DRK AOE Damage

DRK is far better at AoEing than the other tanks and is the only one that actually feels a bit complex and rewarding in AoE situations. Anyone who thinks otherwise is doing something wrong. It's by far the best dungeon tank right now. And it feels absolutely great to me. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the DA Dark Dance + DA DP full evasion tanking in HW, but the current DRK is far more intelligently designed in terms of AoE tanking and I start liking it more than the HW one. It's a blast.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

DRK is far better at AoEing than the other tanks and is the only one that actually feels a bit complex and rewarding in AoE situations. Anyone who thinks otherwise is doing something wrong. It's by far the best dungeon tank right now. And it feels absolutely great to me. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the DA Dark Dance + DA DP full evasion tanking in HW, but the current DRK is far more intelligently designed in terms of AoE tanking and I start liking it more than the HW one. It's a blast.

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You spam abyssal drain and use TBN to get gauge for your other aoe which you then use to continue abyssal drain or more TBN, you are hyping it's complexity a bit too much lol. Any complexity it has is mostly having to deal with mana management because blood price is absolute garbage nowadays with how much it gives you

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Originally Posted by TheCount

You spam abyssal drain and use TBN to get gauge for your other aoe which you then use to continue abyssal drain or more TBN, you are hyping it's complexity a bit too much lol. Any complexity it has is mostly having to deal with mana management because blood price is absolute garbage nowadays with how much it gives you

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Compared to just spamming OP/TE and popping CDs without any mechanic, yes it's more complex. Nowhere have I said that it was very complex (I've even used "a bit complex" which means... a bit, not very), it's just more complex than the other tanks and requires a bit more intelligent button presses since there are actual job mechanics when dealing with AoE on DRK unlike the other two tanks. And while BP feels like garbage when you're not tanking a lot of mobs, it's actually quite good when doing gate-to-gate pulls. And you're not forced to stay in Grit either. I see plenty of people saying that you're forced to stay in tanking stance during AoE since SB but that's completely false. You can drop Grit and get extra damage + self healing from AD while benefitting from BW on Quietus and regaining a lot more MP than with BP, as long as you pop CDs and use TBN you won't feel squishy at all. I even have enough MP to use DA DP on CD by doing this while also being able to DA every AD and sometimes even Quietus depending on the number of mobs, and still popping TBN on CD. The damage is insane, the tankiness is completely fine and it feels awesome.

And yes, current DRK is more complex than just popping DA DP + DA DD and spamming AD. Even if it felt great in HW, it's still a whole lot more fun in SB.


Edit : And I'll add that DRK also is limitless in dungeons. The other tanks are bound to the slow natural TP regen if no one gives them Goad (or if there's no melee at all), and it definitely limits them a lot when dealing with successions of big packs of mobs. DRK can sprint from pack to pack without worrying at all about resource regeneration. Feels really good.

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Originally Posted by TheCount

You spam abyssal drain and use TBN to get gauge for your other aoe which you then use to continue abyssal drain or more TBN, you are hyping it's complexity a bit too much lol. Any complexity it has is mostly having to deal with mana management because blood price is absolute garbage nowadays with how much it gives you

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The funny thing is mana management is overrated if you pull gazillions of mobs. DAAD into DAAD then Quietus, TBN whenever up and DA Quietus some of the times too. I might just record the whole DREX dungeon to show how DRK doesn't have the limitation that the other 2 tanks have.

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Originally Posted by Sarcatica

DRK is best on dungeon, you just suck at it. Try sustaining as WAR now on big pulls, I dare you.

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Hilarious, absolutely hilarious. I've tanked every dungeon as WAR multiples of multiple times, and funny enough, I've not had TP issues. This isn't to say I've been shy about pressing that overpower button either, no, that's seen enough use to wear the button out.

Simply put things die when I start AoEing. There's no need to sustain when mobs die from your burst. /blackguytouchingtemple.jpg

DRK dungeon tanking is not hard either, just convoluted and complex. Get out of here for thinking that I in particular would suck at it.

I don't know what to tell you but DRK is super good at AOE. It's the one thing I think they still do better than the other tanks.

I happen to play all three tanks and I don't understand this claim that DRK's are limitless compared to the Warrior and Paladin in their AOE. In fact you're more liable to face the limits of DRK mana unless it's a truly massive pull with lots of small little adds in which case yeah they are pretty much limitless with their resource; but those ocassions where you get that many mobs at once are very few. With DRK you have to be constantly aware of your mana in fights or risk the chance that you use too much and end up not having enough to do that unleash/abyssal drain to get the aggro on that next group of adds that spawn or some similar circumstance. Warriors and Paladins never have this issue.


the only way you'll be TP starved for warrior for example is if you use overpower and only overpower, which is limiting the moves you have available. If you're particularly confident you could even use inner release to spam decimate even.

The DRK's in here should stop exaggerating the AOE potential and 'limitless' resources they have available compared to other tanks, it's not that much of a difference and one of the main themes of DRK is that they are constantly juggling their resources, way more than the other tanks. Sure it's slightly more punishing if a Warrior runs out of TP but it regens quick enough between fights anyway and the fights themselves don't last so long that it's actually an issue

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Originally Posted by TheCount

In fact you're more liable to face the limits of DRK mana unless it's a truly massive pull with lots of small little adds in which case yeah they are pretty much limitless with their resource; but those ocassions where you get that many mobs at once are very few.

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THIS! and to drive the point further, those pulls with many small adds tend to die real fast real easily. It's overkill and done before you know it. The one situation that makes DRK the most "limitless" is the one where it's needed the least.

But the measurement of successful big pulls is the ability to get dungeon's time as low as possible.

You won't be able to generate more gauge while Overpower is still your no.1 aoe skill so you are spending a lot of time trying to combo to get Decimate or Steel Cyclone. As long as you have BP as a DRK, you are pretty much getting a lot of Quietus on big pulls while TBN gives you more Quietus to keep sustaining and not using other skills than DAAD or just AD.

I have been clocking from 1st pull (the moment I touch 1st add) in 12mins to 13mins for all DREXs iirc. I haven't been able to do those times with PLD or WAR.

https://i.imgur.com/5EYxrMX.png 16,248 DPS total

https://i.imgur.com/BsCbgdA.png 12,991 DPS total

https://i.imgur.com/B7NIqmM.png 10,504 DPS total. Seems to the worse due to ilvl sync, but also been quite awhile since I do Ala Mhigo. Might be possible to reach 15mins for this, the 16:11 had 1 DPS doing 600dps less than the other one, the healer also prolly could be higher.

To the OP,

You're basically having to rebuild your AoE set back up since SE thought it would be cool to nerf the old set of skills and then just give us revamped versions of it to depend on blood.

Everything has been answered here, while leveling up DRK is really weak. When you hit 70 it's the best dungeon tank if you're going for speed clears and damage on trash packs. PLD is good if you think your healer may not be up to par (and the tank I suggest if you're not 100% on top of your game or you get the feeling you'll get a horrible healer). But if you know what you're doing and you know you won't have to pick up the slack of a bad healer, I'd say go DRK all day every day.