Regarding no DRK adjustments in 4.1

[Lyth]

As far as tankbusters go (i.e. burst mitigation), TBN works as long as you have an adjunctive cooldown to help mitigate the damage. For magic damage, you can pair it with DM fairly readily. The issue is more for physical damage, which is why people are asking for adjustments to either SW or some sort of physical DM. But not every defensive action is about spike damage. Some skills like conva are just there to help out your healers and reduce the healing load.

There's more to damage than tankbusters. There are fights which have higher sustained damage, either because of hard hitting autos, or a stacking damage buff. This relates to "average mitigation", "proc-based mitigation", and "average healing requirements". TBN is not so great here because of duration. Historically, you would have used other cooldowns such as Dark Dance or Foresight to smooth out the damage. PLDs are probably the best at this due to the added effect of block, but WAR is quite good as well, having the ability to rotate through a lot of short recast cooldowns if need be.

You could do something like reinstating Dark Dance to cover this niche, but I think DRK has the right tools built into the job already. If we're no longer "parry tanks", why not look at lifestealing? Souleater is functionally our "passive block", except we lose its defensive benefit when we drop Grit. You don't lose access to block when you drop Shield Oath. DA AD can be used to offset some of the damage in pulls, as you rotate between TBN, Quietus, and AD, so it's already a part of reducing healing requirements on big pulls. Soul Survivor could easily be turned into a drain over time that resets on killing the mob. Perhaps Blood Price could be used to temporarily increase lifesteal effects. It's just a question of tuning to produce a similar effect through a different means.

[Chrono_Rising]

Snip

I don't think the suggestion is to make dark knight entirely a drain tank. I believe the suggestion is to build lifesteal into our skills. The primary function would be to offset the healer burden for auto attacks and other fluff damage where dark is currently lacking. In this way we complement our damage reduction with self heals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure warrior's solo'd any relevant content, wasn't it mostly thinks like level 50 ex primals when we were level 60 and the players uncapped? As far as being OP, isn't that also only in the case of undersized parties where the idea is to be OP? Presumably our skills would still level sync.

[whiskeybravo]

I don't think the suggestion is to make dark knight entirely a drain tank. I believe the suggestion is to build lifesteal into our skills. The primary function would be to offset the healer burden for auto attacks and other fluff damage where dark is currently lacking.

I mean, if they aren't going to adjust other cds to bridge the gap defensively, then that's a reasonable solution. I just wanted to bring up that the lifesteal tank already happened in a way, and it didn't really work out. Passive hp regen would certainly help in the fluff damage department, but is it enough to solidify a "niche" for drk? My initial thought is it would lean toward being OP in dungeons but nearly worthless in raids. Although, it would depend a lot on how it's actually implemented (such as, is based on damage you deal or damage you take?)

(I mean passive as in either built on to existing weaponskills or an actual passive recovery rate, opposed to dedicated type self heal like clemency/equilibrium)

[Chrono_Rising]

I don’t think any one change is enough to fix Dark Knight. To be clear I didn’t intend a necessarily passive damage, I was thinking more along the lines of releasing soul eater from grit, and adding a % restore to blood weapon and price abilities.

[Xenosan]

Souleater's Grit-gate HP Absorb should have been moved to an adde DA effect like Abyssal Drain's a long time ago.

With Blood price, instead of trying to buff MP returns on Blood Price.. I like it to have an added effect like:

Restores partial MP when damage is taken.
*Delivers an attack with potency of 50 every time you suffer damage from the front.
**A portion of damage dealt is restored as HP.

Essentially old Bloodbath+Vengeance but without the damage resistance.

After all, DA effects amount to an HP absorb (AD), +Damage, or +Enmity. This addition does a small amount of all three.

Just cut out the middle man.

Delirium is already a stance-specific buff since you're choosing to use it on either BW or (Grit)BP. IMO a Grit exclusive 1300pot heal off it makes more sense than SE's absorb being Grit bound. But that isn't saying much.

