Regarding no DRK adjustments in 4.1

[MauvaisOeil]

Let me let you in on a secret. DRK has always used a single combo rotation, even in HW

I don't know where this is leading us, but can you expose your point instead of some hyperbolic inner question ?



Edit : And a little addition :

(now) war CDS consumed

How do you consider snapping a CD at the last few seconds as a difficulty higher than managing your MP to have enough ressource while making sure you won't cap Blood the moment your shield will break. I think, at best, it's pretty even. As people math rotations before release, or optimize every single GCD used, consuming a buff when he is no longer relevant and/or about to expire will not be a cost of some sort, except in planification, which is already done for every single job at high levels of play.

I'm still quite curious of why you allways consider TBN as an equivalent of Divine veil or the new Shake it off ? Raid wide mitigation against single target mitigation which happens to be the now main cooldown of self mitigation of DRK as well. While I agree it works like Intervention, meaning it's free mitigation for someone else when you don't need it, Divine veil is not "when you don't need it" and shake it off can also be used "when you won't need it either".

Beside, you're barely comparing a 7 people shield, to an 8 people shield, with a 1 person shield, which means relevant only for specific single target mechanics, most (but not allways) of the time beeing Tank busters.

[Gatzamus]

DRK has less dps and less mitigation than both of the other tanks, and is about on par with warrior for lack of party utility. This is non-debatable. Therefore, they deserve a buff instead of warrior. SE don't have the slightest clue how to balance and they have no incentive to because to the legions of casual players that make up the vast majority of their customers, balance doesn't matter.

[Chrono_Rising]

Unfortunately on my phone at so sorry for typos and lack of multiple quotes for context, but a few things.

Veul, path and reprisal aren't really the equivalents that were adjusted. Path, halone, and (old)delerium are each tanks original raid mitigation. Str. Int. All. 3rd hit combos with 20 sec durations. All 3 tanks lost those. All 3 got reprisal. They wanted to delete always on mitigation (mnk lost it too). Nothing wrong with that. They moved all raid support to timed actions with costs. Pld gauge, drk mp, Pld actions+cure activation, (now) war CDS consumed. Drks is the only one that refunds anything and has the shortest CD. Balanced by being ST. It could use some love but the concept of these tradeoffs doesn't sound unreasonable. The numbersecond might need tweaking, but I like that they function differently and each affect game play of the player.

As for "easy" dps. I didn't say I agreed. I said that is the vocalized Dev reasoning. As for dot vs burst class, the burst class is rewarded for playing around the fight. If you can get you windows of burst without missing any by playing around mechanics and letting downtime tick your timers away, of course you win. That's the point. If you can play your burst job to the specific fight well you are rewarded with damage. If you can't or screw it up, you fall flat. Hard. High risk high reward. Compared to dot jobs who have a more consistent output no matter the fight or sotuation. At the higher levels you see that play out and that creates the disparity of a couple 100 dps. Is that fair? Eh kinda ish. Drk is functionally has a higher floor and a lower ceiling. Burst dps jobs have lower floors but higher skill ceilings. In 1 light that is quite equitable. If you are a skilled drk player however it feels limiting because the job holds you back. It's a design choice, but it is still balanced, just not at the highest levels, but it makes drk overturned at lower skill levels. It's more of a design philosophy than a balance problem. When you look at the wide range of player skill level, the jobs are more balanced overall. But when you slice off the top, you always see disparities that aren't present at the bottom. This is true in all things though. Players pushing things to the max will highlight minor differences that are completely unimportant at lower levels of play. And like most games, the conundrum is to balance for the masses or balance for the pros. Drk doesn't make the cut at the highest levels of play but even then by a relatively small margin.

And thus is why meta are stupid and people shouldn't freak about it constantly. Most people could play any tank and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. Most of the complaints are people that don't play at the highest level. If you didn't clear neo in the 1st couple weeks you aren't in the elite where any of the minutia matters. We come in 20 ills higher than the 1st groups and whine that X class is to strong or weak, but the truth is that your personal skill and gear is thedefining characteristic of your success or failure when you aren't on the cutting edge where pushing the limits is a given. Play what you like. As long as the jobs arent horrendously fucked up, it's a delusion in your head that your class is a defining factor. And right now, the jobs are not horrendously fucked up.

