Dark Knight TBN

[Shurrikhan]

For DRK though that risk already exists, looking at numbers for dungeons, DRK HPS is about half of damage received, DRK's self sufficiency is already the lowest of the tanks and as a healer I think that's a good thing but it's also beside the point. Unlike WAR, DRK has to be concerned about all damage received.

DRK needn't always be concerned about all damage, though, even at min ilvl.

So long as healers can counter any more than half the incoming damage (i.e., same amount as a DRK is credited for) via free healing, there's still no rDPS reward for further avoiding damage. This was typically the case; even at minimum ilvl, neither the DRK nor I had to pop all of our CDs across the pulls before each boss unless the DPS were performing quite poorly. There's magic damage enough that Dark Missionary could theoretically have seen use, but often enough none among Low Blow, Arm's Length, Walking Dead, or even Oblation were required to ensure I casted no at-cost heals.

More fundamentally, as well, just as the job of a healer isn't to keep people topped off, the concern of a tank isn't necessarily to prevent damage as much as possible, but simply to maximize rDPS (which, now that we have no trade-offs between damage and sustain, comes simply from reducing costs to healer offense). Sometimes this could even mean taking slightly more damage overall, so long as that course of damage taken strips less "free" healing out of the healer (e.g., out of panic or to meet eHP needs vs. TBs) in such a way that they need an at-cost heal later where they otherwise would not have needed it despite the increased total damage taken.

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To the larger point, though, my primary concern was simply that as long as using TBN for its intended purpose won't rope in at least as much rDPS via at-cost heals spared (due to excess sustain, especially when paired with a Warrior) as the amount 25% DRK HP may exceed 460 (or, 507 w/ Darkside) tank potency of damage, this function could cause a pretty "degenerate" (or certainly unintuitive) point of optimization (avoid damage taken while TBN is up, for a bigger bomb).

Granted, if we just fixed our glut of "free" sustain, there'd be zero threat of that, so this is just one more reason to want that general fix anyways.