Is TBN a bad skill?

[RokkuEkkusu]

I love Xenosys Vex, but I tend to see him as an Offensive tank with major defensive cooldown usage more than anything.

The TBN made cooldowns against Tankbusters more bearable to deal with, especially for the healers who have teamed up with me.

[Lyth]

If they removed invulns from the game and made mitigation actually challenging, players would very quickly realise how powerful TBN is.

[Ultimatecalibur]

If they removed invulns from the game and made mitigation actually challenging, players would very quickly realise how powerful TBN is.

Either than or made tankbusters happen roughly every 30 seconds so Rampart+30%+Invuln didn't cover every tankbuster.

[EthanXdeath]

TBN isn't a bad skill, it's because it's DPS neutral when it breaks and a DPS loss when it doesn't break, while every other tank has a short cooldown defense buff the DRK is the only one when used NEEDS 3000 MP aka a resource needed for part of the DRK's DPS output. Now if TBN didn't cost 3000 MP and didn't grant Dark Arts I think this would be a good compromise. However the 25% extra HP shield it gives would probably need to be nerfed slightly as well if the 3000 MP condition was removed.

[Izsha]

Xeno isnt right just because hes popular. TBN is by far the most powerful mitigation skill in its class (on demand CD) and is dps neutral when used properly. The trade off for that power is that you can use it improperly. People like xeno see any remote chance of loosing dps and trash the skill because it 'can' loose you dps. It's part if optimizing drk gameplay. Using tbn properly is just like any other aspect of tanking. Screwing it up is suboptimal. Just like literally anything else. It's just a higher risk, higher reward action than most other tank actions. Thay doesnt make it bad. It makes it a risk reward situation. Do it right and you gain more than the other tanks via extreme levels of mitigation for free. Do it wrong, loose damage. If you dont want to ride that train, theres 3 other tanks with less risk, less reward play.

[Nedkel]

The thing about that is... in most cases IT DOES NOT save a GCD from a healer. And that in probably more than 90% of this (end) game's content. Maybe an oGCD, but then its a wasted resource anyway. (WHM might be an exception bc of their lily/heavy GCD healing design)
Even if it does save your healer a GCD compared to... let's say GNB: GNB DPS is no doubt higher than DRK, but it's a safe investment into dps. TBN is not, quite the opposite. As I said above, TBN saving a GCD heal is already unlikely. Using it only when you know it will break, is indeed "DPS neutral" at best. You can experiment in duty fights to optimize TBN uptime, and still make sure it breaks. That still doesn't guarantee it will bring your healers more dps. This is a gamble with high risk/effort, low reward.
The only (not even a) handful duties -where TBN shines- are Ultimates. Ultimate AAs, raid wide etc. deal so much damage that the shield breaking during its duration is 99% guarateed. So much, I would even say it's overpowered.

This is false.

TBN makes DRK the easiest job to heal and it saves a ton of GCD when DRK uses it consistently.
Maybe not in raids, but in dungeons where the damage is way higher on trash mobs, it does make a difference.

[Izsha]

People really need to reevaluate the 'but it doesnt save a healer gcd so it doesnt matter's argument. Its constantly spammed for everything tank related in these forums.

No ONE thing saves a healer gcd. Ever miss reprisal on your designated aoe? Did healers spam extra gcds to make up for it? How bout your raid wide miti skill? Miss the intervention on your tabk buddy for huster 10%? Did a healer have to C2 then to make it up? No?

If none of these things cost a healer gcd then why are we doing them?

Because it's the cumulative effect of a combination of skills combined with the passive/low hanging fruit hots.

Bosses deal incoming damage. Healers have a set of 'low hanging fruit's heals that are cheap/free. Fairy heals, regen, medica ticks, ogcd heals etc. If the damage coming in is lower than the ez heals then no healer gcds are required. But bosses deal more damage than that. Then you ADD UP the additional mitigation from all sources to try to bring that damage eew back down. If you can get that overall damage down low enough you dont need extra heals. This is the goal. This is the zero gcd heal runs. No one skill gets you there. It's a group goal everyone participates in.

My cotank often takes zero damage from busters and aoe with his skills, my party skills, and my tbn/etc. Did I single handedly prevent a healer gcd? No. But I was 1 piece of the puzzle that prevented a healer gcd and that has value.

Stop looking at every skill as a binary "does x skill prevent a healer gcd, yes/no. If yes it's good skill. If bad its worthless skill". Its an oversimplification and pretty useless way to look at skills.

The goal is to combine mitigation from all sources to get damage down to match the incoming free/ogcd heals. No one skill gets that done. The entire party combines their skills to get that done.

