Regarding no DRK adjustments in 4.1

[MauvaisOeil]

Snapshotting before something falls off could be lulzy easy or extremely tactical/hard. Depends on a lot of factors. Consider these 2 examples

*1: What if the shield lasts 1 min (extreme good). Well, all of a sudden this ability is super lulzy and costs virtually nothing.
"Hey Tank buster! Time to use vengeance+IB like I always do anyway! @1sec left: NOM NOM NOM SUPER SHIELD NOM!". 30 sec later Raid damage happens. WAR SO GEWD! /flex!!

*2: What if the shield lasts 5 sec (extreme bad). Well, all of a sudden this ability is extremely costly, tactical and situational
"Hey tank buster! Time to use Veng+IB like I always do! Oh wait...Raid aoe comes in 20 sec....do I want to save something to NOM NOM for that? Im not taking a buster then....Shit need to reconfigure my entire CD rotation if I want more than a junky 4% shield! Tradeoffs! Sacrifices! WHAT DO!?!?!?!"

The duration alone will HEAVILY impact how big the tradeoffs are. Sure there are some situations where TB happens and then raid aoe after and that's similar to the rare double busters that intervention gets to double dip and be super awesome (a la twinbolt). But what if the raid damage is BEFORE the buster? What if the shield doesn't last very long so you cant do much double dipping the buster for you and the buffs for raid?

Patch notes will tell all. This can easily be a very nich/OT useful ability, or OP as fudge, or something in the middle depending on a number of factors we don't yet know.

As for Why TBN is compared to DV/AOE? The same reason that Adlo and Succor are both very handy. Is succor BETTER than adlo? Sometimes. Is adlo BETTER than succor? Sure. Sometimes. They don't do the same thing. That doesn't mean 1 is bad and the other is good. 10% single target shield (potentially every 15 sec) vs 10% aoe shield every 2 min. Why cant both of those things be good? Adlo and succor are both good. Why cant TBN and Veil also both be good? Why shit on TBN and not shit on Adlo? Both have value but people keep ignoring the value of a frequent ST shield like it is has no value. If that's true delete Adlo. Its not true. It has value, but people keep insisting otherwise because reasons.

I won't comment about the snapshotting part because, simply, it will show it's limit and edges quite fast and I'm sure people with more intensible play than I will figure it out and get the best out of it.

Considering the comparison between TBN and DV, then Adlo and succor, I think you're getting completely out of hands here.


You're mixing up things, from a cooldown / targettable ressource costy that TBN is (given the refund is quite neutral on cost, but it's usage can only be done if you don't need it for yourself), compared first to AOE low cost support from tank, then to a non cooldown casted heal with a shield, then to the same effect on the same job but AOE spell, which both are healer spells.

I mean, what's next, TBN will a compared to Soul eater or storm's path ? Will tetragrammaton be balanced against Succor ? No. Will medica/cure3 or medica 2 be balanced around succor ? mostly.


You can't just get an upper hand putting things that doesn't even looks, works, or aren't avaliable to the same setup of roles.

A raid wide shield is a raid wide shield, and anything that can be compared to it is a raid wide shield, a boss damage reduction, or (even if less desirable) a raid wide heal. And all of them only beeing useable by a tank role.

You can put TBN close to Intervene, but that's all. Because that's the only other single target damage reduction that is avaliable to a tank role.

[Aana]

I won't comment about the snapshotting part because, simply, it will show it's limit and edges quite fast and I'm sure people with more intensible play than I will figure it out and get the best out of it.

Considering the comparison between TBN and DV, then Adlo and succor, I think you're getting completely out of hands here.


You're mixing up things, from a cooldown / targettable ressource costy that TBN is (given the refund is quite neutral on cost, but it's usage can only be done if you don't need it for yourself), compared first to AOE low cost support from tank, then to a non cooldown casted heal with a shield, then to the same effect on the same job but AOE spell, which both are healer spells.

