WAR raid "UTILITY" (Tank Balanced achieved?)

[Chrono_Rising]

War without IB is flat out worse than Drk or Pld in overall mitigation. Wars kit doesn't compete at all if you take out IB. That would be just like comparing Drks kit without TBN, or pld without shelltron. They are the cornerstone of their mitigation. Ive done this in more than a few posts, but here we go again.

Regarding mitigation:
* Tank Stance: General parity.
* Role skills: equal (obviously). Rampart/conv etc.
* Immunities: 'rough' parity. They are all good in distinct ways with their own pros and cons. This can be a thread unto itself so I will consider them roughly equal as they are all quite different and hard to quantify, but effective at their job. I don't want to side track into a war of immunities.
* 'Always up' CDs. Shelltron/TBN/IB: Again 'rough' parity. They are a little different with some pros/cons but fill the same functional role adequately as a frequent mitigation tool vs all damage types with near zero costs. (war locked behind defiance, but slightly better in a vacuum).
* 'big' CDs. veng/wall/sentinel. rough parity. (drk a smidge behind. 10% or timer. Your choice)
* 'other' CDs: Bullwark vs Raw Int vs Mind. Asymetrically balanced. 2 short CD, high uptime split between Phy and Magic (war/drk) vs a LOONG CD, less reliable (60%) but blocks all damage. I'd consider this 'rough' parity. The individual fights would determine whos is better here, but they are all pretty good in their own way.

Drk Stops here. Leftovers are:
Pld: Passage of arms. Super bulwark. Could be a CD, but I only ever see it actually used as raid mitigation so Ill ignore it for the purposes of personal mitigation.
Pld: Shield. Nuff said.
War: ToB. Fairly week skill for 2 min CD. Never used alone. Always paired with something. This is the 'extra' mitigation war brings over the other tanks and it is a fairly weak one. Its more often used to buff upheaval or 'oh shit' heal. But it is here and counts none the less.

Drk has a slightly weaker 'big' CD (30% vs pld 40% for a whole 10 sec) and no equivalent to ToB. War's trade for this is their best CD (IB) is inaccessible outside of defiance.

Would Drks be happy to lock TBN behind grit but get ToB in exchange? Heck well even throw in Pld 40% instead of 30% sentinel for that 10 seconds every 3 min. If you are trying to stay out of grit, is that a trade you would make? ToB for TBN? Absolutely not. Youd be crazy to give up an 20% HP boost every 15 sec for a 20% HP boost every 2 min. Sure youd be extra tough IN grit, just like war is super tough IN defiance. But dps tanking would take a serious hit.

TLDR: War isn't this bastion of defense its made out to be if you actually play it the way people play tanks in this game.

I don't think warrior is that much ahead of us in terms of mitigation unless TBN remains the way it is. I think dark is only behind in mitigation because TBN usage without grit is minimized. I think warrior is a smidge ahead of the other two currently, but I don't think its huge.

[Chrono_Rising]

I think you're refering to near the end, with the buzz saws, and ppl take magic dmg there.
(not the MT, other than auto attacks. Storms Path was better for that, followed by the possibility of Reprisal, though I tend to use reprisal as a CD, so i hardly used it for raid dmg, except when we struggled on some early on)
Though if thats wrong, Im out of ideas as to what u mean.

For A11S, the dmg that goes evenly to everyone is very minimal, like 10% of their HP minimal. Wasting a CD of GCD on that seems a bit overkill. (Plus isnt a MT thing.)
Whirlwinds, which I did forget about, was definitely something was difficult w/o some raid wide mitigation. I usually was only able to get a single reprisal up for a single whirlwind the whole fight, even with an attempt to bait a parry with dark dance. (since the auto attacks were so few and far between, right before a whirlwind) So it was definitely better to have a WAR for Storms Path on that.

