#BringBackHeavenswardReprisal

[Nivarea]

I don't see how bringing back the old reprisal is a problem concerning balance. I've seen that some fear that it would make DRK mendatory, but I doubt it would. I mean, PLD have a constant chance of blocking hits with their shield fot free, and nobody see it as a problem. They can use passage of arms and Divine Veil to help soak big splash damage, and it's really rare that both of em are on CD when that happens, and EVEN in the case they are, there's still role action's reprisal. Concerning WAR, they have Shake it off, which got a relatively short CD, and on their personnal level, for progression, remember that Defiance has a passive augmentation of parry the more gauge they got. It's not a great utility, WAR is rarely at max gauge, but it's here.

Old Reprisal was the equivalent of Paladin's shield in HW, explaining why they got less mitigation tools than other tanks. It can't be applied when the boss is not targetable, and it has not a 100% uptime, because of its CD and the problem of activating it with a proc. So really, it's already a well balanced skill, and would actually make using TBN as an offtank worth it everytime, contrary of what it is today, where it's not clear if it's worth the cost or not.

And the problem with DPS is not really one, because DRK is already lagging behind in this regard. The idea is to help mitigating fluff damage, which is one of the biggest problem with the mitigation tools we got as of now, the DPS gain is a nice bonus, akin to Shield Swipe for exemple, and got a similar situation wher it procs from blocks, and can be triggered with shieltron.

[Valdegarde]

One thing I'd like to point out is that using TBN to proc Reprisal for a given attack has some implications. In many situations you would have TBN up for a really big attack, OR Reprisal, not both. This I believe is a good thing and has more balance, letting one or the other take care of the myriad amounts of damage that occurs BETWEEN TBN usage, not in addition to TBN. Unless I'm misunderstanding the way this proposed relationship works, it wouldn't be an issue to not use it on cooldown for DPS anyway, considering the duration would act as minor mitigation until your next TBN is ready again.
Using, say, Halicarnassus as an example (mostly since I'm learning her on Dark Knight now), you might want TBN broken on the Critical Hit, which procs Reprisal to help a little bit with subsequent auto attacks and maybe a dimensional wave or two. I don't believe this is overpowered in any way and makes Dark Knight more competitive for a tank spot than it is currently.

[Crater]

One thing I'd like to point out is that using TBN to proc Reprisal for a given attack has some implications. In many situations you would have TBN up for a really big attack, OR Reprisal, not both.

This is a good point. Under the proposed change, you wouldn't be able to combine TBN and Reprisal for a particular attack unless you A) used Parry to proc it (again, it would be cool if Anticipation were an actual valuable skill), or B) you know the fight timing well enough that you can put up a TBN 15+ seconds before the attack you want to mitigate, have it pop, throw Reprisal up, and then have TBN come off cooldown again during the 20s Reprisal duration.

That actually requires a pretty high level of fight awareness and a good sense of timing, and I think it would be a good thing if that sort of knowledge were actually rewarded, which I think that the stacked combination of Reprisal and TBN would accomplish.

[SyzzleSpark]

This is a good point. Under the proposed change, you wouldn't be able to combine TBN and Reprisal for a particular attack unless you A) used Parry to proc it (again, it would be cool if Anticipation were an actual valuable skill), or B) you know the fight timing well enough that you can put up a TBN 15+ seconds before the attack you want to mitigate, have it pop, throw Reprisal up, and then have TBN come off cooldown again during the 20s Reprisal duration.

IIRC Reprisal's proc duration was around 7-ish~ seconds, maybe a bit less. So you could easily stagger your actual hitting of the button such that [TBN used->4s later TBN pops->wait 4s hit Reprisal->TBN now has only 7s left on recast]. So I think stacking them would be easier than it initially seems.

