A challenge to Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida

[Chrono_Rising]

I am also not disagreeing that DRK couldn't use some adjustments. I just disagree that it is unplayable which this whole thread is about. I have only seen some good suggestions to changing DRK but the rest are just OP or return it to 3.0.

I agree that it is viable for all content, DRKoftheAzure would have to tell us themselves what the point of this post is I'm not trying to take a guess. My point is that dark knight is below the other tanks. My responses here to you is that warrior's selfsustain is in a better position than dark knights.

Also you are ignoring that you can DA + AD every 3 GCDS which I already stated you would cutoff SE to use AD. Also realistically you would be at 3 AD by the time you got off one SC.

But you are losing about 1000 mana every time you do this (maybe partially mitigated by blood price), eventually you need to quietus or siphon extra times to refill adding in extra GCDs. This also drops quickly if you ever need to use The Blackest Night.

9 GCD to get off 3 AD if you are weaving in Syphon and not spamming DA AD. With 7 GCDs for an SC. So 312 WAR vs 345 DRK with the potencies you referenced above. Yes you can add in Storm's path but the equivalency diminshes as it is ST based on the number of enemies.

Tomahawk -> Infuriate -> Gauge build. 1 GCD to prep SC which I would hold while you build more gauge. The reason for gauge building is that Steel cyclone can restore a huge amount of HP, which means you have time to sit on this one while you build gauge and accumulate damage. While you build that gauge you are building HP with your combo which is an added bonus because while you build your mana on dark you get nothing for your HP. Meanwhile you still have Equilibrium on a 1 minute cool down if you are slightly behind on HP and then still Thrill of battle which is around an 14k heal if you are super desperate.

Also you are comparing 312 on 7 GCDs to 345 on 9 GCDs (ignoring added heals from combo of course?) on a GCD to GCD basis is a 9 potency difference in favor of war per GCD not adding in 107 potency from doing at least one combo ender, though this is ST so that should be kept in mind.

[Aana]

If your talking best case scenario of 100 gauge+infuriate up+ eye combo up then sure, its pretty sexy. But I can assure you wars aren't running through dungeon packs with 100 gauge +infuriate and setting up with 3gcd single target before we start. That is a WHOLE lot of prep. getting 100 gauge without using infuriate on packs? That just means the previous pack you did nothing but ST for gauge. Its unrealistic. Gather with tom+OPs. get eye up, then spam Overpower. Use infuriate as able. Run to next pack. Theres no reasonable opportunity to build gauge in OP spam on AOE packs besides 1 eye combo per pack. Between the 1st eye and finishing off the last straggler you build about 50 gauge for your next pack or your party is lame and stagger killing everything so you are forced to ST down like 2 mobs instead of getting everything dead at once. Your doing around 2 cyclones a pack unless you sack your OP aoe damage to build gauge or your party is just not AOEing properly. Either way, more gauge is a sign of your party being inefficient and weird than anything.

You don't really 'spam' cyclone in dungeons because youre to busy spamming no-gauge gaining overpowers for most of it. Single target gauge building for your best case scenario in mob pulls just isn't optimal play at all.

With all that said, both war/drk have pretty darn good aoe sustain. They have always been the dungeon heros and now they are both back to kicking pld's ass at something with the cyclone change.

[Chrono_Rising]

I don't play warrior enough to know this answer, but this is one of the places where I wonder how healer DPS factors into this. I know from healing some very good warriors I'm able to really spam AOE more than usual.

[Aana]

I don't play warrior enough to know this answer, but this is one of the places where I wonder how healer DPS factors into this. I know from healing some very good warriors I'm able to really spam AOE more than usual.

