After getting dark knight 60 and playing it for a while

[RaineAmorie]

Carve and Spit is wasted as an MP regen ability. You'd have a better argument if it restored more than a syphon strike rotation. As it is now its best to use as a dps gain since cycling through 2x delirium combo should keep mp stable if your pushing DA + soul eater combo.

Why should it give back more MP? Right now it's a great tool to save you from emergency mode should you get a little overzealous with DA. Are DPS that bad that you need to augment CaS instead of using it to keep yourself rolling in mp? During big pulls, using DA+AD when optimal wrecks your MP, but with Blood Price and CaS I'm losing very little MP all together and have more for things like DP and DA/PS.

Also, I think it's crazy that the same people saying Blood Weapon ruins your TP are also saying that we need to be able to use it in Grit. Why? So you can burn out as MT too? It's about MANAGING your resources, not plowing through them.

And on the point of our survivability kit being lackluster, our big CD may have less mitigation than PLD, but we also have a self heal every 6 secs or so. Some of our mitigation is passive and some is active, and I feel like if everyone could look at the class without the WAR/PLD blinders on and looked at different ways to use things besides "more DPS" they would see that DRK isn't in such a horrible place.

[Hundred]

And on the point of our survivability kit being lackluster, our big CD may have less mitigation than PLD, but we also have a self heal every 6 secs or so. Some of our mitigation is passive and some is active, and I feel like if everyone could look at the class without the WAR/PLD blinders on and looked at different ways to use things besides "more DPS" they would see that DRK isn't in such a horrible place.

I absolutely agree Drk isn't in a horrible place however...


Soul eater legitimately does not heal enough. And I don't mean that in the cliche "Oh static healing is bad" crap.
Look at the Healing potency per second a Warrior can put out, or even a Paladin as a result of Clemency. Dark Knight actually does not have a healing advantage unfortunately and to even try in compete in that department you're throwing out DA Soul Eaters like nobodies business.

At best Drk deals decent damage while self healing but as far as actual healing goes, Drk may very well have the worst self-healing of the three tanks. While comparing the 3 tanks isn't what you want if we're arguing the self-heal niche it isn't really there. I keep going back to magical damage mitigation...because it's actually there . For a Drk to bring their self-healing to its full capability they need a Warrior off-tanking for them dropping Storms Path & Eye. Which I suppose isn't a bad thing "team synergy" and all that, but isolated on their own, it's way easier to recover Health as a PLD/WAR so long as the PLD doesn't get interrupted which can happen but in general puts Drk behind them both.

[Faytte]

I absolutely agree Drk isn't in a horrible place however...


Soul eater legitimately does not heal enough. And I don't mean that in the cliche "Oh static healing is bad" crap.
Look at the Healing potency per second a Warrior can put out, or even a Paladin as a result of Clemency. Dark Knight actually does not have a healing advantage unfortunately and to even try in compete in that department you're throwing out DA Soul Eaters like nobodies business.

Warrior attack based self heal is 300 potency and consumes 5 stacks of wrath. DRK is 260/400. If you are looking at their other powers, these are defensives that replace damage reducers that DRK and Paladins have. You reduce 30% magic damage every minute, while a warrior heals back up that damage instead through bursty self heal cds. That is not the same as constant offensive self healing, where DRK's are clearly ahead of War.


As to Paladin, Clemency is a 3 second cast, and you cant really compare it to the other classes. As an MT you cannot hit a button and save yourself--it takes a lot of foresight and skill, and with harder content you are very prone to being interrupted during the cast (not to mention, you cannot parry or block while spell casting, which is more important given the interrupt mechanic).

DRK's have a great constant self heal, and have access to very short cd defensives. Other tanks work differently (paladin has many defensives, but all on signifncant cds. Wars have limited reduction compared to the other two, but more burst healing).

[Hundred]

DRK's have a great constant self heal, and have access to very short cd defensives. Other tanks work differently (paladin has many defensives, but all on signifncant cds. Wars have limited reduction compared to the other two, but more burst healing).

Inaccurate. Now I have to actually put out math for someone.


Lets assume attack speeds of 2.43 for instance. 7.29s for a Soul eater. 21.87 (max) for an IB.
0.8*1.15*260 = 239 which ends up as 32.7 Healing potency per second.
0.8*1.15*400 = 368 which ends up as 50.4 Healing potency per second (cannot be permanently sustained)
300 * 1.2 = 360 which ends up as 16.4 Healing per second.

