How is this fair for DRK?

[Miziliti]

I got all 4 tank jobs to at least lvl 82 to see if my dungeon leveling can be smoother. DRK is such a disaster that I lost my interest in leveling for now.

PLD Holy Sheltron: 15% damage mitigation + regen


WAR Bloodwhetting: 10% damage mitigation + heal on hit + shield + short cd (25s)


GNB Heart of Corundum: 15% damage mitigation + heal when below 50% hp + short cd (25s)


DRK Oblation: 10% damage mitigation and that's it and it has long ass cd (60s) which is entirely inferior than what the others got.

2 charges makes no difference. Can't even pair with other defense cooldown because they are all mitigations that cannot stack. If Rampart or Shadow Wall can't save me, then this thing is even more useless then TBN.


All except DRK feels stronger and more tanky when I compare my dungeon runs with lvl 81 and lvl 82. DRK still feels the same and painful. Abyssal Drain cd is so long and weak cure potency doesn't really help in dire situation. Not to mention Living Dead makes no difference when I'm about to die in most situations. Many DRK turned a blind eye on the LD problems for many years, and DRK continued to get something so shi/tty.

[Kalaam]

Some would say that the actual short CD is TBN and that's it's just as strong. And they'd be right that this is the skill that should be compared to HS, Blood and HoC, but it isn't as strong anymore.

I assume the idea would be that Oblation is a buff to TBN that you choose or not to apply so you can control wether or not TBN will pop from an attack. But it's honestly quite clunky and not that strong.

Personnaly I'd love for Oblation to be a TBN+ that turns it into a 25% Shield that reapplies after breaking, decreasing by 5% each time, granting several dark arts.
And while at it, make Shadowbringer Flood of Shadow upgraded when under dark arts. That'd likely work better.

[Undeadfire]

Holy Sheltron/Intervention isn't as powerful as they are made out to be, you have to keep their buff rolling not by choice in many situations, because of points gains, the ability isn't free, and you need the second one for the busters. Paladin has always generally lacked self mitigation, it's perfectly fair. Reqs healing? Not by choice, Paladin has a forced rotation requiring. Out of more player throughs, Gunbreaker is shown to be a better main tank, it's only bad at positioning bosses.

HOC is a strong ability, a short mitigation and only gets proper value if the target falls below 50% HP, but it is stronger than TBN, Gunbreaker has a lot of cooldowns.

Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash are extremely powerful abilities, which I would no doubt these two will get healing nerfed, they're basically I don't need a Healer when active, Thrill of Battle adds more boost to them. Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash can be popped whenever you need it without drawbacks.

TBN is intended to soak a heavy attack, that's what it's designed for, but I do agree the punishment needs to go with an increased cooldown. You can't have Oblation operate closely to the other 3, and have TBN, that's incredibly overpowered.

[RyuDragnier]

Holy Sheltron/Intervention isn't as powerful as they are made out to be, you have to keep their buff rolling not by choice in many situations, because of points gains, the ability isn't free, and you need the second one for the busters. Paladin has always generally lacked self mitigation, it's perfectly fair. Reqs healing? Not by choice, Paladin has a forced rotation requiring. Out of more player throughs, Gunbreaker is shown to be a better main tank, it's only bad at positioning bosses.

HOC is a strong ability, a short mitigation and only gets proper value if the target falls below 50% HP, but it is stronger than TBN, Gunbreaker has a lot of cooldowns.

Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash are extremely powerful abilities, which I would no doubt these two will get healing nerfed, they're basically I don't need a Healer when active, Thrill of Battle adds more boost to them. Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash can be popped whenever you need it without drawbacks.

TBN is intended to soak a heavy attack, that's what it's designed for, but I do agree the punishment needs to go. You can't have Oblation operate closely to the other 3, and have TBN, that's incredibly overpowered.

Which is why Oblation should never have been the 82 move. It should have replaced Dark Mind completely (while being 15% mitigation instead of 10%) in order to remove a conditional cooldown for a usable one. 82 should have been an upgrade to TBN that gave it a burst heal should it break, and a small heal should it not. This would bring it in line with the other upgrades and make it so TBN can help keep you going even if it breaks quickly. Personally though, TBN really should just be 25s with no MP cost, and no free usage of Edge/Flood. Bring it in line with the other tank cooldowns.

