Thread: Regarding no DRK adjustments in 4.1

Originally Posted by Chrono_Rising

Actually its not a rebranding, dark knights have been complaining about TBN and trying to get the community to see why it isn't such a great utility since launch. You are right, it is primarly used on the MT, which when anything is paired with dark knight is most likely the dark knight since both tanks do more damage, and in paladin's case has more utility, when in the OT role. So 90% of the time TBN on the MT is actually mitigation. If you are an aggressive main tank (I would be one example), TBN fills the role of mitigation we've lost but to get that I have to sacrifice dps to mitigate as well as a warrior or paladin in my role. If you are a defensive MT TBN is actually really good mitigation since it is a dps gain and mitigation gain in tank stance. This has been the focus of the TBN debate since launch, but it is taking on a new form about the utility.

When used in utility form (dark OT shielding an MT) the utility comes at a dps lose to the dark knight, sub in a paladin into that spot and if there is a hole in the mitigation of the MT that needs filling they can likely do it, sometimes less well and sometimes better than the dark would have and for little to no cost to themselves. Yes, in this case it is a utility that could potentially be useful, but remember this is costing you nearly 25% of your total mana pool, most of this is refunded in blood but its short by a few potency. Then we need to ask ourselves what are we shielding?

Shielding autos is sometimes risky. Healers may not be expecting the TBN and just heal the auto attack damage like it isn't there, think like parry. In which case the utility isn't utilized either because the healer wasn't paying attention or it was just unexpected. So now we've lost dps and because the utility went unnoticed the utility did nothing.

Ok, so maybe I should shield my MT only for busters and large attacks. In this case we are buying the MT 5.5k extra HP. This either saved their life (not likely if they forgot to mitigate 5.5k likely won't save them, and if they did mitigate they are probably around 10k or higher), or it didn't save their life and now need massive healing to get back to safe level of HP. Therein is the issues, healer's have very large heals, 5k is relatively small relative to how much must be healed, so usually this gets washed away.

I notice you keep bringing up these other mitigations/utilities. I'd like to give some uses to these so that maybe we can see why they are very good.

Why is adlo great? Because adlo can be spread to the party and buffed to enhance the shields to double TBN strength. And if it crits we are looking at nearly 6 times the strength of TBN (Highest my raid scholar in shielding hit was 34k and spread it to the party. It was a 17k crit adlo gaining a double bonus bringing it to 34k).

Cover - "only" 20% mitigation. Outside tank busters this is mitigating around the same as TBN for its 12 second duration. With tank busters this is mitigating more than TBN would have. The next standard usage is suppose your current MT messes up and is in critical condition. Healers hearts drop, but wait, your OT covers them with their full HP pool for 12 seconds letting you recover from the mess up, for 12 seconds you can give a person in critical HP an additional HP source of 55k and give the healers a moment to breath. TBN doesn't match this at all.

Here is a free off label use of cover. Go into an instance where tempered will works and cover some one with tempered will active. The person you cover will not be knocked back nor will you. This is particularly useful in v4s where you can cover say a bard and keep everyone close to the healer for the upcoming mechanic which requires people to be at full hp. Bard does not have a knock back prevention, but it can with paladin. Sophia is another example where you can cover a person with tempered will and they can continue to cast and attack when the rest of the party cannot. This move has a scope of abilities.

Why is pallisade good? Its free 20% mitigation, no one is trading anything for it, it is just there.

These moves are useful outside of just helping the MT to mitigate. They help the party as well, and none of them cost anything, except adlo's mp cost. TBN shines as dark knight mitigation but only in one stance. As a utility it leaves alot to be desired. However, warrior was in a similar, yet worse, state of really having nothing but extra dps. Giving warrior a utility that could be useful, we still need to wait for final details of course, really highlights how dark knight will fade. With less dps, less mitigation, and a lesser utility than two tanks, well why bring a dark knight?

