Is it me, or is DRK really isn't that super great, nor super bad.

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Originally Posted by Gooner_iBluAirJGR

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I believe the discussion is being done under the assumption that both drk and warrior are dropping their tank stance to maintain their dps for MTing.

Ironically, the DRK needs to do this much more than the warrior to maintain a high dps since the blood weapon is so central to not being mana starved. That and its easier for warrior to switch around stances than drk since the DRK needs a GCD and a chunk of mana to do so

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Originally Posted by Tila

the new warrior skill raw intuition gives abandon/wrath, and therefore, more damage when MT.

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I never parced it but I'm pretty sure using Raw Intuition (or vengence) to solely to generate an extra stack of abandon/wrath) doesn't increase our dps by that much. All it amounts to is 1 less GCD before an Inner Beast (or +2% more crit/parry).

My DRK is at level 55, and I can tell you that while it's immediate damage doesn't shine, the burst capability due to the sheer number of instant/30 sec cooldown powers at its disposal jumps its DPS potential when weaved into the GCD combos. It also has 2 relatively powerful DoTs. Furthermore, focusing on the Souleater combo and using Dark Arts to empower it boosts your output considerably since it both recharges your MP and recovers health. I use the enmity combo only when establishing aggro at the start of long boss fights.

That said, I don't think its DPS is a major concern. I'm more worried about its survivability during end-game raids.

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Originally Posted by Zolentus

That said, I don't think its DPS is a major concern. I'm more worried about its survivability during end-game raids.

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I don't think we really need to be concerned about that. We lack the shield of the PLD or the HP/IB of the WAR, but we gain a fairly potent Magic Damage cooldown and have some self-healing options.

I don't think trading in innate tankiness for...situational cooldown, especially when paladins and warriors have enough cooldowns to deal with it regardless.

And "some self-healing options" isn't really an argument when paladins got clemency and their improved conva, and warriors have ib/storms/improved bloodbath/new heal/thrill of battle/innate healing bonus :/

I decided to have a speed run in stone vigil, My DRK took longer to clear compare to my warrior, it was like "DAY" and "Night"

Why do I feel my attacks are slower then that of a warrior, maybe its just the animation doing that to me. With a warrior, I feel like I'm hitting them HARD and when I hit 52 with my warrior, its a WHOLE NEW BALL GAME BABY.

I'm at 57 on my DRK and tanked the new dungeons up to Aery (which I have done several times today) and have had no problems at all not only holding hate but doing respectable dps and the healers seem to have no issue at all. I even asked a couple times how healing DRK is and most say it's not a lot different than healing a paladin. Others have said I'm doing great and a lot of the DRK they have got are awful.

Part of me feels like it's those who jumped on the DRK train because they wanna be Batman or something. Not to say the DRK is perfectly fine, I worry about their raiding capability due to a lack of a lot of cooldowns (PLD) or their always on hand one (WAR).

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Originally Posted by Xyphon

I just hit level 51 myself, and with full STR stat distribution it feels like we hit pretty dam hard (are you guys all vit or something??).

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This...I'm new to tanking in general, and I think I need to reset my stats :)

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Originally Posted by Jamez82

I'm at 57 on my DRK and tanked the new dungeons up to Aery (which I have done several times today) and have had no problems at all not only holding hate but doing respectable dps and the healers seem to have no issue at all. I even asked a couple times how healing DRK is and most say it's not a lot different than healing a paladin. Others have said I'm doing great and a lot of the DRK they have got are awful.

Part of me feels like it's those who jumped on the DRK train because they wanna be Batman or something. Not to say the DRK is perfectly fine, I worry about their raiding capability due to a lack of a lot of cooldowns (PLD) or their always on hand one (WAR).

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For healing, it's definitely not much different from healing a paladin.... but the paladin is still tougher in the end (shield) and has no encouragement to drop their tanking stance (blood weapon).
But the aery is pretty cruisy, especially with abyssal drain + DA + blood price.

I'm half way through 58 and I've enjoyed Dark Knight a bunch......

Only thing that I feel it needs a change with , which has already been noted , is reprisal being a proc w/o a cooldown.

I wouldn't mind SS having a shorter cooldown as well though if it could happen......

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Originally Posted by Ipkonfig

30% chance to block 20% of a hit (ignoring Dr \\\\\\'s base parry chance), add into this 20% chance to evade 100% of a hit (ignoring DRK\\\\\\'s base evade chance), also calculate in the 33% up time on Dark Dance, and it gives you roughly 8.5% total mitigation, obviously at the mercy of RNG.

