Dark Knight Megathread

[Archwizard]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is the most insane shit I've ever read. Have you not been using TBN in conjunction with other mitigation in big dungeon pulls where you're taking easily 3-5x as much damage as it takes to break one? Did we just solve the mystery of why a bunch of you guys think Dark Knight is bad in dungeons?

Honestly, I'm speaking mostly from the experience of trying to heal DRKs. Even paired with TBN, Oblation does not nearly stand up to the buffs Sheltron/HoS/RI get at 82, and you definitely feel that difference trying to keep them up; any other tank honestly feels like they're doing half the work for you. Once TBN's down it usually feels like the DRK is hardly using any mitigation at all and they just drop like a stone, and that only gets worse on a Barrier specialist, even popping all my CDs.

If you're not on a WHM, healing a DRK feels awful.

Though with some of the DRKs I've been playing with, it's entirely plausible they weren't using any mitigation other than TBN like you're asserting. I was a bit too occupied trying to panic-barrier to keep them out of WD to double check.

[OdinelStarrei]

Honestly, I'm speaking mostly from the experience of trying to heal DRKs. Even paired with TBN, Oblation does not nearly stand up to the buffs Sheltron/HoS/RI get at 82, and you definitely feel that difference trying to keep them up; any other tank honestly feels like they're doing half the work for you. Once TBN's down it usually feels like the DRK is hardly using any mitigation at all and they just drop like a stone, and that only gets worse on a Barrier specialist, even popping all my CDs.

If you're not on a WHM, healing a DRK feels awful.

Though with some of the DRKs I've been playing with, it's entirely plausible they weren't using any mitigation other than TBN like you're asserting. I was a bit too occupied trying to panic-barrier to keep them out of WD to double check.

I can back this up as someone who does DRK in Expert fairly frequently. TBN is overrated, this is certain. But the two things it does INCREDIBLY well are the low recast timer, and how incredibly effective it is when you stack mitigation on top of it. Flat shields don't suffer from the multiplicative effects of percentage mitigations, TBN starts actually earning it's vaunted reputation under stacking. Oblation isn't strong enough to really pronounce this effect on it's own, but when you combine Rampart + Oblation + Reprisal with TBN sprinkled in between, you'll find the shields last quite a bit longer. It doesn't help that most DRKs who walking around right now throw Abyssal Drain at the first available opportunity rather than waiting until they can get maximum value vs overhealing themselves, without all the good parts of Bloodwhetting.

This is actually why I don't really understand why DRK + SGE is so vehemently bashed, since SGE's dedicated percentage based mitigation support skills mesh incredibly well with TBN and DRK's own personal mitigation. (Protraction for HP/Sacred Soil for mit also falls under this stipulation, I had no issues healing DRKs on SCH, provided they weren't idiots) I guess if the mobs don't die quick enough and both parties run out of resources it gets awful, but the pulls would have to last like a minute straight. Nevermind, I know exactly why, it's because LD is a ******** trashfire and we can't do anything about it if the SGE has already used their instants. FFS

Because it takes so much more effort to reach basic competency in big pulls, compared to 1 CD making you functionally better than invulnerable, the chasm on the surface is about as wide as the distance between Earth and the moon to a healer, PARTICULARLY if the DRK is bad, and are convinced the job is unplayable garbage versus requiring an entirely different, and frankly, unintuitive mitigation mindset for functional, but comparably worse results.