Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

In addition, TBN has no scaling. Once you blow through your 25% hp, that’s it. You’re spent. You have to wait for it to come off of cooldown. In comparison to all of the other damage mitigations which are % based. Meaning, if there is a second attack, those damage mitigations are still there to help keep you alive.

Right, but let's say you similarly have a 25% mitigation over that whole duration. Over that duration, you'd need to absorb damage enough to have otherwise killed you (a quarter of 100% of HP) in order to mitigate as much over that whole duration as TBN could have mitigated in a single hit (again, 25% of your HP).

The only times, moreover, in which the follow-up after TBN's consumption would be vitally important are the times in which, if not for that mitigation being frontloaded, you'd already have been killed (i.e., before that further scaling could be put to use anyways).

Outside of overhealing made unavoidable (and TBN isn't powerful enough nor survival needs tight enough to cause such), the span doesn't matter, only the total mitigation + healing.

:: I don't know why people undervalue TBN on the sole basis that it isn't a percentage. That's like treating Trick Attack as having more value than is clearly stated in rDPS just because "it's a raid buff".

[Dracosavarian]

Right, but let's say you similarly have a 25% mitigation over that whole duration. Over that duration, you'd need to absorb damage enough to have otherwise killed you (a quarter of 100% of HP) in order to mitigate as much over that whole duration as TBN could have mitigated in a single hit (again, 25% of your HP).

Outside of overhealing made unavoidable (and TBN isn't powerful enough nor survival needs tight enough to cause such), the span doesn't matter, only the total mitigation.

:: I don't know why people undervalue TBN on the sole basis that it isn't a percentage. That's like treating Trick Attack as having more value than is clearly stated in rDPS just because "it's a raid buff".

Because it’s not as strong as Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, or Heart of Corundum.

TBN is not Mitigation. It’s Nullification. It’s handled differently by the formula.

A shield that crumbles to dust with a single hit or two, does little to stop the onslaught of multiple attacks over a period of time. Once that shield breaks, it’s ability to stop incoming damage ceases entirely

Mitigation that is % based and lasts over a set duration remains for that duration.

[Shurrikhan]

Because it’s not as strong as Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, or Heart of Corundum.

It is unless your Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, and Heart of Corundum would have mitigated ("nullified") and healed more than 25% of your HP over their durations.

Mitigation amounts to your aforementioned "nullification". If it "nullified" nothing, it'd have done nothing. 25% mitigation that spans 12k would-be damage will "nullify" 3k damage. That is its value.

That value is not changed by when it or at what pace it did that mitigation because the only pertinent part of that, the fading percentile mitigation as you drop from the first to latter 4 seconds of their duration, is already accounted for in the damage nullified. It is not changed by having died early, because that would likewise have changed the total damage nullified. A mitigation tool's value is, simply and wholly, what is has nullified.

We could add effective healing atop that, which would then have its mirrored factor in being wasted by overhealing -- or what would have, a tick later, have been overhealing -- but such would again be accounted for right there in that metric. That it is a HoT or single heal would have no bearing on its total effective healing.

A shield that crumbles to dust with a single hit or two, does little to stop the onslaught of multiple attacks over a period of time.

A shield that crumbles to dust after nullifying 3k damage does exactly the same amount of mitigation as an 8-second duration effect that ends up nullifying 3k damage. TBN gets outscaled only under extreme values of damage taken over 8 seconds. And for all short of that, TBN outperforms its competitors.

Let's say you're a tank with 12k HP. A TBN is therefore 3k. Subtract the healing the competitors could do from that value and you have 8 seconds then to make up the difference.

If you can make up the difference in under 8 seconds, the competitor comes out ahead; if it can't, TBN comes out ahead. And there are plenty of situations where you cannot make up that difference, and TBN will therefore come out ahead.

There is, again, no inherent further weakness to front-loaded mitigation; it's simply a matter of which nullifies ("mitigates", in normal people talk) and resets ("heals") more damage.

[Dracosavarian]

It is unless you Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, and Heart of Corundum would have mitigated ("nullified") and healed more than 25% of your HP over their durations.

