Big pulls with Dark Knight.

[Goji1639]

TBN is very good for big pulls. How you start your CD usage and your current gear and accessory setup will dictate how long TBN will stay up. If you are near the minimal ilevel for the dungeons, TBN won’t last that long at the start of the actual tanking phase of the big pull (once you hit that wall and enemies have all gathered around you). As you start gearing up and getting closer to where your gear could potentially be synced, you will notice the first TBN will last longer.

I tank on DRK very often in dungeons. I average two TBNs a pull. The second TBN often times gets close to not breaking. I am also gear synced for all level 80 and Expert dungeons that force a gear sync.

I mean overgeared; good healer; good DPS you probably don't even need a tank in a lot of content. I feel like a good tank class is defined by how it performs in suboptimal conditions. If I ever want to run a quick comparison I usually just wall to wall pull with a Trust to simulate a mediocre PuG. The Paladin holds up beautifully no matter how bad the DPS is or how thoroughly the healer ignores me. Dark Knight gets absolutely slaughtered; once TBN disappears the class is just a massive ball of squish with no reliable self-healing.

[Aeternal]

How can you even be a DRK main, and think such nonsense? TBN is by far the best defensive CD in the game, and makes mass pulls laughably easy. AD can heal like half your HP bar or more with enough mobs, and you have SW, AL, Reprisal, Rampart to cycle through.

DRK is my favorite tank for mass pulls.

[Xtrasweettea]

If I ever want to run a quick comparison I usually just wall to wall pull with a Trust to simulate a mediocre PuG. The Paladin holds up beautifully no matter how bad the DPS is or how thoroughly the healer ignores me. Dark Knight gets absolutely slaughtered; once TBN disappears the class is just a massive ball of squish with no reliable self-healing.

Trusts aren’t meant to do big pulls with. Trusts are the literal bottom left of the bell curve when it comes to party efficiency. Trusts don’t AOE and they do not do damage when they do mechanics. Trusts also do less damage overall than a mediocre player. Trusts take longer to kill three enemies from a single pack pull than a mediocre pug killing a walled pull.

Trusts are worse than a mediocre PUG, they’re a sub-par PUG.

Paladin is going to hold up fine since it can heal itself and regain MP through its combos and sword oaths. It is a literal self-healing machine. The other tanks, not so much. WAR might be able to with NF healing, but that is only for six seconds and it is only really good with bursting damage. DRK does not have strong self-healing tools like Clemency. Instead, they have a strong shield. The tanks are themed differently. You are not going to get the same results with different tanks and expecting same outcomes when using this test.

[Nedkel]

I mean overgeared; good healer; good DPS you probably don't even need a tank in a lot of content. I feel like a good tank class is defined by how it performs in suboptimal conditions. If I ever want to run a quick comparison I usually just wall to wall pull with a Trust to simulate a mediocre PuG. The Paladin holds up beautifully no matter how bad the DPS is or how thoroughly the healer ignores me. Dark Knight gets absolutely slaughtered; once TBN disappears the class is just a massive ball of squish with no reliable self-healing.

Trust is the simulation of team that only press 1 button and does nothing else.
This is not a good representation of the tanks performance.
You may use as much clemency as you want on PLD, but it does not change a fact that a tank dpsing is going to have easier time anyway, since killing mobs is even more efficient than self sustain.

[Goji1639]

Well, I guess I'm looking for a tank that can actually sustain itself without a strong group. As far as tanks being "built differently" goes, it's not like Paladins struggle against bosses or in Savages; in those regards the tanks seem pretty balanced. The Paladin is just apparently the only tank who is basically untouchable in the other 90% of this games content.

Seems a little weird to me, but I don't mind sticking with Paladin.

[Goji1639]

How can you even be a DRK main, and think such nonsense? TBN is by far the best defensive CD in the game, and makes mass pulls laughably easy. AD can heal like half your HP bar or more with enough mobs, and you have SW, AL, Reprisal, Rampart to cycle through.

DRK is my favorite tank for mass pulls.

You can pull big with any tank if you have a decent healer, but TBN is definitely not a good CD for mass pulls. It's basically just a 20% shield; even with your best damage reduction CDs up it's gone in an instant once everything you pulled swings at you. The worst part is that the class is balanced around TBN; so it's passive mitigation sucks, it's invulnerability CD is the worst in the game and AD is the only decent self healing DRK has. Once that TBN disappears you're the worst tank in the game in a mass pull.