Sentinel 40% damage reduction with a 10s duration and 180 CD ends up being 2.2% overall mitigation since it has such a tiny up time. Obviously designed to handle large burst spikes.

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Paladins have shields which if you know how they work are like an always on buff vs physical. They have their own chance to proc (rolled before parry) and block more damage than parry does (which only increase with better shields. Even crap ones now are blocking 25 to thirty. Block is locked at 20).

Dark dance compares to having a shield at all times and bulwark for when you need it not to sentinel. Sentinel compares to dark wall and its much better than it.

Vs raid bosses the self healing of dark it too weak to matter. Strong bursts matter more than stronger over time healing (which dark has). Warriors can heal twice (thrill and equilibrium) and Paladins new healing spell is amazing.

Sorry we are so good
<--War

Keep this in mind---
--leveled a drk to 55 before i gave up on it. As a Paladin/War primary, its bad.

I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad, but knowing how the classes are used in raids from 2.0 coils (t1-t13) I can tell you ..its bad.

I say this in hopes the class is BUFFED--because that is what SE tends to do, listen and alter.

well, 60 since last night: carve and spit is def nice, but imo could give a bit more MP back, but free mp is free.

now farming for gear first. once ppl in my fc caught up we will try primals. so far i haven't had any problems, except with really lazy healers, though i don't know how the other two tanks play at 60. War shouldn't be much different anyway, except for the self heal. Pld is probably even more of a wall now.

I do enjoy drk a lot, just wishing for a bit more synergy of some of it's skills.

I agree with many of the comments that DRK needs some tweaking to be more equivalent to the other tanks, but I disagree that it is terrible.

My main issues with DRK are as follows (some may be repeats of what has already been said.) Mainly they have to do with visual feedback on abilities since DRK is much more reliant on conditional states than the other tanks to perform.


- Too many abilities use up too much MP and then also use up TP as well. MP depletion should really be more relegated to Darkside upkeep, Dark Arts usage and maybe the OGCD damage abilities. I feel putting MP costs on things like Unleashed and other base abilities, they should either have a reduced MP cost or have it switched to just TP.
- The Darkside visual fx needs to be adjusted. currently it is too spread out and not noticeable enough when multiple effects are going off around the DRK, which is pretty much always. It needs to be more centrally confined to the drk's body and be more concentrated visually. Something like red flames or a red mist emanating off the drk's body would look good imo. This would be useful to be able to visually track that Darkside is up without having to search for it in your status bar icons, especially since it can turn itself off if you are low on MP.
- Reprisal currently feels a bit clunky. I understand the concept and intended mechanics behind it, but it just feels a bit unintuitive, particularly because if you are MTing, it is very important for mitigating damage and it becoming available for usage is not the most noticeable thing on your hotbar when you are focusing on the battle. One thing that would really help Reprisal feel better would be a small visual/audio fx that plays when Reprisal procs, so you can see it become available without having to watch your hotbar so much.
- Blood sword should be available with Grit on but replenishes less MP and also does not provide the skill speed buff. Would work normally without Grit.

Those are the main ones I have noticed so far, but I am still leveling DRK. There are some other things I feel may need some tweaking such as their defensive cd's and potential party/raid utility but I can't quite put my finger on what exactly the issues are and how to address them right now.

Overall, the class is very enjoyable and the mechanics are very fun, I love Dark Arts, it just needs some tweaks and minor adjustments which is to be expected with new classes in a mmo.

Anyways, I suspect there will be some tweaks and changes coming to the new classes and probably the new 50-60 abilities for the other ones, maybe with the first major patch, 3.1, similar to the WAR makeover of 2.1, although probably to a much smaller extent.

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Originally Posted by Faytte

Keep this in mind---
--leveled a drk to 55 before i gave up on it. As a Paladin/War primary, its bad.

I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad, but knowing how the classes are used in raids from 2.0 coils (t1-t13) I can tell you ..its bad.

I say this in hopes the class is BUFFED--because that is what SE tends to do, listen and alter.

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That is my observation so far too. The DRK is not unsalvagable, but he doesnt hold a candle to the warrior as OT (its not even a contest: DRKs are shitty offtanks, and if you have a monk, are utterly useless in every regard), and he doesnt match the PLD as maintank - except when there is no warrior OT to apply Storms Path, then its a bit more close.

