DRK needs re-tuning/buffing.

[Chrono_Rising]

ya but it's also a block. you can't combine it with sheltron if additional mitigation is needed. they have the same effect. PoA would only out do Sheltron if you take a multihit to the face.

This is true, we'll have to wait for the exact timings of tank busters to determine if it will come down to this. But this actually puts paladin at a large advantage when it comes to multihit tankbusters. If we had multi hit physical tankbusters requiring layering two mitigations to survive, then paladin is definately at the advantage, dark would need to save two mitigations to achieve the same thing (rampart and shadow wall). And in that case poa and sentinel is still more mitigation. But this is super hypothetical at the moment.

However, such large damage I think the player base will likely just ultimate CD their way through it, and if it's frequent enough to require tank swaps then it will become less about individual mitigation and more about the party utility, and the most utility comes from double paladin lol.

[DWolfwood]

snip

I would say DRK beats WAR against Magical, but WAR beats DRK in physical. And yeah, PLD pretty much has the least self-mitigation going into Omega, but as OT, they could take another tank buster via Cover + Sheltron. Giving a MT Intervention and a quick Passage of Arms also seems really strong.

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

[SyzzleSpark]

I would say DRK beats WAR against Magical, but WAR beats DRK in physical. And yeah, PLD pretty much has the least self-mitigation going into Omega, but as OT, they could take another tank buster via Cover + Sheltron. Giving a MT Intervention and a quick Passage of Arms also seems really strong.

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

Given that shared tanking responsibilities is much more efficient, I wish they would differentiate tanks by DPS and utility rather than stuffing us into magical/physical mt/ot boxes. This is how PLD got screwed in 3.x and I don't think anyone wants a meta like that 2 expansions in a row.

[Lyth]

What's funny about Passage of Arms is that I'm pretty sure it's useless for Susano's mid-fight ultimate. I know the dev team mentioned how it was a really useful tool when testing out Omega, but I'm not seeing where as of now.

There are a lot of mechanics that we probably aren't aware of yet, but of what we've seen, Meteor is the obvious one. It hits hard enough in normal mode that I'd expect it to be a heavy hitter in savage, and having 100% block while it happens means that you don't have to worry about the follow up auto on the tank.

PLD has double the raid mitigation of the other tanks. In addition to Reprisal every 60 seconds, you have both Veil and PoA on a 120 second recast, letting you have some form of raid mitigation up every 30 seconds from the PLD alone. That's the same amount of mitigation that a DRK/WAR comp has access to combined, in the event than anyone actually bothers to run that comp. Even if you factor out PLD's dps advantage, you're still going to be seeing it locked in based on that massive amount of raid mitigation alone. It's kind of ludicrous.

...

I'm not really worried about DRK's personal mitigation. Most tankbuster sets can be mitigated with the level 50 cooldown kit of Rampart/Sentinel/Hallowed or their equivalents, as long as they're spaced a minimum of 35 seconds apart. Abilities like TBN are actually overkill, and the only potential problem that I can see is multi-hit physical tankbusters. There's no point comparing Shadowwall to something like Vengeance, as Vengeance is just flat out overtuned with Rampart available. The reason why I have an extreme dislike for Living Dead is because there's always at least one point each tier where you can't substitute in anything else, and it can be an unnecessary liability. A7S was one example of a fight where most people went PLD in spite of its dps disadvantage, in part because of the heavy physical damage, but also because Hallowed allowed you to completely ignore your tank for its duration. The tank invincibility moves are completely unbalanced, and have been for the past four years. Even if Hallowed was nerfed so that it only nullifies damage at 1 hp to prevent teams from cheesing stack mechanics, LD would still be inferior because of its arbitrary healer penalty. That's probably the single most longstanding balance issue in tankbuster mitigation.

Self-healing is a bit of a weird one. It's nice, especially if you're doing solo content like PoTD, but it's not mandatory to have this be perfectly balanced. I don't really mind if DRK doesn't have an equivalent to spamming 15k Clemency casts until they're at full health. Accessibility matters much more to me, and actually having some form of self healing out of tank stance, however small (like both PLD and WAR have) would be a good start.

With regards to dps, I feel like a lot of the discrepancy between PLD and the other two tanks was to ensure that PLD didn't get excluded for dps reasons alone. I expect that they were aiming for a marginally higher dps just to be safe, but significantly overshot the mark when players brought out the STR gear. I don't see them keeping both the massive utility buffs and the dps. The WAR/DRK dps balance is in a pretty good place, as long as they dial PLD back a bit. Besides, PLD has always had some fairly major advantages when it came to mitigation, even when they were viewed as less desirable. Perhaps this is an opportunity to properly re-balance it?

[DWolfwood]

Given that shared tanking responsibilities is much more efficient, I wish they would differentiate tanks by DPS and utility rather than stuffing us into magical/physical mt/ot boxes.

While I think this is true, I don't see any imbalance currently for the foreseeable future in terms of mitigation and utility. The imbalance lies in DPS and WAR's need for some QoL improvement.

snip

I'm not contesting PLD's utility in raid whatsoever. I'm merely pointing out self-mitigation. Passage of Arms does little more than what Sheltron can do, Divine Veil doesn't affect the PLD, etc, etc. It's pretty obvious they're the best equipped in terms of utility though.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

My expectations at this point are that they will buff drk and not nerf the others, but you seem to suggest/believe otherwise. If PLD's DPS and WAR's cool downs are overtuned/need dialing back, what is the argument for not simply buffing DRK?

