Dark Knight Megathread

[Sacrilegion]

"Healing is not mitigation" True, but recovering after heavy damage is just as important especially when your healer is occupied trying to keep dps alive. DRK struggles in this category and they cannot fill in for an actual dps (they ain't that strong).

[Ryaduera]

I refuted only four points, on which in no case did I agree with you:
[LIST="1"]That healing is mitigation. It's not. In the same sense that healing isn't a shield, and Sprint is not normal movement speed. Yes, a shield may do no more than healing when there is no context by which to get to its unique advantages, just as bonus movement speed may do no more than normal movement when you would have dodged anyways or still would not have lost uptime, but they are not literally the same thing.

Whether or not you want to believe healing is a form of mitigation in the context in which tanks are using it does not change the fact that it absolutely is. It is and that's enough. It was also never said that they were the same thing. I am genuinely lost on where you think I said that. I specifically called them different and acknowledged there are hypothetical cases where the shield is more important, but the other point I made is that this moment literally doesn't exist. You,re right, they aren't the same thing, I never said they were, just that they have similar effects. Damage mitigated is how much damage you have after all incoming damage has happened. That's why heals factor in. Not all heals, mind you. Clemency is not mitigation, but Aurora is, for example. Brutal Shell is hardly mitigation since it's an offensive tool, just like Souleater isn't mitigation because the HP from both happens without the HP/shield being the intention. There's a clear distinction between health based mitigation (aka drain tanking) and post-damage healing, there has to be or healer wouldn't even be a role.

[*]That having one's gear scale partly from content, instead of one's gear, is inherently better or, as you put it, has...

It doesn't. Having a bit of column A (gear-scaling) and a bit of column B (content-scaling) does not give you "all of the benefits" of each, or even of either one. It's merely proportional.

It's proportional with no drawbacks IE you don't use your DPS resource on it, even if you do get it back that's still bad design in a game where DPS is the only thing they look at. That's what it means to have every benefit with no draw back, except maybe for other tanks delaying an oGCD to weave in the defensive cooldown, but that's just conjecture.

[*]That the existence of SGE/SCH shields somehow reduces the value of TBN. It doesn't. They stack. Having multiple forms of mitigation of the same type does not reduce their efficiency.

I mentioned this only because you brought up their being "redundant" as if that were unique to barriers and TBN that HoC and HS were stronger for having avoided.

I said it was redundant and you put words in my mouth claiming I said it was bad, which I never did because I would never think TBN was bad, it's just not as good as it was. The only scenario in which TNB is "better" is one that doesn't exist in the game save for saving DPS/healers and having too many vuln stacks. It's a useful tool but saying it's the best in a scenario like this is, again, conjecture.

[*]That percentile mitigation scales with gear just because some other part of the same ability does. It doesn't. It trims a portion of damage you take over a given duration. That is not literally the same thing as increasing the efficiency of all healing taken, since that healing is not bound to that duration. As you said, percentile mitigation doesn't scale with gear if the "mitigation... doesn't provide damage reduction after the fact," and no mitigation provides damage reduction after its duration has elapsed.

For percentile mitigation to fully scale with gear, the healing must be entirely your own and must be both generated and consumed over the duration. Otherwise, they do not have the same frame of reference.

I don't get it. Where do you think I'm saying anything about percentage mitigations scaling off of gear? We both know, and I have said multiple times already, the percentage does not scale off of gear. You are angrily agreeing with me on that point. Only the heal scales off of gear, try lowering your ilvl and removing melds and then using HoC. You have stats that inherently increase it and this is something I have first hand experience with, seeing it go up and up and up with every piece of gear I replace, particularly with Determination and Tenacity that both increase heals and is found on tank gear. I don't understand why you think I think something so blatantly wrong. You're literally being mad that I agreed with you on that fact, because percentages don't change with gear, stop it. I didn't even call TBN bad, it's just not the best anymore and no longer justification for the Dark Knight to lack in every other category of mitigation other than one decent shield and a gimmicky magic damage reduction and party mitigation that either another tank has or is inferior to the rest of the tanks. I even admitted the weakness of this skill and how the HP gained works so I don't see why you need to angrily interject just to agree with that exact point.. Skills like TBN/HoC/Intervention should have downsides because they are just tools that don't (if used properly for TBN's case) interfere with your main rotations. The downside of TBN is just glaringly large, and that's a problem, since the downside should be proportionate to the benefit, and considering the benefit is usually less than the other tank skills, that's pretty bad. The downside of HoC? You aren't necessarily still taking damage every time after the heal takes effect. Not a very bad downside for such a good mitigation tool.

