Increase Incentive for using The Blackest Night

[Hierro]

TBN is good enough as is. For what it is, it gives sufficient and flexible coverage for tank busters and raid-wide AoEs. If the majority of dark knights aren't using it, it's not a fault of the skill, but a fault of the player.

Seriously, bad tanks not using their defensive CDs is nothing new.

[Lyth]

Reading through this thread, I'm curious to know what Paladins think of Sheltron. It's also a resource-gated cooldown. It gives you 960 MP and a Swipe proc when it soaks up damage. The MP gain is 2/3 of the cost of HS, so it's effectively worth 253 potency before buffs. The Shield Swipe proc is an additional 100 potency oGCD on top of this. Here you have a short-recast mitigation cooldown which is a clear dps gain to use on recast.

Gauge in Sword Oath is a function of uptime. If you're landing all of your auto-attacks, it should take about 20-30 seconds to generate one Sheltron. Many of the top clears this tier have roughly one Sheltron use every 30 seconds or so. It is getting used on recast as a dps gain. Has this tarnished your enjoyment? Do you dislike having your defensive cooldowns also serving as an offensive boost?

Also, where do we draw the line? Is it a problem for longer recast defensive abilities, like Vengeance, to have dps gains associated with them?

Personally, I don't mind either way, but I would like to see consistency in the design. This is not even considering the fact that TBN already is a situational dps gain in some situations, and a situational dps loss in others. It's unnecessarily convoluted.

The biggest problem that I have with the mentality surrounding TBN is the link with Bloodspiller. We don't have the luxury of big dps multipliers like other tanks get with IR and Req. As it is, Bloodspiller gets used less frequently and has a much lower relative damage contribution when compared to equivalent abilities on other tanks. Do we really need more reasons to restrict Bloodspiller's effectiveness?

[Saeno]

Reading through this thread, I'm curious to know what Paladins think of Sheltron. It's also a resource-gated cooldown. It gives you 960 MP and a Swipe proc when it soaks up damage. The MP gain is 2/3 of the cost of HS, so it's effectively worth 253 potency before buffs. The Shield Swipe proc is an additional 100 potency oGCD on top of this. Here you have a short-recast mitigation cooldown which is a clear dps gain to use on recast.

Gauge in Sword Oath is a function of uptime. If you're landing all of your auto-attacks, it should take about 20-30 seconds to generate one Sheltron. Many of the top clears this tier have roughly one Sheltron use every 30 seconds or so. It is getting used on recast as a dps gain. Has this tarnished your enjoyment? Do you dislike having your defensive cooldowns also serving as an offensive boost?[/QUOTE]

Sheltron in 4.0 is easily PLD's best ability next to intervention. The move mitigates so much damage and helps your DPS out tremendously by allowing you extra holy spirits in the fight thanks to the MP absorb. The 100 potency from shield swipe also helps a ton. I use Sheltron to mitigate hard hitting attacks that are not autos, like aoe busters. The fact that a PLD can block aoe damage thanks to blocking working on magic is insanely good, since you ensure your tank always takes way less damage than the party simply because they blocked.

Also, where do we draw the line? Is it a problem for longer recast defensive abilities, like Vengeance, to have dps gains associated with them?

I think having only one per tank is best. That way, you're never in a situation where one tank will tank everything so they can get the most amount of DPS out of their ability. It also adds a dynamic to tanking where they swap simply because they have their buff that allows them to do damage while tanking, so the WAR will tank while vengeance is running (we normally use vengeance as we pull so vengeance is ticking under Inner release) then the PLD will take the boss to proc shield swipes after the WAR has ran through their CDs.

The biggest problem that I have with the mentality surrounding TBN is the link with Bloodspiller. We don't have the luxury of big dps multipliers like other tanks get with IR and Req. As it is, Bloodspiller gets used less frequently and has a much lower relative damage contribution when compared to equivalent abilities on other tanks. Do we really need more reasons to restrict Bloodspiller's effectiveness?

I think giving DRK's a burst is the answer. Blood weapon is by far the dumbest DPS increase move ever on DRK because double weaving oGCDs while having a 2 second GCD is very clunky and if your GCD is getting delayed because your ping isnt good enough to double weave oGCDs, then blood weapon will feel awful. I think Blood weapon needs to increase damage instead of skill speed and I want Delirium to be removed from the game in place of a DPS augment move so DRK's can join in on the burst bonanza when Trick, Litany, cards and Embolden are running. This of course means nerfing DRK's potencies but overall it might just be better to synergize as a DRK with the party. Moving focus off or on of Bloodspiller won't really make a difference.

EDIT: Actually, on second thought DRK potencies wouldnt need to be nerfed since they still have the lowest aggro and utility. They should straight up do the highest damage of all tanks if they are going to be the weakest everywhere else.

[Mithron]

I don't actually like using TBN, it's not fun IMO, so instead I'd prefer it to be a bigger cooldown more impactful button that does a lot more in a single use but takes much longer to come back up so it wasn't as "spammy."

[InfiniDragon]

I don't actually like using TBN, it's not fun IMO, so instead I'd prefer it to be a bigger cooldown more impactful button that does a lot more in a single use but takes much longer to come back up so it wasn't as "spammy."

I'm actually the complete opposite.

I love knowing TBN is always available if needed, and it being a shield with a counterattack in the form of BS is cool IMO, especially in 4 man content where you can outright take no damage at all from certain attacks and therefore just stay in and keep DPSing without a vuln up debuff.

I just think they need more CD options for stuff that isn't a tankbuster and to be less healer reliant than they are.

[Kabooa]

Remove the MP cost and Blood Interaction.

Increase the cooldown to 30 seconds.

When TBN breaks, it deals damage equal to the amount shielded to the targets around you. Ignores Grit's Penalty.

The cooldown here is short enough that it will be available for what you need and a few times extra, but long enough that a mistiming is punishing and would force Cooldowns you may have been able to keep.

[Chrono_Rising]

Honestly, the only thing I can think of dark knight in terms of balance right now is that TBN is meant to be popped on cooldown as damage reduction. I cannot see why it would be given a 15 second cooldown that it would try to not use. That said, I think using it frequently and well could be a positive for the class.

[WhyAmIHere]

As janky as it is to say, would lowering the MP cost of TBN to 1800 be a bad thing?

[Aniya_Estlihn]

Honestly, I feel like TBN is a victim; and Dark Knight in general, of their mindset in Stormblood of not rewarding higher leveled play, or jobs that are more complex. Yoshi P said time and again that they wanted to raise the bottom floor by doing so, but in doing so they've removed a reason for people to try and optimize their jobs to the fullest and made it so that jobs that do require more to learn receive nothing in the long term.

I like your idea Chrono, but that would go against their design philosophy for this expansion; which was flawed from the start and should have been called into question well before launch, I just don't know if they'd willing to backpedal on something that they've so fervently worked to pointlessly maintain.

[Mahrze]

I just don't know if they'd willing to backpedal on something that they've so fervently worked to pointlessly maintain.

That's what they did from 3.0 to 4.0. Some of the "simplification" was back-pedaling from what they did from ARR to HW. It was/is fine on a few jobs, the issue is they didn't really review all jobs and noticed what would be lost for that job. Much less think what could be done to compensate.