The Blackest Night: What's good about it, and what's bad

[ShinShimon]

What makes TBN special?
1. It's strength. 25% shield on 15s cooldown is amazing and feels good to use.
2. The proc. Seeing the shield break and getting rewarded for it feels good.

What makes TBN bad?
1. Having to risk 500 potency (!) of damage every time you use your tank cooldown. No other tank has to deal with anything like this.

How can we fix what's bad about TBN without changing what's good?
1. Refund the mana cost automatically when the shield times out or breaks (or, remove the cost entirely).
2. Change the proc on shield break to a Heal over Time.

These two simple changes will bring TBN up to par with the newly upgraded cooldowns that the other tanks get, while keeping the ability's distinct feel and identity. Yes, this is a straight buff to DRK. No, it doesn't make DRK overpowered. The cooldown does not need to be increased to 25s to compensate - the power of TBN is still nowhere close to Bloodwhetting.

For bonus points, you can also do something to Oblation. Have it synergize with TBN (such as making the proc go off even if TBN's shield doesn't break). Or perhaps even make it a straight upgrade to TBN (with increased proc HoT, shield duration, and/or damage mitigation). The animation certainly looks cooler...

[The_User]

I don't know if you noticed but other tank now have a short cooldown that are stonger than 25% shield and the 15s recast isn't really that great when you can only expect to use it only 1 time per minute without damage loss.

[Marxam]

What makes TBN special?
1. It's strength. 25% shield on 15s cooldown is amazing and feels good to use.

I only feel "relief" when it actually does pop which is variable at best when you consider in savage encounters the boss is always casting so you aren't getting hit enough for it to pop making its "short" cd redundant, if all the times you could use it the shield won't pop. Its the only cd still stuck in ShB design, when "risk-reward" was still in the game, albeit nerfed from HW. BW/NF, HS/Intervention, HoC all have no downsides when being used and 25 sec recast isn't even that long when you consider the benefits these cds give. TBN, at worst is only dps neutral and at best it's flat 25% eHP. The effect is still good (can negate some 100% HP dmg attacks) but its not updated for the current design of the tanks and 6.0 in general.

Imo they should put TBN to 2 charges, increase the recast timer, duration to up 8 seconds and remove the MP cost. Makes TBN have more utility and ease of use. Spending mana to use TBN is a fallacy that needs to end. Ppl say you get a free edge/flood of shadow when TBN pops but guess what? why do you need to spend 3k MP on TBN when you could have just used that mp on a shadow in the first place? Heals on DRK I can take it or leave it. If these TBN changes are as good as I think they are, heals might not be needed. Though abyssal drain needs to be buffed to at least 400 potency, like last year.

Also a little insight into why TBN procing a shadow is bad. Older players might remember when DRK and PLD had skills like this. Low Blow and Shield Swipe procs are no longer in the game for a good reason. TBN needs to made easier to use because the demographic has shifted to casuals who can't even grasp the concept that pressing one button to put on tank stance lets you gain enmity and keep enemies off the DPS and healer. Personally I would have preferred they go back to 4.0 but since that is not gonna happen why still make TBN still feel that way in 6.0? Just get rid of the MP cost and put Dark Arts out of its misery. Either try again with DA as a separate skill in the next expansion or just remove it entirely because right now all it is, is just text on a tool tip.

[Superskull85]

If you are using TBN in situations where you know it won't break then you never needed to use TBN for mitigation in the first place which means you shouldn't need to worry about a DPS loss. That said, there is still merit for looking at the design of TBN and DRK's MP usage as a whole especially compared to how modern PLD uses MP as a resource. That doesn't mean the effect of TBN should be changing that much or the situations where you should be using it.

[NobleWinter]

I always thought the relationship between TBN and Edge/Flood felt backwards. In my mind using Edge/Flood should proc a free use of TBN. So everytime you spend 3k MP to do damage you have the option to use your Blackest Night Shield as well unless Blackest Night is on Cooldown already. Then if the shield breaks you should be rewarded with a HoT. You would still need to save 3k MP to use Blackest Night but the damage would never be optional. Only the Heal over Time from the Shield Breaking would be in question and if the shield didn't break you clearly wouldn't need the HoT anyway.

[Aegis_Harvey]

I always thought the relationship between TBN and Edge/Flood felt backwards. In my mind using Edge/Flood should proc a free use of TBN.

Nobody would ever spend MP on TBN in this case, the correct play would be to always favor damage and be rewarded with a free shield that will always have benefit, even if you're OT you can just put it on MT and have it soak a little bit of free damage. There is no opportunity cost here. If anything, people would start complaining that they can't line up their free TBNs with busters and such so you end up giving DRK one of GNB's grievances on top of all the others it has.

As it currently stands, the design behind TBN is to force you to weigh the opportunity cost of not breaking the shield against the cost of not soaking the damage. In my opinion, the reason this doesn't feel good is because the gain equals the cost: if I get a broken shield and a free edge that's 3000MP, or if I just ignored the shield and used edge that's also 3000MP for the exact same damage and a consequence (damage not absorbed) that might not even be all that relevant. If TBN were free, it would become a no brainer, just mash the button. I think the answer is right inbetween, TBN costs 1500MP so that a successful break is a 1500MP net for the same damage instead of 0MP and an unsuccessful break is -1500MP net instead of -3000.