[ShinShimon]

These would be solid changes, save that with Flood only doing 130->160 potency anyways, Abyssal Drain's potency would need to be less for Flood to be worth casting when taking even the slightest damage not already covered by Kardia et al.

(I don't think Oblation necessarily needs a powerful HoT, let alone that it needs to be bound up to TBN --though that makes thematic sense-- since both heavily limit its applications, but I wouldn't be opposed to it getting some form of buff.)

Forgot about early Flood. Yeah, drop Abyssal potency to 100-120 if it's spammable.

Oblation HoT gives us effective single-target sustain, tied to our lvl 82 skill like other tanks. Other tanks have it tied to their TBN equivalent, so why shouldn't ours? If TBN isn't going to break, we probably don't need the heal anyway.

[Shurrikhan]

Forgot about early Flood. Yeah, drop Abyssal potency to 100-120 if it's spammable.

Oblation HoT gives us effective single-target sustain, tied to our lvl 82 skill like other tanks. Other tanks have it tied to their TBN equivalent, so why shouldn't ours? If TBN isn't going to break, we probably don't need the heal anyway.

Makes sense. My only hang-up is that Oblation doesn't presently have to be used together with TBN, nor saved for TBN (due to having two charges). That's a unique advantage I'd rather hold onto. The two charges would still mitigate the impact of that a bit, but a lot of the time you'll use Oblation over the 10 seconds before swapping out on a buster, in which case, raid heals would soon have taken care of the rest anyhow (whereas something like Nascent can also put that healing where it's useful, such as the swapped-in tank's damage taken from auto-attacks).

I guess it's mostly going to come down to balancing. If we're balanced under the expectation that the self-heal may be partly wasted, then that's fine. If we're not losing something to get it, and it doesn't make us OP, sure, totally fine. (And with WAR getting no nerfs despite still outDPSing PLD atop all that excess healing, we probably would be.) If we're balanced around actually milking it, though --as arguably PLD was around Intervention swap-outs (maxing damage absorbed by Sentinel and Rampart before feeding half their effects each to the cotank as they swap in-- then... ehhh, I'd kind of rather not.

(Also, I liked using Flood on 2 targets. I want to use Flood on 2 targets. Please revert Flood nerf.)

Agreed. Without bonus at two-targets, gauge alternatives quickly feel like bloat outside of dungeons.

________________

@Ryaduera:

Whether or not you want to believe healing is a form of mitigation in the context in which tanks are using it does not change the fact that it absolutely is, but clearly logic and common sense won't convince you so I want continue to try. It is and that's enough. It was also never said that they were the same thing. I am genuinely lost on where you think I said that. I specifically called them different and acknowledged there are hypothetical cases where the shield is more important, but the other point I made is that this moment literally doesn't exist. You,re right, they aren't the same thing, I never said they were, just that they have similar effects. Damage mitigated is how much damage you have after all incoming damage has happened. That's why heals factor in.

You may as well say that blue and red are the same in the context that they're mixed together.

A thing with an added function is not the same as another without it. They may, in most cases, amount to the same thing, but they are not literally the same.

It's proportional with no drawbacks IE you don't use your DPS resource on it, even if you do get it back that's still bad design in a game where DPS is the only thing they look at.

Ahhh, okay. I see what you mean. Since you replied to a quote discussing scaling, I thought the drawbacks you were talking about were likewise a matter of scaling. I still disagree that all other short-CD mitigation has "all of the benefit" of TBN.

