Dark Knight under review: Feedback to the Developers and Community Team

[Chrono_Rising]

i am not too sure... the full HP buffer is 25%, while Grit and Shield Oath reduce damage only for 20%...

how much % does equilibrium actually heal? when it's below 20% then WAR is at a disadvantage - when it's more than 20% WAR is actually in an advantage here.

They are about equal, I heal for about 14.5 to 15.5k and gain 15.25k total. Warrior is not necessarily at a disadvantage still because that HP doesn't need to be healed. So if you are getting hit for 66k and heal back to 80k you have a HP buffer of around 15k, where as tank stance on paladin and dark knight mitigates for 13.2k. Warrior is at the advantage in this scenario at full HP. Of course you could have the case where you are at less HP and warrior is at the disadvantage.

The point of the post is that its really difficult to put yourself into the position that you need to rely on tank stance. Its even harder to imagine that you put yourself into a position where you burned through all of your cooldowns on warrior, and do not have gauge to throw out an IB if you follow the rotation. In optimal play, warrior is only "out" of cooldowns if it uses everything and also is coming out of a trick attack window with 0 gauge.

Basically to make this argument work, this idea of no mitigation in the last second before a tank buster, you need to meet a whole bunch of conditions that realistically don't happen together frequently, and then attributing this "weakness" to warrior's kit as a balancing argument, when in fact the far more likely scenario is that the weakness is in how the player is handling mechanics.
(1) No mitigation
(2) No tank swapping
(3) No gauge
(4) Last minute tank stance use

No mitigation: at the time of writing this should never happen, you can map your cooldowns to always have something up for all tank busters of savage, though you may need to tank swap. This situation points to the player needing a better cooldown rotation.

No tank swapping: You have no mitigation and do not want to tank swap for your cotank to take the hit. I see this as you didn't realize there was a tank buster coming, in which case that is the real issue. If you know that a tank buster is coming and have no mitigation, my first thought would be to give my healer as much time as possible to get me to my full hp if I'm planning on taking this hit with tank stance.

No gauge: Meaning you do not have Infuriate and are within the 6 GCDs after having dumped your gauge. Realistically this is like 15 seconds of a minute. Again, with the above, this hypothetical situation requires the warrior to know that they are going into a tank buster, have no cooldowns, and they did not save gauge, so they are planning on taking this hit without mitigation. This is a red flag. Or the player didn't know in which case they need to learn where the tank busters happen.

Last minute tank stance: Either the player doesn't know where the tank busters are, which is the issue that needs to be corrected, or they know but decided to turn on their tank stance at the very last second knowing that on its own, being on is not helpful. If as a player, I don't know that I'm going into a tank buster, then that is an issue with the player, not the job of warrior. If as a player, I knew that I had no free mitigation, could not tank swap, and had no gauge for Inner Beast, then I should at least be getting into stance so the healer can deal with my HP before the buster.

[Tint]

Of course you could have the case where you are at less HP and warrior is at the disadvantage.

i think... when Equilibrium heals for more than Grit and Shield Oath mitigates, WAR is never at the disatvantage in that scenario. for comparsion DRK and PLD should not be considered to be at full health either. so even when WAR will not fill his extra 25% HP buffer (completely), he will still fill his HP for around 15k, vs the 13.2k mitigation the other tank stances offer.

o.ô;

[Megguido]

i am not too sure... the full HP buffer is 25%, while Grit and Shield Oath reduce damage only for 20%...

25% more HP isn't superior to 20% less damage taken. To compare those you have to consider effective HP.

WAR gains 25% more HP, which translates directly into 25% more effective HP.
PLD and DRK take 20% less damage, which also translates into 25% more effective HP. Grit and ShOath makes it so you can receive 25% more unmitigated damage.

[Chrono_Rising]

25% more HP isn't superior to 20% less damage taken. To compare those you have to consider effective HP.

WAR gains 25% more HP, which translates directly into 25% more effective HP.
PLD and DRK take 20% less damage, which also translates into 25% more effective HP. Grit and ShOath makes it so you can receive 25% more unmitigated damage.

