Shadow wall needs an additional effect.

[Dererk]

What if shadow wall gave a burst damage that lets you do damage for maybe 5-10% of the damage you mitigated? And make it not be affected by Grits damage reduction.


I still find it odd we don't get a boost to parry in Grit wer not a PLD we don't have a shield.

[Noxifer]

DRK already have -20% damage taken from Grit stance (same as PLD with Shield Oath)

WAR dont have any kind of reduced damage taken while on Defiance.

T_T I'm so tired of this misconception. It's also used in the STR vs VIT debate, where people argue that since WAR have such high HP pools, they can go full Strength and still have as much HP (or more) as a full Vitality PLD/DRK when they're in Tank Stance. Completely forgetting that the larger HP pool (together with the healing boost) is our Tank Stance bonus to defence...

(Of course, the bonus to healing received doesn't work with all healing, like the re-made Lustrate or some of the new instant heals, I forget which. And there's a slightly higher degree of overhealing since we have a lot of self-heals going on. But it's still our 'tank defence'.)

[MiniPrinny]

Why is this thread here? Like... seriously? Dark Knights have plenty of other pros to make up for the con of Shadow Wall being a shittier Sentinel. We don't need Shadow Wall to be any stronger than it already is.

Edit: The only thing Dark Knights do need is anything added to Living Dead to make it usable in 4-mans outside of Benediction.

[Sleigh]

Dark Mind is simply too good for DRK's core CDs to otherwise match PLD's. There has to be that give and take, not all big mitigation tools have to be equal for them to be balanced.

[MeeYow]

Correct Wings, I am assuming full on defence hence the comment on storms path.

I am working on the pretence that there is still a valid statement to make regardless of meta if one class has higher long term reductions AND buster mitigation in full out defence AND greater offence in full out offence that serious changes need to be made.

According to my prelim numbers using IB on cooldown is about 7% mitigation (aka about 33% uptime after infuriate/zerk etc on the 2.4s GCD, I think the numbers actually come out closer to 40% uptime after those, accounting for Fracture and the IB cooldowns themselves). So using storms path and stance independent cooldowns would still give WAR level mitigation with PLDs cooldowns. Of course WARs don't do use path in practice because they have more useful options.

Which leads to the valid argument 'this matches PLD but they chose not to because they have even better things they can do!'

Basically the aim of my calcs are to shed light on the 'but PLD has much better mitigation' misconception, since only tank busters can be theorycrafted quickly.

Long term mitigation isn't hard it just takes a long time to type in all the numbers and make good approximations for things like thrill/convalescence which combos make e an ffective mitigation cooldown by raising both the healing received and HP pool, which PLD and DRK cannot do, calculating in the long term effects of conv for the other classes is not as easy as I am not as familiar with healer numbers.

Could take the time to theorycraft approximate dps values for each class in each case as well, but seeing as live letter is in 5 days the willpower is wearing a bit thin :3

[ArdorGrey]

Correct Wings, I am assuming full on defence hence the comment on storms path.

I am working on the pretence that there is still a valid statement to make regardless of meta if one class has higher long term reductions AND buster mitigation in full out defence AND greater offence in full out offence that serious changes need to be made.

There's two problems with this:

1: You're trying to work the math to suit your argument, of course it's going to work out. Someone else could write up a counter if they wanted to invest an equal amount of time.

2: being able to maximize offense and defense is great but war always does so at opportunity cost. There is something to be said for classes that not only don't have to make on the fly adjustments mid battle, but can also push most of their defense while maintaining most of their offense simultaneously. Not that pld is really in this situation atm, but drk is. Not to mention having defenses on hand as instant OGCD's that don't require a target.

[carbonx]

And I'd say it is fair to look at the cooldown individually when it comes to comparing it to other cooldowns, if raging strikes was 80 seconds like blood for blood without the increased damage taken, you know other damage dealers would raise an eyebrow.

Raging Strikes is 3 whole minutes for BLM, which is their only major offensive CD aside from Ley Lines. Yet, no one is raising the alarm because they are looking at the classes as a whole and how they are functioning. DRK is functioning well.

