Dark Knight Megathread

[Dracosavarian]

It is unless you Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, and Heart of Corundum would have mitigated ("nullified") and healed more than 25% of your HP over their durations.

Mitigation amounts to your aforementioned "nullification". If it "nullified" nothing, it'd have done nothing. 25% mitigation that spans 12k would-be damage will "nullify" 3k damage. That is its value.

That value is not changed by when it or at what pace it did that mitigation because the only pertinent part of that, the fading percentile mitigation as you drop from the first to latter 4 seconds of their duration, is already accounted for in the damage nullified. It is not changed by having died early, because that would likewise have changed the total damage nullified. A mitigation tool's value is, simply and wholly, what is has nullified.

We could add effective healing atop that, which would then have its mirrored factor in being wasted by overhealing -- or what would have, a tick later, have been overhealing -- but such would again be accounted for right there in that metric. That it is a HoT or single heal would have no bearing on its total effective healing.


A shield that crumbles to dust after nullifying 3k damage does exactly the same amount of mitigation as an 8-second duration effect that ends up nullifying 3k damage. TBN gets outscaled only under extreme values of damage taken over 8 seconds. And for all short of that, TBN outperforms its competitors.

Let's say you're a tank with 12k HP. A TBN is therefore 3k. Subtract the healing the competitors could do from that value and you have 8 seconds then to make up the difference.

If you can make up the difference in under 8 seconds, the competitor comes out ahead; if it can't, TBN comes out ahead. And there are plenty of situations where you cannot make up that difference, and TBN will therefore come out ahead.

There is, again, no inherent further weakness to front-loaded mitigation; it's simply a matter of which nullifies ("mitigates", in normal people talk) and resets ("heals") more damage.

I am going to leave this here and call it done.

https://youtu.be/zCEovQvASsY

You are clearly determined to defend this hill. And that’s fine. Respectfully, I can’t agree with you. Been tanking in this game as my main since 1.0 far too long.

TBN is a tool. But it pales in comparison to what the others have.

% based Mitigation over a duration will always win out vs multi-hit attacks and multi hit Tank Busters.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

I can only speak from personal experience as a healer, but DRK is unequivocally the hardest tank for me to heal, especially on SGE -- not least because they trade the sustainability provided by the 82 upgrades, and the boosts to skills like Aurora/Divine Magic/Equilibrium, for... Oblation alone.

And I really have to blame the mitigation model for DRK. It's simultaneously extremely heavily focused on a barrier made for eating tankbusters, but lacking in potent options outside of said barrier for fear of making them overpowered with it.
Oblation is literally the weakest mitigation effect available to tanks such that it needs to be stacked with another skill for any value, Dark Mind is rarely useful due to its limited effects, and Living Dead is the worst invul bar none.
But at least DRK has TBN.

As you have said, the barrier is guaranteed to break on large pulls, but it can do that in under a GCD -- barely a roadbump -- while it continues to take heavy damage. While TBN does negate as much if not more damage overall compared to alternatives, the point is for the tank to slow down their damage intake enough for them to be healed over the course of the encounter, not to stop it all for 3 sec so that I have to burst heal them for the remainder.
Slowing which occurs through mitigation and heal-over-time effects that shave off incoming damage to manageable levels. Where other tanks can alternate BW/HS/HoC with longer, stronger CDs to maintain a constant string of mitigation and self-healing that can keep them above water throughout a pull and allow healers to manage the rest, DRK burns through them more quickly, either because they stack them with their bubble, or because their bubble was obliterated in a fraction of the time.
(And once they run out, they pop LD. And it's all downhill from there.)

[Anhra]

I always wonder how there's so many People religiously defending TBN, as if its the best thing ever since the invention of Cheese.

[MagiusNecros]

TBN is a bad Tank skill. It's just Thrill of Battle on a low CD and gives 25% temporary HP for 7 seconds which you want to break for more DPS. It in reality offers no mitigation and is counter productive to Tanking. The other tank CDs offer a wide berth of Tanking options.

People that defend it to the death are smoking something. An actual Tank CD or Oblation needs to be paired with it to get worthwhile mitigation out of it.

As a Tank you want to mitigate the most damage and should not have DPS tunnel vision.

I'd argue practicing without using TBN at all would make you a better DRK.

TBN peaked in Stormblood when it was introduced. It's value has decreased in the last 2 expansions.

TBN is primarily good against one hit wonders but because of the stat squish and how much damage comes out from large pulls using it in wall to wall pulls is not as great as it was in Stormblood.

[ItsUrBoi]

Agree for the most part, however that is not the case for a trial / raid scenario.
It is good because its a 25% shield and you don't stack mitigations therefore losing value. It increases your effective HP allowing you to take ONE strong hit.
Is it great? No.
Is it useful? Yes.
Does it need love? Yes

[Archwizard]

Agree for the most part, however that is not the case for a trial / raid scenario.

Nobody's saying it's an issue in those scenarios. The argument here is more about its use in AoE scenarios.

[Weetzlo]

It is good because its a 25% shield and you don't stack mitigations

Do savage while it's current, you definitely want to stack mit

[MagiusNecros]

That is because the trial/raid scenario only has one mob/boss to worry about where a majority of damage outside of autos is big single hits. TBN is primarily designed around raids. That is not an excuse to ignore the rest of DRK's shitty ass toolkit.

Which is what they have done.

Being really GOOD at ONE thing objectively makes you terrible at everything else.

[ItsUrBoi]

I have and yes I know you want to stack mitigations. I am just saying that stacking 20% + 30% dmg reduction for one hit, isn't as good as 20% dmg reduction and TBN.

[Sacrilegion]

Drk is good at only one thing, that is dps (for a tank) they have no way to sustain themselves, have the worst invuln where only WHM can guarantee it won't kill them, ultra bloated opener, and so many niche skills. I even considered taking LD off my bar because majority of the can't handle it and won't even to, they'll just let you die. Shadowbringer should be tied to Dark Arts so you are encouraged to use TBN, TBN should heal you for the damage it mitigates plus a regen. Also, the pvp buff to Bloodspiller and Quietus NEED to be added to pve as well. LD needs the doom mechanic gutted from it entirely, screw lore, DRK should not male healers hate themselves. Do that, I could justify the EW additions to DRK.