DRK at 60?

I'm a healer main that didn't have any problems healing drk 51-59 in any of the dungeons. They seemed to take a little more dmg, but I figured it would balance out by 60.

Now at 60, I almost cringe when a drk lands in my party. I struggle to keep them up even on a lot of the trash, but when I have an equally geared pld/war I have no problem healing them and even getting dps out.

Do drk need some serious buffs? Or is there advice I can give these new drk tanks to make healing them less annoying?

Probably would help to check them out and see if they are an experienced Tank (lv 50 Paladin/Warrior) or more a DPS. I havn't had much issue healing any of the tanks as long as they use the cooldowns they are suppose to. Maybe I have just gotten lucky though.

The DRK I had in Neverreap last night gave me panic attacks. So squishy. When I see a DRK in party I need to start popping XANAX.

it's not the dark knight job that's squishy. it might have been a gear difference, or a skill difference. so many tanks don't use any CDs at all. for whatever reason

I think it has to do with DRK being new and people figuring out how to play it. I hit 60 DRK a few days ago and I am still tweaking my CD rotation and skill flow. One thing that really helped me when tanking big pulls at 60 was to combine DA+Dark Dance and DA+Dark Passenger. So a big pull would now go: pop Shadow Wall (30% damage reduction), gather all mobs together, pop Blood Price (getting hit returns mp) , DA + Abyssal Drain (increased enmity and hp return), Salted Earth, about this time Shadow Wall should be about gone so I hit the DA+Dark Dance and DA+Dark Passenger (This gives +30% parry rate, +20% evasion, and Blinds everyone). At that point everything misses or gets parried and I take almost no damage. Work in a Convo for 20% more heals and I am g2g to gather mp for more DA+Abyssal drain or DA+Souleater. I'm sure this isn't the optimal rotation for large pulls, but its a great start for learning the job. Sorry you are getting scrub DRK, but I think it will get better as more and more people figure everything out.

The reason DRKs feel more squishy is because they don't have a mechanic built into their "tank" stance like the others do, or don't have a shield.

For warrior, you get the 20% added heal bonus that's built into their tanking stance. If they didn't have that, they'd be just as hard to heal or even HARDER to heal than DRKs due to their overly large health pool. PLDs don't have a mechanic built into their tank stance, but they have the added armor and stats of a shield which neither of the two other classes have. DRK has none of these things, and it's what hurts them in regards to dungeons.

Its true that, dark Knight are squishier compared to Marauder(with Defiance) or Paladin ( With Shield DEF and lots of Buffs) But its mainly how you play Dark knight, unexperienced Dark knight wont know how or when to use Specific Skills like "Dark Arts" , i had the problem before becouse i didnt know how to Manage using "Dark arts" becouse i thought it was mainly a Huge MP waste for an potency increase like 100-200. but for skills like "Abyssal Drain" Which is same as "Unleash" (black circle thingy) increases Enmity and also Absorbs "Health Points" aswell and they are Both aoe moves. But besides that it should be recommended atleast for Dark knight newcomers to have a little more EQ over nowledge, becouse if you die in 1 Hit , kowning how Dark knight works, hasn't helped either way :P Also hightly recommend to all Dark knight, use Grit, to Grit gud.

Leveling my AST, i have seen MANY DRKs.

All but a few of them were extremely squishy, and couldn't hold any aggro.

The pitiful low level MP regeneration of ASTs makes it that much worse. I had one that would lose aggro whenever i used a card on them.

I feel like a lot of them have never actually tanked before, and are just in it for the theme of the job.

Thanks everyone for the quick replies!

I'm glad to hear it sounds like it's the drk's I'm getting are still learning their rotations, which is fine by me, we all need to learn! I'm just getting bad luck it seems, as I haven't had single drk at 60 that doesn't give me panic attacks lol. My last party I have no clue what happen to the drk (which is why I made the thread), he pulled the first room in FC, I put SS down over him asap, then spamming lustrates he still just dropped faster than I could push out heals.

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Originally Posted by Maliki_Ozari

Thanks everyone for the quick replies!

I'm glad to hear it sounds like it's the drk's I'm getting are still learning their rotations, which is fine by me, we all need to learn! I'm just getting bad luck it seems, as I haven't had single drk at 60 that doesn't give me panic attacks lol. My last party I have no clue what happen to the drk (which is why I made the thread), he pulled the first room in FC, I put SS down over him asap, them spamming lustrates he still just dropped faster than I could push out heals.

