Dark Knight Megathread

[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.