The Bottom Feeders: Moves You Never Use and Why.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

I think the only ability paladins have which I feel needs a big viability boost is Clemency. It -should- be class defining but its implementation makes it stupidly hard to use.

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Not a Paladin myself, but when I read the tooltip at xpac launch, I thought right away Clemency should have an additional affect, "Grants any party member within a 5y range of target Protectra, preventing damage totalling 50% of HP restored". Now that would be class defining.

One man's trash, another man's treasure. I've been finding uses for pretty much all my buttons, even the seemingly contradictory ones. Unleash for low-cost AOE to grab with, Abyssal Drain spam to burn mobs down. DA Dark Dance/DA Dark Passenger is expensive as hell, but 10 seconds of something like 50% dodge rate against a big pull is way too good to pass up. Sole Survivor's a nice pick-me-up and helps with AOE spamming.

DRK has a lot of neat tricks to pull in 4-man content.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

Awareness should be a stat on gear - as an active skill, it's terrible.

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Just literally laughed out loud. DA + Dark Dance/Dark Dance + Awareness alternating, Awareness + Raw Intuition, Awareness + Bulwark...

You need to learn your cooldowns lol

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Originally Posted by AlmightyDook

Just literally laughed out loud. DA + Dark Dance/Dark Dance + Awareness alternating, Awareness + Raw Intuition, Awareness + Bulwark...

You need to learn your cooldowns lol

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Noone here is arguing with HOW to use Awareness. The issue is that it's BARELY NOTICEABLE. Even in those situations. This is a thread about "Bottom Feeder" skills. Mobs have about a 5% crit rate. Crits do +50% damage. Popping Awareness results in 2.5% less damage taken on average if you dont factor in Block/Parry. Even if you pop it with Bulwark/Raw Int so it removes the low chance of crits, it's still only a few percent of damage reduction, with some RNG added in. Technically it might even do nothing if none of the rolls would have been crits anyway. Add in the fact that big tankbusters (that you can still block/parry) cannot crit...

Awareness isnt useless, but the actual impact it has when it's up is TINY. It's by far the least impactful cooldown we have. Even Foresight on average reduces almost twice as much damage as Awareness and that's generally viewed as a weak cooldown. Rampart is a flat 20% less damage taken. Foresight is 7-8% less physical damage taken. Awareness is... maybe 3% less damage taken on average, possibly. Yes it prevents the spikes in certain moments, and has some use, but overall its impact is small.

Just add a "cant be crit" element to Raw Int, Bulwark, Sheltron and Dark Dance, or a passive effect on the tank stance. We're talking here about Bottom Feeders, and that's what Awareness is - it's a button you press at specific times, but the IMPACT of that button is absolutely tiny. Physical Auto Attack damage that can crit do not generally make up a significant portion of damage on most encounters, and crits themselves are only +50% damage. It's not useless, it's just -minimal-.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

Noone here is arguing with HOW to use Awareness. The issue is that it's BARELY NOTICEABLE. Even in those situations. This is a thread about "Bottom Feeder" skills. Mobs have about a 5% crit rate. Crits do +50% damage. Popping Awareness results in 2.5% less damage taken on average if you dont factor in Block/Parry. Even if you pop it with Bulwark/Raw Int so it removes the low chance of crits, it's still only a few percent of damage reduction, with some RNG added in. Technically it might even do nothing if none of the rolls would have been crits anyway. Add in the fact that big tankbusters (that you can still block/parry) cannot crit...

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I completely concur; I did macro Awareness with RI, but I can't recall the last time I took a hit from the flank or from behind so it is moot. I still stick to my statement that RI itself is a glorified auto Wrath Stack CD anyway.

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Originally Posted by Sapphidia

We're talking here about Bottom Feeders, and that's what Awareness is - it's a button you press at specific times, but the IMPACT of that button is absolutely tiny. Physical Auto Attack damage that can crit do not generally make up a significant portion of damage on most encounters, and crits themselves are only +50% damage. It's not useless, it's just -minimal-.

