When do I drop Grit and Drk Controller questions.

Hello, I've just recently returned to the game and have decided I wanted to swap to being a tank and have been leveling my Drk to do so. I had a couple things I wanted to ask if you guys do not mind.

1. From what I've read about tanks in general, I gather that you are to drop swap from tank stance to dps stance, but when would be a good time to do this as a Drk? Also do I stay out of tank stance once I've dropped Grit or do I use it like a cooldown and use it when big hits are coming in?

2. How controller friendly is Drk? My current mmo mouse is starting to loose functionality to some of the buttons and trying to compensate is starting to create a bit of an uncomfortable situation so I was thinking of using my X360 controller, but wasn't sure on how much more comfortable it would be.

Friendly Disclaimer - Just my opinions

1. I wouldn't recommend that you start dropping Grit until you are pretty comfortable with the class. Your goal once you have dropped it is to not have to go back in or use Power Slash to generate enmity if you can help it (sometimes life sucks and you have to :/ ). That being said once you decide you are ready to start stance dancing watch your enmity bars on the party list. When Number 2's enmity bar is at half and is staying there (ie. not increasing quickly) drop Grit and go into your dps rotation. If you have to go back into Grit or use Power Slash combo bc enmity becomes an issue then do so - IMPORTANT: Leave yourself enough MP to get back into Grit. As you get better you will get a feel for when is appropriate to drop Grit and will develop confidence in your abilities. Then you can push yourself more by dropping Grit sooner/staying out of it longer.

Regarding its use as a cooldown I would say "kinda". By that I mean you can absolutely use Grit as a 20% damage reducing cool down, but its way more expensive than the other cooldowns you have at your disposal. So if you got nothing else and you think its gonna hurt - Grit can work in a pinch. Otherwise that MP can be used on those sweet DA Souleaters.

2.The biggest issue with DRK and controllers is that it has a lot of skills that you need to be able to get to as soon as they are available and a lot of skills that you will want to use on cooldown. That being said there are many, many capable DRKs playing on controllers. The key is to just make the systems available work for you instead of against you. Like using hotbars to watch the cooldown of skills on other bars, macros that dont sacrifice your potential, etc.

Ah I see. I'll hold off on the Grit dropping until I'm more comfortable then. As for the controller, yeah I do plan to have a hot bar with all the cooldowns on it so I can track their timers. Ideally the controller thing will only be temporary until I can get a new mouse in a couple weeks.

personally i just use it to adjust to the situation, though im not really a raid-worthy drk. start in grit to get my aggro up and test the waters with damage, if no basic hits are dropping my health too bad, or im not getting hit, i'll gladly drop it for blood weapon, preferably when i have some oGCDs coming off cooldown i can use without grit for the extra damage on. if i'm getting hit fairly regularly but not for much (auto attacks, not busters), i can drop it, go blood weapon, bloodbath and dark dance to get the speed attack speed, the mp, the self healing and a few more bloodbath self heals with stun/ reprisal procs. Though keep checking your aggro in case that sneaky overgeared blm starts catching up, or i make sure i can grit to prep for a buster with a souleater after to help regain that little hp afterwards.

I guess its up to you to decide how you wanna use it. some fights its barely useful, for example in the last phase of sephirot i use grit when adds are up and for maybe 1/3 of the tank soak towers, but in a less scripted or more direct damage fight, it can be safer to err on the side of caution until you know.

long story short, dungeon bosses you can use to experiment with stance dancing as they dont do a great deal of damage, and learn what you can get away with. even if you just like turning grit off to use blood weapon and back on when its over

Drop Grit when you face a boss or add(s) that is noticeably doing low damage to you or if healer keeps healing you at 99% HP. Just play around with it. When there's one add left turn off Grit and if you can manage more go for it later on in the dungeon, but pull first with Grit on. (Assuming you know how to build up MP and do high DPS while keeping control of the aggro)

gather up all the aggro from your pull, drop Grit, pop some cool downs (depending damage taking with grit on/off) and explode with DPS while building up you MP for the next pull

example: The first boss of The Wanderer's Palace (hard) currently I'm ILVL 231. I dropped grit around 60% after noticing healer was having no problems healing me and my HP stayed above 90%. I dropped Grit and DPS'ed while watching aggro. Sometimes i can only keep grit off for a few seconds so i don't bother because of high lvl DPS player taking the aggro fast. Same thing applies with adds.

