Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[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.