I mean, what's next, TBN will a compared to Soul eater or storm's path ? Will tetragrammaton be balanced against Succor ? No. Will medica/cure3 or medica 2 be balanced around succor ? mostly.


You can't just get an upper hand putting things that doesn't even looks, works, or aren't avaliable to the same setup of roles.

A raid wide shield is a raid wide shield, and anything that can be compared to it is a raid wide shield, a boss damage reduction, or (even if less desirable) a raid wide heal. And all of them only beeing useable by a tank role.

You can put TBN close to Intervene, but that's all. Because that's the only other single target damage reduction that is avaliable to a tank role.

My point on adlo/succor is that people have been utterly railing against TBN on the notion that it isnt 'raid wide' mitigation. Before shake it off rework, everyone was talking about raid utility in a broad sense. There was a fairly solid consensus that Pld has a ton of utility (Cures, aoe mitigation, aoe shield, ST mitigation, Cover, etc), drk was 2nd thanks to TBN, and war had none. Now that war has an AOE shield, TBN is suddenly horseshit useless. The fact that its single target is now a big deal. "Its not raid utility! Its only used on the MT 99% of the time when not on the drk!" So? Did cover and intervention suddenly stop being good? Did adlo stop being good? Why is helping the MT not raid utility all of a sudden?

The debate has magically reformed after war got an AOE from Raid Utility=helping the team is now Raid Utility=AOE mitigation. Im trying to point out how absurd this rebranding is. Why is a 15sec (near free) CD rampart on the MT 'not useful' or 'not raid utility'? You dont have to shield the entire party for a skill to be useful. Thus the adlo succor comparison.

In the zeal to rebrand war as OP as fuck and Drk as a shit stain on Plds Pants many have been redefining 'utility' to this absurdly narrow definition of AOE shields because that helps their argument. Its a poor foundation. a 15 sec (near free) super stoneskin (stoneskin was 10% of target HP, drk has more HP than most) IS RAID UTILITY. ITS GOOD RAID UTILITY. It could use some tweaks like a longer duration or more reliable refund for sure. But just because war got an AOE doesnt make a HIGHLY frequent near zero cost single target shield bad. But its post after post about how terribad TBN is because its no AOE. So what. Its still an excellent skill and shouldnt be constantly dismissed and overlooked because people want to play semantics about 'raid utility'.

[Chrono_Rising]

The debate has magically reformed after war got an AOE from Raid Utility=helping the team is now Raid Utility=AOE mitigation. Im trying to point out how absurd this rebranding is. Why is a 15sec (near free) CD rampart on the MT 'not useful' or 'not raid utility'? You dont have to shield the entire party for a skill to be useful. Thus the adlo succor comparison.

Actually its not a rebranding, dark knights have been complaining about TBN and trying to get the community to see why it isn't such a great utility since launch. You are right, it is primarly used on the MT, which when anything is paired with dark knight is most likely the dark knight since both tanks do more damage, and in paladin's case has more utility, when in the OT role. So 90% of the time TBN on the MT is actually mitigation. If you are an aggressive main tank (I would be one example), TBN fills the role of mitigation we've lost but to get that I have to sacrifice dps to mitigate as well as a warrior or paladin in my role. If you are a defensive MT TBN is actually really good mitigation since it is a dps gain and mitigation gain in tank stance. This has been the focus of the TBN debate since launch, but it is taking on a new form about the utility.

When used in utility form (dark OT shielding an MT) the utility comes at a dps lose to the dark knight, sub in a paladin into that spot and if there is a hole in the mitigation of the MT that needs filling they can likely do it, sometimes less well and sometimes better than the dark would have and for little to no cost to themselves. Yes, in this case it is a utility that could potentially be useful, but remember this is costing you nearly 25% of your total mana pool, most of this is refunded in blood but its short by a few potency. Then we need to ask ourselves what are we shielding?

