Dark Knight : Just another mitigation tank

[Assirra]

What's really annoying is people bringing up WoW for every single inference made about anything.

WAR and PLD currently are very different in how they go about doing the same thing - being effective at tanking. It's crazy how often people mention WoW for every single example of something that's been tried before. WoW has to balance classes with 3 different specs each, for both pvp and pve therefore trying to cater a much larger pool of interests.

Do NOT begin to tell me that a tank CANNOT be distinct because of balance issues. WAR operates different from PLD. SCH different from WHM. NIN different from MNK. Because you can't wrap you're head around it means it should'nt even be discussed or attempted? I don't think that's right.

Let me ask you, If DRG and MNK were the only two melee classes, would you suggest that NIN shouldn't be added because it would cause cherry picking? Has that happened, Are DRGs forced to play all 3 mdps? I mean there are things that NIN can do that the others can't? Does a BLM need to level SMN even though their playstlyes are nothing alike?

The point is there are different routes to fulfill the same objectives. The classes don't have to to be totally insular, no one is asking for that. Trying to make DRK have it's own more distinct identity isn't even a challenge, its a choice of whether to just do it or not.

Well the thing is at least with this thread that the OP was basically summing up Blood Dead knight from wow. No idea if this was a coincidence or not but it's really hard to not compared it when it resemblances it so much.

[Reynhart]

Give them a "Dread Spikes" stance the reflects/drains 20% of damage taken instead of a revamped Shield Oath. (And you can even reduce their potencies so that they do less damage by themselves to keep balance)

Cons : Healers need to keep DRK at higher HP than other tanks for the drain to take effect after damage.
Pros : More damage when MT'ing with the reflected damage.

There, another stance for tanking that will make DRK as useful as the other tanks in 90% of the content. For the remaining 10%, it's fine for each tank to be better in a specific situation.

[Asierid]

All of this and you're clearly overlooking the fact that DRK utilizes MP and augments abilities through DA. How is that not a distinctly different from of gameplay compared to the other two tanks? The three operate in completely different ways while achieving the same goal.

Is DRK weaker? Yes. But that's not the question being presented. DRK has its own identity, everyone in this thread is pissed because:

A: it's not their version of the class.

B: it sucks compared to the other two. Which is great...but that's not what's being asked here.

And yes, I can tell you it's because of balance issues. It's only been done before numerous times and has been stated by devs before how much of a pain in the ass it is to balance leech tanking. So they don't do it or overhaul the class completely in favor of passive mitigation.

[Wavaryen]

Op your points are well made. I agree with you, and find it funny people always complain about wow like the ideas wow come up with is a bad thing.

[Niyuka]

Op your points are well made. I agree with you, and find it funny people always complain about wow like the ideas wow come up with is a bad thing.

Actually drain tanking isnt WOWs idea. They just badly copied it. It existed before (hey EverQuest), and as well as drainhealing (hey EverQuest or Vanguard) it is hard to balance because it has to scale with MOB damage, not with the tanks damage, in order to work even remotely. You ll notice how it didnt work well in WoW either, because it basically really had to be balanced around the current mainstream content, and was always broken in anything below that.

I am not happy with the weak performance of the DRK, but leech tanking has been done before, and so far nobody made it work for more than a small sliver of content.
I d thus venture a guess and say its probably not worth the effort.

[Marxam]

This thread is soo wrong. Complaining that DRK is a mitigation tank? All tanks are supposed to mitigate damage! and SE already tried a self healing tank in 2.0 warrior but it sucked and was improved in 2.1.

[Gardes]

Save for magic damage taken and paladin's shield block, warrior has every single type of mitigation and in some cases better versions of it than drk though. It's hard to say that parry is drk's thing when a warrior has a 100% parry skill. Hard to say that life steal is drk's thing cause warriors can do it too and just as hard (maybe even harder? dont have a 60 war yet). Even then warrior has more hp related skills than drk by having bigger natural hp pool in tank stance AND a temporary max hp up. On vital % based mitigation that you need for big attacks both paladin and warrior has drk beat.

Going back to the magic damage reduction thing...it's the one unique type of mitigation that drk has and they still have to pay cold hard mp to use its best version and its technically just a sub type of % based mitigation. It's basically an extra % based mitigation for drk...IF the fight involved magic. So basically adding drk to the game is just SE imposing an additional checklist for designing fights on themselves: "do we have magic damage on this fight?" One could argue that this basically eliminates variety in fights (must always have both, cant be physical only, magic only or both). Unless SE somehow forgot about that checklist or decides that drk shouldn't get to use their 'best thing' in a particular fight.

I don't particularly feel that DRK needs to be revamped mechanically but I do think that 'good at taking magic attacks' isn't good enough. Especially when it's ONE skill out of the entire skill set that does less than the others (shadow skin and wall having less duration and longer cooldown, parry up only 30% for 60sec cd vs 100% for 90 sec cd). Oh and I think while pld and war has skills specifically pressed just to heal up (not life steal), drk doesnt have one so that's one 'mitigation' that drk also doesnt have.

So yeah, maybe soul eater SHOULD get a unique effect to their life steal effect.

[KaedrianLiang]

I was playing WoW during WotLK when they introduced Death Knights, and with it a tank tree oriented around life-steal. We referred to these entities as "Blood DK's", It was viable. When my guild killed the LK, we had a Blood DK MT. I forget the exact numbers but their life-steal restored a percentage of maximum health i think it was 9% of total health and had you juggled your "runes" correctly you could use that 9% health back 3 times in a row and wind up another 3x combo in 12 seconds. This was the bread and butter of the blood DK, but still merely a single piece to the grand design.

[Peekachu33]

I only know that after playing a DRK since HW's launch, I'll be swapping back to PLD main until they balance the class. It's defensively weaker than a PLD, with far less "oh crap" buttons, a wonky invulnerability, and also less does damage than a WAR. Feels like a jack of all trades, master of none class. It's in a really unpleasant middle-ground at the moment.

There is very little that distinguishes the class from other tanks other than the added game of MP resource management (which is really just using blood price whenever it's up).

Oh and Dark Passenger and a bevy of other abilities are literally garbage-tier. No idea why they even exist other than to pad out skills.

[Nadirah]

Well the thing is at least with this thread that the OP was basically summing up Blood Dead knight from wow. No idea if this was a coincidence or not but it's really hard to not compared it when it resemblances it so much.

Pretty much.

And nothing is more ridiculous than things like (again, wow) bringing a specific class for a specific encounter because they can completely negate certain mechanics(hello, monk Guard). It ends up becoming accepted strategy to the point of "hey, reroll this so we can win".

That's not fun to a lot of folks.