[Crater]

Other people are correct; TBN by itself is comparable in strength to the upgraded skills the other tanks get at 82; Oblation is functionally the companion skill that upgrades TBN, so it doesn't need to be (and really shouldn't be) as strong as the other upgrades.

That said, it's probably a touch too weak. If it got a slight bump in mitigation power, it'd be fine. If it got a slight reduction in cooldown but kept the same mitigation power, it'd be fine. There's no cosmic injustice being dealt to DRK here, but it just doesn't feel relevant in most fights.

Which is why Oblation should never have been the 82 move. It should have replaced Dark Mind completely (while being 15% mitigation instead of 10%) in order to remove a conditional cooldown for a usable one. 82 should have been an upgrade to TBN that gave it a burst heal should it break, and a small heal should it not. This would bring it in line with the other upgrades and make it so TBN can help keep you going even if it breaks quickly. Personally though, TBN really should just be 25s with no MP cost, and no free usage of Edge/Flood. Bring it in line with the other tank cooldowns.

These are all straight nerfs that objectively, literally make Dark Knight a worse class, on top of explicitly calling for further homogenization when the game already feels like grasping at straws to find any practical difference from one tank to another within the role. Absolutely no to all of this.

If this is what you want out of a tanking class, there are three out of four tanks in the game that are specifically catered to your tastes. Please stop trying to take away the one (1) single solitary tank that still has some vestiges of gameplay in it catered to people who do not share your tastes.

[RyuDragnier]

]These are all straight nerfs that objectively, literally make Dark Knight a worse class, on top of explicitly calling for further homogenization when the game already feels like grasping at straws to find any practical difference from one tank to another within the role. Absolutely no to all of this.

If this is what you want out of a tanking class, there are three out of four tanks in the game that are specifically catered to your tastes. Please stop trying to take away the one (1) single solitary tank that still has some vestiges of gameplay in it catered to people who do not share your tastes.

You are a fool if you think they're nerfs. Dark Mind is straight up useless against anything physical, and TBN cannot compete with Bloodwhetting, Holy Shelltron, or Heart of Corundum, which give SUSTAIN on top of the mitigation. TBN costs MP, meaning it will ALWAYS compete with damage and be a DPS loss if it doesn't break, making it so TBN hurts DRK's potential by merely existing like it does now.

So Dark Mind is better replaced by something that mitigates all damage, something Oblation does. Since 10% is too low and pathetic to replace it, bringing Oblation up to 15% would bring it up to par. By removing TBN from the MP pool and removing the "gives a free Edge/Flood upon breaking", it's no longer a DPS loss for using, and encourages using it. If a heal is added to it, it is brought up to par with Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, and Heart of Corundum. Clearly you don't know what DRK needs right now if you foolishly believe TBN can compete with HS, BW, or HoC.

[Undeadfire]

If a heal is added to it, it is brought up to par with Holy Shelltron, Bloodwhetting, and Heart of Corundum. Clearly you don't know what DRK needs right now if you foolishly believe TBN can compete with HS, BW, or HoC.

That's not brought up to par, that makes it stronger in comparison being free. TBN does a huge no damage barrier, and having a heal on top would make it insane.

TBN being free comparisons, no drawbacks

Holy Sheltron/Intervention as I said isn't a whole free choice, it's restricted used. Reqs Holy is extremely restricted, Paladin don't get free choices when to use their healing, Clemency exist, but you would only kill the jobs DPS.

HoC only compares on TBN if it's below 50% HP kicks in, otherwise it's a short damage mitigation, Healers have O-GCDs needing use that do the job better.

BW is the focus problem, can pop anywhere anytime, gains in all cases.

