DRK and HP sacrifice

[Carighan]

Like others have said, even DPS dont get this option anymore as unnecessary self damage has been removed from the game outside of exploration content. I think the best option for DRK is to have more ways to use and regain mp.

Yeah and I don't mind using mana instead, although I wish all classes used it more. At the very least I'd want a button that applies a buff to someone (can be me) and as they take damage I regain mana, and then most of my defensive buttons can be pressed while on CD, eating mana to cycle a portion of the CD (I can "feed mana" to cycle them faster, basically).

[Reginald_Cain]

Yeah and I don't mind using mana instead, although I wish all classes used it more. At the very least I'd want a button that applies a buff to someone (can be me) and as they take damage I regain mana, and then most of my defensive buttons can be pressed while on CD, eating mana to cycle a portion of the CD (I can "feed mana" to cycle them faster, basically).

Oh crud a targetable blood price would be cool!

[SalamanderIX]

If DRK used mechanics for HP sacrifice, it would also need mechanics for large HP gains, such as draining.
It would probably need to replace Warrior in terms of a "drain tank" style. (warrior would keep regen and bonus health). Risk and using health as a resource, moving between losing damage to burst and regaining hp to keep alive and tanking.
As for where I'd put the HP drains, put it on the Mana spending abilities. Then the job becomes more of a dance of managing your health/mana. it would be rather thematic for the job really.

[Shurrikhan]

If DRK used mechanics for HP sacrifice, it would also need mechanics for large HP gains, such as draining.

There's no such requirement as long as it still had the same net outputs as other tanks. Healers do exist, after all, however vestigially, and solo content has so little threat that one can easily afford to spend 75% of their health to get the fight over with a few hits sooner.

As for where I'd put the HP drains, put it on the Mana spending abilities. Then the job becomes more of a dance of managing your health/mana. it would be rather thematic for the job really.

If all MP spenders are also HP spenders, how is that a "dance of managing" health/mana? It'd just render one resource or the other redundant.

[Carighan]

If all MP spenders are also HP spenders, how is that a "dance of managing" health/mana? It'd just render one resource or the other redundant.

Or it's auto-balanced, then both are redundant because they are of no actual agency to the player! xD

[Valence]

One mechanic to prevent healers cheating the system in the case of a HP consumption system would be to have it blacken specific parts of the HP bar that could only be healed back by the DRK. In HW, MP support and refreshes didn't affect the regen of the DRK MP bar as long as the DRK had Darkside turned on (which stopped all MP regen except from blood weapon and other DRK mechanics).

[Shurrikhan]

One mechanic to prevent healers cheating the system in the case of a HP consumption system would be to have it blacken specific parts of the HP bar that could only be healed back by the DRK. In HW, MP support and refreshes didn't affect the regen of the DRK MP bar as long as the DRK had Darkside turned on (which stopped all MP regen except from blood weapon and other DRK mechanics).

I remember seeing the suggestion back in HW (or, in the form of max HP decreases or increases back up to the normal max). Many were quick to dog-pile it then, though, for it allowing less knowledgeable tanks either to kill themselves by popping it before something they'd need max HP for (assuming no %DR from spending) or scaring them out of using it at all, ultimately leading people to largely just agree that MP was probably better overall since it'd act as a second 'charge' of health, so to speak, via the sustain it could produce (at the time, in myriad ways) without quite so large an eHP range as would be caused via actual HP-spending. Hmm.

[Absurdity]

There's no such requirement as long as it still had the same net outputs as other tanks. Healers do exist, after all, however vestigially, and solo content has so little threat that one can easily afford to spend 75% of their health to get the fight over with a few hits sooner.

As a warrior main I also wouldn't mind even if they made DrK the HP heal tank, I never thought it fit the "berserker" fantasy all that well anyway.

To take ideas from WoW once again, I think something like Monk's Stagger mechanic make more sense.
You're not healing the damage, you're ignoring/delaying it because you're in a rage, full of adrenaline, and simply don't notice your injuries until much later.

I remember seeing the suggestion back in HW (or, in the form of max HP decreases or increases back up to the normal max). Many were quick to dog-pile it then, though, for it allowing less knowledgeable tanks either to kill themselves by popping it before something they'd need max HP for (assuming no %DR from spending) or scaring them out of using it at all, ultimately leading people to largely just agree that MP was probably better overall since it'd act as a second 'charge' of health, so to speak, via the sustain it could produce (at the time, in myriad ways) without quite so large an eHP range as would be caused via actual HP-spending. Hmm.

In an ideal scenario I'd say let the new tanks mess up and end up dying to their own HP spending. It will teach them to not do that in the future, valuable knowledge gained.
But those potential points of failure are clearly incompatible with the current design philosophy.

[Shurrikhan]

As a warrior main I also wouldn't mind even if they made DrK the HP heal tank, I never thought it fit the "berserker" fantasy all that well anyway.

To take ideas from WoW once again, I think something like Monk's Stagger mechanic make more sense.
You're not healing the damage, you're ignoring/delaying it because you're in a rage, full of adrenaline, and simply don't notice your injuries until much later.

To be fair, without external healing, (A) self-heals plus an expanded health pool and (B) experiencing that damage over time while able to purge portions of the delayed damage... have virtually the same features -- higher passive eHP and active self-scaled sustain (as opposed to enemy-scaled sustain per having only %DRs).

But yeah, I thought the same as far back as ARR. Though, at the same time, I'm not sure self-healing fits DRK, either, as they're not actually vampiric necromancers in this game, but more akin to heretical/unorthodox paladins who take dynamis so far that they substitute reality with their own rules (void and the dark/umbral elements being representative mostly of that unfettered freedom or declined external order more so than anything naturally evil or even naturally dangerous). We (used to) see this even with the color scheme of its abilities, wherein red-toned weapon skills ignored the weight of the blade (replacing that reality with their own) while blue skills simply drew in more force (as if from conviction). The red and all things void was very... "Transgressing"/"Transgression" (ignoring authority, instilling one's own) themed.

In an ideal scenario I'd say let the new tanks mess up and end up dying to their own HP spending. It will teach them to not do that in the future, valuable knowledge gained.
But those potential points of failure are clearly incompatible with the current design philosophy.

Same... ish. But mostly because they're both multiplicative anyways. If you keep the full health bar but didn't, back in the day, have the MP to multiply it via, say, DA-Dark Mind for massively more eHP vs. magic damage (67% more eHP at 40% DR, for instance), you'd screwed yourself just as surely as if you'd spent 40% of your HP right before a tankbuster. And if, say, it'd cost only 25% of your HP to apply a 40% DR for a few seconds, you'd still be better off until very low HP to pop the spender anyways and hope for heals to catch up soon enough after.

That said, I don't think it's any more against the current design philosophy than, say, the ability to spend too much Oath Gauge all at once, or to spend all one's MP on Edges before a necessary TBN.

[Absurdity]

That said, I don't think it's any more against the current design philosophy than, say, the ability to spend too much Oath Gauge all at once, or to spend all one's MP on Edges before a necessary TBN.

It's similar but where I think that it doesn't fit the "frictionless" design philosophy is that it would be a lot more punishing than those two. Even if you mess up your gauge/MP management you have fallback options that you would simply lack if you were to for example reduce your own max HP down to 20%.

If you spend all your oath gauge before a buster you can substitute it with other cooldowns, same for emptying your MP at the wrong moment.
If you reduce your HP to 20% right before a buster, only cleansable by yourself, then no amount of other mitigation options is going to save you, besides maybe your invuln.