When comparing PLD to DRK as MTs, I still see PLD better for those fights, more so A11S. I do agree hallowed is far worse for solo tanking the shared TB, but most groups had WAR OT, and most groups just had the WAR solo it with holmgang.
By the time you're at the end, and might need to solo it again, not that you need to, DRK and PLD can use their invincibles.

So I think PLD still lined up for having more CDs for more TBs, while having more filler CDs foir autos.

All of the magic dmg was AoE, and therefor, mitigating it for yourself was pointless. (To avoid over healing)

EDIT: forgot delirium, that would help on Whirlwinds.

(Though my stance on PLD still remains, solely from having healed them for it, and my healers saying it was easier when i was PLD for A11S, than DRK, though my DRK was easier for them on A12S, etc, but i will agree the AoE dmg being lowered for less raid wide dmg does make things easier for the group, and not just to heal the MT)

This is my last post on this as we are debating something which is widely agreed upon, and is no longer a question since we no longer have some of the skills which made a difference, and has nothing to do with current tank balance. Delrium should have been kept up 100% for dark knight dps rotation. It's mitigation was a fact of life with a dark in the party and was always refreshed whether needed or not, then we had reprisal which with the bosses physical autos could be maintained with dark dance. Further the cycling of magical aoe attacks and physical attacks meant we could mitigate about 90% of the fight with down times. As far as tank busters were concerned the favorite strat of many was to simply tank ultimate through them, meaning mitigation was unnecessary and could be more effectively used elsewhere.

I am not talking about the saws in a10s. The bomb stack and spread mechanics happen periodically though out the fight in a10s were magical in nature. Any small difference in mitigation for the main tank could be easily over come with damage mitigation for the party as a whole.

[Aana]

I don't think warrior is that much ahead of us in terms of mitigation unless TBN remains the way it is. I think dark is only behind in mitigation because TBN usage without grit is minimized. I think warrior is a smidge ahead of the other two currently, but I don't think its huge.

Again, the unwillingness to use TBN because of 'DPS' reasons outside of grit is really not true and absolutely not a reason (by itself anyway) to rebalance drks CD suite.

That 6 potency per use (considering a 15 second window is ~3000 potency in GCDs alone ignoring Auto attacks, Blood weapon multipliers etc etc) shouldn't stop anyone from using it. People have just made a mantra of 'TBN is a DPS loss out of grit' and never use it. Its in your mind. They could buff bloodspiller from 400 to 406 pot out of grit and it wouldn't make a lick of practical difference. Think of it as 'TBN is a sidegrade shift in my damage' and suddenly using it out of grit isn't so unpalatable. But that's what it actually is. The DPS loss is virtually nonexistent and shouldn't stop anyone from using it ever.

The thing TBN needs to be effective is to more reliably give the refund so the risk in using it is lower, not a DPS buff to using it effectively. Adjustments to the duration and/or refund requirements is all the buffs. This reminds me of the onslaught stuff when it came out. Everyone dismissed it as a 'never use' skill because it 'lowered' DPS, but its in truth a sidegrade most of the time in deliverance and a buff if used in certain scenarios, but the myth of a 'dps loss' still exists so people don't use it as often as they should. Same for TBN out of grit. Theoretically its a miniscule irrelivent level dps loss. In practice it is a DPS gain unless you end the fight with zero blood. Its a dps gain until you account for the SE blood gain and TBN>Spiller delays that 10 blood gain by 1 gcd. ie: 3 TBN>BS removes 10 blood. If you use TBN 3 times but have 10 blood at the end of a fight it was actually a DPS gain because that blood never got used to realize the DPS loss from TBN. Its only a loss in theory over a VERY long period of time. In reality, it will not affect your parse at all unless your TBN prevented you from a natural BS. EG: you have 40 blood after a fight and used TBN 3x. Very specific scenarios.

Just use it outside grit. Eat it like candy. Stop the mental block of 'its a dps loss'.

