DRK Consolidated Feedback Thread

[Lyth]

Resource-based mitigation can potentially hurt you in two ways. First, there is the net potency loss from spending the resource. Second, there is the opportunity cost of holding on to resources that you would otherwise want to spend. During Infusion/TA/Embolden, you want to spend as much resources as you can in the window. Likewise, prior to phase transitions where there is no active target, you want to burn off as much MP as possible to allow it to tick back up during the intermission. Being asked to hang on to 18-43% of your MP to perform baseline job functions that other tanks do for free is still a dps loss, even if they were to fully reimburse you after the fact.

There are five %DR actions built-in to DRK. Of these, three have attached resource costs: Grit (18%), TBN (25%), and DADM (25%). Two of these are not reimbursable, and the costs are quite high.

The exchange rate of blood and MP is not fixed. It has actually shown a lot of variation over minor patches, and even presently, TBN varies (on average) from a minor dps gain to a minor dps loss when it breaks. The only way for it to be "free" mitigation would be if it reimbursed you for the MP cost when used correctly, but that would probably be a bit boring, and still runs up against the opportunity cost issue that I raised above.

There actually isn't a problem with having TBN being part of dps optimisation. Third Eye/Seigan on SAM can be used to give you minor resource gains if you use it correctly by predicting incoming damage, and that's on a dps job. It seems like predicting damage and counterattacking would make a lot of sense on a tank job. But it shouldn't something that you throw on any auto and expect it to break. TBN's real function is to mitigate cleaves and single hit tankbusters, and these are what you should be rewarded for predicting.

I don't think that TBN single-handedly solves all of DRK's mitigation problems, either. TBN specifically works on single hit tankbusters. How do you think it would fare against a multi-hit physical tankbuster, such as A7S' Uplander Doom? TBN doesn't really work, because a lot of the damage comes from scaling autos. You'd maybe mitigate one hit. DM doesn't work, because it's magical only. You're left with cross-class Rampart, Shadow Wall, and Living Dead. Any fight which places sustained pressure on the tank is not a good fight for DRK, either. I can't channel TBN indefinitely against a consistently hard hitting mob (especially ones which require you to hold out for as long as you can against a stacking buff), and the rest of the cooldown kit is too sparse to offer great alternatives. There are definitely some significant gaps here that need to be addressed.

[Launched]

I don't think that TBN single-handedly solves all of DRK's mitigation problems, either. TBN specifically works on single hit tankbusters. How do you think it would fare against a multi-hit physical tankbuster, such as A7S' Uplander Doom? TBN doesn't really work, because a lot of the damage comes from scaling autos. You'd maybe mitigate one hit.

Shields work perfectly fine on multi hit tankbusters. They're not like Sheltron where they fade after one hit no matter how much damage it does. A 10k shield reduces the same amount of damage whether it's used on a single 60k hit or 6 10k hits. A Rampart on that same damage would reduce damage by 12k total. The only real difference is that the shield mitigates all up front and pretty much negates one hit completely, while other cooldowns reduce much less on each hit but the damage reduced adds up over time.
Using your A7S example, TBN would be really good there. A TBN by itself could probably reduce one of the attacks to 0 (with some shield left over for the second hit), so you wouldn't get that stack of vuln up. Combined with Adloquium and Stoneskin, you would have been able to completely avoid 2 or 3 stacks which would reduce the damage from the last 3 hits.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Using your A7S example, TBN would be really good there. A TBN by itself could probably reduce one of the attacks to 0 (with some shield left over for the second hit), so you wouldn't get that stack of vuln up. Combined with Adloquium and Stoneskin, you would have been able to completely avoid 2 or 3 stacks which would reduce the damage from the last 3 hits.

If you had TBN on synched content because running it unsynched would be too easy... I wish there was a 8 man raid roulette for those situations and wish there was an EX trial roulette...