Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[Sipherous]

Grit: Leaving your tank stance on paladin and warrior are straight gains except in terms of mitigation and selfsustain. Dark knight loses these things as well, but also resource generation, slowing down its mana accumulation by punishing siphon strike and locking blood price which leads to a lower expected dps gain when dropping grit, and loses potency on our hardest hitting move. This doesn't happen to any other tank when leaving tank stance.

I think you have grit backwards in regards to syphon strike. Going into grit doubles the MP generation of syphon strike not punishes it and also adds the lifestealing effect to souleater. Also argueably DRK is the strongest Tank of the three while in Tank stance because they have permanent dmg increase from darkside, double mana generation increased potency and life steal equipped to their primary dmg combo. In contrast WAR lose all their strongest skills by going into Defiance and PLD has a massive 35% DPS decrease from the loss of sword oaths potency gain. A DRK in grit will out DPS a PLD in Shield and a WAR in Defiance.

[Chrono_Rising]

I think you have grit backwards in regards to syphon strike. Going into grit doubles the MP generation of syphon strike not punishes it and also adds the lifestealing effect to souleater.

Your are saying the same thing as me just giving it a positive spin, going into grit gives you these benefits, vs leaving grit removes these benefits. At the end of the day this means that part of our potency, mana regeneration, and selfsustain are locked into one stance. More over the "extra" damage is locked into the defensive stance under a penalty of a 20% damage down. Its opposite of what you want, warrior for example going into dps stance is gaining a damage up, potency, and its resource generation is untouched and even enhanced with inner release cutting costs on skills, and it is gaining this dps when it would most want it, while trying to dps.

Also argueably DRK is the strongest Tank of the three while in Tank stance because they have permanent dmg increase from darkside, double mana generation increased potency and life steal equipped to their primary dmg combo. In contrast WAR lose all their strongest skills by going into Defiance and PLD has a massive 35% DPS decrease from the loss of sword oaths potency gain. A DRK in grit will out DPS a PLD in Shield and a WAR in Defiance.

First, a 35% dps decrease is extremely steep. I would expect 25% on the high end (15% for stance and 10% from sword oath). We can loosely compare skills but paladin's combos have higher potencies (in particular goring blade) to match the fact that dark knight has a constant 20% buff, a buff which also essentially exists on warrior except you have to upkeep the skill. Paladins and warriors have a higher amount of self buffing. Warrior also doesn't lose all of its strongest skills going into tank stance, upheaval, for instance is actually stronger in tank stance than in dps stance. Warrior does lose fell cleave, but inner beast is still fairly strong and ignores the damage penalty, and it retains its on GCD selfsustain which is also part of its dps rotation, the difference is warrior keeps this regardless of stance. The point here is that the other two tanks leave tank stance and actually gain dps without losing dps resources (potency and guage). In contrast, Dark Knight is also shedding its damage reducing tank stance, but loses potency and and resource generation in the process, which is counterproductive to the goal which is to do damage as an OT (or even MT if you are into that sort of thing).

Regardless, we can argue theory all day about who does more in tank stance. The quicker resolution I think, is found by appealing to the data compiled by savage players. The conclusion that dark knight out dps paladin in tank stance isn't supported by the data. If you compare percentiles dark knight trails behind warrior and paladin at just about every percentile. Now, at high percentiles we expect this since out of tank stance most people agree dark knight is behind warrior and paladin, but at low percentiles where there are high uptimes on tank stance we still see dark knight behind. If dark knight was more powerful in tank stance, then I would expect to see a reversal at lower percentiles. The thing is we don't see that, we see paladin leading ahead of dark knight contradicting our initial assumptions.

[Reynhart]

Now, at high percentiles we expect this since out of tank stance most people agree dark knight is behind warrior and paladin, but at low percentiles where there are high uptimes on tank stance we still see dark knight behind. If dark knight was more powerful in tank stance, then I would expect to see a reversal at lower percentiles. The thing is we don't see that, we see paladin leading ahead of dark knight contradicting our initial assumptions.

A little question on those numbers. Do they take into account who really tanks ?
For example, in O1S, you don't need to tank swap, so you can have a DRK main tanking the whole fight while the PLD or WAR stays out of tank stance. And since DRK brings basically nothing by being an off tank, I'd say it would be a pretty common situation.

[SyzzleSpark]

A little question on those numbers. Do they take into account who really tanks ?
For example, in O1S, you don't need to tank swap, so you can have a DRK main tanking the whole fight while the PLD or WAR stays out of tank stance. And since DRK brings basically nothing by being an off tank, I'd say it would be a pretty common situation.

The only tank that actually brings anything of value under the specific condition that they are not holding the boss is PLD, by virtue of Intervention and Cover, which are functionally nearly useless while tanking the boss unless somebody is screwing up badly.

What you describe is a situation that implies an awareness of what is optimal which means that it would not apply at lower percentiles. Regardless of the reason or situation, there is not a percentile or skill level measured on FFLogs that speaks to DRK having particularly higher tank stance DPS.

At high percentiles, a 100% DRK MT would likely be Gritless, rendering this discussion moot. At really high percentiles, there's no such thing as a 100% MT anyway, regardless of job.

