Dark Knight Megathread

[Ryaduera]

...I can't believe I have to say this, genuinely cannot.

Oblation is a multi purpose low CD tool to flexibly add an additional layer of 10% mitigation, on either yourself or an ally, regardless of role and independent of TBN. Mind you in higher level content (Savage+) we even use Reprisal for buster mitigation, which is also 10% and it hella matters.

Dark Mind is a single purpose self mitigation tool with a critical flaw that comes to light when there is no source of magical damage outside of raidwide attacks. It is the "unique CD" of DRK and is the type equivalent to Bulwark, Thrill of Battle and Camouflage (unique cooldowns wiith niches).

Oblation's role is not solely making up for Dark Mind having this critical weakness vs all of these cooldowns. It should NOT be merged with or folded into Dark Mind; Dark Mind needs to be adjusted in solitude without touching what makes DRK's Oblation so flexible to hand out.

If you think Oblation is weak, be my guest and suggest buffs for it but I assure you every version of "just merge it with..." is objectively worse and reduces diversity.

It's not that Oblation is weak, it's that Oblation does not even begin to make up for the weakness of TBN. It seems like Oblation was the devs answer to HoC, HS, and BW but for DRK and honestly it doesn't even begin to compare to how bad the combination (Yes, combination) of using TBN with Oblation actually is when compared to the other tanks cooldowns, especially this expansion. The math has already been done. Those numbers are based on early EW content but the concept remains the same. Especially this part.

You can see the way the math works out the more damage a tank takes the weaker TBN is by comparison.

And in this expansion, we are taking more damage. Especially in trash pulls (Is it just me or are tank busters weaker?) where DRK can run out of mits if the DPS don't burst them fast enough. Suddenly the 10s uptime of Dark Mind looks more necessary, but it does literally nothing in trash pulls. The fact that people can still sit there and defend TBN and Oblation tells me none of them have actually done the math to see how miserably the skill fails next to the other tanks abilities. It has 2 more seconds than other tank abilities but with 5 seconds (on average, since it is on a charge system) longer cooldown. Either use it back to back and wait 60 seconds or use it between cooldowns (as I think is intended) and be upset you're still taking more damage than them.

It's an uptime difference of less than 1 second leaning in the other tanks favor (Exception maybe PLD since they use gauge on it, but PLD Shield is passive damage reduction other tanks don't have anyway) while they also provide around 4 times the defensive value of raw damage reduction (Math on damage reduction not considering healing and/or shielding such as the heals from the other tank cooldowns or pairing it with TBN, which should be comparable anyway).

Oblation isn't bad, but it also isn't nearly enough. Oblation falls flat as the DRKs answer to other tanks shared cooldowns even when paired with TBN and yet Dark Mind still sees incredibly little usage outside niche scenarios. At least one of them needs to be brought in line.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

That's a fair asessment. Personally the two changes I'd propose may be stale copies of Addle (for Dark Mind as a buff) and Exaltation (a timed 400 cure potency on expiration of Oblation).

I don't think we need this muchnmore power in general, just a consistency change for Dark Mind and a touch of spice for Oblation.

Also I am not going to disregard the math, but while TBN obviously becomes weaker the more damage is taken (since its just +25% eHP and not mitigation), isn't TBN also a cooldown, like Thrill of Battle, that greatly increases eHP% when stacked with normal mitigation? This and the frequency of access is what I thought makes it strong, even in face of the Lv82 tank upgrades.

[Ryaduera]

snip

So it gets a little complicated here to do the math, so instead of direct math I'll do a lot of estimations and use vagueness that hopefully covers enough ground to make it a bit more understandable, but shielding and healing have fundamental differences in how it effects eHP. Healing can be capped, overhealing is real, but shielding can't really be capped outside of timing out, and with how much damage we're taking in this expansion, that's not really going to happen. At an initial look, this appears to have shielding more favorable, but it's a bit more nuanced than that. Under the circumstance you are missing HP (we're ignoring warrior healing from BW because let's be honest, it's just broken, and we should consider standard levels when stating why DRK is weaker) you can, of course, regenerate it. So the HP value starts to change a bit since you should also consider how much HP was removed and under what curcumstances they needed to burn through your HP. Let's use super basic numbers, 150,000 HP, being lower than what the 99 job gear gives us. My PLD HS heals for about 7600 hp, but for constency of rounding down with our HP, let's round down with our heals, too, and call it 7000. Should be about a 10% drop for both values. Let's remove Oblation and the damage reduction from the equation here as well, to keep it simple.


