Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
*Can't help but notice Equilibrium, Aurora, and Paladin's 3200 potency of self-healing per minute.*
Cool that you notice those! Now tell me what's the equivalent to Blodwhetting, HoC and... ... ok I won't compare clemency. But that's why PLD has those heals on skills now.

Is it TBN? If so, a 25% shield. Uh-huh. So too does BW shield you and HoC as well. They may be weaker, but they have other effects to compensate + they have sustain. Next.
Is it Oblation? If so, oh wow, mitigation, aaaand that's about it? Even PLD's skills have more than just a block rate upgrade now.

Where the sustain at?

:T I'm not ignoring those. Those are just not at all skills you can compare the problem to. If Abyssal Drain is indeed our current answer to all those skills, then it's doing a really poor job. Because it's literally doing the same as Bloodwhetting, while DRK only has TBN (which costs MP) as its subsequent "sustain". And shields aren't sustain.

That is but one of the reasons people ask for DRK to be reassessed. Because cool that you noticed those... but then you didn't do the same effort of looking at DRK and wondering which skills match and how their usefulness compares to those other tanks.

TBN isn't an answer. It's a 25%-scaling shield that costs MP to use, you can't spam it as freely as HoC and Bloodwhetting. It's not just the cooldown time. It's the cost.

The whole point of this isn't to blindly say "Oh hey, Abyssal Drain is bad, bring it back". It's "does DRK's kit perform as well as other tanks"? And the answer is no. Because great that you have a shield, but you still need to heal or you're just pressuring the healer. And it having an MP cost when others don't is unfair. Its justification shouldn't be "Oh, but you get "free" damage out of it". It not only is it not free, you just replace the cost elsewhere, it's also heavy on your cooldowns.

Otherwise, I agree. Reduce its cooldown. I too agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with a damage cooldown. But you know why it makes sense for Equilibrium but not Abyssal Drain? Because the whole point of this thread is that DRK's kit needs to be looked over, especially when compared to other tanks. Warrior's got a free instant heal on its back, which is why Equilibrium is actually overkill. GNB has other cooldowns and PLD has block rate, and in between those, they're gaining HP. They can sustain themselves just fine. Some even have shields, weaker than TBN they may be. Dark Knight doesn't have that, which is why Abyssal Drain doesn't make sense. For it to make sense, either TBN needs to give what it's actually worth in comparison to skills like Bloodwhetting and stuff like that, OR AD itself needs to be reworked. If you ask me, I'd rather AD remained as is, and DRK had something to use that gave them small amounts of sustainability until AD came and gave them a burst of sustain. WITHOUT ADDITIONAL COST.

I'm not forgetting those. I'm just pointing out that there's a hole, one currently being filled by TBN which isn't enough. Because the moment you bring those other two into the game, sure it's fairer to compare AD to those (though its effect is more in line with Bloodwhetting), but then you have to really see if TBN matches the sustain (and often times shield and/or mitigation on top) the others have.