Mitigation amounts to your aforementioned "nullification". If it "nullified" nothing, it'd have done nothing. 25% mitigation that spans 12k would-be damage will "nullify" 3k damage. That is its value.

That value is not changed by when it or at what pace it did that mitigation because the only pertinent part of that, the fading percentile mitigation as you drop from the first to latter 4 seconds of their duration, is already accounted for in the damage nullified. It is not changed by having died early, because that would likewise have changed the total damage nullified. A mitigation tool's value is, simply and wholly, what is has nullified.

We could add effective healing atop that, which would then have its mirrored factor in being wasted by overhealing -- or what would have, a tick later, have been overhealing -- but such would again be accounted for right there in that metric. That it is a HoT or single heal would have no bearing on its total effective healing.


A shield that crumbles to dust after nullifying 3k damage does exactly the same amount of mitigation as an 8-second duration effect that ends up nullifying 3k damage. TBN gets outscaled only under extreme values of damage taken over 8 seconds. And for all short of that, TBN outperforms its competitors.

Let's say you're a tank with 12k HP. A TBN is therefore 3k. Subtract the healing the competitors could do from that value and you have 8 seconds then to make up the difference.

If you can make up the difference in under 8 seconds, the competitor comes out ahead; if it can't, TBN comes out ahead. And there are plenty of situations where you cannot make up that difference, and TBN will therefore come out ahead.

There is, again, no inherent further weakness to front-loaded mitigation; it's simply a matter of which nullifies ("mitigates", in normal people talk) and resets ("heals") more damage.

I am going to leave this here and call it done.

https://youtu.be/zCEovQvASsY

You are clearly determined to defend this hill. And that’s fine. Respectfully, I can’t agree with you. Been tanking in this game as my main since 1.0 far too long.

TBN is a tool. But it pales in comparison to what the others have.

% based Mitigation over a duration will always win out vs multi-hit attacks and multi hit Tank Busters.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

I can only speak from personal experience as a healer, but DRK is unequivocally the hardest tank for me to heal, especially on SGE -- not least because they trade the sustainability provided by the 82 upgrades, and the boosts to skills like Aurora/Divine Magic/Equilibrium, for... Oblation alone.

And I really have to blame the mitigation model for DRK. It's simultaneously extremely heavily focused on a barrier made for eating tankbusters, but lacking in potent options outside of said barrier for fear of making them overpowered with it.
Oblation is literally the weakest mitigation effect available to tanks such that it needs to be stacked with another skill for any value, Dark Mind is rarely useful due to its limited effects, and Living Dead is the worst invul bar none.
But at least DRK has TBN.

As you have said, the barrier is guaranteed to break on large pulls, but it can do that in under a GCD -- barely a roadbump -- while it continues to take heavy damage. While TBN does negate as much if not more damage overall compared to alternatives, the point is for the tank to slow down their damage intake enough for them to be healed over the course of the encounter, not to stop it all for 3 sec so that I have to burst heal them for the remainder.
Slowing which occurs through mitigation and heal-over-time effects that shave off incoming damage to manageable levels. Where other tanks can alternate BW/HS/HoC with longer, stronger CDs to maintain a constant string of mitigation and self-healing that can keep them above water throughout a pull and allow healers to manage the rest, DRK burns through them more quickly, either because they stack them with their bubble, or because their bubble was obliterated in a fraction of the time.
(And once they run out, they pop LD. And it's all downhill from there.)

[Shurrikhan]

While TBN does negate as much if not more damage overall compared to alternatives, the point is for the tank to slow down their damage intake enough for them to be healed over the course of the encounter, not to stop it all for 3 sec so that I have to burst heal them for the remainder.[/SIZE]

No. If it absorbs more damage, you have to heal less damage. Period.

The only time what you're talking about here would ever trump total mitigation is if you had to maximally GCD every heal and overheal in any GCD would put you in such a deficit that they would inevitably die. That just does not happen unless

It is not hard to heal a competent DRK. You just don't overheal them, and don't mistake TBN for Hallowed Ground. That's it. That's the difference. And if it breaks in "a single GCD", as you say, well, then it at most delays your (Eukrasian) Diagnosis spam by 1.5 seconds.

