Thread: Dark Knight: Wahts Wrong 4.2 Edition

Excuse the title typo I don't know how to fix that and I'm up way too late. Really not much has changed but I've seen it come up in a few places asking why Dark Knight is considered to be in last place when ranking tanks. The aim of this post is for general awareness and will be relatively light in suggestions (though I will make some towards the end). My general perspective is from a raid where optimization is prioritized (low to no tank stance uptime).

Mitigation
On the surface it seems as if Dark Knight has fairly equal footing as the other tanks. The major issue with Dark Knight’s mitigation comes down to three things: (1) Duration (2) Tuning (3) Number

Major Cooldowns
Shadow Wall: 30% mitigation, 10 second duration, 180 second recast
Vengeance: 30% mitigation, 15 second duration, 120 second recast, counters physical attacks 55 potency.
Sentinel: 40% mitigation, 10 second duration, 180 second recast

Situational Cooldowns
Dark Mind: 15% magic resistance (16% mitigation) (30% if you spend 2400 mp), 10 second duration, 60 second recast
Raw Intuition: 100% parry rate, 20 second duration, 90 second recast
Bulwark: 60% boost to block rate, 15 second duration, 180 second recast

On-Demand Cooldowns
The Blackest Night: 20% max HP shield, 7 second duration, 15 second recast
Inner Beast: 20% mitigation + HP restore, 6 second duration, Instant but tied to gauge and tank stance
Sheltron: 100% Block, 10 second duration or until block is activated, recast (depends on stance)

Passive Mitigation
Dark Knight: ???
Warrior: Tank stance offers increased Parry as gauge becomes larger.
Paladin: Blocking

Other eHP Modifiers
Dark Knight: Tank Stance
Warrior: Tank Stance, Thrill of Battle, Shake it Off
Paladin: Tank Stance, passage of arms (though horrible to use as mitigation)

Tank Stance
We have the very controversial tank stance section. Something tanks will try to avoid when speed running, or use as an extremely costly cooldown. With the liberation of Unchained from warrior’s offensive kit we have a clear winner. Tank stance will still be a loss, but for warrior this loss can be minimized to be between 0% and 5%, compared to 20% to 25% on Dark Knight and Paladin. Warrior does not get a direct damage reduction from its tank stance, but the ability to switch stances relatively free of cost as well as the availability of Equilibrium make this a frequently underrated ability.


Analysis of Mitigation
The clearest case of a disadvantage can be seen in dark knight's mitigation uptimes. The job as a whole is missing a skill which has a duration longer than 10 seconds. Dark Knight is also missing either a passive mitigation or additional eHP modifier when compared to Paladin and Warrior. One can make the case that TBN is meant to fill this gap, however, this is slightly unpalatable as TBN comes at a small cost for its mitigation, which seems to contradict the desire for this skill to fill the gap left by not having a passive mitigation and HP modifier. Two of Dark Knights three cooldowns are not strong enough on their own to deal with powerful tank busters hitting for more than their HP. In the realm of high hitting tank busters Dark Knight is all but forced to combine two or more abilities, this is partially mitigated by both TBN and Dark Mind having extremely short cooldowns. Augmenting dark mind with TBN is much more desirable than using the dark arts form of Dark Mind, but is again forcing two abilities into a cooldown while coming at a minor loss. Dark Knight however suffers in instances where tank busters are spaced at intervals which are just longer than 10 seconds apart.

Warrior’s mitigation kit looks impressive but suffers because its active mitigation is extremely undesirable. However, this is made up for and then some with numerous medium cooldown abilities. Unchained being a useable ability for warrior’s again functions as yet another cooldown which, with proper timing, can be turned into a 0% loss with the way Upheaval functions with tank stance. Coupling this with Shake it off being available as a personal shield when no raid wide damage is expected and I can no longer justify any reason for Shadow Wall being on a three minute timer with a shorter duration.

Paladin remains a very flexible class with its passive blocking and a situational cooldown which is good for all kinds of fluff damage throughout encounters. Its mitigation kit also partially fuels its extra damage by helping to proc shield swipes for oGCD damage. Almost every mitigation on paladin is for 20%+ expected, making each ability fairly valuable, and for high damage points are essentially stand alone mitigations.


Self Healing/Sustain
Dark Knight: Soul Eater, Abyssal Drain, Sole Survivor
Warrior: Equilibrium, Storms Path, Inner Beast, Steel cyclone
Paladin: Clemency

Analysis
Since the world we live in has low to no tank stance up time Soul Eater on Dark Knight isn’t doing anything here other than damage. Abyssal Drain’s HP absorb is abysmal unless there are a large number of softly hitting adds, based on the last tier we didn’t see much use for this, not to mention it comes as a dps loss giving up a full 140 potency per use to pull off. Sole survivor, returns 20% of your maximum HP and mp when a target dies, which can be useful when something dies. Unfortunately, adds are not a guaranteed feature of raids, and so this frequently goes unused.