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I can agree with this, though I think you're short-changing the actual percentage a little.Given that each block can defend as high as 30% dmg on Pld, additional Blocks proc'd by Awareness removing crits would most certainly stack above 3 %. The only problem is, as you pointed out, that it is impossible to tell exactly how much of a return we are seeing off of the move, because impossible to now how many Crits were nullified during the time Awareness is up. Given that it's an RNG issue, it could be as low as 0 (though, by that logic it could also be 100%, which would be a substantial increase in defense). The real issue with Awareness's seemingly small defensive gain is that we simply don't, and can't, know how much it is actually doing for us in the background.

I suppose it would be possible to give very rough values with some testing... For Pld, someone would be have to willing to Tank and identical set number of mobs (say 3 for the sake of replicating an "average" pull) of the same type 4 times using 4 different methods:

1st run would be a dry run with no buffs. Count up the total blocks during a set time (say 5 minutes). 2nd run would be using only Awareness only to test efficiency of increased Proc rate. Count up the blocks over the course of 2 casts of Awareness (2 casts within 5 minutes). 3rd run would be with only Bulwark. Same deal as the Awareness run. Unfortunately, Bulwark's absurdly long CD means only 1 cast within 5 minutes. Count up the blocks. Last run would combine Awareness and Bulwark (used together), followed by a second Awareness on CD within 5 minutes. Count up the blocks.

After that we'd have to compare the results to see a very rough estimate (because RNG of Crits/Blocks precludes the notion of universal results) of how much utility Awareness actually gives us in practice. If you wanted to be really thorough, you'd also count up the crit dmg from the dry run and compare that to the crits dealt during the downtime of Awareness of the other 3 runs.

Without at least doing this much, though, it's really difficult to weigh the full value of Awareness, especially because most Pld's don't really pay attention to Proc'd Blocks. I don't know about most of you, but I don't spend a lot of time watching for every single "block" text that comes onto the screen, especially now that Shield Swipe is off of the OGCD. My only reason for actively paying attention to my blocks has been tossed out the window.

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

I completely concur; I did macro Awareness with RI, but I can't recall the last time I took a hit from the flank or from behind so it is moot.

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I don't think I've ever been hit on my side or my back during a Boss encounter... but I think the risk of IR comes in during mob tanking, not boss tanking. It's not difficult to keep your mob positioned in front of you, of course, but in bigger pulls mobs tend to shove each other around a little. Mob's can't overlap hitboxes, so once you get a pack of 5 or more they run the risk of shoving each other out of position and can, rarely, get pushed to the range of your hitbox that is considered the "flank." It's not common though, and I think I've only seen something like this happen when there's a few big mobs mixed in who squeeze the little guys to the sides. It's kind of funny to watch them shove each other around for the sake of positioning.

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Originally Posted by Februs

I don't think I've ever been hit on my side or my back during a Boss encounter... but I think the risk of IR comes in during mob tanking, not boss tanking. It's not difficult to keep your mob positioned in front of you, of course, but in bigger pulls mobs tend to shove each other around a little. Mob's can't overlap hitboxes, so once you get a pack of 5 or more they run the risk of shoving each other out of position and can, rarely, get pushed to the range of your hitbox that is considered the "flank." It's not common though, and I think I've only seen something like this happen when there's a few big mobs mixed in who squeeze the little guys to the sides. It's kind of funny to watch them shove each other around for the sake of positioning.

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I know exactly what you mean xD especially in A2 SA2 or when you run unsynced content and pull the whole place. I found that the easy fix to this is to target as best as you can the "middle" mob of the pack and slowly back pedal as theyre being burnt down. It's almost like the system constantly reshuffles them and the system registers their hits to the front of your hitbox.

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

I know exactly what you mean xD especially in A2 SA2 or when you run unsynced content and pull the whole place. I found that the easy fix to this is to target as best as you can the "middle" mob of the pack and slowly back pedal as theyre being burnt down. It's almost like the system constantly reshuffles them and the system registers their hits to the front of your hitbox.