The only scenario in which TNB is "better" is one that doesn't exist in the game save for saving DPS/healers and having too many vuln stacks. It's a useful tool but saying it's the best in a scenario like this is, again, conjecture.

Literally just an hour ago played the Dorito for a clear party and saved the healers a total of 4 times (dps another, so 5 together) in a single pull when they weren't in place for the spin mechanics which would otherwise have one-shot them. The latter situation does exist.

I don't get it. Where do you think I'm saying anything about percentage mitigations scaling off of gear?

This was based on the earlier misunderstanding. Having responded to a quote about gear-scaling, I assumed the downside you were discussing was related to gear-scaling. Admittedly, I got a little confused, also, in your bit about incoming "damage also scaales with ilvl so the porpotion of damage generally stays the same anyway. But heals from those abilities do" since both comprise only a small part of the larger picture and are obviously not unique to the other short-CD defensives (DRK's Defense stat likewise increases, as do its self-heals).

_____________________

Let's be clear here. To mitigate means "to lessen or reduce". You cannot not lessen or reduce things that has already hit you. You recover from them.

There is no such thing as "post-damage mitigation." The closest you get to that (i.e., to reduce or lessen damage taken after you've already taken it) is for you to (1) increase max eHP and then later (2) restore a portion of damage taken, in which case you really have two effects (as usually shown by two distinct buffs), one which increases your maximum eHP for a duration [mitigation] (perhaps infinitely, as per invulns) and another than then heals you after the fact [healing]. Even the likes of Purifying Brew, by which to purge DoT damage to be taken (based on a portion of direct damage that was delayed, instead being dealt over time), must still be done prior to that DoT damage taken. Meanwhile, the likes of "heal for 30% of damage taken in the last 4 seconds" is just content-scaled healing.

That's how "reactive" tanks work; they increase their eHP, typically without increasing the effective value of each point of health, and then self-heal the difference. But that does not turn healing into damage reduction. If they did not have access to maximum eHP (be it by passive or active means) greater the passive values of other tanks, they'd be unplayable outside of casual content in most MMOs (i.e., any that actually expects tanks to, idk, use their defensives for more than just the occasional healer GCD saved).

There is no "I unmake your having hit me in the face by parrying your strike afterwards." There is mitigation (literally "(damage) reduction") and there is healing. That's it.

If this is a situation of "by 'can't' I really meant 'can'; language is flexible," then... okay, but... there's otherwise no sense to your position outside of having overgeared content so greatly that the tank needs not pop a single defensive ability over the whole fight, which is not a condition you want to design tanks around. (Vengeance? Thrill of Battle? Rampart? The mitigation component of Raw Intuition? Nah, don't need them. Nothing can kill you anyways now that you overgear this tier, so let's just focus on you healing yourself back up afterwards. Not like there's a next tier.)

[Luin]

Blood Weapon is ping hostile. Having 5 stacks, similar to Perfect Balance or Delirium, would fix this.

Living Dead is the weakest invuln. It needs a rework, but reducing the healing requirement would help. With Holmgang now being 10s, Living Dead has no advantage.

Dark Mind is the only damage-type specific CD currently in the game. Feint and Addle were adjusted to work on both damage-types. Camouflage works on both damage-types. Why doesn't Dark Mind work on both damage-types, with a bonus against Magic damage? Why can't Dark Mind be 10%physical 20%magic?

(It is silly to have a tool that only works on 1 damage-type when the developers refuse to give us official methods to discern the damage type)

Abyssal Drain is a gain on 4 targets. Every tank AoEs at 3. It's weird for DRK to not use one of their AoE tools until 4 targets. DRK uses Flood and Quietus at 3. Why do they Drain at 4, and not 3? Increase Abyssal Drain potency.

(Also, I liked using Flood on 2 targets. I want to use Flood on 2 targets. Please revert Flood nerf.)