As for playing efficiently with a controller, I definitely recommend that you start using Extended Crossbars. You find this setting in Character Configuration > Hotbars > Cross. With it, you'll have instant access to another 16 slots by just holding both triggers (LT+RT or RT+LT). Keep your main combo skills and stuff you use all the time on crossbar 1 and move cooldowns and other less used stuff to the extended bar, and enable a couple of vertical hotbars and use HUD Layout to place them next to your crossbar. Then copy the cooldowns you have on the Extended Bar to those hotbars for easy tracking of cooldowns.

Personal experience only... (AS4 cleared 3.0, AS7 cleared 3.2 in the first month of release then took a break)
Dropping grit is used generally in one of two situations:
1. OT
No reason to reduce your DPS if you aren't taking any damage. Pretty self explanatory
2. MT
Tank's job first and foremost is to hold aggro and mitigate damage. Now for arguments sake we can say that being "efficient" is mitigating tankbusters only so that you may survive and hold aggro.
We could also say that being "efficient" is maximizing DPS whilst surviving, whilst holding aggro.
Dropping grit means that you are increasing damage taken as well as damage done. You would need to personally calculate (also calculate healer ability) whether or not the trade off is worth the drop in grit or not.
Be warned that dropping grit in 3.2 also means a much lower output of enmity thanks to changes made with enmity calculations and such.

All the above info was generally for raiding. In casual content, you can experiment when to drop grit in regards to aggro/damage taken/damage done calculations and then take that experience into raiding if you wish.

As for controllers... like with any job. MACRO MACRO MACRO

/macroicon "Salted Earth"
/ac "Salted Earth" <t>

(The above macro allows Salted Earth to be automatically placed on the target, thus avoiding having to ground cast which is annoying with both a controller or mouse)

/macroicon "Souleater"
/ac "Souleater" <t>
/ac "Mercystroke" <t>

Find intuitive combinations to macro.

I personally macro Shadowskin and Foresight on the same button (1 press Shadow Skin, second press Foresight) with a second lateral hotbar enabled to see the icon and cooldown for Foresight.

Things to note.

NEVER EVER EVER Macro:
Living Dead
Provoke
Unleash
Abyssal Dran
Grit
Darkside

This includes simple macros that add text like:

/macroicon "Living Dead"
/ac "Living Dead"
/p (Living Dead) (Just used it)

Why? Because macros have a client side delay whereas abilities are server side. This means your emergency skills that must be cast immediately such as those lised above will have a detrimental delay when macrod.

Other than that...

I have been in high end raid content since release on a controller with ONLY 3 hotbars enabled (This means Left, Right and the one you get from pressing L2 and R2 at the same time). A controller can have a maximum of 4 hotbars before the need to macro hotbar switches.

These switches and the use of a 4th hotbar make controller use extremely complicated when it really doesn't need to be.

I would personally say that setting up the perfect controller hotbar is a lot more difficult than doing so on PC but it is extremely rewarding and efficient when done properly.

Another good point that a lot of DRKs dont know is:

Dark Arts + Dark Dance + Dark Arts + Dark Passenger = Basically impossible to get hit on a large pull in a dungeon. Pop Foresight or Shadowskin, Blood Price for a bit of mana, drop Grit and smash skulls with Dark Arts + Souleater and Sole Survivor.

When your DA DD and DA DP drop. Enter Grit, regain MP, Dark Arts + Abyssal Drain and rinse and repeat ;3



FINAL POINT =

Its been discussed since 2.0 with Melee DPS and some Tanks... Controller is the king of dodging AOEs and tricky manoeuvring (Thanks to the analog sticks). You can land yourself in a spot smaller than your character in the middle of AOEs everywhere and manage to dodge that like a pro.