Quote Originally Posted by Crater View Post
In most cases, yes, you would then refrain from using it for 15 seconds, and would wait out the soft cooldown on Despair. That's the whole point. If you do that, then the skill is essentially unchanged from the current version, which is exactly what I intended. However, you are then given the option to sacrifice DPS for more mitigation, which is something that Dark Knight cannot do right now, but which Warrior and Paladin are both capable of (in slightly different ways).
They can. It's called Grit. People just want to avoid it like the plague. So rather than complicate TBN with that, you could just put Grit off the GCD. Your on demand mitigation sacrificing DPS.

You could also utilize your Weapon stance proposal to achieve this aim. This honestly has the potential for more defining gameplay than modifying TBN from its current point, both allowing for optimizing DPS potential or achieving active mitigation.

Despair only opens up a can of worms under the guise of filling in the Dark Knight's mitigation toolkit. From what I've read from other Dark Knights, the primary issue is tying cost into mitigation in a toolkit that still needs its 'free' sources filled out. This doesn't address that. It just encourages TBN to be used for a DPS gain, avoiding the neutral version at all costs unless you're definitely going to die, and never looking at the skill again at 2+ stacks until the timer resets.