[Ryaduera]

You may as well say that blue and red are the same in the context that they're mixed together.
A thing with an added function is not the same as another without it. They may, in most cases, amount to the same thing, but they are not literally the same.

I know, I said that too but in a different way. No two similar things are the same, but red and blue are primary colors.

Ahhh, okay. I see what you mean. Since you replied to a quote discussing scaling, I thought the drawbacks you were talking about were likewise a matter of scaling. I still disagree that all other short-CD mitigation has "all of the benefit" of TBN.

Admittedly it is a strange case since TBN isn't necessarily to DRK as HoC is to GNB, that would be oblation, but there's still a lot of comparisons to be made in which I find HoC wins out even if you were to stack Oblation and TBN. And this isn't even where the problem really is, the problem is how much TBN digs deep into the DRK mitigation tools.

Literally just an hour ago played the Dorito for a clear party and saved the healers a total of 4 times (dps another, so 5 together) in a single pull when they weren't in place for the spin mechanics which would otherwise have one-shot them. The latter situation does exist.

And my point is that I've done the same thing with HoC. The question isn't "can it do this" since every tank is capable of similar feats, the question is "is it better at this" and the answer is that if it doesn't kill you, yes, HoC is better. The conditions in which TBN is better is for more situational. The thing is, this particular situation can be solved by the Healer/DPS learning to execute the mechanic better. Once that happens, then what?

This was based on the earlier misunderstanding. Having responded to a quote about gear-scaling, I assumed the downside you were discussing was related to gear-scaling. Admittedly, I got a little confused, also, in your bit about incoming "damage also scaales with ilvl so the porpotion of damage generally stays the same anyway. But heals from those abilities do."

Glad that's cleared up. I was trying to say that yes your HP scales up which buffs your TBN value, but the damage you're taking also scales up with harder content. The older content gets the less important mitigation becomes since none of it is %hp based so it's not relevant for which class is better at what in any role.

Let's be clear here. To mitigate means "to lessen or reduce". You cannot not lessen or reduce things that has already hit you. You recover from them.

There is no such thing as "post-damage mitigation." The closest you get to that (i.e., to reduce or lessen damage taken after you've already taken it) is for you to (1) increase max eHP and then later (2) restore a portion of damage taken, in which case you really have two effects (as usually shown by two distinct buffs), one which increases your maximum eHP for a duration [mitigation] (perhaps infinitely, as per invulns) and another than then heals you after the fact [healing]. Even the likes of Purifying Brew, by which to purge DoT damage to be taken (based on a portion of direct damage that was delayed, instead being dealt over time), must still be done prior to that DoT damage taken. Meanwhile, the likes of "heal for 30% of damage taken in the last 4 seconds" is just content-scaled healing.

That's how "reactive" tanks work; they increase their eHP, typically without increasing the effective value of each point of health, and then self-heal the difference. But that does not turn healing into damage reduction. If they did not have access to maximum eHP (be it by passive or active means) greater the passive values of other tanks, they'd be unplayable outside of casual content in most MMOs (i.e., any that actually expects tanks to, idk, use their defensives for more than just the occasional healer GCD saved).

There is no "I unmake your having hit me in the face by parrying your strike afterwards." There is mitigation (literally "(damage) reduction") and there is healing. That's it.

Let me try to be more clear. You know you're going to take damage so you use something that will heal you while you do. The vast majority of damage (on tanks especially) is not all at once front loaded, but rather over time repeatedly getting hit. If you get hit, then restore, then get hit, then restore, on and on and on, that is eHP. It's a conditional eHP being that [if x doesn't kill you, gain y more HP] but in situations where you know for absolute fact that x will not kill you. eHP is more than how much hp you have raised by your mitigation value, it's how much HP has to be cut through to reduce the tanks HP to 0. We use the term eHP because mitigation is more than just your HP + shields x by damage reduction, healing is in fact a factor in every situation with the exception of tankbusters, which each tank has effective ways of dealing with (being TBN + Other cooldown for DRK) but there isn't a single tankbuster where TBN is necessary, it's just the tool that DRK happens to have unique to them.