And yes i know wars were whiney bitch monsters at SB. I can't undo that, but I can say I didn't agree with them then just like the overdone drk QQ now.

In terms of balance, I know alot of my saltiness comes from a few places, so perhaps this helps you understand what you are calling "whining". Here are the things that stand out in my mind:

1) We did not get a new tank or healer job in this expansion specifically becuase the Devs recognized thier own inability to balance the three classes they had. We were told this was a priority for 4.x.

2) The reason for the imbalance in 3.x was a combination of a few factors: PLD did not bring the dps the other two tanks brought, PLD mitigation was not as well equiped to handle the number of magical tankbusters as drk was, however paladin did bring some marginal utility to the party though some of it was not useful because some only delt with physical damage (again 3.x this has all been changed in 4.0).

3) Warrior was hands down the best designed job of 3.x bringing dps, mitigation, and utility making it a must have when picking a raid tank.

4) People have identified these imbalances as early as June when we saw the ability descriptions. When people complained they told us not to worry about it because the numbers weren't final. In the case of dark, the numbers went down further despite people complaining that the numbers were low to begin with (I guess this means we should have understood this as don't worry its worse than you think LOL)

My personal take away from 3.x tank imbalance, the presence of 1 super class means that there was only one tank spot open, and paladin brining less mititgation, utility, and dps compared to dark on a large number of turns doomed paladin. How to fix this? One class should not be lowest in all three areas, esspecially when one class is highest in all three. But in 4.x we are dealing with the same thing, the only difference is the name of the classes have changed. Paladin brings it all, warrior is about to bring alot with a raid wide shield and its dps and personal mitigation are top of the line, and dark knight has lower dps and mitigation (though TBN is more frequent) and less utility (and maybe this is a better way of saying this) no party wide utility (meaning everyone is helped with one button). We may have closed the gap in 4.x with the % of damage being lower, but its still the same issue of having 1 "must pick" and then looking at the other two to see which has the least problems, despite being told tank balance was a priority of 4.0 to the point of not getting a new job.

Its fine and well to think well who cares about meta anyway play what you like. The problem is if you are trying to fill a raid spot and talented groups are only looking for WAR/PLD then the issue is less about personal beliefs and more about what the community as a whole believes, and saddly this is meta meta meta. This is particularly relevant in light of the ultimate tier coming out in a few weeks and the news that it is tuned to ilvl 340, i.e. we will not be 20 ilvls overgeared until 4.2.

Since I think nerfing the other two classes to dark level would cause a community uproar the only thing I can see is to buff drk to pld/war levels.

[Mekhana]

Hope is the last thing to die.

I want to believe they are keeping super uper duper awesome DRK changes deep in their sleeves to blow our minds but considering the facts...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Chrono_Rising]

Hope is the last thing to die.

I want to believe they are keeping super uper duper awesome DRK changes deep in their sleeves to blow our minds but considering the facts...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To quote Mulder “I want to believe”

[Aana]

How do you consider snapping a CD at the last few seconds as a difficulty higher than managing your MP to have enough ressource while making sure you won't cap Blood the moment your shield will break. I think, at best, it's pretty even. As people math rotations before release, or optimize every single GCD used, consuming a buff when he is no longer relevant and/or about to expire will not be a cost of some sort, except in planification, which is already done for every single job at high levels of play.

I'm still quite curious of why you allways consider TBN as an equivalent of Divine veil or the new Shake it off ? Raid wide mitigation against single target mitigation which happens to be the now main cooldown of self mitigation of DRK as well. While I agree it works like Intervention, meaning it's free mitigation for someone else when you don't need it, Divine veil is not "when you don't need it" and shake it off can also be used "when you won't need it either".

Beside, you're barely comparing a 7 people shield, to an 8 people shield, with a 1 person shield, which means relevant only for specific single target mechanics, most (but not allways) of the time beeing Tank busters.

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.

[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.