[jameseoakes]

WARs don't like that Unchained is nearly pointless in Stormblood. I don't particularly care at this point because WAR doesn't need any more power, but it isn't very good design.

How is unchained pointless it's free extra damage when tanking

[Aana]

I don't think the suggestion is to make dark knight entirely a drain tank. I believe the suggestion is to build lifesteal into our skills. The primary function would be to offset the healer burden for auto attacks and other fluff damage where dark is currently lacking. In this way we complement our damage reduction with self heals.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure warrior's solo'd any relevant content, wasn't it mostly thinks like level 50 ex primals when we were level 60 and the players uncapped? As far as being OP, isn't that also only in the case of undersized parties where the idea is to be OP? Presumably our skills would still level sync.

Fair enough. Regarding the old war stuff, I was thinking more of Wars soloing dungeon bosses and even mob packs with no healer support in a time before clemency. Its not 'savage' level by any means, but gets the point across. The EX solos just demonstrate the drain tank effect. Other games have done true heavy drain tanks and walked smack into that problem.

But even as a counter to shield for fluff damage, it always runs that risk. ie: consider shelltron vs TBN. If a boss hits for 100k that 25% off from shelltron is 25k mitigation while a 20% of your stats shield (~50k hp) is only around 10k. But if a boss hits for only 10k TBN would make you invincible while shelltron you take 7.5k still. Apply small version of the same to a 'soft' drain vs shield block as a form of fluff mitigation.

You can have small enough quantities that it wont affect much, but the fundamental problem with HP drain based on your stats vs mitigation is always present. Theres a reason they took out bloodbath and I (unlike a lot of wars apparently) do not want to bring it back. Don't get me wrong, I loved using it, but I liked it for that OP sustain on easy content and actual balance on hard hitting content. Increasing self sustain as a REPLACEMENT for mitigation is always dangerous in my book. Every tank should have some level of sustain, which drk is currently behind on, but not in lieu of mitigation. Though TBN being a 15sec CD shield complicates that comparison by negating damage instead of healing it. Makes it harder to compare and situational vs the more reliable pld/war heals and entirely dependant on being at that fine edge of content difficulty where you can reliably, frequently break TBN without it being to little damage and you waste mana or so much that the flat mitigation is just more powerful than a static HP shield.

[MauvaisOeil]

But even as a counter to shield for fluff damage, it always runs that risk. ie: consider shelltron vs TBN. If a boss hits for 100k that 25% off from shelltron is 25k mitigation while a 20% of your stats shield (~50k hp) is only around 10k. But if a boss hits for only 10k TBN would make you invincible while shelltron you take 7.5k still. Apply small version of the same to a 'soft' drain vs shield block as a form of fluff mitigation.

That's fun calculation, but while it's true for the last part, where absorbs will slowly overwrite low damages, a 100K hit will kill you with sheltron or TBN.

There is now way to have perfect balanced tanks in every level size or content, the priority is that it's balanced is content that is relevant : Savage for top end raiders, the wolf nest for pvp, and current dungeons for current geared player.


With overgearing or over levels, you will allways get situations where some job will turn overtuned and some other undertuned, except if every job turns out to be the same.

Wow has blood DK which has a self healing mechanic since the creation of the class, and they didn't need to fix it (except the ultra scaling from damage they had back in 3.0) or constantly nerf, remove it or turn it into some pathetic healing you don't even notice like SE now.

It's still the best class for soloing content or raidbosses, and no one gives a shit.

Why should it be different here ?

[Argyle_Darkheart]

How is unchained pointless it's free extra damage when tanking

I don't really want to get into it in this thread, but it's because it shares a recast with Inner Release, which is better than Unchained.

[Ultimatecalibur]

How is unchained pointless it's free extra damage when tanking

Because tanks doing highend content tend not to be in tank stance in important content and Warriors would rather use the cooldown for Inner Release for even more damage.