I'm not trying to say Dark Knights can't mass pull, but Paladin has the versatility to mass pull in any situation; not just in a good group where everyone's totally got you.

From my experience a Trust is basically a modestly below average group. With my Paladin I can wall to wall pull without breaking a sweat; I'm able to react to whatever level of neglect the healer decides to throw at me. That's a capable, versatile tank. Dark Knight just dies; no invulnerability CD, no sustainable self-healing, terrible passive mitigation all to justify TBN, which is gone 2 seconds after you pop it.

[cactuarzzzz]

AD can heal like half your HP bar or more with enough mob.

Last I check, Abyssal Drain can only heal 200 potency. It doesn't increase with each number of targets that got hit by it.

[Hierro]

DRK is better than PLD in dungeons. It's not even a contest.

Based on what you mentioned, it sounds like you're popping both TBN and your defensive CD at the same time. This is a mistake because server ticks haven't quite registered your defensive CD yet. Despite having both shadow wall and TBN used at the same time, the monsters are tearing through your HP like a defensive isn't there. So, to remedy this, you need to use either rampart or SW about two seconds or a GCD before you use TBN. Does 1/4th of your HP just disappear after you use sentinel on PLD? Of course not, your HP remains sturdy and drains ever so slowly. so it's illogical to claim TBN combined with SW is useless when it HAS to do more.

Second, AD is better than clemency in large pulls. You need to use AD when you're at about 66-75% HP, ideally between TBN windows. Clemency is 1200 potency, while AD is 200 potency per target. You need to hit at least 7 targets to beat out clemency, but in large pulls that's an easy task. Logically, if your AD isn't beating out Clemency, you're doing something wrong. If you want to refute that clemency outperforms AD when requiescat is in question, that's going to be a yikes from me.

When you play PLD, it teaches you to not stack your cooldowns. DRK is kinda the opposite, because you need to spam TBN and combine it with everything you have, and then some. Sure, it makes sense why you would open PLD with sheltron and arm's length, but that's such a terrible way to start with DRK because it's a waste of potential eHP you get from combining with traditional mitigation instead.

Also, as a little aside, you get more mileage out of using hallowed ground at the start of a pull instead of when your HP's getting low.

[shao32]

You can pull big with any tank if you have a decent healer, but TBN is definitely not a good CD for mass pulls. It's basically just a 20% shield; even with your best damage reduction CDs up it's gone in an instant once everything you pulled swings at you. The worst part is that the class is balanced around TBN; so it's passive mitigation sucks, it's invulnerability CD is the worst in the game and AD is the only decent self healing DRK has. Once that TBN disappears you're the worst tank in the game in a mass pull.

I'm not trying to say Dark Knights can't mass pull, but Paladin has the versatility to mass pull in any situation; not just in a good group where everyone's totally got you.

From my experience a Trust is basically a modestly below average group. With my Paladin I can wall to wall pull without breaking a sweat; I'm able to react to whatever level of neglect the healer decides to throw at me. That's a capable, versatile tank. Dark Knight just dies; no invulnerability CD, no sustainable self-healing, terrible passive mitigation all to justify TBN, which is gone 2 seconds after you pop it.

It's a 25% shield not 20% witch it's really massive and the trick on aoes is due it have the most short recast (15s) you have to keep it on colddown and use the procs for flood, it's affected by your HP so the more ilvl you have more powerful it gets, so no, DRK is not weak or you are not using it enough, you gear it's just extremely low or both at the same time.

PLD can heal himself but lower the contribution of DPS on the pull making it take way more time to kill and DRK on the other hand can be a eternal wall with TBN spam as long as you play it properly and keep generating mp, something it's extremely braindead to archive this expansion and dealt one of the most broken aoe dps of the tank role killing everything so fast, the faster your targets die the better always.

Btw you can use reprisal since it's aoe, there is just tons of mitigation tools right now, don't depend of the silly heals of PLD without run out of mitigation tools first.

Last I check, Abyssal Drain can only heal 200 potency. It doesn't increase with each number of targets that got hit by it.

It's a heal of 200p per target so if you hit 5 targets with AD you get 5 heals of 200p.

[cactuarzzzz]

It's a heal of 200p per target so if you hit 5 targets with AD you get 5 heals of 200p.

Ah, thank you, been a while now. I'm surprised how 1600 potency heal from AD doesn't heal as much as a heal from the healers.