Are Dark Knights really that bad right now?

[Hierro]

This is a tecnically true, and is so when used sparingly. However, heavy or over use even if you always get the shield is DPS negative. TBN has to make up for the damage loss of DA and the loss of a GCD later to use blood spiller. Which is some cases the use of blood spiller can be a DPS increase if the GCD used take the spot of Lets say a heavy slash, vs making you drop a Syphon of souleater which would be a dps loss. If you loose all three of these is neutral to your dps. However, use the ability wrong could mean you are only losing a syphon which would be a net DPS loss.

IN the short run its rather DPS neutral in most cases if you use it sets of 3 in a fight where you never have down time and can use all your GCDs (or you never drop a combo).

Honestly, i had talked with a few friend last night. If all the tanks while tanking were forced to use tank stance while actively tanking and DPS stance while not tanking. All of the tank would be in a very good spot. DRKs would be the highest damage and most durable tank in tank stance, with the ability to single MT many fights where you swap for more tank cooldowns.

Used sparingly? I would like to know how you define that. My best runs of O6S include at least a dozen TBNs, and I'm no slouch. In fights like Godka, more TBNs are used, and there are examples of better players that use it even more frequently. The only instance I can recall where I had to be mindful of my TBN usage was for when I was adamant on ending certain phases on a complete combo for clown kefka, but even then I didn't neglect the button.

98% of a DRK's performance, for the most part, really just lies on not capping out resources and using your offensive cooldowns ON cooldown. The rest of this theoretical 2% we can say lies in how we place Salted Earth to get the most out of its duration, knowing when to hold plunge to negate knockbacks or close a signifcant gap, knowing when to pool up resources for party buffs, and finally, GCD manipulation via TBN usage or lack thereof. Still, you can act like none of that happens, you will hardly notice a difference unless you want to be the best on some statistics website. You can still spam TBN, and given that each TBN used is proc'd, there's very little to second-guess if you just want to be a really good presence for your party.

[shao32]

Honestly, i had talked with a few friend last night. If all the tanks while tanking were forced to use tank stance while actively tanking and DPS stance while not tanking. All of the tank would be in a very good spot. DRKs would be the highest damage and most durable tank in tank stance, with the ability to single MT many fights where you swap for more tank cooldowns.

acording to the theorycrafters all tanks loose a 25% of they dps on tank stance this keeping in mind they maximun values so DRK will not be the tank with the highest damage there, buuuut no serious test are been made about that as far i know and WAR will be constantly spaming inner beast in that scenario so idk if DRK will be the most durable in that situation too.

[whiskeybravo]

acording to the theorycrafters all tanks loose a 25% of they dps on tank stance this keeping in mind they maximun values so DRK will not be the tank with the highest damage there, buuuut no serious test are been made about that as far i know and WAR will be constantly spaming inner beast in that scenario so idk if DRK will be the most durable in that situation too.

I'd have to agree. When properly prepared, WAR is basically unkillable in Defiance.

Though if we are talking about DPS with 100% tank stance, I could see how DRK might pull ahead given that Darkside pretty much negates the damage decrease.

[shao32]

I'd have to agree. When properly prepared, WAR is basically unkillable in Defiance.

Though if we are talking about DPS with 100% tank stance, I could see how DRK might pull ahead given that Darkside pretty much negates the damage decrease.

mmm probably but Darkside its a direct buff out of grit so i will not count it as it negates anything apart its true WAR have unchained and a boost with Upheaval but since WAR stances have the trick to swap without any penalty it woulnt be bad they swap to deliverance for inner release windows, still even if iss 100% defiance it probably stay at the same level and meaby lower that DRK? im not sure, its hard to say too.

[Aana]

mmm probably but Darkside its a direct buff out of grit so i will not count it as it negates anything apart its true WAR have unchained and a boost with Upheaval but since WAR stances have the trick to swap without any penalty it woulnt be bad they swap to deliverance for inner release windows, still even if iss 100% defiance it probably stay at the same level and meaby lower that DRK? im not sure, its hard to say too.

If were swapping for inner release, you have to start talking about drk dropping grit for blood weapon and then were just back to flipping stances for everyone. Full tank stance I (suspect) warrior still wins. Tank stance drops war flat damage to 76%. But unchained has 22% uptime so it ends up being about 81% the damage of deliverance. This is before you count the 200 pot lost for each FC becoming IB though. If FC is about 40% of war damage, we could estimate a similar ratio for IB in defiance, but e also get upheaval buffed and so on. It might still be closer to that '75%' all said and done. But ultimately, no one actually plays full turtle at high levels because its just....bad, so who wins while playing utterly terribly is kinda irrelevant imo. War is the hardest to kill in flat tank stance though, without a doubt in my book. Spamming IB at the rate we spam FCs is truly immense.