At low percentiles, your argument implies that groups are aware of the fact that DRK is a poor OT. But it isn't really, its not any better of an OT than a MT, neither is WAR, tbh. As I said, the only tank that actually brings something to the raid while being aggro free that they would otherwise not is PLD. There isn't much reason to assume that poorly performing groups wouldn't just stick to the tired PLD=MT mentality, or that the WAR MT watched too many Xeno vids and tried to Deliverance it with no CDs resulting in SICK-DEE----*smack*---[dead]. I'd argue these former two scenarios are far more likely than such a group being savvy enough to realize raid dps would probably be higher with a turtling DRK. Bad players are also probably just as likely to believe TBN is valuable raid utility and relegate their DRK to OT-TBN spam. There's frankly no way of knowing what goes through these players minds. Its pure speculation. What isn't is the data.

Anyway, DRK's DPS being the lowest of the tanks is not really something that is disputable, differences in player skill and gear notwithstanding. Even its SSS dummy has less HP than PLD's, who also has no slashing debuff on a dummy, and also misses out on Shield Swipe procs on a dummy. This by itself of course means little, but in conjunction with flogs data... its not even really up for discussion. The giant dark magic sword does less damage than the 1-handed toothpick and the oversized BTN main hand.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Reynhart]

At low percentiles, your argument implies that groups are aware of the fact that DRK is a poor OT.

Even when WAR was the absolute king of the hill, basic mentality was that WAR was an OT. It was wrong even during 2.1 onwards, yet it had a hard time dying. As for PLD, sure, it was THE MT back in 2.x, but great marketing has been made in SB to promote Intervention and the new Cover, leading to a more blurry role. As for DRK, with the heavy magic content in HW, it was also a very common choice as a MT, and at low level, the trend probably just stick.

So I'd say it's less awareness that bad habit.

Bad players are also probably just as likely to believe TBN is valuable raid utility and relegate their DRK to OT-TBN spam. There's frankly no way of knowing what goes through these players minds. Its pure speculation. What isn't is the data.

Or they could think BloodSpiller is so powerful that it's a neat DPS increase to spam TBN anytime you can just to proc it...

[Daniel_Fury]

Or they could think BloodSpiller is so powerful that it's a neat DPS increase to spam TBN anytime you can just to proc it...

That was my thoughts on SEs view of the dummy hp as well.

[Chrono_Rising]

A little question on those numbers. Do they take into account who really tanks ?
For example, in O1S, you don't need to tank swap, so you can have a DRK main tanking the whole fight while the PLD or WAR stays out of tank stance. And since DRK brings basically nothing by being an off tank, I'd say it would be a pretty common situation.

I don't have a way to seperate out those numbers easily. However, just a quick look at a turn where there are forced tank swaps (v2s and ex death) and the same trend continues so I don't think this is the correct explanation. This may not mean much but I have personal experience on both classes, and nothing in my personal experience suggests turtle dark > turtle paladin. As SyzzleSpark points out, the data supports the opposite claim more. No data I can think of justifies the claim turtle dark > turtle paladin in any actual turn or encounter, and what I do have suggests turtle paladin > turtle dark. By all means if you have something which supports the claim turtle dark > turtle paladin please share.

Or they could think BloodSpiller is so powerful that it's a neat DPS increase to spam TBN anytime you can just to proc it...

This is definately a lack of awarenss.

[Reynhart]

I don't have a way to seperate out those numbers. However, just a quick look at a turn where there are forced tank swaps (v2s and ex death) and the same trend continues.

It might have something to do with PLD having a powerful ranged attack, allowing it to lose less DPS when it's forced to stay away from the boss. Something we can't really calculate by just looking at raw potencies.

This may not mean much but I have personal experience on both classes, and nothing in my personal expierence suggests turtle dark > turtle paladin. Nothing I can think of justifies the claim in any actual turn.

To be fair, even if Turtle DRK would deal more damage than Turtle PLD (Or Turtle WAR), since turtle tanking is basically an inefficient tactic in current content, it wouldn't do anything to make DRK "better".

[Chrono_Rising]

It might have something to do with PLD having a powerful ranged attack, allowing it to lose less DPS when it's forced to stay away from the boss. Something we can't really calculate by just looking at raw potencies.

To be fair, even if Turtle DRK would deal more damage than Turtle PLD (Or Turtle WAR), since turtle tanking is basically an inefficient tactic in current content, it wouldn't do anything to make DRK "better".

My responses are to someone who made the claim that turtling matters, I never claimed it did. Regardless, as for ranged attacks in v4s, have you ever tried holy spirit spamming when being chased by a blackhole, not as easy as it sounds. In v2s the ranged times happen so infrequently that I would expect it barely shows up in the data. If the ranged attacks were such a factor I would expect paladin to be above warrior, also not even close. Again the only thing you are doing is poking holes in evidence by cherry picking single mechanics and flagging them as mattering, and not actually offering any evidence of your own.

[Reynhart]

Again the only thing you are doing is poking holes in evidence by chery picking single mechnics and flagging them as mattering, and not actually offering any evidence of your own.

First, I personally didn't claim anything proving DRK to be superior, I was asking an information...that can't be provided. Besides, since PLD (And WAR) lose more DPS than DRK by staying in tank stance (keep in mind losing more doesn't equal being lower), it's understandable that a fight with tank swaps would also benefit them by spreading mitigation needs and allowing more DPS stance uptime, even at low percentile.