Dark Knight Megathread

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[1] I just don't understand why they put it on the 40.....why not make ablation 15% and throw it on that? I understand it's probably due to [2] TBN but what happens when your shield bursts instantly (certain dungeon trash packs)?

1.) The reason they put it on the 40% Shadowed Vigil / Shadow Wall II was because this time around it was about upgrading the 30% CDs. Oblation was our addition in place of general short mitigation upgrades, last expansion at Lv82. I'm all for making Oblation better though.

However I wouldn't go with 15% mit, at least not directly. I'd like to remind you that 10% is surprisingly strong for a shareable cooldown. Our Reprisal is also 10% and that makes or breaks (or at least massively soften up) incoming damage and is actually used for busters as well in a variety of fights. For Oblation, I can see a few possible additions to make it more interesting:

• A regen effect - but the least likely one since that overlaps with Aurora from GNB.
• An Exaltation effect - a burst of heal that occurs when the cooldown expires. Can either just be a flat potency (say 400-600) or use damage compiling (25% of damage taken) to calculate the heal
• A "defensive Dark Arts" - using it on self or teammates will grant yourself an effect, that modifies or enhances another defensive you are using. Like TBN on break creating a HoT, Dark Mind creating an HP shield, something like that.

2.) Your shield instantly bursting isn't a bad thing, it just shows how hard whatever you throw at it was hitting you for in general. Some basic math...

TBN is a 25% HP shield. Assuming full HP, this is literally just +25% eHP (effective HP), assuming no further healing or mitigation thrown in.
Rampart for example is 20% mitigation, i.e. you take 80% of the damage. Say you have 100k HP.

80% inc damage = 100,000 HP
100% inc dmg = x
x = 100 * 100,000 HP / 80 = 125,000 HP // which is +25% effective HP.

Over the course of 20s with Rampart, your HP pool effectively was 125%. Assuming you only used TBN a single time in that same time frame, your HP pool was also 125%. TBN is as strong as a 20% mitigation in a vacuum. Now, TBN isn't a %-type mitigation but an HP shield though, so it does not suffer from diminishing returns but instead gets exponential returns when paired with tools like Rampart, Dark Mind, etc.

If you know Rampart is 125% eHP and so is TBN, you multiply them to get their combined eHP. [1.25 * 1.25 = 1.5625 // 156.25%. An additional +6.25% eHP]
Let's try it with Shadowed Vigil, ignoring the heal. Shadowed vigil with above formula is +66.66% eHP. [1.6666 * 1.25 = 2.0832 // 208.32%. An additional +16.66% eHP].

So TBN simply performs better the more and stronger layers of mitigation you have and to a degree makes up for diminishing returns of the other CDs. TBN is not weak. If it was then Rampart is weak.

But to sum up my opinion, I agree DRK could use some adjustment regarding sustain. Living Dead puts you at the mercy of your healer letting you "die", Abyssal Drain has over double the CD of Bloodwhetting and half the healing potency (why) and is tied to CaS.