#BringBackHeavenswardReprisal

[Crater]

One thing I'd like to point out is that using TBN to proc Reprisal for a given attack has some implications. In many situations you would have TBN up for a really big attack, OR Reprisal, not both.

This is a good point. Under the proposed change, you wouldn't be able to combine TBN and Reprisal for a particular attack unless you A) used Parry to proc it (again, it would be cool if Anticipation were an actual valuable skill), or B) you know the fight timing well enough that you can put up a TBN 15+ seconds before the attack you want to mitigate, have it pop, throw Reprisal up, and then have TBN come off cooldown again during the 20s Reprisal duration.

That actually requires a pretty high level of fight awareness and a good sense of timing, and I think it would be a good thing if that sort of knowledge were actually rewarded, which I think that the stacked combination of Reprisal and TBN would accomplish.

[Mycow8me]

I'm wondering if a short vuln up would be more beneficial instead of a -10% mitigation, save this kind of thing for an actual party utility skill. You said it yourself, its an act of retaliation. Maybe instead of an outgoing damage debuff we get some kind of attack power buff to go with our next bloodspiller which can be increased even more with dark arts. There's lots of options but damn, I sure would like to have that animation/sound combo as a skill regardless.

[SyzzleSpark]

This is a good point. Under the proposed change, you wouldn't be able to combine TBN and Reprisal for a particular attack unless you A) used Parry to proc it (again, it would be cool if Anticipation were an actual valuable skill), or B) you know the fight timing well enough that you can put up a TBN 15+ seconds before the attack you want to mitigate, have it pop, throw Reprisal up, and then have TBN come off cooldown again during the 20s Reprisal duration.

IIRC Reprisal's proc duration was around 7-ish~ seconds, maybe a bit less. So you could easily stagger your actual hitting of the button such that [TBN used->4s later TBN pops->wait 4s hit Reprisal->TBN now has only 7s left on recast]. So I think stacking them would be easier than it initially seems.

On a less related note, this was shared on Reddit, and the response, as fitting for Reddit, has been lukewarm. But I wanted to reiterate the words of a user there that have been screaming in my head throughout all these buff threads every time I see someone tell us that our suggestions or OP or too much or that we shouldn't have xyz buff:

"DRKs need to stop being nebbish and timid, shuffling their feet and staring at the floor while going "Well gee guys, maybe we shouldn't be good at anything, it's not fair to those other tanks who are way better than us at everything..."
It's okay to have strong abilities. It's okay to have very strong abilities. It's a good thing for every class to have abilities that make people think "I really wish we had one of those in our party". Warrior has skills like that. Paladin has skills like that. Ninja has skills like that, and so does Dragoon, and so does Bard and so does Machinist, and so do all three healing classes.
Dark Knight needs at least one more skill like that, and bringing back Reprisal would pretty much fit the bill."

[whiskeybravo]

I dunno, do you consider it a problem that DRK uses Plunge for DPS even though it's a gap-closer? Because this would be more or less the same thing.

If you don't specifically need the utility of Plunge's mobility, then you use it as often as possible to maximize DPS, but if the mobility is an important factor for a specific part of a specific fight, then you'll usually hold Plunge to use for its mobility, if you're gaining more than you'd be losing by holding it.

Reprisal would work the same way. On most fights, you would aim to use it as often as possible, either by slotting Anticipation to boost your Parry rate (imagine that, by the way: an actual reason to ever slot Anticipation!), or by strategically breaking a TBN to activate Reprisal. But if mitigating raid damage (or even a tankbuster) was a primary concern, then you could just hold off for a few seconds and leave it off-cooldown, even if it does proc, so that you have it available when you need it.

I think DRK has enough bad/useless skills that it would be a good thing to have an extra one that is always good for DPS, even in cases where it's only sometimes useful for utility/mitigation.

I think it's a good thought process, I just don't see how it actually plays out. Set aside if you're MT for a second. If you are OT'ing and need to reprisal a large raid-wide, then you're sacrificing DPS by spending mp for TBN shield to break and proc reprisal. Is the extra 210 potency going to make up for lost dark arts attack? Nvm making sure you aren't going to cap on blood gauge when the shield breaks. I don't know. Plunge is a bit different since it has no cost associated, nor is any party raid utility being compromised by using it. Could be wrong but just my thought process here.

I agree they should make one of the role actions have more synergy with DRK. PLD has synergy with Rampart and War with Awareness. Anticipation would be a good place to start since they lost dark dance.

[Nivarea]

I think it's a good thought process, I just don't see how it actually plays out. Set aside if you're MT for a second. If you are OT'ing and need to reprisal a large raid-wide, then you're sacrificing DPS by spending mp for TBN shield to break and proc reprisal. Is the extra 210 potency going to make up for lost dark arts attack? Nvm making sure you aren't going to cap on blood gauge when the shield breaks. I don't know. Plunge is a bit different since it has no cost associated, nor is any party raid utility being compromised by using it. Could be wrong but just my thought process here.

I agree they should make one of the role actions have more synergy with DRK. PLD has synergy with Rampart and War with Awareness. Anticipation would be a good place to start since they lost dark dance.

You forgot that using TBN procs 50 blood, and that means a Delirium or a Bloodspiller. Right now, using TBN on CD while gritless to proc Bloodspillers is a slight DPS loss over time. With Reprisal, it's a whole new story, as we got a free 210 extra potecny every minute, making it a dps gain on those occasions. And we also have to take into account the possibility of a natural proc by parry, which happens sometimes. And 210 is greater that the 140 potency Dark Arts put on the table, so yes, it's a DPS gain.

