Dark Knight follow up thread

[Sancho_Nyanta]

Nice try.

In the post I was responding to, you had said that all the tanks could do something similar when someone was talking about the amount of mitigation that TBN brings. My point was that Clemency is the only other skill from all the tank skills that is able to deal with as much damage and is as flexible as TBN. That said if you want to consider self sustain to be in a different category all together, then allow me to prove that NO tank is capable of replicating what TBN brings to the table.

At current ilevel, we are able to have around 123k for max HP making TBN around 30,750. All other comparable skills are forms of % based mitigation and come in 5 different % levels from 10% to 35%. Looking at a one on one comparison, with the 35% example (Intervention + Rampart + Sentinel) you'd have to take 88k or more in damage by any number of hits across Intervention's duration to equal the mitigation of TBN. Even worse is that this goes up exponentially as the % goes down. For a 30% mitigation to match TBN you'd have to take around 100k in damage. Anything 20% or lower won't even matter as once you match TBN the remaining damage will kill you anyway.

Further more, assuming that my understanding of how TBN interacts with % based mitigation is correct, then there is no reduction from stacking TBN with those skills. So if used with Shadow Wall, I get the full 30% off of the top and then TBN absorbs what it can of the remaining damage.

So what tank is able to do ANYTHING like this? You want a free WEAKER shield because you don't want to risk anything for something that strong? Even worse is that, in making it free, you'd make us EVEN MORE like War than what we already are.

BTW: yes I know that technically Intervention + Rampart + Sentinel is more than one skill being used but the max % for Intervention is what I am comparing. The player getting Intervention is not using Rampart nor Sentinel.

[Danelo]

In the post I was responding to, you had said that all the tanks could do something similar when someone was talking about the amount of mitigation that TBN brings. My point was that Clemency is the only other skill from all the tank skills that is able to deal with as much damage and is as flexible as TBN. That said if you want to consider self sustain to be in a different category all together, then allow me to prove that NO tank is capable of replicating what TBN brings to the table.

I may be wrong but I could swear I heard TBN is front loaded in the damage calculation to aid in it popping. But that's not really my issue. Any monkey can throw up TBN on yourself or mt against a raidwide or TB to get it to pop. My biggest problem is that when mp regain resources were plentiful it was not a big deal but now the best we have is BW on a 60 sec cd timer. So if you're pushing it to find where you can get it to pop on autos it becomes punishing when resource gain abilities aren't as good as they, in the past, have been but the cost aspect has stayed the same (cost 600 mp more from SB). It's a core feature of the class. Everything else is meh. This is where you're gains should be made but it's entirely neutral at best.

I'm getting the impression I'm entirely by myself on this and that's okay. I'm just wanting that reward for risk not neutral for risk.

I'm not saying TBN isn't powerful. I'm also not huge on the math but it seems to me that as the hits get bigger the % damage reduction CDs will become more powerful up to the point you die no matter what. Comparatively TBN, unless hp scales up as time goes by, will be weaker over the course of the expansion. Again, that's my understanding, could be wrong. I'm not putting TBN into direct competition with rampart, vengeance and the like. I'm comparing it to raw/nascent flash, hos, and Shelton. No one can deny that TBN is powerful. I'm just looking for more engaging gameplay with a reward for squeezing out every opportunity to mitigate and do dps. But if I'm taking a risk for neutral I might as well hold out for eos and that's boring and discouraging gameplay to me by comparison to what I've suggested.

[Sancho_Nyanta]

TBH I haven't tested myself as to whether or not it is front loaded or not. This was just something I was told and why I prefaced it with saying if my understanding was correct.

The thing is that you can't just use it like some knuckle-dragger. Take the unavoidable AOE after Frot rune in Titania. If your party doesn't stack for Frost rune and have the vuln stack then TBN won't pop for this. Testing for these kinds of things and finding when I can and can't use it effectively is the thing I'm finding engaging about it because our resources are much tighter. In SB if it did or didn't pop, I wouldn't really care just b/c resources were so plentiful and it wasn't much of a defensive or offensive gain. Now it is a massive defensive gain while being a offensive neutral. The issue is that people want it to be both an offensive and defensive gain.

As far as the math goes it isn't that difficult. The max damage that you have to take to compare to TBN is just "(max hp)*.25/%" where % is the % of the CD you are comparing. This is a flat amount regardless of timing, number of hits, or when TBN pops. Like taking 100k dmg over 5 hits (so 20k per hit). TBN pops on the 2nd hit (using my 30.7k example) and you take the remaining 3 hits raw. If you compare this to say Sheltron (which is currently blocking for 20%), you'll have all 5 hits mitigated but the overall result will be less mitigation because:
Damage Taken:
TBN-> 100k - 30.7k = 69.3k
Vs
Sheltron-> 100k * 20% = 80k

[DRKoftheAzure]

TBH I haven't tested myself as to whether or not it is front loaded or not. This was just something I was told and why I prefaced it with saying if my understanding was correct.

The thing is that you can't just use it like some knuckle-dragger. Take the unavoidable AOE after Frot rune in Titania. If your party doesn't stack for Frost rune and have the vuln stack then TBN won't pop for this. Testing for these kinds of things and finding when I can and can't use it effectively is the thing I'm finding engaging about it because our resources are much tighter. In SB if it did or didn't pop, I wouldn't really care just b/c resources were so plentiful and it wasn't much of a defensive or offensive gain. Now it is a massive defensive gain while being a offensive neutral. The issue is that people want it to be both an offensive and defensive gain.

As far as the math goes it isn't that difficult. The max damage that you have to take to compare to TBN is just "(max hp)*.25/%" where % is the % of the CD you are comparing. This is a flat amount regardless of timing, number of hits, or when TBN pops. Like taking 100k dmg over 5 hits (so 20k per hit). TBN pops on the 2nd hit (using my 30.7k example) and you take the remaining 3 hits raw. If you compare this to say Sheltron (which is currently blocking for 20%), you'll have all 5 hits mitigated but the overall result will be less mitigation because:
Damage Taken:
TBN-> 100k - 30.7k = 69.3k
Vs
Sheltron-> 100k * 20% = 80k

I believe you are supposed to use the skills you mentioned with another skill that has a longer recast, due to how on demand Sheltron, The Blackest Night, Heart of Stone, and Raw Intuition/Nascent Flash.

And the only reason why Nascent Flash and Raw Intuition share a cooldown is because the devs didn't want players to have stack 2 on demand cooldowns at the same time with a cooldown that has a longer recast, something players hated before on WAR with Unchained and Inner Release...

Of course then again tanking in FF14 is all about stretching out your cooldowns for tankbusters...

[Dyvid]

I'm playing DRK casually for role quest but delirium just seems bad. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I use it and just spam bloodspiller over and over. I would have preferred delirium just remove mp cost of Edge/Flood of Darkness so i could weave them in between weapon skill combos.

[shao32]

I'm playing DRK casually for role quest but delirium just seems bad. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I use it and just spam bloodspiller over and over. I would have preferred delirium just remove mp cost of Edge/Flood of Darkness so i could weave them in between weapon skill combos.

nope, you are not doing it wrong, is use delirium and land 5 bloodspillers and get 1000 mp, nothing more nothing less.

[DRKoftheAzure]

So I have an FC leader that is really pushing their luck with their terrible dark knight jokes(the call dark knight "dork knight") and it just further proves that dark knight really needs buffs and a rework and I would rather sacrifice content for DRK rework this early in the expansion... it's just that bad(and before anybody DRK or the jokes, I say both)