DRK at 60?

I'm a healer main that didn't have any problems healing drk 51-59 in any of the dungeons. They seemed to take a little more dmg, but I figured it would balance out by 60.

Now at 60, I almost cringe when a drk lands in my party. I struggle to keep them up even on a lot of the trash, but when I have an equally geared pld/war I have no problem healing them and even getting dps out.

Do drk need some serious buffs? Or is there advice I can give these new drk tanks to make healing them less annoying?

Probably would help to check them out and see if they are an experienced Tank (lv 50 Paladin/Warrior) or more a DPS. I havn't had much issue healing any of the tanks as long as they use the cooldowns they are suppose to. Maybe I have just gotten lucky though.

The DRK I had in Neverreap last night gave me panic attacks. So squishy. When I see a DRK in party I need to start popping XANAX.

it's not the dark knight job that's squishy. it might have been a gear difference, or a skill difference. so many tanks don't use any CDs at all. for whatever reason

I think it has to do with DRK being new and people figuring out how to play it. I hit 60 DRK a few days ago and I am still tweaking my CD rotation and skill flow. One thing that really helped me when tanking big pulls at 60 was to combine DA+Dark Dance and DA+Dark Passenger. So a big pull would now go: pop Shadow Wall (30% damage reduction), gather all mobs together, pop Blood Price (getting hit returns mp) , DA + Abyssal Drain (increased enmity and hp return), Salted Earth, about this time Shadow Wall should be about gone so I hit the DA+Dark Dance and DA+Dark Passenger (This gives +30% parry rate, +20% evasion, and Blinds everyone). At that point everything misses or gets parried and I take almost no damage. Work in a Convo for 20% more heals and I am g2g to gather mp for more DA+Abyssal drain or DA+Souleater. I'm sure this isn't the optimal rotation for large pulls, but its a great start for learning the job. Sorry you are getting scrub DRK, but I think it will get better as more and more people figure everything out.

The reason DRKs feel more squishy is because they don't have a mechanic built into their "tank" stance like the others do, or don't have a shield.

For warrior, you get the 20% added heal bonus that's built into their tanking stance. If they didn't have that, they'd be just as hard to heal or even HARDER to heal than DRKs due to their overly large health pool. PLDs don't have a mechanic built into their tank stance, but they have the added armor and stats of a shield which neither of the two other classes have. DRK has none of these things, and it's what hurts them in regards to dungeons.

Its true that, dark Knight are squishier compared to Marauder(with Defiance) or Paladin ( With Shield DEF and lots of Buffs) But its mainly how you play Dark knight, unexperienced Dark knight wont know how or when to use Specific Skills like "Dark Arts" , i had the problem before becouse i didnt know how to Manage using "Dark arts" becouse i thought it was mainly a Huge MP waste for an potency increase like 100-200. but for skills like "Abyssal Drain" Which is same as "Unleash" (black circle thingy) increases Enmity and also Absorbs "Health Points" aswell and they are Both aoe moves. But besides that it should be recommended atleast for Dark knight newcomers to have a little more EQ over nowledge, becouse if you die in 1 Hit , kowning how Dark knight works, hasn't helped either way :P Also hightly recommend to all Dark knight, use Grit, to Grit gud.

Leveling my AST, i have seen MANY DRKs.

All but a few of them were extremely squishy, and couldn't hold any aggro.

The pitiful low level MP regeneration of ASTs makes it that much worse. I had one that would lose aggro whenever i used a card on them.

I feel like a lot of them have never actually tanked before, and are just in it for the theme of the job.

Thanks everyone for the quick replies!

I'm glad to hear it sounds like it's the drk's I'm getting are still learning their rotations, which is fine by me, we all need to learn! I'm just getting bad luck it seems, as I haven't had single drk at 60 that doesn't give me panic attacks lol. My last party I have no clue what happen to the drk (which is why I made the thread), he pulled the first room in FC, I put SS down over him asap, then spamming lustrates he still just dropped faster than I could push out heals.

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Originally Posted by Maliki_Ozari

Thanks everyone for the quick replies!

I'm glad to hear it sounds like it's the drk's I'm getting are still learning their rotations, which is fine by me, we all need to learn! I'm just getting bad luck it seems, as I haven't had single drk at 60 that doesn't give me panic attacks lol. My last party I have no clue what happen to the drk (which is why I made the thread), he pulled the first room in FC, I put SS down over him asap, them spamming lustrates he still just dropped faster than I could push out heals.

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Yeah, I had a DRK just flat out die instantly on a trash pull. I didn't have time to even target him. I don't even have time to cast REGEN most of the time, because if I do that he will probably die.

Being a WHM another problem I have is on boss fights I'm running dangerously low on MP because the DRK is a sponge. Thankfully I've had bards with me. <3 you bards!