Question about tanking

I started playing DRK recently after playing most of the game as a DPS (BLM) and a Healer (I became a SGE when EW came out). I've been learning how to use mitigation, how to pull during dungeons and stuff like that. I'm currently at lv67. Today I was spamming Bardam's Mettle so I could level from 65 to 67 and in 2 of those runs I got matched with 2 WHMs.

I did the usual thing: pulled the first group of 3 mobs, popped Rampart to mitigate, rushed towards the second group of mobs, then popped Shadow Wall once Rampart went off. In both runs I died twice during those pulls despite doing my best to mitigate damage and avoiding AoEs. Both WHM refused to heal me to prioritize their DPS. I even said "screw it, Living Dead" in one of the pulls, which triggered Walking Dead and the WHM still refused to heal me.

Granted, both runs went rather smoothly regardless because they rez'd me, like, a half a second after death (they were quick to react to me dying, but not quick to react to my HP dropping like WoW's playerbase?), so I didn't complain in chat. I was just wondering why they let me die for no reason. Maybe they're not aware of how DRK works and expected me to have a ton of self-healing like the WAR has? I don't know.

I'll give that I was "undergeared". Quotation marks because it's not like I was using white gear from Gil vendors. I had the full lv60 Poetics set, and since Poetics vendors don't sell lv65 stuff, I gotta stick with it until I'm lv70.

I ran the same dungeon again later on because I still needed some EXP and I got a SGE who let my HP drop to around 30%~40% before healing me back up to around 80%. All I had to do in this run was alternate Rampart and Shadow Wall between pulls, it went rather well.

So, am I the one doing something wrong? Both as a Tank (because I didn't use mitigation correctly, perhaps?) and as a Healer (because I prioritize my Tank's HP over my DPS when I'm playng SGE)?

Bardam's Mettle is pretty gear gated dungeon. Poetics gear shows it weakness in that dungeon on every tank. When I levelled up my tanks through that range, I made a fully crafted set of lv66 gear set. I would routinely hit 66 in middle of a run and my survivability increased leaps and bounds as soon I crossed the threshold and put on the new gear.
But saying that, the WHMs you had in bad runs were too interested in casting Holy than giving you proper regeneration and attention.

You can also use both Arm's Length and Reprisal; as those are great defensive CDs too. Arm's Length is only good against trashpacks but that is what dungeons are full of.

As a healer main, seeing this happen makes me cringe. It basically boils down to the White Mages not doing their job correctly because they were tunnel visioning their single button smashing.

It’s not just a thing in Bardam’s as mentioned above; any tank that’s leveling in dungeons that are relevant to its level enough to not need syncing are going to have the defense of wet paper compared to being overgeared and downscaled. Add to this the fact that Dark Knight in particular does not have very many defensive tools outside of role skills at that level, while White Mage has none to provide the tank at all compared to Sage and Scholar.

Any healer worth their salt will look at the tank’s level upon spawning in a leveling dungeon, realize that the tank will likely take more damage than they would had they been overgeared, and adjust their expectations of balance between DPS and healing. Anybody else is either not a good healer (yet?), or they’re taking the “dps is the only metric and if you so much as use a GCD heal you’re garbage” mentality that’s built up over the years far too seriously.

From the sounds of it you’re doing fine, so don’t worry about it.

I agree with everything Chameleon said. However there are some other things to consider. WHMs Holy stuns for 4 then 2 the 1 seconds, so if timed properly, your first 7 seconds of combat you should be taking no damage, so using your best defensives during that time is a waste.

Another thing you can do to mitigate damage from the first pack is use sprint before you pull, and just out run them, though be sure to warn your healer before doing this.

Finally, the DPSers might have not been doing enough to kill things quick enough to the point that you and your healers might have been running out of resources to keep you up.

So to sum it up, your issues could have been a number of things.

I would blame myself as a healer. If you're reasonably geared and using any mitigation then there's no reason they shouldn't be able to heal you up. And yeah I always put keeping people alive before personal dps; still a dps loss to let people hit the floor so you can squeeze some more healer dps in.

The Stormblood leveling dungeons are a bit rough for DRK because of not having TBN yet and them being tuned to how DRK worked at those levels in Stormblood which is vastly different from how they perform at those levels now since their defensive kit has changed quite a bit since then.

One thing that I did note in your description was that you were burning through one of your main defensive abilities, Rampart, DURING the pull and then popping your second, and pretty much only other, main defensive ability Shadow Wall within that same wall to wall pull. You should really try to avoid using a strong defensive like Rampart while you are actually pulling. Hitting sprint right before you engage the first pack of mobs, quickly tagging the group as you run through them and then going straight for the next group without stopping or slowing down should allow you to outpace that first pack a bit which will minimize the amount of auto-attacks they land on you, making the amount of damage you take fairly negligible. It takes a bit of practice to get used to, but once you get the hang of it you can pull off full wall to wall pulls with only taking a stray auto here and there or none at all. Not burning Rampart during the pull then allows you to use it when you hit the wall and have all the packs together, which is really where you will need the mitigation.

Also, don't forget your other defensive tools like Reprisal, Arms Length and even potentially trying to weave in Low Blow for the stuns. Every little bit helps, particularly if you feel stretched thin. Also don't completely write off Dark Mind. Sure it is magic damage only, but that can appear in dungeon mob packs every now and then. It's better to use it and it do nothing than need it and not use it when it could have helped.

