Should Dark Knight get a Rework?

[Midareyukki]

*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.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

It effectively has no cost. Any event worth using Shelltron for will pop TBN as well, recouping the MP spent via nuDark Arts.

It would only have been a cost if you could otherwise spend every edge within raid buffs. You can't. And the final TBN per raid cycle is actually a damage increase in that regard, as MP spent during an unbuffed period is nonetheless able to claim damage as if it'd been spent during a buffed period.

Where the sustain at?

Anywhere we want to place it. Technically, the only unreasonable place to put it would be on something spammable if that thing also comes at little to no potency cost -- i.e., akin to old Abyssal Drain. Parity-wise, that's about the only thing that won't work, as all other sources of free sustain are fixed (on CD or resource cost that are themselves time-based).

Arguably, those other tanks' self-healing is also excessive. Warrior has probably too much self-healing, especially in AoE situations. Paladin, as of Conf and Conf-combo getting heals, probably has too much self-healing all around. GNB's is more reasonable, but part of it is also applied in one of the dullest (lowest skill-ceiling) ways possible, an Excog effect.

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

But that kit is not limited to Abyssal Drain. You don't need to make a single CD, or any form or function you want to slap onto its name the primarily --let alone only-- way of dealing with that shortfall. Just like if DRK currently lacked damage, that wouldn't have to be dealt with by buffing C&S to 1k potency.

Find a balance between burst capacity and granularity that allows you to tidily place that self-healing where you want it. You don't want your CD-based means of healing to be just left on reserve, but the stronger it is, the longer you need to let it rest for to avoid overcap. At the same time, you do want it (or, the total throughput across its max charge count) to have some serious saving powerful. Balancing that will usually mean placing that on-demand self-healing across multiple places, such as via both mid-length CDs (e.g., 40-60s) and resource spenders (such as Edge/Flood).

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.

Well, you're in luck. Our lack of self-healing is, itself, under zero debate (we can argue only over whether it's actually any significant disadvantage given current content).

We have the budget. We just need to decide where we want to spend it. For me, I'd rather buff AD just enough to feel sufficiently impressive and offer at least one flexible use per raid cycle and then probably split up the budget's allocations thereafter.

sustain

Just to be clear, I've been using "sustain" to mean anything that sustains you / keeps you alive longer, which therefore includes both damage nullification [mitigation] and damage recuperation [healing]. I focus on healing here simply because our mitigation is already up to snuff. If there were no other obvious balancing constraints, we technically could just buff TBN, Oblation, Dark Mind, and Shadow Wall to high heavens and we wouldn't give a damn about self-healing. But, that would also obviously make DRK broken in any context with external healing since it'd be that much more able to cheese vuln stack mechanics (or avoid them completely by taking no damage, depending on the type of debuff application), stacked TBs, etc.