Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

But therein really lies another problem, because healing from other tanks also scales off of gear. All of the benefits with none of the drawbacks.

...No. That's not how mitigation types work. Having a bit of something else and less of the first thing does not give you the full benefits of both.

How much damage does the percentile mitigation component of Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, or Heart of Corundum absorb? That whole portion, which far exceeds the healing value in any 8-second span that'd require mitigation, does not scale with gear. I.e., the majority of Holy Shelltron, Heart of Corundom, and Bloodwhetting unless holding Primal and 1 or 2 Infuriates, does not scale with gear.

The entirety of TBN, on the other hand, scales with gear.

Again, that's not always a good thing --i.e., if one is undergeared for the given piece of content, in which case content-based scaling would be preferable-- but being a hybrid, under the same (well, less, typically) total throughput, does not give the full benefit of both types.

[Ryaduera]

...No. That's not how mitigation types work. Having a bit of something else and less of the first thing does not give you the full benefits of both.

How much damage does the percentile mitigation component of Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, or Heart of Corundum absorb? That whole portion, which far exceeds the healing value in any 8-second span that'd require mitigation, does not scale with gear. I.e., the majority of Holy Shelltron, Heart of Corundom, and Bloodwhetting unless holding Primal and 1 or 2 Infuriates, does not scale with gear.

The entirety of TBN, on the other hand, scales with gear.

Again, that's not always a good thing --i.e., if one is undergeared for the given piece of content, in which case content-based scaling would be preferable-- but being a hybrid, under the same (well, less, typically) total throughput, does not give the full benefit of both types.

Healing is a form of damage mitigation. Getting health back is very important and if it can be stacked with mitigations the health returned is also more valuable, so the flat percentage is frequently applied to the HP regained as well, meaning yes, the mitigation does scale off gear as well as long as there is a heal attached to the mitigation. It only does not scale with gear if the mitigation either doesn't provide damage reduction after the fact or doesn't provide an HP return during the damage reduction duration. Anyone who says healing is not a form of damage mitigation needs their tank que times revoked.

To be clear, a heal that doesn't overheal and a shield that protect before damage are only distinguishable from eachother in terms of mitigation when the shield provided actually prevents death. Otherwise they are, in effect, the same value if the heal is the same. Heals are only weaker because they happen after damage is taken rather than before, but there's not a single mechanic where a shield is necessary to survive it in the first place, so it's redundant, and even if it was necessary, we have SCH and SGE for it anyway. This means in any sutuation that brought, as an example, Heart of Corrundum to the point the heal activates during the mitigation period and didn't outright kill the tank, then there is no situation where HoC alone didn't mitigate more than TBN even if you stacked it with Oblation. This is especially apparent on tank busters.

[Shurrikhan]

Healing is a form of damage mitigation. Getting health back is very important and if it can be stacked with mitigations the health returned is also more valuable

I never said healing can't... heal, but no, healing is not mitigation. It does not mitigate anything. Healing increases HP until it hits its maximum. It therefore cannot increase maximum eHP against a single strike. If a boss tankbusters you for what would, prior to active mitigation, be 130% of your health, no amount amount of healing will save you. To survive it you must increase your maximum eHP, effective Health Points, e.g., by using mitigation, that which decreases the damage you take, effectively, increase your HP, or by increasing your maximum (and current) HP. Barriers can be equally considered as either a maximum and current HP increase (exempting old interactions like Stormblood Upheaval) or damage reduction. Healing, however, does not increase maximum eHP, unlike the likes of barriers, percentile mitigation, or max and current HP increases (Thrill of Battle). Healing heals; nothing more. You do not "stack" healing with mitigation (be they barriers, percentile mitigation, or ToB). You survive via mitigation and then you or your healers can decrease the gap between current and maximum HP as needed.

so the flat percentage is frequently applied to the HP regained as well

Percentile mitigation increases the eHP of your existing HP. It does not uniquely further increase the value of healing received over that time. It merely increases the length of time, because your existing HP takes longer to deplete, for which you are alive in which to be healed, including by your own healing. But so does a barrier.

The only issue with the latter would be is if the barrier makes some (i.e., early) part of that healing excessive since it'd then do nothing. In practice, that does not happen unless you run into a fight with both incoming heals (Regen, AB, etc.) and a barrier pre-applied. That is far smaller vulnerability than the fact that the remainder of percentile mitigation can be wasted by death since the damage reduction is not as front-loaded (and therefore as immediate or sharply timeable) as on a barrier.

To be clear, a heal that doesn't overheal and a shield that protect before damage are only distinguishable from eachother in terms of mitigation when the shield provided actually prevents death.

By that token, all defensives are useless unless they prevent death. No. The difference between a heal and a shield is that the barrier margin of a shield can extend maximum HP. If one has some 600 potency worth of healing until maximum HP, a 600-potency heal and a 300-potency-heal-300-potency-barrier will have the exact same effect (unless the 300p barrier can prevent a damage-dealing, directly or otherwise, debuff), but if there's only 300 potency of healing left to be done, the latter's eHP increase will be double that of the heal because the barrier can also increase the target's maximum eHP.