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Yeah, I had a DRK just flat out die instantly on a trash pull. I didn't have time to even target him. I don't even have time to cast REGEN most of the time, because if I do that he will probably die.

Being a WHM another problem I have is on boss fights I'm running dangerously low on MP because the DRK is a sponge. Thankfully I've had bards with me. <3 you bards!

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Originally Posted by Velstriker

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Shadow Wall is 30% Damage reduction, not 40%. And for today I would not recommend using Dark Passenger under Dark Arts influence. The fix they did of the double Dark Arts proc on a single GCD combined with a CD attack made that both Abyssal Drain and Dark Passenger's Dark Arts effect only happen on the first mob they hit, subsequent mobs are hit with the "regular" version.

Dark Knight seems more of a Damage orianted Tank compared to PLD and WAR.

Thier mechanic heavily depends on Darkside which reduce their damage loss to 5% which allows them to perform more damage than PLD and WAR when it comes to tanking.

Not to mention their Main Tank buff is Dark Dance which is on a 60 second cooldown and provides 30% increase in parry with the addition of 20% increase chance of dodge with Dark Arts.

DRK appears more designed to be a Off-tank than Warrior was but darn can it keep aggro a bit better due to having higher Damage rate than PLD and WAR.

I would check their gear the 2 level 60 dungeons are the intro dungeons for ilvl 160 gear and law needed to get the ilvl 170 gear.

More than likely they are right at the minimum ilvl. They might have even used off class right side gear to get in or not rotating their cd's the way they should.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Dark Knight seems more of a Damage orianted Tank compared to PLD and WAR.

Thier mechanic heavily depends on Darkside which reduce their damage loss to 5% which allows them to perform more damage than PLD and WAR when it comes to tanking.

Not to mention their Main Tank buff is Dark Dance which is on a 60 second cooldown and provides 30% increase in parry with the addition of 20% increase chance of dodge with Dark Arts.

DRK appears more designed to be a Off-tank than Warrior was but darn can it keep aggro a bit better due to having higher Damage rate than PLD and WAR.

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Except Wars currently blow Drk out of the water when it comes to OT, and in damage.

They sure as hell do not do more damage than a War, and Pld comes incredibly close in terms of damage, to the point where that isn't a strength to Drk's.

And no, Dark Dance is not their Main Tank buff, it's a trash mob buff because that is all it's useful for. You're not dodging anything that matters in places like Ravana EX, nor is a 30% extra chance to mitigate 20% damage going to do anything for you. It just doesn't happen with that buff.

Is probably the skill of the player, they are ways to help the healer keep you alive and well. One thing that I would love to see they change about dark knight is the stun skill, is a CD, it'd be way better if it wasn't(Like the paladin's), you would be surprised how good stunning large trash mobs one after the other can be to help you not die.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

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Agressive tank? Yes. Dealing more damage than a Warrior in both MTing or OTing situations? Hell no, not by a long shot.

Also, Darkside's damage buff with Grit toggled on equals to a total of 8% damage loss, not 5%. Don't add or take % with %.

As MTing, you cannot burn your MP with Dark Arts skills because you may run out of MP easily when you need a buffed (still pathetic) Dark Dance or "reasonable" Dark Mind protection. Not to mention Darkside keeps draining your MP and your only MP recovery is Syphon Strike on Bosses (Blood Price support is small, it's something, and it helps, but small nontheless).

As an OT, you will burn through your TP rather quickly, at about 3 mins you're already dry.

In both scenarios were a DRK and a WAR are performing the same thing, WAR will come on top and still has mitigation that rivals or is superior to DRKs.

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Originally Posted by BlueThunder

Agressive tank? Yes. Dealing more damage than a Warrior in both MTing or OTing situations? Hell no, not by a long shot.

Also, Darkside's damage buff with Grit toggled on equals to a total of 8% damage loss, not 5%. Don't add or take % with %.

As MTing, you cannot burn your MP with Dark Arts skills because you may run out of MP easily when you need a buffed (still pathetic) Dark Dance or "reasonable" Dark Mind protection. Not to mention Darkside keeps draining your MP and your only MP recovery is Syphon Strike on Bosses (Blood Price support is small, it's something, and it helps, but small nontheless).