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Exactly lol. This is one of the only uses I've ever found in the game for the "target lock-on" function (besides the Demon Wall boss). Only time it's even an issue is if over-eager Dps start dropping ground based AoE's, but I am not turning the train around for that. Sorry they wasted a CD, but no... just no...

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Originally Posted by Februs

Exactly lol. This is one of the only uses I've ever found in the game for the "target lock-on" function (besides the Demon Wall boss). Only time it's even an issue is if over-eager Dps start dropping ground based AoE's, but I am not turning the train around for that. Sorry they wasted a CD, but no... just no...

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Same. "...I could take 7 crits or screw over melee positionals while I rotate these mobs for your flaming arrow... or I could just keep parrying everything while slowly being overrun... at a controlled pace." Still have 'lock-on' bound to a convenient button, though mostly for chasing down mobs as melee while lagging, and it does look pretty cool in that situation...

I remember an LS of mine discussing findings on avg crit chance of mobs across HW dungeons. Just can't remember what that number was (albeit fairly consistent). 8... maybe 12%? That'd give you a good average 6% mitigation in the latter case, more with DD or Bulwark up, which isn't too bad given that it also has the safety net factor of preventing RNG spike damage.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Blood Price + Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain = 15 seconds of Immortality

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O God a thousand times yes.

And Sole Survivor has become a staple for me as well. Basically once per pull get 20 percent MP back for picking a mob that's about to die anyway. Wanna feel like a rockstar? Time ur Mercy Stroke properly and get HP back as well! Isss DEELICIOUS.

Stuff I forget about? Dark Passenger. blind effect is meh (I WANT those mobs hitting me so I can get my MP back w/ Blood Price). How about lancer's Piercing Talon? I've only used it twice. Once to show a new tank how to pull in Stone Vigil NM. And once in Copperbell to pull the spriggan away from the bomb that blows up the (2nd?) boss.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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Kinda funny to see the things we use some functions for, isn't it? lol. I remember when I first started playing this, seeing the lock-on function and thinking it was gonna be like every other video game out there and that I'd end up using it a lot... And then I didn't, except for these very rare instances lol.

I thought the crit rate was 5%... I seem to recall reading it somewhere. I don't know if it's true though. Either way, it's very difficult to quantify the benefit of moves like Bulwark and Awareness since we have no way of knowing how many crits were nullified, if any.

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Originally Posted by Februs

The only problem I have with Awareness on Pld is actually a problem with Bulwark. The CD timers don't line up for Bulwark and Awareness to be used in sync or even with every second usage. Terrible timing. Bulwark's CD timer should be adjusted to match.

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I'm really not liking how Bulwark is set up right now. It's an in between ability that's not 100% block rate, but it has a long cooldown. I wish they'd either make it a short cooldown with only a modest improvement in block rate (like DRK's dark dance) or a longer cooldown with 100% block rate (like Raw Intuition, although I guess that is a short cooldown too...). It was ok in 2.0, but by 3.0 standards it feels very lackluster.

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Originally Posted by Freyyy

WTF. When you DA C&S you gain 350 potency (from 100 to 450), when you DA SE you gain 140 potency (from 260 to 400). C&S is oGCD. And honestly, you shouldn't have to choose between DA SE and DA C&S if you're playing properly. You should have enough MP to DA every time C&S is available while rotating DA SE and Delirium and using Dark Passenger on CD. C&S without DA becomes more efficient only during huge AoE pulls; when the extra 884MP you get + the 1768MP you didn't spend makes you able to use Abyssal Drain 2-3 more times.

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Even with smaller groups, I'm finding I use C&S on its own now much more in dungeon runs.

After Blood Price runs out, I'll drop a huge chunk of MP on DA + DD + DA + DP to max out evasion. During this, I'll drop Grit and Blood Weapon and use C&S to get that MP back so I'm near full when I turn back on Grit and move on to the next group. I can only afford to DA + CS if the group kills really slow, and I've got more time to regen MP after blind wears off.