Abyssal Drain may seem like a damage ability but it is primarily a self-heal ability that should be planned for and used during wall to wall pulls, just make sure to time it for when you are getting low on health and when it will hit as many enemies as possible (make sure you have an enemy in the center of the pack targeted). I personally like to use it a little after I engage the last pack of the pull and am gathering together all the packs of enemies into a tight cluster. You tend to be taking a bunch of damage then and AD can give you and the healer a bit more breathing room while also healing up any damage that you may have taken from stray autos during the pull.

As far as gear, you might be slightly undergeared with what you had. Vendor gear is trash for leveling and can be avoided obviously. Just try to get some dungeon gear as you are running them and check the stats to see if they are better than what you currently have and upgrade accordingly. I think it was around the lvl 65-67 dungeons where they started to get better than the upgraded poetics gear.

Lastly, while there is likely always something that you could improve or do better at, sometimes you just get a sh*t healer in the Duty Finder. This will always be the case and it doesn't matter what level you are, how good your gear is or how experienced you are. Sh*t players happen. I still every now and then get healers in Expert Roulette that will literally not heal me at all, not a single heal, shield or regen thrown my way during a wall to wall pull and they just stand there not even DPSing until I die and then they res me and go back to just standing there. While this happens and you do run into absolute garbage players every now and then, luckily the majority of healers and other players in general aren't like that.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

The Stormblood leveling dungeons are a bit rough for DRK because of not having TBN yet and them being tuned to how DRK worked at those levels in Stormblood which is vastly different from how they perform at those levels now since their defensive kit has changed quite a bit since then.

Abyssal Drain may seem like a damage ability but it is primarily a self-heal ability that should be planned for and used during wall to wall pulls, just make sure to time it for when you are getting low on health and when it will hit as many enemies as possible (make sure you have an enemy in the center of the pack targeted). I personally like to use it a little after I engage the last pack of the pull and am gathering together all the packs of enemies into a tight cluster. You tend to be taking a bunch of damage then and AD can give you and the healer a bit more breathing room while also healing up any damage that you may have taken from stray autos during the pull.

Lastly, while there is likely always something that you could improve or do better at, sometimes you just get a sh*t healer in the Duty Finder. This will always be the case and it doesn't matter what level you are, how good your gear is or how experienced you are. Sh*t players happen. I still every now and then get healers in Expert Roulette that will literally not heal me at all, not a single heal, shield or regen thrown my way during a wall to wall pull and they just stand there not even DPSing until I die and then they res me and go back to just standing there. While this happens and you do run into absolute garbage players every now and then, luckily the majority of healers and other players in general aren't like that.

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Bardems has some of the biggest pack pulls in the game. The Burn. Grand Cosmos. Kitoseos pull before 2nd boss. Maybe Mt. Gulg has the biggest trash pack in the game I think. If you can pull the last stretch of Mt. Gulg your a real man/woman mode tank.

Kitchen sink or peacemeal mitigation? I think in dungeons you can get away with either specifically in dungeons though.

DRK on the other hand....it's mitigation in dungeons is TERRIBLE for some odd reason.

TBN is garbage vs. 8-12 mobs as it breaks in milliseconds, as it should because your taking stupid amounts of damage. TBN is stupid good vs. busters or heavy raid wides...it shines there. Sadly I still hope it breaks on raid wides. Busters there is a chance you over mitigate and you lose part of your soul when it doesn't break.

Dark Mind....barf....

Shadow Wall is strong.

Oblation I feel is....meh imo. It's just a bargain bin intervention I felt.

Now if you could buff oblation, dark mind, Carve and Spit, Abyssal Drain, Soul Eater, salted earth with dark arts proc....now were talking.

I truly believe DRK needs to have dark arts give a buffed proc to: oblation, salted earth, carve and spit, abyssal drain, soul eater, shadowbringer. And also add either a second dark arts charge or when using a procced dark arts gives a percent chance of granting a free dark arts.

I think DRK would take anything at this point.

To OP....just get DRK to max level and run savage....DRK is in demand for savage weekly clears as it's DPS is disgusting.

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

Bardems has some of the biggest pack pulls in the game. The Burn. Grand Cosmos. Kitoseos pull before 2nd boss. Maybe Mt. Gulg has the biggest trash pack in the game I think. If you can pull the last stretch of Mt. Gulg your a real man/woman mode tank.

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They have nothing on Saint Mocianne's Arboretum, after the 1st boss you can keep breaking walls and continue, bring down a large army squad if you don't stop.

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

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The vast majority of what you are talking about has nothing to do with what I said, nor what the thread and the original post was about. Not everything has to be turned into a "let's rip on DRK" session.
I was offering targeted advice specific to exactly what the original poster was asking about.

As for Bardem having big pulls as well as some other dungeons, that doesn't matter. The goal is to always try to accomplish the biggest pull you can and to learn to utilize your abilities the best you can to help be successful with that goal, if you have trouble with that or your party can't handle it for some reason then you rein it back until you can. I've always gone for wall to wall pulls in all the dungeons you listed and have very consistently been fine with pulling them off and on DRK as well and yes, I can do the full long pull before the last boss in Mt. Gulg and I was doing that back during early ShB with a DRK just fine.

Also, why did you cut out parts of my post when you quoted me? That's just weird, especially since you weren't even speaking to anything in particular that I said that you quoted.
If your goal was to just complain about DRK mitigation, please don't drag me into it by quoting me.

Thank you for all the advices, everyone. That'll help a lot ^^