Heals are only weaker because they happen after damage is taken rather than before, but there's not a single mechanic where a shield is necessary to survive it in the first place, so it's redundant, and even if it was necessary, we have SCH and SGE for it anyway.

Redundant =/= weaker. TBN stacks with Galvanize and Eukrasian Diagnosis and unless taking extreme amounts of (pre-mitigation) damage over time, it is quite simply stronger than the combined mitigation and healing of Holy Shelltron or Heart of Corundum. Outside of your stat-buffs from job diversity, you do not need variety just for the sake of variety. TBN is stronger, stacks, and then has Oblation available atop that; the mere fact that other shields exist does not somehow make TBN defunct.

This means in any sutuation that brought, as an example, Heart of Corrundum to the point the heal activates during the mitigation period and didn't outright kill the tank, then there is no situation where HoC alone didn't mitigate more than TBN even if you stacked it with Oblation.

It's not that complicated. For HoC to mitigate as much as TBN, it must absorb as much damage over its duration as 25% of the tank's HP minus what would be produced by 900 potency of self-healing under the tank's stats. Simple as that.

Let's put it this way. Let's grab... the highest GNB parse we can, which happens to be on Zodiark. That tanks has 80008 HP, so let's just say 80k. If they were a DRK, their TBN would be 20k. On a top-parse GNB, Heart of Catharsis hits for around 8k. To equal TBN, then, he must absorb 12k damage within your 4-second 30% and/or 8-second 15% window.

That could be from mitigating half your HP (40k) damage (after other mitigation but prior to HoC) over the opening 4 seconds, or your entire health pool (80k) over the later 4 seconds, or some combination of the two (30k in the first 4 seconds + 20k in the later 4 seconds). Whatever.

Now, let's look at the actual outgoing damage from Zodiark Ex. Only once over his 9-minute fight, and despite never pairing it with anything more than Rampart, does his HoC absorb enough damage to make up for that missing 12k stat-based throughput. Once. (And that's not even accounting for TBN being able to pull off two-thirds more casts over time (in practice, around 55% more casts per minute, going by leading parses).)

Again, across a 10-minute fight, there was only one situation where HoC plus its heal absorbed as much as TBN, let alone TBN+Oblation. That's not exactly indicating a majority of contexts by which HoC blows TBN out of the water, despite HoC having a 67% longer CD than TBN and its trait being included in the same skill.



Unless undergeared, TBN is not particularly weak relative to competing skills, especially for its trait-equivalent being a separate ability. And it's certainly not weak just because "other barriers exist anyways."

Nor does any of that change that fact that, yes, TBN wholly scales with gear while HoC, Bloodwhetting, and Holy Shelltron instead scale largely with content (HoC primarily with content, the other two roughly equal under current damage intake). And no, you cannot just scale fully with both gear and content. The percent on percentile mitigation does not increase with your gear. (The only example we've ever had of that is the now long-defunct Foresight action from Marauder.)

[Ryaduera]

I never said healing can't... heal, but no, healing is not mitigation. It does not mitigate anything. Healing increases HP until it hits its maximum. It therefore cannot increase maximum eHP against a single strike. If a boss tankbusters you for what would, prior to active mitigation, be 130% of your health, no amount amount of healing will save you. To survive it you must increase your maximum eHP, effective Health Points, e.g., by using mitigation, that which decreases the damage you take, effectively, increase your HP, or by increasing your maximum (and current) HP. Barriers can be equally considered as either a maximum and current HP increase (exempting old interactions like Stormblood Upheaval) or damage reduction. Healing, however, does not increase maximum eHP, unlike the likes of barriers, percentile mitigation, or max and current HP increases (Thrill of Battle). Healing heals; nothing more. You do not "stack" healing with mitigation (be they barriers, percentile mitigation, or ToB). You survive via mitigation and then you or your healers can decrease the gap between current and maximum HP as needed

Except the situation where you can't mitigate the damage to not kill you literally does not exist in this game, nor will it ever be to a degree that TBN is the only thing that can fill that gap because Squeenix will never design an encounter that requires a specific makeup and the healing from HoC and other like abilities does not take effect until after damage has already been taken so it does not actually overheal.

Percentile mitigation increases the eHP of your existing HP. It does not uniquely further increase the value of healing received over that time. It merely increases the length of time, because your existing HP takes longer to deplete, for which you are alive in which to be healed, including by your own healing. But so does a barrier.

I don't get why you went out of your way to agree with me angrily. You even left in the part where I said "as well". The heal is also instant from when damage is taken so it in effect is exactly the same as a barrier if you survived, and not even once have I had a situation where I couldn't just... survive... It's kinda what we do as tanks.

The only issue with the latter would be is if the barrier makes some (i.e., early) part of that healing excessive since it'd then do nothing. In practice, that does not happen unless you run into a fight with both incoming heals (Regen, AB, etc.) and a barrier pre-applied. That is far smaller vulnerability than the fact that the remainder of percentile mitigation can be wasted by death since the damage reduction is not as front-loaded (and therefore as immediate or sharply timeable) as on a barrier.

