Dark Knight Changes - Suggestion.

[AnjouMaaka]

Yes, by the very dictionary definition of "mitigation", damage shields in this game are mitigation.

So you too have resorted to the brain damaged thought process.

This isn't hard to understand. Shields do not reduce damage received. They absorb damage equal to the amount of HP the shield has, but they do not reduce the damage received. You still take the damage. The shield just absorbs part of it. That's not mitigation. You didn't mitigate anything. Ask all the dark knights that still think TBN is a mitigation how that's been working for them. I can promise you they are all in the grave every time they resort to that mindset. That, or they have a very angry healer who had to blow everything keeping them alive. But, most likely the former, because NA and EU healers don't heal tanks in dungeons, or if they do, it's to troll warrior mains by making the run slower, or to grief Living Dead.

So in layman's terms, you are brain damaged because you don't understand what the word "reduce" means.



Mitigations:
Rampart
Reprisal
Shadow Wall
Sentinel

Shields:
TBN
Adloquium
Haima

Healing:
Equilibrium
Cure II
Excogitation

We classify shields separate from mitigation for a reason. You are wrong. Accept it and move on instead of doubling down on spreading misinformation. You are not making the attack do less damage with a shield. Only an actual mitigation can do that.

[Supersnow845]

I mean if I have a 20k shield I am by nature of it being a shield making the attack hit me for 20k less so yes a shield does make the attack do less

[Carighan]

As per the definition you cite Anjou, shields are mitigation!

I take 30k damage. I have a 20k shield. I now only take 10k of the 30k damage, which has been made smaller in quantity by the shield. Thanks for clarifying that you agree that shields are in fact mitigation. Finally!

[TouchandFeel]

They absorb damage equal to the amount of HP the shield has, but they do not reduce the damage received. You still take the damage. The shield just absorbs part of it. That's not mitigation. You didn't mitigate anything.

I think you need to look at the logic of the very statements you are making as it seems you are perhaps not understanding the meaning of the words you are using or the logic involved with how they relate and correlate to each other.
Also, you really shouldn't be tossing around insults and name calling as you are, it just makes you look childish and certainly doesn't instill any sense of rationality or authority to your presentation.

[Lyth]

Let's go with more Oxbridge definitions.

Absorb v.:
to reduce the effect of a physical force, shock, or change.
to reduce the effect of a physical impact or movement.

If you want to look at it rigorously:
True damage is the value of a damage roll before defensive modifiers are applied to it.
Apparent damage is the net value of the damage received (as shown on the screen).

The total damage mitigated is equal to the difference between true damage and apparent damage. That includes passive effects (stats, gear) and active effects (procs, percentage-based damage reduction, flat damage reduction).
Effective health is the maximum amount of true damage that a player can receive without healing before dying. Because effects that increase maximum HP (i.e. Thrill of Battle) do not alter the apparent damage value, effective health serves as a means of comparison with mitigation effects.

Now, by all means, continue your discussion.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

The way I see it, HP shields are effectively a buffer of HP on top of your current HP, much like Thrill of Battle, Great Nebula and Protraction. Outside of a few niche mechanics that involve debuffs only applying when dealing damage to your regular HP, both of these are essentially just buffers of HP - not damage mitigation. The game doesn't really tell that, so I understand why the notion "the damage said 0 so its reduced" goes around.

Mitigation is what actually lowers incoming damage regardless if applied to regular HP or shield HP and works exponentially with those buffers.

[Lyth]

For consistency, it's better to use the same terminology across the board to describe defensive effects. Most of this theory predates this game itself by at least 5-10 years (probably closer to 20 if you're looking at MUDs).

%DR vs. flat DR
Percentage-based damage mitigation reduces incoming damage by a percentage of the incoming damage. This is usually written out as 'reduces damage taken by x% (i.e. Rampart).
Flat mitigation reduces incoming damage by a fixed amount of damage, irrespective of the incoming damage. This can be expressed relative to your total HP (i.e. TBN), or relative to a potency value (Guardian's Will). The tooltip description is a bit more variable with this, using a mix of 'nullifies' and 'absorbs'.

If you apply the definitions I provided with regards to true and apparent damage, it becomes very simple.