TBN being free, plus no drawbacks, and 25% max HP barrier is very huge with more gear support. Oblation buff too? Bruh, you'll have to be crazy lucky to obtain these level of adjustments, we don't need tanks being more invincible. Instant 25% max HP barrier is incredibly strong, and it carried a lot in Eden Savage raids. I agree TBN drawbacks need to be removed, I got no problem with that, but it's over stretching the bar asking for more. We absolutely do not need another HW tank meta.

[Lyth]

Oblation is functionally the companion skill that upgrades TBN, so it doesn't need to be (and really shouldn't be) as strong as the other upgrades. That said, it's probably a touch too weak. If it got a slight bump in mitigation power, it'd be fine. If it got a slight reduction in cooldown but kept the same mitigation power, it'd be fine. There's no cosmic injustice being dealt to DRK here, but it just doesn't feel relevant in most fights.

If Oblation is irrelevant, then why isn't it being changed?

Shake it Off was deemed to be irrelevant at the start of Stormblood. The dev team tripped over themselves to put a rework out to quell the WAR playerbase. Why should we wait two years before flipping a coin to see whether the dev team could be bothered to do something about it at the next Media Tour? Have you any reason to believe that they'd address this issue, given their track record with abilities like Living Dead, and the fact that the dev team just refuses to publicly talk about issues that they couldn't be bothered to fix? Oh what was that? Does Blood Weapon have a latency issue? We haven't heard about that.

[Crater]

You are a fool if you think they're nerfs. Dark Mind is straight up useless against anything physical

I suggest you take a look at the distribution of damage types across tank-threatening enemy attacks in the current selection of high-end content (or the selection of high-end content from the previous expansion, even). This is not the trump card argument you think it is.

Dark Knight currently has the ability, through Dark Mind and Oblation, to throw 28% in combined percentage-based mitigation at almost every instance of relevant tank damage in the game, on a 60-second cooldown, without even touching Rampart, its 30%/10s/120s cooldown, or its short-mitigation.

You're asking for that to be reduced to 15% - and you don't think you're asking for a huge nerf to the class.

And for... What, exactly? Dungeon performance? Get real.

Re: "TBN can't compete with the others", getting into detail on that a post and a half. Suffice to say, I don't agree; there are four basic use-cases for short mitigation skills (against Low, Threatening, Lethal, and Sustained damage) and the one everybody seems to be fixated on TBN being bad for - Low incoming damage, like dungeon bosses - is almost completely irrelevant. In every other case, TBN acquits itself just fine - largely due to its low cooldown, which you are campaigning to have nerfed.

If Oblation is irrelevant, then why isn't it being changed?

Shake it Off was deemed to be irrelevant at the start of Stormblood. The dev team tripped over themselves to put a rework out to quell the WAR playerbase.

You won't catch me defending any of the travesties of tank design and balance that SE committed during Stormblood, but two things here: A) They weren't exactly tripping over themselves to change Shake at launch; that didn't come about until 4.1. The panic changes for 4.05 were just to get rid of the gauge consumption on stance-swapping, give a self-heal to Steel Cyclone, and eliminate gauge costs for Unchained/Inner Release. And B) My own misgivings about what happened with Shake it Off aside, the complaints there weren't "This skill is a too-weak version of what we want it to be" but rather "This skill does something that we view as useless". The basic functionality of Oblation isn't a problem at all; people just want it to do the same job a little bit harder than it does right now.

Also, I admit this is a little pedantic, but: I didn't say it wasn't relevant. I said it didn't feel relevant. When the only content to use it on is two overgeared Extremes and a Normal mode raid, Rampart barely feels relevant. I expect its value will become more apparent in Savage (and I expect that value to be small enough that I'll still think it needs a small buff).

[ForteNightshade]

Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash are extremely powerful abilities, which I would no doubt these two will get healing nerfed, they're basically I don't need a Healer when active, Thrill of Battle adds more boost to them. Bloodwhetting/Nascent Flash can be popped whenever you need it without drawbacks.

Bloodwhetting is only a problem in dungeons because of how comically undertuned they are. At most, they could slap a fall off effect on multi-targets so it isn't so insanely ahead of the other tanks. Otherwise, a wholesale nerf to Bloodwhetting would completely kill the one niche Warrior has over Gunbreaker highend content.