If this is a situation of "by 'can't' I really meant 'can'; language is flexible," then... okay, but... there's otherwise no sense to your position outside of having overgeared content so greatly that the tank needs not pop a single defensive ability over the whole fight, which is not a condition you want to design tanks around. (Vengeance? Thrill of Battle? Rampart? The mitigation component of Raw Intuition? Nah, don't need them. Nothing can kill you anyways now that you overgear this tier, so let's just focus on you healing yourself back up afterwards. Not like there's a next tier.)

To be completely honest, I have no idea what you're on about here. Unless you think all of my assumptions were with current gear and trials? I was going off of all of this with last patches tomestone gear before getting Ex trial gear, which had me around 70k HP and I actually only melded once I already had accessories. Not sure if that's what you're getting at or not though.

[Shurrikhan]

I know, I said that too but in a different way. No two similar things are the same, but red and blue are primary colors.

My point was that increasing max eHP (mitigation / ToB-likes) and recovering back to maximum eHP (healing) are opposite sides of the same interaction (surviving). (Red -> Purple <-Blue, if you will.) They work together, and may therefore amount to the same thing in many contexts, but if you treat them as literally the same, ignoring the unique advantages of max eHP increases, you end up with imbalances similar to what 2.0 Warrior (which died not due to type, but due to oversights) faced and end up seeing jobs fundamentally reworked instead of addressing a simple, very specific, lack of parity that bottlenecks the larger concept.

And my point is that I've done the same thing with HoC.

I gave that example because in as direct A|B comparison as I can make, TBN (and/or Oblation) did do something unique. That aforementioned dorito-run was with a GNB. They once tried to save an out-of-place DPS (a little over HP) with it. It barely wasn't enough. When I made the same attempt later on, TBN was enough. When both healers (both Sages) were about to take every possible AoE during snakes-fire-birds, he HoCed the other and I cast Oblation on both of them. They came into that damage with the same HP, but only the TBNed one came out (barely) alive (183 HP, iirc).

Now, if both heals had all of 200 more max HP, yeah, HoC probably would have done it, too, but that cases where, trying to save someone at ~60% HP from a single hit (not yet triggering Catharsis but not leaving them with enough HP, even at 1.43x [1/(1-.3)], to survive the next attack).

It's no huge point against HoC (though Intervention and Nascent, with enough precasting, could technically handle that situation better), but it is something that TBN does a bit better than its alternatives (in some cases reaching, yes, a unique result), and I really like that about it. And it is, again, just the difference between frontloading effect into entirely mitigation rather than partly into mitigation and partly into healing.

Glad that's cleared up. I was trying to say that yes your HP scales up which buffs your TBN value, but the damage you're taking also scales up with harder content. The older content gets the less important mitigation becomes since none of it is %hp based so it's not relevant for which class is better at what in any role.

Yeah, my bad there. I way over-assumed that your reply was much more narrowly aimed.

Let me try to be more clear. You know you're going to take damage so you use something that will heal you while you do.

Again, though, that only works if, without mitigation, you'd last for more than one hit. That is not always the case in Savage among tankbusters that can hit pretty damn hard. Any time we've seen reactive tank design ignore that need for single-hit max eHP, they get completely barred from certain fights, which sucks because, yeah, reactive tanks are fun, especially just as a matter of diversity. Single-hit max eHP (what is normally meant by "max eHP" anyways, but just to be clear) is not something that can be ignored past the casual level.

I was going off of all of this with last patches tomestone gear before getting Ex trial gear, which had me around 70k HP and I actually only melded once I already had accessories. Not sure if that's what you're getting at or not though.

No, no, nothing like that. I just mean that jobs can't be designed with only the current tier in mind so long as there's going to be notable gear-step going into the next. And, again, that you can't single-hit max eHP -- the difference between mitigation and ToB-likes... and healing. The two only become even figuratively interchangeable at the point ("non-reactive") tanks no longer need to use their skills.