TBN isnt perfect. I said it in the post you quoted. I'm quite aware it has issues risking all that MP without guaranteed return, has a very narrow window, etc etc. Even suggested some simple adjustments that would vastly improve it. I play Drk as well. Increase TBN's reliability for refund and it will automagically be significantly more useful than it is simply due to its absurdly low CD, no stance requirement, and large shield. Drk is MT over war BECAUSE of TBN. If war could IB/TBN/Shelltron while in deliverance we would MT DPS stance more too. The fact that it is such a powerful mitigation tool that is not tied to stance is (yet another) frequently dismissed trait to drks tanking. TBN is an obscenely flexible ability. It is Shelltron+intervention combined into 1 ability. Sure you cant use it on yourself and another tank simultaniously, but at half a bar that is rare for pld to be able to do both simultaniously as well. All 3 have no real cost except time.

In addition war's shield will cost CDs. If were in defiance its great. Eat any of those free IBs, 25% more HP as well. Just like TBN gets really sweet in grit. But outside tank stance both of these abilities will cost more and be less effective.

Drk only needs a minor tweak to TBN and it will be awesome. The ability does so much and is so flexible AND is a cornerstone of drk for both the mitigation gap and the utility gap that it would be VERY easy to bump it up to much and throw a lot of things out of wack. The flexibility and central nature of this skill should induce caution in tweaking. If it gave blood upon use, lasted a few more seconds, was a couple % stronger, and was a guranteed DPS gain for using we would be having a very different discussion. The actual numbers between where we are and that position is very thin. Drk isnt broken beyond belief. Its core ability is slightly undertuned as it covers their mitigation gap, utility gap, and impacts the DPS gap. Jack of all trades skills are very touchy when it comes to balance. SE isnt oblivious. But time and care must be taken so they dont fuck it up.

Originally Posted by Eliroth-Kaminari

I realy hate ppl who say war has no Raid utility,
War has more raid utility then DRK.
TBN is only skill Dark can use on someone else.
Slashing debuff affect atleast 4/8 ppl in raid in dps wise.
Just because Trick atack make you have ninja in party does not make that war has skill this equal or bether then TBN when it come to utility as hole.
One day in 5,0 they brake ninja by nefing trickatack or some balance team find ninja op and nef shit out of Trick attack. After that war has instant bether posision in raid group then DRK based allredy on skills we have today.

Silly question, but on the note of how WAR brings slashing debuff.
How broken / a bad an idea would it be to augment something with DRK to add like a magic resist down debuff to enemies? I feel like this might've been suggested before, but what if, iuno, dark passenger had it's dark arts'd ability modified to make the mages deal more damage?

Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

Silly question, but on the note of how WAR brings slashing debuff.
How broken / a bad an idea would it be to augment something with DRK to add like a magic resist down debuff to enemies? I feel like this might've been suggested before, but what if, iuno, dark passenger had it's dark arts'd ability modified to make the mages deal more damage?

that would actually be sweet I don't see how this can "break" anything as you will mostly have the 2 healers and 1 caster in the group, it will definetly bring some of that "utility" people complain. plus I don't believe there's an actually magic debuff in the game if i'm not mistaken. regardless it would be nice for ark to have it.

Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

Silly question, but on the note of how WAR brings slashing debuff.
How broken / a bad an idea would it be to augment something with DRK to add like a magic resist down debuff to enemies? I feel like this might've been suggested before, but what if, iuno, dark passenger had it's dark arts'd ability modified to make the mages deal more damage?

I think if one tank brings a dps utility it becomes impossible to balance tanks, as a group will naturally choose the option which buffs their damage. If all tanks bring this utility then we are still at the same spot we are now. The most natural thing would be to get the sole survivor pvp buff, but again, this would make tanks impossible to balance unless war and paladin were given similar options.

Yet Brotherhood and Deep Meditation are already a thing.

Before these 4.1 SMN adjustments I think a magic vuln debuff on DRK would have been interesting in combating no-caster comps, but with what SMN is looking like that may not such an issue anymore. Would add to PLD/DRK comp too.

Utility: PLD > DRK > WAR
Mitigation: Dark = PLD = WAR
Dps: War > drk > pld

And this will automatically force WAR/DRK comps, because nobody take tanks for their utility. We need roughly equal utility/dps/mitigation but different playstyles.

I would accept all equal in all ways as well. I just son’t See how we could have that with all the utility currently on paladin.