12s regen for 7k is 4 ticks iirc which is 4 heals. That's 28,000 HP restored. At 150,000 health TBN is 37,500 shield. This looks like TBN should be offering a greater eHP value, but the thing about healing is if you are not overhealing you need to double the value, because in order to leave you at less than full health it needs to do that damage twice, but let's assume half of your healing ends up being overheal, which it probably isn't that much. then you gain an eHP value of 42,000. And if you do get full use of your healing, the enemy has to burn through 56,000 hp. Now remember, this is without the damage reduction percentages in play. With a difference at its base value of 9500 with the numbers provided, the fact that the other tanks get even larger damage reductions on top of those heals makes DRK start to look pathetic. And then, to put some icing on the cake, heals can crit and ramparts buffs incoming healing from your tank abilities, meaning it's even easier to inflate those healing numbers by a lot. I absolutely hate bringing up healing crits because it's RNG and can lead to negligible overheal, but with how often these heals tick and proc, it should be mentioned because they will happen and it will make a difference. TNB cannot be increased outside of increasing max HP, something 2 tanks do that DRK does not.

All that to say if DRK uses TBN below full health, it takes exactly the shields worth of damage to finish them off at that amount of HP they began with, but if a heal were implemented instead it would have to had burnt through more health than you could heal for at any given time. That is to say heals and shields both grow in power equally as significantly as damage reductions are applied, this is basic tanking logic, taking less damage is always good. However, if damage reduction is applied and enemies cannot do more damage than the values of the heal, you end at a greater HP value, but with a shield, no matter what, regardless of how tanky you are, even if you take 0 damage, the shield finishes you off in the same state you began in. This is why only 10% from Oblation is just not enough. The other tanks get heals and greater damage reduction, meaning they can almost always finish off the cooldown in a greater state than they left it in, but DRK will always finish off their cooldowns in the same state they began in, so its cooldown really means nothing because there is no way to bounce back from damage that has already happened, just pausing damage for a brief moment. TBN briefly offers a greater advantage as taking no damage to your actual HP is always better, but it offers no recourse after it is broken, meaning no matter how good a tank you are, DRK will always suffer.

It really comes down to this fact; When tanking, the only thing that matters is the state of the tank after the damage has occurred, everything inbetween is just semantics. Maybe DRK does reduce more overall, but does it matter in this context if the DRK always has less HP after the damage has occurred? I argue no, not even a little bit. And no, Vigilant should not be considered because every other tank has 2 sources of healing, their special 82 mit and one other, and so Vigilant should be considered to be compared to the other tanks healing like Requiescat combo and Aurora, even Equilibrium.

EDIT: To clarify, both healing and shielding increase eHP but have different forms of impact on your tankiness, and healing only loses when you are already full health, otherwise healing and shielding have the same multipliers to your eHP when applying mitigations, but healing will leave you at a higher health value at the end creating a bouncing effect with your HP keeping you full where shielding just won't do anything about damage already taken. So yes, it probably increases eHP by a greater amount with TBN, but if nothing is done about damage taken durng its downtime, it is inherently unsustainable.

[EthanXdeath]

Yes TBN is a cooldown, but it's not free like HS, HoC, or BW. You lose 3000 MP every cast, and the amount of MP regained between it coming off cooldown isn't equal, not only that, it's a straight up DPS loss if it doesn't pop, 3000 MP out the window that you can't get back and you could've used on an edge of shadow for damage instead. The other tanks just have better defensives overall and sustain. DRK has souleater and abyssal drain that directly correlates to the amount of enemies it hits and is on a 60 second cooldown. Personally I think DRK just needs a complete overhaul since it's basically a discount warrior.

