Quote Originally Posted by Crater View Post
No, you need to read it more closely.

Despair is applied when TBN's shield is applied. The stack check is performed when the shield breaks.
So it would look like:

TBN 1: 1800 cost, 40 blood (Gain)
TBN 2: 2400 cost, 50 blood (Neutral)
TBN 3+: Loss to greater loss

This is somehow...not significantly better. If I had to choose between these two, I'd ask if it could just remain the same. It is a layer to a system that doesn't do much, but as I stated, punish someone for needing their mitigation tool.

Here's the thing. If it's a DPS gain, people are going to do it. That's just the way it works. So the first TBN in the sequence is fine. It'll get used, people will get the blood, get a dps gain, and be happy, then not touch it again for 15 seconds. Until you start to need it more than once every 15 seconds. And that's where we run into the problem. Mitigation isn't something you want to have to juggle into your DPS rotation. That's why TBN is neutral. You use it as you need it, and if you use it right, you basically go on as you were without issue. If you don't need it, you Dark Arts. If it's a DPS gain for it to break, then people are going to use it to gain that damage, not to effectively mitigate.

This is why Despair is a trap. It's disguised as a DPS gain, but it's effectively no different than just buffing bloodspiller with TBN now. It's only a gain once every 15 seconds. It punishes you for needing the shield more often than that, with enough of a punishment that would discourage use of it outside those windows, and if an encounter existed that required a Dark Knight to maintain TBN through Despair, it puts them in a worse position than now, because the other tanks don't need to do that for their Shelltrons.

You would get the same defensive coverage by simply reducing TBN's cooldown as it is now, forego Despair, and slightly boost Bloodspiller and Quietus potency for a minor DPS boost.