in which need to be balanced independently: raid dps, personal mitigation, raid mitigation, and self-sustain.

With regards to TBN, I don't think the devs are specifically balancing around it. The value of TBN depends on the relative potency of Bloodspiller to that of your average combo action. Make Bloodspiller more powerful, and TBN becomes more powerful. Make combo actions more powerful, then TBN becomes less so. What happened over the past two patches is this: in 4.01, Bloodspiller was buffed out of Grit. This made it a dps gain on average. In 4.05, SE was buffed. This made it a dps loss on average. In both patches, it is never a consistent gain or loss, either, as it depends on which GCD combo action it replaces.

What probably happened was this. The devs created an ability which blocks an attack for either yourself or a friend. And when the shield shatters, you launch into a counterattack! That feels pretty fun! And they probably didn't think about it a whole lot further.

The problem is that most of DRK's new actions are interrelated, so flat potency gains just shift around your priorities, rather than giving you the needed dps boost. DRK's issues at the moment are resource related, rather than potency related. That's why the Quietus change made such a fantastic difference to DRK's AoE gameplay. MP is potency. Blood is potency.