[Nedkel]

People really need to reevaluate the 'but it doesnt save a healer gcd so it doesnt matter's argument. Its constantly spammed for everything tank related in these forums.

No ONE thing saves a healer gcd. Ever miss reprisal on your designated aoe? Did healers spam extra gcds to make up for it? How bout your raid wide miti skill? Miss the intervention on your tabk buddy for huster 10%? Did a healer have to C2 then to make it up? No?

If none of these things cost a healer gcd then why are we doing them?

Because it's the cumulative effect of a combination of skills combined with the passive/low hanging fruit hots.

Bosses deal incoming damage. Healers have a set of 'low hanging fruit's heals that are cheap/free. Fairy heals, regen, medica ticks, ogcd heals etc. If the damage coming in is lower than the ez heals then no healer gcds are required. But bosses deal more damage than that. Then you ADD UP the additional mitigation from all sources to try to bring that damage eew back down. If you can get that overall damage down low enough you dont need extra heals. This is the goal. This is the zero gcd heal runs. No one skill gets you there. It's a group goal everyone participates in.

My cotank often takes zero damage from busters and aoe with his skills, my party skills, and my tbn/etc. Did I single handedly prevent a healer gcd? No. But I was 1 piece of the puzzle that prevented a healer gcd and that has value.

Stop looking at every skill as a binary "does x skill prevent a healer gcd, yes/no. If yes it's good skill. If bad its worthless skill". Its an oversimplification and pretty useless way to look at skills.

The goal is to combine mitigation from all sources to get damage down to match the incoming free/ogcd heals. No one skill gets that done. The entire party combines their skills to get that done.

Sure but in equation of Incoming damage > tank > healer you dont have any other party members, there is no DPS in this game that could potentially contribute into tanks damage received, only by killing things faster but it does not change the incoming damage directly in any way. There are tanks and healers, thats it.

TBN scales with other mitigation skills, making it so much more powerful than anything in the game, and this makes DRK so damn tanky.
Once you hit a certain threshold of incoming damage, the healer dps output starts to increase in comparison to other tanks, and this occurs mainly in 4 mans content, not in raids since incoming damage there is severely miscalculated and there is no real risk of killing tank ever by mismanagement.

[ArianeEwah]

My cotank often takes zero damage from busters and aoe with his skills, my party skills, and my tbn/etc. Did I single handedly prevent a healer gcd? No. But I was 1 piece of the puzzle that prevented a healer gcd and that has value.

That I agree with you. TBN is good in what it is supposed to do. Mitigating heavy hits.
It just isn't that kinda skill that prevents all incoming damage like some make it sound like it'd be.
It's short CD in most cases is irrelevent when you only get 3-4 effective uses in 3 min.
On the other hand, heavy damage that's happening in succession gets failry easily handled by TBN.

This is false.

TBN makes DRK the easiest job to heal and it saves a ton of GCD when DRK uses it consistently.
Maybe not in raids, but in dungeons where the damage is way higher on trash mobs, it does make a difference.

I would agrue that would be WAR. I've run dozens of dungeons where my healer didn't even use Excogitation or any GCD heals whatsoever. However, DRK does require at least some heals.
Not that it does hurt, you can probably heal all tanks just with oGCDs -unless your party suffers from low dps.
Certainly, DRK is easier to heal than GNB or PLD in dungeons. Just pray you never have to heal through Living Dead on any heal that's not WHM!

[SamRF]

I feel like TBN is the only skill left that can to a little extend play into the the DRK theme of edgy/dangerous sacrifice of resources. You need to save MP to be able to use TBN when it's appropiate and when you use it, you have to make sure it gets soaked otherwise you'll have sacrificed rescources. This decision you need to make, while being piss easy, is the only thing that kind of resonates with this calculated "sacrifice" theme that I think of when considering DRK.

Many were hoping it would be HP we'd be sacrificing, but before ShB we had MP instead, and it worked to some extend with that you needed MP to hold aggro in dungeon mob pulls and for Abyssal Drain (which could mean life or death in big pulls), so if you went too crazy with MP and didn't manage it well enough you wouldn't be able to keep aggro at certain moments or not have enough for Abyssal Drain. Which means that if you weren't careful with managing your resources, you'd be risking your own and your party's life. Not at all saying that this was difficult, but it was simply a distinction from other tanks that resonated a little to the DRK theme.

ShB has nothing like that anymore, you're just a juicy resource assault rifle who can go berserk if they want with little consequences. The only small thing that still plays into this sacrifice theme is TBN, for which you need sufficient MP at the occasion and need for it to be fully absorbed to get your resource back.