Dear Development Team: Tank Balance

[Chrono_Rising]

Dark Knight is not balanced. To be clear, this is not about meta, this is about offering something of value to a raid team that is unique. You have responded to our feedback that it is your feeling tanks are in good shape, the response is greatly appreciated after months of silence and I ask that you expand on this and continue the conversation.

It is my proposition that Dark Knight is not balanced with respect to warrior and paladin on three fronts: DPS, Mitigation, Utility.

Damage: In both the main tank role and off tank role, dark knight appears to have lower damage output in practice and theory when compared to paladin and warrior. The difference appears to be smaller when in the main tank role, but appears to be larger in the off tank role. On its own the difference appears to be smaller, but noticeable.

Utility: Dark Knight brings a single unique utility, The Blackest Night. This utility can be used frequently, and nearly breaks even with its own cost. The issue with The Blackest Night is that it comes with an inherent risk of not breaking, and this is not made up for with any reward for executing the move properly. As a utility, if it can be executed on cooldown it will mitigate about as much damage as Divine Veil or Shake it off, but has an accumulated damage loss for the dark knight.

These three skills are not comparable, because two of the three moves are raid wide mitigation. Two tanks having raid wide mitigation is a reason against bringing a dark knight which does not offer any type of equivalent for dealing with raid wide damage. Especially in raids with lots of raid wide damage like V4S.

The main gain of The Blackest Night is to give healers back a GCD. However, given the semi unpredictable nature of when it will go up you need to be in communication with your healers as to when it will be used, which is not always the case in pug groups and so this ends up getting treated like parry -- heal like it isn’t there. This removes value from the skill.

Mitigation: Dark Knight has the lowest uptime on mitigation of any tank in the game right now. In In tank stance, Paladin has 3 defensive cooldowns and passive blocking; Warrior has 4 defensive cooldowns, a parry bonus, and lifesteal built into its rotation; Dark Knight has 3 defensive cooldowns and lifesteal. But our mitigation is universally weaker than the equivalents on Warrior and Paladin without investing more of our lower dps into defense.

In tank stance, at max gear level it appears that The Blackest Night no longer breaks to auto attacks in many raids, which negates its short cooldown advantage because it cannot be used frequently, meaning it has to be saved for cleaves or busters where it doesn’t always mitigate enough to keep us alive, meaning it must be paired with another mitigation anyway. Paladin's shelltron is a huge amount of mitigation at max gear level, 26% of an attack blocked, and on tank busters in savage this move outperforms the blackest night by a nice margin and comes as no dps cost to the paladin. Assuming we are in tank stance comparing this to inner beast is a mixed bag, sometimes the blackest night mitigates more, sometimes Inner Beast mitigates more, but Inner beast in tank stance is definitely a boost to warrior's dps and gives more lifesteal. Out of tank stance I would compare The Blackest Night to Thrill of battle, except that Thrill has 4 times the duration and synergy with damaging moves for warrior.

Shadow wall has the mitigation of vengeance, but is weaker in terms of duration and cooldown. The higher uptime means that vengeance will mitigate more than 125% more damage than what shadow wall does over the duration of the encounter while also granting a counter attack for the warrior, I’m not sure what this is meant to balance out with in the dark knight kit. Maybe this is meant to balance out with Warrior’s stance, but this makes things worse if we choose to tank without our tank stance. The situation is not as bad with Sentinel, but we still mitigate less here 10% is not huge, but it is worth noting.

Raw intuition has a higher up time and mitigates more damage than dark mind, and Bulwark has half the uptime of dark mind but mitigates about twice as much and ignores the type of damage.

All of the above assumes we use tank stance.

If we assume a low uptime on tank stance, as many players drop their tank stance for a significant portion of the fight, we have the same issues, but it is made worse as no tank has a defensive buff when out of tank stance. Warrior loses one of its mitigations in dropping its stance and a parry bonus, but retains its combo life steal and its higher uptime on mitigation, Dark Knight does not lose mitigation but does lose an avenue for dealing with incoming damage in its lifesteal being grit locked, The Blackest Night will break on autos (with great care in our timing to catch two autoattacks) but no longer offers a reward since without grit it is a nearly break even (risk without reward). Paladin does not lose much in tanking in sword oath, it even fills their gauge faster than in shield oath.

Nothing on its own is so massive as to make Dark Knight not viable, but all three of these together make Dark Knight undesirable to run in raids.

Given the above, I don’t see how dark knight is not in need of adjustments and can be claimed to be balanced with warrior and paladin. Can you please elaborate on how you think Dark Knight is balanced?

[Daniel_Fury]

I agree with this post mainly bar the TBN on auto attacks. In all savage raids and shinryu, you can mitigate auto attacks with TBN with a full tenacity set at max ilvl. The timing is to pop TBN as soon as you take an auto attack and it should break providing you don't have another mitigation CD active or have grit activated and providing the boss will use 2 more auto attacks.