Basically, the DRK is good if paired with a warrior OT, and no PLD is available. He is the "backup" PLD, thats his niche. But he is inferior to either tank under pretty much every condition known to me. Not FAR inferior to the PLD, but still.

This class is less than a week old. The immediate panic of "oh god the mp drain is awful" and other statements is just silly. Play it and learn it and get the feel for its capabilities.

It's a rather impressive tank class. I've been maining PLD since 2.0 beta and I'm absolutely in love with DRK so far (at lv57). Once you learn to ride the bicycle that is what you can burst and when and learn what is really the Dark Knight strategy, mp is a non-issue, threat is a non-issue, you take damage like a pro, you self-heal like a pro (seriously, laying down multiple dark arts buffed Abyssal Drains on almost 10 mobs in the Vault starts to feel a little godly) AND you can pump out some severe numbers.

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Originally Posted by Faytte

Keep this in mind---
--leveled a drk to 55 before i gave up on it. As a Paladin/War primary, its bad.

I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad, but knowing how the classes are used in raids from 2.0 coils (t1-t13) I can tell you ..its bad.

I say this in hopes the class is BUFFED--because that is what SE tends to do, listen and alter.

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As a Paladin primary, it's the opposite of bad.

And since this class was designed and launched with the expansion that brings us Alexander, a raid we have no knowledge of whatsoever and can't predict at all what'll be needed in it, your talk of what was expected of classes in Coil doesn't really matter and shouldn't be used as a negative against DRK.

From the overview of the class and what I've played of it so far, darkside goes down regularly and is supposed to go down regularly. We have abilities that consume darkside, and its in those moments that we'd want to get our MP back with siphon strike. Blood weapon is only useful during tank swaps, which is when the dark knight will have the opportunity to deactivate grit. The game is built around the WoW model for combat, and I can say from years of playing across games using this model that you'd never put down your tank stance when faced with a boss. Damage reduction cooldowns are supposed to be used to stop instant death from massive boss attacks, not extend the benefits of "grit" so you can regain MP off a single cooldown. Remember, you'd have to keep grit off for a full 15 seconds because grit dispels the effect of blood weapon when you reactivate it.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

From the overview of the class and what I've played of it so far, darkside goes down regularly and is supposed to go down regularly. We have abilities that consume darkside, and its in those moments that we'd want to get our MP back with siphon strike. Blood weapon is only useful during tank swaps, which is when the dark knight will have the opportunity to deactivate grit. The game is built around the WoW model for combat, and I can say from years of playing across games using this model that you'd never put down your tank stance when faced with a boss. Damage reduction cooldowns are supposed to be used to stop instant death from massive boss attacks, not extend the benefits of "grit" so you can regain MP off a single cooldown. Remember, you'd have to keep grit off for a full 15 seconds because grit dispels the effect of blood weapon when you reactivate it.

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You are not supposed ot have darkside fall off

The idea is to manage your MP and keep it rolling

furthermore, abilities dont consume darkside, they require it active to use.

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Originally Posted by Timat

You are not supposed ot have darkside fall off

The idea is to manage your MP and keep it rolling

furthermore, abilities dont consume darkside, they require it active to use.

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Woops, I was confusing dark arts with darkside. My bad.

Regardless, I do flip it off in between encounters to let my MP go back up, and I don't see any dark knight keeping darkside up if they are in a situation that requires heavy AoE.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Woops, I was confusing dark arts with darkside. My bad.

Regardless, I do flip it off in between encounters to let my MP go back up, and I don't see any dark knight keeping darkside up if they are in a situation that requires heavy AoE.

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This is, at early levels, a little more tricky to manage, as Blood Price should never be on cooldown, but when you pop it needs to be strategic. You obviously shouldn't pop it when there's one mob left at half health and you'll get maybe 2 attacks worth of mp regen from it before the mob is dead. As you go and you get the feel for things, the mp management is way more comfortable. The more mobs there are, the more effective Blood Price is, and the more freedom you have with aoes, especially later. Like in the Vault last night, just for kicks, I did nothing but dark arts Abyssal Drain on a group of about 8 mobs while Blood Price was up. By the time dark arts was back up again for another Abyssal Drain, my mp was full.

Darkside should never be off if you're actively in combat. Never ever ever. Not while tanking, not while OTing, not while running around a map doing quests -- never ever ever off. If it falls off, turn it back on the second you have the mana for it. If you turn it off for better mana regen in between pulls, that's fine, but when in combat, if Darkside is off, something is wrong.