Once in a while in some lower tier pug content (EX's etc) I'll just stay in defiance because a healer keeps dying or whatever. War is extraordinarily resilient in defiance. Inner release IB x 5 at nearly double the normal damage (and HP gain) is just ridiculous from a defensive position. You can easily solo dungeon bosses or stay alive while a smn slow cast raise on two dead healers in a primal with all the CDs and HP gain in defiance. You can do lots of HP manupulation and self sustain. For example, Tob>IB for heals and mitigation, then eat both for SiO to guard that regained HP with a 12% hp shield etc. My personal favorite is being nearly dead, HG to survive a big hit, then IR>IBs and equal to just pretend you were always just fine.

[shao32]

snip

yeah i know and i think in the same way, the hipotetical case tank are forced to MT on tank stance show they are not balanced at all with it pretty weird bcs the dev team expect us to tank like that in MT spot but my guess is devs dont have any ide what they are doing with the tanks, and dont forgeth WAR still have equilibrium, anyway all of this was to analyze the garry asumition of all tanks where being better on a 100% tank stance on MT scenario what it looks like worse, or not worse but having a job totally broken there.

[Megguido]

I'd have to agree. When properly prepared, WAR is basically unkillable in Defiance.

Though if we are talking about DPS with 100% tank stance, I could see how DRK might pull ahead given that Darkside pretty much negates the damage decrease.

Then Storm's eye is cutting in half Defiance's damage decrease. I don't think we can consider Darkside and Storm's eye to favor one tank or the other since both buffs should be up at any given time, tank stance or not.

[whiskeybravo]

Then Storm's eye is cutting in half Defiance's damage decrease. I don't think we can consider Darkside and Storm's eye to favor one tank or the other since both buffs should be up at any given time, tank stance or not.

I actually.. Failed to consider that. But it doesn't necessarily stick out because with DRK it's 20/20 and with WAR only 20/10.

One reason I'm not a fan of suggestions about adding/changing weaponskills around in an effort to make them more "interesting", it's just a button you press in some particular order. Like, it doesn't matter what storm's eye (or in the other case, darkside) actually does as long as it's up lol. But maybe that's just how I operate

[Garry]

acording to the theorycrafters all tanks loose a 25% of they dps on tank stance thi.

So thats interested actualy on my warrior and my dark knight i tried both on a text dummy and they do have the same drop off... which actualy get to my point. TBN. TBN is a damage increase while tanking even more so in grit as you have 650 Potency Bloodspillers with dark arts (which is a GCD worth 510 really as you take the normal -140 from the DA you would have gotten to use for spending mana on TBN, but either way its our most powerful GCD use). So TBN goes from being DPS positive/negative/nuetral depending on when and how much you use it. To DPS bonus. So if the damage drop off its the same which it was give or take a 1% or 2 then you add in the DPS increase from TBN and the mild extra damage you get from bonus mana and blood guage from blood price (no it's not great but its even more bonus damage you dont get on a training dummy).

So looking at it i'm fairly confident Darks would be the highest damage tank in tank stance if we sat around actualy doing that. Atleast thats what i find when i combine my testing and the math of TBN.

Now tankiness is interesting is on a perfight thing. Inner beast is nice and it makes inner release kind of like a tanking cool down for absorbinbg tank buster damage. If it lines up with big damage atleast though it might not and i'm not holding my IR to mitigate extra damage. Looking at my chadarnook last night both tanks took about 1.2mill damage meaning anyu give inner beast would block about 17k damage ontop of the heal which might or might not heal me blah blah. It could block more if timed and varies depending on constant boss damage output and big burst attacks. Also uptime on inner beast matters as you can use it during ultima's phases where he's untargetable or in situations where you can't be on the boss.

The TBN shield is pretty specific. its 20% of your max health. For me my TBN blocks 12,239 damage every 15 seconds. It's a very stagnet thing. It doesn't scale up but can scale down. It can scale with your tank buster cooldowns as well.

[Miyafuji]

Dark knight really lost its identity in SB, most of its skills either got deleted or put into the role skills, the dark arts spam is ridiculous, for every skill you need to use dark arts to maximise dps and if you compare the damage output from warrior to drk, war is so much more powerful and easier to play.

Drk also lacks the raid utility and defensive cooldowns of a paladin, there's also no self heal when not in tank stance while the other jobs have reliable self heals no matter what the situation, sole survivor isn't exactly reliable.

Living dead should also be changed, its so much weaker than the HG or holmgang in that it requires assistance from another person for it to actually be useful. While holmgang could use assistance its on a really short cooldown and has other benefits to it, but due to the self heal war has it is actually pretty safe to use.