The Blackest Night, skill improvement.

[Arohk]

I want to suggest a simple change to "The Blackest Night", it wont effect the overall use of the ability, but grant the Dark Knight a lot more party support.

If Blackest Night is not fully absorbed, make the remaining Shield Points turn into healing.

There are often situations in dungeons where a healer dies to a boss and as a dark knight you and the dps just slowly die and you can't do anything against it. Any other Tank can easily keep the DPS alive during a dungeon boss but the Dark Knight is just frustrating in that regard,
If Blackest Night had a healing function you were able to keep the DPS alife a lot better.

[Oizen]

I'm actually not convinced that would be enough to close the gap. Jobs like WAR can basically double dip healing both for itself and one party member with how busted Nascent Flash is. You compare this to DRK and the healing gap is so severe I don't think you'd be able to pocket a DPS like PLD or WAR can.

My experience with clutch soloing with DRK, is that its entirely doable but you need to change your mindset, and do some preparations. Those being:
-Accept that TBN is your only way of extending your longevity, and almost every use is going to be a dps loss
-Use Abyssal Drain single target because healing is that scarce on this job
-Stock up on Hyper-Potions from Eureka Orthos, they're not too expensive anymore and they unironically offer more healing than your entire kit can give you at once.
If you use these properly, DRK can solo just about anything the other tanks can. But it does feel like shit.
The issues with DRK's sustain options are a bit more than just being TBN's awkward Damage thresholds, I don't think the answer should even be touching TBN really.

The issue is that DRK's only single target sustain is the 3rd GCD in its standard rotation, single target only.
If you are in your single target burst window and using Bloodspiller, DRK has no self sustain.
If you are doing AOEs, DRK's only self sustain is Abyssal Drain. a single use 60s CD 200 cure potency attack.

It actually got worse since they stapled Abyssal to Carve and Spit, and while they made Abyssal give MP, they didn't make Carve Heal, so DRK's single target sustain game got worse.

TBN being wonky with its damage thresholds don't help, but I don't think it being a single target delayed heal would really change all that much.

[dspguy]

On one hand, people (not saying the OP) want TBN to be more like Nascent Flash... and on the other hand people want all the jobs to be different.

And players wonder why SE makes all the jobs the same.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Blackest Night is different as a Short CD compared to the other tanks.

Why is that ?

Because Blackest Night is the only short CD that doesn't reduce incoming damage (A shield doesn't reduce damage, it's an absorption).

Of course, the absorption is 25% of the target's HP, so it's always a huge shield, but that's pretty much it. In fact, it's also the only short CD who come's up with a drawback if you don't use it correctly (Aka DPS loss).

What can we do to make it better ?

Basically, let's do some theorical Math. For this to work easier, let's assume that all the tank in the exemple will have 100.000 HP.

So basically, the DRK can shield himself for 25.000 HP, allowing to strongly absorb incoming damage for... 7s... That's short.

On the other hand, all other tank have Double Mitigation in a 4 sec window but still have mitigation up to 8 sec.

We can already tell that the stronger the boss will hit, the stronger the damage reduction will be effective for those 3 tanks. They also have benefits to regen after such a hit.

PLD = 15% + 15% = around 28% Mitigation + 4.500 HP heal x 4 (250 Potency x 4)
WAR = 10% + 10% + Shield = 19% Mitigation + something near 8.000 Hp shield + Heal 8.000 hp x 4 (400 Potency x 4)
GNB = 15% + 15% = 28% + Catharsis of Corundum (Around 16k heal no crit) (900 Pontecy heal)

What doesn't make any sense is that some secondary effect from those tank will have a duration from 12 sec (HoT Paladin) up to 20 sec (WAR and GNB). We can all agree that the War's one will not last because the shield is so little it will only take one auto-attack from the boss to destroy it. BUT the HoT from the paladin cannot be removed and the emergency heal from the GNB will either explode because of the 50% HP condition or when the time run out.

So. I think that having a 25% Shield is kinda Underwhelming at this point, especially considering the rest of the DRK kit. Invuln aside, you have literally only one way to stay healthy. That's your 1-2-3 combo. And that's it.

In my opinion, this make the DRK the weakest tank on the defensive side by a huge margin.

My idea to resolve the matter is this :

Nerf TBN to be a 20% HP shield.
Modify it so it doesn't cost Mana.
Still gives the Free attack if the shield break.

At level 82

Upgrade TBN to become Oblation :

Shield 20% HP for 8 Sec
Reduce incoming damage by 10% for 4 sec
Give Free attack if shields break. If shield doesn't break, heal 100% of the remaining shield for the target.

Modify Carve and Spit :

Add heal 400 Potency on it. (Doesn't make sense to share the same CD if it's not the same effect, aside for the MP regen)

So basically, what does this mean ?