Too many people suggest zany ideas SE has given us no precedence for. I don't trust SE to balance anything through nerfs tbh.

[ChenDynasty]

Blood Price should have a defensive mitigation added to it.

Sole Survivor should have a MCH Wildfire mechanic change, that compounds damage into healing at its expiration -- It's currently not viable for raid encounters with such a long CD and useless on a boss-only encounter.

Abyssal Drain/Unleash should be re-worked -- There's no sense in having two AoE Enmity abilities that hardly cost more/less than each other.

Shadow Wall -- Compare to Vengeance = 1 min longer CD, Same Reduction, No Additional Effect, Lasts 5s shorter -- How did this fall through the cracks?

[SyzzleSpark]

Blood Price should have a defensive mitigation added to it.

Sole Survivor should have a MCH Wildfire mechanic change, that compounds damage into healing at its expiration -- It's currently not viable for raid encounters with such a long CD and useless on a boss-only encounter.

Abyssal Drain/Unleash should be re-worked -- There's no sense in having two AoE Enmity abilities that hardly cost more/less than each other.

Shadow Wall -- Compare to Vengeance = 1 min longer CD, Same Reduction, No Additional Effect, Lasts 5s shorter -- How did this fall through the cracks?

Blood Price should absolutely have like a -10% damage taken added to it. This would make it a more accurate equivalent to Blood Weapon and help DRK in between tankbusters.

The sole Survivor idea is interesting. I think I would rather see that compounded into a shield instead of healing, simply because the healing would likely be overhealing because of the timing element.

The AD/Unleash bit is the only one I disagree with, since they do have different purposes and one doesn't actually wholly replace the other. I wouldn't mind something piddly like the PVP bind being added to Unleash but these skills are fine and the nerf to Unleash has barely any effect on the job at all in spite of people's complaints. The nerf to Dark Passenger however...

Shadow Wall - total agreement. This skill needs to have something to make it stand out between the other tanks' equivalents. Right now its strictly inferior. And if this was balanced around TBN, they need to dial back TBN so that we are not so excessively over-reliant on it.

[Mattiux]

By now Dark knight got an inferior kit if compared withe the Paladins one. Ignoring the shared skill we got this situation:

PLD
Sentinel
CD: 180s Reduces damage taken by 40%.
Duration: 10s

Drk
Shadow wall
Cd: 180s Reduces damage taken by 30%.
Duration: 10s




PLD
Cover
Take all damage intended for another party member, suffering only 80% of it.

Drk
No party utility comparable with cover





PLD
Bullwark: Increases block rate by 60%.

DRK
Dark Mind: Reduces magic vulnerability by 15%.
Can only be executed when succumbing to the Darkside.
Dark Arts Effect: Increases magic vulnerability reduction to 30%
Cost us resources to work full potential, while only lowering magic damage. Block rate now works for both damage





PLD
Hallowed Ground: Renders you impervious to most attacks.

DRK
Living dead When HP is reduced to 0 while under the effect of Living Dead, instead of becoming KO'd, your status will change to Walking Dead.
Living Dead Duration: 10s
While under the effect of Walking Dead, most attacks will not lower your HP below 1. If, before the Walking Dead timer runs out, HP is 100% restored, the effect will fade. If 100% is not restored, you will be KO'd.
This is Hilarious. HG plain reduce all damage to 0. No downside,
at the the end of it you are full HP and healthy.


PLD
Sheltron: Blocks the next attack.

Divine Veil:Upon HP recovery via healing magic cast by self or a party member, a protective barrier is cast on all party members within a radius of 15 yalms.
Barrier Effect: Prevents damage up to 10% of your maximum HP

Clemency:Restores target's HP.
Cure Potency: 1200
Additional Effect: Restores to self 50% of HP restored to target if target is a party member

Passage of arms: Increases block rate by 100% and creates a designated area in a cone behind you in which party members will only suffer 85% of all damage inflicted.


Drk
No party or self utility comparable with those




PLD
Intervention: Reduces target party member's damage taken by 10%.
Additional Effect: Increases damage reduction by another 50% of the effect of Rampart or Sentinel if either are active.

Drk
The Blackest NightCreates a barrier around self that absorbs damage totaling 20% of your maximum HP, or around a party member that absorbs damage totaling 10% of your maximum HP.

The only skill ahead in the drk kit. However using it during trash is a huge waste of mana

Didn't mentioned Dark passanger blind effect 'cause the mana cost isn't affordable.

i can deal with a dowside either in the party utility, mitigation or dps. But right now we are behind in all three sides.

[MixZ]

Read the OP fully and you'll realize why TBN doesn't make up for what DRK is missing.

In Susano Ex for instance - In between Stormsplitters, you have literally nothing but TBN to mitigate damage, because Rampart and Shadow Wall must be saved to pair with TBN for Stormsplitter, and other than that you have... Convalescence? Reprisal?

This is even worse if you wanna tank out of Grit and you literally just have your pants down in between TBN casts. Like I said, the over-reliance on TBN in between things like Rampart and Shadow Wall feels awful.

You don't need to stack Shadow Wall and Rampart to survive Stormsplitter. Just one of them and using TBN along with Reprisal is more than enough to take the hit and then when you are up again for the tank buster just replace Shadow Wall with Rampart along with TBN and Reprisal again. Then just repeat the cycle since Shadow Wall will be off cool down when you are up again to take the hit.

Then the only sort of real CD you need during the fight in between is the AoE magic damage ability which you can use Dark Mind with DA and sometimes you won't even take damage. The rest I still have Anticipation just in case something goes wrong.