I think that has more to do with the high uptime physical leaning CD suite on wars more than cyclone spam. outside of raids in big pulls the option to use dance+awareness instead of shirk/reprisal makes for quite the insane suite to rotate. Conv+Thrill>Awareness+RI>Ramp+Dance>Vengence in any order/combo. Mix in equal, cyclones for sustain. War is a beast in dungeons. Drk's sustain in dungeons is pretty friggin sick with DAAD spam, but its notable lack of high uptime fluff mitigation is much more noticable in dungeons.

[Wintersandman]

I agree that it is viable for all content, DRKoftheAzure would have to tell us themselves what the point of this post is I'm not trying to take a guess. My point is that dark knight is below the other tanks. My responses here to you is that warrior's selfsustain is in a better position than dark knights.

In the most optimal scenario WAR's may excel. DRK's self sustain is part of their normal rotation. WAR's is not. Once aggro is established all DRK's do is self sustain for AoE and ST and it is part of their normal AoE rotation. Which is why I used raw potencies and didn't include Berserk because it is a CD and may not always be up and like Aana said you wouldn't be spamming SC the entire time. TBN usage will be based upon if Mitigation > Self healing for the mana usage and it may very depending on pack size and what the incoming damage is.

So while War has high potential for self healing in reality boils down to other mitigation techniques where that's what DRK was designed to do. Let's also point out the classes weren't designed to be tanking in dps stance the entire time. They were designed to be Tank stance for their mitigation which is why Bloodspiller almost has no positive bonus in and out of Grit (~20 potency difference). This is also probably why we saw the removal of Bloodbath from warrior because Decimate and Overpower spam keeping warriors up.

[Chrono_Rising]

In the most optimal scenario WAR's may excel. DRK's self sustain is part of their normal rotation. WAR's is not. Once aggro is established all DRK's do is self sustain for AoE and ST and it is part of their normal AoE rotation. Which is why I used raw potencies and didn't include Berserk because it is a CD and may not always be up and like Aana said you wouldn't be spamming SC the entire time. TBN usage will be based upon if Mitigation > Self healing for the mana usage and it may very depending on pack size and what the incoming damage is.

So while War has high potential for self healing in reality boils down to other mitigation techniques where that's what DRK was designed to do. Let's also point out the classes weren't designed to be tanking in dps stance the entire time. They were designed to be Tank stance for their mitigation which is why Bloodspiller almost has no positive bonus in and out of Grit (~20 potency difference). This is also probably why we saw the removal of Bloodbath from warrior because Decimate and Overpower spam keeping warriors up.

Though dark knights self sustain is part of their optimal aoe, their ability to keep themselves up is still surpassed by warrior. I will admit that it might not be optimal, I'm not convinced on it not being optimal on the basis of healer dps gain, and that is partly because of warrior's being able to do so much selfsustain in their rotation. As far as I've always understood in trash pulls the order goes dps>healer>tank.

You did count delirium and C&S in your break down of dark, its only reasonable to include berserk when looking at warrior. Also, you don't necessarily need to run into battle with full gauge on warrior, infuriate at the beginning or very end of a pull is a thing. Saving 50 gauge to do SC over a ST Inner Beast is definately a dps gain.

And as Aana, and now you, have pointed out part of the equation which is being ignored is mitigation, which warrior has huge advantages in tank stance here as well.

I have no idea why you are bringing up tanking out of stance at this point. As far as I can tell no one has said anything about being out of stance. I'm also very confused about why we are talking about HW now where warrior was definitely the top of self-sustain. Out of stance with single target warrior will out self-heal a dark knight any day of the week.

[Wintersandman]

I have no idea why you are bringing up tanking out of stance at this point. As far as I can tell no one has said anything about being out of stance. I'm also very confused about why we are talking about HW now where warrior was definitely the top of self-sustain. Out of stance with single target warrior will out self-heal a dark knight any day of the week.

WhiskeyBravo did bring up out of stance on page 5. Also since you factored in Berserk what would the potencies be over a 2 minute period? I would love to see the math breakdown. Because you used 312 as a baseline for SC which only lasts 15 seconds. The rest of the time it is 240. Which it may or may not be up. With Queitus (not on cooldown) you generally get enough back to do a DAAD (of course this depends on pack size). So you can exclude delirium.