Shielding autos is sometimes risky. Healers may not be expecting the TBN and just heal the auto attack damage like it isn't there, think like parry. In which case the utility isn't utilized either because the healer wasn't paying attention or it was just unexpected. So now we've lost dps and because the utility went unnoticed the utility did nothing.

Ok, so maybe I should shield my MT only for busters and large attacks. In this case we are buying the MT 5.5k extra HP. This either saved their life (not likely if they forgot to mitigate 5.5k likely won't save them, and if they did mitigate they are probably around 10k or higher), or it didn't save their life and now need massive healing to get back to safe level of HP. Therein is the issues, healer's have very large heals, 5k is relatively small relative to how much must be healed, so usually this gets washed away.

I notice you keep bringing up these other mitigations/utilities. I'd like to give some uses to these so that maybe we can see why they are very good.

Why is adlo great? Because adlo can be spread to the party and buffed to enhance the shields to double TBN strength. And if it crits we are looking at nearly 6 times the strength of TBN (Highest my raid scholar in shielding hit was 34k and spread it to the party. It was a 17k crit adlo gaining a double bonus bringing it to 34k).

Cover - "only" 20% mitigation. Outside tank busters this is mitigating around the same as TBN for its 12 second duration. With tank busters this is mitigating more than TBN would have. The next standard usage is suppose your current MT messes up and is in critical condition. Healers hearts drop, but wait, your OT covers them with their full HP pool for 12 seconds letting you recover from the mess up, for 12 seconds you can give a person in critical HP an additional HP source of 55k and give the healers a moment to breath. TBN doesn't match this at all.

Here is a free off label use of cover. Go into an instance where tempered will works and cover some one with tempered will active. The person you cover will not be knocked back nor will you. This is particularly useful in v4s where you can cover say a bard and keep everyone close to the healer for the upcoming mechanic which requires people to be at full hp. Bard does not have a knock back prevention, but it can with paladin. Sophia is another example where you can cover a person with tempered will and they can continue to cast and attack when the rest of the party cannot. This move has a scope of abilities.

Why is pallisade good? Its free 20% mitigation, no one is trading anything for it, it is just there.

Intervention (mentioned in a prior post) is good because you can literally mitigate for two tanks simultaneously freeing up tank mitigation for more defensive play elsewhere to help healers. Also it doesn't eat into paladin's dps resources so it is relatively free.

At the end of the day, priority in mitigating will always favor free mitigation, just as healers prioritize their free heals, because they do the job and they do it well enough that extra is just wasted. The loss on TBN is small, but still not 0, and it adds up the more you use the skill which at 15 seconds per reuse can begin seriously lowering ones dps.

The above moves are useful outside of just helping the MT to mitigate. They help the party as well, and none of them cost anything, except adlo's mp cost. TBN shines as dark knight mitigation but only in one stance. As a utility it leaves alot to be desired. However, warrior was in a similar, yet worse, state of really having nothing but extra dps. Giving warrior a utility that could be useful, we still need to wait for final details of course, really highlights how dark knight will fade. With less dps, less mitigation, and a lesser utility than two tanks, well why bring a dark knight?

[Eliroth-Kaminari]

I realy hate ppl who say war has no Raid utility,
War has more raid utility then DRK.
TBN is only skill Dark can use on someone else.
Slashing debuff affect atleast 4/8 ppl in raid in dps wise.
Just because Trick atack make you have ninja in party does not make that war has skill this equal or bether then TBN when it come to utility as hole.
One day in 5,0 they brake ninja by nefing trickatack or some balance team find ninja op and nef shit out of Trick attack. After that war has instant bether posision in raid group then DRK based allredy on skills we have today.

[WhyAmIHere]

I realy hate ppl who say war has no Raid utility,
War has more raid utility then DRK.
TBN is only skill Dark can use on someone else.
Slashing debuff affect atleast 4/8 ppl in raid in dps wise.
Just because Trick atack make you have ninja in party does not make that war has skill this equal or bether then TBN when it come to utility as hole.
One day in 5,0 they brake ninja by nefing trickatack or some balance team find ninja op and nef shit out of Trick attack. After that war has instant bether posision in raid group then DRK based allredy on skills we have today.