[Ryaduera]

12s regen for 7k is 4 ticks iirc which is 4 heals. That's 28,000 HP restored. At 150,000 health TBN is 37,500 shield. This looks like TBN should be offering a greater eHP value, but the thing about healing is if you are not overhealing you need to double the value, because in order to leave you at less than full health it needs to do that damage twice, but let's assume half of your healing ends up being overheal, which it probably isn't that much. then you gain an eHP value of 42,000. And if you do get full use of your healing, the enemy has to burn through 56,000 hp. Now remember, this is without the damage reduction percentages in play. With a difference at its base value of 9500 with the numbers provided, the fact that the other tanks get even larger damage reductions on top of those heals makes DRK start to look pathetic. And then, to put some icing on the cake, heals can crit and ramparts buffs incoming healing from your tank abilities, meaning it's even easier to inflate those healing numbers by a lot. I absolutely hate bringing up healing crits because it's RNG and can lead to negligible overheal, but with how often these heals tick and proc, it should be mentioned because they will happen and it will make a difference. TNB cannot be increased outside of increasing max HP, something 2 tanks do that DRK does not.

I decided to do the math and if HS ticks twice under the first set of mits and twice under just the one 15% mit then it's eHP regeneration would be equal to 33985, slightly less than TBN but if you add Oblation to TBN should make it 40800 eHP, the problem comes exclusively in overheal potential to reduce that PLD eHP with HS, but then they have healing regularly in their offensive kit where DRK gets one heal in pulls and 1 GCD heal exclusively, so once the healing from the other tanks kits are applied it becomes apparant where DRK has a problem in not being able to restore damage that has already been done to it. Honestly, a 100 potency per tick regen on Oblation could probably solve this issue and sway the math towards DRK, but still has an issue with Dark Mind, an easy solution being to add a 10% physical damage reduction and keep the 20% magical. Simple solutions to fix the defensives issue.

[excelsiorjones]

Do you think DRK would feel better to play if:

* Passive MP regen was dramatically increased
* TBN had it's cooldown dramatically reduced (say around 10 seconds)
* Dark Arts could hold 2 charges

Thinking leaning into MP management as more of a thing.

[rxantos]

My biggest complain would be the lost of Plunge.
The new animation is lame, does no agro does no damage. Nor does it feel natural to use as plunge was.

Meanwhile both WAR and PLD closers remain with their agro and their damage. Which removes the excuse of not having the damage or the agro.

[Conando]

If anything the other tanks need their self sustain brought down to Dark Knight levels.

That's not going to happen. It's been 2 expansions.

[Conando]

To add to that, even with the slightly meatier hits in DT, a lot of PUG healers refuse to gcd heal so it would end very poorly.

[Ryaduera]

Do you think DRK would feel better to play if:

* Passive MP regen was dramatically increased
* TBN had it's cooldown dramatically reduced (say around 10 seconds)
* Dark Arts could hold 2 charges

Thinking leaning into MP management as more of a thing.

I don't think reducing the cooldown would help the main issue of sustainability or be healthy for the game. MP regen isn't necessary either, but would certainly help the defensives since TBN consumes MP meaning it's cooldown is actually shorter than it's realistic uptime. The main issue with DRK is sustainability. I'm pretty sure that, because of TBN and its cooldowns, technically DRK reduces damage taken by the largest amount, the issue comes from regenerative abilities and its lack of in long term situations. Every other tank can heal, then when they are done healing, they can heal until their heal is ready. DRK can just heal once off an oGCD every 60 seconds and once every 2 minutes. I think that because of this a better solution is to just throw a small HoT on Oblation or add heals to your Delirium combo and make Dark Mind do something useful. As it stands the main issue with Dark Knight is it just runs out of mits and cannot keep itself up long enough to see them come back.

But also, 2 charges on Dark Arts would be very nice.