The Definitive Dark Knight Guide

Haven't read the guide in the first post. Just thought i would share how I play DRK (currently, 58). I think i have a good grasp of how to tank as DRK. Doubt i am one of those squishy DRKs, so my hope is that this will help those still learning how to play DRK :P

To build enmity on pull (assuming single target boss fight), i use:

Blood price + Dark Dance up --> Unmend --> Plunge --> Hard Slash --> Dark Arts --> Spinning Slash --> Power Slash
Weave Reprisal into rotation if it procs. Also, use unbuffed Dark Passenger, Plunge and Salted Earth in between the GCDs of this rotation as they are instants and should be treated just like a PLD using Spirits Within whenever its up. On trash enemy that is about to die, place Sole Survivor on them. Blood price always up whenever its ready.

After above rotation, i use a self-regen rotation:
Dark Arts (whenever MP is above 2000) --> Hard Slash --> Syphon Strike --> Soul Eater.
Weave Reprisal into rotation if it procs. Also, use unbuffed Dark Passenger, Plunge and Salted Earth in between the GCDs of this rotation as they are instants and should be treated just like a PLD using Spirits Within whenever its up. On trash enemy that is about to die, place Sole Survivor on them. Blood price always up whenever its ready. Do use Scourge whenever (just like a WAR using fracture).

You should hardly need to use the enmity building Power Slash rotation anymore. But, you should still use it if you see another party member getting close to you in terms of enmity.

I won't go into defensive buff usage but I generally think that DRK has a competent enough suite of mitigation cooldowns. Besides DRK abilities, i cross-class Foresight, Convalescence, Awareness as well as Provoke and Blood Bath.

Haven't really found a use for Abyssal Drain yet. MP cost is higher than Unmend.
Delirium Blade is also not very useful currently. Hardly use it.

Haven't gotten Carve and Spit yet but i imagine i would treat it similarly to any other instant.

Thank you for your contribution.

I'm thinking about tanking for the first time with this class. Do you think it will be too much starting at 30 and not having the early levels to get the mechanics down?

The only up front use I could see for Abyssal Drain is if you pulled a ton of mobs and want to make sure you don't die. I plan to keep this ability in more click range, the possible free Unleashed, and that it's ultimately less MP, just feels like he better option for most pulls.

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Originally Posted by AnyTricks

I'm thinking about tanking for the first time with this class. Do you think it will be too much starting at 30 and not having the early levels to get the mechanics down?

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Just do the lower dungeons until your more comfortable. I didn't touch Fates until I got a couple runs in Brayflox because I wanted to play with the class in a more real setting, and the exp was a bit better imo.

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Originally Posted by AnyTricks

I'm thinking about tanking for the first time with this class. Do you think it will be too much starting at 30 and not having the early levels to get the mechanics down?

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Doesn't matter the majority of the game is ezpz lemon squeeze. The minority of the game will require much of you.
You can jump into tanking right away if you check out a few pointers to keep in mind and you'll get better as you go through Haukke/Brayflox/Cutters/Vigil anyways. Those lower level dungeons are all to learn anyways. Just remember stuff like returning to position after aoes in general, holding aggro, cycling targets, face enemies away from party and grow from there.

The early dungeons give you your tank stance which Plds don't even have to 40, you don't technically need it to tank anything there but it'll make things easier for a new player to hold aggro anyways. Can basically spam Unleash and run a siphon strike chain for aggro the majority of the game...you could but you shouldn't build up that habit.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

Blood weapon? How are you making this work while tanking? Using grit to get back in defensive mode eats up like half of what you'd possibly gain from blood weapon.

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Yeah, I'm not sure about that in endgame, things hit too hard to warrant being out of Grit. You also can't drop Grit to pop Blood Weapon and go back into Grit. Going back into Grit while Blood Weapon is active, deactivates it. It's pointless to MT out of Grit for most things anyway. You might be doing more DPS but your causing your healer to have to focus you more. I run with an AST most of the time and they have pretty damn respectable DPS also. The trade-off isn't worth it for most things post-60.


Try MT Ravana EX and eat one of it's tank-busters in Darkside alone. Have fun restarting the instance if you didn't pop considerable CDs i.e. all of them. That thing can hit by 10-12k mitigated with Shadowskin in Grit stance.


