Dark Knight Megathread

[Lyth]

There's nothing requiring you to use TBN at full health. The shield is based off of total HP, not current HP.

The problem with Oblation is that it doesn't really have a clear niche. Most raidwide mitigation abilities are in the 10% DR range. Reprisal, for example, is 10% partywide DR on a 60s recast, and that's a lvl 22 ability. Most melee DPS jobs have personal shields that are stronger than 10% DR, on shorter recasts (MNK, SAM, and RPR in particular). Based on the animation and the level at which you acquire it, it looks like they designed it originally as an upgrade to TBN, but then decided against it in the last minute in case there was complaints about the upgraded shield not breaking. That's also probably why they opted for %DR instead of another barrier effect.

I don't think that TBN's barrier effect needs an upgrade. The break even point for TBN is around of 90% max HP in comparison to HS and HoC, which is very respectable (There's about a 13% eHP difference). If you wanted to upgrade it, then sustain is the only thing that I would add.

People have been talking about Dread Spikes from FFXI for years. This is one way that you could do it, and it would reward you for knowing when damage is going out.

[Ryaduera]

There's nothing requiring you to use TBN at full health. The shield is based off of total HP, not current HP.

Well no, but you do use it at full HP a lot. I never meant to imply it was based on total HP or anything, just pointing out that the way the ability actually works doesn't leave much desire for a heal at the start of its duration and there are several endgame situations where you wouldn't realistically get the heal at all.

The problem with Oblation is that it doesn't really have a clear niche. Most raidwide mitigation abilities are in the 10% DR range. Reprisal, for example, is 10% partywide DR on a 60s recast, and that's a lvl 22 ability. Most melee DPS jobs have personal shields that are stronger than 10% DR, on shorter recasts (MNK, SAM, and RPR in particular). Based on the animation and the level at which you acquire it, it looks like they designed it originally as an upgrade to TBN, but then decided against it in the last minute in case there was complaints about the upgraded shield not breaking. That's also probably why they opted for %DR instead of another barrier effect.

Probably, but I'd also say it's profoundly lazy to build it like this instead of just fixing how fundementally problematic it is for TBN to function with DRK DPS in the way it does. It's probably also that they didn't want upgraded TBN to have a 15s recast time, so to keep it in the recast time of the other tanks they wanted to split the abilities up to keep in line with the 30s recast of the other abilities, with Holy Sheltron being the exception but since it's tied to gauge it's uptime is comparable to the others. Looking at it like this, I'm pretty sure Oblation only exists because of the fundemantal design flaw of TBN in the current state of the game.

I don't think that TBN's barrier effect needs an upgrade. The break even point for TBN is around of 90% max HP in comparison to HS and HoC, which is very respectable (There's about a 13% eHP difference). If you wanted to upgrade it, then sustain is the only thing that I would add.

Uhm, no... After healing is applied this is definitely not true.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5778466
Keep in mind Holy Shelltron comes with 100 more potency after the 12s than HoC and is 15%+20% (block) damage reduction which is more than 15%+15% so in fights where regen can take effect, yeah TBN is way weaker than 90% of your max HP to be considered better. TBN is good, but it's not that good. Without doing the math I would make an educated guess that it takes 66% of your max HP for HoC and HS to be better and even less for Bloodwhetting, because BW is absolutely insane. And it is vital that comparisons be made with healing taken into consideration because it's all about the effectiveness of a single cooldown, of which the above math has the DRK using two.

EDIT: If you want DRK to have a heal the healing has to happen after damage is taken, not before, but shields want to be used before damage is taken, not after, so putting a heal on TBN would require the healing to happen after the shielding or it's just going to be wasted many times. That being said, even putting a heal on TBN after the shielding would be suboptimal since the damage ideally didn't happen, but if it were after TBN then at least there'd be situations where the healing would actually make an impact as opposed to at the beginning of its duration. Since Holy Sheltron is a HoT a the first tick will probably be overheal, but the regen will heal after damage is taken. Same goes for Blood Whetting. HoC is the outlier in that it's nearly impossible for you to overheal with it unless you just didn't take enough damage, in which case it naturally heals/expires in time for another one anyway.