But single target, obviously DA + CS all the way.

It's funny because dungeon runs are starting to feel how I thought DRK was going to be played. I'm managing my MP tightly between blood price, aoe spam (maybe DA + AD depending on group size), DA + DD, DA + DP and having to make decisions about whether I need the extra MP from C&S to top off after the group or whether I can afford the extra damage without starting the next group low on MP.

As opposed to single target where the only decision you really need to make is whether or not you're going to get hit with a hard enough magic attack that you want to use DA + DM.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Except that that post was mimicking your own exaggeration. Realistically, Path is unused 99% of the time because it's both lowest dps and has a largely unwanted secondary effect, except for those moments when you need the extra mitigation because you're too bad to get gear to not need the mitigation.

The original post was "This move sucks because it's not needed, not sucks because it's bad".

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Yea, but it's not that much weaker. You're only losing 40 potency every 7 or so GCD (if you include wrath moves & fracture), I think I napkin mathed that out to like 1-2% of your total DPS.

So 1-2% of your DPS vs. 10% less damage all the time to everyone. I think unless you're talking about bleeding edge content, the extra couple % dps you do isn't going to make that much difference. But 10% allows your healer to breath a little easier.

10% is something like an 11% ehp/eheal increase. For the tank alone, in full STR acc around i200-i210, what does that give you? a base of around 15kish hp? So maybe this is giving you (or the tank) an effective extra base 1600 hp (along with the corresponding eHeal increase). Even if you're doing 1500 dps on a fight, that's a loss of like 30 dps at most (and I think that's a high estimate).

What would you say that was in STR? I've heard vit > str acc adds something like 25% to your DPS on a tank. So 5% each accessory, each accessory at i210 has, what, around 50 STR on it? So lets say 1% is 10 STR. So you're trading 20 STR to give the tank an extra 1600 base HP (more if they're wearing melded or any VIT acc) and 11% effective extra healing. And in reality this applies to the whole group. It sounds like a great trade off to me, unless you are on bleeding edge content and you absolutely NEED that extra few points of DPS to beat an enrage.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

I'm really not liking how Bulwark is set up right now. It's an in between ability that's not 100% block rate, but it has a long cooldown. I wish they'd either make it a short cooldown with only a modest improvement in block rate (like DRK's dark dance) or a longer cooldown with 100% block rate (like Raw Intuition, although I guess that is a short cooldown too...). It was ok in 2.0, but by 3.0 standards it feels very lackluster.

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100% agreed.

A simple adjustment to Bulwark's timer would go miles and miles for fixing that move as well as the efficiency of Awareness on Pld (call me crazy, but I kinda think it's weird that Pld's get the least utility out of a move that comes from their kit). I would probably leave it's block rate the same for now though. 100% would be inefficient now that Shelltron is in the Pld line-up and lowering it would make it under-powered compared to Drk's and War's, because the Duration of effect is much shorter.

Personally, if I could sit down and talk to the Dev's, the change I'd implement to Bulwark would be to reduce the CD timer to 120s (same as Awareness). I'd also consider decrease the block % (maybe as low as 45%), but only if they also increased the duration of the effect to 20-25 seconds with 25 being optimal, as it would last an identical time as Awareness on Pld (and before anyone gripes about the unfairness of that, I'll remind you all that Awareness is a Pld move. It makes sense that Pld's should get the most use out of it. Wars and Drks can suck it up).

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

Even with smaller groups, I'm finding I use C&S on its own now much more in dungeon runs.

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I don't know if this is right or wrong (and a more experienced Drk can feel free to set me straight on it), but I typically start to use an AD spam on mob pulls of 4 or more to increase my enmity + Dps output. Anything more than 5 (or if the Dmg starts to see sizable dips in my Hp), and I start using DA-AB When Blood Price is up to compensate. At that point, C&S becomes an MP regen move for me, rather than a Dps gain. Once the Mob starts to whittle down to 3 or less, I drop Grit, apply Blood Weapon, and regain as much Mp as possible before next pull...Again, don't know if that's the "right" way to do it, but it's been working out for me pretty well so far.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

As opposed to single target where the only decision you really need to make is whether or not you're going to get hit with a hard enough magic attack that you want to use DA + DM.

