Issue with TBN

[Hierro]

The Reward is high mitigation thats dps neutral, the risk is non existent if youre using it right.

B-b-b-but I don't want to activate my two brain cells to use it during a tank buster or AoE+ auto attack follow ups. that's too hard I just want to press the button without thinking!

[Crater]

If you don't think that TBN has an appropriate reward for the risk you take in using it, you really just haven't grasped just how much more defensively Powerful it is than any other tank's comparable skills.

Tankbusters are pretty much the least advantageous thing to use TBN on - and it still tends to significantly outperform the others on tankbusters.

There are significant stretches in Titan this tier where TBN alone is very nearly functionally equivalent to having a permanent Sentinel running against Titan's auto-attacks, for essentially no cost.

[Izsha]

If you cant make tbn break then the damage is inconsequential and covered by regens and the other tabks mitigation tools are equally underwhelming.

Lets say you have 100k hp. Tbn blocks 25k in 7seconds. If you cant break it that means you took LESS than 25k in 7 seconds. You know how much raw intuition would mitigate in that situation if damage is that low? 24k (less than 25) *0.2 is......4.8k over 7 seconds. Also note that the other skills only last 6 seconds so if damage isnt breaking tbn in 7 seconds, other tanks are only mitigating 6 seconds of this tickle damage. You want to give up some of the best mitigation so that when you are being tickled by minsters you can negate less than 5k damage over 6 (not 7) seconds when you have 100k+ hp?

This is what over mitigating looks like. Regen will literally keep up with damage that cant break tbn and the other tanks alternative is mitigating such miniscule damage in a situation that cant pop tbn that its inconsequential.

If monster damage is so low tbn wont pop then nitigating 20% of that same low damage is going to be utterly meaningless levels of mitigation. Welcome to the reality that all tank mitigation sucks if monster output is to low. Thays the point. Monster output is to low for mitigation to matter. Tbn works fine where it DOES matter as do the other tank options.

[DJMau]

Y'all are missing the point. TBN does not give you a reward. On the contrary, it comes with high costs! It is not free, far away from it.

You want to see a free ability? Go to GNB and use Heart of Stone, go to WAR and use Raw Intuition. There, free mitigation!

Everytime you use TBN you pray that the shield will pop. And don't get me wrong, the shield is strong, it is great. A cooldown giving a strong shield is a unique and good design to a tank. The problem lies in DRK toolkit that makes the design bad as a whole. It's costs being tied to your damage!
It shouldn't cost damage, because you'll refrain from using it. And right now it's not used for fluff mitigation, or you rely on rng that the shield gets registered right before the next AA, and you get hit hard enough to break it. As for the other tanks you can, will and should use Sheltron/HoS/RawI for fluff damage, overwise it's wasted mitigation.
On the other hand you can't make it give you additional damage, or it would break the job. The skill ceiling would be too high.
If DRK had any other ability in its toolkit for fluff damage, using TBN for tank busters only wouldn't be such an issue.

In certain fights it would remain as a niche ability. e.g. most recent duty E3 Leviathan: this boss mainly uses AA and mediocre raid-wide damage mechanics with just 2-3 high damage tank mechanics throught the fight. (Actually found a log where a DRK uses TBN only 4 times in 10 min!)

For all those who claim that DRK does mitigate tank busters better than any other tank CDs: That doesn't matter. The amount of times where TBN will save you over HoS or Sheltron will be so minuscule, almost non-existent, probably near <1%. The amount of HP you save with TBN over the other tanks' CDs is not relevant! It will not save a heal, neither will it increase the healers DPS for the cost of yours'!

TBN staying an ability with high risk, no reward is bad, and should be changed.

I've seen this line of argument before...oh yeah. Xeno's exact argument against TBN.

[ExLegen]

Imo it should have a reward to the risk.
As an example, poping TBN shield could make the next flood/edge free and be a critical strike. that would increase the skill ceiling and reward ppl that make optimal use of TBN.

And also make Delirium, blood weapon and living shadow more engaging skills... they are so lazy design and boring.

[Leareaux]

I read the OP, and apologize for not reading the remaining 6 pages.
I love trying to find ways to pop TBN. I think what we may need is more of an incentive to use it.

Outside of a Tank Buster, throwing TBN on yourself or another player is never necessary. If I throw a TBN on my healer during raid wide damage, they probably weren't going to die in the first place were going to throw out a heal anyway. I'm creating extra work for myself to no real benefit to the party.

If Dark Arts gave me a damage boost to my next Edge/Flood, or maybe had a reduced mp cost, resulting in me getting an Edge/Flood at a discount. I'd be more inclined to use it. Until then, I'd rather not gamble my dps if my extra work at using TBN wont result in a different outcome.

[Xiaoki]

The one and ONLY problem with TBN is the animation delay.

You don't actually receive the TBN buff until after the animation finishes so there is a window between when you press the button and when you have the shield.

But, that's just a problem with the game as a whole.

[Interovegas]

Part [1/2]

This is embarassing. World first clear of Eden savage was done with a Paladin and a Dark Knight. This is testament enough to the strength of DRK currently.

Secondly, many detractors of TBN here have ignored simple math arguments about much more effective TBN is compared to other short cool down abilities.

