Core Issues With 4.x Dark Knight

[SyzzleSpark]

Yeaahhh... I'm gonna give that idea its own thread. More than any other suggestion I've seen for DRK in months, it deserves it. Like a bloody lightbulb zapping on.

[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.

[shao32]

syphon strike bonus on grit was made to secure MP generation as they nerf Blood price how make DRK resources limitless on HW in mass pulling, Blood weapon MP burst its pretty equal to the actual shity Blood price with syphon, dont use It as a excuse BCS the MP generation out and in grit is pretty well balanced.

[Chrono_Rising]

syphon strike bonus on grit was made to secure MP generation as they nerf Blood price how make DRK resources limitless on HW in mass pulling, Blood weapon MP burst its pretty equal to the actual shity Blood price with syphon, dont use It as a excuse BCS the MP generation out and in grit is pretty well balanced.

In large pulls sure, but single target this is nerf, we didn’t have limitless mp even with both running. This also does not explain why our GCD selfsustain must be grit locked.

[SyzzleSpark]

In large pulls sure, but single target this is nerf, we didn’t have limitless mp even with both running. This also does not explain why our GCD selfsustain must be grit locked.

Chrono you bring up some really interesting points, basically that Grit gives us bonuses in an area where, were we given the choice, we would not choose to invest them.
That 75 potency on Bloodspiller is cut by 20%.
That 70 potency via MP on Syphon is cut by 20%.
etc.

I think that the Syphon buff in Grit is certainly adapted to mitigate the nerf to BP, and I guess you could say that it succeeds at that in ST and AoE, to some extent or another. But its still a poorly implemented change that they are painting themselves into a corner with, should they ever decide to adjust either of those skills again.

Pair this dynamic with the Quietus buff and you start to wonder why they nerfed BP at all. A lot of people like the Quietus buff, but I think I was in a minority that actually thought it was really stupid, and it is the biggest adjustment we've seen since the expansion and it was really just to band-aid over one of their own mistakes which was nerfing BP in the first place. If they'd kept BP as it is, they wouldn't have had to touch Syphon Strike, or Quietus (from the MP standpoint, anyway - I personally think that Quietus' gauge cost is the most ridiculous thing about it - 50 gauge for 160 potency is really, really weak imo.). In fact they probably could have tuned Quietus' potency higher, or at least had room to do so, had they kept the original dynamic in place. The hilarious thing about this expansion is that they are actually adding additional, different complexities in areas that were nerfed to make up for having nerfed them, when the theme of this expansion was supposed to be simplification. In 5.0, They'll nerf BP to 0.01 of a DA per proc, nerf Quietus to 0.02 of a DA per proc, nerf Syphon to 1/4 of its current value, and then have to add MP regeneration to... idk, Spinning Slash or some other such ridiculous drivel, just to make up for it. I'm not the only one that sees why this is stupid and just adds complexity via nerfs, which are in my eyes, literally the worst possible functions for a nerf to serve.

If you break something over and over and over again, it doesn't matter how much or how well you repair it, eventually its going to lose its structural integrity altogether and just turn to a pile of goo.

The Grit bonus to Bloodspiller is equally perplexing. Of course I get that the idea is to make Grit less punishing (that wretched catchphrase "raising the floor, lowering the ceiling" as it were) but it really just serves to make our DPS investment in our actual DPS stance weaker by measure of ratio, whilst giving us DPS bonuses in an area where they are ineffectual, like stacking Dexterity on a f***ing Scholar.

[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)_/¯

[Dio_Tiferet]

Summoners summon 3 should summon a Dark Knight instead of a Ifrit-Egi.

[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...