It will not solve every problems DRK got, pheraps not totaly DPS wise, but it's still a good ability on the defensive side, with an offensive spin.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

What it basically comes down to is that every other TBN is a DPS gain, as Reprisal's cooldown is (was) 30s. There's still clearly a lot of folks that are confusing the stats of the current Reprisal with the old one. The old Reprisal lasted 20s and had a 30s recast, gated of course by your parry rate (this is why Dark Dance was so much more than what the current Anticipation would imply - DD was not only some small, free fluff mitigation, it was also a tool to proc Reprisal in much the same way as TBN would be under these changes). To me this just shows how many PLD and WAR mains are reaping the rewards of the new CR skills without ever having touched the job that footed the bill, but I digress.

Anyway - This is why you wouldn't just spam TBN on CD for DPS gains, but twice a minute, it is a gain.

As far as the actual DPS gain, 210 potency every 30s is about 7 potency per second and 16(-ish) potency per GCD, which is a very modest DPS boost, and nothing particularly balance-breaking. Shield Swipe equates to 300 potency every 30s, so even it is a greater overall DPS gain than this would be.

As far as the raid mitigation, it would have to be used intelligently to actually be mitigating damage when you need it to, as a fair portion of the time this would only be helping the DRK (or whomever is tanking). So even as utility, its something you have to plan the usage of in order to get mileage out of it. Its really not that powerful of a buff in any one department, the beauty of it is that it is just one, single buff, but it bolsters our effectiveness in literally every metric, and the work SE would have to do to implement it could probably be accomplished in a single shift at SE's office.

[Crater]

I think it's a good thought process, I just don't see how it actually plays out. Set aside if you're MT for a second. If you are OT'ing and need to reprisal a large raid-wide, then you're sacrificing DPS by spending mp for TBN shield to break and proc reprisal. Is the extra 210 potency going to make up for lost dark arts attack?

The "DPS loss" of using TBN on the main tank as an OT is pretty much negligible as-is; because you get 50 Blood in exchange for your 2400 MP, it's the same situation as ever, where there's a technical average loss over time of somewhere in the area of 3-4 potency, which can easily be turned into an outright gain of potency if it means getting an extra Bloodspiller inside of any sort of raid buff. The problem with the skill currently is that the defensive effect of an OT TBN is pretty questionable, and rarely justifies taking the risk if any loss, even one as small as 3-4 potency.

Under this system, both sides of those issues are addressed: First, the "DPS loss" is offset by literally 50-70x, because the 3-4 average potency you lose by converting 2400 MP to 50 Blood is immediately dwarved by Reprisal itself, for a whopping 210 potency gain. And second, the defensive effect of an OT TBN is no longer "You put a shield on the main tank for a couple thousand HP, which almost never makes a difference in terms of tanking or in terms of healing". It becomes that same shield, but is then followed by 20 seconds of taking 10% less damage, which will tend to add up so some substantial help for your co-tank/healers.


Edit:

Another scenario to consider, that I think is actually really important, is one like the sequence in Neo Exdeath where he casts Aero III, and follows it with Earthshakers. This spot is a perfect illustration of where DRK's current defensive kit fails it, because the Aero and the Earthshaker are placed 10 seconds apart. That means that not only can DRK not use TBN to mitigate both of those (pretty hefty) hits, because of TBN's 15s cooldown, but zero of DRK's native cooldowns will do the job. Shadow Wall has a 10s duration and therefore can only catch one of those hits, and even if the Earthshaker were magic, neither could Dark Mind, for the same reason. In practice, DRK tends to want to burn Rampart to cover both of those hits, and use Dark Mind on the Aero, and use TBN on the Earthshaker. Meanwhile, all of a Warrior's cooldowns will cover both hits, and a Paladin can cover both with Bulwark, or use Rampart and Sheltron both of them, or even let a healer take aggro, use Cover on the healer, Sheltron both, and save Rampart.

This is one specific example, but you actually see DRK getting screwed by it over and over and over again, where hard-hitting attacks come exactly 10s apart, and nothing DRK has can deal with the mitigation even remotely efficiently, forcing the use of 2-3 separate cooldowns.

If you could TBN the first hit of something, and then know that you'd have a 10% mitigation tool in Reprisal to cover anything else that happens in the following 20 seconds, DRK would be in a much better place to deal with this specific attack timing in an efficient way.

[SyzzleSpark]

I think concerns about this being overpowered from a raid mitigation standpoint come from a well-meaning place, but are largely unfounded.

3.x Reprisal was never ever considered overpowered, but the fact that it was stackable with Delirium and Storm's Path (which were also stackable with eachother) made it so that your raid group could rock a collective pseudo tank stance if they wanted to. Reprisal all by itself its definitely good and useful but certainly nothing that is unduly over-centralizing, and primarily works behind the scenes, whereas party shields like DV/SiO are on the frontlines mitigating the big scripted hits.

Concerns of having to balance raid damage around this change to me miss the point entirely and were mysteriously absent when the Shake if Off buff arrived. Before you had only one tank providing AoE party mitigation, now you have 2, and they are easily stackable. So with that change, there is already a standing need to re-tune incoming raid boss DPS compared to what it would have been were WAR not providing this new source of mitigation. If anything now is the perfect time to implement this change.

[Daniel_Fury]

The DRKBoner I will have when using this new Reprisal on Halicarnassus' Dimensional Wave spam.

[FallenWings]

*Stares longingly into the horizon*

*Remembers the oGCD Juggernaut that deserved the title "Advance Job" that was Heavensward DRK*

#BringBackReprisal