Something to keep in mind, gear available for a level 50 will be inflated in power and ilvl.
As you level towards 60, you are actually getting worse, in terms of gear and its power/ilvl.
Once you hit 60 then everything starts to smooth out and go back up.
So a lot of the DRK's complaining that are lvl 55, I would imagine the increased stats from better gear at 60 will make MP management much easier.

The other issue is probably that, DRK can use really powerful MP intensive moves with no cooldowns. But in reality the hidden cooldown is your MP.
This gives a skilled tank a lot of flexibility in terms of ability usage. But it allows a bad tank to blow all of the stuff right away and run out of MP and then start switching out of Grit.
(switching out of grit has its place, but mostly when MTing you wont be)

Also very few people are "good" at being a DRK, give it some time its been like 4 days? People have been playing PLD and WAR for a year or more.

Nothing I have seen is out of balance on a scale of 1.0 War/Pld DRK's don't need some giant buff.

side note they should fix the Darkside graphic it does look stupid.

I think it's unfair to make Shadow Wall worse than Vengeance or Sentinel with no upside. But it'll still do its job of being the big mitigation CD.

But, all told, DRK is plenty capable. It's got Rampart and Sentinel (basically). It's got an extra magic defensive CD on a short timer. The parry CD is a bit meh, but has good synergy with a 10% damage down that's up 2/3rds of the time and a DPS-increasing proc. And it's got all the cross-class CDs.
As an added benefit it's got a pretty heavy amount of self healing and strong damage potential MT and OT.
All told for mitigation, besides the Cross-class, CDs:
War gets Inner Beast, Vengeance, ToB (...well it gives more eHp) and Intuition (phys only)
Pld gets Rampart, Sentinel, Sheltron (phys only), Bulwark (chance-based, phys only)
Drk gets Shadow Skin, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind (magic only), Dark dance (chance, phys only)

I think that's pretty decent ballance, aside from some minor things. Then in the Tanking-DPS realm, DRK gets limited more by mana availability, rather than cooldown uptime. We really have to wait a while to see how that part sorts out. But, for now, it seems pretty decent.

I've only played PLD to 50; I haven't really touched WAR. So far I do enjoy DRK but I can still say that PLD is the better tank -- It's easier to play and it does its job more effectively.

I do have more fun playing DRK, but one thing I wonder -- Does Blind really do anything? I feel like Dark Arts is primarily for Souleater, with Power Slash coming in secondary along with Dark Dance and Dark Passenger coming in last.

In most level 50 content blind didn't do anything because most stuff was immune or would begin resisting it very quickly. They may have changed this for the new content but I don't know, so I'm not sure of blind's viability now.
Not sure if getting the blind effect is worth the dark arts use though.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

In most level 50 content blind didn't do anything because most stuff was immune or would begin resisting it very quickly. They may have changed this for the new content but I don't know, so I'm not sure of blind's viability now.
Not sure if getting the blind effect is worth the dark arts use though.

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I agree; it's tough to say. Blind as a mechanic just feels like it does... Nothing. I could be wrong, though.

Eh, maybe we're meant to use dance and pass right after price runs out in dungeons. Start a pull, mitigation + price, dump mana into drains and unleashes then as you run out of price and still have decent mana, you cast blind and evasion (that's like 2/3 of our mp huh?) and then stick to mana combos until next pull?

Just basing this on my first 2 HW dungeon runs. I've been doing single pack pulls because the enemies are tougher and takes longer to kill...so I'm not sure the healers are comfortable with big pull on level synced content. Price tends to be up not long before I start my next pull so I think they take 40 seconds ish but price is only up for like 15?

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Originally Posted by Pinkie_Pie

Its just...

Blah..

It doesn't hit hard no where near against a warrior nor the health

Doesn't have the defensive mitigation like a paladin but damages just a tad more then a paladin.

Depends on parry with a long cooldown to reduce the damage of a mob (parry reprisal) for 10% when a warrior can do it just by storm path combo(doesn't stack it seems)

It seems its a "Tricks of all trades, master of none" right now.

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Its the middle lane, mediocre tank at the moment.