As an OT, you will burn through your TP rather quickly, at about 3 mins you're already dry.

In both scenarios were a DRK and a WAR are performing the same thing, WAR will come on top and still has mitigation that rivals or is superior to DRKs.

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You also get a CD skill at level 60 that gives you a good chunk of MP.

Well, its kinda unfair to compare a fun class like the DRK to the currently best class in the game, warrior. Warrior is a better OT of course, since it brings debuffs (DRK doesnt as OT) and has more damage.

DRK is still in its infancy, its a fun class not able to seriously compete with the big boys. Look at Machinist, or to a lesser degree Astrologian: these classes are fun, but not in the same league as the others. But you dont have to level subclasses, you save yourselves 30 levels of exp, and they look cool.

IMO at this time, they arent serious performance classes, just toys to pass time and have some fun in roulettes.

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Originally Posted by Lee-Akira

You also get a CD skill at level 60 that gives you a good chunk of MP.

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Same "chunk" as Syphon Strike, not worth not doing 350 more potency with it under Dark Arts, so no, we don't get MP back from Carve and Spit.

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Originally Posted by BlueThunder

Shadow Wall is 30% Damage reduction, not 40%. And for today I would not recommend using Dark Passenger under Dark Arts influence. The fix they did of the double Dark Arts proc on a single GCD combined with a CD attack made that both Abyssal Drain and Dark Passenger's Dark Arts effect only happen on the first mob they hit, subsequent mobs are hit with the "regular" version.

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yea, i saw that "fix" after i posted. It's a bug, and hopefully will go back to how it was soon. I doubt they would intend DA+Abyssal drain to only return HP from one mob hit. My bad on the 40% thing, brain fart on numbers, thanks for the correction.

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Originally Posted by BlueThunder

Same "chunk" as Syphon Strike, not worth not doing 350 more potency with it under Dark Arts, so no, we don't get MP back from Carve and Spit.

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Do you even read? I said is a good CD to get MP, I never said to use dark arts then Carve and spit.

I don't think its the DRK job itself, could just be your tank. I was killing level 59 mobs with my healer choco the other day as a level 50 DRK. Sure that doesn't sound amazing, but to me I thought it was pretty cool. I can't wait to hit 60, gear out and try it.

I have been doing the last two dungeons (lvl60) and almost every tank in the party has issues, mostly the WARs. IDK I guess everyone wants to keep trying to do massive pulls to "Speed Run", but when your under geared it doesn't work that great. So it could be the tanks gear, give it a few weeks for most people to catch up gear wise and it probably won't be so bad.

Also they could be the bare min to get in ilvl145 and then dropping below the ilvl after getting in. I know when I ran it the first time, I had to equip two pieces of gear that had higher ilvls, wasn't for my job lol, but I took them off when I got in(was short 2 ilvls), so I guess you could people doing that as well.

Defo a User issue, I'd imagine most tanks spam there Aggro combo over and over again. I can easily Tank the Vault with Grit off and with DPS gear on although Tank was my main at the start of 2.0 so I understand tanking more then these new people who most probs went from DPS to tank role. The only time I had Grit on was bosses of course.

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Originally Posted by Lee-Akira

Do you even read? I said is a good CD to get MP, I never said to use dark arts then Carve and spit.

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It's NOT a good CD to get mp.. That what she's saying, LOL

The only time it should ever be used for MP is if you're not going to be able to hit anything for a bit and can just throw it on CD, while gaining the MP to keep Darkside going.

Otherwise, you should always have Dark Arts at hand for it, which does not recover MP.

As a 60 DRK, I've noticed that I need to not use Unleash the same way PLD uses Flash. Yes, it's great for the initial aggro gain because i don't have to have a target, and it's centered on me. But after that, the animation for it entirely blocks out AOE markers. Most of the mobs in HW use lots and lots of AOE, and a good chunk of those use it right off the bat. If I'm focusing on that Unleash aggro, I'm going to get spanked hard and not even know what hit me. If you notice your tank going down quick and he's spamming unleash, maybe mention to him to use Abyssal Drain more.

Other than that yeah, I'd say most people are still learning their rotations and how to manage their cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by BlueThunder

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That is why players must manage their MP as a DRK.

If a player know how to properly manage MP then they can easily keep their MP pool above 50% for the entire dungeon while also being able to use Dark Arts on buffing the proper skills like Dark Dance.

