An In Depth look at Dark Knight - Lvl 70 Raiding Guide

[Emiin]

I've edited the guide to make a nod to the extra math involved, but it still won't be included.

While your Souleater math displayed checks out on paper, again, the 15 Bloodspillers required to enable that potency loss is something that needs to be either fully considered, or ignored. It's not fully a loss until you lose a Bloodspiller, and at that point you're overusing TBN. Until that 15th TBN usage, it's a gain in most scenarios with proper blood/mana pooling and conservation.

And even then, the entirety of math can only be expressed when you know how the fight ends,how much blood you have at the end, and what GCD you ended on. There's simply too many variables to include Blood gauge in every single TBN usage.

Delirium gains marks when used alongside raid CDs, specifically the longer ones such as card draws, Embolden, etc - buffs that last past the traditional Blood Weapon duration. Increased marks when it's used alongside a potion.

[Lyth]

Delirium is a dps gain, but there comes a question of how much of a dps gain it represents over Bloodspiller. The difference is contingent on your ability to get 16-23 seconds of continuous uptime. Certain mechanics interfere with that, which results in some interesting on-the-fly decision making. It's a bit of a lengthy tangent, though, and I'm still formulating my thoughts on it.

I would say, for the average player, it's enough to know that TBN is a minor dps loss which should not deter you from using defensively where you see fit.

[Diamondawg]

As a level 20 glad I feel like I have more than enough experience to critique this guide...but I don't since is good but it does make me think I should be looking at PLD instead of DRK :'D

[Ghanbaatar]

Noob question I'm sure but I honestly don't know the answer. On the overview of the different openers at the same point in all three is the oGCD ability with a blue sword lookinging icon that's used before a DA. What ability is that? I'm only a level 54 DRK so far so it might be something I'm just not familiar with is all.

Regardless of my inability to know an ability this guide has been VERY helpful. Thank you so much for this from an aspiring OT!

[TouchandFeel]

snip

From what I can tell, it is Delerium but is being displayed with the old (outdated) icon.

[Lyth]

I don't think that anyone here is making the claim that TBN is always a dps loss. The point of contention here was that it is not always a dps gain, which is an erroneous conclusion that came out of ignoring the blood gain on Souleater.

[Quor]

I don't think that anyone here is making the claim that TBN is always a dps loss. The point of contention here was that it is not always a dps gain, which is an erroneous conclusion that came out of ignoring the blood gain on Souleater.

No, I don't mean that to include this thread, just my personal experience. Here's the thread I referenced earlier, linked directly to the post I made regarding my theoretical TBN vs. DA usage.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...44#post4319644

Overall, to me as a WAR (DRK isn't 70 yet), it seems the best way to use TBN as an "offensive" skill would be as a supplement to your team and your blood gauge, as long as you're not wasting blood by over-capping. The true gain from TBN is the mitigation it provides. The blood is just a neat bonus.

[Chrono_Rising]

No, I don't mean that to include this thread, just my personal experience. Here's the thread I referenced earlier, linked directly to the post I made regarding my theoretical TBN vs. DA usage.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...44#post4319644

Overall, to me as a WAR (DRK isn't 70 yet), it seems the best way to use TBN as an "offensive" skill would be as a supplement to your team and your blood gauge, as long as you're not wasting blood by over-capping. The true gain from TBN is the mitigation it provides. The blood is just a neat bonus.

Yes, and that is exactly what the post above the one you linked said and the post below. Also the response to your original post which started the discussion cited it as a potential loss outside of grit. Most people agree with you that it can be a gain, but are pointing out that it can be a loss as well.

The problem people have with it is the dark kit wants us to use this frequently for little to no gain when it risks a fairly large amount of mana. Sometimes it's a small gain, sometimes a small loss, sometimes a large loss. As Syzzle said if you took away the blood and mana effects it would change nothing at all except that we would be able to put it up on cooldown.

The issue which people had in the linked thread is that dark knight mitigation makes us enter a risk game With a low reward unless you are in defensive stance. No other tank has a low number of eHP modifiers and has to enter a risk management when they use mitigation.

[Shinkyo]

So far from what i have been reading about DRK on other forums. you are the only person that says to not use TBN.

The TBN controversy has been there since day one of SB and there has been many discussions about it.
It's a dps gain under certain conditions (mainly party buffs) and a dps loss under other ones.
It's definitely a complicated topic, similar it MCH pre-4.05 Overheat.

As for LD, describing it as ~20 invul is just wrong.
Counting the LD period as "No healer attention" period is like saying that Holmgang can be a 30s invul if it take 25s of damage to bring a WAR to close to 0hp.
In that case, holgang can potentially stretch the "No healer attention" a lot longer than LD since there's no commitment to die in the next 10s...

Great guide still!

[aleph_null]

Yeah you can't say that LD gives you 20s of no healer attention. If you need LD for time T for a tank buster, the earliest you can go into walking dead is T-10s (or T-9s if you take into account benediction animation delay). Even if you pop LD at T-19s your healer still needs to make sure that you don't die and trigger walking dead before T-9s, so the 10s range from T-19s to T-9s is NOT a period of no healer attention. The only benefit LD has over HG is that you can pop it early for multiple tank busters and not worry about tight timings like final punch + beam combo in a8s or back to back tank busters from general's time add in a12s. Those stuffs span 7-8s so using LD gives you a lot more leeway in terms of timing compared to HG.