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Dark Mind tends to be the move I use the least on my Drk these days, and I fully admit that I am under using it.

The problem I think I'm having is: 1. I'm used to having no such option on Pld or War. 2. Fights requiring high magic defense are not as common as physical cleaves and Tank busters. 3. Because of reason 2, I placed Dark Mind on my 3rd Hotbar. I basically put it aside in favour of moves I use far more frequently... but the side effect of that is that I tend to forget about it, and even when I'm using it I don't always know when it's off CD... Bad habits I need to get over.

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Originally Posted by Februs

I don't know if this is right or wrong (and a more experienced Drk can feel free to set me straight on it)

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Here's my big pull ritual in dungeons:

1. Unmend first target.
2. Plunge to the next.
3. Unleash as I run past packs.
4. If my GCD is ticking such that I'll be in melee range by the time my next Unmend goes off, I Scourge instead for shits.
5. If a pack is out of range or stragglers fly past me to eat the healer, I throw an Abyssal Drain at them.
6. I put down Salted Earth wherever the final group is as I approach that spot.
7. Pop Blood Price +Shadowskin or Shadow Wall.
8. AD > DP > AD > DA > AD > unbuffed C&S> AD > DA > AD > AD
9. Blood Price falls, then: HS > DA > SS > (some oGCD here) > DE > DD > HS > DA > SS > (some oGCD here) > DE > DP > Scourge > Awareness
10. Multidot with Scourge if my MP is above like 2.5-3K and mobs are still at around 75% or more.
11. Salted Earth again.
12. 1 or 2 other defensive CDs.
13. Blood Price again.
14. Rinse&Repeat/Wing it.
15. Stuff dies.

I typically pull 10 or so targets in this fashion, and I'd say at least 6-8 mobs are necessary to burn MP as liberally as I do.

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Originally Posted by Syzygian

Here's my big pull ritual in dungeons: 8. AD > DP > AD > DA > AD > unbuffed C&S> AD > DA > AD > AD
9. Blood Price falls, then: HS > DA > SS > (some oGCD here) > DE > DD > HS > DA > SS > (some oGCD here) > DE > DP > Scourge > Awareness

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This is pretty much exactly what I do on mobs of 5 or more, or near enough depending on Mp regen (damn those Whm holy's for wasting my blood price) and which CD's are up at the start of the pull.

Some differences would be that I almost always use DA with DP on any group of 4 or more. Around step 14, "wing it" would be replaced for me with dropping Grit and using Blood Weapon to prepare for the next pull. I typically try to save Shadow Wall for this part, or some sort of a combination of Fracture/[DA-DD/Raw - DD] + Awareness (with DA being applied only if the Dps is slow and have yet to thin out the ranks to my liking) if Wall is still down.

I know I should be more considerate to my healer (and often am if they seem to be struggling), but most healers I've come across don't seem to have a problem with dropping Grit for Mp Regen near the end of the pull.

Abyssal Drain is great when you use it with Dark Arts and Blood Price. The more mobs that are beating on you the better. You can just about fill up your HP and MP bar in one shot. :-D

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).

Quote:

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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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No. Dark Passenger everytime it's available, only Dark Arts it when there is 2 or more targets. Dark Arts every Carve & Spit, and spend the rest of your MP into DA SE. Dark Arts Dark Mind if you're gonna eat high magic damage. As a DRK, your MP are meant to be consumed, not saved. DRK MP doesn't work like WHM or SMN MP. It's closer to BLM MP honestly but in a more complex way (as it's not just spend ALL your MP, get them ALL back in 3 seconds, spend them ALL again, repeat).

Edit :

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Merkava

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.

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

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^ This basically.