After getting dark knight 60 and playing it for a while

[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.

[Kelg]

Blood Weapon: Call for Goad or bard songs? Paladins do this all the time. If a paladin has to use their insane tp cost stun in fights (a3 adds, dungeons for mitigation purposes, etc) they plummet---classes are not all meant to be perfectly self sustaining.

From an OT perspective, blood weapon has brought about many complaints from dark knight players, mainly because our DPS drops off like a rock once we run dry of TP, and it happens very quickly. It makes us pretty much a useless OT, seeing as how little utility we bring. Delirium is not good enough of a reason to bring a dark knight over something like a warrior when you can just bring a mnk instead.

Living Dead: Its buggy--not bad. It has certain advantages over the other two 'do not die' spells. For one, it does not proc until you WOULD die--meaning its effective EHP gain is higher than Holmgang. The living dead state lasts longer than holmgang when procced--so yes the downside has to be there with 2 great upsides.

I don't care how you try to candy coat it, this skill is terrible. You seem to be ignoring the part where the healer has to restore your HP equal to 100% of your max HP, meaning it gets more difficult as your gear gets better. It is a huge resource drain, even when your healers see it coming. In a PUG you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye if you have anything other than a whm(and even stiill you die sometimes).

Soul Eater: Soul eater heals -without- dark arts for almost as much as inner beast, and is a combo attack you can spam. With DA up, it heals for more. That is the strongest self heal through a basic attack in the game (in either version).

Inner beast doesn't require that you go through a whole combo to use. Warrior also has equilibrium(which is an amazing burst heal) and second wind to heal, we have sole survivor instead, which is actually more in line with mercy stroke. Soul eater is basically our version of paladin's shield, or warriors increased hp/healing. It should be made more meaningful.

Dark Dance: 20 second up time, 1 minute cd. Its hard to buff something like this without increasing its cd, or lowering its up time. Bulwark for instance is 60% to block (vs 30% parry/20% dodge) and has 5 less seconds of uptime about 3 times the cd. Frankly, Dark Dance is fantastic due to how much coverage it gives you--many bosses auto or have physical swings (Bis EX, Rav EX) and even physical busters (rav ex). This is a great cooldown.

If you read my post, I said that it is good. Though the RNG evasion is not anything amazing for single targets, luck abilities never are.

Shadow Wall: It's weaker cause you also have dark mind, a one minute cd for 30% mitigation against what seems currently to be ALOT of the raid damage. So yes--your BIG cd is weaker than say, Paladins, who cannot spam any of their defensives like you can. You cannot cherry pick cd's to compare and show that they are weaker--DRK's are defined by -short- cooldowns or -constant- access- to their perks, assuming they can manage their mp.

Paladins pretty much have a permanent dark dance up with their shield. They also have more CDs than us. Their version of Dark mind is sheltron(it's very spammable), which blocks physical attacks 100% of the time, and with how long Dark mind lasts, its pretty much the same thing but for physical. Very few mobs hit for magic damage with their normal attacks, so Dark mind is pretty much a tank buster CD.

Dark Passenger: Not all skills are good in all situations. Paladin flash is useless in raids save for its threat--no damage, everything is immune to blind. Ditto the pacification on shield swipe which is largely useless everywhere. These skills dont need to change though--Blind and Pacification do. They need to be nerfed down a little bit and then be allowed to apply to ~All~ monsters. Blind should only affect auto attacks, namely (not powers, tank busters, etc) while pacification needs to be taken off from shield swipe. Similar situations could exist for Drk, but the core ability is fine, it just doesnt scale into raids which is another issue. If it applied a proper blind, it would be fine in more situations and warrant its mana cost.

Paladin's flash is hardly used for it's blind effect. They only have circle of scorn outside of flash to hold enemies, so it has to be used more than once. You aren't even comparing similar skills here. Dark Passenger is closer to Spirits within.

Carve and Split: 450 damage off gcd. This is weak? Or gain back burst mana when you need it? You think this is weak? I will trade you spirits within for this in a heart beat (spirits hitting up to 300 potency, but generally less given how fast potency tappers off with even a bit of damage).