DRK already have -20% damage taken from Grit stance (same as PLD with Shield Oath)
WAR dont have any kind of reduced damage taken while on Defiance..

Defiance adds the same effective HP as Grit and Shield Oath, in addition to being oGCD while the others are GCD. So, percentage wise, taking the same hit unmitigated is going to look the same on a PLD as a DRK as a WAR, if they are all in respective tank stances.

[MeeYow]

There's two problems with this:

1: You're trying to work the math to suit your argument, of course it's going to work out. Someone else could write up a counter if they wanted to invest an equal amount of time.

2: being able to maximize offense and defense is great but war always does so at opportunity cost. There is something to be said for classes that not only don't have to make on the fly adjustments mid battle, but can also push most of their defense while maintaining most of their offense simultaneously. Not that pld is really in this situation atm, but drk is. Not to mention having defenses on hand as instant OGCD's that don't require a target.

No don't worry. I'm not.
I described my reasoning for typing it up, the calcs I did before I made up my mind, you cannot comment on the calcs when you haven't seen them.
I am doing everything; single target physical, magical, mixed, groups of mobs of both types and mixed and with and without various optional debuffs and stances. The numbers are not tailored at all. (I am a research physicsist so I couldn't if I wanted to, that was drilled out of my years ago, mainly because someone always attempts a counter argument like that so you stop them before they happen, part of good experiment design. :3)

I covered opportunity cost with storms eye, when there is no direct comparison, if you can compare class A to an inferior rotation of class B and find class B better off, then you can comment on the non directly comparable scenario, of course if the results are the other way around the findings are almost completely inconclusive.

As for the second point, yes I am providing numbers and not situations for use, but situational abilities can be overestimated and set to zero eg Holmgang, the comfort margin is still there as far as WAR is concerned.

I don't want to derail this thread but I am happy to PM talk if you want to go talk.

[ArdorGrey]

Defiance adds the same effective HP as Grit and Shield Oath, in addition to being oGCD while the others are GCD. So, percentage wise, taking the same hit unmitigated is going to look the same on a PLD as a DRK as a WAR, if they are all in respective tank stances.

This is flat out not true, but it's widely perpetuated because hey, anything to make War look even better than it is and justify further buffs for pld, right?

The ehp was slightly lower even back in 2.0.

It also doesn't affect healing from skills, and almost all of the healers new kit is skills. So, it's worse than it's ever been.


The ogcd thing is great, but War's don't gain the hp discrepancy when swapping into defiance and instantly lose any extra when swapping back. Having 20% DR on instant demand would be ludicrously powerful. I really think a lot of people clamouring for this don't look at the very many very real drawbacks War's tank stance has compared to the others.

For all the complaints about Inner beast being brokenly powerful on demand damage reduction, there sure are a lot of paladins that complain about their own on demand gcd eating damage reduction to be clunky and awkward, even though the mp cost is far less prohibitive than burning 5 wrath stacks and you don't have to be in melee range of a target to activate it.

I'm not saying pld isn't in a rough spot right now, but if you're going to draw comparisons at least make them fair and educated ones, much like you were able to do when looking at the raging strikes situation.

[carbonx]

This is flat out not true, but it's widely perpetuated because hey, anything to make War look even better than it is and justify further buffs for pld, right?

I don't believe I referred to buffing PLD at all in this thread. Please quote me if I somehow posted it unknowingly in a fit of insanity.

Let's math for a second. All tanks have gear which puts them at 18k HP. Defiance puts the War at 22.5k HP, but increases healing by 25% to make up for the discrepancy in HP. Shield Oath/Grit keeps them at 18k HP, but grants them the additional boon of 20% mitigation. They take a hit of 8k. WAR will drop to 14.5k, or 64% of their HP. DRK/PLD will take 6.4k, dropping them to 11.6k, 64% of their HP.

The only real difference is that WARs don't instantly max their HP until they are healed, which you stated. But they have tools like Equilibrium and the ability to preplan Defiance use to counter this.