On my DRK, I almost never get GCD heals save for a EukDiagnosis pre-pull (maybe another when my Sage is repositioning if they've run out of Addersting), and I stay up just fine. On my alt, I rarely do more than pre-pull GCDs on my DRKs, and most stay up just fine. If I go with a friend, it is entirely just pre-pull shields, Kardia, and oGCDs.

Nobody's saying it's an issue in those scenarios. The argument here is more about its use in AoE scenarios.

The number of sources of damage is irrelevant to TBN's performance. However, the rate of incoming damage typical and the granularity of intervals of attack typical to dungeon trash pulls cause TBN to do especially well in those exact situations.

At risk of, par for the course, conflating correlation with causation, TBN has no issue with AoE scenarios.

You are clearly determined to defend this hill. And that’s fine. Respectfully, I can’t agree with you. Been tanking in this game as my main since 1.0 far too long.

That the only thing that matters about mitigation is how much, in practice, it mitigates is not some "hill". Your instance that the effect taking place over a greater amount of time or via a scalar, regardless of actual total throughput, on the other hand...

Imagine, for instance, that you have the option between a 1000-potency oGCD on a 2-minute cooldown or a 15-second 20% damage buff over which the time the most potency you can fit in is 4850. The latter isn't just inherently better. Nor would it be inherently more powerful for a 1000-potency heal to be done as a HoT than as a single, direct heal. The span is irrelevant. All that matters is how much effective throughput, be that damage, healing, mitigation, or healing+mitigation, that the tool has.

Percentile mitigation over a duration does not "always win out" over a shield. One defensive tool surpasses another only when its combined mitigation and healing exceeds that of another. That is it. And TBN does not "always", let alone all that often, lose out in that comparison, despite not even having a trait.

Of course, if we wanted to actually stop conflating and give complaints about TBN any sort of real relevance, we'd compare TBN against Raw Intuition, Shelltron, and Heart of Stone, and then Oblation against what's added by their respective traits. Does Oblation then badly take the loss in each of those comparisons? Yes. But that's the level 82 additions, not TBN.

[Sacrilegion]

If the tank sustains itself better, then you won't have to heal either. Mitigation is good in a perfect world. The average healer hates drk players because they require the most attention. The average player has to deal with other player's short comings and DRK has no ability to do so. I didn't realize how spoiled I was because I had an amazing healer starting out and once I dealt with randoms, I took my ass back to PLD.

[Archwizard]

No. If it absorbs more damage, you have to heal less damage. Period.

It's not a matter of how much damage they are taking or negating! It's about how easy it is to heal the person receiving that damage, how much time you buy for that damage to realistically be healed.

We're not arguing about a tankbuster every 10-20 sec, we're talking about the equivalent of one every second, from crowd damage.

If a character is receiving continuous damage spikes over a length of time (say, 10-12% of their health a second until mobs start dying) but can take the edge off all of them the whole time (reducing, say, 15-30% of the damage for 8 sec before moving on to the next DR), that grants time for HoT and leech effects to do their job, for oGCD charges to come off cooldown, or even for hardcasts like Pneuma to execute if need be.
And the fun thing about the 82 abilities is they not only bump up that mitigation, but add to exactly those healing effects. A healing effect given under the effects of mitigation is multiplied EHP.

If a character is receiving those same damage spikes over the same length of time but can negate 25% of health in damage outright... you've frontloaded all that value and bought a single GCD, during which the healer will probably continue attacking (and in all likelihood if TBN was the first thing you hit because it's the lowest CD, any healing you do get while it's active would be overhealing).
Meanwhile the backend of that damage will still be a giant unlubricated spike.
And while you can still stack other sources of mitigation on top of it and are still wont to alternate sources of mitigation as they become available, the fact is that you will burn through them more quickly due to the lack of barrier uptime.

... And again, DRK doesn't exactly have a lot of useful mitigation skills to go around in the first place, looking directly at Oblation/Dark Mind/Living Dead.

