Thread: 4.1 and us tanks

So for you, using TBN during a TB or to protect a heal in pain or the other tank is useless? Making dps is good, but if you are tank, your first role is to make the team survive.
This is the kind a words that irritate the dev team: "dps dps dps dps dps..." and that's why they've made mob more powerfull and tank less powerfull.
Again, if you've the luck to raid with 7 other players with you are in symbiosis, it's not everyone's case, and as a DRK, I never hesitate to put a TBN on the other tank or another player in trouble.
If they die, then you'll have a bigger dps lost than using a TBN.
And you can't affirm they'll make Shake it off a support utility, and if they keep the same eye on the idea to make the team works together instead of just dps, WAR has a chance to be out.

WAR needs utility

While not wrong, I would like to point out WAR does have its share of utility, even if its not quite seen.
Holmgang is a mitigation CD, but its so darn useful, it leaves the other tank to save mitigation CDs for other stuff.

And the most obvious one being slashing resistance.
While SAMs and RDMs are the most common, and NINs still exist, there's plenty of groups, and times my raid group didnt have a NIN, and we never have a SAM, and we had to make our DRK OT switch to WAR OT (or MT for holmgang) just for the extra slashing resistance down. (since it wasnt clear enough, no, im not suggesting RDM has the slashing debuff. just that its one of 2, of the most popular DPS, showing that SAM is very likely to be in your group.)

The issue with utility, stems from speed run builds, where they usually already have stuff covered.

The oldschool path giving -10% raid dmg was nice, but still not going to make ppl pick WAR over another tank in that alone. (but it would honestly help cover the gap lost from "Cover" and "TBN" which WAR has nothing like, for similar function.)

Originally Posted by Aana

Better equivalency is Shelltron=IB=Blackest night. Short CD. 20ish% damage reduction for a very short period (1 hit, 5 sec, 6 sec) effective on all damage types. Usuable for virtually every tank buster in a fight and then some. Every tank has their 'always up' mini CD.

TBN I'd say is more closely comparable to clemency and equilibrium as the closest thing DRK has to an instant self heal. Dark mind on the other hand, in 3.0 was a much closer comparison to sheltron, as PLD was more the physical tank, being able to block physical attacks frequently with sheltron, while DRK was more the magical tank being able to block magic frequently with dark mind.

With 4.0 the PLD physical, DRK magical comparison went away. Yet DRKs cooldowns are kind of lacking in the defensive department compared to the other two, including shadow wall being the same cooldown as sentinel while being weaker, living dead being trash and dark mind remaining in a magical niche when sheltron was made universal.

How I would change Dark Mind, probably wouldnt make many people happy, but would be;
w/o Grit up, -10% physical dmg taken
with grit up, -20% physical dmg

w/o grit up, +DA, -10%magic dmg taken (physical mitigation is not present while magic defense is up)
with grit up, +DA, -20% magic dmg taken.

Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

If you have a NIN, Im pretty sure its better to have WAR put up the debuff, where as SAM puts it up by default. (Correct me if im wrong)

NIN slashing debuff is linked to their 18s dot, so its basically default.

-Revert Dark Passenger to HW.
-Dark Mind is now 10%/20% damage reduction, not magic specific.
-Shake it Off: 30% of next hit dealt as DoT damage. More realistically: Defiance only Equilibrium.(Not great but better than its current version.)
-Reprisal and TBN buffed to 6-8s purely for more consistency with server ticks.

Completely Unrealistic Wish: Each class has a native Rampart Equivalent.