I think you need to read more closely. I did not say I think CaS is weak when used with DA. I said it is barely usable without DA, and it is. You would really only use it without DA if you aren't paying attention and expend more MP than you should have. Spirits imo is a better ability, it has a silence, and does not cost a huge chunk of your MP bar to be useful.

Blood Price: Its meant to help you with aoe pulls and some self sustain. Your only option for AOE threat are mana spenders after all. Single target, you can easily self manage your own mana---you are not spending as much mana to maintain threat.

My problem with it is that it seems like too many of DRK's abilities are designed for trash pulls only.

Delirium: I laughed at this suggestion. You want a damage debuff that ALSO increases your own damage? Did you ignore the fact that unlike other tanks, you can keep a constant 15% damage buff up while you are tanking? Or that a ton of bosses are using magical damage?

You realize warrior has both a permanent 20% buff, and a 10% slashing resistance debuff right(they can do all of this while tanking)? Both can be kept up while tanking. Dark Knight has Darkside, which is a 15% buff that constantly drains your MP.

Dark Arts: You are not managing mana properly if the cost of dark arts is an issue. That or you are misunderstanding it--its not meant to be spammed--. You can use it very often--sure, but you also have to regen mana (which is easy enough, frankly).

I'm not even sure you read my post past the ability names now...

And no, I do not think Dark knight is terrible. It's just outshined by other tanks and doesn't bring anything unique to the table.

[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.

[Litegrace]

Paladin's flash is hardly used for it's blind effect. They only have circle of scorn outside of flash to hold enemies, so it has to be used more than once. You aren't even comparing similar skills here. Dark Passenger is closer to Spirits within.

Just wanted to hop in here real quick. I personally used flash a lot on Paladin specifically for the blind effect. During trash pulls it can be super useful, and I also use to weave it in with my other defensive cooldowns to always ensure I have either a defensive buff up or a debuff (blind) on the enemy I'm tanking.

Other than that, I agree with most of what you are saying here. Just wanted to point out that flash weaving used to be a big thing for Paladins (less so now since you have extra defensive cooldowns to cycle through).

[Syzygian]

DRK CDs are meant to be stacked. That's why you have two with only 60s recasts and a potential 4 cross-class cooldowns. Shadowskin and Shadow Wall by themselves are fine but anything else should be paired up with something. (Dark Mind+Conva, Dark Dance+Foresight, etc.) Also DA Dark Mind is OP as fuck on bosses with magic based tank busters. If you stack it with Shadowskin or Shadow Wall that's 50-60% reduced damage. Up to 70-80% with Reprisal/Delirium up.

[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.

[Hundred]

cut

Doesnt check out bud. Storm path and inner beast are both damage mitigation. Berserk affects all the self healing and bloodbath has higher uptime on a Warrior.

The difference is notable in practice on a Ifrit HM solo for instance. The healing potency difference which is certainly there even if you ignore the passive mitigation on Path/IB . Ifrit for example will be untargetable multiple times in the fight, soul eater/bloodbath/IB/Path is automatically discredited at these times where as Second Wind/Thrill/Equilibrium/Clemency are available or running out their clock during this Downtime. These advantages arent there. There isnt a self-healing advantage. You can post the Defiance vs Oath/Grit till one is blue is in the face it is not relevant here. Drks values remain visibly, practically and mathematically lower in self-healing.

Im not ignoring Grit. It is irrelevant here after IB, Storms Path, Berserk and the superior uptime of Bloodbath.

[Windklinge]

so according to faytte drk is totally fine as is? because thats what i read from his post? or did i oversee something here? o.O

[Reynhart]

Ifrit for example will be untargetable multiple times in the fight, soul eater/bloodbath/IB/Path is automatically discredited at these times where as Second Wind/Thrill/Equilibrium/Clemency are available or running out their clock during this Downtime.

Again, not relevant in any real situation since you'll have a healer by your side who will keep eveybody up with a single spell.

It's exactly like the "Shield Oath/Grit is better than Defiance because the healing boost is only 20%". Yes, in theory, it's true, but in practice, both are the same.

And you also didn't take into account Abyssal Drain too, which is marvelous for fight with multiple targets.