If I hadn't seen whole, fun tank concepts (2.0 Warrior included) die over exactly that kind of conflation previously, I wouldn't harp on this. Sorry if that came off as anger. I'll admit I let myself get a little exasperated, hence (and worsened by) my error in comprehension, but I was never angry with you. I'd just seen that core idea that max-eHP increasing and simply HP-increasing effects are interchangeable kill tank classes/specializations/builds in the past and did not at all agree.

[Duskane]

the word fine is gonna lose its definition soon

[Ryaduera]

I gave that example because in as direct A|B comparison as I can make, TBN (and/or Oblation) did do something unique. That aforementioned dorito-run was with a GNB. They once tried to save an out-of-place DPS (a little over HP) with it. It barely wasn't enough. When I made the same attempt later on, TBN was enough. When both healers (both Sages) were about to take every possible AoE during snakes-fire-birds, he HoCed the other and I cast Oblation on both of them. They came into that damage with the same HP, but only the TBNed one came out (barely) alive (183 HP, iirc).

Now, if both heals had all of 200 more max HP, yeah, HoC probably would have done it, too, but that cases where, trying to save someone at ~60% HP from a single hit (not yet triggering Catharsis but not leaving them with enough HP, even at 1.43x [1/(1-.3)], to survive the next attack).

It's no huge point against HoC (though Intervention and Nascent, with enough precasting, could technically handle that situation better), but it is something that TBN does a bit better than its alternatives (in some cases reaching, yes, a unique result), and I really like that about it. And it is, again, just the difference between frontloading effect into entirely mitigation rather than partly into mitigation and partly into healing.

Having done this several times for myself I find it hard to believe. they usually survive with around 40% hp after the heal takes effect when I do this on my GNB. Maybe it wasn't timed properly to take full advantage of the additional 4s of mitigation? Idk this seems incorrect. Not trying to call you a liar here, just saying my own experience is very different. Worth mentioning I only use HoC as an example here because it's the skill I'm most familiar with next to the other tanks.

Yeah, my bad there. I way over-assumed that your reply was much more narrowly aimed.

Aye o7

Again, though, that only works if, without mitigation, you'd last for more than one hit. That is not always the case in Savage among tankbusters that can hit pretty damn hard. Any time we've seen reactive tank design ignore that need for single-hit max eHP, they get completely barred from certain fights, which sucks because, yeah, reactive tanks are fun, especially just as a matter of diversity. Single-hit max eHP (what is normally meant by "max eHP" anyways, but just to be clear) is not something that can be ignored past the casual level.

If you're using heals without using mitigations in this game you're basically griefing, and GNB in particular has some insanely long uptime for damage mitigations with cooldown staggering. In this particular game there has never been a tank barred out of encounters because of these types of HP demands since each tank can deal with each encounter. A drain tank without mitigation works like this in, say, League of Legends where the drain tank can just be locked out with a single ability and killed in that time, but we're playing FFXIV, where damage reduction and heals are hand in hand and even tied to the same abilities now, and if you were to skip damage reduction while healing you're lowering the eHP that the heal even gives you, which is just inefficient.

No, no, nothing like that. I just mean that jobs can't be designed with only the current tier in mind so long as there's going to be notable gear-step going into the next. And, again, that you can't single-hit max eHP -- the difference between mitigation and ToB-likes... and healing. The two only become even figuratively interchangeable at the point ("non-reactive") tanks no longer need to use their skills.

I strongly disagree here. HoC is, again, my best example. Think of it like this, if you worded the skill like this...

Reduces damage taken by a party member or self by 15%.

