DRK dps help

Just came back to the game after a few months and I've been getting back into learning Savage content. I have a mix of 340 and 320 gear with a 340 weapon. Most of my gear is slotted with DH and my accessories are slotted with strength. I know from what I've read that drk dps is on the low side right now but I was main tanking an o1s the other day and a paladin was doing more then 1000 dps more than me. They we're only slightly more geared than myself. At my best I've only been able to get around 2600 without grit. Im not sure if I'm missing something in my rotation. Can anyone point me somewhere to find a breakdown of priorities. I've tried looking but I think too many people are abandoning drk for the other tanks. Thank you

Took a peak at one of your logs, and it looks like the main issues are uptime/skills per minute, and dark arts usage. The log I looked at was a 558 second encounter time, you did 33cpm, and a total of 196 gcd actions. By comparison the top drk for roughly the same encounter length (552 seconds) did 227 gcd actions, and used salted earth 2 times more than you, and both delirium and blood weapon 1 time more. The comparison drk did 80 dark arts while you did 56. Just the combo and da potency loss is around 10.3k over the 9 minute fight which would translate to roughly 250 -300 dps.

edit: A couple more quick notes, you did at least one carve and spit without da (you used da on the combo action before c&s), and you did at least 1 uncombed soul eater during the fight. Little mistakes like these add up quickly (both examples are ~200 potency loss each time) just need to make sure you tighten up the rotaion to fix them

Looking at the "Top" DPS parses can also be slightly off, due to people stacking certain jobs to maximize their own fflog.
But what was most important in that fflog was the number of GCDs. 31 more GCDs than you is essentially 76 seconds (1min and 16 seconds) of time, where you werent attacking the boss.

Looking at DA isnt as helpful, since you might not be able to afford to use DA as often, if your party set up isnt designed to make DRK on par with the other tanks. (Such as having a NIN and a WAR, to help maximize your threat. Or DPS who can cut their threat in half, instead of just diversion)
Heck, just having party members who are terrible at DPS can actually raise your own DPS, due to not needing to use enmity combos. (This is why it gets tricky to measure urself to the top spots. And the further u get into savage, the more likely you'll only see crazier numbers, as you'll have less "average" numbers being posted)

But looking at the DAs missed, 24, is 140 potency missed per DA. (Im not sure what the best way to estimate how many GCDs this is equivalent of, so I'll make a poor guess) So lets say its roughly worth 1 GCD (going with an idea that every 3 GCDs averages out the 3 in total as 150 potency) if so, thats 24 missed GCDs, or 60seconds worth of GCDs. So, only compared to the other DRK, you're roughly not attacking the boss for 2mins of the fight. (This one is less accurate, as not using DA isnt the same as not attacking the boss)

Of course, DRK needs a lot of set up, just to get numbers nearly equal to other tanks, and needs to spend all of its MP on keeping its DPS equal to them.

but it would be better to find a fflog that didnt have a NIN in the DRKs group, with a DRK who had nearly equal amount of time MTing, or even more, to then get a better idea of how far behind your DAs really are.
(unless you have a raid group who does have a NIN, and or a WAR.)

Also, you're using STR potions to help raise your DPS right? using them at the right time, like in TA windows makes a good difference in DPS.

EDIT: forgot to add in priority of DA. I havent played DRK since I hit 70, and hated it, but if I remember correctly, your MP should be prioritized for DA+CnS#1, then Blood Spiller#2 next, then on syphon strike/soul eater. (Of course you heal more if you slap it on soul eater, but this isnt a dps increase) dont forget to prioritize delirium to extend blood weapon, over blood spiller. And dont forget to use up your MP, before you hit delirium.

You may be having clipping issues, due to DRKs longer animations/locks, and poor ping. I know I cant double weave on most jobs w/o clipping 80% of the time. 20% of the time, it will not clip.
In HW clipping wasnt as big of a deal, since DRKs oGCDs were higher priority than their GCDs, but id wager not as much anymore, since they lost so much oGCD potency.

Also, make sure the boss isnt going to jump away when you go to use blood weapon/delirium/DA.
If the boss makes u turn away, depending on your ping, try to find out where is the absolute last GCD u can land, before you have to turn away. its a bit hard, when its not consistent, and you have to get a rough idea what is average.
And some tanks will use range attacks in certain mechanics to keep DPS on the boss, but this may or may not be worth the DPS, if you could be using the MP on DA/other stuff, so its hard for me to tell u the answer here.
(On PLD and WAR lob/hawk are easily a DPS increase when out of range)

Thanks for the insight. I didn't realize how much I was missing on my uptime. I'm really gonna have to work on my rotation then it seems. I sometimes use CnS without arts when I'm Mana starved but maybe I need to work on my Mana management instead.

Some factors depend on your group. The best run has a long clear time. There's about 70% uptime on Slashing, because the NIN forgets to refresh their dot. There are 4 missing TAs.

Some factors are not rotation based. You get hit by Clamp at around 4 minutes and die. This would mess up your result even if you did everything else perfectly.

Look at uptime before you look at rotation. Glue yourself to the boss. When everyone else slides out for Levinbolt, don't. Just wait for the foot debuff to disappear before you shift away from any players still on the boss (the ice disappears a couple of seconds before Levinbolt goes off). If there's fire near the boss and a Levinbolt cast, don't run out - just wait for the cast bar to just about finish before you dodge out (the lightning resolves itself first). Do mechanics in a way that allows you to stay glued to the boss. Lost GCDs are are around a 300 potency loss each. To make matters worse, you're playing a job with a higher average GCD value and a faster GCD on average.

A couple of issues that I'm not sure that I'm seeing correctly: I see no infusion uses and no Plunge uses. Food and infusions are mandatory if you're trying to improve your results. Plunge is a given, especially with regards to the above point on uptime.

Overall: Focus on getting a good, clean run with no deaths, using infusions on recast. Work on maximising uptime first. Then look at rotation, and make sure that you're not hitting max MP at any point. Then try and sync up your rotation with mechanics and with your teammates' raid buffs where possible.

As Deathgiver and Lyth noted there seem to be some rotation issues. There are only two uploads publicly viewable spaced 5 months apart (makes general statements difficult), but it appears you are not managing your oGCDs optimally. Your most recent is missing salted earth casts (525 potency a pop) and more than half of your plunge potential. The first upload is missing plunge entirely and missed some salted casts. In the upload that you appear to main tank in you also only have 5 uses of TBN, TBN in grit is a major source of damage, it is only out of grit that it is usually a dps loss, so this is something to keep in mind if you are going to be full time grit. The best way to raise your dps is of course learning to not use grit (which saps 25% of your dps potential between grit penalty and blood weapon) but if you aren't comfortable with running without grit then the TBN grit thing is good to keep in mind.

Just one other side note, if you were in grit the entire time (as in your most recent upload) you should expect to lose in the neighborhood of 700 to 800 dps (25% of your total damage at the average to above average range) compared to a full time off tank performing in the average to above average range, so being 1000 behind with 100% grit up time isn't extreme but does point at a rotation issue.

As for guides I would check out Emiin for an advanced guide, which is very comprehensive, and posted on the forums: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Raiding-Guide

They provide a number of openers in that guide as well as the dark knight priority system. The off tank opener can be found here: http://ffxivrotations.com/vfc

@Chrono_Rising This is by far the best DRK guide I ever read, thanks for sharing this. I have never think about party buff when doing rotation and all this time I use my own opener that turns out to be not optimal><

All credit to Emiin, they really put alot of love into writing that. I'm happy to share.