DRK is the only tank with upfront mitigation. Just some very basic examples to show how busted this is in comparison to say ... GNB and Heart of Stone:

*Assume the damage specified is dealt within the duration window of each mitigation and that each tank has 120,000 hp (Which is accurate around 450 item level):

Incoming Damage: 30,000
DRK damage taken: 0
GNB damage taken: 25,500

Incoming Damage: 60,000
DRK damage taken: 30,000
GNB damage taken: 51,000

Incoming Damage: 90,000
DRK damage taken: 60,000
GNB damage taken: 76,500

Incoming Damage: 120,000
DRK damage taken: 90,000
GNB damage taken: 102,000

Incoming Damage: 150,000
DRK damage taken: 120,000
GNB damage taken: 127,500

Incoming Damage: 180,000
DRK damage taken: 150,000
GNB damage taken: 153,000

Incoming Damage: 210,000
DRK damage taken: 180,000
GNB damage taken: 178,500

Notice : By the time heart of stone has mitigated more damage than TBN both tanks are dead nearly two times over and must resort to invulnerability spells to survive.

Even Better : TBN is available every 15 seconds and can be cast that often if needed. Meaning that even if you DID need to soak high volumes of damage for protracted periods of time (say 30 seconds) TBN would still mitigate more damage than comparable abilities.

"But GNB/PLD can stack Rampart with their short cooldown defensive" : Because most standard damage reduction abilities are % based they stack multiplicatively. Meaning if you stack rampart with heart of stone you are only mitigating 32% of incoming damage for that 7 second overlap of the two abilities.

If we redo the earlier calculations with rampart involved:

Incoming Damage: 30,000
DRK damage taken: 0
GNB damage taken: 20,400

Incoming Damage: 60,000
DRK damage taken: 18,000
GNB damage taken: 40,800

Incoming Damage: 90,000
DRK damage taken: 42,000
GNB damage taken: 61,200

Incoming Damage: 120,000
DRK damage taken: 66,000
GNB damage taken: 81,600

Incoming Damage: 150,000
DRK damage taken: 90,000
GNB damage taken: 102,000

Incoming Damage: 180,000
DRK damage taken: 114,000
GNB damage taken: 122,400

Incoming Damage: 210,000
DRK damage taken: 138,000
GNB damage taken: 142,800

[Part 1/2]

[Interovegas]

[Part 2/2]

Now : TBN with Rampart is even more effective than Heart of Stone with Rampart. And this disregards that you can get TBN to cast twice during Ramparts duration - although it is admittedly rare that you would ever need to cast TBN twice during Rampart.

"TBN is a dps loss" - assuming you properly use TBN and pop it each time (because if you are taking less than 25% of your maximum HP in 7s why do you even need major single target personal defensive) You are losing 0 dps. You spent 3k mana to get a shield and then cast a free EoS instead of directly casting EoS.

"You have to hold 3k MP" - Uhuh, ok. You spend upwards of a hundred thousand mana during a fight. Keep in mind you spend every 3k MP you generate in excess of the first 3000. Pretend for a second that you start with 0 mp in a fight. Yes, the first 3000 MP you generate has to be held back for TBN. But any time you use TBN properly you will get the free EoS for that 3000 mp spent. Any extra mana above that 3000 is freely spent on damage. So if you generate 102,000 mana during a fight you will be able to use 99,000 mana on EoS or TBN that generates an EoS. Worst case you have 3000 mana left over towards the end of the fight that you didn't spend (but actually you can just dump that mana when its clear the boss is going down meaning 0 damage lost).

Concessions:

Shelltron blocks 20% with the current best shields in SHB, which is superior to the 15% of Heart of Stone, but still worse than TBN for any amount of damage you would actually mitigate with a short cooldown defensive rather than an invulnerability. So TBN is superior to Shelltron and can be cast on other players, go figure.

DRK has weaker other abilities. Abyssal drain is pathetic compared to Clemency, Aurora and Equilibrium. Dark Mind is a strictly worse version of similar abilities (like Camouflauge and Thrill of Battle).

Warrior can pull off similar mitigation to the DRK by stacking the likes of vengeance or Nascent Flash with Thrill of Battle (or Equilibrium too for effective HP calculations). Of course the warrior is also a main tank so this makes sense. The caveat here is that warriors cannot use these kinds of mitigation as often.

Barring some sort of small balance tweaks in the future DRK will be outscaled in value by WAR. When critical values on gear increase over the remainder of the expansion WAR will probably do significantly more damage than DRK and become more useful by that point alone.

[Part 2/2]

[Cabalabob]

Look at it this way:

If you use nascent flash, heart of stone or sheltron you’re only benefiting from it.

If you use it “wrong” you may not get as much benefit out of it but worst case scenario you get no mitigation and the skill goes on cooldown (or you wasted gauge in sheltron’s case but gauge isn’t spent on anything better so it’s basically the same). If you use it right you mitigate a lot of damage.

With TBN if you use it “wrong” you don’t get as much benefit and you lose dps, if you use it right you mitigate a lot of damage.

See the problem? There’s no reward over the other tanks for using it right, but there’s extra penalisation for using it “wrong”. It’s a cooldown, using it “wrong” should be penalisation enough, it shouldn’t also punish you on top of that.

I understand wanting unique job mechanics, really I do, as a PLD i was very sad to see cover as our primary way to mitigate busters go with the expansion. But it’s not a unique job mechanic, it’s just extra punishing for no realistic benefit, there are better ways for TBN to be unique that actually make it more of a boon when used right, not just extra punishing when it’s not.

As an example, increase the cooldown to 25 seconds, but make it free of cost, remove the dark arts effect and add “if you break the shield it instantly resets the cooldown”. As a bonus.