This mean we get rid of one button that wasn't even usefull to begin with.

Second, by lowering the shield a little we allow it to break a little easier.

Third, no more DPS loss for no reason. Instead, give a DPS UP if done correctly, so it's rewarding and not punishing anymore.

And finally, give a little more survivability in higher level content.

[Mikey_R]

We can already tell that the stronger the boss will hit, the stronger the damage reduction will be effective for those 3 tanks. They also have benefits to regen after such a hit.

Because I had a bit of time, I quickly threw together everyone's favourite thing, a graph that shows how effective the mitigations actually are:

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/ejv2rhttny

X-axis is Max HP, this is just so that you can compare between different Max HP values, and allows the scaling of TBN
Y-axis is the damage done after mitigations and heals.
Black line is Dark, Blue is PLD/GNB (virtually the same graph for each anyway), Orange is Warrior and the Purple line is TBN with a 10% mitigation ontop.

To use it, set the variable 'D' to whatever damage you want the incoming attack to do, go across the X-axis to the Max HP you want to compare and go up. The lower the line, the more damage you have mitigated/healed.

This should highlight just how strong Bloodwhetting is compared to the other mitigations. As a comparison, Bloodwhetting and Holy Sheltron will mitigate about the same if the attack does ~216,000 damage.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

Because I had a bit of time, I quickly threw together everyone's favourite thing, a graph that shows how effective the mitigations actually are:

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/ejv2rhttny

X-axis is Max HP, this is just so that you can compare between different Max HP values, and allows the scaling of TBN
Y-axis is the damage done after mitigations and heals.
Black line is Dark, Blue is PLD/GNB (virtually the same graph for each anyway), Orange is Warrior and the Purple line is TBN with a 10% mitigation ontop.

To use it, set the variable 'D' to whatever damage you want the incoming attack to do, go across the X-axis to the Max HP you want to compare and go up. The lower the line, the more damage you have mitigated/healed.

This should highlight just how strong Bloodwhetting is compared to the other mitigations. As a comparison, Bloodwhetting and Holy Sheltron will mitigate about the same if the attack does ~216,000 damage.

So basically... War is completely busted, while DRK is completely underwhelming even with the 10% mitigation I added on top ? That doesn't feel right

Based on your graph, the more the incoming damage is, the less TBN is usefull. this clearly show that we have a problem on the DRK mitigation, by a huge margin.

For 100k damage and 100k HP, based on your graph, we can see that the DRK need to mitigate at least 20k more damage in order to be on the same page. Something like a 20% mitigation tool.

Again, this is strongly based on the incoming damage. A 25% HP shield could negate damage on a attack, where a %mitigation will not.

Your graph include even the heal after that, which can be considered like mitigation, allowing time for your healer to top you if needed.

Thanks to you, we can say that DRK goes stronger as the expansion goes on.... So do the other 3 tanks. Not only the stuff goes up, but the damage as well, and just like that, the problem remains.

[Arohk]

And none of that has anything to do with my request, Dark Knight is simply the worst choice for dungeons because it has very bad group support.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Alright I'll play along for this forum post...

If TBN falls off, restores HP equal to whatever the cure potency of the shield is suppose to be, and reduce cooldown of Abyssal Drain/Carve and Spit by 30(resets timer on break) seconds, and give 25 Blood Gauge(50 on break).

These would be added onto current TBN...

[RyuDragnier]

And none of that has anything to do with my request, Dark Knight is simply the worst choice for dungeons because it has very bad group support.

It also lacks self-healing. It's the only tank without a regen, and the only tank without a burst heal of some kind.

[TabrisOmbrelame]

And none of that has anything to do with my request, Dark Knight is simply the worst choice for dungeons because it has very bad group support.

The amount of group support of the DRK is almost the same as other. You got massive shield on one person and 10% Magic mitigation AoE.

Beside, Tanks aren't supposed to give "Group" support more than what they already did, this is the job of the Healer Shield (Aka Scholar/Sage).

Yeah Paladin got Clemency to heal team mate in case of need. That's niche, cause you mostly never use it for that purpose, It's the healer job.

Yeah WAR got Nascent Flash, It's completely busted, but mostly, you won't use it either, cause you don't need to.

And Finally GNB got a HoT (which won't save people most of the time) and Catharsis of Corundum which can heal either at 50% HP or when time run out (But that will cost you one short Defensive CD, leaving you more vulnerable)

All this is niche, and the only way you have to use that is when people (Especially healer) mess up in Dungeon or in some trial. This is rarely the case in Extreme or Savage.

Keeping other people alive isn't your job. It's the healer AND DPS Job. One has to heal through unavoidable damage, the other as to avoid taking unnecessary damage. Your job is to "protect" them or reduce what you can.