Why I brought up HW is because out of stance was brought up by WhiskeyBravo and why I also believe that SE only attached the HP gain to SC as an illustration that the self sustain is only intended to be used in Tank Stance. Also because if we are to look at the Player Meta this is where DRK falls really behind.

Like I said in an earlier post. The class isn't unplayable but not saying it doesn't need improvements.

[whiskeybravo]

Eh, I only really mentioned it because you can DAAD outside of grit, which is better than any self heal a war has in deliverance. But once you factor in tank stance war clearly overtakes drk in self healing abilities. There probably wasn't a need to bring it up as long as we are assuming most tanks are casually tanking large pulls in dungeons in tank stance anyways.

[Wintersandman]

Eh, I only really mentioned it because you can DAAD outside of grit, which is better than any self heal a war has in deliverance. But once you factor in tank stance war clearly overtakes drk in self healing abilities. There probably wasn't a need to bring it up as long as we are assuming most tanks are casually tanking large pulls in dungeons in tank stance anyways.

Actually I was referring to only SE being available in Tank Stance and not DAAD out of Grit. This was also where I stated that class design and meta are in conflict. I was referencing in dungeon runs if a DRK isn't using DASE or DAAD they are like cottonball tanks. I have had to educate numerous DRK's on their rotations because a lot are so concerned because of the initial burst on RDM they just PS. Not even DAPS either. That once I tell them to DASE or DAAD their survivability increases along with Healer's not sweating as much. It wasn't meant to become a pissing match which is better and more as an educational post about rotation.

[Chrono_Rising]

WhiskeyBravo did bring up out of stance on page 5. Also since you factored in Berserk what would the potencies be over a 2 minute period? I would love to see the math breakdown. Because you used 312 as a baseline for SC which only lasts 15 seconds. The rest of the time it is 240. Which it may or may not be up. With Queitus (not on cooldown) you generally get enough back to do a DAAD (of course this depends on pack size). So you can exclude delirium.

Why I brought up HW is because out of stance was brought up by WhiskeyBravo and why I also believe that SE only attached the HP gain to SC as an illustration that the self sustain is only intended to be used in Tank Stance. Also because if we are to look at the Player Meta this is where DRK falls really behind.

Like I said in an earlier post. The class isn't unplayable but not saying it doesn't need improvements.

Ok I worked out the first two minutes of game play without ever touching berserk. However, I included mp and blood gains for dark knight at generous values to assume we could quietus every time we needed to equal out our mp.

Dark Knight Self healing: 1440n where n is the number of targets over a 2 minute interval.

Warrior Self Healing: 2160n where n is the number of targets over a 2 minute interval.

Warrior notes and assumptions: Now the warrior rotation as noted is not optimal for personal dps, though it may be optimal for party dps. The healing factor DOES NOT include healing from path, equilibrium, or Thrill of Battle or additional effects from berserk, for this purpose I pretend they don't exist on my hot bar and start my encounter at 0 gauge. These are the least friendly assumptions to warrior self heal I felt I could make while be extremely friendly to dark knight starting them at maximum MP and guage.

Once again what is very clear using excel is that Dark Knight can use abyssal drain about twice for every steel cyclone, but even at base potency warrior gets extra uses from infuriate and extra path combos result in a slightly higher usage of SC, and the heal factor from steel cyclone is a bit more than twice abyssal drain even without using berserk.

WhiskeyBravo did bring up out of stance on page 5. Also since you factored in Berserk what would the potencies be over a 2 minute period? I would love to see the math breakdown. Because you used 312 as a baseline for SC which only lasts 15 seconds. .

Lastly Berserk is 20 seconds, not 15. Also just as a quick corollary the warrior does more aoe damage in the same interval.