Again, never really came into a situation where with my mitigations being used properly I actually died, meaning no value of the percentage mitigationwas lost unless going into downtime, which brings things off cooldown anyway, so null point on that.

By that token, all defensives are useless unless they prevent death. No. The difference between a heal and a shield is that the barrier margin of a shield can extend maximum HP. If one has some 600 potency worth of healing until maximum HP, a 600-potency heal and a 300-potency-heal-300-potency-barrier will have the exact same effect (unless the 300p barrier can prevent a damage-dealing, directly or otherwise, debuff), but if there's only 300 potency of healing left to be done, the latter's eHP increase will be double that of the heal because the barrier can also increase the target's maximum eHP.

I'm pretty sure I covered this, but pop off.

Redundant =/= weaker. TBN stacks with Galvanize and Eukrasian Diagnosis and unless taking extreme amounts of (pre-mitigation) damage over time, it is quite simply stronger than the combined mitigation and healing of Holy Shelltron or Heart of Corundum. Outside of your stat-buffs from job diversity, you do not need variety just for the sake of variety. TBN is stronger, stacks, and then has Oblation available atop that; the mere fact that other shields exist does not somehow make TBN defunct.

It's not that complicated. For HoC to mitigate as much as TBN, it must absorb as much damage over its duration as 25% of the tank's HP minus what would be produced by 900 potency of self-healing under the tank's stats. Simple as that.

Let's put it this way. Let's grab... the highest GNB parse we can, which happens to be on Zodiark. That tanks has 80008 HP, so let's just say 80k. If they were a DRK, their TBN would be 20k. On a top-parse GNB, Heart of Catharsis hits for around 8k. To equal TBN, then, he must absorb 12k damage within your 4-second 30% and/or 8-second 15% window.

That could be from mitigating half your HP (40k) damage (after other mitigation but prior to HoC) over the opening 4 seconds, or your entire health pool (80k) over the later 4 seconds, or some combination of the two (30k in the first 4 seconds + 20k in the later 4 seconds). Whatever.

Now, let's look at the actual outgoing damage from Zodiark Ex. Only once over his 9-minute fight, and despite never pairing it with anything more than Rampart, does his HoC absorb enough damage to make up for that missing 12k stat-based throughput. Once. (And that's not even accounting for TBN being able to pull off two-thirds more casts over time (in practice, around 55% more casts per minute, going by leading parses).)

Again, across a 10-minute fight, there was only one situation where HoC plus its heal absorbed as much as TBN, let alone TBN+Oblation. That's not exactly indicating a majority of contexts by which HoC blows TBN out of the water, despite HoC having a 67% longer CD than TBN and its trait being included in the same skill.



Unless undergeared, TBN is not particularly weak relative to competing skills, especially for its trait-equivalent being a separate ability. And it's certainly not weak just because "other barriers exist anyways."

Nor does any of that change that fact that, yes, TBN wholly scales with gear while HoC, Bloodwhetting, and Holy Shelltron instead scale largely with content (HoC primarily with content, the other two roughly equal under current damage intake). And no, you cannot just scale fully with both gear and content. The percent on percentile mitigation does not increase with your gear. (The only example we've ever had of that is the now long-defunct Foresight action from Marauder.)

If you have a DRK and a shield healer it is redundant but nobody said weaker. It was only said that it would not be the deciding factor in your survival. TBN is not stronger. Here's the math from the first set of tomestone gear as a base for HP. I don't know why you say it's not complicated to me, I understand it's not complicated, calculating damage mitigation is extremely simple. It's basic math and I happen to be smarter than the average rock.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778466

I'm not going to pretend to understand why you're going on about gear not increasing percentage. Like... yes, you are correct, that point was never refuted. Not to mention damage also scaales with ilvl so the porpotion of damage generally stays the same anyway. But heals from those abilities do, and healing is mitigation even if you don't want to think it is. Drain Tanks are a thing that have existed in many games because healing is a form of mitigation. Post damage mitigation and pre damage mitigation both exist, but when talking about tanks it's traditionally pre damage mitigation people consider, but post damage mitigation is just as important. This usually takes the form of regeneration or reactive healing, like applying life steal buffs after damage is taken instead of before. Theoretically, with high enough max HP all you need is heals to be considered tanky, which is exactly what Warrior is, as well as it having a plethora of defensive utilities. But they are an outlier right now, so take that with a grain of salt. Bottom line is, post damage mitigation counts as long as you can stay alive, which every tank in this game can do without shields, so it's not that having shields from healers and the off tank is bad, but it is redundant, which, you're correct, is not bad, but saying you succeeded because of the second shield is just copium. You don't need it, you have never needed it, and you will never need it. It's just... nice. That's all it is, calling it better because it does something that is absolutely not necessary is really reaching for justification of such an overrated skill being the reason the DRK can't have better defensive tools.

It really just feels like you angrily agreed with some of my points and tried to say I was wrong about things that I didn't even refute... The only thing I really refuted was that healing is in fact a form of mitigation, because it is whether you want to believe it or not. Especially since every single tank heal can or is automatically applied after damage is taken.