I agree, all tank stances on their own make it possible to survive the same size hit, which is as you said measured by eHP. Warrior is just wearing its eHP on its sleeve so to speak.

But there is also another way to look at this, which I posted in another post, which is the amount of damage mitigated by an attack. In this way, if we are surviving a tank buster with only tank stance, then the buster must be doing less than 1.25 times our HP. If we use tank stance to take a hit, then leave stance, then you can actually see warrior has a great stance. This is because the amount of HP in defiance doesn't need to be healed, effectively the HP buffer is extra HP over what we actually need. Lets put some numbers on it.

My tank has 66k HP in a full party with food. This means if paladin and dark knight take a hit with only tank stance, then they can mitigate up to 16.5k, which decreases as the damage of the attack decreases. If I get hit with an attack for 82.5k I mitigate 16.5, if I get hit with an attack for 50k I only mitigate 10k.

Warrior doesn't get mitigation, but it does get an HP buffer, that buffer is 16.5k (at my HP). But that buffer doesn't need to be healed and it doesn't change depending on how hard you get hit. If you get hit for 50k you still can ignore 16.5k of it while the dark knight and paladin only ignore 10k. This isn't an issue, unless the common strategy is to then drop tank stance, in which case warrior has mitigated more and has higher eHP after tank stance comes off than the other two.

TL;DR: I agree with you, all stances allow for tanks to take the same size hit. But the common strategies in the game favor warrior's tank stance over that of paladin and dark knight, though it does take more planning.

[Megguido]

TL;DR: I agree with you, all stances allow for tanks to take the same size hit. But the common strategies in the game favor warrior's tank stance over that of paladin and dark knight, though it does take more planning.

Even if a tankstance is marginally better than another, at the end of the day, we barely stay 10% of the time on that stance. What favors the WAR's tank stance imo is Unchained. It's WAR's ability to ignore Defiance damage penalty that makes it superior.

[Mycow8me]

In some cases more hp is better due to compounded mitigation. Tank stance and rampart is not 40% mitigation. Its 100*.8 then another*.8 for a total of 64% damage received. However tank stance and tbn is 80% damage and 12k shield so in reality using tank stance for mitigation is a last resort on dark knight even if it was made free with a 10 sec cooldown similar to war. In that sense its still a dps loss but atleast becomes useful in an emergency and low mp. Otherwise a cooldown and tbn is still best choice. Why does it have to be so punishing for pld and drk to change stance?

[Chrono_Rising]

Even if a tankstance is marginally better than another, at the end of the day, we barely stay 10% of the time on that stance. What favors the WAR's tank stance imo is Unchained. It's WAR's ability to ignore Defiance damage penalty that makes it superior.

I don't disagree. My responses were mainly aimed at dispelling this idea that warrior is balanced based on a situation that shouldn't be happening in the first place.

[Dio_Tiferet]

Have we discussed yet about how BIS crafted acc's are a indirect nerf towards TBN?

[HyperiusUltima]

Have we discussed yet about how BIS crafted acc's are a indirect nerf towards TBN?

That's kinda irrelevant since the Vitality difference can be made up through melding if need be(though I'd imagine anyone tanking worth their salt doesn't meld Vitality except for world firsts), and even then it's rather miniscule in the grand picture. The one thing I still wish they'd do in regards to Tank Accessories is just make Crafted Accessories lower stats overall than Raid Gear so that you have to make up with Pentamelds.

[whiskeybravo]

I don't think you can meld any more vit onto the crafted accessories? But yea, either way you're only looking at a couple hundred more HP worth of shield (only 20% of whatever 90 vit points equates to in raw HP, right?)

As for what they should do with accessories.. There obviously trying to keep crafting relevant at end game, it's like welfare for crafters (maybe that's a bit harsh). But as many others have echoed it's fine for them to be good, if not the best, for early prog/clearing, but they shouldn't be BiS for an entire raid cycle. Aana still has the best idea in this regard (IMO), give us the full amount of str on tank accessories and use Weapon Damage to balance tank DPS where they want it to be.