Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

Besides the life-steal game-play niche wasn't originally "given to WAR", they just used to be able to cross-class Bloodbath, a lancer/melee dps ability.

You're thinking of Blood for Blood. Bloodbath was always a Marauder ability, for which they also gained extended duration via a Marauder trait.

Warrior, on the other hand, could not cross-class Blood for Blood, which led to Marauder being the preferred tank for much of ARR's 4-man PvP, since it could stack B4B, Raging Strikes, Internal Release, and the like while crushing undaunted into the enemy's healer or squishier dps.

Initial concept of WAR in ARR was absolutely the life-stealing, high hp tank, it just didn't work well with their content design at the time.

Which, to be fair, was merely because it was undertuned for raid content.

Foresight, for instance, multiplied Defense stat rather than offering direct mitigation, and by a pitiful percent ultimately worth only, what, less than 5% mitigation? And that was somehow treated as an equivalent to Rampart.

Vengeance, their Sentinel-like, originally offered zero damage mitigation.

Their tank stance increased HP but not sustainability since they didn't increase healing intake; that instead relied on Wrath stacks (now Beast Gauge), which even then only affected healing spells, not healing, and to less than the equivalent effective rate offered by Shield Oath (as you'd need 25% more healing to compensate for taking 25% more damage [or, not taking 20% less damage]), and was then consumed the moment Warrior healed itself via Inner Beast, which likewise wasn't affected by that healing modifier.

And even then, people were able to clear Binding Coil 1-5 with it, since at least Infirmity likewise didn't debuff Inner Beast's self-healing and Lustrate was, at the time, a %HP heal, a Infuriate double-self-heal could be powerful for Caduceus, and the added AoE damage and Bloodbath self-healing therefrom (PLD had none save Circle of Scorn at the time) was significant in T4.