The issue isn't "TBN is bad, uniquely and individually." The issue is "TBN is insufficient to hold up the weight of everything DRK is giving up to have it."

[Shurrikhan]

If a character is receiving those same damage spikes over the same length of time but can negate 25% of health in damage outright... you've frontloaded all that value and bought a single GCD

It's literally just a matter of GCDs saved. If you save a GCD at the start, that is not somehow different than saving a GCD across 8 seconds' duration. It's still A GCD of healing.

(and in all likelihood if TBN was the first thing you hit because it's the lowest CD, any healing you do get while it's active would be overhealing).

Why would anyone open a trash-pull in this game with healing? You had the whole pre-pull to shield and HoT.

Meanwhile the backend of that damage will still be a giant unlubricated spike.

Tanks could literally go without touching their short-CD miti whatsoever and that would still be irrelevant even in full pulls.

The issue isn't "TBN is bad, uniquely and individually." The issue is "TBN is insufficient to hold up the weight of everything DRK is giving up to have it."

Until such time as Yoshi come up and says "We won't change Dark Mind, Living Dead, or Oblation because TBN," this narrative is literally not sane.

If a given element is constant even as various other elements change, the constant, unchanging element is not going to explain those changes. It's like you've taken three different iterations of a given play in the same theater and decided to blame the last, lackluster performance... on the dimensions of the room. It's unchanged. It's not going to explain away changes.

We had TBN back when we were invincible in AoE by way of DA-AD. We had TBN back when we also had, on average, the highest single-target mitigation in raids. We had TBN back when DRK had head and shoulders more dungeon mitigation than PLD or GNB. If it coexists alongside those strengths, it cannot be the reason for those relative strengths not existing now.

TBN is not new to this expansion. Oblation is. If you are going to compare the power levels of expansion additions from PLD, WAR, and GNB, then compare them against what DRK gained this expansion. That new defensive capacity, by the way, is Oblation -- not TBN.

And the fun thing about the 82 abilities is they not only bump up that mitigation, but add to exactly those healing effects. A healing effect given under the effects of mitigation is multiplied EHP.

And let's be clear here: mitigation adds to existing eHP only for the duration of that mitigation. Unlike an actual healing buff, every bit of eHP it "adds" is removed at the end of that duration. If you want to make the claim that mitigation, effectively, increases healing received then you must also make the claim that mitigation decreases effective healing you had received the moment its duration ends.

More precise would be to say that HP consumed over the duration of mitigation is worth more damage. For if it was not consumed over that duration, it will have already lost any predictive eHP bonus. Their frames of reference are different. HP is not limited to that 8-second duration unless generated and consumed within that 8-second duration.

And, again, Oblation is DRK's lv82 ability, mirroring Catharsis and Clarity, Resolve and Benediction, and Stem the Flow and Stem the Tide, not TBN.

[Crater]

If a character is receiving continuous damage spikes over a length of time (say, 10-12% of their health a second until mobs start dying)

Okay but this is a completely fictitious hypothetical that doesn't match any situation in the game. Because that simply doesn't happen - anywhere. The hardest-hitting pulls in any of the current endgame dungeons hit for, at most, roughly 6000 DPS on the tank, completely unmitigated. That's not "10-12% of max HP every second"; that's more like 7-8%, and you're not even taking it unmitigated - with DRK's standard mitigation suite you're almost never taking more than 4k DPS pre-TBN in any dungeon pull. OT damage in P3S during the phases where they take the boss's secondary autos? About 4k DPS unmitigated - only about 5% per second. The very brief windows in P4S where a tank takes more than three auto-attacks consecutively? Still only about 6k unmitigated.

It's all well and good to go "Well, say there's a situation where a tank is taking this amount of damage in this amount of time," but that has absolutely no relevancy if that situation never happens. If I came in here and said "Say there was a fight that hit both tanks with a tankbuster for 120% of their maximum HP every 15 seconds like clockwork..." you would, rightfully, immediately call me out for fabricating an unrealistic scenario to suit my own argument. Yet that's exactly what you're doing here.