Why are Grit and Darkside two separate abilities?

Hi. Leveling my dark knight, kinda enjoying it. The spell effects are cool, I like the visual aesthetic of a nice two-handed great-sword, it's all good. BUT I find the stance dancing aspect of it (which is apparently by design) to be a bit clunky. Does it make any sense for Darkside and Grit to exist separate from each other? Shouldn't Dark Arts take the place of Darkside as the dps toggle that speeds up your mana consumption? Wouldn't that be strategic enough?

Grit just seems so...I dunno, pointless. A tank stance that keeps me from using all of my abilities? Really? Why? From what I've read, max level Dark Knights don't even bother using Grit anymore once they've gotten their initial threat spike: They just spend the rest of their fights in Dark Side, using Dark Arts. There don't even seem to be any abilities that require a DRK to remain in grit, so all you can really say about it is that's there, being a drag on our resources. I say give Darkside's damage boost a slight nerf and roll Grit's defense and threat modifiers over to Dark Side. Since everyone ignores grit anyway is there any point at all for it to exist as a separate ability?

None of this is unique to Drk. When a tank establishes enough of a lead in threat, they swap to their DPS stance if they can take the hits and hold threat, and prioritize damage.

Paladin has Fight or Flight.

Warrior has Maim.

Dark Knight has Darkside. It is our version of maim basically, only it is capable of having 100% uptime so long as we can fuel it, where maim runs on a static countdown, and no matter what, isn't going to apply to the first combo ability, nor Maim itself unless it is already up. Grit is ONLY ignored by bad tanks who think they're too good for a tank stance and like to put their healers and high DPS through hell, and those who know they can drop grit without putting their healer through hell. Warriors drop Defiance just as much for Deliverence, and Paladins with Sword Oath.

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Originally Posted by Ditto

None of this is unique to Drk. When a tank establishes enough of a lead in threat, they swap to their DPS stance if they can take the hits and hold threat, and prioritize damage.

Paladin has Fight or Flight.

Warrior has Maim.

Dark Knight has Darkside. It is our version of maim basically, only it is capable of having 100% uptime so long as we can fuel it, where maim runs on a static countdown, and no matter what, isn't going to apply to the first combo ability, nor Maim itself unless it is already up. Grit is ONLY ignored by bad tanks who think they're too good for a tank stance and like to put their healers and high DPS through hell, and those who know they can drop grit without putting their healer through hell. Warriors drop Defiance just as much for Deliverence, and Paladins with Sword Oath.

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Asked and answered. Thanks.

*edit*

But wait, wouldn't Dark Arts be the DRK's answer to maim since it's a temporary boost that has to be constantly refreshed?

No, Dark Arts is kind of it's own thing, and it has nowhere near the effect something like Maim would have.

And refreshing Maim is within a Warriors rotation, unless they're literally spamming only Butchers Block for who knows why. The only difference between Maim and Darkside is 1 can be toggled at the cost of a resource drain and is only 15%, while the other is only applied through a mid combo skill that is used for 2 out of 3 combos a War has, and is 20%.

Edit: Oh, and the few skills that require Darkside to be up to use. Maim doesn't have those.

Grit and Darkside can be used at the same time, it's quite different to how other jobs use stances. Most of your moveset can be used with both activated, but some require you to disable Grit (blood weapon), or enable it (souleater HP absorb), or you might disable darkside to assist mp recovery, so there are times you'd use either or both.

Imagine if a paladin can activate both oaths at the same time. That's how those two drk stances are.

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Originally Posted by rawker

Imagine if a paladin can activate both oaths at the same time. That's how those two drk stances are.

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It's more like imagine a Paladin with Fight or Flight up, while in Shield Oath. But I guess stance wise it'd be similar, only Darkside isn't exactly a DPS stance in the same way that SoO is.

The only thing is that FoF under ShO is a net gain of 4% in damage dealt whereas darkside under Grit is still below normal damage by 8% but is up for as long as you can sustain it.