Duration: 8s
Additional Effect: When targeting a party member while under the effect of Brutal Shell, that effect is also granted to the target
Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: Grants Clarity of Corundum to target
Clarity of Corundum Effect: Reduces damage taken by 15%
Duration: 4s
Additional Effect: Grants Catharsis of Corundum to target
Catharsis of Corundum Effect: When you take damage that would drop you below half HP but would not kill you, reduce that damage by an addition value equal to a 900 cure potency
Duration: 20s

...then it would be damage reduction, but that is in effect what is happening. The heal occurs the instant the damage is taken. While they are fundamentally different, the effect that happens is extremely comparable to the point that if you showed both effects without showing HP recovery being visible (those green numbers) then the person seeing the effects in game wouldn't know the difference at all. Being a heal just technically makes it better since you will always get the full 900 potency (think being at 51% and getting hit for 2% damage) and it can crit, but I absolute hate using chance in discussions like this and I always assume a fail-state for said chances. As long as the condition of survival is met, which it pretty much always is even before 6.0 release (always able to survive without a DRK) you get that value of eHP.

If I hadn't seen whole, fun tank concepts (2.0 Warrior included) die over exactly that kind of conflation previously, I wouldn't harp on this. Sorry if that came off as anger. I'll admit I let myself get a little exasperated, hence (and worsened by) my error in comprehension, but I was never angry with you. I'd just seen that core idea that max-eHP increasing and simply HP-increasing effects are interchangeable kill tank classes/specializations/builds in the past and did not at all agree.

So did I, apologies. That being said, usually the thing that kills it is the communities opinion on it. Because heal tanking is reacting instead of proactive it is a naturally more difficult style to optimize, so novice players of this style see it as weak and seasoned players of this style make it seem broken because "no damage can stick to them." Seeing a tank drop in HP and go back up on their own is going to be seen more than a tank that can reduce damage heavily because... well, on the latter, there is nothing to see in the first place. I do, however, think the real problem with DRK is that it doesn't really get either of those... it has downtime in damage reduction and TBN desperately needs to be taken off their damage resource.

Unreleated idea, if you really want TBN to cost mana, why not indirectly cost mana by making it just consume 30s of Darkside? Not exactly a great fix, but a thought I had, albeit far from a deep thought.

[Shurrikhan]

If you're using heals without using mitigations in this game you're basically griefing.

I'm just comparing the two (a heal vs. a shield). The reactive element can complement the proactive, replacing the need for increased HP value per point outside of potential one-shots (which, unless greatly overgeared or doing only casual content, are a thing), but you need to survive the initial hit first. That might not require any mitigation in content you've seen thus far, but unless you want to turn all use of defensives into simple bonus Glare casts, irrelevant to actual tank survival, that difference will matter at some point.

Don't get me wrong; I like reactive tanks. Such makes for, imo, much more enjoyable play as you have this 'zingier' sense of fighting for your life instead of just delaying the inevitable (even if, ultimately, you'd still die at the very same point, give or take self-healing ppgcd variance and (un)lucky timing, if wholly balanced).

I strongly disagree here. HoC is, again, my best example. Think of it like this, if you worded the skill like this...

But even that still changes a further aspect. That mitigation now increases max eHP for the next attack, whereas the cure will not. Will that be significant? Maybe, maybe not, but it is a difference -- the same one as always: max eHP increase and finite duration of eHP increase (since every mitigation skill is, yeah, generally tied to a maximum duration).

That is "in effect, what is happening" only so long as the latter max eHP increase is irrelevant, just as for any other tankbuster. Games oughtn't design tanks, though, around such casual content as to make skill use irrelevant to surviving tankbusters. Or at least, if they don't want to rob tanks of a significant portion of their excitement.

Seeing a tank drop in HP and go back up on their own is going to be seen [seem?] more than a tank that can reduce damage heavily because... well, on the latter, there is nothing to see in the first place.

Oh, I agree. That can sometimes maybe go a bit too far, as when trying to heal a Death Knight tank with a Holy Priest without decent enough cooldown trackers for said Death Knight, where some relevant waste is even guaranteed just due to possibly crit-healing at the same time, but having the moments where a tank's HP goes down but I can know "s/he's got this" and sure enough they heal themselves back up has a lot more... flair than just "Eh, 40% HP will still last them 8 more seconds. Glare. Glare. Glare." They 'should' be the same--and from the healer's end alone, except for some added constraints in large-heal timings, they are mostly the same--but they feel different.