Now your initial thoughts may be 16.4 < 32.7 <50.4. However this only perceives things in a vacuum.
Lets take a couple of considerations
1) Storms Path buffs the damage of Inner Beast if its up
2) Berserk further increases the damage output of IB.
3) Storms eye is an additional heal.
Now if we're using Storms eye as our other healing option to build up to IB for instance. Storms eye is
(0.75* 250 *1.2)/2 = 112 which can end up as 15.3 healing potency per second. With just Storms path and Inner Beast a Warrior operates around 31 healing potency per second if he chooses, now this is off by a bit as using IB pushes the potency per second of Storms path down by a bit. One would think this it but Infuriate by nature of allowing more Inner Beasts increases the Warriors healing capabilities further. The cross class skill Second wind is 3.3 healing potency per second. Equilibrium is 20 on top. Given we're also dismissing Storms eye 10% damage reduction and Inner Beasts 20% on top which only serve to make these heals more effective given followups from the opposition are decreased.
As well as HP regen on the server tick scaling with maximum health which a Warrior naturally has a slight advantage over Drk in base.

The thought process might be "Well second Wind and Equilibrium are to make up for cooldowns" it doesn't matter one lick. The point of the self-healing is retroactive, after you are damaged you recover back a quantity, this is even more relevant as you outscale content where your healing output may outpace the damage output of an enemy. Dark falters here, Warrior and PLD do not. Now one may think of Sole Survivor.
Mercy stroke if successfully used on cooldown its 0.5% of your heal recovered every second as a warrior. As a Drk its 0.22%. Sole Survivor is 0.16%. When successfully executed a Warrior's Mercy stroke alone is more overall sustain then a Drk using Sole Survivor + Mercy stroke.

It's not a winning argument. Drk's strength isn't having a healing advantage over the other tanks. At best one could say Drk gives up less damage *while* healing (though this may not apply against WAR), but their actual ability to heal is lower and this is rather visible on say an Ifrit solo. For Drk to get the most out of their self-healing they require a warrior OT to be putting up Storms path and Storms eye for them, the WAR just brings himself.

Now if we want to get out of absolutes and go into practicalities neither DRK nor War spam self-heal combos all day given their other obligations (Delirium, Storms eye, Enmity) but three of WAR's heals are off the GCD and can be weaved during this entire process whenever needed.

If a warrior actually wants to, they can manage 50+ healing potency per second and sustain it if it was just a test of who heals more. Drk caps out at 50.4 healing potency per second with the exception of Sole survivor + Mercy stroke which again a warrior mathematically does better with just Mercy stroke alone. Due to MP requirements of DA a Drk can't actually sustain 50.4 healing potency per second.

The deal is going back to magical mitigation because thats what Drk current excels at. There's not much value in discussing self-healing between tanks, it's not where Drk excels and if the intention is to make them excel in that respect the absorption would have to be higher due to Grits interference.

[Phoenicia]

The deal is going back to magical mitigation because thats what Drk current excels at. There's not much value in discussing self-healing between tanks, it's not where Drk excels and if the intention is to make them excel in that respect the absorption would have to be higher due to Grits interference.

Except with the way and frequency WAR can use and stack CDs (Such as IB + Vengeance and IB + ToB/Conv.), WAR can be arguably equal to DRK in magic mitigation.

[rawker]

Except with the way and frequency WAR can use and stack CDs (Such as IB + Vengeance and IB + ToB/Conv.), WAR can be arguably equal to DRK in magic mitigation.

Except that WARs nowadays are reserving stacks and infuriate exclussively for double Fell Cleaves.

[Reynhart]

Too long to quote

Sorry, but I see some confusing info there.

First, your "As well as HP regen on the server tick scaling with maximum health which a Warrior naturally has a slight advantage over Drk in base." is in fact, wrong. Yes, you gain more HP per tick, but you actually lose more HP per hit, so in fact, both are the same.

Second, judging Mercy Stroke and Sole Survivor from a "healing per second" perspective doesn't mean anything, since there's another requirement for both of them to take effect (And Sole Survivor is fare more forgiving in this regard, even though the cooldown is longer.)

And finally, your healing potency completely disregard the actual ratio towards your HP. Apart from when you use Bersek, Inner Beast doesn't hit for really more than Soul Eater. As an example, let's assume a DRK and WAR that both have 10000 HP unbuffed, can hit with Soul Eater/Inner Beast for 1000 and are constantly hit with 1500 damage.

When buffed, the WAR will have 12500 HP, get hit for 1500 and heal for 1000, thus ending with 12000 (96% remaining HP)
When buffed, the DRK will still have 10000 HP, get hit for 1200 and heal for 1000, thus ending with 9800 (98% remaining HP)

The bigger point here is that Defiance doesn't increase the healing effect from Inner Beast, thus your "potency per second" doesn't reflect any real situation.