Even if you choose to use TBN like this you will still suffer a total DPS loss for the encounter. I do find that using TBN like this (especially in Shinryu) allows DRKS defense to be incredibly powerful.

[Chrono_Rising]

I agree with this post mainly bar the TBN on auto attacks. In all savage raids and shinryu, you can mitigate auto attacks with TBN with a full tenacity set at max ilvl. The timing is to pop TBN as soon as you take an auto attack and it should break providing you don't have another mitigation CD active or have grit activated and providing the boss will use 2 more auto attacks.

Even if you choose to use TBN like this you will still suffer a total DPS loss for the encounter. I do find that using TBN like this (especially in Shinryu) allows DRKS defense to be incredibly powerful.

I think I probably wasn't clear enough. In my post I am talking about using TBN with grit. When we talk about tank defense I tried to make an distinction between where tank stance is used and not used but I think I failed. I'll try to edit the OP to be more clear.

I know V1s and Shinryu are on the boarder of where the shield will break. I do not have a full tenacity set and take on average 6.5k damage in both turns without tank stance, in tank stance (which many players also use) the shield will not break even with proper timing to catch two autos.

[Ekimmak]

I agree with this post mainly bar the TBN on auto attacks. In all savage raids and shinryu, you can mitigate auto attacks with TBN with a full tenacity set at max ilvl. The timing...

Forget anything about timing. You can't claim something will work if you just do it at a right moment, because this is an online game. You can't ever depend on gcds or auto-attacks to line up correctly.

[Daniel_Fury]

Forget anything about timing. You can't claim something will work if you just do it at a right moment, because this is an online game. You can't ever depend on gcds or auto-attacks to line up correctly.

It's a skill with a 5 second duration. If the enemy uses 2 auto attacks in 4 seconds and it breaks then yes, timing is neccessary. Timing your defensive skills to make the most out of it is part of tanking efficiently and if you know the fight well enough, it's child play to know the boss will use 2 autos after X spell has been cast.

[Daniel_Fury]

I think I probably wasn't clear enough. In my post I am talking about using TBN with grit. When we talk about tank defense I tried to make an distinction between where tank stance is used and not used but I think I failed. I'll try to edit the OP to be more clear.

I know V1s and Shinryu are on the boarder of where the shield will break. I do not have a full tenacity set and take on average 6.5k damage in both turns without tank stance, in tank stance (which many players also use) the shield will not break even with proper timing to catch two autos.

No worries, this makes more sense. In Grit, with capped gear it's near impossible to break on autos.

[Ekimmak]

It's a skill with a 5 second duration. If the enemy uses 2 auto attacks in 4 seconds and it breaks then yes, timing is neccessary. Timing your defensive skills to make the most out of it is part of tanking efficiently and if you know the fight well enough, it's child play to know the boss will use 2 autos after X spell has been cast.

Yeah, but I can't rely on my own connection to time things that precisely.

I know that if I use Awareness 15 seconds before I pull Halicanarsus, it'll be up for her first critical hit, and off cooldown just in time for her second. I know that if I use it before her second Queenly Waltz in library phase, it'll still be up for her critical hit. What I can't do is time a TBN to take two auto-attacks, because an auto-attack will always land before or after the auto hits. It's just not going to happen, and I don't think it's fair to for people to say otherwise.

[Daniel_Fury]

Yeah, but I can't rely on my own connection to time things that precisely.

I know that if I use Awareness 15 seconds before I pull Halicanarsus, it'll be up for her first critical hit, and off cooldown just in time for her second. I know that if I use it before her second Queenly Waltz in library phase, it'll still be up for her critical hit. What I can't do is time a TBN to take two auto-attacks, because an auto-attack will always land before or after the auto hits. It's just not going to happen, and I don't think it's fair to for people to say otherwise.

To be fair, that sounds like a dropping connection issue and no amount of help is going to save you on an active mitigation job.

I'm a player with a ping above 200ms so believe me when I understand but I found out how to do it with practice, I believe others can do the same.

I use the TBN as soon as i see the auto attack damage hits me. It won't block that auto, but if I know 2 more are coming (due to fight awareness) it will break.

If you are losing packets in your connection (which I assume is what you're referring to) then even boss cast times will be spontaneous and throw TBN off.

[Valdegarde]

I still find it absolutely insanely hilarious that Dark Knight relies on a method of tanking that needs perfect split second timing repeatedly, ideally a couple times a minute over a long fight to even think of matching the other two tank's baseline efficiency.

[Daniel_Fury]

I still find it absolutely insanely hilarious that Dark Knight relies on a method of tanking that needs perfect split second timing repeatedly, ideally a couple times a minute over a long fight to even think of matching the other two tank's baseline efficiency.

Not to mention the dps loss that comes with it