The Bottom Feeders: Moves You Never Use and Why.

not sure why Steel Cyclone gets so much hate - I love to use it on big pulls plus it looks cool.

For my not-so-used skills I#d say:

PLD:
Awareness and Tempered Will - I feel like those two have either too high cooldown or are too weak on their own. Might solve it by merging them into 1 and have an additional cooldown for it. They have their usage in some fights but that's extremely situational (Shiva was one of them).
Was going to say cover but it has its uses - just gotta use it.

WAR:
Honestly - Currently my favourite job besides Scholar, not only for RP purposes playing all Limsan related jobs but being so well rounded. I have no button that I not use very often. Well aside from Holmgang but let's be honest, it's a hell of a cooldown when you know you're gonna die anyway. I guess the only way to improve it is to remove your selfbind, which actually can bring you into a bad position during speedrunning but that's just my personal derp moment right there haha.

DRK:
Dark Passenger - I used it a couple of times to get an aoe blind although I also forget to use it - Plus I rather spend Dark Arts on Abysmal Drain instead of this... Maybe do that Blind effect without Dark arts or something

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

not sure why Steel Cyclone gets so much hate - I love to use it on big pulls plus it looks cool.

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I agree, but I still use Steel Cyclone fairly frequently. The only time I don't use it is if I have BloodBath + Beserk up. Then I'll take the additional healing from Decimate over Steel Cyclone before swapping back into Defiance.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

PLD:
Awareness and Tempered Will - I feel like those two have either too high cooldown or are too weak on their own. Might solve it by merging them into 1 and have an additional cooldown for it. They have their usage in some fights but that's extremely situational (Shiva was one of them).

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I'm still surprised people specify Awareness. In terms of strength of CD, I agree that it's definitely not at the top of my list, but in terms of frequency of use I still use this skill an awful lot. Outside of niche uses (like Shiva) I pretty much pop Awareness on CD when on Pld/Drk/War. At the very least I make sure to use it with every Bulwark/Dark Dance./Raw Intuition. So It's up almost whenever those moves are up (with Pld taking the least often, since Bulwark and Awareness don't match CD timers).

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

Holmgang

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This is a good one. I can honestly say that I probably under-use Holmgang. I'm in the habit of saving it for emergencies (like Pld's HG), so I look for CD alternatives rather than using it outright. Given that Holmgang's CD timer is much much shorter than HG, this is probably a waste. I have to get over my bad habit of holding back my Holmgangs.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

DRK:
Dark Passenger - I used it a couple of times to get an aoe blind although I also forget to use it - Plus I rather spend Dark Arts on Abysmal Drain instead of this... Maybe do that Blind effect without Dark arts or something

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For AOE, you should be blowing Dark Arts with it. It's not just Blind, it's also another 100 potency.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

not sure why Steel Cyclone gets so much hate

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My guess would be because it has an enmity modifier. :3

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

DRK:
Dark Passenger - I used it a couple of times to get an aoe blind although I also forget to use it - Plus I rather spend Dark Arts on Abysmal Drain instead of this... Maybe do that Blind effect without Dark arts or something

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This is off-GCD, free DPS. You need to be using it on cooldown regardless of AoE or single-target, Dark Arts buffed or not, its a part of the job's DPS rotation.

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Originally Posted by Shikiseki

not sure why Steel Cyclone gets so much hate - I love to use it on big pulls plus it looks cool.

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Can explain.

Steel Cyclone is good when:

1. You're doing a trash pull/A2S
2. You don't have Unchained available and
3. You need to stay in Defiance

So pretty much the only time you'll be doing SC is after Unchained wears, after Vengeance wears, after Berserk + IR + Bloodbath wears, and only if enough mobs are still alive for you to need to be in Defiance. Even then it becomes a question of how much TP you have available, as OP spam doesn't build stacks and it's your highest PPS. Infuriate should also be used for either Unchained or Decimate, as both will result in higher DPS or higher HPS.