On a less related note, this was shared on Reddit, and the response, as fitting for Reddit, has been lukewarm. But I wanted to reiterate the words of a user there that have been screaming in my head throughout all these buff threads every time I see someone tell us that our suggestions or OP or too much or that we shouldn't have xyz buff:

"DRKs need to stop being nebbish and timid, shuffling their feet and staring at the floor while going "Well gee guys, maybe we shouldn't be good at anything, it's not fair to those other tanks who are way better than us at everything..."
It's okay to have strong abilities. It's okay to have very strong abilities. It's a good thing for every class to have abilities that make people think "I really wish we had one of those in our party". Warrior has skills like that. Paladin has skills like that. Ninja has skills like that, and so does Dragoon, and so does Bard and so does Machinist, and so do all three healing classes.
Dark Knight needs at least one more skill like that, and bringing back Reprisal would pretty much fit the bill."

[Mycow8me]

I think i see what you mean and it would make a good dps increase and make people want to use TBN more. The question is, would it function well as a party utility and to me that's a 10% mitigation party utility that you can't use when you may "want" to use it.

It would be great for a DPS gain on DRKs and we currently have the lowest amount of skills among the tanks so having one gained back to us would not hurt in the slightest. I don't think the -10% outgoing damage is necessary but I wouldn't complain if SE found a way to balance this and the community doesn't develop some kind of "must have" for it. I would hope we get a true party mitigation tool of some kind though that we can use freely at our discretion at some point if not now, maybe 5.0...

[SummerScorcher]

I love the idea, it's the awesome Reprisal from 3.x and makes sure you're not forced to main-tank-- unless you're in an alliance raid, since you can't use TBN on players other than your party members. I think to synergize even more with this reimplementation, TBN should be usable on players that are not in your party, much like Clemency. In Rabanastre I (too)often see players who don't move to the other side when Hashmal does his fiery arm attack, and I wish I could use TBN to hopefully save them (but I can't because it doesn't work on alliance members). In a situation like that it could be used to prepare your Reprisal for when the boss jumps back into the arena.

[InfiniDragon]

Nah, seems to be the opposite direction devs want to go. Reprisal is useful now because it's only for raid mitigation. Give DRK back reprisal w/ damage it will be used for DPS instead of for raid mitigation. Kinda defeats the purpose..

I agree there needs to be changes but I don't see this doing the job. I'd rather them just give DRK their own off-GCD filler dps move than try to re-purpose reprisal again.

I see what you mean, but I think it's mainly there to cover DRK's lacking mitigation rather than just to add party utility (even though this would definitely also do that).

Besides, if it doing damage is the concern (leading to it being used for damage over mitigation) they could just do my idea (make TBN debuff the one that breaks the shield) without damage and add the needed DPS somewhere else.

(Although I know people would rather have Crater's version because Reprisal looks awesome haha)

[Mycow8me]

I'm wondering if a short vuln up would be more beneficial instead of a -10% mitigation, save this kind of thing for an actual party utility skill. You said it yourself, its an act of retaliation. Maybe instead of an outgoing damage debuff we get some kind of attack power buff to go with our next bloodspiller which can be increased even more with dark arts. There's lots of options but damn, I sure would like to have that animation/sound combo as a skill regardless.

[SyzzleSpark]

I think concerns about this being overpowered from a raid mitigation standpoint come from a well-meaning place, but are largely unfounded.

3.x Reprisal was never ever considered overpowered, but the fact that it was stackable with Delirium and Storm's Path (which were also stackable with eachother) made it so that your raid group could rock a collective pseudo tank stance if they wanted to. Reprisal all by itself its definitely good and useful but certainly nothing that is unduly over-centralizing, and primarily works behind the scenes, whereas party shields like DV/SiO are on the frontlines mitigating the big scripted hits.

Concerns of having to balance raid damage around this change to me miss the point entirely and were mysteriously absent when the Shake if Off buff arrived. Before you had only one tank providing AoE party mitigation, now you have 2, and they are easily stackable. So with that change, there is already a standing need to re-tune incoming raid boss DPS compared to what it would have been were WAR not providing this new source of mitigation. If anything now is the perfect time to implement this change.

[Daniel_Fury]

The DRKBoner I will have when using this new Reprisal on Halicarnassus' Dimensional Wave spam.