Been levelling my DRK for the last two days, lvl 47 atm, and it's been an absolute cakewalk tanking. Aggro is off the charts after 2-3 unleash on aoe pulls. Mana issues have been fairly non existant and with cross class skills such as conva, foresight and bloodbath having some sort of a buff up is no problem at all. The only time I died was when I grossly overpulled. If your healer is somewhat decent there shouldn't be any issues at all.

However I've learned from playing MMO's over the years that even basic logical thinking seems to be soooo stressful for people and getting a decent rotation seems to baffle 90% of the players, in any game.

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Originally Posted by Syfer22

I agree; it's tough to say. Blind as a mechanic just feels like it does... Nothing. I could be wrong, though.

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Last time i checked, it applies a 20% miss rate on all physical abilities and auto attacks. Hardly nothing? Some mechanics ignore this effect, some dont. If you go blind Titan NM before his mountain busters you can notice this--during the original clears I would have about a quarter or so of the busters simply miss me because of a good blind. Consequently in EX his busters could no longer miss because a mechanic (tank swap) was tied to them, but you will still see plenty of auto attacks miss.

In any case, blind if a fantastic defensive mechanic but it --IS-- RNG

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

War gets ... ToB ...

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ToB pairs very nicely with a cross classed convalescence. Both have 2 min cooldowns, both 20s duration. 20% more HP and 20% better heals is effectively *almost* as good as Rampart (convalescence would need to be 25% to match the effect exactly).

Drk gets convalescence, but it doesn't have anything to pair it with to create that 3rd dependable mitigation ability vs. physical.

DRK, even with its perceived initial shortcomings, is the only tank class that makes me want to tank permanently (I've done 100+ clears on both WAR and PLD.) I'm only at level 50 with it, but I can already tell that a lot of people aren't playing it the way that (I think) it's designed to be played.

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Originally Posted by ShaolinMike

DRK, even with its perceived initial shortcomings, is the only tank class that makes me want to tank permanently (I've done 100+ clears on both WAR and PLD.) I'm only at level 50 with it, but I can already tell that a lot of people aren't playing it the way that (I think) it's designed to be played.

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Can you explain? Im genuinly curious, I wanted to like DRK, but found it to clunky and all over the place.

And what way is that? No offense, but theres only so many ways you can play a class overall. The defensives are very clear cut. Keep up grit. Stay in Dark side. Use blood price, draw aggro, use dark arts on soul eater...what else?

The issue isnt even their offense or aggro, its their defensive, and their defensives dont take skill to understand.

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Originally Posted by Tila

Can you explain? Im genuinly curious, I wanted to like DRK, but found it to clunky and all over the place.

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That is because it is.

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Originally Posted by Ipkonfig

It was originally intended in response to DRK's apparent inability to deal with auto attacks.

Even with evidence the masses still don't buy it. I love that "I'm not really buying the 20% evasion" like it just disappears depending on what you are fighting? Dark Arts has a 5s CD so you aren't wasting it at all, and you can evade boss auto attacks.

I find it interesting that it's still believed WARs will be top DPS while tanking still. Oh well!

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You cant evade raid bosses attacks aka coil
DA does have a 5 sec cd, but MP is not an infinite supply, especially if you wanna talk high dps while tanking, your mp for DA would go to Soul Eater

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Originally Posted by Tila

Can you explain? Im genuinly curious, I wanted to like DRK, but found it to clunky and all over the place.

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Not much to explain really, it's just my personal preference. I don't know if the clunkiness is due to the fact that it actually IS clunky or that people had gotten so used to playing PLD / WAR that this just doesn't feel right to them. Perhaps I didn't play either tank job long enough to have their playstyles so ingrained into my way of thinking. Either way, I'm enjoying the job so far. I never chose which jobs to play based on them being "the best" at whatever they did. (I mained SMN all through the sh*t storm it received after having thunder taken away).

Alright, I've been tanking Neverreap and Fractal. ilvl 160. I felt like DRK is too squishy. Apparently, for "big" pulls, Paladin still is the #1. I mean, I gathered the first 5 monsters in Neverreap and I ate damage like a champ...

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Originally Posted by Cyrus-Wallace

Alright, I've been tanking Neverreap and Fractal. ilvl 160. I felt like DRK is too squishy. Apparently, for "big" pulls, Paladin still is the #1. I mean, I gathered the first 5 monsters in Neverreap and I ate damage like a champ...

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Coming from Paladin, you're going to feel that way because PLD in general is built to tougher. That transition to DRK softness is better from WAR. Though I can't really vouch how WAR feels when it comes to DRK's defense.