Paladin has Clemency, which is great for both single target use and for healing a teammate, but being a GCD cast and eating into mp supplies for requiscat windows comes at a large dps cost.

Warrior is the clear winner here. The unchained bonus allows for the use of equilibrium once every 2 minutes, not a huge gain but it exists for relatively little to no cost depending on timings on upheaval, the HP restore from Storm’s path is modest at best, but is part of the jobs main damage rotation. We have not seen how 4.2 will play out yet, but Inner Release potentially gives a spammable Inner Beast, at the time of writing the preliminary notes do not hint at Inner Beast self heal being changed, meaning warrior may have the option to spam direct crit inner beast heals on itself for 10 seconds. However, this would be at a massive dps cost to the job and would likely not be used in an optimal situation. Steel cyclone is in a similar position but requires adds to be useful, also with adjustments coming to the hp effect I'm not confident this will be powerful outside extreme examples.

Really no tank has great self-sustain in optimal environments.

Utility
Dark Knight: TBN
Warrior: Shake it Off, Unchained, Slashing Debuff
Paladin: Divine Veil, Cover, Passage of Arms, Intervention

Analysis
Dark Knight has TBN, in general this is not great as a utility. It has situational uses, but as far as its utility uses go it is fairly undesirable in having a small cost with little effect. Most situations a shield for 10% of the Dark Knight’s HP on a single party member does not have enough of an effect to save them. If the TBN target would not have saved them then its utility is entirely wasted. This has a very small margin of use.

Warrior has a free shield with no activation cost. This can be enhanced at the cost of a cooldown which has some situational value. The shield is less powerful than TBN, but the key here is that it applies to everyone. Where as shielding one person doesn’t net much, shielding everyone even for less has many applications. Unchained paired with the warrior burst window will make aggro a cake walk. Only tank to offer an offensive party utility in the form of slashing resistance down, but this is not particularly valuable if you are running a samurai or ninja, and if you aren’t running one of those two classes it only benefits the warrior and the co-tank. Much less valuable than HW.

Paladin is the clear winner here with defensive utilities galore having multiple applications. A raid shield for 10% of the Paladin's HP, though it excludes the paladin, greatly increases raid survivability. Cover has a number of situational defensive applications, as well as a number of personal offensive applications. Passage of arms is another raid shield, this time reducing damage by 15%, but its canceling of auto-attacks and the paladins inability to take any other action reduces its worth unless there are no targets. Intervention allows you to share your mitigation with another person, this has great applications in places such as shared tank busters, or to just add some more mitigation to your co-tank pairing this with reprisal is 19% mitigation for your co-tank.

Damage
We are in the realm of guessing for 4.2, but it looks like Warrior will have the highest DPS once again, followed by Paladin which might be tied with Dark Knight.

Overall
Dark Knight doesn't really shine in any of the above, there is no place where it even really comes in second. There are other issues with the class than those listed, but for one class to be dominated in all areas above shoves dark knight firmly into third place.

In my opinion Dark Knight suffers from being a class revolving around its mana costs, which seem forgotten at times. For example, Dark Passenger is worthless on a single target because it trades 2400 mana for 100 potency, when mana has been standardized for the entire dark knight kit to be worth 140 potency with few exceptions, Quietus suffers from this as well as its dark arts effect is only worth 50 potency.Dark Mind also can be increased in mitigation through dark arts but having costs on mitigation when the job is also the lowest dps and needs mana to deal damage is a recipe for disaster, luckily almost no encounters require using dark arts on Dark Mind instead favoring Dark Mind + TBN which is nearly free. This problem in general could be fixed by lowering resource costs directly, or by increasing resource generation.

Delirium is another example of a skill which is seemingly undertuned for what it does. Trading 50 blood for 2400 mana is a small gain, reversing a single TBN cost which is again small, and granting 8 seconds of extended blood weapon, but this doesn't add up to a meaningful increase in mana or blood in a single use. This skill needs an additional effect, maybe increasing the effect of dark arts and blood potency by 20% to 30%, to feel more impactful. I enjoy the concept of the idea, it is just doesn't do enough.

QoL issues are also beginning to crop up in Dark Knight's kit making the class more difficult to play (read as more frustrating to play) at all levels. Dark Knight is a class with a large amount of double weaving, but it also benefits from having lower GCD times because of the tools blood weapon and Delirium, however, double weaving and high speed generally don't mesh well together. The animation lock on plunge is so excessively long that it cannot be double weaved even at the longest GCD times.


What can be done
Adjust Shadow Wall cooldown or duration
Increase Dark Mind's Magic Damage Resistance
Allow Soul Eater to restore HP outside of Grit
Increase Bloodspiller potency to make TBN dps neutral or a small gain
Increase dark knight damage by lowering some of its mana costs
Increase the duration of Blood Weapon beyond delirium