Dark Knight follow up thread

[Vaerum]

Maybe change TBN to:
Cooldown 15 secs
Merges your shadow with the target, causing your shadow to take up to 25% of the damage taken for the next 7 seconds. Damage taken will cause mp to drain at a rate of 1mp pt for every 10 damage taken. (Well whatever ratio sets 3k mp to an equivalent amount of hp the shield would provide at lvl 80. Have the shield's mp to hp ratio scale according to some stat, perhaps max hp. Could even do flat ilvl, just something to ensure it keeps up)
Once the effect ends or the limit is reached, your shadow retreats back into you and cause your next edge/flood to deal extra damage according to how much was absorbed. Once again another ratio of x to y.
This way you still have to manage your MP to have your tankbuster mitigation up, if you pop it with less than 3k mp it might not absorb enough to save you. But now when you pop it it's going to be dps neutral no matter what, if it absorbs nothing it cost you nothing, if it absorbs only 10% of max damage, than you only spent a portion of your mana, not the whole 3k, and you still get a powered up flood or edge out of it, just not as strong as if the shield broke.
Later thought: Possibly have the damage bonus from the TBN's stack, so the DRK could game the buff a bit, building up to a larger edge/flood for priority situations. This would make maintaining darkside an actual thing, since you would want to let off the empowered edge/flood while still under the 10% buff from darkside, but would drop APM a bunch since you'd purposefully hold of on edge/flood in certain situations, and drk already feels boring in the rotation anyways.

[Danelo]

I'm not quite sure what you are insinuating by saying the skill isn't the reason I died... I popped it in between first fae light and second then went to 1 hp before the third hit... Check it worked. Oh but the healers couldn't save without beni. Same with the tethers. So what about that did I not do right?
Did I not use enough skills to heal myself up? AD with its 200 pot and SE at 300 pot when you finally get to it. Not going to do it. Death.
Did I not use any of my other healing abilities to help the heal myself? Nope, because I don't have anything else. Dead again.
Did I not take full advantage of a life steal(or some other) mechanic activated by walking dead to assist in healing myself. Nope, it doesn't exist. Still dead.
So if there's nothing in the DRK kit that allows me to help and I'm left with praying then I guess you're wrong and the ability killed me.

I'm glad you've come across good pugs on crystal datacenter but you're just spreading false info when you say this is a good invul.

As far as the longer duration - it depends. You have 9 seconds to go to 1 hp. After that you truly have 9 seconds to receive healing equal to your max hp. When is that point reached? No one knows until WD goes away. That's problem number 1. So let's say you and your whm time this perfectly - at max 18 to 19 seconds. Really that's just 9 seconds of time you can't die, not time that you don't take damage, bc almost every gain your non whm healers make is being wiped away by autos so even if you do live from WD you may die anyway depending on where the next follow up attack is. But hey, you managed to shave 8-10 seconds of its next recast. Great! Worst case scenario is that you don't cut much time off the next cd usage because it wasn't feasible or some other reason. Then you go down to 1 and you get beni right away and you got 1-2 seconds of "can't die" before you get killed by the next leg of a multi hit TB. It is a healer CD pit and not a true tank CD. Useless outside of group content. Completely depending on healers to make this ability ... Work.

There is no comparison to the other tank CDs as a stand alone or when you look at how the kit backs up that ability. You're being anything but objective if saying LD doesnt need a rework.


Side note: saying that whm is in the meta now, therefore a rework of living dead is not necessary, is a weak sauce excuse for devs to be lazy.

[Danelo]

Do something similar without eating into DPS? Stares in Clemency

Nice try. Clemency is a self sustain and if you wanted to compare to the DRK kit it would be AD. A fair comparison to TBN would be Shelton. I don't have pld leveled but last I check Shelton was off the gauge (like all of their defensive utilities which have cost) and damage off mp, except clemency which I imagine is why you used it as a stand in for the false comparison. Besides, clemency has been a dps loss for a long while in most circumstances and is not used outside of solo content with rare exception. It's a side note that the pld isn't built around clemency the way DRK is built around TBN as a core feature so it's a poor comparison for that reason as well.

I would take the free ability over the defensive cd tied to your damage resource. The number of times hos won't save you but TBN will is tiny. In those cases you will more than likely invul if you have it up or move your cd map around. Generally though it's all going to do the same except one is free (ergo a dps gain bc it's not tied to your damage) and the other in not free and dps neutral at its best and a loss if the shield fails to pop.

[Danelo]

The whole "TBN should not be tied to MP and DPS" argument has only really become a thing since Xenosys Vex's post 5.0 release tank video. I don't recall ever seeing this sentiment before then and now it is all over the place



The complication with making DA use a straight gain, such as giving Edge/Shadow a potency boost when used through DA, is that it then in turn increases the potential loss if TBN doesn't break. By increasing the potential gain, you increase the potential loss since they are not separate factors. It also then leaves the foundational problem of the shield potentially not breaking unresolved. While doing something like making DA a gain seems at first glance like a good idea, it potentially just makes the problem worse or at best, more divisive.

Regarding xenosysVex's vid yeah, it's Fair, but does that make it any less of a good point?

I never argued for more of a loss to the way TBN is set up now. Currently it's a loss, or neutral. In addition to how it's currently built make it refund 3000 mp when it pops. Good play is rewarded, bad play is punished. And if you don't think it'll pop, don't use it.

The other tanks are brain dead. Don't any of you want some job that has a higher skill ceiling and lower floor?

[Reynhart]

Regarding xenosysVex's vid yeah, it's Fair, but does that make it any less of a good point?

The point of Xeno was also that making TBN a skill that actually rewards you for good use would also make DRK skill ceiling much higher...but he somehow decided that it would be a problem, which I don't understand why. Let's also remember that, before ShB, breaking TBN did reward with Blood, which, depending on the fight, could be a clear DPS gain instead of being neutral at best.

Don't any of you want some job that has a higher skill ceiling and lower floor?

When you have 80 levels to learn how to play your job, I think it should be expected that you do more that rolling you head on the keyboard to have good results.

All the streamlining make the game more and more boring to play, in my opinion.

[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.

[TheRealQuah]

So you never missed a TBN in your life?

Nope, not saying that. Nobody is perfect, but we aren't talking about missing TBN. I know when to use TBN, if I miss it because I've made a mistake then I need to improve my timings.

We are talking about people who are using TBN willy nilly and then complaining about it not breaking.

[TheRealQuah]

And when there's literally no point in the instance capable of dealing 25% of the DRK's HP in 7 seconds short of the DRK jumping into avoidable AoEs?

Well if that's the case, then you don't need to use TBN and should spend that MP on Flood or Edge.

[Danelo]

The point of Xeno was also that making TBN a skill that actually rewards you for good use would also make DRK skill ceiling much higher...but he somehow decided that it would be a problem, which I don't understand why. Let's also remember that, before ShB, breaking TBN did reward with Blood, which, depending on the fight, could be a clear DPS gain instead of being neutral at best.

When you have 80 levels to learn how to play your job, I think it should be expected that you do more that rolling you head on the keyboard to have good results.

All the streamlining make the game more and more boring to play, in my opinion.

I get that xeno didn't think devs would do it bc it would allow for a dps gain, instead of neutral, when used optimally. And I understand that. But the second point was that it shouldn't be tied to a dps resource. That's a difficult think for fans of a resource management style tank to understand. I agree with xeno regarding the current build bc the resources to build mp back up have been decreased. So there has to be some give someplace.

[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.