Dark Knight Megathread

[ThorneDynasty]

Damage advantages never last.

I hope so. I'd hate this job to stay this messy because "it does good DPS, nothing to see here".

[WhyAmIHere]

I hope so. I'd hate this job to stay this messy because "it does good DPS, nothing to see here".

'member before GNB, when the tank balance was a scale of damage versus utility? Cuz I do.

[Crater]

'member before GNB, when the tank balance was a scale of damage versus utility? Cuz I do.

I don't remember that at all. Prior to GNB/ShB, the recurring problem SE had was that they kept making the tank with the most utility also deal the most damage, and the tank with the least utility sit on the bottom of the chart. Or sometimes the tank with an average amount of utility would be way out ahead in damage and the two with the most and least would be fighting each other for table scraps. There's never really been any sort of coherent design philosophy when it comes to how tank damage is balanced - a fine tradition which continues to this day!

[Keagian]

I'm hoping for some sort of Sustain for DRK, doing dungeons with them is terrifying when you have a bad healer. When a healer dies to almost every mechanics and the DNC has to keep us alive? That is when I wished I lvled up WAR or PLD.

Damage is all well and good but I prefer to have utility just for the safety net.

Then again, they've never been really great with balancing and usually start off the expansions where some jobs are either royally fucked or so powerful that they just dominate in every team comp.

[Kalaam]

Your DPS doesn't matter if you can't stay alive to use it.
Does DRK's DPS allow him to down that is at 60% health after the healer died before getting KOed himself ? If that was the case, DRK would hit for 20k per strikes at least.
Only when the boss is very low on health will DRK's DPS make him on par with other tanks survivability. Basically like when a DPS is the only player remaining and the boss is at 3% HP. They can survive and kill it, doesn't mean they could have done it solo.

[Lyth]

But why should soloing bosses be the standard? When the content is designed for multiple players, you should need everyone's help to clear. Solo runs and all tank runs of content are exciting to watch only when they are a demonstration of exceptional play. If anyone can show up and roll their face across the keyboard to do it, it's just not interesting.

I don't think that you can trade off mitigation vs. damage, but you could trade off self-healing vs. damage if there's a sufficient amount of incoming damage that it makes a difference in healer GCD usage. I think if we're going this route, though, Living Dead needs to change at bare minimum.

The broader utility and mitigation issue is harder to trade-off. What benefit to DRK and GNB have for having conditional mitigation moves based on damage type? The PLD and WAR equivalents have similar recasts, but work on all damage types.

This is largely a band-aid fix, and knowing SE they'll always give in to the cries of baby's first tank jobs sooner than provide any real fixes for DRK.

[RatCopter]

Mitigation feels like just enough for 90 content. I can manage wall to wall pulls fine enough with a good rotation and spamming TBN on cooldown. Just gotta pair your Oblations with Reprisal or Arm's Length.
I just want something more than just Souleater for health regain, because AD doesn't count for much until you hit 6+ targets.

2) I'm not really sure what niche Oblation is designed to cover. This is a single target Reprisal, down to the cooldown timer. When coupled with other forms of damage resistance, it provides even less value than the listed 10% because they are multiplicative. It looks cool, but that's about it. I'd like it more if it was a 15% bubble.

Throwaway auto mitigation, or a vuln stack nullifier. Though, I don't really know how much it's actually doing, so it might just be some pointless busywork.

[Kalaam]

Oblation feels like what a short CD cooldown would have been a few expansions prior, it's kind of like old shieltron in a way.

But yes I aggree that tanks soloing dungeon bosses shouldn't be the norm, that a tank might finish up a boss that is left at like 10 or 20% Hp, sure. if it's a boss with not a lot of auto attacks and just lots of mechanic times and position stuff, that should be doable.
But just... being able to solo most 80+ dungeons is absurd.

[Zordrage]

I'm wondering if that's SE's tradeoff? DRK as little to no real sustain so they do more damage?

if i wanted to be a DPS with almost zero selfsustain i play a DPS not a TANK.

[Derio]

With all the changes to self sustain and DRK toolkit. I only run dungeons on PLD now. DRK can do the trials and extreme trials when I get there but dungeons on a DRK compared to any other tank is not fun at all. You are literally asking your healer to be a bot for large pulls if they arent a WHM for the holy spam.

Right now they are focused on trial balance so if anything I see DRK getting a nerf before any type of sustain issues are addressed.