Silly question, but on the note of how WAR brings slashing debuff.
How broken / a bad an idea would it be to augment something with DRK to add like a magic resist down debuff to enemies? I feel like this might've been suggested before, but what if, iuno, dark passenger had it's dark arts'd ability modified to make the mages deal more damage?

[MyaValentine]

Silly question, but on the note of how WAR brings slashing debuff.
How broken / a bad an idea would it be to augment something with DRK to add like a magic resist down debuff to enemies? I feel like this might've been suggested before, but what if, iuno, dark passenger had it's dark arts'd ability modified to make the mages deal more damage?

that would actually be sweet I don't see how this can "break" anything as you will mostly have the 2 healers and 1 caster in the group, it will definetly bring some of that "utility" people complain. plus I don't believe there's an actually magic debuff in the game if i'm not mistaken. regardless it would be nice for ark to have it.

[Chrono_Rising]

Silly question, but on the note of how WAR brings slashing debuff.
How broken / a bad an idea would it be to augment something with DRK to add like a magic resist down debuff to enemies? I feel like this might've been suggested before, but what if, iuno, dark passenger had it's dark arts'd ability modified to make the mages deal more damage?

I think if one tank brings a dps utility it becomes impossible to balance tanks, as a group will naturally choose the option which buffs their damage. If all tanks bring this utility then we are still at the same spot we are now. The most natural thing would be to get the sole survivor pvp buff, but again, this would make tanks impossible to balance unless war and paladin were given similar options.

[Tegernako]

I realy hate ppl who say war has no Raid utility,
War has more raid utility then DRK.
TBN is only skill Dark can use on someone else.
Slashing debuff affect atleast 4/8 ppl in raid in dps wise.
Just because Trick atack make you have ninja in party does not make that war has skill this equal or bether then TBN when it come to utility as hole.
One day in 5,0 they brake ninja by nefing trickatack or some balance team find ninja op and nef shit out of Trick attack. After that war has instant bether posision in raid group then DRK based allredy on skills we have today.

Technically having utility and it actually being useful are two different things. People wanted something useful.

Same reason why people want changes to DRK. Yes it does bring stuff to the table but is it really all that great? No, not in the mind of at least many people here and in other places.

[Aana]

Actually its not a rebranding, dark knights have been complaining about TBN and trying to get the community to see why it isn't such a great utility since launch. You are right, it is primarly used on the MT, which when anything is paired with dark knight is most likely the dark knight since both tanks do more damage, and in paladin's case has more utility, when in the OT role. So 90% of the time TBN on the MT is actually mitigation. If you are an aggressive main tank (I would be one example), TBN fills the role of mitigation we've lost but to get that I have to sacrifice dps to mitigate as well as a warrior or paladin in my role. If you are a defensive MT TBN is actually really good mitigation since it is a dps gain and mitigation gain in tank stance. This has been the focus of the TBN debate since launch, but it is taking on a new form about the utility.

When used in utility form (dark OT shielding an MT) the utility comes at a dps lose to the dark knight, sub in a paladin into that spot and if there is a hole in the mitigation of the MT that needs filling they can likely do it, sometimes less well and sometimes better than the dark would have and for little to no cost to themselves. Yes, in this case it is a utility that could potentially be useful, but remember this is costing you nearly 25% of your total mana pool, most of this is refunded in blood but its short by a few potency. Then we need to ask ourselves what are we shielding?

Shielding autos is sometimes risky. Healers may not be expecting the TBN and just heal the auto attack damage like it isn't there, think like parry. In which case the utility isn't utilized either because the healer wasn't paying attention or it was just unexpected. So now we've lost dps and because the utility went unnoticed the utility did nothing.