He's still right, though. DA C&S is huge DPS and should always be used with DA. Dark Knights have plenty of MP regeneration tools at their disposal. If you find yourself hurting for MP, you either aren't using your tools or you are going a little spam-happy with Dark Arts or maybe Unleashes in big pulls. But Blood Price/Syphon Strike should be sufficient to keep you topped in either situation and you shouldn't really ever need to blow a C&S for 800 MP. Not when you could be critting it for over 3k...higher if your gear is better than mine.

Just a tip: If you begin your pull with a Dark Arts Power Slash combo you will literally have enough enmity for a large amount of full encounters. DK enmity combo is enormous compared to even a butcher's block, since we have to play the MP management game. After that first combo you should not be using your Power Slash 1-2-3 any longer (or at least for 2-3 mins; if the encounter is long you will need to refresh it), but you need to open with it to cement your hate because good DPS can easily creep back up if you don't Dark Arts it.

You can do either combo that branches from Syphon Strike after that exclusively and you really shouldn't ever be running into MP issues. Even with big pulls on trash mobs, pop Blood Price. Most of the time you are getting more MP than you can use. Spam Unleash, throw in a good aligned DA/Dark Passenger, drop Salted Earth. You should have hate for days and full MP by the time Blood Price runs out. Coordinate with your healer though!! If you have a WHM and they pop in to begin a big pull with Holy spam, you just wasted a Blood price because the mobs will be stunned. If you blow CD's while Blood Price is up, then you are nerfing your own MP regen but that also puts stress on the healer. If there are a lot of mobs, I will usually pair Dark Dance with Blood Price since Parrying something still causes you to actually get hit by it. If there are 4+ mobs then even with that active you are normally still taking enough damage to keep your MP up.

So I do agree, and the way he puts it is right. Never probably is the right word to use. If you are doing your job correctly you shouldn't ever have to waste a C&S outside of Dark Arts.

I'm sorry.. did you say Crit for 3k? I got a crit last night on Soul Eater for 1950... which I don't see often and I'm i169 I think.

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Originally Posted by Docfiord_Fowling

Player skill will always be the determining factor, but....

on paper WARs should be doing more. Deliverance is +5%, maim is +20, so (100 * 1.05) * 1.2 = 126% all the time. Season with Berserk as necessary. In Defiance, they only do 90% damage compared to our 92%

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You aren't taking into consideration that every potency that WAR has, outside of Fel Cleave and Inner Beast is on the low side. Their combos average ~200 Potency, their DoT Fracture is only 300, and they have one off global for 50 potency every 20s. OGCDs alone the WAR does 150 potency every 60s while DRK does 1440 potency (1790 if they DA Carve and Spit) and PLD does 1200. They can stack damage buffs but it is really meant to bring them in line, not make them machines.

@JayCommon I thought Ravana Ex's tank buster was supposed to be shared? I've seen plenty of videos of people solo tanking him though, specifically a strength stacked WAR eat it in Deliverance and watched him drop to ~10% HP, made me cringe inside as a tank, no amount of tank DPS is worth that butt hole clencher!

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Originally Posted by Daega

I'm sorry.. did you say Crit for 3k? I got a crit last night on Soul Eater for 1950... which I don't see often and I'm i169 I think.

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Yeah, the crit values have wild ranges now that Crit rate affects how hard your crit can hit for. There are wider extremes now. Some of my crits are around 2200, and others are in the 3k range. I think you're higher i-level then me but not by much, and I can't remember my crit rate at the moment but I'm pretty sure it's over 500. Ahh, also I still have 2 i145 VIT accessories with about 28 strength in them combined.

I know it's a bit off-topic to branch into this subject, but my tank partner for raid is a warrior and he has seen crits on his Fell Cleave of anywhere from 5k to 6300 in turn 5 (so with 20% echo so normal content numbers won't be that high). But the ranges are pretty wide now for what a crit can actually give you.

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Originally Posted by Ipkonfig

@JayCommon I thought Ravana Ex's tank buster was supposed to be shared? I've seen plenty of videos of people solo tanking him though, specifically a strength stacked WAR eat it in Deliverance and watched him drop to ~10% HP, made me cringe inside as a tank, no amount of tank DPS is worth that butt hole clencher!

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It is, but we went in with no video because we like to least experience content before memorizing it. We had 1 person with us who had beat it a day before we went in and was giving us some pointers but only after we face pulled a few times. It's survivable, but it's absolutely not something you want to eat by yourself more than once. I cringed everytime I saw it too lol. Getting hit by 12k with mitigation up isn't fun for anyone!!