4.1 Dark Knight Feedback and fixes

[Chrono_Rising]

I have run 'theoretical' models of uptime etc which others have done before comparing CDs. But that's right back to the theoretical. As you mentioned, hard data is rare as FF logs doesn't have a lot of war MTs. But I think that is telling in and of itself. But if that shows war's squishiness out of Defiance, or rather, shows Plds strength using its shield is hard to say. But even in Drk/War comps the Drk is largely the MT.

For my own experience, I ran as war in a war/drk combo for all of HW and start of SB. We then replaced the drk with another, less experienced drk who since changed to pld. TLDR: as I was the experienced tank I have been MT as war for 1/3 (2 we swap obviously) and we haven't beat 4 yet. I think war tanking V3 over Drk makes sense for reasons you've stated. Being able to use Raw Int as a tank buster CD makes life much easier. Similarly I hate tanking V1 for the opposite and wish our pld tanked that one. Were at the point where holmgang may not even trigger and just leaves me in dire need of a heal in the lower tiers.

During progression it was really nice. War in defiance is just indestructible. We can heal, we IB everything, more CDs than we can shake a stick at. But as soon as we got comfy and started pushing DPS to clear and dropping stance, it just became a whole new ball game. The loss of both tank stance+IB for virtually every damaging move hurts. A lot. -40%ish mitigation for nearly every move is just hugely painful while drk/pld just loose 20%. The loss of insta heal equilibrium on a short CD for both oh shit moments and recovery is lost. This leaves us with the basic CD suite that every tank has. We have functionally 1 more CD than pld/drk (ToB) but loose the always on (IB/Shelltron/TBN). I think people underestimate how much padding that constantly available mitigation gives. I like to compare it to: Imagine Tanking as Drk out of grit, but we take away TBN (lock behind grit) and give you ToB to replace it. You could also swap dark mind for Raw int, but that is a pro or con depending on the fight. That doesn't sound very appealing, but that's closer to war tanking in deliverance imo.

Its certainly doable, but think of it this way. War has 1 more CD. But when we have no CD available, that's it. Drk/Pld always have a near equivalent to rampart on demand to fall back on. They never 'dont' have a CD. That easily counters 1 CD deficit and (imo) the shorter timers for that reason. If we turtle tank, war has a very distinct advantage. Defiance war is really just silly tbh. But take that away and I find war to be quite rough as MT. But on that note, pld trumps all tanks in that category by a wide margin. Were really discussing the narrow gap betweemn 2nd/3rd, not closing the gap to 1st.

I also cant ignore that the game is more than savage. War just doing normal stuff by normal players can sit in defiance and be REALLY forgiving and EZ mode. When we talk about top level performance its practically a different game. Does the fact that war has an easy time tanking lower stuff factor into balance at high end speed run style raids? Should it? /shrug.

As far as V1S Warrior has an excellent defensive rotation because of the physical cleaves that come before the magical tank buster. Mitigating those two hits is a major boon to healers, and can be mitigated further by using rampart or vegeance shortly after the first one to catch the second cleave for free as well as the tank buster for bonus healer helping. thats good practice for both groups of runners. The new HP shields (which apply to warrior as mitigation) are a helpful addition for healers for the double roar mechanics and other such party wide damage, which depending on your CD rotation can be snap shot and turned into bonus shields at the end.

In Ex death the 16K autos and holmgang basically mean its cheese time for warrior, you can have mitigation up for everything HG the buster, then swap and have your cotank do the same, and then swap back to war and repeat, and this is without touching your new shields which are up for every fire phase again lowering raid wide healing and reducing party wide deaths. The shields are what make warrior really stand out over dark knight in neo.

The game is more than savage, but IMO these issues are a non issue outside of difficult content. Theres no real time where I felt 1 more thing would have saved me in a dungeon. However, on the note of "one more" mitigation I believe with the new shake it off we are at two more now, also if dark or paladin were to fall back into their tank stance, war presumably could do the same and gain access to a oGCD self heal as well as the third mitigation which is IB. The disparity becomes worse bringing tank stance into the conversation not better, IMO of course.

...As you mentioned, hard data is rare as FF logs doesn't have a lot of war MTs. But I think that is telling in and of itself. But if that shows war's squishiness out of Defiance, or rather, shows Plds strength using its shield is hard to say. But even in Drk/War comps the Drk is largely the MT. ...

The final thing I will say about this post, is that warrior is thought of as the go to OT and these prejudices are likely from misunderstandings of wars kit. For all of HW people agreed that warrior was likely the better MT and OT, but paladin and dark knight relied on taking damage for their numbers, and war did not. Therefore to maximize dps warrior became the "OT" while pld and drk were viewed as the go to MT, and going back to Gordias, this was only true for the parties that didn't run double warrior. That was time before LB penalty. This idea has persisted into SB, but there is really no reason for it anymore. Just because the community runs warrior as OT still does not imply that they are an inferior MT, they just likely have held onto the old meta ideas.