Unreleated idea, if you really want TBN to cost mana, why not indirectly cost mana by making it just consume 30s of Darkside? Not exactly a great fix, but a thought I had, albeit far from a deep thought.

Nah, don't sell yourself short; there's actually some interesting interactions that it could put forward. I'm not sold on them, but I'll get to them as soon as I cover what I believe the existing state around TBN and its MP costs to be like, generally:

In practice, TBN is already seeing half to two-thirds more casts than its 25s equivalents even despite its mana cost, so I'm not sure why its mana cost would have to be removed. The MP cost and DA interaction is the reason we can have such a low CD, and I'd much rather hold onto that low CD than drop the MP cost.

Even if we could change the initial MP cost to a MP penalty on failure to break (allowing us to somehow go into outright MP-debt), I prefer the margining vs. all-in behavior of having that MP cost; if I push a final Edge into raid buffs, I like that there's that risk of not having access to TBN or a bit. It's a simple, decently intuitive, but worthwhile mechanic, imo (so long as content doesn't end up pervasively undertuned as to make it damn hard to ever pop).

Okay, now for Darkside. At present we can generate 11.4 to 12k MP per minute (roughly 4 Edge/Floods/mana-cost-TBNs), with E/Fs giving 30 seconds' Darkside duration a pop, leaving us with exactly just a minute's excess. That's our starting point.

This brings an important question, though: Should DA-Edge/Floods grant Darkside, essentially refunding their costs?
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Yes?

If so, you effectively increase TBN's ideal Edge/Floods per minute from 4 to 6-8 (8 if TBN's cooldown somehow isn't increased), since TBN itself costs no mana. Though, you'd have to hold at least 39s Darkside going into the TBN cast, which... might force some "clunky" bar-watching.
More importantly, gameplay-wise, rather than not getting one of your set number of Edge/Flood casts back, you're not getting a "bonus" Edge/Flood.
I have to admit, I am not a fan of that. When we account for the added Edge's impact on total dps and the kits gets balanced for it, not only do we get a wonky spike in throughput all at a single level (70), but we're not actually getting "bonus" casts in terms of actual throughput. We'd still be wasting throughput every time we fail to break a TBN, just in a less obvious and now more punishing way, all while having to constrain defensive casts around offensive casts and introducing new MP overcapping issues.

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No?

In that case, you'd need to set the cost value at something that wouldn't put TBN at a lower frequency than the other tanks' 25s CDs. If TBN were to cost 30s, and you only have 60s spare to work with per minute, you'd actually have just under 2 TBNs available per minute AND you'd have to delay Edge/Flood casts from raid buffs just to avoid overcapping Darkside so that you could even use said TBNs up to twice per minute.

At a more reasonable value, such as would allow for an effectively ~20s CD on TBN, still flexible to 15 seconds if weaving an Edge/Flood between, down from 30 seconds, it'd still give free Edges and there might therefore be an impact on our other potencies to try to keep our average available ppm the same, but at least it'd give us a couple potential screw-ups per minute that... No, no, it'd still then be costing us edges. Hmm. Darn.

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Next question then: Should TBN then grant any free potency at all?

If yes, you still have the above issue.

If no, you could use it, sustainably, n/60 times per minute (where n=the Darkside cost), and, for the most part, you really would be able to cast them as many 15s apart as that same "per minute" value allows. This I kind of like. Quite a bit, possibly, though I'd need to actually play around with it.

I like the current MP margining involved with TBN, since it makes playing with that margin feel more deliberately "all in" (even if once quickly learns whether it's an actual risk or not and therefore to do or not, but that's the flattening that all content-derived interaction/gameplay faces with experience), but... having to actually think about our Edge/Flood casts for future TBN allowance, if done right? As long as the constraint's aren't too tight, such that TBN feels convolutedly "unlocked" by Edge, I think I'd actually dig that. Again, I'd need to really imagine out the moment-to-moment decisions, though.