[Chrono_Rising]

On a phone so forgive me for not quoting you Aana but why not just remove the 6 potency loss and really make it a 0 net like the rest of dark arts? It is a really small difference but would objectively remove all doubt about using the shield in any situation. So what would the objective reason to not add it?

[Shinkyo]

snip

Your analysis is correct in a theoretical context, but it's a bit different when look at how it generally meshes in actual fight.
With how fights are currently designed with scripted TB, short period of high sustained damage, and scratch damage, WAR has equivalent option available (sometimes better) than PLD/DRK.

WAR mitigation strength is in the fact that they always have a medium/strong CD or Invul available when we need them, without even relying on IB.
You can achieve stronger mitigation with the other tanks but:
- you have to juggle your CD a lot more using Sheltron/TBN to fill gaps in CD uptime
- WAR mitigation is typically "enough" and stronger is only better if it saves a healer GCD

WAR CD suite only shines when you overlay it to how fights are designed.

[Aana]

On a phone so forgive me for not quoting you Aana but why not just remove the 6 potency loss and really make it a 0 net like the rest of dark arts

You could, but it wouldn't actually do anything. (Also no skill has interval outside 5s cuz reasons. That would be like buffing path by 1 potency. Who cares. It's not an actual problem that needs fixing. The utter tinyness of the dps gain vs loss and situational nature of wheb it is a loss/gain (depends on what your last gcd is before a jump. Depends on how much leftover blood after a 10 min fight) has nothing to do with the state of balance. Those kinds of miniscule changes are more akin to fixing typos in tool tips than balance. It skirts the legit problems drk has for filler that won't change a thing. If your gonna fix something, fix it. 6 pot buff would be a pr campaign not a fix. It would still be to risky to use liberally which is the greater problem.

[Chrono_Rising]

TBN and blood spiller being buffed 6 potency is less about balance and more about drk internal consistency. This is so close to a break even I cannot imagine it is an accident. But yes this is part a pr campaign. However, a different thread summarized what I think needs changing for balance.

1) shadow wall needs a CD reduction or additional effect to justify the three minutes
2) additional effects on dark passenger to justify its mana cost
3) sole survivor rework to give party utility (I like the idea of an hp and resource leech)
4) delirium doubling the effect of duration of blood weapon/price or lowering its CD by 40 seconds
5) soul eater hp return taken off grit lock
6) reducing blood weapon/price cooldown to 30 seconds

[Shinkyo]

On a phone so forgive me for not quoting you Aana but why not just remove the 6 potency loss and really make it a 0 net like the rest of dark arts? It is a really small difference but would objectively remove all doubt about using the shield in any situation. So what would the objective reason to not add it?

TBN as a DPS gain/loss is a lot more complex than that.
It's a slight DPS gain under certain conditions (party buffs, any downtime that causes to reset combos) and slight DPS loss under others (very linear fight with 100% uptime).

In a raid environment, there are plenty of opportunities where it's a DPS gain as long as your always pop the shield without overcapping blood.

[Chrono_Rising]

Actually I would believe it is only a gain under party buffs or when the 10 blood will not result in a natural blood spiller, and a loss otherwise since bloodspiller is not 1 dark arts above our average combo potency. The exception is when buffed with dps utilities.

[Aana]

I don't think I've ever heard a reason wall isn't 40% like pld. The entire job was modeled after pld in large part. Not sure why it's like it is.

Passenger needs love. I though they did away with abilities that don't work on bosses. If the blind worked on more stuff you could justify the cost, but just like shake it off, doa. Doesn't do what it's supposed to.

Sole survivor has always been awkward as hell. Even if it's not party utility, it needs a rework.

Soul eater hp won't really impact group content. It's a fun toy for soloing EXs and stuff. Not really a balance concern but a fun toy. (Just like path).

Can you link the post about delerium? That's a rather specific buff to what is already a powerful skill. Sure that would be nice, but so would splitting inner release/unchained. Also i want a pony. Not sold it's actually necessary though without more research. It's just a damage buff. There are so many ways to do that, why this way?