Ok, so maybe I should shield my MT only for busters and large attacks. In this case we are buying the MT 5.5k extra HP. This either saved their life (not likely if they forgot to mitigate 5.5k likely won't save them, and if they did mitigate they are probably around 10k or higher), or it didn't save their life and now need massive healing to get back to safe level of HP. Therein is the issues, healer's have very large heals, 5k is relatively small relative to how much must be healed, so usually this gets washed away.

I notice you keep bringing up these other mitigations/utilities. I'd like to give some uses to these so that maybe we can see why they are very good.

Why is adlo great? Because adlo can be spread to the party and buffed to enhance the shields to double TBN strength. And if it crits we are looking at nearly 6 times the strength of TBN (Highest my raid scholar in shielding hit was 34k and spread it to the party. It was a 17k crit adlo gaining a double bonus bringing it to 34k).

Cover - "only" 20% mitigation. Outside tank busters this is mitigating around the same as TBN for its 12 second duration. With tank busters this is mitigating more than TBN would have. The next standard usage is suppose your current MT messes up and is in critical condition. Healers hearts drop, but wait, your OT covers them with their full HP pool for 12 seconds letting you recover from the mess up, for 12 seconds you can give a person in critical HP an additional HP source of 55k and give the healers a moment to breath. TBN doesn't match this at all.

Here is a free off label use of cover. Go into an instance where tempered will works and cover some one with tempered will active. The person you cover will not be knocked back nor will you. This is particularly useful in v4s where you can cover say a bard and keep everyone close to the healer for the upcoming mechanic which requires people to be at full hp. Bard does not have a knock back prevention, but it can with paladin. Sophia is another example where you can cover a person with tempered will and they can continue to cast and attack when the rest of the party cannot. This move has a scope of abilities.

Why is pallisade good? Its free 20% mitigation, no one is trading anything for it, it is just there.

These moves are useful outside of just helping the MT to mitigate. They help the party as well, and none of them cost anything, except adlo's mp cost. TBN shines as dark knight mitigation but only in one stance. As a utility it leaves alot to be desired. However, warrior was in a similar, yet worse, state of really having nothing but extra dps. Giving warrior a utility that could be useful, we still need to wait for final details of course, really highlights how dark knight will fade. With less dps, less mitigation, and a lesser utility than two tanks, well why bring a dark knight?

TBN isnt perfect. I said it in the post you quoted. I'm quite aware it has issues risking all that MP without guaranteed return, has a very narrow window, etc etc. Even suggested some simple adjustments that would vastly improve it. I play Drk as well. Increase TBN's reliability for refund and it will automagically be significantly more useful than it is simply due to its absurdly low CD, no stance requirement, and large shield. Drk is MT over war BECAUSE of TBN. If war could IB/TBN/Shelltron while in deliverance we would MT DPS stance more too. The fact that it is such a powerful mitigation tool that is not tied to stance is (yet another) frequently dismissed trait to drks tanking. TBN is an obscenely flexible ability. It is Shelltron+intervention combined into 1 ability. Sure you cant use it on yourself and another tank simultaniously, but at half a bar that is rare for pld to be able to do both simultaniously as well. All 3 have no real cost except time.

In addition war's shield will cost CDs. If were in defiance its great. Eat any of those free IBs, 25% more HP as well. Just like TBN gets really sweet in grit. But outside tank stance both of these abilities will cost more and be less effective.

Drk only needs a minor tweak to TBN and it will be awesome. The ability does so much and is so flexible AND is a cornerstone of drk for both the mitigation gap and the utility gap that it would be VERY easy to bump it up to much and throw a lot of things out of wack. The flexibility and central nature of this skill should induce caution in tweaking. If it gave blood upon use, lasted a few more seconds, was a couple % stronger, and was a guranteed DPS gain for using we would be having a very different discussion. The actual numbers between where we are and that position is very thin. Drk isnt broken beyond belief. Its core ability is slightly undertuned as it covers their mitigation gap, utility gap, and impacts the DPS gap. Jack of all trades skills are very touchy when it comes to balance. SE isnt oblivious. But time and care must be taken so they dont fuck it up.