Steel Cyclone has it's uses, don't get me wrong, they're just niche compared to everything else WAR has.

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

This is off-GCD, free DPS. You need to be using it on cooldown regardless of AoE or single-target, Dark Arts buffed or not, its a part of the job's DPS rotation.

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Is it really? I can see why in mobs, but for single target I'm usually sitting on a miniscule 1-2k MP, so using it will either drop me out of Dark side or prevent me using dark arts for another combo.

And yes I do use blood weapon and blood price on cool down.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Is it really? I can see why in mobs, but for single target I'm usually sitting on a miniscule 1-2k MP, so using it will either drop me out of Dark side or prevent me using dark arts for another combo.

And yes I do use blood weapon and blood price on cool down.

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Dark Passenger is the most MP efficient thing to do after DA Carve & Spit. 150 pot for 884 MP whereas a Dark Arts Souleater will cost you 1768 MP for 140 pot (in fact, 120, since when you don't DA SE you should Delirium).

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Is it really? I can see why in mobs, but for single target I'm usually sitting on a miniscule 1-2k MP, so using it will either drop me out of Dark side or prevent me using dark arts for another combo.

And yes I do use blood weapon and blood price on cool down.

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You need to be incorporating DP into your rotation. You should be getting to whatever that MP danger zone is WITH DP in your rotation. You should never be "sitting on" a "miniscule" amount of any MP, it should constantly be going up and down, and the job is designed so that you can use all of its oGCDs, DA Carve, and use DA SE at the very LEAST every 2 Deliriums (worst case scenario here, assuming you have to stay in Grit and the boss isn't hitting you much during Blood Price).

There's not a job in the game that shouldn't be using just about every oGCD it has on cooldown unless its a stun/silence/dot that needs to be saved for a mechanic or for a period of downtime to pass, respectively, or maybe if its saving them to line up with DPS buffs, of which DRK has none that effect actual damage dealt.

Edit: I'm pretty verbose, and Freyyy said it better. But I can piggy-back off that to make it even simpler: Every oGCD use of MP DRK has is more mana-efficient than DA-Souleater and thus they are the priority. So for example if DP and Carve just came off recast and you hit Hardslash, you'd weave a DA but instead of going from SS to SE you'd go to Delirium and weave Carve and DP in that GCD, then go back to DA-SE, and adjust your mana management accordingly.

Now, if you just hit Scourge and are on your way to your next combo when those abilities come off recast, you can actually DA Carve+DP in the next two GCDs and have DA off recast again for DA-SE. If its more than 2 GCDs away from your next DA SE you can DA something else in between.

DRK is a rotational/priority-hybrid, its not strictly rotational, so you need to adapt based on your MP situation constantly at any given moment.

So dark arts every dark passenger, souleater, carve and spit, and dark mind... so much mana consumption.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

So dark arts every dark passenger, souleater, carve and spit, and dark mind... so much mana consumption.

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It's just a priority based rotation, not that complicated overall, follow a few simple rules (we're talking single target here):

1) Saving MP is a waste of time, you should be using whenever possible in order to keep your DPS as high as possible. The only exception for this being Dark Mind when you know a Magical Tank Buster is coming (if you die because you're DPSing then you're a bad tank).
2) Keep blood weapon and Blood Price up as much as you can.
3) DA priority should go, in this order, to Dark Mind (Magic Tank Buster) -> Carve And Split -> Souleater (Don't EVER use it on Power Slash).
4) If you do not have enough MP for both Dark Passenger and DA Souleater then give priority to Dark Passenger and just use the Delirium combo.
5) If you do not have enough MP for DA Souleater then use Delirium.
6) oGCD skills should always be in cooldown (unless stun is needed for some reason in the fight).
7) Keep Scourge up at all times.

I'm no pro-DRK player (still leveling my DRK) but think that's about it (overly simplified of course).