Dark Knight : Just another mitigation tank

[Altena]

OP is completely ignoring WAR v2.0. Which is exactly what he's asking for, and there's a very good reason it doesn't exist anymore.

A self-healing tank just does not work here. At all. It was tried, it failed.

I actually played WAR in 2.0. Tanking was hard, not because it took skill, but because you would die in anything serious before you could self-heal or the healer healed you, unless you were being SS/Adlo spammed. WAR is so much better than it was (even just counting only 2.x skills) its not funny.

Having a phat HP container with 1 self-healing skill that you can pop roughly every 15-20 secs is not a blood tank.

I also played WAR for coil 1-5 pre-2.1 and while it was a weaker alternative to PLD, our group still managed to clear.

[SarcasmMisser]

Having a phat HP container with 1 self-healing skill that you can pop roughly every 15-20 secs is not a blood tank.

I also played WAR for coil 1-5 pre-2.1 and while it was a weaker alternative to PLD, our group still managed to clear.

The Binds that Tie I
11/01/2014

Whoops. Completely ignoring that T5 had the only major tank busters and you were probably OT.

[Altena]

Whoops. Completely ignoring that T5 had the only major tank busters and you were probably OT.

Welllllll we actually solo tanked T5. So there goes that.
T1-4 was perfectly doable with a WAR.

[SarcasmMisser]

Welllllll we actually solo tanked T5. So there goes that.
T1-4 was perfectly doable with a WAR.

In 2.1? You just made a claim that you did 1-5 in 2.0 as a war and were caught flat out lying. 1-4 was doable because there were no tank busters, and 1-5 would be doable by virtue that the war was a OT and did little actual tanking. I took a war for 1-4 and it was doable but clearly a handicap. Yes you can solo tank T5 as a war once they implemented those fixes that ditched the idea of a life steal tank.

[SarcasmMisser]

Self-healing tanks are a horrible idea, the tank's side of the damage management equation is mitigation and self-healing is just doing the healer's job for them poorly. How are self-heals supposed to stop you dying to a tank buster, all damage tanks take come in two forms and that's damage you are meant to take and damage you are meant to mitigate.

It's the same awful idea as parry tanking, parry since it's RNG is a form of passive mitigation and useless when encounters are designed to force players to prevent damage at key moments. Self-healing is useless if you just got one hit by a tank buster that you can't mitigate because all your tools heal damage not prevent it.

[Altena]

Self-healing tanks are a horrible idea, the tank's side of the damage management equation is mitigation and self-healing is just doing the healer's job for them poorly. How are self-heals supposed to stop you dying to a tank buster, all damage tanks take come in two forms and that's damage you are meant to take and damage you are meant to mitigate.

Tank busters can be avoided simply with a similar mechanic to what I listed on numerous occasions - provide a adlo-style shield proportionate to damage dealt over and above your HP container. (ie, mitigating a portion of the attack with this shield that was based on a lifestyle style mechanic to the job).

That is one example. In addition to that, there is nothing suggesting that a blood tank should have 0 mitigation skills, but simply carbon copying direct skills from PLD onto another class is just pure lazy and uninteresting.

[Asierid]

Blood DK is also a mitigation tank that happens to heal. Just because DS heals or it runs on runes doesn't automatically make the tank something special. There are passive that allow for mitigation more than there are heals.

Anything that uses leeches/heals to sustain themselves with no sort of mitigation is just asking for failure. WAR 2.0 is an example of this.

[Duelle]

Blood DK is also a mitigation tank that happens to heal. Just because DS heals or it runs on runes doesn't automatically make the tank something special. There are passive that allow for mitigation more than there are heals.

Anything that uses leeches/heals to sustain themselves with no sort of mitigation is just asking for failure. WAR 2.0 is an example of this.

Indeed. The main problem with 2.0's WAR is that it had self heals as the sole way to stay alive instead of being part of a bigger tank model. This is something that was also repeatedly brought up in the tank forums because we knew that WAR was screwed unless it had some mitigation ability at the baseline. Self-heals are nice as part of your kit, but not as the only thing that makes you a tank.

It'd be as if Blizzard had designed Death Knights entirely around Death Strike's self heal and removed Blood Shield (the effect that Inner Beast's damage reduction was based on), Bone Shield and Icebound Fortitude.

Blood death knights in WoW used to be like that.

It was awful.

Well, I remember 3.0 Death Knights had to rotate cooldowns to make it through a fight. DKs came into their own once Blood Shield was introduced (they had to sacrifice my beloved Blood DPS spec to make it happen, but I can't argue with the results).

[Draciella]

All this bllod tank talk and all i can think about is fire tanking in DCUO. Such an awful game but strangely addictive. A proper self healing tank with high health id say would need every hit to be a heal and the user picks the strength at a cost. Also the hp pool should flex with these scaling heals. Big hit incoming, add 60% to your hp bar, self heal 10% hp and have that on cooldown. Smaller cd's with a different balance of stackable/nonstackable self heals and hp pool would be awesome. And the hallowed equal, a cd that heals you 2000hp a second for 12 seconds Still has the risk to be killed but carries a reward of helping the healers. I cant think of anything in game being done properly this would not work. I havent cranked any numbers this is all off the top of my head

[TessaJalloh]

If every class was completely niche instead of having the base role and building upon it with visuals and a couple of unique gimmicks, it would be so impossible to balance it would be FFXI all over again.

Let's not forget the great tanks wars. Is it warrior? no it's paladin! wait it's ninja, paladin, ninja, fuck it let that Red mage do it, oh, nerf that, ninja again, paladin. Y'know, that white mage seems pretty tanky with the right subjob there.

it was a mess, a fun mess, but a MESS. and it really screwed with people's ability to progress at times, especially when paladins were considered Gimptanks for a while until they started making the classes share certain essential role abilities. like thf and dancer getting dual wield natively, and paladin being given provoke so that it could use other sub jobs than warrior.

it took them years to come to the conclusion that balancing is a bitch, and they never truly got that balance down.