[Chrono_Rising]

TBN isnt perfect. I said it in the post you quoted. I'm quite aware it has issues risking all that MP without guaranteed return, has a very narrow window, etc etc. Even suggested some simple adjustments that would vastly improve it. I play Drk as well. Increase TBN's reliability for refund and it will automagically be significantly more useful than it is simply due to its absurdly low CD, no stance requirement, and large shield. Drk is MT over war BECAUSE of TBN. If war could IB/TBN/Shelltron while in deliverance we would MT DPS stance more too. The fact that it is such a powerful mitigation tool that is not tied to stance is (yet another) frequently dismissed trait to drks tanking. TBN is an obscenely flexible ability. It is Shelltron+intervention combined into 1 ability. Sure you cant use it on yourself and another tank simultaniously, but at half a bar that is rare for pld to be able to do both simultaniously as well. All 3 have no real cost except time.

In addition war's shield will cost CDs. If were in defiance its great. Eat any of those free IBs, 25% more HP as well. Just like TBN gets really sweet in grit. But outside tank stance both of these abilities will cost more and be less effective.

Drk only needs a minor tweak to TBN and it will be awesome. The ability does so much and is so flexible AND is a cornerstone of drk for both the mitigation gap and the utility gap that it would be VERY easy to bump it up to much and throw a lot of things out of wack. The flexibility and central nature of this skill should induce caution in tweaking. If it gave blood upon use, lasted a few more seconds, was a couple % stronger, and was a guranteed DPS gain for using we would be having a very different discussion. The actual numbers between where we are and that position is very thin. Drk isnt broken beyond belief. Its core ability is slightly undertuned as it covers their mitigation gap, utility gap, and impacts the DPS gap. Jack of all trades skills are very touchy when it comes to balance. SE isnt oblivious. But time and care must be taken so they dont fuck it up.

I agree that TBN is good for personal mitigation and was part of a factor leading to world first being pld drk, but as we prioritize speed runs I've found myself having to switch to paladin saddly. However, as far as buffs go I have found the following formula useful:

2.8 = (3*bloodspiller potency - average GCD potency without blood gains)/160

***Formula includes 70 extra potency for mana gains in Average GCD***

Currently this ratio is set to 43/16 (which is just a few shy on the low side of being ideal)

Turns out that if the values are tuned this way then TBN potency = dark arts potency in useage intervals of 3, and makes 1 natural bloodspiller the equivalent of an oGCD dark arts. Sounds awesome. If you play with the current values the undertuning on bloodspiller is 6 potency. Fixing this 6 potency will make TBN good as mitigation in all stances (and I would up that to great actually because it also means we can mitigate as well as a paladin and warrior without the dps loss as well as use our utility because its a free shield with your dark arts). This took me about 15 minutes of algebra mainly because I was in a meeting. What this doesn't fix is the state of our party utility. I don't think a raid buff to TBN is the right way though.

I have at one point proposed the following however. Sole Survivor should be turned into a raid buff, in particular I would like to see sole survivor be buffed to return a % of damage delt by the party to a target restored to the party as a regen. Give warrior and paladin their shields (like sch or noct ast) give dark knight a party regen for hp and mp (WHM diurnal ast) (I particularly like the party leech idea). Different from both, but still useful.

However, this also doesn't fix that we are third in dps as well. IMO we need further buffs to get into second place where I think we belong. Imagine this:

Utility: PLD > DRK > WAR
Mitigation: Dark = PLD = WAR
Dps: War > drk > pld

Thats what I want to see from SE, I want to see the tanks spread out so that each has its own trade as you say and no one is bottom of all three.

I think I'm now rambling it is very late here. On paladin mitigation, if you burn rampart and then intervention you mitigate 20% for yourself and 20% for your cotank, this is what I meant about mitigating for two, not intervention + shelltron, sorry I don't think I was particularly clear on that point lol.