Right now most people have yet to handle DRK MP management demand but once a player does it can easily prevent a DRK from depleating their MP and TP.

Blood Price is also a very good MP regen for DRK. Properly used it can keep a DRK MP from falling below 50% even on Boss fights.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

That is why players must manage their MP as a DRK.

If a player know how to properly manage MP then they can easily keep their MP pool above 50% for the entire dungeon while also being able to use Dark Arts on buffing the proper skills like Dark Dance.

Right now most people have yet to handle DRK MP management demand but once a player does it can easily prevent a DRK from depleating their MP and TP.

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"dungeon" is the key word there though.

Things change quite a bit when you're not in dungeons where you get hit by 3+ mobs at once constantly. Blood Price works wonders in dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Ditto

"dungeon" is the key word there though.

Things change quite a bit when you're not in dungeons where you get hit by 3+ mobs at once constantly. Blood Price works wonders in dungeons.

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Well they did say Open world in 3.0 is far more dangerous than 2.X world even for tank players.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Well they did say Open world in 3.0 is far more dangerous than 2.X world even for tank players.

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I think you got his meaning wrong. He didn't meant open world.

And you cannot rely on a Boss to autoattack you constantly, bosses will have their share of casted skills, and some spend half the time casting with 3 sec casts, making Blood Price MP recovery almost nothing because Darkside keeps draining you.

Only Boss fights I've seen you can rely on a well time Blood Price are Ravana and his clone from the "Allagan Museum" dungeon, since they have skills that multihit you in 1 attack.

On trash pulls or having multiple adds of a boss? Eff yes, you can recover as much MP as you want and more, but if you want to potentially use the DRK to its limits as a MT, you'll be very MP starved in most fights, and using DRK as "efficient" as possible as an OT will leave you TP starved in around 3 mins into the fight if nothing changes during those 3 mins.

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Originally Posted by BlueThunder

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I think it is more of a issue on When to use it rather than why not to use it.

True most bosses have to stop attacking you as a tank but they still provided a decent gap time before their next AoE Charge attack.

Players must also learn not to depend only on 123 combo as a DRK as well since it will require DRK to use Syphon Strike to regain a good chunk of their MP as part of their MP management requirements.

The best way so far I've been handling bosses is...

123 combo -> Hard Slash and Syphon Strike -> repeat

It is a standard combo for me when not dealing with poping Defense buffs but it is effective with maintaining both Aggro and MP on boss fights

Weave in the Blood Price buff after using Dark art to buff Dark Dance and it may hit back to 90% to 100% MP in seconds.

Right now after healed some 60 content I can say that proper DRK is an unstoppable force. I actually like healing good DRKs (but they seem to only be in my fc lol). I liked healing them 30-59 too.
I saw a very bad squishy PLDs in Neverreap, I was oom after every normal pull. Its like the worst nighmare: I can see them using cds and stuff but they just drop like rocks while another good PLD can proceed butchering mobs w/o using cds (not in a bad way, he just doesnt needs cds to stay at 80+% of hp during pull). I have yet to encounter a living WAR in 60 content tho, but my healer friend says they're a pain to heal cuz their hp just bounce from full to zero all the time xD

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

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True, it's about discovering what moments Blood Price should be used for maximum benefit, but you cannot count you'll have Blood Price ready for every single of those moments.

Dark Arts consumes the same amount of MP that you recover with 2 Syphon Strikes, and it needs to be used at least twice every minute: For your Enmity Combo and for Carve and Spit. You'll also spend during those 60 seconds the MP equivalent of Syphon Strike recovery in 2 Dark Passengers (strange that a CD would spend resource for its use). You're left with a few Syphon strikes left that would actually recover the MP you've used, and not even the "full" recovery since Darkside keeps draining your MP constantly, and your MP regen in combat is slightly lower than what Darkside consumes.

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Originally Posted by BlueThunder

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Well Dark passage isn't something I let loose on Bosses due to its Large MP consumption.

I find Dark Passage to be best saved when Tanking Multiple enemies or at least when I feel there is enough MP to use it on multiple enemies due to its nature as a Multiple hitter.

Plunge serves as a better weaving skill to use when dealing with bosses since it doesn't consume MP nor TP and does 200 potency with it having the same cooldown time (30 sec cooldown) as Dark passge. It put less stress on my MP this way and saves plenty of MP for other uses.