I have 1000 HP. A damage roll is applied, and let's say that the net value of (true damage - passive mitigation effects) is 1000. No dodge/block/parry procs occur.

The apparent damage after using Rampart (percentage-based damage reduction) alone is 1000 - 250 = 750. The amount mitigated is 250.
The apparent damage after using TBN (flat damage reduction) alone is 1000-250 = 750. The amount mitigated is 250.
You can also see that the break-even point where these two effects are equivalent is when the incoming damage after passive effects is equal to your total HP. Above this value, flat damage reduction wins. Below this value, percentage-based damage reduction wins.

HP buffs and eHP
Now try this with Thrill of Battle.
I have 1000 HP. Thrill of Battle increases this to 1200 HP. A damage roll is applied, and let's say that the net value of (true damage - passive mitigation effects) is 1000. No dodge/block/parry procs occur.
The apparent damage after using Thrill of Battle alone is 1000-0 = 1000. The amount mitigated is 0. This is not a mitigation effect. What you can do instead is look at the eHP of the relative effects.

Let's consider Dark Mind.
I have 1000 HP. The incoming damage is magical. The total amount of damage that I can take without healing before dying, which we'll denote 'x', is:
x - 0.2x = 1000
x = 1000/(1-0.2)
x = 1250

Which is my 'effective health'. More generally, for percentage based mitigation, eHP increases by a factor of 1/(1 - %DR). For flat mitigation, you just increase the eHP by the stated value (in %HP or potency).

In the case of Thrill of Battle, effective health would be 1200. I could reverse this formula and say that a 16.7% (%DR mitigation effect) would provide the same eHP as the HP buff provided by Thrill of Battle. It's really just there as a point of comparison. Note that the concept of effective health is really just there to see if you're going to survive a damage spike. It becomes less useful if you're trying to look at average damage taken over time.

Putting it together
If you want a trickier example, Great Nebula increases your HP by 20%, and reduces incoming damage by 40%. The eHP increase associated with the damage reduction effect is a factor of 1.67. So the total eHP increase is roughly a factor of 2 (by multiplying 1.67 and 1.2). It's pretty easy to test this.

I have 1000 HP. Great Nebula increases my HP to 1200. A damage roll is applied, and let's say that the net value of (true damage - passive mitigation effects) is 2000. No dodge/block/parry procs occur.

The apparent damage after using Great Nebula (percentage-based damage reduction) alone is 2000 - 800 = 1200. The amount mitigated is 1200. I now have exactly 0 HP.

A 50% (%DR mitigation effect) would provide the same amount of eHP.

[Carighan]

Thank you. And yeah MMORPGs are horribly inconsistent about this, everyone wanting to name things their own stuff, but then ending up recycling terms that meant something else in a previous game.

For example, I still call what FFXIV calls 'heavy' a "snare". And an attack speed or cast speed reduction is a "slow", but that meant movement speed reduction in some MMOs. And abreak-on-damage stun is a "mezz". Why? Because that's just the name for it! EQ1 was a titan of modelling the genre, a lot of terms harken back to it. Damage reductions, granted, are more of a thing that DAoC codified, which used terms such as "absorb", "shield", "armor factor" or "bladeturn".

[TouchandFeel]

If I were to point to the crux of where the disagreement is around this, it is defining what is the recipient of the "damage received".
Some people seem to be defining the recipient as pretty much anything that ends up taking damage; shields, the player's HP pool, etc. and defining any such buffs as being the player themselves, at which point shields will not reduce the damage done there since they are taking damage and that damage is being included as part of the recipient.
Others, and it seems a greater majority of people, are defining the recipient as solely the player and their base HP pool, base meaning not including shields or HP boosts as part of that, at which point the shields do reduce the damage that is then taken by the recipient.
Essentially it seems to be a difference of "mitigated in general" vs "mitigated for the player".
Personally, since the character is the representation of the player within the game world, I lean towards the latter probably being the better of the two since it is the perspective that is most pertinent for the player.

[BabyYoda]

Dark knight issue can't be fixed with small changes.

The job do not have identity since SB.

if there is no full-fledge rework I can't see this job performing well for another 6 years