We really need to talk about Living Dead

[Chrono_Rising]

Yeah unless they straight up reduced boss auto attack damage I'm calling BS on this claim. One auto attack from Titan savage pre-5.2 would alone nearly break TBN, while the second hit would break it entirely. Seeing as Titan auto attacked for 33k, if I had to put a guess to it I would assume Shiva autos for somewhere in the 36k-39k range. That means that the only possible way TBN isn't breaking to two auto attacks is if the boss straight up stops autoing after the first hit in order to cast something.

Edit: Legit just watched a bit of an E8S kill video and Shiva autos for around 34-36k. So no, two auto attacks will 100% break TBN.

While Shiva will break it, e5s averages 21k, just short of breaking for 2, e6s does between 15 and 18k, very short of breaking. E7s does enough auto damage, but the boss spends so much time channeling/casting most autos are more than 7 seconds apart. So in 3/4 TBN won't break.

As for commenting on Equilibrium in particular, it's a weird skill; just because the variance for how much it can heal for is so huge. Popped alone and non-crit, 30k. Crit with ToB, like 62k. So it not critting is just depressing. As for what's better, I don't think it's a completely straightforward topic. For one thing, comparing TBN against NF, ToB, & Equil all combined just seems more than a little bit of an unfair matchup. Strong as any cooldown may be, it's bound to lose out when put in a competition against three all together, and that's another reason I think it's only proper to pit TBN against NF individually.

Variance aside, I'm of the camp that would just plan for it to be 32k, but leave head space in case it crits. The reason why you need to compare TBN to three different skills is that TBN is the catch all of mitigation. Abyssal Drain is a damage skill that needs to be used at the same time in your rotation for damage, the heal isn't anything to write home for against single target bosses (granted dungeon pulls are another story). Dark mind is useful but only for magic. More than half the busters the past two tiers were physical, meaning dark mind is only useful less than half the time. TBN has to make up for not having skills like Aurora Camo and heart of stone or ToB Nascent Flash Equilibrium, but also cannot be too strong because we also have dark mind.

TLDR; TBN is a catch all - overpowered when compared in isolation of kits; balanced when compared to entire kits. The odd one out is paladin's kit which is kinda terrible for when you have aggro.