squishy aggressive dark knights, how do i heal these guys on aoe trash pulls?

I came back to the game a week ago and I'm leveling up my WHM and SCH. In general, I get "stuck" with Dark Knights as tanks as that is what everyone is leveling up. Their gear is okay, but they don't have vitality and they are consistently more squishy than I remember from tanks playing six months ago.

In Sohm Al in particular, it is common for the tank to grab both the first group of trash as well as the group of poison enemies up the hill and they'll do something similar after the first boss with the first set of enemies and the ones up the hill.

I haven't looked at DRK yet, but I know they are doing some AoE action. Their health drops like a rock as they get hit by five or six enemies at once. Sometimes, I save them, sometimes I don't, depending on cooldowns and luck. So, I'm either doing something wrong, don't understand the mechanic at play, Dark Knight tanks are largely idiots and I should drop group as soon as I see that is what I'm grouped up with, or some combination ;-)

This is really just a leveling thing. I'm not going to be a good dos'ing healer, so I'm not going to even bother raiding when I get to 60, but I would like to keep people alive while leveling up.

I notice it too, but it's obvious why when you consider the tank meta shuns tankiness. From what I've read (I haven't even unlocked any tank classes yet), tanks are told to shed any signs of vit from their accessories and run pure Slaying (DPS) gear. They also like to tank in DPS stance rather than tank stance. The DPS checks in savage Alexander raiding make it a huge boon for tanks to run like this, and because other content is easier, it's trickled down in to the leveling dungeons and such. Ultimately, if a tank doesn't have the good sense switch to tank stance/pull less, just be on your toes and keep em healed.

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Originally Posted by SkyBane001

I notice it too, but it's obvious why when you consider the tank meta shuns tankiness. From what I've read (I haven't even unlocked any tank classes yet), tanks are told to shed any signs of vit from their accessories and run pure Slaying (DPS) gear. They also like to tank in DPS stance rather than tank stance. The DPS checks in savage Alexander raiding make it a huge boon for tanks to run like this, and because other content is easier, it's trickled down in to the leveling dungeons and such. Ultimately, if a tank doesn't have the good sense switch to tank stance/pull less, just be on your toes and keep em healed.

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Yes and no. This is a bigger problem than gearing though. Gearing that way highlights faults in tanking instead of hiding them. It's as simple as rotating defensive cooldowns on trash pulls.

It's not the gear, its the miseducation on what a good tank is. That's the real issue at work with any squishy tanks.

This is leveling not end-game raiding that I'm talking about. In general, nobody is over-geared that I've seen. Every single dungeon has "walls" to keep you from running to the boss and skipping trash, so you aren't going to speed up a run that much compared to the slow down of a group wipe due to pulling too much.

Anyway, nobody knows what the AoE Dark Knight move is, how to identify that is what they are doing, and how to properly heal it? Is it like a Hallowed Ground or something where they can't die until the time is up, but then it is critical to give them the big heal just before it ends because they are probably at 1 HP?

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Originally Posted by kasplat

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Well living dead should really have some kinda of macro line to help you identify it. Basically it works like this: Living dead activates, if the DRK is knocked below 0 HP in that time he goes into the living dead state. You then have 10 seconds to heal them for 100% of their HP total to make them alive again.

Now if they have 10 k hp, all you have to heal is 10 k HP. Not heal them to full, it doesn't matter that they take damage in the time you are healing them. You just have to give them a total of 10 k HP gained over that 10 seconds. That removes the effect.

Regardless, if a DRK isn't using their defensive cooldowns on trash pulls then they are simply doing it wrong. There isn't any reason why any tank should be dying to trash mobs unless they are simply not using their defensive cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by karateorangutang

Yes and no. This is a bigger problem than gearing though. Gearing that way highlights faults in tanking instead of hiding them. It's as simple as rotating defensive cooldowns on trash pulls.

It's not the gear, its the miseducation on what a good tank is. That's the real issue at work with any squishy tanks.

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I agree, what I meant was that because people say stacking STR good, VIT bad for tanks, new tanks that don't know what their doing/don't have the skills unlocked to make this work yet go in to dungeons without the necessary health buffer to allow for mistakes. So ultimately yeah, it's an education thing exacerbated by a meta that demands every role maximize DPS.

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Originally Posted by SkyBane001

I agree, what I meant was that because people say stacking STR good, VIT bad for tanks, new tanks that don't know what their doing/don't have the skills unlocked to make this work yet go in to dungeons without the necessary health buffer to allow for mistakes. So ultimately yeah, it's an education thing exacerbated by a meta that demands every role maximize DPS.

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Yes, absolutely. It's why alot of higher level tanks will even tell leveling tanks to level in VIT til they are comfortable with the new role.

100% agree.

I don't pull lots of Trash, but when I have a lot, just before pulling or after my pull going there to aggro them, I'll activate Blood Price. We need to make a macro to tell everyone "don't stun the mobs, I need their dmg on me to receover MP for 15 seconds!"

Then once it's gone, I pop up my cooldowns. It enables me to maintain aggro with Unleash, and even moreso if I'm undergeared compared to Healers and DPS.

So yeah, DRK will get their HP down pretty quickly for the initial pull, then it stabilizes.

Once you know how it works, it's a bit easier. my GF keeps on telling me how squishy we are. She manage to heal me all through it so far. And she tries to keep Benediction up in case I have to use Living Dead (on bosses mostly)

But if we'd have problems, I wouldn't mind putting more fending gear, which can be done by anyone if after 2 attempts to kill simple trash, they fail..

True though, pulling more than one can chew, it's another thing ^^

and what SkyBane001 wrote ^^

Have fun in the game, thank you for covering our arses! ;)

One of the issues is that a few or a lot of DPS went to play DRK without a single Tank class leveled and thinking, oh we did big pulls with others tanks before when I was a DPS so I'll do it now but there is a few things about the LV50+dungeons.

1. Mobs hit harder in HW dungeons.
2. If you mained a Tank role before 3.0 you most likely have the iLV130 tank gear which is just started to be passed in terms of iLV by LV55.
3. Similar to 2 but if you mained a DPS role than your tanking gear may not be as high.
4. Doing big pulls myself I always stack on VIT to last longer.
5. Knowing your CD's, DRK has similar CD's to PLD and WAR so mind set wise you know when and how to use them correctly during big pulls. Some DPS to Tanks might not even use them as in there mind DPS DPS DPS let the healer worry about the amount of mobs i'm pulling.

For me If I do big pulls I tend to stack VIT. So it's all down to how the player plays DRK.
Also I notice alot of DRKs not using Dark Side during mob pulls which is weird since Dark Side is like the key role in being a good DRK.

All in all, DRk's are far from squishy, it's just players being not so good.